Sumer and Akkad

During the third millennium, Sumerians and Akkadians emerge.  Sumerians are the most important of the two.  They kept writing accounts in temples and palaces which composed religious and literary texts.  They also developed Sculpture, architecture, religious imagery, and literary styles as well as views on kingship, law, and society.  This all roughly occurred in 2900-2300 B.C.  The Sumerians also began arithmetic, astronomy, botany, and medicine.

 

All cities revolved around the temple with a priest ruler.  Eventually they separate into a secular ruler a ruler in war.  This led to the rise of kingship.  The palace and temple were of course right next to each other.  The kings were representatives of deities and would commission and support the construction of temples. 

 

Akkad is a city that became an Empire around 2300B.C, founded by King Sargon.  They spoke a Semetic language.  Akkadians borrowed from the Sumerians, script religious imagery, scientific principles and literary styles.  It did of course contain it's own cultural elements such as its own deities though they are sometimes identified with Sumerian Gods.

 

The Kings would call themselves King of the Four Quarters of the World, and had themselves deified, yet they were unable to prevent the local revolts and rebellions. 

 

We then have the Sumerian Renaissance 2100-2000B.C

with the Kings of Ur also known as the "Third Dynasty of Ur" who create another Empire. There are actually 100,000 clay tablets that inform the history of the Empire. 

 

This Empire of Ur was overthrown by invaders known as Amorites.  They took over the river valleys and cut off grain supply.  Around the same time Egypt begins to suffer from doubts, so do the Mesopotamians. 

 

That's it for this post. 

Third Millennium: Early Bronze Age: Old Kingdom of Egypt

The Old Kingdom occurs from 2600-2150 B.C.  You actually have two ways to divide Egyptian History: Dynasties and Kingdoms. 

An Egyptian priest named Manetho wrote a history of Egypt in Greek that divided everything into dynasties, a dynasty being various royal houses.  In modern terms you have three Egyptian periods.  Old, Middle and New Kingdom. 

Early Dynastic Period: 3000-2600
Old Kingdom: 2600-2150 B.C
Middle Kingdom: 2000-1800
New Kingdom: 1550-1100 B.C
Late Period: 750 B.C - 1992 A.D or C.E in common terms. 

Lower Egypt is Nile Delta, Upper Egypt is south of Delta

The Egyptian King was called "Lord of the Two Lands" and wore a double crown.  Here!  I'll even show you a picture of the three different crowns of Egypt. 

Pretty neat, ja? 

Now the Old Kingdom was the time when the pyramids were constructed.  The earliest pyramids were made out of mud brick, the bigger ones were made out of stone.  The largest ones were built during the fourth dynasty around 2500B.C.  These pyramids were built in Memphis, the capital of ancient Egypt.  What we can learn from these great architectural feats is that the king was really powerful, and the people after all were willing to serve their king who was a god born into this world.  Unfortunately the Pharaoh begins to lose power to his provincial governors who were granted land as "salaries" which eventually led to a removal of power from the King.  Also around this time the Nile starts to dry up.  Famines begin and Egypt begins practicing artificial irrigation. 

 

And that's our lecture on the Old Kingdom. 

 

As a reminder these sources come from An Introduction to the Ancient World second edition by L. Ed Blois and R.J. Van der Spek  I am not stealing this info.  This is to help me study for a midterm. 

 

Starix Draxon

Birth of Civilizations: Stone Age to Neolithic Period: Rainfall vs Irrigation:

Civilizations begins along three major rivers: The Euphrates and Tigris in Mesopotamia now know as Iraq, and the Nile River now known as Egypt.  These are known as river valley civilizations. 

 

But when on the timeline does civilization begin.  Well it goes something like this. 

 

We have the Old and Middle stone age, which is characterized by Hunter gatherer societies.  We set the end of the Middle Stone Age at 10,000 B.C or B.C.E in modern terms.  The New Stone Age: roughly begins the cultivation of plants and domestication of animals.  This is also called the Neolithic Age or more commonly the Neolithic revolution. 

 

But how did civilization start.  Well in order to transfer from hunter gatherer to agriculture, you have to grow crops. This requires water.  Obviously you can't grow wheat and barely in a desert.  So how then?

 

There are two types of agriculture: Rainfall and Irrigation. 

 

Rainfall agriculture naturally requires rain to fall on the soil in order to grow the crops.  That means you have to rely on the weather to grow your crops.  The place s that used rainfall agriculture were in Iran, Northern Iraq, Northern Syria, and the coastal Mediterranean.  As the book puts it, "A prerequisite for rainfall agriculture is an annual precipitation of at least 250mm.  That means a slight decrease in rainfall will lead to a food crisis, so you can see how very vulnerable these areas are.  If there is a drought you're dead. 

 

There are two kinds of irrigation, Natural and artificial.  Egypt has natural irrigation because every year the Nile will regularly flood leaving damp soil filled with various silts and particles that create superb fertility.  The Egyptians didn't have to artificially irrigate any of their crops.  Mesopotamia however had irregular floods occurring during the wrong parts of the year, so they had to perform artificial irrigation.  In fact Mesopotamia first utilized the sowing plow to help raise the level of production. 

 

What makes these civilizations far better, probably why all river valley civilizations are better is the fact of the irrigation.  These civilizations could produce a crop ratio of 15:1 and sometimes even higher than that!  For Greece, Italy, and Medieval Europe the crop ratio was on average 4/5:1 or if it was a good harvest, 7/10:1. 

 

So once you have a stable way of growing food, a stable agriculture system, now we can develop other crafts emerge such as carpenters, tanners, scribes, and metal workers. 

 

Some key dates to remember:

 

3400 B.C the invention of writing occurs

3000 B.C man discovers how to exploit and smelt copper ore and produce bronze a combination of tin and copper.

 

Once this kind of stability in agriculture occurs, people settle down into villages, which over time turn into city states.  According to my textbook Jericho actually became a full city around 7000 B.C. 

 

Now let's describe what a Mesopotamian city looks like.  At the core of a Mesopotamian city was the temple which housed the state deity.  These temples grow into organizations that own estates and engaged in activities including agriculture, stock breeding and other various crafts. 

 

We eventually have two scripts emerge at the invention of writing that occurs between 3400-3200 B.C, Cuneiform and Hieroglyphics. 

 

There are two kinds of writing that I will mention: pictographic and ideographic

 

Pictographic - words represented by a picture

Ideographic - words represented by a symbol

 

Ex. of Pictographic - a picture of a bird meaning bird

Ex. of Ideographic - a heart symbol meaning symbolically love. 

 

The Egyptian script however renders only consonants, leaving vowels out of the picture.  That's why it's so hard to figure out how the Egyptian language sounds.  Ex.  Ra or Re?  Common battle I see.  Personally I prefer Ra, but I could easily be wrong.  Writing was also only used by small groups of educated people. 

 

In most cities of this time, the majority of people were peasents who lived in the city.  During the day they would leave the city in order to work in the fields and then return to the city in the evening. 

 

Agriculturalists - people so lived a sedentary life. 

Herders - nomadic peoples moving around from one place to another. 

Herders will do a seasonal migration called Transhumance usually transferring from winter to summer pastures. 

 

Both Mesopotamia and Egypt lacked valuable resources such as timber and metals, yet agricultural wise they were very different.  Mesopotamia had to create canals to get their crops grown.  Worse yet the water in the Euphrates and Tigris could contain harmful salts that would damage the crops, unlike the Nile, which left fertile silts and soil deposits. 

 

There's also another aspect about Egypt that actually makes it safer than Mesopotamia.  In Mesopotamia the fertile land gradually separated from infertile land.  In Egypt you can literally have one foot in the desert and one foot in fertile soil with plants and everything. 

 

I will talk more about that when I get to the post on how environment influences cultures and lifestyles in society.

 

That's basically it for this post.  Next post will focus on the third millennium early Bronze age on Egypt.  Take care! 

 

Starvix Draxon

 

Egyptomania: The Defiling of Egyptian Culture

This post is based on my Professor's Essay, "Egyptomania: Have We Cursed the Pharaohs?" by Professor Frank Holt.  This is not to copy his essay but rather reiterate so I can study it for my Midterm in said professor's class.  He's an amazing teacher, outstanding lecturer, and a really funny one too!  If you're doubting, take his class! 

 

So what exactly is Egyptomania?  Basically it's a consumer culture distortion of Ancient Egyptian Culture.  All those toys involving Ancient Egypt, that's basically Egyptomania.  But it's far worse than that. 

 

It all started with the great Father of History, Herodotus himself, who described Egypt in such amazing awe.  When Rome takes over Egypt, they actually "import" some of the obelisks out of Egypt.  The Middle Ages passed down the idea that, "mummies possessed magical powers,-"  But now the fascination that Herodotus felt is now far more exotic and mysterious to us.  The culture is several times removed by oh roughly 2,500 years. 

 

During the Nineteenth century many "businessmen bought them up and charged admission to special shows in which the unfortunate wrecks would be dramatically stripped down to skin and bones." Talk about abuse towards the dead! 

 

Some people even believed that, "the pyramids were built as astronomical observatories," but apparently the silliness has shifted to the idea that astronauts built them! Ludicrous! 

 

It really got bad after the Rosetta Stone was found.  Various countries started to loot and fight over these prized artifacts.  Now Egyptian artifacts are all over the world.  My professor said during one of the lectures that if any aliens were to come down from the sky when all of humanity was gone, they were going to have a hard time figuring out why really old artifacts from Egypt appear in every part of the world.  Some will probably get the misconception that Egypt had a vast global empire and then somehow managed to lose all trace of their powerful global empire in a matter of centuries.  The aliens will never get our history straight after that. 

 

My professor states in his article that, "By coveting the riches of ancient Egypt, we have robbed knowledge as well as a nation.  Much of what archaeologists would like to study in situ has been scattered across the globe.  The material record of Egypt's past has been disturbed and, therefore, its history either distorted or destroyed."  Interesting don't you think? 

 

Has anyone heard of Cecil B. deMille and his film The Ten Commandments 1923?  Well, this man wrote in his diary that he was very concerned that historians a thousand years from then would  uncover his Egyptian set in Guadalupe and actually think that Egypt extended all the way into California!  That's a little sad that people might actually think that, considering it's just a prop set.  I hope that never happens.  But apparently it's too late!  Archeologists have already, according to the article, spent money in trying to excavate that set.  What a waste of money!!!  What the bloody hell is wrong with those idiots?!?!  It's not even the real deal!  It's just a bloody set!!

 

My professor is actually concerned with funds for excavations.  According to his article, "funds for United States excavations are vanishing."  Instead we apparently parade Tut's treasures around the country!  Well, say goodbye to Egypt's culture because as we all know, nothing lasts forever.  Things to eventually shatter, break, and erode. 

 

But if there is anything that is the most defiling it is "The Curse of King Tut's tomb."

 

It all started with Lord Carnarvon who financed the whole expedition.  He died from a bugbite!  He was already in poor health!  But those vengeful journalists who didn't get to see the newly excavated tomb while New York times got to glut themselves with the great story recovery, fashioned from this incident the legendary "Curse of King Tut's Tomb"  Everyone sat around in the world waiting for who'd be next and it continues to this day!  It's been roughly a century since the excavation and people still think that this "curse" is still active!  I mean...seriously?  People die.  It's apart of life. 

 

The article continues to list all the abuses that this "curse" has wreaked on poor King Tut, such as a guard filing law suit because he claimed that "Osiris struck him down with a stroke" 

 

Egyptomania has gone as far as to declare that Egyptians have "ancient jet airplanes" and apparently King Tut died in a plane crash. ....Wow.  That's really sad.  I feel this is what fuels the Stargate Atlantis Egypt version.  I've heard of it, and I'm not to pleased with their defiling of Ra and Anubis two of my favorite gods.  If hardcore science fiction geeks watched that show, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if they actually believed this stuff.  Sometimes I worry about society.  I really do.

 

There's just one more story I need to tell you.  It's the story of the unlucky mummy.  Based on my notes the unlucky mummy caused wailing, managed to somehow wreck entire studies, managed to sink the Titanic and Empress and even the Lusitania while being on board each one of those ships.  It somehow got magically transferred to each ship, and sunk it!  I feel sorry for that unlucky mummy.  If anything's unlucky it's her and the lies that people have laid on her.   

 

As a reminder this post is based on Professor Frank Holt's article, "Egyptomania: Have We Cursed the Pharaohs?" published in Archaeology March/April 1986

 

So now you know what Egyptomania is.  I hope this is good enough to understand.  For my next post I will be giving you some of my notes and the text book dealing with the birth of Civilization and the civilizations of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.  See you all next time. 

 

Starvix Draxon

 

What is History? Why Study Anything Ancient?

What is History?  And for that matter, Why study anything ancient?  Well first we need to define History!

 

History is the study of surviving records, and evidence, namely writing, from which historians infer the past.  It is basically the study of the past through written evidence.  This includes the study of people and events through written records. 

 

Notice how I say written.  Some of you have probably already started to wonder, "What about artifacts and coins and buildings and all that stuff?"  Well that tends to be more of an Archeologist's job rather than a historian.  A historian looks at the written text rather than physical objects.  Those jobs fall under the Archeologist. 

 

Now it is important to know that we do not have a record of all events.  "What we don't?" That's right!  We do not have every record.  My professor used an example of a historian interviewing us students about himself.  The historian may ask, "What was your history professor wearing on February 11th?" We will probably say something like, "Uuuummmm....." We don't know.  We don't pay attention to every single bit of detail.  That's why there are always gaps in history. 

 

For example my teacher said they actually found an inscription of ink on stone written by Aristotle.  The moment they took a picture of it, the ink blew away.  What had happened was the paper had degraded and rotted away but the ink remained imprinted on the stone and got buried under tons of sand.  This was found in an uncovered Greek city in Afghanistan.  The past is always a puzzle with pieces missing. 

 

Now there are various kinds of studies: Epigraphy, Numismatics, Papyrology, and Archeology.  Let me define each one for you. 

 

Epigraphy - stone writing

Numismatics - coinage studies

Papyrology - papyrus or paper studies

Archeology - material remains

 

Here's something interesting my Professor told my class.  Historians are very dangerous.  It's not scientists.  It's Historians.  Basically whoever in the present controls the past controls the future.  Interesting, ja? 

 

But I haven't answered the other key question.  Why study Anything Ancient?  What's more important than the study of World War II, the 20th Century, Modernity, Contemporary Culture, Feminism, Sexual Preference, Civil Rights, and everything else that focuses on mostly 20th 19th Century and a little bit of the Early Modern Period?  How can Ancient History possibly be more important than that? 

 

Answer: Where to all our fields come from?......I got you there didn't I?  All fields such as Medicine, Writing, History, Philosophy, Government, Economics, Astronomy, Religion, and just about everything else under the sun, comes from Ancient History.  Who do we go to first when studying ethics and Government?  Greece!!!  Aristotle and Plato and Socrates: all in that ancient society!  The first concepts of religion and mythology: Mesopotamia and Egypt!  Great Architecture: Egyptian Pyramids and Greek Columns!  First works of Great Literature, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece! 

 

To anyone who is from Asia or Northern Europe, this also applies to you as well, but my course only focuses on the birth of these particular civilizations.  They are considered the first few to give birth to the rise of Western Civilization.  All other old civilizations are just as important.  We just don't have the time to learn them in the particular class I am taking. 

 

There's also something else I want to add that I want to emphasize in particular.  By studying these ancient cultures, you become more accepting of others who have different cultural backgrounds.  I emphasize these ancient cultures because many of them have polytheistic religions and many were a bit more...open I guess is the word.  What I'm trying to say is that by learning an ancient culture, you are keeping it alive, and you are celebrating your cultural heritage whether you are related to it or not.  That's why I am studying and advocate the study of Early Civilizations. 

 

That's it for the first lecture.  Stay tuned for the next podcast which highlights important moments in my professor's essay, "Egyptomania: Have We Cursed the Pharaohs?" 

 

Study Ancient History!  You will become a better person if you do! 

 

Starvix Draxon

 

 

 

 

A Study Guide for Early Civilizations

Hello everyone!  For the next several posts I will be writing about History.  I am doing this in order to help myself study, so this is not plagiarism.  This is just me trying to study.  Plus I'm sure you'll find this all informative.  So...good luck! 

A Mesopotamian Ritual

According to history textbook I'm reading for my Early Civilizations Course, in Mesopotamia the king would have sex with the high priestess in order to giver fertility to the land and ensure a good harvest.  Pretty interesting, ja?  That could be a could plot conflict for a story......

Anyway that's your Mesopotamian Ritual for the day!

The history textbook is An Introduction to the Ancient World by L. De Blois and R.J. Van Der Spek Second Edition.