MELC 10 Midterm Key Concepts, Terms, & Expressions

Week One Imagining the Ancients in the Modern World

Reception History

how different audiences respond to ideas of the past

Egyptomania

fascination with Ancient Egypt within Western Civilization

Hermeticism

• “Secret Knowledge”

• philosophy founded by Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes / Thoth of the Thrice Great) who was believed to have lived in the 1st millenium BCE in Egypt (or earlier before Moses + Great Flood)

• Hermes Trismegistus blended the Greek god Hermes w/ the Egyptian god of wisdom of Thoth

  • authored the hermetica, a corpus of philosophical, religious, and scientific texts

    • alchemy, astrology, botany, magic, religion, numerology, religion, and more

    • sources were translated and copied into Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, and other language scripts by scholars during the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance Period

  • Debate over ‘reason’ and ‘myth’ between Ptolemy & Trismegistus

    • Metal Plate: depicting this debate, two ancient scholars depicted debating this

  • Hermetic texts: fake but useful

    • not written in the 1st millenium

    • Isaac Casaubon (French 1559-1614) later proved that the Hermetica was secretly written between 200 and 300 CE, afterwards Enlightenment Era thinkers dismiss it as forgery

  • Scholars continue to use it in their study of secret knowledge, attributing the source to Ancient Egypt

  • Recently, fragments of lost Greek, Egyptian, and Babylonian knowledge have been identified

Pharaonism (Modern Egyptians)

return to Egypt’s indigenous greatness, a great civilization

1920s-1930s - Egypt nationalism

Context:

• Egyptians grew aware of Ancient Egypt during the 19th and 20th century

• Egyptian nationalism caught between 3 paradigms

  • Pan-Islamism: Egyptians were connected to the Islam world, beyond being Egyptians

  • Pan-Arabism: Egyptians part of Arab region, connected to Arab communities

Afrocentrism

• Afrocentric perspectives considers Ancient Egypt a powerful African civilization

  • Afrocentric scholarship examines how Ancient Egypt was connected to African societies in Sudan, Ethiopia, Libya, the Sahara, and the Niger River Valley societies of West Africa

  • Afrocentric scholarship counters a Eurocentric bias that is more interested in Egypt’s connections to Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East

    • African diaspora celebrates Ancient Egypt

      • Sun Ra led the Sun Ra Arkestra from the mid 1950s until his death in 1993 Arkestra still performs today

      • A founder of Afrocentrism

      • Lived in Bay Area during early 1970s, lectured at UC Berkeley

      • Ideas were set down in the Space is the Place

      • Combine themes of science fiction w/ Ancient Egyptian dress

    • Controversial for some: Modern Egyptians are mad abt Netflix’s Cleopatra, want Ancient Egypt to have a connection w/ Arab/Mediterranean World rather than Africa

    • “Egypt for Egyptians” campaign against Netflix, conflict between 2 modes

Napoleon’s Campaign to Egypt

Napoleon landed in Alexandria on July 1 and presented himself as a liberator from the Mamluks. He believed that to conquer a country, one must "possess" the culture. His expedition was called the "capture of Egyptian history."

Description de l’Egypte

A series of publications produced by the 150 savants who joined Napoleon on his expedition that featured images of the geography, monuments, and flora and fauna of Egypt

Week 2: Geographies & Chronologies of the Ancient Middle East

Fertile Crescent

• dated paradigm/argument

• argued that once you look at region, in terms of Fertile Crescent, areas of where civilization was limited to b/c this is where you can grow grains/build irrigation canals

• ‘where agriculture was created and most productive’

• James Henry Breasted, American scholar of Middle East

  • no data, developed this paradigm

  • human geography of Middle East: ppl living all over region, adapting themselves to diff ecological and environmental conditions

  • 100 y/a when breasted was developing this paradigm, research was taking place within Fertile Crescent, a lot more research now shows this is an oversimplification of human geography

Plant and Animal Domestication

Neolithic Era

• adoption of sedentary life

  • people become less mobile, leads to agriculture

  • Domestication - allows for humans to select certain qualities they want to reproduce, started to select for the features of the animals they found ideal —> sheep & goat earliest animals to be domesticated

  • Started to identify diff aspects of an animal that they valued, would breed those animals to select those characteristics

  • One thing that got selected out was large, prominent antlers

  • Grain agriculture

Domestication of Plants

• Wheat, barley, lentils, chickpeas, olives, grapes eventually

Wild vs. Domesticated Plants

• Domesticated ones are bigger, parts that we value in wheat & barley are larger, more durable

• Wild wheat and barley are susceptible to blowing ears off

• Humans began to select ones that are heartier + withstanding harsher temps

Paleoethnobotany

The Study of Ancient Plant Remains

Zooarchaeology

The Analysis of Ancient Animal Bones

Pastoralism

• People who are living mobile lifestyles moving seasonally with herds

• Practicing Paleolithic practices of agriculture

Prehistory

• Paleolithic Era: waves of hominid migration into Middle East, stone tool tech

  • 1.5 mya - 12,000 bp (before present)

• Neolithic Era: adoption of sedentary life, plant & animal domestication, ceramic tech

  • 12,000 bp - 8,000 bp

• Chalcolithic Era: first signs of social stratification, rise of copper metallurgy, early temples

  • 8,000 bp - 5,000 bp

Paleo + Neo + Chalcolithic = Prehistory

Protohistory

• Bronze Age: first cities, kingship, intl trade, writing, bronze tech

  • 5,000 bp - 3,000 bp

  • 3,000 BCE - 1,000 BCE

• Iron Age: first empires, global trade patterns, iron tech

  • 3,000 bp - 0 bp

  • 3,000 BCE - 330 BCE

  • Assyrian Empire, Persian empire

  • Global trade patterns, commodities moving all over Middle East and Mediterranean

Bronze + Iron = Protohistory

Nomenclatures of Time-Keeping

BP (bp) - Before Present: subtract backwards from 1950

• Popular with prehistoric research

BC and AD - Before Christ and Amno Domini

• Christian Gregorian solar calendar established 1582 AD

BCE and CE - Before Common Era and Common Era

• Secular calendar follows Gregorian calendar

‘Ubeidiya

Archeological site in Israel

1.2 - 1 mya

• Near Dead Sea

• Camp site archeologists found, found stone tools, no skeletons

• Earliest human inorganic technology

• Sharp, meant for cut

• Homo erectus settled there

Geography Terms

Week Three What is Philosophy? What is Archeology?

Archeology

Study of humans through material remains

Four goals of analysis:

• Form: Describe and classify archeological evidence

• Function: Reconstruct how ancient objects were used

• Process: Determine how and why societies change over time

• Meaning: Understand how ppl in the past thought abt the world and their place in it

Visual Analysis

• Line

• Shape

• Color

• Space

• Texture

Absolute Dating

through scientific methods, assign a more specific date

Relative Dating

Time, space, buildings, objects in relation to each other in terms of what is younger and what is older

Carbon-14 Dating

Radiocarbon of organic elements, something organic needs to have been carbonized in the past, so u calculate half life of carbon 14, to give us pretty precise dates (± 25 or 15 years)

Philology

study of ancient languages, their scripts, and how both change over time

• ancient discipline still in demand today

• the analysis of ancient texts in their historical and cultural context

• examine how words & their meanings change over time (i.e. translation)

• philology draws their field of linguistics, the general study of language

Speech Community

Comprehending speech depends on context (context = informed by culture, time, situation, perspective)

• members of a speech community share explicit & implicit rules abt the ‘rules’ of the language and the ‘meanings’ of words and expressions

• philologists lack direct access to ancient speech communities: problem

• living members of speech communities who believe themselves to be descendants of ancient communities are imperfect guides bc lang evolves over time, shed old meanings + gain new ones

• text provide evidence for speech communities

Textual Analysis

Texts Provide Evidence for Speech Communities

What is a text?

• An attempt to represent or record speech in a patterned format using a script or scripts, and following the unwritten rules of a writing system

• An ancient text, then, can be an artifact of a speech event

• A text artifact that stores and transfers information

There are things lost when translating speech into text

Yet a Text is an imperfect record of speech

• Contextualization cues are often lost when transferring spoken language to written language

• Cues can be verbal (ie intonation) and non verban (ie body language)

• Think ab what meanings are lost and gained when sending a text message

  • Invention of the emoji has created tools to build cues into written language

  • “Can I come home and wash my laundry?” vs. “Can I come home and wash my laundry? [praying emojis]” 

The Translation of an Ancient Text is Difficult

• An ancient text cannot simply be ‘translated’ into words with contemporary meanings 

• Scholars consider a word or expression in its written context, but also study the word in other written contexts for clues

• Translations are always imperfect and subject to debate and revision 

Tell

an archaeological manmade mound formed by centuries of human occupation built on top of one another

Artifact

Artifact: portable, discrete objects created or altered by human behavior

ex. pottery, tablet, fragments of animal bones, not created by humans but altered by humans, bones broken to make food for family

Feature

A non-portable artifact unrecoverable from its excavated context

ex. Neolithic Tower, Jericho, Palestine (one of the oldest built towers in MidE, in West Bank, built for protection)

Karnak, Egypt (features even though they’re a building)

Features can become portable, but if you modify them you compromise their realness

Assemblage

• All artifacts and features associated with a particular time period or ancient society

• Pottery of successive prehistoric periods

• Modern artifacts: water bottles, phones, keys, notebooks, credit cards, identity cards

• Virtual world: much more difficult for archaeologists to define our assemblage bc many things virutal

Law of Superposition

Objects on bottom older than objects above them, deposited first, material on top deposited after

Stratigraphy

Vertical relationship between layers

Flood Narratives: Gilgamesh XI vs. Genesis

Week Four: Scribal Cultures in the Ancient World

Cuneiform

• a script

• Sumerian and Akkadian language

• Written primarily on clay tablet with reed stylus

• In use for 4,000 years

Scribe

How ancient scribes saw and ordered the world around them - lexical lists

Lexical Lists

• Long lists of signs/words, sharing some kind of category

Proto cuneiform lists

• Professions

• Wood objects

• Fish

• Birds

• Cities

In later periods, in addition

• Bilingual word lists

• Organized by sign shape

• Body parts

• Gods

• Temples

Hieroglyphs

Language of Ancient Egyptians

• Writing system

• developed ca 3200 BCE to write their lang

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Stela

Stela of Nefermaat Dynasty 4 (Old Kingdom)

Rosetta Stone

• key to deciphering Egyptian scripts

• Founded by French in Rosetta, surrendered to British 1801

  • Stone was discovered by napoleon’s troops in egypt in 1799

    It was among rubble being used to build foritfication walls

• Now in British museum 1802

• 196 BCE in honor of Ptolemy V

• hieroglyphs, demotic, and greek

• First time made available for researchers, a trilingual inscription from ancient egyptian, with greek which ppl can see

• Copied in 3 diff langs, all saying the same thing

Egyptian writing system unlocked comparing it to greek + using coptic

Jean francois cahmpollion’s list of hieros and their cursive versions and their greek equivalents

Breakthrough - hiero is language, not occult knowledge

Abecedary

Tel Zayit Abecedary, c. 950 BCE 

• Ordinary ppl practicing alphabet 

• Abecedary → alphabet 

Could write from left to right + right to left 

Logographic

Each character represents a complete word or meaningful unit called a morpheme

MEANING

ie. Egyptian hieroglyphics, Sumerian

Syllabic

Each character represents an entire syllable, or a mora (rhythmic time unit)

Cuneiform script syllabic, so diff speech communities could use it to write down their language

Akkadian syllabic mostly, but some logographic

Week 5: How did Ancient People Think about their History?

Source Criticism

• helps evaluate a text’s usefulness as a historical source

• scholars perform source criticism on their evidence

• Who composed this source? Who commissioned the source?

• Who was the audience? Who benefits from the source’s creation? Who does not?

• Why are certain kinds of info shared?

Historical Consciousness

• Mesopotamians and egyotpains possessed a historical consciousness, but one that was diff than those found today

• Beliefs ab the past were recorded in texts and in visual culture that requie careful study

• Skills such as source criticism, close reading, and visual analysis are necessary for interpreting these sources 

importance of planet Venus

Recording time in meso

• Documenting astrological phenomena - eclipse, planets - imp part of meso scholarship

• Scholars recorded their observations in cuneiform tablets and used them to mark time and predict future events. Same texts mentioned events or the year of the king’s reign

• We use these observations to identify the year and sometimes the month + day the vent occurred

• Meso astronomers observed phases of the planet venus - chief deity which dictated what would happen

Enuma Ana Enlil

• Astrological text from final centuries of meso

• The venus tablet of ammisaduqa

• Strong lines that separate each passage - like an entry

• Predictive science, look for observations then use that to predict the future 

lunar calendar

BH and AH - Before the Hijrah and After the Hijrah

• Islamic lunar calendar based on the HIjarah of 622 CE

• When Prophet Muhammad trekked to Medina from Mecca with his followers

Ma’at

Egyptian worldview of ma’at

• persistent Egyptian virtue that emphasized truth, order, and justice

• All Egyptians, especially leaders, were expected to practice the principles of ma’at in daily life

• Sustaining ma’at held back chaos (isfet) and sustained the balance of the universe

Instructions of Ptahhotep 

• Egypt good at leaving us sources talking about ma’at and how ppl r supposed to behave, instructional texts

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Egypti’s Pharaohs Maintained ma’at

• As a child of the gods, the pharoah’s principal job was to sustain and promote ma’at in all activities

• Pharoah partiicipated in temple rituals to insure Egypt’s prosperity

• Sustaining ma’at was the justification for potl and military actions

Battle of Kadesh

• Battle of kadesh 1274 BCE

  • Egypt may have lost, but egyptian lit depicted it as a win

  • Hittites also viewed the battle as a win themselves 

  • Historians think it was a draw likely

Cyrus Cylinder

• recorded the Persian King’s conquest of Babylon 539 BCE

• text describes how ‘welcoming’ the Babylonians were of their new king

Enuma Anu Enlil

• Astrological text from final centuries of Mesopotamia

• Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa

• Strong lines that separate each passage, like entry

• Predictive science, look for observations and use that to predict the future

Sumerian Kings List

• said kings ruled for thousands of years

• used to tell history of Ancient Mesopotamia

Narim Sin Victory Stele

• two-meter high stone monument

• created c. 2250 BCE

• records the victory over King Satuni of the Lullubi tribe in western Iran

• Stone itself signals that it is depicting a mountain, conveying the sense that the king is a warrior

Berossus [320(?) - ?? BCE]

• Babylonian astronomer wrote a history of Meso entitled, Babyloniaca, in Greek

• Text used of cuneiform sources to write his history for a Greek audience who understood history as a narrative of events and characters

• The Babylonianaca was lost, but portions were quoted by other authors in Greek, Latin, and Armenian texts

• Ppl would plagiarize or quote it, paraphrase

Manetho

3rd century BCE

• Egyptian priest who authored the Aegyptiaca (History of Egypt) in Greek

• Studied diff kings list and compiled the 32 Dynasty List system used today (w slight modifications)

Manetho used Egyptian Sources to Write the First Narrative History of Egypt

• Manetho was a priest living in fourth-century Egypt

• Wrote the now lost(!) 3-volume Aegyptiaca in Greek, possibly for Egypt’s Greek Ptolemaic rulers

• Travelled around Egypt consulting visible sources to compile lists of kings 

But not entirely lost 

Manetho’s Scholarship is the Basis for the Current Dynastic Chronology of Egypt

Palermo Stone

• An Old Kingdom Chronicle

• A royal chronicle lists the pharaoh’s name and the events that occurred during their reign

• The palermo stone describes the reign of Early Dyanstic and Old Kingdom pharaohs

  • Basalt; 45 cm by 23 cm, today in Palermo Italy

  • One of possibly seven fragments so far recovered

  • Ca. 3150 - 2183 BCE

Sea Peoples Relief from Ramses III’s Mortuary Complex

Example II: the mortuary temple of Ramesses III in Luxor

Ramesses III’s Battle of Djahy Against the Sea Peoples Depicted on the Temple’s North Wall

• Battle occurred c. 1178 BCE

• Sea ppls - fleeing homeland after military and climatic disruptions

One way ramesses iii sustaining ma’at, battling foreigners who r attempting to invade egypt 

• Also historiocal event 

• Nekhbet (vulture) protects the pharoah

• Pharoah portrayed participating in battle

• Victims trapped beneath pharoah’s feet 

Autobiography of Pepynakht Heqaib

(Elphantine, Reign of Pepy II, Sixth Dynasty, Old Kingdom) 

Autobiographical, Followed the virtuous path of ma’at, carried out military campaign on behalf of pharoah

Ma’at not just about being a good person, but more so about holding back chaos by being a good person and good servant to pharoah, for ppl not relatives or pharoah’s care→enemies, fight against them

Week 6 and Week 7: When Kingship Descended from Heaven

Popular Sovereignty

• characteristic of modern democracies

• consent to govern granted by ‘the people’

• origins in Enlightenment Era and a response to Euro kings’ divine right

Absolute Sovereignty

Absolute Sovereignty Characterized Mesopotamian and Egyptian Politics 

• Gods granted kings the authority to rule over ppl and territory 

• Critical question: If consent did not originate from the governed, how did kings sustain their authority over them?

Answer: Mesopotamian Kingship Descended from Heaven 

• Sumerian Kings’ List 

  • Lugal repeated several times, word for king 

  • Sumerian = LUGAL = ‘King’

  • Akkadian = saru = ‘king’ (turn the sumerian script for king on the side, bc of the way they were writing on tablets) 

Cultural Hegemony

Sustained the Consent of the Governed 

• Ideas and practices promoted a ‘common sense’ ideology that the king was the sanctioned ruler

• Intellectuals – priests, scribes, artists – promoted this ideology

• Ideologies were expressed in spectacles such as monuments, festivals, and performances that required the governed to participate 

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) 

Myth of Osiris

Investiture

Serekh

Shenu

Cartouche

Red Crown

White Crown

Double Crown

Smiting Scenes

Cosmopolitanism

LUGAL

DINGER

Ur-Nanshe plaque and inscription

Stele and Legal Code of Hammurabi

The Teaching of Amenhat I

Narmer Pallette

Ashurnasirpall II’s Palace

Persepolis

Apadana

Behistun Inscription

Week 7: The Ancient Middle East