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Cradles of Civilisation
Ancient-history
Period Ancient History
Dates 3360 BC to 539 BC
Chronology
Preceded by
None
Followed by
Foundation of Classical Antiquity
Civilization is a natural and inevitable consequence -- whether good or evil I am not prepared to state.

–Robert E. Howard

The Cradles of Civilization is the first major chronological division of world history, and lasted from about 3360 BC until 539 BC. It began with the end of prehistory, when a particular mix of human potential and natural factors came together to make possible a new order of life; the earliest civilization known to us, that of Sumer. It then ended with the appearance of the classical world, comprising the interlocking civilizations of Classical Persia and the Greco-Roman world. Although "classical antiquity" is a wholly Eurocentric concept, India and China also crossed an important boundary somewhere in the middle of the first millennia BC; empires of unprecedented size and complexity - such as Han China, Maurya and Gupta India - that set standards for later times.

Civilization has been one of the great accelerators of mankind’s unique power to produce change. It began, according to most historians, at least seven times; meaning that they can identified seven ancient civilizations which emerged independently, or with a minimum of outside stimulus. It will be helpful to set out a rough chronology. We begin with the first recognizable civilization, Sumer in Mesopotamia (now part of modern-day Iraq), where civilized life is observable sometime around 3360 BC. It is credited with a great many "firsts", including the first true cities, the first writing system and literature, the first wheeled vehicles, and even the first recipe for beer. The next example is Ancient Egypt about 3100 BC, whose rich physical remains have fascinated men’s minds and stirred their imaginations ever since. Then, further east and perhaps in 2600 BC, another civilization has appeared along the length of the Indus River (straddling the present India–Pakistan border), which was to some degree literate. Another marker in the Near East is Minoan Crete from 1900 BC, after which, this part of the world was already a coherent system of complex cultures in interplay with one another. China’s first civilization may have started later, perhaps around 1600 BC, but it left a startling legacy; from tiny beginnings to the subcontinent of today, an uninterrupted thread runs through its entire history, making for arguably the longest-lasting complex civilization on earth. Once we are past that date, only the examples in the Americas - Mesoamerica around 1200 BC and Peru in 900 BC - are sufficiently isolated for stimulus or inheritance not to be a big part of explaining the appearance of new civilizations. We should note, for clarity's sake, that assigning dates to anything that happened before, say, Hammurabi of Babylon (d. 1750 BC), has an error factor of at very least fifty years.

About civilizations it is very difficult to generalize. Clearly, a favorable geographical setting was essential, after-all, everything in antiquity rested on an agricultural surplus. Many appeared on great river valleys, which provided fertile soil, and easy irrigation. This was the case with Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China. But civilizations have also arisen away from river valleys; on the island of Crete, on the tropical coast of Mexico, in the highlands of Peru, the rugged terrain of Hittite Anatolia (the major part of modern Turkey), and, later, on mainland Greece. Other factors were just as important: the capacity of the peoples to work together to master their environment, to rise to a challenge, or to exploit an advantage. In the Aegean, for example, the multitude of islands, which made for short sea-crossings and easy trade, seems to have been crucial. It is easier to say something about common characteristics of early civilization than about the way it happened. One historian had listed eleven: an urban way of life; the concentration of surplus; full-time specialists not engaged in agriculture; formalized social hierarchies; state-level organization; extensive trading networks, monumental architecture; a distinct art style; writing and recording information; developments in technology; and organized religion (some still very important today such as Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Jainism, Confucianism, and Daoism), Again, no absolute and universal statements are possible; civilizations have existed without writing and without the wheel. All of these early civilizations turned out very differently. Some of them raced ahead to lasting achievement, while others others declined and disappeared, even if after spectacular flowerings. Nonetheless, together they determined much of the cultural ground-plan of the world we still inhabit.

History[]

The Potential for Civilization[]

Adam s Creation Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michelangelo

In the beginning ...

When does history begin? Like many seemingly basic questions, the answer soon turns-out to be complicated. There are no neat dividing lines in history. We could try to reconstruct the lost world of nomadic hunter-gatherers, following the big game herds across the plains. We could go back further still, to trace the chain of human evolution back to the appearance of Homo sapiens, a recognizably modern human, however raw in form; or even to the origins of photosynthetic cells which lie at the start of life itself. Yet this is not "history". Common sense helps here: history is the story of mankind, of what it has done, suffered or enjoyed. The historian hopes not just to explain what people did, but in some measure why and how they did it. This suggests that prehistory - the time before people began to tell and write stories about themselves - is the wrong starting place. Whatever archaeologists conclude about fossilized bones, stone tools, and cave paintings, no story emerges. There are no kings, no heroes, and no wives in prehistory. Stripped of personality, the historian is forced to resort to hugely general statements about “human behavior”. Other specialists are better equipped to dig into the murk of the very distant past. Archaeologists can unearth the remnants of the earliest sedentary villages, built of rock and mammoth bones; anthropologists can speculate about the lives of the villagers. The historian’s task is different: to give flesh and spirit to abstract assertions about past.

Hominids were primates with an average height of three or four feet. Their brains were only one-third the size of the modern human brain, which limited cognitive ability. Nonetheless, they distinguished themselves by using primitive tools such as flints to hunt and gather. their food. The earliest evidence is a group of fossilized animal bones bearing marks from stone tools which was found in 2010 in the Lower Awash Valley in Ethiopia and is now believed to be 3.4 million years old. During the next phase, some of these hominids began to develop larger brains. This gave them the ability to communicate verbally with one another-for example, to coordinate an attack on prey or form a community that would share the security and well-being of their offspring. One of the earliest groups of these humans, Homo Erectus, first appeared in Africa some 1.9 million years ago. This species enjoyed a particular advantage in that they could walk upright, leaving their hands free to wield tools and weapons and to gather foodstuffs. While the men were focused on the hunt, the women became adept to scouring the fields for wild cereals and fruits, including almonds, acorns, and pistachios, sometimes covering large distances in order to find fresh sources of food. In the process, these early humans learned to develop more sophisticated tools, such as sharpened stones to dig out plants and roots and carve meat from animal carcasses. This greater access to higher nutrients, including proteins may have accelerated brain development, which in turn allowed them to create better tools. Various skeletons have been found of prey such as deer, gazelles, and wild boar that appear to have been felled with arrows or sharpened stone blades. Such tools also allowed these early humans to remove the hides of their prey to make clothing, which could be stitched together with wooden needles or spun flax. Finally, between 300,000 and 200,000 BC, Homo Sapiens began to appear almost simultaneously in Africa and Asia. These early humans had bigger brains than other humanoids, which gave them a critical edge with their rivals in the hunt for wild animals, the foraging of foods, and the preservation of fire. They also developed a more complex lifestyle such as burying their dead according to set rituals; one example found in the Wedi el-Mughara Caves on Mount Carmel, Israel.

Agricultural-scene-egypt

It is not hard to imagine a strong human impulse to abandon the pursuit of great game, and to stay, instead, in a place where edible plants grow in sufficient profusion. From encouraging plants, by weeding or perhaps watering in a dry spell, it is a small step to collecting seeds and planting them in a protected spot where they will have a better chance of growing. In such circumstances, there is also a strong incentive to ensure that animals remain nearby as a supply of food. From herding animals, it is a small step to penning them in enclosures.

The waning of the last Ice Age, about 11,700 years ago, is the immediate prelude to history. Within the next five thousand years or so a succession of momentous changes took place, of which, unquestionably, the most important was the birth of agriculture. The importance of this was so great that it has been aptly called the Neolithic Revolution. Agriculture - the cultivation of crops and the practice of animal husbandry - truly revolutionized the conditions of human existence. In terms of population growth alone, a huge acceleration became possible. An assured, or virtually assured, food supply meant settlements of new solidity; and true villages could appear. Specialists not engaged in food production could be tolerated, while they practiced their own skills; weaving, leather-working, carpentry, masonry, and pottery. It also provided for a priestly class, who elaborated more complex ritual practices and ideas which lie at the roots of religion. Agriculture arose independently in more than one place and in different forms. It has been claimed that the earliest instance, based on the cultivation of primitive forms of rise and millet, occurred in South-East Asia, somewhere about 11,000 years ago. Yet the accident of surviving evidence and the direction of scholarly effort have meant that much more is known about early agriculture in the region later called the "Fertile Crescent"; this is the arc of territory running northwards from Egypt through the Levant (modern Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon), up to Anatolia (the major part of modern Turkey), and then south to enclose the two river valleys of Mesopotamia (Iraq, Kuwait, and western portions of Iran). Much of it now looks very different from the same area’s lush vegetation when the climate was at its best, six thousand years ago. Emmer, a wild wheat-like cereal, then grew in the Jordan valley, and a wild barley in southern Turkey; Egypt enjoyed enough rainfall for the hunting of big game well into historical times, and elephants were still to be found in Syrian forests in 1000 BC. The Neolithic site at Çatal Hüyük in southern Anatolia provides a good example of the transition to agriculture. Around 11,000 years ago, people here were hunter-gatherers; hunting or trapping game, together with foraging wild edible plants, especially as cereals, peas, lentils, nuts, and fruit. These were abundant enough to support a small permanent village; population pressure may well have stimulated attempts to extend food production. In the upper levels of the site, it becomes apparent that the people of Çatal Hüyük were honing skills in agriculture. Digging sticks and other tools have been found, with which they gathered seeds to be planted in a protected spot; and encouraged them by weeding or watering in a dry spell. They learned, based on trial and error, to select seeds in order to get crops which had desirable qualities, such as larger edible parts, drought resistance, or kernels that ripened all at one time (which made harvesting easier). Through selective breeding, certain crops became domesticated, modified to serve human needs. By 8000 BC, if not earlier, many villages across the Fertile Crescent were cultivating crops. At roughly the same time, people also domesticated animals. The hunter is dependent on the luck-of-the-chase; the herdsman has a living larder always at hand. The first traces of domesticated sheep and goats comes from northern Iraq, in about 8000 BC. From their systematic exploitation for meat and skin would follow the control of their breeding and other possibilities. The sheering of sheep for wool; the taking of milk launched dairying; the use of animal manure as fertilizer. Riding and the use of animals for traction would come later. So would domesticated poultry. Neolithic villages increasingly included spaces for domesticated animals as well as storage places for crops.

Ancient-jerycho

For as long as we know there has been at Jericho a never-failing spring that feeds what is still today a sizeable oasis. No doubt it explains why people have lived there almost continuously for more than eleven-thousand-years. Before 8000 BC, Jericho had grown into a considerable place, covering ten acres; its population perhaps numbered two or three thousand. Circular dwellings, about sixteen feet across, were built of clay and straw bricks, baked hard in the sun.

At Jericho, a site only slightly younger than Çatal Hüyük, brick building was going on before 6000 BC. Clay, mixed with straw, molded, and baked hard in the sun, became the foundations of their houses. There were great water tanks which suggest provision for big irrigation needs, and a massive stone tower which was part of elaborate defenses long kept in repair. Clearly, the inhabitants thought they had something worth defending; they had property. Jericho was a considerable place; its population may have numbered two or three thousand. It is a long time before we can discern much of the social organization of early agricultural communities. It seems likely that distinctions of role multiplied, and new collective disciplines had to be accepted. It certainly seems likely that. Social hierarchies became more marked; grave goods show that certain people were buried with significant amounts of jewelry and other fancy goods. We may even speculate that the vulnerability of the agricultural communities, tied to their areas of cultivation, encouraged mankind’s oldest sport (after hunting); warfare. The possibility of material and human prizes must have made raids and conquest tempting. Political power may have its dim roots in the need to organize protection for crops and stock from human predators. In the long run, metallurgy changed things as much as did agriculture; though it was in the very long run. Copper was the first widely-used metal. At some time after 7000 BC, it was being hammered into shape without heating at Çatal Hüyük. Once the technique of blending copper with tin to produce bronze was discovered, soon after 3,500 BC, a metal was available which was both relatively easy to cast and retained a much better cutting-edge. On bronze much was to be built. Its military value springs to the eye, but it had just as much impact when turned into agricultural tools. Bronze-using people could till soils which had remained impervious to wood, bone, or flint; especially when the plough (invented around 3000 BC) brought animal muscle-power to the assistance of humans. Turning heavy soil and digging deep began to be possible only when iron tools became common. Metallurgy also gave new importance of ore-bearing areas, and added a new twist to trade and to trade-routes. It is already clear that, by the fourth century BC, there existed in at least a few areas of the world all the essential constituents of civilized life, Civilization was to bring faster development in every field; in the technical control of environment, in the changing of social organization, in the growth of population, in the accumulation of wealth, in the elaboration of a mental sophistication.

Civilization in Mesopotamia[]

City-states-of-Sumer

The best case for the first appearance of something which is recognizably civilization has been made by Sumer, an ancient name for the southern part of Mesopotamia; the seven-hundred mile long land formed by the two river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. This end of the Fertile Crescent was thickly studded with agricultural villages in Neolithic times, where centuries of drainage from up-country and annual flooding had built-up a soil of wonderful richness. It must have always been much easier to grow crops here than elsewhere. Yet such a setting was a challenge, as well as an opportunity. The Tigris and (less so) the Euphrates were prone to sudden and violent flooding. The marshy, low-lying land of the delta had to be raised above flood level by banking and ditching, and canals had to be built to carry water away. Once the floods subsided, Sumer received almost no rainfall, and irrigation was necessary for the best agricultural results; perhaps even any agriculture at all. The drainage and irrigation system could be managed properly only if managed collectively. This suggests a new complexity in the way men lived together. As the population rose, more marshland was taken to grow food. Sooner or later, men of different villages would have come face to face with each other, intent on reclaiming the same land. There was a choice: to fight or to cooperate. Each meant further collective organization; to band together in bigger units for self-protection or control of the environment. One physical result was the town, mud-walled at first to keep out floods and enemies. It was logical for the local deity’s cult center to be the place chosen; and its chief priest became the ruler of his own little theocratic state competing with others. Something like this – we cannot know what – explains the difference between Lower Mesopotamia. and the other areas of the Fertile Crescent in the fourth millennia BC. Gathered around the hearth after dark, these communities were almost certainly aware of themselves as a meaningful unit against a chaotic and unfriendly background. The Near East for much of ancient times was a great confusion of peoples, moving about for reasons we often do not understand. By the fourth millennium BC, "Semitic" language speakers had already begun to wander-up from the Arabian peninsula to finish in Mesopotamia; their pressure grew until, by 2500 BC, they were well-established in central Mesopotamia, as well as further west in the Levant. Probably, "Caucasian" peoples (a confusing term which here refers to those originally from the Caucasus Mountains) had also entered on the scene, pushing into the higher lands that enclosed Mesopotamia from the north-east. No doubt the stimulating effect of different cultures upon one another is much of the story of the appearance of the first observable civilization.

Early-sumer-writing

A clay tablet with hieroglyphs and early Cuneiform writing. The Sumerians are credited with developing the earliest known writing system, possibly the only invention of comparable importance to the invention of agriculture.

Sumerian Civilisation (3300-2000 BC) had deep roots. One of its cult centre, at a place called Eridu, probably originated around 5400 BC. A temple there grew steadily into historic times, and may have provided the original model for Sumerian monumental architecture. By about 3300 BC, the first true cities had arisen across Lower Mesopotamia. A dozen or so separate city-states, each comprising of a walled city and its surrounding villages and land, each worshipping its own deity whose temple was the central structure, each jostling with each other for power: Eridu, Ur, Uruk (called Erech in the Bible), Nippur, Adab, Lagash, Kish, and more. One city alone is said to have had thirty-six thousand males. Pottery provides one of the first clues that something culturally important was going on. The so-called Uruk pots are often duller, less decorative than earlier examples. They were, in fact, mass-produced, made by specialized craftsmen on a potters-wheel. It is with this change that the story of Sumerian civilization can conveniently be begun. Almost at the very beginning, in about 3200 BC, came the invention of writing, perhaps the most useful tool comparable to agriculture in human history. The earliest writings followed the form of pictographs, or simplified pictures, inscribed on clay tablets with a reed stalk and then hardened in the sun. The surviving examples can be seen to be economic transactions; list of goods for trade, or offerings to the temple in return for divine favour. Trade was very important in Sumerian society. Southern Mesopotamia had few natural resources to speak of; no stone, no metals, and no wood (except for palm trees, which makes for a third-rate building material). Even in Neolithic times, the region must have obtained from elsewhere the flint and obsidian it needed for the first agricultural tools. Clearly a remarkably wide-ranging network of trade was in the background; copper from Anatolia; gold from Iran; incense and resins from Yemen; the most prized wood, cedar, from Lebanon; and lapis lazuli (a blue gemstone) from places as far away as Afghanistan. Before 2000 BC, Mesopotamia would be obtaining goods, though probably indirectly, from the Indus Valley. As writing develops, a new wedge-shapes stylus was introduced, with all signs made-up of combinations of the same basic wedge shape; this made writing quicker and easier. At this stage, many pictographs began to lose their original function, and came to be used for their phonetic value. This style of writing has been given the name Cuneiform Script; from the Latin word Cuneus ("wedge"). A fair amount is therefore known about the Sumerian language. A few of its words have even survived to the this day; among them is the origin form of the word "alcohol". The invention of writing opens more of the past to the historian. This is because writing preserves literature. The oldest story in the world is the Epic of Gilgamesh. It relates the earthly exploits of the eponymous Gilgamesh, who was probably a historic king of Uruk, beneath the fancy dress of supernatural adversaries. There is, for example, an ideal creature of nature, the wild-man Enkidu, created by the gods as a rival to the cultured, city-bred king; the pair, in the end, become friends, though the outcome for Enkidu is civilized life, and the loss of his happy association with the nature. To modern readers, the most striking part may be the story of a great flood, which washed away mankind, except for a favoured family who survive by building a boat; a likely source for the Bible story of Noah. A sombre mood dominates the Epic. Gilgamesh does great things, but his relentless quest to assert himself against the gods ultimately ends in failure; he too must die. Apart from this mood, there is much information about the religious temperament of ancient Mesopotamia in the Epic. Originally, each city had its own god, more or less personifying natural forces such as wind, rain, and storm. They were, in the end, organized into a kind of pantheon, which probably reflected political relations between the associated cities. At the top was the chief god Enlil, and the patron deity of the city of Nippur, who is said to have separated heaven from earth, thus making the world habitable. No other ancient society devoted so much of its collective resources to religion; except perhaps the Egyptians. By the end of their history as an independent civilization, some Sumerian cities had very big temples indeed; ziggurats, step-pyramid-like structures with a sanctuary at the top. The most impressive, the Great Ziggurat of Ur (remembered in the Bible as the Tower of Babel), measured 210 feet in length, 150 feet in width, and over 100 feet in height. It has been suggested that this was because no other ancient society left men feeling so utterly dependent on the will-of-the-gods. Lower Mesopotamia must always have had much trouble with flooding, which would undoubtedly put a heavy strain on the fragile system of irrigation on which its prosperity depended. The Sumerians saw themselves as a people created to labour for the gods; to conquer the forces-of-chaos and bring order to the world. In return, the gods would grant protection and length of days, but nothing more. They can hardly have derived much comfort from their beliefs; they seem to have seen the afterlife as a gloomy, sad netherworld. It was, "The house where they sit in darkness, where dust is their food and clay their bread, they are clothed like birds with feathers for garments, over bolt and door lie silence". In it lies the origin of the later notions of Hell. This hints at the importance of the diffusion of Sumerian ideas long after the focus of history has moved away from southern Mesopotamia. The Sumerians laid the foundations of mathematics, using a sexagesimal counting system which has passed on to us our circle of 360 degrees and our hour of sixty minutes. We first encounter the notion of a seven-day week in the Gilgamesh epic. They were among the first astronomers, mapping the stars into sets of constellations, many of which survived in the zodiac. And they left the world innumerable other technological and cultural "firsts", from the first codified law to the first recipe for beer.

Ancient-sumer

The history of Sumer spans more than thirteen hundred years. Scholars have recovered much of the story to this huge stretch of time, though much is still debated, and even its dating is only approximate. The first Sumerian ruler (probably a king-priest as much as a warrior-leader) whose deeds are recorded was a man called Etana of Kish, who may have come to the throne as early as 3000 BC. The cities of Lower Mesopotamia were independent. But the northern city of Kish lay at the narrowest point between the Tigris and Euphrates, a position which simply cried out for some exercise of hegemony. A huge proportion of trade, after all, went up and down the two rivers. By the end of his reign, Etana had made Kish the most powerful city on the plain, by collecting tribute from the traffic passing by the city; he also extended his protection (and control) over the sacred city of Nippur, where the shrines of the chief god Enlil stood. After its early supremacy, Kish gradually declined, but retained a strong symbolic significance; other cities would sometimes claim the title “king of Kish” as though it was an honorary title. Thereafter, the narrative content for hundreds of years is a matter of constant war between city-states for ascendancy. Fortified cities, increased use of bronze weaponry, and the application of the wheel to military technology in clumsy four-wheeled chariots, are some of the evidence of this. Towards the middle of this period, a more modern concept of kingship, distinct from the temple establishment, began to establish itself with some success. They probably began as military leaders appointed by cities to command their forces, who refused to give-up power when the emergency which called them forth had passed. The evidence is physically apparent in the appearance of palaces beside the temples in the Sumerian cities. A military-minded king of Lagash named Eannatum, who ruled around 2450 BC, made the most ambitious effort yet to bring the scattered cities of Sumer under his control. We know much more about Eannatum than any other Sumerian king because he was greatly inclined to inscriptions and left behind him one of the most famous monuments of Sumer, the Stele of Vultures, carve to celebrate his victories. This stone slab shows an advanced state of warfare, with disciplined infantry, armed identically, arranged in what resembles a phalanx formation. After a lifetime of war, Eannatum apparently used this well-organised to reduce to tribute Umma (Lagash's arch rival), and practically every other city on the Sumerian plain. He also subdued the troublesome Elamites, a people who had been living in their own small cities, just east of the Persian Gulf, for almost as long as Sumerians. Collecting tribute is one thing though, and actual conquest another. The difficulty of moving armies may have dissuaded the king of Lagash from actually extending imperial rule over other cities. The first of a long line of empire-builders would come from another nation entirely.

Sargon-I

A bronze sculpted head which is presumed to be Sargon. If it is, it is one of the first royal portraits.

Sargon of Akkad (d. 2279 BC) was of Semitic stock rather than Sumerian. His people had mingled with Sumerians on the Mesopotamian plain for hundreds of years, especially in the north. The birth legend of Sargon may seem familiar to those versed in the Bible story of the Prophet Moses. The claim is that he was the secret child of a priestess, who set him in a basket, and cast him off into a river; a gardener at the palace of Kish found him and raised him as his own. Like Moses, this foundling child rose to high position, becoming cup-bearer to Ur-Zababa of Kish; an ancient cup-bearer was more than a mere servant, but an influential person at court, perhaps even the king's right-hand-man. While Sargon was serving in Kish, an ambitious ruler named Lugalzaggesi ascended to the throne in Umma. He first conquered Uruk, where he re-established his new capital, before leading the final victory of Umma in a three-generation-long rivalry with Lagash Encouraged by his victories, he spent twenty years expanding his realm, and establishing the first reliably documented kingdom in Sumer. Finally, Lugalzaggesi turned his eye towards Kish. A fragmentary account tells us what happened then. In the face of the coming attack, Ur-Zababa sank deeper and deeper into paranoia. Something in his cup-bearer's bearing had made him wonder if he was in fact on his side. So he sent Sargon to Lugalzaggesi with a message, ostensibly seeking peace terms. Instead, the message asked his enemy to kill the bearer. This part of the story may be apocryphal; it gave Sargon a justification to utimately usurp the throne. For whatever reason, Lugalzaggesi declined the request and marched triumphantly on Kish, forcing Ur-Zababa to flee. While Lugalzaggesi was revelling in his victory in the north, Sargon gathered an army of his own (perhaps from Ur-Zababa's shattered forces), marched south towards Uruk, and took the city by surprise. Immediately, Lugazaggesi headed home to meet this new threat to his power, only to be defeated. With both Ur-Zababa and Lugalzagesi out of the way, Sargon was unstoppable, blowing through all remaining Sumerian resistance. The speed of his conquest probably reflects a combination of his own strength and Sumerian weakness. In Sargon, there is something of a climax to early militarism. It was boasted that he had 5,400 soldiers eating before him in his palace; perhaps the first standing army. This army made heavy use of a new weapon, the composite bow made of strips of wood and horn. In addition, the Sumerians were probably crippled by strife within their cities. As in every age up to our own, Sumerian cities suffered from a growing resentment of the lower classes for the wealthy elite. Tales of Sargon's humble origins may reveal a successful appeal to the downtrodden members of Sumerian society. Whatever the reason, the outcome was something new. Sargon did what no Sumerian king had yet done successfully; he turned a loose collection of cities into an empire. As part of his strategy for ruling far-flung cities, Sargon built a new capital, Akkad; its location had never been found, but most attention has focused on an area a little north of Kish, near present-day Baghdad. From this position, he could control river traffic. Unlike his predecessors, Sargon was willing to run roughshod over the native elite. When he took over a city, it became an Akkadian stronghold, staffed with Akkadian officials, and garrisoned with Akkadian troops. Most notably, he appointed his own daughter, Enheduanna, as high priestess of Ur in the far south, and, through her, seems to have been able to manipulate religious, political, and cultural affairs from afar; Enheduanna is famous in her own right as the world's first author known by name. In this kingdom, the Sumerians rapidly found themselves living as foreigners in their own cities. Sargon’s followers were Semites from the northern plain; their speech and customs were unlike those of the southern Sumerians. They took over from its culture what they wanted as they imposed themselves; Cuneiform Script was adapted to meet the needs of a Semitic language, demonstrating the splendid flexibility of the writing system. With Sumer under his control, Sargon set out on campaign after campaign, creating an empire that reached westwards as far as the Mediterranean coast, eastward over Elam, and as far north as the city of Purushanda, well into Anatolia. Keeping control of this vast expanse of land required a bureaucracy far beyond anything developed to this point in Sumer.

Great-Ziggurat-of-Ur

Drawing of the Great Ziggurat of Ur, based on archaeological excavations and textual evidence. Sadly for modern tourists, an abundance of clay, and a lack of stone, meant the structure was made entirely of sun-dried mud brick, so erosion has reduced the remains to a fraction of its original height.

The Akkadian hegemony was relatively short, a century or so. Under Sargon’s great-grandson, the empire began to disintegrate and collapse in the face of invading barbarians called the Gutians, down from the Zagros Mountains to the east of the Tigris. Inscriptions lament the fall of Akkad itself, sometime around 2150 BC; the city was destroyed so thoroughly that its remains have never been found. For half-a-century, the Gutian horde ranged across the entire Mesopotamian plain. They left little behind them to suggest that they had developed a culture of their own: no inscriptions, no record-keeping, no cut centres. But the old Sumerian cities did not long tolerate the rule of barbarians. When they were finally expelled, rule had passed again to native Sumerians. This time its centre was Ur, though what that meant in a political sense is hard to see. This period is known as the Sumerian Renaissance due to the remarkable advances in culture. This left behind a new style of Sumerian art marked by the theme of royal power. The Great Ziggurat of Ur was built again, bigger and better, as kings sought to embody their own grandeur in the temple. The Code of Ur-Nammu, the oldest surviving law code yet discovered, provided a precedent for the much later and better known Code of Hammurabi. Yet this was the sunset of the first people to achieve civilization. Sumer faced a threat which had long been growing; infertile land. For centuries now, perhaps for millennia, the cities on the plain had grown enough wheat to support their burgeoning populations through irrigation. But the waters of the delta, though fresh enough, were ever so slightly salty. This eventually led to such a concentration of salt in the soil that crops began to fail. Record show, in the years after 2100 BC, a progressive switchover from wheat to barley, which is less sensitive to salt in the ground. In time, however, even barley refused to grow. Grain grew scarce. So did meat, since animals had to be taken farther and farther afield to find fodder. And vultures were circling on the frontiers; they landed in 2004 BC. The Elamites, now united into one, hungered to revenge themselves for decades of domination. They swept over the Tigris, broke down the walls of Ur, and brought a final and shattering end to the Sumerian era.

Code Hammourabi

Despite his success as conqueror and king, Hammurabi is best remembered as a lawgiver. His famous code of laws, handed down and reinforced from the centre of the empire, were meant to convince conquered peoples of the justice and rightness of Hammurabi's rule. Our primary source for the text is a black stone stele, discovered in 1901 at the site of Susa (present-day Iran); where it had probably been taken as plunder. The top of the stele features the Babylonian sun-god and god-of-justice, Shamash, bestowing his authority on Hammurabi. Hammurabi received the unique honour of being declared to be a "living god" within his own lifetime.

The horizons of history are about to expand beyond one relatively small area; now a world of more than one civilization. All over the Fertile Crescent new peoples and kingdoms had been appearing, stimulated by what they saw in the south. This makes it hard to find any central narrative. Worse still, the Near East continued to be disputed by migrating peoples moving to and from, The Akkadians themselves had been one of them, pushing up from great Semitic reservoir of Arabia. The Gutians, who overthrew them, were Caucasians. The most successful of all of these peoples were the Amorites, of Semitic stock, who joined the Elamites to destroy the supremacy of Ur. They established a series of petty kingdom which stretched from central Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean coast. The vigorous Indo-European speaking peoples had also entered on the scene, and from two directions. Some of these peoples made their way east, becoming the ancestors of those Aryans who filled-up Iran and eventually travelled down into India. But others had gone west, pushing into Anatolia, as well as Europe. At the edges of this great confusion stood another old civilization, Egypt. The main processes and events grow hard to distinguish. Fortunately, a convenient landmark is provided by the appearance of a new empire in Mesopotamia, one which has left behind a famous name; Babylon. Another famous name is inseparably linked with it; that of its sixth kings, Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC). He would have a secure place in history if we knew nothing of him except his reputation as a law-giver. When Hammurabi became king, Babylon was just one of many Amorite kingdoms, struggling for power or for survival on the central Mesopotamian plain. Through a combination of successful military campaigns, and careful alliances made and broken, he brought almost all of Mesopotamia under central control, for the first time since Sargon, more than four-hundred years earlier. Of the major cities, only Assyria, high on the Tigris, maintained some independence. Seven hundred or so miles long and about a hundred miles wide, this was no unruly empire; it was ruled by law. The Code of Hammurabi is justly famous, though it owes something of its pre-eminence to chance. While earlier collections of laws have only survived in fragments, Hammurabi’s was carved on stone slabs (or steles), and set up in the courtyard of temples for the public to consult. In a more ordered way than earlier collections, his laws dealt comprehensively with a wide range of concerns; penalties for murder, for robbery, for adultery, for injury (the oldest statement of the legal principle of an "eye for an eye"); regulations on marriage, on divorce, on inheritance (widows can inherit property but cannot sell it; they must keep it for their sons); together with standard fees for everything from hiring a cart to medical attention; and many other matters. Sadly, perhaps, the penalties seem to have harshened by comparison with older Sumerian practice; the death penalty is common for many crimes. Although the Code of Hammurabi were a step in the right direction, there was still plenty of injustice in Babylon. Penalties for crimes against women, while not negligible, were considerably more lenient. It is also evident that Babylon, like every ancient civilization (and a few of modern times), rested on the great exploitation of man by man; slavery. By Hammurabi's day, there was a steadiness of price which suggests regular slaves markets, with slaves from certain regions especially prized for their reliability. And their disadvantage was spelled out: a slave could be punished with his life for an offence for which free-men got off with not much more than a beating. But some slaves were eventually freed, as is clear from a reference to an ex-slave. In due time, Babylonian culture became renowned for its magnificence. Every ancient writer to make mention of the city, save for the Bible writers, references it with awe; and its tarnished Biblical reputation - the worldly, wicked city of pleasure and consumption - speaks to a much later period. During Hammurabi's reign, Babylon usurped the position of "most holy city" in Mesopotamia from its predecessor, Nippur; Hammurabi himself received the unique honor of being declared to be a "living god" within his own lifetime. Many more tablets survive from the first Babylonian empire than from its predecessors or immediate successors. There were libraries in most towns and temples; it was then that the Epic of Gilgamesh took the shape in which we know it. The Babylonians gave Cuneiform Script a syllabic form, thus enormously increasing its flexibility and usefulness. Babylonian astrology pushed forward the observation of nature. They were the first to recognize that astronomical phenomena are periodic and apply mathematics to their predictions. It took centuries to accumulate, but, before 1000 BC, the prediction of lunar eclipses was possible, and the path of the sun and visible planets had been plotted with remarkable accuracy. This was a scientific tradition reflected in mathematical tables and algebraic formulas of great practical utility. It also seems likely that they invented the sundial, the earliest known instrument for measuring time.

Near-East-1550-BC

Hammurabi’s achievement did not long survive him. His law code was helpless to hold the far reaches of the empire together. In the south, the ancient power centers of Sumer revolted in turn, and threw-off Babylonian rule. Hammurabi's ineffectual successors met with further defeats and loss of territory at the hands of the Assyrians in the north, and the Elamites to the east. At the same time, a nomadic people, the Kassite, were wandering over the Zagros Mountains, across the Tigris, and into central Mesopotamia in larger and larger numbers. The coup de grace came in 1595 BC, when Babylon was taken and plundered by the Hittites, to the north, one of the most important of the peoples whose ambitions break-up the Near East more and more in the second half of the second millennium BC. Back around 2300 BC, this particular Indo-European people had been establishing themselves in central Anatolia. They carried on a healthy trade with the Aegean islands to the west, as well as with the peoples to the east, especially the Assyrians, from whom they learned to write; adapting Cuneiform Script to yet another language. While Hammurabi had been storming through Mesopotamia, the Hittites were coalescing into a kingdom, centered on Hattusa (modern-day Bogazkoy), a dramatically fortified city on a steep slope among ravines; an inner and outer portion were both surrounded by massive walls and towers. One of their kings, Hattusili (1650–1620), consolidated and extended Hittite control over much of Anatolia and northern Syria. His grandson, Mursili (1620-1590 BC), then turned southwards, against a Babylon already weakened and shrunken to its old heartland; bringing an end to Hammurabi’s dynasty. But then Mursili withdrew; the city was too far from Hattusa to be governed securely. When he was well away, the Kassites moved-in to rule Babylon for a mysterious four centuries. The Hittites had entered history; and their introduction of the horse and war-chariot would transform warfare in the Fertile Crescent. Horses were at first rare in the river valleys, the prized possession of kings and great leaders. The Sumerians are depicted trundling about in four-wheeled carts, drawn by asses; but these were probably a means of simply moving generals about. The true chariot is a two-wheeled fighting vehicle, usually crewed by two men; the one driving, the other using it as a platform for missile weapons. The Hittites were the first people to exploit the horse in this way. Access to the high pastures to the north of the Fertile Crescent opened to them a reserve of horses in the lands of the nomads. Eventually, though, chariots were used in the armies of all the kingdoms of the Near East; they were too valuable a weapon to be ignored. Mursili's raid on Babylon was something of a high-water mark for the first Hittite kingdom. After his death, a century of dynastic quarrels, of scarce records, of reduced domains followed; a pattern that was to repeat over and over throughout Hittite history. This political instability is probably explained by the nature of the Hittite kingship; their kings were not "living gods", like an Egyptian Pharaoh, but rather the greatest of great nobles, their acknowledged authority measured by their ability to impose themselves. During the reign of Suppiluliumas (1380–1346), the Hittite kingdom emerged from the fog of obscurity, and recovered its former glory. There followed nearly two-hundred years during which Syria, a vital trade route linking the Mediterranean with the Euphrates, was to be a battleground and prize, eventually drawing in New Kingdom Egypt, Assyria, and another kingdom called the Mitanni. One innovation that can be credited to these later Hittite rulers is the art of iron working. Iron ore is among the most abundant metals on the earth's surface. It has undoubtedly been known about for millennia; iron beads, dating to before 2000 BC, have been found. Certainly, it was being worked in Anatolia by 1500 BC. However, iron is much more difficult to work than copper or tin. In its simplest form, iron is less hard than bronze, and more prone to corrosion; thus of less use for making weapons. By 1200 BC, however, it has been discovered that iron can be much improved; by repeatedly heating and hammering to literally force-out the impurities; by fuelling the furnace with charcoal, which transfers some carbon to the metal; and by rapidly quenching in water to prevent undesired cooling processes. The new material is wrought iron, and it will keep a fine edge. During the twelfth century BC, iron gradually replaced bronze in the Near East. By 1100 BC, it was being used in the Aegean, and from there spread throughout the Mediterranean soon after 1000 BC. That date can serve as a rough division between the Bronze and Iron Ages, but is no more than a helpful prop to memory. The diffusion of iron weapons must surely be part of the story of the sudden collapse of the Hittite empire, sometime around 1193. What has be called the Late Bronze Age Collapse was about to close in, and they are as obscure as what was happening elsewhere in the Near East and eastern Mediterranean at about the same time. There is only a picture of confusion, which goes on until a new succession of empires began to emerge in the ninth century BC.

Civilisation in Egypt[]

Ancient Egypt (3100-1077 BC) has always been our greatest visible inheritance from antiquity. For thousands of years after its demise, the physical remains of the first civilization in the Nile Valley fascinated men’s minds and stirred their imaginations. Even the Classical Greeks were bemused by the legend of the occult wisdom in a land where gods were half men, half beasts. And people today still waste their time trying to discern a supernatural significance in the arrangement of the pyramids.

In the north, where the lower Nile empties into the Mediterranean, Egypt had the advantage of a different kind of environment. Here, in the delta region, food sources and useful plants complemented what farmers could grow in the irrigated lands to the south. In the delta's teeming marshlands, birds, animals, fish, and plants clustered for the gatherer and hunter. A painter showed Nebamun - a scribe and counter of grain who lived probably about three and a half thousand years ago, hunting among reeds and bulrushes. Lotus and papyrus plants inspired carvers to decorate pillars. Contemporary praise for a city built in the delta paints the environment in lush colors. The same source lists onions and leeks, lettuces, pomegranates, apples, olives, figs, sweet vines, and "red fish which feed on lotus flowers." Thickets of rushes and papyrus provided rope and writing paper. Most of Egypt, however, lay above the delta, as far upriver as the rocky rapids called cataracts. The Nile flows from south the north, from the highlands of Ethiopia in Central Africa to the Mediterranean, where the ground breaks from higher altitudes or where the riverbed narrows, dangerous rapids hinder navigation. Soil samples reveal the history of climate change. By about 4000 years ago, the valley was already a land of "black" earth between "red" earths. Floods fed the fertile, alluvial black strip along the Nile, slowly drying red desert lay on either side. Hunting scenes painted at Memphis, Egypt's first capital, in the Nile delta, showed game lands turning to scrub, sand, and bare rock. Rain became rare, a divine gift according to a pious king's prayer to the Sun, dropped from "a Nile in heaven." Thirst was called "the taste of death." In spring, when the Nile is low, rain in Central Africa swells the feed waters of the Nile, which turn green with algae in early summer, than red with tropical earth in August. In September and October, if all goes well, the river floods and spreads the dark, rich silt thinly over the earth. If the flood is too high, the lands drown. If the level of the river falls below about 18 feet, drought follows. Irrigation created little microclimates, like the paintings of orchards and gardens that adorn tombs in the city of Thebes, the second capital of Egypt. From streams filled with water lillies, a gardener with a dog at his feet swings a bucket on a pole, called a Shaduf, that a single operator can dip, hoist, reposition, and spill over the soil. It is an invention of maybe 6000 years ago. Strips of cattle-raising grasslands lay between foodplain and desert. But the silt the water brought was vital because the nitrogen content of the soil decreases by two-thirds in the top six inches between floods. This annually renewed topsoil grew some of the densest concentrations of wheat in the ancient world. The economy was dedicated to a cult of everyday abundance. That is, it guarenteed basic nutrition for a large population, not individual abundance. Most people lived on bread and beer, in a mounts only modestly above subsistence level. A surplus gathered and guarded against hard times was at the disposal of the state and priests. Eaters who relied exclusively on the wheat and barley of the irrigated drylands were vulnearable to routine malnutrition and to famine in years of drought. Normally, however, there were greater quantities of the basic products of the economy than Egyptians could eat. The surplus generated trade, which made up for the country's lack of timber and aromatic plants for perfumes and incense. The wall carvings of a memorial to Queen Hatshepsut, a female monarch of about 3500 years ago, reveal the nature of Egyptian "food aid." Vast stores of grain and live cattle are unloaded in the land of Punt, at the far end of the Red Sea in East Africa, in exchange for scented trees to grace a temple garden and exotic animals for the Egyptian royal zoo. Most of the courtly luxaries that today's Western museum goers see in exhibits on ancient Egypt came from trade, raids, and conquest. Gold and ivory, came from Nubia, an African kingdom from Sinai, a region of desert uplands that link Egypt to the Middle East.

Ancient-egypt

Ancient Egypt

From the earliest times, the Egyptians buried their dead at the edge of the desert, with their heads pointed south and their faces turned west; life came from the south, but the Land of the Dead was westward, towards the Saharan waste they had fled. Then, in the middle of the fourth millennium BC, signs of trade and contact with other lands multiply, notably with Mesopotamia. That Egypt benefited from Sumerian influence and example seems incontestable, though exactly what this meant has been much debated. Mesopotamian contributions have been seen in the motifs of early Egyptian art, in similar techniques of monumental building in brick, and in the debt of Egyptian hieroglyphs to the earliest Sumerian script. Yet it cannot be said that it was decisive. There always existed a potential for civilization in the Nile Valley that needed no external stimulus to discharge it. It is at least obvious, when Egyptian civilization finally did emerged, that it was unique, unlike anything we can find elsewhere.

Egypt-dynasties

Egyptian history is usually divided into thirty-one dynasties, though the system is not quite as straight forwards as it might seem. Some dynasties are so obscure, that their actual existence is still debated; the 7th for example. In times of disunity, a dynasty might only rule part of Egypt, and exist simultaneously with another dynasty ruling elsewhere; the 9th, 10th, and 11th for example.

The deepest roots of Egyptian civilization have to be pieced together from archaeology and later tradition. They reveal that, at some point around 3200 BC, there had solidified two kingdoms, one of the northern delta and one of the southern river valley; one of Lower Egypt and one of Upper. This is interestingly different from Sumer; there were no city-states. Egypt seems to move straight from pre-civilization to the government of large areas. Her early "cities" were market places and storage centres of barely two thousand people. Even later, Egypt would have only a restricted experience of an urban way of life; Memphis and Thebes were religious centres and palace complexes, rather than true cities. Of the kings of the two Egypts we know almost nothing; even their names at lost. It was about the same time that the written records begin and this must have been important in the consolidation of power. In Egypt, writing was used from the beginning, not merely as an administrative and economic convenience, but to record events on monuments intended to survive. These records tell us that, in about 3100 BC, a great king of Upper Egypt conquered the north, uniting Egypt into a single kingdom running from the Mediterranean coast to the First Cataract (or waterfall) at Abu Simbel. A new capital was built at Memphis, just south of the Delta, a strategic location from which to control both Upper and Lower Egypt. Egyptian tradition credits both these things to the first Egyptian Pharaoh, Menes, though that is merely an honorific meaning "founder". It is likely that "Menes" was an important northern ruler named Narmer, who is featured on an inscription found at Hierakonpolis wearing the symbol of power over the two lands, the double crown; the Red Crown of Lower Egypt set atop the White Crown of Upper Egypt. This was effectively the beginning of a civilization which was to survive more than two-thousand years; roughly speaking, its greatest days were over by 1077 BC. That is about as much time as separates us from the birth of Christ. Egyptian history can most easily be understood in six big chronological divisions. Three of these are called respectively the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and the New Kingdom. They are preceded by a six-hundred-year long Archaic Period that is more than a little obscure, and separated by two periods called the First and Second Intermediate. Very roughly, the three "Kingdoms" are periods of success or at least of consolidated government; the two "Intermediate" stages are interludes of weakness and upheaval to which the overworked word "crisis" can reasonably be applied. This is by no means the only way of visualizing Egyptian history; many Egyptologists prefer to set out the chronology in terms of thirty-one dynasties of Pharaohs. Nonetheless, the six-part scheme is sufficient for our purpose.

Pyramids of giza

The Egyptian pyramids have always been our greatest visible inheritance from antiquity. The beginning of the pyramid age suggests that Egypt had reached a new level of prosperity and organisation. Only a strong and centralised state could order such an unprecedented and almost unsurpassed concentration of human labour. For this reason, it also marks the beginning of a new era in Egyptian history: the “Old Kingdom".

The Old Kingdom (2686–2160) traditionally understood to begin with the second Pharaoh of the Third Dynasty, Djoser (d. 2648 BC). Strictly speaking, the title "Pharaoh" was only applied personally to king under the New Kingdom; before that, it referred to the buildings of the royal palace and court. Nonetheless, by Djoser’s day, Egyptian rulers already wielded a startling autocracy which was so to impress the ancient world. They had not emerged like Sumer’s as simply men, subject to the will-of-the-gods like all men, great or small. They were living gods, mediators between their subjects and the divine. The Pharaohs were believed to control the annual rise and fall of the Nile no less; life itself to an agricultural society. The theological underpinnings of Egyptian kingship underwent many later elaborations, but the central story is simple. The god Osiris was given the dominion over heaven and earth, and taught mankind the arts of civilisation, including agriculture. But his brother, Set, god-of-the-deserts, was jealous of his power, and plotted his death. Set killed Osiris, and mutilated his corpse, scattering the pieces across Egypt. Osiris' wife and sister, the mother-godess Isis, reassembled his body, and half-resurrected him; alive enough to impregnate her, but not quite enough to remain on earth. Instead Osiris became ruler of the underworld, while his posthumous son, Horus, became the ruler of the living realm. In life, the Pharaohs claimed to be the earthly embodiment of Horus. When he died, as all men must, he took on a new role, as the incarnate Osiris, while the son of the dead Pharaoh now became the incarnate Horus. Thus, the new Pharaoh was, in a sense, his father’s reincarnation; a neat way to legitimise succession. And if the old Pharaoh was still going to be waiting for you in the afterlife, then his power became all-encompassing. Beneath the Pharaoh, an elaborate and orderly bureaucracy managed his affairs. At its head were viziers (chief ministers), provincial governors and other senior officials who came from the Egyptian nobility; less eminent families provided the thousands of scribes, This bureaucracy directed a country most of whose inhabitants were peasants. They cannot have lived wholly comfortable lives, for they provided both the conscript labour for great public-works projects, and the agricultural surplus upon which the state and religious establishment subsisted. Yet the land was rich and increasingly mastered with irrigation techniques; with little change, this agriculture would be sufficient to make her the "bread-basket" of the Roman Empire. Upon the surplus there also rested Egypt’s own spectacular form of conspicuous consumption; a range of palaces, temples, tombs, and memorials unsurpassed in antiquity. The most famous are the pyramids, and they were began under Djoser. When he died, he was not buried in the traditional graveyard at Abydos, far to the south. He had already built his own tomb at Saqqara, near Memphis; the 200-foot-tall Step Pyramid. It was the masterpiece of the first architect whose name is recorded; Imhotep, chancellor to the Pharaoh. We don’t know exactly what inspired Imhotep to come up with this novel tomb, although, given the extent of trade routes in the ancient world, Egyptians had undoubtedly seen Sumarian Ziggurats. It was a century or so later that the greatest of the pyramids were completed at Giza. The first pharaoh of the Fouth Dystasty, Snefru (d. 2589), got things off with a bang, by introducing some innovations that later became standard. For one thing, the burial chamber was inside the pyramid itself, rather than in the ground beneath, as had been the case with the pyramids that preceded it. He also gave the pyramid a causeway, a broad path leading east to a “mortuary temple” where offerings could be made. But most interesting of all, he covered the steps of his pyramid with a smooth layer of facing stones, thus creating the familiar smooth-sided pyramid that we know. In fact, Snefru built no less that three pyramids; he finished-off his predecessor's, and undertook two of his own. His second effort was completed, but never used, for the unfortunate reason that their measurements were off, lending the pyramid a visibly "bent" appearance. This suggests that Egypt had now become even richer, more stable, and more subject to the authority of the pharaoh, than ever before. Snefru son, Khufu (d. 2566 BC), inherited this power and exercised it to the full. His pyramid, the Great Pyramid, was twenty years in the building, employing many thousands of men, and using huge quantities of stone - some fifteen tons apiece - brought from as far away as five-hundred miles. This colossal construction, peaking at 481 feet, was the tallest structure built by man for more than 3,800 years. Khufu was succeeded by his son, Khafre (2532 BC), who left perhaps Egypt's most recognisable monument, the Great Sphinx; a mysterious limestone sculpture, part lion and part falcon, with a man’s face (probably Khafre himself, though there is still plenty of argument over that point). These still-startling monuments make it less surprising that the Egyptians were later reputed to have been great architects. In truth, the technology of pyramid-building is far from complicated. What was required was exacting competence in measurement, the manipulation of certain elementary formulae for calculating volumes and weights, and an unprecedented and almost unsurpassed concentration of human labour, under the direction of official who, by the standards of any age, must have been outstanding civil servants.

BM-Wall-Painting-960x675

Environmental diversity nourishes civilization. Egypt combined the grainlands of Upper Egypt with the moist, game-rich delta regions of Lower Egypt, with its wealth and aquatic animals and plants. On the tomb walls of Nebamun in the fourteenth century BC, an irrigated garden appears, reproducing the lush look of the Nile delta.

Egyptian-hieroglyphs

Egyptian hieroglyphs developed into a mature writing system in the Middle Kingdom period, and then made use of about 900 distinct characters. Hieroglyphs were a formal script, use for monumental inscriptions. In day-to-day writing, scribes used a cursive script, called hieratic, which was quicker and easier.

From the outset, the Egyptians seem obsessed with death. They believed that, in the afterlife, a man could expect judgement before Osiris; if the verdict was favourable, he would happily live in Osiris’ underworld; if not, he was abandoned to a monstrous destroyer, part crocodile, part hippopotamus. The struggle to assure a favourable outcome explains, not only the building of the pyramids, but the obsessive care shown in conducting the deceased to his eternal resting-place. It took seventy days, under the supervision of temple priests, to carry out the funerary embalming and mummification of a Pharaoh's corpse. This did not mean, though, that in life human beings need do no more than placate Osiris, for the Egyptian pantheon was huge and immensely complicated. Much of Egyptian history is the story of ebbings and flowings of major cults, as the Pharaohs sought through cult-consolidation to achieve political ends; politics and religion were always bedfellows in Ancient Egypt. Not only the Pharaohs were interested. The institutions which maintained these beliefs were in the hands of a hereditary priestly class, who acquired vested interest in the popularity of their cults. The gods loom large in the subject-matter of ancient Egyptian art; depicted with animal heads stuck on human bodies. But it contains much more besides: realistic portrayals of rural life, craftsmen at work, scribes at their duties, and later, in a more decadent period, Pharaohs in their chariots, mighty men-of-war, confidently trampling down their enemies. Neither its content nor technique is the most striking characteristic of the Egyptian art, but its recognizably continuous style. For some two thousand years, artists were able to work satisfyingly within a classical tradition; what a visitor saw looked so much of a piece. Another great artistic achievement of the Egyptians was calligraphy. It seems the Egyptians learned the technique of pictograms from Mesopotamia, but rejected the later Cuneiform Script. Hieroglyphs retained their lifelike little picture (or near-picture) form, even after phonetic elements were added. It was much more decorative than Cuneiform, but also much harder to master. None of the writers of classical antiquity ever learnt to read hieroglyph, it seems. The last example of which we know were written in 394 AD; it could not be read for another fourteen centuries, until a French scholar deciphered the inscription on the "Rosetta Stone", brought back from Napoleon's campaign in Egypt. The first hieroglyphs appear before 3000 BC, and, soon after, the invention of papyrus provided a convenient medium. Papyrus may be our greatest debt to the Egyptians; more convenient that clay tablets, and cheaper than parchment (made from skins), papyrus was the most general medium for writing until well into the Middle Ages, when paper reached the Near East and Europe from China.

Mummy of Ramesses I

The mummy believed to be that of Ramesses I, Egyptians saw the preservation of the dead as an important step to living well in the afterlife. As Egypt grew more prosperous, elaborate burial became a status symbol of wealth. Extraordinary skill was attributed to mummification practitioners, though somewhat unjustifiably since the arid climate was on their side.

The Old Kingdom was to be looked back upon as a golden age of peace and stability, when the Pharaohs were impregnable. Egypt faced no serious threats from abroad. There were successful raids to the south into Nubia (modern Sudan), west against Libyan desert-dwellers, and north into the southern Levant. Far flung trade expeditions are recorded to Anatolia and to Punt (a mysterious land probably in modern-day Eritrea). However, during the Fifth Dynasty, the Pharaoh became more closely identified with the sun-god Ra, and consequentially under the influence of that cult’s high priests; fewer efforts were devoted to pyramid building, and more to the great sun temples at Abu Gorab and Abusir. As the priests gained more power, so too did the high officials. Towards the end of the dynasty, provincial governors, who had always been appointed by the crown, seized on periods of chaos at Memphis to pass their power to their sons, and asserted their independence from central authority. By the next dynasty, the Pharaohs, in essence, ruled an Egypt that contained small hereditary states. The extremely long reign of Pepi II (d. 2184 BC), said to be 94-years, marked the collapse of central authority. The level of the Nile floods began diminishing year on year, bringing famine and causing difficulties for the Pharaoh’s claim to divinity; Pepi's death, well past that of his intended heirs, may have caused a succession crisis within the royal family. After the wasteful Fourth Dynasty squandering of Egyptian lives and money, political weakness and environmental issues combined to push the Old Kingdom over the edge; the First Intermediate (2184-2021 BC). For more than a hundred years, Egypt descended into anarchy, as effectively small kingdoms began raiding each other's territories. The Egyptian king list records the Tenth Dynasty, neatly followed by an Eleventh Dynasty. In truth, rival dynasties "ruled" simultaneously over different parts of Egypt, while other provincial governors went on doing as they pleased. Meanwhile, rather than being the invader, Egypt was invaded, as Western Semitic peoples established themselves in the Nile Delta. Towards the end of the period, two great power centres had emerged; Hierakonpolis in Lower Egypt and Thebes in Upper Egypt. This struggle was finally brought to a end by Mentuhotep II (2060-09 BC), who fought his way north and took Hierakonpolis in the fourteenth year of his reign. Now he held both Thebes and Herakleopolis, but Egypt was far from united.; battles with provincial governors continued for years. But by 2021 BC, Mentuhotep felt confident enough to alter the writing of his title; he was, unsurprisingly, Shematawy ("Uniter of the Two Lands"). Not long after, his name began appearing in inscriptions next to that of Menes/Narmer himself; the semi-legendary king who had first pulled Upper and Lower Egypt into one.

Sun-god Ra

The sun-god Ra, portrayed falcon-headed with the sun-disk inside a cobra resting on his head. The number of Egyptian gods is difficult to know; text name gods whose nature is never explained, make vague reference to other gods who are not even named, and, over time, some gods merge into a single god. One scholar has estimated 1,400 gods. In different eras, various gods were said to hold the highest position in the divine order.

During the Middle Kingdom (2021-1786 BC), Egypt once again flourished, as it had during the Old Kingdom. There was a new emphasis on order and social cohesion. An efficient bureaucracy was created that concentrated wealth and power with the crown, but generously rewarded high officials for their loyalty. This was reflected in the quality of artistic production for elite members of society, which gives the Middle Kingdom its reputation as Egypt's "Classical Age". The Temple of Karnak was begun under Senruset I (d. 1926 BC); Egyptian literature featured sophisticated themes written in a confident, eloquent style; and relief and portrait sculpture reached a high point that was, perhaps equalled, but never surpassed. The divine status of the Pharaoh also subtly changed After the bad times made it impossible to believe that he was the earthly incarnation of a god, he was now descended from a god, a subtle but meaningful demotion. Theological change followed, with something of a consolidation of cults under the god Amun-Ra; the Theban patron deity, Amun, acquired national importance, expressed in his fusion with the sun-god, Ra. It is clear, too, that there was expansion and material growth. Far sighted reclamation work was achieved in the marshes of the Delta. Copper mining operations in the Sinai, which had previously been intermittent expeditions, became permanent camps. With peace and stability at home, Middle Kingdom Egypt pursued an aggressive foreign policy, colonizing Nubia, to the south, between the first and third Cataracts, and fully exploiting its rich gold mines and stone quarries. The reign of Amenemhat III (d. 1797 BC) was the high point of the Middle Kingdom; and of the Nile floods, which once again began to decrease year by year. As always in Egypt, a slump in the Nile and royal power went hand in hand. Amenemhat's son died almost as soon as he was crowned, and his wife, Queen Sobeknefru (d. 1786), took his place; a woman on the throne was a sign of serious palace intrigue. Few details from the queen’s reign have survived; nor for the obscure figure who succeeded her, beginning the ineffectual Thirteenth Dynasty.

Egyptian War Chariot

Later Egyptian pharaoh returning home in triumph thanks to the adoption of the Hittite war chariot.

The Second Intermediate (1674–1549) was marked by another and far more dangerous incursion of foreigners. These were the Hyksos, a Western Semitic people, who, for a generation or two, had been wandering into the Delta in increasing numbers. Some of them settled down to live side by side with the Egyptians. Others were less civilised; around 1720, one particularly aggressive band sacked and burned Memphis, the old Egyptian capital. Unlike the Egyptians, they fought with the composite bow, the horse and the iron-fitted chariot, an advantage that offset their relatively small numbers. After this humiliation, the Pharaoh's power wilted so dramatically that, some fourty years later, the Hyksos established their own capital at Avaris, on the eastern fringe of the Delta. From there, they spread their rule to the west and south by force. By around 1663 BC, they ruled supreme. Not much is known about the Hyksos. Apparently, they retained Egyptian models of government; their kings identified as Pharaohs; the Egyptian language continued to be the official language of inscriptions and records; Egyptian officials served them as administrators and priests. But this did not lead to assimilation. Despite their success, the Hyksos were never in sole control of Egypt. The Egyptian governors of Thebes, to the south, announced that they would not submit to Hyksos rule. The Hyksos, aware of their own limitations, do not appear to have made a serious push to the south, The Theban Pharaohs clung on for decades, trapped between the Hyksos controlled north and a resurgent Nubia to the south, But eventually Thebes gathered enough strength to challenge the Hyksos, in a conflict that lasted more than thirty years, until Ahmose I (d. 1544 BC) completed the task, battling all the way to Avaris, and permanently evicted the Hyksos from Egypt. He followed-up this first great success by pursuing the Hyksos to their strongholds the southern Levant, finally halting his march near Gaza.

Sarcophagus

The Death Mask of Tutankhamun, whose name is thought to mean "Living image of Amun". He took the throne at eight or nine years of age, and reigned for less then a decade. In all likelihood, his tomb was no more magnificent than those of his predecessors, but it remained undisturbed by grave-robbers until November of 1922.

The New Kingdom (1554-1077) in its prime was internationally so successful that it is difficult not to conclude that Hyksos domination must have had a fertilizing effect. There was a transformation of military techniques by the adoption of Near Eastern devices such as the chariot. Tuthmosis I d. 1492 BC) and his grandson Tuthmosis III (d. 1425 BC) expanded the boundaries of Egypt in the south to the Fourth Cataract in Nubia, and to the north, through the Levant and Syria almost to the Euphrates. It was between their reigns that Queen Hatshepsut (d. 1458 BC), Egypt's most successful female Pharaoh, occupied the throne in a reign notable for greatly expanding Egyptian trade, including a mission to the mysterious Land of Punt. Monuments recording the arrival of tribute testify to an Egyptian pre-eminence, matched at home by a veritable renaissance of the arts. The New Kingdom provided the bulk of the art, artefacts and architecture (apart from the pyramids) for which ancient Egypt is famous. The Pharaohs created at Thebes the great temples to Amun-Ra at Karnak and Luxor, and were buried in splendour on the other side of the Nile in the Valley of the Kings. Foreign influences touched Egyptian art at this time; they came from Minoan Crete. In the same year that Tuthmosis III died, a king named Saustatar came to the throne of Mitanni, a kingdom that dominated eastern Syria and northern Mesopotamia, and began his own empire-building. Amenhotep II (d. 1400 BC) and his successors changed tact; they made treaties with the Mitanni, married Mitanni princesses, and came to rely on their friendship to protected Egyptian interests in the region. Under Amenhotep III (d. 1352 BC), the New Kingdom reached its peak of power, prestige, and prosperity. He sponsored building at Karnak and Luxor on a colossal scale, and was fittingly buried in a tomb which was the largest ever prepared for a Pharaoh; little remains of it today, but its famous Colossi of Memnon testify to its proportions. The resulting reforming zeal on his son, Amenhotep IV (1336 BC), shock Egypt's old political and religious certainties to their very foundations. He was determined to break the influence of the priests of Amun-Ra (and avoid contributing any more wealth to their temples), by assert his own preferred choice of deities, the sun-disk Aten. Aten had not gone unrecognized in the past; it was one aspect of the sun-god Amun-Ra. But in the Pharaoh's hands, it became something new; the manifestation of a single divine power. Amenhotep was on his way to becoming a monotheist. To mark his seriousness, Amenhotep moved the capital away from Thebes to a site, never before built on, about halfway between Thebes and Memphis. Here, he built the planned city of Akhet-Aten, around a great temple to Aten with a roofless sanctuary open to the sun’s rays that was to be the centre of the new religion. Though there can be no doubt of Akhnaton’s seriousness, his religious revolution must have been doomed from the outset given the innate conservatism of Egypt. Akhnaton was succeeded by his two sons, the second of which. Tutankhamun (d. 1323), fully reversed his religious reforms. This probably explains his magnificent burial in the Valley of the Kings, after a short and otherwise unremarkable reign; the 1922 discovery of his largely intact tomb has made him one of the most famous of all Egyptian Pharaohs.

Temple-of-ramses-ii

Abu Simbel, a temple complex originally cut into a solid rock cliff. Four huge statues flank the entrance, two on each side, depicting Ramesses II seated on his throne; each one 65 feet tall. The decision to build such a grand monument in southern Egypt, on the border with the conquered lands of Nubia, suggests to some scholars that Ramesses undertook it as a symbol of Egyptian power.

When Tutankhamun died, the New Kingdom still had two centuries of life ahead, but their atmosphere was one of steadily increasing decline, only occasionally interrupted. The Egyptian sphere of influence was crumbling in the face of growing pressure in the north from the resurgent Hittites. The Mitanni could not be saved; losing all their lands west of the Euphrates in 1372 BC, and dissolving in civil war some thirty years later. By the time Ramesses II (d. 1213 BC), sometimes called Ramesses the Great, came to the throne, Egypt had lost her northern holdings as far as Kadesh, a city that had become more than a battle front; a symbolic football kicked back and forth to determine whichever empire could boast of superior strength. Only three years into his reign, Ramesses marched north with an unheard of number of soldiers to get Kadesh back; according to his own count, twenty thousand. The resulting Battle of Kadesh (1275 BC) is generally regarded as the largest chariot battle ever fought. Though Ramesses proclaimed victory, the battle was more of a draw, and he did not even attempt to recapture Kadesh, which henceforth remained in Hittite hands; later confirmed in a lasting Egyptian–Hittite peace agreement. If this doesn’t sound like an overwhelming triumph, it soon mutated into one, when Ramesses had flattering accounts of the battle carved onto the walls of Egyptian temples, with plenty of graphic illustrations of Egyptians slaughtering Hittites. Ramesses built more temples, palaces, statues, and monuments than any other Pharaoh - most notably completing the great hall of columns at Karnak, planned by his grandfather and started by his father; the vast mortuary temple complex known known as the Ramesseum at Thebes; and the most spectacular of all rock-cut temples at Abu Simbel, famous for the four colossal seated statues of the Pharaoh himself (each sixty-five feet high) flanking its entrance. This only shows how far Egypt had come from its former greatness; it had become an empire that depended on reputation and symbols of grandeur, rather than actual strength. For Ramesses II's successors, even a Hittite alliance was no longer a safeguard. The Aegean was in uproar, the islands "poured out their people all together" and "no land stood before them", wrote Ramesses III (d. 1155 BC) on his temple wall. Like the Vikings some 2,000 years later, sea-borne invaders and raiders plunged down on the Delta again and again, undeterred by the occasional defeat. These Sea Peoples were eventually beaten off, but the struggle was hard. The signs of internal disorder are plentiful too. Ramesses III was killed as a result of a conspiracy in the harem; he was the last Pharaoh to achieve some measure of success in offsetting the swelling tide of disaster. Over the next eighty years, eight kings named Ramesses ruled, most of them in such obscurity and chaos that only fragments of records survive. We hear of on-again, off-again drought and famine; of the first labour strike in recorded history; and of corrupt officials. There is the ominous symptom of the looting of royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Meanwhile, the priests of Amun-Ra had grown rich. Re-enthroned as chief god under Tutankhamun, Pharaoh after Pharaoh made rich offerings to their temple. By Ramesses III's day, the priests may have controlled a third of all the cropland in Egypt. Rameses XI (d. 1077 BC) was in effect a prisoner in his own palace, while a High Priest of Amun named Herihor acted as de-facto ruler of Egypt. When both men died within a few years of each other, neither leaving a son, their son-in-laws began a civil war; one enthroned himself in Upper Egypt, the other claimed a divine right to rule Lower Egypt. This time, no great unifier appeared; the great days of Ancient Egypt were over. So in fact were those of the Hittites, and of other empires of the late second millennium BC; the Late Bronze Age Collapse. In the centuries that followed, Egypt's wealth and prestige made her a tempting target to invaders: a line of Libyan Pharaohs appeared in the tenth century BC; a line of Nubian pharaohs in the eighth; and then Egypt fell before the armies of the Neo-Assyrians, the Neo-Babylonians, and the Persians in turn, to become a mere province of empires.

Egyptian medicine

By the New Kingdom, Egyptian pre-eminence in medicine was internationally recognized. Its practices included simple non-invasive surgery, setting of bones, dentistry, and an extensive set of pharmacology recipes. It is a considerable thing to have initiated the use of a remedy as effective as castor oil.

In reflecting on the demise of Ancient Egypt, it is hard to resist the feeling that the last centuries of the New Kingdom expose weaknesses present from the very beginning. This is not easy to discern at first; the spectacular legacy of her monuments and a history counted, not in centuries, but in millennia, stagger the critical sense. Yet behind this glittering tour de force, Egypt's creative quality seems strangely to miscarry. Colossal resources of labour were massed, and its ends were the creation of the greatest tombstones the world has ever seen. Craftsmanship of exquisite quality was employed, and its masterpieces were grave-goods. A highly literate elite utilised a complex and subtle language, and a medium (papyrus) of unsurpassed convenience, but had no philosophical or religious idea comparable to those of Greek or Jew to give to the world. It is difficult not to sense an ultimate sterility, a nothingness, at the heart of Egyptian civilisation. On the other scale must be placed her sheer staying-power. Though Egypt underwent at least two phases of considerable eclipse, it recovered with little fundamental change; survival on such a scale is a great historical success. What remains unclear is why it should have stopped there. Technology is by no means an infallible test, but, if it is looked at comparatively, it suggests a civilisation slow to adopt new skills and reluctant to innovate. Egypt had been in contact with Mesopotamia for getting on for 500 years before adopting the potter’s wheel; there is no evidence of the well-sweep during the Old Kingdom, by then long in use to irrigate land in the other river valleys; bronze-making did not appear until the second millennium BC; and the lathe has to wait for the Hellenistic Age. Modern mathematicians do not think much of the Egypt's endeavours; they certainly did not match the Babylonians in this art. No doubt primitive mathematics is a part of the explanation for the sterility of the Egyptian astronomy; another field in which posterity, paradoxically, was to credit them with great things. Only in medicine is there indisputably originality and lasting achievement. By the second millennium BC, an Egyptian pre-eminence in this art was internationally recognized. Though medicine in Egypt was never wholly separable from magic (magical amulets survive in great numbers), it had substantial rational content based on empirical observation. Much of our knowledge of medicinal plants was first established by the Egyptians and passed, through the Greeks to medieval Europe and the Islamic world. It is a considerable thing to have initiated the use of a remedy effective as long as castor oil. Apart from this, Egyptian civilisation made little permanent difference to the world. Her monuments have continuously fascinated artists and architects, but her style never took root elsewhere; only one great contribution was made by Egyptian art to the future, the fluted column. Egyptian cults popped up from time to time down the ages - Imperial Roman had to tolerate them - but the result was always superficial and exotic. As the world-shaping wars of the Fertile Crescent raged across the centuries, on the banks of the Nile, a grateful and passive people gathered the richness it bestowed, and set aside what they thought necessary for the real business of living; the proper preparation for death.

Early Civilised Life in the Aegean[]

Early-aegean-civilizations

North of the Nile Delta, far up in the Mediterranean Sea, the island of Crete lies in the far south of the jagged Greek peninsula. Several centuries before 2000 BC, there were important towns and villages on the coasts, built of stone and brick. The people of these towns practised metal-working, making attractive jewellery. However, the island is notably poor in metal ore, a fact believed to have first spurred their interest in international trade. Virtually all the inhabited areas of the Aegean grew sufficient food for their own needs, but Crete seems then, as today, to have been better for the cultivation of olives and vines than the other islands or mainland Greece. These two staples of later Mediterranean agriculture changed the possibilities of economic life. Immediately, they made new organizational demands for the handling of a more complex agriculture, and the processing of crops into secondary products (oil and wine). On this much else could then be built. Within the Aegean, its multitude of islands made for short sea-crossings and easy communication. The Cretans traded extensively around the eastern Mediterranean; their brightly painted pottery jars (presumably once holding oil or wine) have been uncovered not only throughout the Aegean, but in Anatolia, Egypt, and the Levant. A new interplay with higher cultures may have spurred them to exceptional achievements, but they could well have arrived at civilization for themselves.

Knossos palace

A modern reconstruction of the great Minoan palace of Knossos. It is a useful warning from history; or a warning about history and how we can romanticize it. This dubious reconstruction was the life-work of a British archaeologist, Sir Arthur Evans (d. 1941). In his hunger to achieve it, he set about slowly "improving" the ruins with reinforced concrete and faked-up frescoes. The extent to which his re-imagining is a reasonable guess or merely Evan's fantasy, divides even experts.

At this stage, that is to say 2000 BC, the Cretans shared much of the culture of other Aegean communities. There then came a change; they began to build a great palace at Knossos, a settlement just inland from the very centre of the northern coast. Not long afterwards, a series of slightly smaller palaces went up to keep tabs on other strategic locations: at Mallia, just east of Knossos on the coast itself; at Phaistos, inland from the southern coastline; and at Zakros, in the far east of the island. They stood at the centre of sprawling towns, connected to each other and smaller settlements by paved road. Nothing quite as impressive appears anywhere else among the islands. These palaces are the great monuments of what we call Minoan Civilization (2000-1500 BC); a name taken from a King Minos who, although celebrated in legend, may never have existed. Much later, the Greeks said that he was a powerful king, who angered Poseidon, the god of the sea. The gods punished Minos by making his wife, Pasiphae, mad with passion for a bull. Her monstrous offspring, the half-bull, half-man Minotaur, devoured youths and maidens sent as yearly tribute from Greece at the heart of a labyrinth, until successfully penetrated by the hero Theseus. Beneath the fog of myth, we may be able to glimpse a civilization which has left no other stories behind it. The Minoans were a literate society, but their writing script has not been deciphered, as yet; based on what is known, their language was . The Minotaur story, with its compelling of tribute, is anachronistic; there were only scattered settlements on the peninsula at this time. But it does reflect Minoan naval power and cultural hegemony, which came to be felt over more or less the whole of the Aegean. And sacrifice, it is clear, was important in Minoan religion; perhaps even human sacrifice. At Anemospilia, four human victims were found in the ruins of a temple; one skeleton, belonging to a young man, was trussed-up on his side on a raised alter, an elaborate bronze blade among his bones, and forensic evidence suggests death by blood loss. Human sacrifice wasn’t carried-out very often; traces have been uncovered at only two other sites. The ruins do not tell us what horrible dilemma drove them to such an extreme act of worship; but we can make a good guess. The Aegean is seismically active, and earthquakes shook the island with regularity. Sometime around 1720, one of them knocked down the palace of Knossos. A new palace was built overtop of its ruins, this one much more elaborately decorated with frescoes of startling liveliness and movement. Among the most familiar motifs of Minoan art are depictions of bulls. The ritual of bull-leaping, for example, seems to have had religious significance; the sacred bull lowers its horns in threat, while the worshipper vaults over the horns onto the bull’s back, and from there springs to the ground. By about 1580 BC, Minoan civilisation had reached the full extent of its power. Pirates had always been a problem in the Mediterranean; and probably explains why Knossos was originally built inland. But the Minoan "navy" put an end to piracy, at least in the sea around Crete. In this new peace, trade flourished, new buildings went up, art reached a new level of sophistication. Here was a really original style, influential across the seas. In Egypt, a palace built by the third Hyksos king at Avaris has on its walls the remains of frescoes painted in the Minoan style. A century or so later, around 1525 BC, the palace culture on Crete was destroyed. The mystery of this end is tantalizing. There had been earthquakes in the past, so perhaps this was another of them. Recent scholarship has identifies a great volcanic eruption centred on the nearby island of Thera at a suitable time; it would have been accompanied by tidal waves, and followed by ash fall, perhaps blighting the Cretan fields. Whatever the cause, this was not the end of the first civilization in Europe, for Knossos was then occupied by newcomers from the mainland.

Achilles and Patroclus

Achilles tending to the arrow wounds of Patroclus. The great heroes of Homer occupied Mycenaean palaces.

The inhabitants of the Greek peninsula were no doubt stimulated by contact with Minoan Crete to develop a more sophisticated culture of their own. Their most important city was at Mycenae, after which Mycenaean Civilization (1600-1100 BC) is named. By 1600 BC, the rulers of Mycenae had gained enough power over their subjects to be buried in deep shaft-graves well-stocked with treasure, high on a central hill of the city, or acropolis. But their authority didn’t extend very far beyond the city-walls. The royal palace at Mycenae was matched by another one that dominated the city of Thebes, to the north-east; a third palace stood at Pylos, on the southern coast, and a fourth was built at Athens, just across a short expanse of land. The Greek cities, divided from each other by mountain ridges, ruled themselves from their earliest days. Despite this independence, they shared trade, a language, and a culture. The Mycenaean Greeks were barbarians by comparison with the Cretans, more aware of the role of warfare in society than art. They fortified their cities heavily with walls built of unworked boulders. some weighing several tonnes. This architectural style has been appropriately named Cyclopean; later Greeks believed that only the mythical giants, the Cyclopes, could have heaved them into place. Grave goods add to the impression of a proud and warlike society. The royal tombs at Mycenae contain a profusion of bronze swords and daggers, together with much gold cups, masks, figurines, jewellery, and more. Most Mycenaean art is clearly derived directly from the Minoan style. And it was from the Minoans that the Mycenaeans learned to write, borrowing their script and adapting it to their own Indo-European dialect; revealing a language which was basically Greek. By 1400 BC, the culture, represented most spectacularly at Mycenae, had spread all over mainland Greece and to many of the islands. Mycenaean replaced the Minoan trading supremacy in the eastern Mediterranean. There are Hittite diplomatic records which treat the Mycenaean empire, if the term is permissible, as a major power. Yet there were signs of flagging in the thirteenth century BC. War seems to be one explanation. An oral tradition, preserved centuries later by Homer in the Iliad and the companion epic the Odyssey, tells us that the rulers of Mycenaean Greece joined forces to assault a rich city on the other side of the Aegean Sea; the city is Troy. In the epic, it took ten years before Troy finally fell. If there is truth to the legend, then the war perhaps fatally weakened the Greeks. Shorty after 1200 BC, a score of Mycenaean cities were destroyed by an unknown enemy, Archaeology suggests that the sites were reoccupied by newcomers from the northern part of the peninsula, who had no knowledge of writing, no skill in building with brick or stone, and no particular interest in foreign trade. Among the Mycenaean cities, only Athens appears to have avoided destruction; even so, its population shrank alarmingly. Later Greeks called them the Dorians. Although much about an invasion by one compact group is problematic, tradition makes them the descendants of the hero Heracles (who were exiled at his death), and speakers of a distinct dialect which lived on into the classical age. What can be called the Dark Ages of the Aegean had closed in, and they are as obscure as what was happening elsewhere. Only in the ninth century BC are there a few signs that a new social pattern was emerging; the ground-plan of Classical Greece.

Late Bronze Age Collapse in the Near East[]

14 century BC Eastern1-1024x569

By the middle of second millennia BC, the whole Mediterranean and Near East can almost be viewed as one interconnected system. The great kingdoms and empires of the day - including Hittite Anatolia, New Kingdom Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, Mycenaean Greece, and the Semitic states of the Levant - were closely tied to one another in a network of lucrative trade, marriage alliances, and often cordial diplomacy. Then in a matter of a few decades after the year 1200 BC this whole way of life was swept away. There is a closeness of timing in the collapse of so many Bronze Age civilizations that historians have thought too pronounced to be mere coincidence; the so-called Late Bronze Age Collapse. Almost everywhere archaeology reports depopulation, cities abandoned, and severely reduced literacy. Even the survivors of the collapse, like Egypt and Assyria, were weakened considerably. The precise cause has been debated by historians for a century now, but no consensus has been reached. It was probably a "perfect storm" of multiple stressors - a huge drought event, desperate famine, internal failures, roving marauders, and more - that toppled these interdependent realms like dominoes. Another interesting feature is a coincidence with the diffusion of ironworking technology, with the year 1200 BC serving as a rough division between the Bronze and Iron Ages; though that is no more than a helpful prop to memory. The sweeping upheavals and rearrangements which stud this confusion are hard even to map in outline, let alone to explain. Fortunately, there soon appear two threads through the turmoil. One is that some people, notably the Phoenicians and the Hebrews, enjoyed new independence and power with the waning military presence of great powers, The other is an old theme renewed, that of the continuing Mesopotamian tradition about to enter its final phase; the Neo-Assyrian and then Neo-Babylonian empires.

Phoenician alphabet

The most famous legacy of the Phoenicians is undoubtedly the alphabet. Mesopotamian cuniform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and other early writing systems consisted of hundreds of symbols, that stood for words and ideas with a few that stood for sounds, and that required years of study to master. Sometime around 1800 BC, the common people of the Sinai peninsula, then under Egyptian control, began to develop an only phonetic writing systems as a practical way to record things. Before 1050BC, the Phoenicians had adopted and perfected this simpler system for their own language. Their alphabet consisted of twenty-two letters, simple and memorable, all of them consonants; it vastly simplified writing and reading, thus making a more widespread literacy possible. The Greeks then borrowed the Phoenician alphabet, added vowels, and passed it on to the Romans. Thus, an invention of ordinary people and spread by Phoenician merchants is the origin of most of the world’s alphabetic scripts in use today.

The Phoenicians (1800-64 BC), a particular mix of Western Semitic and Aegean cultures, had a long and troubled history. They were already settled on the coast of modern Lebanon by the middle of the third millennium BC, when the Sumerians and Egyptians were getting supplies of cedarwood from them. The Phoenicians became merchants and seafarers because geography urged them to look outwards rather than inland. Behind their coastal strip lay a narrow hinterland, cut up by hills running down from the Lebanese mountains to the sea. This also made it difficult to unite. There was no Phoenician kingdom; nor a Phoenician high king. The cities of Sidon, Tyre, Arwad, Byblos, and Berot (modern Beirut) were politically independent, united only by a shared culture and language. Weak and divided at home - these city-states came under the sway of Egyptian and Hittite in turn - it cannot be entirely coincidental that the Phoenicians emerge from the historical shadows only after 1100 BC, when the great era of Minoan and Mycenaean trade was long past. Their importance then is attested by copious evidence; the Bible relates that Phoenician craftsmen and materials played an important part in the building of Solomon’s Temple; one of the characters in an Egyptian tale, the Story of Wen-Amen, is a Phoenician merchant, who claimed more than fifty ships plying back and forth between Sidon and the Nile. Ancient writers all stress their skill as traders, ship-builders, and long-distance navigators. No doubt commercial need stimulated Phoenician inventiveness. Cedarwood was the earliest export, but, unable to rely solely on this limited resource, the Phoenicians developed an industrial base manufacturing a variety of commodities. Timber was not only exported, but skilfully carved, and the same skills were adapted to even more luxurious goods in ivory and metal, particularly gold. The most prized Phoenician export was fine textiles dyed with "Tyrian purple", deriving from marine snail, which remained much sought after well into Classical times. Sidon was the leading source of glassware in antiquity. But it was in the field of writing that the Phoenicians made their most lasting contribution to world history. The scripts in use in the world then had all required the scribe to learn a large number of separate characters, each expressing either a whole word or a syllable. It was at Byblos, in about 1500 BC, that an entirely new approach to writing was developed, a phonetic one, based on an alphabet representing the basic sounds of a word. This was a change with monumental potential. It could liberate writing from an arcane skill requiring years of study, and made possible the ideal of a literate. The Classical Greeks would borrowed the Phoenician alphabet, turned it sideways, and passed it on to the Romans, and thence to us. And yet no noteworthy Phoenician literature survives, while Phoenician art tended to borrow and copy Near Eastern and Egyptian forms, perhaps reflecting their role as middlemen; as the customers demanded. Trade was the Phoenician passion, and, to facilitate their commercial ventures, they established colonies and trading posts all across the Mediterranean. The first was probably at Citium on Cyprus, established in the tenth century BC. But the main expansion came from the eighth century onwards, as their home cities came under increasing pressure from the Neo-Assyrian Empire. A century later Sidon was razed to the ground, and the daughters of the king of Tyre were carried off to an Assyrian king's harem. The Phoenicians were then reduced to only their colonies on Crete, Corsica, the Balearics, Sardinia, and Sicily, as well as on the European mainland at Genoa and Marseilles. The furthest west was just beyond the entrance to the Mediterranean at Cadiz in southern Spain, to link Mediterranean and Atlantic trade, especially in British tin and Spanish silver. Few colonies had more than 1,000 inhabitants, but, in time, Carthage, on the coast of north Africa, would grow into a seat of power more formidable by far than Tyre and Sidon had ever been.

Moses-breaks-the-tablets-of-the-law-by-gustave-dore-gustave-dore

Moses Breaks the Tablets of the Law by Gustave Doré (d. 1883). Moses is considered the most important prophet in Judaism, and among the most important in Christianity, Islam, and other Abrahamic religions. In Jewish tradition, all of the teachings found in the Torah were given by God through Moses. The Ten Commandments are timeless riights and wrongs, but there are another 613 Commandments covering every aspect of life, from law to family, from personal hygiene to diet.

While the Phoenicians by their resumption of intercourse between Europe and the Near East were important, the people whom the Egyptians called Hebrews (and the world later called the Jews) were something more entirely. For many people over many centuries, mankind’s history before the coming of Christianity was the history of the Jews, as written down in the books of the Old Testament, and subsequently diffused worldwide in many languages by the Christian missionary impulse. The Hebrews somehow arrived at a unique religious vision, a coherent and uncompromising monotheism based on the worship of one all-powerful God, whom they called Yahweh; just and merciful, stern to punish sin but ready to welcome the repentant. No ancient people produced a greater historical impact from such comparatively insignificant origins and resources. The history of the early Jews begins among the Semitic people, nomads of Arabia, whose prehistoric and historic tendency had been to press north into the richer lands of the Fertile Crescent. Sometime around the time that the Sumerians were struggling against the Gutians, roughly 2150 BC, a Semitic citizen of Ur named Abraham decided (understandably) to gather his wife Sarah, his sons, their families, servants, and livestock, and set off westwards towards “Canaan”; the Western Semitic land of the Levant. The theological explanation for the journey, according to Genesis, was that Abraham had heard the voice of God, who gave him both a promise and a command. The promise was that Abraham and his descendants were blessed, and would be a great nation; the command was to leave his birthplace, and go with his household to the “land I will show you”. This Covenant is fundamental to an understanding of Judaism, the agreement that the Hebrews believed to exist between God and his chosen people. There does not seem to be good grounds for historians to deny that Abraham actually existed; countless peoples throughout history have traced their origins to a semi-legendary founding-father. If he did, his story is part of the confusion following the collapse of Akkadian Sumer as the population shifted away from southern Mesopotamia. When Abraham's clan arrived in Canaan, they cannot be blamed for wondering how this unpromising land was ever going to be theirs. This was a particularly rough time to be in the Western Semitic lands. The region had no unified culture, but had been moving towards increasing urbanization, building up independent cities, and quarrelling with neighbours over territory, wells, and grazing. But archaeology shows that, in the century or so before 2000 BC, things took a turn back towards a more nomadic lifestyle, due to a combination of over-planting, drought, and loss of lucrative trade after the collapse of Old Kingdom Egypt to the south. Several cities were temporarily abandoned, and the walls of Jericho were damaged and repaired at least seventeen times. In a time of particularly severe famine, one group of Hebrews left Canaan and moved down into well-watered Egypt, led by Abraham's grandson Jacob. On the journey, the Covenant between God and his chosen people was renewed, after a mysterious incident in which Jacob wrestled all night with the angel. God gave Jacob a new name "Israel", and from each of his twelve sons descend the "twelve tribes of Israel". The Hebrews / Israelites settled in the eastern Nile Delta, and prospered for a time. It was probably in Egypt that the Jews adopted circumcision as a distinctive mark of their community, because it was normal practice there. However, after the Second Intermediate, the Egyptian population grew understandably uncomfortable about the vigorous Israelites; after-all, they had in recent memory been dominated by the Hyksos, another group of Western Semites. The book of Exodus tells us that the Egyptian pharaoh rounded up the Israelites as slave labour for his building projects, and ordered all male Hebrew children thrown into the Nile. One mother, however, sealed her baby boy in a papyrus basket, and set it in reeds by the river, right near the place where the Egyptian princesses came down to bathe. A princess found the baby, recognized him as one of the Hebrews, but decided to adopt him as her own, under the name of Moses. On the face of it, the adoption seems unlikely, but we do know that Pharaohs often married the daughters of eastern royalty at this time; this princess could easily have been of Western Semitic stock; or perhaps she knew the story of Sargon’s birth, which served as a proof of divine chosenness. Raised in the palace, Moses, as a grown man, heard the call of God; he was to lead the Children of Israel out of slavery, back up to the land promised to Abraham. Inevitably, the Pharaoh refused, but each refusal was followed by divine reprisal - the Ten Plagues - until his resistance finally buckled. At this point we might hope for help from Egyptian sources, but, after a century of research, most scholars have abandoned the search for evidence of an Egyptian captivity and escape as a fruitless pursuit. There is only tradition, as there is only tradition for all Jewish history until the twelfth century BC. The Exodus became the central event in the history of the Jews. It is a story dominated by Moses, who managed the exodus, and held the Israelites together in the Sinai wilderness for fourty years. He did so by founding the Law, bringing down the Ten Commandments from his encounter with Yahweh on Mount Sinai; Jews were to worship Yahweh alone, to showed their devotion to Him through rituals, and to please Him by living up to high moral standards. This renewal of the Covenant was the bedrock of Jewish national identity, and led to a political reorganization; the formal recognition of the twelve tribes. Moses died just before the Israelites entered Canaan, but he had prepared them well for their inheritance.

David and goliath

King David, the second king of Israel, gained lasting fame in his youth by slaying the giant Goliath. After one indecisive battle between the Israelites and Philistines, it was proposed that two champions should fight to settle the matter. The Philistine champion was a giant, nine feet tall; an unusual height but not entirely impossible. King Saul had no intention of facing down this man, but David, an Israelite in his army, accepted the challenge. Confident that God was with him, David walked out with a slingshot, knocked Goliath out with a well-placed stone to the head, and cut off his head with Goliath's own sword.

Archaeology finally comes to the historians’ aid with the arrival of the Israelites at the southern border of the Western Semitic lands. The Biblical account of the conquest of Canaan fits evidence that the region was disputed between two religious traditions and two peoples throughout the twelfth century BC. Despite the resounding story of the walls of Jericho falling down when Joshua, the chosen successor of Moses, marched around them, the texts makes it plain that the conquest was a long and fiercely contested process. With the twelve tribes united only by their worship of Yahweh, each enjoyed their own small victories under their own local heroes. This, of course, again illustrates the collapse of Egyptian power, because such an important region could not have fallen prey to a minor Semitic people otherwise. The Israelites took as well as destroyed. They were in many ways less culturally sophisticated than the Canaanites, adopting their writing system and building practices, though without always reaching the same level of urban life as their predecessors. It seems to have been the challenge from the formidable Philistines, living along the Mediterranean coast, that spurred the next stage in the consolidation of a nation. During the settlement period the only Israelite political institution was a series of chief judges, prophets said to be chosen by God to guide them through crises. The penultimate and most famous was the supernaturally strong Samson, who "ruled" for twenty years, until betrayed by his lover Delilah. Captured and hauled off to Gaza, he prayed to God, and recovered his strength, allowing him to bring down the temple on himself and thousands of the enemy. This sort of Pyrrhic victory reflected a stalemate. No Philistine leader was powerful enough to pull together an army from all of their five cities, while the judges of Israel, their theological authority notwithstanding, had even less authority. Finally, the Israelites decided that they needed a king, and the last judge Samuel chose the impressively tall Saul (d. 1010 BC). The Kingdom of Israel (1037-587 BC) was thus established, but royal power was not universally accepted. Disagreement over several issues lost Saul the support of Samuel. And he had a dangerous rival in the young David (d. 970 BC), who won fame by defeating the Philistine champion Goliath in single combat. Paranoid that David was seeking to usurp the throne, Saul attempted to have him killed, forcing him to go into hiding. After Saul's death, the people of Judah, to the south, chose David as their king, while Saul's son struggled to maintain his inheritance in the north. After seven years of chaos, the northern tribes invited David to become their king as well. David's first act as king of all twelve tibes was to seize the Canaanite stronghold of Jerusalem, and make it his capital. To give the city religious significance, he had the Ark of the Covenant - containing the two stone tablets of the Ten Commandments - moved there. He intended to build a temple to house it, but God denied him this, because of his well-known flews such as greed, lust, selfishness. Yet David went on the decisively defeat the Philistines, and conducted a series of successful campaigns that extend his control over almost all of the Western Semitic lands. He chose Solomon (d. 931 BC), from among his many sons by many wives, to be his successor. The Biblical portrayal of Solomon is paradoxical. On the one hand, he is credited with great wisdom, wealth, and power. Certainly the building of the "First" Temple in Jerusalem was just one part of the largest building program ever seen in Western Semitic lands. On the other hand, Solomon's heavy taxes and conscript labour caused disaffection among the populace, especially of the northern tribes. Moreover, his tendency to secure friendly relations with the neighbouring kingdoms through marriage - according to tradition he had 700 wives and 300 concubines - led him into idolatry; foreign wives meant tolerating the cults of their gods. Solomon’s ambition to turn Israel into an great kingdom instead helped destroyed it.

Kingdoms of Israel and Judah 900BC

Upon Solomon's death, his son Rehoboam was unable to prevent the kingdom splitting in two. The ten northern tribes seceded and proclaimed an official named Jeroboam as their king; the Kingdom of Israel (930-720 BC). Only Rehoboam’s own tribe, Judah, and the tiny tribe of Benjamin remained loyal to Jerusalem; the Kingdom of Judah (930–587 BC). The weakness and division of the Israelites did not go unnoticed by their neighbours. The Egyptians were enjoying a very brief renaissance under a Libyan warlord named Shishak. He marched up the coast, and laid siege to Jerusalem. The city-walls remained intact, though. In other words, the southern kingdom bought off the attackers with the palace treasure, and became an Egyptian vassal for a time. In contrast, the northern kingdom was regarded as an important power in the region, as evidenced by successfully fended-off a series of Neo-Assyrian invasions from the late-ninth century BC onwards. This doesn’t get much play in the Biblical account, which is more concerned with presenting its story as a parable about the danger of idolatry. No northern king, not even the strongest, would pull down the ancient Canaanite shrines at Bethel and Dan, remembered for the idol of the golden calf. This eventually invited God's wrath, and , in 722 BC, the Kingdom of Israel fell to the Neo-Assyrian king Sargon II (d. 705 BC). As per Assyrian policy, the population was deported en masse across Mesopotamia, giving rise to the persistent legend of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Judah lasted longer. It was more compact and somewhat less in the path of great powers; though, it did become a Neo-Assyrian vassal state from 701 BC. By the sixth century BC, the international situation had changed; Babylon, rather than Assyria, was once again the dominant power in Mesopotamia. In 598 BC, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II (d. 562 BC) conquered the Kingdom of Judah, plundered Jerusalem, and systematically destroyed Solomon's Temple; not a trace could later be found. The Judaeans then suffered mass deportation too; large numbers were carried away to captivity in Babylon, while others escaped into exile in Egypt. This was the great defining experience of The Exile, a period so important that afterwards we may properly speak of "the Jews". This period saw the last high point of Biblical prophecy in the person of Ezekiel, whose faith in the ultimate establishment of a new Covenant with God had a profound influence on the reconstruction and reorganization of Judaism. The authoritative text of the Hebrew Bible (or Torah), and the synagogue as an institution, can be traced to the Babylonian exile; crucial elements in the Jewish ability worship anywhere, and to retain their identity regardless of circumstance. It is also believed that the concept of the Messiah first entered Jewish tradition at this time, a beacon of light in dark times; and of course crucial to the beginnings of Christianity. There was a narrowing of the Jewish community, too. According to Ezekiel, redemption must lie though purification. Hebrew laws on marriage were more rigidly enforced; a Jew, already married to a gentile wife, was obliged to divorce her. This became more obvious after the Persians conquered Babylon in 539 BC, and the Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem, as a self-governing vassal state,

Neo-Assyria 824 BC

The circumstances which had favoured the appearance of a Jewish state had disappeared. Since the days of Hammurabi, the Mesopotamian valley had been the seat of no great empire, though such a sweeping statement conceals much. One king of Assyria, Tukulti-Ninurta (d. 1207 BC), conquered Hittite Syria and Kassite Babylon, and defeated the Elamites, who had themselves been coveting Babylon. But his empire was soon swept a cluster of Semitic desert-dwellers whom scholars call the Aramaeans, together with a new line of Kassite kings in Babylon, For the next two-centuries or so, these three peoples made awkward and touchy neighbours, until shape began to reappear in this turmoil of events in the ninth century BC. Then, as the Bible account tells us, Assyrian armies were once again on the move; the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–609 BC). This was an important and particularly unpleasant phase of Near Eastern history. Assyria was the first society to make militarism the central policy of state. Fed by conscription of all males, and armed with siege engines able to breach walls until this time impregnable, the Assyrian war-machine moved outwards through unconquered territory each spring. Resistance was often brief, for their custom was to make an example of any city which refused to capitulate. Siege artillery was brought up, and the end was usually swift. Soon the ruling elites were dangling from poles around the city-walls, while their people were taken as slaves, and others would be moved into the new territory; the probable fate of the Ten Tribes of Israel. Other cities understand the message, and open their gates. The Assyrian peak followed 729 BC, when Babylon was seized. Israel, Syria, Lower Egypt, Cilicia (southern Anatolia), Cyprus, and northern Arabia were soon annexed. Finally, in 646 BC, the Assyrians made their last important conquest, the northern part of the lands of Elam. The consequences for the Near East were of great importance. A standardized system of government and law spanned the whole region. Conscript soldiers and deported populations were moved about within it, sapping its provincialism. Aramaic spread widely as a common language. A new cosmopolitanism became possible after the Assyrian age. Meanwhile, the profits of conquest financed the building of a new and spectacular capital at Nineveh by Sargon II (d. 705 BC). His son, Sennacherib (d. 681 BC), added a great palace, which he called ekallu ša šānina la išu ("the Palace without Rival"); it covered more than half a square-mile of land, ornamented throughout with superbly sculpted reliefs commemorating the great deeds of Assyrian kings, as well as another theme monotonously repeated; sackings, enslavement, impalement, torture and the final solution of mass deportation. Ashurbanipal (668–626 BC ) left his own monuments, but his finest relic was the world's first great library. In it he accumulated copies of all that he could discover of the records and literature of ancient Mesopotamia; more than 30,000 tablets and fragments (now mostly in the British Museum), including the famous Epic of Gilgamesh in its fullest edition. But the death of Ashurbanipal, in 631 BC, was close to Assyria's end. 

Hanging gardens of babylon

A hand-coloured engraving made in the 19th century, after the first excavations in the Babylonian capitals. It depicts the fabled Hanging Gardens, with the Tower of Babel in the background.

One of the fundamental reasons was the inability of the Neo-Assyrian kings to resolve the "Babylonian problem"; a brutal sack of the ancient city in 689 BC led to prolonged unrest, frequent periods of outright revolt, and, eventually, to devastating revenge. Ashurbanipal's son was immediately faced by the revolt of his brother. In the middle of this mess, another revolt of Babylon under Nabopolassar (d. 605 BC), combined with an invasion by a dangerous new neighbour, the Kingdom of the Medes, to swiftly sweep the Neo-Assyrians away. In 612 BC, Nineveh was captured and destroyed after a three-month siege. Assyria's collapse left the Fertile Crescent open to new masters. The Medes were content with the eastern territory (for now), so the Neo-Babylonian Empire (626–539 BC) became the dominant power in Mesopotamia for the first time in a thousand years. Nabopolassar was succeeded by his son, Nebuchadnezzar II (d. 562 BC), gave Mesopotamia its last Indian summer of grandeur. If for nothing else, he would be remembered as the destroyer of the Jerusalem in 587 BC, and then carrying of the Jews into their Babylonian captivity, to carry out the embellishment of his capital. According to tradition, he was also the creator of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. And he was the greatest king of his time, perhaps of any time until his own. The great glory of the empire was an annual New Year's Festival, celebrated in honour of the city's patron deity, Marduk. Each year, all the Mesopotamian gods - the idols and statues of provincial shrines - were borne down the rivers and canals to take counsel with Marduk at his temple. The destiny of the entire whole world was then debated and determined for another year. Thus theology reflected the political reality; Marduk's eternal supremacy endorsed the absolute monarchy of Babylon. But Nebuchadnezzar’s successors were less effective. And they had the misfortune to be close neighbors of the greatest empire-builder to have emerged by this stage in history; Cyrus the Great,of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. On 12 October 539 BC, Cyrus' army entered Babylon without the need for battle, after his engineers diverted the waters of the Euphrates. In so far as the story of antiquity has a turning-point, this is it. An independent Mesopotamian tradition going back to Sumer was over. We are at the edge of a new age, in which the Persian East or Greco-Roman West would dispute mastery of the "civilised world".

Civilisation in India[]

Indus valley civilization mature phase

Harappan Civilization

In the years when the Egyptian Pharaohs were building the earliest pyramids, and the Sumerian kings of Kish collected tribute from the shipping up and down the Euphrates, another great civilisation of ancient times had appeared on the Indian subcontinent. Even now, the diversity of Indian life is enormous. The subcontinent is, after-all, about the size of Europe and divided into regions clearly distinguished by climate and terrain. From the very beginning of Indian history, the peoples of the south, the northeast, and the northwest lived independent of each other. The north and south were divided from each other by two mountain ranges, the Vindhya and Satpura. As the weather warmed, a desert three hundred miles wide spread its sands between the two great river valleys of the north, the Indus and Ganges systems. When written history begins, its racial complexity, too, was already very great: scholars identify six main ethnic groups. Many others were to arrive later and make themselves at home within Indian society. All this makes it hard to find a focus. Yet, Indian history has a unity in the fact of its large measure of insulation from the outside world by geography. Until the oceans began to be opened-up in the sixteenth century AD, India had only to grapple with occasional, though often irresistible, incursions by alien peoples. To the north, she was protected by some of the highest mountains in the world; to the north-east lay belts of jungle. The other two sides of the sub-continent opened-out into the huge expanses of the Indian Ocean. This natural definition not only restricted external forces, it also gave India a distinctive climate. Much of it does not lie in the tropics, but nonetheless the climate is tropical. The mountains keep away the icy winds of Central Asia; rain-laden clouds roll in from the oceans, which cannot go beyond the northern ranges. The climatic clock is the annual monsoon, bringing the rain during the hottest months of the year. Although protected in some measure from the outside world, India's north-western corner is more open. The mountain passes of the Hindu Kush were the most important zones of encounter between India and other peoples; even India’s contacts with China were first made by this roundabout route. This is suggestive when we consider the first Indian civilizations.

In the Indus Valley Civilization, the sparse remans of the society called Harappan after Harappa, one of its earliest excavated cities, lie frustratingly beyond archeologists' reach. The rising water table had drowned evidence of its earliest phases, and the literature period is obscure because scholars have not been able to decipher the writing system. Here the Indus and Saraswati Rivers were more powerful and capricious than the Nile. changing course and cutting new channels that might deprive settlements of water supplies. Ultimately, perhaps, they were fatally unpredictable, for Egypt lasted thousands of years longer. When, the Indus altered course and the Saraswati dried up, Harappan cities dwindled to faint traces in the dust. But three to five thousand years ago, the Indus floodplain was broader than the Nile's. The Indus and Saraswati flooded twice a year, first with the spring snowmelt when the rivers rose, and then in summer when warm air, rising in Central Asia, sucks moisture in from the sea. As a result, farmers could grow two crops annually. The basic patterns were the same as Egypt. Wheat and barley grew on rainless, irrigated soil and cattle, mainly humped-back zebu, in Harappa grazed on marginal grassland. No region was as rich as the Nile delta, but Harappa had a costal outpost as the seaport of Lothal, on the Gulf of Cambay on the Indian Ocean, in a land of rice and millet.

Indus-valley-seals

The best-known artifacts of Indus Valley Civilisation are seals depicting real and fantastical animals. These seals, and other relics found at Harappan sites, suggest many cultural elements would later become assimilated into Hinduism. Some seals show a mother-goddess (later personified as Kali) and a male three-faced god sitting in a yoga pose attended by animals (believed to be an early Shiva). Black stone pillars (associated with phallic worship of Shiva) and bull figures (later Shiva’s mount, Nandi) have also been discovered.

The Harappan heartland had few valuables of its own. Again, as in Egypt, the basis of wealth and the surplus of agriculture. Around 2000 BC, the Harappan-culture area was the biggest in the world, stretching over half a million square miles. This was, perhaps evidence of weakness rather than strength. Territorial expansion was the Harappan solution to feeding its increasingly dense population in the heartland, and no society can keep expanding forever. Most surviving Harappan art is engraved on seals used to mark trading goods. These little masterpieces capture how people of the time saw their world. Some show naturalistic representations of animals, especially bearded zebus, feasting tigers, and elegant, hump less bulls, that are sniffing, it seems at an object that looks like an incense burner. Violations of realism, however, are more characteristic and include jokey elephants and rhinoceroses. Perplexing scenes, probably from Harappan mythology show magical transformations of human into tiger, starfish into unicorn, horned serpent into flourishing tree. In one case, a human is transforming into a tree after sex with a rampant bull. A common motif shows an apelike figure defending a tree against a tiger; both creatures wear horns. We do not know much about Indus Valley Civilization (2600-1900); also called "Harappan" civilization. The people who settled along the length of the Indus river (straddling the modern India–Pakistan border) did not set down their achievements on tablets. Nor did they carve the likeness of their leaders on stone. What remains of their civilization consists of city ruins, a whole assortment of seals used to identify goods for trading, and a few brief inscriptions that no one can read, since the script has never been deciphered. Archaeological evidence shows that agriculture came later to India than to the Fertile Crescent. It, too, can first be traced in the north-west corner of the sub-continent from about 6000 BC; there is the reasonable possibility of direct Mesopotamian influence, though it would be rash to be assertive about that. Three thousand years later, a string of farming villages had spread along the lower Indus River, and along the five branches of its upper end. Parallels with other river-valley cultures begin to be found, such as wheel-thrown pottery, copper implements, and baked bricks. When at last indisputable evidence of civilized life is available, the change is startling. By about 2600 BC, the villages along the Indus had turned into a network of cities. The great cities of the Mature Harappan period were Harappa itself on a northern branch of the Indus; Mohenjo-Daro, farther to the south; and Lothal, near modern Ahmedabad on the Gujarāt coast. More than seventy other sites have been uncovered. Harappan cities were astoundingly uniform, despite being spread across more than a quarter-million square miles; an area greater than either Sumer or Egypt. Even their bricks were of standard size. Each had a citadel and a residential area, with streets laid out on a rectangular grid pattern, wide enough for two oxcarts to pass each other. There was an elaborate sewage system with household drains leading into main sewers, and inspection holes for maintenance. The great granary at Harappa, for feeding the populace, was designed with bays to receive carts of grain, and air ducts to dry it; estimates put the population at some thirty-thousand at its peak. At Mohenjo-Daro, close to its granary, there was a great public bath-house. Perhaps it is not fanciful to see in this the first manifestations of an enduring feature of Indian life; the ritual ablutions still so important to Hindus. It is clear the Harappans had a well-developed economic life. Weights and measures seem to have been standardized over a large area. Evidence survives of specialist craftsmen drawing materials from far afield, and subsequently sending-out their finished-goods again. This civilization had cotton cloth - the first of which we have evidence - which was plentiful enough to wrap bales of goods for export. Harappan seals, of which thousands survive, turn up in the far corners of the Near East, Eastern Africa, and Central Asia. These seals, and a few inscriptions on fragments of pottery, provides our first evidence of Indian writing. Yet it has no message for us; the lack of long texts suggests that the script was limited to trading. With an effort we can imagine Harappan Civilization with faceless artisans, merchants, and labourers, but it has no recorded kings, battles, power struggles, or tales of heroes. Ideas and techniques from the Indus spread west through Sind (now southern Pakistan), north to the Punjab, and down the west coast of India. Where its influence did not reach – the Ganges valley and the south-east – different cultural processes were at work; there are traces of Chinese influence. Rice, for example, began to be grown in India in the Ganges valley from about 3000 BC. We do not know why the India's first civilization crumbled, though its passing can be roughly dated. The sense of order, so evident in the Indus cities, began to diminish after about 1900 BC. The Harappans were not brought down by hostile invasion. The ruins show no dropped weapons, no systematic destruction, and no signs of struggle around the citadel; which had, after-all, been built for just such an occasion. We have to assume that some kind of natural disaster; an epic flood, drought, or earthquake. Recent examination of skeletons show evidence of severe illnesses like anemia, leprosy, and tuberculosis, probably caused by severe malnutrition. Whatever the cause, most Harappan cities had been abandoned by sometime around 1700 BC.

Shiva-auspicious-one

Hinduism has been called the oldest still practised religion in the world. The oldest Hindu religious text, the Rigveda, was composed around 1500 BC. They are considered "revealed scripture", meaning disclosed directly by the gods to the ancient sages. Although not written down until much later, the sacred hymns and mantras have been orally transmitted in minute detail; not only the words, but specific pronunciations, rhythms, and melodies. A tradition that continues to this day. So that, when listening to a modern recitation, it sounds exactly as it did thousands of years ago.

A violent intrusion did come down into India from Central Asia, but not until about 1600 BC. These newcomers were the Aryans - from their own word for "noble" - an Indo-European people, who made their way through the Hindu Kush down into the Punjab in several waves. Their civilization was, at first, barely civilized at all. As a pastoral nomads of the steppes, they were accustomed to living in roving bands grouped around a war-leader; they did not farm; they did not build; they did not write; they had no culture so advanced as that of the Harappans. What they could do was fight, bringing bronze weapons, horses, chariots, and bows with range unlike anything India had seen. This was the beginning of centuries during which these migrants washed deeper and deeper into the Indus valley, and eventually reached the upper Ganges. No doubt much violence marked their coming, but there is plenty of evidence that the native populations lived on with them. Instead, there was a fusion of Aryan with earlier ways; the arriving Aryans adopted lives that were patterned much more after the vanished Harappans, while elements of Aryan culture were adopted by the peoples already there. This was process that took centuries; not until the coming of iron, after 1000 BC, was the Ganges valley fully colonized in a sprawl of villages. Meanwhile, the invaders had made two decisive contributions to Indian history, in its religious and in its social institutions. The deepest roots of Hinduism go very deep indeed. Practically every prehistoric people and nomadic tribe honoured a goddess of fertility, a guardian of farmers and herdsmen, a patroness of motherhood and childbirth. Many of these have been brought together in Shiva, one of the great popular cult figures today. Seals depicting a figure like an early Shiva, and stones like the phallic lingam (a symbol of Shiva), have been found in the Harappan cities. Vishnu, another focus of modern devotion, is much more an Aryan. Most historians believe Hinduism is a fusion or synthesis of beliefs from various sources. As Aryan culture spread over northern India, they did not obliterate indigenous cultures and practices. Instead, hundreds of local cults came to join their own gods and goddesses to form the Hindu pantheon. There is some debate over who influenced who more during this time. Whatever survived from the pre-Aryan past, the major philosophical and speculative traditions of Hinduism stem from the Aryan legacy; their language, Sanskrit, is the language of religious learning to this day. Around 1200 BC or so, they began to set-down in writing their own myths and ritual hymns, passed-down orally for many centuries, in the Rig-Veda, the earliest Hindu sacred text. Within the early pantheon of gods, the most important were: the fire-god Agni, through whose sacrificial flames men could reach the gods; the war-god Indra, who, year after year, slew a demon, and thus released the heavenly waters which came with the breaking of the monsoon; and the sky-god Varuna, embodiment of justice and the natural order. In the long term, none of these were to play a major role in Hinduism, but two minor characters in the Rig-Veda were waiting in the wings: Vishnu appears as a sun-god who occasionally helps Indra in slaying demons; and Shiva has a small and sinister part. Any society with complicated gods who make complicated demands stands in need of priests, as well as warlords. By the later verses, priests had become something more than simply specialists in god-care, but a hereditary class (Brahman); priests fathered sons who were trained to become priests, and who married daughters of other priests. Together with a hereditary class of warrior-chiefs (Kshatriyas), they were India's first true aristocracy, distinct from ordinary peasant-farmers (Vaishyas). These social divisions have survived to our own day, in what the Portuguese later gave the name we use, the Caste System. About the early history of this vast and complicated subject, it is impossible to speak with assurance. Once the rules of Caste were written down, they appeared as a hard and solid structure; movement between divisions was impossible. Yet this did not happen until Caste had been in existence for hundreds of years. As society became more complicated, two new categories were soon added to the earliest divisions: a class of landowners and merchants (Gahapata), and a voiceless and powerless class of people, the "unclean" (Shudras), whose origin is unclear, but the word eventually came to denote slave. This structure has been elaborated almost ever since, as a vast number of Castes and sub-Castes slowly inserted themselves.

India-560

By the seventh-century BC, Aryan culture had established something like a cultural unity in northern India. Its centre of gravity had also shifted from the Punjab to the Ganges Valley, which was already what it was to remain, the great centre of Indian population, its cultural domination assured as the centre of Indian civilization. A second age of Indian cities began there, together with the development of larger and better-equipped armies; we hear of war-elephants. By about 600 BC, the warlike clans had battled, negotiated, and treatied their way into a semi-stable arrangement of sixteen kingdoms; known as the Mahajanapadas. The processes in which they emerged are touched on in two great Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Together with the Upanishads, sacred texts dating from about 700 BC, they mark the next important evolution towards Classic Hinduism. Although Hinduism, with its colourful pantheon of gods and goddesses, is usually viewed as a polytheistic religion, it can be interpreted as monotheistic. Brahma is, in a sense, the one supreme divinity, who sets all else in motion and in whose essence all human souls take part. He is too immense a concept for the human mind to comprehend, though, so presents himself in many different aspects and manifestations which people recognize as the gods. Of these, the most important are Vishnu and Shiva, who together with Brahma form the central "Hindu Trinity": Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver), and Shiva (the destroyer). An immense, all-embracing world view slowly emerged, in which all things are linked in a web of being. Souls might pass through different forms of this immense whole; they might move up or down between Castes, or even between the human and animal world. The duty of the devout Hindu is the observation of Dharma – a virtually untranslatable concept, but one which embodies carrying-out religious duties, behaving virtuously, striving to be the best version of oneself, and obedience to one's station in life. In the short term a good Dharma will lead to reincarnation in more fortunate circumstances, The ultimate purpose is to achieved Moksha; release from the recurring pattern of death and rebirth.

Lord-buddha

Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it.” – The Buddha

During the days of the Mahajanapadas kingdoms, the Kshatriya held political power, but this must always have depended on a nice balance of relations with the Brahman priestly class. In almost every other ancient society, the kings dominated the rest; even those who paid lip service to the gods were likely to throw-in-jail or even execute their priests. But in India, the Brahman wielded a peculiar power of their own. It was still possible, at this time, for a man who had not been born Kshatriya to become king if the priests carried out the rituals bestowing sacred power upon him. But no one who was not born Brahman could become a priest. In such a rigidly hierarchical society, someone was bound to be discontent. In the sixth century BC, the rise of new ascetic movements challenged the formalism of orthodox Hinduism One very successful cult which did not require communication with the gods through the agency of the priests was Jainism, based on the teachings of Nataputta Vardhamana (d. 477 BC); also known as Mahavira ("Great Hero"). At the heart of the Jain doctrine is the principle of Ahimsa: non-violence against all living things, since any forms of life share with mankind the possession of a soul. This, of course, made agriculture or animal husbandry impossible, so Jains tended to become merchants and later bankers, with the result that, in modern times, the Jain community is one of the wealthiest in India. A few years later, an even more important reformer appeared; Siddhartha Gautama (d. 483 BC), better known as the Buddha ("Enlightened One"), founder of Buddhism. Gautama was born into wealth and privilege, a prince of the Shakya clan on the northern edge of the Ganges plain. After a comfortable and gentlemanly upbringing, he found his life unsatisfying and left home. His first recourse was extreme asceticism, divesting himself of all possessions except for a single garment, and spending his time in silence and meditation. Seven years of this proved to him that he was on the wrong path. He began instead to pursued a Middle Way, of reflecting on life in modest comfort. Following this decision, Gautama sat down with the determination under a pipal tree (known as the "Bodhi tree") in Bodh Gaya, a village in Bihar.

After seven days he had attained enlightenment, also called Nirvana; the knowledge of a truth which is caused by nothing, dependent on nothing, and leads to nothing (a way of existence impossible to define in words). Like other contemporary religious leaders, Gautama began preaching and gathering disciples. His message was plain to the point of bluntness; most Indians faced a lifetime of weary suffering, with no hope of escape except through rebirth, which might face them with another long life of suffering. It was an existence which, as one historian put it, did not so much promise hope, as threatened even worse. The Buddha taught his disciples that no obstacle prevented the soul from attaining Moksha, a concept common to Hinduism and Jainism. In the older two religion, the cycle of death and rebirth eventually leads Moksha, and release from the endless cycle. In Buddhism, it can be achieved in this life by following the Eightfold Path; that reasoning, mindfulness, and concentration would lead the mind to enlightenment. The Buddha apparently had great practical and organizational ability, as well as insight. By his death, at the age of about eighty, communities of Buddhist monks had been established across northern India. Wandering through villages and towns with their begging bowls, eager to describe the path to the truth, they were familiar figures. But so were many other such groups, including the Jains. The advance of Buddhism beyond the others was largely due to the enthusiastic support of a king of the 3rd century BC; Asoka the Great, ruler of much of the Indian subcontinent. 

While Mahavira and the Buddha were preaching the freeing of the self from the material world, the rejection of material possessions, the kings of the Mahajanapadas were fighting to gain as much territory as possible. Vatsa, Avanti, and Kosala, to the north of the Ganga, were the major rivals in the wars of supremacy, trading off power with each other; none keeping it for long. But Magadha, below the Ganges, grew steadily in strength. Bimbisāra of Magadha (d. 492 BC) became the first Indian empire-builder, albeit in a minor way. He conquered the delta kingdom of Anga, which controlled the river’s access to the ocean; by way of the Bay of Bengal. It was also the first of the sixteen kingdoms to be permanently absorbed into another. Bimbisāra is also remembered as a great friend and protector of the Buddha. This was not merely a religious position, but a political one; any doctrine which reduced the power of the Brahmans was bound to increase the power of the king. By the late fourth century BC, Magadha was well on the way to becoming the center of the first great Indian empire; the Maurya Empire.

Civilisation in China[]

The most striking fact about Chinese history is that it has gone on for so long. For about 3,500 years, there has been a Chinese nation using a Chinese language. Its government as a single unit has long been taken to be normal, despite long periods of grievous division and confusion. China has had a continuing experience of civilization almost unrivalled in history. Somehow, at a very early date, it crystallized certain institutions and attitudes which were to endure; some of them even to transcend the revolution of the 20th century.

China1150bc

We must begin with the land itself, which, at first glance, does not suggest much that makes for unity. The physical setting of Chinese history is vast - almost three times bigger than India. From the Great Wall, which came to guard the northern frontier, to Hong Kong, more or less the southern tip, is 1,250 miles as the crow flies. This huge expanse contains many climates and many landscapes. Above all, northern and southern China are very different. In summer the north is scorching hot and arid, while the south is semi-tropical and prone to flooding; the north is cold and barren in the winter, while the south is always green. China’s major internal divisions are set by three great river valleys, which drain the interior, and run across the country, roughly from west to east. These are, from north to south, the Yellow River (or Huang He), the Yangtze River, and the Pearl River (or Zhu Jiang). It is surprising that a country so vast and so divided should form a unity at all. And yet, China is geographically isolated too; a world unto herself. It seemed inaccessible to outside influence, far removed from other great civilizations. Mesopotamia made more difference to India than any empire's rise or fall made to China. Moreover, her frontiers still sprawl across and along great mountain ranges and plateaux. These highlands are a great insulator. This arc is broken only where the Yellow River flows into northern China from Inner Mongolia. Originating in the High Kunlun, north of Tibet, the Yellow River loops north, skirting the Ordos Desert, itself separated by another mountain range from the desolate wastes of the Gobi, before turning south, and then flowing generally eastward across the North China Plain to the Bohai Sea. Through it have flowed people, ideas, and soil; and it is on the banks of this river that the story of civilization in China begins. As in other parts of the world, the coming of agriculture meant a revolution. It has been argued that peoples who lived in the semi-tropical south coast were clearing forests to make fields as far back as 10,000 BC. Certainly, rice was being farmed along the Yangtze around 7000 BC. In the north, people cultivated millet, a grain well-adapted to the sometimes arid climate. By the fifth millennium BC, four complex cultures can be identified; the Longshan culture, beneath the great southern bend of the Yellow River; the better-known Yang-shao on the river’s middle and lower reaches; the Qinglian’gang appeared further south on the Yangtze; and another culture, called Dapenken, sprang up on the south-east coast. We know almost nothing about these four groups. All we can do is label them with different names because they had different styles of pottery. Already things were being made which cannot have been intended for the rough and tumble of everyday use. The crafting of ceremonial vessels in forms which were to become traditional, the carving of turquoise and appallingly hard jade into intricate jewellery, and perhaps even the use of chopsticks. A fragment of silk from the Yellow River valley, the oldest in the world, shows that the Chinese domesticated the silk-worm as early as 3630 BC. In Neolithic times, then, this was already the home of much that is characteristic of the later Chinese culture.

Shang-writing

Shang sites have yielded the earliest known body of Chinese writing, mostly divinations inscribed on oracle bones. Some modern Chinese characters can be traced back to around 1200 BC, making Chinese arguably the oldest continually-used writing-systems in the world.

According to the Chinese myth, the world had its origin in a primordial creator, Pangu, who separated heaven and earth, and became geographic features such as the sun, the moon, mountains and rivers Afterwards, a succession of three divine and five earthly rulers helped create mankind, and imparted to them the essential skills and knowledge of human society. Because of their lofty moral character, they lived to great age, and ruled over a golden age in Chinese history. Perhaps the most famous of these rulers was the last, Yu the Great, the Chinese “Noah”, who controlled the flooding to render China habitable, It is at this point that China's prehistory begins to merge with history, for Yu is said to have founded the Xia Dynasty (2200-1766 BC), the first of the three dynasties of Ancient China. The Xia are generally regarded as more myth than fact, despite considerable effort to identify certain Bronze Age sites - such as Erlitou, just below the southern bend of the Yellow River - with the dynasty. It is more certain that, somewhere about 1766 BC, a tribe called the Shang, who enjoyed the military advantage of chariots, imposed themselves over a sizeable stretch of the middle Yellow River valley. The area the Shang Dynasty (1766-1046 BC) controlled was tiny, a matter of about 40,000 square miles; this made it somewhat smaller than half modern Henan province, though its cultural influences reached far beyond that. The political arrangements of the Shang seem to have been a matter of uniting the landholdings of tribe leaders with obligations to the king, including labour services and military duties. It has been described as "feudal". The ruins of Shang cities reveal that, in the first half of the dynasty, the Shang kings had no fixed capital city. Sima Quin (d. 86 BC), the historian who collected the traditional tales of ancient times into the seminal Records of the Grand Historian. tells us that the capital moved moved five, before finally settling at Yin (near modern Anyang) around 1400 BC, which inaugurated the dynasty's golden age. These shifts suggest a dynasty whose power was anything but unquestioned. Rather than resist over-mighty subjects around them, the Shang shifted their ground, and, in this way, managed to keep the crown in the family. The Shang kings may not have governed with the power of an Egyptian pharaoh, but what they could do when at full strength is shown in their ability to compel the labour of many hundreds of men. Excavations at one of the earlier capitals, near modern Zhengzhou, reveal walls of stamped earth some thirty feet high and forty thick enclosing a sizeable settlement. Outside Yin, eleven very deep and lavish tombs have been uncovered, which presumably belong to the eleven Shang kings who were recorded as having reigned there. The Shang court was sophisticated enough to use scribes and archivists, for this was the first truly literate civilisation east of Mesopotamia. All the great decisions of state, and many lesser ones, were taken by consulting oracles. A man or woman who sought guidance went to the Shang court to pose a question. This was done by engraving the shoulder-blade of an oxen (or less commonly the shell of a tortoise) with an inscription, and then applying a heated metal point so as to produce cracks. The path of the crack through the inscription was "read", and interpreted as a message, sent by departed ancestors, who now passed their wisdom back to the living. The veneration of ancestors does not imply the deification of the dead, but rather the dead, as spirits, merged with the divine, and became a means of connection to unseen forces. The goodwill of the ancestors was sought through offerings, including animal and human sacrifices. Excavations at Yin reveal that a ruler cannot be buried, or a building consecrated, without a retinue of ghostly retainers. Beneath each column of the largest buildings is a kneeling human, together with a dog, sheep, or oxen. Royal tombs demonstrate a similar reckless disregard for human life. The victims were likely prisoners of war. Religion had considerable repercussions on political forms. The heart of the ruling house’s claim to obedience was its religious superiority. In Shang times, few ancestors were thought likely to survive into the spirit world; only the spirits of particularly important persons, above all, the kings themselves. The oracle bones show that the questions, no matter who asked them, were always posed in the name of the king. The characters on the bones also provide us with evidence about the foundation of Chinese language, for they are basically those of classical Chinese. The Shang had over 4,600 different pictographic characters, some of which evolved, with only minor modifications, into the characters used in written Chinese today. There can be no better example of the continuity underpinning Chinese civilization. Apart from oracle bones, the most famous Shang artefacts are beautifully turned bronze-ware. Like pyramid-building, the mining and casting of bronze requires many multitudes of men, both hard-labourers and skilled craftsmen, to do nasty and labour-intensive work. No other ancient civilisation was able to cast bronze on such a scale; nor in such sophisticated forms. Bronze was used for the fittings of spoke-wheeled chariots; bronze buckles fastened the bridles of horses; soldiers were equipped with an assortment of bronze weaponry. Ritual vessels, the most elaborate of the bronze-ware, were often shaped like fantastical beast and birds. The production of bronze was controlled by the king, and suggests a great deal of autocratic authority. Yet Sima Qian makes constant mention of court officials and noblemen with clout of their own. This conflicting portrait boils-down to a simple reality: the Shang king was the spiritual head of all his people, but his real and earthly power existed inside a much smaller domain. His nobles governed farther-flung provinces in his name, but acted more or less as they pleased. Farther out lay peoples who sent tribute to the king only to avoid arousing his anger.

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The Yellow River - The powdery, wind blown soil from inner Asia that gives the Yellow River its name is highly fertile if irrigated. In a climate slightly warmer and slightly wetter than today's, it produced great quantities of millet in the third and second millennia BC. What we now think of as Chinese civilization took shape when this region combined economically and politically with the moist, rice producing Yangtze valley to the south.

Zhou-ding

A tripod cauldron, or Ding, from the Zhou period. The "Nine Cauldrons" was a collection of Ding, which came to symbolize the authority granted to the ruling dynasty by the Mandate of Heaven. They had, according to legend, been cast by Yu the Great himself, of the Xia dynasty. The use of these cauldrons to offer ritual sacrifices to the ancestors was a major ceremonial occasion, with strict regulation for their use based on rank. Only the king was permitted to use all nine cauldrons; the highest vassal lords were entitled to use seven; and lessor noblemen five, three, or one.

Shang China succumbed in the end to another tribe from the west of the Yellow River valley; the Zhou Dynasty (1046-256). The Zhou were not foreign invaders; nor were they exactly vassals of the Shang kings. Their land, after all, lay across the Wei River, a tributary of the Yellow River, some four hundred miles from Yin. The name "Zhou" appears often in the oracle bone inscriptions, sometimes as a friendly tribute-paying neighbour, and at other times as a hostile one. They came to adopt many aspects of Shang culture. The ancient chronicles make it very clear that the Shang brought rebellion on themselves, entering a cycle that would repeat again and again throughout Chinese history. The early kings earned their right to rule by hard-work and virtue. They passed their rule to their sons, but, as time went on, those sons grew corrupt, negligent, and cruel, and the people suffered under misrule. Conflict reached a head during the reign of the last Shang king, Chou (1075–1046 BC), who slowly alienated his people by committing all manner of immoral behaviour. According to Sima Quin, he created a new form of execution, known as the "Burning Pillar" punishment; officials or noblemen, suspected of disloyalty, were forced to hug a large hollow bronze cylinder stuffed with burning charcoal. He was challenged by Wen of Zhou (d. 1050 BC), and finally defeated by his son Wu (1046-1043 BC) in a great battle at a place called Muye. It was said that the Zhou headed a coalition of eight nations, but were still considerably outnumbered, and gained victory only because the Shang troops were driven to mutiny by the cruelty of their king. Chou fled back to his capital, where he donned jade armour in preparation for a last stand, but the invading Zhou forces burned down the palace around his ears. The new dynasty was not yet secure, however. King Wu died just three years after the conquest, leaving a young and inexperienced heir, Ch'eng (1042-1021 BC), and a huge territory to consolidate. This was accomplished by one of his brothers, Duke Dan of Zhou, who served as regent. The Duke of Zhou is one of the most celebrated figures of early Chinese history. Almost at once, rebellion broke-out in the east, led by a surviving prince of the Shang royal family. Even though it garnered the support of old Shang loyalists and several discontented Zhou nobles, the Duke of Zhou managed to quell the rebellion, and further expand the Zhou domain into the east. If the Zhou kings were to rule without constantly using the army to whip rebels into shape, then his divine authority needed to be clear. To counter the Zhou crisis of legitimacy, the Duke of Zhou introduced what was to prove one of China's most enduring political doctrines: the "Mandate of Heaven". No one wanted the Shang back, but their overthrow had to be justified with care. According to the doctrine, there exists a power, Tian ("Heaven"), superior to all the other gods and ancestral spirits of the dynasty, from which derived a mandate to rule. In return, the king had a moral obligation to use power for the good of his people, which spreads harmony throughout the land, and in turn demonstrates harmony with the divine. If he did not, he would lose the mandate, and harmony could only be restored by removal of the king. The concept is somewhat similar to the later European doctrine of "divine right of kings", but with one key difference; the mandate was not unconditional. The right of rebellion against an unjust ruler existed in China, as it never did in Europe. On a more practical level, the Duke of Zhou organized the Chinese state into an efficient bureaucracy, perhaps for the first time. No divine mandate was going to convince peoples who lived a day’s ride or more from the capital city at Fenghao (near present-day Xi’an) that the Zhou king must be obeyed. That would have to be done by force. The eastern side of the kingdom was, perhaps, the most worrying, where the remnant of the Shang needed to be watched. So the Duke of Zhou built a fortress on the middle reaches of the Yellow River, to guard the eastern approach to the capital; a fortress that became the centre of the new city of Luoyang. Members of the ruling dynasty and trusted allies were sent-out to build similar centres of Zhou watchfulness at strategic spots along the periphery of the kingdom. Each of these became a hereditary fiefs, ruled by a royal relative, while still owing loyalty to the king. Sima Qian called these noblemen the “Lords of the Nine Lands”, though inscriptions on ceremonial gifts given and loyalties claimed suggest a still more complicated picture; a pyramid-like structure with as many as five ranks of noblemen sloping downwards from the throne. The Zhou position at the top was represented by the Nine Cauldrons, nine ceremonial vessels used to offer ritual sacrifices to the ancestors, which resided in the capital.

Chinese plain 5c

The Zhou Dynasty was the longest lasting of any in China's history. However, the great longevity of the royal line was not marched by a similar continuity of its rule. The early halcyon days of the Zhou became known as the Western Zhou (1046-771). It was characterized by rapid but unstable expansion of what may now be called Chinese civilisation. To begin with, Chinese culture was a matter of tiny islands in a sea of barbarism. Yet by the end of the period, it was the common possession of scores of what have been termed "states" scattered across the north, and as far south as the Yangtze valley. At first, the appointment of royal relatives and trusted allies to semi-independent fiefs created a viable political structure. However, by the ninth century BC, the stability of that arrangement began to collapse. The longer expansion went on, the more diluted the blood tie between king and lords became, and the more dependent the ruler became on the combined strength of his vassals. Inevitably, the "Lord of Nine Lands" acted with more and more independence. Bickering between the king and fief lords escalated, and more than once erupted into actual fighting. In 841 BC, the noblemen jointly expelled the tenth Zhou king, a tyrant, and power was held for fourteen years by the two most influential nobles, until the crown prince came of age. In 771 BC, the Zhou royal line was broken again, when King Yu (781–771 BC) was killed by invading barbarian nomads from the northern steppes. The barbarians may have been beaten away, but the western border was insecure, and the capital at Fenghao clearly no place for the king. The surviving crown prince, P’ing (770–720 BC), decided to withdraw to the east, to the safer city of Luoyang, which had been founded centuries before by the Duke of Zhou. The Western Zhou had ended; the era of the Eastern Zhou (771-221 BC) had begun, a violent and volatile time, which further subdivides into the Spring and Autumn (771-481 BC) and the Warring States (403-221 BC) periods. The former is named after the Spring and Autumn Annals, a chronicle of these years in the small state of Lu. As a result of the shift east, the royal domain and its influence shrank. Real power thereafter passed into the hands of the various feudal lords, who asserted their political autonomy, and waged war against one another. The Zhou kingdom now consisted of perhaps 160 states, of which many were tiny; a single city and surrounding land. Since more powerful states tended to conquer and incorporate weaker ones, the number of states declined over time. All the while, the Zhou kings cowered in the middle, clinging to a power which had become almost entirely ceremonial. The general agreement among the lords was that, even if the king did not actually rule, he stood at the centre of some sort of cosmic order that they would prefer not to disrupt.

Confucius-statue

No contemporary portrait or sculpture of Confucius survives, and the earliest known picture dates from more than four centuries after his death. It is customary to portray him as a wise old man with long grey hair and moustaches, usually carrying scrolls.

The Chinese world of the Spring and Autumn Period was both warlike and intellectually fertile, in a way similar to Classical Greece at roughly the same time. For the lords who disputed China, the price of survival was the development of better administrations to mobilize more soldiers and resources. The era was to remain famous as the time of the "Hundred Schools of Thought", when wandering thinkers moved about from patron to patron, expounding their ideas. One sign of this was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the appearance of the most famous treatise on military strategy; Sun-Tzu's The Art of War. Sun-Tzu (496 BC), a military advisor in the Wu state, had few illusions about what constant warfare was doing to his country; his central theme was to conquer your enemies, while avoiding as much actual fighting as possible. In a world where force-of-arms seemed to be the only glue holding a state together, the most famous of all Chinese thinkers offered another way. It is convenient to call him Confucius (d. 479 BC), though that is only a Latinized version of his Chinese name, Kong Fuzi ("Master Kong"). He was to be more profoundly respected in China than any other philosopher. What he said - or was said to have said - would shape his countrymen’s thinking for two thousand years; and was to be paid the dubious compliment of bitter attacks from the Marxist regime of the 20th century. Confucius came from the lesser nobility in the small north-eastern state of Lu. By the time he was twenty-one, he had married, fathered a son, and landed a job overseeing the granaries in his own state. This was a post that required attention to detail and perfect record-keeping, both of which young Confucius found himself naturally suited for. But his real passion was the rituals and ceremonies carried out in the state court, and the court of the Zhou king. He gained a reputation as a sort of walking thesaurus of ritual performance, which led to more important appointments in the Lu court. In his early thirties, Confucius was forced to go into exile, when internal turmoil flared-up in Lu. For several years, he wandered from state to state, trying to find a ruler who would put into practice his recommendations for just government. He reputedly asked 72 different rulers if he could advise them, before returning home, where he devoted the rest of his life to teaching, proclaiming his school open to talent regardless of birth or wealth. He is also traditionally credited with having authored or edited the Five Classics of the traditional Confucian canon; though modern historians are cautious about attributing them to Confucius himself. Confucius was deeply conservative. In fact, his love of past was so strong that he saw himself, not as the "inventor" of a new philosophy, but rather a "transmitter" of ancient moral traditions. He believed that, in the early Zhou period, China had experienced a golden age. He frequently cited the actions of Kings Wen and Wu, and especially those of the Duke of Zhou, as examples of appropriate behaviour. Confucius taught his pupils how to find both tranquillity and virtue in a world where neither was on conspicuous display. The man who knew his place and scrupulously performed his duties became the anchor for an orderly state and society. The practical expression of this was the strong Confucian predisposition towards hierarchies, and the due respect upwards to those higher in rank; older members of a family, senior members of government. He was not easy on those at the top, either. They must be benevolent in order to win the affection and respect of their juniors, and serve as an example of high moral standing. Confucius placed particular stress on the importance of self-cultivation. Self-cultivation was not only a matter of book-learning, but the value of good form and proper behaviour. The Confucian ideal was the Junzi, a term often translated as "gentleman". One aspect of Junzi was the "Golden Mean"; moderation in all things. Vulgar displays of wealth were frowned upon as distasteful and socially disruptive. Confucius' teachings were immediately successful in the sense that his pupils were much in demand as advisers among the competing states of China. And so his ideas were spread, and his disciples began, as they would continue - as civil servants. Confucian texts were to be treated with something like religious awe. And yet, it is striking that Confucius had so little to say about the supernatural; apart from the importance of ritual and ceremony, which he thought reinforced moral teachings and embedded them in daily life. Confucianism is so emphatically practical a creed that it can scarcely be called a religion. It was ill-equipped to satisfy the natural human need for something more mysterious. Chinese thought provided this in the form of Daoism (or Taoism). Its formulation is traditionally attributed to the semi-legendary sage, Laozi ("Old Master"), the supposed author of the Tao Te Ching ("the Way and its Power"), the foundational text of the philosophy (and later religion); though we know virtually nothing about him. Sima Qian tells us that Lǎozǐ grew weary of the division, chaos, and endless wars in China, and ventured west to live as a hermit in the barbarian wilds, leaving this small book with the gatekeeper of a western pass. Daoism urges submission to a conception already familiar in Chinese thought, that of Dao ("The Way"), an unknowable cosmic force which flows through all things, and sustains the harmoniously ordered universe. How this is achieved is a subtle mystery. Whereas Confucians were obsessed with the correct course of action in any situation, Daoists champions Wúwéi ("inaction"), allowing things to naturally occur without interference - to flow like water does in nature, effortlessly flowing around obstacles. Confucians yearned to serve a ruler; Daoists were famously uninterested in taking part in government. Followers of Daoism developed a diverse set of rituals and practices, ranging from monasticism to meditation, from energy healing to the pursuit of immortality through alchemy. Daoists were to irritate straight-laced Confucians for millennia, and yet the two systems of thought became like two sides of the same Chinese coin; opposites and complementary, the practical and the spiritual. A Chinese official is a Confucian while going about the business of government; if he loses his job, he may retire to a monastery as a Daoist; but a new job offer will rapidly restore him to Confucianism.

Although the Spring and Autumn Period was the cradle of the two most enduring schools of Chinese thought, Confucianism and Daoism, it was brought to an end by a more brutal philosophy, which historians refer to as Legalism. The Legalist responded to the lawlessness of the age by demanding more teeth for the law. They maintained that human nature was incorrigibly selfish; accordingly, the only way to preserve the social order was to impose discipline from above, by strictly enforcing a system of rewards and punishments. Legalism exalted the state above all, seeking its prosperity and martial prowess over the welfare of the common people. "The object of rewards is to encourage desirable behaviour; that of punishments, to prevent undesirable behaviour," proclaimed a 4th century Legalist work. It was read with attention by the rulers of the Ch'in state, which emerged as one of the seven dominant powers of the Warring States Period, and ultimately unified China into a centralized political structure for the first time in history under Ch'in Dynasty.

Civilisation in the Americas[]

Olmec-chavin-artifacts

Olmec artifacts (top row): colossal head; great mound pyramid; and jade face mask. Chavin artifacts (bottom row): jaguar-and-cactus ceremonial vessel; 3D model; and tenon head.

The only other area where a startlingly high level of achievement was reached was the Americas. It is clear that the history of man on this vast landmass is much shorter than almost anywhere else. The first inhabitants of the Americas arrived from Siberia in several migrations, perhaps thirty-thousand years ago, crossing the land bridge (now submerged beneath the Bering Strait), which had formed due to glaciation and significantly lower sea-levels. They then filtered slowly southwards for thousands of years. Traces of cave-dwellers have been found in Cape Horn, at the southern tip of South America, from about 12,500 BC; the impression of a human footprint, probably from a child. The Americas contain very varied climates and environments. and it is scarcely surprising that evidence shows almost equally varied patterns of life, based on different opportunities for hunting, food-gathering and fishing. What is more certain is that some of these cultures arrived at the invention of agriculture without any import of techniques from the Old World. Maize (corn) began to be cultivated in Mexico before the third millennium BC, and, towards the end of it, had been domesticated. from ears about 5cm-in-length, into something like the plant we know today. Further south, evidence of potatoes and other starchy root vegetables appears at around the same time, and a little later there are signs that maize had spread southwards from Mexico.

Ancient-olmec

The earliest recognized civilisation in Central America is that of the Olmec Civilization (1200-400 BC), on the eastern Mexican coast (now the states of Veracruz and Tabasco). It appears, apparently without antecedents, in a humid, swampy, forested region, which makes it hard to explain why civilization, which elsewhere required the relative plenty of the river valleys, should in America have sprung from such seemingly unpromising soil. Yet reliable rainfall and year-round warmth meant that crops could be harvested twice or even three-times a year. They also no doubt gathered the plentiful supply of local forest-foods and sea-life, including avocados, cacao, palm nuts, clams, and turtles. With an agricultural surplus, the Olmecs set about trading their crops for obsidian from the central highland to make tools, jade from the southeastern lowlands to create magnificently carved ornaments, and iron-ore from the rugged west to make polished mirrors (used by later Mesopotamian shamans to communicate with the gods). By 1200 BC, significant cities had developed, first at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, and then at La Venta and Laguna de los Cerros. While other areas were mere villages of wattle and daub, the Olmecs of San Lorenzo constructed the first monumental architecture of Mesoamerica; a massive earthen plateau rose fifty meters above the plain, with ceremonial buildings on top. Around 900 BC, San Lorenzo displays evidence of decline, at which point the the centre of Olmec civilization shifted to La Venta, which eventually boasted a population of some 18,000. La Venta initiated one of Mesoamerica's most long-lasting traditions, the construction of a great pyramid, one-hundred feet high and shaped life an effigy to a nearby volcano. But the best known Olmec artefacts are their colossal stone heads, basalt sculptures up to three-meters high with grim pug-nosed faces, and wearing curious helmets. The nearest basalt to San Lorenzo was thirty-miles away; eighty-miles from La Venta. The stone, of up to fifty tons, had to be cut without metal (probably rope-�and-water abrasion assisted by drilling), and transported without the wheel or pack animals (most likely on rafts), All this suggests a highly centralized and hierarchical society able to mobilize large amounts of labour, and support skilled artisans. Olmec cultural influence seems to have prevailed right across Central America, as far south as what is now El Salvador. It remains unknown why their civilization ended in about 400 BC. Its hallmark art style - snarling jaguar-human figurines and jade face masks - gradually disappear. Archaeological evidence shows that the population of their heartland dropped precipitously, and their centres were abandoned one by one. Olmec civilization transmitted something to the future, for their gods, such as the feathered serpent, persisted right through the pre-Columbian era. It seems likely that the hieroglyphic writing, system of Central America originated in Olmec times, though surviving evidence appears a century or so after its disappearance. They are also credited with, or speculatively credited with, the Mesoamerican Long Count calender, the invention of the zero concept, the ball-games, and the ritual of human sacrifice, which reached its grisly peak in the ceremonies of the Aztecs

Ancient-chavin

Much further south, in Peru, another complex culture appeared and survived a little later than the Olmecs. It, too, spread vigorously only to dry up mysteriously. The Chavín Culture (900-250 BC) had long been regarded as the "mother culture" of South America. But in recent decades, archaeologists have discovered new evidence of a far earlier complex society in the Norte Chico region of Peru, along the Supe River. Aspero was the first of many such sites to be discovered, of which Caral is the largest. They reveal sophisticated architecture, including pyramids and raised platforms, dating from around 3000 BC; contemporary with the beginnings of civilization in Mesopotamia and Egypt. But we know much more about Chavín Culture, which was much more of a religious and cultural phenomenon, than a political one. By 900 BC, a settled agricultural way of life had spread across much of Peru. Until the Chavin, numerous local cultures of considerable diversity achieved importance at a regional level, but tended to have little interaction with one another, apart from quarrelling with neighbours over water sources. The main Chavin site, the magnificent temple complex of Chavín de Huántar, is about 10,000 feet above sea level, in the Andean highlands of central Peru. It became an important pilgrimage site throughout the region, transcending local rivalries. Ancient landslides had left natural terracing, and an ample supply of stone, that ensured the growth of the site. At its peak, Chavín de Huántar had a population of up to 3,000, and covered an area of 100 acres. Associated with agricultural fertility, Chavin religious ceremonies involved a multi-sensory spectacle. Two staircases descend into the labyrinthine temple interior of passageways, galleries, and rooms. An added aura of religious mystery was achieved with stone reliefs depicting fantastical or transformational creatures, priests suddenly appearing from secret passages, and a cacophony of sound. Shells were carved into trumpets, and the temple itself had many water channels, through which water would have run under pressure, creating an impressive noise in the confined inner. The ritual activity of the Chavín is not fully understood, but it is believed the priests were oracles, who gave answers to pilgrims in return for offerings. Chavin art was equally influential, and its style of architecture, sculpture, pottery, and textiles represents the first widespread, recognizable artistic form in the Andes. For the first time, most of the local or regional cultures of Peru were unified by a common iconography, religion, and ideas.

In the Americas, the Olmec and Chavin foundations proved very important. When the Spanish landed in the New World nearly two-thousand years after their disappearance, they would find most of its inhabitants still working with stone tools. They would also find remarkable civilisations, and the relics of others, in the same two culturally important areas.

The Rest of the World[]

Rulers of Kush, Kerma Museum

Statues of various rulers of the late 25th or "Kushite" Dynasty of southern Egypt.

So far, huge areas of the world have still hardly been mentioned. This is, in the main, because none of them had yet achieved levels of civilization comparable to those already touched upon. The story of Africa, of the Pacific peoples, and of western Europe is not history but still prehistory, even if one or two instances may reopen the argument about what constitutes "civilization". Africa is a good place to start, because that is where the human story first began. its history has often been overlooked. When New Kingdom Egypt was in the final stages of decline, it empowered the first independent African state (other than Egypt) of which we have information; the Kingdom of Kush (1000 BC-350 AB), high up the Nile, in present-day Sudan. This had been the extreme frontier of Egyptian activity after Nubia had been absorbed. The Kushites, free from Egyptian incursions into their territory, founded the kingdom with its capital at Napata (now modern Karima), Kush became the power in the region as Egypt floundered, and, by 730 BC, was strong enough to conquer southern Egypt; five of its kings ruled as the Pharaohs, known as the Twenty-Fifth (or "Kushite") Dynasty. When the Assyrians fell on Egypt, the Kushites turned their attention to pushing their frontiers southwards, which resulted in two important changes; its culture became less clearly influenced by the Egyptians, and it extended over territory containing iron ore. Having learned the technique of iron smelting from the Assyrians, this became the basis for another three centuries of prosperity and civilization.

Stonehenge2007

Stonehenge, in southern England, whose creation is thought to have taken about 900 years to its completion in about 2100 BC. It contains eighty blocks weighing over five tons apiece, which had to be brought some 150 miles from the mountains of Wales.

To the great civilizations which rose and fell in the river valleys of the Near East, Europe the was largely an irrelevance, except as a supplier of metals. For the sake of clarity, two Europes must be distinguished; the Mediterranean coasts, where literate, urban cultures came fairly quickly once we are into the Iron Age; and north of this line, where literacy was never achieved in antiquity, but imposed much later by conquerors. Yet, western Europe had one art form which remains indisputably impressive. It is preserved in the thousands of megalithic monuments to be found in a broad arc from Malta, Sardinia and Corsica, around through Spain and northern France, to the British Isles and Scandinavia. Megaliths are not unique to Europe, but are more plentiful than on other continents, and seem to have been erected earlier; a stone passage grave at Finistère in Brittany dates from around 4800 BC. Over the centuries, an astronomical theme is added; they begin to be aligned in relation to the sun. An outstanding example is at Newgrange in Ireland, dating from about 3400 BC. At sunrise on the winter solstice, the rays penetrate the length of the passage grave to illuminate the innermost sanctum. In the later stage of this mysterious tradition, the megaliths emerge in their own right as great standing stones, often arranged in circles; sometimes laid out in patterns which run for miles. The most striking site is Stonehenge, in southern England, whose function is not easy to say, though it has been argued that the cluster of stone operated as a giant calendar or solar observatory. These relics represent huge concentrations of labour and argue for well-developed social organization. This has led some enthusiasts to claim Western Europe as another seat of early "civilization", almost as if its inhabitants were some sort of depressed class needing historical rehabilitation. But even at the beginning of the Christian era, Europe had little of its own to offer the world except its minerals. Europe’s time was still to come; hers would be the last great civilization to appear.

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