Transcript Civilization and Its Discontents HUM 2051: Civilization I Fall 2014 Dr. Perdigao August 20, 2014

Civilization and Its Discontents
HUM 2051: Civilization I
Fall 2014
Dr. Perdigao
August 20, 2014
Framing
• B.C./B.C.E.
“before the common era” or “before the Christian era”
• A.D.
Anno Domini (“in the year of the Lord”)
• Western culture—classical/pagan world of Greece and Rome and JudeoChristian world of Europe
• How we think of history—as a progressive narrative or as Homer does
with The Iliad (gold: silver: bronze: iron)
• Ancient Near East and the first civilizations
Unearthing
• Paleolithic (“Old Stone”) Age: 200,000-100,000 B.C.E.
• Neolithic (“New Stone”) Age: 10,000-4000 B.C.E.
• Bronze Age: 4000-1000 B.C.E.
• Hunting and food-gathering as foundations of society during Paleolithic
Age
• Toolmaking, control of fire, language—markers of earliest civilizations
• Language—development of culture and transmission from one
generation to the next (Perry 6)
• Mythic-religious ideas to explain the world
• Rituals, burial of the dead
Neolithic Age
• Neolithic Revolution
• Discovered farming, domesticated animals, established villages,
polished stone tools, made pottery, wove cloth; technological
advancements—pottery, potter’s wheel, sail (Perry 7)
• Food supply became more reliable, village life expanded, population
increased
• Religion became more structured
• More organized and complex society, beginnings of civilization; cities
developing in 3000 B.C.E. in Sumer
• The modern stone age family?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdX6fwfrULI
Civilizing
• Civilization: beginnings five thousand years ago in Near East
(Mesopotamia and Egypt) and then Far East (India and China) (Perry
8)
• Origins of civilization in cities that were larger and more complex in
political, economic, and social structure than Neolithic villages (Perry
8)
• With food supplied through trade with inhabitants of nearby villages,
urban dwellers became merchants, craftsmen, bureaucrats, and priests
(Perry 8)
• Invention of writing—preservation, organization, and expansion of
knowledge
• Organized governments developed, created laws and boundary lines
• Buildings, monuments
• Complex religious structures
Mesopotamian Civilization
• Mesopotamia (Greek: “land between the rivers”; present-day Iraq) as
first civilization (Perry 9)
• Sumerians first developed urban civilization
• 3000 B.C.E.: 12 independent city-states, with a city and countryside
• Development of cuneiform with pictograms and signs for numbers on
clay tablets; world’s first dictionary in translation from Sumerian to
Akkadian language
• Sumerians built brick houses, palaces, and temples; made bronze tools
and weapons, irrigation system; developed a monetary system; created
a system of trade, religious and political institutions, schools, literature,
art, codes of law, medicine, and a lunar calendar (Perry 10)
• Mesopotamians’ contributions in mathematics—multiplication and
division tables, cubes, cube routes, area of right-angle triangles and
rectangles, circle divided into 360 degrees, basis for Pythagorean
theorem and quadratic equations; beginnings of astronomy (Perry 14)
Mesopotamian Civilization
• Centrality of religion to Mesopotamian life
• Myths to explain origin of humans: creation stories
• Ziggurats constructed for temples
• Temple as religious and economic heart of the city (Perry 12)
• God as real owner of land and ruler of city
• Omnipresence of gods in daily life
• Kingship bestowed on man by the gods
• Hammurabi (1792-1750 BCE)—Babylon; control of Akkad and Sumer;
establishes code of laws unearthed in 1901-1902 by French archaeologists
(Perry 13); “eye for an eye” system of justice and retribution
• http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/Law508/CodeHammurabi-1.htm
Egyptian Civilization
• Western Civilization: Sumer, Mesopotamia (4000-3000 B.C.E.), Egypt,
northeastern Africa (3050 B.C.E.)
• Egypt in fertile river valley of the Nile; distinction from Mesopotamia
in sense of security from the environment (Perry 15)
• 2900 B.C.E.: Menes conquers Nile Delta and Lower Egypt, leading to
centralized rule, construction of pyramids
• 2686-2181 B.C.E.: Pyramid Age, Old Kingdom, royal power at its height
• Pharaoh as man and god, earthly embodiment of deity Horus (Perry 15)
• Decline of Old Kingdom as result of the nobles’ rise in status and
challenge to divine king’s authority
• 2181-2040 B.C.E.: First Intermediate Period, rival families competing for
the throne, civil wars and collapse of central authority (Perry 15)
Egyptian Civilization
• 2040-1786 B.C.E.: Middle Kingdom, reassertion of power of the kings
• 1786-1570 B.C.E.: Second Intermediate Period, nobles regain power and
weaken central authority; Hyksos invade Europe, rule for 100 years
• 1570-1085 B.C.E.: New Kingdom, Egyptians drive out Hyksos invaders
and rebuild empire
• Led to expansion of bureaucracy, creation of a professional army and
increased power of priests, acquisition of slaves
• Egyptian polytheism, belief in afterlife
• Egyptian Ma’at (justice, law, right, and truth, the “right order of nature”
(Perry 18)); Re (sun god); Isis (goddess of love and fertility); Thoth
(god of wisdom and inventor of writing); Nut (sky goddess)
• Egyptians demonstrated engineering skills in building pyramids; created
system of mathematics, geometry for measurement, Egyptian calendar
based on the sun (more accurate than the Babylonian lunar calendar);
identified illnesses
Egyptian Civilization
• Move toward monotheism by Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (c. 1369-1353
B.C.E.) who took the name Akhenaton (“Servant of Aton”) and moved
to holy city Akhetaten (“Horizon of Aton”) (Perry 20)
• Wife Nefertiti
• Successor Tutankhamen (1352-1344 B.C.E.) returned to Thebes
• Question if Akhenaton helped to push religious thought into new
direction and if his actions had an influence on Moses who led the
Israelites out of Egypt (Perry 20)
Empire Builders
• Near Eastern history marked by international empires, intermingling of
traditions and cultures
• Migration of Indo-Europeans: Hurrians; Kassites; Hittites
• Small nations asserting sovereignty: Phoenicians (descendants of
Canaanites, devised first alphabet which was later added to by the
Greeks and became the phonetic alphabet), Aramaeans, Hebrews
• Assyria, 9th century B.C.E., empire building, but spread culture of past,
Mesopotamia’s literature, religion, art, maintained a library; “copied and
edited the literary works of Babylonia, adopted the old Sumerian gods,
and used Mesopotamian art forms” (Perry 23)
• Destruction of Assyrian power, rise of Chaldean, Neo-Babylonian
Empire; under Nebuchadnezzar (ruled 604-562 BCE) who rebuilt
Babylon
• After Nebuchadnezzar’s death, civil war, Persia gains power under
Cyrus the Great and his son Cambyses (Perry 25)
• Aramaic emerges as uniform language, letters based on Phoenician
alphabet (Perry 26)
Empire Builders
• Persian empire—effective systems of communication, transportation,
money; preservation of cultural traditions of the Near East (Perry 26)
• Persia “unified the nations of the Near East into a world-state, headed
by a divinely appointed king, and synthesized the region’s cultural
traditions” (Perry 26).
Connecting Civilizations
• Centrality of religion present throughout the ancient Near East
• Mesopotamian kings—not gods but selected by gods, difference from
Egyptian pharaohs as both man and god
• Mythopoeic (mythmaking) view of the world, shared by
Mesopotamians and Egyptians (Perry 26-27)
• Writing: 3500 B.C.E.—Sumer: cuneiform; Egypt: hieroglyphics (perhaps
learned from Sumerians)
• Built irrigation works and cities, organized governments, began work in
astronomy, mathematics, architecture, engineering, conducted
international trade, established institutions (Perry 28)
Gilgamesh
• Epic of Gilgamesh (ca. 2500-1500 B.C.E.)
• One of the earliest works of literature, first great heroic narrative
• Written in cuneiform
• Found in 1844, cuneiform language deciphered in 1857, text discovered as
story of the Flood from British Museum in 1872 and introduced
• Sumerian legend, poems, later Akkadian version
• Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, historical figure (2700 B.C.E.), written
versions 2100 B.C.E. but oral versions precede them, put into single
work by a Babylonian author around 1600 B.C.E.
• 12 clay tablets
• Book XI, story of the Flood
• Other stories: Enkidu, friend who later dies, leads Gilgamesh to
contemplate life and quest for immortality; prologue shows lessons
learned
Contextualizing Gilgamesh
• Transformation from oppressive ruler to one changed by experience of
loss of friend and knowledge of death (Lawall 17)
• Questioning of heroic ideal, connection to Achilles