- Cognitive revolution

- Language an important outcome

- Ability to think
- Language and myths help overcome the inability to speak about others →
allows larger groups to work together
- Gossip theory of language
- Theory of fictions
- Governed by these fictions that help unite us all → common stories
1. Religion
2. Fiction of nations
3. Laws and justice → we created these
4. Modern corportaionts → corportaiotns have power but not in a
physical unit, they were just given
5. Money → only has value because we gave it value
- Agricultural revolution
- Change from hunter gather → work in agriculture
- Settled in one place
- Skeletal evidence of body changes due to the intensive work
- Change in demographics → no kings, queens, priestly class of people or army)
- Negatatives:
- Change in environment could wipe out all the crops (doesn’t happen with
huntergathers)
- “What domesticated us, not we domesticated the wheat”
- Prehistoric mesopotamia (period before written mesopotamia)
- Dates:
- BC, AD: before christ
- BCE, CE: before common era
- Geography:
- Neart east: Middle east, American English
- Fertile crescent
- Mesopotaia: means: between 2 riviers (Tigris and euphrates)
- Beginning of agriculture in china
- 4 alluvial civilizations
- water/river systems
- China, mesopotamia, egypt and india → developed independently
but at the same time
- Earliest pottery in world
- Settlement first → than agriculture emerged
- Rice and millet is main crop
- Movemnets of knowledge and skills between cities in china → help
agriculture revolution
- Ubaid period - presumarian culture - 6500-3800 BCE
- Prehistoric: no wriitng
- Important ubaid city: Eridu
 - Many prehistoric, pre-state societes had chiefdoms (one person in power)
- Archaelogical evidence
- Warfare
- Long distsance
- “Exaggerated symbolization of social rank”
- Unstable political system
- NO CHIEFDOMS IN UBAID
- Socio-political organization
- TEMPLES:
- Ubaid cubit: 72 cm
- Very complex → even in prehistory with no writing there
was mathematical understanding and organization
- First example in region of riutal public architecture
- Corners orient to cardinal points of compass
- Ekphrasis: descriptive s
- peech bringing what is described cleary before the eyes
- Example: lizard/figure art
- Mix of human/animal
- Sophisticated society because of the details in art
- Why is pottery important?
- Can understand a massive amount through poetry
- Social stratifciation/ social signaling
- More sophisticated → wealthier society
- Show where it came from → through materials that were used
- Ubaid society
- Moved around a lot
- Lots of trading
- Sophisticated and was trading with cities around the m
- Stamps
- Develops ownership and becomes connected to the most
important changes in human history: WRITING
- Conclusion: democracy
- Primitive democracy in ancient mesopotamia
- Evidence: judicial system
- Body of people townsmen had the power (only men)
- Eventually as writing merges, there is a centralization of power
and move away from democracy

Mesopotamia: between Tigris and Euphrates River

Standard of Ur

- Size portrays importance

- War vs peace painting
- Peace: domestication of animals
- 3 levels in the art → social hierarchy
- More complex than ubaid period → different matierals used

Commerce and Trade:

- Lapis lazuli
- Shell
- Red limestone
- These gems were used for painting
- Use of these materials showed sophisticated way of trading
- More wealth and porspoerity shown because they were able to purchase these materials

Conclusions:
Far reaching trade
Somewhat globalized world
Movement of goods and contact with people
Increasing wealth and prosperity
Power to purchase things
Bronze is the most important good being traded→ transform human life

Agriculture Revolution
- Polyculture: using a variety different crops in the same area
- Irrigation systems, which included canals, dams, leeves
- Delayed return labor investment
Negative side: fixed people in place, people were stuck/trapped
Domestication of animals: pictograms
Horses domesticated, utilized in warfare
Farming allowed for some people to work a lot and others not to have to (division of roles
in society)

SUMERIAN SOCIETY
Clothing
- Sumaerian clothing= wool spun by women and dyed by men
- Both women and men wore skirts made of fleece-like fabric known as kaunakes
- Social class, modes of dress
- Slaves, servants, soldiers = short skirts (short and practical working and fighting)
- Long skirts= royalty and deities

- Movement away from “primitive democracy”

- Lugal → “big man”
- Ensi → “lord of the plowland
- Priest-King → gives prestige that is untouchable, gives a power that is much larger than
anything human, convenient and useful- King says the he is a God (Roman emperors)
- Below the king was a class of free men and women
- Servants and slaves
- An army

Royal Tombs of Ur
- 2600 BCE
- Queen Puabi
- Excavated 1922-1934, Sir Charles Leonard Woolley
- Tomb→ 74 dead bodies→ servants murdered
- Can see the difference in status with life and death

Sumerian City-States
- Each city has a king and temple that are not united politically but by culture or
religion similar to ancient Greece (Polis)
- Temples dominated these cities

- Theocracy: religion and politics combined

- Ziggurat - massive temple strucutre
- Cella - holy part of a temple → only priests allowed
- “Eh” = house, temple (dwelling place of god)
- Bible
- Humans tried to reach the heavens through the temple

Polytheistic
- Pantheon of gods
- Major deities and minor deities → some more important than others
- Religion, as the only available intellectual system for understanding the world
- Religion is the center of humans: Understanding and explaining the world and
human life and its meaning
AFTERLIFE:
- Pessimistic perspective
- Contrast with other civilizations
Stamp:
- Drinking beer
- Long straws
- Sophistication of seal is the first step into writing
- Mark ownership of bundle of goods
- Signals that someone owned the good
- Often denoted possession, could be used to mark private property

Writing:
- First: Rudimentary lists and contracts
- Sumerian writing became more complex and sophisticated
- Business and commerce spurs innovation in human life
- Pictograms: Standardization because everyone draws differently
- Cuneiform ( latin, cuneus “wedge”)- Sumerian dialect → school
- Some 700 written signs
- From simple and literal (pictograms) to more abstract
- Division
- Hand = “received”

China: an oracle bone description → religious practices

Sumerian= language isolate

- Agglutinative language
- Other languages of Mesopotamia-Akkadian and babylonian- were Semitic
languages
- Hebrew and Arabic = Semitic Language family

Writing Mediums
- Clay

The Birth of Schools

- Edubba, “house of tablets”
- Sumer offered the world its first schools
- Cultural elite
- Knowledge that other people didn’t have
- Being literate gave people power
- Excluded women, excerpt for the daughters of kings

Protestant christianity does not view temple as a dwelling of god

- Low literacy
 - Students learned how to fashion the medium of their craft
- Rigorous training
- School was intense and harsh environment

From writing to Literature

- From factual to meaningful
- From lists to hymns, epics, literature
- Epic of Gilgamesh

Writing and Power

- Useful for those who can use it
- Goals → leave their mark
- Stabilize meaning in the world
- Ideology
- Not entirely under anyone's control
- Writing and the old
- Elderlies are extremely important - once writing emerges you don't need
to look at understanding of the world anymore

- Sumerian dwelling = house

- Insulated the cold and retained heat in a harsh desert environment
- Sumerian relief: reed house 3
- Iraqi mudhif (reed house)
- Marshy areas of iraq
- Follows the model that existed in ancient sumer

eco-architecture “designing with nature”

- building with climate and topography in mind
- Local resources
- Create comfort through building itself
- Minimum of mechanical/technology
- Accessible to lots of people

Sumerian Art
- Figurines in a frequent pose of prayer
-lenght of dress symbolizes wealth
-What Sumer created continued to exist in other civilizations

- technology and invention in ancient sumer

- Created wheel
- Created writing
- These were taken up by other civilizaitons and left a huge impact on the world
Characteristics of Ancient Civilizations
1. Writing
2. Cities
a. brings lots of people together → social interactions
b. Motor of cultural life
c. Identity
3. Organized governments
a. Priest-king
b. Evidence from art
c. Size of temples → sophisticated government
4. Social classes
5. Complex religion
6. Art and architecture, monumental architecture(pyramids)
7. Job specialization
8. Public works
a. Infrastructure, dams, canals
9. Surpluses

Social Cage/caging
- Prehistoric peoples had some degree of freedom
- Infrastructure of canals and dams - trapped in some way and cant get out
- Writing: once you start writing in a certain way you are trapped doing it in a
certain way
- technology - exposed to a lot of information and if you don't respond or do
anything about it you are considered rude
- Language
ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA PART 2 - AKKADIAN EMPIRE
- Took over Sumer and new hold over mesopotamia
- Akkadian empire: 2334 BC - 2154 BC
- Wealth and splendor
- Bureaucratic systems
- Writing
- Take sumerian writing for their own language → new writing system:
- CUENIFORM
- God of sumerians
- Add the gods to their own religious sytem and facilitate new state of
affairs
- Oppennes of polythesism
- Sumerian language would eventually decline
- Akadain slowly = lingua franca → the common/international language of the
native world
- Birth of sargon = origin story
- Similar to moses
- Rags → riches
- Legendary birth with humble origins → cool birth
- Adds lust to Sargon as a ruler → not just a random person, had an
interesting history
- Akkahd arts and writing flourish
- Goddes Inanna = priestess
- Wrote a hymn = prayer = poem
- Wrote her name after it → first example of attaching
authorship to their own work
- Significant: asserting individuality and themself
- Massive change in art
- STELE: placed in public areas
- Can be read or it was laws it could be followed
- Massive structures
- Had a message on it
- Increasing detail to depict scene in a life like way → more
depth (was linear in sumerian art)
BABYLONS 2000-1000 BCE
- Resurgence of Sumer
- UR III
- Lasted one century
- 2 kingdoms emerged: Assyrian and Babylonia
- Babylon
- Akkadian speaking people
- Hanging gardens of babylon
- Biblical mention of babylon
- Tower of babel → confusion, is connected to the city’s name
- Babylonian captivity
- Known for fast living
- Babylon and law
- Code of Hammurabi (1755-1750 BC)
1. Stele
2. 282 laws, found in 1901
- Legal principles:
1. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth (hebrews)
2. God, in this case Shamash, is the law giver (moses, hebrews)
3. Clear social classes, the law not only identifies them it creates and
perpetuates distinctions
4. The bodies of the upper classes are protected
5. Subsitutionary punishment
- A son can be subsituted and punished for the crime of the
father
6. Steal, striking one’s father, capital crimes
- VEBLEN, “THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS” READING
- Important thing to broadcast your power = leisure class
- Professions:
- Priests, royals, government, sports, war
- Conspicuous leisure
- Hunting for leisure
- Sports
- Yachts
- Manners → table manners
- Conspiocous consumption
- Buy things to show your wealth
- Standards of beaut y
- Takeaways: leisure class
- Ancient
- Exempted from industrial, manual, work
- Negative attitude towards manual labor
- Originally associated with women
- Professions limited
- Violences, prowess
- Put exploits on display
- Ownership → women, goods produced by women, property
- Institution
- EPIC OF GILGAMESH
- Understand friendship, how humans were created, establish and make
sense of world around them
Ancient Egypt

Cosmos
-water/swamp
-creatures/gods (8) - came in pairs (ogdoad)
-brother and sister? Husband and wife?

Egyptian Cosmogony
- Religion, myth, philosophy
- Non-empirical questions
- Water, primordial water, primordial chaos called Nu (sometimes Nun)
- Pairs: male and female
- Attributes: formlessness, darkness, hiddenness
- Therianthropism

Old, middle and new kingdom

- Artificial categorization
- Each kingdom= dynasties of pharaohs
- The great sphinx= old kingdom

Hymn to the Nile, c 2100 BCE

- More economic stability
- Stable base in civilization → allowed to flourish
- Connection to the nile made this civilzitio long lasting and prosperous

Nile River was everything:

- source of everything
- Helped for transportation
- Used for agriculture

Valued Order!!!

Polyculture
- Wheat and barley (beer)
- Lentils and chickpeas
- Papyrus
- Important because you created paper, sandals, wigs
- Medium of communication → not just writing on stones anymore, quicker now
- Flax - linen → normal clothing

Legacy of Egypt
- Hyksos in 1664 BCE
- Alexander the Great 30 BCE, Roman Conquest
Art:
- Depict in a standardized way
- Used a grid to draw
- Could replicate
- Bodies were proportional
- Equality between divine and and person
- Static composition
- Easy to understand
- Men were red, women were yellowish
- Hunting and farming
- Pharaoh and god - static poses/ rigidity

- Contrast w ancient greek art

Ancient Egyptian Society

- Divine kingship → not just kings ruling → gods themself
- Horus
- Members of the same family could marry each other
- Tutankhamn married his half-sister
- Took inspiration from own gods that had incest → justified
- Royalty and incest
- Incest and those below
- Consensus

Royal Women
- Queens might ascend and take the throne
- Neferti, Hatshesput, and cleopatra VII
- Greek women, Kyrios
- Birth control and abortion
Society
- Happy domestic scenes
- Idealized

Adorning the body

- Hygiene and appearance powerful cultural values
- Statues of the gods
- Cosmetics and jewelry
- Beyond beauty→ maintain health
- Statues given make- up
- Oils would soothe and nourish the skin and hair
- Shaved heads
- Prevent lice
- Pre-makeup cream served as sunblock
- Eyes kohl eyeliner
- Protects eyes from sun and insects
- Clothes made of flax- linen
- Wigs
- Concern with cleanliness connected to medicine
- Circumcision
- Egyptians had perhaps the most developed medical practices for the time

Death in ancient egypt- afterlife

- Be judged to show they lived a good life
- The soul hovering over the individual
- Osiris judge the dead
- Heart of the person placed on the scale - heart is heavier than feather→ you are
condemned
- Ba = art represented as a bird

The field of Reeds

Egyptians had mummies

- Salt= natron, dry out and defat the body
-organs had to be removed
-all organs removed except the heart

Sacrifice of bird
- The book of the dead
- 2670-2613 BC
- Not a codified religious text
- One spell: deceased how to bring the legs back to life
Rituals for the dead
- Elaborate chambers
- Get more information about egyptians here

Architecture for the dead

- The great pyramid of Giza
- the largest was built as a tomb for pharaoh khufu
- 481 feet
- 2.3 million stone blocks
- Tomb important in the ancient world - domu aeterna (etermnal home)
- Corvee labor existed in many civilizations, sometimes in Medieval Europe
- Corvee labor wasn't slavery, corvee labor was unpaid, coercive and periodic form of
labor

Slavery
- Slaves were mostly captive, the spoils of war
- If you went into debt and didn’t you would be placed into slavery

Writing
- Hyksos, Greeks, and Rome
- After 332 BCE, Greek culture began to have a major influence
- 30 BCE= Roman province in, the latin language and Roman culture would have a
powerful influence
- By circa 400 CE the ancient Egyptian language was largely dead
- hieroglyphs (greek for “sacred writing”)
- Initially, more than 1000 hireroglyphs
- System was simplified to 750
- Roughly 3500-3200 BCE

Rosseta stone
- 3 languages written - 3 scripts, 2 languages
- Ancient egyptians (hieroglyphics and demotic-like arabic) and ancient greek
- Demotic - other ancient egyptian writing
- Of the people
- Developed for everyday life

- Hieroglyphs used in 4 WAYS:

1. Alphabetic
2. Logographic
3. Syllabic
4. Determinatives
- Can be written/read right to left, left to right, top to bottom

Social Upheaval (New Kingdom)

 - Review aspects of Egyptian art
- More dimension now in art
- Differences in sizes
- Not following same body standaridzation anymore
- Androgyny how men are being depicted
- men are curvy
- First example of monotheism

Amarna Hersey and Egyptian Art

- Religious change mirrored in Egyptian Art
- Depictions of pharaoh himself
- Some scholars describe the king as effeminate and androgynous
- Changes in religion and art linked
- Akhenaten believed himself to be a living god
- Akhenaten incarnation of the god aten, the sun disk, which was neither male nor female
- Abstraction of depiction of gods

- AMENHOTEP IV: 1353 - 1336

- Queen Nefertiti
- Tutankhamun
- Closed all other temples
- Exclusive cult of Aten
- Moved capital to Akhetaten
- First historical example of state monotheism
- Amun most widespread cult of worship
- Power of the priests of Amun
- Element of political maneurvring
-
- Damnatio memoriae of Akenhaten - cancelation of memory itself
- He dies and the son takes over
- Reverted society back to polythesism
- Rath of humans coming out
- Start fresh
- Art and temples were ruined
- To make future populations forget
- What does this relate to
- Change of religion
- Abstraction of the art → SUNDISK
- Sandisk: one god - monotheism → in egypt
- Breakaway from regulated standards of art in egypt
- Difference in size of body
- Mat - order and continuity
- In egypt
 - Worship sungod → power move to move away from the
norm of other priests
-
- COSMOS, CHAOS AND THE WORLD TO COME - NORMAN COHN
- Cosmos: Static, wasn’t supposed to change, was threatened but was
stable enough to not change
- Connection the nile → natural connection
- Religion is forefront
- All ethnocentric → always involving their own people, needed to
be at the center
- Most important concept for ancient egyptiains, according to Cohn? How
did this concept influence politics, religion and culture?
- Ma’at = order, politics
- Pharoh was upkeeper of Ma’at
- Can be indivudals
- Was a goddess
- Personified this ideas of order
- Need to create this type of order today?
- Mos Mairum
- Unspoken social rules, how elders did things,
attachment to these rules
- Compare and contrast 3 civilizations
- Egyptian
- Vedic indians
- Similar to egyptian with the idea of order: Veda
- Zoroastrians
- Moment where everything is come to the end
- World and justice is achieved
- Step away from dominant power
- Everyone would soon have a place in the life and have a
purpose
- People could be helpful
- Judaism heavily influenced
- Christians merged out of judiasm also will be influenced

PERSIAN EMPIRE - dates differ 1500 and 1200 BC (Cohn)

- Zoroaster = Zarathustra
- Cosmic struggles between 2 gods
- Combat myth - apocalyptic faith
- Ahura Mazda: wise and benvolent god
- Angra Mainyu: force of evil
- Free will
- Offical faith
- Influnece on other religions
 - “Great consummation” future event where all will be made right
- With other civilizations, the interest was in creation and explaining it, maintaining order
- Zarathustra there was a shift
- Interested not in creation itself but in its purpose (Cohn)
- Spread of Islam in Persia
- Tehre ares some 90,000 practitioners in Iran today and a small community in
India (Parsis community, immigrated 7th century CE)
- Disccusion: Herodotus on the Egytpians (426 BCE)
- Travelled throught hte know world, claimed to have traveled in Egypt
- Could not speak egyptian
- Could not all be factual
- “Father of history”
- Historie - “an inquiry” in ancient greek
- Greco-persian wars
- Greek revolution in genre
- Before chronicles, lists
- Attempt to understand these tlits and understand why
- Trying to make it objective
- For herodotus, what connections were there between egypt and greek world?
- Gods
- Greek religion comes from egyptians
- Precursor to greek society - relgion
- Each month and day is associated with a specific god
- Zodiac sign
- Cleanliness
- Men couldn’t enter temples after sleeping with women
- What socio-cultural practices did Egyptians use to create a sense of the sacred?
- ???

BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE

- Bronze Age Approx: 3300-1200 BCE
- Bronze Age Collapse: 1250 - 1150 BCE
- Iron age: approx 1200-550 BCE
- Consequences of bronze age collapse
- ??
- Reasons:
- Sea peoples
- Evidence: art
- Philistines
- Numerous causes:
- 1250-1150 BCE evidence of:
- Natural disasters (earthquakes)
- Internal rebellions
- Invasions (primarly the sea peoples)
 - Disruption of trade relations/systemss collapse (political instablity)
- Climate change: drought, resulting in famine
- Climate problems: pollen in core samples of sediment, sea of Galilee
- Summary
- Period of decline
- Most major powers of the region, except Egypt, were swept away or weakened
- Age of “darkness”
- Collapse ushered in Iron Age (roughly 1200-700 BCE)
- New empires rose again from the near east to fill the void
- The assyrian empire, babylonian and persian empire

The Ancient Israelites

- Isaac and Revecca had a son: Jacob

- Jacob= grandson of Abraham and Sarah
- Israel: one who wrestles with God, one who contends with God

Archeological Evidence for Exodus

- Canaanite expulsion, Nile Delta, Labor
- Hyksos, 1650-1550 BC, chronology
- Constant migration
- Climate Factors
- No evidence of Israel, distinct ethnic group, in Egypt
- Escape not likely
- No evidence of encampments
- Lack of archeological or historical evidence for these events
- Mesha Stele
- Kingdom of Moab

- The united Kingdom of ISrael: 1050 BCE and 930 BCE

- It spans the reigns of kings Saul, David, and Solomon

The Ancient Israelites

- Tensions in the United Monarchy= split
- The Kingdom of ISrael and the Kingdom of Judah (930 BC)
- 10 and 2
- Yaweh
- Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement)

Emergence of the ancient Israelites

 - Israelites emerged in the Iron Age, roughly 1100/1000 and 500 BCE
- Geographical space, Canaan
- From the beginning to roughly the 7th century BCE was polytheistic
- Particular devotion to the God of Yahweh
- Henotheism
- Monotheism

Four-room house= Canaan in the 13th centuries BCE

- Animals
- Courtyard
- Agro-pastroal lifestyle
- Small walls

- Women, separate rooms, menstruation

- Highly popular in the region until the babylonian destruction and the exile
- Nomadic people
- Shepherds→ settled society

- The shepherd motif : Hebrew bible/New Testament

- United Kingdom, Solomon, the First Temple

- Built on the Temple Mount or Mount Moriah= Abraham had almost sacrificed isaac
- Ark of the Covenant, in the Holy of Holies
- Cella scared interspace of temple

Rituals:
- Community
- “Stabilize life”
- Move you away from yourself, bring focus outward to the world
- Psychologize and de-internalize those enacting them”
- Repetitive nature allows one to linger, to focus attention, to intensify a relationship
- Rituals disappearing
- THrough ritual, you become a different person

Ritual Sacrifice
- Korban= sacrificial offerings bulls, goats, sheep, and doves
- Grains, wine, and incense
- Korban= “something which draws close”

- Burnt offering (twice daily), which was wholly consumed by fire

- The sacrifice, part of the animal was given to the priests for their consumption
 - shakan= dwelling place of god
- kohanim= priestly class
- Court of the Women
- Court of Israel (men)

Gift
- Sacrificed predated temple
- Practice involving animals appears with the biblical figure of Aaron
- Two goats, one was consumed as a burnt offering (Yom Kippur)

Shinto
- 660 BCE?
- Disputed, 7th century AD
- Polytheism
- Japanese emperor: divine kami
- No sacred scripture, no binding doctrine of the kami

Ritual Sacrifice and the City

- Temple=center for pilgrimage
- Religious festivals such as Yom Kippur and Passover
- Sacrifice and the economy of the Holy City
- Ritual sacrifice rooted to a site, a place
- Exclusive preserve of the kohanim (the priests)
- Jewish populations outside of the immediate are of Israel

The Temple Today

- Do sacrifices outside temple complex

PRECLASSICAL CIVILIZATIONS
- Two bronze age civilizations: minoan and mycenean → contributed a great deal to later
greek culture
- cluster of greek islands
1. Minoans - isalnd of crete
- 3200-1200 BCE
- Primarily traderes
- Cultural sphere of influence
- Apart from trade and fishing → developed polycutre
- Raised cattle, pigs and goats
- Writing
- Linear A
- Used in palace and religious texts
- Linear A has remained undeciphered, lack of textual evidence
- Craftsmanship and trade
 - Rhyton
- Used in ritual way = libation
- Sacrifice with liquid
- Made out of crystal
- Crystal pouring bowl → skill is shown on it
- Art
-Fresco = art painted onto a wall
- Leaves lasting record
- Movement is shown in art → one of the first times
- Contrasted with egyptian art → stiff
- Ex: bull leaping fresco
- General economic equality = relations between men and women
- Evidence: art
- Outside the context of domestic life (religion, life)
- Obsession wtih war and power
- Advanced with working with gemstone → very detailed of the muscles
- Difference with standard of ur → real person depicted
- Lifelike compared to standard of ur
- Pottery in marine style
- Marine theme
- Movement
- Ex: dolphin art
- Scenes of narue
- Experience as traders
- Childlike
- Obsession with bulls
- Bull’s head rhyton
- Bulls part of their culture
- Art, wealth and ideas
- Nexus of trade and art
- Prosperous economy
- Trade, art and ideas flowed from minoan crete to surrounding areas and back
again
- Erotic childbirth
- Nexus of trade and art
- The palaces of the minoans
- No textual corroboration
- Palace of knosses
- More economic equality and gender equalty in minoana society
- Simialr many mulit-room houses = possible more equal distrubutions of wealth
- Lack of defensive walls
- Geographical isolation
- There is evidence of watchtowers along the roads
- Story of the end
 - 15th century BCE
2. Myceneans
- 1700-1100 BCE
- Late bronze age
- Area of greece, aegean sea
- Forerunners of the greeks
- Trade
- Writing
- Linear A from minoans was taken by myceneans and changed it for themselves
- Evolved into Linear B
- Syllabaries
- Linear B and development
- Michael Ventris → self taught linguist, obsessed with linear B at a young
age
- Earliest form of greek
- Linear B and rethinking history
- War
- Troy located
- Excavation of site in modern day turkey have revealed mycenean pottery
- Art
- Frescos largely lost, palaces destroyed
- No large status in this period
- Pottery and figurative art
- Funerary masks
- Griffen warrior tomb 1450 BCE
- Most important discovery was the pylos combat agate
- Miniature masterpiece
- Gemstone engraved with a combat scene
- Most likely of minoan origin
- Near pylos, southwest
- Grave contained more than 2000 artifacts
- Power in Myceneans Greece
- Large palace structures and tholos tombs
- Tholos tombs
- Beehive like structure
- Inflcued by minoans
- Warlike, had a warrier class and actively expanded through conquest
- The Phoenicians
- Phoencican city states 3200 BCE
- Spokke a semitic language
- Floursied as a maritime trading and manufacturing center from 1500-332 BCE
- Ship building, glass making, producing dyes and other luxury goods
- Not a unified kingdom but rather independent city-states
- Purple dye
 - Used for royalty in teh ancient world
- Imperial purple dye was made of rock snails
- “Purple people”
- Phoenix
- Expensive → have to go into sea → process it → turn it into garment
- Premier luxy good of ancient world
- Became connected to royalty
- Forbidden for eveyroen else to wear purple
- Producers of luxury goods
- Glassware
- Bronze objects
- Princess of the sea - in the old testamnte
- Pheonican alphabet
- Proto-sinaitic script
- Originally from egyptian hieroglyps
- Greeks eventually adopted this writing system and added vowels
- Latin would eventually base its alphabet on the greek
- Conclusion: cultural exchange
- Openness of the ancient world
- Opness to ideas, to new ways of doing things, new practical tools, like
writing
- Cultural productions were taken and adopted quite frequently: art,
alphabet
- People recognized greatness, achievement and seized upon it