Notes and References 2 The Rise of the Levant: The Cuneiscript and Pharaonic Civilizations 1. K.A. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism, A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976), p.193. 2. Actually Wittfogel himself qualified his system to this effect in 'Ideas and Power Structure' in Approaches to Asian Civilizations, eds. W.M. Theodore deBary and A.T. Embree (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1964). 3. F. Lexa, Vybor ze starsi literatury egyptske [Anthology of ancient Egyptian literature] (Prague, 1947), pp.2~2. 4. H. Frankfort, Ancient Egyptian Religion (New York: Harper and Row 1962), p.18. 5. Ibid., pp.91 and 96--102. 6. Quotations from the translation by John A. Wilson in J.B. Pritchard (ed.) Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 3rd. ed., (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp.412-14. 7. Ibid. pp.422-3. 8. Frankfort, Ancient Egyptian Religion, p.65. 9. G. Roux, Ancient Iraq (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980), p.93. 10. S.N. Kramer, The Sumerians (University of Chicago Press, 1963), p.123. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., p.125. 13. There exists a simplified, cursive version of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, but this is believed to be a much later invention. 14. H. Frankfort, The Birth of Civilization in the Near East (London: Benn; and New York: Barnes and Noble, 1968), p.77. 15. Translation by Robert H. Pfeiffer in J.B. Pritchard (ed.) Ancient Near Eastern Texts, p.424. 16. The Babylonian celebration of the New Year, lasting 12 days, is vividly described by J. Hawkes, The First Great Civilizations: Life in Mesopotamia, The Indus Valley and Egypt (New York: Knopf, 1977), pp.197-200. 17. Although the evidence for city-type settlements in pre-unification Egypt is rather thin, it would be over-hasty to rule out this possibility. Cf. A.L. Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia (University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp.l26--7. 305 306 Notes to pages 21-30 18. J. Cerny, Stary Egypt (Ancient Egypt) in Dejiny lidstva (History of Mankind), vol. I (Prague: Melantrich, 1940), p.216. 19. As the main guide on this point I am following the classical work of H. Breasted, A History of Egypt (2nd. ed., London, 1946). I do not think that the main lines of his presentation have been significantly altered by the more recent research. 20. F. Petrie, Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt (London: Methuen, 1898), pp.130-31. 21. E. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums (3rd. ed., vol. I, Stuttgart, Berlin, 1925), pp.27 ff. 22. This is for instance the view of H. Breasted, A History of Egypt, and of V.I. Avdiev, Istoria drevnego vostoka (Moscow, 1948). 23. E.g. P. Calvert, Revolution (Pall Mall, London, 1970), pp.24 ff. 24. W.W. Halls and W.K. Simpson, The Ancient Near East (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971), p.246. 25. Hawkes, The First Great Civilizations, p.391. 26. A.J. Toynbee, A Study of History, Vol. IV (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), p.412. 27. Hawkes, The First Great Civilizations, p.386. 28. A collection of contradictory opinions of Akhenaten's religion and policy has been edited by Donald Kagan in Problems in Ancient History, vol. 1: The Ancient Near East and Greece (New York: Macmillan; London: Collier-Macmillan, 1966), pp.36-68. F.G. Bratton's view is taken from The First Heretic: The Life and Times of Ikhnaton the King (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), pp.178-86; John A. Wilson's from The Burden of Egypt (University of Chicago Press, 1951). For a further evaluation of arguments for and against, see F.J. Giles, Ikhnaton, Legend and History (London: Hutchinson, 1970). 29. The Libyan and Nubian rule in Egypt after the breakdown of the New Kingdom can be compared to a certain extent with Germanic rule in Western Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire. In both cases, ecclesiastical organization formed the backbone of the civilizational framework and its continuity. Even so, the priestly organization in Egypt at that time bore more resemblance to a professional guild than to the Roman Catholic Church when the whole of the latter's history is taken into account. Both claimed to provide exclusive fulfilment of the transcendental needs of the population in their respective countries. In both cases the invaders took over and respected the established organization, their only imposition on it being the elevation of their own favourites to its important posts. In both cases the main stronghold of conservation, the main support of tradition rested in a country beyond the radius of the superimposed rule. Thus, in the first few centuries after the fall of Rome, Christianity flourished in the Byzantine East, and while Egypt declined, a para-Pharaonic Egyptian civilization was thriving in the Nubian south. But here the parallel ends. Whereas Rome became the centre of a new spiritual drive and the force behind the successful civilizational reconstruction of Western Europe, no such potential existed at Thebes. Amon's church was not capable of playing the role of 'chrysalis', in Toynbee's sense of the word (A.J. Toynbee, Notes to pages 31-7 307 A Study of History, vol. VII, pp.392 et seqq.). The Libyans and Nubians had mastered a world whose spirituality was dying out, and their own creative efforts were not equal to its successful revival. All the Nubians were able to achieve was a transplant of the Pharaonic civilization, in the form of its last hierocratic stage, to their own native land, where the whole cycle of a Pharaonic civilization was then lived through once more. 30. As the composition of these bodies and the scope and manner of their functioning are matters of conjecture, it is difficult to draw a sensible comparison with the collective bodies (of elders and plebians) in Graeco­ Roman antiquity. T. Jacobsen's suggestion of a primitive democracy in ancient Mesopotamia must be taken with some caution (T. Jacobsen, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 2, 1943, pp.159-72). 31. I.M. Dyakonov, Obshchestvennyi stroi drevnego Dvurechiya (Moscow, 1959). 32. Remnants of 'primitive democracy' might have survived in the organization of the judiciary. This, at least, is the view put forward by T. Jacobsen in 'Primitive Democracy in Ancient Mesopotamia' (cf. n. 30). Although the evidence of popular assemblies acting as courts of law comes from a later period (the Old Babylonian), it is difficult to judge whether this type of judiciary was an Amorite innovation or a survival from Sumerian times. 33. Dyakonov, Obshchestvennyi, p.251. 34. B. Hrozny, 'Kultura hethitskych a subarejskych narodti' (The Culture of the Hittite and Subaraean Nations), Dejiny lidstva (History of Mankind), vol. I (Prague: Melantrich 1940), p.374. 35. For a careful assessment of the 'feudal' elements in Kassite Mesopotamia see e.g. Burr C. Brundage, 'Feudalism in Ancient Mesopotamia and Iran' in R. Coulborn (ed.) Feudalism in History (Hamden, Conn.; Archon Books, 1965), pp.97-9. 36. This point has been particularly stressed by A. Gotze, Hethiter, Churriter und Assyrer (Oslo, 1936), pp.72-3. 37. When discussing the Hittites we are resorting for brevity's sake to a simplification. We are leaving aside the variety of the ethnic groups for which the collective name Hittites is (not quite correctly) being used. The reader keen on penetrating further in this matter is advised to look into O.R. Gurney, The Hittites (London: Allen Lane, 1975), esp. pp.121-3. 38. The Hurrian state of Mitanni is another ethnically complex phenomenon. The affinity of the Hurrians with the other nations in the area has not yet been firmly established; the Hurrians might have been the descendants of the ancient Subaraeans, already known to the Sumerians in the first millennium BC, or immigrants from the Caucasus area. More intriguing however is the fact that the state of Mitanni, in which they constituted the bulk of the population, was created and ruled not by them but by a military aristocracy, most probably of Indo-European origin, whom the Hurrians called mariyanni. This political domination, however, does not seem to have particularly influenced the Hurrian culture, which was able to absorb various foreign elements and 308 Notes to pages 37-50 developed in close association with the Hittite culture. To borrow Sir Leonard Woolley's words: The relations between the Hurrians and the Hittites prove to be unusually intimate, a fact which is abundantly reflected in virtually every phase of the Hittite civilisation. Indeed, we are justified in speaking of Hurro-Hittite symbiosis which for closeness and effect is second only to that blend of Sumerian and Akkadian elements which constitutes the composite culture of Mesopotamia. J. Hawkes and Sir L. Woolley, History of Mankind, vol. I: Prehistory and the Beginnings of Civilization (London: Allen and Unwin, 1963), p.729. 39. V. Groh, 'Babel, Assur a Israel: Dejinny vrchol semitskeho zivlu' (The Historical Apogee of Semitic People') in Dejiny lidstva (History of Mankind), vol. I (Prague: Melantrich, 1940), p.425. 40. I am combining the accounts of I.M. Dyakonov, Obshchestvennyi stroi drevnego Dvurechiya (Moscow, 1959), and N.S. Kramer, The Sumerians (University of Chicago Press, 1963). For a well-rounded and balanced account of social life in the valleys of the Twin rivers and of the Nile see esp. Hawkes, The First Great Civilizations pp.144-85 and 375-405. 41. Hawkes and Woolley, History of Mankind, vol. 1., p.508. 42. Until then only three Babylonian cities enjoyed that status: Babylon, Nippur and Sippar. Now seven more were added to that list. 43. I.M. Dyakonov, Razvitie zemel'nykh otnoshenii v Assirii (Leningrad, 1945).