HIS 106 Ancient Near East to AD 600 Midterm Flashcards

How does social organization relate to sacred order?

"Social organization is created in a way that is consciously reflecting a sacred order that comes from God, or the gods, or some law."

What does common life mean?

Common life is the idea that all humans have to align with the cosmic order.

What differs about the concept of religion and culture in the West compared to in pre-modern/non-Western cultures?

In the West, we view religion as aspects of our life that have to do with God, the gods, or cosmic order.

In Non-Western/pre-modern civilizations, they saw everything in life as having to do with religion. There wans’t even a word for religion because it wasn’t a concept.

Does sacred order or social order reflect the other?

The social order reflects beliefs about sacred order.

Examples of terms for alignment of cosmic order and social order

ma’at, dao, tian, dharma, rta

A sacred-social order is

• Oriented toward higher powers

• Criterion for right action

• Embodied in laws, customs, ceremonies

• Passed down through education, art, culture

• Ground of authority

What did herding and farming look like in the early days?

• People started domesticating plants

• People would stay in places where they could have found provision for long periods.

What did the beginnings of cities and more complex societies entail?

• Social differentiation (people started to specialize in different tasks/ jobs

• Started to see different kinds of buildings including temples.

How does the cultural mandate and social structure connect and how does the reality of sin impact this?

• Development of social structure is part of the cultural mandate.

• The presence of sin means any technological advancement can be used wrongly.

What impact did social differentiation have on writing and in turn on culture?

• The pattern of individuals beginning to specialize in different tasks meant people could devote time to writing (learning how to write and mastering it)

• Writing could now be used to write down laws and teachings that could be passed down helping with cultural development/patterns.

How did written communication look in cave men times?

• Humans would create cave paintings which are pictographs/pictures to represent what they wanted to share. 

• For most of human history, writing has been limited to a minority of people who were able to write/create pictographs. 

• Civilizations are not morally inferior if they don't have writing or if it dies.

What does the Neolithic Revolution mean?

• Transition to agriculture

• Paleolithic (hunter-gather) -> Neolithic (agricultural)

Farming in the Fertile Crescent

ca. 8000 BC ?

What did the birth of farming in the fertile crescent include?

• Wild Cereals:  wheat and barley

• Wild sheep and goats

What was the Fertile Crescent like?

• The Fertile Crescent was suitable for agriculture because it got the right amount of rainfall. Not enough to make year round good but enough to grow crops w/o irrigation. 

• Did not include big river valleys yet.

• Used water from river to irrigate and grow crops

• Unknown how they domesticated the plants and animals.

The First Civilizations contained:

• Cities of 5,000+ people (Founding of Uruk circa 4300 BC)

• People specializing in certain areas

• Plow, wheeled carts, bronze (4th millenium BC) which lead to more productive farming and larger civilizations

• Writing (ca. 3450 BC in Mesopotamia)

• Elaboration of sacred-social order (polytheism) -> infer from artifacts and paintings. Bigger civilizations could've allowed for temples and idols.

Mesopotamia is known as

“the land between the rivers”

Mesopotamia has first

• widespread use of irrigation farming

• first cities (Uruk, Ur)

What people lived in Sumer?

Sumerians ca. 3500 BC by Persian Gulf

What were key parts of the sacred social order in ancient Mesopotamia?

• Polytheism was the religion for all of the Mesopotamian cities. Each city had a patron diety.

• Believed gods could bless and protect but also could be unpredictable.

• Mesopotamian accounts of Great Flood

• The first kings of Mesopotamian civilization were priests and claimed semi-divine status.

What are three responses to the cultural mandate seen in Ancient Mesopotamia?

• Writing (cuneiform), originated as pictographs, probably originally used for list of goods (food, taxes, etc.)

• Mathematics, developed numbering from 1 to 60, multiplication tables, table of squares, square roots, cube and cube roots

• Sculpture and art (ex. Akkadian seal, “Peacetime” and “Wartime” mosaic, representation of Akkadian King Naram-Sin)

What are examples of some of the first empires and when did they start?

Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians from ca. 2300 BC

What was a common theme in Mesopotamian art?

Lamassu (winged guardian dieties)

What was the importance of the Nile?

• flows north into the Mediterranean eventually and going north went downhill as it headed to the Mediterranean (flowed from upper egypt to lower egypt even though technically it was going north)

• Predictable annual flood

• Provided water for irrigation and a highway for transportation

Timeline of Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt had a series of dynasties from 3100 BC to 30 BC (when the Romans came in). Ancient Egyptian history lasted longer than history post 30 BC. It had continuity, stability, and long-lasting.

What did sacred-social order look like in Ancient Egypt?

• Polytheism

• Focused on death and the afterlife and employing various means for a good afterlife for those who had died (ex. mummification)

• Many structures built as tombs

• Hierarchy stratification

• Belief in ma’at

• Pharoah Akhenaten interlude (mid-1300’s BC)

• Pharaoah’s believed to be a god themselves

What did believing in ma’at look like for the Egyptians?

• ma'at determines that Nile will rise and fall

• encompassed natural law and moral order

• human law ought to conform

What occurred during the Akhenaten interlude?

Akhenaten suggested only worshipping the sun-god. This may have been influenced by interaction with the Hebrews. This shows that sacred-social order is hard to change and almost never do we see change maintained.

Examples of structures in Ancient Egypt

Pyramid of Giza → burial places and centers of worship, around 2500’s BC

Temple of Abu Simbel built ca. 1264-1244 BC for Ramses II

What were two writing styles?

Hieroglyphs → very remote ancestor of our writing system

Hieratic → cursive hieroglyphs, example of written on papyrus (paper)

Where was Israel situated?

Sandwiched between civilizations (Mesopotamia & Egypt, Israel's history intersects with both of these)

Stages of Israel’s history and connection to ANE

1. Abraham from Mesopotamia and leaves for Canaan and Joseph and family end up in Egypt

2. Sojourn in Egypt and eventually Exodus from Egypt. Israel recieves God’s Law and His sacred social order which is the true sacred-social order.

3. Judges, United Kingdom, Divided Kingdom (Israel and Judah?)

4. Israel exiled by Assyrians (722 BC)

5. Judah exiled by Neo-Babylonians (586 BC)

6. Persian rule over Babylon (539 BC), Jews permitted to go back and build their city, time of Daniel, Cyrus used as an instrument of God

7. Greek rule (332 BC), Alexander the Great starts conquest of Persia in 334 BC

8. Romans conquer during Intertestamental Period, Roman conquest of Judaea (63 BC)

9. Jesus Christ born in 5 BC!

What did the sacred-social order look like in Ancient Israel?

Monotheism, holiness of God

• every other "god" is a fiction or demon.

• God reveals He is holy and just unlike the gods of the Mesopotamians.

• God gives His Law at Mt.Sinai (Be holy as I am holy), Poseidon & Zeus can't say that

• Revelation -> God speaks clearly and authoritatively through His prophets

• The Law & Sin

- God institutes sacrificial systems and atonement

- Sacrifice was widespread in Ancient Near East

• Sacrifice points to the Messiah!

What was the first empire of Ancient Persia?

Achaemenid Empire (550 Bc-330 BC) under the leadership of Cyrus the Great, it rises and Cyrus conquered Neo-Babylonian empire. Cyrus' successors conquer even more territories.

What were the origins of Ancient Persia?

• Came on the scene around 550 BC

• Conquered essentially the whole region

• Originated from Aryans (appeared around 1000 BC and migrated to Iran?)

• Spoke Indo-European languages which stretch all across Europe, Central Asia, down into India

What was the sacred-social order like in Ancient Persia?

• Rise of Zoroastrianism (named after founding prophet), idea that universe is caught in a struggle b/w good and evil, kind of monotheism

• Ahura Mazda (good) vs. Ahriman (evil, chaos, lies)

• Priests of Zoroastrianism were called magi.

What was the later history of Ancient Persia?

• Conquest by Alexander the Great (334-330 BC)

• Hellenistic Kingdoms (after death of Alex. the Great). Hellenistic means greek-ish

• Parthian Empire (247 BC-AD 224)

• Occurred around same time as Romans

• Fought Romans and had diplomatic relations with Rome and China

• Overthrown by Sassanid Empire

• Sassanid Empire (AD 224 - AD 642)

By time of Sassanid Empire, Christianity was becoming widespread.

SUMMARY OF ANCIENT NEAR EAST TO AD 600

1. Agriculture and civilization first developed in the ancient Near East

2. Complex polytheistic civilizations flourished in Mesopotamia and Egypt for thousands of years

3. God chose a marginal people in this region, the Israelites, to reveal himself and prepare the way for his Messiah

4. Vast Persian, Greek, and Roman empires came to rule much or all of the region after 550 BC