The Ancient Middle East
Mesopotamia Crash Course
The Fertile Crescent:
Crossroads of the World
• The Tigris-Euphrates Valley lies in the eastern end of the
Fertile Crescent, an area that stretches in a large arc from
the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea.
• The Fertile Crescent received its name from the rich soil of
the region and its crescent shape.
• The Fertile Crescent has often been called the "crossroads
of the world" because it commands the land routes to
three continents:
– Asia
– Africa
– Europe
• Unlike Egypt, the Fertile Crescent has few natural barriers.
• The Arabian and Syrian deserts offered less protection to
early civilizations than the Libyan Desert did in Egypt.
The Fertile Crescent Cont’d
• Because of its position, the region was frequently
overrun by invaders.
• Waves of migrating peoples came down from the
mountains north and west of the Tigris-Euphrates
Valley.
• Invaders such as the Hittites swept into the Fertile
Crescent from Asia Minor.
• The diversity of the people living in the Fertile Crescent
made it difficult to unite the area under a single ruler.
• Yet the constant contact among different peoples also
led to an exchange of ideas that led to major
achievements.
Land Between Two Rivers
• The Greeks called the Tigris-Euphrates Valley
"Mesopotamia," meaning "land between two rivers."
• Like the Nile in Egypt, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers
dominated the lives of the people in Mesopotamia.
– The two rivers flow from the rugged highlands of the
Armenian Plateau to the Persian Gulf.
– They run parallel for over 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers).
– In the spring or early summer, melting snows from the
mountains sometimes cause the rivers to overflow.
– However, the floods of the Tigris and Euphrates, unlike those
of the Nile, are unpredictable.
• In some years, the rivers do not rise above their banks.
• In others, savage floods cause enormous damage.
A Precarious Existence
• In ancient times, many floods swept across lower
Mesopotamia.
• About 4000 B.C, a massive flood deposited a bed of
clay eight feet (2.4 meters) thick.
– The flood destroyed farms, villages, and animals and
drowned many people.
– Only a few towns built on high ground survived.
• In addition to floods, lower Mesopotamia suffered
summer droughts and hot winds, which could turn
fertile soil to dust, shrivel crops, and cause famine.
• Despite the danger of flooding, however, the rivers
supported the development of an advanced
civilization.
The Development of an Advanced
Civilization
• Trade along the rivers made Mesopotamian cities
wealthy and powerful.
• Silt left by floods made the soil fertile.
– Good soil meant that the people living in Mesopotamia
could rely on a stable food supply in most years.
– Year after year, silt created a delta at the mouths of the
Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
– Like the Nile delta, the delta in lower Mesopotamia was a
maze of swamps and marshlands.
– To drain the swamps and channel the water to farmland,
the people of Mesopotamia built an intricate network of
dikes and canals.
– The building and upkeep of such a complex irrigation
system required an elaborate, well-run government.
City-State Government
• By 3000 B . C , the villages of lower Mesopotamia had grown
into prosperous cities.
– Tens of thousands of people lived in the chief Sumerian cities of
Ur, Erech, and Kish.
– Each city was an independent city-state with its own government
and ruler.
– In a city-state, a large town or city and the surrounding
countryside cooperate for mutual defense.
• The government of a Sumerian city-state supervised the
building and maintenance of dikes and canals in the
surrounding farmlands.
– It also constructed strong defensive walls and stored food in case
of invasion.
• When threatened by attack, farmers took refuge behind the
city walls.
City States Cont’d
• Each city-state worshipped its own god or goddess as well
as other gods.
– The people of the city-state believed they were wholly
dependent on their city's god for food and protection.
– The land and everything people produced belonged to the god.
– In fact, farmers turned over about two thirds of each harvest to
the temple.
• Because a disaster such as a flood or invasion could strike
suddenly, people in Mesopotamia believed that their
survival depended on keeping their gods content.
– Priests alone knew how to please the gods, and they spoke with
the gods for the people.
– As a result, in the early city-states priests ruled in the name of
the gods.
Sumerian City-States
• As Sumerian city-states grew, they were constantly at war
with each other.
– For example, Ur fought with Erech for control of the lower
Euphrates.
• This frequent warfare may have increased the power of
military leaders who could successfully defend their citystates.
• Military leaders then gradually replaced priests as rulers of
the Sumerian city-states.
• The Sumerians did not worship their rulers as gods.
– Instead, they believed their kings were the gods' representatives
on earth.
– But because they spoke directly with the gods and the people,
Sumerian kings commanded absolute obedience.
Religion
• Towering above each Sumerian city-state was the
ziggurat the home or temple of the god of the city.
– Pyramid-shaped, the ziggurat was often six to seven stories
high.
– The Sumerians believed that gods descended to earth
using the ziggurat as a ladder.
• Like the Egyptians, the Sumerians were polytheistic.
– They worshipped other gods in addition to the god of their
city-state.
– Sumerians believed that a council of gods and goddesses
ruled the earth, deciding the fate of individuals and cities.
– Each god had a specific rank or place within this council.
• The reconstructed facade of the Neo-Sumerian
Great Ziggurate of Uhr , near Nasiriyah, Iraq
Inanna and Dumuzi
• Sumerians explained natural events as the results
of actions by gods and goddesses.
– For example, they believed that winter, the season of
hunger and hardship, occurred when the god Dumuzi
died and descended into the underworld.
– Only when the goddess Inanna rescued her husband
Dumuzi from the underworld did spring arrive,
bringing new life.
– Every year, to ensure the return of the growing
season, priests and priestesses reenacted the story of
Inanna and Dumuzi.
Angry and Spiteful Gods
• In Egypt, the favorable climate of the Nile Valley
allowed the people to enjoy life and see their gods as
kindly forces.
• By contrast, fear of natural disasters and invasions
probably contributed to the Sumerians' gloomy
outlook on life.
– They believed that the gods punished them by sending
floods or famine.
– This gloomy outlook colored their belief about the
afterlife.
– At death, they expected to descend forever into a dark
underworld, a huge cave filled with 38 nothing but dust
and silence.
Written Language
• The need for accurate records led to the development of
writing sometime after 3500 B.C.
• Sumerian writing began as pictograms and ideograms.
• Scribes gradually simplified the system, using symbols to
represent sounds and syllables.
• Sumerians used a stylus, or sharpened reed instrument, to
make symbols on tablets of wet clay.
• They then baked the tablets to harden the clay.
• Because the symbols were made up of wedge-like shapes,
the writing was later called cuneiform from the Latin word
"cuneus," or wedge.
• Traders and conquering armies helped spread cuneiform
across the Fertile Crescent.
•
Sumerian tablet from the period of King Shurrupak 2550BC describing the gift of a
house and land (one and a half "SAR" approx 54 square meters) which includes a
male slave. Early Cuneiform text with text groupings (words) in boxes. This
technique developed from the very early pictographic text and soon after this
period was changed in favor of text written in horizontal lines.
• Cuneiform Tablet and Envelope
– Cuneiform documents would often be sealed in a second layer of clay onto
which the inner document text was rewritten. On receipt of the document the
clay outer envelope could be broken away and the inner text checked if there
was any suspicion of tampering. This tablet still has its outer envelope with
seals still fully intact
Scribes
• As the Sumerian city-states grew, the need for
scribes increased.
– Scribes wrote down laws, treaties, and religious texts.
– As trade expanded, merchants hired scribes to record
business deals, property holdings, and contracts.
– To train scribes, priests set up schools in the temples.
• Only boys, usually the sons of scribes, attended temple
schools.
• Students endured strict discipline in order to earn a
privileged position as a scribe.
• Although no schools existed for girls, priestesses and the
daughters of wealthy Sumerians probably learned to read
and write from private tutors.
The Sumerian Legacy
• Sumerians were the first people known to use a wheel.
– They either invented it or borrowed the idea from earlier
settlers in Mesopotamia.
– Wheeled carts and the sail, another Sumerian invention,
enabled merchants to engage in long-distance trade.
– Sumerians also used wheels on war chariots.
– The use of wheeled vehicles spread slowly across the ancient
world.
• You will recall that the Hyksos used war chariots when they conquered
Egypt.
• The Sumerians made many improvements in farming.
– They built complex irrigation systems to channel water through
the sunbaked plains, planted trees to serve as wind breaks, and
invented a plow.
• They also developed an accurate 12-month calendar to
keep track of the seasons.
60
• Like the Egyptians, the Sumerians used
arithmetic and geometry to survey land and
reestablish property lines after floods swept
away boundary markers.
– The Sumerian system of arithmetic was
based on the number 60, which led to such
present-day measurements as the 60second minute, the 60-minute hour, and
the 360° circle.
• This clay tablet exhibits a sky map above Mesopotamia in 3300BC. It is a
"planisphere" found in the library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh of 650BC. It
consists of segments mapping sections of the sky in cuneiform text. The
Sumerians of the time were very sophisticated scholars, shown in that it took
modern computer analysis to discover the true date of the star chart
Sumerian Architecture
• Sumerian architecture influenced the civilizations
of Mesopotamia for more than a thousand years.
– The Sumerians were the first to use arches, columns,
ramps, and inclined walks.
– Because stone was scarce, Sumerian builders used
bricks made of sunbaked clay.
– Later peoples built temples that rose in a series of
terraces to heights of six or seven stories like the
Sumerian ziggurat.
• The Egyptians may have adopted the idea of
pyramids from the Sumerians.
The Fall of the Sumerians
• About 2500 B.C, invaders conquered the citystates of Sumer.
– Sumerian civilization ceased to exist about
1750 B.C, but its traditions and
achievements left a lasting mark on the
newcomers.
The First Empire
• As older Sumerian city-states declined, Akkad, a
city to the north, rose to power.
– About 2350 BCE, Sargon, an Akkadian soldier, founded
the first empire in recorded history.
– With an empire reaching from southern Mesopotamia
to the Mediterranean Sea, Sargon proclaimed himself
"Lord of the Four Quarters of the World," a title used
by many later conquerors.
– A talented ruler, Sargon repaired and extended the
flood control and irrigation systems of Mesopotamia.
He also sent his armies to protect trade caravans.
The Akkadians
• The Akkadians borrowed many things from Sumerian
civilization.
– Although the Akkadian language differed from the
Sumerian, the conquerors adopted cuneiform for writing.
– Scribes translated Sumerian religious, scientific, and
literary works into Akkadian.
– As a result, the Akkadians absorbed Sumerian religious
beliefs and ideas about government and society.
– Later Akkadian rulers lacked Sargon's abilities, and civil war
resumed.
• For a brief time, Ur-Nammu, ruler of Ur, reunited the citystates.
• About 2050 B.C, Ur-Nammu compiled the first known code of laws.
• This code summarized Sumerian ideas of justice, emphasizing the
king's duty to protect the people and to correct any existing
wrongs.
The Amorites and the Rise of Babylon
• About 2000 B.C, groups of nomadic peoples
invaded Mesopotamia, attacking the rich river
valley cities.
• One group, the Amorites, built the small village of
Babylon on the Euphrates River.
• Slowly, the small village rose from obscurity into a
magnificent city-state boasting of a giant ziggurat
dedicated to the chief Babylonian god, Marduk.
• By 1700 B.C, the king of Babylon, Hammurabi had
carved out an empire in Mesopotamia.
The Code of Hammurabi
• Hammurabi was one of the great rulers of ancient times. He
was an outstanding general, an excellent administrator, and a
patron of the arts.
• In hundreds of surviving letters, he shows concern for details
such as clearing blocked river channels, punishing dishonest
officials, reforming the calendar, and honoring the gods.
• However, he is best known for drawing up a uniform code of
laws.
• Hammurabi appointed a committee to revise existing laws
and to create one set of laws for the whole empire.
• His purpose, he declared, was:
" to cause justice to prevail in the land, to destroy the
wicked and the evil, to prevent the strong from
oppressing the weak, and to further the welfare of the
people."
“An Eye For An Eye”
• Although the resulting system of laws relied on
earlier law codes, the Code of Hammurabi was
the first effort by an empire to record all its laws.
• The code contained 282 laws arranged under
headings such as trade, family, labor, real estate,
and personal property.
• The basic principle behind Hammurabi's Code
was "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth."
– A man who blinded another was punished by losing
an eye.
– If a house collapsed and killed the owner, the builder
was put to death.
The Legacy of Hammurabi’s Code
• Despite the severity of most punishments, Hammurabi's
Code was an important contribution to civilization.
– It distinguished between major and minor offenses, and it
established the state as the authority that would enforce
the law.
– It also tried to guarantee social justice.
– The punishment was supposed to fit the crime.
• Hammurabi had the laws carved on a stone column, which
was placed for everyone to see.
• Atop the column sat Shamash, the sun god and god of
justice, handing the laws to Hammurabi.
• The god's image reminded Babylonians that by breaking a
law they not only offended the king but also the gods.
Beginning of the Iron Age
• After Hammurabi's death, rebellions and
invasions weakened the Babylonian Empire.
• In 1600 BCE , it fell to invaders from the east.
• About 1550 BCE, another group of invaders, the
Hittites, moved into the Fertile Crescent from
Asia Minor.
• The empire established by the Hittites eventually
reached as far as the northern Euphrates Valley.
• Hittite rulers adopted Babylonian cuneiform and
ideas about government and religion, which they
carried back into Asia Minor.
The Hittites
• The Hittites owed their military success to careful strategy,
skillful diplomacy, and superior weapons.
• Expert metalworkers, they were among the first people to
use iron for spears and battle axes.
– Iron weapons gave the Hittites an advantage over enemies
armed with softer bronze spears.
– The Hittites carefully guarded the secret of ironworking.
– Even so, the new technology spread to other peoples.
– By 1200 B . C , iron was being used in place of bronze, ushering
in the Iron Age.
• The Hittites soon lost their military advantage. About the
same time, a new onslaught of invaders swept into Asia
Minor and the Fertile Crescent, destroying the Hittite
Empire and the sophisticated city-state civilizations of
Mesopotamia.
The Assyrians
• Among the peoples who invaded the Fertile
Crescent after 1200 BCE, the most feared and
hated were the Assyrians
– The Assyrians were hardy nomads who settled in
the Tigris Valley, where they built a city state
named after their chief god, Assur
– Beginning about 1100 B.C, the Assyrians
conquered people after people until they had an
empire that included the entire Fertile Crescent as
well as Egypt.
The Assyrians did not Mess Around…
• The mighty Assyrian Empire depended on a highly disciplined army.
• Iron weapons, an excellent cavalry, and iron-tipped battering rams
carried the Assyrians from one victory to the next.
• Once a city was conquered, the Assyrians showed no mercy.
"I cut off their heads and like heaps of grain, I piled
them up,“ boasted one Assyrian ruler.
" I skinned alive all the chief men. Their young men and
maidens I burned in the fire," wrote another.
• When the Assyrians captured Babylon, about 700 B.C, they tortured
and beheaded prisoners, enslaved women and children, and
reduced the city to rubble.
The Assyrian Empire
• Assyrian government was as harsh and efficient as the
Assyrian army.
• The empire was divided into provinces, each ruled by a
governor responsible to the king, who had absolute
power.
• The Assyrians built roads to speed the movement of
their army from the capital to the provinces.
• They deported groups of troublesome people to
remote parts of the empire, where they could not
organize rebellions.
• One side effect of these forced migrations was an
exchange of ideas among the conquered peoples of the
Fertile Crescent.
The World’s First Library
• With war loot and taxes collected from
conquered peoples, the Assyrians built a capital
at Nineveh
• The Assyrian king Assurbanipal built a great
library at Nineveh.
• In it, he stored a vast collection of over 22,000
clay tablets written in the cuneiform of Sumer
and Babylon.
• Although the Assyrians were despised as brutal
conquerors, they made a lasting contribution to
civilization by organizing and preserving these
invaluable records in the world's first library.
"I am Assurbanipal, King of the
Universe, King of Assyria. I seized a
fierce lion of the plain by his ears. I
pierced his body with my lance.“ Thus,
the ruthless Assyrian leader
celebrated his hunting skill The lion
hunt shown here was one of a series
of sculptures that decorated
Assurbanipals palace at Nineoeh.
Revival of Babylon
• In 612 B.C, oppressed peoples within the Assyrian
Empire joined the Medes and Chaldeans to
capture and destroy Nine-veh.
• The victors divided up the Assyrian Empire.
• The Medes occupied the highlands north of
Mesopotamia, and the Chaldeans established an
empire in Mesopotamia proper.
• During the reign of Nebuchadnezzar the
Chaldeans extended their empire over the Fertile
Crescent.
Nebuchadnezzar
• Nebuchadnezzar rebuilt Babylon as a symbol of his
power. Massive walls surrounded the city and the
outlying farmlands, protecting the food supply during a
siege.
• Nebuchadnezzar's immense palace, decorated with
blue glazed bricks, was rivaled in splendor by the
famous hanging gardens of Babylon.
– According to legend, Nebuchadnezzar designed the
gardens for his wife, who despised the flat plains of
Mesopotamia and longed for the mountains of her Median
homeland.
– The many terraces filled with exotic plants and trees
amazed travelers, who returned home awed by this
wonder of the ancient world.
Chaldeans
• Like earlier peoples of Mesopotamia, the Chaldeans
advanced the study of mathematics and astronomy, largely
because of their interest in astrology.
• They believed that the positions of the stars and planets
and the movement of comets determined the fates of
individuals and empires.
• By charting the paths of planets, stars, and comets,
Chaldean priests acquired a vast store of knowledge about
eclipses and the movement of heavenly bodies.
• They also accurately calculated the length of a year to
within a few minutes.
• Priests, who used their knowledge of the stars to predict
the future, occupied a privileged position in Chaldean
society.
The Death of Nebuchadnezzar
• After the death of Nebuchadnezzar, the
Chaldean Empire, like those before it, suffered
civil wars.
• In 539 B.C., Babylon fell to invading Persians.
• Unlike the Assyrians, the Persians left the city
standing, and it remained a flourishing center
of commerce and learning.
The Persians
• The Persians rapidly became a powerful force in
the ancient Middle East.
• In 550 B.C, Cyrus king of Persia, led a successful
revolt against the Medes.
• Within 20 years, he had conquered the Fertile
Crescent and Asia Minor.
– His successors added Afghanistan, northern India, and
Egypt to the Persian Empire
– Cyrus was a remarkable military leader and a wise
ruler.
• He treated conquered peoples with tolerance, allowed them
some self-government, and respected their religions and
customs.
Government within the Persian Empire
• Cyrus's son-in-law, Darius completed the task of organizing
the vast Persian Empire.
– Copying the Assyrian model, he divided the empire into 20
provinces, or satrapies.
– Each satrapy was ruled by a governor, or satrap, who collected
taxes and administered uniform laws.
– As a check on the satrap, Darius sent royal inspectors, called
"the Eyes and Ears of the King," into every province.
• To ensure rapid communication, the Persians improved the
Assyrian road system.
• The main highway, the Great Royal Road, stretched from
Asia Minor to Susa, one of the four capitals of the empire.
• Relay stations with fresh horses were set up along the
Great Royal Road so that royal messengers could cover
1,600 miles (2,560 kilometers) in ten days.
The Fall of The Persian Empire
• The efficient government and transportation
system, as well as trade and the policy of
toleration, helped draw the empire together.
– Yet Persian power did not go unchallenged
– Darius and his heirs failed to conquer
Greece.
– In 331 B.C, a weakened Persian Empire fell
to the armies of Alexander the Great.
Religion Within the Persian Empire
• Although the early Persians believed in many
gods, by the time of Darius they had adopted a
new religion named after its founder, Zoroaster
– According to Zoroaster, who lived about 600 B.C, the
world was a battleground for the forces of good and
evil.
• Every individual made a choice in his or her lifetime to join
Ahura Mazda, god of goodness, wisdom, and truth, or to
follow Ahriman, the evil spirit.
• Zoroaster predicted that at the end of the world Ahura
Mazda would win the final battle.
• Those who had lived moral lives would be rewarded with
eternal life in paradise. Those who had followed Ahriman
would be condemned to eternal suffering.
Zend Avesta
• The sacred book of Zoroastrians was the Zend
Avesta
• This collection of hymns and religious poems
contained several ideas that influenced later
peoples of the Fertile Crescent.
– For example, Zoroastrians emphasized ethical, or
moral, conduct.
– They also believed in a final day of judgment and in
the role of the individual in determining his or her
salvation.
– Later, Hebrews and Christians stressed similar
concepts.
The Contributions of Smaller States
• While the great empires of the ancient Middle
East were expanding through conquest,
several small, independent states were also
making lasting contributions.
• Between 1200 B.C. and 500 B.C, the
Phoenicians, Lydians, and Hebrews made
advances in the areas of writing, trade, and
religion.
Phoenicians: Carriers of Civilization
• The Phoenicians built small city-states along
the eastern Mediterranean coast, in the area
of present-day Lebanon.
• They thrived on profits from trading.
– To cities around the Mediterranean, the
Phoenicians brought timber from cedar trees and
a rare purple dye made from a tiny sea snail.
• Because Phoenician purple cloth was very expensive
and was worn mostly by kings, the color purple came to
be associated with royalty.
Phoenician Colonies
• From the bustling port cities of Tyre and Sidon,
Phoenician traders crisscrossed the
Mediterranean.
• Beginning about 1200 B.C, they founded a
network of colonies from Cyprus to Gibraltar.
• About 814 B.C, they settled Carthage in northern
Africa.
– Carthage dominated trade in the western
Mediterranean until 146 B.C, when it was destroyed
by the Romans.
Carriers of Civilization
• The Phoenicians earned the name "carriers of
civilization" for their role in spreading the culture
of the ancient world.
– Through trade and colonization, they introduced the
achievements of Mesopotamia and Egypt to the lessadvanced peoples of the western Mediterranean.
• They also made their own contribution by
improving the alphabet.
– The Phoenician alphabet contained 22 symbols, each
of which represented a single consonant.
– Unlike cuneiform and the Egyptian system of writing,
the new alphabet was fairly easy to learn
The Origins of the Alphabet
• Phoenician merchants and colonists spread the
use of their alphabet.
• About 800 B.C, the Greeks adopted it and added
symbols for vowel sounds.
• Later, the Romans adapted the Greek alphabet,
and they passed the resulting written language
on to the western world.
• The very word "alphabet" comes from "aleph"
and "beth," the first two symbols of the
Phoenician alphabet.
The Lydians: Influential Traders
• Like the Phoenicians, the Lydians left their mark on history
through trade rather than conquest.
• From their capital, Sardis, the Lydians dominated trade in Asia
Minor.
• The most significant contribution of the Lydians was the
introduction of coined money as a medium of exchange in trade.
– Earlier, people had relied on the barter system, exchanging one
set of goods for another.
– The barter system limited trade because two people could trade
with one another only if each had a product the other one
wanted.
• The use of coins eliminated that problem.
– Furthermore, coins could be stored and saved for later use, and
they allowed merchants to establish a system of set prices.
– An economic system based on money rather than barter is called
a money economy.
The Spread of Money
• Through trade with the Greeks and Persians,
Lydian merchants spread the idea of using
coined money.
• Lydian coins were imprinted with the king's
image as a guarantee that they were the
correct weight and value.
• Wherever coinage came into use, a more
complex economic system developed.
The Hebrews
• South of Phoenicia was Palestine, another
crossroads for nomadic herders and conquering
armies.
• Among the many peoples who migrated into the
Jordan River valley of Palestine after 2000 B.C.
were the Hebrews.
• Although the Hebrews ruled a small state for a
relatively brief period, their religious beliefs
profoundly affected later civilizations in the
western world.
Early History
• The Hebrews believed that God was the moving force
behind everything that happened to them.
• To show God's role in history, they preserved their
early history in a sacred text, known today as the Old
Testament.
• According to the Old Testament, God gave Canaan, or
Palestine, to the Hebrews.
• About 1800 B.C, drought and famine forced some
Hebrews to migrate to Egypt, where the pharaohs
eventually enslaved them.
• The Old Testament book of Exodus records how a
courageous man named Moses forced the pharaoh to
free the Hebrews.
Moses
• The Hebrews considered Moses one of their most
important leaders and their chief law giver.
• After leading the Hebrews out of Egypt, Moses
gave them the Ten Commandments, a set of
religious and moral laws.
– The Hebrews believed that God had revealed the laws
to Moses and had thereby made a covenant, or
binding agreement, with them.
– According to that covenant, God would protect the
Hebrews as the "Chosen People" if they obeyed the
commandments.
• Obedience to God's laws bound the Hebrews
together as they wandered from Egypt, across
the Sinai, into Palestine.
• Hardened by life in the desert, they fought the
Philistines and other peoples for control of the
Jordan River valley.
• About 1025 B.C, the Hebrews organized the
kingdom of Israel in Palestine.
The Kingdom of Israel
• During the reigns of David and Solomon, from
about 1000 to 930 B.C, the kingdom of Israel
flourished.
• A successful general and skillful diplomat, David
decisively defeated the Philistines and forged
alliances with other peoples to make the
Hebrews supreme in Palestine.
• David's son Solomon transformed the city of
Jerusalem into a magnificent capital.
• In the center of Jerusalem, he built a massive
temple that symbolized the Hebrew faith.
King Soloman
• Solomon's lavish spending required heavy taxes, which
caused popular discontent.
• After Solomon died, in 930 B.C, violent disagreements
split the kingdom into two separate states:
– Israel in the north
– Judah in the south.
• Powerful empires soon threatened the Hebrew
kingdoms.
– In 722 B.C, the Assyrians conquered Israel and exiled
thousands of Hebrews to distant corners of their empire.
– In 586 B.C, Nebuchadnezzar seized Judah, destroyed the
temple in Jerusalem, and sent the Hebrews as slaves to
Babylon.
• The Persians later freed the Hebrews from captivity.
• Some of the Hebrews returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt
their temple.
• However, Israel no longer existed as an independent state.
• The Persians, then the Greeks, and later the Romans ruled
Palestine.
• Although they no longer had their own state, the Hebrews
preserved their religious ideas and cultural traditions
because of the covenant they believed they had with God.
• Many of these ideas would influence two other religions
that later rose in the Middle East—Christianity and Islam.
An Ethical World View
• Unlike other peoples of the ancient Middle East,
the Hebrews were monotheistic.
• They believed in one all-powerful God, called
Yahweh.
• But their view of God changed over time. To the
early Hebrews, God was a fierce, vengeful figure
who inflicted harsh punishments if angered.
• Later, the Hebrews came to see God as wise and
forgiving.
Hebrew Law
• The Hebrews developed an ethical world view—
that is, they believed that people and their rulers
should lead moral lives.
• This view grew out of the moral and religious
laws recorded in the first five books of the Old
Testament, which are called the Torah.
• Among the most important laws of the Torah are
the Ten Commandments, which forbid lying,
cheating, stealing, and murder.
• The commandments also counsel men and
women to be just, love their neighbors, and obey
their parents.
No one was Above the Law
• According to the Hebrews, no one was above God's law, not even a
king.
• A Hebrew king was not considered a god or the earthly
representative of gods as kings were in other cultures of the ancient
Middle East.
• Hebrew laws, as expressed in the Torah, have been compared to
Hammurabi's Code since both law codes contained the principle of
"an eye for an eye."
• However, Hammurabi's laws, which set the death penalty for many
minor offenses, were more severe.
• Hebrew law generally held human life in greater respect, leaving
the ultimate judgment and punishment to God.
• Furthermore, while slavery was an accepted practice in the ancient
world, Hebrew law demanded that slaves be treated with kindness.
Men and Women
• Women had few rights under Hebrew law, but
respect for women was taught in the
commandment:
"honor thy father and thy mother.“
• In addition, the Hebrews honored certain
outstanding women, such as the prophet
Deborah, who, according to the Old Testament,
led the Hebrews to a victory against their
enemies in Palestine.
Prophets
• Prophets contributed to the Hebrews' ethical world view.
• The Hebrews believed that the prophets were messengers
God sent to reveal His will.
• Prophets scolded the Hebrews for wickedness, laziness, and
worshipping other gods.
• The prophet Isaiah for example, called on the king and
people of Judah to:
"cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, relieve
the oppressed, judge [look after] the fatherless, plead for the
widow."
• Out of the teachings of the prophets, the Hebrews
developed strong traditions that stressed respect for the
individual, concern for the poor, and obedience to God's
laws.
The First Ethical World View
• Some Hebrew beliefs were similar to the beliefs
of other peoples in the ancient Middle East.
• Like the Zoroastrians, for example, they believed
that individuals had to make a choice between
good and evil.
• However, the Hebrews were the first people to
develop an ethical world view, which included the
basic principles of belief in one God and concern
for individuals.