NEWCOMERS AND CRISIS IN ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN CIVILIZATION: Mycenaeans, Assyrians, and Hebrews in the 2nd millenium
We've talked about the two first civilizations - the Sumerians and the Egyptians - who within several centuries of one another invent the first forms of writing, and the first complex political systems.
The question is how Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilization got to be adopted by other peoples - like the Greeks, like the Hebrews.
This brings us to the disruptions of the 2nd millenium - when new ethnic groups take over much of the Near East; disrupting the previous political systems; new military technologies and possible environmental change assist them.
Two stages of disruption
2200-1600 BCE migrations of peoples into western Asia and Europe (including Indo-Europeans)
1200 BCE: Coming of Sea-peoples and destruction of much of ancient bronze-age civilization
I. 2200-1600 BCE Newcomers (Semitic and Indo-European immigrants)
From 2200 on, an large number of new peoples begin to immigrate into western Asia and Europe.
They spoke languages in two main language families - Semitic and Indo-European.
I'll first talk about the Indo-Europeans (concentrating on the Greeks), and then two of the major Semitic speaking peoples - Assyrians and Hebrews.
First wave
of Semitic speaking invaders adopt culture of previous civilizations
Indo-Europeans
Indo-European is the language family which includes most European languages, as well as some Asian languages.
You can tell by comparing vocabulary and grammar that these languages had a common origin - the example given in your textbook is the word "night" -
English "night" has the same root as Sanskrit "nakt" or Russian "noch"
All of these languages come from some common mother tongue - which then turned into various dialects.
Origins of
Indo-Europeans
From around 2100 BC, Indo-European speakers are thought to
have migrated from the steppes of southern Russia into the Near East and Europe.
Discovering the precise origins of the Indo-Europeans is difficult.
It has been assumed, from common words in various Indo-European languages, that the original Indo-Europeans were pastoral nomads, who used wheeled vehicles, and organized themselves into patriarchal clans.
The wheeled vehicles are important - this gave them a military advantage.
They began to disperse around 2100 BC, some to Europe (Celts, Germans, Italians), others to Asia Minor (Hittites) and Greece, others to India (Sanskrit is an Indo-European language), and some to Iran (the Persians).
Displacing Neolithic Europeans
In Europe, the Indo-Europeans overwhelmed the Neolithic Europeans.
These Neolithic Europeans of the 5th to 2nd millenium BC had learned to farm and make metal weapons - but they did not yet use war chariots.
The most impressive monuments they left behind were stone megaliths - like Stonehenge in England - built around 2000 BC , at the same time as the Europeans were starting to move towards Europe.
These megaliths probably had religious or astrological purposes; they were not defensive (which was too bad for the Neolithic Europeans)
In the course of the 2nd millenium, the Indo-Europeans had take over most of Europe.
A separate group migrated into Armenia and the Balkans (Greeks)
A group of Indo-Europeans called the Hittites settled in Asia Minor and developed the first literate Indo-European civilization (adopting much of Mesopotamian law and religion)
(MAP)
War chariot - key factor in success
In most respects, the invaders were less advanced than the older civilizations of the Fertile Crescent.
But they were warriors – quick to adopt a new military technology that would change the shape of war for a thousand years - the war chariot.
The Sumerians, and Egyptians had fought on foot, primarily with a spear and axe.
The new invaders used light war chariots, drawn by horses.
One man would control the horses, the other should shoot at the enemy with a composite bow.
(PICTURE?)
Much more mobile way of attacking than before
II. Sea Peoples and the Crisis of ancient Near
East: 1200 BC
The 50 years around 1200 BC was a disaster for most ancient
civilizations.
Egyptians fought Libyans and
the mysterious "Sea Peoples" in 1208; at same time, Mesopotamians
fought Aramaeans from the desert.
Hittite civilization in Asia
Minor, Mycenaean civilization in Greece, collapsed and disappeared.
Archaeologists find destruction levels at many sites throughout the Near East (Claude Schaeffer, Stratigraphie Comparee et Chronologie L'Asie Occidentale 1948)
Only Egypt survived relatively unchanged, though not without a struglle.
Two main theories:
1) Population movements
start in central Mediterranean, roll over Greece and Near East, destroying as
they go, before being stopped by the Egytians
2) Something ecological
destabilizes Bronze Age system; population movements are consequence, not
cause, of the collapse
Recent work on dendrochronology (tree ring):
history professor William Stiebing from the University of New Orleans has
studied tree rings around the Mediterranean and Asia Minor and has found
evidence of severe drought that extended from that region to North America in 1200
B. C.
Even more recently, astronomers have suggests that
crisis caused by impact of comets or other types of cosmic debris .
Whatever the cause,
widescale population movements happened, including migration from the Aegean
region to western Asia.
Some of these migrants were
certainly Mycenaean Greeks and related people (as seen by their material
culture)
Philistines
(Peleset) who settle in Palestine (and give it their name) probably came from
Greece
Important side effect: collapse around 1200 BC allows new civilization to develop in the Near East.
For the rest of these class, I am going to talk about two Semitic civilizations which took advantage of the power vacuum.
III. NEW PRINCIPALITIES OF THE 2ND MILLENIUM
A. Assyrians of N. Mesopotamia most powerful new state
(1300 - 612 BC)
Assyrians became masters of chariot-warfare (though they did not invent it), and built the first great multiethnic empire of the Near East.
First immigated into N. Mesopotamia ca. 3000 BC.
Semitic speakers:
(Semitic is a language family which includes Hebrew, Arabic, and various ancient Near Eastern languages)
main god was Assur (named themselves after him)
In 12th century BC, the Assyrians expanded in Mesopotamia
Their base was in northern Mesopotamia (with Nineveh as its capital)
By the 9th century, the Assyrians conquered southern Mesopotamia, Israel, much of Egypt, and Syria.
Why successful?
Militarily, Assyrians were the most formidable people who had yet emerged, combining iron weaponry, the war chariots, and siege technology.
Yet good at keeping, not just acquiring empires:
They were first state to recruit their troops without ethnic discrimination - a truly multi-ethnic empire.
When groups within the empire became rebellious, the Assyrians would deport them - force men, women, and children to migrate to another part of the empire; this would help weaken regional separatism.
Promotion of cultural interchange
Yet they were not simply destroyers -
The Assyrians preserve and promoted the cultures they conquered.
Assyrian intellectuals were responsible for transmitting much of the culture of earlier civilizations, like Sumerians - they rewrote Sumerian and Babylonian laws
It is only under their rule that Mesopotamian law becomes systematized.
B. HEBREWS: ANOTHER NEW (MUCH SMALLER) PRINCIPALITY OF THE 2ND C BC
Early history
It's difficult to narrate the early history of the Hebrews because the earliest parts of the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible) weren't composed until the 10th century BC or after, so hundreds or (in case of Genesis) thousands of years after the events they relate.
It seems likely that the Hebrews were among the various Semitic speaking groups who begin to move around the Near East shortly after 2000 BC (Aramaeans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Canaanites)
- Biblical narrative
Abraham was said in the Hebrew Bible to have migrated from Ur (a city in Mesopotamia) to the land of Canaan (Palestine).
This might have been around 1800 BC.
According to the Bible, Abraham's great- grandson Joseph - brought the Hebrews to Egypt.
There they lived for generations until Moses (a man with an Egyptian name) led them out of Egypt, miraculously crossed the Red Sea, and made a covenant with Yahweh.
After wandering through the desert, the Hebrews returned to Canaan ("the Promised land") and conquered it.
Other evidence for early Hebrews
This is the story in the Bible.
Very little of it can be confirmed by archaeological or other textual evidence.
The earliest external reference to Israel comes from the
Stele of Merneptah - late 13th century BC - an inscription on a standing rock put up by an Egyptian pharaoh who was bragging about a victory in Palestine - including a victory over a people called "Israel"
So it would seem that the Hebrews were in Palestine from the 13th century BC.
But these early Hebrews were a weak, illiterate, impoverished pastoralists - surrounded by powerful and sophisticated neighbors.
Kingdom of Israel
10th century BC
In late 11th century BC, the Hebrews had their first king - Saul, followed by David and his son Solomon.
These kings made Jerusalem their capital and had at their peak a kingdom approaching the size of modern Israel - tiny by their neighbors' standards.
As we've seen before, political unification went hand in hand with learning how to write - the earliest bits of Old Testament date from this period, the 10th century.
Borrowings from neighbors
Most aspects of technology they borrowed from their neighbors - their form of writing from ancient Palestinians (Canaanites), iron weapons from the Philistines, architecture of their temple from the Philistines.
Many of the Hebrews' early religious stories were derived from other Near Eastern cultures - stories picked up during their wanderings, or from their immediate neighbors.
account of Noah's flood shows up in Sumerian epic
Early Hebrew Law - the Ten Commandments - had a lot in common with other Near Eastern law codes like Hammurabi's - only simpler.
Monotheistic religion
What was special about the Hebrews was their monotheism and the way they formalized this monotheism into a holy book - the Hebrew Bible.
All of the other peoples we have been talking about worshiped multiple gods.
From an early period, the Hebrews vowed to worship Yahweh above all gods.
Eventually, they regarded Yahweh as the only god who existed, and a god who demanded a strong moral commitment from his people.
Formalization of their religion belongs to period after the independent Israel - to the period when the Hebrews were being defeated and deported by their more powerful neighbors (at the beginnings of the Jewish Diaspora – see Bulliet)
End of the independent Hebrew State
Unlike the Assyrians, the Hebrews never created a mighty empire, they never became very wealthy or numerous, they didn't even remain independent more than a few centuries.
By 722, an Assyrian king (Tiglath-pileser III) had conquered Israel
The century after that, a Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar (II) (Neo-Babylonians had replaced the Assyrians) took the other Hebrew kingdom, Judah, and Jerusulem, (597)
He destroyed the temple and deported many Hebrews to Babylon, "the Babylonian captivity."
It was in the period of foreign domination that the Hebrew Bible started to come together (by 5th century Torah compiled) and the Jewish prophets write.
The Hebrews would never have another truly independent state until the 20th century.
SUMMARY
Migrations after 2000: IndoEuropean and Semitic speakers into western Asia and (in the former case), Europe.
Chariot-warfare helped them.
Indo-Europeans in this period (Hittites, Mycenaeans) fairly dependent on older civilizations for much of their culture other than warfare.
After 1200 BC, they enter into a Dark Age.
Assyrians - greatest empire builders up until that point.
Hebrews - religious innovators
Both serve as transmitters of much of ancient Near Eastern culture - esp. Mesopotamian.