EARLY CIVILIZATIONS: ONWARD INTO THE PAST

EARLY CIVILIZATIONS: ONWARD INTO THE PAST

Cro-Magnons (~30,000 years ago)

like subsequent peoples, their art depicts their lives
hunting (both preying and being preyed upon!)
life and death
existence and extinction
** Cro-Magnon life was a brutish existence: humans are in a precarious place in nature

Why cave art?

mimic nature?

Totems?

to map migrations?

Pleasure brought from representing world?

Realism in art is generally prized until photography comes along…

**8000 BCE- RADICAL SHIFT TAKES PLACE

From hunting and gathering to agricultural settlements

A shift in artwork: animals are no longer the exclusive concern of artists

human images reflect early societal organization

humans begin to dominate their environment (predict seasons, work the land, domesticate animals)

But, humans remain dependent on nature as well;

early civilizations sprouted near rivers (Nile; Tigris and Euphrates)

FERTILITY RITES

Mesopotamia ("the land between rivers");

4000 BCE: Sumerians

Cuneiform

Ziggurats

Where the gods dwelt

Priest center

How religion and State can support each other

Famous rulers:

1) Gilgamesh: r. ~2700 BCE

Synopsis of Gilgamesh excerpts

Themes:

-Even the excellent and god-like face disappointment

-Women as seductresses

-Whims of gods affect our world

-The afterlife

-Views of the afterlife in different religions

-Gilgamesh’s reaction to death is to seek to avoid it

The human search for wisdom; ingenuity

Human subjugation to the will of gods

-The story of the flood

-Irrationality of nature implies irrationality of the gods (e.g., Enlil)

-the gods may differ (a problem with polytheism)

-found in story of Noah from Torah

2) Gudea : r. ~2100 BCE: serious, but benevolent

3) Hammurabi: like Gudea Hammurabi is benevolent, but there is a harshness to his famous code.

Religion + State: The god Shamash wishes for Hammurabi to "make justice appear in the land"

Is God the source of justice?

The Israelites

-nomads

-Abraham, from Ur, rejects the religion of his region

-From many (irrational) gods within nature, Abraham’s God is one (rational) God beyond nature.

-Animistic polytheism with immanent gods turns to monotheistic belief in a transcendent god.

-God promises Abraham many descendents and ample land in turn for Abraham’s commitment to God.

- But the Assyrians conquer the Israelites in 722 BCE, and the Babylonians conquer them in 587 BCE.

-diaspora (the scattering of the Jews after their captivity in Babylon)

-Psalm 137 : "By the rivers of Babylon…"

-the importance of a Jewish homeland and Middle East Peace in the 21^st century

-Since the Israelites were bound by the commandment against graven images, they turned their attention to the written word.

-Cf. Matthews and Platt Exodus

EARLY CIVILIZATIONS II

EARLY CIVILIZATIONS II

-The Nile River makes farming relatively easy

-Desert makes leaders better able to maintain order, control, and succession; you can’t run away!

-priests were learned, powerful; able to predict the behavior of the Nile

-religion was, for the most part, polytheistic and animistic

polytheism-

the gods are immanent-

animism-

-Akhenaten (formerly Amenhotep IV) rejects polytheism

------- there is one God (Aton)

-Hymn to Aten (See Matthews and Platt)

-Israelites’ monotheism- compare with Egyptian monotheism

-Why did Akhenaten do this? For political reasons? For religious ones?

-Priests, as a result of the new monotheism, lose much of their authority and mandate

-Monotheism does not last much past Akhenaten’s death

-Akhenaten’s son: King Tutankhamen (Fleming, p. 16); tomb

-Queen Nefertiti:

Tutmhmosis Queen Nefertiti c. 1340 BCE (Fig. 1.20)

Has she been found? (See website ‘Links of Interest’)

-Egyptian art, life and views of the afterlife (Figs. 1.14-1.18)

Religion and Khufu's Pyramid at Giza

Sphinx

Valley of the Mummies (video)

The Mycenaeans

Seafaring traders (not beneficiaries of fertile rivers)

Often seen as predecessors to Classical Greeks

-Homer’s Iliad:

-Synopsis of excerpts (see Matthews and Platt)

-Themes to discuss:

-The epic form

-View of gods:

-View of women:

-Ethics: (Piety and Military Virtue)

The Minoans

From Crete, Cycladic islands

Traders

Artwork (Figs. 1.20-1.22)

The conditions of the Minoans’ decline and its claim to Classical Greek culture (Fleming versus the video on Arthur Evans, entitled Search for Lost Worlds)