Week 1

Reading
1. First civilization: river valleys of Mesopotamia & Egypt
a. Built cities
b. Organized states with definite boundaries
c. Invent writing
d. Engaged in large-scale trade
e. Practiced specialization of labor
f. Erect huge monuments

2. Emerged in river valleys

a. Mesopotamia: Tigris & Euphrates
b. Egypt: Nile
c. Drain swamps
d. Built irrigation works
 Bonds of cooperation 생성

3. Religion & myths: central force

a. Natural objects seen as gods
b. Theocratic: people regard their rulers either as divine or as representatives of the
gods
c. Polytheism

4. Sumerians: founders of urban life in Mesopotamia

a. Built city-states that were independent of each other
b. Other replacements of Sumerians – Akkadians, Elamites, Babylonians – built upon
them
c. Basis of coherent Mesopotamian civilization

5. Egyptians
a. Pharaoh: viewed as both a man and a god
 All Egyptians are subservient to him

6. Sumerians and Egyptians commonality

a. Religion and theocratic kingship playing dominant role

7. Difference
a. Egypt
i. Pharaoh was considered divine
ii. Benign natural environment fostered security and optimistic viewpoint toward
life
b. Sumerians
i. Rulers were regarded as exceptional human beings gods selected as agents
ii. Suffered frequent invasions and insufficient overflow, thus having pessimistic
outlook

8. After 1500 B.C Persians entered Near East and made a period of empire building

9. Value of the Near Eastern peoples

a. Establish bureaucracy
 b. Demonstrate creativity in art and literature
c. Fashion mathematics
d. Knowledge of architecture & metallurgy & engineering
e. Invent wheel & plow & phonetic alphabet & calendar

10. Epic of Gilgamesh: greatest work of Mesopotamian literature

a. Theme: human protest against death
b. Gilgamesh learns to accept reality
c. Expression of the pessimism that pervade Mesopotamian life
d. Involves gods in human activities
e. Contents
i. Gilgamesh torments his people
ii. Gods make Enkidu, his rival, whom he can contend
iii. They together kill gods’ monsters – 신이 화남
iv. As Enkidu dies due to this, Gilgamesh seeks for immortality
v. He fails and accepts his fate

11. Code of Hammurabi

i. Guilty party is required to pay a monetary compensation to the victim
ii. Principle of exact retaliation: eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth
iii. Penalties vary according to social status of the victim
 Patricians can compensate what they did to plebeians by money
iv. Patricians were protected by the law of retaliation
v. Show importance in trade and property
vi. Tried to protect women and children from neglect and mistreatment
vii. Divorce was permitted
viii. Gov. guilty of bribery or corruption were severely punished
12. Divine kingship in Egypt
a. Nature and human destiny controlled by divine beings
 ⅹ idea of political freedom
b. Pharaoh: earthly embodiment of the god Horus
c. Pharaoh Akhenaten: preach monotheism of sun god Aton
d. His idea was soon forgotten

13. Egyptian women: relatively fewer disabilities

a. Legal rights
b. Could enter the priesthood
c. Though to have access to the other world after death

14. Hebrews & Greeks

a. Ethical monotheism: belief in one God who demands righteous behavior
 Essential element of the Western tradition
b. Hebrews originated in Mesopotamia and migrated to Canaan
c. Hebrews borrowed elements from the Near East
i. Creation
ii. The Flood
iii. Tower of Babel

15. Difference between the religion of the Near East and the Hebrews
a. The Near East
 i. Saw gods everywhere in nature
ii. Gods were not fully sovereign: can be sick or even die
 Limitations on their power
b. Hebrews
i. God was one and transcendent: above nature
ii. Yahweh was fully sovereign
 Led to revolutionary view of the human being: inviolable worth and dignity of the
individual

16. Old Testament

a. Genesis: first two chapters – show cosmogony and anthropology of the Jews
b. Regarded nature as orderly creation of God
c. Genesis compared to Dilmun – a mythical land of the blessed described in the epic of
Gilgamesh

17. Ten Commandments: the law of God

a. Hebrews thought they had responsibility of acting well
b. 10 계명
PPT
1. Mesopotamia: land between rivers
i. Between Tigris & Euphrates rivers
ii. Irrigate fields
iii. System of writing
iv. Mathematics
v. Invent wheel & calendar
vi. Worked bronze
vii. Irrigation system: heart of Mesopotamian settlement system

2. History of Mesopotamia
a. Sumer: Southern part
b. Akkad: Northern part
c. Babylonia: unified
d. Assyria

3. Religion
a. Reflect insecurity of Mesopotamian life
b. Highly based on agriculture & polytheistic
c. Origin of “divine rights to rule”: kings interpreted the will of gods
d. Gods: anthropomorphic – look humans & exhibit human virtue
e. Ziggurat: worshipping monument
i. Dedicated to the god of the city
ii. Made of mud + shape of mountain
iii. Storage of agricultural surplus
iv. Ex) tower of Babel
f. Nippur: religious center
i. Great political importance
ii. Focus of pilgrimage & building programs

4. Writing
a. Happened during a period of profound transformation
 b. Arose from practical commercial concerns like accounting
c. Cuneiform: name of these scripts – first pictogram to ideograms

5. The Tale of Gilgamesh

a. Gilgamesh: king of Uruk
i. Human and god at the same time: mortal
ii. Tormented his people
b. Enkidu
i. Became civilized
ii. Fought with Gilgamesh, lost, and became friends

Q1. What did Gilgamesh attempt to secure?

A. Immortality

6. Sumerians
a. First know city-states: created canals & drainage system
b. Ranks of society
i. Nobles
ii. Artisans & merchants
iii. Slaves
c. Made bartering system of trade
d. Land rented from priests

7. Akkadians
a. Ruled by single dynasty: first king Saruukin
b. Different groups under a single military power
c. Their language became international language

8. Babylonians
a. Reunite Mesopotamia
b. Built walls + property secured
c. Grain used as medium of exchange
d. Ended after the Hittites invaded

9. Code of Hammurabi
a. Governed every aspect of ancient life
b. Origin of “eye for an eye” and Biblical Ten Commandments

10. Assyrians
a. Military superiority & iron weapons
b. Unite Mesopotamia before fallen by Persian Empire by Alexander the Great
c. Assyrians conquered peoples and relocated them in other parts of empire
d. Separated Israelites during conquer

11. Neo-Babylonian Captivity

a. Conquest by Chaldeans: scattering of Jewish people

Q2. What did the Hammurabi Code suggest about the status of women in Babylonian society?
A. Women had limited civil rights

12. Ancient Egypt and River Nile

 a. Able to calculate the overflowing period and thus have rich fertile soil

13. Religion
a. Priests modified the Pharaoh’s supremacy
b. Pharaohs were the sons of Re (sun god)
c. Gods were conceptualizations of an abstract force which was considered the divine
d. Gods
i. Ma’at: god of order, justice and truth
ii. Osiris: ruler of the realm of dead
iii. Seth: god of the desert
iv. Horus: god of balance and harmony

14. Afterlife
a. Made great care before burying the dead so they can have pleasant afterlife
b. Pharaoh and nobles made mummies
c. Pyramids
d. Great interest in cosmology – rules that govern the universe

Q3. What were the duties expected of an Egyptian king?

A. Virtuous care for civic welfare

15. Egyptian world view

a. Interested in paired opposites & duality: love of symmetry
b. Desire to impose order to inconsistency

16. Hieroglyphics
a. May have been traded from Mesopotamia
b. Pictographs & phonetics
c. Papyrus
i. Writing medium paper-like material
17. Rosetta Stone
a. Crucial for decipherment of hieroglyphs by Champollion

18. Society
a. Gave importance in personal hygiene
b. Public works for drainage and bathing

19. Nile Theory

a. Heavily interested in how body works & how the world works
b. Interested in medical system

20. The Decalogue: Ten Commandments

a. Obligations with respect to God & society
i. Only worship Yahweh
ii. Prohibition of images
iii. God’s name & God’s day

Q4. Which of the following was one of the Ten Commandments with respect to societal rules?
A. Shall not covet thy neighbor’s manservant or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass