Mesopotamia Civilization

Ancient Sumeria was the first writing society known to man. In

our last lecture we considered that long, long period of millions of
years of preliterate human experience, which gave us so much: a
physical body and a wondering curious mind. That prehistoric period
finally resulted in the Agricultural or Neolithic Revolution about 8
to 10 thousand years ago. And one of the most important consequences
that came out of that Agricultural Revolution you may remember was
writing. The first writing society of which we have any record
developed in Mesopotamiaa Greek term that means the land between the
rivers. It was here in the area of modern Iraq that these first
agricultural villages, products of the Neolithic Revolution, produced
some written documents. We date this first writing society in the
late 4
th
millennium B.C., around 3200, 3300, or 3400 B.C.

Cuneiform Writing

Some scholars have argued that the Egyptians preceded the
Mesopotamians with the invention of writing, but the consensus, which
is what we must go by, though it is shifting, is that writing first
occurred in Mesopotamia, in the area occupied by modern Iraq. They
used clay tablets because there was a lack of wood and things with
which to make paper. With a little pen like instrument called a
cuneaus they wrote pictures on clay that had a word or sound
value. We call these pictures, preserved on clay tablets, cuneiform
writing. It was fortunate that they used clay because once it
hardened, it survived violence and fire. We now have thousands of
clay tablets which are thousands of years old, dating back to the
period of the late 4
th
millennium B.C. They record the thoughts and
ideas, chiefly about commerce in their earlier writing, but
increasingly about literature, religion, and law. Though we have an
enormous number of them, it wasnt until the middle of the nineteenth
century, around 1845 or 1850 that a scholar named George Rawlinson
successfully deciphered them. Now they can be read as rapidly as
English by those who know the language. One foremost Sumerian scholar
in Americawas Professor Samuel Noah Kramer, whose book, The Sumerians:
Their History, Culture, and Character I consulted in preparing this
lecture. Though we can read them, there are tablet that have not yet
been deciphered. Young scholars are yet going into the field hoping
to discover something new about ancient Mesopotamian civilization.
This first civilization, this first society is usually
referred to as Sumeria, the land of Shumer. The Bible refers to it as
the land of Shimar. They are all the same. We refer to the people
who lived there as Sumerians. The Sumerians were a remarkable
people. They were a long lasting civilization of enormous
accomplishment. One of the exciting things about the Sumerians is
that when the curtain goes up, everything is already in full
motion. From their very first writings they reveal an organized
society with kings, laws, literature, schools, and libraries. They
appear on the world scene as a very sophisticated people. I could not
help wondering,
Where is the evolution? Where are the preliminaries? It is amazing
that with their first written records on these clay tablets, they come
across as a very accomplished and sophisticated people. Ultimately,
the Sumerians will last about a thousand years, from about 3200 B.C.
until about 2000 B.C. or after.


Religion, Government and Social Structure

We discover from the tablets that in ancient Sumeria religion and
government became one and the same. We encounter divine
kingship. The leader of government was usually referred to as the
Ensi. The Ensi was the king or the ruler of the city-state. He
became also the high priest. He was the one getting revelations from
God and telling the people what their religious ritual should be. He
was also the one who decided where the canals should be dug and handed
out the work assignments. Government and religion become
intertwined. We encounter a society that is very structured, with the
Ensi, this divine king, at the top. Beneath him was the aristocracy,
the wealthy landowners; then there were some artisans and merchants; a
large number of workers or peasants, and at the bottom, slaves. At
every one of these strata, women ranked very low.
The government structure was built around a city-state. Each
village or city in ancient Sumeria, in southern Mesopotamia, was a
separate political entity in its own right. It was a nation, a city-
state, much the same kind of entity that we will encounter later among
the Greeks, or even later, during the Renaissance in Italy, where each
city is a separate independent political sovereignty. And so it was
in ancient Sumeria. And just as among the Greeks and in Renaissance
Italy, these Sumerian city-states didnt get along very well and often
went to war. Some of them would sometimes ally or confederate
themselves with other city-states for purposes of common defense. But
still the dominant political structure remained the city-state.

Canals and Ziggurats

If you were able to visit ancient Sumeria, there would be two
outstanding physical features that were very obvious. The first was
the great canal. Remember that cities developed out of
agriculture. Ancient Sumerians were tremendous farmers. We believe
they were among the first people in history who learned to
irrigate. Water was very precious in the Middle East, as it is
today. They learned how to siphon it out of the rivers,
the Tigris and the Ephrates, and move it to their fields. Those
canals were so large and well dug that they are visible even today, a
testament of their success and determination and ability as
agriculturalists.
The second physical structures that you would see were the
ziggurats. A ziggurat was a high terrace which gradually developed
into a massive tower upon which the main temple was situated. This
was Sumers most characteristic contribution to religious
architecture. There was always at least one, and sometimes more than
one, ziggurat in each city. These ziggurats were very interesting
structures. They were tiered or staged structures with some kind of
walkway to the top. They were solid inside, unlike the Egyptian
pyramids, which would sometimes have interior corridors and burial
chambers. These ziggurats were entirely solid, made of brick or
adobe. Sometimes they had decorations, made by inserting thousands of
painted clay cones into the mud plaster. The chief functions occurred
at the top, where there would be a little enclosure for the purpose of
religious ritual. The Ensi would go up to the top in order to
communicate with heaven. They also required others to go up and
participate in ritual to satisfy the gods. The Greek traveler,
Herodotus, indicates that these included some very interesting sexual
rituals. He said that as recent as 500 B.C. they were still having
these sexual rituals. That would be 2500 years after the Sumerians
started, so one may well be skeptical, but he described rituals
undoubted for the purposed of fertility. He tells some funny stories
about it. This was a kind of a temple. But not only for religious
purposes, but because it was combined with government, it fulfilled
secular, governmental purposes as well. The same was true of the
Greeks, that their temples were both religious edifices and buildings
used for governmental purposes as well because of the combination and
merging of church and state. And so with the ziggurats, the remains
of which are still visible today.

Law and the Lex talionis

What do we read on the tablets about Sumerian law? Law may seem
dry and uninteresting, but it can be fascinating when you get into the
details. In studying ancient Sumerian law from their clay tablets on
which they wrote it down, we learn that there were three chief
characteristics of Sumerican law. There characteristics will remain
typical of all Mesopotamian societies and even some societies that
came after. The first was its harshness, which falls into the
category that we call the Lex talionis, or the Law of the
Talon. The talon is the claw of a bird of prey, like a hawk. The
law of the claw means that it is a very harsh code of law. They put
many to death for what we might consider menial crimes. They punished
people severely. The law of the talon would characterize many
societies long after the Sumerians. Our phrase, A pound of flesh,
is literally taken from Roman practice, where in early Roman times
they would sometimes take out a pound of flesh for various infractions
of the law by Roman citizens. The Lex talionis also has another
feature. As part of this harsh approach, we encounter the old
tradition of the blood feud. The blood feud is a phrase that we use
for very primitive, very early forms of law. It is employed as a way
to satisfy justice with a minimum of burden on the state. The blood
feud is predominantly private justice. If I hit you in the nose and
break your nose, you have the right to hit me and break mine. But it
is more than just a leveling of the scale of justice. It is that the
responsibility for leveling the scale of justice rests with you. You
must hit me in the nose. Or if I steal from you, you must then steal
back from me. It is private justice. We call it the blood feud
because it you are unsuccessful in satisfying justice, it falls to
your blood kin to satisfy that justice. This is inexpensive justice
because society doesnt have to hire policemen or establish an
elaborate court system because it is up to individuals. But the
problem is that it is also inefficient. What if in the process of
breaking my nose, you also knock out some of my teeth, and then I go
after you for teeth. In the course of a generation or two we forget
the original problem but we have entire families at war with one
another, like the Hatfields and the McCoys. It goes on generation
after generation. In most societies the blood feud is put aside at
some point because of these problems. They begin to establish some
kind of court system where a third party is involved, like a
judge. In ancient Sumeria they were moving in that direction as early
as 1050 B.C. Yet we find in some of their laws evidence of the blood
feud, which seems to be a part of the Lex talionis. So that rather
than making me pay a fine if I broke your nose, justice is satisfied
only by harsh individual centered retaliation. Both the Lex talionis
and the blood feud are applicable descriptions of their system of
law.

Inequality before the Law

There is one other great feature of Sumerian law that we must
mention. This is the idea of inequality. This is difficult for us to
understand, but throughout most of history the assumption has been
that people are not equal. It is only in the last three generations
that we have become so passionately attached to the idea that people
are equal. Throughout most of history they would have laughed at that
idea. How can we possibly be equal. Some are stronger than
others. Some are richer than others. Some are smarter than
others. In what sense are we all equal? To ancient men and women it
seemed obvious that people are not equal. Individuals with power,
wealth, and authority should be treated better than poor beggars
living off of the garbage and trash of others. How could they
possible be looked upon as equal. Consequently, an unequal or
differential approach to the administration of the law was a part of
the ancient philosophy. A poor person was punished more harshly for
the same crime than a rich person. Throughout most of human
experience this was considered the way it should be. Part of the
privilege of being well educated and wealthy was that you were not
punished as harshly.

Religion: Polytheistic; Mythopoeic

Ancient Sumerian religion, like all ancient societies except for
two, were polytheistic. That means they believed in many gods. In
addition, they were mythopoeic and animistic. Mythopoeic means that
all the world was alive. There was a spirit in the brook, the
mountain, and in the storm. All of nature had some life force. They
were animistic because they believed that that life force was able to
assert itself. A rock could leap up and hit you. They were
animistic, mythopoeic, and polytheistic. These characteristics of
ancient Sumerian religion, like the characteristics of their legal
system would continue through society after society, through most of
the societies we well talk about this semester. Though they had many
gods, their pantheon, the way they organized their gods reflected
society on earth.
The gods were structured like society. There were more powerful
gods, and less powerful gods. The chief god, called Enlil was the god
of the wind and the skies. Right at the beginning the chief rulers
were in heaven, and people would look up. Perhaps one of the reasons
they built ziggurats, as a way to get closer to heaven. Another thing
about Enlil was that he was male. Remember that in Paleolithic times,
we think the dominant deities were female and that with the Neolithic
or agricultural revolution there was a transition that
occurred. Women lost status and men became more dominant, so in their
pantheon the most powerful gods were male. However, some female gods
retained considerable status. The chief most of those female
goddesses among the Sumerians was Ishtar, strongly associated with
fertility rituals.
The ancient Sumerians believed in an afterlife. They did
not divide it into heaven and hell. They believed that in the next
life there would be a kind of structural diversity similar to that on
earth today. The powerful would be in a better position than the
weak. But altogether, powerful and weak alike, found the next life a
rather unpleasant place. They called it Sheol. It was a kind of dark
region that nobody looked forward to, even if they were wealthy and
powerful. The fact that they tended to denigrate the afterlife,
looking upon it as a dusty, dark, unpleasant, existence, resulted in
the fact that most Mesopotamian societies, including this first one of
Sumeria, did not give much attention to funerary rites. When somebody
died, unless they were especially wealthy and powerful, they were just
buried quickly under the floor. This absence of elaborate funerary
rites stands in sharp contrast to the Egyptians, where they looked on
the next life as a wonderful desirable place to go, like the Christian
heaven or the Islamic paradise. In Egypt funerals were very
elaborate. Sumerian funerals were looked upon as inconsequential and
not deserving of much attention.


Literature

The next topic is their literature. One of the fascinating
things about the Sumerians was that so early we encounter so much, not
only in their laws and religion, but also in their literature. They
had literary tales and stories including a creation epic called the
Enuma Elish. This was their account of how the world began. It
describes this struggle between the gods, a war in heaven that
resulted in a truce in which one of the gods, Enlil, won out. Every
year that struggle was re-enacted in a kind of dramatic morality
play. And every year at a certain time everyone was encouraged to
breed to help the fertility of the crops, just as the gods had done at
the beginning when two gods had mated and brought about the whole
human race. This is described in the Sumerian Enuma Elish, the
creation epic which was written about on their tablets.

Gilgamesh Epic

But the most popular of all Sumerian literature was the Gilgamesh
Epic. The Gilgamesh Epic has been recognized as one of the great
stories in all world literature and it is fascinating that we have it
right at the beginning of human writing. The Sumerians wrote it over
and over again in different versions with great variety. The book of
readings provides an edited account compiled from one of the most
recent versions. It should give you a sense of the way they thought
and help you to see how mythopoeic they were. I will include
questions about it on the exam that will not be included in the
lecture. To assist you in understanding it, however, I will present a
brief summary of it to you.
Gilgamesh, the historical Gilgamesh was an Ensi, king of
the Sumerican city-state of Uruk. He ruled the city of Uruk sometime
about 2500 B.C. He was the divine king, remembered for building the
citys walls and temple. Sumerian stories recounting his adventures
are so shadowed with myth and legend that it is impossible to separate
myth from reality. Perhaps the stories reflect his abilities or
perhaps they merely project later events or imagination. Gilgamesh
was considered a god. His deeds brought him such fame that he became
the supreme hero of Sumerican myth and legend. Poems extolling him
were written and rewritten for centuries. Samuel Noah Kramer, the
foremost expert on ancient Sumeria, has called Gilgamesh, the hero
par excellence of the ancient world.
The following is a quote from the primary source reading
on the Epic of Gilgamesh, which you should read in its entirety:

Surpassing all other kings, heroic in stature,
brave scion of Uruk, wild bull on the rampage!
Going at the fore, he was the vanguard,
going at the rear, one his comrades could
trust!

Who is there can rival his kingly standing,
and say like Gilgamesh, It is I am the king?
Gilgamesh was his name from the day he was born,
two-thirds of him god and one third human.


The Epic of Gilgamesh portrays him as a tremendous athlete,
large, strong, but cruel. Gilgamesh was a tyrant and he tyrannized
his subjects in his pursuit of pleasure. Because he had all power, he
insisted on having his way. He loved to eat and he loved women. He
indulged himself with his love of both food and women. Gilgamesh
insisted on exercising le droit de seigneur, which means the right
to deflower the bride before the bridegroom consummated the
marriage. He insisted on enjoying the favors of the daughters of his
warriors as well. In this way, he abused his power over men and women
and if anybody crossed him, he simply had them put to death. In the
Gilgamesh Epic, the people cried for relief from the gods from this
very hard and self-centered king. Their response to the kings
oppression was to create a kind of equal double for Gilgamesh, named
Enkidu, who could rival Gilgamesh and distract him from oppression of
the people of Uruk.
Then the story shifts without any transition out of the
city to an isolated region in the desert and introduces the character
of Enkidu. Enkidu is also a powerful manly figure. But he is
uncivilized. He is ignorant of how to dress properly and of how to
behave using acceptable manners. He is primitive and raw and simply
eats wild animals and behaves like a cave man. Yet, there is
something appealing about his innocence. He knows nothing about wine
or women and is completely naive about the ways of the world and city
life. Enkidu is seduced by a temple prostitute who introduces him to
human ways. A hunter instructs the harlot, Shamhat to lure Enkidu
away from the herd. He tells her to strip off her clothing and reveal
her charms so that Enkidu will see her when he and the herd come down
to the water-hole. The following is a quote from the seduction of
Enkidu from the version of the epic provided in your primary source
book.

Spread your clothing so he may lie on you,
do for the man the work of a woman!
Let his passion caress and embrace you,
his heard will spurn him, though he grew
up amongst it.

Shamhat unfastened the cloth of her loins,
she bared her sex and he took in her
charms.
She did not recoil, she took in his scent:
she spread her clothing and he lay upon
her.

She did for the man the work of a woman,
his passion caressed and embraced her.
For six days and seven nights
Enkidu was erect as he coupled with
Shamhat.


After Enkidu lost his innocence, his herd no longer accepted
him. Shamhat persuades Enkidu to come to Uruk where he encounters
Gilgamesh in a terrible confrontation. They fight until they finally
give out and lay on the ground to rest before they intend to go at it
again. While they rest, they begin talking to one another. Very
slowly they become friends. Before long, Gilamesh persuades Enkidu to
go to the city with him. The city is all new to Enkidu. There he
learned to wear fine clothes, to eat refined delectable foods and
intoxicating liquors, and to enjoy the company and pleasure of
women. In short, Enkidu is corrupted. All of the morality themes
that you find in the masterpieces of literature are
present. Eventually, Enkidu becomes very ill and dies. But before he
dies, he curses urban life and expresses regrets that he gave up the
innocent life of the country. Then, an even more exciting thing
follows.
Gilgamesh, who had come to love Enkidu like a brother, witnesses
the death of Enkidu and is overcome with grief. He is extraordinarily
sad. He realizes that he, too, is mortal and will someday die. This
realization grips him with anxiety. Here he is the most powerful man
in his world and is unable to prevent his brother-like friends death
or his own mortality. That realization leads Gilgamesh to undertake a
great epic search for immortality. And so he begins his journey
looking for the key to everlasting life. He doesnt find it for a
long time. Then finally, he hears about this old guy living up in the
mountains who has been alive as long as anyone can remember. His name
is Utnapishtim. Gilgamesh gets directions and makes his way up and
asks Utnapishtim if its true. And Utnapishtim says, Yes its true, I
have the magic herb. Then, he tells Gilgamesh the story of how he
obtained the magic plant that gave him his immortality.
This story is written on Sumerian clay tablets right at the
beginning of civilization. And what Utnapishtim tells him is this: A
long time ago when he was a young man, everybody behaving sinfully and
the gods became angry and made it rain. And it rained and it rained
and it rained. And everybody drowned but me and my family and some
birds and animals. And we floated and succeeded in escaping. You
recognize that story? After the flood was over, Utnapishtim found an
herb growing at the bottom of the water and ate it, giving him eternal
life. This story pre-dates the story of Noah and the flood by about
2,000 years. Undoubtedly, this Sumerian story was the source of the
ancient Israelites story of Noah. It is one the oldest stories in all
of world literature. Well, Gilgamesh is elated. He has found it. He
heads for the lake. He gets into a canoe and goes out in the middle
of the lake. At the bottom of the lake he finds the magic herb. He
swims up and climbs into the canoe. Hes got it. Sure enough, he is
going to live forever. But before he can get off of the lake, a
serpent swims across the lake and steals it from him. It takes away
the herb that will guarantee him eternal life. He is greatly
saddened. And at about that point the tablets break off. So we dont
know how it ends. Its a great story but you have to make up your own
ending. When you look at all of the themes that are present right
there at the beginning of world literature: good versus bad, country
life versus city life, the problem of mortality, tyranny versus
freedom, its all there. It truly is one the great pieces of world
literature. Hopefully, you can read this account a little more easily
than had I not rehearsed it for
you.


Mesopotamian Societies after Sumer

I want to tell you what happened to ancient Sumeria? Weve been
describing its culture, its literature, it law, its religion. What
happened to this sophisticated society? It lasted about a thousand
years. What happens will set a pattern that will be repeated again
and again by many other civilizations. Sumeria located between the
Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers about 2331 B.C., about the 24
th
century
B.C. , sophisticated, urbanized, writing society, all of these things
going on in Sumeria. What happens is that all of a sudden, like a
great storm out of the desert, a bunch of barbarians invade. They
cant write. They cant read. They are not at all
sophisticated. But theyre tough, and theyre lean, and they know how
to fight. They came out of the Arabian Desert. We call them the
Akkadians. They invaded and they overthrew the Sumerians. We do not
know the ethnic nature of the Sumerians, but as you will see in the
slides, some of them seemed to have blue eyes. The Akkadians were
Semitic. They were desert folks, related to the Semitic societies
that live in the Near Easttoday. They drove in on foot. They did not
have horses. They overthrew the Sumerians and took over. The great
king of the Akkadians was named Sargon. He was one of the most
remarkable figures of the ancient Near East. Not only was he a
military genius but he was also a capable administrator, who began as
a high official to the Sumerian king of Kish named Ur-Zababa. During
the constant warfare that plagued Sumeria, Ur-Zababa was dethroned by
an ambitious rival, King Lugalzaggesi of Umma. Sargon defeated
Lugalzaggesi in a surprise attack against his capital, Erech and
brought Lugalzaggesi to the gates of Nippur in a neck stock and chains
where he was reviled and spat upon by all who passed by. Sargon built
the city of Akkad after which his people were called the Akkadians.
After conquering the Sumerians, and especially under Sargons
grandson named Naram-sin, the Akkadians began to adopt Sumerians
culture, and life, and religion. Now, this is that fascinating
pattern which will be repeated again and again. The invaders, though
culturally inferior, conquer a culturally superior culture, in this
case the Sumerians, and then after conquering them are themselves
culturally conquered by those whom they defeat militarily. These
Akkadians then adopted Sumerian religion and began to worship Sumerian
gods. They learned to write like the Sumerians. They started writing
stories like the Gilgamesh Epic. They began to erect schools for
their kids like the Sumerians. In other words we have a replication
by the conquerors of the people that they conquered. This pattern
will repeat itself again and again and again, right down to near the
end of the course when European barbarians from Europe storm
into Rome and begin to wear Roman clothes and worship Roman gods. It
will happen again and again and again. The French philosopher, Jean
Jacque Rousseau, said that all history can be reduced to the story of
the fellow in his silken pajamas and slipper coming with his lamp at
night out of his bedroom only to meet at the top of the stairs the
hob-nailed, booted barbarian coming up the stairs after him. But then
that hob-nailed barbarian becomes the fellow in silk because he
becomes cultivated and civilized only in his turn to have to come out
and encounter some barbarian coming after him. We are going to see
that pattern repeat itself again and again and again. Under Naram-
Sin, Sargons grandson, the Akkadians spread Mesopotamian culture
throughout the region from Mesopotamia north through Syria and south
toEgypt.
Yet after a relatively short time, the Akkadians
themselves, but only after they had adopted Sumerian culture and
become quite cultured, experienced a tragic end. They were invaded
from the opposite direction by the Guti or Gutians, a barbarian people
who came out of the Zaggros Mountains of modern Iran. They descended
into Mesopotamians and overthrew the Akkadians. The Gutians were so
barbarous that they were called the wild beasts of the
mountains. The Gutians overthrew the Akkadians, adopted their
culture, their religion, their writing, and became very cultivated and
civilized. In fact one of the most famous kings during the Gutians
rule, Gudea, is preserved in statues showing him sitting in a rocking
chair with a garment inscribed with all of his good deeds. The wild
beasts of the mountains assimilated the Sumerian culture of those
that they had defeated. So once again this pattern is
replicated.
After the Guti an unexpected development occurred. The
Sumerians achieve a come back. We have the period known as the
Sumerian Revival. It lasted from 2150 until about 1800 B.C.about 350
years. What seems to have been the case is that the Sumerians all
along had simply been in a subordinated status. Once conquered by the
Akkadiians and then the Guti. The Sumerians had simply been put on
the bottom of society. But they had not been destroyed. They yet
existed in large numbers, such that in 3250 B.C. they rose up in
rebellion, threw the Guti out and took over. The fascinating thing
about this revival is the brilliant of the culture that they succeeded
in creating after they took over once again. The period of the
Sumerian Revival was like an Indian summer, a last hurrah, which is
louder and more beautiful than anything that had come before. In that
350 year period, the so-called Sumerian revival, Sumerian culture was
more beautiful and brilliant than ever before. The Sumerians wrote
more literature, sculpted more statues, became more civil, made more
pottery, built more roads and canals than ever before. Thus, the
period is divided into three segments, all named after the most
dominant cultural city of the time, Ur. We call these three periods
within the Sumerian revivalUr I, Ur II, and Ur III. Each one was more
productive and brilliant than the one preceding it.

The Amorites (1800-1650 B.C.) and Hammurabi

Finally, the Sumerians came to an end. They were invaded once
again, this time by the Amorites, and this is the last we hear of them
except in the writings of other societies that came after them. Their
civilization survived about 2,000 yearsa long time. Not many
civilizations survive that long.
The next group who invaded the Sumerians and became their
successors brought a final end to the Sumerian story around 1800 B.C.
were the Amorites. They were a Semitic people who came out of
the Arabian Desert, invading from the west and overrunning the
Sumerians. Their great leader was Hammurabi. He unified Mesopotamia
and became ruler of a united kingdom, reaching from the Persian Gulf
north to Anatolia and west to Syria and Palestine. Hammurabi is
remembered chiefly for his great law code though it was not the first
written law code. The significance of the Code of Hammurabi cannot be
overstated. It is very long, numbering over 100 laws. Carved on a
huge pillar of stone standing as tall as a normal ceiling, it is now
located in the Louvre in Paris, France. It is important to remember
that these laws, though we associate them with Hammurabi and the
Amorites, reflect the early laws of the Sumerians themselves because
of this pattern of conquest and assimilation that has already been
described. Thus, what we are probably reading in the laws of
Hammurabi are the laws of the very early Sumerians themselves.
A number of the laws are provided in the book of readings. I am
going to use a few of them to illustrate concepts that we have already
mentioned. Consider this one: number six. If a man has stolen goods
from a temple or house, he shall be put to death. And he that has
received the stolen property from him shall be put to death. This is
an example of the Lex Talionis. Stealing means death. The next
item: If a nobleman has stolen ox, sheep, ass, pig, or ship, weather
from a temple or a house, he shall pay 30 fold, but if he be a
commoner, he shall return 10 fold, if the thief cannot pay, he shall
be put to death. Then, number 108: If the mistress of a beer shop
has not received corn as the price of beer of has demanded silver on
an excessive scale and has made the measure of beer less than the
measure of corn (shes cheated her customers), that beer seller shall
be prosecuted and drown. In other words, throw her in the river. If
she serves beer and doesnt fill the glass up, shes in trouble. This
suggests that women sometimes ran shops or taverns. We can see that
the translator has taken some license in referring to corn because
corn was a product of the new world and did not exist in ancient
Sumeria. Neither did coinage exist until about a thousand years
later. Although there is some evidence to indicate that rings of
silver were used as a kind of money. Listen to this one, number
132: If a mans wife has the finger pointed at her on account of
another but has not been caught lying with him, for her husbands sake
she shall plunge into the sacred river. This is a forced suicide if
a woman has simply been accused. The one before is less harsh. If a
mans wife has been accused by her husband and has not been caught
lying with another, she shall swear her innocence and return to her
house. There is a little inconsistency in terms of the severity of
the penalty. I think youll find these laws very
interesting. Consider number 148: If a man has married a wife and a
disease has seized her, if he is determined to marry a second wife, he
shall marry her (polygamy was common). He shall not divorce the wife,
however, whom the disease has seized. In the home they made together
she shall dwell and he shall maintain her as long as she lives. A
man might think that there is a measure of equity here. If he takes
another wife, at least he is required to maintain his first wife. Im
not convinced that a woman would agree that this arrangement was
equitable.
Dont forget that these probably reflect the laws of
societies well before the time of Hammurabi. They probably closely
reflect the laws of the ancient Sumerians.


Kassites (1650-1300 B.C.)

Now, it used to be that the common thing to say was that they
wasnt very much to say about the Kassites. They were very warlike
people and they seem not to have done much of a cultural nature to be
remembered. But increasingly, Im reading that we are finding more
and more about the Kassities that would perhaps give then greater
importance and significance than we had traditionally believed. At
the least, we know that it was the Kassites, around 1600 BC who in
their conquest of the Amorites, introduced the horse. Until that
time, they hadnt used the horse. They had the wheel. They had
chariots. But they hadnt domesticated the horse until cavalry, as a
military device, first made its appearance at this time with the
Kassites, around 1600. Then the pattern continued.

Assyrians (1300-612 B.C.)

The Kassites were overthrown after about 300 year by the
Assyrians. The Assyrians were around for a long time, for the better
part of 7 or 8 hundred years. They are a very warlike people. They
established their capital way up in northern Mesopotamia at a place
called Ninevah. In addition to that, they expanded their authority
and rule far beyond the land between the rivers. Mesopotamia, the
land between the rivers, the area now occupied by modern Iraq,
largely contained most of these empires we have mentioned up until
this time: the Sumerians, the Akkadians, the Guti, the Amorites, and
the Kassites. But come the Assyrians, about 1300 BC, Mesopotamian
rulers expanded their hegemony far beyond the Tigris and the Euphrates
even as far away as Egypt. The Assyrians constituted a large empire
and were a very militaristic people who established a very regimented
authoritarian kind of regime.
One of their kings named Sargon II illustrates that there was a
memory of the Akkadian period. You may remember Sargon I, who lived
about a thousand years earlier and was king of Akkai. The Assyrians
were still naming some of their kings after the Akkadians. Sargon II
charged into the land of ancient Israel and carried off thousands of
Israelites captive back to Mesopotamia. The kingdom of
ancient Israel was conquered by the Assyrians under Sargon II. This
illustrates the extent of their far-ranging well outside
of Mesopotamia. We are going to have an entire lecture on
ancient Israel and will consider this fact again at that time.
The Assyrians ruled Mesopotamia from about 1300 to about
600 B.C.quite a period of time, about 700 years.

Chaldeans or Khaldi (612-549 B.C.)

Then, they are overthrown by another people known as the
Chaldeans or the Khaldi. They are known by both names and it is
spelled both ways. They are a people referred to in the Old Testament
of the Bible as ruling in Mesopotamia, greatly feared by the ancient
Israelites. It was one of their kings, Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 B.C.),
who stormed into Israel and carried off those remaining Israelites who
had not been taken the first time around by Sargon II. And we will
mention that again at a little greater length in our lecture
about Israel.
But again, we see a Mesopotamian people or society
conquering far a field. The Chaldeans themselves are very short-lived
in terms of their kingdom. They do not survive much beyond about 50
years. It is one of the shorter-lived and abbreviated empires of
antiquity.

Persians

In the middle of the century, about 550 B.C. the Chaldeans were
overwhelmed by an eruption from within Mesopotamia when the Medes and
the Persians rise up and take over. This really begins the story of
one of the longest lasting civilizations and societies of which we
have a record, that of the ancient Persians. They are still in
existence today, a very long lived people indeed. They took over
in Mesopotamia from the Chaldeans around 550 BC. I dont intend to
say much about the Medes. They seem to have been an allied or
confederated people with the Persians. But they sort of dropped out
of sight and the Persians were left as the prominent or singly ruling
people in Mesopotamia. They became one of the great powers of the
world in ancient times and, of course, are yet flexing their muscles
in the Middle East today.

Cyrus (fl. 549-529 B.C.)

Their first king was Cyrus the Great, who led the Persians in
their revolt against the Chaldeans and ruled over the Persians for
some time. He was followed by his son, Cambyses, who was followed by
his son, Darius, who was followed by his son, Xerxes, who was followed
by his son, Darius IIIa long series of powerful Persian kings. But
these early Persian kings beginning with Cyrus were very
ambitious. In one of our later more dramatic lectures we will
recollect the story of how these Persian kings came into conflict with
the Greeks. The Persian Wars between the Persians and the Greeks are
remembered and told and retold until the present day.
In any case, the Persians were successful as empire builders for
two or three reasons. They extended their empires even farther than
the Assyrians. Remember, the Assyrians had extended their rules as
far asEgypt. The Persians not only did that, dominating
Assyria, Palestine, and Egypt, but they also extended their rule far
to the east as well. Ancient Persia extended as far as India. It was
an enormous empire reaching from modern Turkey all the way to Egypt.

Reasons For Persian Success

One of the reasons the Persians were so successful in
establishing such a great empire that lasted so long was that they
were willing to delegate authority to local district rulers, whom they
called Satraps. In other words, they divided the Persian kingdom into
provinces and placed over each of those provinces a separate ruler and
gave him extensive authority. He was called a Satrap and the
province was called a satrapy. By permitting the Satrap to exercise
his own judgment in his own region the Persians were able to diminish
the sense of oppression and undercut the likelihood of revolt.
Persian kings could be very cruel but they were willing to
permit a great deal of decentralization. For example, we believe that
in ancient Persia there existed a great variety of religions and a
variety of different ethnic groups of people. And they tolerated
those differences, further illustrating the kind of decentralization
and local authority and local differences that they were willing to
permit.
Another factor that contributed to Persian governmental
success was that they were great road builders. They built a vast
spread of roads, particularly the Royal Road that extended all the way
from their capital in Sousa 16 hundred miles to the Mediterranean
Sea. It also had branch roads running off in all directions, allowing
them to communicate with the various provinces and peoples under their
jurisdictions quickly and effectively. The Persians had a postal
system, whereby people could send letters and messages to each other
and whereby, of course, the king and the Satraps, and other officials
could communicate rapidly and efficiently as well.

Persian Religion

While there were a variety of religions and different ethnic
people in ancient Persia, the major religion and oldest religion
associated ancient Persia was Mithraism. It was named after Mithrai,
a god associated with the sun. Many Persians worshipped the sun as a
deity. The Persians, like the Sumerians, were polytheistic and
worshipped many deities. Almost all of these ancient people were
polytheistic. Although they worshipped many gods, their dominant and
most powerful god was Mithrai. Mithraists believed in sin and
righteousness, in a final judgment, in baptism, and in a heaven.
A second religion that we believe may have derived from Mithraism
was Zoroastrianism. This religion partook of many of the same
theological ideas and doctrine as Mithraism. And Zoroastrianism has
survived until this day. There are Zoroastrians in India and in
the United States today. But in the ancient world, Zoroastrianism
never succeeded in challenging the popularity and widespread extent of
Mithraism. Mithraism was one of the great religions of the Roman
Empire as well. At the time of Christ, few people would have believed
that Christianity would survive to be the dominant religion of the
future. Most people would have thought that a thousand years later
the dominant religion of the world would be Mithraism. Nobody would
have bet on Christianity at that time. And many Romans and many non-
Persians believed and followed the worship of Mithrai. We have found
shrines in England, dating back to the period of Roman rule about 200
or 300 A.D. containing inscriptions indicating a worship of
Mithrai. Because they practiced baptism, they may well have had an
influence on early Christianity. The Christians themselves came to
date the birth of Jesus at the time of the rebirth of the sun, or
Mithrai. Scholars think it is much more likely that Jesus was
actually born in the spring time but the influence of Mithraic belief
on Christians resulted in Christmas being celebrated in December,
which is the time of the winter solstice. But the larger point Im
making is the extent of Mithraic influence. So, quite apart from the
Persian military conquest, we have an example of the strong influence
of ancient Persia.


Related Mesopotamian Peoples

Let us consider some neighboring peoples and societies existing
near ancient Mesopotamia, which the Mesopotamians influenced.
The McKay, Hill, and Buckler textbook refers to the Eblaites and
the tablets found at Ebla. The Eblaites were located west
of Mesopotamia and constituted a kingdom as early as 2800 B.C.
contemporary with very early Sumeria. Existing outside Mesopotamia,
yet writing with cuneiform characters like the Sumerians, the Eblaites
are an example of a non-Mesopotamian society that was very much
influenced by people insideMesopotamia.

Hittites (1500-1200 B.C.

The Hittites are another example. They were centered way up in
central and eastern Turkey and exerted great influence in
the Mideast for a time. Like the Eblaites, the Hittites flourished
not within Mesopotamiabut outside of it, yet they were very much
influenced by Mesopotamian societies and practices.

Significance of the Hittites

The Hittites are memorable for other reasons. With their capital
at Hattusas, in central Turkey, it seems that they were the first, or
among the first to learn to smelt iron. They took rocks with iron
seams and placed them in hot fires and melted the iron out of them and
then used the iron to make weapons and various kinds of
implements. This was what gave them such a great military advantage
over many of their neighbors. Iron is harder than bronze. And until
the time of the Hittites, around 1200 or 1300 B.C. the dominant metal
had been bronze, which is an alloy of copper and tin. Bronze is
harder than either copper or tin, so it was a preferred metal for
spears and knives. But iron is harder than bronze. So other
societies still using bronze found on the field of battle that they
were at a great disadvantage when they came up against the Hittites
because the Hittites swords and spears were made of iron. The
Hittites prevailed in battle after battle because of this. So that is
something that ought to be remembered and associated with the
Hittites.
Another significant thing to remember is that we think they had a
kind of primitive military democracy. The Hittite kings were often
selected by the body of soldiers in the army, which was a kind of
democracy. The soldiers in the military, by a shout, or beating on
their shields would indicate who it was they wanted to be king.

Voelkerwanderung and Decline of the Hittites (1300 B.C.)

Then, something happened. And because this happened repeatedly
in history, it is another one of those patterns that you want to
remember. It is similar to the pattern we saw with the barbarians
overrunning more advanced societies, followed by assimilation and
civilization only to face subsequent invasion by other
barbarians. The Voelkerwanderung Zeitwhich means a people
wandering time is another common pattern in history. It refers to a
time when everything seems to be in upheaval. Around 1200 or 1300
B.C. we encounter a people wandering timea Voelkerwanderun Zeitwhen
everybody seems to be going in all directions. Nothing seems to be
stable. The Hittites were overthrown at this time. This is the
period of Homer and the Battle of Troy, about which we will learn in a
future lecture. This is the time when Moses was leading the children
of Israel out of Egypt, about which we will learn soon. There was
great upheaval and movement and migration and violenceit was indeed
a people wandering time. And when it was all over, the Hittites no
longer existed.
Scholars believe Voelkerwanderung Zeits are closely associated
with the climate. When you have a series of dry years and the cattle
and animals cannot feed on plants, they begin to move to try and find
food and forage. And this has happened again and again. People were
hungry and desperate and were moving looking for food. We believe
that climatic change and crisis was very much a part of what
stimulated the Voelkerwanderung Zeit. This particular one was
accompanied by volcanic explosives, especially in the eastern
Mediterranean area. Islands were blown out of existence. Dust and
clouds filled the skies. It became cooler and grass did not
grow. Many factors contributed to the geological and climatic crises,
resulting in great political and human drama taking place at that
time. As I said, among the consequences of the upheaval, the Hittites
disappeared, but in their place other peoples came into view.

Phoenicians (1300-774 B.C.)

And one of these newly appearing peoples were the
Phoenicians. Now the Phoenicians are important because they made a
very significant contribution. The Phoenicians were located in the
area that is now occupied by modern Lebanon, in the eastern
Mediterranean, near modern Israel. They were sea builders and they
were great merchants. They were probably the greatest sailors and
maritime folk of their day. The Phoenicians sailed all over the
Mediterranean World, carrying their goods and agricultural products,
particularly olive oil. They traded with people all over the ancient
Mediterranean world. They even sailed out of theMediterranean. And
we have found evidences of Phoenicians trading and contact as far
north as England. Some scholars have argued that the Phoenicians were
such great sailors that they made it as far as the New World. Cyrus
Gordon, who for a time, was looked upon as the foremost Hebrew scholar
in the United States, even argued that there are Phoenician remains
that have been found in North and South Carolina. This is disputed,
however. It is a matter of controversy. But whether or not it is
true, it is at least possible that the Phoenicians made it across
the Atlantic. They were tremendous sailors. And along the way, they
established a lot of colonies. They established colonies in Spain, we
mentioned England already, and in North Africa, and in Italy. When we
come to the story of Rome, we will encounter the best known of their
colonies, which was ancientCarthage, a large, powerful, beautiful city
located in North Africa.
But the most important thing to remember and associate with the
Phoenicians is their writing. They took these cuneiform characters
that I have earlier describedpicture wordssometimes just an animal
or an ox-head, or a wagon, or a ship, or something to which they gave
a sound value, and from them they constructed words. The Phoenicians
took these cuneiform characters and reduced their number. Originally,
there were as many as 600. But the Phoenicians reduced them to about
35 characters. From those 35 characters, our alphabet of twenty-six
letters derived. And because they were such a formidable maritime
power and traveled all over the Mediterranean world, they carried
their written language with them. And the Greeks, for example, picked
up the Phoenician alphabet and adapted it to their own language. So,
we are greatly indebted to ancientPhoenicia for our alphabet, a very
important contribution because of the immense centrality of writing to
cultural civilization.


The Mesopotamian Heritage

Now, I want to address several factors in conclusion. Most
importantly, what we have found is that in ancient Mesopotamia and in
associated and allied societies nearby, they invented writing. First,
we must acknowledge the importance of the cuneiform script used by the
Sumerians. And that was later developed and refined, especially by
the Phoenicians. It is probably impossible to adequately emphasize
the importance of writing. Writing makes civilization possible
because writing escapes time. We know about the Gilgamesh Epic
because of writing. We know something about how the Sumerians thought
and believed because of writing. It is a magical kind of thing. And
we are owing to these early Mesopotamian societies, especially the
Sumerians, for it. Literature, world literature, is possible because
of writing. Literature is not only wonderful because of
communication, but it further stimulates our imagination. One of the
hallmarks of being human is our capacity to wonder, which writing
compounds. We can cock our heads and squint our eyes and gasp and
look at something, and wonder how it works, and be curious about it,
and we can determine how it works by investigating it. Then we can
write about it and be thrilled by it, because of literature. The most
wondering and investigative societies are those who communicate
through writing. We stimulate each other through the written
language. And the importance of writing is enhanced because it
eventually led to mathematics, to computers, and all kinds of
technological innovations. There is no way we can adequately evaluate
the significance of this great Mesopotamian contributionwriting.
We also owe a lot to the Sumerians and those who came after them
in the area of mathematics. They were pretty good
mathematicians. They learned to multiply. They could add and
subtract. They based their time and their measuring devices on sixes
and twelvesa sexagesimal system, we say. And remnants of that system
are yet with us today. Our clock is based on twelve. We divide the
day into 12 or 24 units. The multiplication of six came right out
of Mesopotamia. We have 12 months in a year, 12 inches in a
foot. Have you ever wondered how we ever settled on those
units? Well, they came from ancient Mesopotamian Civilization.
They also had clocks. They were the first to invent water
clocks. You know how we drain sand through an hourglass? They used
the same principle with dripping water in Mesopotamia.
Many people open the morning newspaper and look to see what their
astrological sign says is in store for them today. That comes right
out of Mesopotamia, where they divided the heavens into certain
regions and said if you were born under this sign and the planets and
stars were in this position, it meant something for you and your
life. Some folks still believe in that today and follow it and read
it. And that belief came directly fromMesopotamia.
The Mesopotamians attempted to practice
Medicine, but they werent very good at it, not nearly as good as the
Egyptians, in part because they relied on astrology to heal
people. And because thats nonsense, they didnt have much
success. The Egyptians, when we get to them, youll see that though
they believed in myths, they were much more scientific than the
Mesopotamians when it came to medicine, and they were very, very good
at it. Well consider that subject when we come to ancient Egypt.
We are also owing to the ancient Mesopotamians for a number of
architectural forms. They gave us the vault, the arch, and the dome
as building devices for covering a building. What good does it do to
be able to live indoors if you dont have a roof? But how are you
going to construct a roof without these kinds of supporting
devices? We need some kind of an arch, vault, or dome. They learned
how to do that and do it very well. They built these huge ziggurats
from clay brick, very impressive, the remains of some of which are
still standing out in the Iraqi desert today. You may view some
images of them in the Gallery. And we must not forget the
canals. Irrigation didnt begin with the American West, you know. It
began with the very first civilization, 5,000 years ago with ancient
Sumeria in Mesopotamia.
The idea of divine kingship, of government, which we mentioned in
connection with the Neolithic or agricultural revolution continued and
even came to acquire a greater luster and significance with succeeding
civilizations in Mesopotamia. The king became extremely powerful and
was both a governmental ruler and a high priest, a pattern that
persisted in nearly all civilization that we will consider in this
course.


The Urban Pattern Continued

Finally, it is in Mesopotamia, beginning with ancient Sumeria and
continuing with all of the societies that followed them, that we
encounter urbanism, town life. And Im going to emphasize this
because we tend to take it for granted. We all live in the city and
we think it has always been that way. But for most of history, most
people have lived in rural areas. The way most of us live today in
close quarters is quite recent. It is largely a product of the
twentieth century. Prior to 1900, most people lived on farms. Now,
we live in cities. And cities began it ancient Mesopotamia. And
cities changed us. You and I are very different folks from our great-
grandparents and from people who lived in rural areas. Gilgamesh and
Enkidue were very different. Enkidu was a country boy and Gilgamesh
was a city dweller. In the city, we have conveniences and
pleasures. We have running water. We have sanitation and sewers and
places for waste and garbage disposals. We have schools and
libraries. We have a more immediate authority structure of
government. We have laws and rules of which we are more aware. On
the lone prairie, outside the city, you can be a Marborough Man. You
can go where you want when you want. You can cuss and spit and do
what you want. That kind of life-style is no longer available to most
of us. And the interesting thing is that most of us choose not to
live that way. Wed rather live in cities. Its more
comfortable. We like to be around others most of the time. We like
the advantages of urban dwelling. That historical pattern began in
ancient Mesopotamia. It was an outcome of the Neolithic or
agricultural revolution that was very quickly cultivated by the
ancient Sumerians and the societies that followed them. And it has
been with us and growing ever sinceurbanism. And we owe it to
ancient Mesopotamia that we experience it today.

Egyptian Civilization
Overview
The basic element in the lengthy history of Egyptian civilization is
geography. The Nile River rises from the lakes of central Africa as
the White Nile and from the mountains of Ethiopia as the Blue Nile.
The White and Blue Nile meet at Khartoum and flow together northward
to the Nile delta, where the 4000 mile course of this river spills
into the Mediterranean Sea (see map).
Less than two inches of rain per year falls in the delta and rain is
relatively unknown in other parts of Egypt. Most of the land is
uninhabitable. These geographical factors have determined the
character of Egyptian civilization. People could farm only along the
banks of the Nile, where arid sand meets the fertile soil. Of course,
each summer the Nile swells as the rains pour down and the snow melts
on the mountains. The river overflows its banks and floods the land
with fresh water and deposits a thick layer of rich alluvial soil. The
land would then yield two harvests before winter. This yearly flood
determined more than just the agricultural needs of early Egypt. It
also determined the lifecycle of society and helped to create the
world view of ancient Egyptian civilization.
The basic source of Egyptian history is a list of rulers compiled in
c.280 B.C. by Manetho for the Macedonians who ruled Egypt. Manetho
divided Egyptian kings into thirty dynasties (a 31st was added later)
in the following manner.
Early Egypt was divided into two kingdoms, one in Upper Egypt (Nile
Valley), and one in Lower Egypt (Nile delta). Remember, the Nile flows
from south to north.
Egyptian Dynasties
Menes (or Narmer) unified Upper and Lower Egypt and established his
capital at Memphis around 3000 B.C.. By the time of the Old Kingdom,
the land had been consolidated under the central power of a king, who
was also the "owner" of all Egypt. Considered to be divine, he stood
above the priests and was the only individual who had direct contact
with the gods. The economy was a royal monopoly and so there was no
word in Egyptian for "trader." Under the king was a carefully graded
hierarchy of officials, ranging from the governors of provinces down
through local mayors and tax collectors. The entire system was
supported by the work of slaves, peasants and artisans.
The Old Kingdom reached its highest stage of development in the Fourth
Dynasty. The most tangible symbols of this period of greatness are the
three enormous pyramids built as the tombs of kings at Giza between
2600 and 2500. The largest, Khufu (called Cheops by the Greeks), was
originally 481 feet high and 756 feet long on each side. Khufu was
made up of 2.3 million stone blocks averaging 2.5 tons each. In the
5th century B.C. the Greek historian Herodotus tells us that the
pyramid took 100,000 men and twenty years to build. The pyramids are
remarkable not only for their technical engineering expertise, but
also for what they tell us about royal power at the time. They are
evidence that Egyptian kings had enormous wealth as well as the power
to concentrate so much energy on a personal project.
The priests, an important body within the ruling caste, were a social
force working to modify the king's supremacy. Yielding to the demands
of the priests of Re, a sun god, kings began to call themselves "sons
of Re," adding his name as a suffix to their own. Re was also
worshipped in temples that were sometimes larger than the pyramids of
later kings.
In the Old Kingdom, royal power was absolute. The pharaoh (the term
originally meant "great house" or "palace"), governed his kingdom
through his family and appointed officials. The lives of the peasants
and artisans was carefully regulated: their movement was limited and
they were taxed heavily. Luxury accompanied the pharaoh in life and in
death and he was raised to an exalted level by his people. The
Egyptians worked for the pharaoh and obeyed him because he was a
living god on whom the entire fabric of social life depended. No codes
of law were needed since the pharaoh was the direct source of all law.
In such a world, government was merely one aspect of religion and
religion dominated Egyptian life. The gods of Egypt came in many
forms: animals, humans and natural forces. Over time, Re, the sun god,
came to assume a dominant place in Egyptian religion.
The Egyptians had a very clear idea of the afterlife. They took great
care to bury their dead according to convention and supplied the grave
with things that the departed would need for a pleasant life after
death. The pharaoh and some nobles had their bodies preserved in a
process of mummification. Their tombs were decorated with paintings,
food was provided at burial and after. Some tombs even included full
sized sailing vessels for the voyage to heaven and beyond. At first,
only pharaohs were thought to achieve eternal life, however, nobles
were eventually included, and finally all Egyptians could hope for
immortality.
The Egyptians also developed a system of writing. Although the idea
may have come from Mesopotamia, the script was independent of the
cuneiform. Egyptian writing began as pictographic and was later
combined with sound signs to produce a difficult and complicated
script that the Greeks called hieroglyphics ("sacred carvings").
Though much of what we have today is preserved on wall paintings and
carvings, most of Egyptian writing was done with pen and ink on fine
paper (papyrus). In 1798 Napoleon invaded Egypt as part of his Grand
Empire. He brought with a Commission of Science and Arts composed of
more than one hundred scientists, engineers and mathematicians. In
1799 the Commission discovered a basalt fragment on the west bank of
the Nile at Rachid. The fragment is now known by its English name, the
Rosetta Stone. The Egyptian hieroglyphics found on the Rosetta Stone
were eventually deciphered in 1822 by Jean Franois Champollion (1790-
1832), a French scholar who had mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac,
Ethiopic, Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit and Coptic. The Rosetta Stone
contains three inscriptions. The uppermost is written in
hieroglyphics; the second in what is now called demotic, the common
script of ancient Egypt; and the third in Greek. Champollion guessed
that the three inscriptions contained the same text and so he spent
the next fourteen years (1808-1822) working from the Greek to the
demotic and finally to the hieroglyphics until he had deciphered the
whole text. The Rosetta Stone is now on display at the British Museum
in London.
During the period of the Middle Kingdom (2050-1800 B.C.) the power of
the pharaohs of the Old Kingdom waned as priests and nobles gained
more independence and influence. The governors of the regions of Egypt
(nomes) gained hereditary claim to their offices and subsequently
their families acquired large estates. About 2200 B.C. the Old Kingdom
collapsed and gave way to the decentralization of the First
Intermediate Period (2200-2050 B.C.). Finally, the nomarchs of Thebes
in Upper Egypt gained control of the country and established the
Middle Kingdom.
The rulers of the Twelfth Dynasty restored the power of the pharaoh
over the whole of Egypt although they could not control the nomarchs.
They brought order and peace to Egypt and encouraged trade northward
toward Palestine and south toward Ethiopia. They moved the capital
back to Memphis and gave great prominence to Amon, a god connected
with the city of Thebes. He became identified with Re, emerging as
Amon-Re.
The Middle Kingdom disintegrated in the Thirteenth Dynasty with the
resurgence of the power of the nomarchs. Around 1700 B.C. Egypt
suffered an invasion by the Hyksos who came from the east (perhaps
Palestine or Syria) and conquered the Nile Delta. In 1575 B.C., a
Thebian dynasty drove out the Hyksos and reunited the kingdom. In
reaction to the humiliation of the Second Intermediate Period, the
pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty, most notably Thutmose III (1490-
1436 B.C.), created an absolute government based on a powerful army
and an Egyptian empire extending far beyond the Nile Valley.
One of the results of these imperialistic ventures of the pharaohs was
the growth in power of the priests of Amon and the threat it posed to
the pharaoh. When young Amenhotep IV (1367-1350 B.C.) came to the
throne he was apparently determined to resist the priesthood of Amon.
Supported by his family he ultimately made a clean break with the
worship of Amon-Re. He moved his capital from Thebes (the center of
Amon worship) to a city three hundred miles to the north at a place
now called El Amarna. Its god was Aton, the physical disk of the sun,
and the new city was called Akhenaton. The pharaoh changed his name to
Akhenaton ("it pleases Aton"). The new god was different from any that
had come before him, for he was believed to be universal, not merely
Egyptian.
The universal claims for Aton led to religious intolerance of the
worshippers of other gods. Their temples were closed and the name of
Amon-Re was removed from all monuments. The old priests were deprived
of their posts and privileges. The new religion was more remote than
the old. Only the pharaoh and his family worshipped Aton directly and
the people worshipped the pharaoh. Akhenaton's interest in religious
reform proved disastrous in the long run. The Asian possessions fell
away and the economy crumbled as a result. When the pharaoh died, a
strong reaction swept away his life's work.
His chosen successor was put aside and replaced by Tutankhamon (1347-
1339 B.C.), the husband of one of the daughters of Akhenaton and his
wife, Nefertiti. The new pharaoh restored the old religion and wiped
out as much as he could of the memory of the worship of Aton. He
restored Amon to the center of the Egyptian pantheon, abandoned El
Amarna, and returned the capital to Thebes. His magnificent tomb
remained intact until its discovery in 1922.
The end of the El Amarna age restored power to the priests of Amon and
to the military officers. Horemhab, a general, restored order and
recovered much of the lost empire. He referred to Akhenaton as "the
criminal of Akheton" and erased his name from the records. Akhenaton's
city and memory disappeared for over 3000 years to be rediscovered by
accident about a century ago.

Egyptian Religion
Religion was integral to Egyptian life. Religious beliefs formed the
basis of Egyptian art, medicine, astronomy, literature and government.
The great pyramids were burial tombs for the pharaohs who were revered
as gods on earth. Magical utterances pervaded medical practices since
disease was attributed to the gods. Astronomy evolved to determine the
correct time to perform religious rites and sacrifices. The earliest
examples of literature dealt almost entirely with religious themes.
The pharaoh was a sacrosanct monarch who served as the intermediary
between the gods and man. Justice too, was conceived in religious
terms, something bestowed upon man by the creator-god. Finally, the
Egyptians developed an ethical code which they believed the gods had
approved.

J. A. Wilson once remarked that if one were to ask an ancient Egyptian
whether the sky was supported by posts or held up by a god, the
Egyptian would answer: "Yes, it is supported by posts or held up by a
god -- or it rests on walls, or it is a cow, or it is a goddess whose
arms and feet touch the earth" (The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient
Man, 1943). The ancient Egyptian was ready to accept any and all gods
and goddesses that seemed appropriate. For instance, if a new area was
incorporated into the Egyptian state, its gods and goddesses would be
added to the pantheon of those already worshipped.
From its earliest beginnings, Egyptian religious cults included
animals. It is no accident that sheep, bulls, gazelles and cats have
been found carefully buried and preserved in their own graves. As time
passed, the figures of Egyptian gods became human (anthropomorphism)
although they often retained the animal's head or body. Osiris, the
the Egyptian god who judged the dead, first emerged as a local deity
of the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt. It was Osiris who taught the
Egyptian agriculture. Isis was his wife, and animal-headed Seth, his
brother and rival. Seth killed Osiris. Isis persuaded the gods to
bring him back to life, but thereafter he ruled below. Osiris was
identified with the life-giving, fertilizing power of the Nile, and
Isis with with the fertile earth of Egypt. Horus, the god of the sky,
defeated the evil Seth after a long struggle.
But Horus was only one kind of sky god. There was also Re, the sun
god, later conjoined with Amen, and still later Aten. The moon god was
the baboon-headed Thoth, who was the god of wisdom, magic and numbers.
In the great temple cities such as Heliopolis ("city of the sun"),
priests worked out and wrote down hierarchies of divinities. In the
small communities of villages, all the forces of nature were deified
and worshipped. One local god was part crocodile, part hippopotamus,
and part lion.
Despite the ever-increasing number of deities which could be added to
this hierarchy of deities, one thing is certain: Egyptian religion,
unlike the religion of Mesopotamia, was centralized. In Sumer, the
temple was the focus of political, economic and religious
organization. Indeed, it was often difficult to know where one aspect
began and another ended. By contrast, the function of an Egyptian
temple was focused on religion.
We are certain that ancient Egyptians were preoccupied with life after
death. They believed that after death each human being would appear
before Osiris and recount all the evil that had been committed during
one's earthly existence: "I have not done evil to men. I have not ill-
treated animals," and so on. This was a negative confession and
justification for admittance into the blessed afterlife. Osiris would
then have the heart of the person weighed in order to determine the
truth of their confession.
The Egyptians believed not only in body and soul, but in ka, the
indestructible vital principle of each person, which left the body at
death but which could also return at other times. This explains why
the Egyptians mummified the dead: so that the ka, on its return, would
find the body not decomposed. And this also explains why tombs were
filled with wine, grain, weapons, sailing ships and so on -- ka would
find everything it needed, otherwise it might come back to haunt the
living.

Indus Valley Civilization.
The earliest traces of civilization in the Indian subcontinent are to
be found in places along, or close, to the Indus river. Excavations
first conducted in 1921-22, in the ancient cities of Harappa and
Mohenjodaro, both now in Pakistan, pointed to a highly complex
civilization that first developed some 4,500-5,000 years ago, and
subsequent archaeological and historical research has now furnished us
with a more detailed picture of the Indus Valley Civilization and its
inhabitants. The Indus Valley people were most likely Dravidians, who
may have been pushed down into south India when the Aryans, with their
more advanced military technology, commenced their migrations to India
around 2,000 BCE. Though the Indus Valley script remains undeciphered
down to the present day, the numerous seals discovered during the
excavations, as well as statuary and pottery, not to mention the ruins
of numerous Indus Valley cities, have enabled scholars to construct a
reasonably plausible account of the Indus Valley Civilization.
Some kind of centralized state, and certainly fairly extensive town
planning, is suggested by the layout of the great cities of Harappa
and Mohenjodaro. The same kind of burnt brick appears to have been
used in the construction of buildings in cities that were as much as
several hundred miles apart. The weights and measures show a very
considerable regularity. The Indus Valley people domesticated animals,
and harvested various crops, such as cotton, sesame, peas, barley, and
cotton. They may also have been a sea-faring people, and it is rather
interesting that Indus Valley seals have been dug up in such places as
Sumer. In most respects, the Indus Valley Civilization appears to have
been urban, defying both the predominant idea of India as an eternally
and essentially agricultural civilization, as well as the notion that
the change from rural to urban represents something of a logical
progression. The Indus Valley people had a merchant class that,
evidence suggests, engaged in extensive trading.
Neither Harappa nor Mohenjodaro show any evidence of fire altars, and
consequently one can reasonably conjecture that the various rituals
around the fire which are so critical in Hinduism were introduced
later by the Aryans. The Indus Valley people do not appear to have
been in possession of the horse: there is no osteological evidence of
horse remains in the Indian sub-continent before 2,000 BCE, when the
Aryans first came to India, and on Harappan seals and terracotta
figures, horses do not appear. Other than the archaeological ruins of
Harappa and Mohenjodaro, these seals provide the most detailed clues
about the character of the Indus Valley people. Bulls and elephants do
appear on these seals, but the horned bull, most scholars are agreed,
should not be taken to be congruent with Nandi, or Shivas bull. The
horned bull appears in numerous Central Asian figures as well; it is
also important to note that Shiva is not one of the gods invoked in
the Rig Veda. The revered cow of the Hindus also does not appear on
the seals. The women portrayed on the seals are shown with elaborate
coiffures, sporting heavy jewelry, suggesting that the Indus Valley
people were an urbane people with cultivated tastes and a refined
aesthetic sensibility. A few thousand seals have been discovered in
Indus Valley cities, showing some 400 pictographs: too few in number
for the language to have been ideographic, and too many for the
language to have been phonetic.
The Indus Valley civilization raises a great many, largely unresolved,
questions. Why did this civilization, considering its sophistication,
not spread beyond the Indus Valley? In general, the area where the
Indus valley cities developed is arid, and one can surmise that urban
development took place along a river that flew through a virtual
desert. The Indus Valley people did not develop agriculture on any
large scale, and consequently did not have to clear away a heavy
growth of forest. Nor did they have the technology for that, since
they were confined to using bronze or stone implements. They did not
practice canal irrigation and did not have the heavy plough. Most
significantly, under what circumstances did the Indus Valley cities
undergo a decline? The first attacks on outlying villages by Aryans
appear to have taken place around 2,000 BCE near Baluchistan, and of
the major cities, at least Harappa was quite likely over-run by the
Aryans. In the Rig Veda there is mention of a Vedic war god, Indra,
destroying some forts and citadels, which could have included Harappa
and some other Indus Valley cities. The conventional historical
narrative speaks of a cataclysmic blow that struck the Indus Valley
Civilization around 1,600 BCE, but that would not explain why
settlements at a distance of several hundred miles from each other
were all eradicated. The most compelling historical narrative still
suggests that the demise and eventual disappearance of the Indus
Valley Civilization, which owed something to internal decline,
nonetheless was facilitated by the arrival in India of the Aryans.

Chinese Civilization
THE HISTORY OF CHINA, as documented in ancient writings, dates back
some 3,300 years. Modern archaeological studies provide evidence of
still more ancient origins in a culture that flourished between 2500
and 2000 B.C. in what is now central China and the lower Huang He
(Yellow River) Valley of north China. Centuries of migration,
amalgamation, and development brought about a distinctive system of
writing, philosophy, art, and political organization that came to be
recognizable as Chinese civilization. What makes the civilization
unique in world history is its continuity through over 4,000 years to
the present century.
The Chinese have developed a strong sense of their real and
mythological origins and have kept voluminous records since very early
times. It is largely as a result of these records that knowledge
concerning the ancient past, not only of China but also of its
neighbors, has survived.
Chinese history, until the twentieth century, was written mostly by
members of the ruling scholar-official class and was meant to provide
the ruler with precedents to guide or justify his policies. These
accounts focused on dynastic politics and colorful court histories and
included developments among the commoners only as backdrops. The
historians described a Chinese political pattern of dynasties, one
following another in a cycle of ascent, achievement, decay, and
rebirth under a new family.
Of the consistent traits identified by independent historians, a
salient one has been the capacity of the Chinese to absorb the people
of surrounding areas into their own civilization. Their success can be
attributed to the superiority of their ideographic written language,
their technology, and their political institutions; the refinement of
their artistic and intellectual creativity; and the sheer weight of
their numbers. The process of assimilation continued over the
centuries through conquest and colonization until what is now known as
China Proper was brought under unified rule. The Chinese also left an
enduring mark on people beyond their borders, especially the Koreans,
Japanese, and Vietnamese.
Another recurrent historical theme has been the unceasing struggle of
the sedentary Chinese against the threat posed to their safety and way
of life by non-Chinese peoples on the margins of their territory in
the north, northeast, and northwest. In the thirteenth century, the
Mongols from the northern steppes became the first alien people to
conquer all China. Although not as culturally developed as the
Chinese, they left some imprint on Chinese civilization while
heightening Chinese perceptions of threat from the north. China came
under alien rule for the second time in the mid-seventeenth century;
the conquerors--the Manchus-- came again from the north and northeast.
For centuries virtually all the foreigners that Chinese rulers saw
came from the less developed societies along their land borders. This
circumstance conditioned the Chinese view of the outside world. The
Chinese saw their domain as the self-sufficient center of the universe
and derived from this image the traditional (and still used) Chinese
name for their country--Zhongguo, literally, Middle Kingdom or Central
Nation. China saw itself surrounded on all sides by so-called
barbarian peoples whose cultures were demonstrably inferior by Chinese
standards. This China-centered ("sinocentric") view of the world was
still undisturbed in the nineteenth century, at the time of the first
serious confrontation with the West. China had taken it for granted
that its relations with Europeans would be conducted according to the
tributary system that had evolved over the centuries between the
emperor and representatives of the lesser states on China's borders as
well as between the emperor and some earlier European visitors. But by
the mid-nineteenth century, humiliated militarily by superior Western
weaponry and technology and faced with imminent territorial
dismemberment, China began to reassess its position with respect to
Western civilization. By 1911 the two-millennia-old dynastic system of
imperial government was brought down by its inability to make this
adjustment successfully.
Because of its length and complexity, the history of the Middle
Kingdom lends itself to varied interpretation. After the communist
takeover in 1949, historians in mainland China wrote their own version
of the past--a history of China built on a Marxist model of
progression from primitive communism to slavery, feudalism,
capitalism, and finally socialism. The events of history came to be
presented as a function of the class struggle. Historiography became
subordinated to proletarian politics fashioned and directed by the
Chinese Communist Party. A series of thought-reform and antirightist
campaigns were directed against intellectuals in the arts, sciences,
and academic community. The Cultural Revolution (1966-76) further
altered the objectivity of historians. In the years after the death of
Mao Zedong in 1976, however, interest grew within the party, and
outside it as well, in restoring the integrity of historical inquiry.
This trend was consistent with the party's commitment to "seeking
truth from facts." As a result, historians and social scientists
raised probing questions concerning the state of historiography in
China. Their investigations included not only historical study of
traditional China but penetrating inquiries into modern Chinese
history and the history of the Chinese Communist Party.
In post-Mao China, the discipline of historiography has not been
separated from politics, although a much greater range of historical
topics has been discussed. Figures from Confucius--who was bitterly
excoriated for his "feudal" outlook by Cultural Revolution-era
historians--to Mao himself have been evaluated with increasing
flexibility. Among the criticisms made by Chinese social scientists is
that Maoist-era historiography distorted Marxist and Leninist
interpretations. This meant that considerable revision of historical
texts was in order in the 1980s, although no substantive change away
from the conventional Marxist approach was likely. Historical
institutes were restored within the Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences, and a growing corps of trained historians, in institutes and
academia alike, returned to their work with the blessing of the
Chinese Communist Party. This in itself was a potentially significant
development.
THE ANCIENT DYNASTIES
Chinese civilization, as described in mythology, begins with Pangu,
the creator of the universe, and a succession of legendary sage-
emperors and culture heroes who taught the ancient Chinese to
communicate and to find sustenance, clothing, and shelter. The first
prehistoric dynasty is said to be Xia, from about the twentyfirst to
the sixteenth century B.C. Until scientific excavations were made at
early bronze-age sites at Anyang, Henan Province, in 1928, it was
difficult to separate myth from reality in regard to the Xia. But
since then, and especially in the 1960s and 1970s, archaeologists have
uncovered urban sites, bronze implements, and tombs that point to the
existence of Xia civilization in the same locations cited in ancient
Chinese historical texts. At minimum, the Xia period marked an
evolutionary stage between the late neolithic cultures and the typical
Chinese urban civilization of the Shang dynasty.
The Dawn of History
Thousands of archaeological finds in the Huang He Valley--the apparent
cradle of Chinese civilization--provide evidence about the Shang
dynasty, which endured roughly from 1700 to 1027 B.C. The Shang
dynasty (also called the Yin dynasty in its later stages) is believed
to have been founded by a rebel leader who overthrew the last Xia
ruler. Its civilization was based on agriculture, augmented by hunting
and animal husbandry. Two important events of the period were the
development of a writing system, as revealed in archaic Chinese
inscriptions found on tortoise shells and flat cattle bones (commonly
called oracle bones), and the use of bronze metallurgy. A number of
ceremonial bronze vessels with inscriptions date from the Shang
period; the workmanship on the bronzes attests to a high level of
civilization.
A line of hereditary Shang kings ruled over much of northern China,
and Shang troops fought frequent wars with neighboring settlements and
nomadic herdsmen from the inner Asian steppes. The capitals, one of
which was at the site of the modern city of Anyang, were centers of
glittering court life. Court rituals to propitiate spirits and to
honor sacred ancestors were highly developed. In addition to his
secular position, the king was the head of the ancestor- and spirit-
worship cult. Evidence from the royal tombs indicates that royal
personages were buried with articles of value, presumably for use in
the afterlife. Perhaps for the same reason, hundreds of commoners, who
may have been slaves, were buried alive with the royal corpse.
The Zhou Period
The last Shang ruler, a despot according to standard Chinese accounts,
was overthrown by a chieftain of a frontier tribe called Zhou, which
had settled in the Wei Valley in modern Shaanxi Province. The Zhou
dynasty had its capital at Hao, near the city of Xi'an, or Chang'an,
as it was known in its heyday in the imperial period. Sharing the
language and culture of the Shang, the early Zhou rulers, through
conquest and colonization, gradually sinicized, that is, extended
Shang culture through much of China Proper north of the Chang Jiang
(Yangtze River). The Zhou dynasty lasted longer than any other, from
1027 to 221 B.C. It was philosophers of this period who first
enunciated the doctrine of the "mandate of heaven" (tianming), the
notion that the ruler (the "son of heaven") governed by divine right
but that his dethronement would prove that he had lost the mandate.
The doctrine explained and justified the demise of the two earlier
dynasties and at the same time supported the legitimacy of present and
future rulers.
The term feudal has often been applied to the Zhou period because the
Zhou's early decentralized rule invites comparison with medieval rule
in Europe. At most, however, the early Zhou system was proto-feudal,
being a more sophisticated version of earlier tribal organization, in
which effective control depended more on familial ties than on feudal
legal bonds. Whatever feudal elements there may have been decreased as
time went on. The Zhou amalgam of city-states became progressively
centralized and established increasingly impersonal political and
economic institutions. These developments, which probably occurred in
the latter Zhou period, were manifested in greater central control
over local governments and a more routinized agricultural taxation.
In 771 B.C. the Zhou court was sacked, and its king was killed by
invading barbarians who were allied with rebel lords. The capital was
moved eastward to Luoyang in present-day Henan Province. Because of
this shift, historians divide the Zhou era into Western Zhou (1027-771
B.C.) and Eastern Zhou (770-221 B.C.). With the royal line broken, the
power of the Zhou court gradually diminished; the fragmentation of the
kingdom accelerated. Eastern Zhou divides into two subperiods. The
first, from 770 to 476 B.C., is called the Spring and Autumn Period,
after a famous historical chronicle of the time; the second is known
as the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.).
The Hundred Schools of Thought
The Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, though marked by
disunity and civil strife, witnessed an unprecedented era of cultural
prosperity--the "golden age" of China. The atmosphere of reform and
new ideas was attributed to the struggle for survival among warring
regional lords who competed in building strong and loyal armies and in
increasing economic production to ensure a broader base for tax
collection. To effect these economic, military, and cultural
developments, the regional lords needed ever-increasing numbers of
skilled, literate officials and teachers, the recruitment of whom was
based on merit. Also during this time, commerce was stimulated through
the introduction of coinage and technological improvements. Iron came
into general use, making possible not only the forging of weapons of
war but also the manufacture of farm implements. Public works on a
grand scale--such as flood control, irrigation projects, and canal
digging--were executed. Enormous walls were built around cities and
along the broad stretches of the northern frontier.
So many different philosophies developed during the late Spring and
Autumn and early Warring States periods that the era is often known as
that of the Hundred Schools of Thought. From the Hundred Schools of
Thought came many of the great classical writings on which Chinese
practices were to be based for the next two and onehalf millennia.
Many of the thinkers were itinerant intellectuals who, besides
teaching their disciples, were employed as advisers to one or another
of the various state rulers on the methods of government, war, and
diplomacy.
The body of thought that had the most enduring effect on subsequent
Chinese life was that of the School of Literati (ru), often called the
Confucian school in the West. The written legacy of the School of
Literati is embodied in the Confucian Classics, which were to become
the basis for the order of traditional society. Confucius (551-479
B.C.), also called Kong Zi, or Master Kong, looked to the early days
of Zhou rule for an ideal social and political order. He believed that
the only way such a system could be made to work properly was for each
person to act according to prescribed relationships. "Let the ruler be
a ruler and the subject a subject," he said, but he added that to rule
properly a king must be virtuous. To Confucius, the functions of
government and social stratification were facts of life to be
sustained by ethical values. His ideal was the junzi (ruler's son),
which came to mean gentleman in the sense of a cultivated or superior
man.
Mencius (372-289 B.C.), or Meng Zi, was a Confucian disciple who made
major contributions to the humanism of Confucian thought. Mencius
declared that man was by nature good. He expostulated the idea that a
ruler could not govern without the people's tacit consent and that the
penalty for unpopular, despotic rule was the loss of the "mandate of
heaven."
The effect of the combined work of Confucius, the codifier and
interpreter of a system of relationships based on ethical behavior,
and Mencius, the synthesizer and developer of applied Confucian
thought, was to provide traditional Chinese society with a
comprehensive framework on which to order virtually every aspect of
life.
There were to be accretions to the corpus of Confucian thought, both
immediately and over the millennia, and from within and outside the
Confucian school. Interpretations made to suit or influence
contemporary society made Confucianism dynamic while preserving a
fundamental system of model behavior based on ancient texts.
Diametrically opposed to Mencius, for example, was the interpretation
of Xun Zi (ca. 300-237 B.C.), another Confucian follower. Xun Zi
preached that man is innately selfish and evil and that goodness is
attainable only through education and conduct befitting one's status.
He also argued that the best government is one based on authoritarian
control, not ethical or moral persuasion.
Xun Zi's unsentimental and authoritarian inclinations were developed
into the doctrine embodied in the School of Law (fa), or Legalism. The
doctrine was formulated by Han Fei Zi (d. 233 B.C.) and Li Si (d. 208
B.C.), who maintained that human nature was incorrigibly selfish and
therefore the only way to preserve the social order was to impose
discipline from above and to enforce laws strictly. The Legalists
exalted the state and sought its prosperity and martial prowess above
the welfare of the common people. Legalism became the philosophic
basis for the imperial form of government. When the most practical and
useful aspects of Confucianism and Legalism were synthesized in the
Han period (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), a system of governance came into
existence that was to survive largely intact until the late nineteenth
century. Taoism (or Daoism in pinyin), the second most important
stream of Chinese thought, also developed during the Zhou period. Its
formulation is attributed to the legendary sage Lao Zi (Old Master),
said to predate Confucius, and Zhuang Zi (369-286 B.C.). The focus of
Taoism is the individual in nature rather than the individual in
society. It holds that the goal of life for each individual is to find
one's own personal adjustment to the rhythm of the natural (and
supernatural) world, to follow the Way (dao) of the universe. In many
ways the opposite of rigid Confucian moralism, Taoism served many of
its adherents as a complement to their ordered daily lives. A scholar
on duty as an official would usually follow Confucian teachings but at
leisure or in retirement might seek harmony with nature as a Taoist
recluse.
Another strain of thought dating to the Warring States Period is the
school of yin-yang and the five elements. The theories of this school
attempted to explain the universe in terms of basic forces in nature,
the complementary agents of yin (dark, cold, female, negative) and
yang (light, hot, male, positive) and the five elements (water, fire,
wood, metal, and earth). In later periods these theories came to have
importance both in philosophy and in popular belief.
Still another school of thought was based on the doctrine of Mo Zi
(470-391 B.C.?), or Mo Di. Mo Zi believed that "all men are equal
before God" and that mankind should follow heaven by practicing
universal love. Advocating that all action must be utilitarian, Mo Zi
condemned the Confucian emphasis on ritual and music. He regarded
warfare as wasteful and advocated pacificism. Mo Zi also believed that
unity of thought and action were necessary to achieve social goals. He
maintained that the people should obey their leaders and that the
leaders should follow the will of heaven. Although Moism failed to
establish itself as a major school of thought, its views are said to
be "strongly echoed" in Legalist thought. In general, the teachings of
Mo Zi left an indelible impression on the Chinese mind.


THE IMPERIAL ERA
The First Imperial Period
Much of what came to constitute China Proper was unified for the first
time in 221 B.C. In that year the western frontier state of Qin, the
most aggressive of the Warring States, subjugated the last of its
rival states. (Qin in Wade-Giles romanization is Ch'in, from which the
English China probably derived.) Once the king of Qin consolidated his
power, he took the title Shi Huangdi (First Emperor), a formulation
previously reserved for deities and the mythological sage-emperors,
and imposed Qin's centralized, nonhereditary bureaucratic system on
his new empire. In subjugating the six other major states of Eastern
Zhou, the Qin kings had relied heavily on Legalist scholaradvisers .
Centralization, achieved by ruthless methods, was focused on
standardizing legal codes and bureaucratic procedures, the forms of
writing and coinage, and the pattern of thought and scholarship. To
silence criticism of imperial rule, the kings banished or put to death
many dissenting Confucian scholars and confiscated and burned their
books. Qin aggrandizement was aided by frequent military expeditions
pushing forward the frontiers in the north and south. To fend off
barbarian intrusion, the fortification walls built by the various
warring states were connected to make a 5,000- kilometer-long great
wall. (What is commonly referred to as the Great Wall is actually four
great walls rebuilt or extended during the Western Han, Sui, Jin, and
Ming periods, rather than a single, continuous wall. At its
extremities, the Great Wall reaches from northeastern Heilongjiang
Province to northwestern Gansu. A number of public works projects were
also undertaken to consolidate and strengthen imperial rule. These
activities required enormous levies of manpower and resources, not to
mention repressive measures. Revolts broke out as soon as the first
Qin emperor died in 210 B.C. His dynasty was extinguished less than
twenty years after its triumph. The imperial system initiated during
the Qin dynasty, however, set a pattern that was developed over the
next two millennia.
After a short civil war, a new dynasty, called Han (206 B.C.- A.D.
220), emerged with its capital at Chang'an. The new empire retained
much of the Qin administrative structure but retreated a bit from
centralized rule by establishing vassal principalities in some areas
for the sake of political convenience. The Han rulers modified some of
the harsher aspects of the previous dynasty; Confucian ideals of
government, out of favor during the Qin period, were adopted as the
creed of the Han empire, and Confucian scholars gained prominent
status as the core of the civil service. A civil service examination
system also was initiated. Intellectual, literary, and artistic
endeavors revived and flourished. The Han period produced China's most
famous historian, Sima Qian (145-87 B.C.?), whose Shiji (Historical
Records) provides a detailed chronicle from the time of a legendary
Xia emperor to that of the Han emperor Wu Di(141-87 B.C.).
Technological advances also marked this period. Two of the great
Chinese inventions, paper and porcelain, date from Han times.
The Han dynasty, after which the members of the ethnic majority in
China, the "people of Han," are named, was notable also for its
military prowess. The empire expanded westward as far as the rim of
the Tarim Basin (in modern Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region), making
possible relatively secure caravan traffic across Central Asia to
Antioch, Baghdad, and Alexandria. The paths of caravan traffic are
often called the "silk route" because the route was used to export
Chinese silk to the Roman Empire. Chinese armies also invaded and
annexed parts of northern Vietnam and northern Korea toward the end of
the second century B.C. Han control of peripheral regions was
generally insecure, however. To ensure peace with non-Chinese local
powers, the Han court developed a mutually beneficial "tributary
system." Non-Chinese states were allowed to remain autonomous in
exchange for symbolic acceptance of Han overlordship. Tributary ties
were confirmed and strengthened through intermarriages at the ruling
level and periodic exchanges of gifts and goods.
After 200 years, Han rule was interrupted briefly (in A.D. 9-24 by
Wang Mang, a reformer), and then restored for another 200 years. The
Han rulers, however, were unable to adjust to what centralization had
wrought: a growing population, increasing wealth and resultant
financial difficulties and rivalries, and ever-more complex political
institutions. Riddled with the corruption characteristic of the
dynastic cycle, by A.D. 220 the Han empire collapsed.
Over the centuries a great many peoples who were originally not
Chinese have been assimilated into Chinese society. Entry into Han
society has not demanded religious conversion or formal initiation. It
has depended on command of the Chinese written language and evidence
of adherence to Chinese values and customs. For the most part, what
has distinguished those groups that have been assimilated from those
that have not has been the suitability of their environment for Han
agriculture. People living in areas where Chinese-style agriculture is
feasible have either been displaced or assimilated. The consequence is
that most of China's minorities inhabit extensive tracts of land
unsuited for Han-style agriculture; they are not usually found as
long-term inhabitants of Chinese cities or in close proximity to most
Han villages. Those living on steppes, near desert oases, or in high
mountains, and dependent on pastoral nomadism or shifting cultivation,
have retained their ethnic distinctiveness outside Han society. The
sharpest ethnic boundary has been between the Han and the steppe
pastoralists, a boundary sharpened by centuries of conflict and cycles
of conquest and subjugation. Reminders of these differences are the
absence of dairy products from the otherwise extensive repertoire of
Han cuisine and the distaste most Chinese feel for such typical steppe
specialties as tea laced with butter.
HAN DIVERSITY AND UNITY
The differences among regional and linguistic subgroups of Han Chinese
are at least as great as those among many European nationalities. Han
Chinese speak seven or eight mutually unintelligible dialects, each of
which has many local subdialects. Cultural differences (cuisine,
costume, and custom) are equally great. Modern Chinese history
provides many examples of conflict, up to the level of small-scale
regional wars, between linguistic and regional groups.
Such diversities, however, have not generated exclusive loyalties, and
distinctions in religion or political affiliation have not reinforced
regional differences. Rather, there has been a consistent tendency in
Chinese thought and practice to downplay intra-Han distinctions, which
are regarded as minor and superficial. What all Han share is more
significant than the ways in which they differ. In conceptual terms,
the boundary between Han and non-Han is absolute and sharp, while
boundaries between subsets of Han are subject to continual shifts, are
dictated by local conditions, and do not produce the isolation
inherent in relations between Han and minority groups.
Han ethnic unity is the result of two ancient and culturally central
Chinese institutions, one of which is the written language. Chinese is
written with ideographs (sometimes called characters) that represent
meanings rather than sounds, and so written Chinese does not reflect
the speech of its author. The disjunction between written and spoken
Chinese means that a newspaper published in Beijing can be read in
Shanghai or Guangzhou, although the residents of the three cities
would not understand each other's speech. It also means that there can
be no specifically Cantonese (Guangzhou dialect) or Hunanese
literature because the local speech of a region cannot be directly or
easily represented in writing. (It is possible to add local color to
fiction, cite colloquialisms, or transcribe folk songs, but it is not
commonly done.) Therefore, local languages have not become a focus for
regional selfconsciousness or nationalism. Educated Chinese tend to
regard the written ideographs as primary, and they regard the seven or
eight spoken Han Chinese dialects as simply variant ways of
pronouncing the same ideographs. This is linguistically inaccurate,
but the attitude has significant political and social consequences.
The uniform written language in 1987 continued to be a powerful force
for Han unity.
The other major force contributing to Han ethnic unity has been the
centralized imperial state. The ethnic group takes its name from the
Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220. Although the imperial government never
directly controlled the villages, it did have a strong influence on
popular values and culture. The average peasant could not read and was
not familiar with the details of state administration or national
geography, but he was aware of belonging to a group of subcontinental
scope. Being Han, even for illiterate peasants, has meant conscious
identification with a glorious history and a state of immense
proportions. Peasant folklore and folk religion assumed that the
imperial state, with an emperor and an administrative bureaucracy, was
the normal order of society. In the imperial period, the highest
prestige went to scholar-officials, and every schoolboy had the
possibility, at least theoretically, of passing the civil service
examinations and becoming an official.
The prestige of the state and its popular identification with the
highest values of Chinese civilization were not accidents; they were
the final result of a centuries-long program of indoctrination and
education directed by the Confucian scholar-officials. Traditional
Chinese society can be distinguished from other premodern
civilizations to the extent that the state, rather than organized
religious groups or ethnic segments of society, was able to
appropriate the symbols of wisdom, morality, and the common good. The
legacy for modern Chinese society has been a strong centralized
government that has the right to impose its values on the population
and against which there is no legitimate right of dissent or
secession.

Mesoamerican Civilization
San Lorenzo and La Venta: 1200 - 400 BC
The first civilization in central and north America develops in about
1200 BC in the coastal regions of the southern part of the Gulf of
Mexico. Known as the Olmec civilization, its early site is at San
Lorenzo.
From about 900 BC the capital city of the Olmecs moves further east
along the Gulf coast to La Venta, an island site in the Tonal River.
For the next 500 years La Venta is the cultural centre of a large
region, trading with much of central America. The Olmec traditions of
sculpture and of temple architecture, developed over eight centuries,
will influence all the subsequent civilizations of the region.
The most characteristic sculptures of San Lorenzo and La Venta are
astonishing creations. They are massive stone heads, more than two
metres in height, of square-jawed and fat-lipped warriors, usually
wearing helmets with ear flaps.
The chunky and uncompromising quality of these images will remain
typical of much of the religious art of Mesoamerica, particularly in
the region around Mexico City. It can be seen in the rain-god masks of
Teotihuacan (about 2000 years ago), in the vast standing warriors at
Tula (about 1000 years ago) and in the brutally severe monumental
sculpture of the Aztecs (500 years ago).
The first American monuments: from 1200 BC
In both the centres of Olmec civilization, at San Lorenzo and then La
Venta, numerous large clay platforms are raised. At their top there
are believed to have been temples, or perhaps sometimes palaces, built
of wood. The concept of climbing up to a place of religious
significance becomes the central theme of pre-Columbian architecture.
Its natural conclusion is the pyramid, with steps by which priests and
pilgrims climb to the top (unlike the smooth-sided tomb pyramids of
Egypt). La Venta initiates this long American tradition too. One of
its pyramids is more than 30 metres high.
The Olmec temple complexes set the pattern for societies in America
over the next 2000 years. The pyramids, with their temples and
palaces, dominate the surrounding dwellings as powerfully as the
priestly rulers and their rituals dominate the local community.
It is also probable that the Olmecs engage in a custom which remains
characteristic of all the early civilizations of America - the ritual
of human sacrifice, reaching its grisly peak in the ceremonies of the
Aztecs.
The Zapotecs and Monte Alban: from 400 BC
The Zapotecs are among the first people to develop the Olmec culture
in other regions. From about 400 BC at Monte Alban, to the west of the
Olmec heartland, they establish a ceremonial centre with stone temple
platforms.
Monte Alban eventually becomes the main city of this part of southern
Mexico. Pyramids, an astronomical observatory and other cult buildings
and monuments (including America's earliest carved inscriptions) are
ranged in a temple district along the top of a ridge. In terraces on
the slopes below there is a town of some 30,000 people. The Zapotecs
thrive on this site for more than 1000 years, finally abandoning it in
about AD 700.
Teotihuacan and Tikal: early centuries AD
Around the beginning of the Christian era two regions of central
America begin to develop more advanced civilizations, still based on a
priestly cult and on temple pyramids.
The dominant city in the northern highlands is Teotihuacan. It
eventually covers eight square miles, with a great central avenue
running for some two miles. At its north end is the massive Pyramid of
the Moon. To one side of the avenue is the even larger Pyramid of the
Sun (66 metres high). The sculptures on an early pyramid in
Teotihuacan introduce Quetzalcoatl, the most important god of ancient
Mesoamerica. His image is a snake's head with a necklace of feathers
(the plumed serpent).
The other classic civilization of Mesoamerica is that of the Maya,
developing in what is now the eastern part of Mexico and the
neighbouring regions of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and western
Honduras. Much of this region is jungle. The inaccessibility of the
great centres of Maya culture (of which the largest is Tikal) means
that they outlast all rivals, surviving a succession of violent
changes in the civilization of central Mexico.
The first of these changes is the sudden collapse of Teotihuacan in
about AD 650. It is not known for certain which invaders overrun this
greatest city of ancient America. But the next people to establish
themselves as rulers of the valley of Mexico, in the 10th century, are
the Toltecs.

The first American script: 2nd c. BC - 3rd c. AD
Of the various early civilizations of central America, the Maya make
the greatest use of writing. In their ceremonial centres they set up
numerous columns, or stelae, engraved with hieroglyphs. But they are
not the inventors of writing in America.
Credit for this should possibly go back as far as the Olmecs.
Certainly there is some evidence that they are the first in the region
to devise a calendar, in which writing of some sort is almost
essential. The Zapotecs, preceding the Maya, have left the earliest
surviving inscriptions, dating from about the 2nd century BC. The
first Mayan stele to be securely dated is erected at Tikal in the
equivalent of the year AD 292.
The Mayan script is hieroglyphic with some phonetic elements. Its
interpretation has been a long struggle, going back to the 16th
century, and even today only about 80% of the hieroglyphs are
understood. They reveal that the script is used almost exclusively for
two purposes: the recording of calculations connected with the
calendar and astronomy; and the listing of rulers, their dynasties and
their conquests.
Thus the priests and the palace officials of early America succeed in
preserving writing for their own privileged purposes. In doing so they
deny their societies the liberating magic of literacy.