Chapter 2: Western Asia and Egypt

Civilization Begins in Mesopotamia

The Impact of Geography

• The ancient Greeks spoke of the valley between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers as Mesopotamia, the land “between the rivers.”
• Mesopotamia was at the eastern end of an area known as the Fertile Crescent, an arc of land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf.
  • Mesopotamia was a region with little rain, but its soil had been enriched over the years by layers of silt—material deposited by the two rivers.
  • Because of these circumstances, farming in ancient Mesopotamia could be done only when people controlled the flow of the rivers.
  • Irrigation and drainage ditches—part of a large-scale system of water control—made it possible to grow crops on a regular basis.
• When we speak of Mesopotamian civilization, we are referring to the achievements of several peoples.
  • Ancient Mesopotamia includes three general areas: Assyria, Akkad, and Sumer.
  • We focus first on the Sumerians, the creators of the first Mesopotamian civilization.

The City-States of Ancient Mesopotamia

• The origins of the Sumerian people remain a mystery.
  • By 3000 B.C., they had established a number of independent cities in southern Mesopotamia, including Eridu, Ur, and Uruk.
  • They formed city-states, the basic units of Sumerian civilization.
  • Sumerian cities were surrounded by walls.
  • Although Mesopotamia had little stone or wood for building purposes, it did have plenty of mud.
• The most prominent building in a Sumerian city was the temple dedicated to the chief god or goddess of the city.
  • This temple was often built atop a massive stepped tower called a ziggurat.
• Priests and priestesses, who supervised the temples and their property, had a great deal of power
• The Sumerians believed that the gods ruled the cities, making the state a theocracy— a government by divine authority.
• Sumerians viewed kingship as divine in origin.
  • Kings, they believed, derived their power from the gods and were the agents of the gods.
  • Regardless of their origins, kings had power.
  • As befitted their power, Sumerian kings, their wives, and their children lived in large palaces.
• Although the economy of the Sumerian city-states was based chiefly on farming, trade and industry became important as well.
• Sumerian city-states contained three major social groups: nobles, commoners, and slaves.

Empires in Ancient Mesopotamia

• As the number of Sumerian city-states grew and the city-states expanded, new conflicts arose.
• To the north of the Sumerian city-states were the Akkadians.
  • We call them a Semitic people because they spoke a Semitic language.
• Around 2340 B.C., Sargon, leader of the Akkadians, overran the Sumerian city-states and set up the first empire in world history.
• An empire is a large political unit or state, usually under a single leader, that controls many peoples or territories.
• Attacks from neighboring hill peoples eventually caused the Akkadian Empire to fall.
• Leadership came from Babylon, a city-state south of Akkad, where Hammurabi came to power.
  • He gained control of Sumer and Akkad, thus creating a new Mesopotamian kingdom.
  • After his death in 1750 B.C., however, a series of weak kings was unable to keep Hammurabi’s empire united, and it finally fell to new invaders.

The Code of Hammurabi

• The Code of Hammurabi was based on a system of strict justice.
  • Penalties for criminal offenses were severe, and they varied according to the social class of the victim.
• Hammurabi’s code took seriously the duties of public officials.
  • Officials were expected to catch burglars.
• The law code also included what we would call consumer protection laws.
  • Builders were held responsible for the buildings they constructed.
• The largest category of laws in the Code of Hammurabi focused on marriage and the family.
• Society in ancient Mesopotamia was patriarchal— that is, Mesopotamian society was dominated by men.
  • A woman’s place was definitely in the home. If she failed to fulfill her duties, her husband had legal grounds for divorce.
  • Fathers ruled their children as well as their wives.

The Importance of Religion

• The physical environment strongly affected the way Mesopotamians viewed the world.
• To the Mesopotamians, powerful spiritual beings—gods and goddesses—permeated all aspects of the universe.
  • The Mesopotamians identified almost three thousand gods and goddesses.
• Mesopotamian religion was polytheistic because of this belief in many gods.
• By their very nature, humans were inferior to the gods and could never be sure what the gods might do to help or hurt them.

The Creativity of the Sumerians

• The Sumerians created many inventions that still affect our lives today.
  • Probably their greatest invention was their writing. In addition, historians credit them with many technological innovations.
  • Around 3000 B.C., the Sumerians created a cuneiform (“wedge-shaped”) system of writing.
  • Mesopotamian peoples used writing primarily for record keeping.
  • Cuneiform texts, however, were also used in schools to train scribes, members of the learned class who served as copyists, teachers, and jurists.
• For boys of the upper class in Mesopotamia, becoming a scribe was the key to a successful career.
  • To become scribes, boys from wealthy families, many of them the sons of scribes, attended the new schools that were in operation by 2500 B.C.
  • Scribal students spent most of their school days following the same routine.
• Writing was important because it allowed a society to keep records and to pass along knowledge from person to person and generation to generation.
  • Writing also made it possible for people to communicate ideas in new ways.
• This is especially evident in The Epic of Gilgamesh.
  • Gilgamesh is a Mesopotamian epic poem that records the exploits of a legendary king named Gilgamesh.
  • This Mesopotamian epic makes clear that “everlasting life” is only for the gods.
• The Sumerians invented several tools and devices that made daily life easier and more productive.
  • They developed the wagon wheel, for example, to help transport people and goods from place to place.
• The Sumerians also made out- standing achievements in mathematics and astronomy.

Egyptian Civilization: “The Gift of the Nile”

The Impact of Geography

• The Nile is a unique river, beginning in the heart of Africa and coursing northward for more than 4,000 miles (6,436 km).
  • The Nile Delta is called Lower Egypt; the land upstream, to the south, is called Upper Egypt.
  • To the ancient Egyptians, the most important feature of the river was its yearly flooding — the “miracle” of the Nile.
  • The surpluses of food that the Egyptian farmers grew in the fertile Nile Valley made Egypt prosperous.
• Unlike Mesopotamia, which was subject to constant invasion, Egypt was blessed by natural barriers that gave it protection from invasion and a sense of security.
• The regularity of the Nile floods and the relative isolation of the Egyptians created a feeling of security and changelessness.

The Importance of Religion

• Religion, too, provided a sense of security and timelessness for the Egyptians.
• The sun, the source of life, was of course worthy of worship.
  • The sun god took on different forms and names, depending on his specific role.
• River and land gods included Osiris and Isis.
• A famous Egyptian myth told of the struggle between Osiris, who brought civilization to Egypt, and his evil brother Seth, who killed him, cut his body into 14 parts, and tossed the parts into the Nile.
  • Osiris took on an important role for the Egyptians as a symbol of resurrection.
  • The flooding of the Nile and the new life it brought to Egypt were symbolized by Isis’s bringing all of Osiris’s parts together each spring in the festival of the new land.

The Course of Egyptian History

• Modern historians have divided Egyptian history into three major periods, known as the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, and New Kingdom.
• The history of Egypt begins around 3100 B.C., when Menes the king united the villages of Upper (southern) and Lower (northern) Egypt into a single kingdom and created the first Egyptian royal dynasty.
• A dynasty is a family of rulers whose right to rule is passed on within the family.
• From then on, the Egyptian ruler would be called “King of Upper and Lower Egypt.”
• The Old Kingdom, which lasted from around 2700 to 2200 B.C., was an age of prosperity and splendor.
• Among the various titles of Egyptian monarchs, that of pharaoh (originally meaning “great house” or “palace”) eventually became the most common.
  • Kingship was a divine institution in ancient Egypt and formed part of a universal cosmic order.
  • Egyptian pharaohs possessed absolute power— that is, they had complete, unlimited power to rule their people.
• At first, members of the pharaoh’s family aided in running the country.
• During the Old Kingdom, however, a government bureaucracy—an administrative organization with officials and regular procedures — developed.
• Especially important was the office of vizier, the “steward of the whole land.”
• One of the great achievements of Egyptian civilization, the building of pyramids, occurred in the time of the Old Kingdom.
• The tombs were well prepared for their residents.
• To preserve the physical body after death, the Egyptians practiced mummification, a process of slowly drying a dead body to prevent it from rotting.
  • Pyramids were tombs for the mummified bodies of pharaohs.
  • The largest and most magnificent of all the pyramids was built under King Khufu.
  • Constructed at Giza around 2540 B.C., the famous Great Pyramid of King Khufu covers 13 acres (5.3 ha), measures 756 feet (230 m) at each side of its base, and stands 481 feet (147 m) high.
• The building of the Great Pyramid was an enormous construction project.
  • Guarding the Great Pyramid at Giza is a huge statue carved from rock, known as the Great Sphinx.
  • The Great Pyramid still stands as a visible symbol of the power of the Egyptian pharaohs of the Old Kingdom.
• The Old Kingdom eventually collapsed, followed by a period of chaos that lasted about 150 years.
• One feature of the Middle Kingdom was a new concern of the pharaohs for the people.
  • The Middle Kingdom came to an end around 1652 B.C. with the invasion of Egypt by a group of people from western Asia known to the Egyptians as the Hyksos.
  • The Hyksos used horse-drawn war chariots and overwhelmed the Egyptian soldiers, who fought from donkey carts.
  • Eventually, a new dynasty of pharaohs used the new weapons to drive out the Hyksos and reunite Egypt.
• Massive wealth boosted the power of the New Kingdom pharaohs.
• Hatshepsut—the first woman to become pharaoh — built a great temple at Deir el Bahri, near Thebes.
• The New Kingdom was not without troubles, however.
• The pharaoh Amenhotep IV introduced the worship of Aton, god of the sun disk, as the sole god.
• Amenhotep changed his own name to Akhenaton (“It is well with Aton”) and closed the temples of other gods.
  • Akhenaton’s changes were soon undone after his death by the boy-pharaoh Tutankhamen, who restored the old gods.
• The upheavals associated with Amenhotep’s religious revolution led to a loss of Egypt’s empire.
• Under Ramses II, who reigned from 1279 to 1213 B.C., the Egyptians went back on the offensive.
• In the first century B.C., the pharaoh Cleopatra VII tried to reestablish Egypt’s independence.

Society in Ancient Egypt

• Over a period of thousands of years, Egyptian society maintained a simple structure.
• It was organized like a pyramid, with the god-king at the top.
• Below the upper class were merchants, artisans, scribes, and tax collectors.
• By far, the largest number of people in Egypt simply worked the land.
  • They paid taxes in the form of crops to the pharaoh, nobles, and priests; lived in small villages or towns; and provided military service and forced labor for building projects.

Daily Life in Ancient Egypt

• Ancient Egyptians had a very positive attitude toward daily life on Earth.
• They married young (girls at 12 and boys at 14) and established homes and families.
• The husband was master in the house, but wives were very well respected.
  • Women’s property and inheritance stayed in their hands, even in marriage.
  • Parents arranged marriages for their children.
• Their chief concerns were family and property.
• Egyptian marriages could and did end in divorce.
• It included compensation for the wife.

Writing and Education

• Writing in Egypt emerged around 3000 B.C.
• The Greeks later called this earliest Egyptian writing hieroglyphics, meaning “priest-carvings” or “sacred writings.”
• A highly simplified version of hieroglyphics, known as hieratic script, came into being.
• Egyptian hieroglyphs were at first carved in stone.
  • Later, hieratic script was written on papyrus, a paper made from the papyrus reed that grew along the Nile.
• The Egyptian scribes were masters of the art of writing and also its teachers.
• At the age of 10, boys of the upper classes went to schools run by scribes.
• Girls remained at home and learned housekeeping skills from their mothers.

Achievements in Art and Science

• Pyramids, temples, and other monuments bear witness to the architectural and artistic achievements of the Egyptians.
  • Egyptians also made advances in mathematics.
  • Mathematics helped them in building their massive monuments.
  • The Egyptians developed an accurate 365-day cal- endar by basing their year not only on the move- ments of the moon, but also the bright star Sirius.
• Sirius rises in the sky just before the annual flooding of the Nile River.
• The practice of embalming (preserving a dead body to protect it from decay) led to medical expertise in human anatomy.
• Other ancient civilizations acquired medical knowledge from the Egyptians.

New Centers of Civilization

The Role of Nomadic Peoples

• On the fringes of these civilizations lived nomadic peoples who depended on hunting and gathering, herding, and sometimes farming for their survival.
• Most important were the pastoral nomads who on occasion overran settled communities and created their own empires.
• Pastoral nomads domesticated animals for both food and clothing.
• The Indo-Europeans were one of the most important nomadic peoples.
• Between 1600 and 1200 B.C., the Hittites created their own empire in western Asia and even threatened the power of the Egyptians.
• The end of the Hittite kingdom and the weakening of Egypt around 1200 B.C. temporarily left no dominant powers in western Asia.

The Phoenicians

• The Phoenicians lived in the area of Palestine along the Mediterranean coast on a narrow band of land 120 miles (193 km) long.
  • The Phoenicians improved their ships, became great international sea traders, and thus created a trade empire.
  • The Phoenician culture is best known for its alphabet.
  • The Phoenicians, who spoke a Semitic language, simplified their writing by using 22 different signs to represent the sounds of their speech.

The “Children of Israel”

• To the south of the Phoenicians lived another group of Semitic-speaking people known as the Israelites.
  • They followed a lifestyle based on grazing flocks and herds rather than on farming.
• Then, because of drought, the Israelites migrated to Egypt, where they were enslaved until Moses led them out of Egypt.
• They wandered for many years in the desert until they returned to Palestine.
• Some interpretations of recent archaeological evidence contradict the details of the biblical account.
• By the time of King Solomon, who ruled from about 970 to 930 B.C., the Israelites had established control over all of Palestine and made Jerusalem into the capital of Israel.
  • Solomon greatly strengthened royal power.
  • King Solomon was also known for his wisdom.
  • After Solomon’s death, tension between the northern and southern tribes within Israel led to the creation of two separate kingdoms.
• In 722 B.C., the Assyrians overran the Kingdom of Israel and sent many Israelites to other parts of the Assyrian Empire.
• The Kingdom of Judah managed to retain its inde- pendence for a while, but a new enemy soon appeared on the horizon.
• The Babylonian captivity of the people of Judah did not last.
• According to Jewish beliefs, there is but one God, called Yahweh, the Creator of the world and everything in it.
  • This powerful creator, however, was not removed from the life he had created.
• The Jews were monotheistic; they believed in one God.
  • The Jews believed that certain religious teachers, called prophets, were sent by God to serve as his voice to his people.
  • The age of prophecy lasted from the eleventh to the fifth centuries B.C., during the time when the people of Israel and Judah faced threats or endured conquests by powerful neighbors.
• From the prophets came new concepts that enriched the Jewish tradition
• The prophets also cried out against social injustice.
• They condemned the rich for causing the poor to suffer.
• The religion of Israel was unique among the reli- gions of western Asia and Egypt.
• Although the prophets developed a concern for all humanity, the demands of Judaism—the need to obey God—encouraged a separation between Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors.

The Rise of New Empires

The Assyrian Empire

• The first of the new empires was formed in Assyria, located on the upper Tigris River.
• The Assyrians were a Semitic-speaking people who exploited the use of iron weapons to establish an empire by 700 B.C.
• The Assyrian Empire included Mesopotamia, parts of the Iranian Plateau, sections of Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt down to Thebes.
• In 612 B.C., the empire fell to a coalition of Chaldeans and Medes (people who lived in the East), and was divided between those two powers.
  • At its height, the Assyrian Empire was ruled by kings whose power was seen as absolute.
• The Assyrians were good at conquering others.
• Over many years of practice, they developed effective military leaders and fighters.
  • The Assyrians used terror as an instrument of warfare.
  • They regularly laid waste to the land in which they were fighting.

The Persian Empire

• After the collapse of the Assyrian Empire, the Chaldeans, under their king Nebuchadnezzar II, made Babylonia the leading state in western Asia.
• The Persians were an Indo-European people who lived in what is today southwestern Iran.
• One of the family’s members, Cyrus, created a powerful Persian state that stretched from Asia Minor to western India.
  • Cyrus ruled from 559 to 530 B.C. In 539 B.C., he entered Mesopotamia and captured Babylon.
  • The people of his time called Cyrus “the Great.”
  • Cyrus’s successors extended the territory of the Persian Empire.
• His son Cambyses successfully invaded Egypt.
• Darius, who ruled from 521 to 486 B.C., added a new Persian province in western India that extended to the Indus River.
• Darius strengthened the Persian government. He divided the empire into 20 provinces, called satrapies.
  • Each province was ruled by a governor, or satrap, literally a “protector of the kingdom.”
• The Royal Road stretched from Lydia to Susa, the chief capital of the empire.
• In this vast system, the Persian king—the “Great King”—occupied an exalted position.
  • The Great King held the power of life and death.
  • At its height, much of the power of the Persian Empire and its rulers depended upon the military.
• These groups were known as the Immortals because their numbers were never allowed to fall below ten thousand.
  • When one member was killed, he was immediately replaced.
• After Darius, the Persian kings became more and more isolated at their courts, surrounded by luxuries provided by the immense quantities of gold and silver that flowed into their treasuries.
• As the Persian kings increased taxes to gain more wealth, loyalty to the empire declined.
• Struggles over the throne weakened the monarchy (rule by a king or queen).
• Persian kings had many wives and many children.
  • For example, Artaxerxes II, who ruled in the fourth century B.C., had 115 sons.
• Of all the Persians’ cultural contributions, the most original was their religion, Zoroastrianism.
• According to Persian tradition, Zoroaster was born in 660 B.C.
  • After a period of wandering and solitude, he had visions that caused him to be revered as a prophet of the “true religion.”
  • His teachings were eventually written down in the Zend Avesta, the sacred book of Zoroastrianism.
  • Like the Jews, the followers of Zoroaster were monotheistic.
• Humans also played a role in the struggle between good and evil.
• Ahuramazda, the creator, gave all humans the freedom to choose between right and wrong.
  • The good person chooses the right way of Ahuramazda.