Transcript River Valley Civilizations

Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, and China
 Earliest large populations
 Development of monumental architecture
 Development of writing
 Social/economic relationships can be better understood
 Religious beliefs
 Political/legal systems become clearer
“The Land between the Rivers”
 Migrants to the area increase--especially Semites
(Akkadian, Aramaic, Hebrew, Phoenician)
 Sumer (in south) becomes population center
 1st cities emerge, 4000 BCE
 Between 3200 and 2350 BCE, they evolve into city-states
(control of surrounding region)
 Governments sponsor building projects and irrigation
 Attacks by others led to wall building and military
development
 Kingships evolve w/ cooperation of noble families
 Sargon of Akkad (2370-2315 BCE) often considered “the” first
emperor in world history.
 Seizes trade routes and natural resources
 Gradually empire weakens and collapses about 2000 BCE
 Hammurabi (1792-1750 BCE)
 Centralizes the bureaucracy and regulates taxation
 Hammurabi’s Code: law of retribution and importance of social
status
 Assyrians (northern Mesopotamia), about 1300-612 BCE
 Powerful army: professional officers (merit), chariots, archers, iron
weapons
 Unpopular rule leads to rebellions; ends 612 BCE
 New Babylonian empire, 600-550 BCE
 Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 BCE)
 Hanging gardens of palace shows wealth and luxury
 Mesopotamia had a stratified society in which kings and priests
controlled much of the wealth. The three classes of
Mesopotamian society were:
 (1) the free landowning class;
 (2) dependent farmers and artisans;
 (3) slaves: Slavery was not a fundamental part of the economy, and
most slaves were prisoners of war.
 Some scholars believe that the development of agriculture
brought about a decline in the status of women as men did the
value-producing work of plowing and irrigation.
 Women had no political role, but they could own property,
control their dowry, and engage in trade.
 The rise of an urban merchant class in the second millennium
B.C.E. appears to have been accompanied by greater emphasis on
male privilege and an attendant decline in women’s status.
 The religion of Mesopotamia was an amalgam of Sumerian and
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later Semitic beliefs and deities.
Mesopotamian deities were anthropomorphic, and each city had
its own tutelary gods.
Humans were regarded as servants of the gods.
In temples, a complex, specialized hereditary priesthood served
the gods as a servant serves a master.
The temples themselves were walled compounds containing
religions and functional buildings. The most visible part of the
temple compound was the ziggurat.
We have little knowledge of the beliefs and religious practices of
common people.
Evidence indicates a popular belief in magic and in the use of
magic to influence the gods.
 The Mesopotamian writing system (cuneiform) evolved from the use of
pictures to represent the sounds of words or parts of words.
 The writing system was complex, required the use of hundreds of signs,
and was a monopoly of the scribes.
 Cuneiform was developed to write Sumerian, but was later used to
write Akkadian and other Semitic and non-Semitic languages.
 Cuneiform was used to write economic, political, legal, literary,
religious, and scientific texts.
 Other technologies developed by the Mesopotamians included
irrigation, transportation technologies (boats, barges, and the use of
donkeys), bronze metallurgy, brickmaking, engineering, and pottery,
including the use of the potter’s wheel.
 Military technology employed in Mesopotamia included paid, full-time
soldiers, horses, the horse-drawn chariot, the bow and arrow, and siege
machinery.
 Mesopotamians also used numbers (a base-60 system) and made
advances in mathematics and astronomy.
 Egypt--lower 3rd of Nile River; Nubia--middle 3rd of
Nile
 After 5000 BCE peoples cultivate gourds and
watermelons, domesticate donkeys and cattle (from
Sudan), and grow wheat and barley (from
Mesopotamia)
 Agriculture easy in Egypt (due to Nile flooding) but
more work in Nubia
 States begin to emerge by 4000 BCE, small kingdoms
by 3300 BC
 Egypt, large and prosperous state by 3100 BCE
 Menes at Memphis unites Upper and Lower Egypt
 Pharaoh, absolute ruler and owns all land
 Archaic Period (3100-2660 BCE) and Old Kingdom
(2660-2160 BCE)
 Great pyramids of Giza built during this period; Khufu
the largest
 Violence between Egypt and Nubia (Egypt dominates
from 3000-2400 BCE)
 Nubia later develops into Kingdom of Kush
 Interaction through diplomacy, Nubian mercenaries,
and intermarriage
 Period of upheaval after Old Kingdom (2160-2040 BCE)
 Middle Kingdom (2040-1640 BCE)
 Nomadic horsemen, Hyksos, invade Egypt
 Using bronze weapons and chariots (Egypt does not have)
 Captures Memphis in 1674 BCE
 Causes revolts in Upper Egypt
 New Kingdom (1550-1070 BCE)
 Pharaoh gains power, huge army, large bureaucracy
 Building projects: temples, palaces, statues
 Tuthmosis III (1479-1425 BCE) built empire including Palestine, Syria, and
Nubia
 Then Egypt falls into a long period of decline
 Egyptians driven out of Nubia in 1100 BCE
 Nubian Kingdom of Kush; capital is Napata
 King Kashta conquers Thebes (in Egypt) in 760 BCE
 Assyrians with iron weapons invade from the north
 After 6th century BCE series of foreign conquests
 Egypt was more rural than Mesopotamia. It did have cities,
but since they have not been excavated, we know little
about urban life in Egypt.
 Egypt regarded all foreigners as enemies, but its desert
nomad neighbors posed no serious military threat. Egypt
was generally more interested in acquiring resources than
in acquiring territory; resources could often be acquired
through trade.
 Egypt traded directly with the Levant and Nubia and
indirectly with the land of Punt (probably part of modern
Somalia). Items of trade included exports of papyrus, grain,
and gold and imports of incense, Nubian gold, Lebanese
cedar, and tropical African ivory, ebony, and animals.
 Social classes
 Egypt: peasants and slaves (agriculture), pharaoh,
professional military and administrators
 Nubia: complex and hierarchical society (can tell from
tombs)
 Patriarchy in both but women have more influence
than in Mesopotamia
 Women act as regents, like female pharaoh Hatshepsut
 Nubia: women serve as queens, priestesses, and scribes
 Hieroglyphics found on monuments and papyrus by
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3200 BCE
Hieratic script, everyday writing 2600-600 BCE
Demotic and Coptic scripts adapt Greek writing
Scribes live very privileged lives
Nubia adapts Egyptian writing until Meroitic in 5th
century BCE
 Principal gods: sun gods Amon and Re
 Brief period of monotheism: Aten
 Pharaoh Akhenaten’s idea of a new capital at Akhetaten
 Orders all other gods’ names chiseled out; their names die
 Mummification
 At 1st only pharaohs are mummified (Old Kingdom)
 Later ruling classes and wealthy can afford it
 Eventually commoners have it too (Middle and New Kingdom)
 Cult of Osiris
 Brother Seth murders Osiris and scatters his body
 Wife Isis gathers him up and gods restore him to life in the
underworld
 Becomes associated with Nile, crops, life/death, immortality
 Osiris judges the heart of the dead against the feather of truth
 5. Nubians combine Egyptian religions with their own