A New Epic? HUM 2051: Civilization I Fall 2009 Dr. Perdigao October 26, 2009.
Civilization and Its Discontents HUM 2051: Civilization I Fall 2012 Dr. Perdigao August 22-24, 2012.
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Transcript of Civilization and Its Discontents HUM 2051: Civilization I Fall 2012 Dr. Perdigao August 22-24, 2012.
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Civilization and Its Discontents
HUM 2051: Civilization IFall 2012
Dr. PerdigaoAugust 22-24, 2012
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Framing• B.C./B.C.E.
“before the common era” or “before the Christian era”• A.D.
Anno Domini (“in the year of the Lord”)
• Western culture—classical/pagan world of Greece and Rome and Judeo-Christian world of Europe
• How we think of history—as a progressive narrative or as Homer does with The Iliad (gold: silver: bronze: iron)
• Ancient Near East and the first civilizations
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Unearthing• Paleolithic (“Old Stone”) Age: 200,000-100,000 B.C.E.• Neolithic (“New Stone”) Age: 10,000-4000 B.C.E.• Bronze Age: 4000-1000 B.C.E.
• Hunting and food-gathering as foundations of society during Paleolithic Age
• Toolmaking, control of fire, language—markers of earliest civilizations
• Language—development of culture and transmission from one generation to the next (Perry 6)
• Mythic-religious ideas to explain the world
• Rituals, burial of the dead
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Neolithic Age• Neolithic Revolution
• Discovered farming, domesticated animals, established villages, polished stone tools, made pottery, wove cloth; technological advancements—pottery, potter’s wheel, sail (Perry 7)
• Food supply became more reliable, village life expanded, population increased
• Religion became more structured
• More organized and complex society, beginnings of civilization; cities developing in 3000 B.C.E. in Sumer
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Civilizing• Civilization: beginnings five thousand years ago in Near East
(Mesopotamia and Egypt) and then Far East (India and China) (Perry 8)
• Origins of civilization in cities that were larger and more complex in political, economic, and social structure than Neolithic villages (Perry 8)
• With food supplied through trade with inhabitants of nearby villages, urban dwellers became merchants, craftsmen, bureaucrats, and priests (Perry 8)
• Invention of writing—preservation, organization, and expansion of knowledge
• Organized governments developed, created laws and boundary lines
• Buildings, monuments
• Complex religious structures
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Mesopotamian Civilization• Mesopotamia (Greek: “land between the rivers”; present-day Iraq)
as first civilization (Perry 9)
• Sumerians first developed urban civilization
• 3000 B.C.E.: 12 independent city-states, with a city and countryside
• Development of cuneiform with pictograms and signs for numbers on clay tablets; world’s first dictionary in translation from Sumerian to Akkadian language
• Sumerians built brick houses, palaces, and temples; made bronze tools and weapons, irrigation system; developed a monetary system; created a system of trade, religious and political institutions, schools, literature, art, codes of law, medicine, and a lunar calendar (Perry 10)
• Mesopotamians’ contributions in mathematics—multiplication and division tables, cubes, cube routes, area of right-angle triangles and rectangles, circle divided into 360 degrees, basis for Pythagorean theorem and quadratic equations; beginnings of astronomy (Perry 14)
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Mesopotamian Civilization• Centrality of religion to Mesopotamian life
• Myths to explain origin of humans: creation stories
• Ziggurats constructed for temples; example of Ur
• Temple as religious and economic heart of the city (Perry 12)
• God as real owner of land and ruler of city
• Omnipresence of gods in daily life
• Kingship bestowed on man by the gods
• Hammurabi (1792-1750 BCE)—Babylon; control of Akkad and Sumer; establishes code of laws unearthed in 1901-1902 by French archaeologists (Perry 13); “eye for an eye” system of justice and retribution
• http://faculty.cua.edu/pennington/Law508/CodeHammurabi-1.htm
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Egyptian Civilization• Western Civilization: Sumer, Mesopotamia (4000-3000 B.C.E.),
Egypt, northeastern Africa (3050 B.C.E.)
• Egypt in fertile river valley of the Nile; distinction from Mesopotamia in sense of security from the environment (Perry 15)
• 2900 B.C.E.: Menes conquers Nile Delta and Lower Egypt, leading to centralized rule, construction of pyramids
• 2686-2181 B.C.E.: Pyramid Age, Old Kingdom , royal power at its height
• Pharaoh as man and god, earthly embodiment of deity Horus (Perry 15)
• Decline of Old Kingdom as result of the nobles’ rise in status and challenge to divine king’s authority
• 2181-2040 B.C.E.: First Intermediate Period, rival families competing for the throne, civil wars and collapse of central authority (Perry 15)
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Egyptian Civilization• 2040-1786 B.C.E.: Middle Kingdom, reassertion of power of the
kings
• 1786-1570 B.C.E.: Second Intermediate Period, nobles regain power and weaken central authority; Hyksos invade Europe, rule for 100 years
• 1570-1085 B.C.E.: New Kingdom, Egyptians drive out Hyksos invaders and rebuild empire
• Led to expansion of bureaucracy, creation of a professional army and increased power of priests, acquisition of slaves
• Egyptian polytheism, belief in afterlife
• Egyptian Ma’at (justice, law, right, and truth, the “right order of nature” (Perry 18)); Re (sun god); Isis (goddess of love and fertility); Thoth (god of wisdom and inventor of writing); Nut (sky goddess)
• Egyptians demonstrated engineering skills in building pyramids; created system of mathematics, geometry for measurement, Egyptian calendar based on the sun (more accurate than the Babylonian lunar calendar); identified illnesses
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Egyptian Civilization• Move toward monotheism by Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (c.
1369-1353 B.C.E.) who took the name Akhenaton (“Servant of Aton”) and moved to holy city Akhetaten (“Horizon of Aton”) (Perry 20)
• Wife Nefertiti
• Successor Tutankhamen (1352-1344 B.C.E.) returned to Thebes
• Question if Akhenaton helped to push religious thought into new direction and if his actions had an influence on Moses who led the Israelites out of Egypt (Perry 20)
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Empire Builders• Near Eastern history marked by international empires,
intermingling of traditions and cultures
• Migration of Indo-Europeans: Hurrians; Kassites; Hittites
• Small nations asserting sovereignty: Phoenicians (descendents of Canaanites, devised first alphabet which was later added to by the Greeks and became the phonetic alphabet), Aramaeans, Hebrews
• Assyria, 9th century B.C.E., empire building, but spread culture of past, Mesopotamia’s literature, religion, art, maintained a library; “copied and edited the literary works of Babylonia, adopted the old Sumerian gods, and used Mesopotamian art forms” (Perry 23)
• Destruction of Assyrian power, rise of Chaldean, Neo-Babylonian Empire; under Nebuchadnezzar (ruled 604-562 BCE) who rebuilt Babylon
• After Nebuchadnezzar’s death, civil war, Persia gains power under Cyrus the Great and his son Cambyses (Perry 25)
• Aramaic emerges as uniform language, letters based on Phoenician alphabet (Perry 26)
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Empire Builders• Persian empire—effective systems of communication,
transportation, money; preservation of cultural traditions of the Near East (Perry 26)
• Persia “unified the nations of the Near East into a world-state, headed by a divinely appointed king, and synthesized the region’s cultural traditions” (Perry 26).
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• Centrality of religion present throughout the ancient Near East
• Mesopotamian kings—not gods but selected by gods, difference from Egyptian pharaohs as both man and god
• Mythopoeic (mythmaking) view of the world, shared by Mesopotamians and Egyptians (Perry 26-27)
• Writing: 3500 B.C.E.—Sumer: cuneiform; Egypt: hieroglyphics (perhaps learned from Sumerians)
• Built irrigation works and cities, organized governments, began work in astronomy, mathematics, architecture, engineering, conducted international trade, established institutions (Perry 28)
Connecting Civilizations
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• Epic of Gilgamesh (ca. 2500-1500 B.C.E.)
• One of the earliest works of literature, first great heroic narrative
• Written in cuneiform
• Found in 1844, cuneiform language deciphered in 1857, text discovered as story of the Flood from British Museum in 1872 and introduced
• Sumerian legend, poems, later Akkadian version
• Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, historical figure (2700 B.C.E.), written versions 2100 B.C.E. but oral versions precede them, put into single work by a Babylonian author around 1600 B. C. E.
• 12 clay tablets
• Book XI, story of the Flood
• Other stories: Enkidu, friend who later dies, leads Gilgamesh to contemplate life and quest for immortality; prologue shows lessons learned
Gilgamesh
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• Encounters Utanapishtim
• Story of the Flood
• Ea’s warning, associations with magic and wisdom
• Ship like ziggurat
• Six days, seven nights
• Dove, swallow, raven
• Belet-ili’s necklace as rainbow
• Serpent
• Transformation from oppressive ruler to one changed by experience of loss of friend and knowledge of death (Lawall 17)
• Questioning of heroic ideal, connection to Achilles
Contextualizing Gilgamesh
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• Anu: sky, supreme god• Enlil: earth, enemy of humanity• Ninurta: agriculture and war, son of Enlil• Ennugi: water courses• Ea: wisdom and magic, fresh water, friend to humanity
• Ishtar: sex, love, warfare, chief goddess of Mesopotamian rgion
• Belet-ili: goddess of birth; created human race with Enki
• Ur-Shanabi: boatman
• Shamash: sun god and god of oracles, Gilgamesh’s guide
Casting
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• Work of translation, first version as literal translation by Benjamin R. Foster (2001); modern poetry in second version by Stephen Mitchell (2004)
• Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf
• John Gardner’s translation
Translating