Asia, Europe, and North Africa

in 1 C.E.

Writing• The Development of systems of writing was

integral to the development of civilization• With writing came effective long-distance

communication and the ability to build nation and empires. Writing could be used to:– Create records

– Record history

– Preserve imaginative works

Cities, Nations, and Empires

The agricultural revolution– Primitive people were hunters and

gathers– Between 8,000 and 6,000

B.C.E. people began to settle and cultivate crops.

– With the increased food supply, civilizations were able to develop specialist (non-agricultural roles) in cities.

– Over time, vast civilizations emerged.

The Great Ziggurat at Ur Today.

Credit: Ur, Photograph 17th January 2004, by Lasse Jensen. The Great Ziggurat.

Cities, Nations, and Empires

• Early civilizations grew up near water– Mesopotamia: takes its name from the Greek phrase “between

the rivers”• Tigris and Euphrates rivers, on their banks were:

– Ur– Akkad– Nippur– Babylon

– Egypt (on the banks of the Nile River)– China (on the banks of the Yangtse River)– India (on the banks of the Indus River)

• Water was important for trade and communication

Travel, Migration, and Trade

• People were on the move throughout the ancient period. – Armies of conquest– Traders– Waves of migration in search of resources

• Much of ancient literature plays to people’s fascination with hearing about distant peoples and their unusual customs.

Lyric and Epic• Lyric poetry gets its

name from the Greek poet’s custom of signing their poems to the accompaniment of a lyre, a small harp.

• The poetic impulse seems to be universal all ancient cultures in the anthology recorded lyric poetry long before prose emerged. Funerary relief with a lyre player. A young boy, reading in a

book role, recites a poem on the melody. Magna Graecia (South Italia), ca. 420 BC.

Lyric and Epic

• Poetry was composed in many different settings:– Religious ceremonies– Entertainment at banquets

• Poets could be seen as powerful verbal magicians

• In China poetry was seen as integral to the daily life of any educated person.

Lyric and Epic

• Epics are long, narrative poems that concern a series of great struggles or adventures of a hero or group of heroes, aided and opposed by different gods, often leading to the forming of a people or nation.

• Epic poetry is found in the ancient cultures of:– Babylonia– India– Greece– Rome

Lyric and Epic• The oldest epics are collective

compositions– They were developed over time, carried on

and revised through oral tradition

Deogarh. Here you see the five Pandava princes- heroes of the epic Mahabharata - with their shared wife-in-common named Draupadi (although some had their own wives too). Vishnu, incarnated as Krishna , was advisor and their charioteer in battle. The central figure is Yudhishthira ; the two to his left are Bhima and Arjuna . Nakula and Sahadeva , the twins, are to his right. Their wife, at far right, is Draupadi . These heroes are themselves incarnations: Yudhishthira manifests Dharma, the Sacred Order of Life. Bhima represents the Wind God, Vayu. Arjuna is Indra. Nakula and Sahadeva incarnate the twin “Horseman Gods” (The Greek Dioscuri). Draupadi is Indrani , the queen of the gods and wife of Indra- a very old Vedic (Pre-Hindu) god.

Credit: Bob King. This file is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License

Myth, Legend, and History

• “Myth” is a term with many meanings. – Today, sometimes used for anything that isn’t

true– In ancient Greek, any story– A certain group of stories about the gods

• Myth in the ancient world can be thought of as a story of ultimate truths– Often used to explain origins

Myth, Legend, and History

• Ancient literature mixes material that we usually think of as distinct.– Myths, legends, history

• The ancient texts that we have today are rare exceptions that survived the centuries– They were so treasured that they were widely

circulated– They simply happened to be preserved in a tomb or

library

The Ancient Near East

• The “Fertile Crescent” is a broad band of settled lands stretching from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers into what is now Iraq, up into Asia Minor, and down through Palestine.

The Ancient Near EastDue to a unique combination of favorable

environmental conditions and human ingenuity, the world’s first great cities were established.

Ruins of Babylon, 1932.

Library of Congress

The Ancient Near East

• As rulers sought to create empires and merchants trading, writing developed to solve communication needs.

• Around 3200 B.C.E. early Sumerians developed a form of writing that used symbolic representations of objects, and later of sounds. – By 3000 B.C.E. the world’s first fully developed writing

systems had emerged– Eventually, language became simplified to alphabetic

symbols and dropped visual signs; creating the first phonetic alphabets

The Ancient Near East

• Scribes achieved great authority– Highly skilled counselors– Diplomats – A sort of civil service elite

• Early writing systems were complex and difficult to learn. – Involved carving hundreds of

symbols on stone or clay tablets, later brushed onto papyrus

Cuneiform Clay Tablet.

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Ancient Near East

• Cultural production centered around court and temples– Kings were often seen as partly divine– Tensions between court and temples over

power– Extensive texts were written to record the

affairs of both• Royal annals, medical and astronomical texts,

hymns, prayers, etc.

Divinities varied throughout the ancient near east but there are strong family resemblances– A primordial generation that created the world and

gave birth to a further generation of gods that now rule

– A few major divinities and a host of minor• Major divinities

– Sun: Utu (Sumarian), Shamash (Akkadian), Amon Re or Aten (Egypt), Apollo (Greece)

– Fertility/Love: Inanna or Ishtar (Mesopotamia), Isis (Egypt), Aphrodite (Greece), Venus (Rome)

– Cosmic systems relied on a male/female interdependence

Ancient Near East

Example of the Greek Divine Lineage

• The worship of many gods often tempered by devotion to a particular god (patron deity)

• Among the Hebrew tribes, devotion to Yahweh gradually evolved into monotheism– United Israel under Saul in 1020 B.C.E. His son Solomon

strengthened the kingdom but civil wars erupted at his death and the country was ruled by a series of foreign powers.

– During Solomon’s reign, writers composed chronicles and wisdom texts of their own, inspired by older Canaanite, Babylonian, and Egyptian sources. They continued throughout the years of foreign rule and exile.

– The Hebrew Bible became an extraordinary compendium of historical writing, law, poetry, and reflection on fundamental questions of human existence.

Birth of Monotheism

Language, Cities, Empires

• The ancient world was instable, with constant political and social instability– Empires grew and fell through wars with rivals– Natural disasters led to mass migrations

• Created an ethnic, linguistic, and cultural milieu• Example: Flood stories (Gilgamesh, Bible, etc.)

– Egypt remained a single country with an unbroken history for 3,000 years – a record only matched by China.

Early China

Early China

• Early China usually thought of as lasting until the first millennium B.C.E. – Confucius lived at midpoint

• Mythological record credits a series of sage emperors with innovations and principles that guide the development of Chinese civilization– Focus on historical beings and world, rather than

supernatural– Insistence on respect for one’s parents and ancestors– Importance of agriculture, writing, ritual, arts– Conviction that morality, rather than genealogy,

validated one’s right to govern

Early China

• Shang Dynasty: begins the actual historical record at 1550-1040 B.C.E.– Scapulimancy: reading of cracks in heated bones or

shells– Demonstrates continuities in Chinese language

• Zhou Dynasty: came to power after a tyrannical Shang ruler claiming a mandate of heaven– Like Shang, agrarian people with regulated city

layouts– Sacked by a non-Chinese tribe– A new capital of a revived Eastern Zhou remained for

five centuries divided into Spring and Autumn period and Warring States period

Early China

Confucius: enormous respect for Zhou ideals– Primacy of a family-based

morality and an extension of this into other relationships

• Government for the good of governed; governing by moral example

• Priorities of group over individual• Proper roles in a social hierarchy

led to social harmony

Early China

Daoists, most important early thinkers to take issue with Confucian ideals

• Sought harmony with the “way”• Privileged natural over human• Thoroughgoing relativity undermined active

commitment of any kind

Legalists, believed that human nature was not inclined to be good.

• Only power could succeed in ordering the state

Early ChinaQin dynasty

– Short-lived and busy• Standardized writing

system, weights and measures, coinage, width of carriage axles

• Construction projects, including Great Wall

• Centralized imperial power through agents dispatched across the country

• Also ordered all classical texts burned, searched for elixirs of immortality, and commissioned a elaborate mausoleum

– Civil war erupted and the Han Dynasty was born.

Herbert Ponting (1870-1935)

Early China

• The Han Dynasty rejected the excess of the Qin, but built up the administrative structure more– Implemented the civil service exam– Identified the Five Classics (each associated

with Confucius in some way), which were the basis of the exam, and became the required reading of all educated people

Early South Asia

• History of Early South Asia is obscure until around 500 B.C.E. – Asoka (third

Maurya king) is the first that we have solid information about

– Mauryan empire ended about 2nd century B.C.E., but we have only a shadowy idea of why

Early South Asia

• Although Indus Valley civilization appears to have been literate. They left only seals that are indecipherable. – Part of Indo-European language family – Roots of

which can be traced from Iran to Ireland• The Veda (“wisdom”) is one of the oldest

remaining texts. It comprises materials used in the complex liturgy of domestic and communal sacrifices.– Transmitted orally for 3 millennia (samskrita)– Much of the Veda is verse – same 11 meter found in

ancient Greek poetry

Early South Asia

• The Ramayana was composed in the late Maurya epoch, around 200 B.C.E.

• The Mahabharata, ascribed to the sage Vyasa, is usually thought of as a history. Probably created a century or two before Asoka, but continued to grow.

• For both the principle theme is meaning and extent of power – The nature of kingly rule and the limits of the world within which

this rule makes sense

• Sanskrit poets and scholars produced literature and theory about literature that dominated the cultural scene in South Asia

Early South Asia• Vedic tradition encountered a crisis of belief in

the middle of the first millennium B.C.E. – One reaction was an ascetic renunciation and

physical self-mortification– Another reaction was a new and profound reflection

on life and death• Ideas of redeath and rebirth (transmigration or samsara) , in

accordance with deeds committed in a previous life (karma)• Upanishads and Four Noble Truths

– Vedic thinkers tried to synthesize there many tendencies into a doctrine called “the four-life goals”

• Spiritual attachment to various gods remained, but three main gods: Brahma (creator), Vishnu (sustainer – note his avatara, or descent into human form), and Shiva (beneficent destroyer) – sometimes merged into a triple godhead

Classical Greece

The Greeks lived in pockets of what is now mainland Greece, throughout the islands of the eastern Mediterranean and along the shores of the Mediterranean sea.

Classical Greece

Mycenaean civilization came in contact with Minoan civilization in the late Bronze age through trading– The earliest writing dates back to this period– Clay tablets used to meet the record-keeping

needs of large bureaucracies– Greek speakers later conquered them and

adopted their writing system to record the sounds of Greek

– The Greeks later looked back on this period as their heroic age

Classical Greece

• Epic poetry was by far the most important Greek genre– Aethiopis or Amazonia– Iliad and the Odyssey

• There appears to have been a dark age where written language was lost. Stories passed orally and recaptured in 8th century B.C.E.– Began to use alphabet borrowed from Phoenicians– Writing often seen as something dangerous (used by

tyrants)

Classical Greece

• Greek society was really a mosaic of many varied micro-cultures

• We know the most about Athens thanks to the

rich written record they left behind.– Following Mycenaean era, city-states ruled by

aristocracies– Some aristocrats eventually set themselves up as

tyrants– In a sharp break from traditional forms of governance,

democracy rose (esp. in Athens). All free male citizens chose their magistrates by lot (no women, slaves, or non-citizens).

Classical Greece• Dramatic festivals were central to Athenian life.

– Celebrated Dionysos, god of wine– Committees of citizens chose the plays and awarded a winner

• Tragedy dramatized the epic cycle in music, dance, and spoken dialogue

• Comedy featured fantastic plots and direct references to their contemporary world. There was also a good deal of obscenity and phallic humor.

Greece, Athens, Dionysus theater, seen from the Acropolis

Classical Greece

• After the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars, a period of relative peace was established by Philip of Macedon.

• His son, Alexander, inherited his kingdom. Relentlessly

trying to conquer the Persian empire, Alexander conquered the Greeks, Egypt, deeply into barbarian lands, and east to the Indus River. – At his death, his generals divided his fragile empire.

• I.E. Alexandria, under the Ptolemies

• Eventually Hellenistic empire fell under the Romans

Rome

• Mythological origins– Romulus and Remus– Aeneas

• Local magistrates expelled the last Tarquin kings and gained independence from the Etruscan Empire in 510 B.C.E.– The republic, governed by the Senate, lasted

until Augustus in 27 B.C.E.

Rome

• By 1st century C.E. Rome had grown from tiny republic to the dominant power in the Mediterranean– Rome itself had an unmatched population

• Problems of overcrowding, supply, and waste disposal

• Inspired necessary advances in water and sewage• Multicultural: almost all residents came from

somewhere else

Rome• The republic’s troubles

began with the Gracchi brothers’ attempts to address growing social inequality with land redistribution and citizenship for all Latins.– This launched a series of

reform measures and attempts to grab power that eventually end in Caesar’s dictatorship.

• Caesar’s power based on his army and track record of victories

Modern bronze statue of Julius Caesar, Rimini, Italy

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Rome

• After Caesar’s assassination in 44 C.E. war broke out among potential heirs.

• Caesar’s adopted son, Octavian, defeated Mark Antony and his ally and lover Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium, and became sole ruler

• The Roman Empire was born

Rome

• The Roman Empire was a complex combination of military prowess and political savvy.– Roman legions highly-trained, well-equipped,

and effective– Constructed carefully laid-out provincial

capitals and paved roads and aqueducts to link the empire.

– As long as conquered rivals paid heavy taxes they were given relative autonomy

Rome

Expansion continued through the 4th century. – At its height, borders extended into Scotland, the

Rhine and Danube in Europe, and throughout the Mediterranean.

Overtime, emperors became more autocratic powers and godlike status, but the military played an increasingly important role in selecting emperor often resulting in a series of military coups.

The Roman Empire

Rome

Fall of Rome: Invasion by northern barbarians led by Alaric in 410.

• Military relied on peoples of conquered nations• Conversion of Constantine in 324 eventually shifted power

eastward

• The rule of Germanic tribes was less centralized and often at odds with Eastern Empire

• Rome continued to decline, although somewhat strengthened by the medieval papacy