Transcript Different styles of civilization

7. Rise and Fall of Egypt
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Mesopotamia and Egypt:
Similarities
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Hierarchical state systems
Flood-plains, irrigation systems
Original, not successor states
Geography: civilization traps
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Mesopotamia and Egypt:
Differences
• Timeline: unity v. disunity
• Social-political life
– Re warfare
– Re law
– Re gender
• Religion
– Nature of gods, divinity of ruler, immortality
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Egypt: Unity and Disunity
– 3100 BCE: unification (Narmer-Menes)
– 2200: collapse of Old Kingdom
– 2050: restore unified state
– 1750: collapse of Middle Kingdom
– 1550: New Kingdom
– 1050: collapse of New Kingdom
• Years of unity, peace: 1700
• Years of disunity, war: 350
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Mesopotamian Wars
• 2600 Gilgamesh (fights with “Enkidu”)
• 2350 Sargon: Akkadian conqueror
– Creates standing army
– Creates unified administration replacing local rule
– Empire lasts 100 years
• 1792-50 Hammurabi creates Babylonian empire
• 1600 Hittites invade, destroy dynasty
• 1500-500: constant wars until unification under
Persians (Spodek, 58)
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War v. Peace
• “Politically, each of the major cities of Sumer was
also a state, ruling over the contiguous agricultural
areas and often in conflict with neighboring citystates. The artwork [involved] an exaltation of war.”
Spodek 60
• “Unlike Mesopotamia, Egypt has almost no existing
record of independent city-states.” 71
• Compare: Hammurabi’s code with what famous
Egyptian code?
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Law v. Tradition
• Code of Hammurabi
– Problem of how to unify people with different kinship
traditions
– King imposes rules
• Based on class, social status, gender
• Not on local (democratic, egalitarian) traditions
• Egypt: no code!
– No need to impose new legal system of unity
– Administration by Nomarchs is adequate for tax purposes
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Egyptian liberalism
• “In Egypt, thousands of small, largely selfsufficient communities seem to have persisted
under a national monarchy, but with a
generally decentralized economy for the local
production and consumption of food and
basic commodities. . . .” Spodek, 71.
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Egypt’s Easy Rule
• No independent city-states to conquer
• =>No history of warfare for 900 years of Old
Kingdom’s existence
• =>No need to radically transform old kinship
systems through legality,
– through a code of laws issuing from the Pharaoh
or a god
• =>Survival of elements of ancient past in
Egypt’s social and cultural life
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Creation of Legal-Bureaucratic State in
Mesopotamia
• Problem of Sargon’s (died 2279 BCE) standing army
– devastates local area
• Solution: disperse army to different regions
• Next problem: Local leadership revolts
• Solution: replace local rulers with centralized
administration and army:
– ->faceless bureaucracy, military discipline
• Impose centralized rules: Law carved in stone
(Hammurabi): creation of legalist state
• Result: radical overthrow of old kinship system
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Egypt and Mesopotamia: culture
• Hymn to the Nile, to the Sun
– Nile as life-giving, mankind-loving divine force
– Sun as divine source of life for all the world
• Gilgamesh: story of the flood
– Rivers as tools of destruction of wrathful
anthropomorphic king-like gods
• Hammurabi’s Code of law
– v. continuation of traditional society in Egypt
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Death and Immortality
• Emphasis of Epic of Gilgamesh on Death
– Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh fails in quest for immortality
– Only 2/3 a god
– Historical context: Kings are overthrown; they die
violent deaths in frequent warfare between city-states
• Egypt builds pyramids for immortality
– Book of the Dead (Spodek, 73)
– Pharaoh is 3/3 divine: 900 years of rule before first
defeat!
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Weirdness of Egyptian religion
• Mesopotamia as classical model
– Animism > anthropomorphic polytheism (Why?)
• Sphinx, p. 74 head of a human, body of a lion;
see list of gods, 70; Horus, p. 71
– = Animistic/anthropomorphism
• Egypt with one foot in the (animistic) past?
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Re-Horakhty
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Evolution of religion
• Early Mesopotamia (to 539 BCE): Animism >
anthropomorphic polytheism
• Egypt: From early animism to
• > animistic anthropomorphism (or
anthropomorphic animism?)
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Why the differences?
Compare environments (p. 45)
• Isolation of Egypt by desert
– No need to fight outsiders from west or east
– Stress north-south axis along Nile (unity)
• Mesopotamia: herders from hills beyond
rivers
– Need for constant military defense against
surrounding nomads: to east and west
– Rise of separate, independent city-states
– Stress East-West axis (division)
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Compare rivers
• Nile is easy to navigate, reliable flooding
– Easy to conquer, using small force
• >T & Eu.: winding, shift paths, devastating
floods; two rivers, not one
– Divides rather than unites
– > separate, independent city states
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Continuity of Old Ways in Egypt
• Hierarchical rule remains largely external to ancient
system
• > Survival of elements of old system
• > No harsh code of law replacing kinship traditions
• > Greater freedom, dignity for women
– Women Pharaohs (Hatshepsut, Cleopatra)
• >Relatively decentralized society
• >Animism only partially displaced by
anthropomorphic aspects of deity
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Hatshepsut (1508–1458 BC)
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Why Did Old Kingdom Fall?
• Reasons for success = reasons for fall
• > moderation of central government becomes
its weakness
• Growing power of local “nomarchs”
• From faithful warriors to independent lords
• = feudalization of Egypt (feudalism)
• = collapse from within
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From unity to disunity
• Mesopotamia: from disunity to greater unity
• Egypt: early unity, peace
– Time of greatest cultural achievements (e.g.,
pyramids)
• Growing internal wealth over 900 years
• Seized by local “feudal” powers
• Collapse of original, moderate but relatively weak
state
• Its weakness is due to its early decentralization
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Rise and Fall of Middle Kingdom
• New unification (2050): “more organization
and power than before.” Why?
• Expansion of power to Nubia, Middle East:
empire (see map 134)
• Defeat by Hyksos (1750 BCE) Why?
• = Still too weak
• Compare with Mesopotamian state
– formation through constant warfare
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Empire of New Kingdom
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1550-1050
Even stronger than before
Confronts surrounding civilization as major power
Extends empire to Euphrates under Thutmosis I
(1504-1492)
• Chariot battle with Hittites at Quadesh, Syria in 1274
under Ramses II (“one of the greatest battles of the
Middle East” Spodek, 129.)
• Fall of dynasty in 1050
• Conquest by Nubia in 712
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Egypt’s foreign policy
• “The small states of Syria and Palestine
managed to remain self-governing, but Egypt
stationed army units and administrative
officials in the region and collected taxes. Here
in western Asia, Egypt seemed more
interested in access to raw materials than in
governance.” Spodek, 132
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Why Did Egypt Fall?
• =Inability of Egyptian state to become fully imperial
• Legacy of “early success” continues
– Isolation
– No need for strong state to control its territory along
the Nile
– No need to integrate outsiders
• Creative cultural focus (Old Kingdom) is replaced by
(more destructive) military focus of New Kingdom
• Egypt remains closed on itself, not “dynamic”
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Pantheon Method of Intellectual
Integration
• Importance of belief systems to rule
• In Mesopotamia: pantheon of gods
incorporates new peoples, new religions
• Problem for Egypt:
– Peculiarity of their “gods”
– Specificity of animistic Nile to Egypt
– > Need new intellectual/belief system
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Akhenaton’s Religious Revolution
• Need for a religion of empire
• Inadequacy of old religion
• Akhenaton’s (1353-35) solution: one God for all
human beings: monotheism
• That God is the Sun
• > Continues old animism, but transformed for empire
• Animism > animist-polytheism > animistic
monotheism
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New openness
• Artistic freedom: naturalism
– Recalls Cave paintings
• Rigid rules of hierarchical state abandoned
• Temple open to sky, not closed and dark
• New city Akhetaton (Amarna)– away from
priests
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Hymn to the Sun
• Your dawning is beautiful in the horizon of the
sky,
• O living (God) Aton, Beginning of life!
• When you rise in the Eastern horizon,
• You fill every land with thy beauty.
• You are beautiful, great, glittering, high above
every land,
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• Your rays, they encompass the lands, even all that
you have made.
• You are (the God) Re, and you carry them all away
captive;
• You bind them by your love.
• Though You are far away, your rays are upon the
earth;
• Though you are on high, your footprints are the day.
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• When you set in the western horizon of the
sky,
• The earth is in darkness like the dead;
• They sleep in their chambers,
• Their heads are wrapped up,
• Their nostrils are stopped,
• And none sees the other,
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While all their things are stolen
Which are under their heads,
And they know it not.
Every lion comes forth from his den,
All serpents, they Sting.
Darkness ...
The world is in silence,
He that made them rests in his horizon.
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Bright is the earth when you rise in the horizon.
When you shine as Aton by day
You drive away the darkness.
When you send forth your rays,
The Two Lands (Egypt) are in daily festivity,
Awake and standing upon their feet
When you have raised them up.
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Their limbs bathed, they take their clothing,
Their arms uplifted in adoration to your dawning.
(Then) in all the world they do their work.
All cattle rest upon their pasturage,
The trees and the plants flourish,
The birds flutter in their marshes,
Their wings uplifted in adoration to you.
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All the sheep dance upon their feet,
All winged things fly,
They live when you have shone upon them.
The barques sail up-stream and down-stream
alike.
• Every highway is open because you are
dawning.
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The fish in the river leap up before you.
Your rays are in the midst of the great green sea.
Creator of the germ in woman,
Maker of seed in man,
Giving life to the son in the body of his mother,
Soothing him that he may not weep,
Nurse (even) in the womb,
Giver of breath to animate every one that he makes!
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