chapter 1

• The millions of years in which human beings appeared on the earth spread across the planet and advanced in organization and skills.
• Language, religion, art, technology, farming, village communities, and other basic features of human existence began in prehistoric times.

• The earliest development took place around 3000 b.c.

• Complex social and economic structures, effective and lasting governments, compelling religious beliefs, impressive scientific and technical achievements, and sophisticated literary and artistic styles were all found in the Middle East.

• From the first civilized peoples, civilization spread to less advanced ones.
• civilized peoples did not do all the work in this process.
• Less advanced people had to be wealthy to be worth the trouble of trading with or conquering civilized people.
• Less advanced peoples were often skilled and powerful enough to conquer their neighbors, but that also brought them under the influence of civilization.
• Less advanced peoples were so active in adopting civilized ways of life that they often brought with them something of their own.
• As civilization spread, it was also liable to change.

• There was an international civilized world with many local versions of Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilization.
• There was no reason for civilization to stop at the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

• The crisis was larger, more advanced, and more expansive than before.
• The Phoenicians explored and traded with the less advanced lands and peoples of the Mediterranean Sea.
• The Middle East was united under the rule of the Assyrians and Persians.
• Empire builders might fall as well as rise, but by 300 b.c.

• After 1200 b.c., the Jews became prominent in the civilized world, which led to the rise of monotheism.
• Their disasters in the power struggles of the era strengthened their belief in one God and in themselves as his Chosen People.
• Many of the features of later monotheistic religions were already part of the beliefs and practices of Judaism by 300 b.c.

• Humans are latecomers in relation to more ancient life forms and the age of the planet.
• The human-to-earth time relationship can be grasped through a drastic reduction in the time scale.
• The time that elapsed before the appearance of humans is twenty-three hours and fifty-eight minutes if we reduce the age of the earth to the period of our familiar twenty-four-hour day.

• As we look back through those thousands of centuries, an answer takes form.
• The creation of civilization was an extraordinary creation by one species, and it was not a chance.
• Human beings were able to take the first important steps towards civilization after completing a series of successful responses to the environment.

• The invention of writing was a key step.
• The dividing line between "historic" and "prehistoric" was established by written language.
• We will first look at the long prehistoric period, from the first appearance of human beings to the dawn of civilization.

• To discover the origins of humans, we need to identify them as a biological type.

• The brain of today's species is four times larger than that of the great apes.

• Criteria other than brain size may be used to classify and compare advanced biological types.
• The use of tools is a product of intelligence.
• Humans are clearly superior to apes in terms of conception, fashioning, and employing tools.
• The ability to make tools was important in the struggle for survival because humans are weak and often unfriendly in natural environments.
• Small in size (except for their brains), humans have used tools, as well as countless other devices such as weapons, vehicles, machinery, and buildings, as extensions of their mental and physical being--as ever more powerful levers for subduing competitors, constructing worlds of the imagination.
• The stock of devices at the disposal of the human race has increased over time thanks to this persistent inventiveness.
• In the social and economic realm, in government, politics, and warfare, and even in culture and the arts, have taken place a greater or lesser extent under the impact of this progress in technology.

• It is fitting that the past ages of human beings have been identified and classified according to the development of materials used for making tools, as determined by excavation of early human remains and the tools found alongside them.
• Standard methods of dating such remains include investigating the geological stratum in which they are found or subjecting them to laboratory tests that reveal their approximate age.

• The Old Stone (Paleolithic) Age is the earliest prehistoric period.
• The earliest human types used tools made of stone.
• Stone tools became more and more specialized for different tasks until 8000 b.c., when the birth of civilization in the middle east tasks began.

• Evidence shows that the earliest humanlike species was in East Africa.
• The eastern tip of Asia and Alaska were linked by a "land bridge" at that time to pioneer the human colonization of the Americas.

• The color of the skin and the shape of various external physical features form the basis of the present-day distinctions among whites, blacks, orientals, and other races.
• The total genetic variations among human populations are not represented by these racial differences.
• Whites from eastern Europe have more genes in common with blacks than with whites from western Europe.
• Compared to other species, the genetic variations among human beings are small, amounting to only minor differences within a single subspecies.

• They usually combine into small groups of twenty to thirty.
• These groups built shelters in caves or huts, with room for storing their tools and provisions.

• Observation of hunting and gathering societies that have survived into recent times suggests that there was a rough equality between males and females due to food-acquiring methods and child-rearing practices.
• Women would have been responsible for gathering plants and the technologies required to store them and prepare them for eating, and men would have been responsible for hunting as well as the manufacture of tools and weapons that were needed for killing and butchering animals.
• There would have been few and far between pregnancies.
• The images of rhinoceroses and a panther were painted about 25,000 years ago.
• People had their dwellings, but they would only have seen these pictures on special occasions.
• The painters did not hunt the beasts they depicted, but perhaps they saw them as powerful beings and the images were used in worship.
• The paintings must have been very important because of the layers of paint.

• Playing an equal part with men in ensuring the survival of the group, and with few children to take care of, women probably enjoyed much the same status and power within the hunting and gathering bands as men did.

• There is no way of knowing when and how this means of communication came into use.
• It was very useful to humans in hunting, fighting, and other cooperative enterprises.
• The creation of abstract ideas such as guardian spirits, magic, and life after death depended on language.

• The period after 8000 b.c.
• was named after it because of the change in techniques brought about by accelerated toolmaking skills.
• Human social organization and way of life were altered by the advances in toolmaking.
• The birth of civilization in the middle east shifted the patterns of existence of a large portion of the human species.
• The creation of agricultural villages and the growth of more organized community relations resulted from this giant step, which involved the cultivation of plants, the taming of animals, and the breeding of both so as to adapt them to human needs.
• Humans no longer lived in the wild as a result of the Agricultural Revolution.

• Increased security and stability was brought to individuals and groups by this change.
• With nature's help, it increased the supply of food and other commodities.
• There was a steep rise in actual and potential population.
• At the close of the Old Stone Age, there were probably no more than four million humans on the planet.

• The first agricultural revolution in the world began in the Middle East.
• It was conditioned by geological and climatic changes.
• The most recent ice sheet, which had covered much of Europe after 70,000 b.c., began to melt and withdraw around 10,000 b.c.
• The glaciers retreated more or less to their modern limits by 8000 b.c.
• Europe and North Africa were left cold and rainy.
• The inhabitants of places with fertile soil and a good water supply were able to cultivate crops.
• Similar opportunities have existed before.
• The combination of mental capacity, tools, and will allowed humans to make a successful response.

• Grasses with seeds flourished in the Middle East.
• The women of hunting and gathering bands would have collected and stored the grains and then watched the seeds fall to the ground and grow into plants.
• The seeds of the plants that grew the best would be put back into the soil, where they would be easier to harvest.
• The first deliberately bred grain crops were wheat and barley.
• Stone-bladed hoes were used to break the soil for seeding and flint-edged shears were used to cut the seeds from the stalks.

• Domestication of animals was linked to crop production.
• The men of hunting bands used wild dogs to help them find and kill prey.
• With the Agricultural Revolution, sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle became more important because they did not need to be hunted as a source of food and then as providers of wool, skins, and milk.
• Humans began to use the strength of large animals in agriculture and transportation at the end of Neolithic times.
• The first animals to be used in this way were oxen, which were castrated to make them un aggressive and responsive to training.

• Common cultural features, peaceful and warlike contacts, and trade by land and sea are what link civilized ways of life in these regions.

• Selecting and training animals were not enough.
• It was necessary to invent devices that would make their strength available for transporting people and goods, and for tilling the ground.
• The wheel, first used in the grassland on the borders of Europe and Asia, and the plow, which is first known to have existed among the villagers of Neolithic Europe, appeared around 3500 b.c.
• With the development of the plow, which turned over the soil for seeding faster and more thoroughly than hoes, cereals like wheat and barley became the main food source for larger populations.

• Along with farming and the domestication of animals there arose a whole range of new technologies to make the products of the fields and pastures fit for human use.

• The items of food, clothing, and equipment that we take for granted today were first used by the early farmers of the Middle.
• The Agricultural Revolution was one of the most important eras of technological advancement in human history because of how many complex operations are involved in turning wheat into bread or the wool of a sheep into a garment.

• Looking after crops and animals requires more or less permanent settlements within easy reach of field and pasture.

• The consequences of the Agricultural Revolution were far reaching.
• The village with two or three hundred inhabitants needed more control and organization than the earlier hunting packs of twenty to thirty people.

• The authority likely rested with the elders and village chiefs.
• The farmlands were likely to have been worked on.
• Since individual and community survival depended on closely coordinated efforts, the lives of the villagers would have been regulated by complex systems of tradition and custom.

• Changes in the division of labor between men and women may have accompanied the Agricultural Revolution.
• The reason for these changes was that agriculture could feed many more people than hunting and gathering and needed many more people as laborers; it also shortened the period of breast-feeding by providing foods that young children could eat, thereby causing women to become pregnant at shorter intervals than before.
• The amount of time and effort that women had to put into getting pregnant, giving birth, and rearing their children was far more than in earlier times, and this would have had the effect of limiting them to a new sphere of activity that had itself come into existence along with settled village life.

• Women focused on tasks that could be accomplished in and around the home and which could be combined with looking after children.
• Garden cultivating, the care of barnyard animals, all phases of food preparation from grain grinding to cooking, and the crafts of yarn spinning and cloth weaving were included.
• tending to field crops and herd animals, most kinds of skilled crafts, and trade, as well as politics, government, and war, were all done by men.
• The changes in the division of labor between women and men that began with the rise of industrial society in recent times made this pattern a basic fea ture of most societies.

• The division of labor was never easy.
• It could be broken down by emergencies, such as the death of a male or female member of a household.
• Cloth weaving became a male occupation as it could shift over time.
• The upperclass women of later civilized societies who became rulers of kingdoms and empires were always able to break through the barrier.

• The distinction between "men's work" and "women's work" continued, and perhaps because it placed the main responsibility for the survival of the household and for community affairs on men, it gave them power over women of a kind that they may not have had before.
• Values, customs, and laws relating to the relationships of women and men would vary greatly from place to place.
• The variations are usually within a framework of female dependence on males.

• Food production was related to religious beliefs and rituals.
• Humans used to respect animal spirits while hunting.
• The fruitful Great Mother brought forth the harvest as a farmer.
• Priests came into being to seek the favor of the Great Mother.
• Farmers and herders revered many spirits and deities.
• The sun and moon's movements provided a visible and regular calendar, and a calendar is indispensable for the accurate timing of plantings and harvests.
• The sun, through its rising and setting, and yearly movement across the various constellations, made it possible to reckon the days, seasons, and years; the moon, through its phases, enabled people to keep track of passing weeks and months.
• The early sky watchers noticed that the roughly twenty-nine days it takes the moon to go through its phases don't correspond to the roughly year it takes the sun to return to the same position in a particular constellation.
• The problem of adjusting the months so that they would stay in step with the seasons was the first scientific endeavor.

• The Neolithic peoples of Europe were the first to adapt wheat and barley to the cooler and wet conditions of Europe.
• In Africa, tropical Asia, and eventually also the Americas, separate agricultural revolutions based on local crops such as yams, rice, corn, and potatoes brought settled village life to the humans of those regions as well.

• In this way, the small agricultural community, with its farms, established routines, watchful priests, and dependence of women on men, became the typical way of life of the human race throughout much of the world.
• This way of life was the same for thousands of years even after many changes in farming methods, customs and traditions.
• It is still found in many parts of the world today.

• The rise of the first true civilizations was prepared by the Neolithic villages.
• This wasn't a simultaneous worldwide development.
• The prehistoric society of farmers and villagers has never evolved into an advanced civilization.
• The birth of civilization in the middle east seems to require a stimulating combination of advantages and difficulties, which are only encountered at certain times and places.
• There must be favorable conditions of soil and climate that allow primitive farming to be productive, but there must also be difficulties and problems in exploiting these conditions, which force people to develop new technical and cultural abilities.

• The most well-known ravines of civilization are the river valleys of the Middle East about 3500 b.c., where the earliest known civilizations arose; northern India and northern China about a thousand years later; and the plains, forests, and mountain valleys.
• The Western civilization of modern times is descended from the early civilizations of the Middle East: those of Mesopotamia and Egypt.

• Mesopotamia and Egypt emerged at the same time.
• They lasted down to the beginning of the Christian era, leaving a massive inheritance of cultural achievement, technical and scientific knowledge, and religious belief that has influenced many subsequent civilizations down to the present day.
• Archaeologists dug up ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt's cities and deciphered their writing systems and languages after they were lost for hundreds of years.

• The recorded history now goes back to the beginning of the earliest known civilizations.
• In the case of Mesopotamia, it is possible to reconstruct how civilization came about.

• The scene of this momentous development was a vast plain stretching between two great rivers of the Middle East.

• After the Agricultural Revolution began, Mesopotamia and the region surrounding it had many prosperous villages.
• The southernmost part of Mesopotamia, where the twin rivers ran close to each other before entering the gulf, was where the leap to civilization began.

• The land was flat, marshy, and open to disastrous floods.

• The summers were hot and humid.
• Local farmers relied on irrigation to live here.
• The villagers diverted the water from the river to their fields and palm groves because they were the most productive in the Middle East.
• Because of the size of the rivers, there weren't many places in Mesopotamia where the water could be used for irrigation.

• A change in the local climate about 3500 b.c.
• began the rise to civilization.
• Less water flowing through them made it easier to harness for irrigation.
• The effects were dramatic.
• Around 3000 b.c., the population of this area expanded tenfold.
• Many new villages were founded, some older villages grew into small towns, and a few of the towns grew still further.
• Technical innovation, cultural development, and more complex social organization came with growing population and wealth.

• As the landscape continued to dry out, the wealth and population stopped growing.
• The waters never retreated far enough to make city life impossible.
• New problems were responded to with new solutions.
• They built large-scale irrigation systems.
• They began intensive warfare for control of scarcer resources.
• Governments were able to plan and organize these undertakings.
• Growing up in southern Mesopotamia, a new kind of society that was more advanced than the older one, made it one of the world's first true civilizations.

• The people who created the new civilization in the southern part of Mesopotamia are known as the Sumerians.

• They seem to have arrived in southern Mesopotamia sometime after 3500 b.c., conquering or absorbing the earlier inhabitants.
• It is possible that they came from somewhere in central Asia, and that they were attracted to their new homeland by its growing wealth and fertility as the environment there began to change.
• Each of the growing cities in the region became the seat of government for a surrounding area of villages and countryside.
• The ruins of many of these cities have been excavated in recent times, with spectacular discoveries of buildings and works of art.
• The southern part of Mesopotamia was controlled by the Sumerians for over a thousand years.
• They shaped the basic ideas and institutions that would become the models for civilization throughout Mesopotamia and later, Europe.

• There was a need for social direction, regulation, and discipline as the population grew.
• Initially, this was done by a specialized priesthood.
• The power of the priests came from their status as servants of the gods and goddesses, as the Sumerians believed that the survival of their communities depended on them.
• The birth of civilization in the middle east new resources to the service of the gods and goddesses increased the power and wealth of the priests and priestesses as these communities became more prosperous and powerful.
• They were not limited to matters of ritual and belief.
• They were responsible for the creation of large temples to house the gods and goddesses, as well as the management of vast properties, the introduction of technological innovations, and the creation of writing.
• The process of social, technical, and cultural innovation was led by the priesthood.

• As the waters retreated and resources became scarcer, there was a new group of leaders who were based on military might rather than religious belief.
• As the landscape became more dry, the cities of Sumer became more attractive to gangs of bandits and wandering peoples, and the Sumerians fought among themselves over land claims and water rights.
• As the competition for resources grew more intense, so did the warfare between the cities and foreign peoples.
• The armies and soldiers appeared in each city.
• Military chiefs won power and rewards when they were defenders of their communities.
• By 2500 b.c., the military leaders had come to be called "kings," with power not only in war but also in the peacetime governance of the cities.
• Their relationship with the priests was one of partnership and competition.
• The kings built temples and took a leading part in temple rituals in order to make sure that the gods supported them.
• They built palaces for themselves and taxed the people.
• Palace and temple have been the dual houses of social power in almost every civilization.

• In this way, each major city of Sumer acquired its own government and armed forces, independent of others.

• The priests, kings, and the artisans and soldiers who they employed all depended on the farmers for their food.
• The farmland surrounding most cities was divided into two parts, one for the temple priests and another for the king.

• The tenant farmers who worked on one of these sections received a share of the crop for their labors, but the rest went to the other groups or into storehouses from which the community could draw in times of famine or siege.
• The farmers were prosperous enough to purchase pottery, textiles, and tools manufactured by skilled artisans; some became craftsmen themselves, employed in temples and palaces to produce tools, weapons, works of art, and other articles for use by the priests and rulers.
• In exchange for commodities that the city lacked, others turned to commerce, shipping surplus produce beyond the city.
• Some people who had fallen into heavy debt sold themselves and their children as payment for debt and labored as domestic servants for fixed periods of time.
• They shared this form of slavery with war captives.

• One of the main features that distinguishes civilized from primitive societies is the division of labor and the specialization of social functions.
• The system of ranks of prestige, authority, and power was developed out of this.
• The king, the high priests, and their principal officers and agents acted in the name of the city's goddess.
• The private men of wealth were the great landowners and merchants.
• The commoners were mostly farmers and a small number of free craftsmen.
• The slaves were considered to be the property of their masters.

• The roles of authority and prestige that women would fill in many subsequent civilized societies were given to them as Sumerian society grew more complex and sophisticated.
• The temple rituals of male gods were an important part of the religion.

• King's wives administered large estates, as well as wealthy female landowners.
• The priestesses and wealthy women occupied specialized niches within a general structure of female subordination.
• Unlike the priests of goddesses, the priestesses of Sumer did not have power outside the temples.
• With the development of writing, there was a new area of civilized life from which women seem to have been mostly excluded.

• Advances in social and political organization were accompanied by progress in technology.
• In ancient times, civilized societies had no monopoly on technical inventiveness, and the Sumerians benefited greatly from a series of epoch-making innovations, which changed the ways of life of many societies across Asia, Africa, and Europe from about 3500 b.
• The wheel and plow were included.
• Early written documents show that the use of Sumer was widespread by 3000 b.c.
• The development of metalworking changed the way tools and weapons are made.

• People living in the mountains of Mesopotamia learned to use loose pieces of copper that they found on the ground.
• They created a variety of useful articles by hammering the metal.
• The tools made of copper are soft and the supply of pure copper was limited.
• The first breakthrough was about 4,000 b.c.
• A further discovery was that copper and tin could be blended to make a stronger metal.
• New processes of working the metals also had to be devised, such as casting, in which molten metal is poured into molds to make articles of the desired shape.
• The problems were solved by 3000 b.c.

• The lands of western Asia, northern Africa, and eastern Europe entered the Bronze Age.
• The general adoption of iron tools and weapons after 1000 b.c.
• made bronze the king of metals.

• One of the world's first systems of writing was created by the Sumerians, who were also responsible for another great invention.
• The earliest written documents were from about 3100 b.c.
• The wealthy and powerful Sumerian priesthood would have been well aware of the need for direction and control, which is why writing was developed in response to them.

• Before the rise of civilization, Neolithic villagers used a simple record keeping system based on clay counters with drawings of objects, such as sheep or bales of cloth, scratched into them.
• The system of counters developed into something much more sophisticated in the Sumerian temples, which had more property to keep track of and a greater need for detailed records.

• Some of the symbols came to be used as ideograms, or symbols for ideas, such as "life", while others were adapted to become phonograms, which stood for the sounds of words or syllables.
• The new symbols were written on their own small counter.
• Instead, any desired combination of symbols was scratched with a piece of reed or stylus into a larger piece of clay.
• The dried tablet was used to record complicated transactions.

• The system outgrew its original purpose as a result of all the improvements.
• A writer could make a visual statement not just of business dealings but also of what was said.
• Writing can express any human thought or feeling.

• Cuneiform writing was hard to learn and clumsy.
• Professional sholders had to master hundreds of symbols and the delicate skill of imprinting them on moist clay to practice writ ing.
• The practice of writing was so valuable that other people in the Middle East borrowed the symbols and adapted them to their own languages.
• After the beginning of the Christian era, the main vehicle of communication in the Middle East fell out of use.

• The invention of writing resulted in the creation of written laws.
• The customary rules and practices of early Sumerian society were the first to appear.
• The Egyptian writing system, which dates from about the same time period as that of Sumer, is discussed in the book.

• By 2500 b.c., most city-states had begun to assemble codes of accumulated law.

• The universe and humanity were the focus of law and life in Sumer.
• Civic order, maintained by human authority, was seen as part of universal order.
• The God of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim faiths were not the only deities the Sumerians believed in.
• It's believed that powerful living beings, friendly and hostile, caused the workings of nature.
• The rise of civilization is thought to have started the two other characteristics of Sumerian religion.
• A dozen or so great gods and goddesses were considered to excel all the others in power and holiness, because they were considered to be humanlike in character and appearance.

• The surviving religious writings describe many of the Sumerian deities.
• The god of heaven was named An.
• The god of the waters was Enki, and the goddess of fertility was Inanna.
• The role of humans was to amuse and serve the gods and goddesses, who were mostly concerned with their own affairs.
• They hadtemples in certain cities.
• They were served by priests and priestesses who sought their favor through prayer, sacrifice and ritual.
• The will of the gods could be seen through signs that appeared in dreams, animals and the stars.
• The mystical arts, including astrology, made their appearance in the area.

• Humans could not expect rewards or punishments after death.
• The spirits of the dead were believed to descend to a dark Underworld, where they eventually passed into nothingness.
• The bodies of the dead were not prepared for a voyage beyond the grave.
• The view that life was brief, hard, and uncertain was derived from the unpleasant physical environment of Mesopotamia.
• The gloom of daily existence was reinforced by religious myths of the Creation and the Flood, each showing humanity at the mercy of divine powers.

• The surviv ing literature of the Sumerians shows a lot of humanity, even though passive "acceptance" was the main popular mood.
• Word of mouth was the main way in which fables, legends, psalms, and proverbs were passed down.
• The epic poems of these people were recorded on clay tablets and are the most impressive literary creations of these people.
• Many societies deal with heroes and their ambitions and struggles in this form of expression.
• The birth of civilization in the middle east in epic poetry is what made Gilgamesh a semidivine character who embodies the values and aspiration of the people of Sumer.
• He fights for his city-state, slays hostile humans and animals, and displays bravery, cunning, and a sense of fairness and mercy.
• The king's quest for immortality ends in failure, as it does for all people.

• The epics of Gilgamesh, along with the religious myths of the Sumerians, provided a rich cultural inheritance for later civilizations in the Middle East.
• The Greeks and Romans shared that inheritance through contact with Mesopotamia and the Syrians and Jews.

• The foundations of mathematics, science, and engineering were established by the Sumerians.
• These developments were responses to practical needs.
• The basic processes of multiplication, division, and the square and cube root were created by the Sumerians.
• They first divided the hour into sixty minutes, the minute into sixty seconds, and the circle into degrees.
• The formula for calculating the hypotenuse of a right triangle was derived by them.

• The time taken by the moon to go through all its phases is provided in a lunar calendar.
• An extra month was added every few years to keep the lunar months, since twelve months of this length did not add up to one solar year.
• The seven days of the week were named for heavenly bodies, and the most prominent sky objects were mapped by official astronomer.
• The twelve divisions of the zodiac are familiar to the followers of astrology.

• The Sumerians were ignorant of the physical basis of disease, so they didn't do much in the field of medicine.
• They believed that spirits entered the body to cause sickness.
• The doctor prescribed magic charms to get rid of the culprits.
• The progress was retarded by the severe penalties imposed on the surgeon in the event of failure.

• Religious and political needs were served by architecture and the arts.
• The raising of mighty temples to gain the favor of the gods or palaces to display the power of kings was a challenge that brought forth some spectacular monuments.
• The Tigris-Euphrates region does not have a durable stone.
• The most ambitious structures, such as hundred-room palaces for kings, were built of mudbrick, which is not a beautiful or durable material.
• The basic forms of the arch, vault, and dome were not exploited by the Romans as they would later.

• The records show that temples were the most distinguished.
• The main temple of a Sumerian city was built at the center of the city, with structures for priests and temple craftsmen surrounding it.
• It is usually con 3500 B.C.

• The first level of the ziggurat was made of mudbrick and spanned 200 by 300 feet.
• The higher level was used as a shrine for the deity.
• In Mexico and India, this type of mountain-temple has been around for a long time and may reflect similar beliefs about the relationship of the human and the divine.
• The sheer mass of the monument symbolizes the power and rank of the god in comparison with ordinary mortals, and the hundred-step ramps of the ziggurat suggest a sacrifice climb as the worshiper approaches the deity or perhaps the descent of the deity from heaven to be present among the people.

• The faithful believed in the divine personality of the statues in the Sumerian temples.
• The main subjects of the sculptors were deities, high priests, and kings.
• Because durable stone was hard to come by in Mesopotamia, sculptors often used sandstone or clay, adding shells, alabaster, and semiprecious stones for dramatic effect.
• The jewelry and metalwork was used in the temples and palaces.

• The large scale of the structure shows the skills, organization, and wealth of early Sumerian civilization.

• As a base for all later cultural growth in the Middle East, as well as that of neighboring territories to the east and west, Sumerian civilization is one of the most remarkable features.
• The patterns of work, class structure, law and government, religious and literary traditions, and art forms remained the same despite being absorbed by peoples from outside Mesopotamia.

• No one of the early Sumerian city-states was able to keep down the others.
• The balance was destroyed by conquerors from the Akkad area.
• They migrated from Arabia to the Akkad region.
• About 2350 b.c., one of their military chiefs, Sargon, began to attack the Sumerian cities.
• The rest of the Mesopotamian region was won by his ruthless campaigns.
• The first great military conqueror was sargon.
• After his empire fell within a century, he had to fight for control of the valley.
• It wasn't until about 1900 b.c.
• The Amorites, a tribe of Semitic nomads, had settled near the city-state of Babylon on the midcourse of the Euphrates River.

• The cities of Sumer were forced into submission by the Amorite kings.
• The greatest king of their line was Hammurabi, who built up an empire that included much of Mesopotamia by 1700 b.c.
• The Semitic tongue Akkadian became the language of the new empire of Babylonia and the Sumerian language was only used by priests and scholars.
• Marduk, the god of the city of Babylon, was portrayed as the Maker of All Things after the Creation myth was revised.
• Ba'al was the most important deity of Mesopotamia.

• The rules engraved on the black stone rep resent the will of the god coming through the person of a divinely sent king.
• The laws of Hammurabi are a culmination of legal concepts and practices that have existed in the valley for hundreds of years.
• The code provided a uniform standard of law for the entire empire of Babylonia.

• The Babylonian god Shamash gave the laws to Hammurabi.
• The Mesopotamian concept of kingship is that kings are servants of divine power and must therefore be honored and obeyed.

• Marriages were arranged by parents, with the contract specifying the price of the bride and the amount of her dowry.

• Husbands were masters of their children and could divorce their wives.
• If the court found her to be at fault, she was subject to death by drown.

• A sterile wife could find a concubine for her husband to have a child with, and the concubine and her offspring were accepted as legitimate members of the family.
• Records show that some women were allowed to engage in business even though they were not allowed to.

• Penalties for criminal acts were different from modern practices.
• Penalties took the form of physical acts against the person judged guilty.
• Depending on the nature of the crime, mastication was common.
• A son who hit his father might have his hand cut off, a snooper might have an eye put out, and a spy might have an eye put out.
• To fit the crime, capital offenses were punished in a number of ways.
• These methods included burning, hanging, crucifying, and impaling.
• King Hammurabi's forms of punishment were found in Europe until the 18th century.
• They have influenced Islamic law as well.

• After the death of Hammurabi, the high state of government, law, and economy achieved by the Babylonian empire fell apart.
• Less civilized people were attracted by the wealth of the valley.
• The non-Semitic Kassites conquered most of Babylonia by 1600 b.c.
• Mesopotamia was dominated by the Babylonian culture, language, and religion for four hundred years.

• The civilization that began at Sumer flourished despite the many changes of rulers and nations that followed the downfall of the Sumerian citystates in 2400 b.c.
• Mesopotamian civilization spread far and wide among less advanced peoples in the lands that encompassed the region to the north and west.
• The arrival of invaders from still farther north caused a lot of changes among those people.
• The newcomers were related to many different tribes and nations and spoke related languages.
• They brought with them a domestic animal that was unknown to civilized peoples, the horse, as well as a new weapon of war, the chariot, which carried warriors wielding bows, spears, or axes.
• Horse-drawn chariots were adopted by every civilized nation as the main striking force of their armies after the invaders were unbeatable.
• The newcomers settled down on the northern and western fringes of Mesopotamia, establishing organized kingdoms, adopting the institutions and culture of Mesopotamian civilization, and adapting Cuneiform writing to their various languages.

• Civilization had to adapt to a different environment in Asia Minor.
• The most valuable metals were copper, gold, and silver, though tin was rare.
• The birth of civilization in the middle east, as well as the profitable export routes to Mesopotamia, had been fought for by local peoples and invaders for centuries.

• The Hittite kings dominated almost all of Asia Minor at the height of their power.
• They ruled with the help of nobles who lived in mountaintop strongholds, but in time they became as effective as any Mesopotamian king.

• They built an army of charioteers and well-trained infantry numbering as many as thirty thousand men, and fought wars with Egypt to control Syria and Palestine.
• In the cities of the Hittite homeland, priests tended to gods and goddesses and practiced rituals that were partly Hittite and partly Mesopotamian.
• The Hittite tongue was used to translate Babylonian versions of the tales of Gilgamesh and other Mesopotamian heroes.
• By 1200 b.c., the Semitic tongue of Mesopotamia had become the international language of trade and diplomacy.
• The partners and rivals of the Hittite kings were the rulers of the other great civilization that had arisen at the same time as that of Mesopotamia.

• Like the twin valleys of Mesopotamia, the valley of the Nile River was a center of early civilization.
• The people of the area came from Arabia to the east, Nubia to the south, Libya to the west, and Palestine and Syria to the north.

• The Egyptians were both white and black, with the black in the south and the white in the north.
• They spoke an Afro-Asiatic tongue, one of a large group of languages spoken across northern Africa and the Middle East, which also includes the Semitic languages.

• The people of the Nile moved toward civilization in response to the influences that gave rise to the cities of Sumer 900 miles to the east.
• The development of the two civilizations was different.
• Egypt was a conservative and insulated society for three thousand years.
• For many centuries, foreign invasions were few and far between, and cultural influences from abroad were welcomed or kept at arm's length, as seemed best to the literate elite.
• For the first two thousand years of Egypt's existence, there was a continuity and stability that gave its inhabitants a sense of permanence, even perfect, in their institutions and way of life.
• Egyptian civilization was able to flourish even in its last thousand years of existence because of this sense of perfection.
• Western peoples are heir to both the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates.

• The cycle of labor and life depended on the flooding of the river.
• The mighty Nile, the longest river in the world, rises in central Africa and winds northward for thousands of miles before descending into the Egyptian desert.

• The "Two Lands" are Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt and are named after the ancient Egyptians.
• Lower Egypt is a triangular area of rich soil, while Upper Egypt is a long and narrow area.
• Egypt was a barren wasteland beyond those areas of fertile land.

• The gift of the Nile gave the Egyptian rulers resources needed for power, and the desert barriers made it difficult for foreign nations to cross in the past.
• Egypt saw an early consolidation of wealthy communities scattered along the river into the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt.
• The Two Lands were unified by a single king around 3100 b.c.
• The rulers of the country from then on are known as the pharaohs.
• The center of government for the entire country was built at Memphis, south of the Delta and close to the boundary between the Two Lands.

• Egyptian civilization was linked with a single state from the beginning.

• It was not easy to hold the Egyptian state together.
• The Egyptians were able to do it because of the wealth of the Nile and their desert defenses.
• It was possible because of their beliefs about the pharaoh, who they both obeyed as a man given power by the gods and worshiped as a god.

• Every pharaoh was identified with three of the country's deities throughout the three thousand years of Egyptian civilization.
• He was the son of the sun god, Re, who was also the king of the other gods and goddesses.
• He was the reincarnation of Horus, the falcon-headed ruler of the sky.
• He became one with Osiris after he died.
• During and after the pharaoh's reign, one or other mighty god was always present in the person of the pharaoh.

• The pharaoh had a unique position among the Egyptians because he was also a human being and responsible to the gods.
• Alone among humans, they believed, it was he who the gods and goddesses had appointed to conduct the rituals and sacrifice that won their favor and made them do their work.

• Thousands of priests and priestesses tended to the gods and goddesses in their shrines.
• The most trivial ritual act they could perform was done in the name of the pharaoh.

• The pharaoh had both power and responsibility.
• The Egyptians believed that the stability and harmony of their state was a part of the universe as a whole.

• The way the country was governed reflected these convictions.
• The cattle of god were tended to by the pharaoh as his personal property.
• His household staff closely supervised the economy, the military, and the priesthood.
• The pharaoh was able to delegate many of his functions.
• His high priests regulated religious matters while his chief deputy directed most royal affairs.

• The royal administrators and priests were made up of a kind of aristocracy.
• Minor officials, soldiers, artisans, and laborers were drawn from the commoner class, but most commoners toiled as sharecroppers on the pharaoh's land.
• Foreign trading expeditions, mining, and similar large enterprises were conducted by select companies of the royal household.
• Payments and exchanges were in kind.
• In Egypt, the urban centers were essentially administrative capitals or extensive temple compounds.

• Egyptian women had a high degree of freedom.
• Women could own property, bring lawsuits, and divorce their husbands if they were in a monog amous marriage.
• It's more often than it is as men--upper-class women learned to read and write.
• Harems with multiple wives as well as concubines were a feature of upper-class households, but there was always a principal wife who held high status and authority in order to avoid "diluting" the divine blood of the pharaoh.
• When there was no male heir to inherit the throne or when the heir was still a child, Egyptian princesses and queens were able to wield real power.

• This was within the framework of female subordination.
• Hatshepsut, the only woman to wield the full authority of a pharaoh, was depicted in monuments not as a queen but as a "king" because of her masculine features.

• The Egyptian political and social system was not always perfect.
• From time to time, Egypt was shaken by incompetent pharaohs, disputes over the succession, disloyal courtiers, and self-seeking officials.

• Over three thousand years, no less than thirty dynasties succeeded one another in power, because whole dynasties were cut down by failure to produce heirs or violent turnovers.
• There were times when the Egyptian state would collapse.
• The Egyptians thought that the state of affairs was profoundly abnormal.

• The rhythm of Egyptian history was interrupted by many briefer intervals of slippage and change.
• After several hundred years of state building, the power of the pharaohs reached its highest point in the Old Kingdom, which began in the 2nd century b.c.
• In total control of the country's resources and having few foreign enemies to contend with, the pharaohs used their power to build the most gigantic of Egyptian monuments, the pyramids.
• The weak pharaohs allowed power to pass to the local administrators, who thought their positions were hereditary.
• Egypt was in turmoil for more than a century.

• The world outside Egypt was changing, with the spread of Semitic tribes and the growth of many powerful states throughout the Middle East.
• The god-kings of Egypt faced a new challenge to uphold universal order against the forces of chaos that they called "treading on" foreign nations.
• The pharaohs of the Middle Kingdom poured the spoils of their conquests into the temples of the Nile.
• About 1800 b.c., internal conflict was renewed.
• The Middle Kingdom came to an end when the Semitic immigrant tribes known as the Hyksos were able to move into Lower Egypt.
• The hyksos adopted Egyptian culture and their chiefs ruled Lower Egypt as pharaohs.
• Egyptian pharaohs ruled Upper Egypt from Thebes to 1600 b.c.

• The rulers of Egypt acted as conquerors.
• The armies moved south into Nubia and fought with the Hittites of Asia Minor.
• The pharaohs took to breeding horses and riding chariots, just like their Hittite rivals, as part of their aggressive warfare and bid for military glory.
• The gods and goddesses of the Nile benefit from the wealth of the world.
• The birth of civilization in the middle east sive tombs hewn out of solid rock in the Valley of the Kings near Thebes was the birth of civilization in the New Kingdom.
• The power of the priests came to overshadow the power of the pharaohs because of their dedication to wealth to religion.
• The end of the New Kingdom was caused by this and the inability of the dynasty to produce heirs.

• Egypt was a victim of power struggles in the Middle East and northern Africa after the New Kingdom.
• It was dominated at different times by its western and southern neighbors and by the Assyrians of Mesopotamia.
• Egypt became a province of the universal empire of Persia in 525 b.c.
• It was ruled by the Greeks from 333 b.c.
• to 30 b.c., and finally by the Romans in 30 b.c.

• Egyptian civilization continued to grow.
• Libyan and Nubian rulers, who were influenced by Egyptian ways even in their homelands, ruled as genuine pharaohs and upheld the country's power and independence against enemies in the Middle East.
• It was wise for conquerors to rule Egypt in accordance with the country's traditional beliefs and customs.

• After 250 b.c., the last great temples of the Nile were built.

• Despite the ebb and flow of the nation's fortunes, the core institutions of Egypt remained essentially unchanged until the Roman Empire took over.
• Between 3100 and 30 b.c., the whole of Egypt shared in a single civilization.

• During historic times, the divine images often bore animal heads or bodies, and many of their deities were originally conceived in the form of animals.
• Sometimes the two were joined together with a third god to make a mighty deity.

• The custom of worshiping different deities in a single form came from the way in which Egypt came into being.
• It made sense to believe that the god or goddess of one community was the same as the god or goddess of another community because the Nile had many different communities.
• It did not seem odd to combine the Egyptian deities because they did not have strong individual "personalities" like the Greek gods and goddesses.

• The Egyptian belief in the pharaoh as god-king is expressed in this monument carved out of rock.
• The face of the sphinx is that of King Khafre, which is symbolic of the god Re.
• There is a pyramid to the left of the sphinx.
• The pyramid is to the right of the sphinx.

• Egyptian priests and rulers believed that there was a single god who created all the other deities and ruled over all the nations of the world.
• A pharaoh of the New Kingdom, who identified the supreme god with Aten, the shining disk of the sun, tried to abolish the worship of other leading deities.
• Even though he failed in the religious revolution, Egyptian polytheism still had an underlying urge to believe in monotheism.

• Over time, Egyptian religion became more ethical.
• The Egyptians did not believe in the expectations of the gods.
• The universal order was created by the divine beings and they continued to regulate it benevolently until the human race performed specified services.
• The religious teachings began to include ethical ideas.
• The major gods were associated with the ideals of truth and justice.

• The hope of immortality provided additional motivation for living a good life.
• It was thought that the pharaoh, being a god, was the only one who could live forever.
• The birth of civilization in the middle east who now held power independently of the pharaoh, came to expect that they would also live independently of him after death, thanks to the time of troubles at the end of the Old Kingdom.
• Under the powerful rulers of the Middle Kingdom, the belief in wider access to the afterlife continued to grow.

• By 1800 b.c., Egyptians believed that the soul of every dead person had to be examined by Osiris, the ruler of the Underworld.

• The soul denied doing anything bad.
• The soul's truthfulness was measured by weighing the character of the person.
• If the soul passed the test, it would be admitted to a garden paradise, but if it didn't, it would be thrown into the jaws of a monster.

• The religious beliefs of the world were influenced by the Egyptians' idea of a single divine power, their belief in rewards and punishments after death, and their expectation of immortality.
• They influenced ideas about life after death and the role of divine power in the universe.

• The Egyptians did not have a system of law like that of Mesopotamia.
• All law, right, and justice flowed from one source: the pharaoh.
• Royal decree and court decisions were recorded for judges to consult, but their principal guides were custom and the ruler's will.

• Even though the god-king could not be everywhere at once, judges and administrators were free to make their own decisions.
• Court procedures did not exist.
• If pharaohs did not deal fairly with their subjects, they would fear the judgement of Osiris.

• Around 3100 b.c., writing probably started in Egypt.

• The idea may have been borrowed.
• Egyptian writing produced several different scripts.

• The hieroglyphs were first created as part of carvings and paintings to benefit the pharaohs as god-kings of Egypt.
• Religion and magic were closely connected in the mind of the pharaohs.
• They believed that they could make a scene happen in a magical world if they depicted themselves and a god in it.

• Most of the characters were used to represent either whole words or separate sounds of speech.
• They could communicate anything they wanted.

• The shorthand versions of the charac ters were developed after the invention of the hieroglyphs.
• The "hieratic" script is a Priestly script.
• The hieratic script was used not only by priests, but also for general literary and administrative purposes.
• The "demotic" script came into use after the New Kingdom.
• Writing was a part of the daily life of civilization in Egypt as it was in Mesopotamia.

• The Egyptian script used hundreds of characters according to complex rules, despite the differences in speed of writing.
• Some of the hieroglyphs were used to develop the first alphabet.
• The invention was handed on to the Western peoples by the Phoenicians, so that the letters used to print the book are distant descendants of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

• The hieratic and demotic script were written on papyrus.
• The Egyptian method of writing scrolls from the stems of the water-grown papyrus plant was a major cultural breakthrough.
• The Mesopotamians used clay or stone as writing materials.

• The easy availability of writing materials encouraged the Egyptians to create a national literature.
• It was used for religious purposes, for example, tales about the gods and books of rituals and spells to aid the passage of the soul to the afterworld.
• The Egyptians produced no heroic masterpiece like the Sumerian epics.
• They excelled in the scope and quantity of their work.

• The areas of fields, the volumes of shapes, and the properties of pyramids are explained in surviving texts.
• The invention of a solar calendar by the Egyptians was a major contribution.

• They added five "free" days at the end of the year.
• The solution of keeping the months in step with the seasons was the most successful yet.
• Basic principles are still used in the calendar.
• The birth of civilization in the middle east "weeks" of ten days each and each day into twenty-four hours was divided into three c hapter 1.
• Sundials were invented to tell the hours of the day.
• They had no interest in a general science of the skies, despite recording the daily rising of certain stars.

• Some writers claim that the Egyptians were the originators of scientific medicine.
• They didn't know anything about germs or infections, and the "demonic" theory of sickness prevailed in Egypt as well.
• Along with magic formulas and exorcists were trained physicians and surgeons.
• The Egyptians wrote books about diseases and established medical libraries and schools.
• The Egyptian practice of mummification is believed to have contributed to the superiority of their medical techniques.
• The internal organs of the deceased were removed prior to the embalming process.

• The Egyptians were pioneers in technology.
• The growing wealth of their civilization led to the creation of ways to improve water transportation along the Nile.
• They began building larger boats by fastening wooden plank together to make the hull.
• To propel the heavy craft upstream by 3100 b.c.
• They were the first known people to harness the power of the wind to benefit themselves.
• The Egyptians adapted these sailboats to travel the open sea to the Mediterranean's eastern shoreline, which was a source of timber and other valuable products.
• It was the first time that the Mediterranean would be used to link the Middle East with less advanced peoples in the north and west.

• The fact that their god-king must have a stone tomb as a final resting place was the main inspiration.
• The structures that come to mind when we think of Egypt are the giant royal pyramids.
• The character of that ancient civilization is summed up by the masterpieces of practical engineering and social discipline.
• They were built by a group of people who believed that their ways would last forever.
• The four-sided, pointed design of a pyramid was the most stable and resistant structural form they could come up with.

• King Khufu built the largest of the pyramids.
• The marble on the sides of the pyramid was stripped away in the Middle Ages to make way for the mosques and palaces of Cairo.
• The Great Sphinx is a monument carved for another king.
• The enormous head of this man-beast, cut from the cliff of the valley wall, rises 66 feet from its base.

• The primary architectural con cern of Egyptian priests and worshipers were religious shrines.
• The "post-and-lintel" method supported Temple buildings with horizontal beams held up by columns.
• The method was used by Mesopotamian architects, but it was not practical for their structures, which were made of brick.
• The method was suitable for stone structures and Egyptian builders had easy access to huge supplies of stone.

• The temple of Amon was built around 1530 b.c.
• The largest religious building ever constructed covered a ground area of 1,220 feet by 340 feet and enclosed a space large enough to hold four Gothic cathedrals that were built more than 2,500 years later in Europe.
• The main hall's roof was made of 134 columns, each made of stone drums and 70 feet high.
• The huge proportions of Karnak make them feel insignificant.

• The aim of each kind of building was fulfilled by the work of sculptors and painters.
• They worked on the interiors of royal and noble tombs.
• Stone statues of the individual and members of the household were usually placed within the tomb because they were believed to contribute to the welfare of the soul of the dead.
• Scenes of Egyptian life were painted on the walls of the tomb.
• The way people and objects look to the eye was not naturalistic.
• The portraits had to be made according to the rules.

• The figures were placed so that they could be seen from the front.
• wigs and beards were usually treated in a stylized manner, with the left foot placed forward.

• We have learned a lot about Egyptian civilization from the tomb paintings.
• Artists were free to arrange their compositions as they thought best within the assigned space, and there was no attempt to provide perspective or depth in these pictures.
• Some scenes might be laid out on a line parallel to the base line of the picture frame and some on a line parallel to the base line.
• The king was always shown as the largest person in a frame, but individual figures could be drawn to different scales.

• The governing principle of Egyptian painting was that a representation must reflect established knowledge of the object and must be shown from an angle that best reveals that knowledge.
• The face is always shown in profile, except for the eye, which is shown as it appears frontally.

• The New Kingdom's wealth and power made this building large.
• The Hypostyle Hall is a gigantic porchlike structure leading from the temple's outer courtyard to a series of inner shrines where the actual worship took place.
• The priests were about to perform the rituals of the god.

• King Menkaure and his Queen were born in 2500 b.c.
• The queen has her arm around her husband in a typical pose in Egyptian statues of married couples.

• The king's pose, with arms at his sides, fists clenched, and left foot forward, was typical of Egyptian male statues for thousands of years.

• The purpose of these strict rules was to make sure that painting fulfilled the religious and magical purposes of Egyptian art.
• By depicting the various parts of a human body from different angles, the artist could make a person most fully present on a two-dimensional surface, even if the whole body was not seen, as it would be in real life.
• The Egyptian painters developed techniques of line, design, and color that were very effective.
• The artistic creations of the Egyptians, including jewelry, metal, and glass, became admired models for the ancient world.

• This was the resting place of an official during the New Kingdom who was important enough to lie in a cemetery near the tombs of the pharaohs.

• The smaller pictures at right are hieroglyphs.
• According to Egyptian belief, the picture and words would bring about what they depicted and described, so they were intended to remain dark and unread.

• The First Universal Empires: Assyria and Persia opened in the Middle East around 1200 b.c.
• From the eastern Mediterranean to the shores of the Indian Ocean, the brilliant civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia had spread.

• The international civilized world has gone through a crisis.
• It was weakened by internal conflicts, less advanced peoples attacked it from the north and south, and old established kingdoms were swept away.

• The civilized world recovered from the crisis, but it was different than before.
• The use of iron and alphabetic writing is one of the basic features of future civilizations.
• Trade and travel were controlled by networks of flourishing commercial city-states.
• The new skills and international contacts helped make it possible for conquering peoples to build universal empires that could rule all of the civilized world.

• There were times when one empire fell and another came to take its place.
• The idea was that it was normal for the world to have a single ruler.

• This was an idea that would last a long time.

• The invaders arrived by land and sea from the Aegean region and other parts of the Mediterranean.
• The invaders were perhaps displaced by overpopulation and war among the barbarian peoples of Europe.
• The newcomers were well armed and desperate, and from Asia Minor they spread havoc in Syria and Palestine.
• They attacked Egypt, where they were known as the "Sea Peoples".
• The Kassite kings of Mesopotamia were overthrown by civilized eastern neighbors who were not strong enough to replace them as rulers of that entire region.
• Two of the great powers of the civilized world were destroyed, and the third, Egypt, was weakened by rivalry between the pharaohs and the priests.

• In Mesopotamia, new groups of Semitic nomads appeared out of the desert, and took advantage of the collapse of Kassite rule to overrun much of the region.
• The decline and decay of civilization in Asia Minor was caused by the disruption of the trade in metals and the invasions of nomadic peoples from farther north.

• World-changing advances in technical skills were brought about by invasions and the disruption of trade.
• The nomadic warriors who attacked Asia Minor brought with them a new way of exploiting the speed and strength of the horse in battle: instead of using it to pull chariots, their archers and spearmen rode on its back.
• This was an advance that horrified civilized people until they adopted it themselves.

• The metalworkers in the devastated lands of Asia Minor were short of imported tin that they needed to make bronze, so they began to use iron.
• It was more plentiful than copper and tin, but it was hard to smelt and work, so it had never been popular.
• Forced by necessity, the bronzesmiths started to experiment with improved processes for smelting iron, as well as hardening and toughening it, until they ended with a metal that was superior to bronze and available in far larger quantities.
• Tools and weapons from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age were advanced out of the chaos wreaked by the Sea Peoples.

• In the Middle East, the Aramaean nomads adapted to the civilized ways of Mesopotamia.
• They established a network of prosperous city-states that dominated land trade in the Middle East after the collapse of the great powers.

• The Phoenicians lived by seaborne trade with Egypt for many centuries, and they seem to have been subject to the pharaohs.
• C hapter 1 is the birth of civilization in the middle east independent city-states, using the forests in the coastal mountains as the last word in two thousand years of progress in shipbuilding.

• The Phoenician ships had stout internal timber frameworks to strengthen their hull against wind and wave.
• The merchant vessels were escorted by purposebuilt seagoing warships that were propelled by sail but also by crews of oarsmen, sitting in two rows one above the other, to provide speed and maneuverability.
• In battle, they sank enemy vessels with bronze-tipped rams projecting from their bows.

• Phoenician merchants traveled throughout the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic in search of timber, metal, and slaves.

• The spread of civilization to the less advanced nations of Mediterranean Europe was led by the Phoenicians.

• Both the Aramaeans and the Phoeni cians were involved in the transmission of the new alphabet.
• The trast was developed to several hundred.
• The Middle developed the porary writing system as an improvement on Egyptian hieroglyphs.
• For centuries earlier.

• The Romans then the Greeks.
• All the alphabets used in the West are derived from the Greek version at the present time, whether Greek, Latin, or which has remained standard Cyrillic.

• The civilized world once again stretched from the Persian Gulf to the Aegean, and in many ways it was more advanced than it had been before the crisis.
• The time was ripe for new great powers to arise, who would not merely compete with each other as the Egyptians, Hittites, and Kassites had done, but each of which would seek to unite the civilized world under its rule.

• Their location exposed them to frequent attacks by nomadic tribes to the north and east as well as by civilized states to the south and west.
• As they defended their lands, they grew into tough soldiers.
• The trade routes between western Asia and the Mediterranean were to be controlled by the Assyrians.
• They began to think of the larger object of a universal empire as they gradually accomplished this aim.
• One of their rulers would say, "I am the legitimate king of the world."

• The rise of the universal empire began after 900 b.c.
• The Assyrians took over the southern portion of Asia Minor, as well as Syria, Phoenicia, and part of the Israelite territories in Palestine.
• The territories of southern Mesopotamia were added to their possessions by 700 b.c.

• During the turbulent period of conquests, insurrections, and frontier wars, the Assyrians faced the task of holding a widespread empire together.
• They were defeated by a rebellion of their old enemies, the Chaldeans, aided by the Medes.
• There is an attack from the east.
• The high-walled capital of Nineveh was burned in 612 b.c.
• The Assyrian nation sank into obscurity after most of their army and royal family were wiped out.

• The Assyrians were brought to their knees by the way they were ruled.
• Assyrian power began with armed force and terror.
• The first military state was Assyria.

• All adult males were subject to military service, commanders were rewarded with the best lands and the highest honors, and war was the main business of the kingdom.
• The Assyrians were the most advanced people in the arts of weaponry and military tactics.
• Their army was a mixed force that did not rely on chariots alone but on the combined striking power of chariots, light infantry, and massed heavy infantry.
• The Assyrians used the new horse-riding cavalry and the first battering rams and siege towers to break down the defenses of cities.

• As the nation's manpower was reduced by its wars, the imperial masters relied on drafted or hired troops from the subject peoples.

• Most of the Middle East was conquered by the rulers and armies of Assyria and Babylonia.
• The rise and fall of other world conquerors, the Persians and later the Greeks, were prepared by the collapse of both empires.

• They pursued a policy of deliberate terror to compensate.
• They boasted of their inhuman practices, which included skinning and killing bodies, torturing, impaling, burning alive, and displaying stacks of human skulls.
• The Assyrians were the most feared people of the ancient world because of the propaganda of the deed.
• They were destroyed by the storm of hatred they had aroused.

• The Assyrian kings succeeded in bringing together the largest collection of peoples ever united up to that time.
• The first truly imperial government was this one.
• Assyrian nobles were appointed as governors of conquered lands.
• In return for regular payments, some of the "tribute states" were allowed to keep their own rulers.

• Defenders are impaled on tall stakes behind the siege tower.
• The invention of the cannon continued to be used by armies for two thousand years.

• The Assyrians made few original contributions.

• As heirs to the ancient Mesopotamian civilization, they played a vital role in preserving it and sending it to future generations.
• The Assyrian ruler Assurbanirpal established the world's first great library about 650 b.c.

• When it was excavated in the 19th century a.d., it contained twenty thousand tablets with texts in the Sumerian and Akkadian languages, and provided the key to present-day knowledge of Mesopotamian writing, history, and culture.

• The people of the Middle East returned to their own ways after the fall of Assyria.
• The rebirth of industry and the arts was stimulated by the liberation of Babylonia.
• The king of the Old Testament, Nebuchadnezzar II, reached out to destroy the kingdom of Judah in Palestine.
• The power of the "Neo-Babylonian empire" was short-lived and fell to the Persians.

• The peoples of the east of Mesopotamia were related to the peoples of the west of Europe.

• The natural environment was very different from the Mesopotamian heartland.
• The western part of a c hapter 1 was formed by media and Persia.

• The region was rich in metals and farmers were able to exploit underground water sources.
• As the wealth and population of the Medes and Persians grew, the rulers became sophisticated enough to take an interest in Mesopotamian civilization and intervene in the power politics of their western neighbors.

• After the Assyrians were defeated, the Persian king, Cyrus, moved to take over all of the surrounding lands.
• He defeated the king of the Medes.
• Cyrus sought the support of the Medes for his further ambitions.
• The Greeks used the names "Persians" or "Medes" to describe their powerful eastern neighbors.
• Cyrus showed that he meant to reject the Assyrian way of taking power.
• He sought to win over his opponents by treating them fairly.
• Persian rule was quickly accepted.
• Cyrus was in control of the Middle East within twenty years after his victory over the Medes.

• The Assyrian effort was similar to the second attempt at political unification.
• The style of monarchy practiced in Mesopotamia for hundreds of years was the same as it was in the Persian absolute ruler.

• He was identified with divine will and justice, but not as a god like the Egyptian pharaohs.
• He was dressed in purple cloth and was sitting on a gold and blue throne.
• Ordinary mortals were required to lie face down before him, and his royal word was an unquestioned command.

• The Persian army and civil servants were ready to take over the throne.
• The military forces were similar to those of the Assyrians in their organization and weaponry.

• Large supporting forces, including fleets of warships, were drawn from the conquered populations.
• The moderate nature of Persian rule made these forces loyal.
• The empire rarely engaged in offensive wars and insurrections by the conquered peoples.
• The state did not develop a militaristic character.
• The monarchs preferred to use their resources on public buildings, roads, and services.
• Unlike the Assyrian rulers, they advertised their peaceful accomplishments.

• The Persian Empire was larger than any other empire in the Middle East.
• From their homeland on the border between the Middle East and the rest of Asia, the Persians moved west to conquer most of the civilized world that had grown up in the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean.
• In central and southern Asia, they moved north and east.

• The satrap ruled with a light hand under the guiding principles of restraint and tolerance after the king placed a nobleman in charge of each province.
• Local customs, language, and religion were left alone as taxes and military supplies were rigorously collected.
• The satraps were supervised by the "king's eyes," who were appointed by the monarchs as a further measure of administrative control.

• An excellent road network made it easier for the "king's eyes" to work.

• The Jews broke away from the polytheism of the peoples of the Middle East in religion.
• The ancient beliefs and superstitions of the Persian people were transformed into a faith in one God, the author of good and evil, by the religious thinker Zoroaster.
• The world was the scene of two opposing forces: Ahura Mazda, god of goodness and light, and Angra Mainyu, demon of evil and darkness.
• The birth of civilization in the middle east would be raised to enjoy eternal bliss at the end of time.
• The Savior would appear at the last days to prepare the way for the Final Judgment.
• The Avesta, the Persian holy book, contained all this.

• Zoroastrianism condemned pride, lust, and avarice and praised truthfulness, love, and the "Golden Rule" (treat others as you would want them to treat you).
• Conduct during life determines whether a person's soul goes to heaven or hell.
• All people would be saved by Ahura Mazda's goodness, unlike the later Christian damnation.

• The religion of Zoro aster was spread to all the peoples of the Middle East after the conquest of the Persians in the sixth century b.c.
• It had an influence on the Jews for a long time.

• Babylonians learned how to calculate and predict eclipses of the moon after being encouraged by the Persians to advance their knowledge of the heavens.
• Persian art and architecture were mostly based on existing styles and techniques.
• The most magnificent example was the royal palace at Persepolis, which was a combination of elements from Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, and Greece.
• For purposes of administration and government, the Persians used the Aramaic language and alphabet, which was standard for commerce throughout the Middle East.
• The Persian development of coinage was good for trade.
• Payment for goods used to be made in kind or with bars of precious metal.
• Coins were invented by the Lydians of Asia Minor in the seventh century B.C.

• The Persian Empire lasted for two centuries, but fell in its turn due to some of the same reasons that later empires, like that of Rome, also fell.
• Human aggressiveness and corruption were some of the issues it had to contend with.
• It was weakened by internal conflicts among the Persians.
• Alexander the Great brought down the failing empire in a brilliant military campaign in 330 b.c.

• The standard for a successful world state was set by the Persian Empire.
• The civilized Middle East of Persia's time had grown into an economic and cultural unit, and the empire's subjects showed a longing for unity, peace, and the freedom of movement and ideas that unity permits.
• The Persian Empire allowed the subject peoples to maintain their own identities.
• The Persian Empire was the culmination of three thousand years of civilization in the Middle East.

• The rise of a new kind of religious in 2000 B.C.
• was the most lasting change that took place in the new world of the Middle East after 1200 b.c.

• The new belief involved more than the question of how many divine beings were to be worshiped.
• The one God was thought of as eternal, almighty, all-knowing, the creator of the whole universe, infinitely good, pure spirit yet somehow masculine.

• He allowed an evil power to gain control over the human race.
• He would save those humans who obeyed him, but at the end of the day, he would send a mighty Savior to destroy the evil power and all who served it.

• Humans must accept the truth that the gods and goddesses were evil beings and not the one God.
• Even though God was beyond human knowledge and understanding, he spoke to them through angels, prophets, and authoritative books, and religious leaders who acted as guides to understanding and obeying his will.

• It took time for the ideas to come together and form a single belief, as several Middle Eastern peoples were involved in developing them.
• After his death, the Egyptian pharaoh had worshiped a single divine power that ruled the whole universe, though his innovations had been rejected.
• The Persians saw the world as a place of struggle between good and evil.
• The features of monotheism were developed from the beliefs and practices of the Jews and their experiences of victory and defeat in the Middle East.

• Semitic emigrants from Egypt were among the settlers, according to their traditions, which said that they had already existed for many generations.
• According to these traditions, they originated in Mesopotamia.
• They went to Palestine as a small nomadic clan headed by their forefather, Abraham.
• After famine forced them to move to Egypt, they grew to be many people.
• One of the pharaohs had begun to distrust and oppress them, but a great prophet had arisen to lead them out of Egypt, thus allowing them to return to Palestine.

• The emigrant group from Egypt were identified by most of the other settlers in Palestine.
• The group's name was adopted as the "children of Israel," the "Israelites," or just "Israel."
• They began to worship the group's god.

• The beliefs of the people of Israel may have been influenced by Egyptian and Mesopotamian ideas, but it's clear that they were unique among the gods and goddesses of the Middle East.
• Many Egyptian deities were hidden, veiling their true being in mystery, and only Yahweh was so deeply hidden that he could not even be depicted.
• The name Israel was taken by Abraham's grandson Jacob, according to tradition.
• It was the most common name for the people who claimed descent from him.
• The name "Jews" came into use after that date.
• Today, the name "Hebrew" is used to refer to the people of Israel, who were around 500 b.c.

• Only Yahweh's requirements were so detailed and specific that they came to be the status of laws.

• It wasn't unusual for Mesopotamian peoples to have special loyalty to a god or goddess who was the rival or enemy of other deities.
• He forbade his people to worship other deities because he wasjealous.
• While the deities of all peoples promised benefits in return for obeying, only Yahweh had bound himself by specific covenants with Abraham, Moses, and others, promising the Israelites favor and protection as his Chosen People so long as they gave him their exclusive allegiance.

• Many or most of the early Israelites did not give him the exclusive allegiance that he wanted.
• David and Solomon combined the worship of Yahweh with that of the traditional gods and goddesses of Palestine.
• After the settlement of Israel in Palestine about 1200 b.c., his chosen messengersstruggled for the people's soul against the gods and goddesses.
• In the course of this struggle, he showed himself to be even more grand than before.

• Instead of forbidding his people to worship other gods and goddesses, he declared that they were "abominable beings" and that no real deity existed beside himself.
• He was the creator and ruler of the universe and not just the powerful protector of Israel.
• Jewish monotheism began to take shape in this way.

• The triumph of the prophets was not only due to the new monotheis tic belief in Yahweh, but also to the disasters of Israel from 1200 b.c.

• Like other Middle Eastern peoples, the Israelites became more advanced.
• They used the new alphabetic writing to record their traditions about their dealings with Yahweh in the past and his guidance in the present.
• They used iron weapons to fight the Philistines, who had moved into Palestine about 1200 b.c., from somewhere in the Mediterranean.
• The prophets began to call for justice between rich and poor as the society grew more complex.

• Under the rule of David and Solomon, the Israelites experienced military triumph and worldly power.
• David extended his kingdom until it included most of the eastern coast of the Mediterranean and ruled his territories from Jerusalem.
• Solomon built a temple on Mount Zion that was a shrine to a leading Middle Eastern deity.
• The Ark of the Covenant stood in the middle of the Temple, instead of being a sacred image.

• The people of the Middle East were more successful in power struggles than the people of Israel.
• Solomon's kingdom split into two after his death, one in the north and the other in the south, because of internal discontents and rivalries.
• The birth of civilization in the middle east dom of Israel was destroyed in 722 b.c.
• by the Assyrians.
• The Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed in 587 after the Babylonians invaded Judah.

• Many of the people of the Middle East merged with the people of the Israelites, leading to the creation of a large community centered on the city of Babylon.
• The kings of Israel and Judah were friendly to the recent pharaohs of Egypt.
• In this way, the Israelites became scattered, trying to worship and preserve their identity as a minority in foreign nations.

• For the first time, the worship of the exclusive Israelite religion was made monotheistic by the experience of defeat and exile.
• The disaster proved that the power of the gods and goddesses of other nations was not proof that Yahweh was weaker than them.
• They were being punished by the almighty God for breaking their covenant with him because they had not been overcome by foreign deities.
• The Assyrians and Babylonians were just his instruments.
• The land that God had given the Israelites would be restored once they turned their hearts back to him.

• The largest and most tolerant universal empire was established when the Persians overthrew the Chaldeans.
• They allowed the people of Israel to return to Palestine.
• The Ark of the Covenant had not survived the troubles of the city of David, so that the "Holy of Holies" now consisted of an empty place.

• The disaster brought about permanent changes to the way of life of the Jews.
• From which they took their new name, they had no more than Judah.
• They were ruled by the high priests of the Temple who were appointed by the Persian rulers.
• Many Jews did not return from Babylonia and many did not return from Egypt.
• They gave up their Hebrew tongue in favor of the internationally spoken Aramaic language and eventually came to speak Greek.
• The Jews were held together by religion, not by a common language or territory.

• The Jews were more fervent in their worship of the one God.
• They studied the writings about God's dealings with his people, which by this time had grown into a large mass of documents recording his laws, his utterances through his prophets, and his raising up and casting down of rulers and nations.
• The Old Testament of the Christian Bible was re-written while the Jews lived under Persian rule.

• The first five books of the Bible contained the laws of righteousness and ritual purity, which the Jews tried to follow more diligently than before.
• For the first time, the Jews took to holding themselves apart from non-Jews who did not follow the Law, such as intermarry or eat with them.
• It was possible for a Gentile to join the house of Israel through circumcision and obeying the Law because the Jews were more religious than a national group.

• Since the worship of God with offerings and sacrifice now takes place only in the Temple, everyday Jewish religious practice came to consist of study of the holy writings and prayer to God.
• It was customary to meet for these purposes on the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week, which God had commanded to be holy.
• The Greek word for "meeting-houses" refers to the buildings where the Jews met for prayer and study.
• Men who were respected in their communities for obeying and understanding the law grew up in an elite group of prayer and study leaders.
• The religious guides replaced the prophets and became the leaders of the Jews.

• The experience of exile and return led to the development of new beliefs in the Jewish people that are included in the Hebrew Bible.
• The answer to this question was an unsearchable mystery according to some Jews.
• The sufferings of the righteous were not the fault of God, but of an evil power called the Adversary, which was influenced by the beliefs of the world-conquering Persians.
• The righteous would rise from the dead in their own bodies to enjoy blessedness, because God would send his "Anointed One" to triumph over the forces of evil.

• Many present-day features of Judaism as a way of life came into ex istence in Persian times.
• Future monotheistic religions were expected to have some of these.
• The main religious practices included an authoritative holy book, prayer and study as the main religious practices, ministers of religion who acted as leaders of the community and interpreters of the holy book, religious buildings that were meeting places for prayer and study rather than the "residences" of gods and goddesses,

• In a world where most people still worship the traditional gods and goddesses, these are the beliefs of a scattered minority.
• After 1200 b.c., monotheism was one of the two longest lasting legacies from the changing world of the Middle East.
• The Greeks are a European barbarian people living on the northwestern edge of the civilized world.

• The World History Resources Center at http://history.wadsworth.com/west_civ/ offers a variety of tools to help you succeed in this course.