The Culture Of The Ancient Near East

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The Culture of the Ancient Near East

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THE CULTURE OF THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST 2

The Culture of the Ancient Near East

Introduction

The Ancient Near East (ANE) was the early civilizations within regions corresponding to

the current modern east. It includes countries like Mesopotamia, Lebanon, Anatolia, Levant,

Israel, Jordan and Palestine. At first, this early civilization development appeared to be a uniform

progression involving different people progressing at a comparable pace. The term ancient near

east, was used to describe the global regions within the British Empire marking a distinction

between the near and the Far East. The distinctions began during the Crimean war. Though the

end of ancient history varies, the onset was estimated to be during the rise of summer in the 4

millennium BC and spans through Bronze Age to Early Iron Age. These regions are considered

as the cradle of civilization, being the first regions in the world to carry out practices like

intensive agriculture, invention of alphabet (writing system), centralized government, organized

religions and welfares, social stratification, slavery, laws and empires, pottery, vehicular and mill

wheels inventions and it was the founder of modern mathematics and astronomy (Nissen, 2011).

During this era, it became increasingly large, and it became controlled by militaristic

empires who had conquered many empires by then. The region has gained a lot of significance in

the worlds’ history, in terms of adequate water supply and ideal climate for intensive agriculture

diverse culture and abundance of inventions. Spread of civilization was considered in a region if

the residents or occupants of that region knew how to write, have well established systems of

taxation, adequate laws and ability to maintain order, have distinct forms of social classes, have

leaders for priestly and administrative duties, and be able have adequate production functions for

sustainability (Braudel & Mayne, 1995).Prepare to witness the epic developments and ancient

cultures of the Near East from Sumerians to Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians. The paper has

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also evaluated the progression of civilizations and the similarities as well as differences in the

cultures of the people of the ANE.

Progression of civilization in the Ancient Near East

The Sumerians civilization

Sumer civilization was established in the Tigris and the Euphrates river valley. This

happened around 5000 years BC. In their era of civilizations, the summer people established

cities like Ur, Eridu, Kish, Nipur and many others so as to enrich their civilization. They were

the pioneers of matters to do with administration, writing system, art, literature, trade and

architecture.

Around 3500 BC Sumerians established Mesopotamian civilization, with several cities

ruled by kings (Westenholz, 2002). The temple (ziggurat) was the central place for all political

activities. The. Sumerians made a significant contribution to the field of writing with their

popular writing system that was known as cuneiform that had more than 350 signs. This was

discovered by Henry Rowlison. The writings were made on small tablets with writings read from

right to left. These tablets mainly contained information about the summer civilization and after

the Rock of Behistan reading, facts about Sumerian spread all over. The alphabet contributed

greatly to both cultural and literary revolutions in Greece. From Greeks, it was then transmitted

to other people in the western region and it remained the primary genre of communication. They

kept the tablets in their libraries, in series. This boosted the Sumerian contribution of mankind.

Their religious belief was outstanding, having a temple built for the worship of gods and

goddesses, though they were polytheists. Being agriculturalist, they offered agricultural products

to gods and goddesses as sacrifices, and in return pray for rain and more grain. The priests

offered the sacrifices and predicted the future of Sumerians through their abilities to observe the

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movement of stars and the planet. This made them to be excellent in the field of astrology. The

priest also played an important role in writing stories such as story of creation, flood, tower of

Babel, fall of mankind and Hebrews currently used by Christians in the modern- day.

The Sumerians contributed a lot to the fields of art and architecture. After establishing the

cities, palaces and ziggurats, they left ineffaceable marks. Every architecture, had a good

finishing touch such as column, arch, vault and dome. Testimonies of excellent decorated pots,

carvings, photographs, metallic faunae, and ornaments in Ur are evidences of artistic skills of

potters, stone cultures and goldsmiths in Sumerian.

They had a calendar divided into 12 lunar months, with each month divided into 30 days.

It became defective when some kings adjusted the months to 13 months. This was later accepted

by Arabians and Hebrews. They also used water clocks to measure time. They divided an hour

into 60 minutes and 60 seconds. The idea of looking at marks in the pots from water droplets was

a unique inventions by the Sumerians. It was then, that they invented counting procedures by

using 60 as a numeral unit that was used to manage counting. The number sixty (60) is highly

associated with Sumerians for their belief of it being sacred to their god.

The idea of wheel accelerated the history of mankind. It boosted pottery and enhanced

trade as well as commerce on land routes. They maintained a good trade relationship with Asians

and India, with the city of Ur being the center for the international trade. Wool, silk dress, and

metallic goods were their exported goods while food grains were the mainly imported goods.

Among Mesopotamian civilization, summer civilization was the first manifestation. Its

unique characteristics reflects its contribution to other civilizations. Though it came to an end

around 2500 BC after the invasion by Akkadians the civilization has contributed to various world

cultures.

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Assyrian civilization

In the first millennium BCE Assyrian Empire pioneered the ancient Mesopotamian

civilization too. It emerged powerful in the second millennium and drastically expanded and

developed both bureaucracy and military covering many parts of the Middle East. During this

time, it had a great influence on civilization that allowed it to grow and flourish. In the field of

technology, Assyrians had a number of contributions such as astronomy, mathematics and

medicine. The Assyrians inherited astronomical traditions from the Sumerians.

They preserved several cuneiform tablets containing predictions on lunar eclipse and time

interval between sequential events. They later advanced on astronomy and passed it to Greeks.

The idea is the basis of the modern astronomy. They are the pioneers of the unique properties of

a circle, 360 degrees and the latitude and longitude. Assyrian medical text written in cuneiform

on tablets clearly shows patient records kept by Ashipus (doctor) (Pekkarinen & Toivari, 1993) .

Evidence to show that patients were given adequate health care. According to history, aspirin,

treatment for headache was discovered by Ashipus who used to crush adaru-poplar seeds, around

1853.

Literature and art were also part of Assyrian civilization. They were the first to use

libraries with clay tablets as a way of communication. Being devoted to history, they had bulk of

their own literature in their libraries. Due to drastic expansion of their empire, access to

resources like stones and iron became easier. As a result, iron tools led to massive establishment

of palaces. Relief carvings on stones exhibited extensive details using images of battles and war

events. Other inventions currently used to date include masonry dam technology, the postal

system and antidepressants.

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Babylonian civilization

After the decline of summer, Babylon arose during the Akkadian period, around 2500

BCE. The Babylon briefly became the major power under Hammurabi though it was a short

lived empire. The death of Hammurabi was the downfall of the empire. Like other civilization,

Babylon retained the Akkadian language for their official use, although the language was no

longer used for communication. Sumerian tradition frolicked an important role in the culture of

Babylonians

According to human history, Nebuchadnezzar who ruled Babylon for decades recorded

the longest and most accomplished human history in the world. He recorded unique historical

moments during his reign. Such as capturing Jerusalem city twice, destroying it and establishing

buildings and walls of that city which were highly admired by Greek historians.

Babylonians are well known for their important discoveries in astronomy, physics and

mathematics. They are the pioneers of trigonometry, mathematical models for tracking planet

Jupiter and they invented methods of tracking time that are still in use to date. Modern-day

astronomy, still uses the Babylonians records to study earth’s rotation.

Due to abundance of clay and inadequate stone, Babylonian made greater use of mud

bricks in building. They had walls radiantly decorated and gold-plated with zinc and tiles. There

was a great use of three dimensional figures (statues of Gudea). The scarcity of stone resource

made the little available pebbles so precious and this increased precision in the skill of gem-

cutting.

Although the Babylonians ancient medical medicaments are similar to that of Sumerians,

their diagnostic hand book has gained worldwide popularity. During this era, Babylonian empire

invented the concepts if medication all the way from diagnosis, prognosis and prescription, and

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patients physical assessments. The diagnostic handbook also contained therapies, etiology and

use of pragmatic in diagnosis, reasonable and logic prescription, and use of signs and symptoms

in diagnosis. In situations where physical medication ineffective, physicians opt to use exorcism

for cleansing from any curse. (Heeßel, 2004). The modern view of medication, such as

examination of symptoms, etiology, chances of patient's recovery and future development are

also indicated in the diagnostic handbook.

A substantial amount of Babylonian literature was originally Sumerians with its

language, religion and law written in the ancient summer dialectal. Their literature amassed

grammars, explanations, commentaries of older text and vocabularies for students with the

syllabus well arrange and named. The literacy work of Babylonians is still used in the modern

literature, i.e. epic of Gilgamesh (Lambert, 1996)

Persian civilization.

Persian Empire had its name given around 6

century BC, from series of dynasties that

are in present-day Iran. The first empire founded by Cyrus the Great around 500 BC was the

largest empire in history (Briant, 2002). The Persian Empire became a hub of culture,

technology, law and government, religion and art for quite long until when they were conquered

by the army of Alexander the Great. It is believed that the first human civilization originated

from Persia. And according to one historian , Pope, the world owes its advanced industrialization

to Persian civilization (Tajar et al, 2004).

The Persian drastically got converted to Islamic region in the 7

century and adopted the

Arabic alphabet. The empire created arts of many forms such as rock carving, metal works,

architecture literacy, rugs and weaving, despite periodic waves of both invaders and intruders.

Their culture has spread all over the world.

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The Persian art used carved rock reliefs and shaped them into cliffs, most of them are

found at the tombs of Achaemenid kings at Naqshe Rustam. The paintings shows equine scenes

and victorious battles. The ancient Persians are also known for their metal work. Along river

Oxus, modern-day Tajikistan, gold and silver artifacts were discovered among the remnants that

are found on the shores of that river. They include coins, bracelets and small golden chariots.

They are currently preserved in the British Museum. Carpet weaving in Persia originated from

nomadic tribes. The Greeks valued the hand woven rugs because of their unique design and

attractive colors.

Commonalties among the Major Ancient Near East Civilizations

During this period, commonly known as the 2

half of the Old Testament, the whole

region of Israel felt influences from neighboring empires like Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian and

Sumerians. Through invasions, conquering and exerting influences on cultures and institutions

thus affecting both its political and social structure. These similarities were the characteristics of

cultural development in the ANE. The empires developed at different time, in different

environment and under different natural forces, and this affected their state of stability, political

system and religion

The ANE civilization thrived in regions bordering Mediterranean Sea, with dissimilar

perceptions on social, political as well as economic aspects, a number of similarities existed. It

gathered on river valleys on powerful river flow that provided water, food, supported agriculture

and trade routes.

The ancient near east consisted of highly depended and organized cities like Ur, Nipur,

etc. ruled by kings. Due to their diversified culture and ethics, the cities were independent with

frequent rivalry from their neighbors. The disorganization led to political changes among those

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empires over history. Sumerians were conquered by Akkidians, who were later conquered by the

Babylonians then Assyrians who crumbled and in the long run, Babylonians conquered them too.

Emergence of the powerful Parisian empire conquered the region and unified it, this happened

around 539 BC.

Through extensive trade and diplomacy in the area, ideas such as cultural and artifacts

were embraced by all empires. Both civilization actively engaged in trade. They build

commercially affluent civilizations subjugated by wealthy nobles. In all the four empires, there

was a clear and distinct powerful class system. With the top class being the rulers of government,

religion and military. Farmers, slaves and causal laborers were in the lower class.

The four ancient civilization had their unique form of religion. The ancient civilization

was deeply influenced by their spiritual beliefs that had no clear distinction between the heavens

and earth. To them, divine actions had a great influence on their routine matters. They believed

in divination and omens as their records of major events in their lives. The Mesopotamians

worshiped their god of the two rivers, they believed in their god for the stability of their

civilization and magnanimous harvest.

Throughout the ancient civilization, social stratification was common them, as it does in

the modern civilization. Social setting, especially in economics, was based on productive and

non-productive groups of people in the society. In situations where there was an economic

surplus in a nation, or more than its needed by a specified group of people, such groups tend to

look for protection against communities that believed they had unfair share from the surplus. To

protect themselves, there was a formation of the ruling class and this led to deeper inequality

among people based on their basic needs in life (Harman, 2008). Although many socio-political

themes in Israel had good intentions of denouncing the ANE normality, the Pentateuch tried to

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restructure and facelift the commonalities in defense of characterization, Israel’s economic

approach and unbroken homogenous people, but it did not define communism among the

civilizations.

There were common cultural change in the ANE such as cultural forms of their rituals

and religion. Often, changes in religious beliefs occurred through direct and indirect interactions

of foreign deities that occurred mostly in instances involving trade, alliance and conquest.

Religious cultural transformation was common among the ANE. They were the acculturation of

both deities and with associated religious practices. A typical example of cultural transformation

in the ANE involved the adoption of military innovations and technologies from other empires

after winning the battles.

Both ancient near east empires developed similar writing systems that began as

pictograms, clay tablets and cuneiforms serving a main purpose of record keeping. In both

civilizations, schools emerged training young people. Both Babylonians and Assyrians used

cuneiform scripts with every individual including priest, royalty, merchants as well as teachers

wholly relying on writing that was originally Sumerian’s.

Distinctions between the Major Ancient Near East People Groups

The ANE began as city states governing themselves and having rivals for power. It was

around 2370 BC when the ANE was unified under Sargon the Great who was the founder of the

first Semitic dynasty (empire). The end of Akkad rule led to other groups conquering the region

such as the Amorites, Hittites and Assyrians until the emergence of Cyrus the great who

established the Persian Empire that brought in political unity. Though from the same region, the

empires within the ANE had a lot of dissimilar characteristics in terms of culture, religion,

dressing codes and power.

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The Greek sacrificial rituals involved burnt offering, pouring drinks, pipe music and use

of altars with God as the Supreme Being. Unlike Persians and Assyrians whose rituals, as well as

worship, were mainly dominated by animal sacrifices. From Assyro- Babylonian literature,

henotheism dominated their belief in god, according to them it wasn’t right to believe in one god

without proclaiming that he is the only god (Lambert, 1996). The culture of both Persians and

Assyrians was chiefly indebted by the Babylonians, Hittites and Hurrians. The Persian empire

was more open in embracing foreign cultures like dressing codes and luxuries. Their mode of

dressing was highly inspired by the medians and most of them wore Egyptian breastplates.

While Babylonian empire advanced in agriculture and trade, Assyrian empire became

more militaristic, having military camps headed by an autocratic king surrounded by primitive

nobility. Militaristic nature of Assyrian empire and good climate compared to other empires, saw

the birth of strong agricultural organization in the region. During the neo Assyrian empire,

distribution of labor forces, installation of intensive irrigation system and centralized land

settlement policy made it out shine other neighboring empires in agriculture and trade.

Both regions in the ANE, had invasions of nomadic communities during the Neolithic

period (agricultural revolution), River Nile in Egypt was of great benefit. It’s on and off

predictable floods boosted agriculture enabling it to flourish in agriculture as well as trade.

Unlike the benefits of Nile River, the opposite was experienced in Mesopotamia, destructive

floods killed people, destroying cities and swamping villages. Egypt civilization was protected

from invasions by their natural barriers while Mesopotamia being on a flat land, its civilization

often rose and fell, with new empires being frequently born hence making it unending

battleground. Mesopotamia was not only a target of invasion but also the land was a route for

armies thus causing the interminable battles.

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In the ANE civilization, religious awareness was highly attributed by the nature and

environment. Nile River was as a gift that brought prosperity and harmony in the region. The

Egyptian gods associated positive religion with a positive afterlife. The god, commonly known

as Osiris was the law giver, and the custodian of the world of death. Whereas Mesopotamian

religion that was so miserable and low spirit. Their prayers demonstrated their lack of mutual

relationship with god and goddesses. The god and goddesses had negative attitude toward

humans and frequently sent them natural calamities (Bricker, 2000). According to Hebrews

though, their god was unforgiving and disparaging, he established series of covenant with them.

He used his chosen people to bring redemption and establish kingdoms built on just grounds.

This has been used throughout the Hebrew deity.

Sumerians who originated from the banks of river Tigris and Euphrates, they were

agricultural based community. The area’s isolation and lack of mutual understanding among

themselves, led to the domination of mythopoeic thinking (Wengrow, 1999). Due to frequent on

and off floods from the two rivers, and the mythopoeic society, their thinking was cyclic with

subjective views (related everything to themselves) concept of separatism did not develop and

while the concept of self-dominated, this was spread to other empires.

Conclusion

Unlike other civilization, ANE was a collection of diverse cultures, and saw the invention

of the alphabet, art and architecture, religions, trade, power and language that are used in the

modern day civilization. Bearing a lot of resemblances as well as distinctions the ANE formed

the foundation of modern civilization all the way from urban setting, social stratification,

agriculture, law and order, religion and literacy. Assyrians and Persians formed military

dynasties while Babylonian and Sumerians were mainly agriculturalist and merchants. The ANE

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is recognized as the cradle of civilization and this is pioneered by the Sumerians. Invasions,

conquering and cultural influences led to a cyclic emergence and fall of empires. Persian Empire

established a long-lasting peaceful coexistence in the ANE.

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Copenhagen: CA Reitzels, 23–42. JOUR.

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