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The First River Valley Civilizations, 3500 – 1500 B.C.E. Civilization Cities Government Artisan, craftsmen Social Structure Writing Trade Art, and Science. Mesopotamia A. Settled Agriculture in an Unstable Landscape
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The First River Valley Civilizations,3500 – 1500 B.C.E. Civilization • Cities • Government • Artisan, craftsmen • Social Structure • Writing • Trade • Art, and Science
Mesopotamia A. Settled Agriculture in an Unstable Landscape 1. Mesopotamia is a Greek word meaning “land between the rivers”. 2. Mesopotamia civilization developed in the plain alongside and between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.
3. Agriculture did not come to Mesopotamia until appx. 5000 B.C.E. 4. By about 4000 B.C.E., farmers were using plows pulled by cattle to turn over the Earth. 5. Shortly after 3000 B.C.E. they learned to construct canals to supply water as needed.
6. The earliest people living in Mesopotamia in the “historical period” are the Sumerians. 7. They created the main framework of civilization in Mesopotamia. 8. Eventually, Semitic speaking peoples from the northerly cities became dominant culturally and the language of Mesopotamia became dominantly Akkadian by about 2000 B.C.E.
B. Cities, Kings, and Trade 1. Mesopotamia was a land of villages and cities. 2. Cities were not developed for the purpose of becoming cities. In fact, most cities started with combination of one or more villages. 3. We use the term city-state to refer to independent ancient urban centers and the agricultural territories they controlled.
4. The production of food was vital to the survival of the Mesopotamians that they opened new land to agriculture by the production of irrigation. 5. This could only be done by compelling large numbers of people to work together. 6. The two centers of power for which there are written records are the temple and the palace of the king.
7. Each Mesopotamian city contained a central temple that housed the cult of the cities deity or deities. 8. By the 3rd millennium B.C.E., another type of figure arose called the “lugal” or “big man”. 9. The first truly epic piece of literature comes from Mesopotamia and is called “The Epic of Gilgamesh”. It was probably based on the stories of the king of Uruk.
10. Eventually after the fall of the Akkadians and the city of Ur came the Amorites which founded a city named Babylon. 11. The best known Babylonian king was a man named Hammurabi. 12. Hammurabi is best known for his law code, inscribed on a polished black stone pillar. 13. This code provided judges with a lengthy set of examples illustrating the principles they were to employ in deciding cases.
C. Mesopotamian Society 1. One persistent feature of urbanized civilizations is the development of social divisions. 2. Society was divided into three classes: (1) the free, landowning class (2) farmers and artisans (3) slaves. 3. Penalties for crimes in the Law Code depended on the class of the offender.
4. Women have no political role, but they were able to own property, maintain control of their dowry, and even engage in trade. 5. Some women worked outside the household, in textile factories and breweries or as prostitutes, tavern keepers, bakers, and fortunetellers.
D. Gods, Priests, and Temples 1. The ancient Mesopotamians believed in a multitude of gods who embodied the forces of nature. (polytheistic = belief in many gods.) 2. For the Sumerians the god Anu was the sky, Enlil the air, Enki the water, Utu the sun, Nanna the moon.
3. The Mesopotamians feared their gods and believed the gods were responsible for the changes that occurred. 4. Mesopotamian creation myths, like all creation myths, were generally intended to give a satisfactory explanation for their environment. 5. The most visible part of the temple compound was the ziggurat. A multistory, mud bricked, pyramid-shaped tower approached by ramps and stairs.
E. Technology and Science 1. The word technology means “specialized skill” 2. One example of technology employed by the Mesopotamians was irrigation. 3. Another example of technology is their writing system which first appeared before 3300 B.C.E. 4. Their most common method of writing is called Cuneiform. It is not a language but a system of writing.
Egypt A. The land of Egypt: “Gift of the Nile” 1. The most fundamental geographical feature of Egypt, ancient and modern, is the Nile River. 2. The Nile originates at Lake Victoria and flows northward toward the Mediterranean Sea.
3. Nearly the entire population of the region lives in the twisting, green ribbon alongside the river. 90% of the geography is a bleak and inhabitable desert of mountains, rocks, and dunes. 4. The ancient Egyptians referred to life-sustaining dark soil as the “Black Land” and the deadly outlying desert as the “Red Land”
5. Because of Egypt’s relative geographic isolation and natural environment its culture was unique. 6. The Nile River was the main means of travel and communication. 7. Because the river flows south to north the southern part of the country is called “Upper Egypt” and the northern part of the country is called “Lower Egypt”.
B. Divine Kingship 1. The pivotal event in Egyptian history was the unification of both Upper and Lower Egypt by King Menes. 2. King Menes, a ruler from the south around 3100 B.C.E., was either a historical figure or a mythical one. We’re not sure! 3. In contract to Mesopotamia, Egypt was unified early in its history.
4. Historians typically organize Egyptian history into thirty dynasties (kings from the same family) identified by Manetho, and Egyptian from the 3rd century B.C.E. 5. From a much broader point of view, scholars also refer Egyptian history as the “Old”, “Middle”, and “New Kingdoms”. 6. The central figure in the Egyptian state was the King aka Pharaoh - which wasn’t used until the period of the “New Kingdom”.
7. Unlike the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians believed the Pharaoh was a god come to earth. 8. They also believed that the Pharaoh had been placed on earth by the gods to maintain ma’at, divinely authorized order of the universe. 9. Because the Egyptians believed the Pharaoh was divine they felt no need to write a law code like Hammurabi did in Mesopotamia.
10. The death of a Pharaoh was such a critical moment in Egypt that Djoser, a 3rd dynasty king, ordered the construction of a step pyramid for a burial tomb. 11. Between 2550 and 2490 B.C.E., the Pharaohs Khufu and Khefren erected huge pyramids at Giza – the largest stone structures ever built by human hands.
C. Administration and Communication 1. Various cities served as the capitals of Egypt based entirely on the preference of the Pharaoh. 2. Memphis, on the lower Nile near the apex of the delta, held the central position during the Old Kingdom. 3. Thebes, far to the south, came to prominence during much of the Middle and New Kingdom periods.
4. A system of writing, called Hieroglyphics, were picture symbols standing for words, syllables, or individual sounds. 5. Early Hieroglyphics were laborious to reproduce and cursive script eventually replaced it. 6. By 2500 B.C.E., administrators working with ink wrote on a material called papyrus, after the reed from which it was made.
D. The People of Egypt 1. The population of ancient Egypt is estimated at between 1 million and 1.5 million people. 2. It was physically heterogeneous, ranging from dark-skinned people related to the populations of sub-Saharan Africa to light-skinned people akin to North Africa and western Asia.
3. At the top of their Social Stratification were the King and high-ranking officials. 4. In the middle were low-level officials, local leaders, priests and other professionals. 5. At the bottom were peasants, constituting the vast majority of the population. 6. Compared with Mesopotamia, the Egyptian population was more rural and agricultural.
7. Slavery existed on a limited scale but was of little significance for the economny. 8. Women, for the most part, were treated more respectfully and had more legal rights and social freedom compared to women in Mesopotamia.
E. Belief and Knowledge 1. The religion of the Egyptians was rooted in the landscape of the Nile Valley and in the vision of cosmic order that this environment evoked. 2. Unlike in Mesopotamia, the river rose on schedule every year, ensuring a bounteous harvest.
The Indus Valley Civilization A. Material Culture 1. The Indus Valley civ. flourished from appx. 2600 to 1900 B.C.E. 2. It thrived in the floodplain of the Indus River and the now dried up Hakra River 25 miles east of the Indus. 2. This particular culture is best known from two of its largest cities: Harrappa and Mohenjo-Daro.
3. The culture built major urban centers that swelled in population to 35,000 people. 4. Like the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, the Indus valley civ had a writing system. 5. This writing system contains at least four hundred signs to represent syllables and words.
6. Indus valley cities were arranged in a rectangular grid that allowed for easy transportation. 7. The regular size of the streets and length of the city blocks have been taken as evidence for a strong central authority.
