CLEMONS GN 851 .F7 1951b University of Virginia Library GN851.57 1951B CLEM The birth of civilization in t UX 000 133 961 UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA CHARLOTTESVILLE LIBRARY. THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST Clemons Lib. GN 851 .FT : 1951b MANUFACTURED IN GREAT BRITAIN PREFACE A FULL description of the birth of civilization in the Near East would require a work many times the size of the present book. We have concentrated on the social and political innovations in which the great change became manifest. These bear most directly on the questions to which the appearance of the first civilized societies gives rise ; yet they have received less attention than the concomitant changes in the fields of technology and the arts, the manifestations of religion, or the invention of writing. In so far as technological and artistic developments reveal social and political conditions, we have taken them into account ; but we have not attempted to describe them in detail, and have kept our subject within manageable limits by a somewhat strict interpretation of the word civilization. While it is true that the terms “civilization” and “culture” count as synonyms in general usage, and that every distinction therefore remains arbitrary, there are etymological reasons for preferences in their use. The word “culture," with its overtones of something irrational, something grown rather than made, is preferred by those who study primitive peoples. The word “civilization," on the other hand, appeals to those who consider man in the first place as homo politicus, and it is in this sense that we would have our title understood. A question which we have left unanswered is that of origins. The reader will find that in trimming the ramifications of historical beginnings we have exposed the trunks rather than the roots of Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilization. To what extent can their roots be known; what were the forces that brought them into being ? I think that the historian must deem this question unanswerable. It can but lead him astray in the direction of quasi- philosophical speculations, or tempt him to give pseudo-scientific answers. It is the latter alternative which has done most harm, for time and again such changes as an increase in food-production or technological advances (both, truly enough, coincidental with the rise of civilization) have been supposed to explain how civiliza- tion became possible. This misconception bars the road to a deeper understanding. For Whitehead's words are valid for past and present alike : mian Chere the towust dee. 8 THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST In each age of the world distinguished by high activity there will be found at its culmination, and among the agencies leading to that culmination, some profound cosmological outlook, implicitly accepted, impressing its own type upon the current springs of action. This ultimate cosmology is only partly expressed, and the details of such expression issue into derivative specialized questions . . . which conceal a general agreement upon first principles almost too obvious to need expression, and almost too general to be capable of expression. In each period there is a general form of the forms of thought ; and, like the air we breathe, such a form is so translucent, and so pervading, and so seemingly neces- sary, that only by extreme effort can we become aware of it.1 It is this effort which the historian cannot shirk, nor is there a short cut to the understanding of an alien past ; but I believe that the comparative study of parallel phenomena leads most surely to an elucidation of manifest and implicit form. I have confined myself to Egypt and Mesopotamia, the cultural centres of the Ancient Near East ; for in the peripheral regions civilization arose late and was always, to some extent, derivative. Egypt, too, was influenced by Mesopotamia during its formative period, but without losing its distinct and highly individual character. This matter of early cultural contact is of such importance for our problem that I have discussed the relevant evidence in an Appendix. The following chapters are expanded versions of lectures delivered at Indiana University, Bloomington, in the winter of 1948-9, on the Patten Foundation. I am grateful to Dr. Helene J. Kantor, of the Oriental Institute, the University of Chicago, for generously providing me with the drawings for Figures i and 4. H. FRANKFORT. WARBURG INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON. DECEMBER 17, 1950. 1 A. N. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York, 1933) pp. 13, 14. _-- - - _- _- CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE EFACE . . . . . . . . . LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . USTRATIONS . . . . . CHAPTER I. THE STUDY OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS . II. THE PREHISTORY OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST . III. THE CITIES OF MESOPOTAMIA . . . . . IV. EGYPT, THE KINGDOM OF THE Two LANDS APPENDIX. The Influence of Mesopotamia on Egypt towards the End of the Fourth Millennium B.C. . . . . CHRONOLOGICAL Table . . . . . . . 112 INDEX . . . . . . . . . LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 13 FIG. FACING PAGE 26. Macehead of king “Scorpion ” (Courtesy of Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) . . . . . . 72 27–28. Palette of King Narmer (Cairo Museum ; photographs of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) 73 and 80 29. Harvesting scenes, from the tomb of Ti, Old Kingdom, about 2400 B.C. (Wreszinski, Atlas zur Altaegyptischen Kulturgeschichte, III, Plate 49) . . . . 81 30. Agricultural scenes, from the tomb of Menna, New King- dom, about 1400 B.C. (Wreszinski, Altas zur Altaegyp- tischen Kulturgeschichte, I, Plate 231) . . . 88 31. Plan of workmen's village at Tell el Amarna, about 1360 B.C. (Peet and Woolley, The City of Akhenaten, I, Plate 16) . . . . . . . 89 32. Impression of a Mesopotamian cylinder seal, from Egypt (Berlin; Scharff, Altertümer der Vor- und Frühzeit Aegyptens, 1929, Plate 25, No. 135) . . . 96 33–34. Impressions of two cylinder seals of the second half of the Protoliterate period, from Khafajah (Courtesy of Oriental Institute, University of Chicago) . . 96 35. Wooden cylinder seal of the First Dynasty, from Abydos (Berlin ; Scharff, op. cit., Plate 27, No. 48) . 36. Impression of Fig 35. . . . . . . . 37. Cylindrical funerary amulet (Berlin ; Scharff, op. cit., Plate 26, No. 145) . . . . . . 38. Impression of Fig. 37, showing long-haired man seated at offering table. · · · · · 39. Cylindrical funerary amulet showing seated man (Berlin ; Scharff, op. cit., Plate 26, No. 146) 40–41. Flint knife with gold-foil handle, from Gebel et Tarif (Cairo ; J. E. Quibell, Archaic Objects (Cairo, 1905), P• 4371 . . . . . . . 96 42. Two buildings, with recesses and towers, of the First Dynasty in Egypt, and a seal impression of the second half of the Protoliterate period, from Khafajah (American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, LVIII (1941), Plate I, a, b) . . . . . . . 97 43. Stela of King Djet of the First Dynasty (Louvre). . 06 14 THE NEAR EAST THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN FACING PAGE 97 97 MIG. 44. Three buildings with recesses, rendered on monuments of the First Dynasty in Egypt, and three Mesopotamian cylinder-seal impressions of the Protoliterate period (American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, LVIII (1941), Plate 341, Fig. 7) . . . . 45. Plan of the “White Temple” on the archaic ziggurat at Erech (Achter vorläufiger Bericht, 1937, Plate 19b) . 46. Plan of the Tomb of Hemaka at Saqqara (W. B. Emery, The Tomb of Hemaka, Plate I) . . . . 47. Tomb ornamented with recesses, at Abu Roash (Kemi, VII [1938], Plate XIa) · · · · · · 48. Recesses of the “ White Temple” at Erech (Drawn after Achter vorläufiger Bericht, 1937, Plate 146). . . 49. Wooden coffin imitating a recessed building with round wooden beams, from Tarkhan (Petrie, Tarkhan, I, Plate XXVIII) . . . . . . . so. Recessed tomb with round wooden beams, of the First Dynasty, at Abu Roash (Kemi, VII (1938), p. 40, Fig. 9) SI. Map of the Ancient Near East, from the Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible (The Westminster Press, [Philadelphia, 1945], 22 . . . . . 104 104 104 105 PLATE I HJK SA 1. Sickles of bone and wood with flint "teeth”: A, B, from Carmel, Palestine ; C, from Sialk, Persia ; D, from Fayum, Egypt ; E, from Saqqara, Egypt. UNEXCAVATED TO HERE het Alm111111 FOUNDATIONS OF LEVEL I B EDGE OF SOUNDING 1011 ARTH 2. Camp site at Hassuna. PLATE II 3. Papyrus swamp on the Upper Nile. (Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History, New York) · 18 THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST but only homologues—features similar as regards form. He also maintains that the life-cycle of each civilization runs through the same phases : youth, maturity, and senescence. This implies that a comparison of corresponding phases in different civilizations may be instructive, but that it is merely confusing to compare phases which do not correspond; for then one is led to expect, for instance, than an ageing civilization (like our own) might yet be able to produce great poetry or a live religion, which are features peculiar to civilizations in their youthful stage. The birth of civilization is succinctly described by Spengler in the following passage : It comes into flower on the soil of a precisely definable region, to which it remains linked with a plant-like attachment. A civilization dies when it has realized the sum total of its potentialities in the guise of peoples, languages, theologies, arts, states, sciences. 1 I have omitted certain untranslatable references to an urseelenhafter Zustand from which civilizations are supposed to emerge and to which their “souls” return. For the quotation shows clearly that Spengler, notwithstanding these irrational additions, writes, like Toynbee, under the spell of the nineteenth century and attempts to interpret history in the terms of science. Even if we admit that the country in which a civilization arises influences its form, we must balk at Spengler's formulation (repeated elsewhere in his work, e.g. I, 29) which approaches materialistic determinism. By interpreting the harmony between each civilization and its natural setting in this manner, he denies a freedom of the human spirit which—to name but one instance—the achievements of the Greeks in Sicily and southern Italy splendidly vindicate. In describing the death of a civilization Spengler is likewise under the spell of scientific notions. This is not obvious ; in fact, Spengler's success is largely due to the plausibility of some of his most imaginative statements. We feel that it makes sense, even that it is illuminating, to speak of a youthful, or ageing, or dying civilization. But for Spengler such phrases are not metaphors ; and when he speaks (as in the previous quotation) of a civilization's dying “when it has realized the sum total of its potentialities,” he believes that he refers to a state of affairs as inevitable and as accurately predictable as the withering of a plant. He actually calls civilizations “ living beings of the highest order," ? and he undertakes to state with precision which phenomena characterize 10. Spengler, op. cit., I, 153. 2 O. Spengler, op. cit., I, 29. een THE STUDY OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS each stage in their life-cycle. For him, an imperialistic and socialistic order follow a traditional and hierarchical society; expanding technique and trade follow greatness in art, music, and literature as certainly as the dispersal of the seeds follows the maturing of a plant which will never flower again. But to take the biological metaphor literally, to grant in this manner reality to an image, is not morphology but mythology; and it is belief, not knowledge, which induces Spengler to deny the freedom of the spirit and the unpredictability of human behaviour. Spengler substitutes the mystery of natural life for the dynamics of history which he, therefore, fails entirely to explain. But to the aspect of“ form” he has done justice as few before him. Here too, however, he goes much too far. It is one thing to stress the singularity of each great epoch of the past as a prerequisite of deeper understanding, and quite another to declare the discontinuity of cultural achievements to be absolute. Had the first been Spengler's intention, no one who had once comprehended the uniqueness of a historical situation, a work of art, or an institution, would have quarrelled with his dictum : “Each civilization has its own possi- bilities of expression, which appear, mature and wither, and never recur.” 2 When he states, furthermore, “I see in world-history the image of a perennial configuration and transfiguration, a wonderful formation and dissolution of organic forms. The professional historian, however, sees in it the image of a tape-worm which tirelessly puts forth period after period,” there is enough truth in this scathing remark for it to strike home. It is a negative truth, but it is born of a true perception of the poverty of our usual view of history as an evolutionary process. This view encourages us to project the axioms, habits of thought, and norms of the present day into the past, which, as a result, seems to contain little that is unfamiliar to us. It is remarkable how rarely historians of ancient or alien civilizations have guarded themselves against that danger. In this respect Herodotus was more perspicacious ; he realized that the values of different cultures may be incommen- surate when he frankly epitomized his description of Ancient Egypt in the statement that its laws and customs were, on the whole, the opposite of those of the rest of mankind. This peculiar 1 Spengler's position is invalidated in his own terms by Bergson's criticism of a deterministic view of life in nature. 2 O. Spengler, ibid. Leopold von Ranke has expressed a similar idea in the splendid and simple phrase, “ Alle Epochen sind unmittelbar zu Gott.” 3 History, II, 35. 20 THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST integration of the facts satisfied a Greek facing Barbarians. We, however, seek understanding. We can be resigned neither to registering astonishment nor to accepting the solution which a misconceived regard for objectivity sometimes proposes : a mere chronicling of the facts. We cannot rest content when we know that the Egyptians considered their king a god, entombed him in a pyramid, buried cats and dogs, and mummified their dead. We want to recover the cultural “ form ” in which these odd phenomena find their proper place and meaning. But it is a laborious, and never completed, task to rediscover the original coherence of a past mode of life from the surviving remains. Spengler attempts short cuts ; overrating the extent of his truly remarkable erudition, and, for the rest, trusting recklessly his intuition, he forces the evidence to fit the schemata which he has conceived. He describes, for instance, the bearer of Egyptian civilization as follows: The Egyptian soul-pre-eminently gifted for and inclined towards history, striving with primeval passion towards the infinite-experienced past and future as its entire universe, and the present ... but as a narrow borderland between two measureless distances. The Egyptian civiliza- tion is an embodiment of concern—the soul's correlate of distance- concern with the future, manifest in the choice of granite and basalt as the material for sculpture, in the engraved documents, in the elabora- tion of a masterly system of administration and a net of irrigation works ; of necessity a concern with the past is linked with this concern for the future.1 I hold this image of ancient Egypt evoked by Spengler to be totally at variance with the evidence. I have recently interpreted this evidence and described how (to take up the points raised by Spengler) the Egyptians had very little sense of history or of past and future. For they conceived their world as essentially static and unchanging. It had gone forth complete from the hands of the Creator. Historical incidents were, consequently, no more 10. Spengler, op. cit., I, 15. Incidentally, this quotation illustrates the very point at issue by emphasizing the almost insuperable difficulty of formulating an alien mode of thought. In transposing the words of a German contemporary I have been obliged to blur his thoughts and lose shades of meaning at almost every step : Seele, eminent historisch veranlagt, urweltliche Leidenschaft, Sorge, derive their overtones and deepest meaning from a world of thought which includes, at the very least, German literature of the romantic period ; these terms, therefore, hardly bear translating. It is obvious that the disparity of terms and concepts is immeasurably greater where an ancient civilization is concerned. THE STUDY OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS 21 than superficial disturbances of the established order, or recurring events of never-changing significance. The past and the future- far from being a matter of concern—were wholly implicit in the present; and the odd facts enumerated above—the divinity of animals and kings, the pyramids, mummification—as well as several other and seemingly unrelated features of Egyptian civiliza- tion—its moral maxims, the forms peculiar to its poetry and prose- can all be understood as a result of a basic conviction that only the changeless is truly significant. I do not offer this summary as a formula by means of which Egyptian civilization becomes compre- hensible, for it explains nothing by itself and does not pretend to replace the detailed and concrete description of Egyptian life and thought which it summarizes. Nor can even such a detailed description ever be final or entirely comprehensive. I do hold that a viewpoint whence many seemingly unrelated facts are seen to acquire meaning and coherence is likely to represent a historical reality ; at least, I know of no better definition of historical truth. But each new insight discloses new complexities which now demand elucidation, while at all times a number of facts are likely to remain outside any network to be established. How- ever, if our view is true as far as it goes, then Spengler's view . is baseless. Spengler's lack of respect for the phenomena has a twofold cause. It is due in part to his overweening conceit, in part to his lack of experience. Like Toynbee, he is truly familiar only with classical antiquity and its western descendant. His Urmensch, his “primordial man,” is the Greek or the Aryan Indian. He ignores altogether the work of those who have ventured outside the familiar in order to meet an alien spirit on its own terms—the anthropologists, or, more precisely, the ethnologists or cultural anthropologists. These scholars have come up against behaviour defying every modern norm in their personal contact with primitive peoples, and in their encounters discovered an approach to the study of alien cultures which the historian of antiquity would be wise to make his own. The ethnologist will not take for granted savage customs and usages which seem comprehensible even familiar- to him. For he has observed that cultural traits cannot be studied in isolation since they are integral parts of a whole—the given civilization—and derive their meaning from the particular whole 1 See my Ancient Egyptian Religion, New York, 1948, and Kingship and the Gods, Chicago, 1948. 2 O. Spengler, op. cit., I, 224 f. PLATE III LOWER EGYPT UPPER EGYPT FIRST DYNASTY KING LIST Mace- Stone Qa Semerkhet Tablet of Den Ivory Azib Palette Stone Den Ojet Djer Aha Copper, Wooden handles 0000 loddol 10 (OP KAYA Narmer 000 to 0000 OC Sealing op Aha Copper Stone GERZE AN = SEQUENCE DATES 40-63 wwwww MAADI Ivory Umwww Amulets 1 Stone Mace-head Fli P10TIONAL COMMANUAL Stone Palette Copper AMRATIAN = SEQUENCE DATES 30-39 MERIM DE Mace- head Palette Pendant stone SVP Palette - - Flints - - - Stone Ivory Range Uncertain BADARIAN - - - - - FAYUMA Ivory M w Bracelet Palette Ivory ne Palette TASIAN Basket Bone Range Uncertain Palette Ivory HJK 4. Chart of the sequence of predynastic and protodynastic remains by Dr. Helene J. Kantor. THE STUDY OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS 25 two historical periods or ways of life must be able to “understand (them) historically, that is with enough sympathy and insight to reconstruct their experience for himself.” But that means that he has already accepted them as things to be judged by their own standards. Each is for the historian " a form of life having its own problems, to be judged by its success in solving those problems and no others. Nor is he assuming that the two different ways of life were attempts to do one and the same thing and asking whether the second did it better than the first. Bach was not trying to write like Beethoven and failing ; Athens was not a relatively unsuccessful attempt to produce Rome.” Collingwood then indicates the exceptional and really purely academic) case in which one may be entitled to speak of progress, 1 and in doing so touches upon a subject with which modern man is particularly concerned : Can we speak of progress in happiness or comfort or satisfaction ? Obviously not. . . . The problem of being comfortable in a medieval cottage is so different from the problem of being comfortable in a modern slum that there is no comparing them ; the happiness of a peasant is not contained in the happiness of a millionaire. Toynbee, though he is less precise than Collingwood, does formulate what he means by progress. He equates it with growth, and “growth is progress towards self-determination.” 2 But Toynbee, who is a believing Christian, surely knows that self-determination may not be a matter of gradual advance at all, but rather a flash-like illumination in which one's true nature stands revealed. As a rule, the sequel to this experience is a life-long struggle for a realiza- tion of the vision. Why could not this type of self-determination also, like the slow and gradual realization, have an analogy in the life of civilizations ? Flinders Petrie and others have maintained that every significant trait of Egyptian culture had been evolved before the end of the Third Dynasty. We find once more that Toynbee has uncritically proclaimed the universal validity of one of several possible sequences. And if he describes “the consummation of 1 R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Cxford, 1946), 328–30, especially 328–8. “There is only one genuine meaning for this question. If thought in its first phase, after solving the initial problems of that phase, is then, through solving these, brought up against others which defeat it ; and if the second solves these further problems without losing its ho d on the solution of the first, so that there is gain without any corresponding loss, then there is progress. And there can be progress on no other terms. If there is any loss, the problem of setting loss against gain is insoluble.” 2 A Study of History, III, 216. 26 THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST human history” as “ accomplishing the transformation of Sub-Man through Man into Super-Man" 1 and calls this “the goal towards which the whole creation groaneth and travaileth' (Romans vii, 22),” 2 we may respect his faith but can hardly accept it as the argument of an “ empirical student of history.” 3 It is, in fact, odd that Toynbee, who opens his work with an excellent statement of the relativity of historical thought, who complains that “a local and temporary standpoint has given our historians a false perspective," remains himself so completely under the spell of a nineteenth-century western outlook. His evolutionary bias, his empiricism, and his treatment of civilizations as “specimens of a species” are all of a piece. He sometimes equals Spengler in myth-making, treating his equation of civilizations and living beings as a reality, and appealing to biological opinion to uphold a historical conclusion. His use of “species” and “genus " obscures the fundamental fact that science can study individuals as members of a species only by ignoring their individual character- istics. The historian, following this course, would defeat the very purpose of his work. In fact, Toynbee's vaunted empiricism is an attempt to transpose the method of the natural sciences, where experiment is essential and experience is reduced to figures, to history, where experiment is impossible and experience subjective. Toynbee's “experience” (a word which, in the case of a historian, may stand for intimate acquaintance with historical data) is confined to classical antiquity and its western descendant. It is an odd fact that he should have supposed this limited field capable of supplying the conceptual apparatus with which every historical phenomenon could be comprehended, and that he should have done this, not unconsciously, but knowingly, although unaware of the enormity of his assump- tion. For anyone moving outside western tradition should soon discover the truth that the values found in different civilizations are incommensurate. And so we find Toynbee, like Spengler, 1 Op. cit., I, 159. 2 Op. cit., III, 381. 3 Ibid. et passim. 4 Op. cit., I, 172–3. Edgar Wind,“ Some Points of Contact Between History and Natural Science,” in Philosophy and History, Essays Presented to Ernst Cassirer (Oxford, 1936), 255-64, shows that the latest developments of science, which make it so much less “ exact,” lead to the raising of questions by scientists “ that historians like to look upon as their own." But if these latest developments have made science more“ humanistic,” Wind is over-optimistic when he says that “the notion of a description of nature which indiscriminately subjects men and their fates like rocks and stones to its' unalterable law' survives only as a nightmare of certain historians." For many of them (not to mention sociologists) it seems still to be a cherished ideal. 30 THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST Our criticism does not proceed from a positivistic belief in a so-called “scientific ' historiography which is supposed first to assemble objective facts which are subsequently interpreted. Our objection here is not against Toynbee's procedure, but against a terminology which obscures what is the starting-point, and what the outcome, of his procedure. And we make the further criticism that he does not actually evolve from each particular historical situation the notion of a particular challenge to which it can be construed as a response ; he applies the formula, as I have said, from the outside, and it is therefore doomed to irrelevance. For example: Toynbee considers the descent of the prehistoric Egyptians into the marshy Nile valley as their response to the challenge of the desiccation of North Africa. In their new home- land they faced, in due course, as a further challenge, “ the internal articulation of the new-born Egyptiac society” and failed. The truth is that the Egyptians flourished exceedingly for two thousand years after the Pyramid Age ; but Toynbee thinks they failed because he cannot conceive of a “response" in Egyptian terms, but only in those with which he is familiar : secular government, democracy, and the Poor Law." But since neither the rich nor the poor Egyptians took this view of their state, Toynbee's conclusion is irrelevant. It is true that he quotes the tales which dragomans told to late Greek travellers about the oppressive rule of the builders of the pyramids. But the actual folk-tales of Pharaonic Egypt show us that the people took as great a delight in tales of royalty as the public of the Arabian Nights took in the doings of the despot Harun al Rashid. Snefru, whom Toynbee names, is known as one of the most popular rulers in legend. The fact of the matter is that Toynbee should have started from an analysis of the “response.” This would not have shown, as Toynbee has it, that “ Death laid its icy hand on the life of the growing civilization at the moment when the challenge that was the stimulus of its growth was trans- ferred from the external to the internal field (from the subjugation of nature to the organization of society, H.F.) because in this new situation, the shepherds of the people betrayed their trust.” 2 Studied without preconceived ideas the “response ” of the Egyptians stands revealed as a vastly different achievement. The ideal of a marvellously integrated society had been formed long before the pyramids were built ; it was as nearly realized, when they were built, as any ideal social form can be translated into actuality ; and it remained continuously before the eyes of rulers 1 Op. cit., III, 214. a SC 2 Op. cit., III, 215. PLATE V 7. Clay objects of the Al Ubaid period, from Tell Uqair. 8. The “White Temple ” on its ziggurat at Erech. PLATE VI 9. Semi-engaged columns covered with cone mosaic, Erech. 34 THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST experience. But we formulate it in order to emphasize that, from the first, man possessed creative imagination, and we have to reckon with this in considering social cohesion. If the earliest men of whom we have knowledge co-operated in order to trap and kill animals far more powerful than themselves, their hunting differed toto cælo from the hunting of a pack of wolves. Their art proves that their relation with their game was not a mere matter of killing and devouring, and that their parties were kept together, not merely by common need, but also by imaginative, religious conceptions, made explicit, not in doctrine, but in acts. The transition from paleolithic to neolithic culture is not yet known; but we do know that a change of climate, which started in the Old Stone Age, continued in the New, and very gradually changed living conditions throughout the Near East. Libya remained rich in vineyards, olive trees, and cattle up to the end of the second millennium B.C.-a fact which may be surmised from records of booty brought back from there : by a pharaoh of the First Dynasty ; 1 by Sahure of the Fifth Dynasty (about 2475 B.C.), who listed 100,000 head of cattle and more than 200,000 each of asses, goats, and sheep ; ? and finally by Ramses III (about 1175 B.C.), who was still able to take away 3600 head of cattle, in addition to horses, asses, sheep, and goats. At the opposite end of the Near East, in south-eastern Iran, Sir Aurel Stein was unable to round up a " minimum of local labour” to investigate the thickly dotted ruins of ancient settlements. Nevertheless, progressive desiccation marked the period from perhaps 7000 B.C. onwards, turning the plateaux from grassland into steppe and, ultimately, into desert, and making the valleys of the great rivers inhabitable. When meadows and shrub lands began to emerge from the swamps and mudflats along the river courses, man descended from the highlands. Now the earliest inhabitants of the valleys were in possession of a considerable body of knowledge which the hunters of the ice- age had lacked. And we do not know how the change from old to new, from the Old Stone Age to the New Stone Age, came about ; for nowhere has a series of continuous remains covering 1 On the so-called Libyan palette : Capart, Primitive Art in Egypt, 236-7, Figs. 175, 176. 2 L. Borchardt, Das Grabdenkmal des Konigs Sahure, II (Leipzig, 1913), 10 and Plate I. 8 W. F. Edgerton and J. A. Wilson, Historical Records of Ramses III (Chicago, 1936), 67 f. Wreszinski, Atlas zur altaegyptischen Kulturgeschichte, III, Plate 66. 4 Sir Aurel Stein, An Archaeological Tour in Gedrosia (Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, No. 43), 34 ; cf. 6—7. 36 THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST nore distinctive flint teeth have been found in Anatolia, South Russia, on the Danube, and at the western end of the Mediterranean at Almeria. They occur also throughout North Africa. It is clear, then, that the diffusion of agriculture consisted not merely in spread- ing the knowledge of emmer and barley but in a simultaneous diffusion of the odd and complex harvesting tool, first used, as far as we know, by the Natufians. Radiating from the Near East, the new knowledge spread in widening circles, reaching the shores of the Baltic and the North Sea about 2500 B.c.1 However, many questions remain at present unanswered. When did men undertake to improve the wild grasses and to produce, by cross- breeding and selection, the vastly more nutritious grains which were known to the earliest farmers of the neolithic period ? When, in fact, was the extraordinary first step taken and the satisfaction of immediate needs limited in order to save seeds, store them, safeguard them against insects and rodents, and sow them when the time was propitious ? This may have been done by the Natufians, but of this we know nothing. Furthermore, we do not know how far agricultural methods had advanced when they began to be diffused throughout the Old World. In particular we know nothing about the origin of irrigation, which played so large a part in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and which has been repeatedly recognized as a factor greatly furthering social and political cohesion, since it makes each settlement dependent on its neighbours. We must, therefore, consider this invention. It deserves notice that irrigation can be resorted to by people who do not cultivate but collect wild-growing plants. This is done, for instance, by certain Indians of the Great Basin of Western North America, and their methods could very well have been followed by the Natufians utilizing the wadi running at the foot 1 C. F. C. Hawkes, The Prehistoric Foundations of Europe (London, 1940), 82-4. 2 C. Daryll Forde, Habitat, Economy and Society (London, 1934), 35: “In Owen's valley several groups took advantage of favourable conditions to irrigate patches of ground. The growth of bulbous plants and grasses is patently more luxuriant wherever abundant water reaches them, and this was achieved artificially by diverting from their narrow channels the snow-fed streams flowing down from the Sierra Nevada. In spring, before the streams rose with snow-melt, a dam of boulders, brushwood and mud was thrown across a creek where it reached the valley floor. . . . Above the dam one or two main ditches, sometimes more than a mile long, were laboriously cut with long poles to lead the river water out on the gently sloping ground over which it was distributed by minor channels.... After the harvest the main dam was pulled down. . . . There was, however, no attempt at planting or working the soil, and none of the cultivated plants grown to the south of the Colorado were known.' THE PREHISTORY OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST 39 nu-sided economy: jl of them, too, we u take for granted the other ways of finding sustenance were neglected. A “ partial exploitation of the environment”i is characteristic of modern savages who have become stuck in a backwater, but not of the true primitives of antiquity. The Natufians may have sown a catch crop or gathered wild grasses, but they also hunted deer and speared fish. All the early settlements of the Near East show signs of a many-sided economy, although in all of them agriculture played an important part. In all of them, too, we find stock-breeding; and this is an innovation which we must simply take for granted since its origin and motivation is at present quite obscure. The Natufians did not possess domestic animals. Other inventions, too, were known throughout the Near East in the earliest settlements of the New Stone Age. Pottery-making is one of them, weaving another. It is hardly to be wondered that we cannot follow the first phases of their existence. If the earliest pots, for instance, were only dried in the sun or lightly baked or were merely clay-lined baskets, they cannot be expected to have survived. And it may be considered exceptionally fortunate that of early textiles a few scraps have survived for six or seven thousand years. It is likewise only due to the refinements of modern excavation technique that the oldest of the successive settlements of Hassuna, near Mosul (Fig. 2), was recognized as a camp site, consisting of no more than a number of hearths, still containing wood ashes. They were made of “potsherds and pebbles set in a kind of primitive cement” with pottery lying around them." Only in higher levels did adobe walls appear. This single instance in which a very early settlement was recognized explains why others remain unknown. But we know that after (or during) 1R. U. Sayce, Primitive Arts and Crafts (Cambridge, 1933), 27 ff. 2 An attractive guess is made by V. Gordon Childe, Man Makes Himself (Oxford, 1939), 87–90. For a recent discussion of the problem which accentuates our uncertainties, see André Leroi-Gourhan, Milieu et techniques (Paris, 1945), 96–119. 3 E.g. G. Caton-Thompson and E. W. Gardner, The Desert Fayum (London, 1934), 46 and Plate XXVIII. Guy Brunton and Gertrude Caton-Thompson, The Badarian Civilization (London, 1928), 64 ff. Jacques de Morgan, Mémoires de la Delegation en Perse, XIII (Paris, 1912), 163 and Plate XLIII. 4 Seton Lloyd and Fuad Safar, in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, IV (1945), 271. 5 This point has been emphasized by Robert J. Braidwood in lectures and papers. See Human Origins, an Introductory General Course in Anthropology, Selected Readings, Series II, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1946), 170 ff., 181 ff. See also Linda Braidwood, ibid., 153 ff. The Braidwoods, excavating in 1948 for the Oriental Institute at Jarmo near Sulimanieh, found remains of a settlement perhaps even older than Hassuna. See p. 35, n. I above. PLATE VII YA ory XX XXXX Sexy XXXX COX YOY Xboxer/08 Dex XXX095 3. XOXOXO West CO2- Songs Xxxx CXXY XX XXX SOLO * SY KO 3 Xxxcom YOXDUR! SEX XANA 10. Colonnade on platform, Erech. amera macam The complemented because II. The Ishtar ziggurat at Erech in Assyrian times. PLATE VIII 12. Fertility god on cult-relief, from Assur. THE PREHISTORY OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST 41 their attendant carnivores. It has been pointed out 1 that the methods of hunting prove that different types of landscape could be found here. Sometimes rows of beaters are shown driving the game towards the hunter or into nets, a method possible only in areas which are somewhat thickly wooded. At other times lassos are used, which presuppose pampa-like open spaces with low shrub. In the valley, the annual flood of the Nile continuously changed the lay of the land. When the water overflowed the river banks the silt, previously kept in suspension by the speed of the swollen current, precipitated. Some of this precipitation raised the river bed, the remainder covered the banks and the area closest to them ; towards the edges of the valley there was comparatively little deposit. Thus banks of considerable height were formed, and after some years the weight of water broke through these natural dikes to seek a new course in low-lying parts, some distance away. The old bed turned into swamp, but its banks remained as ridges and hillocks whose height and area were increased by wind-blown dust and silt caught at their edges. Trees took root, and man settled there, sowing his crops and grazing his beasts in the adjoining lowlands, to retire with them to the high ground of the old banks when the river overflowed. During the inundation, fish, wild boar, hippopotamus, and huge flocks of water birds invaded the surrounding fields and supplied an abundance of food throughout the summer. All traces of these settlements in the valley proper have long since disappeared ; they have been not merely silted over but washed away by the changes in the river's course. This explains why we find traces of early settlements only at the edge of the valley, on the spurs of detritus at the foot of the high cliffs. We must imagine the valley, not flat and featureless as it is to-day, but dotted with hamlets perched on the high banks of former watercourses and surrounded by an ever-changing maze of channels, marsh, and meadow. Even as late as the First Intermediate period, just before 2000 B.C., the populace of a province in Middle Egypt left their homes and hid in swamps in the valley to escape the dangers of civil 1 S. Passarge, Die Urlandschaft Aegyptens (Nova Acta Leopoldina, N.F., Vol. IX, No. 58, Halle, 1940), 35. 2 In 1923 an expedition going to Qau el Kabir in Middle Egypt found no trace of a Ptolemaic temple which Champollion, a hundred years earlier, had marked on his maps on the east bank of the Nile ; the river had destroyed both the ruins and the village of Qau and subsequently cut a new bed (G. Brunton, Qau and Badari (London, 1927), 2–3, Plate I). 42 THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST war and marauding soldiers. And the early predynastic settlements at the valley's edge were built in groves ; among the remains of huts and shelters, tree roots of considerable size have been found. The prehistoric, “predynastic," period of Egypt clearly falls into two parts or stages (Fig. 4). The earliest of these is known in three successive phases called Tasian, Badarian, and Amratian,3 each a modified development of its predecessor. Together they represent the African substratum of Pharaonic civilization, the material counterpart of the affinities between ancient Egyptian and modern Hamitic languages ; of the physical resemblances between the ancient Egyptians and the modern Hamites; and of the remarkable similarities in mentality between these two groups which make it possible to understand ancient Egyptian customs and beliefs by reference to modern Hamitic analogies. The second stage of predynastic culture-called Gerzean 5—is in many ways a continuation of Amratian ; in other words, the preponder- antly African character remained. But new elements were added, and these point to fairly close relations with the East, with Sinai, and with Palestine. Foreign pottery was imported from that quarter. A new type of Egyptian pottery, implying a change in ceramic technique, was derived from a class of wavy-handled vases which were at home in Palestine. Several new kinds of stone used for vases may have come from Sinai, and the increase in the use of copper points certainly to closer relations with that peninsula. 1 Rudolf Anthes, Die Felseninschriften von Hat Nub (Leipzig, 1928), s2 ff., 95 ff. 2 Brunton, Mostagedda (London, 1937), 67; Sir Robert Mond and O. H. Myers, Cemeteries of Armant, I, 7. 8 Amratian is called " Early or First Predynastic” or “ Naqada I” in the older literature. 4 Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods (Chicago, 1948), 348, n. 4, and Index, Africa, Hamites. Badarian objects have been found, not only in Middle and Upper Egypt (at Badari, Mahasna, Naqada, Armant, and Hierakonpolis—see Brunton in Antiquity, III (1929), 461), but in Nubia (Brunton, The Badarian Civilization (London, 1928), 40), in the northern provinces of the Sudan (report of the discoveries of Mr. Oliver Myers of Gordon College, Khartoum, in The Times (London) of March 31, 1948), in the desert fifty miles west of the Nile in the latitude of Abydos (Man, No. 91 (1931]), and again far to the south, four hundred miles west of the Nile in the latitude of Wadi Halfa (Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XXII (1936), 47–8). 6 Also called “Naqada II” or “ Middle Predynastic." Note that “ Late Predynastic” or “ Semainean” has been proved a chimera. The remains so labelled belong to the Gerzean period, which thus leads right up to the First Dynasty. See Helene J. Kantor, in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, III (1944), 110–46. When we use “late Predynastic ” we mean the last part of the pre- dynastic period, in other words, late Gerzean. 6 A. Lucas, in Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XVI (1930), 200 ff. THE PREHISTORY OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST Although flint remained in use and flint-work achieved an un- rivalled beauty and refinement, copper was no longer an odd substance used for luxuries but appeared in the form of highly practical objects : harpoons, daggers, axes (one of which weighs 37 pounds). The language of the country may also have been affected.2 The innovations of Gerzean can best be explained as the effect of a permeation of Upper Egypt by people who had affinities with their Asiatic neighbours and derived from them certain features of their culture. We know that in historical times a similar gradual but continuous drift of people from Lower Egypt into Upper Egypt can be observed. During the Gerzean period the country seems to have become more densely populated ; and it has been suggested that the reclamation of the marshland was begun.5 Such work presupposes co-operation between neighbouring groups and organization of men in some numbers. We may assume that this took place, but on a strictly limited scale. For there are no signs of large political units. There are no ruins of great size, no monuments of an exceptional nature ; and if it is objected that these may have existed but may not have been discovered yet, we must insist on the significant fact that among the many thousands of predynastic graves which have been found, there is not a single 1 Nature, XII (October 1932), 625 ; Lucas in Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XIII (1927), 162–70 ; XIV (1928), 97-108. 2 The Egyptian language has been explained as a common tongue imposed upon a country where several dialects existed, in the same manner as the French of Ile de France became the official French language, and “Hochdeutsch” the vehicle of communication for all Germans. Now this ancient Egyptian language included two recognizable Hamitic strains—one Southern or Ethiopian, the other Western or Berber—and also one Semitic strain (see the studies of Ernst Zyhlarz in Africa, IX (London, 1930), 433-S2 ; Zeitschrift fur Eingeborenensprachen, XXIII (1932–3), 1 ff; XXV (1934-s), 161 ff.] 3 It would be possible to assume that the Semitic elements entered through the Wadi Hammamat from the Red Sea, but this leaves the Gerzean innovations unexplained and ignores the arguments put forward by K. Sethe, “ Die Aegyp- tische Ausdrucke für rechts und links und die Hieroglyphenzeichen fur Westen und Osten,” in Nachrichten von der Koniglichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Phil.-Hist. Kl., 1922, 197–242. 4 It even affected the physical type of the population ; see G. M. Morant, “Study of Egyptian Craniology from Prehistoric to Roman Times,” in Biometrika, XVII (1925), 1-52. 5 Brunton, The Badarian Civilization, 48. The assumption finds strong support in the tradition that Menes, the first king of the First Dynasty, reclaimed all the land from Wasta to Cairo before he founded Memphis at the north end of the strip so reclaimed. Such an enterprise presupposes some established skill in work of that nature. 46 THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST built on mattresses of bent and trodden-down reed stems. Their dwellings are described as follows : at one end is a low and narrow aperture which serves as a doorway, window and chimney combined ; on the rush-strewn and miry floor sleep men and women, children and buffaloes, in warm proximity ... the ground of the hut often oozing water at every step. 1 The chiefs' reed tents are more impressive; they are large tunnels of matting covering a framework of reed bundles which form semi- circular arches. Doors and windows are arranged in the mats closing either end. We know that such structures were also used in the fourth millennium B.C., for they are represented, with all the necessary detail, in the earliest renderings of sacred buildings, notably the byres and folds of temple animals (Fig. s). But modern savages are but diminished shadows of the true primitives, and the ancient people of the Al Ubaid period exercised a mastery over the marsh to which the modern inhabitants never as much as aspire. Moreover, the people of the Al Ubaid period belonged to the most advanced group of the prehistoric farmers. Copper was used in their homeland for axes and adzes and even for mirrors. Bricks were known there, too ; and brick buildings and the waterproofing of reeds with bitumen are certified for the period. It is likely that some reclamation and drainage of marsh- land was undertaken. In any case, the men of the Al Ubaid period appear from the first as cultivators, and we are free to imagine their fields as shallow islands in the marsh or as reclaimed and diked-in land. The vitality and power of these earliest settlers is astonishing. Their influence can be traced upstream, where their pottery replaced the Tell Halaf wares completely, even occurring in appreciable quantities in North Syria. Since it has nothing to recommend it as an article of export, we must assume that its makers came with it and settled widely throughout the upper reaches of Tigris and Euphrates. Nevertheless, the Al Ubaid people were simple cultivators like their contemporaries in Egypt and their predecessors in northern Iraq and Syria. This is most clearly shown by their inability to organize trade in order to obtain the copper which they had been accustomed to use in their country of origin. Once settled in Mesopotamia and removed from the sources of the metal, they used a substitute material that was locally available, making axes (Fig. 7a), choppers, and sickles (Fig. 7b) of clay which they 1 Fulanain, The Marsh Arab, Haji Rikkan (Philadelphia, 1928), 21. SO THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST inscriptions were legends on royal monuments or seal engravings identifying the king's officials. The earliest representations in Mesopotamian art are preponderantly religious ; in Egyptian art they celebrate royal achievements and consist of historical subjects. Monumental architecture consists, in Mesopotamia, of temples, in Egypt of royal tombs. The earliest civilized society of Meso- potamia crystallized in separate nuclei, a number of distinct, auton- omous cities-clear-cut, self-assertive polities—with the surrounding lands to sustain each one. Egyptian society assumed the form of the single, united, but rural, domain of an absolute monarch. The evidence from Egypt, which is the more extensive, indicates the transition was neither slow nor gradual. It is true that towards the end of the prehistoric period certain innovations heralded the coming age. But when the change occurred it had the character of a crisis, affecting every aspect of life at once but passing within the space of a few generations. Then followed—from the middle of the First until the end of the Third Dynasty—a period of consolidation and experiment, and with this the formative phase of Egyptian civilization was concluded. Few things that mattered in Pharaonic Egypt were without roots in that first great age of creativity. In Mesopotamia a parallel development possessed a somewhat different character. It likewise affected every field of cultural activity at once, but it lacked the finality of its Egyptian counter- part. It cannot be said of Mesopotamia that its civilization evolved in all its significant aspects from the achievements of one short period, decisive as that had been. Mesopotamian history shows a succession of upheavals, at intervals of but a few centuries, which did more than modify its political complexion. For instance, the Sumerian language, which was dominant throughout the formative 1 The earliest tablets, of the Protoliterate period, seem to be written in Sumerian. They use the Sumerian sexagesimal system (with units for 10, 60, 600, and 3600) and refer to Sumerian gods like Enlil. But Sumerian has no clearly recognized affinity to other tongues. It is important to realize that the term “Sumerian,” strictly speaking, can be used only for this language. There is no physical type which can be called by that name. From Al Ubaid times until the present day, the population of Mesopotamia has consisted of men predominantly belonging to the Mediterranean or Brown race, with a noticeable admixture of broad-headed mountaineers from the north-east. This is, for instance, true of the Early Dynastic period, as the skulls from Al Ubaid and Kish show. Skeletons of the earliest known in- habitants of the plain, found at Eridu and Hassuna, have been briefly discussed by C. S. Coon in Sumer, V (1949), 103–6; VI (1950), 93-6. They represent " rather heavy-boned prognathous and large-toothed mediterraneans." The much-discussed problem of the origin of the Sumerians may well turn out to be the chase of a chimera. Skeletothe Early Dyna mountaineers THE CITIES OF MESOPOTAMIA SI phase of Mesopotamian civilization, was replaced by Semitic Akkadian during the second half of the third millennium. And the shift of the centre of power, in the third millennium, from Sumer in the extreme south to Babylonia in the centre, in the second millennium to Assyria, in the extreme north, brought with it important cultural changes. Yet notwithstanding all the changes, Mesopotamian civilization never lost its identity ; its “ form ” was modified by its turbulent history, but it was never destroyed. We shall now desist from comparisons and consider the formative age of Mesopotamia, which is called the Protoliterate period since it witnessed the invention of writing. To this period the earliest ruins of cities belong. Now one may say that the birth of Mesopotamian civilization, like its subsequent growth, occurred under the sign of the city. To understand the importance of the city as a factor in the shaping of society, one must not think of it as a mere conglomeration of people. Most modern cities have lost the peculiar characteristic of in- dividuality which we can observe in cities of Renaissance Italy, of Medieval Europe, of Greece, and of Mesopotamia. In these countries the physical existence of the city is but an outward sign of close communal affinities which dominate the life of every dweller within the walls. The city sets its citizens apart from the other inhabitants of the land. It determines their relations with the outside world. It produces an intensified self- consciousness in its burghers, to whom the collective achievements are a source of pride. The communal life of prehistoric times became civic life. The change, however, was not without its disadvantages, especially in a country like Mesopotamia. The modest life of the prehistoric villager had fitted well enough into the natural surround- ings, but the city was a questionable institution, at variance, rather than in keeping, with the natural order. This fact was brought home by the frequent floods and storms, droughts and marsh- fires with which the gods destroyed man's work. For in Meso- potamia, in contrast with Egypt, natural conditions did not favour the development of civilization. Sudden changes could bring about conditions beyond man's control.1 Spring tides in the Persian Gulf may rise to a height of eight to nine feet; prolonged southerly gales may bank up the rivers for as much as two feet or more. Abnormal snowfalls in Armenia, or abnormal rainfall farther to 1 A. J. Wilson in Geographical Journal, LIV (London, 1925), 235 ff. 54 THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST why so many great shrines were equipped with them, and why the staggering communal effort which their construction entailed was undertaken. The significance of the ziggurats is revealed by the names which many of them bear, names which identify them as mountains. That of the god Enlil at Nippur, for example, was called “ House of the Mountain, Mountain of the Storm, Bond between Heaven and Earth.” Now “mountain," as used in Mesopotamia, is a term so heavily charged with religious significance that a simple translation does it as little justice as it would to the word “ Cross” in Christian, or the words “ West” or “Nun ” (Primeval Ocean) in Egyptian, usage.1 In Mesopotamia the “ mountain ” is the place where the mysterious potency of the earth, and hence of all natural life, is concentrated. This is perhaps best understood if we look at a rather rough relief of terra cotta (Fig. 12) which was found at Assur in a temple of the second millennium B.C., although similar representations are known on seals of a much earlier date. The deity represented is clearly a personification of chthonic forces. His body grows out of a mountain (the scale pattern is the con- ventional rendering of a mountainside), and the plants grow from the mountainsides as well as from the god's hands. Goats feed on these plants; and water, indispensable to all life, is represented by two minor deities flanking the god. Deities like the main figure on this relief were worshipped in all Mesopotamian cities, although their names differed. Tammuz is the best known of them. As personifications of natural life they were thought to be incapacitated during the Mesopotamian summer, which is a scourge destroying vegetation utterly and exhausting man and beast. The myths express this by saying that the god “dies” or that he is kept captive in the “ mountain.” From the mountain he comes forth 1 It is sometimes said that the Sumerians, descending from a mountainous region, desired to continue the worship of their gods on “ High Places” and therefore proceeded to construct them in the plain. The point is why they considered “ High Places” appropriate, especially since the gods worshipped there were not sky gods only but also, and predominantly, chthonic gods. Our interpretation takes its starting-point from “the mountain," not as a geographical feature, but as a phenomenon charged with religious meaning. Several current theories have taken one or more aspects of “the mountain ” as a religious symbol into account and we do not exclude them, but consider them, on the whole, subsidiary to the primary notion that “the mountain ” was seen as the normal setting of divine activity.—The whole material referring to the temple towers, and the various interpretations which have been put forward, are conveniently presented in André Parrot, Ziggurats et Tour de Babel (Paris, 1949). e temple towersting of divinery notion that came but consider THE CITIES OF MESOPOTAMIA so and in the mural decoration of temples—plants and animals, especially those upon which man depends for his livelihood, were by far the most frequent. These were the emblems of the great goddess worshipped at Erech and throughout the land. They occur singly or in combination (for instance an ear of barley and a bull [Fig. 14; cf. Fig. 44]), the vegetable kingdom often being represented by rosettes. Friezes of sheep or cattle covered the walls of the Protoliterate temples—painted at Uqair, inlaid or carved in stone at Erech (Figs. 17, 18).1 Implements used in the cult, such as stands for offerings, were likewise decorated with animals, as were also sacred vessels : a trough (Fig. 5), from which the temple flock was presumably fed, shows sheep near their fold—a reed structure (srefe) like those still built by the marsh Arabs in southern Iraq (Fig. 6); and the building is crowned by two curiously bound reed bundles which correspond to the oldest form of the sign with which the name of the mother-goddess was written. Vases and seal designs showing the performance of ritual acts (Figs. 15 ; 44) are also common. Like the symbols used in decorative art, these acts point consistently to the worship of deities manifest in nature. The gods were also symbols of a collective identity. Each city projected its sovereignty into the deity which it conceived as its owner. There seems to be a contradiction here : the nature gods whom the Protoliterate monuments celebrate would seem more suitable for worship by countrymen and farmers than by townsmen as we know them. But our contrast “ town versus country” is misleading. While it is true that the city in Mesopotamia was an outstanding innovation of the Protoliterate period, the great divergence between city and countryside, between rural and urban 1 The inlays consisted of terra cotta plaques set in among the clay cones which covered the walls. The carved figures were executed in stone and fixed to the wall with copper wire through loops drilled in their backs (Fig. 18). 2 The same applies to the “urban revolution ”-a phrase often used to describe the birth of civilization. This term has been introduced by V. Gordon Childe, whose great achievement has been the replacement of period-distinctions, which had only typological significance, by others which suggest socio-economic differ- ences. However, in the later editions of his Dawn of European Civilization, in Man Makes Himself, and in What Happened in History, his point of view has assumed a Marxist slant which applies to ancient Near Eastern conditions in- appropriate categories. His recent article, “ The Urban Revolution," in The Town Planning Review, XXI (Liverpool, 1950), 3-17, and his recent L. T. Hob- house Memorial Lecture, “ Social Worlds of Knowledge” (London, 1949), seem to embody, however, a change of viewpoint. As regards the term “urban revolution,” it can in no way be applied to Egypt, as we shall see, even if we should accept it, with the qualifications stated in our text, for the transition from pre- history to history in Mesopotamia. whosen ly typologic in the late What Hap Can Makes Hever, in the latence, by others- 60 THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST We must start by distinguishing two interlocking but distinc social institutions. The political unit was the city ; the economic- religious unit the temple community. Each temple owned lands which formed the estate of its divine owners. Each citizen belonged to one of the temples, and the whole of a temple community the officials and priests, herdsmen and fishermen, gardeners, crafts- men, stone cutters, merchants, and even slaves—was referred to as “the people of the god X.” Ideally one can imagine one temple community to have formed the original kernel of each city ; but whether this situation ever prevailed we do not know, since the Early Dynastic tablets acquaint us with cities comprising several temples with their estates.1 Part of the temple land was actually worked by all for all, or again, to put it in the terms of the ancients, by all in the service of the god. This part of the land—not more than one-fourth of the whole in a case we can check—was called nigenna-land, a term which may be translated “ Common,” since the land involved was cultivated by the community as a whole. A second part, called kur-land, was divided into allotments which were assigned to members of the community for their support at a rent amounting to from one-third to one-sixth of the yield. Most of this rent could be paid in grain, but a small part had to be paid in silver. The temple supplied the seed-corn, draft animals, and implements for the cultivation of the Common; and high and low worked every year in the “ fields of the god,” repairing the dikes and canals as a corvée. The sangu, or priest, who stood at the head of the temple community assigned the shares in the communal tasks. He appeared as bailiff of the god and was assisted by a nubanda, or steward, who supervised labour, magazines, and administration. Stores of grain which had accumulated were not merely used for seed-corn, nor were they exclusively at the disposal of the priest, to be used for sacrifices and for the sustenance of the temple personnel. The priests, like everyone else, had their allotments to support them- selves, and the fruits of communal labour returned in part to the citizens in the form of rations of barley and wool, which were distributed regularly, and extra rations, supplied on feast days. 1 The city god was, for political purposes, and often also as regards the importance of his temple, the chief god of the city. But “ the chief god owned only his own temple's land. His relationship to the other gods may most probably be compared to that of the headman of a village to other landowners and their holdings in the village.” (Thorkild Jacobsen in Human Origins, An Introductory General Course in Anthropology, Selected Readings Series II (Chicago, 1946), 255. THE CITIES OF MESOPOTAMIA 61 Although the amounts of rations were not equal, nor the tasks assigned to all men equally burdensome, we observe here a fact unparalleled in the ancient world, namely, that in principle all members of the community were equal. All received rations as well as allotments to support themselves; all worked on the Common and on the canals and dikes. There was no leisure class. Likewise there were no native serfs. Some foreigners and prisoners of war were kept as slaves, but private people possessed very few, if any. Slaves worked in the temple alongside free-men as porters and gardeners. Slave girls were kept in considerable numbers as spinners, and they helped in the kitchens, the brewery, and the sties where pigs were fattened. The allotments differed in size, even when assigned to men of the same profession, and we cannot explain the differences. There is no evidence of large estates in the hands of single members of the temple community, but we may suppose that the existence of several temple communities in one city may have made it possible for some men to dispose of allotments in more than one of them. We know of a nubanda who had about 120 acres and a supervisor of the herb magazines who owned about 80 acres.1 But such conditions represent deviations from the original system. More significant is the fact that even the smallest allotment entered in the temple lists—a gan, or seven-eights of an acre-would suffice to keep a man. Monogamy and the scarcity of slaves would, in any case, limit the area which one family could cultivate. Women are also listed as holders of allotments, and this means that they served the community in some function or other. For the basic rule of the temple community was that a person received land for his sustenance because he put his specialized skill at the service of all : the shepherd and the fisherman, the carpenter and the smith, provided the temple magazines with certain quantities of their produce or simply devoted all their time to work on temple property. The magazines (Fig. 19) 2 contained an immense variety of articles : grain, sesame seed as the raw material for oil, onions and other vegetables, beer, dates, wine (which was rare), fish (dried 1 Schneider, op. cit., 35. 2 The illustration shows a reconstruction, warranted in all essential details, of an Early Dynastic temple excavated at Khafajah by the Iraq Expedition of the Oriental Institute. The magazines were built against the inside of the oval enclosure wall. They surround entirely the platform supporting the shrine and the open space in front of it. See P. Delougaz, The Temple Oval at Khafajah (Chicago, 1940). THE CITIES OF MESOPOTAMIA 65 Sumerian measures can be converted by taking the gan at just under an acre and the gur at about 3} bushels.) 147 gan arable land, the oxen put in the plough and seed : barley for food of the ploughing oxen . . . 241 gur barley for food of the sowing oxen . . . 124 , seed-corn . . . . . . . . 124 · waste . . . . . . . . . It » 36 gan sown in addition : seed-corn . . . . · 3 » fodder . . . . . . . . 3 , Together : 183 gan arable land. Its grain Expenditure for the Common1 . . . . . 561 This grain came from the temple magazines which had been filled by the harvest of the Common. In order to make it possible to draw up a budget, the yield per acre was estimated, account being taken of whether the land was good and arable, newly reclaimed, swampy, or distant from water. The monthly allowances of functionaries were listed, as were the monthly supplies to brewery, bakery, and kitchen, and the tasks allotted to the guilds of craftsmen, shepherds, fishermen ; and other specialized workers were also listed in monthly quotas. All these documents were signed by the sangu and the nubanda. But the absence of money made simplification imperative, since the accounts recorded a continual intake of all kinds of goods, and the outflow of similarly varied stores, in the form of rations, sacrifices, materials for repairs, goods for trade, and so on—which were not reduced to a common standard of value. It would have been impossible to budget from month to month and from year to year unless the book-keeping had been adapted to a somewhat simple scheme with fixed ratios prevailing throughout. The schematic character of the temple accounts can be seen in the one instance which we quoted above: the fodder for the sowing oxen was precisely the same quantity as that used for seed. The span used to break the ground received precisely twice the amount allotted to the span following after with the seed funnel. Similar simple ratios were used for valuations : one gur of barley was reckoned equivalent to one gin of silver ; one gur of barley was likewise charged as rent for one gan of land. It is obvious that such equations reduced the innumerable calculations of the temple book-keeping to manageable proportions. But it is likewise obvious that these simplified and rigid scales never corresponded to the 1 After Anna Schneider, op. cit., 54. THE CITIES OF MESOPOTAMIA 71 communities within the city. To each he assigned a share in the common tasks on buildings, canals, and dikes. These corvées were then divided among the guilds and individual members of a community by its sangu or nubanda. The ensi dealt, furthermore, with matters of defence and trade, in other words, with foreign affairs. The professional soldiers were under his direct and personal command and formed an important source of his power within the city. Like every other citizen, he received an allotment for his sustenance; but his fields were part of the Common and were cultivated by the people as part of their communal task. Here, again, was an opportunity for abuse of power. Moreover, it became customary to acknowledge the ensi's exalted position by offering him presents on the festivals of the gods. He also took a fee for making legal decisions or decreeing a divorce, and imposed certain taxes. While he administered the main temple of the city, he appointed members of his family to head other temple communities. Although the assembly seems not to have been superseded entirely, the effective power of the ensi was preponderant; and what had been the original strength of Sumerian society, its integra- tion with the temple organization, became its weakness when the leaders of the temple communities utilized the need for leadership, which the growth of the cities called forth, to oppress the people. We know, for instance, that one ensi sequestered fields assigned to him on the Common and used them to build up an independent “ estate of the palace,” modelled on that of the temple. The tablets from Fara show how varied an assortment of people had become directly dependent upon the ensi : scribes, chamberlains, heralds, pages, cupbearers, butlers, cooks, musicians, and all kinds of craftsmen. An equalitarian society had been thoroughly trans- formed, and the power assumed by the ruler was reflected in the presumptions and extortions of his officials. In fact, the Early Dynastic period ends, in Lagash, in an abortive attempt to move 1 The enumeration recalls the so-called “Royal Tombs” of Ur, where, under conditions which are as yet obscure, a courtly society had been buried in all its splendour. The riches discovered in these tombs, which belong to the very end of the Early Dynastic period and appear far removed from the simple co-operative society of the ideal temple community which we have described, recall Homer and Malory rather than Hesiod and Piers Plowman. Since Sidney Smith suggested in 1928 (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1928), 849 ff.) that these rich tombs, containing numerous attendants killed when the main occupant was buried, derived from the performance of a “ fertility rite," the discussion has continued without leading to a decisive conclusion. See my Kingship and the Gods, 400, n. 12. PLATE XVI 27. Reverse of King Narmer's palette. 74 THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST sea from Sumer attracted those who had come under its spell. Evidence of this movement is contained in Early Dynastic inscriptions. The thoroughly Sumerianized people of Mari, who had adopted the Sumerian script, inscribed their statues in Akkadian. The same seems to have happened at Khafajah near Baghdad. At Kish, a little farther to the south, the population seems to have been bilingual.1 These observations in the field of language are valuable pointers ; there may have been other, intangible, differences between the northern and the southern elements in the population of Meso- potamia, differences which would distinguish two strains with distinct cultural traditions. And although the old view that the accession of Sargon of Akkad represents a foreign conquest is untenable, his reign truly marks a new beginning. In the arts a new spirit finds magnificent expression, and in statecraft an entirely new attempt is made to create a political unity which would comprise the city states but surpass their scope, and which had no precedent in the past. The house of Sargon appears as a succession of rulers consistently claiming kingship over the whole land; and it is possible that their political ideal was not unrelated with the fact that they were free, as their predecessors were not, from the traditional viewpoint which grasped political problems ex- clusively in terms of the city. For among most semitic-speaking people kinship provides the supreme bond. It is possible that the Akkadian-speaking inhabitants of middle and northern Mesopo- tamia had always acknowledged loyalties which went beyond the city proper. In Sumer there is no sign of the existence of such loyalties, nor was there a political institution which over-arched the sovereignty of the separate cities. But of Sargon a chronicle reports : “He settled his palace folk for thirty-three miles and reigned over the people of all lands.” 3 The first part of this entry suggests that Sargon allotted parts of lands of temple communities to his own followers, thus overriding the age-old local basis of land rights. No conqueror could rely on the loyalty of the defeated cities, and it seems as if Sargon built up a personal following, perhaps exploiting kinship ties in the wide sense of tribal loyalty. Under his grandson Naramsin, governors of cities styled themselves “slave of the king." 1 Journal of the American Oriental Society, LIX (1939), 490. 2 However, Lugalzaggesi, whom Sargon overthrew, had assumed the title of “ King of the Land." 3 L. W. King, Chronicles concerning Early Babylonian Kings, II, s; Sidney Smith, Early History of Assyria, 93. THE CITIES OF MESOPOTAMIA Sargon also seems to have made a bid for the loyalty of the common people. This appears from a change in the formula for oaths." The name of the king could now be invoked alongside the gods. This had a definite practical significance : if an agree- ment thus sworn to was broken, or if perjury was committed, the king was involved and would make it his business to uphold the right of the injured party. This was of the utmost importance, for the judge had originally been merely an arbitrator, whose main task was the reconciliation or satisfying of both parties. He had had no power to enforce his decisions; and if a man without personal prestige did not have a powerful patron to “overshadow him,” there was little chance of his finding satisfaction in court. The new oath formula put the king in the position of the patron of all who swore by his name ; in practice he constituted a court of appeal for the whole land, independent of the cities—a step of the greatest importance in the development of Mesopotamian law and society. Another step towards unification of the country was the introduction of a uniform calendar. Hitherto each city had had its own, with its own month names and festivals. Finally, the existence of a single monarch, who styled himself “ King of the Four Quarters of the World,” served as a perpetual reminder of the unity of the state.3 If pressure from the outside world could be relied upon to bring about national unity, Mesopotamia would no doubt have become a single state on the lines laid down by the kings of Akkad. For the country was at all times exposed to great dangers. Civilized and prosperous, but lacking natural boundaries, it tempted mountaineers and steppe dwellers with the possibilities of easy loot. Raids could be dealt with by the cities, but the large-scale invasions, which recurred every few centuries, required a strong central government, to be repelled. The safeguarding of the trade routes, too, went beyond the competence of individual cities, and one would 1 So F. W. Geers and Thorkild Jacobsen ; see Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods, 406, n. 35. 2 Frankfort, loc. cit. 3 The Akkadian rulers were themselves apparently too close to the period of local autonomy to draw up a single king list for the whole land. This was done under Utuhegal (Ca. 2100 B.C.), the destroyer of the Gutian invaders who had overthrown the rule of Akkad. Utuhegal's “pride in new independence and in the ‘kingship’ which had been brought back” led to the compilation of the country-wide list in which the traditional lists of local rulers of the important cities were combined (Thorkild Jacobsen, The Sumerian King List, Chicago, 1939). Thus a conception of kingship established by the Sargonid dynasty was projected into the past. EGYPT, THE KINGDOM OF THE TWO LANDS a chieftain of the northern marshes. On the other side, the king, now wearing the crown of Lower Egypt, inspects a number of beheaded enemies. Thus Narmer is shown as the first “ Lord of the Two Lands." But it would be a mistake to read the Narmer palette as a mere tale of conquest. The “unification of the Two Lands” was, to the Egyptians, not only the beginning of their history, but also the manifestation of a preordained order which extended far beyond the political sphere and bound society and nature in an indestructible harmony. Of this order Pharaoh was the champion. Throughout historical times the texts proclaimed this conviction, and pictorial art expressed it by great compositions in which the towering figure of the king destroys, single-handed, the misguided wretches who have sided with chaos in opposing Pharaoh's regimen. It is significant that this aspect of Pharaoh's power should be expressed in art for the first time in the reign of Narmer. To appreciate the novelty of the design of the Narmer palette, we must investigate its antecedents. Material and shape proclaim it as a specimen of a common type of toilet article : throughout predynastic times slate palettes (Fig. 4) had been used for the grind- ing of a green powder which, put on the lids, protected the eyes against glare and infection. On the Narmer palette, too, a round space is set aside for this purpose, even though the size of the object seems to preclude actual use. Now palettes, as well as combs, knife-handles, and so on, had been embellished with reliefs during the last phase of the predynastic period. Among such decorated objects, two treat new subjects. The first, an ivory knife-handle found at Gebel el Arak in Upper Egypt (Figs. 23, 24), shows, on one side, the pursuit of game, a motif which recurs on other objects of the same age ; on the other side is depicted a battle. The second, the Hunters' palette (Fig. 25) shows two groups of men who have joined forces in an attempt to destroy lions, perhaps because these infested wasteland which had to be re- claimed. The two groups are identified by standards carried in their midst. The battle scene and the hunting scene are without parallels in predynastic times. But they are likewise unconnected with 1 We confine ourselves to this, the most obvious, aspect of the Narmer palette as a work of art. But its extraordinary significance for the history of art has recently been fully discussed by H. A. Groenewegen-Frankfort, Arrest and Move- ment, An Essay on Space and Time in the Representational Art of the Ancient Near East (London and Chicago, 1951), 20–3. 80 THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST later Egyptian art. Their novelty consists in the rendering of com- munal action, their un-Egyptian character in the manner of that rendering. Both knife-handle and palette present a faithful record of the actual course of events : groups of men are engaged in combat or move together towards game. We must suppose that some of the figures stand for leaders or chieftains, but there is nothing by which we can identify them. Each scene shows the melee character- istic of the occasion. But to the Egyptian of historical times such a veristic rendering was totally unacceptable. It hid the true significance of occurrences by merely rendering their outward appearance. However large the masses that moved in battle, built temples or pyramids, went into the deserts to quarry stone or mine gold, they were moved by the will of their divine ruler. Art was adequate to its purpose only if it stressed this fact. It did so by using, throughout two and a half millennia, variants of Narmer's composition. Note that on the macehead of Scorpion, the classical Egyptian viewpoint is not yet rendered in its purity : men are shown to assist the ruler ; 1 and the strangled rekhyt-birds swing from the standards of the gods. On some other fragments which antedate Narmer 2 the divine standards are provided with hands to show their active participation in a ruler's victory. But on the Narmer palette, as on all monuments of historical times, Pharaoh acts alone. The standards of the gods have become adjuncts to his progress (Fig. 28), and men are merely followers; no act of theirs can be significant beside his own. If the characteristic Egyptian conception of kingship first received pictorial expression under Narmer, it found its first literary embodiment in a famous text which, from internal evidence, must likewise be assigned to the formative years of Egypt.3 This is the so-called Memphite Theology. The lasting value of the theory of kingship which it expounded is shown by the fact that the only copy now extant was made as late as the reign of king Shabaka in the eighth century B.C. Moreover, it relates the theory with an act of Menes, the founding of Memphis. The text concerns us, 1 For the unique features of this scene see H. A. Groenewegen-Frankfort, op. cit., 19. 2 The so-called Bull and Lion palettes. See Capart, Primitive Art in Egypt, 238, Fig. 177 ; 242, Fig. 181; or Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods, Figs. 27 and 28 and 91 ff. 3 The evidence for the early date is linguistic. Junker's view on the date of the text is ill-founded. See Frankfort, op. cit., 352, n. 1. In chapter ii of this work English renderings of the major part of the Memphite Theology are given. PLATE XVII TA AAN 28. Obverse of King Narmer's palette. THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST and to perform the “ Circuit of the White Wall," as Menes was thought to have done when he had constructed his royal castle.1 The state which Menes created was habitually referred to as “ The Two Lands,” a designation apt to be misunderstood ; we meet here—as so often in Egypt-a term with cosmological rather than political connotations. We have shown elsewhere 2 that the dualistic mould of the “ Kingdom of Upper and Lower Egypt” satisfied the Egyptian mode of thought which conceived totality as an equilibrium of opposites. A meaningful symmetry was imposed upon the unified land, but it had no basis in fact, for Scorpion and Narmer conquered the north piecemeal, as far as we know. Nor is there any sign of resentment against the north. On the contrary, northerners were found among the highest in the land : two queens of the First Dynasty reveal a Delta origin by their names, and officials of that dynasty, buried near their royal masters at Abydos, exemplify the Lower Egyptian physical type. 3 The outside world did not challenge the exalted view of their state which the Egyptian entertained. None of their neighbours threatened the safety of “ The Two Lands”; all of them disposed of natural resources which seemed predestined to be offered as tribute to the divine ruler of Egypt. We have seen that the southern littoral of the Mediterranean was not a desert in antiquity. Narmer's successors had to consolidate their northern frontiers even though they prevailed with ease over the neighbouring populations. Some had to fight the Libyans in the west. At the malachite mines in Sinai, Semerkhet recorded his victory over the local Bedouin on a rock-stela repeating the main motif of Narmer's palette. Another king of the First Dynasty had an ivory gaming piece engraved with the picture of a bound Syrian captive. The roofing beams of the royal tombs at Abydos consist of coniferous wood imported from the Lebanon. Jugs of Syrian and Palestinian manufacture have been found in these tombs and in those of dignitaries buried at Saqqara : they probably served as containers of olive oil. Gold, ivory, ostrich feathers, and ebony came through Nubia from inner Africa. However, in this phase of Egyptian civilization, signs of contact 1 The reader conversant with the role of Osiris in the Egyptian theory of kingship may here be reminded of the fact that the “ Interment of Osiris " was localized in the “Royal Castle " by the Memphite Theology, and that this inter- ment, as well as the resurrection of Osiris in the Djed pillar, was annually performed at Memphis. 2 Frankfort, op. cit., 19–23. . 3 See G. M. Morant, “ Study of Egyptian Craniology from Prehistoric to Roman Times,” Biometrika, XVII (1925), 1–52. EGYPT, THE KINGDOM OF THE TWO LANDS 83 with a yet more distant region are also found. They differ in character from those we have just mentioned. Libya, Sinai, and Syria supplied the Nile valley with much-needed raw materials ; but Sumer supplied ideas. Imported Mesopotamian cylinders seal have been found in Egypt, and the same odd form of seal was adopted in Egypt. The earliest Egyptian brick buildings resemble the Protoliterate temples of Mesopotamia in all significant matters of technique. Egyptian art—even in the Narmer palette—used Mesopotamian motifs. Even writing seems to have been due to the stimulus derived from acquaintance with Mesopotamian writing of the end of the Protoliterate period. We have dealt with these matters in an Appendix. For although it is certain that contact between the two great centres of the Near East took place, it did not affect the social and political sphere with which we are concerned here. In fact, if we look back over the evidence presented in this chapter, the autochthonous character of the Egyptian development is unmistakable. The basic structure of the society which emerged was the direct opposite of that which came into being in Mesopotamia. In Egypt the great change did not lead to a concentration of social activity in urban centres. It is true that there were cities in Egypt, but, with the single exception of the capital, these were no more than market towns for the countryside. Paradoxically enough, the capital was less permanent than the towns in the provinces, for in principle it served for only a single reign. Each pharaoh took up residence near the site chosen for his tomb, where, during the best part of his lifetime, the work on the pyramid and its temple continued, while the government functioned in the neighbouring city. But after his death the place was abandoned to the priests and officials who maintained his cult and managed his mortuary estate, unless the new king decided to continue in residence because the adjoining desert offered a suitable site for his own tomb. Until the middle of the second millennium B.C. (when Thebes assumed a metropolitan character) there was no truly permanent capital in Egypt, a situation which clearly demonstrates the insignificant role played by the concept of the city in the political thought of the Egyptians." In Mesopotamia, 1 The rural character of the Egyptian commonwealth became apparent also in times of internal conflict. The wars between the Sumerian city-states find their Egyptian counterpart in struggles in which large parts of the Nile valley appear united under rival chiefs : a Theban family of Antefs and Mentuhoteps leading Upper Egypt against the royal house residing at Herakleopolis ; or Kamose or Ahmose leading, first the Thebaid, then the whole Nile valley, against the foreign Hyksos in the Delta. hiefs : a Theb house residing hole Nile va 84 THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST on the other hand, even the most powerful rulers of the land styled themselves rulers of cities and functioned as such, in Akkad or Ur, in Babylon or in Assur. The contrast in social structure and the divergent conceptions of kingship can be seen as correlated. The city as the ultimate form of political organization is inconceivable without a ruler who remains potentially one among many ; conversely, absolute power entails a unified realm. We did, therefore, not lose sight of our theme when we discussed in this chapter the origin of the myths and rites of kingship under Menes ; nor is it due to the accident of discovery that we studied the birth of Egyptian civilization with the aid of royal monuments. For Pharaoh symbolized the community in its temporal and transcendent aspects, and, for the Egyptians, civilized life gravitated around the divine king. Our discussion of the rise of the monarchical society of Egypt must now be complemented by a concrete description. The administration of the country 1 functioned on the strength of dele- gated royal power. Pharaoh was the living fount of law, governing by decrees which were formulated as inspired decisions. In early times the government assumed a somewhat patriarchal character. Sons and other close relatives of Pharaoh acted as his principal advisors and aids. Distant relatives and descendants of past rulers were found in minor government posts. At first no single minister stood between the king and the various branches of the administra- tion. There was no Grand Vizier. Under the Fourth Dynasty, however, the vizierate was introduced as the apex of the bureau- cracy ; but it was, at first, occupied by a prince of royal blood. Even in later times the king reserved certain prerogatives, such as the imposition of the death penalty and of mutilations ; 1 We may note in passing that the rudiments of the official hierarchy were established in the First Dynasty. Cylinder seals of that period (Figs. 35, 36) bear titles (and presumably names) of officials. The investiture with a cylinder seal confirmed the official in his function, and the term shw, which is usually translated “noble,” in reality means “ he who owns a seal of office”-in other words, a high official. 2 This may have been a contributory cause to the extreme scarcity of legal and administrative documents, the main cause being the perishable nature of the Egyptian writing materials—leather and papyrus ; but when the king's decision is the source of law, the need of codes and statutes is much reduced (see my Ancient Egyptian Religion, 43–6). In any case, the rarity of written documents obliged us to telescope in this chapter evidence much more widely spread through time than we used in our description of Mesopotamia. We have attempted to stress the features of society which we believe to have been present well-nigh from the first and which remained fairly permanent. But we are aware of the danger that we have distorted our sketch of conditions in the early part of the third millennium B.C. EGYPT, THE KINGDOM OF THE TWO LANDS 87 they were free or bond. Finally, he was called “ Chief of Com- mands,” which meant that orders from the king or the vizier went to him and that he was responsible for their being carried out in his province. In the nomarchs we find an element most dangerous to the unity of the state. Under the Old Kingdom there was, at first, no question of any power opposing the king. Nesutnefer, whose office we have just described, was twice transferred to another province. But the kings rewarded their faithful servants with gifts of land ; and, at the same time, officials pressed for hereditary appointments. Officially this claim was never admitted, but in practice there was an advantage in letting a son succeed his father, since the loyalty of the incumbent of an office was then ensured and his successor was certain to receive most careful professional training. However, the two tendencies together changed the relation between the great officials and the king in the course of time. Hereditary offices and property turned the officials into landed proprietors who were no longer entirely dependent upon their function at court, although, as long as the central power remained strong, Pharaoh could cancel all rights to land or to office at any time. Nevertheless, when the central administration collapsed completely at the end of the Sixth Dynasty, the hereditary landowners were in a position to assume responsibility for the maintenance of rule and order in their districts. The manors of their estates were turned into miniature courts. This situation flouted every native theory and practice of government, and it did not outlast the period of confusion. The kings of the Twelfth Dynasty restored centralized government. It is possible to gain a clear idea of the mentality of the Egyptian official, since many texts define the norms of his behaviour. The ideal official was “the silent man," who is respectful of established authority and just, since Maat (which means truth, justice, right- ness) is part of that world order of which his royal master is the champion. The “silent man ”? is, therefore, not the meek sufferer, but the wise, self-possessed, well-adapted man, modest and self- effacing up to a point, but deliberate and firm in the awareness that he is thoroughly in harmony with the world in which he lives. 1 The change was a slow one. Methen (whose career under the Fourth Dynasty we have described) thought it worth while to record in his tomb the possession, not of a large estate, but of a country seat of about 2} acres, provided with a garden, with vines, figs, and other good trees, and a pond. 2 H. Frankfort, Ancient Egyptian Religion (New York, 1948), Chapter iii. EGYPT, THE KINGDOM OF THE TWO LANDS 89 charged with depicting on the walls of the great tombs the various rural activities from which the sustenance of the owner, in the next world, as in this, derived," rendered these with the liveliest interest. Their work (Figs. 29, 30) presents to us a gay, light- hearted people, resembling in many respects the modern fellahin who similarly live on the verge of poverty under hardship and oppression. In the tombs we see fishermen and herdsmen at their tasks, joking with one another (the words are sometimes rendered over their images). Harvesters move in a row, rhythmically swing- ing their sickles to the tune of a song which is accompanied by a man with a long reed pipe (Fig. 29). Women bring food to their menfolk; two little girls squabble, while a third draws a thorn from the foot of her friend; a shepherd dozes under a tree, his dog asleep beside him (Fig. 30) ; 3 another herdsman refreshes himself from a goatskin bottle. This is an over-simplified description of the significance of the scenes of daily life found in the tombs. For a more penetrating treatment, see H. A. Groenewegen-Frankfort, Arrest and Movement, 28-44. 2 Fig. 29, a relief from the Old Kingdom, shows, in the upper register, the harvesters with their sickles ; on the extreme left is an overseer; the third figure from the left plays a long pipe, while his companion sings, holding the side of his face, as oriental singers do to this day. In the second register donkeys are brought to carry the harvest home. The register below shows various incidents in the transport; the bottom register shows how the sheaves are stacked. . 3 Fig. 30, a wall painting from the New Kingdom, is best“ read” from the bottom upwards. At the left bottom corner teams of oxen draw ploughs, while sowers, holding a bag with seeds, sprinkle the grain with uplifted hands. Farther to the right men are shown breaking the ground with hoes. Behind the three of them shown on the right we see a girl drawing a thorn out of the foot of her friend. The second register from below shows the grain being cut-one of the labourers takes a swig from a water jar handed him by a girl who stands in front, a basket hanging from her shoulder. Farther to the right the grain is carried away in hampers (underneath one of these, two girl gleaners are fighting and tearing each other's hair); and, on the far right, it is forked out in readiness for threshing. The threshing is done by bullocks who trample the grain—this is shown at the extreme right of the third register from below. To the left women winnow the grain, their hair wrapped in white cloth against the dust. The tomb owner watches in a kiosk and receives two water jars. Behind the kiosk squat the scribes who note the yield of the harvest while the grain is shovelled into heaps. The upper register shows the deceased in his function as “ Scribe of the fields of the Lord of the Two Lands.” On the left are shown a group of his officials, dressed in white, pencase in hand, busy measuring the grain on the stalk ; their attendants (with bare bodies) hold the measuring cord. A peasant (followed by his wife who carries a basket on her head with further gifts) offers something to the tax officials, to propitiate them. But on the right, before the kiosk of the tomb owner and near the mooring-place of the boat which brought his subor- dinates to the scene, a peasant, who apparently defaulted, is beaten, while another kneels and prays for grace. 12 EGYPT, THE KINGDOM OF THE TWO LANDS 91 the stone from Tura, on the east bank, to Gizeh or Saqqara on the west bank of the Nile. For this purpose it was convenient that in summer, when the arable land was flooded, all agricultural labour came to a standstill, and the water covering the fields facilitated transport to the very foot of the desert plateau.1 We have some evidence of the life which these labourers lived. Three places are known where workmen were housed. Near the pyramid of Chephren at Gizeh there are, around a court, extensive barracks consisting of ninety-one galleries, each 88 feet long, 94 feet wide, and 7 feet high. Petrie estimated that these could house 4000 men. Near the pyramid of Senusert II at Lahun there is a walled town covering an area 900 by 1200 feet. And at Tell el Amarna, near the northern group of rock tombs, is a walled village measuring only 210 by 210 feet (Fig. 31). Its layout is dreary, with identical houses built back to back along straight streets. Each house consists of a court serving for kitchen and workshop, a central room as living-room, and two little bedrooms at the back. The enclosure wall has but one gate, opening on a square where the men no doubt mustered before being marched off to work. At one end of the square there is a larger house for the foreman or commandant. Described in this way the settlement makes the impression of a penal colony. But when one visits the site or reads the excavation report with some care, that impression changes. One is struck by the variations which one observes in going from house to house. Although the plans are identical, the tenants had made many changes to suit their individual needs and predilections. The internal arrangements are hardly ever the same. The objects found in the houses also show considerable variety and do not suggest penury or gloom. In one room was discovered a gay, painted frieze of dancing figures of the god Bes, the popular genius of music and love. One gets a distinct impression at the site that lack of freedom neither interfered with the home life of these workers nor destroyed their gaiety. Abuses naturally existed. Royal decrees granting freedom from corvée, or levy, to the personnel of certain shrines explicitly protected these men against removal to other parts of the country, and show incidentally that common folk were exposed to this hazard. The small man was dependent on the protection of a man of influence 1 For a detailed discussion of the building of the pyramids, see I. E. S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt, Pelican Books, chapter vii. 2 T. Eric Peet and C. Leonard Woolley, The City of Akhenaten, Part I (38th Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Society), London, 1923. EGYPT, THE KINGDOM OF THE TWO LANDS 95 now, important secondary products. Ricinus plants were grown for oil, and flax for linen. When the grain had grown to a certain height, surveyors measured it to assess it for taxation on an estimated yield (Fig. 30). It was harvested with sickles, threshed on a circular threshing floor by asses (and later by cattle) who trod out the kernels. As a rule, women did the winnowing by throwing the grain up in a winnow- ing basket. After that it was stored in barns or in beehive-shaped silos, and the portion due to the king or to the estate-owner was handed over. Large estates, including the royal domains and the temples, had reserves to supplement bad harvests. Seed-corn was lent to the tenants, and teams of oxen and asses for ploughing or carrying were lent or let out, too. There are records of great landowners relieving tenants who could not meet their obligations in difficult years. But not only the grain harvest was taxed. There was a tax on canals and ponds, on trees and wells. The produce of the home industries and of the spare-time occupations of the people were taxed : they had to turn over some of their textiles, leatherwork, honey, oil, wine, vegetables, some of the catch of the fowler and fisherman, some of the increase of the shepherd's flock. Genesis xlvii. 24 states that one-fifth of all produce was owed to the govern- ment; this may or may not be correct'; it is not improbable. Certain people were liable to pay fixed quantities of produce, irrespective of yield. Again, it is necessary to correct our first reaction to a description of these conditions. In Egypt personal enterprise was made sub- sidiary to the performance of public duties ; and it would seem that under normal conditions sufficient scope for private initiative, in production and in barter, remained. The contents of graves which are best, perhaps, called lower middle class (since of the poorest people no trace survives) show as much. It is likewise revealing that during Egypt's long history no attempts to overthrow the existing order were made. This shows that the Egyptian experi- ment of organizing a rural community was, on the whole, successful. The obligation to hand over part of every kind of produce may seem pettifogging to us. But money was unknown; the state could function only if it disposed of all kinds of articles to supply those who were in its service. If officials abused their power and oppressed the people, the peasants had an effective weapon at their disposal : they fled. This was a catastrophe for their owner since he remained liable for the normal dues on his land, which now PLATE XXII MWILI Ooood U NUIHINIO OOOO 43. Stele of Djet, First Dynasty. ! WINCONTUL 01|||||||IIIIC XXX 42 and 44. Mesopotamian seal impressions (right) and Egyptian First Dynasty buildings (left). 45. “White Temple,” Erech. THE TOMB OP HEMAKA he sen RRRR BRUNEI ENEREERU MERINO 000 PIT TOIRE PLAN 3CALCL METROS सरास 46. Tomb of Hemaka, First Dynasty, Saqqara, EGYPT, THE KINGDOM OF THE TWO LANDS 97 The last inscription makes much of livestock, and stock-breeding was next in importance to agriculture. We have seen that a special official, “ The Master of the King's Largesse," was in charge of its supervision. In antiquity, in contrast with now, plenty of marsh- ble for grazing in the valley, and the large herds were also sent to the Delta in spring to graze. One official of the Sixth Dynasty lists 1000 head of cattle, 760 asses, 2200 goats, and nearly 1000 sheep as his own. Trade played a subordinate part in the internal economy of the country. There was, naturally, a great deal of barter between individuals. There were markets where food, especially garden produce, or birds netted in the fields, or fish, were exchanged for tools or sandals or walking-sticks, necklaces, textiles or oils— luxuries or articles which, although issued by the estate office, might not, in quantity or quality, suit everyone. Barter in the market-place allowed a man to adjust his share in various goods to his own particular taste or to dispose of catches or produce obtained on the side. These markets are sometimes depicted in the tombs, and we know that already, in the Old Kingdom, pieces of metal served as standards of value. An important object was said to be worth so and so many rings. In the New Kingdom this system was simplified, and the value of an object was said to be so much weight (deben) of gold, silver, or copper. In the New Kingdom, too, the closer contact with Syria made more imported articles available for the market trade. A tomb-painting shows a Phoenician ship just made fast at the quay of Thebes. Some of the crew have gone ashore and approach booths where sandals, linen, fruits, and vegetables can be exchanged for a jug of Syrian oil or wine. This type of trade remained, however, purely marginal to the economy of Egypt. Neither the home-grown staple products nor the main imports were distributed through the markets. We do not meet the word “merchant" until the second millennium B.C., when it designates the official of a temple privileged to trade abroad. Raw materials which Egypt lacked were procured through royal expeditions, organized by the Exchequer (which included among its personnel interpreters to assist the commanders in various foreign countries). These expeditions were of two types. In Nubia, the eastern and western desert, and in Sinai, the nomad tribes and poor peasants could not oppose the Egyptians in any way at all. The army came and took what it needed. On 1 Gardiner, Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, XXXVII (1915), 117; XXXIX (1917), 133. 13 98 THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAST quarrying and mining expeditions the military component of the expedition was no more than an armed escort, while the bulk of the “army” (as it was called) consisted of navvies to assist a core of trained stone-cutters or miners. Another type of expedition was required to obtain wood from the Lebanon and frankincense and myrrh from Punt, the Somali coast. These lands were outside the sphere of Egyptian military influence, and the native rulers could ask for a price. This was offered in the form of royal presents to favourite vassals, and their products were listed as tribute. In reality there was an exchange ; some splendid and extremely costly Egyptian jewellery, inscribed with the names of Pharaohs of the Twelfth Dynasty, has been found in tombs of the local princes of Byblos at the foot of the Lebanon. Coniferous roofing beams in the tombs of the First Egyptian Dynasty and a record of a sea expedition of Snefru of the Fourth Dynasty prove the great age of this lumber trade with the Levant. And from a late period we have the following list of objects which an Egyptian envoy—Wenamon-offered in exchange for wood from the Lebanon : Five gold and five silver vessels ; ten garments of royal linen ; ten pieces of other linen ; five hundred pieces of fine paper ; five hundred cattle skins ; five hundred ropes ; twenty bags of lentils ; thirty baskets of fish. The Phoenician export included, beside wood, oil, wine, resin, and ivory. It has been said that Pharaoh was the only wholesale merchant in Egypt and that foreign trade was a royal monopoly. But the implication of profit-making and exploitation is inappropriate. It was merely due to the complete consistency with which the Egyptians had organized their community as a centralized monarchy that they supplied themselves with the foreign materials of which they stood in need by means of royal expeditions. It is curious evidence of the practical effectiveness of Pharaonic rule that the absolute monarchy of Egypt did supply essential commodities, whether imported or produced at home, to the people as a whole in sufficient quantities; the distribution took place “ from above,” the king making gifts and allotments to his officials who in turn rewarded their retainers and so down the social scale. And in the First Intermediate period, when royal power suffered an eclipse, the texts contain a complaint that there is no wood available for the making of coffins. EGYPT, THE KINGDOM OF THE TWO LANDS 99 Whatever aspect of Egyptian society we have scrutinized, we have found Pharaoh at the centre. Yet nothing would be more misleading than to picture the Egyptians in abject submission to their absolute ruler. Their state can be described as “ a self-directed organism held together by a common regard for customary rights and obligations.” 1 Their polity was not imposed but evolved from immemorial predilections, and was adhered to, without protest, for almost three thousand years. Similar predilections have, in fact, maintained the institution of divine kingship among Africans related to the ancient Egyptians down to our own days. It was good, not evil ; it gave a sense of security which the Asiatic con- temporaries of the ancient Egyptians totally lacked. If a god had consented to guide the nation, society held a pledge that the un- accountable forces of nature would be well disposed and bring prosperity and peace. Nor does the Egyptian view lack ethical content. Truth, justice, were “that by which the gods live,” an essential element in the established order. Hence Pharaoh's rule was not tyranny, nor his service slavery. 1 F. M. Powicke, The Reformation in England (Oxford, 1941), 31. APPENDIX 101 Mesopotamia of remains of the Protoliterate period revealed the source from which curious and passing features of Egyptian culture in late predynastic and protodynastic times were obviously derived. The strongest evidence of this contact between Mesopotamia and Egypt is supplied by three cylinder seals shown by their very material and by their designs to have been made in Mesopotamia during the second half of the Protoliterate period (Figs. 33, 34), but found in Egypt. One was excavated at Naqada (Fig. 32), in a Gerzean grave ; and the same origin is probable for the other two. These importations were not without consequence : from the beginning of the First Dynasty the cylinder seal was adopted in Egypt and made at once in considerable quantities. Since it is an odd form for a seal, used only in countries in contact with Mesopotamia, and since one of the Mesopotamian cylinders was found in Egypt in a context just ante-dating the earliest native seals, it would be perverse to deny that the Egyptians followed the Mesopotamian example. But it is quite characteristic for them that they exploited the new suggestion with the greatest freedom. They even used engraved cylinders for a purpose for which there is no Mesopotamian prototype : some of these objects, found in the graves of the First Dynasty, are not seals at all but funerary amulets showing the dead man at the table (Figs. 37, 38, 39). In addition, the Egyptians used cylinders as seals, but they very rarely covered them with pictorial designs. They engraved upon them the names and titles of officials written in hieroglyphs (Figs. 35, 36). In Mesopotamia the earliest cylinders (Figs. 14-16, 42, 44) bear designs, not inscriptions; inscribed seals are unknown before the second Early Dynastic period, and then even the inscribed examples - always bear a design as their distinctive feature. Moreover, the early Egyptian seals are usually made of wood, a material not used in Mesopotamia, as far as we know. Since, on the other hand, the cylinder was better adapted to the sealing of merchandise and clay tablets than to that of documents on papyrus, it was replaced in Egypt during the Middle Kingdom by the stamp seal in the shape 1 Frankfort, Cylinder Seals (London, 1939), 293. 2 The reader unacquainted with these cylinders may identify the figures as follows. In Fig. 37 he will see some hieroglyphs which appear, reversed, at the extreme left in the impression of Fig. 38. To the right of them one sees the offering table with two crescents representing loaves of bread ; over these a man extends his hand. He is seated on a bed with legs ending in bull's or lion's feet (such beds have been found in the graves at Abydos). His long hair is rendered in a crosshatched mass. In Fig. 39 is a similar figure, facing to the right. His hair is rendered with a straight line. APPENDIX 103 Antithetical groups 1 and the carnivore attacking an impassive prey (Figs. 23, 40), are examples of Egyptian designs composed in an un-Egyptian manner. We may even formulate the way in which they are un-Egyptian : they share with the group of the hero dominating two lions, the intertwined snakes and lions, and the serpent-necked panthers a pronouncedly unrealistic character. Animal forms are, in all these instances, used to produce a decorative design ; they are subjected to a purely aesthetic purpose. And though the Egyptians eventually used plant motifs in such a fashion, they never again so employed animal or human figures. In Meso- potamia, on the other hand, imagination and design usually pre- vailed over probability or nature. Hence we see, once again, that the Egyptians experimented with Mesopotamian inventions during the formative phase of their civilization but soon rejected what was uncongenial. There remain two fields in which Mesopotamian examples have produced results more important than those we have discussed so far. They are architecture and writing. With the First Dynasty, monumental brick architecture makes its appearance in a form, both as regards material and plan, which recalls the Protoliterate temples of Mesopotamia. It is a moot point whether bricks were 1 Gebel el Arak knife-handle (Fig. 23); Small Louvre palette (Capart, op. cit., 235, Fig. 174); Lion palette (Capart, op. cit., 239, Fig. 178 plus 241, Fig. 180); Zaki Youssef Saad, Royal Excavations at Saqqara and Helwan, 1944-5, Supplément aux Annales du Service des Antiquités de l'Egypte, 166, Fig. 14. 2 The Egyptian manner of representing carnivores and their prey is shown in the central row of animals on the Hunters' palette (Fig. 25) where they appear in headlong flight. See also the Small Hierakonpolis palette and Egyptian renderings of the historical periods. In Mesopotamia the prey is rendered as unaffected by the attack ; our Fig. 14, for instance, can be matched by a seal (Frankfort, Cylinder Seals, Plate V a) where a lion is shown striking his claws into a bull's hindquarters. The bull stands as in our figure. This is but one example from many. Another instance of this rendering in Egypt is found on a macehead from Hierakonpolis (Capart, op. cit., 97, Fig. 68) with alternating dogs and lions, each of which attacks the one before him with teeth and claws. This type of design, a circular interlocking by activation of the individual figures, is characteristic for Mesopotamia and occurs on numerous cylinder seals, on the silver vase of Entemena, and on the macehead of Mesilim of Kish in the Louvre. 3 See Frankfort, Cylinder Seals, Epilogue et passim. 4 See Frankfort, “The Origin of Monumental Architecture in Egypt,” in American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, LVIII (1941), 329–58. In this article we have not only discussed the detailed technical similarities between recessed brick building in the two countries but also demonstrated the inadequacy of prevalent explanations of the Egyptian examples, “irrespective of the fact that they failed to account for the contemporary construction of similar buildings in Mesopotamia." PLATE XXIII 47. Tomb at Abu Roash. erinev. MITTITIETOTIDIMMMMTITION 2-4* LEE-ACCESO T 48. Recesses with timbers, “ White Temple,” Erech. 49. Wooden coffin, Tarkhan. 50. Recesses with timbers, Abu Roash. PLATE XXIV TER Khattushash: S E A) Ankur Kanish s Tepe Sialk (Lake Urmiah Tarsus Corchemish Haran, til-Barsip. ADAN: Nineveh lepe Goweg Mersin TH-Barsip PAPARAM ASSUR Arrapkha Alepre Alalokho Khalab LAND OF THE Asshur AMORITES Hamath) Tirqae Cuphra cTepe Giyan ALASHIYA Arvado Qatna odmoru CYPRUS Byblose Mari Eshnunns Tuttul Tyre09 Hozor Babylon Kisha Nippur Shechem Erech- Larsa Ashkelong Jerusalem Mamre Geras Beer-Sheba Tanis Avaris Ponon Ancient Sea Copper Mining Center) Coast water piva Der A Sidon ) Damascus Shushan Ur- Memphise Coliopolis To Ni Singi Mi Heracleopolise DES E R T) (A R A B I AN (PERSIA? OBeni-hasa Rive Abydos Thebes Nekhene Nekheb 51. Map of the Ancient Near East, from the Westminster Historical Atlas of the Bible. (Courtesy of The Westminster Press, Philadelphia). APPENDIX IOS as the strengthening in the niches (Figs. 49, 50)—likewise reflect Mesopotamian usages of the Protoliterate period (Fig. 48). In Mesopotamia the whole method of recessed brick building can be seen to come into being, starting with the temples at Eridu and Tepe Gawra of the Al Ubaid period (when the buttresses, widely spaced, seem merely to strengthen the walls), until, in the Proto- literate age (Fig. 45), the exact degree of complexity was reached with which brick building appears under the First Egyptian dynasty, unheralded, and yet with every refinement of which the material is capable. Contemporary but simplified renderings of these buildings on Protoliterate cylinder seals in Mesopotamia resemble those on First Dynasty monuments in Egypt (Figs. 42, 43, 44).2 There are differences, too, which indicate that the Mesopotamian renderings were not copied in Egypt, but that the Egyptian and Mesopotamian renderings are abbreviations of buildings which themselves were closely alike. The towers appearing on the Stele of Djet (Fig. 43) are found in the later part of the Protoliterate period (Fig. 42 right). Entrance towers with straight sides were, since Early Dynastic times, in use in Mesopotamia but not in Egypt, where the pylon with a pronounced batter was developed. In view of this great variety of detailed resemblances there can be no reasonable doubt that the earliest monumental brick architecture of Egypt was inspired by that of Mesopotamia where it had a long previous history. In conclusion, it is worth notice that the architectural forms used in Mesopotamia for temples were applied in Egypt to royal tombs and royal castles. But then, Pharaoh-in life and in death—was a god. Stone architecture, so characteristic for Egypt in historical times, replaced bricks in the royal tombs from the Third Dynasty onward. We must turn, finally, to the invention of hieroglyphic writing. It is a moot point whether it first appears on the macehead of 1 Our Fig. 48 shows the impressions of these round timbers in the brick work of the White Temple at Erech, of which Fig. 45 shows the plan. Fig. 49 shows a wooden sarcophagus found in a First Dynasty tomb at Tarkhan in Egypt, which imitates a recessed building with a similar strengthening of round timbers. Fig. so shows an actual tomb found at Abu Roash in Lower Egypt with some timbers still in place. 2 The Egyptian designs (Figs. 42, 44 left, 43) are supposed to render a palace façade, an assumption incapable of proof and ignoring the fact that the tombs have recesses on all four sides. But whatever the original of this design may have been, its abbreviated rendering in Egypt resembles an abbreviated rendering of temples in Mesopotamia (Fig. 44 right) very closely. 3 At Abydos three of these, perhaps built under the Second Dynasty, survive. See Petrie, Abydos, III (London, 1904), Plates V-VIII. 14 THE BIRTH O VILIZATION IN THE NEAR EAS: 200 106 THE BIRTH OF CIVILIZATION IN THE NEAR BAST Scorpion (Fig. 26), or whether the two signs on the Hunters' palette (Fig. 25) must count as writing. These cannot be read, although they may mean “shrine of (the earth-god) Akeru," for this name is written with the double fore-quartered animal in the pyramid texts. Whether this palette or the Scorpion mace is the first inscribed monument, the appearance of writing falls within a period in which Mesopotamian influence has been proved to exist. It has been customary to postulate prehistoric antecedents for the Egyptian script, but this hypothesis has nothing in its favour.1 In the annals of the kingdom (which happen to survive in a version of the Fifth Dynasty), events are recorded only from the First Dynasty onwards, a fact suggesting that no written records of earlier times existed. Only some names of prehistoric chieftains were still known and entered in the annals as “kings” preceding Menes. But the writing which appeared without antecedents at the beginning of the First Dynasty was by no means primitive. It has, in fact, a complex structure. It includes three different classes of signs : ideograms, phonetic signs, and determinatives. This is precisely the same state of complexity which had been reached in Mesopotamia at an advanced stage of the Protoliterate period. There, however, a more primitive stage is known in the earliest tablets, which used only ideograms. To deny, therefore, that Egyptian and Mesopotamian systems of writing are related amounts to maintaining that Egypt invented independently a complex and not very consistent system at the very moment of being influenced in its art and architecture by Mesopotamia where 1 Scharff, Archaeologische Beiträge zur Frage der Entstehung der Hieroglyphenschrift (München, 1942). * See Kingship and the Gods, 20 and 350, n. 15. 3 We have shown that in early Mesopotamian script words sounding alike (e.g. "to live ” and “arrow”) could be written with the same sign and the meaning clarified by the addition of determinatives which were not pronounced but indicated what kind of notion was rendered. In Egypt from the first we find the same devices in use. The hieroglyph depicting a rib can also be used to render the verb “to approach," in which case two legs are added as a determinative. Just as in Mesopotamia the picture of the arrow became a phonetic sign for ti, so the Egyptian signs become phonetic signs. There is, however, a difference. In Mesopotamia both consonants and vowels were rendered by the signs. In Egypt the vowels were ignored, and only the consonantal skeleton of the word was rendered. This was natural to the Egyptians, because the consonants of their words remained constant while the vowels changed in the conjugation and declension (as with us the verb "to break” has in the past tense“ he broke ”). To return to our example, the picture of the rib stood for spir when it meant rib, soper when it meant to approach," and so on. (This is the vocalization in APPENDIX 107 a precisely similar system had just been developed from a more primitive stage. To state this view is, of course, to reject it. But, again, the Egyptians did not copy the Mesopotamian system slavishly; they were merely stimulated to develop a script of their own, once the notion that language could be rendered graphically had been conveyed. The writing signs—the “hiero- glyphs”—which they invented have nothing at all in common with the Mesopotamian signs. They depict Egyptian objects ; they depict them faithfully; and they remain to the end exact pictures in the majority of cases. In Mesopotamia the tendency to use abstract symbols was strong from the beginning, and prevailed at an early date. And before the middle of the third millennium even the pictograms had lost all trace of semblance to the objects they originally rendered (Fig. 13). This contrast between the Egyptian and Mesopotamian scripts undoubtedly has a twofold cause. The Egyptians always loved the pictorial rather than the abstract and had a strong inclination towards the concrete. This tendency (which also prevented them from distorting animal forms for the sake of ornamental schemes) made them adopt and retain minute images as writing signs. But, in the second place, writing was at first used in Egypt for a purpose different from that to which the Mesopotamians put it. In Mesopotamia writing was invented to serve the practical needs of administration. In Egypt it was used, at first, as an element of monumental art, in the form of legends added to reliefs (Figs. 26, 27, 28). The legends fixed the identity of the figures in the reliefs which could be made explicit only by the adding of names and titles. But once writing was introduced, it was—in Egypt also—used for practical purposes ; and this required a shorter and more Coptic, the latest stage of Egyptian which used the Greek alphabet and, therefore, wrote vowels.) The phonetic value of the sign of the rib is therefore spr. In this way the Egyptians adapted the notion of how language might be rendered (which they evidently got from Mesopotamia) to the peculiarities of their own language. I do not want to suggest that Egyptian necessarily calls for a script in which only the consonants are written. Scharff (loc. cit.), points out that Hebrew and Arabic developed in their punctuation a method of rendering the changing vocalization alongside the permanent consonantal skeleton of the words. Some of the phonetic signs of Egyptian consist of only one consonant. In a discussion concerned with Egyptian writing there would be no reason why they should be mentioned in particular, since they do not differ in principle from the other signs. But in a wider historical context the signs with the value of a single consonant are of unique importance : they seem to be the distant ancestors of the alphabet. APPENDIX 109 Mesopotamian cylinders were found, not only at the places mentioned just now, but as far afield as Cappadocia and Troy. At a time when Mesopotamian influence radiated in all directions it was but natural that it should touch Egypt also. Thus the traces of Mesopotamian arts and crafts which we find in pre- and proto- dynastic Egypt represent but one more manifestation of the expan- sion of Mesopotamia during the latter part of the Protoliterate period. MESOPOTAMIAN INFLUENCE IN PRE- AND PROTODYNASTIC EGYPT I. EVIDENCE OUTSIDE THE FIELD OF ART. A. Mesopotamian Objects found in Egypt. 1. Three cylinder seals of the late Protoliterate period. B. Mesopotamian Usages temporarily adopted in Egypt. 1. Sealing with engraved cylinders. 2. Recessed brick building for monumental purposes. C. Mesopotamian Objects depicted on Egyptian Monuments. 1. Costume, on the Gebel el Arak knife-handle. 2. Scalloped battle-axe on fragment of late predynastic stone vase. 1 3. Ships, on Gebel el Arak knife-handle, “ decorated ” vases, and ivory labels of First Dynasty.2 II. EVIDENCE IN THE FIELD OF ART. A. Mesopotamian Motifs depicted in Egypt. 1. Composite animals, especially winged griffins and serpent-necked felines, on palettes and knife-handles. 2. Group of hero dominating two lions, on Gebel el Arak knife-handle and in tomb at Hierakonpolis. 3. Pairs of entwined animals, on knife-handles and Narmer palette. B. Mesopotamian peculiarities of Style apparent in Egypt. 1. Antithetical group, on knife-handles and palettes. 2. Group of carnivore attacking impassive prey, on knife handles. 3. Drawing of musculature, on Gebel el Arak knife-handle. 1 This object is depicted in Capart, op. cit., 100, Fig. 70, and Scharff, Die Altertümer der Vor- und Frühzeit Aegyptens, II, Plate 22, No. 108. 2 There are no parallels in Egypt in historical times for the ships with vertical prow and stern, while the Mesopotamian belem-represented in silver, e.g. in the Royal Tombs at Ur-assumes that shape. See Woolley, The Royal Cemetery, Plate 169, and, for older literature, Frankfort, Studies in Early Pottery of the Near East, I, 138 ff. 14* CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE UPPER EGYPT LOWER EGYPT NORTH MESOPOTAMIA SOUTH MESOPOTAMIA ---- Sooo? Hassunah Period Tasian Period Fayum A - - - - - -- Badarian Period Samartan - - - Merimde Halaf Period Eridu Amratian Period Northern Ubaid Period Southern Ubaid Period 3900 ? Warka Period 3750 ? Gawra Period Early Gerzean Period Early Protoliterate Period Maadi -- - - Late Gerzean Period Late Protoliterate Period 3100 Protodynastic Period : Dynasties Ninevite Period Early Dynastic Period II 2664 IV Old Kingdom : Dynasties 2425 Proto-Imperial Period 2340 Dynasty of Akkad VI I North Akkadian 21811) Period 2180 INDEX blind, employment of, 63 boats on Nile, 93 Brak, temple at, 73, 76, 108, 110 bricks, 46, 104 Byblos, 40, 98 Ababdeh tribe, 38 Abu Shahrein, 47. See Eridu Abydos, 81, 82, 86 Administration, Egyptian, 84 ff. African character of early Egyptian civilization, 42 ; modern A. parallels, 37, 64, 99 Agriculture : Egyptian, 85, 88 f., 94 f.; Al Ubaid period, 46; of Meso- potamian cities, 62 ff.; neolithic, 35 f., 37 ; social consequences of introduction, 38 f. Akkad, 72 Akkadian, 73 allotments of temple land, 60 f. Al Ubaid culture, period, 45, 46, 48, 73, 104 Amon-re, texts glorifying, 27 f. Amorites, 76, 77 Amratian culture, 42 amulets, funerary, 101 animal forms, use of, in art, 102 f., 107, 109 Anu, 53, 76 Arabia, Southern, III Arabs of marshes of S. Iraq, 44, 45 f., 57 architecture, 46, 53, 104 ; monumental, appearance of, 49, 103 ; Proto- literate, influence of in Egypt, 83, 103 f. See also bricks, houses, recessed buildings, reed structures, temples army service, 63 ; usually as labour corps, 90 f., 98 art : Egyptian, 80, 83, Mesopotamian influence in, 102 f. ; Mesopotamian Protoliterate, 56 f.; Palaeolithic, 33 ; representational, 49, 50 assemblies in Sumerian cities, 68 f. Assur, 73 calendar, 58, 75. See also Seasons canals, 52, 61 Cappadocia, 109 Carchemish, 40 Chagar Bazar, 40 cities : Egyptian, insignificance of, 83 ; Mesopotamian, basis of rulers' power, 84; economic organiza- tion of, 60 ff. ; particularism, 76 ; political institutions, 68 ff. ; ruled by deity, 52, 59; rural connections of, 58 civilizations, genesis of, 15 ff. climate, 33 f., si f., 62, 63 Collingwood, R. G., 24 f. common land, 60 copper, 42 f., 46, 67, 85 corvée, 60, 68 n. 2, 71, 90, 91 craftsmen, 62, 66, 92 f. Crocodilopolis, 96 crops, 35, 62, 94 cylinder seals, 55, 56 and n. 2, 73, 83, 101 Cyrus the Persian, 77 dictatorship, 69 f. Djet, Stele of, 105, 108 drainage, 38, 94 dress, Sumerian, 67 f. dynamics of civilizations, 16, 22, 23 Egypt : compared with Mesopotamia, 49 ; early conditions, 40 f.; foreign contacts of, 42 f. ; formative period, so; ideal of society in, 30 f. ; Meso- potamian influence in, 100 ff., time of, 110; predynastic culture phases, 42 ; rural life in, 88 f., 90 f. ; sickles, 35; Spengler's idea of, 20 f., Toynbee's, 27 f., 30 f. ; unification of, 78 f. Babylon, 48, 111 Badarian culture, 42 barter, 66, 97 Bes, 91 113 114 INDEX Elam, 62, 67 Kassites, 77 Elamites, 77 Khafajah, 61 n. 2, 67, 74 Enki, 47 king-figure in art, 69 n., 102 Enlil, 54, 59, 76 kingship, 70 f., 75 and n. 3, 80 f., ensi, “ governor,” functions, 70 f. 84, 99 equality of Mesopotamian citizens, 69 knife-handles, 79. See Gebel el Arak Erech, 53, 55 f., 57, 69 n., 102 Koptos, III Eridu (Abu Shahrein), 47, 105 exchequer, Egyptian, 85, 86, 97 labour corps, housing of, 91 Lagash, 62, 70, 71 Fayum, 35, 81 Lahun, workmen's town at, 91 festivals, 58 land of Mesopotamian cities, division First Dynasty (Egyptian), 35, 83, 94, and cultivation, 60 f. 101, 103, 104, 108, 109, 110, III language : Akkadian, S1, 73 f.; First Intermediate Period, 41, 92, 98 Egyptian, Hamitic elements in, 42 fish, fishing, 47, 62, 93 f. ; Sumerian, so floods of Tigris, 52. See Nile flood law, 75 ; Pharaoh fount of, 84 "forms ” of civilization, 16, 19, 32, Lebanon, timber from, 82, 98 49, 81 Libya, 34, 83 Fourth Dynasty, 84 lugal, “great man,” “king,” 69. f. frankincense, III Lugalzaggesi, 72 luxuries, trade in, 40 Gebel el Arak, knife-handle from, 79, 102, 109 Maat, 87, 90 Gerzean period, 42 f., 101, 110, 111 Marduk, 59 Gizeh, workmen's barracks at, 91 Mari, 73 gods : chthonic, 54; of waters, 47 ; markets, 97 man created to serve, s9 ; Pharaoh Memphis, 80 f. regarded as a, 52, 105; rulers of “Memphite Theology," 80 Mesopotamian cities, 52, 57 Menes, 78, 80, 81 f., 94 gold,” reward of merit, 93 merchants, 62, 66 f., 97 Guti, 77 Mersin, 40, 104 Mesopotamia : prehistoric, 44 f.; Hadendoa tribe, 37 southern, 45 f. ; cities of, Chapter Hassuna, 35, 39, 40 III passim ; compared with Egypt, Herodotus, 19, III 49 ff.; formative age of, so f.; hieroglyphs, 107 influence in Egypt, 100 ff. ; in- history, idea of progress in, 24 f. ; vasions of, 75 f. theories of, 17 ff.; distinction | Methen, career of, 85 f., 87 n. between prehistory and, 32 f. Min, statues of, 111 houses, Mesopotamian, 67 money, absence of, 65, 95 hunting, 41, 93 “ mountain," religious significance of, Hyksos, 27 54 f. Inanna, temple of, 53 inventions, neolithic, 39 f. Iraq, 35 irrigation, 36 ff., 38, 49 Naqada, 101 Naramsin, 74, 76 Narmer, 78, 82 ; palette of, 78, 79 f., 82, 102 Natufians, 35, 36, 39 Nekhbet, 81 Nesutnefer, 86 f.. New Stone Age, inventions, 39 Jamdat Nasr, Late Protoliterate, formerly called, 108 Jericho, 40