by Kevin Reilly
27 who says to the watery deep, “Be dry,
and I will dry up your streams,”
28 who says of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd
and will accomplish all that I please;
he will say of Jerusalem, “Let it be
rebuilt,”
and of the temple, “Let its foundations be
laid.” (Isaiah 44)
The belief in a single god of all nations and the use of one alphabet for all languages were two important ways in which the Iron Age Middle East and Mediterranean turned local knowledge into universal truths. In both cases, the creation of universals occurred in the struggle between small independent city-states and large empires.
The area from the Fertile Crescent to the eastern Mediterranean was unusual in the abundance of city-states. City-states had been the first Bronze Age societies on the Tigris and Euphrates, and they sustained themselves along jagged coastlines of the Mediterranean Sea as merchant cities and as colonies from North Africa to southern Spain. But the Middle East was also dominated by increasingly large empires in the early Iron Age. After the Assyrians came the Babylonians (sixth to fifth centuries BCE), followed by the Persians (later sixth to fifth centuries BCE) and Alexander the Great and his successors (fourth to first centuries BCE). Throughout the first millennium BCE, the conflict between city-states and large empires contributed to the increasing universalism of people in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Iron Age societies.
Iron, alphabets, and monotheism were not the only marks and makers of a more inclusive society in the first millennium BCE. One might also think of money or, more precisely, coinage minted in Lydia from the beginning of the seventh century.18 Lydia was an empire, not a city-state, but situated in what is today eastern Turkey, it was as mindful of the power of the Assyrian Empire as were the Phoenicians and Israelites. The creation of coins, worth their weight in metal but also backed by the king whose face was engraved on them, was another local invention that quickly won universal acceptance. Not only did the idea of coinage quickly pass to other states, but the actual coins circulated throughout the region and beyond.
Citizenship and Salvation:
Leveling in Life and Death
Two other ideas of the Iron Age gave the people of the Middle East and Mediterranean a sense of equal participation between 600 BCE and 200 CE. One was the idea of citizenship: the equality of the citizens and their common stake in their city. The other was the idea of salvation: a kind of equality beyond life and beyond death. We associate the idea of citizenship with the cities of ancient Greece, especially Athenian democracy, and the idea of an afterlife with the rise of Christianity, notably the idea of heaven, but these two examples were neither the only cases nor the first.
The Cities of Babylon . The cities of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (626-539 BCE) may have originated the idea of citizenship. The inhabitants of Babylon and other Babylonian cities claimed special privileges from the monarch. When Babylonian cities were conquered by foreign kings (the Assyrians before and the Persians after this period), the conquerors contacted delegations of urban inhabitants and agreed to respect elements of city law and tradition. The root of this idea, called “divine protection,” was probably laid in the Bronze Age cities of the Tigris and Euphrates, where each local temple was dedicated to a city god, but the concept was expressed frequently in the Neo-Babylonian period after 600 BCE.
The Persian Paradise . If the idea of citizenship sprang from the local interests of city-states and independent cities in empires, the idea of salvation came from the opposite direction—from the large empires that suppressed local initiative. The largest of these in the ancient world was the Achaemenid Persian Empire19 (ca. 550-330 BCE), created by Cyrus the Great (559-530 BCE), who conquered Babylonia in 539 and by the time of his death had extended Persian power from Asia Minor to India and Egypt to central Asia. An empire of such global scale, with its variety of peoples and traditions, sought universal explanations of its power. Like the Hebrew refugees in Babylon, Persian kings and soldiers needed a deity who was not limited by geography or language. The Persians called that god Ahura Mazda. An inscription above the tomb of King Darius (522-486 BCE) proclaimed, “A great god is Ahura Mazda, who created this earth, who created yonder sky, who created man, who created happiness for man, who made Darius King, one king over many, one lord over many.”
The idea of a single god, creator of heaven and earth, creator of mankind and anointer of kings, does not necessarily imply the idea of life after death, heaven, or eternal salvation, certainly not on an individual level. The monotheism of ancient Jews, many of whom were returned to Jerusalem by Cyrus, was a belief in a creator god who protected his people collectively in this world. Many Jews do not believe in a life after death. But under the influence of Persian thought, some Jews began to envision a last judgment and an individual immortality that inspired the prophet Daniel in the second century BCE. In fact, the driving force behind the Persian idea of a last judgment was not monotheism but the idea of two gods—Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainya, the good, creative god and the evil, destructive deity, described by the Persian prophet Zoroaster. Zoroastrians believed that there would be a final conflict between Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainya in which the force of evil would be defeated. In the end of days, there would be a last judgment, the passage of souls to heaven or hell, a resurrection of the dead, and paradise on Earth. These ideas filtered into Judaism and became core beliefs of Christianity.
Imperial Size and Reach
Zoroastrianism spread with the Persian armies across an empire that extended from Egypt and Greece in the west to the Indus Valley in the east, an area of 2 million square miles with 10 million people, representing 70 different ethnic groups. The empire was five times larger than the previous largest, the Assyrian, only 200 years before. Traditionally, the size of empires depended on the ability of soldiers to get from the center to the farthest reaches. That, in turn, depended on the speed and carrying capacity of their transportation technology. The invention of the horse-drawn chariot around 1700 BCE made possible the late Bronze Age empires of Shang dynasty China, central Asian migration to India, the Hittite Empire of Turkey, and the New Egyptian Empire of Egypt and the Levant. The Iron Age cavalry revolution gave the Assyrians the capacity to cover an area of 375,000 square miles with considerable speed. The Persians also made good use of cavalry, but the weapon that stretched their reach far beyond the Assyrians was the warship.
Ships and Satraps . The Persian navy sent galleys from the Persian Gulf to the Indus, across the Mediterranean, and down the Red Sea. In one sense, it was not a Persian fleet at all but rather the ships and sailors of countries and cities that the Persians had conquered or brought into their empire. The most effective of these were the fleets of the Phoenician cities, including Tyre, and the Greek cities on the coast of modern Turkey and throughout the Mediterranean. These fleets included both mercenaries (sailors who fought for pay) and the sailors of subject cities and states.
Persian ability to rule such a vast empire depended in part on an innovation in organization carried out by Darius soon after he came to power in 522 BCE. He divided his empire into districts, called satrapies, each governed by an appointed governor, or satrap. Depending on size, wealth, and population, each satrapy was assessed taxes and troops: infantry soldiers, cavalry and horses, and sailors and ships. Mercenaries and ethnic Persian forces rounded out the huge Persian force, estimated to number 300,000. “Of all the troops in the Persian army,” the Greek historian Herodotus wrote, “the native Persians were not only the best but also the most magnificently equipped.”20 He was referring probably to the elite palace guard of 1,000, which the Greeks called the Immortals because of the Persian practice of immediately replacing the fallen to keep the force at full strength.
That the Persians could govern the largest empire in the world from 522 BCE until 330 BCE testifies to their organizational ingenuity and military power. That the entire empire could be lost i
n just under four years—as the 23-year-old Alexander of Macedon forced one satrap after another to change sides—shows how fragile the system could become.
Conclusion
The Legacy of Gilgamesh’s Wall
What, then, is the legacy of the urban revolution? The great ramparted wall of Uruk was meant to magnify the power of the king and to keep out his enemies: to mark the boundaries of the civilized from the barbarian. The walls inside the city served a similar function within the urban community. The walls of temple, palace, and fort separated the new divisions of class, function, power, and wealth. These divisions increased throughout the course of the urban revolution. As cities grew in size and number, so did the power of kings and the numbers of soldiers and slaves.
Farmers, herders, and other food producers vastly increased their output and efficiency with irrigation, terraces, plowing new fields, adding new crops, and improving yields. The raw measure is the number of people who could be fed. World population grew slowly from about 6 million at the beginning of agriculture around 8000 BCE to about 7 million by 4000 BCE. But from there, it doubled every 1,000 years: 14 million by 3000 BCE, 27 million by 2000 BCE, and 50 million by 1000 BCE. Iron Age food producers doubled the pace again—to 100 million by 500 BCE.
The growth of cities meant a faster increase in the number of those who did not have to farm, herd, hunt, or gather. Cities popped up like mushrooms after a spring rain from 3000 BCE to 2000 BCE. From populations of a few thousand, they reached about 80,000 in Uruk by 2600 BCE. The Iron Age forged new cities again after 1000 BCE, and the new imperial capitals attained sizes never seen before: Babylon probably numbered 200,000 in 612 BCE.
Quantity of life is not the same as quality, and quality went to the few. The finest arts and treasures of the first civilizations were buried in the tombs of pharaohs and princesses. The work of the most accomplished astronomers and mathematicians enabled rulers to predict eclipses, improve calendars, and increase taxes. The scribes wrote for the eyes of the lords only.
Cities could not keep up their walls indefinitely, however. Gilgamesh needed Enkidu. Cities needed pastures: their meat, milk, horses, hides, and chariots. Iron Age empires needed soldiers, taxpayers, farmers, herders, artisans, merchants, and specialists. Some cities needed citizens.
Words leapt the walls of sacred precincts. The secret symbols of scribes and priests, initially used to collect taxes and communicate with the gods, became more versatile as they became simplified and more accessible. Epics, stories, and poetry could not be contained like secret formulas. Written laws could teach one to read. Literature could tempt one to dream.
The Promise of Pharaoh’s Dream
The pharaohs of Old Kingdom Egypt monopolized the resources of their realm to provide for their own afterlives. Immortality was reserved for kings, their accommodations prepared by the backbreaking work of Egyptian peasants, especially in the period of pyramid building between 2700 BCE and 2500 BCE. By 2000 BCE, Egyptian peasants were drawn to cults of the god Osiris, who himself had been restored to life by his loving wife Isis after being dismembered by his wicked brother Seth. As the god of the underworld, Osiris weighed the souls of all deceased Egyptians against the feather symbol of justice. Immortality was opened to those beyond the family of the pharaoh, and a person’s worth could no longer be measured only by wealth and social position. Osiris worship became so common in the Egyptian New Kingdom that the priests attempted to regain control by devising fees and duties that would ensure a light heart (or a heavy feather). Cults of Osiris and Isis spread to the occupiers of Egypt in the Iron Age, filtering idea of judgment, rebirth, and immortality to Assyrians, Babylonians, Jews, and Persians. Persian Zoroastrianism recirculated the promises of Egyptian mysteries throughout South Asia and the Mediterranean in the fifth and sixth centuries CE.
The urban revolution was too big to remain the preserve of the few. The city released too many genies that could not be rebottled. They would be granting wishes for centuries to come.
Suggested Readings
Chadwick, Robert. First Civilizations: Ancient Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. London: Equinox Publishing, 2005. Introductory survey from the agricultural revolution to the rise of Persia.
Foster, Benjamin R., trans. and ed. The Epic of Gilgamesh. New York: Norton, 2001. Well worth reading in full; a classic for thousands of years.
Ristvet, Lauren. In the Beginning: World History from Human Evolution to the First States. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007. As thoughtful and well informed here as for the previous chapter.
Scarre, Christopher, and Brian Fagan. Ancient Civilizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2003. Very good textbook; includes the Americas.
Trigger, Bruce G. Early Civilizations: Ancient Egypt in Context. Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 1993. Interesting effort by an anthropologist to compare Egypt with other ancient civilizations, including African and American.
Notes
1. Benjamin R. Foster, trans. and ed., The Epic of Gilgamesh (New York: Norton, 2001), p. 10, tablet I, 226-32.
2. John Noble Wilford, “Evidence of Ancient Civilization is Found in Peruvian Countryside,” New York Times, December 28, 2004, F3.
3. Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 42.
4. There are many ancient Egyptian documents like this, copied by student scribes for writing practice. This selection is adapted from two: “Teaching of Khety, Son of Duaf,” quoted in Sir Leonard Woolley, The Beginnings of Civilization, vol. 1, pt. 2, of UNESCO History of Mankind: Cultural and Scientific Development (New York: Mentor, 1963), 170, and V. Gordon Childe, Man Makes Himself (New York: Mentor, 1951), 149.
5. Adapted from Bernal Diaz, The Conquest of New Spain, trans. J. M Cohen (London: Penguin, 1963), 232-33.
6. James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts relating to the Old Testament (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955), 438-40, cited in William H. McNeill, The Rise of the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 138, n. 31.
7. P. Anastasi IV, cited in R. A. Caminos, Late-Egyptian Miscellanies (London, 1954), 137-38. Adapted from Barry J. Kemp, Ancient Egypt (London: Routledge, 1989), 310.
8. John Noble Wilford, “String and Knot, Theory of Inca Writing,” New York Times, August 12, 2003, F1.
9. Quoted in Amelie Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East c.3000-330 B.C., vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 1995), 316-17.
10. E. Weidner quoted in Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East c. 3000-330 B.C., vol. 2 (London: Routledge, 1995), 396.
11. Bronze was used for tools in Peru in addition to gold and copper. The Aztecs fashioned objects of gold and silver, but the Mayans lacked an indigenous metal industry.
12. Again, the Americas are an exception. In Peru, bronze tools were available widely, but there was no iron anywhere in the Americas. Highland Mexican societies received bronze from South America, but the lowland Maya did not.
13. There may have been other, possibly even earlier sites. For the claim of a separate Indian discovery as early as 1800 BCE, see Tawari Rakesh, “The Origins of Iron-Working in India: New Evidence from the Central Ganga Plain and the Eastern Vindhyas Antiquity,” Antiquity 77 (297, 2003): 536-44. For China, see Donald B. Wagner, Iron and Steel in Ancient China (London: Brill, 1996).
14. A book published by the Iron Roads Project of UNESCO, Les Routes du Fer en Afrique (Paris: UNESCO, 2000), argues that African iron production in central Africa may be as much as 5,000 years old and that there is evidence of iron production in Niger dating to at least 1500 BCE.
15. See William H. McNeill, The Rise of the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 117-18.
16. Ezekiel 27:12-25, adapted from New English Bible.
17. Quoted by Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East, vol. 2, 511.
18. Coinage also originated in India and China toward the end of the seventh century CE.
19. “Achaemenid” refers to the name of the founder of the Persia
n dynasty. This was the first great and largest Persian Empire. It was followed by the other Persian empires after the interruption of Alexander the Great and his Seleucid successors.
20. Aubrey de Selincourt, trans., Herodotus, Histories 7.83.
Eurasian Classical Cultures and Empires
600 BCE-200 CE
The Great Traditions of the Classical Age
The Classical Age
The Great Divergence
Interpreting Literature
Differences Not Permanent
The Ways of India and Greece
India
Vedic Civilization
Four Varnas
Karma and Reincarnation
Farmers and Jatis
Cities, States, and Buddhism
Mauryan Dynasty
Ashoka
Buddhism, Politics, and Commerce
Greece
The Hellenes
Clans into Citizens
The Polis and Greek Religion
Public Spaces and Public Dramas
Freedom and Law
Law and War between States
Laws of Nature
Athenian Democracy
Athens City Limits
The Worlds of Rome and China
Rome
Greco-Roman Society and Hellenism
Republic Not a Democracy
Armies, Lands, and Citizens
Praetors and Publicans
Cicero on Provincial Government
Civil War and Empire
Empire and Law
Administering the Roman Empire
No Bureaucracy
The Pax Romana
The Third Century
China
Similarities and Differences
Lineages, Cities, and States