WESTERN CIVILIZATION: an INTRODUCTION This Course Is Called Western Civilization I, So Perhaps the ﬁrst Thing That We Should Do Is Deﬁne What This Means

WESTERN CIV. I A

Mesopotamia Egypt Mesopotamian and The Catastrophe of Egyptian World Views 1200 B.C. and the End of the Bronze Age Page 4 Page 9 Page 14 Page 19

WESTERN CIVILIZATION: AN INTRODUCTION This course is called Western Civilization I, so perhaps the first thing that we should do is define what this means. The “Western” part means that we won’t look at the history of areas of Asia that had civilization like China, Japan, India. We will look at part of Western Asia – the Middle East and the Near East, because that’s one of the areas where European civilization arose. We also won’t be looking at Sub-Saharan Africa, because not much happened in terms of civilization there except fairly late historically, and what there was had virtually no effect on European civilization. We will be looking at Egypt in North Africa which is one of the oldest and longest enduring civilizations in the West, and had some effect on the growth of European civilization. So, that takes care of the “Western” part. Next, what about “civilization”? This one is a bit more difficult. The Oxford English Dic- tionary defines civilization as “the action or process of civilizing or of being civilized; a developed or advanced state of human society.” Well, that’s not a very satisfying defini- tion. Various people have tried various ways to define civilization. The Greeks had an easy one, for instance, they defined as civilized all Greeks, and later, begrudgingly, the Romans. Everyone else was a barbarian. We can probably do better than that.

Lef: Circle shows approximate area of focus for this course.

P a g e 1 o f 24 What are Civilized Societies? The best way to define civilization is to say that civilized societies have certain traits – do certain things – that pre-civilized societies don’t. So, what are they? 1. Civilized peoples are organized: they cooperate to do things that require a lot of labor, like build dams and levies and temples and other great structures. They also divide their labor to do other things more efficiently. Division of labor creates specialists who do specific things well. There are farmers, craftsmen (like carpenters, brickmakers, jewelers, blacksmiths), there are doctors, priests, scribes, administrators, and other specialists, all of whom contribute in their own way to the continuance of their society. 2. Civilized societies are builders: they live in permanent structures which they build themselves from wood or Evidence of Civilization brick or stone. In addition to family homes, they also Civilized societies are capable of regimenting their population in build monumental structures like temples, palaces, forts and walls, and sometimes great tombs. This stuff re- order to create monumental structures like the Egyptian Pyramids quires a lot of effort and the ability to mobilize and above, built around 2500 B.C. as tombs for the Egyptian god- control large numbers of people in a group effort. kings, the Pharaohs. 3. Civilized societies have some form of metal crafts. Civilized societies also divide their They possess at least rudimentary skills at smelting and forming tools and weapons from metal. The earliest labor in order to do a lot more stuff civilizations were skilled at crafting bronze (copper, tin) more efficiently. In this picture, tools, so the earliest period of history is called the Egyptian bakers are producing Bronze Age. bread in an organized and efficient 4. Civilized societies are producers. They possess agricul- fashion in order to feed an enormous tural skills, and are able to produce a surplus of food- work crew. stuffs in order to have seed to plant the next season and to get by in poor farming years. 5. Finally, civilized peoples are able to tell stories through art, and more importantly, through writing. The more advanced the civilization, the more complex the stories and mes- sages they can tell. Every civilization has had the ability to keep records and tell stories through some method of writing. Individual Characteristics Now, just because every civilization has these traits in common, that doesn’t mean every civilization is the same. As we study various civilizations, we will observe that every civilization has its own individual characteristic way of carrying on civilized activities. That is, every civilization is in some way different. Let me give you a simple example. We have seen that one thing civilizations have is big buildings. To construct a big building requires wealth, manpower, organization, and certain technical skills – none of which pre-civilized societies have. When the early Egyptians acquired what was needed to create large buildings, what did they build? Pyramids, enormous tombs for single individual. Modern Americans would never think the building such an enormous tomb. What do we build? The Super Dome, the Washington Monument, or perhaps a pyramid shaped casino in Las Vegas. So big buildings created by great civilizations differ widely in design, purpose, size, and even ownership. The same differences exist in almost all of the more complex functions of civilizations.

P a g e 2 o f 24 So, why do civilized people act in such different ways? Because every civilization has different ideas about what is important and what is not. These ideas are based on the particular civilization's world view – a particular civilization’s notion of what the world is like and what man's place in the world is. We could say that each civilization has certain problems to solve. These problems are imposed by conditions of climate, of geography, or conditions within the culture itself as it develops through time. In solving these problems, the civilization uses ideas, techniques, and institutions - that is various forms of organizations. And each civilization, to some extent, comes up with slightly different ways of solving their problems. Stone Age Societies And in the process, each becomes a bit more unique. Early human societies subsisted by means of hunting food and Origins of Civilization gathering wild seeds and fruits. they were pretty successful at it up So, I’ve defined Western Civilization. Now I want to until about 40,000 years ago when the Ice Age began. As game spend a few minutes talking about where that civilization became scarce and the came from. First, I should note that human beings, that is, weather got colder, people not very different from us in the scientific ways that Stone Age humans count – DNA and stuff like that, originated in Africa well wandered and sur- over 150,000 years ago. vived, or not, until Some of them arrived in western Asia and Europe by the end of the Ice about 40,000 years ago, just before the Ice Age began. This period is called the Mesolithic, the middle Stone Age. Age, about 12,000 These humans were hunters and gatherers. They used years ago. stone tools and stone-tipped weapons to hunt and fight. The Ice Age was pretty tough on these folks especially in Europe and northern Asia because most of the Northern Hemisphere was covered in ice and snow. Weather conditions tended to push some of these wandering hunters further south toward warmer climates and a greater food supply. They wandered around Europe, just making do, as the herds thinned and food became scarce until the Ice Age ended about 12,000 years ago. Around 12,000 years ago, in what today is Turkey, Syria and Israel, humans began to domesticate some game animals and some wild grains and to settle down and raise their own food instead of hunting it. In short, they created agriculture. Now these were still Stone Age people, what we call Neolithic -- that is “New Stone Age. They had not yet begun to use metal, but they did build permanent settlements of mud brick, and we think that they began to divide their labor. They cer- tainly used art at least in their religious ceremonies. Your book discusses several of these very early settlements — Catal Huyuk in Turkey for instance. Their villages and towns were a bit like built cave complexes, homes and other contained spaces all interconnected, and attached to each other. Nevertheless, they were proper settlements, with homes, temples, storage areas and other kinds of public and private spaces. These primitive cities grew and prospered for a time with the rudiments of civilization and faded into obscurity. But they are important because they form a sort of bridge between those wandering tribes and other small groups of the Stone Age and the bright shiny new Bronze Age civilizations that we will start looking at A “floor-plan” of Catal Huyuk in next time. Turkey. Note the interconnected- ness of the village.

P a g e 3 o f 24 Mesopotamia Our story today begins on a chunk of desert real estate in the area of Western Asia called Mesopotamia (Greek. “between the rivers”). At first glance, it seems pretty surprising that the earliest civilization on our planet should appear in such a hostile environment. Average summer temperatures on the Mesopotamian plain hover around 104 degrees Fahrenheit and may reach as high as 120 degrees. There is little rainfall, and no natural barriers protect against the windstorms and floods, and hostile intruders that may sweep across the flat, open landscape. Resources are few: no stone, no metal ores, and no trees sturdy enough to provide lumber. There was, however, an abundance of deep, rich soil deposited over eons by the annual flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Most of the primal civilizations (Sumer, Egypt, India, and China) sprang up along great rivers. Once the Sumerians developed irrigation systems, water from their rivers made agriculture possible. Earliest Arrivals in Mesopotamia During the Neolithic era, farmers living in very small communities worked the Iranian highlands east of the Tigris River. Over time, these peoples, and others, began to move down to the flood plains of the Euphrates and use employ primitive irrigation to grow enough crops that they could settle in larger villages, and by about 4000 B.C., these peoples had developed the first cosmopolitan civilization. They expanded their agriculture and their communities across the plain to the Tigris River, which gave them more land to cultivate, but also greater challenges. The Tigris ran fast through a relatively deep channel that made its waters difficult to tap for purposes of irrigation. The river sometimes broke through its levees to turn wide stretches of farmland into swamp, and it sometimes carved new channels that Mesopotamia altered its course. It also flooded at an inconvenient From the Greek, “land between the rivers,” it is the annual flooding time each year-in April, when grain crops were of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that makes life possible in this ripening. More sophisticated engineering and greater parched desert environment. A very unlikely place for civilization to numbers of workers were needed to trap its waters originate, but there you are! in reservoirs and distribute them where needed in the appropriate seasons. Once the Sumerians had hurdled these new obstacles their land could support a population of unprecedented density. The Sumerians We do not know where the Sumerian people originated or when they settled the lands north of the Persian Gulf. Language often provides a clue to a people's background, but it is of no help here. Sumerian is not related to any known tongue. The Sumerians probably entered Mesopotamia from the east, from the Zagros Mountains. They were attracted to southern Mesopotamia because the marshes along the rivers and the coasts of the Persian Gulf provided sources of food. Pioneers in the region would have relied on a mixture of farming, herding, hunting, and gathering. Myths and archaeological evidence identify the town of Eridu near the later, more famous city of Ur, as one of the area's earliest settlements. It was inhabited by 5400 B.C.E.

P a g e 4 o f 24 During the ﬁrst phase in Sumer's development, new kinds of settlements spread across the southern Mesopotamian plain. They were larger than Neolithic villages, and each boasted a major building, the construction and maintenance of which required a more sophisticated government than was characteristic of a simple village. Because all the dwellings in these communities were about the same size and there is little evidence of differences in wealth or of occupational specialization, privileged social classes may not yet have appeared. The investment that these communities made in their public buildings suggests, however, that this was changing. Their great buildings were probably temples, and temples create powerful priesthoods. Sumerian city-states reached their full development between 3600 and 3000 B.C.E. Gilgamesh's Uruk (or Erech), for instance, grew by absorbing neighboring villages until it had about 50,000 inhabitants. Scholars have wondered why Sumerian civilization quickly became dominated by cities in the 4th millennium B.C. At one time, they assumed that the development of irrigation systems promoted the growth of cities, but archaeological evidence suggests that the expansion of irrigation systems followed the rise of cities. Legends and archaeological evidence suggest that the Sumerians clustered together for protection. Cities were walled, and warfare Sumerian Civilization appears to have been fairly commonplace as city states competed for land with their neighbors and The need for irrigation, warfare neighboring peoples saw plenty in the river and the rise of the priesthood valleys and wanted to help themselves to some of it. Another important feature of Mesopotamian all contributed to the rapid civilization that made cosmopolitan life possible growth of city-state civilization was the rise of the priesthood. in Mesopotamia some 5500 During this earliest period, there was no years ago. concept of private property in the sense that we understand it. All of a city’s wealth was believed Sumerians were led by priestly to be the property of the gods. Each city-state government. Property belonged had many gods, and each god owned a portion of the land that the state had set aside for that to the gods and the priests particular god. The farmers and others in a city directed all civilized efforts in worked for the gods, and the gods were the early Mesopotamian city represented on this earth by a class of specialists whose job it was to perform the necessary tasks to states. keep the gods happy and to direct the work on Above is a map of the extent of the lands of the gods they served. This was the priests. Each city had many priests who had all Sumerian civilization. Right, a kinds of duties. They ran the economy of their Sumerian god, or perhaps a city; they supervised workers; they kept various priest. kinds records; they probably supervised inter-city trade, and, of course, they performed all of the rituals that were needed to keep the gods happy and supportive in an environment that was often hostile.

P a g e 5 o f 24 Although Sumerian city-states each had lots of gods, each city chose a deity to be its special patron. The priest of that particular god often became the most important priest in that state, and came to supervise all the other priests. The chief god was provided with lavish accommodations. Sumerian gods were assumed to want the same things that human beings crave: shelter, food, and amusement. Tem- ples were literally homes for gods. Sacred images were cared for like living things. They were provided with changes of clothing, meals, and entertainments. The Sum- erians believed that a god's residence should be elevated above the ordinary human plane. Before 3000 B.C.E., lofty Sumerian Trade terraces were being built to serve as foundations for temples. Builders then began to layer terraces on top of ter- The print above is from a Sumerian signature cylinder. Below is a races to create pyramidal structures called ziggurats statue made of gold and precious stones made around 3500 B.C. ("mountain tops"). The largest ziggurats covered about two acres and may have been as tall as a seven-story building. Sumerian Trade and Industry Sumer produced surpluses of grain that it could trade for things that were not locally available. The merchants who procured goods from abroad did not necessarily make long journeys, for many items reached Sumer simply by passing from hand to hand. Lapis lazuli, a blue stone used for jewelry, came from northern Afghanistan some 1,500 miles from Sumer. Carnelian, a red stone, was mined in equally distant India. Sumerian artisans made skillful use of the materials merchants imported. They created splendid jewelry from beaten gold and silver, and semiprecious gems. They carved statues from blocks of stone brought from distant mountains. They built furniture and musical instruments from rare woods and decorated these objects with subtle inlays. They wove garments from wool and linen for both domestic and foreign markets. (Cotton was not known to the Mediterranean world until the seventh century B.C.E., when an Assyrian king imported cotton plants from India to ornament his palace garden.) Sumerians knew how to make glass, and by 3000 B.C.E., their potters were using wheels to throw their vessels. (The Sumerians may have been the ﬁrst to explore uses for the wheel; by 3500 B.C.E., they were replacing sledges with wheeled carts.) The most distinctive Sumerian artifact was an exquisite object called a cylinder seal. This was a small, engraved cylinder that was rolled across a clay tablet to imprint a design that served as a signature. The management of Sumer's cities and their economies prompted the most famous Sumerian invention: writing. The Sumerians wrote on tablets made from their country's most abundant and inexpensive resource: mud. Many of these, some sun-dried and others ﬁred, have survived burial in the earth for thousands of years. The earliest specimens of writing come from Uruk and may date as far back as 3500 B.C. No one has yet deciphered them, but they are consistent with the theory that writing was invented by accountants. As early as 8000 B.C.E., people began to make small clay tokens whose size, shape, or design represented quantities of vari- Very early Sumerian writing on a ous commodities. By assembling piles of these tokens, a merchant or warehouse clay tablet, ca. 3300 B.C. manager could keep track of his inventory.

P a g e 6 o f 24 At some point, these accountants began to draw their Akkadians & Amorites tokens instead of modeling them. The early tablets from Sumer's cities probably began as independent founda- Uruk often display rows of lines that seem to indicate num- tions, but as they grew, they came into conflict with one an- bers. All the evidence suggests that writing was not invented other. From time to time, one would subdue others, but to preserve the words of scholars and poets, but for more Sumer was a difficult country to unify. Its featureless plain mundane, if vital, purposes. It was a long time before Sum- provided no natural boundaries for a state. erian scribes produced anything but business ledgers. As busy scribes developed ways to speed up their work, writing One of the most numerous invading peoples came out systems became more efficient. Because it took a lot of time of the Arabian Desert sometime around 2400 B.C. They to draw realistic pictures of objects or tokens, scribes began were a Semitic group called the Akkadians. At first the Ak- to strip their images down to a few essential lines. This kadians moved into older Sumerian cities or founded cities made writing easier to do but harder to learn. The meaning of their own in Mesopotamia. Although the Akkadians of simplified signs was not self-evident. People had to be adopted Sumerian religion and culture, the Akkadian lan- taught what each one represented. The physical act of writ- guage came to dominate Mesopotamia by about 2400 B.C. ing was also reformed to improve speed and clarity. Linear Increasingly also during this period, the power of the priests drawings were difficult to make on mud tablets. Inscribed gave way to war leaders and a professional warrior class. lines gouged furrows that had jagged edges and ended in Some lands that had belonged to the gods were relegated to messy clumps. It was cleaner and faster to poke a stylus (a war chiefs (lugals) and professional soldiers. Lugals began to reed) into a clay tablet than to push or pull it across one. control government and the economies of the city-states. Poking produced a triangular indentation instead of a line, Professional military leaders became an aristocratic class but a quick series of jabs could create a clump of wedge- and lugals became, essentially kings. This increased power shaped impressions that approximated one of the older lin- in the hands of a warrior class probably reflects the increas- ear symbols. The triangular indentations that cover Sum- ingly violent conditions of life in Mesopotamia. As warriors erian tablets constitute a script that modern scholars have became more and more important, we can assume that they named cuneiform (cuneus, Latin for "wedge"). The cunei- needed something to do, so warfare became both more fre- form writing system is complex. Its symbols can represent quent and more sophisticated. both objects and prominent sounds in the words for objects. Sumer was eventually unified by a man named Sargon The latter function allowed a scribe to record the sounds of (2371-2316 B.C.), a native of Akkad, on Sumer's northern speech. Once writing began to be thought of as a way to border. Sargon was a self-made man of obscure origin. He describe not what was seen but what was heard, a tablet is said to have been abandoned as an infant and found float- could record anything that could be thought and said. Early ing in a basket on the Euphrates. (Similar stories were later cuneiform employed about 1,200 signs. Scribes steadily re- told about the infancies of the Hebrews' Moses and Rome's duced their number, but the Sumerians never developed a Romulus and Remus.) Sargon's empire extended from the true alphabet (a set of symbols for a language's elemental Persian Gulf up the Euphrates and across the caravan sta- sounds). tions of northern Syria to the Mediterranean and Asia Mi- nor. He could not have exercised much direct control over Change in Mesopotamia after 3000 B.C. such a large area, for communication systems were primi- These were the conditions that prevailed in Mesopo- tive. If his major concern was continuously to police the tamia under the early Sumerians. But gradually, between trade routes that coursed through these territories, it is easy 3000 and 2250 B.C., certain important changes took place to see why he created history's first standing army. He that we should consider. Because they were civilized, they doubtless hoped that family ties would foster loyalty, for he produced food surpluses, had trade and the wealth that assigned key posts to relatives-some of whom were women. came with it, and produced cool stuff, increasingly, peoples Another group of Semitic peoples had already begun to from less civilized neighboring areas were attracted to the wander into Mesopotamia by then. These peoples, called region. These outsiders came from all directions – especially the Amorites gradually took control of the region and from the Arabian desert to the south, and from the Iranian founded a new Empire, often named after their capital, plateau to the north. Increasingly, the Sumerian City-states Babylon. Possibly the founder of the Babylonian Empire, had to defend themselves from these external threats. and greatest Amorite leader was Hammurabi, who ruled from ca. 1792-1750 B.C.

P a g e 7 o f 24 Hammurabi conquered all of Mesopotamia and took the modest title “King of the Four Quarters of the Earth.” Hammurabi solved one of the perennial problems of rulership; how do you rule an empire? He appointed governors to rule in each of his cities. These governors represented the king, supervised in his name, and presided over the local courts. Hammurabi also created a single law code for his entire empire, providing a relatively stable and uniform system of law throughout his empire. The Amorite Empire lasted down to about 1650, when again, Mesopotamia fell to outside invaders. Weakened by a series of barbarian invasions, the great city- states fell in the mid-1500s B.C. to an Indo- European people called the Hittites. This very militant people who probably came from the Caspian region and had settled in Northern Asia Minor by 1650 B.C., created an empire that covered most of the Near East and ﬂourished from 1400-1300 B.C.

P a g e 8 o f 24 Ancient Egypt was located in the valley of the Nile Ancient Egypt ERiver, whicGh ﬂows northwarYd from EastP Africa intoT the Mediterranean Sea. Most of the valley is very narrow and surrounded on both sides by dry, moun- tainous desert. At the mouth of the river, the land spreads out into a wide fan-like delta.

The Nile performs the same service for Egypt that the Tigris and Euphrates does for Mesopotamia. It provides water and rich soil to a land that would otherwise be desert. Like the Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile floods regularly, but its annual flooding is regular and easier to predict and control. It rises in the summer (rather than the spring) just after the harvest, and its gentle inun- dation provides a new layer of silt just in time for planting season. The Nile was such a gentle provider of necessities that Settlers on its banks were slow to take up agriculture. Wildlife flourished along its banks, so the earliest Egyptians could hunt and fish and exploit wild plants for food in order to meet their needs. By about 5000 B.C., Egyptians had domesticated sheep, cattle and goats, and had begun to raise wheat and barley to supple- ment the Niles generous natural bounty. Village communities that were fully dependent on agriculture may not have appeared until around 3500 B.C. Since the Nile was fairly easy to control, no large workforce was necessary in order to exploit it, so settlement patterns along its banks tended toward village communities rather than the cities that dominated Mesopotamian civilization. City formation was further slowed by the fact that communities did not need to support armies because the Nile valley was virtually surrounded (East & West) by nearly impassable desert. The desert not only provided protection from outsiders, but also provided metal ores and good building stone that provided the building materials for Egyptian civilization.

P a g e 9 o f 24 Unification of Egypt By about 3300 B.C., two kingdoms existed in the Nile valley– Upper and Lower Egypt – and these two kingdoms were united in 3100 B.C. when the king of Upper Egypt conquered the entire Nile valley. A stone palette from the period honors a certain Narmer, or Scorpion, as the first ruler of both Upper and Lower Egypt. On one side the palette shows Narmer wearing the crown of Upper Egypt and on the other he wears the crown of Lower Egypt. It was easier to both create and preserve a central government in Egypt because everyone lived on the river. Additionally, trade and government were simplified by the fact that the Nile provided one great highway for the entire kingdom. Prevailing winds made it possible to coast north with the river current and sail south in the other direction. In short, the Nile provided Route 1 (and only) for Egyptian civilization! Pharaoh Pharaoh The god-king of Egypt for some 3,000 years was the phar- The heart and soul of Egyptian civilization was its mon- aoh. He was both the god Ra, or Horus, AND the living ruler archy. It was so important that the office of the king became the dominant institution of Egyptian history. The pharaoh of Egypt. His power was had enormous power and prestige. Egyptians believed that absolute and complete bothy in their king was also their chief god – which I’m sure you will this world and the next. His agree, goes beyond the Mesopotamian view that the king only represented the gods! Pharaoh was divine in a number word was greater than law, it of ways. At first, he was identified with Horus, one of was everything! Egypt’s sun gods. He was also linked with another sun god – Ra. Pharaohs were, of course, mortal, they were born and Behold the Pharaoh! died like everybody else, so how could Egyptians consider them to be gods? Well, there were lots of things in nature that were born and died and were reborn. Every day the sun did just that – and pharaoh was, after all, a sun god! But it was still the same sun, yes? The year was born with the Nile flood each year and died at the end of the year. Nature is full of “rising and dying” cycles, and the gods are part of nature, and so the pharaohs’ reign and divinity follow the same pattern. So, one after another, for nearly 3,000 years, pharaohs were born and died, each a new iteration of the sun god, and each oversaw Egypt and represented Egyptian affairs among their fellow deities. Needless to say, pharaoh’s control of Egypt was, in theory, absolute. He commanded the army; he ran the government, supervised trade and religious activities, dispensed justice, coordinated food production and provided patronage for Egypt’s artisans. He owned everything and every person in Egypt. Of course he also had certain less mundane duties. He caused the sun to rise each day, the Nile to flood at the appropriate time, the fields to bring forth their bounty and the animals and people of his kingdom to be fruitful and multiply. This enormous power enabled the pharaohs to mobilize Egypt for massive The Narmer Palette, ca. 3000 B.C, public works programs like irrigation and levies, military activities on a large scale and building projects of enormous proportions.

P a g e 10 o f 24 The only limit on pharaoh’s power was theoretical. Egyptians expected him to rule justly and to preserve the balance among the various competing forces in nature and society. He was expected to preserve and exercise ma’at (justice) in all of his dealings, both human and divine. In fact, pharaoh’s authority was limitless. For this reason, Egypt never adopted any codes of laws; the only law was the will of the pharaoh. The Old Kingdom The first stage of Egyptian history is called the Old Kingdom. It extended from 2700 B.C. down to around 2200. During this period the pharaohs had their greatest power. This is the era of the pyramids. Egyptians believed during this time that only the god-king was immortal and thus when the pharaoh passed on to live with the gods, The Old Kingdom Egyptians built huge tombs to their rulers – the pyramids. The power of the pharaoh was at its greatest during the Old Beginning in this period. Pharaohs ruled Egypt with the help of an enormous bureaucracy – some 2,000 titles Kingdom (2700-2200 B.C.). this is the age of the great have been identified for officials of the Old Kingdom. pyramids, built by the Egyptians to entomb their god-kings. Since he controlled every aspect of life and civilization in The greatest achievements of the pyramid builders were the his realm, he needed a horde of royal officials to get stuff Pyramids of Giza, built near the capital city of Memphis done. Egypt was highly centralized, but only minimally for the fourth dynasty kings Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure urbanized. Most Egyptians lived in small farming villages along the banks of the Nile. So administration was subdi- who ruled through 2589-2504 BCE. But pyramid build- vided into small units of local government. Groups of ing soon waned as the power and prosperity of the kings of small communities were combined into provinces called Egypt weakened with the end of the Old Kingdom. nomes (21 in all), and a royal official called a nomarch administered each nome. These administrators were the Pharaoh’s eyes and ears and hands in their own province. To pay the nomarchs, Pharaohs gave them lands to farm. Initially, the nomarchs ruled at the king’s pleasure and lost the land when they were fired, retired or died. But, gradually, the lands and the title became the property of the nomarch and became hereditary, this from the Old Kingdom, an Egyptian aristocracy grew up, and nomarchs began to use the profits from their lands to create armies loyal to them. Eventually the nomarchs became strong enough to fight each other for dominance, and even to revolt against the Pharaoh. This happened in about 2200 B.C. and brought down centralized government for nearly 200 years (first Inter- mediate Period).

The Middle Kingdom Egypt was reuniﬁed around 2000 B.C. when one family of nomarchs defeated the others and established themselves as pharaohs. This established the Middle King- dom (2000-1800). The new dynasty established a small standing army to defend Mummiﬁcation was undertaken to themselves from their rivals. They were good generals and used their military both preserve the pharaoh’s body for to maintain order at home, and expand their empire. They kept the nomarchs under control, and over time these administrators became more important. During the next world. In the Old Kingdom this period they began to share power somewhat with their royal masters. it was believed that only pharaoh had immortality.

P a g e 11 o f 24 This new order is illustrated by the fact that Middle The New Kingdom Kingdom nomarchs began to build elaborate tombs for themselves. During this period Egyptians came to believe The new pharaohs of the New Kingdom had that all men could earn immortality, by living just lives. As a learned that isolationism was a luxury that they could result of this new belief, Egyptian thinkers began to try to no longer afford. They embarked on a series of con- define more exactly what a just life was, and to draw up lists quests that expanded the kingdom and brought Egypt of specific rules to live by. Over time, some writers began to to the height of its wealth and power. Thutmose (1504- explore the possibility that it might not be necessary to ac- 1492), the third ruler of the 18th Dynasty led armies as tually life a just life, so long as the soul could convince the far east as the Euphrates and south into the mineral- judge of the afterlife that it had lived one. So you begin to rich Sudan. Over the next 200 years expanded their get books and tomb paintings that show the departed what empire well beyond their valley. By 1425 B.C., Egyp- they will have to go through to arrive at the place of judg- tian warrior-Pharaohs had expanded into Syria- Pales- ment, and what the soul should saw to the gods of judgment tine and the Near East, south into Nubia, and West in order to achieve immortality. into Libya. Wealth flowed into Egypt from their new Strong and stable government during the Middle King- tribute states and sparked the most ambitious building dom gave Egypt four centuries of peace, prosperity and sta- program since the pyramids. Pharaohs spent lavishly bility until it was brought down by unanticipated outside on palaces and temple complexes and on the source of attack. In about 1630 Egypt was invaded by a people whom their new power, the army and its commanders. the Egyptians called the Hyksos (“foreigners”). These were Semitic peoples whose ferocity and military technology made it possible for them to conquer the better organized and more numerous Egyptians. In about 1660 B.C. the Hyksos crossed the Sinai Peninsula and occupied Lower Egypt. They brought down the pharaoh and forced the nomarchs of Upper Egypt to pay them tribute. The Egyp- tians, protected in the past from outside invasion were un- prepared for the Hyksos who brought with them the latest in military technology the most important of which were chariots. It is unclear whether the Egyptians even had made much use of the wheel before about 1700 B.C.; simple sledges were really all they needed to drag goods to and from the Nile. They had oxen and donkeys for beasts of burden, but, before the coming of the Hyksos may not have been introduced to horses. By around 1700 B. C., in Asia Minor warriors were employing the chariot with great effect. Egyptian military technology had, by the 1600s, not really changed much since the Late Stone Age. Most of the weapons in the Egyptian arsenal were stone, and, although they possessed the bow, it was used mostly for hunting. En- ter the Hyksos armed with bronze weapons, chariots, and powerful bows. Hyksos archers speeding across the battle- field in chariots quickly devastated the Egyptian infantry. When it came to military affairs, the Egyptians were com- As a result of the Hyksos occupation, New Kingdom Phar- paratively quick learners, and in a few generations, the aohs expanded the borders of Egypt to create a buffer between chiefs of Upper Egypt mastered the new technology, built their lands and the rest of the world. chariots, and rebelled against the Hyksos, expelling them around 1550 B.C.

P a g e 12 o f 24 theism. The Military Pharaohs Tutankhamen’s successors were all military men who expanded Egypt’s power in the ancient world, and the prestige of the pharaoh after Akhenaten’s dangerous experi- ment. The most important of these was the great warrior- builder pharaoh, Ramses II. Ramses was an amazing builder, constructing about one half of all of the extant monuments in Egypt. He fought a number of campaigns, and was largely successful in maintaining the greatness of the Egyptian Empire in the face of new and dangerous Eastern and Western kingdoms. He also tried his best to insure the dynastic future of his family by siring some 160 children (with the aid of a pretty impressive harem). His 60- year reign was about the longest of any pharaoh. In many ways, Ramses’ reign marks the high point of Egyptian history, and as we will see, the end of the Age of Bronze and beginning of a new threat, not only to Egypt, but to all of the ancient world.

The Pharaoh Akhenaten

Akhenaten One result of the pharaoh’s attention to temple complexes was the growth of power of the Egyptian priesthood. Increasingly the temple priests of Egypt became wealthier and more powerful, especially in local affairs. By 1350, the priests of Amun-Ra owned nearly a quarter of the land in Egypt. Their power began to threaten the power of the pharaoh, himself. They also threatened the prestige and power of the relatively new military aristocracy that clung to the pharaoh for their inﬂuence. Perhaps as a result of this new danger, Amenhotep IV (r. 1352-1338) announced that henceforth Egypt would worship only one god, a new deity names Aten (the disk of the sun). In 1348, the young pharaoh changed his name to Akhenaten (beloved of the sun), and moved the capital from Thebes to a new capital he con- structed called Akhetaten (horizon of the sun – Arabic name Tell el Amarna). The new religion was a royal religion, its rites conducted by the Pharaoh and his family. It was supported by the military aristocracy and the Pharaoh’s court, but was not very well received by other Egyptians. The very conservative Egyptians had no desire to change Ramses II, the greatest of the military pharaohs, shown their religion. In around 1336, Akhenaton died and his son about to execute enemy prisoners with the help of his Tutankhaten came to the throne. Shortly thereafter, the trusty Axe. Ramses was the greatest of the builder phar- young pharaoh’s name was changed to Tutankhamen, and aohs; he liked to keep busy -- he fathered 91 children! the court returned to Thebes. Amarna was abandoned to the desert, as was Egypt’s brief experimentation with mono-

P a g e 13 o f 24 MESOPOTAMIAN & EGYPTIAN WORLD VIEWS

We have seen that their political and economic organizations were very different from our own. Clearly the ideas of Mesopotamians and Egyptians about government, economic activity, and life in general were different form ours. Today I want to look at the ideas of these Near Eastern peoples more closely. I want to consider what I call their outlook, that is, their attitudes about life and how they expressed them in religion, art, and literature. In early civilizations, intellectual activity and ideas were heavily influenced by the geographical and other conditions under which men in the civilizations lived. We have seen that conditions in Mesopo- tamia and Egypt were similar in some ways but different in others. The same is true of their ideas. I want to look at their common beliefs first. The most important ideas that Egypt and Mesopotamia shared were those used to explain the world and what happened to them in the world. They did not explain this A votive statue... as we would. Like all primitive peoples, they explained life in terms of religion. Most either representing a primitive explanations of the natural world are based on what anthropologists call Sumerian priest or god. animism. Animism is the belief that the world is filled with gods and spirits who con- Every Mesopotamian city trol natural phenomena. There were major state had thousands of gods who lived in important phenomena like the sun, the moon, or the rain; and similar statues made out there were other, lesser spirits who lived in of lots of different mate- rocks, and trees, and animals. These gods rials, from mud clay to controlled all of nature. If the sun rose, it ivory. Left is a model of was because the sun god wanted to jour- the ziggurat at Ur. ney across the sky. If the rain fell, the rain god wanted to nourish the land with water.

P a g e 14 o f 24 The Place of Myths existed but one vast ocean; most of the gods who control the world had not been born yet. There were only two It is necessary to realize that the gods were thought to deities — Tiamat, goddess of salt water, and Apsu, god of control human affairs and what happened in the life of sweet water. They were mixed together in the ocean. individuals and governments as well. Mesopotamians Eventually, as a result of their mixing, the other gods were believed that if a man stubbed his toe on a rock, it was born from the ocean; and the other phenomena of nature, because the spirit of the rock wanted to trip him. When two like the earth and the storm, came into existence. cities were at war, it was because the gods of the cities were quarreling. The city with the stronger god would win. If you wanted to explain anything that happened in life, you had to explain why the gods made it happen. For this purpose, ancient peoples used myths. We still do! A myth is a story about gods or men, or both, that imparts some essential truth about what the gods are like and why they make things happen as they do. Mythology is how societies explain the world and what happens in it. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “myth” as, “A purely fictitious narrative usually involving supernatural persons, actions, or events, and embodying some popular idea concerning natural or historical phenomena.” Your middle- or high-school teacher might have told you that myths are “primitive stories,” or “religious fictions,” or some such. But, myths are at once more real and more important than those definitions would suggest. First, a myth is a story about the gods that usually describes the relationships of humans toward the gods, and also life, the universe and everything. Secondly, the story imparts some essential TRUTH about This picture from a cylinder seal (ca. 3000 B.C.), shows how something really, really important works. The story Apsu (left) and Tiamat (rt.) in the act of creating the world. might be true, or half true, of completely false. The hero may have existed, or might be a compilation of several real, long dead, people, or the hero might never have existed. BUT, the message of the story is absolutely true, and, so, the Then the war god Enlil gathered some of the gods into whole myth is absolutely true. an army. By military power, he forced all the other gods to The myths of the Egyptians and Mesopotamians were recognize him as king and to follow his commands. He extremely important because they influenced what men made each god take over some function of nature. Some would think and how they would act and organize them- made the rivers flow, others made the crops grow, and so on. selves. They would also influence art and literature. Both In this way, Enlil created the world and nature as we know the Egyptians and Mesopotamians had many myths, but them. The organization of the gods and nature was based they were not the same because the conditions under which on the military power of Enlil, just as the government of a they lived were not he same, as I suggested before. Mesopotamian city was based on the military power of a human king. At the end, Enlil created men and organized Mesopotamian Myths their cities. He decreed that men should work for the gods, Life in Mesopotamia was precarious and uncertain. As just as they did in Mesopotamia. So the cities and the we saw, the Mesopotamian cities were continually threat- temple communities were created in the same way and at ened by destructive floods and war with other cities. Thus, the same time as the natural world. It was no more possible Mesopotamian ideas were very pessimistic. to do away with kings and priests than to stop the rain. Mesopotamians explained the dangers of life through Men could not change their basic institutions. But it was their myth of how the world was created. This myth is possible for them to be destroyed. Mesopotamian cities were called Enuma Elish. It was first written around 3000 B.C. It often destroyed by floods or war. Mesopotamians were goes like this. Before the creation of the world, nothing always afraid that Enlil’s government of the world would be

P a g e 15 o f 24 overthrown and destroyed too. If that happened, the world that all men must die, even great men like Gilgamesh. And would suddenly come to an end. Especially in summer when they die, they suffer more than they do while they are when the floods came, men feared that the world was alive. This work perfectly reflects the gloomy, pessimistic ending. They thought it was about to be drowned and that view that Mesopotamians had about life and the world. everything would become an ocean once more. At this time of year, Mesopotamians had their most important religious festival, the Zagmuk, or New Years festival. As the floods rose, there was universal mourning. The king’s power weakened, and there was widespread immor- ality. Since the world was ending, human social restraints were being removed too. At the height of the flood, the people would meet at the ziggurat and reenact Enlil’s military victory over the other gods. The king would usually take the part of Enlil. By reenacting this victory, it was thought that the world would be recreated all over again. This was necessary to keep the world going for another year. After the ceremony, the king would be re-crowned, social ties would be restored, and in most cases the floods would recede. This made men believe that the ceremony had worked. During the rest of the year, men had to keep on the good side of the gods by serving them and protecting the society they had created. Artists and writers served the gods by producing works with a religious content and purpose. For example, the major buildings were the ziggurats where This cylinder-seal picture shows Gilgamesh and his best buddy the gods lived and were worshiped. Most Mesopotamian art depicts events from myths or shows the king conquering Enkidu smiting a monster together. Gilgamesh is the guy on the his enemies with the help of the gods. It also reflects the right. fear and uncertainty of Mesopotamian life. Art is fre- quently filled with monsters and dangerous animals. Death in war, floods, people and livestock drowning. Egyptian Myths If we consider the outlook of Egypt, we see that it is The Epic of Gilgamesh very different. Egypt was not threatened by floods, and It is the greatest work of Mesopotamian literature, The peace and political stability existed through most of their Epic of Gilgamesh. An epic is a long narrative poem. This history. Egyptians thought that the world was secure and one tells the story of Gilgamesh, a legendary Sumerian serene and unchanging. king. He is a great hero who has accomplished many daring Egyptians had many different myths about the creation feats for his city. In the story, his best friend, Enkidu, dies, of the world, but the most typical is found in the Theology and Gilgamesh is broken-hearted. Mesopotamians believed of Memphis (ca. 2700 B.C.), which was written early in the that death was terrible. The souls of the dead lived in a Old Kingdom. Let us look at it. dark, gloomy place under the earth and subsisted on dust and dirt. Gilgamesh sets out to find the secret of As in Mesopotamia, the world begins as water, and immortality to bring his friend back to life. He also wants to the various gods are born from the water. But the find it for himself, because he gradually comes to fear his Egyptian gods are not compelled to assume their jobs in own death. Gilgamesh has many terrible adventures on his nature by military force. Their Egyptian creator is Ptah. search. He has to fight monsters, and eventually he is forced He is not a war god, but the god of wisdom and magic. to go to the land of the dead himself to find the secret. He uses magical power and the force of his mind to assign There he finds a plant that will provide immortality. But as the gods to their jobs. Thus, the Egyptian world is he is bringing the plant home, it is stolen from him by a founded on wisdom and reason. It is completely stable serpent. He is forced to give it up. The point of the story is and unchanging. To insure stability, Ptah assigns the

P a g e 16 o f 24 Pharaoh to rule over man in this life in the form of Horus The content of Egyptian art is also optimistic. There and to rule over man in the next world in the form of are no monsters, as in the art of Mesopotamia. Most Osiris. Just as in Mesopotamia, therefore, Egyptians could Egyptian art shows pictures of every-day life in Egypt. As not change their government. But they did not need to we might expect, the most common figure in art is the change. It was perfect, just like everything else in life. Pharaoh. When he is pictured, he is often much larger than The New Years festival was important in Egypt, but everyone else because he is a god. All of Egyptian life there it was a real celebration. It had none of the gloomy revolved around him, and they believed that they would features of Zagmuk. Egyptians gave thanks that life had continue to be happy and prosperous only as long as they proceeded without change in the previous year and obeyed his rule. This may seem like a strange idea to us; but expressed confidence that it would continue that way. as we saw last time, historically it was true. The optimistic view that life is perfect and would always Conclusion be perfect is reflected in many aspects of Egyptian culture If we look at Mesopotamian and Egyptian culture as a and thought. It was only during the intermediate periods, whole, perhaps the most curious feature of it to us is the when government was weak that Egyptians ever despaired idea that political, economic, and social organization are of a happy life. natural. They are governed by the same rules and forces as Egyptians even developed a happy idea of death and the rising and setting of the sun, and they cannot be the after-life. They thought that the soul of man had three changed ever. interconnected parts. The part most like our soul was called ka. At first, they believed that the ka lived in the body after death. But in the Middle Kingdom, the idea arose that it went to live in the next world, which was underground. As it was pictured in art and described in literature, this next world is pretty much like the world of the living except that it has no hardships at all. As we saw, the soul had to prove that it was good enough to get into the next world; but the Egyptians provided notes to insure that no one would be kept out. It was once thought that Egyptians were morbid because so much of their art and literature dealt with death. But that was only because they looked forward to death with hopeful anticipation. Egyptian art also reflects a happy, serene outlook in the way it was done, how it developed, and what it shows. Modern observers often find Egyptian art funny because the figures are represented in a curious way. The head and feet are shown from the side, but the body and eyes are shown straight on. There is a reason. Egyptians believed that in a perfect human figure all parts of the body were in exact proportion to each other. The breadth of the shoulders was so many times as wide as the eye. Artist only wanted to show perfect figures in their paintings, and they could only do this by turning different parts of the body in different directions. This method of depicting human figures was created very early, and it changed very little for almost 3,000 years. That is also very significant. The Egyptians considered their art perfect, like everything else in their world. So there was no need to change it. A golden statue of the Egyptian god, Ptah from the tomb of Tutankhamun.

P a g e 17 o f 24 Now, we have seen, of course, that change did take place in the ancient Near East. But it was so slight and so gradual that Near Easterners were generally unaware of it. At any given time, men did not know about any way of life other than the one they had. They had no history; so they could not compare conditions in the present with conditions in the past. At ﬁrst, they had little contact with people outside their own civilizations. Thus, they could not compare their lives with the lives that others led. They tended to think that their present conditions must exist everywhere and always and that their way of organizing themselves was the only way possible. Later on, this made it very difﬁcult for them to adjust to new conditions that arose after many centuries.

P a g e 18 o f 24 THE CATASTROPHE OF 1200 B.C. & THE END OF THE BRONZE AGE

Today I want to do two things. First, I In my last lecture, I discussed the two major civilizations of the ancient Near East: Mesopotamia and want to give you some idea of Bronze Egypt. For a long time, they were the only civilized so- Age civilization in the eastern Mediter- cieties in the world. But, gradually, civilization spread out of the great river valleys into surrounding regions. ranean down to about 1200 B.C. Next, One area affected was the region of Syria-Palestine I want to spend some time on what his- that lay between the two early civilizations. Some “more advanced (civilized)” communities torians call the “catastrophe of the began to appear here as early as 2000 B.C., but the re- 1200s,” and the results of that catastro- gion only became important in the late 1000's and after. We already had a glimpse of this region earlier. As phe which heralded in the Iron Age. we saw, beginning in 1575 B.C., the pharaohs of the Today we will move around quite a bit – we will Egyptian New Kingdom conquered this territory and look at the Near East and Asia Minor, and we’ll take a brought it into an Egyptian empire. look at a couple of Bronze Age civilizations in the Ae- For almost three hundred years, the Egyptians gean – Crete and Mycenaean Greece. I’ll talk a bit ruled many small states in the region without serious about these cultures and quite a bit about one of traits opposition. But around 1300 B.C., another powerful that all of them had in common – dependence on people invaded it and tried to take the lands away from chariots in warfare – and we will see that, no matter Egypt. These new invaders were the Hittites. where these civilizations existed, all of them may have The Hittites suffered much the same fate! If we look at a map of the eastern Mediterranean, we will see Near East and The Hittites invaded Asia Minor around 2000 B.C. Egypt; to the North is Syria-Palestine, and further and conquered many primitive peoples living there. north, Asia Minor. Look to the West of Asia Minor and The invaders came from the north — somewhere in you will see the Aegean Sea and the end of the Balkan Central Asia. The Hittite language is one of the oldest Peninsula (Greece), and at the very bottom of the Bal- representatives we have of a large family of languages kan Peninsula, in the Mediterranean, is the little island called Indo-European languages. They get their name of Crete. We’ll take a look at all of the main Bronze from the fact that they are spoken in most of Europe Age civilizations in these areas today, and then, we will and part of India in historic times. destroy them. Cool, huh?

P a g e 19 o f 24 Scholars once assumed that the secret of Hittite expansion was the use of iron armor and weapons, in their military activities from a very early date. Scholars made, in fact, two faulty assumptions. 1. That the Hittites were Europeans, and therefore racially superior to the peoples that they conquered. 2. That the Hittites were the first civilization to use iron that they somehow guarded as a secret weapon against their rivals. In the first place, the homeland of these Indo-Europeans was most likely Central Asia, rather than Europe, but it doesn’t really matter, since late 19th century notions that Europeans are “racially superior” is poppycock anyway. In the second place, yes, the Hittites had developed limited use The Hittite Empire of iron materials by about 1300 B.C., but so had most of their rivals. Ironically, the iron technology of this period The Hittite Empire was didn’t produce a quality of iron that was much more useful centered at its capital of than bronze for weapons, but what the Hittites had was Hattusas in Asia Minor. LOTS of iron, as well as silver and other materials found in The Hittite expanded their Asia Minor. Iron was a VERY valuable metal. We know empire until they ran into that lumps of iron were traded like gold or silver in the the Egyptians. From then on Eastern Mediterranean. In the Iliad, iron is often men- they fought to a standstill. tioned as a valuable trophy or prize, and these aren’t things The Hittites chief weapon made out of iron – they are just lumps of the stuff. So, per- was the war chariot which haps the secret to the success of the Hittites lay more in was a mobile missile plat- their mineral wealth than in their secret iron weapons! form. See picture of the Anyway, the Hittites were very warlike, and made good archer in his cart right. use of the war chariot in their military conquests. Another Central Asian people, who arrived in Mesopotamia in the mid-1600s B.C. had introduced the war chariot and used it to conquer a fair sized chunk of the Babylonian Empire. The weapon that enabled these new invaders to gain a sub- stantial military advantage was the war chariot. The Hittites took the war chariot and improved upon it, and then they employed their new weapon to finish off the rest of Babylonian Empire in 1595 B.C. The Hittite Empire reached its peak between 1450 and 1300. During this period their empire stretched from northern Asia Minor down the Mediterranean coast through Syria and Lebanon, and as far east as the Euphrates River. In the early 1200s, the Hittites fought a long war with Egypt over Syria- Palestine. Neither side could win a decisive victory. The main result of the war was to drain the resources and undermine the strength of both Egypt and the Hittite kingdom. This weakness proved disastrous for both sides. As we will see, around 1200, serious problems began to appear throughout the eastern Mediterranean. The Bronze Age Aegean Now I want to turn our attention to the area of the eastern Mediterranean that is dominated by the Aegean Sea. It is comprised of Greece and the islands of the Ae- The map above shows Egyptian gean down to Crete. The earliest civilization in the area grew up on that little island and Hittite expansion into Syria- which was inhabited from as early as 7000 B.C. Palestine.

P a g e 20 o f 24 Minoan Civilization An Early Bronze Age culture flourished and grew on the island. By about 2200 B.C. a very high civilization had developed. This culture is called Minoan, after the mythical king Minos. Cities began to appear on Crete at about this time. The largest and most important of these cities was Knossos. A large palace was begun here in about 2000 B.C. The palace was an enormous structure that appears to have housed thousands of people. We do not know what the relationship was between the various cities on Crete. The absence of fortifications suggests that all of these cities were part of the same kingdom. There was considerable traffic between the cities, which tends to support this theory. Truth is, we would like to know lots more about Minoan civilization, but we can’t read their writing – Linear A, so we have to rely on a wealth of archaeological evidence. The Bronze Age Aegean The economy of Minoan Crete The Aegean Sea is at the top of the eastern Mediterranean. People have was primarily agricultural. Most lived there since the Stone Age. By about 2000 B.C., there existed two people were farmers. They cultivated Bronze Age cultures in the area. The earliest is called Minoan figs, olives, grapes, beans, and peas civilization, which was situated on the island of Crete. The second was and raised livestock. Some of these situated on the Greek mainland. It is called the Mycenaean civilization. crops, especially figs and legumes were We don’t know what these folks called themselves. The labels that we specialty produce which were use were created by European scholars in the late 19th century. The probably traded with other areas of picture right the Mediterranean. Some other trade is an artistic ware included jewelry (made in the reproduction cities) and pottery. of the city of It is probable that Knossos on the great cities of Crete in Minoan Crete about 1600 owed their B.C. when it prosperity to sea may have trade in their own had 15,000 produce, and inhabitants. everyone else’s all Left, Minoan over the eastern goddess of Mediterranean. fertility.

P a g e 21 o f 24 Minoan Religion Trying to reconstruct religious patterns on the basis of ar- chaeology is dangerous. We get some clues from artifacts and some from later survivals, which were incorporated, into the Greek legends and myths. The Minoans probably worshiped fertility gods. We know that they worshiped a male god who was born and died annually. This cult may have been imported from the Near East, where dying and rising gods were associated with agricultural fertility worship. Another cult was dedicated to animal fertility and is associated with small statues of a woman holding snakes and usually surrounded by small animals. These figurines are found all over Crete. Decline of Minoan Civilization Between about 1550 and 1450 B.C. Minoan civilization fell on some pretty hard times. There was an enormous volcanic eruption on the island of Santorini, about 140 miles north of Crete around 1550 B.C. Scholars believe that it was one of the most cataclysmic eruptions in history. The volcanic ex- plosion literally tore the island of Santorini apart, inciden- tally destroying a vibrant Bronze Age civilization situated there, and sending tsunamis across the Eastern Mediterra- Sometime around 1550 B.C., the island of Santo- nean. One scholar surmised that Crete was hit by a series of rini exploded in a volcanic eruption that caused a these waves, some of which were 400 to 600 feet high. Since most of the cities of Crete were coastal harbors, and since massive tidal wave that swept across Crete. The the island depended on sea trade for its prosperity, the tidal Island civilization never recovered from the blow. waves could have crippled Minoan civilization. We know that by 1450 B.C., Crete may have been invaded and conquered by the Mycenaeans of the mainland. Linear A disappears from usage to be replaced by the Mycenaean script, Linear B. Mycenaean Civilization Although the Greek mainland had been settled from about 6000 B.C. on- ward, I am going to begin this lecture with the first Bronze Age culture that had a written language – the Mycenaeans. The Mycenaean culture takes its name from the first site from that civilization to be unearthed in modern times. Bronze Age Mycenae was built on a hilltop. It was continuously occupied and improved upon from about 2000 B.C. until 1200 B.C. It was a walled fortress with a large palace and some smaller buildings inside the walls. Unlike Knossos, the Minoan city on the island of Crete, Mycenae was never a city. Most of the populace lived in outlying villages and worked the land. Mycenae was built to house and protect the king – wanax – and his administrators and craftsmen. It was a heavily fortified center of government. In 1939, archaeologists found a second center of Mycenaean culture – Pylos. As they dug into the ruins they began to find bits of clay tablets upon which there was a previously unknown kind of writing – Linear B. In all, some 600 The ruins of the fortress palace at complete tablets were found at Pylos. These tablets remained undeciphered until 1954 when a young British archaeologist named Michael Ventris discovered that Mycenae in Greece. Linear B was a form of the Greek language.

P a g e 22 o f 24 These 600 tablets began to give us some idea of what the Mycenaean culture was like. There were several city-states on the mainland of Greece. Each of these was a center of government for a sizable territory. Each state was ruled by a king (wanax). In turn, each king’s holdings were administered over by a complicated hierarchy of servants who saw to it that the local taxes were paid, organized and trained the military, and organized the populace (demos) when necessary. The Mycenaean culture flourished until about 1200 B.C. At this time, new settlements and burial patterns became established all over the Aegean – especially in Greece. Somewhat later, Bronze Age tools began to be replaced with iron technology. The Mycenaean culture that had dominated Greece van- ished altogether. The Sea People The Catastrophe of ca. 1200 B.C. Professor Robert Drews argues that the Sea People were In fact, archaeological evidence indicates that around 1200 Europeans mercenaries and raiders who invaded the eastern th B.C. civilizations all over the eastern Med. were either de- Mediterranean in the 13 century B.C. and plundered the stroyed or aversely effected by something, and scholars have rich Late Bronze Age cities there in order to bring the wealth come to call that something the catastrophe of the 1200s B.C. home. The frieze above is part of an Egyptian temple relief Various scholars have come up with a number of interpreta- commemorating the victory of Ramses III over the Sea People tions to try to explain the catastrophe. So, we should review the ca. 1200 B.C. The Egyptians had better luck against these main interpretations briefly. What happened? We don’t know, folks than other states. Between 1260 and 1200 B.C., some but several factors probably led to the change. Here are some fifty cities fell in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Hittite theories: Empire fell, as did Troy, a rich city in Asia Minor, and the Mycenaean civilization, and lots of others. 1. Several European historians in the late 19th century argued that the Bronze Age civilizations of the eastern Mediterra- nean were overrun by invading hordes of European invaders who settled in these areas. This would square with the Greek legends of Dorian invaders who wandered into Greece in the 1200s and settled there, displacing the older Mycenaean culture. Volkwanderung, that is migrations of peoples from central Europe displacing inferior non-Europeans in the East was a favorite fantasy of European national- ist scholars of the 19th century, and the ideas was revived briefly by Nazi historians in the 1930s. Problem is that the theory isn’t supported by any real archaeological evidence. There is no sign of the pre-existing populations being replaced by invaders with a different culture, and no real evidence of new peoples moving in and adapting older cultures to fit, as had happened in Mesopotamia in the past. The best evidence indicated the original populations living in the same places with a much lower level of wealth, prosperity, security and material culture. So much for volkwanderung! 2. Another popular theory, this one crops up from time to time in the 20th century we might call the “massive acts of god” argument. Essentially, scholars who subscribe to this one argue that a series of earthquakes, tsunamis, severe droughts, whatever, devastated the Eastern Med. between about 1350 and 1200 B.C., destroying the great cities and thus devastating those civilizations. We know that this happened occasionally – I’ve already talked about the case of Crete, and it may be that an earthquake destroyed Troy, at least once. But lots of the cities were not in earthquake zones, and there is no evidence of any of the other stuff, either. If earthquakes or whatnot had destroyed the cities, there would be lots of valuable artifacts on the sites. Natural cataclysms tend to destroy the buildings and bury people and artifacts in rubble. Good examples of this are Pompeii, covered by volcanic ash, and one level of Troy (VIIa). Most of the cities of the eastern Med. yield archaeological evidence that suggests the cities were attacked, sacked and burned, and whoever did it grabbed all the goodies that they could carry and split. 3. Some historians surmise that Bronze Age kingdoms all over the eastern Med. collapsed under the weight of their own internal social/economic failings. This argument has been real popular among Marxist historians since the 1940s (Brit. Gordon Childe). These folks argue that the city societies became increasingly top heavy, bloated with a greedy warrior and bureaucratic palace-based aristocracy whose needs were met by an increasingly oppressed peasant population.

P a g e 23 o f 24 Usually the trigger for a peasant revolt is a drought, which reduces production so that there aren’t enough goodies to go around. Under this theory the peasants, in good Marxist fashion, rise up and destroy their oppressors. Again, there isn’t any good evidence, and there are lots of problems: a) Why would the peasants destroy the cities? b) How did oppressed and downtrodden peasants who had been dominated by the ruling class and professional armies suddenly have the clout to overthrow their oppressors, especially if a drought had reduced their caloric intake so severely that they had to rise up? c) Why is there no record of troubles up to the moment when the cities were destroyed? Finally d) how can we rationalize so many relatively identical peasant uprisings and cities destroyed – over 50 of them – all over the eastern Med. in roughly a century? 4. In 1993, a historian named Robert Drews of Vanderbilt University offered a new interpretation that accounts for all of the evidence in a way that I find much more satisfying. In The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C. Drew argues that, by 1400 B.C., the main form of military power in the civilized East was the chariot. Despite Homeric descriptions of chariot warfare that depict the chariot as a sort of battle-taxi for warrior heroes who dismount to fight, real chariot warfare involved pairs of warriors, one to guide the chariot, and one firing arrows at the enemy. Massed chariots advanced on the enemy, fired missiles, then veered off, returned to the lines and did it again. Over time, eastern Mediterranean states invested more and more in chariots, and employed infantry as offensive troops less and less. Chariots are very expensive, and scholars once thought that Egyptian and Hittite descriptions of armies with thousands of chariots were mostly official bragging. But written inventories of chariots and horses in My- cenaean Pylos indicates that even that small city state had an army with as many as 1,600 chariots. So maybe Egypt at the height of its power might have had 5 or 6 thousand chariots. At any rate, Drews surmises that by about 1300 B.C., the great states in the eastern Mediterranean supported large professional armies of aristocratic charioteers, and had only small infantry units to guard camps and supplies and to dispatch wounded enemy troops after the chariots had done their thing. Written evidence indicates that, since the warrior aristocrats had no desire to arm their peasants, these kingdoms began to hire mercenaries from areas on the fringes of the civilized world to serve as garrison soldiers and guards. Some of these mercenaries came from the Western Med. Europe – Italy, Spain, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, and the Ae- gean. These areas were materially poor, so mercenaries who served in Eastern armies were most impressed by the material wealth of their employers, VERY impressed! These barbarian warriors were not only able soldiers, but also very good sailors. They fought with small, light shields, effective thrusting/cutting swords, and light throwing spears (javelins). They wore light armor and practiced very mobile group infantry tactics. Sometime around 1200 B.C., these outsiders realized that they were well equipped to attack and destroy chariot-based armies. Their javelins could be employed to bring down the horses and they could swarm over the drivers and archers and use their swords to kill them. Between 1300 and 1200, groups of these folks began to make sea raids against Eastern cities, much as their cousins the Vikings would against European civilization some 2000 years later. These “Sea People” had no interest in settling in the cities that they attacked, they weren’t con- querors, they were looters. They defeated the chariot armies, plundered the cities, burned them, and then returned home to enjoy the fruits of their efforts. They were very successful. As I mentioned earlier, some 50 cities in the Eastern Med. exhibit signs that they were attacked quickly, methodically plundered and destroyed between roughly 1260 and 1190 B.C. The “Sea People” did not conquer the Egyptians but the Egyptian state was considerably weakened by a series of their attacks during the period, and never fully recovered. The Hittite Empire was destroyed by a series of raids from the sea and her major cities were destroyed including Hattusas, the capital, in about 1200 B.C. The overall effect of these raids made much of the Near East and Egypt easy pickings for Iron Age invaders who began to expand into the area in the 1100s B.C., among them the Assyrian and later, the Persians. For nearly 200 years after the invasion of the “Sea People,” Egypt was ruled by invaders from Libya and Nubia, who took advantage of the weakened state of the Egyptians. As we will see later in the course, the great fortress-palace Mycenaean culture disappeared from Greece, to be replaced by a “Dark Age” that lasted from 2 to 4 centuries. So, the catastrophe marks the end of the great Bronze Age civilizations in the eastern Mediterranean. Now, is Drews’ theory the last word on the subject of the Catastro- phe of 1200 B.C.? Probably not, but, his interpretation fits the evidence better than any other theory so far.

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