Transcript Chapter One: The Beginnings of Civilization

Chapter One:
The Beginnings of
Civilization
Mesopotamia
Egypt
Early Greece
Defining “Civilized”
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Urban life: permanent constructions
System of regulatory government
Class distinction (wealth and occupation)
Tools/skills --> production/trade
Written communication
Shared system of religious belief
** Not a value judgment! “So-called primitive people can live a fruitful life.” **
Origins of Western Civilization
• Paleolithic World View (Old Stone Age)
(Began1 million to 1 ½ million years ago and ended around 8000
BCE)
• Homo-Erectus– Constant search for food and shelter
• Art
• Religion
• Neanderthal – fist to bury the dead
• Neolithic Civilizations (Late Stone Age)
(Began around 8,000 BCE)
• Domestication of animals
• Cultivation of vegetation-Farming
• Community
• Pottery
• War / Weaponry
Lascaux, France, Dates: 150,00 to 13,000 BCE
Realistic - a bulge on the rock – used to define the
hump of an animal, making it more realistic.
Venus of Willdendorf, Austria c. 28,000 to 23,000 BCE
Mostly women – birth, life, fertility
The Bronze Age (3000-1000 B.C.E.)
Use of Bronze became widespread
Mesopotamia – different people
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Sumerian (3500-2350 B.C.E.)
Semitic (2350-612 B.C.E.)
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Egypt – one general group of people,
united.
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Aegean Cultures – two main groups
Sumerian Culture
• Agricultural/Urban settlements
• “Fertile Crescent” – Tigris/Euphrates Rivers
• Writing/record-keeping: Cuneiform
• Shared system of religious belief
• Civil ruler / Religious rulers
Epic of Gilgamesh
• Gilgamesh ruled at Uruk (Irak) c. 2700 B.C.E.
• FIRST WRITTEN LANGUAGE - Composed in
Sumerian (2000 B.C.E.) on cuneiform tablets
• Series of Legends - Pessimistic work
• Asserts universal questions about human
existence
• Secretes of Immortality
Semitic Culture
Semitic – from Shem one of Noah’s sons
Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians
• Akkadian Period
• King Sargon and descendants (2350-2150 B.C.E.)
• Focus on HUMAN achievement
• Gutian (Iran) invasion / return to tradition
• Babylonian Legacy
• King Hammurabi
• Assyrians
• Culmination of Mesopotamian culture
Mesopotamia Ziggurats – terraces, different from Egyptian pyramids
They were temples. This was built in Ur, around 2100 BCE
Sumerian Ruler
2100 BCE
Steele of Hammurabi – 1780 BCE
Sun God dictates law to the King.
Below in cuneiform, The Law Code of Hammurabi
Fall of Mesopotamia
• Medes conquered the Mesopotamians
around 612 BCE.
• Nomadic warriors
• Conquered and absorbed by Persians
• Persians
• Nomadic warriors
• Conquered by Alexander the Great
B.C.E.)
(330
Ancient Egypt
• 31 dynasties / 4 groups:
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Old Kingdom (2700 B.C.E.)
Middle Kingdom (1990 B.C.E.)
New Kingdom (1570 B.C.E.)
Late Period (1185-500 B.C.E.)
Ancient Egyptian Culture
• Unified and consistent
• Resistant to change
• Worldview affected by external events
Political Structure
• Pharaoh
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Head of the central government
Regarded as a living god
Exercised absolute power
Ordered and controlled visible world
• Priests
• Preservation of religious beliefs
• Divine kingship of Pharaohs
Egyptian Religion
• Obsession with immortality / life after
death
• Deities, subdeities, nature spirits
• Responsible for all aspects of existence
Egyptian Art
• Principal function of artists: to produce
images of deities (gods)
• Form of worship - Standards set forth by
Pharaoh
• Artists also provided temples and
shrines for honoring deities
The Old Kingdom
• Imhotep
• First architect known to history
• Pyramids
• Funerary monuments for pharaohs, upper
class
• Mummification
• Preservation of the body was necessary for
the survival of the soul
Great Age of the Pyramid
• Pyramids at Giza (Dynasty IV)
• Cheops
• Chefren
• Mycerinus
• Who built the pyramids?
• Farmers
• Slaves
Great Sphinx – 2575 to 2525 BCE
Akhenaton and Nefertiti and Three of Their Children
Around 1370 BCE
Queen Nefertiti
c. 1355 BCE
Death Mask of Tutanhkamen c. 1323 BCE
Temple of Ramses
1275 BCE
Four Statues – Remses’
Military Achievements
Small statues of Mother, Wife and Children
Aegean Culture
GREEKS
• Crete
• King Minos / Knossos – excavated in 1899
• Where the Labyrinth that housed Minotaur
(half man, half beast – from Minos wife
and a bull)
• Cyclades Islands
• Bronze tools
• Imaginative/humorous pottery
• Marble statues/idols
Cycladic Idol
2500 BCE, Marble
The Bronze Age in Crete
(Greeks)
• Early Minoan
• Contacts with Egypt and Mesopotamia
• Scattered Towns
Middle Minoan
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Evolution of large urban centers
Art = lively and colorful
Little interest in monumental art
Writing system of hieroglyphic signs
[Image 1.22]
Palace of Minos at Knossos
[Image 1.25]
Wasp Pendant
Wasp Pendant
Gold – two wasps, Minoan
1700 BCE
[Image 1.27]
Snake Goddess
Snake Goddess
From the Palace at Konososs ,
c. 1600 BCE
[Image 1.28]
Funerary Mask
Funerary Mask
1500 BCE
Mycenaean
Mycenaean Culture
• Heinrich Schliemann, 1870-1873
• The Trojan War (1250 B.C.E.)
• Strongly influenced by Minoan Culture
• Art = preoccupied with death and war
• Fall of the Mycenaean empire (1200
B.C.E.)