ANCIENT CIVILIZATION

THE RISE OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION

Sometime in the dim past, a number of neolithic villages grew large enough to qualify as the first true towns.  Traces of such ancient towns have been found throughout the entire Near East (such as Jericho in modern Israel/Palestine). But the earliest true cities, complete with an urban culture or ‘civilization’ (from the Latin, civus, meaning ‘city’), entered history around 3000 BC along the two major river systems of the middle East:  1) the lower reaches of the Nile in Egypt and 2) the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what was anciently called "Mesopotamia" by the Greeks (modern Iraq). Because of the steady source of the all-important combination of water and sun, these settlements in Mesopotamia and Egypt flourished easily – when they were not under attack.  As the populations grew, social organization became more important in sustaining these larger settlements.  The marshy deltas could support large populations – provided that channels were cut, dikes were built and the marshes were drained.  Further upriver, reservoirs had to be dug to provide a continuing water source during the dry season. To protect this investment in real estate, fortified towns had to be built where the people could take refuge when their lands came under attack.  Men had to be trained as soldiers to oversee the defenses of the land.  And those with special spiritual skills had to be trained as spiritual specialists (priests), dedicated to the task of making sure that the gods and goddesses of the land were favorably disposed to the community's earthly endeavors.  Sacrifices would need to be carefully offered to these gods in order to appease them and gain their heavenly support. All this required very complex social coordination – and highly skilled political leadership.   The hierarchical principle Hierarchy.  And into this latter role stepped powerful personalities – priest-kings who could command the respect of the populace.  At first these priest-kings may have been tribal elders, leading kinsmen who demonstrated special administrative, martial and spiritual talents that distinguished them from the others.  This would have been in keeping with neolithic logic. But eventually a new principle of social organization came to the fore within these urban settlements, replacing the neolithic principle of tribal kinship.  This new principle is normally termed ‘hierarchy’  – a Greek term which originally applied only to a well organized political network which governed a community of priests (Greek: hieros, meaning ‘priest’).  A hierarchy is notable by the way it is organized in a pyramid fashion, with layers of membership more numerous at the bottom of the pyramid, the lower orders totally subordinate to the order immediately above them, the members smaller in number but greater in authority as you move up the network.  It is basically a command system, mechanically efficient though relatively impersonal – especially compared to the neolithic tribal idea of interpersonal relations. The most notable feature of this emerging hierarchical society is that it was so huge that what held it together was no longer blood relations that linked personally every member of the community.   The multitudes who made up these new huge hierarchical societies were from many different tribes and nations.  There was in fact no limit to the numbers of different tribes and the varieties of national or ethnic groupings that could be included in these communities.  That is because what held it together was not the social unity of the multitudes making up the whole population, but the unity or cohesiveness of the small group at the very top of the social pyramid.  This small group of elite were the ones responsible – solely responsible – for maintaining the unity and integrity of the entire social order. The principle of serfdom or slavery.  How did this hierarchical system come about?  How did it get past the neolithic idea that society must rest only on blood ties?  We can only speculate. Perhaps it involved the insight among some of the conquering tribes who periodically overran these river settlements that it was foolish to put to the sword the entire population that they had just conquered.  The conquerors themselves may have had little interest in farming the land they had just conquered.  They probably preferred to remain warriors – and let the conquered population remain in place to raise the crops for them as slaves or serfs.  As long as the warriors alone possessed military power the class of farmer-slaves posed no threat but instead an enormous economic advantage – much like having large herds of animals. While this may not have served the enserfed or enslaved farmers' sense of dignity – it was better than being slaughtered off.  In fact it offered them a greater degree of protection, a greater degree of security for the farmer to do his work unmolested under these newcircumstances – for their warrior-conquerors were better able to protect the lands than the farmers themselves. Or – perhaps this social order simply evolved over time as a tribe proved so successful in managing the water resources around it that the population simply grew to monumental proportions – and one or another clan within the tribe grew to possess the larger responsibility of overseeing the work – until it came to constitute itself as a ruling class.  Perhaps also the usefulness of allowing unrelated tribes to take shelter within the precincts of the growing community came to be valued for the labor that this offered, though these immigrants would find themselves in the community with a servant-worker status – or even into serf or slave status, as generation after generation became bound to the soil and the lords of the land who presided over them.  This is what seems to have happened to the Israelites or Hebrews who took refuge in Egypt during a long drought – and eventually became bound servants or slaves to the Egyptians. Or perhaps it was some combination of conquest and slow development that produced this massive hierarchical structure.  But what is certain is that around 3000 BC these huge communities began to dominate the political scenes in Egypt and Iraq – and (perhaps that early) also along the Indus River in Pakistan.  China developed similar systems along the Huang He (Yellow) and the Chang Jiang (Yangtze) rivers – though centuries later than those of the Middle East. The ruling class or caste and the priest-king or priest-emperor. The cohesion of this whole system depended heavily on the unity and power of the ruling class – and the particular abilities of the head of this ruling class.  At this upper level the society worked much more like a tribal unit, in that the members of the ruling class tended to come from a exclusive order perhaps indeed derived from a single ancient blood line.  Those born into the society of the ruling class were the only ones entitled to the privileges of rulership.  The whole society was ultimately theirs – which they were well aware of.  But it was also their sole responsibility, this enormous social order they had created or inherited. At the head of this ruling class was typically a person of enormous political and religious stature.  It was not uncommon to believe that he (or she) came from a special line of ancestors who may actually have included one of the gods himself or herself.  Thus this individual was normally considered semi-divine, if not something of a living god himself. Certainly this was the image projected by the Egyptian Pharaohs.  The Macedonian-Greek adventurer Alexander made such a claim for himself.  Even some of the Roman emperors attempted to make such claims of divinity. The Law Over time, the power of the ruling classes was systematized through the power of law.   Legal covenants and rules of behavior (usually given and enforced by some presiding god) now bound the rulers and the ruled into some kind of orderly accommodation.  Law proved to be as capable as blood and custom in uniting people into effective social units.  Indeed, most highly esteemed among the rulers by even the ruled were those ‘law-givers’ who proved able to enforce the rule of law – and thus protect the peace – within these vast domains. On the many carved stone (steles) located around the ancient kingdom of Hammurabi of Babylon are found not only engraved copies of his great Law (ca. the late 1700s BC), but usually at the top of each of these steles is a bas-relief carving showing Hammurabi receiving these laws from the hand of the Babylonian sun god (presumably Shamash).  This image gave huge weight to his laws, not just because they were fair and thus worthy of being respected, but because they had the weight of a great god behind them. The urban center:  the "city" part of civilization The city.  From a purely material point of view, the most notable feature of civilized society was the central role played by the city.  The city was the one place where no agriculture took place.  Instead the city was devoted to social pursuits other than farming.  The city might have been a garrison town where soldiers were housed.  Or it might have been a religious site devoted to the worship of one or another god.  It might have been the residence of the ruling classes.  It might have been a commercial center where artisans and craftsmen gathered to manufacture and sell their wares.  But most likely it was a place where several or even all of these activities occurred together. Probably the heart of the city was its worship center – containing a temple or temples housing the priests and some representational form or other (perhaps a statue) of the god or gods they served.  The usual order of the day was receiving the sacrifices of meat or grain brought by the pilgrim – part burned before the altar for the benefit of the god and part set aside for consumption by the priests.  Probably somewhere nearby was the palace or palaces that housed the civil rulers – and that opened their doors upon occasion for these rulers to hear appeals for justice from the citizenry.  And probably nearby was the market place where pilgrims could trade some of the extra wealth that they brought with them for just this purpose.  The market stalls with their goods on display looked out on the main street or passageway, while behind the market stalls were the work shops where workers toiled to produce the goods to be sold or traded.  Nearby cafes, restaurants, and hostels or hotels offered refreshment and rest for the urban visitor – as well as a place for the locals to take moments to relax.  And of course there were homes for those who made the city their permanent place of residence: the aristocracy in their grand homes (probably in the neighborhood of the palace and temple), the prosperous merchants in their private homes, and the artisans and craftsmen – in rooms frequently in the floor above their shops. The city was always a buzz of activity – but especially during the high holy seasons when important traditional festivals drew in people from all around the realm.  The cities would be decorated for the event and parades with priests and civil notables, musicians and dancers, masses of costumed participants, would snake through the city’s crowded streets toward the temple where the final acts in the festival would take place.  Business would be very good.  Drunken or at least tipsy revelry would be commonplace – and so would be pickpockets and con artists who took advantage of the frolicsome disorder.  All in a week’s fun! The urban-rural network.  The city was the heart of a very much larger realm of city-state, kingdom or empire.  Urban life could not exist if it were not vitally connected to the rural countryside of villages and fields where the food supporting the whole society was produced. To support the non-farming culture of the cities there would have to be a huge rural culture busy at work.  For each urban dweller there might have to be ten to twenty farmers growing food – enough that the farmers could feed not only themselves and their villages but also produce the excess amount of food that could – through religious tithes and civil taxes – support the urban population. The urban-rural network could be very complex and very extensive.  A grand imperial city may have had very little or only occasional direct contact with the rural world around it – but instead found its life-support through lesser cities –  provincial capitals actually – that passed on to the imperial capital a part of the rural revenue that they gathered.  In this case it would be the provincial capitals that networked directly through trade and taxes with the rural tribal villages – and with the nomadic herdsmen who would occasionally pitch their tents just outside these provincial cities in order to trade meat for manufactured goods. City-states, kingdoms and empires With the appearance of this new principle of social organization – the possibilities of vast and complex community life or ‘civilization’ emerged.  Towns could become cities – connected economically to a vast hinterland of small towns and rural villages.  People no longer had to be related by ‘blood-lines’ in order to cooperate socially.  Freed from the restrictions of kinship organization, these communities could incorporate thousands, even tens and hundreds of thousands of people into a single political unit.   Thus cities could become the centers of grand city-states, or kingdoms which united several or more city-states, and empires which united a number of kingdoms.  The possibilities for territorial expansion were enormous once the idea of hierarchical order was accepted.

The divine hierarchy Just as the development of civilization produced a social and political hierarchy here on earth – so too the worldview that accompanied this development tended to see the heavenly world above ordered in a similar hierarchical fashion.  The heavenly world of the spirits or gods was organized in an orderly fashion into a divine community of carefully ranked greater and lesser gods, with the whole usually presided over by some great super-god, as in the Aryan ‘Deus’:  Greece’s Zeus, or Rome’s Jupiter (Deus-pater) or Vedic India’s Dyaus Pita. The ruling classes, privileged to enjoy the special favor of the supreme gods of heaven, nonetheless allowed the classes below them to continue to worship their old tribal gods, lesser gods in terms of the heavenly ranking.  This helped fix the social place of the lower classes – providing a very important emotional underpinning of the hierarchical social order.  And occasionally there were great state occasions where even the lower social orders were allowed (or even required) to sacrifice to the ruling or supreme state god or gods of the ruling class.  This provided a proper sense of order to life in the community. It was not that the heavens mirrored the earthly hierarchy – but rather the reverse.  The earthly hierarchy was always considered to be a mirroring of the heavenly hierarchy.  It was the heavenly hierarchy that gave rise to the hierarchical social order on earth.  It was the very top gods that had called the earthly rulers to their governing positions and who sanctioned or supported their rule from above.  Thus behind the might of the rulers or the ruling class stood the power of the gods in heaven.  Thus to contest the right of the ruling classes to rule was to challenge the entire heavenly scheme of things – something that no one would likely be willing to do under any circumstances.  To challenge the social order on earth was to challenge the gods themselves. The Bible tells the story of one occasion when just such a challenge took place.  This was when Moses went before the Egyptian Pharaoh to demand the release of the Hebrew slaves from their bondage – supposedly to allow them to leave Egypt in order to worship Moses’ god YHWH in the eastern desert.  Needless to say the Pharaoh was unimpressed with Moses’ demand – unimpressed until Moses was able to demonstrate that his god was more powerful than the Egyptian gods and their Egyptian priests.  But this took a number of power struggles between Moses and the Egyptian priests – and between his god and theirs.  But finally the death of all the firstborn males of the Egyptians (and the immunity of the Hebrews’ sons from the same fate as the angels of death passed over the Hebrew families) was such an overwhelming demonstration of YHWH’s power that the Hebrews were finally released (although not without one last instance of Pharaoh changing his mind – but again, to no avail).  YHWH had amply demonstrated that he was the Supreme God (El Shaddai); there were no other gods above him, before him, or even equal to him. [This was something however that the Hebrews or Israelites themselves were often to forget.]

The neolithic tribal confederacy The most complete account we possess today of the dynamic of a society shifting from neolithic life into full-blown traditional civilization, complete with urban capital, king and temple, is found in great detail in the Hebrew Bible. The neolithic foundations of the Hebrews or Israelites take definite political or social shape with the great founding father, Abraham.  He and his offspring were nomadic herders rather than agricultural villagers – operating in the strip of land between the lower portions of the eastern Mediterranean and the Jordan River.  Abraham’s exploits were so notable that he became the starting point of a generational narrative that eventually gave identity to the nation Israel. Twelve of his grandsons or great-grandsons themselves achieved sufficient distinction that they passed their names on to the twelve tribes that ultimately made up the nation as a whole. The story goes into something of a huge hiatus when these tribes were driven by drought into Egypt – and into slavery there – where over the next few centuries they nearly lost their identity.  Eventually Moses was called to rescue them from their plight in Egypt (1200 BC?) - and restore them as YHWH’s specially chosen people.  Furthermore he was to bring them back to the land that had once been Abraham’s nomadic legacy – now inhabited by the agricultural Canaanites.  The relationship between the settled Canaanites and the not-so-settled Hebrews (Israelites) was typically characterized by warfare.  Gradually the Israelites settled in on the land and themselves became farmers.  But they too were troubled by surrounding nomadic tribes – and found themselves having to fend off these troublesome neighbors, not always successfully. At this point Israel was a loosely confederated community of tribes without any specific leadership as a whole – except in emergency situations when one or another tribesman, upon the call of YHWH, would be elevated to leadership to take command of a joint effort of the Israelites tribes to rid themselves of the immediate danger, typically the neighboring Amorites – though later typically the invading Philistines.  Once the immediate danger was past the tribes reverted to their former loose political relationship.  Their spirit of thanksgiving to YHWH for the deliverance of Israel would also revert to a kind of looseness, especially with subsequent generations for whom such saving events were merely stories and not actual realities. A social or political transition began shortly before 1000 BC when Israel had become somewhat more united under YHWH’s prophet Samuel.  Israel was beginning to look and act more and more like the larger city-states or empires growing up around them in Syria, Egypt and Mesopotamia (Iraq).  Finally, toward the later days of Samuel’s religious presidency the Israelites demanded of him that he actually select or anoint them a king.  Israel wanted to be more than just a neolithic confederacy.  It wanted to be reconstituted as a true kingdom.  Samuel relayed to them YHWH’s warning of what this was going to mean to them: greater national status perhaps, but the loss of a large amount of personal freedom at the same time.  But it seems that this was what Israel wanted.  And so Samuel was led to anoint Saul as Israel’s first king. The Davidic Kingship Saul, as it turned out, proved not to be the ideal king the people hoped for.  But his successor, David, was (though not without personal blemishes of his own).  The Israelites made much of the idea that David was a man of YHWH’s own heart – ruling Israel in and through YHWH’s very power.  He successfully united the tribes into something indeed resembling a strong, unified nation.  When the Jebusite (likely an Amorite subtribe) town of Jerusalem was captured by David, Israel also now found itself in possession of a capital city.  The key religious articles of the YHWHist religion were moved from Bethel in the north to the new capital at Jerusalem.  David wanted to build in Jerusalem a permanent temple to replace the tent-like structure of the old YHWHist holy shrine which housed all these religious articles – but received instructions from YHWH that this was not his call to do so.  Nonetheless a palace was erected for David – and Jerusalem began to take on the look of a noble capital city. It was under his successor, Solomon, that the full transition to civilized status occurred for the Israelites.  Solomon not only built a magnificent temple to YHWH – he apparently also erected temples to the gods of the many wives he took on as he expanded – through marriage or conquest or both – the reach of the Israelite kingdom.  This produced mixed emotions in Israel.  The YHWHist purists were shocked at his loose religious loyalties – though the general populace seemed to approve of the great material success of his diplomacy and military ventures. But this success did not long outlive Solomon - and his grand kingdom split into two separate and often warring sub-kingdoms of Israel and Judah with the next generation after him.  And from then on the kings of these two Israelite kingdoms tended to be considerably less than brilliant – at least according to the YHWHist accounts in the Hebrew Bible.  Foolish diplomacy and unwise decisions to go to war served only to diminish the power of the two kingdoms over time.  Eventually in the late 700s BC the Assyrians carried off in defeat and into oblivion the northern tribes of the kingdom of Israel, leaving only the southern Israelite tribe of Judah to survive.  But a little over a century later Judah too suffered something of a similar fate (though not the oblivion portion) when the key leadership of Judah was carried off to captivity in Babylon – and the temple of YHWH was leveled.  Thus the Davidic kingdom of Israel came to an abysmal end.

Egyptian Pictographic Writing
Egyptian Museum

Sumerian Cuneiform tablet
British Museum

Chinese Oracle Bone (ancient writing scratched onto an ox scapula) -
from the latter part of the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1200-1050 BC?)

---

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CIVILIZATION:  A CHRONOLOGY

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CIVILIZATION: A CHRONOLOGY

13,000 BC Retreat of the last ice age begins the Holocene (recent) Epoch 10,000 BC Flint knives used in Palestine in reaping wild grains 9000 BC End of the last Ice Age; domesticated sheep in the North Tigris valley 7500 BC Fortified Jericho settlement – cultivated cereals 7000 BC Fertility cult in Asia Minor (Turkey) indicates use of domesticated cattle Earliest pottery invented in the Middle East 6500 BC Copper in Asia Minor – used for ornamentation 5000  BC Copper in Mesopotamia (land of the "two rivers" in modern Iraq) Sumerians settle  lower Mesopotamia 3700 BC Rise of the city-states in Sumer:  Ur, Uruk, Lagash, Kish  Wheel-made pottery, sailboats, animal-drawn plows  Bronze in use in both Sumer and Egypt 3500 BC Two separate kingdoms in Egypt along the lower and upper Nile 3200 BC Sumerian cuneiform writing used to keep royal records 3100 BC Hieroglyphics (pictorial writing) in Egypt 3000 BC The rise of the unified Egyptian state governing vast reaches of the Nile;  Wheeled vehicle used in Sumer 2550 BC Beginning of pyramid building in Egypt 2360 BC Sargon the Great of Akkad (central Mesopotamia) rules the bulk of the Middle East 2000 BC The beginning of the Aryan migrations from southern Russia:     to India (Hindus), to Asia Minor (Hittites) and to Greece (Myceneans)    somewhat later to Central Europe (the Celts) Possibly the time when Semitic migrations from Arabia occur     Abraham migrates from Ur to Palestine? The rise of the Greek-speaking Minoan state in Crete; palace at Knossos The powerful Middle Kingdom of Egypt Sumer in decline 1800 BC Hammurabi:  law-giver and ruler of Babylonian empire (based in central   Mesopotamia) 1700 BC The Hittite Empire emerges in central Asia Minor (modern Turkey);    Hittites use the  new secret metal:  iron The Semitic Hyksos overrun Egypt  Hebrews (Jacob and Joseph and his brothers) settle in Egypt – perhaps under    Hyksos protection 1550 BC Egyptian power restored  The Hyksos expelled from new Egyptian Empire (Hebrews  enslaved?) 1450 BC Cretan (Minoan) civilization collapses – probably as a result of devastating    volcanic or earthquake  activity 1390 BC The "Golden Age" of Egypt begins under pharaoh Amenhotep III 1350 BC Akhenaten, son of Amenhotep III, tries to establish monotheism in Egypt 1275 BC Ramesses (or Ramses) II the Great – pharaoh of Egypt Moses leads the Hebrews from Egypt? Aryan Medes and Persians invading Iran Assyrians from the north extending their power over Mesopotamia 1250 BC Troy besieged by the Greeks 1200 BC The period of the Israelite Judges begins The Hittite empire collapses 1100 BC Beginning of the Dorian and Ionian invasions of Greece 1070 BC The Philistines conquer Israel and settle the coastal plains 1000 BC David rules a united Israel from Jerusalem Germanic (Aryan) tribes migrate to the Rhine River 961 BC Solomon succeeds his father David to the throne of Israel 922 BC Upon death of Solomon, Israel splits into two kingdoms:  Israel (Northern) and    Judah  (Southern) 850  BC Assyrian power in the ascendancy again:  attacks Israel (Northern kingdom) 800 BC  Traditional date for the writing of Homer's Epic poems:  the Iliad and the    Odyssey (but modern scholars place the date closer to 700 BC) Aryans establishing the Hindu caste system over the Indian population 750 BC Israel (Northern Kingdom) at height of prosperity under Jeroboam II The traditional date for the founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus 722 BC Sargon II of Assyria overruns Israel (the Northern Kingdom);  takes 27,000 Israelites captive; destroys Israel 650 BC Beginning of period of rule of Greek city-states by tyrants (dictators) 626-609 BC Wars of independence by subject nations of the Assyrians; Assyria collapses 605 BC Rise of Babylonian power under Nebuchadnezzar II (to 561 BC) 594 BC Solon in Athens reforms the severe laws of Draco, setting up democratic rule 586 BC Nebuchadnezzar II sacks Jerusalem and carries the population of Judah into captivity 559 - 529 BC Cyrus II, the Great, king of Persia; overruns Asia Minor (546) and Babylon    (539);  allows the Jews to return to Judah, ending the "Babylonian Captivity"    (538) 500 BC Persia rules from Egypt in the West to the Indus River in the East (Darius I,    king:  521-  486). Athens has confirmed its commitment to democracy--against a Spartan effort    to restore aristocratic rule in Athens (507) Etruscans are at the height of their power in northern Italy But Rome is under Republican government and in control of the whole of    Latium (west-central Italy)