Santa Monica College History 1 STILES, C

History 1 Exam 1 Guide

Mesopotamia is the Greek name for the land between the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers, commonly known as the “cradle of civilization,” Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer, Akkadian, Babylonia and Assyrian empires. There the arid climate confronted the peoples with the hard problem of farming with scant water supplies. Irrigation on a large scale, like building stone circles in the West, demanded organized group effort. The Mesopotamians made significant and sophisticated advances in mathematics using a numerical system. Mesopotamia history extends from the emergence of urban societies in a Southern Iraq in the 5^th millennium B.C. to the arrival of Alexander the Great in the 4^th century B.C. A cultural continuity and spatial homogeneity for the entire historical geography is popularly assumed.

Cuneiform (c. 3000 B.C) is one of the earliest written expression forms that began as a system of pictographs. It is used widely for a very long time to communicate. As time went by, in the course of 3^rd millennium B.C. the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract. It was so complicated that only professional scribes mastered it. By 2500 B.C. scribal schools flourished throughout Sumer. It brought many literary, mathematical, and religious texts survive today, giving a full picture of Mesopotamian intellectual and spiritual life.

Sumer was a civilization and a historical region in Mesopotamia, known as the Cradle of civilization. It lasted form late 6^th millennium B.C. through the 2^nd millennium B.C. The “Sumerian” applies to all speakers of the Sumerian language. The cities of Sumer were the first to practice intensive, year-round agriculture. The storable food surplus created by this economy allowed the population to settle in one place instead of migrating after crops and grazing land. The Sumerians established the basic social, economic and intellectual patters of Mesopotamia.

Sargon was the king of the Mesopotamian city-state of Akkad during the 2300s B.C. Sargon was a Semite who led the conquest of the city-states of Sumer, finally unifying Mesopotamia under his rule. Although the unification didn’t last, it was significant because the Acadians assimilated Sumerian culture and spread it throughout Mesopotamia. The Sumerian and Semitic gods were seen as equal, and scribes used Sumerian cuneiform to record Acadian Semitic texts.

Epic of Gilgamesh is the first epic poem from Mesopotamia in c. 2000 B.C. and is among the earliest known works of literary fiction. It was written about the wandering of Gilgamesh, the semi historical king of Urak. It is an excellent piece of literature as well as an intellectual triumph. It shows the Sumerians grappling with such enduring questions as life and earth, humankind and deity, and immortality. It is read widely in translations and historians use it to learn various aspects of a society as a historical source.

Code of Hammurabi (c. 1700 B.C) Most memorable accomplishments was the proclamation of a law code that offers a wealth of information about daily life in Mesopotamia. Hammurabi’s code inflicted such penalties as mutilation, whipping, and burning. Despite its severity, a spirit of justice and a sense of responsibility pervade the code. First, the law differed according to the social status of the offender. Second, the code demanded that the punishment fit the crime. Hammurabi tried to regulate the relations of his people so that they could live together in harmony. Hammurabi gave careful attention to marriage and the family. Because farming was essential to Mesopotamian life, Hammurabi’s code dealt extensively with agriculture.

The Nile River had a fundamental and profound impact on the shaping of Egyptian life, society, and history. It played a major role in politics and social life because it provided the resources such as food and money because of the floods that happened frequently made the farm soil fertile. Moreover, the Nile was so significant to the lifestyle of the Egyptians that they created a god dedicated to the welfare of the Nile’s anural inundation.

Pharaoh was the political unification of the country under the Egyptian authority. They were seen as religious and politic leaders in all of the periods. Pharaohs were believed to be the god Horus in life. He was the power that achieved the integration between gods and human beings, between nature and society that ensured peace and prosperity for the land of the Nile. Egyptians considered him as a god.

Akhenaten (C. 1350 B.C) is one of the most extraordinary of unusual line of kings. He was a pharaoh more concerned with religion than with conquest. He and his wife were monotheists who were believed in the sun god Aton. Akhenaten’s monotheism failed to find a place among the people. The reason for Akhenaten’s failure is that his god had no connection with the past of the Egyptian people, who trusted the old gods and felt comfortable praying to them. When Akhenaten died, his religious died with him.

The Hittites (C. 1600-1200 B.C) became a major power in Anatolia and began to expand eastward. The Hittites learned from their neighbors and rivals, but they also introduced their own sophisticated political system for administering their empire, a system that in some ways influenced both their contemporaries and later peoples. Their major contribution was the introduction of iron into war and agriculture in the form of weapons and tools. The Hittites refers to a large family of languages that includes modern Europe languages.

Hebrew (c. 1900 B.C)/The Hebrew Bible (c. 900 B.C-100 B.C) It is difficult to say precisely who the Hebrews were, because virtually the only source for much of their history is the Bible, which is essentially a religious document. Unlike Akhenaten’s monotheism, Hebrew monotheism became the religious of a whole people. According to the Bible, the god Yahweh appeared to Moses on Mount Sinai. There Yahweh made a covenant with the Hebrews that was in fact a contract: if the Hebrews worshiped Yahweh as their only god, he would consider them his chose people and protect them from their enemies. The Hebrew believed that their god would protect them and make them prosper if they obeyed his commandments. The Hebrew Bible has fundamentally influenced both Christianity and Islam and still exerts a compelling force on the modern world.

Moses and the Exodus Under the leadership of Moses, perhaps a semi mythical figure left Egypt in what the Hebrews remembered as the Exodus. From Egypt in they wandered in the Sinai Peninsula, until they settled in Palestine in the thirteenth century B.C. Exodus is the second book of the Jewish Torah and of the Christian Old Testament. It tells how Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt and through the wilderness to the Mountain of God Sinai. There Yahweh, through Moses, gives the Israelites theirs laws and enters into a covenant with them, by which he will give them the land of Canaan in return for their faithfulness.

Assyrian Empire began at 859 B.C. and finished at 612 B.C. They were Semitic speakers heavily influenced by the Mesopotamian culture. Their capital was at Nineran. They were also one of the most warlike people because their neighbors threatened them. They were really powerful at that period they conquered and ruled a big region.

Cyrus the Great (554-530 B.C) was the king of the Persian Empire in 6^th century B.C. He created the Persian Empire and expanded over Mesopotamia. He applied linear rules to areas he had conquered. He allowed people form other areas that he had conquered to keep their custom and religions, and their tradition to flourish. Cyrus the Great made a policy which the cultures and religions of its members were respected and honored. He considered the areas that he conquered as different states, not colonies.

Zoroastrianism became a major religion in 5^th century. The Persian royal adopted Zoroastrianism. It survived fall of the Persian Empire to influence liberal Judaism, Christianity, and early Islam, mainly because of its belief in and afterlife that satisfied the longings of most people. It presented the ideal of a fair god who would be honor. It had a profound impact on Manichaeism, a religion that was to pose a significant challenge to Christianity and to spread through the Byzantine Empire. In some form of another Zoroastrian concepts still pervade the major religions of the West and every part of the world touched by Islam.

The Hesiod (c. 700 B.C) was a Greek poet. Hesiod and Homer have generally been considered the earliest Greek poets whose work has survived, and they are often paired.  Hesiod’s writing serves as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time keeping.

The Polis (800-338 B.C) Greek developed their basic political and institutional unit, the Polis. It refers to “City-state.” Physically a polis was a society of people who lived in a city and cultivated the surrounding countryside. The city contained a point called the acropolis. The average polis did not have a standing army. Instead, it relied on its citizens for protection. The polis was a community of citizens, and the affairs of the community were the concern of all. The polis could be governed in any of several ways such as monarchy, aristocracy, oligarchy, or democracy. The polis administered the cults and festivals, and all were expected to participate in this civic religion, regardless of whether they even believed in the deities being worshiped.

Athens faced pressing social and economic problems during the archaic period, but the Athenian response was far different from that of the Spartans. The Athenians extended to all citizens the right and duty of governing the polis. The Athenian democracy was one of the most thoroughgoing in Greece. Athenian democracy was to prove an inspiring ideal in Western civilization.

Philip of Macedonia (359 B.C) Philip II, one of the most remarkable men in history, became king of Macedonia.  Philips army won a hard-fought victory that gave him command of Greece and put an end to classical freedom. Not opposed to the concepts of peace and federalism, he sponsored a new Common Peace in which all of Greece was united in one political body under his leadership.

Greek polytheism Ancient Greeks recognized the 13 major gods and goddesses. Different cities worshipped different deities, sometimes with epithets that specified their local nature. Greeks had no sacred books such as the Bible unlike the Egyptians and Hebrews. In Greece priests and Priestesses existed to care for temples and sacred property and to conduct the proper rituals. The most important members of the Greek pantheon were Zeus. The Greeks also honored some heroes. For most Greeks religion was quite simple and close to nature.

The Peloponnesian Wars (5^th Century B.C) It was conflicts of the Greeks, fought by Athens with its league and Sparta with its league during 5^th century B.C. after the Persian war. The Peloponnesian war lasted a generation, after all Sparta won with the power of Persia. It established Sparta as a leader of the Greece but long war brought widespread destruction into the Greek world and weakened them.

Sparta was a city-state in ancient Greece. From c. 650 B.C it rose to become the dominant military power in the region. Sparta owed its military efficiency to its social structure. All male citizens of Sparta were full-time soldiers. Spartans expanded the boundaries of their polis and made it the leading power in Greece. Like other Greeks, the Spartans faced the problems of overpopulation and land hunger. Unlike other Greeks, the Spartans solved these problems by conquest, not by colonization. The political and social strain it caused led to a transformation of the Spartan polis.

The Persian wars were a series of conflicts between some Greek city-states and the Persian Empire in between 499-479 B.C. The wars occurred because of the Persian invasions of the Greek mainland, yet finally, Persians were beaten off at Battle of Marathon. The significant of these Greek victories is nearly incalculable. By beating the Persians, the Greeks were able to develop their particular genius in freedom. These decisive victories meant that Greek political forms and intellectual concepts would be the heritage of the West.

Essay1) The differences, and similarities, between the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt.

Ancient Egypt was built to the southeast of Mesopotamia. Egypt was built in the fertile area on both sides of the Nile River. The basis for Mesopotamia was in the Fertile Crescent, specifically the area between the Tigris and Euphrates River. Both of these civilizations were created around a very important source, water. Water is a very important basis of life. It is only natural that civilization start around such an essential source. The water was important for many reasons. The most important reason was agriculture. As many of Egyptian's paintings show, grain was a very important element in society. In Mesopotamia the planting wasn't limited to just the riverbank where it flooded. Mesopotamians used canals.

The social structure of Mesopotamia and Egypt were different. In Mesopotamia there was no gender equality. However, in ancient Egypt, as exampled in female pharos, females had more opportunities to rise in life. In Mesopotamia, although they had different classes of slaves, they were still treated like property. In both societies the very few elite held enormous wealth, while the common people normally just got by day-by-day.

One aspect that was very different in both Egypt and Mesopotamia was the government. In Egypt, most of the time they had just one leader--the pharaoh. Egypt would have needed this strong central government for projects such as organizing and overseeing of the pyramid buildings. The early Mesopotamians used a city-state type government. Each area was controlled by its own political and economical center. Each area was a separate political unit.

Mesopotamia had advanced metallurgy techniques for working with bronze, lead, silver, and gold. Because examples of the pottery spun on a wheel were found from about 3000 B.C., the invention wheel is credited to Mesopotamia. We still don't know all of the technology that Egypt use used to build the pyramids. The architecture and engineering skills involved still have modern experts amazed. While the Mesopotamian's didn't have anything quit to scale with the pyramids, they did use and build ziggurats.

Both civilizations were centered on religion. Egypt believed in many gods. Even the pharaohs were believed to be gods. The gods Mesopotamia believed in tended to be absolute rulers to whom the people owed total devotion. In both civilizations religious leaders were given very high status and held in high regard.

Cities, architecture, and lots of small inventions are credited from having come from these two civilizations. One of the most noticeable achievements we received was writing. Mesopotamia also created the earliest recoded rules for improving life ever found. We have barely even begun to realize and understand all the legacies that were handed down from these two civilizations.

Essay2) Colonization and culture during the Greek Archaic Age

Generally know as Archaic primarily because of its art and literature. For the first time in Western civilization, men and women began to write of their own experiences. Sappho is best known for erotic poetry, for she expressed her love frankly and without shame. This year ushered in one of the most vibrant periods of Greek history, an era of extraordinary expansion geographically, artistically, and politically. The overpopulation was the problem of hunger and the resulting social and political tensions drove may Greeks to seek new homes outside of Greece. From about 750 to 550 B.C., Greeks from the mainland and Asia Minor traveled throughout the Mediterranean and even onto the Atlantic Ocean in their quest for new land. Colonization changed the entire Greek world, both at home and aboard. In economic terms the expansion of the Greeks created a much larger market for agricultural and manufactured goods. From the east came wheat in a volume. In return flowed Greek wine and olive oil. Thus Greek culture and economics, fertilized by the influences of other societies, spread throughout the Mediterranean basin. For the Greeks, colonization had two important aspects. First, it demanded that the polis assume a much greater public function than the polis assume a much greater public function than ever before, thus strengthening the city-state’s institutional position. Second, colonization spread the polis and its values far beyond the shores of Greece. More important, colonization on this scale had a profound impact on the course of Western civilization.