Leviticus: The Impurity of Women

These passages of the Mosaic Law are part of a much longer section concerned with impurity; that is, those conditions un­der which performing religious rituals is not permissible. Note that, although men, too, could be impure, the purification of women took longer and the amount of time required for purifi­cation after the birth of a girl was twice as long as that for a boy.
12:2–5. If a woman conceives and bears a male child, she shall be ceremonially unclean seven days; as at the time of her menstruation she shall be unclean. On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. Her time of blood purification shall be thirty-three days; she shall not touch any holy thing, or come into the sanctuary, until the days of her purification are completed. If she bears a female child, she shall be unclean two weeks, as in her menstruation; her time of blood purification shall be sixty-six days.
15:12–22. If a man has an emission of semen, he shall bathe his whole body in water, and be un­clean until the evening. Everything made of cloth or skin on which the semen falls shall be washed with water and be unclean until the evening. If a man lies with a woman and has an emission of se­men, both of them shall bathe in water and be un­clean until the evening. When a woman has a discharge of blood that is her regular discharge from her body, she shall be in her impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be un­clean until the evening. Everything on which she lies during her impurity shall be unclean; every­thing also on which she sits shall be unclean. Whoever touches her bed shall wash his clothes, and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening. Whoever touches anything on which she sits shall wash his clothes and bathe in water, and be unclean until the evening.
From the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permis­sion. All rights reserved.
divorce and no provision was made for a dowry, which usually meant that a man could divorce his wife without financial loss. Divorces were nevertheless uncommon because Mosaic Law and Jewish custom placed a pre­mium on the family. Polygyny and concubinage, though permitted, were rare for economic reasons, and adultery was punishable by death.
Within the home, women were more respected than their legal position might indicate. They had the right to name the children and were responsible for their early instruction in moral and practical matters. Theory aside, they often controlled the everyday life of the household. Furthermore, Jewish literature reveals none of the contempt for women and their capacities sometimes found in the writings of ancient Greece. The Bible abounds in heroic women such as Esther, Rachel, and Deborah, and the Book of Proverbs holds the value of a good woman as “beyond rubies.” But the patriar­chal nature of Jewish society coupled with the divine origin of the Mosaic Law would have a profound im­pact on subsequent history. Christianity, Islam, and modern Judaism absorbed from the Bible the idea that women’s exclusion from many aspects of public and re­ligious life was ordained by God.
The Mosaic emphasis on family placed a high value on children. Infanticide, a practice common in other ancient cultures, was forbidden, and child-raising prac­tices, like every other aspect of life, were prescribed by law. On the eighth day after birth, male children were circumcised as a sign of their covenant with God. They received religious instruction from their fathers and at age thirteen assumed the full religious responsibilities of an adult. Eldest sons, who were especially honored, had extra responsibilities. Both boys and girls were ex­pected to help in the fields and in the home, but gender roles were carefully preserved. Boys learned their fa-ther’s trade or cared for the livestock. Girls were re­sponsible for gleaning the fields after harvest and for keeping the house supplied with water from wells that, in town at least, were usually communal. What re­mained in the fields after gleaning was left for the poor.
The obligation to assist the poor and helpless— symbolized by this minor, yet divinely established, injunction—was central to the Jewish conception of righteousness. A comprehensive ideal of charity and communal responsibility gradually evolved from such precepts and, like monotheism itself, spread to Western society as a whole long after Israel as a political entity had ceased to exist.
The central features of the Jewish faith were well established at the time of the Babylonian exile. The subsequent history of the Jewish people and the trans­mission of their religious and ethical concepts to other cultures are important to consider, for the interaction of the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths continues to this day.

The Social and Economic Structures of Ancient Israel

The society that produced these revolutionary concepts was not in other respects much different from its neigh­bors. From a federation of nomadic herdsmen initially organized into twelve tribes, the earliest Jews evolved into settled agriculturalists after their arrival in Canaan. Tribal survivals such as the communal ownership of re­sources gave way to a system of private property in which land and water were generally owned by fami­lies. Inevitably, some families were more successful than others, and many became substantial landholders with tenants and perhaps a few slaves. As in Mesopotamia, these families were often extended and always patriar­chal in organization. A gradual process of urbanization increased the importance of crafts and trade, but the basic family structure remained.
In earliest times, fathers held absolute authority over wives and children. As ethical standards evolved, patriarchy was increasingly tempered by a sense of re­sponsibility and mercy. However, the status of women was lower in ancient Israel than among the Hittites, the Egyptians, or the Mesopotamians. Under the Judges who ruled Israel from the invasion of Canaan to the emergence of the monarchy, women presided as priestesses over certain festivals. As interpretation of the Mosaic Law evolved, their participation in reli­gious life was restricted (see document 1.6). The wor­ship of Yahweh demanded purity as well as holiness, and women were regarded as ritually impure during menstruation and after childbirth. They were also ex­empted from regular prayer and other rituals on the theory that they should not be distracted from child care. In effect, they were excluded from direct partici­pation in all public rites and were segregated from men even as observers because their presence was thought to be distracting. The proper role of women was in the home.
The home, however, was central to religious life. Marriages were arranged between families and sealed by contract as in Babylon, but only men could initiate
.DOCUMENT 1.6 .

The Prophet Isaiah: Social Justice

This passage (Isa. 1:11–17), attributed to Isaiah of Jerusalem in the mid-eighth century B.C., demonstrates the in­creasing emphasis on social justice in Hebrew religious thought.
What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD. I have had enough of burnt offer­ings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not de­light in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of he-goats. When you come to appear before me, who requires of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomi­nation to me. New moon and sabbath and the call­ing of assemblies—I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your ap­pointed feasts my soul hates; they have become a burden to me, I am weary of bearing them. When you spread forth your hands I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppres­sion; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.
From the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Divsion of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permis­sion. All rights reserved.
priests, prophets, and teachers, it remains to this day the foundation of Jewish life.
Certain features of Mosaic Law—such as the princi­ple of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—recall Babylonian precedents, but it went much further by seeking to govern private as well as public behavior. Di­etary regulations were set forth in great detail along with rules for sexual conduct and the proper form of re­ligious observances. Though legalistic in form, the Mo­saic Law offered a comprehensive guide to ethical behavior whose force transcended social or political sanctions (see document 1.5). It was intended not only as legislation but also as a prescription for the godly life. God could mete out terrible punishment; but the com­mandments were to be kept, not in brute fear or from a sense of grudging duty, but in awe of God’s majesty and holiness, and in gratitude for God’s blessings. This concept of righteousness as an essential duty, together with many of the specific ethical principles enshrined in the Torah, or first five books of the Jewish Bible, would later be adopted by both Christianity and Islam. The in­fluence of Mosaic Law on Western thought and society has therefore been incalculable.

The Covenant

This passage (Exod. 19:1–9) describes the making of the covenant between the Hebrews and their God that forms the basis of the Jewish religion and the concept of the Jews as a chosen people.
On the third new moon after the Israelites had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that very day, they came into the wilderness of Sinai.. . . Israelcamped there in front of the mountain. Then Moses went up to God, the LORD called to him from the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagle’s wings and brought you to myself. Now, therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites.” So Moses came, summoned the elders of the people, and set before them all these words that the LORD had commanded him. The people all answered as one: “Everything that the LORD has spoken we will do.” Moses reported the words of the people to the LORD. Then the LORD said to Moses, “I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, in order that the people may hear when I speak to you and so trust you ever after.
From the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permis­sion. All rights reserved.
Greeks would write it, it remains the first attempt to provide a coherent account of past events.
The primary expression of Yahweh’s will is found, however, in the Ten Commandments and in the subse­quent elaboration of the Mosaic Law. The Ten Com­mandments, brought down by Moses from Mt. Sinai and delivered to the people of Israel before their entry into Canaan, formed the basis of an elaborate legal and moral code that governed virtually every aspect of life and conduct. Like the concept of God, the law evolved over time. Refined and amplified by generations of
.DOCUMENT 1.5 .

The Origins of Judaism

Ancient Israel was not, in other words, a material suc­cess. Its people were never numerous or rich, and it was only briefly a regional power. Its contributions to art and technology were negligible, yet few societies have had a greater influence on those that followed. The rea­son for this paradox is that the Jews developed a reli­gion that was unlike anything else in the ancient world. It was not wholly without precedent, for ideas were borrowed from Mesopotamian and perhaps from Egyptian sources. Moreover, though inspired by revela­tions that can be dated with some accuracy, its basic practices evolved over time. But if the history of the be­liefs themselves can be traced like those of any other religion, the Jewish concept of the divine was neverthe­less revolutionary.
Its central feature was a vision of one God who was indivisible and who could not be represented or under­stood in visual terms. Yahweh, the God of the Jews, could not be described. The name is formed from the Hebrew word YHWH and appears to be a derivative of the verb “to be,” indicating that the deity is eternal and changeless. Creator of the universe and absolute in power, the God of Israel was at the same time a per­sonal god who acted in history and who took an inter­est in the lives of individual Jews.
Above all, the worship of Yahweh demanded ethi­cal behavior on the part of the worshipper. This was ex­traordinary, because though the Mesopotamians had emphasized the helplessness of humans and Akhenaton had thought of a single, all-powerful god, the idea that a god might be served by good deeds as well as by rit­ual and sacrifice was new. The concept was founded on the idea of a covenant or agreement made first between God and Abraham and reaffirmed at the time of the ex­odus from Egypt (see document 1.4).
The people of Israel formally reaffirmed the covenant on several occasions, but failure to observe it could bring terrible punishment. The fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchedrezzar was thought to be an example of what could happen if the Jews lapsed in their devotion, and a rich prophetic tradition developed that called upon the people of Israel to avoid God’s wrath by be­having in an ethical manner. The Jews thus became the first people to write long narratives of human events as opposed to mere chronologies and king lists. Much of the Jewish Bible is devoted to the interaction between God and the children of Israel and is intended to pro­vide a record of God’s judgments on Earth to discern the divine will. Therefore, while not history as the
.DOCUMENT 1.4 .

The Historical Development of Ancient Israel

The Hapiru who entered Canaan around 1200 B.C. came from Egypt. The name is thought to mean outsider or marauder and is the probable root of the term Hebrew. The invaders were a Semitic group of mixed ancestry whose forebears had left Mesopotamia some six hun­dred years earlier during the conquest of Sumeria by Babylon. According to tradition, their patriarch Abra­ham came from Ur. They lived for several generations as pastoralists in the trans–Jordan highlands and then emigrated to Egypt, probably at about the time of the Hyksos domination. With the revival of the New King­dom under native Egyptian dynasties, the situation of the Semitic immigrants became more difficult. Op­pressed by a pharaoh (or pharaohs) whose identity re­mains the subject of controversy, a group of them fled to Sinai under the leadership of Moses. Moses, whose Egyptian name helps to confirm the biblical story of his origins, molded the refugees into the people of Israel and transmitted to them the Ten Commandments, the ethical code that forms the basis of Judaism, Christian­ity, and Islam.
The Israelites conquered their new homeland with great difficulty. The period between 1200 and 1020
B.C. appears to have been one of constant struggle. As described in the Book of Judges, the people of Israel were at this time a loose confederacy of tribes united by a common religion and by military necessity. Saul (reigned c. 1020–1000 B.C.) established a monarchy of sorts in response to the Philistine threat, but it was not until after his death that David (ruled 1000–961 B.C.)
consolidated the territories between Beersheba and the Galilee into the kingdom of Israel.
Under David’s son Solomon (reigned 961–922 B.C.), Israel became a major regional power. Commerce flourished, and the king used his wealth to construct a lavish palace as well as the First Temple at Jerusalem, a structure heavily influenced by Phoenician models. But Solomon’s glory came at a price. Heavy taxation and religious disputes led to rebellion after his death, and Is­rael divided into two kingdoms: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Israel was a loosely knit, aristocratic monarchy occupying the land later known as Samaria. Judah, with its walled capital of Jerusalem, was poorer but more cohesive. Both, in the end, would fall prey to more powerful neighbors.
The danger came from the north. In what is now Syria, remnants of the Hittite empire had survived as petty states. Many of them were annexed in the twelfth century by the Aramaeans, a Semitic people whose most important center was Damascus. The Aramaic lan­guage would become the vernacular of the Middle East—it was the language, for example, in which Jesus preached. However, Syria remained politically unsta­ble. Assyria, once more in an expansionist phase and enriched by the conquest of Mesopotamia, filled the vacuum. The ministates of the region could not long expect to resist such a juggernaut. For a time, an al­liance between Israel and Damascus held the Assyrians at bay, but by 722 B.C., both had fallen to the armies of the Assyrian conquerors Tiglath-pileser and Sargon II. Sennacherib (ruled 705–682 B.C.) annexed Philistia and Phoenicia, after which Esarhaddon (ruled 680–689 B.C.) and Assurbanipal (reigned 669–c.627 B.C.), the greatest and most cultivated of the Assyrian emperors, con­quered Egypt. The tiny kingdom of Judah survived only by allying itself with the conquerors.
The end came in 587 B.C. A resurgent Babylonia had destroyed Assyria by allying itself with the Medes and adopting Assyrian military tactics. In a general set­tling of scores the Babylonian king Nebuchadrezzar II then sacked Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and car­ried the Judaean leadership off to captivity in Babylon. Many of these people returned after Babylon was con­quered by the Persians in 539 B.C., but the Israelites or Jews, a name derived from the kingdom of Judah, did not establish another independent state until 142 B.C. Judaea and Samaria would be ruled for four hundred years by Persians and by Hellenistic Greeks, while thousands of Jews, faced with the desolation of their homeland, dispersed to the corners of the known world.

Canaan, Phoenicia, and Philistia

The eastern shore of the Mediterranean has been in­habited since earliest times. Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon remains are found in close proximity to one another in the caves of Mt. Carmel, and agriculture was established on the eastern shore before it was intro­duced to Egypt or Mesopotamia. The climate is benign, with mild winters and enough rainfall to support the Mediterranean triad of crops—wheat, olives, and grapes. The Bible calls it “the land of milk and honey,” but it was also a corridor and at times a disputed fron­tier between the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Its inhabitants never enjoyed the political stabil­ity of the great river empires. The eastern shore of the Mediterranean was from the beginning a world of small, aggressive city-states whose wealth and strategic position attracted the unwelcome attention of stronger powers.
The first Canaanites or Phoenicians, as they were known to the Greeks, spoke a variety of Semitic di­alects and moved into the region during the fourth mil­lennium, superseding or blending with an earlier Neolithic population (see map 1.2). Their first urban foundations, at Sidon, Byblos, and Ras Shamra (Ugarit), date from around 3000 B.C. From the beginning, these and a host of other cities traded actively with both Egypt and Sumer. Their inhabitants were sailors, ship­builders, and merchants who played a vital role in the process of cultural exchange.
They were also skilled craftsmen. Carved furniture of wood and ivory was an obvious speciality, but metal­working was equally important. The Phoenicians ex­ported fine gold and copper jewelry, bronze tools, and weapons over a wide area. Around 1500 B.C. they seem to have invented the process of casting glass around a core of sand. Decorative glassware remained an impor­tant export throughout antiquity, and glassblowing likely was invented by their descendants in Roman
Illustration 1.6
.Egyptian Beliefs about the Afterlife. In this papyrus from the Theban Book of the Dead, the dead man and his wife watch as the god Anubis weighs his heart against a feather and Thoth records the results. The Devourer of Hearts waits at the far right. The writing in the background provides a good example of New Kingdom hieroglyphics.

times. The women of Sidon were known for their re­markable textiles, and Sidon and Tyre were the primary source of the purple dye that symbolized royalty throughout the ancient world. It was extracted with great difficulty from the shell of the murex snail, a crea­ture abundant in the harbors of Lebanon.
Politically, Phoenician towns were governed by a hereditary king assisted by a council of elders. In prac­tice, they were probably oligarchies in which policy was decided by the wealthy merchants who served on the council. Little is known of their civic life or even of their religious practices. The Phoenicians are credited with inventing the first true alphabet, a phonetic script with twenty-two abstract symbols representing the consonants. Vowels, as in the other Semitic languages, were omitted. Their system is regarded as the greatest of all Phoenician contributions to Western culture be­cause it could be mastered without the kind of exten­sive education given to professional scribes in Egypt or Mesopotamia. Literacy was now available to nearly everyone, but because the Phoenicians normally wrote with ink on papyrus, most of their records have perished.
Political crises were common. Phoenicia was in­vaded and at times ruled by both Egypt and the Hittites of Asia Minor. In 1190 B.C. a mysterious group known as the Sea Peoples attacked the Egyptian delta. They were driven out but eventually established themselves along the coast south of Jaffa. They appear to have come from somewhere in the Aegean or western Asia Minor and to have brought with them the use of iron weapons. Little of their language has survived. Their gods appear to have been Canaanite deities adopted on arrival. The Sea People were great fighters and iron-smiths who dominated the iron trade in the Middle East for many years. Politically, their towns of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gath, and Eglon formed a powerful league known as Philistia or the Philistine confederacy. The Bible calls these people Philistines, and the Ro­mans used Palestine, a term derived from that name, to describe the entire region.
While the Philistines annexed the southern coast, the Hebrews, recently escaped from Egypt, invaded the Canaanite highlands. They fought bitterly with the Philistines, but after establishing a united kingdom of Israel that stretched from the Negev to Galilee, they formed an alliance of sorts with the Phoenicians of Tyre. Both of these incursions were related to broader population movements in the eastern Mediterranean. They coincide roughly with the displacement of the Io­nians in Greece and a successful assault on the western portion of the Hittite empire by the Phrygians, a peo­ple who may have come from the same region as the Philistines. In Canaan proper, both Philistines and He­brews were forced to contend with other peoples push­ing in from the Arabian desert and the country beyond the Jordan.
Canaan was becoming crowded. The newcomers encountered a land that may already have been reach­ing its ecological limits after several millennia of human settlement. The Phoenician cities, already closely spaced, now saw their hinterlands greatly reduced, and with that their ability to feed their people. Led by Tyre, the Phoenicians began planting colonies from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. The first was at Utica in North Africa, supposedly founded by 1101
B.C. In the next three centuries, dozens of others were established in Cyprus, Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain. At least twenty-six such communities were in North Africa, the most important of which was Carthage, founded about 800 B.C. near the present site of Tunis.
Like the colonies later established by the Greeks, those of the Phoenicians retained commercial and per­haps sentimental ties to their founding city but were for all practical purposes independent city-states. They did not normally try to establish control over large territo­ries. They served as commercial stations that extracted wealth from the interior in return for goods from the civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean. They were also useful as safe harbors for Phoenician traders.
By the seventh century B.C., Phoenician ships had reached Britain in search of precious tin, and Phoeni­cian caravan routes based on the African colonies had penetrated the regions south of the Sahara. The Carthaginians later claimed to have circumnavigated Africa, and, at the very beginnings of the age of colo­nization, Hiram I of Tyre and his ally Solomon of Israel sent triennial expeditions to Ophir, a place now thought to have been on the coast of India. Wherever they went, the Phoenicians carried their system of writ­ing together with the ideas and products of a dozen other cultures. Though their history was all too often neglected or written by their enemies, they played a vital role in the establishment of Mediterranean civilization.

Monotheism

The Egyptians long resisted monotheism. Perhaps they felt that it was too simple a concept to account for the complexity of the universe. When the New King­dom pharaoh Akhenaton (reigned c. 1379–1362 B.C.) banned all cults save that of Aton, the Sun disk (for­merly an aspect of Re-Horus), his ideas were rejected as heretical and abandoned soon after his death. Akhen­aton has been seen by some writers as an early pioneer of monotheism, but little reason can be found to be­lieve that his views had much influence either in Egypt or elsewhere. Akhenaton’s greatest legacy was probably artistic, for he and his queen, Nefertiti, were great pa­trons, and the art of the Amarna Age, named after the new capital he constructed at Tell el-Amarna, was magnificent.
Of the many facets of Egyptian religion, the one that most intrigued outsiders was its concern with eter­nal life. The funerary cults of the pharaohs, the practice of embalming, and the adoption of similar practices by men and women of lesser status have been noted, but a full description of Egyptian lore about the hereafter would require volumes. Broadly speaking, the Egyptians thought of eternal life as a continuation of life on Earth, spent somewhere beyond the “roads of the west” (see document 1.3). They also believed that, like the pharaoh, the virtuous dead would merge their identities with Osiris. This was possible because the human soul had many aspects or manifestations, including the akh, which emerged only after death. The fate of the wicked was not reassuring. Their sins were weighed in a scale against the feather of ma’at, and if the scale tipped, their souls were thrown to the monstrous, crocodile-like “de­vourer of hearts” (see illustration 1.6).
The richness and complexity of Egyptian belief ex­tended beyond religion to astronomy, astrology, and natural magic. The works attributed by Greek scholars to Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes the Thrice-Great, or Thoth) may be a compilation of ancient Egyptian sources on these subjects, though their origins remain the subject of controversy. Indisputable, however, is
.DOCUMENT 1.3 .



An Egyptian Mortuary Text
This prayer or incantation was found on coffins during the Middle Kingdom. It provides not only a vision of the here­after, but also a sample of Egyptian religious imagery. The Eastern Doors mark the entry into paradise. Re is the Sun god, and Shu is the god of air who raised Heaven above the Earth and planted trees to support it. A cubit measures between seventeen and twenty-one inches.
Going in and Out of the Eastern Doors of Heaven among the Followers of Re. I know the Eastern Souls.
I know the central door from which Re issues in the east. Its south is the pool of kha-birds, in the place where Re sails with the breeze; its north is the waters of ro-fowl, in the place where Re sails with rowing. I am the keeper of the halyard of the boat of the god; I am the oarsman who does not weary in the barque of Re.
I know those two sycamores of turquoise be­tween which Re comes forth, the two which came from the sowing of Shu at every eastern door at which Re rises.
I know the Field of Reeds of Re. The wall which is around it is of metal. The height of its barley is four cubits; its beard is one cubit; and its stalk is three cubits. Its emmer is seven cubits; its beard is two cubits, and its stalk is five cubits. It is the horizon dwellers, nine cubits in height, who reap it by the side of the Eastern Souls.
I know the Eastern Souls. They are Har-akhti, The Khurrer-Calf, and the Morning Star.
Pritchard, James B. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Related to the Old Testament, vol. 1, 2d ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955.
that the Greeks admired the Egyptians for their wisdom and would borrow heavily from them, especially after the establishment of a Greco-Egyptian dynasty by Ptolemy in 323 B.C.
Yet Egyptian culture, for all its concern with the unseen world, was at another level deeply practical. Its institutions, like its engineering, held up well. Conser­vative, inward-looking, and less aggressive than many empires, it served as a bridge not only between Africa and Europe, but also between historic times and an al­most unimaginably distant past. Growing involvement with the outside world after about 900 B.C. was in some ways a tragedy for the Egyptians. The country fell to a succession of foreign rulers, but most of them, whether Persian, Greek, or Roman, were content to preserve Egyptian institutions. Only the triumph of Islam in the the seventh century A.D. brought fundamental change. By this time much of the Egyptian achievement had been incorporated, often unconsciously, into the devel­opment of the West.

Egyptian Culture, Science, and Religion

Egyptian Culture, Science, and Religion
Writing evolved in Egypt and in Mesopotamia at about the same time, but the two systems were different. Egyptian writing is known as hieroglyphics and in its earliest form consisted of lifelike pictures representing specific objects or actions. By a process similar to word association certain hieroglyphs acquired additional meanings, and by about 2700 B.C., seventy-eight of them were being used phonetically to represent conso­nants or groups of consonants. As in the Semitic lan­guages, Egyptian writing had no vowels. Symbols rep­resenting both the object or idea and its pronunciation were often used simultaneously to avoid confusion, and spelling was not standardized. Though Egyptian can be read vertically or horizontally in any direction, the hieroglyphic figures always face the beginning of the line.
Hieroglyphics were used primarily for inscriptions and were typically inscribed on stone. Correspondence, contracts, and other everyday documents were pro­duced by professional scribes writing with reed pens on a paper made from papyrus fiber. The written script, known as hieratic, was based on hieroglyphics but be­came more cursive over time. Most of Egyptian litera­ture, including poems and popular romances as well as learned treatises, was circulated in this form.
Egyptian mathematics were in general less sophisti­cated than those of Mesopotamia. The need for land surveys after each annual flood forced the Egyptians to become skilled measurers and the construction of the pyramids reveals an impressive grasp of geometry. The Egyptians never developed a place-value system of no­tation, so a bewildering combination of symbols was needed to express numbers that were not multiples of ten. Ancient Egyptians could multiply and divide only by doubling, but this appears to have been sufficient for their needs. They understood squares and square roots, and they knew, at an early date, the approximate value of .. The Greeks adopted, and passed on to other Eu­ropean peoples, the Egyptians’ use of ten as the numeri­cal base.
Though few cultures have devoted more attention to religion and philosophy or produced a larger body of speculative literature, the ancient Egyptians main­tained ideas that are difficult to describe. This is in part because they saw no need to demonstrate the logical connection between different statements. Asserting principles or retelling illustrative myths was enough; analysis was left to the wit or imagination of the reader. If an oral tradition supplemented these utterances or provided a methodological guide to their interpreta­tion, it has been lost. The surviving literature is there­fore rich, complex, and allusive, but to literal-minded moderns, full of contradictions.
The earliest Egyptian gods and goddesses were na­ture spirits peculiar to a village or region. They were usually portrayed as animals, such as the vulture god­dess Nekhbet who became the patroness of Upper Egypt and her Lower Egyptian counterpart, the cobra goddess Buto. The effigies of both adorned the pharaoh’s crown as a symbol of imperial unity. This ani­mal imagery may reflect totemic beliefs of great antiq­uity, but in time the deities acquired human bodies while retaining their animal heads.
Eventually, new deities emerged who personified abstract qualities. Ma’at, the principle of justice and equilibrium, became the goddess of good order; Sia was the god of intelligence. None of this involved the dis­placement of other gods; the Egyptians, like other soci­eties with polytheistic religions, sought to include and revere every conceivable aspect of the divine.

Wood was the chief import. Egypt was self-sufficient in most other commodities, but the Nile val­ley contained few trees and those that existed were of species unsuitable for boat building or for the exquisite cabinetry favored by the royal court. Long before the First Dynasty, ships were sailing to Byblos on the coast of Lebanon and returning with cargos of rare timber. This trade probably was the primary vehicle for cultural and demographic contacts with Asia. The role of Egypt as a connecting link between Asia and Africa was reflected in the appearance of its people. In Upper Egypt, the predominant physical type was slender with dark skin and African features. The people of the delta were heavier, with broad skulls and lighter complexions that betrayed Asian or European origins. But representatives of both types were found everywhere, and the Egyptians as a whole seem to have been indifferent to racial or ethnic classifications. No apparent connection was made between rank and skin color. Immigrants from Palestine to the north and Nu­bia in the south were found in the army as well as in civilian society and often achieved high office. The Egyptian language, too, contained a mixture of African and Semitic elements. Women enjoyed considerable status. In art they were often, though not always, portrayed as equal to their husbands (see illustration 1.5). They could hold property, initiate divorce, and undertake contractual obligations in their own right. The women of the royal family owned vast estates and seem to have exerted an influence on politics. At least one queen ruled Old Kingdom Egypt in her own name, and two women ruled in the New Kingdom—Hatshepsut (c. 1503–1482 B.C.), who devoted her reign to the de­velopment of commerce and commissioned some of the finest monuments of Egyptian architecture, and Tawosre. But no evidence exists that women served as scribes or as officials in the royal administration. The absence of a legal code and the shortage of court records makes evaluating the true status of women in Egyptian society difficult, but several fac­tors seem to have operated in their behalf. The iden­tity of a child’s mother, not its father, established heredity, and the matrilineal inheritance of private property, a practice dating from predynastic times, was far more common in Egypt than in other parts of the ancient Near East. Attitudes may also have been affected by the respect accorded to women of the royal family.

The Social and Economic Structures of Ancient Egypt

The character of Egyptian society is difficult to re­construct, in part because no legal code comparable to that of Hammurabi has been found. Little is known about land tenure, though vast tracts were held by the king and by pious foundations set up to support temples and those who served them. As many tem­ples were small and as the priests and accolytes sup­ported by their foundations were also farmers, it appears that the tax exemptions enjoyed by the trusts were a primary reason for their establishment. The owners of land held privately, which was abundant, had to pay an annual tribute in kind to the ruler. The king may also have been able to confiscate pri­vate property on the theory that, as a god, he owned the entire country. The remaining records of assess­ment are detailed and reveal a competent and often ruthless bureaucracy at work in even the humblest of villages. Slaves, most of whom had been captured in war, were found in the fields and households of the rich. They belonged by law to the pharaoh who granted them in turn to private individuals or to the great trusts that managed the temples. They could hold property in their own right and were frequently manumitted, or freed, through a simple declaration by their owners. They were neither numerous nor central to the work­ings of the economy except perhaps in the expansionist period when the New Kingdom pharaohs conquered much of Phoenicia and Syria (c. 1560–1299 B.C.). The vast majority of Egyptians were humble farmers whose life probably resembled that of today’s fellahin. They lived in small villages built of mud bricks and spent their days working in the fields and drawing precious water by means of the shaduf, a bucket swung from a counterbalanced beam. They were subject to the pay­ment of taxes as well as to labor services and perhaps to conscripted service in the army. The idea of conscrip­tion was so pervasive that people expected to labor in the fields of Osiris after death and placed small clay figurines of slaves in their tombs to help them with the work. Crops were remarkably varied. Barley and wheat were the staples, and the average person’s diet included large quantities of bread and beer with broad or fava beans for protein and the tender stalks of the young pa­pyrus plant for an occasional salad. Papyrus was primar­ily valued because its fibers could be formed into a kind of paper, an Egyptian invention that takes its name from the plant, though modern paper is derived from a process developed originally in China. Wines for con­sumption by the upper classes were produced in the delta and painstakingly classified according to source and quality. Beef, too, was a delta product and formed an important part of a wealthy person’s diet along with game birds, mutton, and pork. Poultry was common, as were many different kinds of fruit and, above all, onions. Cotton, so closely associated with the Egyptian economy in modern times, was not introduced until about 500 B.C., and most Egyptians wore simple linen garments made from locally grown flax. Famines and epidemics were rare, but the life ex­pectancy of ancient Egyptians was no more than thirty-five or thirty-six years, a figure comparable to that for most other societies before the industrial revolution. In spite of their belief in an afterlife, the Egyptians seemed unwilling to accept these harsh demographic realities. An extensive medical literature reflects their reputation as the greatest doctors of antiquity. Rules for diagnosis and treatment, lists of remedies, and careful instructions for surgical operations on every part of the body have been preserved. The Egyptian practice of embalming the dead and removing their organs contributed to a knowledge of anatomy unequaled by any other ancient culture. Egypt was not a heavily urbanized society like Mesopotamia. The major cities, including Thebes, the capital of Upper Egypt, and Memphis, near the present site of Cairo, were centers of government and cere­mony. Commerce, though important, was conducted mainly by royal officials. Traders operating at the vil­lage level served the modest needs of the countryside. Official expeditions collected the gold and copper that were among Egypt’s most important exports. Copper was also used domestically for tools and weapons, but the Egyptians did not adopt the use of bronze until about 1500 B.C., long after it was common elsewhere.

The Pharaohs

The restoration of a native dynasty in 1567 B.C. marked the beginning of the New Kingdom. A series of warlike pharaohs destroyed the capital of Kerma and briefly extended their authority to the banks of the Eu­phrates. Ramses II (1279–1213 B.C.), the ruler associ­ated with the Hebrew exodus, fought the Hittite empire to a truce. Ramses III remained strong enough to protect Egypt against the great population move­ments of the early twelfth century B.C. Thereafter, the power of the monarchy declined, perhaps because the imports of gold and silver that sustained its armies be­gan to shrink.
After 525 B.C. Egypt fell first to the Per­sians and then to the Macedonians of Alexander the Great. The society that survived these changes bore little resemblance to that of Mesopotamia. Its most unusual feature was the absolute power it accorded to the king, or pharaoh, a Middle Kingdom title meaning “great house.” His authority in life was absolute, though in practice he presumably would always act according to ma’at, a concept of justice or social order based on the balance or reconciliation of conflicting principles. The king could not therefore appear arbitrary or irresponsi­ble, and his actions were further limited by precedent, for Egyptian society was conservative. If ma’at were not preserved, dynasties could fall, but the historical cir­cumstances in which this took place are generally unknown. When the king died, his spirit or ka would take its place in the divine pantheon and become one with Osiris, god of the dead. This was the purpose of the pyramids, the largest of which were built at Giza by the Fourth Dynasty (2613–2494 B.C.) monarchs—Khufu (Cheops), Khafre, and Menkaure. Constructed of be­tween eighty million and one hundred million cubic feet of cut and fitted stone, these vast funeral monu­ments held the deceased ruler’s mortal remains and served as the center of a temple complex dedicated to his worship. Projects on this scale were a measure of the king’s wealth and power. Scholars believe that the taming of the Nile was achieved by workers conscripted and di­rected by early rulers in the common interest. This right to labor services was retained by later kings, and conscript labor rather than slaves probably built the pyramids as well as the massive fortifications con­structed in Upper Egypt to protect the kingdom from Nubian invasions. Similar works in the delta have been obliterated by shifts in the course of the river. Bureaucrats, with multiple titles and responsibili­ties, supervised the construction of pyramids and other public projects. Many of these people combined priestly, secular, and military offices, which suggests that managerial competence was valued above special­ized skills.
The establishment of a standing army during the Middle Kingdom encouraged the emergence of professional soldiers, but no military aristocracy ex­isted. Some high officials were royal relatives, while others were drawn from what may have been a hereditary caste of scribes and civil servants. All, like the laborers, were paid in food, drink, and various com­modities including gold, for the Egyptians did not coin money until long after the end of the New Kingdom. Pyramids after the Fourth Dynasty grew smaller and less expensive, but the Egyptian penchant for pub­lic works, temples, and funerary monuments continued until the Hellenistic era.
The Egyptians were superior craftsmen in stone and could convert even the hardest granites into works of art. As architects they seem to have invented post-and-lintel construction in masonry. Their temples, whether cut into the limestone cliffs of the Nile valley or freestanding, are graced with mag­nificent galleries and porticoes supported by stone columns, many of which were decorated or inscribed with writing. The Egyptians also built spacious palaces for the kings and their officials, but few palaces sur­vived the centuries intact. These projects could be seen as an appalling waste of resources, but they may have served a vital economic and social purpose. They certainly provided sustenance for thousands of workers, especially during the months of flood from July to November when the fields could not be worked. As such, they were an important mech­anism for the distribution and redistribution of wealth. Furthermore, by centralizing the direction of arts and crafts under royal patronage, the projects improved the quality of both and led to technological advances that might not otherwise have occurred.

Ancient Egypt

While the Sumerians were establishing themselves in Mesopotamia, another great civilization was develop­ing in the valley of the Nile. In central Africa, more than three thousand miles from the shores of the Mediterranean, streams running from a cluster of great lakes merge their waters to form the White Nile. The lakes serve as a reservoir, and the river’s volume remains constant with the seasons as it flows north to meet the Blue Nile at Khartoum. The Blue Nile is smaller than the White, but its sources are in the Ethiopian high­lands where the monsoon rains of June and the melting mountain snow become a torrent. This annual flood, which reaches the lower Nile valley in July or August, provides both the moisture and the rich layer of black silt that support Egyptian life. From the confluence of the two rivers, the Nile makes a wide sweep to the west before flowing north­ward through a valley more than 350 miles long but rarely more than ten miles wide.

The historic land of Egypt is a narrow well-watered passageway between the Mediterranean and the heart of Africa. To the west lies the vast emptiness of the Libyan desert; to the east, a line of parched and rugged hills mark the shores of the Red Sea. Open country is found only near the river’s mouth, a vast alluvial delta through which, in antiquity at least, seven main channels provided access to the Mediterranean. Summer temperatures in the valley are not as hot as those of Mesopotamia, but little or no rain falls and, without the river, life would be insupportable.

As in Mesopotamia, the key to Egyptian agriculture was the proper management of the annual flood. The Nile is more predictable and less violent than the Tigris or Euphrates, but the construction of levees, catch­ments, and an extensive network of ditches, was essen­tial both to protect settlements and to preserve water after the flood subsided in the fall. The high level of or­ganization needed for such tasks and for the preserva­tion and distribution of grain during the dry months may have been responsible for the centralized, hierar­chical character of ancient Egyptian society, but the point is arguable.

Little is known of politics before the advent of the First Dynasty around 3100 B.C.At that time, the kings of the First Dynasty or their immediate predecessors united the two lands of Upper (southern) and Lower (northern) Egypt and laid the foundations of a political culture that would endure for nearly three millennia. The essential characteristics of Egyptian society were in place when the Third Dy­nasty assumed power in 2686 B.C. and began the Old Kingdom. The history of ancient Egypt is conventionally di­vided into three kingdoms and no fewer than twenty-six dynasties: the Old Kingdom (2686–2181 B.C.), the Middle Kingdom (2133–1786 B.C.), and the New Kingdom (1567–525 B.C.). The terms old, middle, and new do not necessarily reflect progress. Some of Egypt’s greatest achievements came during the predynastic pe­riod and the Old Kingdom. The Intermediate Periods between these kingdoms were troubled times during which provincial governors, known to the Greeks as nomarchs, increased their power at the expense of the central government. Eventually one would gain ascen­dancy over the others and establish a dynasty that served as the cornerstone of a new kingdom. The Old Kingdom ended when massive crop fail­ures coincided with the political collapse of the Sixth Dynasty. After an anarchic Intermediate Period of more than one-hundred years, Amenemhet I, the ruler of Thebes in Upper Egypt, reunited the country and estab­lished the Middle Kingdom.

During the Twelfth Dy­nasty (c. 1991–1786 B.C.), Egypt found itself under military pressure in both the north and south and, for the first time in its history, created a standing army. Ex­peditions into Palestine, Syria, and Libya helped to sta­bilize the north, while massive fortresses were built in Upper Egypt as protection against the growing power of Kerma, an expansionist state in what is now Sudan. The Middle Kingdom dissolved when a series of foreign dynasties known as the Hyksos supplanted the native Egyptian rulers. From the late eighteenth century B.C., Egypt’s wealth attracted an influx of immigrants from Israel and other parts of the Middle East. They came to power by infiltrating high office instead of by inva­sion, but their success was deeply resented.

Mesopotamian Literature

This fragment from a longer prayer displays the characteristic Mesopotamian attitude toward the gods, who are seen as hos­tile, demanding, and inscrutable.

"...

The sin, which I have committed, I know not.

The iniquity, which I have done, I know not.

The offence, which I committed, I know not.

The transgression I have done, I know not.

The lord, in the anger of his heart, hath looked upon me.

The god, in the wrath of his heart, hath visited me.

The goddess hath become angry with me, and hath grievously stricken me.

The known or unknown god hath straightened me.

The known or unknown goddess hath brought af­fliction upon me.

I sought for help, but no one taketh my hand.

I wept, but no one came to my side.

May the known and unknown god be pacified!

May the known and unknown goddess be pacified! ...

(Penitential Psalms.)”

In Assyrian and Babylonian Literature was therefore a recurring theme. Even death offered no hope of relief. In the great­est of all Babylonian epics, the hero Gilgamesh is inspired by the death of his friend Enkidu to wrestle with the problem of the hereafter. His discoveries are not reassuring. The nether world is portrayed as a grim place, and neither the mythical Gilgamesh nor any other Mesopotamian could apparently imagine the idea of personal salvation.

If their extensive literature is an indication, the peoples of ancient Mesopotamia knew how to enjoy life, but their enjoyment was tempered by a grim fatalism. In the land between the rivers, with its terrible inundations and vulnerability to invaders, it could hardly have been otherwise.

Mesopotamian Law

Though capitals and dynasties rose and fell, the land between the rivers remained captive to the annual floods and to the consequent need for cooperation, su­perlative engineering, and frequent redistribution of land. The Mesopotamians’ highest intellectual achieve­ments were therefore practical rather than speculative. The development of writing is a prime example of their talents. The Mesopotamians were also the first great mathematicians. Using a numerical system based on sixty instead of the modern ten, they produced refer­ence tables for multiplication, division, square roots, cube roots, and other functions. Their greatest achieve­ment, however, was the place-value system of notation in which the value of each digit is determined by its po­sition after the base instead of by a separate name. This makes describing large numbers possible and is the ba­sis of all modern numeral systems.
The Babylonians also created one of the first com­prehensive legal codes. Named after Hammurabi, it is almost certainly a compendium of existing laws rather than new legislation and reflects a legal tradition that had been developing for centuries. Its basic principles were retribution in kind and the sanctity of contracts. In criminal cases this meant literally “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” if the social status of the par­ties was equal. If not, a defendant of higher status could usually escape by paying a fine. Blood feuds, private retribution, and other features of tribal law were, however, forbidden. This same sense of retribu­tive justice extended to the punishment of fraud and negligence. A builder whose house collapsed and killed its occupants could be executed; tavern keepers who watered their drinks were drowned. Craftsmen were required to replace poor workmanship at their own expense, and farmers who failed to keep their ditches and levees in good repair were sold into slav­ery if they could not compensate the victims of their carelessness. Contracts governed everything from marriage to interest rates and could not be broken without paying a heavy fine.

Hammurabi’s Code was driven by an almost op­pressive sense of social responsibility. The ecology of Mesopotamia was both fragile and highly artificial. Only elaborate regulation could prevent disaster, and the law is explicit on many aspects of trade, agriculture, and manufacturing. Courts and town councils took an interest in matters that other cultures have regarded as private. Furthermore, because there were no lawyers, the parties to a dispute were expected to plead their own cases. Marriage, as in most ancient cultures, was arranged by parents. The bride received a dowry, which she was entitled to keep in the event of widowhood or divorce. Husbands could demand a divorce at any time but had to pay maintenance and child support unless they could demonstrate that the wife had failed in her duties. These duties, like all other aspects of the marriage arrangement, were spelled out in a detailed contract that in effect made the couple a single person, responsi­ble before the law for their actions and their debts. The latter was an important point, for husbands had the right to sell wives and children into servitude, usually for no more than two or three years, to satisfy their creditors. The system was patriarchal, but wives could sue for divorce on grounds of cruelty or neglect, or if their hus­band falsely accused them of adultery. If adultery were proved, the guilty couple would be tied together and drowned; if the aggrieved husband forgave his wife, her lover would be pardoned as well. All of these family is­sues were heard before the city councils, which demon­strates the continuing importance of local government even after the establishment of an empire. Women, like men, were expected to plead their own cases—a right often denied them in more modern legal systems—but recourse to the law had its perils. To reduce litigation, Hammurabi’s Code decreed the death penalty for those who brought false accusations or frivolous suits.
Hammurabi, like most lawgivers, claimed divine sanction for his code, but Mesopotamian religion was not legalistic. The Sumerians had worshipped more than three thousand deities, most of whom represented natural forces or the spirit of a particular locality. In time many of them acquired human form, and a rich mythology developed around their adventures. Babylon made its city god, Marduk, its chief, while the Assyrians accorded similar honors to Ashur. Both were thought of as creators who had brought the universe out of primal chaos. Other gods and goddesses were still worshipped, but in an apparent step toward monotheism, they were increasingly described as agents of Marduk or Ashur and eventually as manifesta­tions of a single god. The power of the gods was absolute. Humans were dependent on their whims and could hope only to pro­pitiate them through the ceremonies of the priests.

Mesopotamian Societies

The organization of Sumerian society was probably much like that of earlier Neolithic communities, and its political institutions reflect the ancient idea of chief­tainship. More is known about it only because the Sumerians were the first Western people to create a written language. Their political and economic rela­tionships had reached a level of complexity that re­quired something more than the use of movable clay tokens to record transactions, a practice characteristic of many earlier cultures. Though the Sumerian lan­guage was apparently unrelated to any other and was used only for ritual purposes after the second millen­nium B.C., all later Mesopotamian cultures adopted its cuneiform system of writing.
Cuneiform refers to the wedge-shaped marks left by a stylus when it is pressed into a wet clay tablet. Sumeria was rich in mud, and slabs of clay were perfect for recording taxes, land transfers, and legal agree­ments. When the document was ready, the tablet could be baked hard and stored for future reference.

The Sumerians, Akkad, Babylonia, and Assyria
Even with written records, political relations between the Sumerian city-states are difficult to reconstruct. As populations increased, struggles over boundaries and trading rights grew more violent, and by 2300 B.C. inter-city conflicts engulfed all of Mesopotamia. At times, a king would claim to rule over more than one city or over Sumer as a whole. There may therefore have been no Sumerian Empire, or if there was, its exis­tence could have been brief. According to his inscrip­tions, Lugalzaggeszi of Umma (c. 2375 B.C.) achieved control over the entire region only to have it taken from him by a non-Sumerian, Sargon of Akkad (reigned
c. 2350–2300 B.C.).
The Akkadian triumph marked the beginning of a new imperial age. The unification of southern and cen­tral Mesopotamia provided Sargon with the means to conquer the north together with Syria. Though Akka­dian rule was brief, it transmitted elements of Mesopotamian culture throughout the Middle East, and Akkadian, a Semitic language, became standard throughout the Tigris and Euphrates valleys. But the brevity of Sargon’s triumph set a pattern for the politi­cal future. For a millennium and a half, the rulers of dif­ferent regions in succession achieved hegemony over all or part of Mesopotamia. This was normally achieved by force combined with the careful manipulation of al­liances and ended when the ruling dynasty fell prey ei­ther to the divisive forces that had created it or to invasions by people from the surrounding highlands. Throughout its history, Mesopotamia’s wealth and lack of natural defenses made it a tempting prize for conquerors.
After the overthrow of Sargon’s descendents by a desert people known as the Guti and a brief revival of Sumerian power under the Third Dynasty of Ur, Baby­lon became the chief political and cultural center of the region. Under Hammurabi (ruled c. 1792–1750 B.C.) the Babylonians achieved hegemony over all of Mesopotamia, but a series of invasions after 1600 B.C. led to a long period of political disorder. The invaders, the most important of whom were Hittites, an Indo-European people from central Asia Minor. Their influence was otherwise impermanent, but a rivalry soon developed between Babylon and Assyria, a king­dom in the northern part of the valley centered first on the city of Ashur and later on Nineveh.
The Assyrians, a fierce people who spoke a dialect of Akkadian, may have been the first people to coordi­nate the use of cavalry, infantry, and missile weapons. Not only were their armies well organized, but their grasp of logistics also appears to have surpassed that of other ancient empires. Though in other respects a highly civilized people whose literary and artistic achievements continued the traditions of Sumer and Babylon, they waged psychological warfare by cultivat­ing a reputation for horrific cruelty. They eventually defeated the Babylonians and after 933 restored the achievements of Sargon by establishing an empire that stretched from Egypt to Persia. In spite of these violent political alterations, Mesopotamia remained culturally homogeneous for nearly three thousand years.

The Flood

The great Mesopotamian epic about Gilgamesh contains an account of the Flood that strongly resembles the biblical account in Genesis, although divine caprice, not human wickedness, brings on the disaster. Here, Utnapashtim, the Mesopotamian equivalent of Noah, tells his story to the hero Gilgamesh.


In those days the world teemed, the people multi­plied, the world bellowed like a wild bull, and the great god was aroused by the clamor. Enlil heard the clamor and said to the gods in council, “the up­roar of mankind is intolerable and sleep is no longer possible by reason of the babel.” So the gods agreed to exterminate mankind. Enlil did this, but Ea [the god of the waters] because of his oath warned me in a dream . . . “tear down your house and build a boat, abandon possessions and look for life, despise worldly goods and save your soul alive . . . then take up into the boat the seed of all living creatures . . .” [After Utnapashtim did this] for six days and six nights the winds blew, torrent and tempest and flood overwhelmed the world, tempest and flood raged together like warring hosts. When the sev­enth day dawned the storm from the south sub­sided, the sea grew calm, the flood was stilled; I looked at the face of the world and there was si­lence, all mankind was turned to clay. The surface of the sea stretched as flat as a rooftop; I opened a hatch and the light fell on my face.. . . I looked forland in vain, but fourteen leagues distant there ap­peared a mountain, and there the boat grounded; on the mountain of Nisir the boat held fast. .. . When the seventh day dawned I loosed a dove and let her go. She flew away, but finding no rest­ing place she returned. Then I loosed a swallow, and she flew away but finding no resting place she returned. I loosed a raven, she saw that the waters had retreated, she ate, she flew around, she cawed, and she did not come back. Then I threw every­thing open to the four winds, I made a sacrifice and poured out a libation on the mountain top. The Epic of Gilgamesh, trans. N.K. Sandars. Rev. ed. Harmondsworth, England. Penguin Classics, 1964. An organized priesthood served in the great raised temple or ziggurat that dominated the town. The zig­gurat was a stepped pyramidal tower dedicated to the god or goddess who was the patron of the city. The earliest examples were built of packed earth. After about 2000 B.C. most were constructed on a foundation of imported stone and decorated with glazed tiles. The temple and its priests were supported by extensive landholdings. Other large tracts were owned by the royal family and its retainers. Sumerian kings were likely at first war chiefs whose powers became heredi­tary as their responsibilities for the distribution of goods and labor grew. Like chiefs in other societies, they stood at the center of a system of clientage that involved their families and their servants as well as offi­cials, commoners, and probably priests. Clientage is best defined as a system of mutual de­pendency in which a powerful individual protects the interests of others in return for their political or eco­nomic support. With or without legal sanction, client­age is the basic form of social organization in many cultures and was destined to become a powerful force in the history of the West. In Sumer, clients formed a separate class of free individuals who were given the use of small parcels of land in return for labor and a share of their produce. Their patrons—kings, noble of­ficials, or temple priests—retained title to the land and a compelling hold on their client’s political loyalties. The cities were therefore ruled by a relatively small group. Clients had full rights as citizens, but they could not be expected to vote against those who controlled their economic lives. The rest of the land was owned by private families that were apparently extended, multigenerational, and organized on patriarchal lines. Though rarely rich, these freeholders enjoyed full civil rights and partici­pated in the city’s representative assembly. The greatest threat to their independence was debt, which could lead to enslavement. Other slaves were sometimes ac­quired for the temple or palace through war, but Sumer was not a slave-based economy. The organization of trade, like that of agriculture, reflected this social struc­ture. For centuries Sumerian business was based on the extended family or what would today be called family corporations. Some firms ran caravans to every part of the Middle East or shipped goods by sea via the Persian Gulf. They exported textiles, copper implements, and other products of Mesopotamian craftsmanship and im­ported wood, stone, copper ingots, and precious met­als. Iron and steel were as yet unknown. Later, in the time of Hammurabi, Babylonian rulers attempted to bring some of these trading concerns under govern­ment regulation.

Mesopotamia: The Social and Economic Structures of Mesopotamian Life

Mesopotamia, in Greek, means the land between the rivers, in this case the Tigris and the Euphrates (see map). It is a hot, fertile flood plain, most of which falls within the borders of modern Iraq. Summer high tem­peratures reach 110 to 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and no rain falls from May to late October. Winters are more moderate, but only Assyria in the north receives enough rainfall to support agriculture without irriga­tion. In the lower valley, everything depends upon wa­ter supplied by the two rivers. Of the two, the Tigris carries by far the larger vol­ume of water. The Euphrates on the east has fewer trib­utaries and loses more of its flow to evaporation as it passes through the dry plains of Syria. In April and May the melting of snow in the Zagros Mountains causes massive flooding throughout the region. This provides needed water and deposits a rich layer of alluvial silt, but the inundation presents enormous problems of management. The floods must not only be controlled to protect human settlement, but water also must some­how be preserved to provide irrigation during the rain­less summer. To make matters worse, both rivers create natural embankments or levees that inhibit the flow of tributaries and over time have raised the water level above that of the surrounding countryside. If spring floods wash the embankments away, the river changes its course, often with disasterous results. The biblical story of Noah and the Flood originated in Mesopotamia, though there was probably not one flood but many (see document 1.1). The first known settlements in the region were vil­lage cultures possibly speaking a Semitic language dis­tantly related to the more modern Hebrew or Arabic. They grew wheat and barley and were established as far south as Akkad, near modern Baghdad, by 4500 B.C. Other Semitic peoples continued to migrate into the region from the west and southwest until the Arab inva­sions of the ninth century A.D., but by 3000 B.C.the Sumerians, a non-Semitic people who may have come originally from India, had achieved dominance in the lower valley. They introduced large-scale irrigation and built the first true cities. Sumerian cities were usually built on a tributary and dominated a territory of perhaps a hundred square miles. Their inhabitants cultivated cereals, especially barley, and had learned the secret of making beer. Sumerian homes, made of sun-baked brick, originally were small and circular like a peasant’s hut but gradually expanded to become large one-story structures with square or rectangular rooms built around a central courtyard. Governance seems to have been by elected city councils. Each city also had a king who ruled with the assistance of a palace bureaucracy. The precise divi­sion of powers is unknown, but the later Babylonian council had judicial as well as legislative authority.

The Neolithic Revolution III

The advent of metallurgy provides a more dramatic example of occupational specialization. Pure copper, which is sometimes found in nature, was used for jew­elry and personal items before 6000 B.C., but by 4500 B.C. it was being smelted from ores and forged into tools and weapons. These complex processes appear to have evolved separately in the Middle East and in the Balkans, where copper deposits were common. They were based on the development of ovens that could achieve both a controlled air flow and temperatures of more than two thousand degrees Fahrenheit. An analy­sis of pottery from these areas reveals that such ovens had already been developed to facilitate glazing. By 3500 B.C., bronze—a mixture of copper and tin—was in general use throughout the West for the manufacture of tools and weapons. The Neolithic Age was over, and the Bronze Age had begun. Because the skills involved in working bronze were highly specialized, smiths probably forged their wares almost exclusively for sale or barter. A sophisticated system of trade and gover­nance must have been established. Furthermore, the large-scale production of metal weapons further en­hanced the power of chiefs. Chieftainship might also involve religious duties, though organized priesthoods evolved in some soci­eties at an early date. Chiefs almost certainly organized the building of communal burying places in the Aegean and along the Atlantic and North Sea coasts from Iberia to Scandinavia. Originally simple dolmens formed of a giant stone or megalith laid upon other stones, these tombs gradually evolved into domed chambers that were entered through long masonry passages. Graves of this kind are often found in the vicinity of stone circles. Stonehenge, constructed around 3500 B.C. on England’s Salisbury Plain, is the largest and best known of these structures (see illustration 1.2). Because the circles are oriented astronomically, many have as­sumed that they served as giant calendars, but their pre­cise function and the beliefs that mandated their construction are unknown. The prevalence of these large-scale construction projects, whatever their purpose, indicates that Neo­lithic societies could achieve high levels of organization and technological sophistication. When survival—as opposed to the demands of ritual—required a major co­operative effort, some societies evolved into civiliza­tions. Civilization is a term loaded with subjective meanings. In this case, it refers to the establishment of political and cultural unity over a wide geographic area and the development of elaborate social, commercial, and administrative structures based upon high popula­tion densities and the production of substantial wealth.
In most cases, civilization also meant the develop­ment of mathematics and written languages. Both were needed for surveying, administration, and the distribu­tion of goods and services in a complex society. As chiefs became kings, the record of taxes and tributes paid, of lands annexed, and of the provisions consumed by their ever-larger armies acquired great significance. The desire to record the ruler’s glorious deeds for posterity came slightly later but was nevertheless important. Writing gives names to individuals and permits the dead to speak in their own words. Without it there is no history. The emergence of societies at this level of com­plexity affected even those areas that they did not di­rectly control. Great civilizations are magnets that draw other cultures into their orbits. As peoples on the pe­riphery become involved with the larger market through trade or tribute, cultural borrowing accelerates. Then, as civilizations expand, they come into conflict with one another, a process that brings neighboring peoples into their systems of war and diplomacy as well. By 3000 B.C., at least two such civilizations had begun to emerge, one in the valley of Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the other in the valley of the Nile.

The Neolithic Revolution II

The distribution of Neolithic and ancient popula­tions therefore bore little resemblance to that of a mod­ern industrial society. Ancient people were younger and had far shorter working lives than their modern coun­terparts. Their reproductive lifetimes were also shorter, and in people of mature years (aged thirty to fifty), men may have outnumbered women, primarily because so many women died in childbirth. The life expectancy for either gender may not have been much more than thirty years at birth, but those who survived their fifties had as good a chance as their modern counterparts of reaching an advanced age. This pattern, like the condi­tions that produced it, would persist until the industrial revolution of modern times. The invention of agriculture expanded the idea of property to include land and domesticated animals, which were not only personal possessions but also the means of survival. In Paleolithic times the primary mea­sure of individual worth was probably a person’s ability as a hunter or gatherer, skills from which the entire tribe presumably benefited. The Neolithic world mea­sured status in terms of flocks, herds, and fields. This change affected the structure of human societies in three important ways. First, because luck and manage­ment skills vary widely, certain individuals amassed greater wealth than others. To gain the maximum ad­vantage from their wealth, they found it necessary to utilize, and often to exploit, the labor of their poorer neighbors. Neolithic society was therefore character­ized by social stratification, though a measure of coop­eration could be found at the village level in the performance of agricultural and construction tasks. Second, the emergence of property seems to have affected the status of women. Little is known about the lives of women in Paleolithic times, but most theorists agree that, with the development of herds and landed property, controlling female sexuality became necessary in ways that would have been unnecessary in a commu­nity of hunter-gatherers. The issue was inheritance. The survival of the family depended upon the preserva­tion and augmentation of its wealth. Women were ex­pected to provide heirs who were the biological children of their partners. The result was the develop­ment of a double standard by which women had to be pure and seen to be pure by the entire community. If anthropologists are correct, the subjugation of women and the evolution of characteristically feminine behav­iors were an outgrowth of the Neolithic revolution. Third, the Neolithic age marked the beginning of warfare, the systematic use of force by one community against another. Though Paleolithic hunters may have fought one another on occasion, the development of settled communities provided new incentives for vio­lence because homes, livestock, and cultivated land are property that must be defended against the predatory behavior of neighboring peoples. Dealing with the problems of population growth by annexing the land of others was all too easy. War, in turn, made possible the development of slavery. To a hunter-gatherer, slaves are unnecessary, but to herders and agriculturalists their labor makes possible the expansion of herds and the cultivation of more land because under normal circum­stances slaves produce more than they consume. At first, Neolithic communities seem to have been organized along tribal lines, a structure inherited from their hunting and gathering ancestors when they settled down to till the land. Most inhabitants shared a com­mon ancestor, and chieftainship was probably the domi­nant form of social organization. The function of the chief in agricultural societies was far more complex than in the days of hunting and gathering, involving not only military leadership but also a primary role in the alloca­tion of goods and labor. Efficiency in operations such as harvesting and sheep shearing requires cooperation and direction. In return, the chief demanded a share of an in-dividual’s agricultural surplus, which he then stored against hard times or allocated in other ways. This function of the chief helps to explain the storehouses that were often constructed by early rulers. As agriculture developed, crops became more varied. Wheat, wine, and olives became the basic triad of prod­ucts on which society depended in the Mediterranean basin. One farmer might have a grove of olive trees but no land capable of growing wheat, while another would be blessed with well-drained, south-facing hillsides that produce the best grapes. In such cases the chief encour­aged a measure of agricultural specialization. He could collect a tribute of oil from one and grapes from an­other and barter both to a third farmer in return for his surplus wheat. In the north, different commodities were involved, but the principle was the same. Specialization in Neolithic times was rarely complete because prudent farmers knew that diversification offered a measure of security that monoculture, or the growing of only one crop, can never provide. If the major crop fails, some­thing else must be available to fall back upon, but even a modest degree of specialization can increase effi­ciency and raise a community’s standard of living. Effective systems of distribution can also encourage the development of technology. Pottery was invented soon after the Neolithic revolution, primarily as a means of storing liquids. The first pots were probably made by women working at home and firing their pots in a communal oven, but the invention of the potter’s wheel allowed for throwing pots with unprecedented speed and efficiency. Because the new method required great skill, those who mastered it tended to become specialists who were paid for their work in food or other commodities.

The Neolithic Revolution I

Hunting and gathering remained the chief economic activity for a long time, and even today they provide supplementary food for many westerners. The bow and arrow as well as the basic tools still used to hook or net fish or to trap game were developed long before the ad­vent of agriculture, pottery, or writing. The domestica­tion of animals probably began at an early date with the use of dogs in hunting, but was later extended to sheep, goats, and cattle that could be herded to provide a reli­able source of protein when game was scarce. Shortly thereafter, about ten thousand years ago, the first efforts were made to cultivate edible plants. The domestication of animals and the invention of agricul­ture marked one of the great turning points in human history. Several species of edible grasses are native to the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys in Asia Minor, including wild barley and two varieties of wheat. Of the latter, einkorn (one-corn), with its single row of seeds per stalk, produces only modest yields, but emmer, with multiple rows on each stem, is the ances­tor of modern wheat. When people learned to convert these seeds into gruel or bread is unknown, but once they did so the value of systematic cultivation became apparent. By 7000 B.C. farming was well established from Iran to Palestine. It spread into the Nile valley and the Aegean by 5000 B.C. and from the Balkans up the Danube and into central Europe in the years that fol­lowed. Radiocarbon dating has established the exis­tence of farming settlements in the Netherlands by 4000 B.C. and in Britain by 3200 B.C. The diffusion of agricultural techniques came about through borrowing and cultural contact as well as through migration. Farming, in other words, developed in response to local conditions. As the last ice age ended and hunting and fishing techniques improved, a general increase in population upset the Paleolithic ecology. Game became scarcer and more elusive while the human competition for dwindling resources grew more intense. Herding and the cultivation of row crops were soon essential to survival. In time, as the human population continued to grow, herding diminished. It provides fewer calories per unit of land than farming and was increasingly restricted to tracts otherwise un­suitable for cultivation. Though crop raising would al­ways be supplemented to some extent by other sources of food, it gradually emerged as the primary activity wherever land could be tilled. The invention of agriculture marked the beginning of the Neolithic or New Stone Age. The cultivation of plants, beginning with grains and expanding to include beans, peas, olives, and eventually grapes, made food supplies far more predictable than in a hunting or herd­ing economy. At the same time, it greatly increased the number of calories that could be produced from a given area of land. Efficiency was further enhanced by the in­vention of the wheel and the wooden plow, both of which came into common use around 3000 B.C. Farm­ing therefore promoted demographic growth both ab­solutely and in the density of population that a given area could support. On the negative side, the transition to a farming economy often resulted in diets that were deficient in protein and other important elements. Bread became the staff of life, largely because land supports more peo­ple if planted with grain. The nuts, animal proteins, and wild fruits typical of the Paleolithic diet became luxu­ries to be eaten only on special occasions. As a result, the skeletal remains of Neolithic farmers indicate that they were shorter and less healthy than their Paleolithic ancestors. Though beans, peas, lentils, and other pulses became a valuable source of protein, ordinary people consumed as much as 80 percent of their calories in the form of carbohydrates. Caloric intake varied widely. An adult male en­gaged in heavy labor requires a minimum of thirty-seven hundred calories per day. No way exists to measure a normal diet in Neolithic or ancient times, but the average peasant or laborer probably made do on far less, perhaps only twenty-five hundred to twenty-seven hundred calories per day. Grain yields on unfertilized land are relatively inelastic, typically ranging from three to twelve bushels per acre with a probable aver­age of five. Populations expand to meet the availability of resources, and Neolithic communities soon reached their ecological limits. If they could not expand the area under cultivation, they reached a balance that barely sustained life. Moreover, because grain harvests depend upon good weather and are susceptible to destruction by pests, shortfalls were common. In years of famine, caloric intake dropped below the level of sustenance. The establishment of permanent farming settle­ments also encouraged the spread of disease. The hunter-gatherers of Paleolithic times had lived in small groups and moved frequently in pursuit of game, a way of life that virtually precluded epidemics. Farming, however, is by definition sedentary. Fields and orchards require constant attention, and the old way of moving about while camping in caves or temporary shelters had to be abandoned. Early farmers built houses of sun-dried brick or of reeds and wood in close proximity to one another for security and to facilitate cooperation. The establishment of such villages encouraged the ac­cumulation of refuse and human waste. Water supplies became contaminated while disease-bearing rats, flies, lice, and cockroaches became the village or town dweller’s constant companions. Inadequate nutrition and susceptibility to epidemic disease created the so-called biological old regime, a demographic pattern that prevailed in Europe until the middle of the nineteenth century. Though few people starved, disease kept death rates high while poor nutri­tion kept birth rates low. Malnutrition raises the age of first menstruation and can prevent ovulation in mature women, thereby reducing the rate of conception. After conception, poor maternal diet led to a high rate of stillbirths and of complications during pregnancy. If a child were brought to term and survived the primitive obstetrics of the age, it faced the possibility that its mother would be too malnourished to nurse. Statistics are unavailable, but infant mortality probably ranged from 30 to 70 percent in the first two years of life.

The Paleolithic Era

Few subjects are more controversial than the origins of the human species. During the long series of ice ages, the fringes of the European ice pack were inhabited by a race of tool-making bipeds known conventionally as Neanderthals.
Heavier, stronger, and hairier than mod­ern Homo sapiens, they hunted the great herding animals of the day: mammoth, bison, wooly rhinoceros, and reindeer. They lived in caves, knew how to make flint tools and weapons, and buried their dead in ways that suggest some form of religious belief. About thirty thousand years ago the Neanderthals were abruptly superseded by people who were physi­cally identical to modern men and women. Where they came from or whether they somehow evolved within a few generations from a basically Neanderthal stock is unclear, but within a short time the Neanderthals were no more. This development remains a mystery because the first true humans did not have a more advanced cul­ture or technology than their more established neigh­bors and were by comparison weak and puny. Some have suggested that the Neanderthals fell victim to an epidemic disease or that they could not adapt to warmer weather after the retreat of the glaciers. They may also have found hunting the faster, more solitary animals of modern times difficult after the extinction of their traditional prey, but no one knows.

The new people, like their predecessors, were hunter-gatherers who lived in caves and buried their dead. They, too, used stone tools and weapons that be­came steadily more sophisticated over time, which is why the period up to about 9000 B.C. is known as the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Paleolithic people lived on a healthy diet of game and fish supplemented by fruit, berries, nuts, and wild plants, but little is known about their social structure. If the hunter-gatherer soci­eties of modern times are an indication, they probably lived in extended families that, if they survived and prospered, eventually became tribes. Extended families may contain older surviving relatives—siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and cousins—as opposed to nuclear families of only parents and children. Tribes are composed of several nuclear or extended families that claim common descent. The division of responsibilities probably was straightforward. Men hunted and perhaps made tools; women cared for the children, preserved the fire, and did most of the gathering.

Among the most extraordinary achievements of these paleographic cultures was their art. Caves from Spain to southern Russia are decorated with magnifi­cent wall paintings, usually of animals. Many groups also produced small clay figurines with exaggerated fe­male features. This suggests the widespread worship of a fertility goddess, but Paleolithic religious beliefs re­main unclear. Were the cave paintings a form of magic designed to bring game animals under the hunter’s power, or were they art for art’s sake? The question may sound silly, but articles of personal adornment in caves and grave sites indicate, as do the paintings themselves, that these people had a well-developed sense of aesthetics.

Introduction

Western civlization rests upon the achievements of far more ancient societies.
Long before the Greeks or Romans, the peoples of the ancient Near East had learned to domesticate animals, grow crops, and produce useful articles of pottery and metal.
The ancient Mesoptamians and Egyptians developed writing, mathematics, and sophisticated methods of engineering while contributing a rich variety of legal, scientific, and religious ideas to those who would come after them.
The Phoenicians invented the alphabet and facilitated cultural borrowing by trading throughout
the known world, and ancient Israel gave birth to religious concepts that form the basis of modern Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

We will look briefly at life in the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age before examining the Neolithic revolution and its material consequences, including its impact on diet, demography, and the advent of warfare. It will then describe the development and structure of two great ancient socieities, the Mesopotamian and the Egyptian, before concluding with descriptions of the Phoenicians and of the life and religion of ancient Israel.