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The Ancient World Part II:
The Middle East and Africa to 1000 BCE
Time Line of Art History: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
In his famous book, "Organism," Abraham Maslow originated the idea of self-actualization within a hierarchial structure of physilogical and psychological needs. Within this structure are what Maslow calls "esteem needs." From the very beginning of time historians have made manifest evidence of man's expression of "esteem needs." Over 30,000 years ago in Chauvet France the discovery of dynamic, vibrant paintings of animals drawn on limestone cave walls stand as a testament to man's need to express his world through art.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,
That is all ye know on earth and
All ye need to know.
-------- John Keats (1819) "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
Take the time to see the truth, to see the beauty that man has created across time and space. "Click away!"
The Eastern Mediterranean 2000–1000 B.C.E.
Maps:
Animated Map-Imperial History of the Middle East
Who has controlled the Middle East over the course of history? Pretty much everyone. Egyptians, Turks, Jews, Romans, Arabs, Persians, Europeans...the list goes on. Who will control the Middle East today? That is a much bigger question.
Time Line Index:
The Timeline Index : People, Periods, Places and Events in a chronological context.
A timeline of ancient Mesopotamian history up to and including the Persians. Mesopotamia stands at the very dawn of human recorded history; we are often fooled into think...
King Gilgamesh lived and reigned about 2700 BCE The Epic of Gilgamesh
is from Babylonia, dating from long after the time that king Gilgamesh was
supposed to have ruled. I...
Enheduanna, Sumerian Poet/Priestess
Enheduanna was a Sumerian/Akkadian high priestess of the moon god Nanna in
Ur, who came to honor Inanna above all the other gods of the Sumerian pantheon.
A single tablet...
At the heart of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel are the stories of apparently commonplace things, such as wheat, cattle, and writing. Diamond believes the uneven distribution of these simple elements shaped the course of global history and played a vital part in the epic story of continental competition.
Jared Diamond’s journey of discovery began on the island of Papua New Guinea. There, in 1974, a local named Yali asked Diamond a deceptively simple question: “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”
Bridging World History: Annenburg Media
Agricultural and Urban Revolutions
What do historians know about the earliest farmers and herders, and the evolution of cities? Newly emerging evidence about the "cradles of civilization" is examined in light of the social, technological, and cultural complexity of recently discovered settlements and cities.
Bridging World History: Annenburg Media
How did people begin to understand themselves in relation to the natural world and to the unseen realms beyond, and how was religion a community experience? In this unit, animism and shamanism in Shinto are contrasted with philosophical and ethical systems in early Greece and China, and the beginnings of Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and Judaism.
Dictionary of the History of Ideas
The religious and cosmic symbolism of the cit reaches back to the early stages of human culture. It seems that in none of the great archaic cultures have cities been understood simply as settlements, arbitrarily established at a certain place and in a given form; both the placing and the shape of cities were conceived as related, in a hidden or manifested form, to the structureof the universe. The most common form of this symbolism is the belief that the cities have astral or divine prototypes, or even descend from heaven; sometimes they were believed to have a relationship to the underworld. In both cases, however, they refer to an extra-terrestrial reality.
Themes of Ancient Civilizations:
Cities - Religion - Buildings - Writing - Technology - Trade
Power Point Presentation on the web covering the early rise of ancient cities across the world. This link will bring you to a Google list of links; scroll down unil you see: Origins and Growth of Cities.
Readings: Washington State University-World Cultures to 1500
The Emergence of Agriculture:
While they are not exciting in appearance, settled agricultural villages like this early example at Ban Po, China, represented a radically new way of life for human beings, unlike anything that had existed before. First, agriculture means sedentism--living permanently in one place. This was itself new to human beings, and it may have seemed very constraining to the first people to experience this way of life. Living in one spot permanently means exploiting a relatively small amount of land very intensively (rather than exploiting a large amount of land extensively, as hunter-gatherers did), and over a long period of time.
The Emergence of Sedentary Agriculture
The earliest agricultural sites in the world have been found in the Near East: in the Nile Valley and Western Asia, in valleys of the Zagros Mountains in Iran, in Anatolia (modern Turkey, shown above), in northern Syria, and along the Jordan River valley. Around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, agriculture began to emerge as a new specialized way of life, replacing hunting and gathering. In this region of the world, the changes in climate which accompanied the most recent retreat of the glaciers may have triggered the development of agriculture
Understanding the New Mode of Life
It is important to understand that this new way of life meant a whole new set of opportunities for human beings and a whole new set of problems as well. The following list suggests some of the problems inherent in this new way of life: Dependency on few plants--Agriculture made human communities, like this one pictured at left in Turkey, dependent on relatively few plants--the main crops which they grew--rather than on the many different kinds of plants which hunter-gatherers use.
What are the opportunities of the new way of life?
With the emergence of a sedentary way of life, it made sense for the first time to devote a considerable amount of effort in building permanent dwellings. For the first time, in fact, it was possible for humans to invest for the long term. Accordingly, almost immediately after agriculture appears, the archeological record begins to show a variety of solid dwellings of a more or less permanent sort which make ingenious use of local building materials This cluster of houses is from one of the world's earliest towns, Catal Huyak, in what is now southern Turkey.
Population Growth and Epidemic Diseases
Another of the challenges of sedentary life is population growth. Mobile hunter-gatherer groups must necessarily limit the number of children they have to care for at any given time; their way of life simply does not permit large families or large child-to-adult ratios. Sedentary agriculturalists, however, do not face such natural constraints. On the contrary, large families of many children mean more hands to help in the fields. Thus, a tendency toward larger families is built into the new way of life. With the advent of agriculture as a way of life, human populations began to increase and then to soar in number.
Technology Necessary for Agriculture
Surprisingly, this dramatically new way of life was not very dependent on new technology. On the contrary, in the earliest phase of development, pioneer farmers used techniques and tools which had long been familiar to hunter-gatherers: the stone axe, hoe, and sickle (left) for preparation of the fields and harvesting the grain. The primitive milling device for grinding seeds between two stones to process the grain into edible form had been in use for thousands of years by peoples who collected seeds but did not plant them.
Over time, the settled way of life gives birth to many crafts and skills and special forms of knowledge. The economic functions that individuals once were required to master in order to survive are carried on at a higher level of skill by groups of specialists, who exchange their labor or their products for grain or other commodities and eventually for money. The specializations are almost endless--and, in fact, they continue to proliferate in our own times. The earliest were: baking, brewing, weaving, dyeing, carpentry, pottery-making, stone and metal-working, etc. Needs arise for merchants and soldiers and artists. Priests or shamans and healers had probably existed in the earlier hunter-gatherer societies, but knowledge of writing gave rise to a host of new specializations: estate or temple managers, literate bureaucrats, calendar-keepers, professional medical practitioners and teachers.
In contrast to hunting and gathering as a mode of life, agriculture means modifying the environment in order to exploit it more effectively. Agriculture alters both the animals and plants it domesticates. Ultimately, it changes the very landscape itself.
Settled agricultural villages meant the accumulation of storable food-stuffs and other wealth. These food surpluses and other capital represented the prerequisite conditions for further cultural advance--for civilization. But what can be stored can also be stolen. Hence, we should expect to find, where ever these surpluses occur, large investments of labor in building walls or other measures to protect that vulnerable wealth. Thus, the creation of wealth paradoxically meant the creation of "security problems" as well.
Readings: Washington State University-World Cultures to 1500
Ancient Mesopotamia:
Mesopotamian History and Peoples
Although we like to imagine that Mesopotamia was a single, coherent culture passing from hand to hand, in fact the cultures of Mesopotamia were diverse and variegated. Even in the period of great empires, beginning with the Akkadians, Mesopotamia consisted of largely independent city-states with their own cults (often completely different religions), languages, kings, and administrations. So when we speak of Mesopotamia as dominated by one group or another, the traditions and governments of other groups thrived beneath this domination. These diverse city-states were always on the look-out for an opportunity for independence, and the history of the exchange of power is largely determined by the desire for independence seething below the surface.
British Museum: Mesopotamia
Geography - Gods, Goddessess (Creation Story) - Time - Writing
Among the earliest civilizations were the diverse peoples living in the fertile valleys lying between the Tigris and Euphrates valley, or Mesopotamia, which in Greek means, "between the rivers." In the south of this region, in an area now in Kuwait and northern Saudi Arabia, a mysterious group of people, speaking a language unrelated to any other human language we know of, began to live in cities, which were ruled by some sort of monarch, and began to write. These were the Sumerians, and around 3000 BC they began to form large city-states in southern Mesopotamia that controlled areas of several hundred square miles
British Museum: Sumer
The Akkadians were a Semitic people living on the Arabic peninsula during the great flourishing period of the Sumerian city-states. Although we don't know much about early Akkadian history and culture, we do know that as the Akkadians migrated north, they came in increasing conflict with the Sumerian city-states, and in 2340 BC, the great Akkadian military leader, Sargon, conquered Sumer and built an Akkadian empire stretching over most of the Sumerian city-states and extending as far away as Lebanon
The Amorites: Old Babylonian Period (1800-1530 BCE)
After the last Sumerian dynasty fell around 2000
BC, Mesopotamia drifted into conflict and chaos for almost a century. Around
1900 BC, a group of Semites called the Amorites had managed to gain control
of most of the Mesopotamian region. Like the Akkadians, the Amorites centralized
the government over the individual city-states and based their capital in
the city of Babylon, which was originally called Akkad and served as the center
of the Amorite empire. For this reason, the Amorites are called the Old Babylonians
and the period of their ascendancy over the region, which lasted from 1900-1600
BC, is called the Old Babylonian period.
Roaring into history from mysterious origins, the Hittites would rule a great empire that stretched from Mesopotamia to Syria and Palestine. The Hittites are shrouded in fog and mystery; we don't where they came from, and for a long time the language they spoke was undecipherable. In the end, it turns out they were Indo-European, that is, they spoke a language from the Indo-European language family, which includes English, German, Greek, Latin, Persian, and the languages of India. Their invasion spelled the end of the Old Babylonian empire in Mesopotamia (1900-1600 BC), and like so many others before them, the invaders adopted the ways of the conquered; after the conquest of Mesopotamia, the Hittites adopted the laws, religion, and the literature of the Old Babylonians thus continuing the long heritage of Sumerian culture.
The Kassites: The Kassite Interregnum (1530-1170)
History has been unkind to the Kassites, a people who come onto the stage of history in the one of the most chaotic periods in the Middle East. In the middle of the second millenium BC, Indo-European peoples began vast and chaotic migrations out of Europe towards Persia and India; this migration was powered by a stunning new technology: the military use of horses and chariots. These invasions displaced many peoples who began to migrate in many directions, and some headed towards Mesopotamia and Palestine. These were Asian people who had adopted Indo-European authority and military structures, and many of them were invaders who set up miniature kingdoms dotting the landscape of the Middle East and Asia Minor.
The Assyrians: The Assyrian Period (1170-612 BCE)
The Assyrians were Semitic people living in the northern reaches of Mesopotamia; they have a long history in the area, but for most of that history they are subjugated to the more powerful kingdoms and peoples to the south. Under the monarch, Shamshi-Adad, the Assyrians attempted to build their own empire, but Hammurabi soon crushed the attempt and the Assyrians disappear from the historical stage.
British Museum: Assyria
The Chaldeans: The Neo-Babylonian Period (612-539 BCE)
After the fall of Assyrian power in Mesopotamia,
the last great group of Semitic peoples dominated the area. Suffering mightily
under the Assyrians, the city of Babylon finally rose up against its hated
enemy, the city of Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian empire, and burned
it to the ground. The chief of the Babylonians was Nabopolassar; the Semites
living in the northern part of Mesopotamia would never gain their independence
again.
British Museum: Babylonia
Astronomers of Babylon - Trade and Transport
Video Presentations
Ancient Mesopotamia:
Legacy Origins of Civilization
Host Michael Wood traces the rise of both Asian and Western civilization in one global perspective in these thought-provoking videos. From the crumbling ruins in the Iraqi desert to those of Greece and Rome, viewers contemplate thriving cities and complex societies that have vanished, a reminder that other nations prospered for thousands of years. Now all that remains is their legacy. After thousands of years as a hunter/gatherer, man built the first cities 5,000 years ago on the banks of the Euphrates River. Civilization as we know it began with the glorious cultures of Ur, Nineveh, and Babylon
Western Tradition: Mesopotamia
Settlements in the Fertile Crescent gave rise to the great river civilizations of the Middle East.
Western Tradition: From Bronze to Iron
Metals revolutionized tools, as well as societies, in the empires of Assyria, Persia, and Neo-Babylonia.
THE DELUGE-Ancient Sumerian flood story
Sumerian versian that predates the bible by almost 2,000 years. Much of text, written in cuneiform on stone tablets, did not survive the long and difficult journey through the ages but enough has survived to sufficiently blow your mind.
Atrahasis: Old Babalonian Flood Story
From the Epic of Gilgamesh the ancient Babylonian Flood Story
Comparison of the Babylonian and Noahic Flood Stories
Ancient City of Babylon 612 BCE
Animation Video of the Reconstruction of ancient Babylon
Seven Wonders Of The Ancient World-Gardens of Babylon Part I - Part 2
Enuma elish
Like the Greek Theogony, the creation of the world in the Enuma elish begins with the universe in a formless state, from which emerge two primary gods, male and female. Apsu, the male "begetter," is the sweet waters, while Tiamat, the female "maker," is the bitter, salt waters. Sweet and salt water mingle together at the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, site of the origins of Mesopotamian civilization. See below under the section on the Hebrew a video presentation by Dr. David DeLauro from St. Joseph's College a comparison of the story of Genesis from the Old Testament to the far older mythology of the Enuma elish.
Readings: Washington State University-World Cultures to 1500
Ancient Egypt:
Egyptian History and Peoples: The Valley of the Nile
Like a giant lifeline in the midst of desperation, the Nile River, longest river in the world, cuts a swath of green and life through the barrenness of the giant Sahara desert in North Africa. Fed by three major sources—the White Nile which begins at Lake Victoria, the Atbara, and the Blue Nile, which joins the Nile near Khartoum in the Sudan—the river rushes down into the Nile Valley and beyond that into the rich alluvial plain of the Nile delta. Swollen by rains, the river yearly floods the Nile Valley, so that the valley literally turns into isolated islands separated by the high waters. In an area without any rainfall, the Nile brings water and life, and in its periodic flooding, it also brings nutrient-rich silt which it deposits on the agricultural land in the Nile Valley.
Egyptian Prehistory: The Great Desert
Seven or eight thousand years ago, at the farthest reaches of human memory, before there was Egypt or the pyramids, North Africa was a lush and green place. There were vast grasslands and green forests stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. Over this enormous green area, humans wandered in small groups; eventually, about eight thousand or so years ago, some of these small groups began to plant and cultivate their food. You might say that this change, which happened so slowly that it probably took a millenium to take place, was the single most important event in human history. For it turned humans into agriculturalists. As farmers, these wandering human groups settled down in one place, and human culture, confined now to villages, radically changed shape.
The Two Lands: The Archaic Period (3100-2650 BCE)
From 3900 to 3100 B.C., the villages along the Nile valley grew in wealth and power. Two of these villages became particularly powerful and wealthy, so much so that it is not an exaggeration to think of them as cities. In the north, the city of Nekheb (named by the Greeks, Hieraconpolis or "city of the falcon") grew powerful, while in the south, Nekhen grew powerful. Around 3000 BC, the rivalry between these two towns erupted into war. Upper Egypt would emerge victorious in this war and dominate all of Egypt. We are told that this unification was brought about by the warrior-king Menes, whose name in Egyptian was Narmer.
The Old Kingdom (2650-2134 BCE)
While the unification of Egypt in the Archaic period was the single most important event in Egyptian history, it was a long and drawn-out affair. Although Narmer is credited with unifying the country, all the kings of the first two dynasties had to fight constant wars against considerable opponents all along the Nile. But the third dynasty of Egyptian kings began powerfully; the second king of that dynasty, a man named Netcheriche or Djoser (or Zoser) became powerful enough to control the whole of the country.
The First Intermediate Period (2134-2040 BCE)
After the magnificence and creative energy of the Old Kingdom, the Nile began to a series of poor floods which caused widespread hunger and death. All the administrative organization that held the country together during the Old Kingdom fell apart into chaos; the country splintered apart into dozens of chiefdoms. Each of these chiefs declared themselves king of all Egypt, but their claim was as ephemeral as the wind. The institution of the Egyptian king pretty much died out as local governors and officials associated themselves with their own region rather than with the king.
The Middle Kingdom (2040-1640 BCE)
For one hundred years after the decline of the Old Kingdom (2134-2040 BC), the once proud land of Egypt splintered into dozens of independent states. It seemed as if the Two Lands and the king of the Two Lands would never appear again; but two kings, Intef and Mentuhotep, in the region of Luxor re-established order and reinstituted the institution of the Egyptian king. The dynasty they began, the Eleventh Dynasty, marks the beginning of the Middle Kingdom.
The Second Intermediate Period: The Hyskos (1640-1550 BCE)
The large-scale immigration of foreigners into the Nile Valley during the Middle Kingdom eventually spelled the end of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt. These foreigners remained non-naturalized "Asiatics" in the land of the pharoahs; they established their own communities and lived by their own laws. Eventually, as their numbers increased, they threatened the power of the Egyptian monarchy itself and Egypt fell into disarray.
The New Kingdom: The Warrior Kings (1550-1070 BCE)
After Amosis drove out the Hyksos and established the Eighteenth Dynasty, the Egyptian kings dedicated themselves to preventing the Hyksos disaster from ever happening again. The period of Hyksos domination was a chaotic and shameful time for the Egyptians, and they were determined never to see a foreign king lording it over Egypt ever again. These were warrior-kings, great generals who did not stand apart from their people in divine aloofness. They were active administrators who built up fortifications all along the Egyptian border and actively seized territories outside of Egypt, such as Palestine and Syria. These kings subjugated foreign lands and exacted high taxes, making Egypt wealthy and powerful again.
The Third Intermediate Period (1070-712 BCE)
After the collapse of the Nineteenth Dynasty, the so-called Ramesside kings, Egypt descended into another period of political chaos. This chaos literally began during the kingship of the last Ramesside king, Ramsses XI. After the death of Ramsses XI, a man named Smendes, who lived in the town of Tanis, claimed the throne. From this point on, no-one was really in charge of Egypt. For a brief time, Libyans controlled Egypt. These Libyan chiefs made up the Twenty-second Dynasty and ruled Egypt at the same time as the kings of the Twenty-third Dynasty.
In 728 BC, after three hundred years of political chaos, Egypt was invaded by its sister civilization to the south, Nubia. The Nubians had built a civilization on the model of the Egyptians and had maintained Egyptian values and culture with a high degree of conservatism. Under the command of Piankhy, the Nubians rushed northwards and conquered Egypt. The Nubians wanted to return Egypt to traditional Egyptian ways and Egyptian religious practices. Many Egyptian traditions that had died out were restored by the Nubian conquerors. But the Nubian renaissance lasted for only the blink of an eye, for they wilted under the ferocity of the Assyrians and their king Ashurbanipal.
Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt (332 BCE-395 CE)
When the Greek conqueror, Alexander the Great, entered Egypt in 332 BC, he intended to found a universal empire. At its height, Alexander's brief empire included all of Egypt, Greece, Thrace, Turkey, the Near East, Mesopotamia, and Asia all the way to India. Nothing of the kind has ever been seen before or since. The Egyptians thought of Alexander as their great liberator, but soon they found themselves under Alexander as their king. He built a magnificent new capital at the very mouth of the Nile on the Mediterranean. And since Alexander was above everything else a modest man, he named his new capital, Alexandria.
British Museum: Ancient Egypt
Geography - Gods and Goddessess (Creation Story) - Mummification - Pharaoh - Pyramids - Temples - Time - Trades - Writing
1240 BCE
The Papyrus of Ani
Religion guided every aspect of Egyptian life. Egyptian religion was based on polytheism, or the worship of many deities. The Egyptians had as many as 2000 gods and goddesses each representing characteristics of a specific earthly force, combined with a heavenly power. Often gods and goddesses were represented as part human and part animal. They considered animals such as the bull, the cat, and the crocodile to be holy. Their two chief gods were Amon-Ra and Osiris. Amon-Ra was believed to be the sun god and the lord of the universe. Osiris was the god of the underworld and was the god that made a peaceful afterlife possible. The Egyptian "Book of the Dead" contains the major ideas and beliefs in the ancient Egyptian religion. Because their religion stressed an afterlife, Egyptians devoted much time and energy into preparing for their journey to the "next world."
Parallels Between Jesus and the Egyptian god Horus
Stories from the life of Horus had been circulating
for centuries before Jesus birth (circa 4 to 7 BCE). If any copying occurred
by the writers of the Egyptian or Christian religions, it was the followers
of Jesus who incorporated into his biography the myths and legends of Horus,
not vice-versa.
Video Presentations
Ancient Egypt:
Discovery Channel's Engineering an Empire Egypt
Westeren Tradition: The Ancient Egyptians
Egyptian irrigation created one of the first great civilizations
What the Ancients Did for Us - The Egyptian
Egypt became a unified country five thousand years ago and - until the arrival of Alexander the Great in 332 BC - remained a fiercely independent land with its own very distinctive art, religion and culture. Egypt was the superpower of its day and her kings were treated as demigods throughout the Mediterranean world – but what did they do for us? It goes without saying they gave us mummies and mummification, and one of the great wonders of the ancient world – the pyramids. On a more practical level they invented the sewn plank boat, a method of boat construction using wooden pegs and fibre rope - no nails. Huge boats were built using this technique, the most famous one belonging to King Khufu, the builder of the great pyramid in 2500 BC. The recent discovery of a Bronze Age boat in Britain reveals that this method of construction had found its way here and could have influenced our own boat builders.
Seven Wonders Of The Ancient World-Great Pyramids Part 1- Part 2
Readings: Washington State University-World Cultures to 1500
The Hebrews:
Hebrew History and Culture to the Diaspora
History is filled with enigmas and accidents, of great empires and cultures that last for millennia only to fade into the soil on which they arose, and small and insignificant cultures, mere specks on the world in their time, which profoundly alter the course of human history forever. The Hebrews are in the latter category. The Hebrews, their religion, and their brief state, could easily have faded away from history in the same way their close neighbors did: the Edomites, the Moabites, the Ammonites, and even the Philistines. They all had profound religions, powerful states, and a highly developed civilization. So why have we forgotten them? What happened in history that elevated the Hebrews to such a foundational role in the cultures of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, indeed, of the whole world because of the spread of Christianity and Islam.
The stage on which Hebrew history takes place is a varied and a troubled place. Hebrew history, as told by the Hebrews, begins in Mesopotamia, in the cities of Ur in the south and Haran in the north. Mesopotamia was a rich agricultural area, fed by irrigation from the two rivers which give it its name: the Tigris and the Euphrates. Powerful city-states, such as Ur, rose up in this fertile area, and these city-states would eventually become the foundation of mighty empires, such as the Akkadian and Amorite empires.
The Age of the Patriarchs (1950-1500 BCE)
For the most part, the people surrounding the Hebrews took little interest in them for much of Hebrew history. The Hebrews themselves don't actually appear in history until the reign of Marniptah, king of Egypt from about 1224-1211 BC. The son of Raamses I (1290-1224 BC), generally taken to be the king of Egypt at the time of the Hebrew exodus, Marniptah undertakes a military campaign in Asia in 1220 BC. In an account of the campaign inscribed in granite, a list of all the conquered peoples includes the Israelites who are mentioned as "now living in Canaan."
Egypt and the Wanderings (1500-1250 BCE)
However dim and uncertain Hebrew history is in the age of the patriarchs, there is no question that the migration out of Egypt around 1250 BC is the single most important event in Hebrew history. More than anything else in history, this event gave the Hebrews an identity, a nation, a founder, and a name, used for the first time in the very first line of Exodus , the biblical account of the migration: "bene yisrael," "the children of Israel."
The Occupation of Canaan (1250-1050 BCE)
When the Hebrews arrive at Canaan,
the land promised to them millenia
earlier when God told Abraham at Shechem that the land would belong to
his descendants, they they begin the long, painful, and disappointing process
of setting the land. There were, after all, people already living there. These
people, the Canaanites, were a Semitic people speaking a language remarkably
close to Hebrew. They were farmers, some were nomads, but they were also civilized.
They used the great Mesopotamian cities as their model and had built modest
imitations of them. They had also learned military technology and tactics
from the Mesopotamians, as well as law. So the Hebrews, uncivilized, tribal,
and nomadic, found themselves facing a formidable enemy. Even the accounts
of this period in the Hebrew bible, the books of Joshua and Judges paint a
pretty dreary picture of the occupation.
After two hundred years of only marginal success in occupying and holding lands in Palestine, the Hebrews united to form a single state under a single monarch. During the early centuries in Palestine, the Hebrews were ruled loosely by "judges," who seemed to exercise a limited amount of judicial, legislative, and even military control over the otherwise independent Hebrew tribes. At times, various "deliverers" would lead some or all of the tribes against non-Hebrew oppressors or aggressors, and then fade again into history. Still, the tribes faced down the constant threat of invasion and oppression, and they still had not even remained firm in their Yahweh religion.
The Two Kingdoms (920-597 BCE)
The experiment with the opulence and power of the great eastern kingdoms had ended in disaster for Israel. Solomon created the wealthiest and most powerful central government the Hebrews would ever see, but he did so at an impossibly high cost. Land was given away to pay for his extravagances, and people were sent into forced labor into Tyre in the north. When Solomon died (between 926-922 BC), the ten northern tribes refused to submit to his son, Rehoboam, and revolted. From this point on, there would be two kingdoms of Hebrews: in the north, Israel, and in the south, Judah. The Israelites formed their capital in the city of Samaria, and the Judaeans kept their capital in Jerusalem. These kingdoms remained separate states for over two hundred years.
The Chaldeans, following standard Mesopotamian
practice, deported the Jews after they had conquered Jerusalem in 597 BC.
The deportations were large, but certainly didn't involve the entire nation.
Somewhere around 10,000 people were forced to relocate to the city of Babylon,
the capital of the Chaldean empire. In 586 BC, Judah itself ceased to be an
independent kingdom, and the earlier deportees found themselves without a
homeland, without a state, and without a nation. This period, which actually
begins in 597 but is traditionally dated at 586, is called the Exile in Jewish
history; it ends with an accident in 538 when the Persians overthrow the Chaldeans.
When Cyrus the Persian conquered Mesopotamia and the whole of the Middle East, he did so for religious reasons. Unlike any conqueror before him, Cyrus set out to conquer the entire world. Before Cyrus and the Persians, conquest was largely a strategic affair; you guaranteed your territorial safety by conquering potential enemies. But Cyrus wanted the whole world and he wanted it for religious reasons.
Yavan in the House of Shem: Jews and Greeks (332-63 BCE)
In the Table of Nations in Genesis 10.1-32, which
lists the descendants of Noah and the nations they founded, the Greeks appear
under the name "Yavan," who is a son of Yaphet. Yavan is parallel
with the Greek word, "Ionia," the Greek region of Asia Minor; "Yaphet"
is parallel with the Greek word, "Iapetus," who is the mythological
father of Prometheus in Greek legend. Two other Greek nations appear in the
table: Rhodes (Rodanim) and Cyprus (Kittim and Elishah). The sons of Shem,
brother to Yaphet, are the Semitic (named after Shem) nations, including the
Hebrews. Imagine, if you will, the Hebrew vision of history. At some point,
in the dim recesses of time, after the world had been destroyed by flood,
the nations of the earth were all contained in the three sons of Noah. Their
sons and grandsons all knew one another, spoke the same language, ate the
same mails, worshipped the same god. How odd and unmeasurably strange it must
have been, then, when after an infinite multitude of generations and millenia
of separation, the descendants of Yavan moved among the descendants of Shem!
The Jewish state comes to an end in 70 AD, when the Romans begin to actively drive Jews from the home they had lived in for over a millenium. But the Jewish Diaspora ("diaspora" ="dispersion, scattering") had begun long before the Romans had even dreamed of Judaea. When the Assyrians conquered Israel in 722, the Hebrew inhabitants were scattered all over the Middle East; these early victims of the dispersion disappeared utterly from the pages of history. However, when Nebuchadnezzar deported the Judaeans in 597 and 586 BC, he allowed them to remain in a unified community in Babylon. Another group of Judaeans fled to Egypt, where they settled in the Nile delta. So from 597 onwards, there were three distinct groups of Hebrews: a group in Babylon and other parts of the Middle East, a group in Judaea, and another group in Egypt. Thus, 597 is considered the beginning date of the Jewish Diaspora.
PBS: Heritage "Civilization and the Jews"
Where and how are we to discover the origins of the Jewish people? Until the 20th century, most people would have replied that one need only open the Bible and read. The modern inquirer, however, has new information available drawn from archaeology and recently discovered ancient Near Eastern literature. These new sources help deepen our understanding of Israelite history as told in the Bible. They help us understand to what extent the early Israelites were a typical Near Eastern people and to what extent they were unique.
Video Presentations
Ancient Israel:
Lost Treasures of the Ancient World: Jerusalem
Decoding The Past - The Prophecies Of Israel
Could the future already be written? This mammoth series spans humanexperience to illuminate this question. Common wisdom has it we prepare for our future by understanding our past. But did the ancient prophets already know the future? Are we living in the world they predicted? In this enlightening and often unsettling series, the viewer revisits the prophecies and divinations of the Ancients and traces them to the modern events they may have been predicting.
Based on Karen Armstrong's book, this film examines the concept of God in the three major monotheistic religions from the days of Abraham to modern times. Through analysis of historic and holy texts and incorporation of ancient art and artifacts, the program explores the deity written about in the Bible and the Quran. The evolution and intertwining of various Christian, Jewish and Islamic interpretations of God are also addressed.
Jerusalem, for three of the world's largest religions, is one of the most holy places on earth. For Jews it is where Solomon's Temple was a place of God's special presence on earth. The Dome of the Rock is where Muslims believe Mohammed ascended into heaven to receive special instructions from Allah. Christians believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was crucified and resurrected in Jerusalem. Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Christian Crusaders have shed blood over possession of this city. Who owns Jerusalem? Be prepared to be challenged on Beyond Today.
Genesis: Creation and Humanity
Lecture presentations (Four Parts) by Dr. David DeLauro from St. Joseph's College on the synergism of the Enuma Elish and the book of Genesis in the Old Testament.
Who Wrote the Bible? Is the Bible the Word of God? Why is the Bible full of Contradictions? This documentary explores questions at the ... all » heart of the great Christian faith in a fair open-minded fashion. It is NOT meant to be inflamatory but informative. The truth one will see is the Bible is NOT what it is thought to be. So what is the Bible? Find out!
Video Presentation: Annenburg Media
The decline and fall of civilizations captures our interest. Could we be next,
going the way of the Sumerians, the Romans, the Maya? The collapse of Copan,
brought on by overpopulation and overexploitation of resources, is explored
along with other ancient cultures that have faced the problems we confront
today.
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