Second+Generation+Civilizations+&+State+Building

=Hist 151 Unit 2: The Middle East Beyond Mesopotamia=

Following the rise of civilization in Mesopotamia, the level of interaction among cities and states in the Middle East between 3000 and 300 BCE increased due to the geopolitical needs of big empires existing so close together. In this period, Akkadian, the spoken language of the first real empire in the world, created by Sargon the Great, was the most common language spoken between cultures for political and trade purposes. The writing form used for contracts, treaties, and other documents was Cuneiform, the pictographic script developed by the Sumerians, but adaptable to many languages. The existence of a common language encouraged growth in what we would call international trade, in diplomatic relations, and in warfare. Religious ideas, goods, and people crossed borders, and increasingly shared cultures and history.

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Geopolitics
During the 3rd Millenium BC, the political context in the Middle East consisted mostly of small states concerned about local conflicts. Among them was [|Akkad] – the first inter-state empire in human history. Created by [|Sargon the Great], this Empire unified most of the cities of Sumer and some from the area of the central Tigris and Euphrates valleys. Sargon's military genius combined with a flare for organization, and he was able to use the writing and political ideas of the Sumerians as well. It was the Akkadian Empire which finally unified the constantly warring city states of Sumer, and began to concentrate the wealth of their surplus and trade into a major regional civilization. Later the [|Kassites] formed an interstate empire, and by 1500 BC controlled Mesopotamia from Babylon for 400 years. No Kassite documents exist, however, suggesting a loss of literacy at some point during their rise. By the end of the Kassite Empire, in about 1100 BCE, Sumerian City-states such as Uruk, Lagash, and Nippur were able to reclaim their independence, and built a unified Sumerian political structure based not on the older theocratic system, but on wealth, landholding, and secular power. These city-states regained some of their former importance before they, too, fell to the control of the increasingly large empires of the region. During the second Millenium BC, there was a growth of much larger empires which were concerned with regional trade and conflict. These included the Hittite Empire, the Myceneans and Minoans, the Egyptian Empire, and Assyria. As a part of this trend, we can see the spread of Mesopotamian (Sumerian) culture and language. Akkadian became the language of diplomacy, and Cuneiform was the writing system of choice. 

The Hittites
The [|Hittites] were not of Middle Eastern origin. They were herders of Indo-European origin, probably from the area around the Black Sea, or between the Black and Caspian seas, who migrated into the Anatolian Peninsula (the area we now call Turkey) in about 2000 BCE. They were able to create an empire through the use of technologies new to the region, including bronze armor, horse-drawn chariots, and compound bows. By 1595, they had captured Babylon, and begun raiding in Syria. During the Middle Kingdom period in Egypt, Pharaoh Ramses II was able to recapture Palestine from the Hittites, but following that, the Hittites and Egyptians shared control of the region until 1200 BCE, when pressure from the sea peoples and attacks by the Assyrians eventually led it to collapse. The Hittites created a culture that was an interesting blend of their own traditions and a number of older Middle Eastern cultures. For example, they used Cuneiform for writing (especially for diplomatic communications and inter-regional trade contracts), as well as their own distinct pictographic script. They merged the mythology of west Asia with their own religious beliefs. They used Hammurabi's law, and others from the Mesopotamians, as models for their own law, but made them less severe, and concentrated on restitution and compensation for wrongs done, rather than retaliation. The Hittites also had control of the rich mineral deposits in Anatolia, and this provided them with iron and bronze for their weapons, as well as prime resources for trade with other cultures. This meant that the Hittites were both militarily strong, and economically strong, with a deep interest in trade. Their trading and conquering activities led them to be important disseminators of West Asian ideas, languages, and technologies, thus contributing to the cultural mix, and growth in culture, technology, and trade, of the Middle East all the way through 1200 BCE.

New Kingdom-Era Egypt
After Hyksos warlords conquered southern **Egypt** around 1786 BCE, events led the factionalized leaders of northern Egypt in Thebes to successfully unify Egyptians and retake the area controlled by the Hyksos. This reconquest was finished in 1532 BCE, and marks the beginning of what is called the **New Kingdom Period** there. Following the reconquest of Egyptian lands, much of Egypt's newfound power came from the conquest and control of the gold- and timber-rich areas of [|Sudan and Nubia], to the south. This wealth in gold and building material fueled an economic as well as military resurgence. Even beginning as early as the first New Kingdom Pharaoh, Ahmose, Egypt changed from its earlier isolationist policies, and by 1490 BCE had created a large empire stretching from the Sudan into Palestine and Syria. After the Reign of Thutmose III, Egypt was the foremost power in West Asia, with an empire that was prosperous, but also brought with it cultural imports that Egyptians tried, but failed, to reject. However, like the Hittites, Egypt was struck hard by the pressure of the sea peoples – invaders from the lands north of Egypt in the Mediterranean whose migration, possibly under pressure from a sudden cold shift in temperatures and the onset of a short ice age in the North, led to Egyptian loss of Palestine, and economic chaos throughout the Middle East. Eventually unable to defend themselves from other threats in the region, the Egyptians were conquered in waves by Libyans, Nubians, Assyrians, Persians, Alexander the Great's Greeks, and finally the Romans in 30 BCE. To watch a video on Ancient Egypt's position in this 2nd Millennium BC international order, click here. Then input your UH Username and password. You should then be able to watch the video called "Egypt's Golden Empire: Pharaohs of the Sun". 

The Fall of Empires
Attacks by the [|sea peoples] and desert nomads led to the collapse of the Egyptian and Hittite empires and the creation of a political vacuum in west Asia. As a consequence, several small independent states emerged in the Syria-Palestine region between 1200 and 750 BCE. This region had been home to the Canaanites since the third millennium. The most significant of the new states were those founded by the Phoenicians and the Hebrews. 

Phoenecians
The **Phoenicians** were descendants of the Canaanites whose homeland was a series of small independent city-states along the narrow coastal region of modern Lebanon. Tyre, Sidon, and Byblos were some of the most important, and powerful, of these Phoenician city-states, and they maintained a kind of federated status for defense and to help dominate the trade in the area (Eastern Mediterranean). One of their key trading techniques was to found towns and cities that functioned as distribution centers, to which they could bring cargoes from various ports, trans-ship them, and send them off to other varied ports in a series of wheel-and-spokes systems that resemble in many ways modern distribution systems of companies like Federal Express. Among those distribution-center cities founded by the Phoenicians were Cyprus, Sicily, and Carthage (founded in 814 BCE). This strategy made the Phoenicians the foremost traders in the region. Even after being conquered by the Assyrians in the eighth century BCE, the Phoenicians were able to exploit the need of the Assyrians for trade to secure a special position in the empire that allowed them to maintain their dominance of the Mediterranean trade. In fact, their cooperation with the Assyrians, which helped the Assyrian empire maintain its economic and military dominance, and likewise helped the Phoenicians continue their wealth-building trade eventually led the Assyrians to grant trade privileges in Western Asian inland markets as well. In dealing with so many different cultures and languages, the Phoenicians also eventually worked out an innovative system of writing that used a series of shapes, each representing a sound rather than a picture, that could be combined to approximate the sounds of speech, thus creating the forerunner of the Greek and Latin Alphabets, a derivation of which we use today. It is difficult to overstate the importance of the Phoenicians in the development of trade, culture, and language in the ancient world.

Unit 2 The Middle East After Mesopotamia

==Hebrews== The **Hebrews** were not among the powerful or politically important states in the Middle East during the second-millennium. However, the religion that they developed had, and continues to have, major impact on world history. The Hebrew Bible, known to Christians as the Old Testament, is itself a history, and one of the foundational documents of European and Islamic cultures. As the Hebrew Bible says, sometime after 1700 BCE, Abraham, a [|Hennotheist], left the city of Ur, in ancient Sumeria, and founded a tribe of pastoral herders who settled in the area of Canaan. Long drought led to famine, though, and eventually they left this area and migrated to Egypt, where they continued their pastoral traditions for several centuries until they were eventually enslaved by the Egyptians. During the 13th Century, Moses, a Hebrew prophet, was able to secure the release of a group of Hebrew slaves, and they migrated to the Sinai peninsula, and there they accepted a covenant in which they worshipped only one god, whom they knew as Yahweh, and who is said to have given a set of laws to Moses. This covenant guaranteed Yahweh's protection of the Hebrews as long as they obeyed the Mosaic law. Over the following two hundred years the Hebrews migrated in small tribal groups into Canaan, where they took control of the territory from the native Canaanites through warfare. They were also forced to defend themselves against Philistine conquest during this period. The needs of defense eventually forced the Hebrew tribes (known as the twelve tribes) to accept unification into a formal state, the Kingdom of Israel, with a king at its head, and despite his misgivings, the Hebrew prophet Samuel, in around 1025 BCE, annointed Saul as the first king. He was followed in 1000-961 BCE by King David, and David was followed by Solomon, who ruled from 961-922 BCE. However, political disagreements over the degree of political autonomy that could be exercised by the tribes as opposed to the state, led ten of the twelve tribes to secede from the Kingdom of Israel and set up a separate kingdom of Israel in the northern part of the territory occupied by the Hebrews. The remaining two tribes, who continued to control Jerusalem in the south founded the Kingdom of Judah. Thus divided, the power of the Hebrews was also limited through political disagreements, and the northern Kingdom of Israel was conquered, and its occupants forcibly resettled, by the Assyrians in 721 BCE. Judah survived the Assyrian threat, however, and remained an independent state in the region until the Neo-Babylonian Empire crushed it, occupied Jerusalem, destroyed the central temple, and forced the resettlement of many of the Judeans to Babylon as skilled workers and slaves. In 538 BCE, after conquering the Neo-Babylonian Empire, Persian Emperor Cyrus the Great allowed the captive Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild their temple, traditions, and society. After the conquest of the Persians by Alexander the Great, the Jews were made subjects of the Greek Seleucid Empire, then, after a short period of independence between 167-63 BCE, they were annexed into the Roman Empire. ==Assyrian Empire== The **Assyrians** first appeared in history sometime in the third millennium BCE. At this point, they were just one of many societies in the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. However, the area where they settled happened to be very difficult to defend, and during the period of constant warfare in Mesopotamia, the Assyrians apparently were required to create successful methods of defense. Out of this came a powerful, well-organized army with a professional officer corps. This army was the first in history to be fully outfitted with iron weapons, and apparently also had units of engineers and cavalry. This combination of organization and innovation made them the most formidable army in the Middle East for a long period. The Assyrians were distinguished not just for their army, however. Assyrian administration was centralized, with outlying governors in the provinces to make certain that imperial orders were carried out throughout the empire, and to react quickly to any needs that arose. This central administrative system allowed the Assyrians to gain control of the wealth of all of the states they conquered and to use it efficiently for the enrichment and power of the Assyrian state, providing a system of feedback that kept the state and the army strong. Eventually, the Assyrians came to control Syria, Phoenicia, Israel, Armenia, Egypt, and Babylonia. They built roads for efficient communication and military movement, and also maintained control of outlying regions by forcing conquered people to relocate to other parts of the empire far from their homes, thus keeping them off balance, relatively poor, and effectively unable to rebel. However, the Assyrian empire, when it did collapse, did so quickly, disappearing altogether after 605 BCE. Culturally, the Assyrians patronized Sumerian culture and art as a foundation for appreciating, and preserving, the art and literature of many of the other groups they conquered. King Ashurbanipal's great library at the Assyrian capital of Nineveh (found by Archaeologists) preserved a tremendous amount of Middle Eastern cultural traditions and historical documents by which we have learned not only about the Assyrians, but about most of those who lived in the Middle East from the 3rd to the 1st millennium BCE. ==Persia== By about 2000 BCE, a large number of Indo-Iranians migrated to the Iranian plateau. These migrants settled in tribal divisions, and melded with the local native inhabitants of the plateau, and their Indo-Iranian language became dominant. Among these tribes, two groups were dominant, and related to each other – the Medes and the Persians. Until the 7th century BCE (600's) the Medes and Persians were under the control of the Assyrians. After 700 BCE, however, they were able to unite to defeat the Assyrian empire, and become independent. In 559 BCE, Cyrus the Great, a Persian, united the Persian tribes and rebelled against the Medes, who had dominated the Iranian Plateau since the defeat of Assyria. Defeating his own grandfather, Median King Astyages, in 550 BCE, Cyrus declared the Iranian Plateau to be a unified **Persian empire**. He then went on to gain control of Syria, and the Anatolian peninsula, due in part too the skill of the Indo-Iranians in battle, and in part to the disunity of the conquered territories following the defeat of the Assyrians. The Achaemenid Persian Empire grew into the largest empire yet held in the world, and its very size had important effects. The first emperor of the united Achaemenid Persian Empire was Cyrus II (the Great) who defeated Astyages, king of the Medes and united the Median and Persian kingdoms in 550 BCE. He went on to conquer the Lydians, who had attacked his new empire assuming that it might be in a weakened state. Since the Lydians were allies with the other great empires of the Middle East at the time it became Cyrus' goal to conquer them all, one by one. He conquered Babylon in less than three weeks in 539 BCE, and in the process, freed the Hebrews, who were allowed to return to Jerusalem after thei captivity under the Babylonians. Cyrus, though, died on his return trip to Persia, and was succeeded by Cambyses (529-522 BCE), who continued his predecessor's work, and took Egypt for the Persian empire.

Cambyses was succeeded by Darius I (521-485 BCE) whose need to govern combined with a flair for organization, and with a talented group of advisors, to make him the shaper of the Persian (Acheamenid) state. In turn, the Achaemenid State became a model for later empires. Darius started with legitimacy, espousing the Zoroastrian religions, and claiming the divine right to rule from Ahura Mazda, the Zoroastrian creator god who is also the god of goodness. However, Darius practiced tolerance. He forced no one to believe in the offical religion, nor did he persecute those who operated under different religious rules Darius also came to see that it is not military success but administrative flexibility that makes an emperor successful.

Darius I also caused the building of a complex and effective system of roads, and official couriers to carry government messages across the empire at record speeds. This system operated very much like the Poney Express of the American West. The Persian economy was also a great success, based as it was on the diversity of people and products that came from across the empire. Darius' tolerance extended to allowing the various different ethnic and cultural groups in the empire to maintain their own systems of government as long as they remained loyal. In the same way, he accepted traditional patterns of trade, as long as they paid taxes. This meant that economic success brought huge sums to his treasury, and because Persia was an early adopter of the system of coins for trade, rather than bartering goods, that tax came in the form of cash which could be easily converted to whatever was necessary. All of this convertible wealth had to be stored somewhere, and Darius built a capital city to act as his religious, political, and economic center. Persepolis, the name of his new capital city, was a center for all of the major activities of the Persian government and economy. It was not large, but it was lavish, and its storehouses held unbelievable wealth for the time.

In order to support all of this political and economic activity, Persia developed new institutions, such as banks, and improved on old ones such as agriculture to increase the surplus generated by the society, making it possible for the Persians, with their diverse cultures, huge and diverse geography, and well-organized government, to do and build things that no state had been able to achieve up to this point in history. It is for this reason that Persia is so well-known, and so important, in history.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the most important legs on which the legitimacy of Darius was based was that of religion (although effectiveness, security, and economic success were also important) was religion. Early Persian religion was similar to the Vedic religion in India. Much of that changed with the birth of Zarathustra/Zoroaster sometime before 1000 BCE. Zoroaster may not have been the inventor of the religion that bears his name, though we really are not sure at this point. However, he did come to believe that there was on god among all the others who was most important - the foundation of his religion was the acceptance of Ahura Mazda as first among gods. Zoroastrianism, as it is now called by scholars, also involved the Sacralization of cow, and emphasized the ethical imperative of honesty in trade. He posited that the world is a stage on which a battle between good and evil was being waged. That battle, according to Zoroaster, would end in a final judgment. Because human actions mattered in this battle, Zoroastrianism asked people to help the good, and Ahura Mazda, win by turning from "the lie" to "the Truth." Zoroastrianism's sacred symbol was fire.