Ch. 1 Early Civilizations

UR III Dynasty

(2160-2000BCE) the last Sumerian dynasty which came to preeminent power in Mesopotamia. It began after several centuries of control by Akkadian and Gutian kings

Upper Egypt significance

- Although towns in Lower Egypt were more numerous, it was in Upper Egypt that the first Egyptian cities developed. - By 3200 B.C.E. (when the Sumerian city of Uruk had been thriving for a thousand years), important communities such as Nekhen, Naqada, Thebes, and Abydos had all developed high degrees of occupational and social specialization.

Egyptian Funerary Practices

- Egyptian funerary rites aimed to emulate the example set by Isis and Anubis, who had carefully preserved the parts of Osiris' body and enabled his afterlife. This is why the Egyptians developed their sophisticated techniques of embalming, whereby all of the body's vital organs were removed and then treated with chemicals—except for the heart, which played a key role in the ka's final judgment. - A portrait mask was then placed on the mummy before burial, so that the deceased would be recognizable despite being wrapped in hundreds of yards of linen. - To sustain the ka on his or her journey, food, clothing, utensils, weapons, and other items of vital importance would be placed in the grave along with the body. "Coffin texts," or books of the dead, also accompanied the body and were designed to speed the ka's journey. They contained special instructions, including magic spells and ritual incantations, that would help the ka travel through the underworld and prepare it for the final test. - Throughout this era of the Old Kingdom, the privilege of undergoing these preparations (and thus of ensuring immortality) was reserved for the royal family alone. By the time of the Middle Kingdom, it was becoming possible for most Egyptians to ensure that their bodies would participate in these rituals, too.

Female commoners in Old Kingdom Egypt

- Female commoners were recognized as persons in their own right and were allowed to initiate complaints (including suits for divorce), to defend themselves and act as witnesses, to possess property of their own, and to dispose of it: all without the sanction of a male guardian or representative, as was typically required in other ancient societies—and in most modern ones until the twentieth century. - Women were not allowed to undergo formal scribal training, but surviving personal notes exchanged between high-born ladies suggest at least some degree of female literacy. - Women were also barred from holding high office, apart from that of priestess and also, importantly, queen. Queens are often represented as the partners of their royal husbands and were certainly instrumental in ruling alongside them:

Declination of the 5th and 6th dynasties of the Old Kingdom

- For reasons that are not entirely clear, the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties of the Old Kingdom (2494-2181 B.C.E.) witnessed the slow erosion of pharaonic power. - Although pyramid construction continued, the monuments of this period are less impressive in design, craftsmanship, and size, perhaps mirroring the diminishing prestige of the pharaohs who ordered them built. Instead, the priesthood of Ra at Nekhen, which was the center of worship for the god Horus and the place where Narmer's unification of Egypt was memorialized, began to assert its own authority over that of the pharaoh. - Ultimately, it declared that the pharaoh was not an incarnation of Horus or Ra, but merely the god's earthly son. This was a blow to the heart of Egyptian political theology - More practically threatening was the growing power of the pharaoh's nomarchs, whose increased authority in the provinces allowed them to become a hereditary local nobility: precisely what the vigorous kings of earlier dynasties had refused to permit.

Ancient Egypts view on death

- For the Egyptians, death was a rite of passage, a journey to be endured on the way to an afterlife that was more or less like one's earthly existence, only better. To be sure, the journey was full of dangers. - After death, the individual body's ka, or life force, would have to roam the Duat, the underworld, searching for the House of Judgment. There, Osiris and forty-two other judges would decide the ka's fate. - Demons and evil spirits might try to frustrate the ka's quest to reach the House of Judgment, and the journey might take some time. But if successful and judged worthy, the deceased would enjoy immortality as an aspect of Osiris.

Hammurabis creation of the code of laws

- Hammurabi did not rely solely on religion to bind his empire together. - Building on the precedents of past rulers, he also issued a collection of laws, copies of which were inscribed on stone and set up in public places throughout his realm. The example that survives is an eight-foot-tall stele (STEH-luh) made of gleaming black basalt, erected in the central marketplace of Babylon.

Hammurabis diplomacy

- Hammurabi did not try to confront his mightier neighbors directly. Rather, through letters and embassies, double-dealing and cunning, he induced his stronger counterparts to fight each other. - While other Amorite kings exhausted their resources in costly wars, Hammurabi fanned their mutual hatred and skillfully portrayed himself as a friend and ally to all sides. Meanwhile, he quietly strengthened his kingdom, built up his army, and, when the time was right, fell on his depleted neighbors. By such policies, he transformed his small state into what historians call the Old Babylonian Empire.

What followed after Hammurabi's death

- Hammurabi fell ill and died around 1750 B.C.E and although some contraction of the Babylonian Empire followed under his successors, his administrative efforts created a durable state in Mesopotamia - His son Samsu-iluna became king and his first few years were uneventful. He also faced the rebellion of Larsa - For another two centuries the Old Babylonian Empire played a significant role in the Near East, until invaders from the north (the hittites under Mursili) sacked the capital by defeating Samsu-ditana and occupied it

Hammurabis use of Marduk

- Hammurabi's genius was to use Marduk's supremacy over all other gods to legitimate his own claim to rule, in Marduk's name, because he was king of Marduk's home city - Hammurabi thus became the first known ruler to launch wars of aggression justified in the name of his primary god. This set a precedent for colonial expansion that would become a characteristic feature of Near Eastern politics

Imhotep

- Imhotep (im-HO-tep) rose through the ranks of the pharaoh's administration to become a sort of prime minister, the right-hand man to Djoser (ZOH-ser) - a pharaoh of the Third Dynasty (c. 2686-2613 B.C.E.). Imhotep's learning included medicine, astronomy, theology, and mathematics, but above all he was an architect

Long distance trade in Ancient Egypt

- Long-distance trade was entirely controlled by the pharaoh, as were systems for imposing taxation and conscripting labor. To administer these, the pharaohs installed provincial governors, known to the Greeks as nomarchs, many of whom were members of the pharaoh's own family. - Old Kingdom pharaohs kept tight control over the nomarchs and their armies of lesser officials in order to prevent them from establishing local roots in the territories they administered. - Writing was therefore critical to internal communication and the management and exploitation of Egypt's vast wealth.

Egyptian advances

- Only in the calculation of time did the Egyptians make notable advances, since their close observation of the sun for religious and agricultural reasons led them to develop a solar calendar that was far more accurate than the Mesopotamian lunar calendar. Whereas the Sumerians have bequeathed to us their means of dividing and measuring the day - the Egyptian calendar is the direct ancestor of the Julian Calendar adopted for Rome by Julius Caesar in 45 B.C.E. (and later corrected by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 C.E: this is the calendar we use today) - The Egyptians also devised some effective irrigation and water-control systems, but they did not adopt such labor-saving devices as the wheel until much later than the Sumerians, perhaps because the available pool of peasant manpower was virtually inexhaustible, so that the necessity for such innovations was not felt. - Nor did the written laws and other documentary practices produced by the lugals of Mesopotamia have any Old Kingdom parallels. The Egyptians of this era apparently had no need for written laws beyond what was customary in their communities, or what was proclaimed as law by their pharaoh.

initial settlement in predynastic Egypt

- The first-known permanent settlement in Egypt, situated at the southwestern edge of the Nile Delta near the modern town of Merimde Beni Salama, dates to approximately 4750 B.C.E. - Merimde Beni Salama was a farming community that may have numbered as many as 16,000 residents, and this number (based on burial remains and open to contention) suggests that some Egyptian communities were much larger than those of a comparable period in Mesopotamia.

Imhotep set a precedent upon pyramids to which all other Old Kingdom pharaohs built such as..

- The pyramids on the plain of Giza, built during the Fourth Dynasty (2613-2494 B.C.E.), are a case in point. The Great Pyramid itself, built for the pharaoh Khufu (KOO-foo, called Cheops by the Greeks), was originally 481 feet high and 756 feet along each side of its base, constructed from more than 2.3 million limestone blocks and enclosing a volume of about 91 million cubic feet. In ancient times, the entire pyramid was encased in gleaming white limestone and topped by a gilded capstone, as were the two massive but slightly smaller pyramids built for Khufu's successors. - During the Middle Ages, the Muslim rulers of nearby Cairo had their builders strip off the pyramid's casing stones and used them to construct and fortify their new city. - The Greek historian Herodotus (heh- RAH-duh-tuhs), who toured Egypt more than 2,000 years after the pyramids were built, estimated that it must have taken 100,000 laborers, 20 years to build the Great Pyramid. This is probably an exaggeration, but it is a measure of the impression these monuments made.

Social hierarchy of Old Kingdom Egypt

- The social pyramid of Old Kingdom Egypt was extremely steep. - At its apex stood the pharaoh and his extended family, whose prestige and power set them entirely apart from all other Egyptians. - Below them was a class of nobles, whose primary role was to serve as priests and officials of the pharaoh's government. Scribes were usually recruited and trained from among the sons of these families. All of these Egyptian elites lived in considerable luxury {They owned extensive estates, exotic possessions, and fine furniture, they also kept dogs, cats and monkeys as pets, and hunted and fished for sport} - Beneath this tiny minority was everyone else. Most Egyptians lived in crowded conditions in simple mud-brick dwellings. During a period of prosperity, master craftsmen— jewelers, goldsmiths, and the like—could improve their own conditions and those of their families by fulfilling the needs of the wealthy, but they did not constitute anything like a middle class. Other skilled professionals—potters, weavers, masons, bricklayers, brewers, merchants, and schoolteachers—also enjoyed some measure of respect as well as a higher standard of living. The vast majority of Egyptians, however, were laborers who provided the brute force necessary for agriculture and construction -Beneath them were slaves, typically captives from foreign wars rather than native Egyptians.

Hammurabi's empire

- Ultimately, Hammurabi's empire stretched from the Persian Gulf into Assyria. The southern half of the region, formerly Sumer and Akkad, would henceforth be known as Babylonia. -To help unify these territories, Hammurabi introduced another innovation, promoting the worship of the little-known patron god of Babylon, Marduk, and making him the ruler-god of his entire empire. - Although he also paid homage to the ancient gods of Sumer and Akkad, Hammurabi made it clear that all his subjects now owed allegiance to Marduk

Egyptians compared to Sumerians

- Unlike the Sumerians, the Egyptians did not have to wrest survival from a hostile and unpredictable environment. Instead, their land was renewed every year by the flooding of the Nile River. - The fertile black soil left behind every summer made theirs the richest agricultural region in the entire Mediterranean world.

Lower Egypt vs. Upper Egypt

- Warfare between the two competing pharaonic dynasties would continue for over a century until 2055 B.C.E., when the Theban king Mentuhotep II conquered the northerners and declared himself the ruler of a united Egypt. - His reign marks the beginning of Egypt's Middle Kingdom and the reestablishment of a unified government, but this time centered in Thebes rather than Memphis

12th dynasty expansion

- diplomatic relations with the smaller states and principalities of Palestine and Syria led to decisive Egyptian political and economic influence in this region - These lands were not incorporated into Egypt; instead, Amenemhet (first king of the 12th dynasty) constructed the Walls of the Prince in Sinai to guard against incursions from the Near East - These huge fortifications built along Egypt's new frontier demonstrate the great resourcefulness of the Twelfth Dynasty, and their very different ways of allocating resources and expressing ambition.

creation of the step pyramid

- earlier pharaohs had already devoted enormous resources to their burial arrangements at Abydos. It was Imhotep, however, who designed the Step Pyramid, the first building in history constructed entirely of dressed stone. It was not only to be the final resting place of Djoser but an expression of his transcendent power as the pharaoh. - Built west of the administrative capital at Memphis, the Step Pyramid towers over the desert to a height of 200 feet, its design was based on an older form of burial monument, the mastaba, a low rectangular structure built entirely of brick with a flat top and sloping sides - these buildings served two purposes. First and foremost, they would provide Djoser's ka, his spirit, with a habitation and sustenance in the afterlife. Second, the design of the buildings, with their immovable doors and labyrinthine passageways, would (it was hoped) thwart tomb robbers, a chronic problem as pharaonic burials became more and more tempting to thieves.

Emergence of Nubia

- small states were beginning to form to the south in Nubia, perhaps in response to Egyptian aggression against its neighbors. - With better organization and equipment, the Nubians may have restricted Egyptian access to precious metal deposits in and around the First Cataract, further crippling the Egyptian economy.

Egyptians views on themselves

- the special environment of Egypt and the special benefits it conferred on its inhabitants were construed as peculiar divine gifts, renewed each year through the mediation of the pharoah, who was god on earth. - Old Kingdom Egyptians saw themselves as superior to all other civilizations. A person was either an Egyptian or a foreigner, and the lines between the two were absolute. - For Egyptians, it was simply self-evident that their country—nurtured by the Nile and guarded by the deserts and seas that surrounded it—was the center of the universe.

Lugalzagesi of Umma (c. 2358 - 2334 BCE)

- was a great ruler of the southern part of Mesopotamia - approached Kish and was given an order from

Phoenicians

-(1500-300 B.C) located on eastern Mediterranean coast -invented the alphabet which used sounds rather than symbols like cuneiform

Hittites

-(1600-1180 BCE) A people from central Anatolia who established an empire in Anatolia and Syria in the Late Bronze Age. -With wealth from the trade in metals and military power based on chariot forces, they vied with New Kingdom Egypt over Syria.

Akkadians

-2350-2160 BCE, this civilization included Semitic people living north of Sumeria; united city-states of Mesopotamia; first empire in history established by Sargon(c.2350) the Great -They adopted much of Sumerian script, literature, religion, & culture

Amorites

-A group of people who overwhelmed the Mesopotamians and founded the Babylonian Empire -

Sumerians significance of the invention of the wheel

-Alongside writing and the making of bronze, the invention of the wheel was the fundamental technological achievement of the era. -The Sumerians were using potter's wheels by the middle of the fourth millennium B.C.E. and could produce high-quality clay vessels in greater quantity than ever before. -By around 3200 B.C.E., the Sumerians were also using two- and four-wheeled chariots and carts drawn by donkeys.

What imperial developments predated Hammurabi's rule in Mesopotamia?

-An earlier imperial leader, Shulgi, issued a code of law of his own -past imperial conquest under Sargon already united the region linguistically

Emergence of the ur III dynasty or Neo-Sumerian period

-Around 2100 B.C.E., a new dynasty came to power in Ur under its first king, Ur-Nammu, and his son Shulgi. -Ur-Nammu was responsible for the construction of the great ziggurat at Ur, which originally rose seventy feet above the surrounding plain, and for many other architectural marvels. -Shulgi continued his father's work, subduing the lands up to the Zagros Mountains northeast of Ur and demanding massive tribute payments from them; one collection site accounted for 350,000 sheep per year. -Shulgi built state-run textile production facilities to process the wool. He promulgated a code of law, calling for fair weights and measures, the protection of widows and orphans, and limitations on the death penalty for crimes. He also pursued military conquests, the centralization of government, commercial expansion and consolidation, and the patronage of art and literature.

Complications of the Sumerian Era

-Around 2900 B.C.E., conflicts among the growing Sumerian city-states became more acute. -Competition for resources intensified and warfare became more frequent and destructive, leading to the eradication of many urban centers. -During this period, a new type of military leadership began to emerge and eventually evolved into a form of kingship. -Historians refer to this phase as the Early Dynastic Period because it was dominated by families, each headed by a war leader, whose prestige earned him the title lugal: "big man"

What conclusions about Babylonian society can be drawn from Hammurabi's code of laws?

-Babylonian society was hierarchical, giving nobles more power than commoners and men more power than women -Babylonians struggled with issues we have today, like fraud, divorce, and medical malpractice

Difficulites of understanding the Ancient Egyptian past

-Because so few routine business documents of the Old Kingdom survive, historians have to rely on surviving funerary texts from the tombs of the elite in order to reconstruct the achievements of particular individuals. These sources are hardly representative, and they have tended to convey the impression that Egyptians were obsessed with death; they also tell us little about the lives of ordinary people -Further complicating the historian's task is the early Egyptians' own belief in the unchanging, cyclical nature of the universe. In this early period, there appears to have been little interest in maintaining a record of key events arranged in chronological order. This makes it difficult for us to reconstruct their history in detail.

What questions are researchers able to definitively answer about human life in the Paleolithic Period?

-Did people bury their dead? -Did people know how to use fire? -Did people make art?

Sumerian civilization

-Each Sumerian city had its own aristocracy, the group from which priests were drawn. -As much as half the population consisted of free persons who held parcels of land sufficient to sustain themselves, but the rest were dependents of the temple who worked as artisans or as agricultural laborers on its lands, and many of these dependents were slaves.

Ubaid Period

-Earliest manifestation of classic Mesopotamian civilization -(6200-4000BC) -found in the lowest levels of Ur, Uruk, Eridu; reflects spread of farming throughout S. Mesopotamia

How did geography affect the development of Egypt?

-Egyptian cosmology reflected the idea that the universe was centered on the Nile -the outside world was hostile -Egyptian territory was defined by the extent of the Nile's floodwaters

Egyptian science

-Egyptians made notable advances in the calculation of time -Egyptians lagged behind Sumerians and Akkadians in science, mathematics, and new technology

Shamshi-Adad (r.1808-1776)

-First great king of Assyria -Once defeated in 1818 BCE by the Naram-Sin of Eshnunna and forced to leave, conquered Ashur and replaced its king -In 1792 BCE he captured extremeley wealthy city Mari

Sargon's Accomplishments

-From his capital, Sargon installed Akkadian-speaking governors to rule the cities of Sumer, ordering them to pull down existing fortifications, collect taxes, and impose his will. -Sargon transformed the independent city-states of Sumer and Akkad into a much larger political unit -was able to manage and exploit the network of trade routes crisscrossing the Near East {East to West: Ebla, Nagar, Mari, Parts of Subartu/Assyria, and Elam} -although his political influence was felt only in Mesopotamia, his economic influence stretched from Ethiopia to India. -Sargon's capital became the most splendid city in the world, and he exercised unprecedented power for a remarkable fifty-six years

Facts about Hammurabi

-Hammurabi may have been the first ruler in history to understand that power need not be based on force. -He recognized that military intelligence, diplomacy, and strategic planning might accomplish what his small army could not. -A rich archive of tablets found at the city of Mari (which eventually fell under his rule) testifies to his talents and cleverness, for Hammurabi used writing itself as a weapon.

Old Babylonian Empire rise

-In 1792 B.C.E., a young Amorite chieftain named Hammurabi (hah-muh-RAH-bee) became the ruler of Babylon, an insignificant city in central Mesopotamia. -By this time Babylon was precariously wedged among a number of powerful Amorite kingdoms. -Its site on the Tigris and Euphrates had great potential, but it was also dangerous, because it lay in the path of mighty antagonists.

Theology in Sumer

-In the Uruk Period, the Sumerians identified their gods with the capricious forces of the natural world. -In the Early Dynastic Period, however, they came to imagine their gods as resembling the powerful lugals who now ruled the city-states as kings. Like them, the gods desired to live in the finest palaces and temples, to wear the costliest clothing and jewels, and to consume the tastiest foods. -According to this new theology, which clearly reflects changes in Sumerian society, humans exist merely to provide for their gods. This was, indeed, why the gods had created people in the first place; for if humanity ever ceased to serve the gods, the gods themselves would starve.

How did the ability to store agricultural surpluses affect societies?

-It promoted social stratification -made it possible for some people to specialize in nonagrarian skills

Old Babylonia

-Lasted from about 1894-1600 BC -Founded by Amorite chieftain Sumuabum -Sumu-la-el succeeded and expanded the empire obtaining more cities most importantly Akkad and Kish

Human life before civilization

-Long before modern humans made their appearance, recognizable human traits had already begun to leave traces on the landscape. -Hominids in Africa were kindling and controlling fire as early as 164,000 years ago, using it to make tools. -The Neanderthals, a hominid species that flourished about 200,000 years ago, made jewelry, painted on the walls of caves, and buried their dead in distinctive graves with meaningful objects such as horns (blown to make music) and, in one case, flowers. -Archaeology has shown that in the last phase of the Paleolithic Era, around 40,000 B.C.E., the pace of human development began to accelerate dramatically. Human populations in Africa expanded, suggesting that people were better nourished, perhaps as a result of new technologies. -In Europe, Homo sapiens sapiens began to produce finely crafted and more effective tools such as fishhooks, arrowheads, and sewing needles made from wood, antler, and bone. The most astonishing evidence of this change was produced by these new tools: cave paintings like those at Lascaux (France), discovered in 1940.

Çatalhöyük

-More than 9,000 years ago, a town began to develop here in what is now south-central Turkey -Over the next 2,000 years, it grew to cover an area of thirty-three acres, within which some 8,000 inhabitants lived in more than 2,000 separate houses.

How did the role of the Egyptian pharaoh differ from that of the Sumerian lugal?

-Pharaoh means "great household" whereas lugal refers to a charismatic leader whose power was established through personal prowess -In the Old Kingdom, the pharaoh was considered a living god who was reborn to rule repeatedly, not a person favored by the gods to rule for one lifetime

Naram-Sin (c. 2254 - 2218 BC)

-The Akkadian ruler who claimed to be divine and had a temple built for him -Last great Akkadian King -grandson of Sargon

Akkadians significance

-The Akkadians were the predominant people of central Mesopotamia -Their Sumerian neighbors to the south had greatly influenced them, and they had adopted cuneiform script along with many other elements of Sumerian culture -The Akkadians preserved their own Semitic language, part of the linguistic family that includes Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Ethiopic, and Assyrian

Ubaid people

-The earliest cities of Mesopotamia were founded by the Ubaid peoples, so called because of their settlement at al-Ubaid (now in Iraq), which dates from around 5900 B.C.E -In this era, the headwaters of the Persian Gulf extended at least 100 miles further inland than they do today, so some Ubaid settlements bordered on fertile marshlands, which enabled them to develop irrigation systems. -Although these began as relatively simple channels and collection pools, Ubaid farmers quickly learned to build more sophisticated canals and to line some pools with stone. They also constructed dikes and levees to control the seasonal flooding of the rivers and to direct the excess water into irrigation canals.

What did the great centers of Sumerian civilization share in common?

-The great centers of Sumerian civilization—the cities of Uruk, Ur, Lagash, Eridu, and Kish—shared a common culture and a common language. They also shared a set of beliefs. However, this common religion did not produce peace. -The residents of each city considered themselves to be the servants of a particular god, whom they sought to glorify by exalting their own city above others. -The result was intense competition that frequently escalated into warfare. There was also an economic dimension to this conflict, since water rights and access to arable land and trade routes were often at stake.

What was life like in Çatalhöyük?

-The people of Çatalhöyük developed a highly organized and advanced society. -They wove wool cloth, they made kiln-fired pottery, they painted elaborate hunting scenes on the plaster-covered walls of their houses, they made weapons and tools from razor-sharp obsidian imported from the nearby Cappadocian mountains. -They honored their ancestors with religious rites and buried their dead beneath the floors of their houses. -Settled agriculturalists, they grew grains, peas, and lentils and tended herds of domesticated sheep and goats. -Men died, on average, at the age of thirty-four. Women, who bore the additional risks of child- birth, died around age thirty.

Sumer

-The world's first civilization founded in Mesopotamia, which existed for over 3,000 years -comprised of city states Hierarchical, Patriarchal, Kingship, Theocracy(rule of the gods), Polytheistic, Redistributive economy

What do archaeologists know about Neolithic people from studying their pottery?

-They cooked their food -They traded with other people -They stored grain, oils, and alcoholic drinks

Sargon's imperialism and rule

-To unite the two halves of his empire, Sargon merged the Akkadian and Sumerian divinities, so that the Akkadian fertility goddess Ishtar became the Sumerian goddess Inanna -He also tried to lessen the rivalry of Sumerian cities by appointing a single Akkadian high priest or priestess, often a member of his own family, to preside over several temples. {His own daughter Enheduanna (en- he-doo-Atl-nah) was high priestess of both Uruk and Ur, and her hymns in honor of Ishtar/Inanna are the earliest surviving works by a named author in world history}

Sargon of Akkad (r. 2334-2279 bce)

-before fame was cup-bearer of Ur-Zababa, the king of Kish {this unfolds when Akkad tells him he had a dream about killing him in a river of blood} -was sent to confront Lugalzagesi of Umma when Ishtar who warned him about Ur-Zababa treachery in which Lugalzagesi invites him to join forces to fight against her -Turns against zagesi by capturing and takes him to nippur -Calls himself king of Kish

Old Assyrians

-c. 1900 BCE -Leading long distance traders -Private deals/contracts for the first time -Assyria goes into decline c. 1760

Sumerian's use of metals

-despite the fact that their land had no mineral deposits, the Sumerians became skilled metallurgists. -By 6000 B.C.E., a number of cultures throughout the Near East and Europe had learned how to produce weapons and tools using copper. Mesopotamia itself has no copper, but by the Uruk Period (4300-2900 B.C.E.), trade routes were bringing this raw element into Sumer, where it was processed into weapons and tools.

Sumerians use of the seed drill

-in use for two millennia before it was depicted on a stone tablet of the seventh century B.C.E. -this was a technology unknown to any other Western civilization until the sixteenth century C.E.

Difference between Egyptian and Mesopotamian cities

-it was harder to travel throughout the Tigris-Euphrates region than through the Nile valley -the Nile River's pattern of flooding was more predictable than flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers -Egypt enjoyed much longer periods of stability under strong, centralized government

Maadi

-just three miles away from Merimde Beni Salama -by around 3500 B.C.E the residents of Ma'adi, had extensive commercial contacts with the Sinai Peninsula, the Near East, and the upper reaches of the Nile, some several hundred miles to the south. - Copper was a particularly vital import, since it enabled residents to replace stone tools with metal ones.

Sumerian Slaves

-most of the slaves in Sumer were prisoners of war from other city-states whose bondage was limited to three years, after which time a slave had to be released. -non-Sumerians could be held indefinitely, although a few might manage to buy their freedom. In either case, slaves were the property of their owners. -They could be beaten, branded, bought, and sold like any other form of merchandise. Perhaps the only positive thing to say about slavery in antiquity is that it was egalitarian: anyone could become a slave. It was not until the beginning of the modern era that slavery became linked to race

what kinds of physical infrastructure typified early cities in Mesopotamia?

-protective walls -irrigation systems -temples

What does the Epic of Gilgamesh tell us about how ancient Sumerians defined civilization?

-settled society -They equated civilization with urbanism and barbarism with living outside of agraria

Emergence of the Bronze Age

-shortly before 3000 B.C.E., perhaps starting in eastern Anatolia (now Turkey), people further discovered that copper could be alloyed with arsenic (or later, tin) to produce bronze. -For almost two thousand years, until about 1200 B.C.E. the development of techniques for smelting iron, bronze was the strongest metal known to man—the most useful and, in war, the most deadly

Hieroglyphics vs. Cuneiform

-unlike Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics never evolved into a system of phonograms -Instead, the Egyptians developed a faster, cursive script for representing hieroglyphics called hieratic, which they employed for the everyday business of government and commerce -They also developed a shorthand version of hieratic that scribes could use for rapid note taking

How did Sumerians use the wheel?

-used donkey-drawn work carts -made ceramic pots -built war chariots

Iron Age

1200- 550 BCE

Which of our current common measures is based on Sumerian mathematics?

30 days in a month and 60 minutes in an hour

Bronze Age

3100-1200 BCE

Paleolithic Age

60,000-10,000 BCE

Cuneiform

A form of writing developed by the Sumerians using a wedge shaped stylus and clay tablets.

After Naram-Sin's death in 2219 BC....

Akkadian Rule faltered

How do historians know that some elite Egyptian women could read and write?

Archaeologists have found and deciphered personal notes exchanged between women

The story of Osiris and Isis

At the heart of Egyptian religion lay the myth of the gods Osiris and Isis, not only brother and sister but husband and wife, two of the gods most fundamental to Egyptian belief -Osiris was, in a sense, the first pharaoh: the first god to hold kingship on earth. But his brother, Seth, wanted the throne for himself. So Seth betrayed and killed Osiris, sealing his body in a coffin -Isis retrieved the corpse and managed to revive it long enough to conceive her brother's child, the god Horus -Enraged by this, Seth seized Osiris' body and hacked it to pieces, spreading the remains all over Egypt (All of Egypt could therefore claim to be part of Osiris, a belief witnessed by shrines dedicated to him throughout the land) -Still undeterred, Isis sought the help of Anubis, the god of the afterlife. Together, they found, reassembled, and preserved the scattered portions of Osiris' body, thus inventing the practice of mummification. Then Horus, with the help of his mother, managed to defeat Seth. Osiris was avenged and revived as god of the underworld. Like Egypt itself, he could not be killed, and the cycle of his death, dismemberment, and resurrection was reflected in the yearly renewal of Egypt itself.

What did status have to do with trade?

Because status was enhanced by access to high-prestige goods, local elites sought to monopolize trade by organizing and controlling the production of commodities within their own communities and by regulating their export.

First Intermediate Period in Egypt

By 2160 B.C.E., which marks the beginning of what historians call the First Intermediate Period, Egypt had effectively ceased to exist as a united entity. - The central authority of the pharaoh in Memphis collapsed, and a more ancient distribution of power reemerged: a northern center of influence based at Herakleopolis was opposed by a southern regime headquartered at Thebes, with families from each region claiming to be the legitimate pharaohs of all Egypt.

Significance of the pharaoh by the end of the Second Dynasty

By the end of the Second Dynasty, which coincides with the end of the Archaic or Early Dynastic Period (2686 B.C.E.), the pharaoh was not just the ruler of Egypt, he was Egypt {a personification of the land, the people, and their gods}

The Egyptian system of hieroglyphics was deciphered by

Champollion using the Rosetta Stone

In what ways were predynastic Sumerian cities connected to one another?

Cities spoke a common language and shared a common culture

The Epic of Gilgamesh explores, among other themes, the

Early Dynastic shift away from priestly leaders toward military leaders

What bests represent the shift in Egyptian worldview that took place between the fall of the Old Kingdom and the establishment of the Middle Kingdom?

Egypt expanded its interactions with Nubia, Middle Kingdom pharaohs extended Egypt's influence into the areas of Palestine and Syria

Rulers of the Third Dynasty of Egypt tightly controlled the behavior of provincial governors. What does this suggest about the power of the pharaoh?

Even though leaders were considered living gods, ambitious aristocrats sometimes threatened the pharaoh's position

Reasons as to why tensions rose in Sumer around 2500 BCE

Evidence shows that competition among Sumerian city-states reached a new level around 2500 B.C.E., as ambitious lugals vied to magnify themselves and their kingdoms. -This aggrandizement of royal power was made possible by the growing complicity of the aristocracy and the priesthood, and also by the growing marginalization of commoners, whose lives and property were increasingly exploited

T or F: Agricultural surplus made it possible for early societies to become more stable and to expand in population, yet also kept early societies socially stagnant as all labor was focused on the land and the cultivation of more grain

False

True or False: Settled agriculture was a development of the Paleolithic Era, more than 40,000 years ago

False

Gender divisions amongst the peasantry in the Old Kingdom

Gender divisions were less clearly defined among the peasantry -Peasant women often worked in the fields during the harvest alongside men, and carried out a number of vital tasks in the community.

Status of women in Babylonian society

Hammurabi's code also provides evidence as to the status of women in Babylonian society, and shows that they enjoyed certain important protections under the law, including the right to divorce abusive or indigent husbands. - If a husband divorced a wife "without cause," he was obliged to provide financial support for her and their children. -a wife who went around the city defaming her spouse was subject to severe punishment, and she would risk death, along with her lover, if she were caught in adultery. - The sexual promiscuity of husbands, by contrast, was protected under the law.

Hammurabi's Code of Laws

Hammurabi's code of laws begins with legislation against false testimony (fraud or lying under oath) and theft; followed by: -laws regulating business deals -laws regulating the use of public resources, especially water -laws relating to taverns and brothels, most of which appear to have been run by women -laws relating to debt and slavery; many laws dealing with marriage, inheritance, divorce, and widows' rights -laws punishing murder, violent assault, and even medical malpractice

Why was Sargon's influence felt beyond the region of Mesopotamia?

His Akkadian Empire controlled trade routes that linked Mesopotamia to Africa, the Persian Gulf region, and Northern India

The important administrator of the pharaoh Djoser who initiated pyramid building in the "step" style was

Imhotep

Accounting in the 4th and the 5th century BCE

In 4000 B.C.E, The peoples of the Near East were already using clay tokens to keep inventories. Within a few centuries, they developed a practice of placing tokens inside hollow clay balls and inscribing, on the outside of each ball, the shapes of all the tokens it contained. By 3300 B.C.E priests had replaced these balls with flat clay tablets on which they inscribed the symbols representing tokens. These tablets made keeping the tokens themselves unnecessary, and they could also be archived for future reference or sent to other settlements as receipts or requests for goods.

Sumerians development of measuring and surverying

In order to construct their elaborate irrigation systems, the Sumerians had to develop sophisticated measuring and surveying techniques as well as the art of map making. -Agricultural needs may also lie behind the lunar calendar they invented, which consisted of twelve months, six lasting 30 days and six lasting 29 days. Since this produced a year of only 354 days, the Sumerians eventually began to add a month to their calendars every few years in order to predict the recurrence of the seasons with sufficient accuracy

Jericho and Çatalhöyük significance

Jericho and Çatalhöyük illustrate the impact that stored agricultural surpluses have on human relations. For the first time, significant differences began to arise in the amount of wealth individuals could stockpile for themselves and their heirs

Why did the Egyptian historian, Manetho, omit what is now called the Zero Dynasty from his account of ancient Egypt?

Manetho was writing in the third century B.C.E., over 2,000 years before modern archaeologists rediscovered the Zero Dynasty

Why was Sumerian technological development dependent on trade?

Mesopotamia lacked metal ores, so Sumerians imported copper ore to make tools and weapons

Why do archaeologists have more examples of daily uses of writing from Sumer than from the Egyptian Old Kingdom?

Mesopotamian clay tablets were more durable and longer lasting than Egyptian papyrus

Neolithic Age

New Stone Age 10,000-4000 BCE

Sumerian vs Egyptian religious beliefs

Sumerians: -Our gods are capricious and unreliable -Humans cannot avoid death or achieve immortality Egyptians: -By following the guidance of the gods, humans can achieve a kind of immortality -Reliable flooding and regeneration of the land is a gift from the gods -Our leader is the embodiment of truth, order, and justice on earth

Lawful divisions enforced by Hammurabi

The division among classes in this society was marked -As Hammurabi's code indicates, an offense committed against a nobleman carried a far more severe penalty than did the same crime committed against a social equal, or against a dependent or slave -nobles were also punished more severely than were commoners for crimes they committed against other nobles

Early Dynastic Period

The period beginning with recorded Sumerian history, at which time the Sumerians reached a high point of cultural development as independent city-states, and ending with Sargon's conquest 2900-2350

Uruk Period

The period between 4000 B.C. and 3200 B.C. during which the first cities in Mesopotamia were developed

Predynastic Egypt (5000-3000BCE)

The phrase "Predynastic Egypt" refers to the period before the emergence of the pharaohs and their royal dynasties {an era for which archeological evidence is difficult to find and interpret} - Many predynastic settlements were destroyed long ago by the waters of the Nile and are now buried under innumerable layers of silt.

True or False: The early pharaohs had difficulty establishing their rule over all Egypt due to the power of local civic and religious authorities

True

How was trading an important element in the development of early settlements?

With local trading networks already being established around 9000 B.C.E., and by 5000 long- distance routes linked settlements throughout the Near East, exotic goods and luxury items were the most frequent objects of exchange, including marine shells and semiprecious stones like turquoise and lapis lazuli

Anthropocene Era

a new geologic era dominated by the effects of humans

The weakening power of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties resulted in

a wider distribution of wealth in Egyptian society

The civilization that emerged in ancient Egypt arose at the same time as that of

ancient Sumer

The development of hieroglyphic writing in Egypt dates to around?

around 3200 B.C.E., when pictograms begin to appear in Mesopotamia

Egyptian's worldview

between the fertile Black Land along the Nile and the desiccated Red Land beyond, it deeply influenced the Egyptian worldview - they thought the Nile itself was the center of the cosmos and the lands beyond were hostile and beyond the pale of habitation

To foster greater understanding of the prehistoric period, scholars began to use scientific data from the discipline of

climatology

Shortly before 3000 B.C.E., people in the Near East discovered that bronze could be produced by

combining copper with arsenic or tin

The Akkadian rulers of Sargon and Naram-Sin ruled from kept their empires through..

conquest and commerce

T or F: Egypt in the Old and Middle Kingdoms was maintained chiefly through conquest

false

Egyptian coffin books or books of the dead contained

instructions for traveling through the underworld

The Tigris and Euphrates rivers

noted for their violence and unpredictability. Both are prone to flooding, and the Tigris was liable to jump its banks and change its course from year to year. It was in this challenging environment that the first urban society, the civilization of Sumer, flourished.

The Nile River runs north into the Mediterranean Sea, whereas the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers

run south into the Persian Gulf

Ur-Zababa of Kish

she ruled anywhere from 2500- 2330 BCE

Sargon of Akkad (c. 2350 B.C.E.) is significant because he

subdued Sumer and exerted influence from Ethiopia to the Indus Valley

By 2350 B.C.E Sargon had conquered..

the cities of Sumer and then moved to establish direct control over all of Mesopotamia

Who really built the pyramids?

the pyramids were raised by tens of thousands of peasant workers, who labored most intensively on the pyramids while their fields were under water during the Nile's annual flood. Some workers may have been conscripts, but most probably participated willingly, since these projects glorified the living god

What did Mesopotamians use writing for?

to record information about inventory and tax collection

treatment of slaves in the Old Babylonian Empire

treated much more harshly, and were more readily identifiable as a separate group whereas free men in Babylonia wore long hair and beards, male slaves were shaved and branded

Who wrote the system for numbering the ruling dynasties that emerged in this era—known as the Archaic Period?

was devised nearly three thousand years later by an historian named Manetho (mahn-EH-thoh), who wrote in the third century B.C.E

Sumerians invented?

writing

Significance of the emergence of writing and reading

writing and reading now became specialized, abstract, powerful skills accessible only to a small and influential minority who were taught in special scribal schools called Houses of the Tablet.