ChAPTER 3 Asia's First Civilizations: India

• Men's control over women was emphasized in Mesopotamia.

• By the third millennium b.c.e., Mesopotamian husbands hid their wives from the world.

• The detail from Egyptian tomb art shows a husband and wife.

• In Egypt, unlike Mesopotamia, men and women were depicted working together.

• The family honor depended on strict control of women's sexual behavior, whereas the men's honor depended on their work and public duties.
• Women were only allowed to control property if they were widowed.

• In Egypt women were seen as inferior, and many writers urged men to maintain control of the women in their households, but Egyptian women had a much wider range of permissible activity.
• queens had considerable power.
• Queen Nefertiti was known for her beauty but also for her role in promoting major religious reforms which included the promotion of one of Egypt's many dieties.
• According to Egyptian belief, both men and women could become stars in the heavens and have equal access to the afterlife.
• The daughters were responsible for carrying on family religious practices.

• The subject of this chapter is the introduction of many important changes in human life.

• Theyhrined men's superiority in laws and art as well as government structures, making patriarchal systems more formal.
• Each major society gained distinctive characteristics, as each early civilization put its particular stamp on basic aspects of life.
• The gender systems depend on cultural values and political arrangements.
• Each civilization's identities were created by differences in the way patriarchy was practiced.
• Travelers would note that women in Egypt were treated differently than in Mesopotamia.
• Specific gender practices can last well beyond the early civilization.
• Middle Eastern con texts for women have traces of approaches first introduced in Mesopotamia.

• The wave of technological changes around 4,000 economy to writing, followed by the cumulative effects of agriculture.
• Civilization was created as a new organizational form because of frequent b.c.e.
• The invasions contributed to elements of civilization as a form of human organization.
• Some agricultural economies have distinctive religious belief and political systems.

• The kind of written records useful for trade were promoted by writing.
• Bronze was useful for conquest.
• Support was required for new types of manufacturing.

• Bronze required longer-distance trade in order to find copper and tin.
• Middle Eastern people traveled as far as Britain and Afghanistan to get resources.
• Irrigation along great river valleys, vital for greater agricultural productivity, promoted new kinds of organizational structures to coordinate the process and new laws to demarcate property.

• Major floods occurred.

• A layer of mud swept over in a flood separated the sites where one city was built on top of the other.
• The story of how the gods decided to wipe out mankind is told in mud tablets.
• There was only one man who was saved.
• His name was Utnapishtim.

• The first civilization arose in the northeastern part of the Middle East, which is now known as the Middle East.
• Between the northern hills and the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula lies a large swath of arable land called the Fertile Crescent.
• fertile soil is deposited when the rivers overflow in the spring.
• Farming communities began to find ways to use the rivers through irrigation ditches as population pressure increased due to early agriculture.
• Improvements in the region were swift with the improved tools of the Bronze Age.
• The fertile Tigris-Euphrates region generated large food surpluses, promoting population growth and village expansion as well as increased trade and job specialization.
• The region was so flat that it was vulnerable to invasion.

• The centers of religion, pilgrimage, and Euphrates rivers were developed by the civilization.

• The Sumerians introduced into Mesopotamia.

• About 2000 b.c.e., the Sumerian culture was completely destroyed.
• The agricultural hinterland was ruled by a form of political an urban king.
• In some cases, the king was advised by a local organization.
• One of the functions of Sumerian city-states was to define the boundaries of Mesopotamian civilization.
• The agricultural hinterlands religion helped regulate each city-state.
• It gave a system of courts for justice.
• The warriors were ruled by an urban king.

• Kings and priests owned a lot of land.
• Slaves, who had been in wars with nearby tribes, worked here.

• The traditions of the region were set up by the Sumerian political and social organization.
• The tradition of regional rule was established by the city-state government.
• Slave labor was used by many successor civilizations.
• The use of slaves and the lack of natural barriers to invasion help explain recurrent warfare, which was needed to supply labor in the form of captured slaves.

• Political stability and the use of writing added to the economic prosperity of the Sumerians.
• Farmers learned how to grow onions and garlic.
• donkeys carried goods and oxen were used to pull plows.
• The carts were used to transport goods.
• The use of silver as a means of exchange for buying and selling was introduced by the Sumerians.

• Major cities expanded with substantial housing units in rows of flat-roofed, mud-brick shops and apartments.

• A form of writing was developed by many people.
• The potter's wheel and the production of pottery sumerians were improved by the Sumerians.
• Spurred by the increasing skill level and commercial importance of pottery, men began stylus and clay tablets.

• Glass was also invented by the Sumerians.

• Trade moved to the lower Persian Gulf and the western part of the Middle East.
• By 2000 b.c.e., the Sumerians had contacts with India.

• Between the advent of agriculture and the age of the steam engine, writing was the most important thing to do.
• The invention of writing by the Sumerians was sudden.
• It was based on new needs for commercial property and political records, as well as a celebration of the deeds of proud local kings.
• The invention of clay cylinder seals made it possible to record small pictures of objects.
• The pictures were baked on clay tablets and turned into symbols.
• The early Sumerian alphabet may have had as many as 2000 symbols from the early pictures.
• The Sumerians were able to reduce the alpha bet to about 300 symbols because writers began to use more abstract symbols to represent sounds.

• The writers used a stick to impress the symbols on the tablets.
• Cuneiform writing was hard to learn, so specialized writers dominated it.
• The picture shows a power over an object.

• The map focuses on allowing people to impose an order over nature and the social defining the king's estate, with sections for priests and for key gods world.

• The first hero in world literature was described as the ruler of a city-state.
• The great flood was also described in this epic.
• The tone of the epic and of Sumerian culture was somber.
• The gods have iron laws that control human destiny.

• Like the new moon, the heroes have their waxing and waning.
• Without him there is no light.
• This was the meaning of your dream.
• You were given the kingship, but it was not your life's purpose.
• You will never find the life you seek.
• The gods made death a part of human fate.

• Sumerian art and science developed quickly.
• The temples of the gods were adorned with statues and painted frescoes.
• The science of astronomy was found by the Sumerians, who sought to learn more about the sun and stars.
• They wanted to improve their mathematical knowledge.
• The Sumerian system of numbers, based on units of 12 to 60, is the one we use today.
• In the Middle East and India, Sumerian charts of major constella tions have been used for 5000 years.

• An abstract thought about nature on which many later societies still rely.

• The first literary Religion was very important in Sumerian culture and politics.
• In Western civilization, Gods were associated with written forces of nature.
• At the same time, gods were seen as having human form and many of the more down c. 2000 b.c.e.
• The gods quarreled and used their power in Flood.

• An original version of the concept of hell was included in the gloomy cast of Sumerian religion.
• In a region where nature was often harsh and unpredictable, gods were more feared than loved.
• Priests' power was derived from their responsibility for placating the gods.
• Priests became full-time specialists and were needed to manage the irrigation systems.

• Prayers and offerings were important parts of the temple complexes.

• The creation of the earth by the gods from a chaos of water and divine in many aspects of nature and punishment through floods is one of the religious beliefs developed by the Sumerians.
• The influence of these beliefs on Jewish, Christian, and Muslim cultures can be seen in the fact that all of them were born in the Middle East.

• The Jewish Bible was written to the west of Sumer.
• The power of this early culture and its decidedly religious emphasis was shown by the fact that the Sumerian language was still used in temples and schools after the collapse of Sumer.

• Civilization is one form of human organization.
• Civilizations had more economic surpluses than other forms of society.
• This was true of Sumer, which boasted a rich agriculture capable of employing a minority of specialist workers.

• The initial Mesopotamian civilization can be used to flesh out a more elaborate plan, which other historians prefer.
• A clearly defined state was created by Sumerian civilization, replacing the more disorganized communities of previous agricultural societies.
• The creation of cities beyond scattered individual centers was a part of civilization.
• Most of the population still lives in the countryside, as was the case until 200 years ago.
• The cities were important in promoting trade, more specialized manufacture, and the exchange of ideas.
• At the same time, cities depended on a well-organized regional economy that could provide food for urban areas and on a government that could run essential services such as a court system to handle disputes.

• Writing is an important feature of most other civilizations.
• The new communication system had consequences.
• The lists essential for effective taxation can be organized by societies with writing.
• The ability to maintain documenta tion is a precondition for most formal bureau cracies.
• A more elaborate intellectual life can be created by societies with writing.
• Mesopotamia began to generate more formal scientific knowledge as a result of writing.
• The societies before the devel opment of writing depended on poetic sagas to convey their value systems; the poetry was designed to aid in memorization.
• The importance of sagas such as the Gilgamesh epic continued, but the diversity of cultural expressions soon increased and other kinds of literature supplemented the long, rhymed epics.

• Writing promoted both trade and manufacturing.
• In India, Sumerian merchants used to write to their trading partners.
• Manufacturing knowledge can be preserved by written records.
• The first recorded use of Sumerian writing was to transmit a beer recipe.

• New divisions were created within the population of early civilizations.
• Priests, sholders, and merchants had time to master writing.

• Civilization brings losses as well as gains.
• Civilization needs careful evaluation, compared to societies that did not develop this form of human organization.
• As the Middle East moved toward civilization, the distinctions between social class and wealth increased.
• Slaves, who were treated as property, were a part of the social structure in Sumer.
• Civilizations can create inequalities between men and women.

• Noncivilized societies are often well regulated and have interesting cultures.

• Inuit groups are particularly successful in avoiding anger and aggression in human dealings.
• Many civilized societies, including Sumerian society, value aggressive behavior and warlike qualities as virtues.
• Civilizations don't promote human happiness.

• The development of civilization generated new technological, cultural, and political capacities.
• As other societies came under their influence or deliberately tried to ability to produce food surpluses, they tended to spread.
• Early civilizations spread slowly because many peoples had no contact with them and because their disadvantages, such as greater social inequality, were seen as elites.

• Mesopotamian civilization was unstable as one ruling group gave way to another.
• The geographic frame work for this process is shown on the region's map.
• The invaders of the fertile river valleys were unable to resist the pressures from other people who were copying their achievements.

• One king controlled a large portion of the Mesopotamian civilization region.
• The empire sent c. 2400 b.c.e.

• He integrated the city-states into a whole empire.
• Mespotamia was added to in 1800 b.c.e.

• The theme of royal victory is marked by the new style of Sumerian art.

• A number of literary works were produced by the Akkadians, who were the most important ruler of the mercial and temple records.

• The first works of codification of law were left behind by the Babylonian empire.

• The Akkadian Empire lasted only 200 years before being overthrown by another force.
• By 2200 b.c.e., kingdoms were springing up in various parts of the Middle East, and new invading groups added to the region's confusion.

• The wealth and power of this new empire was testified to by large cities.

• An extensive network of officials and judges was set up by Hammurabi.
• The laws of the region were codified to deal with a number of issues.
• Sumerian cultural traditions were elaborated at the same time.
• The code was built by Sumerian kings.
• The box shows the problems the code sought to regulate.

• Rulers such as Hammurabi were associated with the gods.
• The tradition of artistic monuments celebrating rulers' power has continued ever since.

• The Akkadian dynasty dates from about 2350 b.c.e.
• and scholars were able to predict lunar eclipses.
• Babylonians worked out mathematical tables and talents to evoke feelings of awe and reverence, and they could figure out areas and volumes for many shapes.

• The maps show the relationship between the river and empires in the region.

• This map shows the location of Mesopotamia and two other empires in the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean.

• The location of sumer and two other empires can be seen on the map.

• The Babylonians ruled for only 200 years, but they built the most elaborate culture.
• The Babylonians expanded commerce and a common cultural zone due to growing use of Cuneiform writing and a shared language.

• The man who was king of babylon will be put to death and his rule will last from 1800 to 1750 b.c.e.
• The earli that woman will go free is his law code.

• If a man accuses his wife and she have not been taken in, she will take an oath in the name of a slab in Iran in 1901.
• She will return to her house after the presentation was a God.

• If the finger was pointed at the wife of a man of justice.
• She has not been taken in social relations and family structure in this ancient civilization because of the code.

• If a man is taken captive and there is nothing to eat in his prince, the worshiper of the gods, then that woman has ness to prevail in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil, no blame.

• They will cut off his hand if he strikes his father.

• If a man destroys another man's eye, they will not be able to convict him and he will be put to death.

• They will break a man's bone if he breaks it.

• If he destroys the eye of a common man or breaks a bone, he will throw himself into the river and pay silver.

• If he destroys the eye of a man's slave or breaks a bone of a show that man to be innocent and come forth unharmed, he will pay half his price.

• If a man knocks out a tooth of a man of his own rank, they will throw themselves into the river and go to the house to knock out his tooth.

• If a man is in a case, he should give testimony one-third of silver.

• If a man smites on the cheek of a man who is his superior, he will receive sixty strokes with an oxtail whip in public.

• If a man is captured, he will pay a fee to be put to death.

• If a common man smites a common man on the cheek, he will have to pay a certain amount of money to the god.

• They will cut off his ear if a man's slave smites the son of a gentleman on the cheek.

If the wife of a man are taken in lying with another man, why did agricultural civilization such as Babylon insist on harsh punishment?

• The wife of a man who has not significant historical meaning is different from the wife of a man who has significant historical meaning.

• New government strength was shown in both the legal system and the opulent public buildings.
• The gardens of trees and vines on the roof of the king's palace were a hit with visitors from all over the region.

• The Babylonian empire fell around 1600 b.c.e.
• Middle Eastern society has become so good that it is starting to attract waves of attack from nomadic peoples from central Asia.
• The Hittites yielded, and a series of smaller kingdoms fought for control of the region.

• Early in northeastern Africa, the civilization emerged.

• The Egyptians developed art.
• Egypt's geography explains a different outlook on life.
• The differences between Egyptian and Mesopotamian gender practices were an example of how these two early civilization differed.

• The early kings were seen as Egypt.

• Pharaohs were often depicted as huge figures in art.
• They used to bury servants with dead pharaohs in order to help him in the next life.
• King faced limits for all of these claims.
• It's hard to tell how much ordinary people believe in godhood because popular writings treated them irreverently.
• The kings were often controlled by priests who insisted on elaborate rituals.

• It wasn't always clear who ruled despite the big claims.

• The Nile's steady flow is marked by floods.
• The cast to Egyptian culture was more optimistic.
• It could be seen as a source of bounty to be received rather than as a cause of floods.

• Farming was developed along the Nile by 5000 b.c.e., but some time before 3000 b.c.e.
• The formation of regional kingdoms was based on this.

• Egypt had fewer problems with the old Kingdom.

• There were fewer invasions.
• The deserts acted to limit the kind of attacks that troubled Sumerian civilization.
• Egyptian politics were more centralized.
• The Mesopotamian city-states developed opportunities for interaction.

• The unified state was 600 miles long.
• The state was to last 3000 years.
• Even though the civilization was exhausted by about 1000 b.c.e., this was an amazing record of stability.
• The society went through three major periods of monarchy during the 2000-year span in which Egypt replaced the traditional Egyptian with a pantheon of gods.

• Egyptian civilization was characterized by the strength of the pharaoh.
• An extensive bureaucracy was recruited from the landed nobles and trained in Lower Egypt.

• The belief that pharaohs were gods and the importance of royal rule made each of the main periods of Egyptian UPPER EGYPT history marked by some striking kings.

• This was a statement of authority.

• Up to 100,000 men are being commanded by Meroe to haul and lift stones.

• The first great pyramid was built.

• Africa rose in importance because of the weakened connection between Egypt and kingdoms farther up the Nile.

• Ancient Kingdom Egypt used Egyptian culture to separate itself from Mesopotamia and as burial sites for pharaohs.

• The Egyptians did not use the Sumerian alphabet.
• The hieroglyphs were based on simplified pictures of objects to represent concepts or sounds.
• The writing system was complex and used mostly by the priestly class.
• The new material to write on was made from strips of a plant.
• It was cheaper to make and use this than it was to make clay tablets or animal skins.
• Egypt did not have the same kind of epic literary tradition found in the Middle East.

• The Egyptian achievements in astronomy were not as advanced as those of Mesopotamia.

• The week was not based on any natural cycles.

• The Nile floods are predicted in a letter.
• Knowledge of a variety of drugs and contraceptive devices was made important by the Egyptians.
• The Greeks learned elements of Egyptian medical knowledge and passed it on to other cultures.
• It was also advanced in geometry.

• It was like an early religion almost everywhere.

• The Egyptians held that a happy, changeless well-being could be achieved in another world where they were concerned with death and preparation.
• The act of with elaborate funeral rituals, particularly for the rulers and bureaucrats, was designed to ensure preserving the bodies of the dead; a satisfactory afterlife, although Egyptians also believed that favorable judgement by a key god, practiced in Egypt to preserve the Osiris, was essential.
• The creation goddess is similar to the other Middle body for enjoying the afterlife.

• Christian veneration of the Virgin Mary and a host of gods was adapted from Eastern religious figures.
• The depiction of earthly and human scenes in Egyptian art lasted without great change for hundreds of years.

• Egyptian culture had a reputation for stability.
• There were few changes to styles and beliefs during Egyptian civilization.
• Egypt was fairly isolated and this helped preserve continuity.
• Occasionally, change occurred.
• A period of division, chaos, and rival royal dynasties were brought about by the attacks from the Middle East.
• The unification of the monarchy happened during the Middle Kingdom period.
• The Sudan became the African kingdom of Kush during this time, as Egyptian settlements spread southward into what is now the Sudan.

• The largest single-stone statue in the ancient world was used for trade with the Middle East.
• It is not known who built the eastern Mediterranean, but it is believed to have been constructed as ground.
• The guardian of the Necropolis at giza, the home of the great pyramids, is one of the Egyptian influences spread by these contacts.
• The symbol of the power of the pharaohs was displayed.

• They were part of patriarchalism.
• Around 2000 b.c.e.
• "If you are a man of note, tural civilizations developed and became more prosperous and found for yourself a household and love your wife at home, as more elaborately organized, the status of women often deterio."
• Clothe her back.

• Although still vital, individual families became less important with agriculture.
• The key decisions were made by the husband and father.
• In the upper classes authority, this was given humility to this male.

• There was a revealing symptom of patriarchy in en's labor.

• Agricultural societies need more tamian civilization.
• Marriages were arranged for women by their family labor, with children often born parents, and a formal contract was drawn up.
• The pres may have given women more latitude than they thought.

• Agricultural societies were based on concepts ality, and their earlier laws gave women important rights so that of property, beginning with the ways land was organized.
• They were not treated as property early on.
• Property relationships were defined by the law.
• tery was treated lightly because he was a double standard character because he was a wife and a husband.
• The strong times began to emphasize the importance of a woman's virgin legal emphasis on women's sexual fidelity and the tendency to ity at marriage and to require women to wear veils in public to treat women as part of a man's property.
• They should emphasize their modesty within this framework.
• It was possible to think of women as inferior and partly orna, so that when groups achieved a certain level of wealth, women were protected.

• In Chinese civilization, the pattern was very clear, and it varied from one civili in India to another in western Europe.
• Archalism was a response to economic and property conditions in the upper classes.
• Over time, artistic works in agricultural civilizations could deepen.

• Women cultural societies traced their descendants from mothers rather than themselves, and that raises important questions.
• For example, this was true of Jewish law.
• The culture of patriarchalism held that it was their job to these matrilineal societies to make women inferior to men and that they should obey and serve men.
• Law and culture were used by many societies to try to get minority of women to express themselves through religious tasks.
• Because of their importance in carrying to act independently of family structures, these boys were dictated.
• Some rights for women in marriage were protected by patriarchal laws, which were defined on the family name and economic activities.
• There were times when population excess threatened a family or theory.
• Female infants were sometimes killed as a means women as wel as men the right to divorce under certain conditions of population control.

• In patriarchal societies, women could wield informal power by their emotional hold over their husbands or sons.

• Formal slavery was instituted by Egyptians in the New Kingdom.

• The overall tone was striking, with Egypt more stable and cheerful than Mesopotamia, not only in its beliefs about gods and the afterlife, but in the colorful and lively pictures the Egyptians emphasized in their decorative art.
• Egyptian civilization was less marked by disruption than its Mesopotamian counterpart.

• Variations in geography, exposure to outside invasion and influence, and different beliefs made Egypt and Mesopotamia different.
• They did not like each other much despite the trade and war.
• Mesopotamian politics shifted more often over a substructure of regional city-states, whereas Egypt emphasized strong central authority.
• The literary element that Egyptian art lacked was embraced by Mesopotamian art.
• The great tombs and pyramids of ancient Egypt were motivated by the Egyptian concern for the afterlife, which Mesopotamians did not share.

• The economies were different.
• The environment of Mesopotamia was more difficult to manage than the Nile valley.
• The Mesopotamians gave a lot of attention to the merchant class and commercial law.
• Different ideas about women and women's costumes illustrated separate social systems.

• River valley civilizations Egypt and Mesopotamia shared important features.
• Both emphasized social stratification, with a noble, land-owning class on top and peasants and slaves at the bottom.
• The elite also had a powerful priestly group.
• Both civilizations emphasized astronomy and related mathematics and produced durable findings about units of time and measurement.

• Mesopotamia and Egypt changed slowly.
• Both societies had developed successful political and economic systems.
• When change came, it was usually brought by outside forces.

• Both civilizations left important heritages in their regions.

• Several smaller civilization centers were launched under the influence of Mesopotamia and Egypt, and some would produce important innovations of their own by 1000 b.c.e.

• The development of Egypt and Mesopotamia was influenced by their outreach.

• The results of the parts of northeastern Africa helped spread civilization to a wider zone, creating additional centers in Africa and the Middle East.

• It was ruled by Egypt for several years.

• From time to time, Egyptian garrisons were stationed.

• The emergence of Kush is shown in early artistic work.

• As Egypt declined, Kush was able to conquer its northern neighbor and rule it for several centuries.
• When the Assyrians invaded the Middle East, the Kushites began to push their frontiers farther south, gaining a more diverse African population and diminishing the Egyptian influence.

• The use of river extended the area that could be cultivated.
• The southern capital of the Kushite was derived from Egyptian hieroglyphics and has not yet been fully deciphered.
• The sig Kingdom was established from 800 b.c.e.

• Similar to Egypt's political organization, they emphasized a strong monarchy with elaborate ceremonies based on the belief that the king was a god.
• The focus of religion was on the lion god.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, the Kushite economic influence extended.
• They traded a lot with people in the west, which may have spread knowledge of ironmaking to the rest of Africa.

• The greatest period of the kingdom was from about 250 b.c.e.
• African goods, such as ivory, gold, and slaves, were brought to the Middle East and the Mediterranean by this time.
• Huge royal pyramids and an elaborate palace were built during those centuries, as well as fine pottery and jewelry.
• Meroe fell from about 100 c.e.
• The kingdom was located in the 300's.
• Prosperity and extensive political and economic activity did not end in this region, but in the formation of a kingdom in present-day Ethiopia.

• The Nile region learned a lot from Kush about political forms.
• There wasn't much imitation of being converted to Christianity.

• The formation of a separate society stretching below the eastern Sahara was an important step in setting the bases for technological and economic change in upper Africa.
• Although its achievements are less well known in later African development, they may have helped set a larger pro cess of civilization in motion.

• Smaller centers in the Middle East began to spring up after 1500 b.c.e.
• Although dependent on the larger Mesopotamian culture for many ideas, these centers added important new elements and extended the hold of civilization to the Asian coast of the Mediterranean.
• For several centuries, Egypt was ruled directly by the people from the rising kingdom of Kush, depicted in this Egyptian wall painting.

• Several smaller cultures influenced other parts of the world.

• The most important of the smaller Middle Eastern groups were the Hebrews, who gave the world one of its most influential religions.
• The Arabs are included in the population group of the Semitic people.
• They were influenced by Babylonians.
• They may have moved from Mesopotamia to the southeast corner of the Mediterranean around 1600 b.c.
• The first clear record of the Hebrews dates to 1100 b.c.e., but some may have moved into Egypt, where they were treated as subject people.
• The Jewish tradition says that in the 13th century b.c.e., God promised a homeland for the people of Palestine.
• This was the most important development in Jewish history.

• When other parts of the Middle East were disorganized, the Jewish state was small and weak.
• The Jews were divided into separate regional states as a result of a few Jewish kings unifying their people.
• Palestine was under foreign domination from 722 b.c.e.
• Jewish beliefs were elaborated by a series of dynamic prophets.

• The emphasis encouraged a focus on the father God.
• According to Mosaic tradition, the prophets encouraged Jews to abandon the worship of all other gods and to receive from God the Torah.
• All Jews were made holy by keeping this law as it made them a special people.
• From this point onward, Jews regarded themselves as a "chosen" people; a commu nity to bear witness to God's evolving will on earth.
• The development of monotheism had a lot to do with it.
• The concept of God became abstract and less human in the hands of Jewish people.
• The planning quality of the traditional gods of the Middle East and Egypt was vastly different than that of God.
• The gods in Mesopotamia were random and unpredictable, the Jewish god was orderly and just, and people could know what to expect if they followed God's rules.
• There was a link to ethical conduct and moral behavior.
• Religion for the Jews was more than just a set of rituals.
• Between the 9th and 2nd centuries b.c.e., God's laws were clearly spelled out in the Torah and other writings.
• The semitic tribe brings tribute to the pharaoh in this segment of the wall painting.

• When Jewish ideas were taken up by Christianity and Islam, Eastern and Mediterranean civilization would come later.
• One of the legacies of the twilight period between the first great civilizations and the new cultures was the basic concept.

• The impact of Jewish religion beyond the Jewish people was complex.
• All peoples would be led to God.

• God's special pact was with the Jews, and little premium was placed on missionary activity or converting others to the faith.
• This limitation helps explain the nature of the Jewish faith.
• It kept the Jewish people a minority in the Middle East, although the religion was spread more widely by conversions to Judaism.

• The civilization developed on the island of Crete.
• Minoan society copied Egyptian.

• The writing system came from Egypt.
• The political structures of Egypt and the Mesopotamian empire were similar to those of today.
• The establishment of the first civilization on the Greek mainland was the result of Minoan conquests.
• The famous conflict with Troy was one of the many wars conducted by the early Greek civilization in the Middle East.

• Civilizations in Crete and Greece were destroyed by a wave of invasions.
• The civilization that arose later to form classical Greece was built on the memories of the first civilized society in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

• Lebanon is home to another distinct society that grew up in the Middle East.

• The Phoenicians gained a lot of knowledge from their extensive trading shores of the eastern Mediterranean.
• Mediterranean was the descendant of the Phoenician alphabet.

• The Egyptian numbering system was upgraded by the Phoenicians.

• The Phoenicians were not vested in cultural achieve ments.
• The production of dyes for cloth is one area where they advanced manufacturing techniques.
• colonies were set up at several points along the Mediterranean.
• There were few competitors for influence in the Mediterranean by 1000 b.c.e., so the Minoan society and its Greek successor benefited from the weakness of Egypt.
• The Phoenicians established a major trading city on the coast of north Africa at Carthage, as well as lesser centers in Italy, Spain, and southern France.
• Phoenicia collapsed in the wake of the Assyrians invading the Middle East in the 6th century b.c.e., but several of the colonial cities, such as Carthage, survived.

• The civilization of the Middle East was disrupted by a series of invasions and migrations after 1200 b.c.e.
• The hunt was built on the early civilizations.

• Regional, political units and wealthy economies are what the civilizations were.
• There was a break in devel for a while.
• Mesopotamian and Egyptian beliefs were downplayed by the Europeans.

• New religious ideas were brought in by them.
• The river valley civilization phase in the Middle East was brought to a close by them.

• Even with new patterns, the accomplishments of the river valley civilizations would continue to have an impact.
• In the east and north Africa, the tools of civilization did not need to be reinvented.
• Basic mathematics and science were used in later societies.

• The cultural elements survived.
• The Jewish religion continued to grow and had a larger influence.
• The development of the seven- and eight-tone scales, as well as the invention of musical instruments like harps, drums, and flutes, would influence the music of Greece and other societies.
• The impact of Egyptian architecture was wide.

• The achievements of Egyptian societies were built on by later civilizations in the Mediterranean.
• The range of influence is debated by historians.
• The heritage of other mative civilization centers would be important in shaping major societies in Asia.

• Mesopotamian leaders thought about expansion.
• It was natural for traders to push civilization in the human experience, for example by dealing with merchants to the east or sending the rise of formal states.
• The two expeditions went into the Mediterranean and beyond.

• The Middle East's role as active agent in wider contact was clear, with contacts with regions beyond the core boundary of the civiliza being established.

• Neither civilization had massive outreach to a wider Egypt, but it was self-contained.
• Important trade and interaction along the Nile to the south was received more widely by each of them.
• The annual Ethiopia can be traced back to Sumerian trade contacts with India or through the Persian Gulf.
• Mediterra exchange of tons of Sumerian copper for Indian wheat was linked to trade and influence.
• Fine gemstone necklaces were provided by a few interactions.
• Most Egyptians, including the royal households.
• Indian teak was imported by Egyptians.
• The early Greeks learned about beverages from the desire to learn more.
• The Egyptians may have returned the favor by sharing with Egypt, which may have led to less of a role for the region in the production of wine.

• The forces that drove these contacts were both geographic and cultural.

• There are two studies of history by both Euro and African scholars.

• Most of our knowledge of the 3 comes from what types of evidence.