The First Civilizations: The Peoples of Western Asia and Egypt
The Neolithic Revolution marked the dramatic human shift away from hunting
and gathering to systematic food production (i.e., planting grains and vegetables, and
domesticating animals). This happened independently in different parts of the world
between 8000 and 5000 B.C.E., and the earliest instances of civilizations beginning to
form as a result were Mesopotamia in the Middle East and Egypt in northern Africa. As
people began staying in one place, they began developing a sense of unity and
entitlement to the land. People settled in villages, made advances in technology (the
wheel, plow, sailboat, metalworking) and crafts, such as pottery … and began trading
with other people. The surplus of food made possible by farming enabled the
specialization of work: More and more people had the time to do something other than
produce food. This also led to a stratified social structure: The Sumerians, the first
Mesopotamian civilization, consisted of nobles, commoners and slaves. These people
organized themselves into city-states with defined boundaries and a formal political
structure.
The Sumerians developed cuneiform, the earliest known form of writing, around
3000 B.C.E., enabling kings, priests, merchants and artisans to keep records. From The
Epic of Gilgamesh, we get a glimpse of the Mesopotamian view of the world – that its
harsh climate, repeated floods and resulting famine were the result of supernatural forces.
Sumerian polytheistic religious notions, including the gods’ creation of the earth from
water and the divine punishment of humans through floods, later influenced the writers of
the Old Testament and continue to play a role in Jewish, Christian and Muslim cultures.
The Sumerians also believed in an afterlife of punishment – the original conception of
hell. Their relationship with the flat land of the Fertile Crescent – experiencing as they
did constant, unpredictable flooding and repeated invasions from other peoples – led to a
gloomy view of the world.
The Sumerians fell to the Akkadians, who then fell to the Babylonians … and the
history of this tumultuous region is marked by a steady drumbeat of conflict. The
Babylonian king Hammurabi (1792-1750 B.C.E.) laid down history’s most notable early
code of law – a collection of 282 regulations and judgments that included both strict and
severe punishment but also provisions aimed at preventing the oppression of the weak.
In contrast to the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians had a more benign and beneficial
relationship with their environment, dominated by the Nile River. Egyptian history from
about 3000 B.C.E. to 30 B.C.E. was relatively stable, divided into three major periods
(Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom) across 31 dynasties. This 3,000year period of essential continuity was aided by the geography of the region: The
Egyptians were protected by deserts to the east and west and the Mediterranean Sea to the
north.
The Egyptians’ culture and technological achievements were unequaled in the
world at the time. They built tremendous pyramids dedicated to the dead. They too were
polytheistic, but their view of the afterlife was much different from the Mesopotamians:
They mummified their dead and embraced symbols of resurrection, preserving magical
incantations in the Book of the Dead to ensure a happy afterlife. Kings, or pharaohs, were
seen as gods, and during the New Kingdom – a time when Egypt emerged as the
strongest empire in the Middle East – Queen Hatshepsut was the first woman to become a
pharaoh. During the New Kingdom, in fact, women in Egypt had a number of rights
uncommon elsewhere during this time. They could buy and sell property, for example, or
choose to dissolve their marriages. However, women in Egypt were still expected to be
subservient to men, and young girls weren’t educated as well as young boys.
Around 2000 B.C.E., Indo-Europeans using languages derived from a single
parent tongue began nomadic movements from their believed origins in the steppe region
of southwest Asia above the Black Sea. The Hittites were among them, the first to use
iron weapons. By 1500 B.C.E. they dominated the Fertile Crescent region … but their
military supremacy didn’t last long because the Assyrians – a very militaristic people –
learned to use the same iron technology, and their empire became ascendant. But the
Assyrians were defeated by the Medes and the Chaldeans, and before long the Persian
Empire developed into a major world force. By 500 B.C.E., the Persian Empire stretched
from beyond the Nile River Valley and the eastern Mediterranean through present-day
Turkey, parts of Greece and eastward through present-day Afghanistan. To facilitate
transportation and communication across this vast empire, they built a series of roads,
including the 1,600-mile long Great Royal Road. Persian rulers showed great tolerance
and restraint in their treatment of conquered peoples, and the relatively peaceful trade that
occurred during their time helped cultural diffusion throughout the region. Their religion
of Zoroastrianism dealt with the struggle between good and evil.
During the Persian Empire, there were smaller societies who kept their own
identities, including the Lydians (who came up with the concept of coined money rather
than barter), the Phoenicians (who established powerful naval city-states along the
Mediterranean and a simplified alphabet the Greeks later adopted), and the Hebrews
(who were the first Jews, and who are significant for their monotheistic religious beliefs).
– from World History (Duiker & Spielvogel)