38 Neither of these names originate with the Harappan civilization itself. “Hara” is a later name for Shiva, a divinity who may or may not have been worshipped this far back, and “Mohenjo-Daro” means “Mound of the Dead,” a name given to the city’s ruins by its excavators.
39 For readers who may be too young, or too literate, to recognize the reference: the Borg, the scariest civilization ever invented, threatened the entire universe in various episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The Borg were cyborg creatures linked together in a collective, with a mass identity so strong that they were unable to use the word “I.” They rumbled through the universe sucking other cultures into the collective and making them Borg, while announcing, “We are Borg. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.” They were entirely unstoppable until the scriptwriters of the eighth Star Trek movie apparently got drunk and gave the collective an individual identity, at which point the crew of the Enterprise mopped them up (Star Trek: First Contact). For an explanation of why this all has intellectual value, see The Well-Educated Mind, Chapter Twenty.
40 Manetho gives Khafre the name Suphis II; Herodotus calls him Chephren.
41 The lion and falcon appear combined into one creature in a predynastic carving, but the creature looks entirely different and has come to be known as a “griffin.”
42 Herodotus calls Menkaure by the Greek name Mycerinus. He also tangles up the geneaology, making Khafre (“Chephren”) the brother of Khufu (“Cheops”), and then identifying Menkaure as Khufu’s son rather than his grandson.
43 The Pyramid Text inscriptions eventually migrate to the tops and sides of coffins and become the Coffin Texts; from the coffins, they travel to papyri and become the well-known Book of the Dead, which elaborates on the destiny of the soul after death. This, however, is not fully developed until the New Kingdom, nearly a thousand years later.
44 The Greeks called these governors nomarchs and their provinces nomes, and the anachronistic names have become traditional.
45 The plagues visited on Egypt just before the Exodus numbered ten, with the tenth as the most devastating: this may also reflect an understanding of the number ten as an intensifier of sorts. (See the footnote on Chapter Thirty-Two for another example.)
46 A Palestinian parallel may be the city of Jericho, which fell to Israelite attack and had a curse laid on it by Joshua, the Israelite leader (Josh.6:26); likely because of its reputation as a cursed city, Jericho, one of the world’s oldest cities, was deserted for several centuries before it was reoccupied. The biblical account treats the rebuilding of Jericho, which takes place under the rule of the wicked Ahab of Jericho, as a further sign of the corrupt times; apparently the builder used human sacrifice to guarantee that the walls built on evil-omened ground would remain standing (see 1 Kings 16:34).
47 The traditional dating of Abraham’s lifetime is 2166–1991 BC, based on a straightforward reading of the Masoretic text. There is, naturally, no agreement whatsoever on this. The text itself makes other readings possible; Genesis is a theological history, not a political chronicle, and does not provide an exact chronology. No archaeological evidence points irrevocably to Abraham; scholars comparing the world of Genesis 14 to ancient Mesopotamian conditions have come up with birth dates ranging from 2166 to 1500 BC, or have argued that he never existed at all. In keeping with my general practice up to this point, I have retained the traditional dating, but it ought to be held very loosely. However, Abraham’s adventures fit well into the world of 2100 BC, as the rest of this chapter should make clear.
48 The familiar “Jehovah” is a non-name. The name God gives to himself when speaking to Abraham is YHWH (see, for example, Gen. 15:7); this name, later known as the “Tetragrammaton” in Greek, is thought by some linguists to be related to the Hebrew verb that expresses existence (see, for example, Jack M. Sasson, Hebrew Origins: Historiography, History, Faith of Ancient Israel, Chapter Eight). The name simply consists of the four consonants; the Masoretic text of Genesis has no vowels anywhere, since the reader was meant to insert these as he went. Vowels were added to the Hebrew text much later to help fix its meaning; at this time, the name was rendered YAHWEH. However, to avoid impious use of the name, many readers subsituted the name ELOHIM (the generic “my lord”) when they reached YAHWEH. From about 1100 on, scribes unfamiliar with Hebrew began with increasing frequency to insert the ELOHIM vowels into the YHWH consonants, yielding the nonsensical YEHOWIH, which eventually travels into English (by way of Latin) as JEHOVAH.
49 The chronology in the Genesis account is ambiguous. Either Abram heard the call of God in Ur, convinced his father to head for Canaan, and then got sidetracked to Haran; or else Terah headed towards Canaan for other reasons and then got sidetracked to Haran, where Abram then received the divine command to strike back out in the original direction. Both readings of the text itself are possible. I merely note this so that I won’t get (any more) letters accusing me of not having read my Bible.
50 This name originates with religion scholar Mark Smith, who suggests using it because it is not as horribly anachronistic as every other name used for the early inhabitants of the area. (See The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, frontmatter.)
51 In “Canaan,” the eras after prehistoric times are divided (based on pottery styles) into Early Bronze I,3300–2850; Early Bronze II/III, 2850–2400; and Early Bronze IV, 2400–2000.
52 The theory was once that Amorites had mounted an armed invasion, which would account for such a drastic change in lifestyle; but since there does not seem to be any change in the culture of the area, this is unlikely.
53 See chapter 48 for the entry of the “Chaldeans” into Assyrian and Babylonian history.
54 Muslims still practice male circumcision, or khitan, which tradition traces back to Abraham. Tradition says that the Prophet was born circumcised, but Muslim scholars disagree about the meaning of this miracle. Since the Qur’an does not specifically command circumcision, the practice is less strongly mandated in Islam than in Judaism; scholars disagree over whether circumcision is wajib, an obligation, or sunna, a custom. See M. J. Kister, “‘…and He Was Born Circumcised…’: Some Notes on Circumcision in Hadith,” in Oriens 34 (1994), frontmatter.
55 Technically, salinization involves not only the accumulation of salt, but an actual chemical reaction that changes the soil’s mineral content; it is “the process by which soluble chemical salts accumulate in soils and change their chemical composition” (D. Bruce Dickson, “Circumscription by Anthropogenic Environmental Destruction,” in American Antiquity 52:4[1987], Seventy-Nine). Dickson points out that the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates are also high in calcium, magnesium, and sodium, which tend to precipitate soluble salts out of the soil.
56 Compare this with the wandering populations that later occupied the North American continent, who could move across a practically unlimited expanse of fertile land (R. L. Carneiro, “A Theory of the Origin of the State,” Science 169 [1970], Chapter Eighty). The McKaslin Clan
57 Even today, something like 60 percent of the previously fertile land of Iraq (the country which now claims much of Mesopotamia) is uncultivable because of centuries of built-up salt and chemicals.
58 The time from the fall of Ur through about 1600 BC is generally called the Old Babylonian Period, an incredibly inaccurate designation since Babylon doesn’t become an important city until the reign of Hammurabi, beginning in 1792, and even after this doesn’t dominate the whole Mesopotamian plain for another thirty years or so.
59 The traditional start of Shamshi-Adad’s reign is 1813; this may not be quite right, but it serves as one of the benchmarks of ancient history.
60 Using the name “China” is an anachronism, like using “Iran” for the territory of Elam (which is something I’ve tried to avoid). During this millennium, the states that lay on the eastern part of the Asian continent were called by the names of their ruling families. However, it’s marginally
easier to justify the use of “China” for this area than the use of “Iran” for the Elamite lands, since the country of China has been coterminous with the land where the ancient Xia state lay for so very long (something certainly not true of modern Iran, which had its borders drawn in the twentieth century in places that do not match any of the ancient countries that occupied the same land).
61 Compared with the divisions of Mesopotamian history, the traditional archaeological divisions of Chinese history are pure simplicity: the Yang-shao culture (5000–3000) was followed by the Longshan culture (3000–2200), the Bronze Age (2200–500), and then the Iron Age.
62 Until these excavations, carried out in the late 1950s, historians widely assumed that the Xia Dynasty was entirely legendary; archaeology has demonstrated that there was indeed a Yellow river kingdom during the traditional Xia dates. The relationship between the Erlitou site and the Xia dynasty is still a matter of debate, although the connection is primarily questioned by Western historians and archaeologists (see Li Liu and Xingcan Chen, State Formation in Early China, frontmatter).
63 The previous dynasty had bee the Simash. This dynasty was named after its first king, Eparti; it is also referred to as the Sukkalmah, or “grand regent,” Dynasty, possibly so named because the Elamite king ruled with the help of a viceroy (the “grand regent”) whose succession was governed by unbelievably complicated rules.
64 The original account by Manetho is lost, but the Jewish historian Josephus preserved it by copying parts of it, word for word, into the work Against Apion.
65 Josephus actually translates the word used by Manetho as “shepherds.” He deduces, incorrectly, that the term “Hyksos” comes from the Egyptian hyk, or “captive,” and that the Hyksos were thus connected to the Israelite captivity in Egypt; in fact, it refers not to an invading race, but narrowly to the warrior-chiefs who rose up to claim rulership over Egypt; “chieftain” or “prince of the hill country” is closer to the sense of the word.
66 The early history of Crete is conventionally divided into the Prepalatial Period (3200–2000), before the building of palaces began; the Protopalatial, or First Palace, Period (2000–1720); the Neopalatial, or Second Palace, Period (1720–1550; it runs to 1450 if the eruption of Thera is placed in 1520 rather than 1628[see the footnote on Chapter Twenty]; and the Final Palatial Period (1550[1450]–1350).
67 The Library was generally attributed to Apollodorus, a Greek historian who lived in Athens around 140 BC; it is probably not by him.
68 The date of the eruption of Thera continues to be a topic for much argument. Radiocarbon dating of volcanic ash suggests a date around 1628. There is also evidence from tree rings in various places around the Northern Hemisphere suggesting that their growth was interrupted around 1628, which is certainly a possible result of a massive eruption such as may have taken place at Thera. However, there is no definitive way to link this for certain with the Thera eruption. Archaeologists argue that the eruption can’t have happened in 1628 because the archaeological period (based on pottery styles) during which the eruption occurred ended about thirty years after the eruption; if Thera erupted in 1628, this period (called LM IA) must have ended around 1600; but the similarities between LM IA pottery and those of other cultures which traded with Crete suggest that LM IA went on until around 1500. This is a simplification of J. Lesley Fitton’s condensed overview of the debate between 1628ers and 1530ers; for the overview itself, see Fitton’s Minoans, frontmatter-Chapter One; for a recent survey of all the various theories, in way more detail than most of us need, see Paul Rehak and John G. Younger, “Review of Aegean Prehistory VII: Neopalatial, Final Palatial, and Postpalatial Crete,” in American Journal of Archaeology 102:1 (1998), Chapter nine–Part III.
69 It is impossible to make a more positive assertion, thanks to the fact that at least four different dates have been suggested for the eruption of Thera, and that archaeologists also disagree on the dates of the Minoan decline. (The landscape is further confused by the sheer number of different specialists who have gotten in on the act: historians, archaeologists, vulcanologists, and oceanographers, all using different methods and quarrelling over the results.)
70 Much has been written, some serious and some not so serious, about the possibility that the eruption of Thera and the sinking of the island’s center is the source of Plato’s description of the lost island of Atlantis, which sank into the sea after violent earthquakes and floods; Plato calls Atlantis the strongest sea power in the region, which is a possible connection to the Minoan civilization. While this sort of speculation is fascinating, unfortunately I don’t have room in this history to treat even real civilizations in detail, let alone investigate imaginary ones.
71 The early twentieth-century theory that the Aryans swept in and conquered the Harappan cities through sheer might had more to do with politics than evidence; European scholars were anxious to find that the Aryans, with their European roots, were superior in every way to the natives of the Indian subcontinent. This motivation has also colored English understanding of the word arya, which (although it refers to a particular people group) probably did not originally bear the implication of “pure.” As historian Stuart Piggott points out, it very likely bears the connotation “noble” (as opposed to “servant-class”); the invading Aryans, setting themselves up as conquerors, became the ruling class in the lands where they settled.
72 This people group is often called “Indo-European,” a not terribly helpful designation that means they weren’t Semitic, Elamite, or Egyptian. “Indo-European” is primarily a linguistic term, referring to commonalities between the languages spoken across Europe and down into India which are not shared by the Semitic languages, by Egyptian, or by Elamite. (Incidentally the Minoans are still a wild card in this four-way division; they are probably Indo-Europeans who migrated from Asia Minor over to Crete, but it’s possible that they represent a fifth, totally different people group. The languages of the Far East fall into an entirely separate category.)
73 The standard Mesopotamian chronology follows the Old Babylonian Period (the reign of Hammurabi’s dynasty, 1800–1600) with the Kassite era (1600–1150 BC).
74 Kahmose’s place in the family is not entirely clear; he may have been Sequenere’s brother, since there appears to have been a substantial gap in age between Kahmose and Ahmose, who comes next (Aidan Dodson and Dyan Hilton, The Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt, Chapter Thirteen).
75 These four mummies, along with fifty-two more, survived in good shape because they were gathered up and hidden in two groups by Egyptian priests around 1000 BC; the priests hoped to protect them from the increasingly destructive threat of tomb robbers. The first group was discovered in 1881, the second in 1898.
76 Tuthmosis I was likely the first pharaoh to use the Valley of the Kings, but because his mummy itself hasn’t been identified (and his name appears on two different Valley sarcophagi), some scholars believe he was buried elsewhere.
77 Historian James Henry Breasted was the first to call Tuthmosis “the Napoleon of Ancient Egypt,” a title which has stuck.
78 This is the first appearance of the city of Megiddo, which had been a crossroads since the days of Abram, as a place of strategic importance. Thanks to its location, Megiddo would be the site of further crucial battles, the last fought in the twentieth century. In Rev. 16:16, armies gather at Megiddo, which the Greek text calls “Armageddon,” just before the destruction of the world.
79 No Mitanni archives have been discovered, which means we have no king list, no correspondence to speak of, and no way to establish a definitive king list; all constructions of a Mitanni royal succession are open to question.
80 The term “Greek” is anachronistic. The classical civilization of “Greece” comes much later; but “Greece” is a convenient name for the peninsula, which, like China, is a fairly well defined geographical area. Also there is a connection, however weak and mythological, between the Mycenaean cities and the cult
ure of classical Greece; the Mycenaeans are, most likely, the people Homer calls the Achaeans (or, elsewhere, Danaans or Argives: the earliest of the “Greek” heroes). For an extensive discussion of Greek origins and the timetable of Mycenaean culture, see William Taylour, The Mycenaeans.
81 The exact relationship between the Homeric epics (the Iliad and the Odyssey) and the early cultures on the Greek peninsula is not at all clear. And since archaeologists, historians, and literary scholars all have their own theories, all based on different materials, the relationship is not likely to grow much clearer. Nevertheless it seems safe to assert that the epics, like the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Chinese histories, were passed down orally for many generations and reflect, however weakly, a much earlier time.
The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome Page 90