History of Civilization 6: Early Mesopotamia

Hi, I'm John Stephenson, and we're going to be looking at early Mesopotamia in our continuing history of civilization. Dr. Rufus Fears from the University of Oklahoma used to say that the Middle East is the birthplace of civilization, the crucible of conflict, and the graveyard of empires. I think he had a point there, that civilization begins really in the Middle East. Yes, there are other places where we see very early civilization, but I think it really begins here in the Middle East. If you speak to an Egyptologist, they'll say it begins in Egypt. I think that's very early too, but I'm going to point really to Mesopotamia as the beginning, the birthplace of civilization. Notice he calls it the crucible of conflict, that there has been continuous warfare from that day all the way to today. And also he's going to make a point, and we'll come back to this point, that the graveyard of empires, that empires have fallen in trying to control and conquer and deal with the Middle East. Again, a lesson to which we'll return. Now when we look at the Middle East, we're sort of zooming in now, we have an area that's become known as the Fertile Crescent. It was noticed back in the 1800s, somebody noticed, you know, there's an area of relative fertility. Now it's all relatively dry, but an area of relative fertility following the river systems of both the Tigris and Euphrates River that are bounded by the Zagreth Mountains in the east, and also I've got some other river systems, the Arantes and the very much smaller Jordan River in the west alongside the Mediterranean. And this area of relative fertility, that's where the people are going to go, because when people are going to live, one of the things they need is water. And so this area, you have, first of all, this big river valley, you know, we mentioned these smaller rivers of the Jordan and the Arantes River, but the two major river systems are the Tigris and Euphrates River. And so there's water there, and water is needed for people and for civilization. It's not an isolated area, so when we look at this isolation concept, you know, this is really the polar opposite. Yes, it's bounded to the east by the Zagreth Mountains, yes, it's bounded to the west by desert, but those deserts were rather porous in the sense that there were desert nomads that would come out of the desert, and there were mountain people that would come out of the mountain. And so these were not barriers, these were rather ways in which people would come into Mesopotamia, and especially from the north. So we're going to see a lot of the invading forces coming to Mesopotamia either from the north or from the southeast, that is from Elam and from the Persians. The climate of this area can be quite harsh in the sense that it can be very, it's hot and then it's very hot, and that was the case back then too. And yet heat has never been something that stopped the growth of civilization. In fact, global warming is going to be something, at least in the ancient world, that's going to help civilization advance. And indeed, as we look at the growth of civilization in Mesopotamia, there's a sense in which part of that came about, perhaps, by global warming and changing weather conditions. And maybe we see, of course the Bible talks about a flood, a great flood that had taken place. And it's on the heels of those climate changes that now we have civilization beginning to grow up in Mesopotamia. As we look at Mesopotamia, and in the future we're going to come and look at Egypt and we're going to compare the two, Mesopotamia tended to be very legalistic in their religious outlook, looking more to the letter of the law, that was just a tendency, as opposed to Egypt that had more of an ethical outlook on life with a focus on the spirit of the law. In Mesopotamia, the art and literature generally reflect a gloomy, pessimistic outlook on life. You know, life is hard, and then you die. In Egypt, it demonstrates, usually, there are places where you see pessimistic literature, but usually you demonstrate more of a cheerful resignation to the problems of life. You know, yes, there's difficulties in life, but life is good. And you picture that in Egypt. In Mesopotamia, the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers flooded unexpectedly, they were often very destructive, they often killed those who were caught, and those rivers came to be feared. When you come to Egypt, the Nile River flooded on a regular cycle, and the Egyptians came to expect, and even to depend upon it flooding. The Nile River was worshipped by the Egyptians. It was good, it was the gift of Egypt. In Mesopotamia, Mesopotamia was surrounded by hostile forces on every side, either from the desert, or from the Zagros, or from the north, and people came to live in constant fear of invasion. There's always somebody who's going to come and invade, and take your possessions, take your people, take your food, and the culture is going to reflect that. Egypt, by contrast, is bounded by natural boundaries. The sea and the desert usually, not always, but they usually keep out invaders. And so Egypt is going to be much more enclosed, much more protected by the deserts to the east and to the west. Yes, there are the cataracts of the Nile that stop travel as you go toward the south into Nubia. In the north, there's the Mediterranean. There's really one door to Egypt, and that's the door that takes you through the Sinai, through Canaan, and through the Sinai to bring you from the northeast. And that's going to be a door, we're going to see, that will be used by invaders. In Mesopotamia, they live from day to day, always in fear of invasion and death. In Egypt, they look forward to immortality and a life after death. That was part of their theological outlook on life. In Mesopotamia, the tendency was to be selfish, to be practical. In Egypt, the tendency was to be giving and idealistic, and certainly there were exceptions to these. These are all generalities. Now, one of my early peoples in Mesopotamia are going to be the Sumerians. They call themselves the black-headed people. I'm not sure what that was in contrast to, but that's how they viewed themselves. The term Sumer actually refers to southern Mesopotamia. I have a place where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers sort of come together, and then they separate a bit, notice on our map. And it's after the separation, the southern part, that is the part we refer to as Sumer. It was referred to by the Hebrews as Shinar. We find that reference in the book of Genesis. The Egyptians called it Singer. Notice the way we write it. Sometimes we leave out the vowels, because even in Hebrew we add vowel points, but the old Hebrew wasn't written with vowels. The Hittites called it Sanhar. So, variations on the theme. That was the various terms by which this land was called. It was a land of connected canals and rivers. I have the Tigris and Euphrates River, and our map here shows some of the minor tributaries, but there were many more. And not only were there rivers, there were also artificial rivers, that is canals, that were dug. And that's going to be one of the signs as we grow from very early society, as we grow to various cities. And I'm going to see the growth of the canals during that period. My earliest period, we usually start with what's known as the Ubiad period. Right now it's named for Tell al-Ubiad. It's near the location of Ur, near the Euphrates River, in southern Mesopotamia. From 4500 to 4100, we're all BC here, and this is an agrarian society, which means that instead of being hunters and seekers, we now have people that are beginning to farm. They're using stone tools, they're using knives, they're using bricks, they're making pottery. Pottery is important, because now I can, if I've gathered something, if I've got food, I can place it in a pot, maybe put a lid on it, and protect it from animals eating it, bugs eating it. I can maybe keep it a bit fresher, and I can save my food and eat it tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day after that. So I have people that are living in southern Mesopotamia. Now that area, it's very flat. I'm right along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. It's marshy areas. And I have people beginning to build homes, and they're not going to be going out hunting and seeking. Now they're going to be in a settled location, as we bring homes. Small communities are being built. Notice in our picture, we have canals being dug, so that now we can bring water to not just that part that's right alongside the river, but I can now water areas where the river doesn't quite reach. And I can extend my farmland. I have people traveling in boats. And notice the two types of boats, they're all made of reeds, but there's one that's sort of long and slender, and that's what we usually think of, and that's good for traveling. But also, we have evidence in some of the early depictions, paintings and rock carvings and so on, of sort of a circular boat. Notice the fellow down at the bottom of the picture, he's got this sort of round, it looks like a big bathtub almost. And that was in use as well. Now that's not going to sail very far, or if it does, it's only going in one direction, it's only going downriver with the current. Now from the Euboea period, we next move to the Uruk period, named for one of the very early cities, the city of Uruk. And now we're going from 4,100 to around 3,000, and I'm painting with a very broad brush here. I begin to see government organization, and we're moving from little tiny communities to actual cities that are trading with each other, sometimes they're fighting each other, but sometimes they're trading, all throughout Mesopotamia. And I'm beginning to see metal, I'm beginning to see copper being used. As we said, there are cities being formed. These cities are governed by either priests or kings, or a combination of both, there might be priest-kings, sometimes with the council of elders. As soon as I move to a city, I need somebody to run things. And that's always going to be a leader at the top, maybe you'll have some other leaders to help out, but there will be this leader, whether you call him a priest or a king. I will see trade during this period, from the Persian Gulf, all the way up to the mountains of Urartu, far in the north, that is the whole length of Mesopotamia, from the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates, all the way to where they run, into the Persian Gulf. And I will eventually also begin to see the beginning of cuneiform writing, and now we have to talk about writing. Some of my earliest depiction is going to be what's called a cylinder seal. And notice I have a piece of rock or some sort of thing that's not going to break apart too easily, and carved into it are shapes of, in this case, individual shapes of people, might be animals, might be some other sorts of shapes. And I'm able to take the seal and roll it across a bit of clay, and it will leave an impression. And that impression will be my signature. You see, they don't have writing, so I can't just sign my name. But that will leave my signature, and it will be my official seal. And so these cylinder seals we see from this very early period. We're still in what we call the proto-literary period. And let's say I want to, for example, I want to count how many sheep I have. Well, I've got ten fingers, but if I've got more than ten sheep, then I'm going to run out of fingers. And so what I can do, I can take this little bit of clay, and I can put a sort of a line and then mark that with another line. And each one of those bits might represent one sheep. And so I'm going to count how many sheep I have. And I take one sheep for each one of these little tokens. And now I can, gee, I've got a whole bag full of these sheep, a whole bag full of these tokens that represent the sheep. Now this isn't being used as money. This is being used just for counting, for accounting purposes. Or instead of sheep, maybe I'm going to have another one that represents metal. And notice one represents sheep and one represents metal. And in this case, it's sort of a funny little shape with lines cut through it. And that's going to represent maybe copper or some other sort of metal that's being used. And I'm going to have different sorts of shapes which will eventually represent different sorts of things. And these tokens are going to be used, they're not used for money, not yet anyway, they're used as accounting measures so that I can count. How much bread do I have? How much metal do I have? How many sheep? How much grain do I have? And each one has a different meaning. Now I'm moving into, I'm still in the proto-literary period, we're not really writing, but we're beginning to see things pressed in clay tablets. Notice the holes, I might do the counting. How many holes maybe is how many bushels or how many parts of grain that I have in my farm. Or in this communal farm, or in all the farms maybe even of this city. Here's another very early tablet. And in this case, notice that one of the symbols, this is a symbol for a human head. Now it's not very graphic, you don't have any eyes or nose or mouth, but that symbol is going to represent a human head. Next to it is another symbol for bread. And so I've got a head and I've got bread, and maybe the two of these together might represent, for example, eating. And so I have these various symbols that are going to be used to represent different actions or different ideas, and they're going to be placed on clay tablets. The cylinder seals, by now, we're in 2600 BC, by now they're becoming quite a bit more ornate. Notice this cylinder seal looks much more sophisticated than the previous one. It has rows of people. Now you say, gee, they look sort of funny. Well, their artwork isn't quite what ours might be today. But we can learn something about what they are wearing. The dress styles, notice the sort of fringe thing almost looks like a bit of a skirt. And yet these are men. And then I've got two rows of them. They are seated. It looks like maybe one is drinking. They are eating. They're going about the things that they do in life. As I continue now, I'm beginning to see cities develop. And notice around that city is a wall, because one of the reasons I need a wall is to keep out a neighboring city from coming and taking all my crops, my people, my stuff. And so I need that for protection. I have folks that are going to be living within the city walls, although many would live without. And then notice up in the upper right-hand corner I have a ziggurat, a temple tower, because that's going to be the place of worship. It's also going to be the unifying element of my city. Now let me take a short excursus and just speak about money at this time. The economy of hunter-gatherers is such that, gee, if I gather some berries, or maybe I hunt an animal and I kill it, well, that's good. Now I've got enough to feed myself, but I have to go out and do that again. I have to hunt again tomorrow and gather berries or gather whatever thing. And after I've gathered everything that's close by, now I have to extend my search. However, what that's going to do, I can, let's see, I've got some berries and I'd really like a bird that may be my next-door neighbor that he managed to catch. And I can maybe offer to trade him some berries for that bird. And of course, gee, I only want half a bird. And maybe I'd like a bird that's still alive so that it can lay eggs. How am I going to do that? I can't really divide it. And so there's bartering that takes place in this society, in this economy of the hunter-gatherers. But now I begin to see that there are certain things that have intrinsic value, for example, metal. Because with metal, maybe I can build a better tool, maybe a spear that will be better able to kill that animal that I'm seeking to hunt. Or maybe I can find something that will better cut off the fruit that I'm gathering. Now, eventually I'm going to take that metal and I'm going to weigh it. And certain metals will be esteemed of greater value because they are the more rare metals. If it's commonplace, it's sort of supply and demand. So if it's commonplace, everybody's got it. But there are certain metals that can be useful and that will be esteemed of greater value. Either they look pretty, like silver or gold, or they are rare, or both. And so there will be a unit of measurement, and that measurement, one of those measurements, is going to be known as the shekel. The shekel will initially be a unit of measurement. Much, much, much later on, it will be also used as a term to describe a coin. But not yet. That's going to be far, far, far in the future. The invention of coins isn't going to come until the mid-6th century BC. The earliest coins of which we know for sure, the Lydian kingdom, the kingdom of Lydia, in what we call Turkey today, western Anatolia, they're going to have minted coins, and usually the king we think that's having to do with that is King Croesus of Lydia. And we'll have much more to say about him when we get to that era. All right, some of the early people groups that we have during this period. We have the Sumerians. Now the Sumerians are not a Semitic people, although there are elements in their language that might have some Semitic elements, but they do not seem to be Semitic. And then we're going to see another people group coming down from the north, and that's going to be the Akkadians. And the Akkadians are Semitic. So we've got non-Semitic and Semitic peoples. They're in Mesopotamia. They're Semitic. We're also going to see the Medes. They'll be in the Zagros Mountains, so they'll be the mountain peoples. And we'll also see the Elamites from the east. Notice they're still in the lowlands, not up in the mountains, and they're going to have a capital at Susa, which will eventually be one of the capitals of the Persians. Elamites and the Persians, we can think of them as maybe second cousins, two people groups that sort of eventually relate to each other, but the Persians really are going to be much later. Right now we're going to be talking about Elam instead. Now that brings us now to the early dynastic period. Two of the cities, and there are already a number of cities, but two of the cities that get quite a bit of the press, Kish and Uruk and other cities here in southern Mesopotamia that have now begun to grow up and strive for dominance one against the other. Ur is going to be another one of the cities. That's the city from which Abraham comes, if indeed he comes from southern Mesopotamia. And most people, including myself, usually think that's where he's coming from. We're also going to have Babylon. We're going to have Lagash. A number of other cities here in southern Mesopotamia. Now we move from the Uruk period to the early dynastic period. That's from 3000 to 2350 BC. Cuneiform now begins to develop into syllabic writing. That is where the different wedge-shaped, different impressions that we make on the clay actually represent syllables. This is the age of Gilgamesh that we talked about previously. And this is, of course, the age of kings. There's no question that kings are now ruling over the early dynastic period. This is the period of city-states. Yes, we've got cities, but now they are groups of cities, smaller communities, but around a central city, around a central king. And it's from this era that we have one particularly interesting document known as the Stele of the Vultures. The Stele of the Vultures was originally a, when I say a stele, that's a big stone slab sort of rounded at the top. We don't have the whole thing. We have it in pieces. It was discovered in the late 1800s in southern Iraq. It comes from this early dynastic period, 2600 to 2350 BC. The text is Sumerian. There is writing on it. And it celebrates a victory of the city of Lagash over Umma. One of these city-states is fighting a different city-state, and they won. There are seven surviving fragments, and we're going to zoom in on a few of those. Here's one of those fragments. Notice the top section. I have a series of soldiers. They are holding spears. They have these square-looking shields. They're going into battle. And before them is the king. It looks that way. Of course, part of the stele is damaged, so we can't really tell. And notice they're marching over. Right under their feet are the conquered enemy with what looks like maybe arrows or spears sticking out of them. If I go down to the panel below, and part of that's missing, again I see the soldiers to the left. And they are following the king because the king is out front. Now notice that the king has a band around his head. That represents his crown. That represents his authority. And so that's how you can tell that he's the king. And you can barely see it, but it looks like he's riding in a chariot. And so the chariot now is beginning to be used. But notice it's just the king that's in the chariot as he's leading his soldiers into battle. We turn to another section of the stele. Now this is the part that actually gives it the name, the Stele of the Vultures, because we see the vultures. And they've come along, and they are feeding upon the conquered dead. They're taking the body parts and running away with them. And now you can see some of the cuneiform, some of the writing that tells the story of what's taking place in the stele. Here's another example of artwork during this period. This is found in the British Museum, so it's not my photograph. A compliment to the British Museum. From Ur, 2600 to 2400 BC. And it depicts a ram that has been caught in a thicket. Sort of reminds me a little bit of the story of Abraham, who, remember, he takes his son, he takes Isaac up to the land of Moriah, up onto a mountain, and he's commanded by God, he's going to sacrifice his son. And then the angel of the Lord comes and says, no, don't do that. And he lifts up his eyes, and he sees a ram caught in a thicket. Maybe in his mind's eye, it looks a bit like this. We have a board game from this period. The Sumerian, they're not all work. Sometimes they're play as well. I don't know the rules of this game, but evidently it's very ornate, very involved. You've got the pieces, reminds me a little bit of checkers or chests, or something like that. And so this is apparently some sort of game that was played. And that brings us to Cuneiform and the scribes. Because not everybody could read and write, but we have a whole class of people now, and they are a segment of society, that their job is to write, to document things, to give records. Notice the fellow in the middle. He's got a cylinder scroll. He's rolling that out. Likewise, the one on the left. But our fellow on the right, he actually has a little stick, known as a cuneus. He's pressing it into clay, and that is bringing forth this Cuneiform writing. Now, that Cuneiform writing, we noted already. Notice in the upper left-hand corner, the sag is the word for head. And so that picture of the head, initially it's just used to demonstrate maybe a person, or how many heads in this room, how many people in this room, or how many people are you feeding. But eventually that's going to represent not a head, but it's going to represent the sound of the word head. And so there might be other words that are formed with that same sound, but now I'm using the Cuneiform to form syllables, which can form other words. And in each case, notice that along the first column, I see a picture of maybe walking. I just need a foot. Or a hand. You know, I've got this little thing that's got five little appendages. Or barley with a stick with the little pieces of wheat coming out. Or this upside-down triangle with a line through it that represents bread. Or a wavy thing. You can see where that represents water. Now, as time moves on, those shapes begin to change, and as they're changing, what's also happening, instead of it representing the thing, it's representing the sound of the thing. And so I have the growth of writing, and notice it grows and develops, sort of like my own personal handwriting. My handwriting has really sort of degenerated over the years. I don't do any cursive writing anymore because I can't read it. And likewise, there's some changing and refining as I go from 3200 to 3000 to 2400 to 1000 BC. And cuneiform is growing and developing during this period. Now, notice the cuneiform tablet in the upper right. It's been... This is advanced cuneiform. I have a tablet where I have made a series of wedges, and they represent syllable sounds. This is cuneiform. And that's going to be regularly in use for the next several thousand years, all the way up until... Actually, I'm going to see cuneiform in use all the way up until at least, I would say, the 300s BC, probably even later. Now, below that, and we're going to talk... When we get to Egypt, we'll talk much more about hieroglyphs. These are hieroglyphs below that. And they start off much the same way as cuneiform, first as pictures, but by the time we see them here, again, they are syllabic sounds where each one represents... Yes, that's... You see... Well, gee, is this... Notice there's a picture of a bird down below. Is this saying something about birds? No, it's not saying something about birds, but it's using that sound that sounds like bird as part of a bigger word. And so it might take a word that has, for example, the term ka, and that might be a part of a larger word, just one syllable of a much bigger word, and that's going to develop in the hieroglyphs. Finally, what we will see is the alphabetic text. This is an example of an alphabetic text. This is actually very early Hebrew that you're looking at on the left. And, of course, the shape of those letters is going to change, but where each letter represents a sound, not just a syllable, but now a sound, and, of course, the advantage of that... You see, with cuneiform, you might have something like a thousand different letters. With hieroglyphs, eventually that will sort of be brought down to where there's only a handful used, but that's going to take a long time. And with an alphabetic text, you can get by with 22, 24 letters, 26 maybe. The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters in it. And so you don't need near so many letters, which means that your scribe doesn't have to learn quite so much to be able to use that. And so we're going to see these various systems of writing develop in Mesopotamia, the hieroglyphs that's going to be in Egypt, and eventually we're going to see in the Middle East alphabetic writing. And scholars are still arguing about where does it actually begin? Does it begin with the Phoenicians, as we've often said in the past? Now there's maybe earlier evidence that might suggest, no, it actually begins in the Sinai. And we'll be looking at some of that evidence.