The First States
Egypt Emerges
It's ironic; just as Mesopotamia collapsed into the inter-city warfare of the Early Dynastic Period, Egypt formed the first stable regional state in history. In 3000 BC, Narmer, the King of Upper Egypt, conquered the Nile Delta and unified Egypt under one crown. He was the first king of a long line; the Sumerian king-priests of the Early Dynastic Period typically ruled for a few years or a few decades before another city wrested control away from them. Narmer's royal line would die out, but be replaced by another dynastic line which was replaced by another dynasty and another in relatively smooth succession. Egypt would control its own destiny for the next 2000 years, one of the longest lived civilizations in world history. In 2575 BC, the kings of the fourth Dynasty inaugurated the "Old Kingdom" and in 2550 BC, Khufu the Great began work on the Great Pyramid at Giza – one of the grandest and certainly the oldest major monument in world history. His son and grandson would build the other two pyramids which compose the Pyramids as we see them today. The Old Kingdom would rule over a unified Egypt until its fall in 2134 BC.
Sumeria did not stand still through these Egyptian advances; state formation was progressing, just more slowly than in Egypt. Around 2500 BC, when the stones of the Great Pyramid were still new, the city of Kish was the first to unite all of Sumeria under its sway. However, it soon lost its supremacy. In 2350 BC, Lugalzagesi, king-priest of Umma, briefly united not only coastal Sumeria but also the hilly reaches of Akkad, north of Sumeria. This was followed in 2334 BC, by the first stable regional state to emerge in Mesopotamia; Sargon of Akkad threw off Sumerian dominance and conquered the Sumerians themselves.
The Akkadians would borrow much of Sumerian culture, including the Sumerian's cuneiform script for pressing symbols on wet clay with a reed stylus. The Akkadians worked out extensive differences to build a vibrant written language despite the fact that their Semitic language shared virtually nothing in common with the original Sumerian tongue. In fact, the very term Sumerian is Akkadian, Šumeru (Shumeru). The original population of Sumeria called their language Emegir, and despite being the first written language on the planet, it shares characteristics with no other language that followed.
The Akkadians were a vigorous war-loving people who wrote the world's first literature, celebrating their warrior triumphs, ideals, and heroes. Until 2334 BC, writing had only been used as a business tool for record keeping in business, governmental, and legal transactions. After the Akkadian conquest, it was used for saving religious hymns and texts, myths, and hymns of praise to the king-priests of the city-states. Eventually things came apart; civil wars broke up both states. The Old Kingdom of Egypt collapsed in 2134 BC, and around 2100 BC Akkad fell, inaugurating another period of fragmentation.
Fragmentation and Balance of Power
By 2100 BC, the states in Egypt and Mesopotamia had collapsed from pressures within. This would be the first of many times in world history that the fall of empires may have marked a decline of military might, but it also heralded a more vibrant cultural phase in the life of the region. In the midst of Sumeria's disunity, 2000 BC stands as one of the seminal dates in human history – it is the date of the composition of the world's first major literary work, the Epic of Gilgamesh. While writing had begun as a series of record-keeping symbols in Mesopotamia (circa 3400 BC) and independently developed into the first true writing system in Egypt (circa 3000 BC), Gilgamesh is the first masterpiece produced in world history. Its themes and indeed some of its stories would be become the basis of portions of the Old Testament some 1500 years later.
2000 BC also marks the rise of civilization in Palestine. The Phoenician city-states of Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre became important maritime trading centers for a remarkably knowledge-loving and cosmopolitan culture. They did more than any other people to disperse Middle Eastern culture throughout the Mediterranean with their trading contacts.
In Egypt, the collapse of 2100 BC began the First Intermediate period; it was defined by several dynasties which ruled simultaneously over different portions of the land, though this did not last long. In 2000 BC, a dynasty from Upper Egypt reestablished control over Lower Egypt, unifying the country and beginning the Middle Kingdom. The Middle Kingdom is the least distinguished of the three major phases of Egyptian civilization. In fact, their greatest achievement was being the first dynasty to fall to barbarians. In 1640 BC, Egypt's Middle Kingdom was conquered by sea raiders. Known to history by their Egyptian name, the Hyksos adopted many Egyptian customs and ruled the rich plains of Lower Egypt. However, they were unable to complete their conquest of Upper Egypt, inaugurating the Second Intermediate period.
Yet the Hyksos made critical innovations in the traditional and tradition-loving culture of the Egyptians – probably just one of many reasons they were so poorly liked by their subjects. But, they had shaken things up and brought new developments to a state that had proven it was falling behind the times. When the Egyptians once more unified their country, they owed much to the Hyksos for being an empire that forced the whole world to sit up and take notice.
Mesopotamia remained the center of global civilization throughout this period of Egyptian weakness. In 1800 BC, perhaps the most famous city in Mesopotamian history rose to power. Hammurabi, Lord of Babylon, conquered all of Mesopotamia inaugurating the largest empire known to date. More importantly, Babylon became a symbol of power and a cosmopolitan center of knowledge and trade unlike anything ever seen before. This rich culture certainly had something to do with the more sophisticated courts, and the first written law code to survive, issued by Hammurabi himself – though there is some disagreement as to its significance. What legal records we have of the period do not refer to Hammurabi's law code. Nevertheless, Babylon ruled the most famous empire of antiquity; the Bible refers to the rule of Babylon as a golden age of culture. So its complete collapse in 1595 BC was all the more shocking.
Babylon boasted the most powerful army in the known world, with mighty four-wheeled chariots and a city wall of unprecedented size not seen either before or since. The Hittite invasion of 1595 BC, therefore, signaled a major turning point in history. The Hittites emerged from Anatolia unexpectedly and attacked the most powerful empire of the Mesopotamian plains. Using light two-wheeled chariots, their superior maneuverability proved too much for the Babylonians. But if their defeat of the Babylonian army was a surprise, then their sack of the city completely stunned the civilized peoples and ended the Babylonian empire. For the next 400 years the Hittites enjoyed a fearsome reputation that was only strengthened by their discovery of iron working and iron weapons in 1500 BC, which inaugurated the Iron Age.
They were not alone. While Babylon fell, the cities of Mesopotamia continued to thrive and a succession of smaller states continued to vie with the Hittites for control of the Middle East. And so was a resurgent Egypt. In 1532 BC, the Egyptians expelled the Hyksos, and reunified their nation, forming the New Kingdom. The New Kingdom reached the peak of Egyptian civilization territorially, monumentally and culturally. With the exception of the Pyramids of Giza, everything we think of concerning Egyptian history is really the history of the New Kingdom; this was the period when Egyptian rulers abandoned the previous title of king and took a new and unique title – pharaoh. Egypt's success created a powerful tripartite set of regional states. (Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Hittite Kingdom in Anatolia) These states struggled against one another for the next three hundred years. None were able to subdue their rivals permanently, and so in the middle ground between them – Syria and Palestine – new regional states emerged.
The Phoenician traders of the coast were not the least of these, sailing forth from their great cosmopolitan centers of Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre which reached the peak of their influence at this period. Also during this time, circa 1250 BC, Moses led the Jews out of Egypt to settle in Southern Palestine. The entrance of the Jews into history was no accident. Their unusually strong cultural identity melded the people together, and their settlement in Palestine was a logical choice, being in the middle ground between the three empires. Every empire which ruled over the Jews at this time was soon expelled by another, allowing the Jews to develop a certain regional autonomy under their religious oligarchs, the Judges.
1200 BC: The Age of Destruction
Then in 1200 BC, Middle Eastern civilization was virtually wiped out. The Hittites were lost in the same way they appeared – in a barbarian invasion. Little is known about their destroyers, but they were referred to as the Sea Peoples. They destroyed the Hittites, who vanish from history. They obliterated Greece and the Aegean so completely that Southern Europe would fall into a four-hundred-year dark age so devastating they forgot how to write and would need to borrow another civilization's script when they finally emerged.
The only empire to survive the Sea Peoples was Egypt; Ramses III raised a massive fleet and sailed against the Sea Peoples in what may have been the largest naval battle in history until the Persian invasions of Europe. Ramses' victory secured the safety of Egypt and the retreating Sea Peoples took refuge in Southern Palestine. There they caused much trouble among their new neighbors with their love of war. They are today known either by their Greek name, the Pentapolis – "the five cities" – or by their biblical name, the Philistines.
They were not alone. The Dorian barbarians followed them into Greece and conquered all of the important cities of the native Ionians; at the time they ignored a small village which would eventually loom large in Greek history; Athens. Further, two other barbarian tribes, the Chaldeans and Aramaeans invaded Mesopotamia in 1200 BC, and continued their raids for the next 200 years. The Chaldeans would eventually conquer and raise up Babylon again, and the Aramaeans became an important conduit for Middle Eastern trade. As the ancient languages were already waning, Aramaic was the right language at the right time; it became the lingua franca of the Middle East for the next thousand years and was the language spoken by Jesus.
However, these successes were hundreds of years in the future for the shattered civilization of Mesopotamia. Various cities raised up small and short lived states which kept alive the spark of civilization, though none of them benefited greatly from it at the time. They can certainly be forgiven if they regarded the Chaldean and Aramaean invasions as nothing but a disaster. Ironically, in this time of cultural collpase, the most far reaching development went largely unnoticed; in 1100 BC, the Phoenician cities developed their own writing system. Consisting of only 22 letters, it was the easiest to learn script ever developed. Moreover, the Phoenician's massive trading empire would take it throughout the Middle East, Europe, and North Africa. This ultimately proved even more important to world history as it would become the basis of the first alphabet.
In 1070 BC, even the New Kingdom was conquered; Egypt's fall put an end to the power of the great states of the Formative Middle East. While the region survived and would be unified from time to time, Egypt never again played a major role except as the breadbasket of other empires. In this political vacuum the Jewish Kingdom arose – the most powerful and organized regional state in a time of very weak major powers, a bright star in a sea of chaos. The Kings of Israel emerged in 1000 BC, peaking in 928 BC, with the death of Solomon, son of King David. Then in 912 BC, a new power emerged – the Assyrian Empire.
The First Empires
The greatest cultural contribution of the Assyrians was their massive library. By robbing the Middle East of its literature and information, the Library of Nineveh became a treasure trove of clay tablets which has provided archaeologists with their greatest collection of Sumerian and Akkadian documents. Institutionally, in 744 BC, the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III had the distinction of forming the world's first professional bureaucracy. The Assyrians also stripped their conquests of their historical borders and carved nations up into provinces ruled by Assyrian functionaries. The resulting police state devastated local cultures. It was an important step in the unification of Mesopotamia, but that silver lining was entirely lost on their subjects. It was also the kindest of the Assyrian's international achievements. Even for the Formative Era, the Assyrians were known for and reveled in their reputation for ruthless butchery and gory atrocities. Thus it was that the Assyrians' final major achievement was to piss off both Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and the Medes of Persia, who formed the world's first international coalition in 612 BC. They besieged Nineveh and destroyed the hated city which brought about a complete and nearly instant end to the Assyrian Empire.
The Chaldeans of Babylon, under Nebuchadnezzar, were the chief beneficiaries of the collapse. While the Egyptians tried to reassert themselves, the Chaldeans defeated them at the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BC giving them power throughout Mesopotamia. They eventually conquered the Assyrian's old territory with the exception of Egypt. Nebuchadnezzar would go on to become most well known for his outrage at the Jewish Revolt of 587 BC. He deported the population of Israel to work as slaves in Babylon itself. Ironically, it was the trauma of this deportation that prompted a return to traditional values that inaugurated Judaism as the world's second true religion. The Old Testament as we know it was codified and completed during the Babylonian captivity, one of the reasons that Mesopotamian legend and philosophy run so strongly through it.