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I.
Before Civilization
A. Introduction
The first pre-humans appeared as early as five million years ago. They were toolmakers and
survived by hunting and gathering. The first immediate ancestors of man, Homo sapiens, appeared
over a hundred thousand years ago. One of the earliest varieties of Homo sapiens was Neanderthal
man. Although closely related in structure and culture to modern man, Neanderthal man
mysteriously disappeared about forty thousand years ago. Our immediate ancestors were Homo
sapiens sapiens. All current races are descended from this subspecies. Early varieties of Homo
sapiens sapiens lived as small bands of hunter-gatherers.
B.
Dominance of Culture
The Homo sapiens sapien’s original material culture (everything about human not inherited through
biology) consisted of the production of stone and bone tools. By the late Paleolithic period (35,00010,000 B.C.E.), early humans had produced art and appear to have formulated religious practices
related to fertility and fecundity in the natural world around them. One of the best examples of cave
painting is at Tassili-n-Ajjer in Algeria. In contains a painted record of life dating from 6000 B.C.E. to
the time of Jesus.
Around 10,000 B.C.E., hunter-gatherers residing in the Middle East began to become more
sedentary. They stopped following the herds of wild animals and began to exploit the resources of a
single area more completely. The transition to sedentary communities was most prominent along the
shores of the Mediterranean and the foothills of the Zagros Mountains. Sedentary life permitted more
rapid population growth and created a demand for greater food supplies. The demand for a more
intense exploitation of the environment led to domestication of animals and cereal agriculture.
C.
Social Organization, Agriculture, and Religion
Sedentary agricultural societies required more formal political organization in order to exploit the
environment effectively. Religious rites of various types also became more important in agricultural
societies.
II.
Mesopotamia: Between the Two Rivers
A. Introduction
Mesopotamia was not naturally well-suited to agriculture. Only the southern portions of the land
between the Tigris and Euphrates—the area called Sumeria—were fertile, and limited rainfall
necessitated irrigation. In order to ensure protection against neighboring nomadic peoples and make
better use of the river plains, villages concentrated into larger urban centers. Urban development
became pronounced around 3000 B.C.E.
B.
The Ramparts of Uruk
The cities of Mesopotamia produced new social, political, and cultural systems. Religious priesthoods
and military leaders created political and social elites. Beneath the elites were slaves, peasants who
worked the land belonging to the elites, skilled workers who served the temple complexes, and free
landowners. The Mesopotamian city-state also contained a large number of slave women who served
as laborers in the textile industries. Although the overall status of free women was somewhat better,
the Mesopotamian city-state established the male dominance pattern in households.
C.
Tools: Technology and Writing
Mesopotamian city-states allowed economic specialization and technological advance. Innovations
were made in irrigation, transportation on land and sea, pottery, and metalworking. Writing was also
developed in Mesopotamia. As early as 3500 B.C.E. administrators were using simple drawings called
pictographs made with a wedge on a clay tablet to keep records. Writing permitted greater
centralization and control, enabled communication throughout the administrative units, allowed the
management of commerce, and recorded the achievements of the political elites.
D.
Gods and Mortals in Mesopotamia
Mesopotamians believed in many gods that looked and acted like people. There were both greater
and lesser gods. The greatest divinities were those of the sky, air, and rivers. Temple complexes
called ziggurat dominated both the landscape and the economy of Mesopotamian city-states.
Although the people sought a positive relationship with the gods through special rituals and
donations in order to secure their protection and aid in this world, Mesopotamian religion did not
offer hope of an afterlife.
E.
Sargon and Mesopotamian Expansion
Mesopotamia was divided into warring city-states until about 2300 B.C.E. The first ruler to unify the
southern portion of Mesopotamia was Sargon of Akkad. Sargon conquered the other major cities and
appointed his officials to govern them. He also broke the power of the local temple complexes by
redistributing their lands and wealth among his followers. Sargon’s unification of Sumeria was a
temporary accomplishment of a brilliant commander and ruler. His empire did not long survive him.
III.
The Gift of the Nile
A. Introduction
The Nile River valley that gave rise to Egyptian civilization was capable of supporting a dense
population. Unlike Mesopotamia, the Nile ecology was more easily converted to sedentary agriculture
and required little human intervention to produce crops. The Nile valley was also protected along its
length by deserts; thus its agricultural settlements did not require walls for defense. Agricultural
villages first appeared in the Nile valley about 4000 B.C.E. The agricultural communities were at first
divided politically into two halves: northern or Lower Egypt near the Nile delta and southern or
Upper Egypt.
B.
Tending the Cattle of God
Around 3150 B.C.E. the ruler or pharaoh of Upper Egypt, Narmer, united the two halves and
established a single capital at Memphis. Old Kingdom Egypt lasted from around 2770-2200 B.C.E.
The king or pharaoh was a living god who was responsible for the flooding of the Nile and the
preservation of ma’at, the harmony of the universe. Old Kingdom Egypt, protected by its
surrounding deserts, was less militarized than Mesopotamia. The kings, known as pharaohs were
viewed as divine administrators. The royal administration was peopled by priests and trained
bureaucrats that governed agriculture, allocated labor to public works, and managed the
organization of trade. Local governors administered local districts called nomes. Although Egyptian
women were allowed to own property and engage in business, they were not educated and therefore
were not allowed into the bureaucracy. Most important in the religious life of the Old Kingdom were
the cults of the dead pharaohs. King Zoser, the first ruler of the Old Kingdom, began the practice of
building pyramids surrounded by temples to serve the spirits of departed rulers. The first pyramids
was built at Sakkara. These burial complexes became the focus of public works and employing
thousands of laborers.
C.
Democratization of the Afterlife
By 2200 B.C.E. the unified Old Kingdom fragmented and royal authority disappeared. Provincial
governors exercised political authority for nearly two hundred years. Temple priesthoods and
religious foundations devoted to cults of the dead began to receive greater and greater amounts of
land and wealth to support their devotion to the departed spirits. Eventually, the practice of creating
shrines to the dead spread beyond the royal family to other members of the royal administration and
then gradually to all men who could afford the costs of embalming and burial. After 200 years of
political fragmentation the governor of Thebes, a city in Upper Egypt, restored the unified
government and established the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (around 2050-1786 B.C.E.). There was
less distance between the elites and the common population in the Middle Kingdom. The
administration was opened to all men of talent, including men born outside of Egypt. Foreign
invaders from Palestine, the Hyksos, brought the Middle Kingdom to a close, although the foreign
rulers adopted the customs of the defeated Egyptians. The Hyksos were also responsible for bringing
new military technology—the horse driven war chariot and new bronze swords—into Egypt.
D.
The Egyptian Empire
The Theban ruler Ahmose I expelled the Hyksos and initiated the New Kingdom (around 1560-1087
B.C.E.). The rulers of the New Kingdom extended Egyptian control beyond the Nile valley for the first
time. Under Thutmose I (1506-1494 B.C.E.), Egyptian authority ran from Nubia in the south to the
borders of Mesopotamia in the north. The expanded frontiers of Egypt brought the Nile valley
civilization into contact with the other civilizations of the Middle East and the Mediterranean.
E.
Religious and Royal Consolidation Under Akhenaten
Egyptian politics was often a precarious balance between the kings and the priesthoods of the
religious cults. During the New Kingdom, King Amenhotep IV (1364-1347 B.C.E.) attempted to
curtail the authority of the traditional religious cults by creating a new deity, the sun-disk god Aten.
Amenhotep moved to a new capital dedicated to Aten and changed his name to Akhenaten in honor
of the new god. The radical religious reform did not outlive Akhenaten. The next pharaoh,
Tutankhamen, restored the traditional cults and festivals. With the restoration of the ancient religion
came the return of the political struggle between the kings and the priesthoods. King Ramses II
(1289-1224 B.C.E.) temporarily stopped the advance of the Hittites into Egypt, but the New
Kingdom disintegrated shortly thereafter. The internal collapse of the Egyptians was mirrored in the
fall of other centers of civilization at the same time.