HIST 1250 lecture 2 and 2.5 (sport and meaning through time and ancient near east)

what are sports (according to Oxford English dictionary)

An activity involving physical exertion and skill, esp. (particularly in modern use) one regulated by set rules or customs in which an individual or team competes against another or others.
Frequently in singular or plural.

what are sports (according to European Sports charter)

means all forms of (1) physical activity which, through (2) casual or organized participation, aim at (3) expressing or improving physical fitness and (4) mental well-being, (5) forming social relationships or (6) obtaining results in competition (7) at all levels.”

core elements of sports

• physical exertion (but: mind sports? Esports?)

• competition (rewards/ multiple people)

remember: modern. English term. No direct equivalent in many languages and cultures

who participates in sports

1. athletes

2. audiences

3. elites/sponsors/owners

athletes

Active’ participants using skill/force to engage in physical activity.
• May be amateur or professional.
• Almost always plural & competing with one another. May be part of a team.
• Usually (not always) benefit personally from prize. May represent others. (Owners Organization? Nation? Region?

• indispensable

audiences

• Responsible participants; view, listen to, react to performance of athletes. May play more active role (e.g. chants, displays)

• Formerly always physical present > no longer necessary with communications advance

• May support one/more athletes ("fans") or simply appreciate "the game"

• Derive: enjoyment, group identity affirmation, pride (pain?)

• E.g. why not just support winners

elite/sponsors/owners

• Provide financial backing necessary to stage sporting competitions

• Typically pay athletes, provide equipment (different levels for different sports). Provide prizes?

• More present at higher levels (higher costs)

• Derive own benefits (Prestige? Money? Power?)

the purpose of sports

• Varies significantly based on role (athlete/audience/ sponsor) and on particular sport

• But can be broadly classified in two forms

1. Material benefits

2. Intangible benefits

material benefits

• Close association with professional sports, meaning athletes are paid

• Financial benefits for winning competitions (for athletes and owners)

• Fees paid by audience for attendance, plus amenities (e.g. merchandise, conveniences)

• Estimated $118 billion dollars in revenue generated by professional sports globally in 2025

intangible benefits

• Can vary enormously. True of both amateur and professional sports

• types are prestige/social benefits and emotional benefits

prestige/social benefits

increased status from being "winters" for athletes/ sponsors; enhanced clout in immediate social circles for "fans"

emotional benefits

sense of personal reward and satisfaction for athletes/ fans. May be tied to sense of group identity; e.g. family, community, nation; or investment in particular athlete (s).

Roman night

An April night in Rome.
• Contenders face off in a packed arena.
• Champions face off; some local, some from overseas, including a storied titan, among the most famous in the Mediterranean, all before a crowd baying for blood.
• The decisive blow in the contest is struck by a Greek, purchased four years earlier. The locals are victorious. The crowd cheer

continuities

• Mass audience spectacles (c. 65000-70000)

• International character of participants

• "celebrity participants"

• Rabid fan support and participation (chants, banners, etc.)

• Team based

• Defined rules

•  presence of violence

• Political dimensions

• Huge sum of money at stake

differences

• Willing vs coerced participation

• Status/ honor of participants

• Stakes (life and death vs Pride, money)

• Enforcement of rules (referee/ump)

• Religious vs secular context

A history of sports?

• Some scholars argue that we cannot meaningfully talk about history of sports because the word has such different meanings in different societies

• E.g. when a medieval peasant saw jousting or a Greek soldier saw discus- throwing or a modern spectator sees lacrosse- are they seeing the same thing? Are they undergoing a similar experience? Can we compare them?

• Position of this class is that they are and we can > as long as we take account of nuance and do not flatten differences into reductive oversimplifications

why compare?

what is the benefits of comparing sporting phenomena across space and time

1. lay out shared human experiences

2. lay out cultural differences

lay out shared human experiences

• Parallels point to basic continuities in human nature

• We often enjoy similar things despite our great differences

• Combat presentism, assumption that "now" is all that counts

• Understand common functions of sporting activity in different society

lay out cultural differences

• Appreciate how different societies promote different values (e.g. What are the rewards or risks of participation?)

• See how rules are interpreted or developed differently by different societies

• Think about elements like violence or enforcement of rules > how are these shaped by broader social context?

• Who gets to participate? Who is excluded? Which communities are supported?

sports history, historically

• Sports history still relatively young discipline. Often not taken seriously by academics and historians (who were frequently not athletic).

• Grew in 1960s and 1970s out of social history and interest in wider rituals and activities of society, mixed with later cultural history

• Now major, mainstream branch of historical field, breaking down conventional periodization and asking challenging questions

takeaways from lecture 2

No single definition of sports but broadly: involves competition, usually physical, between multiple individuals or teams, usually for an audience.
• Three key parties typically involved: athletes, audiences, elites/sponsors/owners.
• Many parallels exist across time and space which facilitate meaningful & productive historical comparison and contrast, when done with nuance.

sports in the age of stone

The earliest evidence for humans participating in competitive physical competitions which we might consider a form of sports date to deep in prehistory, long before the advent of writing.
• Between 15,000 and 10,000 BCE, cave paintings and rock art from Mongolia to France begin to depict ‘athletes’ apparently competing for observers. Wrestling is the most commonly depicted sport, although others such as running, archery, and swimming may also make appearances.
• Scholars disagree on how systematic or widespread any sort of ‘sports’ in these prehistoric societies were, but this evidence at least suggests that a desire for physical competition emerged at a relatively early stage in human development.

what was the most common depicted sport of the age of stone

wrestling

sports at the dawn of history

What happened as humans moved from ‘prehistory’ to ‘history’ – that is, from an era
before before human records begin to one of more stable and large-scale civilizations
for which we possess more meaningful evidence?
• In our last class, we asked whether sport can be meaningfully compared across
societies. Doing so requires us to look at the emergence of ‘sporting cultures’ which
we can first see in detail in the Classical World of the Ancient Mediterranean,
starting next class.
• Today, however, we will look at how sports developed in two even earlier societies
about which we have some knowledge, though less than we have for the Classical
World:
• Egypt, from c. 2000 BCE
• Mesopotamia, from the 3rd millennium BCE

the Egyptian state was

highly centralized

ancient Egypt

Ancient Egyptian civilization flourished as early as c.3000 BCE. For most of its history, it was one of the most technologically advanced, economically prosperous and highly populated societies on Earth.
• The Egyptian state was highly centralized around a single dominant Monarch, the Pharaoh, who was believed to have divine qualities. Egyptian society was likewise highly centralized, clustered around the banks of the long and fertile Nile River.
• These characteristics fed directly into the development of sports and games in Egypt, which begin to appear in art around the year 2000 BCE.

the sports of kings

Our visual and occasional scattered literary evidence consistently presents sports in relation to the person of the Pharaoh.
• Archery, for instance, appears regularly as the subject of image in tombs and in Egyptian stories and myths. It was seen as an important prerequisite for the rightful king, and a sign of legitimacy.
• Stick-Fighting (Tahtib) also appears, often in similar contexts. It is not limited only to the Pharaoh but also to soldiers especially, suggesting that it was seen as a way of preparing for war in a militant society.

Our visual and occasional scattered literary evidence consistently presents sports in relation to the person

of the pharaoh

archery

appears regularly as the subject of image in tombs and in Egyptian stories and myths. It was seen as an important prerequisite for the rightful king, and a sign of legitimacy.

stick fighting (tahtib)

also appears, often in similar contexts. It is not limited only to the Pharaoh but also to soldiers especially, suggesting that it was seen as a way of preparing for war in a militant society

Amenhotep’s boast

A stela erected near the Great Sphinx at Giza records the athletic feats of the young Amenhotep II (r. 1427-1400 BCE).
He is said to have:
• Rowed faster than 200 crewmen (without getting tired)
• Shot arrows clean through a copper target
• Fired from a galloping chariot, reins tied at his waist
• Trained his own chariot horses from boyhood
The stela functioned as a form of ancient propaganda, reinforcing the physical fitness and ability of the young ruler to prove his right to rule.

Heb-Sed festival

We know of one major recurring festival at which sports were staged on a repeated and predictable basis

However this was very different from the scheduled festival games of later cultures like the Olympics in a key respect: as with Amenhotep, it was the Pharaoh who performed the only athletic activities! He was required to run a ceremonial race course around boundary markers.
• This festival seems to have originated as a way of ‘proving’ the continued fitness of the ruler, being held to mark his thirtieth year on the throne and at regular intervals thereafter. He could thus show that he was still physically capable of wielding power.

hunting

Pharaohs also displayed physical prowess through the hunt, especially of lions or wild bulls. This was commemorated in inscriptions and small objects distributed widely.
• E.g. Lion hunt tallies of kills recorded on royal scarabs
• These were presented ceremonially as evidence of the control exercised over chaos by Egyptian elites, not as competition for its own sake. As we shall see, hunting would remain a sign of elite or royal sports all the way through the Middle Ages and beyond.
• As with archery, this is athletic display bound tightly to kingship, not an activity available to compete in.

wrestling at Beni Hasan

We must not oversimplify, however. There is also scattered evidence for broader participation in sports from Ancient Egypt beyond the Pharaoh. Perhaps the most spectacular such source comes from Middle Kingdom tombs at Beni Hasan, c. 2000–1800 BCE.
• The walls of these spectacular tombs are covered in hundreds of paired figures wrestling, demonstrating many different techniques of holds and throws.
• We lack evidence to know whether what is depicted here was a one-off event or a recurring one, although once again it does appear to reflect martial training. While it is difficult to say much without context, it is an intriguing insight into instances of sports that may have been practiced at a level rarely captured by our sources.

Mesopotamia

the ‘Land between the Rivers’ was one of the most wealthy and populous regions of the ancient world, watered by the fertile Euphrates and Tigris rivers.

Many great empires arose in the region in the ancient world, including the Akkadians, Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians. These ancient civilizations provide us with more of the oldest evidence for organized sports within larger societies than that preserved in paleolithic cave art.
• This begins with literature: some of the oldest writing in human history.

the first written sports account?

The Epic of Gilgamesh has a claim to be the oldest surviving narrative literature in the world today, surviving in various forms from c.2100 BCE.
• Its protagonist is the great Mesopotamian hero Gilgamesh, semi- divine king of the City of Uruk. In order to check his power, the gods create a ‘wild man’ to challenge him, named Enkidu.
• In a famous scene from the poem, Enkidu and Gilgamesh engage in a great wrestling match in the city of Uruk. Initially a hostile conflict, both participants end up respecting their opponent so much that it ends up forming the basis of their friendship later in the cycle! But sports were by no means limited to literature…

the sports of kings

Like Egypt, many of the ancient Mesopotamian city-states were monarchies and the larger societies that grew around them were often empires. It is no surprise then to see that the evidence for sports again concentrates on the royal household, from cylinder seals to royally sponsored literature, with hunting again prominent.
• Perhaps the most famous of these royal sports were the lion hunts associated with Near Eastern Kings, in which monarchs would prove their worth by slaying the great hunters of the region.
• Images of such hunts were a prominent part of Ancient Mesopotamian art, such as the famous monumental reliefs of Ashurbanipal from the seventh century.

Shulgi of Ur’s Boast

One Sumerian poem of praise records an extraordinary feat ascribed to King Shulgi of Ur (r. c. 2094–2046 BCE):
• The King is said to have performed a festival in the city of Nippur before running one hundred miles to Ur, another city in his realm, in order to officiate the same festival there – and back again! The poem was composed allegedly to commemorate this achievement.
• We can clearly see many parallels here with Egyptian Pharaohs such as Amenhotep II, and the same basic conceit of proving one’s worth through athletic accomplishment.

Two kings, two boasts

Amenhotep II

date: c. 1427-1400 BCE

alleged achievement > rowing, archery, horsemanship

stated purpose > prove fitness to rule

Shulgi of Ur

date: c. 2094-2046 BCE

alleged achievement > ran 200 mile run in a single day

stated purpose > secure his name “for distant days”

the royal game of Ur

As we saw last class, it remains debated to what extent sports should be considered purely ‘physical’ or whether the term also embraces mental competition.
• Mesopotamia also furnishes us with some of our earliest evidence for a ‘board game’ which enjoyed considerable popularity for thousands of years
• Playing boards have been discovered from c.2500 BCE, and we even have fragments of cuneiform tablets preserving actual sets of rules!

Sports among non-Elites

As with Egypt, while the overwhelming majority of evidence of sports is associated with royal figures, there is some evidence of more widespread forms of athletic contest, especially in art.
• Like the Tombs of Beni Hasan, depictions survive of wrestling in particular, notably on cylinder seals and terracotta plaques. These do not appear to show any named or ‘important’ figures but suggest a cultural familiarity with wrestling more generally.
• While we cannot see evidence for staged festivals or organized competition then, there is reason to think that ancient Mesopotamians did sometimes participate in games beyond
the royal level.

The royal athlete

As with Egypt, while the overwhelming majority of evidence of sports is associated with royal figures, there is some evidence of more widespread forms of athletic contest, especially in art.
• Like the Tombs of Beni Hasan, depictions survive of wrestling in particular, notably on cylinder seals and terracotta plaques. These do not appear to show any named or ‘important’ figures but suggest a cultural familiarity with wrestling more generally.
• While we cannot see evidence for staged festivals or organized competition then, there is reason to think that ancient Mesopotamians did sometimes participate in games beyond
the royal level.

no contest!

It is the lack of ‘true’ competition in particular which sets apart these royal games from our conventional notions of sports in later eras.
• This absence of competition was a structural necessity for ancient kings! They could not afford to take the risk that some other man might beat them, which could challenge their legitimacy and worthiness to rule; especially in societies like Egypt where the Pharaoh was considered at least quasi-divine.
• ‘Competition’ between mortals could exist only on a non—royal level, and appears to have been very limited.

what’s missing

While evidence from Beni Hasan or the Mesopotamian cylinder seals do show us some level of non-elite sports, it is worth considering what is not present:
• Repeating, predictable opportunities for athletics like festivals or a calendar of games
• Formalized rule-sets or enforcers (except the Royal Game of Ur!)
• Designated arenas or venues to host contests
• Records or advertisements of victors or any indication of prizes
• Evidence of civic sponsorship or patronage of athletes

takeaways

Organized physical display in Egypt and the Near East predates Greek literary evidence by well over a thousand years, from the wrestling scenes of Beni Hasan to the royal boasts of Amenhotep II and Shulgi of Ur.
• This evidence is real, specific, and often spectacular, but it consistently centers on individual kings, not public, repeatable competition.
• What’s missing - sponsorship, separated roles, a public record- points to what made Greece and Rome distinctive.

key tenets of Egyptian/ Near Eastern Sports

Purely individual glory, especially of the monarch
• Single centralized kingship, not rival nations or communities
• No civic sponsorship or separation of patron and athlete
• No durable public record of repeated contest