Prehistory, Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Ancient Greece Vocabulary

Vocabulary flashcards covering key definitions, terms, and historical concepts from prehistory, ancient Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, and classical Greece.

Emic viewpoint

Description of behavior or belief from someone within the culture.

Etic viewpoint

Description of behavior or belief from outside the culture.

Domestication

Taming wild animals and plants for our use, and altering their traits as a result.

Agriculture

Food system that combines labor, land, plants, animals, storage, and social rules.

Cultivation

Genetically modifying a plant to fit human needs.

Portable art

A category of prehistoric art that includes movable items, such as pottery.

Mural art

A category of prehistoric art that includes stationary works, such as cave paintings and engravings.

Antiquity

Historical period spanning from 3,000 BCE to 500 CE.

Middle Ages

Historical period spanning from 500 CE to 1500 CE.

Modernity

Historical period spanning from 1500 CE to the Present.

Catalhoyuk

The first Neolithic city, notable for early social hierarchy, architectural innovation, maps, and wealth distribution.

Mesopotamia

A region whose name literally translates to 'Land between two rivers' (the Tigris and Euphrates).

Enuma Elish

Mesopotamian creation story centered on Babylon's right to kingship and the idea that power comes through agreement and negotiation rather than solely killing enemies.

Egyptian double crown

Regalia consisting of Deshret and Hedjet used by the Pharaoh to symbolize the unity of upper and lower kingdoms.

Ma'at

An Egyptian goddess and governing principle of ethics embodying truth, justice, order, and the right ordering of the cosmos, society, kingship, speech, judgement, and everyday conduct.

Heb-Sed

A jubilee festival occurring on a Pharaoh's 30th year of reign and every 3rd year thereafter, where the king runs a race to prove physical fitness to rule.

Hieroglyphics

Egyptian script used in monumental and formal contexts, composed of pictorial signs carved in stone or painted on walls.

Hieratic

Cursive Egyptian handwriting script used primarily for administrative, literary, and religious texts, typically written in ink on papyrus or ostraca.

Demotic

A highly cursive Egyptian writing script developed later for everyday and legal uses.

City-state

An independent, self-governing community.

Kemet

The ancient Egyptian term for the fertile 'Black land'.

Deshret

The ancient Egyptian term for the 'Red Land' referring to the desert area containing mineral resources, trade routes, danger, defense, and burial grounds beyond the cultivated zone.

Upper Egypt

The southern region of Egypt, characterized by up-river geographical locations and higher elevation than Lower Egypt.

Cuneiform

A Mesopotamian writing system, distinguished from a spoken language.

Hierarchical scale

An Egyptian art design technique where the artist draws or sculpts figures larger or smaller depending on their social, spiritual, or political importance.

Step Pyramid of Djoser

The historically recognized first attempt at constructing a pyramid in Egypt.

Namer Palette

An artifact from c. 3100 BCE that made unified rule into a visual agreement, marking the beginning of the First Dynasty and Egyptian pharaonic rule.

Phonograms

Symbols in Egyptian hieroglyphics that represent spoken sounds.

Logograms / Ideograms

Pictures in Egyptian hieroglyphics that directly represent the objects they depict.

Determinatives (classifiers)

Silent symbols placed at the end of a word in Egyptian hieroglyphics to indicate its semantic category or meaning.

Socratic Method

A teaching method developed by Socrates focused on asking questions.

Homeric question

The historical and literary inquiry into whether a single person composed the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Kleos

Honor or glory representing an individual's reputation among others, passed down from father to son, which in excess leads to hubris.