Download ancient near east - Mr. C at Hamilton

M. Cistaro 4/4/16
ANCIENT NEAR
EAST
Near East
• The ancient Near East was the home of early
civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to
the modern Middle East:
– Mesopotamia (modern Iraq, southeast Turkey, southwest Iran,
northeastern Syria and Kuwait)
– Ancient Egypt
– Ancient Iran (Elam, Media, Parthia and Persia)
– Anatolia/Asia Minor and Armenian Highlands (Turkey's Eastern
Anatolia Region, Armenia, northwestern Iran, southern Georgia, and
western Azerbaijan)
– Levant (modern Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and Jordan)
– Cyprus
– Arabian Peninsula.
ANCIENT NEAR
EAST
ANCIENT NEAR EAST - Terms
• “Fertile Crescent”
• “Cradle of Civilization”
• Cuneiform
• Ziggurat
• Epic of Gilgamesh
ANCIENT NEAR EAST - Terms
• “Fertile Crescent”
– A crescent-shaped region containing the comparatively moist and fertile land
of otherwise arid and semi-arid Western Asia, the Nile Valley and Nile Delta.
• “Cradle of Civilization”
– A term referring to locations where, according to current archaeological data,
civilization is understood to have emerged.
• Cuneiform
– Cuneiform script is one of the earliest systems of writing, distinguished by its
wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a
stylus. The name cuneiform itself simply means "wedge shaped", from the
Latin cuneus "wedge" and forma "shape."
• Ziggurat
– Ziggurats ("to build on a raised area") were massive structures built in the
ancient Mesopotamian valley and western Iranian plateau, having the form of
a terraced step pyramid of successively receding stories or levels.
– Notable ziggurats include the Great Ziggurat of Ur near Nasiriyah, Iraq; the
Ziggurat of Aqar Quf near Baghdad, Iraq; the now destroyed Etemenanki in
Babylon.
• Epic of Gilgamesh
– The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia. Dating
from the Third Dynasty of Ur (circa 2100 BC), it is often regarded as the
earliest surviving great work of literature.
ANCIENT NEAR EAST - Terms
ANCIENT NEAR EAST - Terms
• “Fertile Crescent”
– A crescent-shaped region containing the comparatively moist and fertile land
of otherwise arid and semi-arid Western Asia, the Nile Valley and Nile Delta.
• “Cradle of Civilization”
– A term referring to locations where, according to current archaeological data,
civilization is understood to have emerged.
• Cuneiform
– Cuneiform script is one of the earliest systems of writing, distinguished by its
wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a
stylus. The name cuneiform itself simply means "wedge shaped", from the
Latin cuneus "wedge" and forma "shape."
• Ziggurat
– Ziggurats ("to build on a raised area") were massive structures built in the
ancient Mesopotamian valley and western Iranian plateau, having the form of
a terraced step pyramid of successively receding stories or levels.
– Notable ziggurats include the Great Ziggurat of Ur near Nasiriyah, Iraq; the
Ziggurat of Aqar Quf near Baghdad, Iraq; the now destroyed Etemenanki in
Babylon.
• Epic of Gilgamesh
– The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia. Dating
from the Third Dynasty of Ur (circa 2100 BC), it is often regarded as the
earliest surviving great work of literature.
ANCIENT NEAR EAST - Terms
ANCIENT NEAR EAST - Terms
• “Fertile Crescent”
– A crescent-shaped region containing the comparatively moist and fertile land
of otherwise arid and semi-arid Western Asia, the Nile Valley and Nile Delta.
• “Cradle of Civilization”
– A term referring to locations where, according to current archaeological data,
civilization is understood to have emerged.
• Cuneiform
– Cuneiform script is one of the earliest systems of writing, distinguished by its
wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a
stylus. The name cuneiform itself simply means "wedge shaped", from the
Latin cuneus "wedge" and forma "shape."
• Ziggurat
– Ziggurats ("to build on a raised area") were massive structures built in the
ancient Mesopotamian valley and western Iranian plateau, having the form of
a terraced step pyramid of successively receding stories or levels.
– Notable ziggurats include the Great Ziggurat of Ur near Nasiriyah, Iraq; the
Ziggurat of Aqar Quf near Baghdad, Iraq; the now destroyed Etemenanki in
Babylon.
• Epic of Gilgamesh
– The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia. Dating
from the Third Dynasty of Ur (circa 2100 BC), it is often regarded as the
earliest surviving great work of literature.
ANCIENT NEAR EAST - Terms
HERODOTUS & Significance
• According to Herodotus, at the top of each ziggurat was a
shrine, although none of these shrines have survived.
• One practical function of the ziggurats was a high place on
which the priests could escape rising water that annually
inundated lowlands and occasionally flooded for hundreds
of miles, for example the 1967 flood.
• Another practical function of the ziggurat was for security.
Since the shrine was accessible only by way of three
stairways, a small number of guards could prevent nonpriests from spying on the rituals at the shrine on top of the
ziggurat, such as initiation rituals such as the Eleusinian
mysteries, cooking of sacrificial food and burning of
carcasses of sacrificial animals.
• Each ziggurat was part of a temple complex that included a
courtyard, storage rooms, bathrooms, and living quarters,
around which a city was built.
CAD rendering of Sialk's largest ziggurat based
on archeological evidence.
ANCIENT NEAR EAST - Terms
• “Fertile Crescent”
– A crescent-shaped region containing the comparatively moist and fertile land
of otherwise arid and semi-arid Western Asia, the Nile Valley and Nile Delta.
• “Cradle of Civilization”
– A term referring to locations where, according to current archaeological data,
civilization is understood to have emerged.
• Cuneiform
– Cuneiform script is one of the earliest systems of writing, distinguished by its
wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a
stylus. The name cuneiform itself simply means "wedge shaped", from the
Latin cuneus "wedge" and forma "shape."
• Ziggurat
– Ziggurats ("to build on a raised area") were massive structures built in the
ancient Mesopotamian valley and western Iranian plateau, having the form of
a terraced step pyramid of successively receding stories or levels.
– Notable ziggurats include the Great Ziggurat of Ur near Nasiriyah, Iraq; the
Ziggurat of Aqar Quf near Baghdad, Iraq; the now destroyed Etemenanki in
Babylon.
• Epic of Gilgamesh
– The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia. Dating
from the Third Dynasty of Ur (circa 2100 BC), it is often regarded as the
earliest surviving great work of literature.
ANCIENT NEAR EAST
•
•
•
•
•
•
Summary
Political Evolution
Religion
Culture
Technological Developments
BIG IDEAS
Overview – What’s Going On?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
5000 BC Wheel and Plow invented
4000-3000 BC Egyptian Priests invent writing
3000 BC Stonehenge erected
3000 BC Bronze Age begins
3100 BC Cuneiform writing invented
1867 BC Babylon founded by Amorite dynasty
1700 BC Windmills invented for irrigation purposes
1600-1360 BC Egypt dominates the region of Canaan and Syria
1250 BC Hebrews establish a kingdom in Palestine
1200-1050 BC Collapse of the Bronze Age
1041 BC Jerusalem designated the capital of the Kingdom of Israel
1000 BC Iron Age begins
600 BC Babylon conquered; Cyrus the Great creates the Persian Empire
Overview – What’s Going On?
Specifically in the Ancient Near East?
• Broad overview
• Specifics for exam
Overview – What’s Going On?
Specifically in the Ancient Near East?
• The history of the ancient Near East begins
with the rise of Sumer in ~4000 BC.
• The date it ends varies: the term covers the
Bronze Age and the Iron Age in the region
until either the conquest by the Achaemenid
Empire in the 6th century BC or that by
Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC.
• I’ll split the difference and say ~500 BC.
Overview – What’s Going On?
Specifically in the Ancient Near East?
• It was here that intensive year-round agriculture was first
practiced, leading to the rise of the first dense urban
settlements and the development of many familiar
institutions of civilization, such as social stratification,
centralized government and empires, organized religion
and organized warfare.
• It also saw the creation of the first writing system and law
codes, early advances that laid the foundations of
astronomy and mathematics, and the invention of the
wheel.
• During the period states became increasingly large, until by
the end the region was controlled by military empires who
had conquered a number of different cultures.
3500 BC
3500 BC
• Farming has been established for thousands of years in the
Middle East, and in the river valleys of ancient
Mesopotamia the first true civilization in world history of
mankind is appearing, that of the Sumerians.
• The Sumerians live in large communities of many
thousands of people - the first cities. Along with many
other advances they are developing the techniques of
writing, on which most future human progress will depend.
• A second civilization is also beginning to emerge, that of
Ancient Egypt in the Nile Valley.
2500 BC
2500 BC
• In the previous thousand years, the influence of
Mesopotamian civilization has spread far and wide,
carried by the trade networks radiating outwards from
the Sumerian cities. Towns and cities are now scattered
over a large part of the Middle East, with outlying
regions such as Asia Minor and Iran being drawn into
the orbit of urban civilization.
• The second great civilization of the ancient world is
now well established. Situated in the Nile valley, Egypt
has already produced some of the most famous
structures in all history, the great Pyramids of Giza.
1500 BC
1500 BC
• The past thousand years have seen many upheavals in the Middle
East, particularly in Mesopotamia and surrounding regions. Tribes
from the fringes of the old civilizations have come in to create new
states and empires: the Hittite, Mitanni and Babylonian empires are
ruled by Indo-European speakers from the north and east. These
states are joined by the New Kingdom of Egypt to form the leading
powers of the region.
• These centralized states are home to highly sophisticated - and
already ancient - civilizations, with a complex commercial life,
bureaucracies, and well-organized armies based on a new
technology, the chariot. The struggles between them dominate the
history of the Middle Eastern world at this period.
1000 BC
1000 BC
• Over the past 500 years, great changes have wracked the Middle East. The
old powers of the ancient Middle East - Egypt, the Hittites, Assyria and
Babylon - have all been devastated by invaders from outside their borders.
The eclipse of these states has allowed new peoples, particularly the
Phoenicians and Israelites, to come to the fore. Their achievements will
have an enduring impact on world history.
• Several major advances in civilization have taken place in region in recent
centuries. Firstly, iron has come into widespread use, probably starting
somewhere in Asia Minor. Secondly, the alphabet has been developed,
again probably in Asia Minor but soon to be spread by Phoenician
merchants around the Mediterranean and Middle East. A third occurrence
of world significance is the appearance of the monotheism, carried into
history by the Israelite tribes. Finally, the camel has been domesticated
recently. This tough animal is helping new trade routes across the Arabian
desert to come into use.
1000 BC
1000 BC
• Hittites, Assyria and Babylon - have all been devastated by invaders
from outside their borders. The eclipse of these states has allowed
new peoples, particularly the Phoenicians and Israelites, to come to
the fore. Their achievements will have an enduring impact on world
history.
• Several major advances in civilization have taken place in region in
recent centuries. Firstly, iron has come into widespread use,
probably starting somewhere in Asia Minor. Secondly, the alphabet
has been developed, again probably in Asia Minor but soon to be
spread by Phoenician merchants around the Mediterranean and
Middle East. A third occurrence of world significance is the
appearance of the monotheism, carried into history by the Israelite
tribes. Finally, the camel has been domesticated recently. This
tough animal is helping new trade routes across the Arabian desert
to come into use.
500 BC
500 BC
• The history of the Middle East over the past 500 years or so has been one
of imperial powers following one another in succession: first the Assyrians,
then the Babylonians and Medes, and now the Persian empire, the largest
state in the history of the Ancient World. This now covers the entire region
and beyond. The Lydians, Phrygians and Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor, the
Phoenicians and Jews (newly restored to their homeland) of Syria and the
Levant, the Egyptians, the Babylonians of Mesopotamia, and the different
Iranian peoples, are now all under one regime.
• This succession of great empires – and the policy that the Assyrians and
Babylonians pursued of re-settling conquered peoples in scattered groups
throughout their territories - has resulted in the upheaval of populations
on a vast scale. As a result, old languages have vanished and Aramaean
has become the lingua-franca of the region. With its simple-to-learn
alphabet, this has greatly stimulated international trade and inter-regional
communications.
Linguistics
• Note: Mr. C loves linguistics.
• It is useful to map out when things change.
• I like to think of it as fingerprinting or dating layers
of dirt in the ground in order to figure out how old
something is or when a certain event happened.
• You can use linguistics a lot in History, and I
will.
ANE - Political Evolution
• Sumer, located in southern Mesopotamia, is the
earliest known civilization in the world.
• It lasted from the first settlement of Eridu (late
6000’s BC) until the rise of…
• The Akkadian Empire, founded by Sargon the
Great, lasted from the 24th to the 21st century
BC, and was regarded by many as the world's first
Empire. The Akkadians eventually fragmented
into Assyria and Babylonia.
• Assyria (late 3000’s BC) and Babylon (early 2000’s BC)
ANE - Political Evolution
Sumer: 4100–2900 BC
• By the late 4th millennium BC, Sumer was
divided into about a dozen independent citystates, which were divided by canals and
boundary stones.
• Each was centered on a temple dedicated to
the particular patron god or goddess of the
city and ruled over by a priestly governor
(ensi) or by a king (lugal) who was intimately
tied to the city's religious rites.
ANE - Political Evolution
Sumer: 4100–2900 BC
ANE - Political Evolution
Akkadian: 2270–2083 BC
• The Akkadian Empire was the first ancient Semitic
empire of Mesopotamia, centered in the city of
Akkad and its surrounding region, also called
Akkad in ancient Mesopotamia.
• The empire united all the indigenous Akkadianspeaking Semites and the Sumerian speakers for
the first time under one rule. The Akkadian
Empire controlled Mesopotamia, the Levant, and
parts of Iran, sending military expeditions as far
south as Oman.
ANE - Political Evolution
Akkadian: 2270–2083 BC
• The Akkadian government formed a "classical
standard" with which all future
Mesopotamian states compared themselves.
• It is the first Mesopotamian “empire”.
• The empire was bound together by roads,
along which there was a regular postal service.
• Clay seals that took the place of stamps bear
the names of Sargon and his son.
ANE - Political Evolution
Akkadian: 2270–2083 BC
• Starting in 2800 BC we see Akkadian used in
texts.
• Upon Sargon rising to power Akkadian becomes
the dominant language (c. 2270–2215 BC), but
even then most administrative tablets continued
to be written in Sumerian, the language used by
the scribes.
• Akkadian and Sumerian coexisted as vernacular
languages for about one thousand years, but by
around 1800 BC, Sumerian was becoming more
of a literary language familiar mainly only to
scholars and scribes.
ANE - Political Evolution
Akkadian: 2270–2083 BC
Map of Iraq showing
important sites that
were occupied by
the Akkadian Empire.
ANE - Political Evolution
Akkadian: 2270–2083 BC
• After the fall of the Akkadian Empire, the
Akkadian people of Mesopotamia eventually
coalesced into two major Akkadian speaking
nations: Assyria in the north, and, a few
centuries later, Babylonia in the south.
ANE - Political Evolution
Assyrian: 2025–1393 BC
• Assyria became a regionally powerful nation in
the Old Assyrian Empire from the late 21st
century to the mid 18th century BC.
• Following this, it found itself under short periods
of Babylonian and Mitanni-Hurrian rule in the
18th and 15th centuries BC respectively.
• From the mid 18th century BC, Assyria came into
conflict with the newly created city state of
Babylon.
ANE - Political Evolution
Babylonia: 1894–1595 BC
• By the late 4th millennium BC, Sumer was
divided into about a dozen independent citystates, which were divided by canals and
boundary stones.
• Each was centered on a temple dedicated to
the particular patron god or goddess of the
city and ruled over by a priestly governor
(ensi) or by a king (lugal) who was intimately
tied to the city's religious rites.
ANE - Political Evolution
Babylonia: 1792–1750 BC
• Hammurabi conducted major building work in
Babylon, expanding it from a small town into a
great city worthy of kingship.
• He was a very efficient ruler, establishing a
bureaucracy, with taxation and centralized
government.
ANE - Political Evolution
Babylonia: 1792–1750 BC
ANE - Political Evolution
Babylonia: 1792–1750 BC
• The armies of Babylonia under Hammurabi
were well-disciplined.
• The conquests of Hammurabi gave the region
stability after turbulent times and coalesced
the patchwork of states of southern and
central Mesopotamia into one single nation,
and it is only from the time of Hammurabi
that southern Mesopotamia came to be
known historically as Babylonia.
ANE - Political Evolution
Babylonia: 1792–1750 BC
• Hammurabi’s greatest achievement is
probably his codex.
• These codes were based on Sumer, but also
were improved too.
• See SOURCE BOOK for reading on the Code of
Hammurabi.
ANE - Political Evolution
Babylonia: 1792–1750 BC
• Dating back to about 1754 BC, it is
one of the oldest deciphered writings
of significant length in the world.
• The sixth Babylonian king,
Hammurabi, enacted the code, and
partial copies exist on a seven and a
half foot stone stele and various clay
tablets.
• The code consists of 282 laws, with
scaled punishments, adjusting "an
eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"
(lex talionis) as graded depending on
social status, of slave versus free
man.
ANE - Political Evolution
Babylonia: 1792–1750 BC
• In 1901, a copy of the Code of Hammurabi
was discovered on a stele by J. De Morgan and
V. Scheil at Susa, where it had later been taken
as plunder. That copy is now in the Louvre.
• PERSONAL OBSERVATION: If it can be picked
up and stolen, it will often end up in the
Louvre. For all their talk, France loves to
plunder art from antiquity, but so does
England.
ANE - Religion
• Ancient civilizations in the Near East were deeply
influenced by their spiritual beliefs, which
generally did not distinguish between heaven and
Earth.
• They believed that divine action influenced all
mundane matters, and also believed in divination
(ability to predict the future).
• Omens were often inscribed in ancient Egypt and
Mesopotamia, as were records of major events
ANE - Religion
• The religions of the ancient Near East were mostly
polytheistic.
• There are broad practices that these religions often
hold in common:
– Purification and cleansing rituals
– Sacrifices (plant and animal sacrifice, libations, rarely, but
prominently in mythology, human sacrifice)
– Polytheism (Though Egypt and Greece were Henotheistic
societies)
– State (city-state)–sponsored religions (theocracy)
– Sacred prostitution
– Divination
– Magic (invocations, conjuring, and talismans)
ANE - Religion
• Identification of the Gods and Goddesses with
heavenly bodies—planets and stars, besides Sun
and Moon—and to assigning the seats of all the
deities in the Heavens is found in AssyroBabylonian religion.
• The personification of the Sun and the Moon—
was the first step.
• This eventuially led to identifying the planet
Venus with Ishtar, Jupiter with Marduk, Mars with
Nergal, Mercury with Nabu, and Saturn with
Ninurta.
ANE - Religion
ANE - Culture
ANE - Culture
ANE - Technological Developments
• You need to remember (you will see this later
in Greece and Rome) technology, and
inventions will often rely on the geographical
area.
• In Babylonia, an abundance of clay, and lack of
stone, led to greater use of mudbrick;
Babylonian temples were massive structures
of crude brick, supported by buttresses, the
rain being carried off by drains.
ANE - Technological Developments
• One such drain at Ur was made of lead. The
use of brick led to the early development of
the pilaster and column, and of frescoes and
enameled tiles.
• The walls were brilliantly colored, and
sometimes plated with zinc or gold, as well as
with tiles.
• Painted terra-cotta cones for torches were
also embedded in the plaster.
ANE - Technological Developments
• Tablets dating back to the Old Babylonian
period document the application of
mathematics to the variation in the length of
daylight over a solar year.
• Centuries of Babylonian observations of
celestial phenomena are recorded in the
series of cuneiform tablets known as the
'Enūma Anu Enlil'.
ANE - Technological Developments
• The oldest significant astronomical text that
we possess is Tablet 63 of 'Enūma Anu Enlil',
the Venus tablet of Ammi-saduqa, which lists
the first and last visible risings of Venus over a
period of about 21 years and is the earliest
evidence that the phenomena of a planet
were recognized as periodic.
• The oldest rectangular astrolabe dates back to
Babylonia c. 1100 BC.
ANE - Technological Developments
An astrolabe is an
elaborate inclinometer,
historically used by
astronomers,
navigators, and
astrologers. Its many
uses include locating
and predicting the
positions of the Sun,
Moon, planets, and
stars, determining local
time.
ANE - Technological Developments
Of course theirs was rectangular and probably looked more
like this:
ANE - Technological Developments
• The oldest Babylonian (i.e., Akkadian) texts on
medicine date back to the First Babylonian
Dynasty in the first half of the 2nd millennium
BC although the earliest medical prescriptions
appear in Sumerian during the Third Dynasty
of Ur period.
• Along with contemporary ancient Egyptian
medicine, the Babylonians introduced the
concepts of diagnosis, prognosis, physical
examination, and prescriptions.
ANE –
BIG IDEAS
• Formation of cities.
• Simplification and PUBLICATION of laws for
everyone to read (even if they were illiterate),
it is a big deal that the law is open to all.
• The environment is harsh and capricious,
therefore the religion, art, and culture is
equally harsh and capricious.