M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 30 19/11/2013 10:08 2 The Ancient Near East Power and Social Order THINKING AHEAD 2.1 Describe the relationship between the gods and the peoples of Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, and Assyria. 2.2 Explain how the Epic of Gilgamesh reflects the relationship between the gods and the people. 2.3 Distinguish between the culture of the Hebrews and the other cultures of the ancient Near East. 2.4 Discuss how the art and architecture of Neo-Babylonia and Persia reflect the ambitions of their leaders. I n September 1922, British archeologist C. Leonard Woolley boarded a steamer, beginning a journey that would take him to southern Iraq. There, Woolley and his team would discover one of the richest treasure troves in the history of archeology in the ruins of the ancient city of Ur. Woolley concentrated his energies on the burial grounds surrounding the city’s central ziggurat, a pyramidal temple structure consisting of successive platforms with outside staircases and a shrine at the top (Fig. 2.1). Digging there in the winter of 1927, he unearthed a series of tombs with several rooms, many bodies, and masses of golden objects (Fig. 2.2)—vessels, crowns, necklaces, statues, and weapons—as well as jewelry and lyres made of electrum and the deep-blue stone lapis lazuli. With the same sense of excitement that was felt by Jean-Marie Chauvet and his companions when they first saw the paintings on the wall of Chauvet Cave, Woolley was careful to keep what he called the “royal tombs” secret. On January 4, 1928, Woolley telegrammed his colleagues in Latin. Translated to English, it read: I found the intact tomb, stone built, and vaulted over with bricks of queen Shubad [later known as Puabi] adorned with a dress in which gems, flower crowns and animal figures are woven. Tomb magnificent with jewels and golden cups. —Woolley Fig. 2.2 Vessel in the shape of an ostrich egg, from the Royal Cemetery of Ur. ca. 2550 bce. Gold, lapis lazuli, red limestone, shell, and bitumen, hammered from a single sheet of gold and with geometric mosaics at the top and bottom of the egg. Height 53⁄4”, diameter 51⁄8”. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia. Museum object #152071. The array of materials came from trade with neighbors in Afghanistan, Iran, Anatolia, and perhaps Egypt and Nubia. Fig. 2.1 The ziggurat at Ur (present-day Muqaiyir, Iraq). ca. 2100 bce. The best preserved and most fully restored of the ancient Sumerian temples, this ziggurat was the center of the city of Ur, in the lower plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Listen to the chapter audio on MyArtsLab 31 M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 31 19/11/2013 10:08 THE CULTURES OF MESOPOTAMIA, 3200–612 bce When Woolley’s discovery was made public, it was worldwide news for years. Archeologists and historians were especially excited by Woolley’s discoveries, because they opened a window onto the larger region we call Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Ur was one of 30 or 40 cities that arose in Sumer, the southern portion of Mesopotamia (Map 2.1). In fact, its people abandoned the city more than 2,000 years ago, when the Euphrates changed its course away from the city. Over the centuries other cultures would vie for control of the region, chief among them the Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians. By 612 bce, the Assyrian Empire would fall to Nabopolassar, first king of Babylonia, and a second Neo-Babylonian culture would arise, only to fall, in turn, to the Persians. Throughout almost the entire era, a very different culture, that of the Hebrews, coexisted with the major Mesopotamian powers, sometimes peacefully, often not. This chapter outlines the social and political forces that came to define these Mesopotamian cultures. What was the nature of the relationship between the gods and the peoples of Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, and Assyria? The peoples of Mesopotamia were almost totally dependent on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for their livelihoods. By irrigating the lands just outside the marshes on the riverbanks, the conditions necessary for extensive and elaborate communities such as Ur began to arise: People dug canals and ditches and cooperated in regulating the flow of water in them, which eventually resulted in crops that exceeded the needs of the population. These could be transformed into foodstuffs of a more elaborate kind, including beer. Evidence indicates that over half of each grain harvest went into producing beer. Excess crops were also traded by boat with nearby communities or up the great rivers A N AT O L I A Caspian T U R K E Y Sea gr Ti is M O Assur N a D AA Babylon SUM YL ER Girsu le Ni u n Susa t a Lagash Ur Eridu DEA rs modern-day coastline Pe A R A B I A Uruk AL o I s S A U D I CH M n JORDAN ON s i Dead Sea BAB o A I R A Q r Tell Asmar IA CAN Z g M KA A AK T BA ASSYRIA Sippar Jerusalem I R A N Nineveh Kalhu O LE S P s Sea te Mediterranean ra SYRIA ph NON Eu E ia n G 250 km 250 miles Fertile area of early agriculture lf u Red Sea Map 2.1 Major Mesopotamian capitals, ca. 2600–500 bce. 32    PART ONE   The Ancient World and the Classical Past M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 32 19/11/2013 10:08 CONTEXT Timeline of Ancient Near Eastern Empires and Cultures The Hebrews Persia Neo-Babylonia Assyria Babylon Akkad Sumer 330 bce 520 bce 600 bce 1595 bce 1800 bce 2200 bce 2350 bce 4000 bce to the north, where stone, wood, and metals were available in exchange. As people congregated in central locations to exchange goods, cities began to form. Cities such as Ur became hubs of great trading networks. With trade came ideas, which were incorporated into local custom and spawned newer and greater ideas in turn. Out of the exchange of goods and ideas, then, the conditions were in place for great cultures to arise. After agriculture, first among these was metallurgy, the science of separating metals from their ores and then working or treating them to create objects. The technology probably originated in the Fertile Crescent to the north about 4000 bce, but as it spread southward, the peoples of Mesopotamia adopted it as well. This new technology would change the region’s social organization, inaugurating what we have come to call the Bronze Age. Metallurgy required the mining of ores, specialized technological training, and skilled artisans. Although the metallurgical properties of copper were widely understood, technicians discovered that by alloying it with tin they could create bronze, a material of enormous strength and durability. Bronze weapons would transform the military and the nature of warfare. Power consolidated around the control and mastery of weaponry, and thus bronze created a new military elite of soldiers dedicated to protecting the Sumerian city-states from one another as they vied for control of produce and trade. The city-states, in turn, spawned governments ruled by priest-kings, who exercised power as intermediaries between the gods and the people. In their secular role, the priest-kings established laws that contributed to the social order necessary for maintaining successful agricultural societies. The arts developed largely as celebrations of the priest-kings’ powers. In order to keep track of the production and distribution of goods, the costs of equipping the military, and records relating to enforcing laws and regulations, writing—perhaps the greatest innovation of the Bronze Age—developed. If agricultural production served to stimulate the creation of urban centers, metallurgy made possible the new military cultures of the city-states. The arts served to celebrate these new centers of power, and writing, which arose out of the necessity of tracking the workings of the state, would come to celebrate the state in a literature of its own. Sumerian Ur Ur is not the oldest city to occupy the southern plains of Mesopotamia, the region known as Sumer. That distinction belongs to Uruk, just to the north, which by around 3200 bce was probably the largest settlement in the world. But the temple structure at Ur is of particular note because it is the most fully preserved and restored. It was most likely designed to evoke the mountains surrounding the river valley, which were the source of the water that flowed through CHAPTER 2   The Ancient Near East   33 M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 33 19/11/2013 10:08 the two rivers and, so, the source of life. Topped by a sanctuary, the ziggurat might also have symbolized a bridge between heaven and earth. Woolley, who supervised the reconstruction of the first platform and stairway of the ziggurat at Ur (Fig. 2.3), speculated that the platforms of the temple were originally not paved but covered with soil and planted with trees, an idea that modern archeologists no longer accept. Visitors—almost certainly limited to members of the priesthood—would climb up the stairs to the temple on top. They might bring an offering of food or an animal to be sacrificed to the resident god—at Ur, it was Nanna or Sin, god of the moon. Visitors often placed in the temple a statue that represented themselves in an attitude of perpetual prayer. We know this from the inscriptions on many of the statues. One, dedicated to the goddess Tarsirsir, protector of Girsu, a city-state across the Tigris and not far upstream from Ur, reads: Fig. 2.3 Reconstruction drawing of the ziggurat at Ur (present-day Muqaiyir, Iraq). ca. 2100 bce. British archeologist Sir Leonard Woolley undertook reconstruction of the ziggurat in the 1930s (see Fig. 2.1). In his reconstruction, a temple on top, which was the home of the patron deity of the city, crowned the three-tiered platform, the base of which measures 140 by 200 feet. The entire structure rose to a height of 85 feet. Woolley’s reconstruction was halted before the second and third platforms had been completed. To Bau, gracious lady, daughter of An, queen of the holy city, her mistress, for the life of Nammahani … has dedicated as an offering this statue of the protective goddess of Tarsirsir which she has introduced to the courtyard of Bau. May the statue, to which let my mistress turn her ear, speak my prayers. Fig. 2.4 Dedicatory statues, from the Abu Temple, Tell Asmar, Iraq. ca. 2900–2700 bce. Marble, alabaster, and gypsum, height of tallest figure, approx. 30". Excavated by the Iraq Expedition of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, February 13, 1934. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. The wide-eyed appearance of these figures is probably meant to suggest they are gazing in perpetual awe at the deity. 34    PART ONE   The Ancient World and the Classical Past M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 34 19/11/2013 10:08 A group of such statues, found in 1934 in the shrine room of a temple at Tell Asmar, near present-day Baghdad, includes seven men and two women (Fig. 2.4). The men wear belted, fringed skirts. They have huge eyes, inlaid with lapis lazuli (a blue semiprecious stone) or shell set in bitumen. The ­single arching eyebrow and crimped beard (only the figure at the right is beardless) are typical of Sumerian ­sculpture. The two women wear robes. All figures clasp their hands in front of them, suggestive of prayer when empty and of making an offering when holding a cup. Some scholars believe that the tallest man represents Abu, god of ­vegetation, due to his especially large eyes, but all of the figures are probably worshipers. Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia Although power struggles among the various city-states dominate Mesopotamian history, with one civilization succeeding another, and with each city-state or empire claiming its own particular divinity as chief among the Mesopotamian gods, the nature of Mesopotamian religion remained relatively constant across the centuries. With the exception of the Hebrews, the religion of the Mesopotamian peoples was polytheistic, consisting of multiple gods and goddesses connected to the forces of nature—sun and sky, water and storm, earth and its fertility (see Context, page 36). We know many of them by two names, one in Sumerian and the other in the Semitic language of the later, more powerful Akkadians. A famous Akkadian cylinder seal (Fig. 2.5), an engraved cylinder used as a signature by rolling it into a wet clay tablet in order to confirm receipt of goods or to identify ownership, represents many of the gods. The figures are recognizably gods because they wear pointed headdresses with multiple horns, though the figure on the left, beside the lion and holding a bow, has not been definitively identified. The figure with two wings standing atop the scaly mountain is Ishtar, goddess of love and war. Weapons rise from her shoulders, and she holds a bunch of dates in her hand, a symbol of fertility. Beneath her, cutting his way through the mountain so that he can rise at dawn, is the sun god, Shamash. Standing with his foot on the mountain at the right, streams of water with fish in them flowing from his shoulders, is Ea, god of water, wisdom, magic, and art. Behind him is his vizier, or “burden-carrier.” To the Mesopotamians, human society was merely part of the larger society of the universe governed by these gods and a reflection of it. Anu, father of the gods, represents the authority, which the ruler emulates as lawmaker and -giver. Enlil, god of the air—the calming breeze as well as the violent storm—is equally powerful, but he represents force, which the ruler emulates in his role as military leader. The active principles of fertility, birth, and agricultural plenty are those of the goddess Belitili, while water, the life force itself, the creative element, is embodied in the god Ea, or Enki, who is also god of the arts. Both Belitili and Ea are subject to the authority of Anu. Ishtar is subject to Enlil, ruled by his breezes (in the case of love) and by his storm (in the case of war). A host of lesser gods represented natural phenomena, or, in some cases, abstract ideas, such as truth and justice. The Mesopotamian ruler, often represented as a priestking, and often believed to possess divine attributes, acts as the intermediary between the gods and humankind. His ultimate responsibility is the behavior of the gods—whether Ea blesses the crop with rains, Ishtar his armies with victory, and so on. The Royal Tombs of Ur Religion was central to the people of Ur, and the cemetery discovered by Woolley tells us a great deal about the nature of their beliefs. Woolley unearthed some 1,840 graves, most dating from between 2600 and 2000 bce. The greatest number of graves were individual burials of rich and poor alike. However, some included a built burial chamber rather than just a coffin and contained more than one body, in some cases as many as 80. Fig. 2.5 Cylinder seal impression and the Seal of Adda. Akkadian. ca. 2200–2159 bce. Greenstone, height 11⁄2". © The Trustees of the British Museum. The two-line inscription at the left identifies the seal’s owner as Adda, a scribe. CHAPTER 2   The Ancient Near East   35 M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 35 19/11/2013 10:08 CONTEXT Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses Name Symbol An/Anu Enlil Utu/Shamash Father of the gods, god of the sky horned cap horned cap horned horned cap cap horned cap horned cap solar disk solar disk disk solar Inanna/Ishtar Role solar disk solar disk solar disk solar disk star God of the air and storm; later replaces Anu as father of the gods Sun god, lord of truth and justice Goddess of love and war star star Ninhursag /Belitili Enki/Ea Marduk star star star star ‘omega’ symbol ‘omega’ ‘omega’ symbol symbol ‘omega’ ‘omega’ symbol symbol ‘omega’ symbol ‘omega’ symbol goat-fish goat-fish goat-fish goat-fish goat-fish goat-fish goat-fish Mother Earth God of water, lord of wisdom, magic, art Chief god of Babylon spade spade spade spade spade These multiple burials, andspade the evidence of elaborate burspade of a king or queen’s court ial rituals, suggest that members accompanied the ruler to the grave. The two richest burial sites, built one behind the other, are now identified as royal tombs, one belonging to Queen Puabi, the other to an unknown king (but it is not that of her h ­ usband, King Meskalamdug, who is buried in a different grave). In the grave of either the unknown king or Queen Puabi (records are confusing on this point) were two lyres, one of which today is housed in Philadelphia (Fig. 2.6), the other in London (Fig. 2.7). Both are decorated with bull’s heads and are fronted by a panel of narrative scenes—that is, scenes representing a story or event. Although originally made of wood, which rots over time, these objects were able Fig. 2.6 Soundbox panel front of the lyre from Tomb 789 (alternatively identified as the unknown king’s or Puabi’s tomb), from the cemetery at Ur (present-day Muqaiyir, Iraq). ca. 2600 bce. Wood with inlaid gold, lapis lazuli, and shell, height approx. 121⁄4". University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia. Museum object #B17694 (image #150848). The meaning of the scenes on the front of this lyre has always puzzled scholars. On the bottom, a goat holding two cups attends a man with a scorpion’s body. Above that, a donkey plays a bull-headed lyre held by a bear, while a seated jackal plays a small percussion instrument. On the third level, animals walking on their hind legs carry food and drink for a feast. In the top panel, a man with long hair and beard, naked but for his belt, holds two human-headed bulls by the shoulders. 36    PART ONE   The Ancient World and the Classical Past M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 36 19/11/2013 10:08 forms that decorate these lyres represents a funerary banquet in the realm of the dead. They are related, at least thematically, to events in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, which we will discuss later in the chapter. This suggests that virtually every element of the culture—from its music and literature to its religion and politics— was tied in some way to every other. The women whose bodies were found under the two lyres may have been singers and musicians, and the placement of the lyres over them would indicate that the lyres were put there after the celebrants died. Such magnificent musical instruments indicate that music was important in Mesopotamian society. Surviving documents tell us that music and song were part of the funeral ritual, and music played a role in worship Fig. 2.7 Lyre from Tomb 789 (alternatively identified as the unknown king’s or Puabi’s tomb), at the temple, as well as in banquets from the cemetery at Ur (present-day Muqaiyir, Iraq). ca. 2600 bce. Gold leaf and lapis lazuli over and festivals. Indeed, a fragment of a a wood core, height 441⁄2". Restored 1971–72. © The Trustees of the British Museum. poem from the middle of the third millennium bce found at Lagash indicates to be saved in their original form due to an innovation of that Sumerian music was anything but funereal. It is music’s Woolley’s during the excavation. He ordered his workers to duty, the poet says, tell him whenever they came upon an area that sounded To fill with joy the Temple court hollow. He would fill such hollows (where the original And chase the city’s gloom away wood had long since rotted away) with wax or plaster, thus The heart to still, the passions calm, preserving, in place, the decorative effects on the object’s Of weeping eyes the tears to stay. outside. It seems likely that the mix of animal and human CHAPTER 2   The Ancient Near East   37 M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 37 19/11/2013 10:08 One of Woolley’s most important discoveries in the Royal Cemetery was the so-called Royal Standard of Ur (Fig. 2.8). Music plays a large part here, too. The main panels of this rectangular box of unknown function are called “War” and “Peace,” because they illustrate, on one side, a military victory and, on the other, the subsequent banquet celebrating the event, or perhaps a cult ritual. Each panel is composed of three registers, or self-contained horizontal bands, within which the figures stand on a ground line, or baseline. At the right side of the top register of the “Peace” panel (the lower half of Fig. 2.8), a musician plays a lyre, and behind him another, apparently female, sings. The king, at the left end, is recognizable because he is taller than the others and wears a tufted skirt, his head breaking the register line on top. In this convention, known as social perspective, or hieratic scale, the most important figures are ­represented as larger than the others. In other registers on the “Peace” side of the Standard, servants bring cattle, goats, Fig. 2.8 Royal Standard of Ur, front (“War”) and back (“Peace”) sides, from Tomb 779, cemetery at Ur (present-day Muqaiyir, Iraq). ca. 2600 bce. Shell, lapis lazuli, and red limestone, originally on a wooden framework, height 8", length 19". © The Trustees of the British Museum. For all its complexity of design, this object is not much bigger than a sheet of legal paper. Its function remains a mystery, though it may have served as a pillow or headrest. Woolley’s designation of it as a standard was purely conjectural. View the Closer Look for the Royal Standard of Ur on MyArtsLab 38    PART ONE   The Ancient World and the Classical Past M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 38 19/11/2013 10:08 sheep, and fish to the celebration. These represent the bounty of the land and perhaps even delicacies from lands to the north. (Notice that the costumes and hairstyles of the figures carrying sacks in the lowest register are different from those in the other two.) This display of consumption and the distribution of food may have been intended to dramatize the power of the king by showing his ability to control trade routes. On the “War” side of the Standard, the king stands in the middle of the top register. War chariots trample the enemy on the bottom register. (Note that the chariots have solid wheels; spoked wheels were not invented until approximately 1800 bce.) In the middle register, soldiers wearing leather cloaks and bronze helmets lead naked, bound prisoners to the king in the top register, who will presumably decide their fate. Many of the bodies found in the royal tombs were wearing similar military garments. The importance of the Royal Standard of Ur is not simply as documentary evidence of Sumerian life but as one of the earliest examples we have of historical narrative. Akkad At the height of the Sumerians’ power in southern Mesopotamia, a people known as the Akkadians arrived from the north and settled in the area around present-day Baghdad. Their capital city, Akkad, has never been discovered and in all likelihood lies under Baghdad itself. Under Sargon I (r. ca. 2332–2279 bce), the Akkadians conquered virtually all other cities in Mesopotamia, including those in Sumer, to become the region’s most powerful city-state. Sargon named himself “King of the Four Quarters of the World” and equated himself with the gods, a status bestowed upon Akkadian rulers from Sargon’s time forward. Legends about Sargon’s might and power survived in the region for thousands of years. Indeed, the legend of his birth gave rise to what amounts to a narrative genre (a class or category of story with a universal theme) that survives to the present day: the boy from humble origins who rises to a position of might and power, the so-called “rags-to-riches” story. As depicted on surviving clay tablets, Sargon was an ­illegitimate child whose mother deposited him in the ­Euphrates River in a basket. There, a man named Akki (after whom Akkad itself is named) found him while drawing water from the river and raised him as his own son. Such stories of abandonment, orphanhood, and being a foundling raised by foster parents were to become a standard feature in the narratives of mythic heroes. Although the Akkadian language was very different from Sumerian, through most of the third millennium bce—that is, until Sargon’s dynastic ambitions altered the balance of power in the region—the two cultures coexisted peacefully. The Akkadians adopted Sumerian culture and customs (see Fig. 2.5) and their style of cuneiform writing, a script made of wedge-shaped characters (see Closer Look, pages 40–41), although not their language. In fact, Fig. 2.9 Head of an Akkadian Man, from Nineveh (present-day Kuyunjik, Iraq). ca. 2300–2200 bce. Copper alloy, height 141⁄8". Iraq Museum, Baghdad. many bilingual dictionaries and Sumerian texts with Akkadian translations survive. The Akkadian language was Semitic in origin, having more in common with other languages of the region, particularly Hebrew, Phoenician, and Arabic. It quickly b­ ecame the common language of Mesopotamia, and peoples of the region spoke Akkadian, or dialects of it, throughout the second m ­ illennium bce and well into the first. Akkadian Sculpture Although Akkad was arguably the most influential of the Mesopotamian cultures, few Akkadian artifacts survive, perhaps because Akkad and other nearby Akkadian cities have disappeared under Baghdad and the alluvial soils of the Euphrates plain. Two impressive sculptural works do remain, however. The first is the bronze head of an Akkadian man (Fig. 2.9), found at Nineveh. It was once believed to be Sargon the Great himself, but many modern scholars now think it was part of a statue CHAPTER 2   The Ancient Near East   39 M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 39 19/11/2013 10:08 CLOSER LOOK W riting first appeared in the middle of the fourth millennium bce in agricultural records as pictograms—pictures that represent things or concepts—etched into clay tablets. For instance, the sign for “woman” is a pubic triangle, and the more complicated idea of “slave” is the sign for “woman” plus the sign for “mountains”—literally, a “woman from over the mountains”: woman mountains slave Early pictogram for donkey In the cuneiform tablet opposite, the sign for “donkey” (below) is apparent everywhere. It represents a later, abstracted version of the earlier pictogram (literally “picture-writing”) above. Such abstracted signs came into use not long after 2400 bce and replaced the earlier pictograms. Pictograms could also represent concepts. For instance, hatred friendship the signs for “hatred” and “friendship” are, respectively, an “X” and a set of parallel lines: woman mountains hatred slave friendship Later cuneiform pictogram of donkey Beginning about 2900 bce, most writing began to look more linear, for it was difficult to draw curves in wet clay. So scribes adopted a straight-line script made with a wedgeshaped stylus, or writing tool, cut from reeds. The resulting impressions looked like wedges. Cuneiform writing was named from the Latin cuneus, “wedge.” By 2000 bce, another significant development in the progress of writing had appeared: Signs began to represent not things but sounds. This phonetic writing liberated the sign from its picture. Previously, they had been linked, as if, in English, we represented the word belief with pictograms for “bee” and “leaf.” stylus View the Closer Look for cuneiform writing in Sumer on MyArtsLab 40    PART ONE   The Ancient World and the Classical Past M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 40 19/11/2013 10:08 Cuneiform Writing in Sumer Something to Think About … What is it about this “document” that underscores the necessity of writing in the development of a civilization? Sumerian clay tablet from Lagash (present-day Tello, Iraq). ca. 2360 bce. Musée du Louvre, Paris. This tablet is an economic document detailing the loan of donkeys to, among others, a farmer, a smith, and a courier. These stars are the Sumerian sign for “god.” They sometimes have many more points than the eight seen here. CHAPTER 2   The Ancient Near East   41 M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 41 19/11/2013 10:08 Materials & Techniques Lost-Wax Casting At about the same time that cuneiform script was adopted, Mesopotamian culture also began to practice metallurgy, the process of mining and smelting ores. At first, copper was used almost exclusively; later, an alloy of copper and tin was melted and combined to make bronze. The resulting material was much stronger and more durable than anything previously known. Because sources of copper and tin were mined in very different regions of the Middle East, the development of trade routes was a 1 2 3 necessary prerequisite to the technology. While solid bronze pieces were made in simple molds as early as 4000 bce , hollow bronze casts could produce larger pieces and were both more economical and lightweight. The technology for making hollow bronze casts was developed by the time of the Akkadians, in the second millennium bce . Called lost-wax casting, the steps involved in this technique are illustrated below. 4 5 6 A positive model (1), often created with clay, is used to make a negative mold (2). The mold is coated with wax, the wax shell is filled with a cool fireclay, and the mold is removed (3). Metal rods, to hold the shell in place, and wax rods, to vent the mold, are then added (4). The whole is placed in sand, and the wax is burned out. Molten bronze is poured in where the wax used to be (5). When the bronze has hardened, the whole is removed from the sand and the rods and vents are removed (6). Watch a video about the technique of lost-wax bronze casting on MyArtsLab of Sargon’s grandson, Naramsin (ca. 2254–2218 bce). It may be neither, but it is certainly the bust of a king. Highly realistic, it depicts a man who appears both powerful and majestic. In its damaged condition, the head is all that survives of a life-size statue that was destroyed in antiquity. Its original gemstone eyes were removed, perhaps by plundering soldiers, or possibly by a political enemy who recognized the sculpture as an emblem of absolute majesty. In the fine detail surrounding the face—in the beard and elaborate coiffure, with its braid circling the head—it testifies to the Akkadian mastery of the lost-wax casting technique, which originated in Mesopotamia as early as the third millennium bce (see Materials & Techniques, above). It is the earliest monumental work made by that technique that we have. The second Akkadian sculpture we will look at is the Stele of Naramsin (Fig. 2.10). A stele is an upright stone slab carved with a commemorative design or inscription. (The word is derived from the Greek for “standing block.”) This particular stele celebrates the victory of Sargon’s grandson over the Lullubi in the Zagros Mountains of eastern Mesopotamia sometime between 2252 and 2218 bce. The king, as usual, is larger than anyone else (another example of social perspective or hierarchy of scale). The Akkadians, in fact, believed that Naramsin became divine during the course of his reign. In the stele, his divinity is represented by his horned helmet and by the physical perfection of his body. Bow and arrow in hand, he stands atop a mountain pass, dead and wounded Lullubians beneath his feet. Another Lullubian falls before him, a spear in his neck. Yet another seems to plead for mercy as he flees to the right. Behind Naramsin, his soldiers climb the wooded slopes of the mountain—here represented by actual trees native to the region. The sculptor abandoned the traditional register system that we saw in the Royal Standard of Ur and set the battle scene on a unified landscape. The lack of registers and the use of trees underscore the reality of the scene—and by ­implication, the reality of Naramsin’s divinity. The divine and human worlds are, in fact, united here, for above Naramsin three stars (cuneiform symbols for the gods) look on, protecting both Naramsin, their representative on earth, and his troops. Both the copper head of the Akkadian king and the Stele of Naramsin testify to the role of the king in Mesopotamian culture, in general, as both hero and divinity. If the king is not exactly a supreme god, he behaves very much like one, wielding the same awe-inspiring power. Babylon The Akkadians dominated Mesopotamia for just 150 years, their rule collapsing not long after 2200 bce. For the next 400 years, various city-states thrived locally. No one in Mesopotamia matched the Akkadians’ power until the first decades of the eighteenth century bce, when Hammurabi of Babylon (r. 1792– 1750 bce) gained control of most of the region. 42    PART ONE   The Ancient World and the Classical Past M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 42 19/11/2013 10:08 coming from his shoulders. The god is much larger than Hammurabi; in fact, he is to Hammurabi as Hammurabi, the patriarch, is to his people. If Hammurabi is divine, he is still subservient to the greater gods. At the same time, the phallic design of the stele, like such other Mesopotamian steles as the Stele of Naramsin, asserts the masculine prowess of the king. Fig. 2.10 Stele of Naramsin, from Susa (present-day Shush, Iran). ca. 2254–2218 bce. Pink sandstone, height approx. 6'6". Chuzeville/Musée du Louvre, Paris. This work, which was stolen by invading Elamites around 1157 bce, as an inscription on the mountain indicates, was for centuries one of the most influential of all artworks, copied by many rulers to celebrate their own military feats. View the Closer Look for the Stele of Naramsin on MyArtsLab The Law Code of Hammurabi Hammurabi imposed order on Babylon where laxness and disorder, if not chaos, reigned. A giant stele survives, upon which is inscribed the so-called Law Code of Hammurabi (Fig. 2.11). By no means the first of its kind, though by far the most complete, the stele is a record of decisions and decrees made by Hammurabi over the course of some 40 years of his reign. Its ­purpose was to celebrate his sense of justice and the wisdom of his rule. Atop the stele, in sculptural relief, Hammurabi receives the blessing of Shamash, the sun god; notice the rays of light Fig. 2.11 Stele of Hammurabi, from Susa (present-day Shush, Iran). ca. 1760 bce. Diorite, height of stele, approx. 7', height of relief, 28". Musée du Louvre, Paris. Like the Stele of Naramsin, this stele was stolen by invading Elamites and removed to Susa, where, together with the Stele of Naramsin, it was excavated by the French in 1898. CHAPTER 2   The Ancient Near East   43 M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 43 19/11/2013 10:08 Below the relief, 282 separate “articles” cover both sides of the basalt monument. One of the great debates of legal history is the question of whether these articles actually constitute a code of law. If by code we mean a comprehensive, systematic, and methodical compilation of all aspects of Mesopotamian law, then they do not. This code is instead selective, even eccentric, in the issues it addresses. Many of its articles seem to be “reforms” of already existing law, and as such they define new principles of justice. Chief among these is the principle of talion—an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth—which Hammurabi introduced to Mesopotamian law. (Sections of earlier codes from Ur compensate victims of crimes with money.) This principle punished the violence or injustice perpetuated by one free person upon another, but violence by an upper-class person on a lower-class person was penalized much less severely. Slaves (who might be either war captives or debtors) enjoyed no legal protection at all—only the protection of their owner. The code tells us much about the daily lives of Mesopotamian peoples, including conflicts great and small. In rules governing family relations and class divisions in Mesopotamian society, inequalities are sharply drawn. Women are inferior to men, and wives, like slaves, are the personal property of their husbands (although protected from the abuse of neglectful or unjust husbands). Incest is strictly forbidden. Fathers cannot arbitrarily disinherit their sons— a son must have committed some “heavy crime” to justify such treatment. The code’s strongest concern is the maintenance and protection of the family, though trade practices and property rights are also of major importance. The following excerpts from the code, beginning with Hammurabi’s assertion of his descent from the gods and his status as their favorite (Reading 2.1), give a sense of the code’s scope. But the code is, finally, and perhaps above all, the gift of a king to his people, as Hammurabi’s epilogue, at the end of the excerpt, makes clear: R E A DI N G 2 .1 from the Law Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1760 bce) When the august god Anu, king of the Anunnaku deities, and the god Enlil, lord of heaven and earth, who determines the destinies of the land, allotted supreme power over all peoples to the god Marduk, the firstborn son of the god Ea, exalted him among the Igigu deities, named the city of Babylon with its august name and made it supreme exalted within the regions of the world, and established for him within it eternal kingship whose foundations are as fixed as heaven and earth, at that time, the gods Anu and Bel, for the enhancement of the wellbeing of the people, named me by my name, Hammurabi, the pious prince, who venerates the gods, to make justice prevail in the land, to abolish the wicked and the evil, to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak, to rise like the Sun-god Shamash over all humankind, to illuminate the land. … 1. If a man accuses another man and charges him with homicide but cannot bring proof against him, his accuser shall be killed. … 8. If a man steals an ox, a sheep, a donkey, a pig, or a boat—if it belongs either to the god or to the palace, he shall give thirtyfold; if it belongs to a commoner, he shall replace it tenfold; if the thief does not have anything to give, he shall be killed. … 32. If there is either a soldier or a fisherman who is taken captive while on a royal campaign, a m ­ erchant redeems him, and helps him get back to his city—if there are sufficient in his own estate for the redeeming, he himself shall redeem himself: if there are not sufficient means in his estate to r­ edeem him he shall be redeemed by his city’s ­temple; if there are not sufficient means in his city’s temple to redeem him, the palace shall redeem him; but his field, orchard, or house shall not be given for his redemption. … 143. If [a woman] is not circumspect, but is wayward, squanders her household possessions, and disparages her husband, they shall cast that woman into the water. … 195. If a child should strike his father, they shall cut off his hand. 196. If an awilu [in general, a person subject to law] should blind the eye of another awilu, they shall blind his eye. … 197. If he should break the bone of another awilu, they shall break his bone. … 229. If a builder constructs a house for a man but does not make his work sound, and the house he constructs collapses and causes the death of the householder, that builder shall be killed. … 282. If a slave should declare to his master, “You are not my master,” he (the master) shall bring charge and proof against him that he is indeed his slave, and his master shall cut off his ear. … These are the decisions which Hammurabi, the able king, has established, and thereby has directed the land along the course of truth and the correct way of life. I am Hammurabi, noble king … May any king who will appear in the land in the future, at any time, observe the pronouncements of justice that I have inscribed upon my stele. May he not alter the judgments that I rendered and verdicts that I gave, nor remove my engraved image. If that man has discernment, and is capable of providing just ways for his land may he heed the pronouncements I have inscribed upon my stele, may the stele reveal for him the traditions, the proper conduct, the judgments of the land that I rendered, the verdicts of the land that I gave and may he, too, provide just ways for all humankind in his care. … I am Hammurabi, king of justice. … Consequences of the Code Even if Hammurabi meant only to assert the idea of justice as the basis for his own divine rule, the stele established what amounts to a uniform code throughout Mesopotamia. It was repeatedly copied for over a thousand years, long after it was r­emoved to Susa in 1157 44    PART ONE   The Ancient World and the Classical Past M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 44 19/11/2013 10:08 bce with the Naramsin stele, and it established the rule of law in Mesopotamia for a millennium. From this point on, the authority and power of the ruler could no longer be capricious, subject to the whim, fancy, and subjective interpretation of his singular personality. The law was now, at least ostensibly, more objective and impartial. The ruler was required to follow certain prescribed procedures. But the law, so prescribed in writing, was now also much less flexible, hard to change, and much more impersonal. Exceptions to the rule were few and difficult to justify. Eventually, written law would remove justice from the discretion of the ruler and replace it with a legal establishment of learned judges charged with enacting the king’s statutes. The Assyrian Empire With the fall of Babylon in 1595 bce to a sudden invasion of Hittites from Turkey, the entire Middle East appears to have undergone a period of disruption and instability. Only the Assyrians, who lived around the city of Assur in the north, managed to maintain a continuing cultural identity. Over the centuries, they became increasingly powerful until, beginning with the reign of Ashurnasirpal II (r. 883–859 bce), they dominated the entire region. Ashurnasirpal II built a magnificent capital at Kalhu (present-day Nimrud), on the Tigris River, surrounded by nearly 5 miles of walls, 120 feet thick and 42 feet high. A surviving inscription tells us that Ashurnasirpal invited 69,574 people to celebrate the city’s dedication. The entire population of the region, of all classes, probably did not exceed 100,000, and thus many guests from throughout Mesopotamia and farther away must have been invited. Assyrian Art Alabaster reliefs decorated many of the walls of Ashurnasirpal’s palace complex, including a depiction of Ashurnasirpal II Killing Lions (Fig. 2.12). The scene uses many of the conventions of Assyrian pictorial representation. For instance, to create a sense of deep space, the sculptor used the device of overlapping, which we first encountered in prehistoric cave paintings (see Fig. 1.1 in Chapter 1). This is done convincingly where the king stands in his chariot in front of its driver, but less so in the case of the horses drawing the chariot. For instance, there are three horse heads but only six visible legs—three in front and three in back. Furthermore, Assyrian artists never hid the face of an archer (in this case, the king himself) by realistically having him aim down the shaft of the arrow, which would have the effect of covering his eye with his hand. Instead, they drop the arrow to shoulder level and completely omit the bowstring so that it appears to pass (impossibly) behind the archer’s head and back. The scene is also a synoptic view, that is, it depicts several consecutive actions at once: As soldiers drive the lion toward the king from the left, he shoots it; to the right, the same lion lies dying beneath the horses’ hooves. If Assyrian artists seem unconcerned about accurately portraying the animals, that is because the focus of the work is on the king himself, whose prowess in combating the lion, traditional symbol of power, underscores his own invincibility. And it is in the artists’ careful balance of forms—the relationship between the positive shapes of the relief figures and the negative space between them—that we sense the importance placed on an orderly arrangement of parts. This orderliness reflects, in all probability, their sense of the orderly character of their society. Fig. 2.12 Ashurnasirpal II Killing Lions, from the palace complex of Ashurnasirpal II, Kalhu (present-day Nimrud, Iraq). ca. 850 bce. Alabaster, height approx. 39". © The Trustees of the British Museum. The repetition of forms throughout this relief helps create a stunning design. Notice especially how the two shields carried by the soldiers are echoed by the chariot wheel and the king’s arched bow. CHAPTER 2   The Ancient Near East   45 M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 45 19/11/2013 10:08 Cultural Propaganda Rulers in every culture and age have used the visual arts to broadcast their power. These reliefs were designed to celebrate and underscore for all visitors to Ashurnasirpal’s palace the military prowess of the Assyrian army and their king. They are thus a form of cultural propaganda, celebrating the kingdom’s achievements even as they intimidate its potential adversaries. In fact, the Assyrians were probably the most militant civilization of ancient Mesopotamia, benefactors of the invention of iron weaponry. By 721 bce, the Assyrians had used their iron weapons to conquer Israel, and by the middle of the seventh century bce, they controlled most of Asia Minor from the Nile Valley to the Persian Gulf. The Assyrians also used their power to preserve Mesopotamian culture. Two hundred years after the reign of Ashurnasirpal, Ashurbanipal (r. 668–627 bce) created the great library where, centuries later, the clay tablets containing the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, discussed later in this chapter, were stored. Its still partially ­intact collection today consists of 20,000 to 30,000 cuneiform tablets containing­ approximately 1,200 distinct texts, i­ncluding a nearly complete list of ancient Mesopotamian rulers. Each of its many rooms was dedicated to individual subjects—history and government, religion and magic, g­ eography, science, ­poetry, and important government materials. As late as Ashurbanipal’s reign, reliefs of the lion hunt were still a favored form of palace decoration, but those depicted in his palace at Nineveh, in what is now northern Iraq, reveal that the lions were caged and released for the king’s hunt, which was now more ritual than real, taking place in an enclosed arena. The lions were sacrificed as an offering to the gods. In one section of the relief, Ashurbanipal, surrounded by musicians, pours a libation, a liquid offering to the gods, over the dead animals as servants bring more bodies to the offering table. This ritual was implicit in all kingly hunts, even Ashurnasirpal’s hunt of 200 years earlier, for in his pursuit and defeat of the wild beast, the ruler masters the most elemental force of nature—the cycle of life and death itself. The Assyrian kings represented their might and power not only through the immense size of their palaces and the decorative programs within, but also through massive gateways that greeted the visitor. Especially impressive are the gateways with giant stone monuments, such as those in Iraq at the Khorsabad palace of Sargon II (r. 721–705 bce), who named himself after Sargon of Akkad. These monuments (Fig. 2.13) are composites, part man, part bull, and part eagle, the bull signifying the king’s strength and the eagle his vigilance. The king himself wears the traditional horned crown of Akkad and the beard of Sumer, thus containing within himself all Mesopotamian history. Such composites, especially in monumental size, were probably intended to amaze and terrify the visitor and to underscore the ruler’s embodiment of all the forces of nature, which is to say, his embodiment of the very gods. MESOPOTAMIAN LITERATURE How does the Epic of Gilgamesh portray the relationship between the gods and the people? Sumerian literature survives on nearly 100,000 clay tablets and fragments. Many deal with religious themes in the form of poems, blessings, and incantations to the gods. The Blessing of Inanna Fig. 2.13 Human-Headed Winged Bull, one of a pair from the entrance to the palace of Sargon II, Khorsabad, Iraq. ca. 720 bce. Limestone, height approx. 13'10". Musée du Louvre, Paris. Seen from a three-quarter view, as here, this hybrid beast that guarded the palace entrance has five legs. He stands firmly before you when seen from the front, and seems to stride by you when seen from the side. One particularly interesting Sumerian religious work is The Blessing of Inanna (Reading 2.2). It recounts the myth of the goddess Inanna, here depicted as a young girl from Uruk who decides to visit Enki, the god of wisdom. Inanna travels south to Eridu, the chief seaport of Sumer, where Enki lives. Apparently taken with Inanna, Enki offers a series of toasts, each time bestowing upon her one of his special powers, including the highest powers of all: 46    PART ONE   The Ancient World and the Classical Past M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 46 19/11/2013 10:08 The Epic of Gilgamesh R EAD IN G 2 .2 The Blessing of Inanna (ca. 2300 bce) Enki and Inanna drank beer together. They drank more beer together. They drank more and more beer together. With their bronze vessels filled to overflowing, With the vessels of Urash, Mother of the Earth They toasted each other; they challenged each other. Enki, swaying with drink, toasted Inanna: “In the name of my power! In the name of my holy shrine! To my daughter Inanna I shall give The high priesthood! Godship! The noble, enduring crown! The throne of kingship!” Inanna replied: “I take them!” Having gathered all 80 of Enki’s mighty powers, Inanna piles them all into her boat and sails back upriver. The drunken Enki realizes what he has done and tries to recover his blessings, but Inanna fends him off. She returns to Uruk, blessed as a god, and enters the city triumphantly, bestowing now her own gifts on her people, who subsequently worship her. Enki and the people of Eridu are forced to acknowledge the glory of Inanna and her city of Uruk, assuring peace and harmony between the two competing city-states. The Sumerians worshiped Inanna as the goddess of fertility and heaven. In this tale, she and Enki probably represent the spirits of their respective cities and the victory of Uruk over Eridu. That Inanna appears in the work first as a mere mortal is a classic example of anthropomorphism, endowing the gods and the forces of nature that they represent with humanlike traits. The story has some basis in fact, since Uruk and Eridu are the two oldest Mesopotamian cities, and surviving literary fragments suggest that the two cities were at war sometime after 3400 bce. One of the great surviving manuscripts of Mesopotamian culture and the oldest story ever recorded is the Epic of Gilgamesh. It consists of some 2,900 lines written in Akkadian cuneiform script on 11 clay tablets, none of them completely whole (Fig. 2.14). It was composed sometime before Ashurbanipal’s reign, possibly as early as 1200 bce, by Sinleqqiunninni, a scholar-priest of Uruk. This would make Sinleqqiunninni the oldest known author. We know that Gilgamesh was the fourth king of Uruk, ruling sometime between 2700 and 2500 bce. (The dates of his rule were recorded on a clay tablet, the Sumerian King List.) Recovered fragments of his story date back nearly to his actual reign, and the story we have, known as the Standard Version, is a compilation of these earlier versions. The work is the first example we have of an epic, a long, narrative poem in elevated language that follows characters of a high position through a series of adventures, often including a visit to the world of the dead. For many literary scholars, the epic is the most exalted poetic form. The Read the document The Epic of Gilgamesh on MyArtsLab Fig. 2.14 Fragment of Tablet 11 of the Epic of Gilgamesh, containing the Flood Story. From the Library of Ashurbanipal, Nineveh (present-day Kuyunjik, Iraq). 2nd millennium bce. © The Trustees of the British Museum. This example, which is relatively complete, shows how difficult it is to reconstruct the Gilgamesh epic in its entirety. CHAPTER 2   The Ancient Near East   47 M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 47 19/11/2013 10:08 central figure is a legendary or historical figure of heroic proportion, in this case the Sumerian king Gilgamesh. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey (see Chapter 4) had been considered the earliest epics, until late in the nineteenth century, when Gilgamesh was discovered in the library of King Ashurbanipal at ­Nineveh, believed to be the first library of texts in history systematically collected and organized. The scope of an epic is large. The supernatural world of gods and goddesses usually plays a role in the story, as do battles in which the hero demonstrates his strength and courage. The poem’s language is suitably dignified, often consisting of many long, formal speeches. Lists of various heroes or catalogs of their achievements are frequent. Epics are often compilations of preexisting myths and tales handed down generation to generation, often orally, and finally unified into a whole by the epic poet. Indeed, the main outline of the story is usually known to its audience. The poet’s contribution is the artistry brought to the subject, demonstrated through the use of epithets, metaphors, and similes. Epithets are words or phrases that characterize a person (for example, “Enkidu, the protector of herdsmen,” or “Enkidu, the son of the mountain”). Metaphors are words or phrases used in place of another to suggest a similarity between the two, as when Gilgamesh is described as a “raging flood-wave who destroys even walls of stone.” Similes compare two unlike things by the use of the word “like” or “as” (for example, “the land shattered like a pot”). Perhaps most important, the epic illuminates the development of a nation or race. It is a national poem, describing a people’s common heritage and celebrating its cultural identity. It is hardly surprising, then, that Ashurbanipal preserved the Epic of Gilgamesh. Just as Sargon II depicted himself at the gates of Khorsabad in the traditional horned crown of Akkad and the beard of Sumer, containing within himself all Mesopotamian history, the Epic of Gilgamesh preserves the historical lineage of all Mesopotamian kings— Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, and Babylonian. The tale embodies their own heroic grandeur, and thus the grandeur of their peoples. The poem opens with a narrator guiding a visitor (the reader) around Uruk. The narrator explains that the epic was written by Gilgamesh himself and was deposited in the city’s walls, where visitors can read it for themselves. Then the narrator introduces Gilgamesh as an epic hero, two parts god and one part human. The style of the following list of his deeds is the same as in hymns to the gods (Reading 2.3a): R E A DI N G 2 .3 a from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet I (late 2nd millennium bce) Supreme over other kings, lordly in appearance, he is the hero, born of Uruk, the goring wild bull. He walks out in front, the leader, and walks at the rear, trusted by his companions. Mighty net, protector of his people, raging flood-wave who destroys even walls of stone! … It was he who opened the mountain passes, who dug wells on the flank of the mountain. It was he who crossed ocean, the vast seas, to the rising sun, who explored the world regions, seeking life. It was he who reached by his own sheer strength the Utnapishtim, the Faraway, who restored the cities that the Flood had destroyed! … Who can compare to him in kingliness? Who can say like Gilgamesh: “I am King!”? After a short break in the text, Gilgamesh is described as having originally oppressed his people. Hearing the pleas of the people for relief, the gods create a rival, Enkidu, to challenge Gilgamesh (Reading 2.3b): R EA D IN G 2.3b from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet I (late 2nd millennium bce) Enkidu born of Silence, endowed with the strength of Ninurta. His whole body was shaggy with hair, he had a full head of hair like a woman. … He knew neither people nor settled living. … He ate grasses with the gazelles, and jostled at the watering hole with the animals. Enkidu is, in short, Gilgamesh’s opposite, and their confrontation is an example of the classic struggle between nature, represented by Enkidu, and civilization, represented by Gilgamesh. Seduced by a harlot (see Reading 2.3, page 63), Enkidu loses his ability to commune with the animals (i.e., he literally loses his innocence), and when he finally wrestles Gilgamesh, the contest ends in a draw. The two become best friends. Gilgamesh proposes that he and Enkidu undertake a great adventure, a journey to the Cedar Forest (either in present-day southern Iran or Lebanon), where they will kill its guardian, Humbaba the Terrible, and cut down all the forest’s trees. Each night on the six-day journey to the forest, Gilgamesh has a terrible dream, which Enkidu manages to interpret in a positive light. As the friends approach the forest, the god Shamash informs Gilgamesh that Humbaba is wearing only one of his seven coats of armor and is thus extremely vulnerable. When Gilgamesh and Enkidu enter the forest and begin cutting down trees, Humbaba comes roaring up to warn them off. An epic battle ensues, and Shamash intervenes to help the two heroes defeat the great 48    PART ONE   The Ancient World and the Classical Past M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 48 19/11/2013 10:08 guardian. Just before Gilgamesh cuts off Humbaba’s head, Humbaba curses Enkidu, promising that he will find no peace in the world and will die before his friend Gilgamesh. In a gesture that clearly evokes the triumph of civilization over nature, Gilgamesh and Enkidu cut down the tallest of the cedar trees to make a great cedar gate for the city of Uruk. At the center of the poem, in Tablet VI, Ishtar, goddess of both love and war, offers to marry Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh refuses, which unleashes Ishtar’s wrath. She sends the Bull of Heaven to destroy them, but Gilgamesh and Enkidu slay it instead (Reading 2.3c): R EAD IN G 2 .3 c from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet VI (late 2nd millennium bce) A Woman Scorned … When Gilgamesh placed his crown on his head, Princess Ishtar raised her eyes to the beauty of G ­ ilgamesh. “Come along, Gilgamesh, be you my husband, to me grant your lusciousness.1 Be you my husband, and I will be your wife. I will have harnessed for you a chariot of lapis lazuli and gold, with wheels of gold … Bowed down beneath you will be kings, lords, and princes. The Lullubu people2 will bring you the produce of the mountains and countryside as tribute. Your she-goats will bear triplets, your ewes twins, your donkey under burden will overtake the mule, your steed at the chariot will be bristling to gallop, your ox at the yoke will have no match.” Gilgamesh addressed Princess Ishtar saying: “Do you need oil or garments for your body? Do you lack anything for food or drink? I would gladly feed you food fit for a god, I would gladly give you wine fit for a king … [You are] a half-door that keeps out neither breeze nor blast, a palace that crushes down valiant warriors, an elephant who devours its own covering, pitch that blackens the hands of its bearer, a waterskin that soaks its bearer through, limestone that buckles out the stone wall, a battering ram that attracts the enemy land, a shoe that bites its owner’s feet! Where are your bridegrooms that you keep forever? … You loved the supremely mighty lion, yet you dug for him seven and again seven pits. You loved the stallion, famed in battle, yet you ordained for him the whip, the goad, and the lash, Literally “fruit.” The Lullubu were a wild mountain people living in the area of present-day western Iran. The meaning is that even the wildest, least controllable of peoples will recognize Gilgamesh’s rule and bring tribute. ordained for him to gallop for seven and seven hours, ordained for him drinking from muddied waters,3 you ordained for his mother Silili to wail continually. You loved the Shepherd, the Master Herder, who continually presented you with bread baked in embers, and who daily slaughtered for you a kid. Yet you struck him, and turned him into a wolf, so his own shepherds now chase him and his own dogs snap at his shins. You loved Ishullanu, your father’s date gardener, who continually brought you baskets of dates, and brightened your table daily. You raised your eyes to him, and you went to him: ‘Oh my Ishullanu, let us taste of your strength, stretch out your hand to me, and touch our “vulva.”’4 Ishullanu said to you: ‘Me? What is it you want from me? …’ As you listened to these his words you struck him, turning him into a dwarf(?),5 … And now me! It is me you love, and you will ordain for me as for them!” Her Fury When Ishtar heard this in a fury she went up to the heavens, going to Anu, her father, and crying, going to Antum, her mother, and weeping: “Father, Gilgamesh has insulted me over and over, Gilgamesh has recounted despicable deeds about me, despicable deeds and curses!” Anu addressed Princess Ishtar, saying: “What is the matter? Was it not you who provoked King Gilgamesh? So Gilgamesh recounted despicable deeds about you, despicable deeds and curses!” Ishtar spoke to her father, Anu, saying: “Father, give me the Bull of Heaven, so he can kill Gilgamesh in his dwelling. If you do not give me the Bull of Heaven, I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld, I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down, and will let the dead go up to eat the living! And the dead will outnumber the living!” Anu addressed Princess Ishtar, saying: “If you demand the Bull of Heaven from me, there will be seven years of empty husks for the land of Uruk. Have you collected grain for the people? Have you made grasses grow for the animals?” Ishtar addressed Anu, her father, saying: “I have heaped grain in the granaries for the people, I made grasses grow for the animals, Horses put their front feet in the water when drinking, churning up mud. This line probably contains a word play on hurdatu as “vulva” and “date palm,” the latter being said (in another unrelated text) to be “like the vulva.” 5 Or “frog”? 1 3 2 4 CHAPTER 2   The Ancient Near East   49 M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 49 19/11/2013 10:08 in order that they might eat in the seven years of empty husks. I have collected grain for the people, I have made grasses grow for the animals. …” When Anu heard her words, he placed the nose-rope of the Bull of Heaven in her hand. Ishtar led the Bull of Heaven down to the earth. When it reached Uruk … It climbed down to the Euphrates … At the snort of the Bull of Heaven a huge pit opened up, and 100 Young Men of Uruk fell in. At his second snort a huge pit opened up, and 200 Young Men of Uruk fell in. At his third snort a huge pit opened up, and Enkidu fell in up to his waist. Then Enkidu jumped out and seized the Bull of Heaven by its horns. The Bull spewed his spittle in front of him, with his thick tail he flung his dung behind him (?). Enkidu addressed Gilgamesh, saying: “My friend, we can be bold(?) … Between the nape, the horns, and … thrust your sword.” Enkidu stalked and hunted down the Bull of Heaven. He grasped it by the thick of its tail and held onto it with both his hands (?), while Gilgamesh, like an expert butcher, boldly and surely approached the Bull of Heaven. Between the nape, the horns, and … he thrust his sword. … Ishtar went up onto the top of the Wall of Uruk-Haven, cast herself into the pose of mourning, and hurled her woeful curse: “Woe unto Gilgamesh who slandered me and killed the Bull of Heaven!” When Enkidu heard this pronouncement of Ishtar, he wrenched off the Bull’s hindquarter and flung it in her face: “If I could only get at you I would do the same to you! I would drape his innards over your arms!” … Gilgamesh said to the palace retainers: “Who is the bravest of the men? Who is the boldest of the males? —Gilgamesh is the bravest of the men, the boldest of the males! She at whom we flung the hindquarter of the Bull of Heaven in anger, Ishtar has no one that pleases her …” R eading 2.3d from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet X (late 2nd millennium bce) My friend … Enkidu, whom I love deeply, who went through every hardship with me, the fate of mankind has overtaken him. Six days and seven nights I mourned over him and would not allow him to be buried until a maggot fell out of his nose. I was terrified by his appearance, I began to fear death, and so roam the wilderness. The issue of Enkidu, my friend, oppresses me, so I have been roaming long trails through the w ­ ilderness. How can I stay silent, how can I be still? My friend whom I love has turned to clay. Am I not like him? Will I lie down, never to get­up again? Dismayed at the prospect of his own mortality, Gilgamesh embarks on a journey to find the secret of eternal life from the only mortal known to have attained it, Utnapishtim, who tells him the story of the Great Flood. Several elements of Utnapishtim’s story deserve explanation. First of all, this is the earliest known version of the flood story that occurs also in the Hebrew Bible, with Utnapishtim in the role of the biblical Noah. The motif of a single man and wife surviving a worldwide flood brought about by the gods occurs in several Middle Eastern cultures, suggesting a single origin or shared tradition. In the Sumerian version, Ea (Enki) warns Utnapishtim of the flood by speaking to the wall, thereby technically keeping the agreement among the gods not to warn mortals of their upcoming disaster. The passage in which Ea tells Utnapishtim how to explain his actions to his people without revealing the secret of the gods is one of extraordinary complexity and wit (Reading 2.3e). The word for “bread” is kukku, a pun on the word for “darkness,” kukkû. Similarly, the word for “wheat,” kibtu, also means “misfortune.” Thus, when Ea says, “He will let loaves of bread shower down, / and in the evening a rain of wheat,” he is also telling the truth: “He will let loaves of darkness shower down, and in the evening a rain of misfortune.” R eading 2.3e But Gilgamesh and Enkidu cannot avoid the wrath of the gods altogether. One of them, the gods decide, must die, and so Enkidu suffers a long, painful death, attended by his friend, Gilgamesh, who is terrified (Reading 2.3d): from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI (late 2nd millennium bce) Utnapishtim spoke to Gilgamesh, saying: “I will reveal to you, Gilgamesh, a thing that is hidden, a secret of the gods I will tell you! Shuruppak, a city that you surely know, situated on the banks of the Euphrates, that city was very old, and there were gods inside it. The hearts of the Great Gods moved them to inflict the Flood. … 50    PART ONE   The Ancient World and the Classical Past M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 50 19/11/2013 10:08 Ea, the Clever Prince, was under oath with them so he repeated their talk to the reed house: ‘Reed house, reed house! Wall, wall! Hear, O reed house! Understand, O wall! O man of Shuruppak, son of Ubartutu: Tear down the house and build a boat! Abandon wealth and seek living beings! Spurn possessions and keep alive human beings! Make all living beings go up into the boat. The boat which you are to build, its dimensions must measure equal to each other: its length must correspond to its width, Roof it over like the Apsu.’ I understood and spoke to my lord, Ea: ‘My lord, thus is your command. I will heed and will do it. But what shall I answer the city, the populace, and the Elders?’ Ea spoke, commanding me, his servant: ‘… this is what you must say to them: “It appears that Enlil is rejecting me so I cannot reside in your city, nor set foot on Enlil’s earth. I will go … to live with my lord, Ea, and upon you he will rain down abundance, a profusion of fowls, myriad fishes. He will bring you a harvest of wealth, in the morning he will let loaves of bread shower down, and in the evening a rain of wheat.”’ … I butchered oxen for the meat(?), and day upon day I slaughtered sheep. I gave the workmen(?) ale, beer, oil, and wine, as if it were river water, so they could make a party like the New Year’s F ­ estival. … The boat was finished. … Whatever I had I loaded on it: whatever silver I had I loaded on it, whatever gold I had I loaded on it. All the living beings that I had I loaded on it, I had all my kith and kin go up into the boat, all the beasts and animals of the field and the c­ raftsmen I had go up. … I watched the appearance of the weather— the weather was frightful to behold! I went into the boat and sealed the entry. … Just as dawn began to glow there arose on the horizon a black cloud. Adad rumbled inside it. … Stunned shock over Adad’s deeds overtook the h ­ eavens, and turned to blackness all that had been light. The … land shattered like a … pot. All day long the South Wind blew …, blowing fast, submerging the mountain in water, overwhelming the people like an attack. No one could see his fellow, they could not recognize each other in the torrent. The gods were frightened by the Flood, and retreated, ascending to the heaven of Anu. The gods were cowering like dogs, crouching by the outer wall. Ishtar shrieked like a woman in childbirth. … Six days and seven nights came the wind and flood, the storm flattening the land. When the seventh day arrived, the storm was pounding, the flood was a war—struggling with itself like a woman writhing (in labor). The sea calmed, fell still, the whirlwind (and) flood stopped up. I looked around all day long—quiet had set in and all the human beings had turned to clay! The terrain was flat as a roof. I opened a vent and fresh air (daylight?) fell upon the side of my nose. I fell to my knees and sat weeping, tears streaming down the side of my nose. I looked around for coastlines in the expanse of the sea, and at twelve leagues there emerged a region (of land). On Mt. Nimush the boat lodged firm, Mt. Nimush held the boat, allowing no sway.” When the gods discover Utnapishtim alive, smelling his incense offering, they are outraged. They did not want a single living being to escape. But since he has, they grant him immortality and allow him to live forever in the F­ araway. As a reward for Gilgamesh’s own efforts, ­Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh of a secret plant that will give him perpetual youth. “I will eat it,” he tells the boatman who is returning him home, “and I will return to what I was in my youth.” But when they stop for the night, Gilgamesh decides to bathe in a cool pool, where the scent of the plant attracts a snake who steals it away, an echo of the biblical story of Adam and Eve, whose own immortality is stolen away by the wiles of a serpent—and their own carelessness. Broken-hearted, Gilgamesh returns home empty-handed. The Epic of Gilgamesh is the first known literary work to confront the idea of death, which is, in many ways, the very embodiment of the unknown. Although the hero goes to the very ends of the earth in his quest, he ultimately leaves with nothing to show for his efforts except an understanding of his own, very human, limitations. He is the first hero in Western literature to yearn for what he can never attain, to seek to understand what must always remain a mystery. And, of course, until the death of his friend Enkidu, Gilgamesh had seemed, in his self-confident confrontation with Ishtar and in the defeat of the Bull of Heaven, as near to a god as a mortal might be. In short, he embodied the Mesopotamian hero-king. Even as the poem asserts the hero-king’s divinity—Gilgamesh is, remember, two parts god—it emphasizes his humanity and the mortality that accompanies it. By making literal the first words of the Sumerian King List—“After the kingship had descended from heaven”—the Epic of Gilgamesh acknowledges what many Mesopotamian kings were unwilling to admit, at least publicly: their own, very human, limitations, and their own powerlessness in the face of the ultimate unknown—death. CHAPTER 2   The Ancient Near East   51 M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 51 19/11/2013 10:08 THE HEBREWS What cultural traits distinguish the Hebrews from other cultures in the ancient Near East? The Hebrews (from Habiru, “outcast” or “nomad”) were a people forced out of their homeland in the Mesopotamian basin in about 2000 bce. According to their tradition, it was in the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that God created Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It was there that Noah survived the same great flood that Utnapishtim survived in the Epic of Gilgamesh. And it was out of there that Abraham of Ur led his people into Canaan, in order to escape the warlike Akkadians and the increasingly powerful Babylonians. There is no actual historical evidence to support these stories. We know them only from the Hebrew Bible—a word that derives from the Greek, biblia, “books”—a compilation of hymns, prophecies, and laws transcribed by its authors between 800 and 400 bce, some 1,000 years after the events the Hebrew Bible describes. Although the archeological record in the Near East confirms some of what these scribes and priests wrote, especially about more contemporaneous events, the stories themselves were edited and collated into the stories we know today. They recount the Assyrian conquest of Israel, the Jews’ later exile to Babylon after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in 587 bce, and their eventual return to Jerusalem after the Persians conquered the Babylonians in 538 bce. The stories represent the Hebrews’ attempt to maintain their sense of their own history and destiny. But it would be a mistake to succumb to the temptation to read the Hebrew Bible as an accurate account of the historical record. Like all ancient histories, passed down orally through generation upon generation, it contains its fair share of mythologizing. The Hebrews differed from other Near Eastern cultures in that their religion was monotheistic—they worshiped a single god, whereas others in the region tended to have gods for their clans and cities, among other things. According to Hebrew tradition, God made an agreement with the Hebrews, first with Noah after the flood, later renewed with Abraham and each of the subsequent patriarchs (scriptural fathers of the Hebrew people): “I am God Almighty; be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall come from you. The land which I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give the land to your descendants after you” (Genesis 35: 11–12). In return for this promise, the Hebrews, the “chosen people,” agreed to obey God’s will. “Chosen people” means that the Jews were chosen to set an example of a higher moral standard (a light unto the nations), not chosen in the sense of favored, which is a common misunderstanding of the term. Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible, tells the story of the creation of the world out of a “formless void.” It describes God’s creation of the world and all its creatures, and his continuing interest in the workings of the world, an interest that would lead, in the story of Noah, to God’s near-destruction of all things. It also posits humankind as easily tempted by evil. It documents the moment of the introduction of sin (and shame) into the cosmos, associating these with the single characteristic separating humans from animals—knowledge. And it shows, in the example of Noah, the reward for having “walked with God,” the basis of the covenant. (See Reading 2.4, pages 63–65, for two selections from Genesis, the story of Adam and Eve and the story of Noah.) Moses and the Ten Commandments The biblical story of Moses and the Ten Commandments embodies the centrality of the written word to Jewish culture. The Hebrew Bible claims that in about 1600 bce, drought forced the Hebrew people to leave Canaan for Egypt, where they prospered until the Egyptians enslaved them in about 1300 bce. Defying the rule of the pharaohs, the Jewish patriarch Moses led his people out of Egypt. According to tradition, Moses led the Jews across the Red Sea (which miraculously parted to facilitate the escape) and into the desert of the Sinai peninsula. (The story became the basis for the book of Exodus.) Most likely, they crossed a large tidal flat, called the Sea of Reeds; subsequently, that body of water was misidentified as the Red Sea. Unable to return to Canaan, which was now occupied by local tribes of considerable military strength, the Jews settled in an arid region of the Sinai desert near the Dead Sea for a period of 40 years, which archeologists date to sometime between 1300 and 1150 bce. In the Sinai desert, the Hebrews forged the principal tenets of a new religion that would eventually be based on the worship of a single god. There, too, the Hebrew god supposedly revealed a new name for himself—YHWH, a name so sacred that it could neither be spoken nor written. The name is not known and YHWH is a cipher for it. There are, however, many other names for God in the Hebrew Bible, among them Elohim, which is plural in Hebrew, meaning “gods, deities”; Adonai (“Lord”); and El Shaddai, literally “God of the fields” but usually translated “God Almighty.” Some scholars believe that this demonstrates the multiple authorship of the Bible. Others argue that the Hebrews originally worshiped many gods, like other Near Eastern peoples. Still other scholars suggest that God has been given different names to reflect different aspects of his divinity, or the different roles that he might assume—the guardian of the flocks in the fields, or the powerful master of all. Translated into Latin as “Jehovah” in the Middle Ages, the name is now rendered in English as “Yahweh.” This God also gave Moses the Ten Commandments, carved onto stone tablets, as recorded in Deuteronomy 5:6–21. Subsequently, the Hebrews carried the commandments in a ­sacred chest, called the Ark of the Covenant (Fig. 2.15), which was lit by seven-branched candelabras known as 52    PART ONE   The Ancient World and the Classical Past M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 52 19/11/2013 10:08 Fig. 2.15 Menorahs and Ark of the Covenant, wall painting in a Jewish catacomb, Villa Torlonia, Rome. 3rd century ce. 3'11" × 5'9". Two menorahs (seven-branched candelabras) flank each side of the Ark. The menorah is considered a symbol of the nation of Israel and its mission to be “a light unto the nations” (Isaiah 42:6). Instructions for making it are outlined in Exodus 25:31–40. Relatively little ancient Jewish art remains. Most of it was destroyed as the Jewish people were conquered, persecuted, and exiled. menorahs. The centrality to Hebrew culture of these written words is even more apparent in the words of God that follow the commandments (Reading 2.4a): R eading 2 .4 a from the Hebrew Bible, Deuteronomy 6:6–9 6 Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an ­emblem on your forehead, 9 and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. Whenever the Hebrews talked, wherever they looked, wherever they went, they focused on the commandments of their God. Their monotheistic religion was thus also an ethical and moral system derived from an omnipotent God. The Ten Commandments were the centerpiece of the Torah, or Law (literally “instructions”), consisting of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. (Christians would later incorporate these books into their Bible as the first five books of the Old T ­ estament.) The Hebrews considered these five books divinely inspired and attributed their original authorship to Moses himself, although, as we have noted, the texts as we know them were written much later. The body of laws outlined in the Torah is quite different from the code of Hammurabi. The code was essentially a list of punishments for offenses; it is not an ethical code (see Fig. 2.11 and Reading 2.1). Hebraic and Mesopotamian laws are distinctly different. Perhaps because the Hebrews were once themselves aliens and slaves, their law treats the lowest members of society as human beings. As Yahweh declares in Exodus 23:6: “You will not cheat the poor among you of their rights at law.” At least under the law, class d­ istinctions, with the exceptions of slaves, did not exist in Hebrew society, and punishment was levied equally. Above all else, rich and poor alike were united for the common good in a common enterprise, to follow the instructions for living as God provided. After 40 years in the Sinai had passed, it is believed that the patriarch Joshua led the Jews back to Canaan, the Promised Land, as Yahweh had pledged in the covenant. Over the next 200 years, they gradually gained control of the region through a protracted series of wars described in the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings in the Bible, which together make up a theological history of the early Jewish peoples. The Jews named themselves the Israelites, after Israel, the name that was given by God to Jacob. The nation consisted of 12 tribes, each descending from one of Jacob’s 12 sons. By about 1000 bce, Saul had established himself as King of Israel, followed by David, who as a boy rescued the Israelites from the Philistines by killing the giant Goliath with a stone thrown from a sling, as des­cribed in First Samuel, and later united Israel and Judah into a single state. CHAPTER 2   The Ancient Near East   53 M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 53 19/11/2013 10:08 IC IA SYRIA PH OE N The United Monarchy under David and Solomon, c.1100 BCE AR AM Sidon HA B Damascus Tyre M e di te r ranean ZO ARAM Sea of Galilee M -DA AS CU S Samaria Jordan ISRAEL Sea AMMON Jericho PHILISTIA Jerusalem Gaza Beer Sheeba Dead Sea Although women were their husbands’ possessions, the Hebrew Scriptures provide evidence that women may have had greater influence in Hebrew society than this patriarchal structure would suggest. In one of the many texts later incorporated into the Hebrew Bible and written during Solomon’s reign, the “The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s” (as Chapter 1, Verse 1 of this short book reads), the woman’s voice is particularly strong. It is now agreed that the book is not the work of Solomon himself, but rather a work of secular poetry, probably written during his reign. It is a love poem, a dialogue between a man (whose words are reproduced here in regular type) and a younger female lover, a Shulamite, or “daughter of Jerusalem” (whose voice is in italics) (Reading 2.4b). This poem of sexual awakening takes place in a garden atmosphere reminiscent of Eden, but there is no Original Sin here, only fulfillment: MOAB JUDAH R eading 2.4b from the Hebrew Bible, Song of Solomon 4:1–6, 7:13–14 EDOM EGYPT 100 km 100 miles Map 2.2 The United Monarchy of Israel under David and Solomon, ca. 1100 bce. Kings David and Solomon, and Hebrew Society King David reigned until 961 bce. It was he who captured Jerusalem from the Canaanites and made it the capital of Israel (Map 2.2). As represented in the books of Samuel, David is one of the most complex and interesting individuals in ancient literature. A poet and musician, he is author of some of the Psalms. Although he was capable of the most deceitful treachery—sending one of his soldiers, Uriah, to certain death in battle so that he could marry his widow, Bathsheba—he also suffered the greatest sorrow, being forced to endure the betrayal and death of his son Absalom. David was succeeded by his other son, Solomon, famous for his fairness in meting out justice, who ruled until 933 bce. Solomon undertook to complete the building campaign begun by his father, and by the end of his reign, Jerusalem was, by all reports, one of the most beautiful cities in the Near East. A magnificent palace and, most especially, a splendid temple dominated the city. First Kings claims that Yahweh himself saw the temple and approved of it. The rule of the Hebrew kings was based on the model of the scriptural covenant between God and the Hebrews. This covenant was the model for the relationship between the king and his people. Each provided protection in return for obedience and fidelity. The same relationship existed between the family patriarch and his household. His wife and children were his possessions, whom he protected in return for their unerring faith in him. The Song of Songs (translated by Ariel and Chana Bloch) How beautiful you are, my love, My friend! The doves of your eyes looking out from the thicket of your hair. Your hair like a flock of goats bounding down Mount Gilead. … Your breasts are two fauns twins of a gazelle, grazing in a field of lilies. An enclosed garden is my sister, my bride, A hidden well, a sealed spring. … Awake, north wind! O south wind, come, breathe upon my garden, let its spices stream out. Let my lover come into his garden and taste its delicious fruit. … Let us go early to the vineyards to see if the vine has budded, if the blossoms have opened and the pomegranate is in flower. There I will give you my love … rare fruit of every kind, my love, I have stored away for you. So vivid are the poem’s sexual metaphors that many people have wondered how the poem found its way into the Scriptures. But the Bible is frank enough about the attractions of sex. Consider Psalms 30:18–19: “Three things I marvel at, four I cannot fathom: the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship in the heart of the sea, the way of a man with a woman.” The 54    PART ONE   The Ancient World and the Classical Past M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 54 19/11/2013 10:08 Song of Songs is full of double-entendres, expressions that can be understood in two ways, one of them often sexual or risqué. Although the implications of such language are almost un­avoidable, embarrassed Christian interpreters of the Bible for centuries worked hard to avoid the obvious and assert a higher purpose for the poem, reading it, especially, as a description of the relation between Christ and his “Bride,” the Church. Generations of translators also sought to obscure the powerful voice of the female protagonist in the poem by presenting the young woman as chaste and submissive, but of the two voices, hers is the more active and authoritative. In a world in which history is traced through the patriarchs, and genealogies are generally written in the form of the father “begetting” his sons, the young woman asserts herself here in a way that suggests that if in Hebrew society the records of lineage were in the hands of its men, the traditions of love-making—and by extension, the ability to propagate the lineage itself—were controlled by its women. It is even possible that a woman composed all or large parts of the poem, since women traditionally sang songs of victory and mourning in the Bible, and the daughters of Jerusalem actually function as a chorus in the poem, asking questions of the Shulamite. The Prophets and the Diaspora After Solomon’s death, the United Monarchy of Israel split into two separate states. To the north was Israel, with its capital in Samaria, and to the south, Judah, with its capital in Jerusalem. In this era of the two kingdoms, Hebrew culture was dominated by prophets, men who were prophetic not in the sense of foretelling the future, but rather in the sense of serving as mouthpieces and interpreters of Yahweh’s purposes, which they claimed to understand through visions. The prophets instructed the people in the ways of living according to the laws of the Torah, and they more or less freely confronted anyone guilty of wrongful actions, even the Hebrew kings. They attacked, particularly, the wealthy Hebrews whose commercial ventures had brought them unprecedented material comfort and who were inclined to stray from monotheism and worship Canaanite fertility gods and goddesses. The moral laxity of these wealthy Hebrews troubled the prophets, who urged the Hebrew nation to reform spiritually. In 722 bce, Assyrians attacked the northern kingdom of Israel and scattered its people, who were thereafter known as the Lost Tribes of Israel. The southern kingdom of Judah survived another 140 years, until Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians overwhelmed it in 587 bce, destroying the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem and deporting the Hebrews to Babylon (Fig. 2.16). Not only had the Hebrews lost their homeland and their temple, but the Ark of the Covenant itself had also disappeared. For nearly 60 years, the ­Hebrews endured what is known as the Babylonian Captivity. As recorded in Psalm 137: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea we wept, when we remembered Zion.” Fig. 2.16 Exile of the Israelites, detail of a limestone relief from the palace of Sennacherib, Nineveh, Assyria. Late 8th century bce. This relief shows a family of Israelites, their cattle yoked to a cart carrying their household into exile after being defeated by the Assyrians in 722 bce. The relief seems to depict three generations of a family: the father in front with the cattle, the son behind carrying baggage, the wife of the father seated on the front of the cart, the son’s wife and children seated behind her. CHAPTER 2   The Ancient Near East   55 M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 55 19/11/2013 10:08 Finally, invading Persians, whom they believed had been sent by Yahweh, freed them from the Babylonians in 520 bce. They returned to Judah, known now, for the first time, as the Jews (after the name of their homeland). They rebuilt a Second Temple of Jerusalem, with an empty chamber at its center, meant for the Ark of the Covenant should it ever return. And they welcomed back other Jews from around the Mediterranean, including many whose families had left the northern kingdom almost 200 years earlier. Many others, however, were by now permanently settled elsewhere, and they became known as the Jews of the Diaspora, or the “dispersion.” Hebrew culture would have a profound impact on Western civilization. The Jews provided the essential ethical and moral foundation for religion in the West, including Christianity and Islam, both of which incorporate Jewish teachings into their own thought and practice. In the Torah, we find the basis of the law as we understand and practice it today. So moving and universal are the stories recorded in the Torah that over the centuries they have inspired—and continue to ­inspire—countless works of art, music, and literature. Most important, the Hebrews introduced to the world the concept of ethical monotheism, the idea that there is only one God, and that God demands that humans behave in a certain way, and rewards and punishes accordingly. Few, if any, concepts have had a more far-reaching effect on history and culture. THE LATE EMPIRES: NEO-BABYLONIA AND PERSIA How do the art and architecture of NeoBabylonia and Persia reflect the aspirations of the two cultures? As noted earlier in this chapter, the Assyrians had begun to conquer neighboring peoples in about 1000 bce, and they controlled most of Mesopotamia by the end of the ninth century bce, eventually extending their dominance as far west as the Nile Valley by the seventh century bce. The Assyrians modeled a kind of military and cultural prowess that others envied and aspired to attain. The most successful of these new imperial adventurers were the Babylonians and the Persians. Neo-Babylonia From the eighth through the seventh century bce, Babylon fell in and out of Assyrian rule, until Nabopolassar (r. 626–604 bce), the first king of Babylonia, defeated the Assyrians, sacking Nineveh in 612 bce. The Assyrian ­Empire collapsed completely in 609 bce. Nabopolassar was followed by his son and heir, Nebuchadnezzar (r. 604–562 bce), who continued on with his father’s plan to restore Babylon’s palace as the center of Mesopotamian civilization. It was here that the Hebrews lived in exile for nearly Fig. 2.17 Reconstruction drawing of Babylon with the Processional Way and the Ishtar Gate as it might have appeared in the 6th century bce. Courtesy of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. In the distance is the Marduk ziggurat, and between the ziggurat and the Ishtar Gate are the famous Hanging Gardens in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II. 50 years (586–538 bce) after Nebuchadnezzar captured the people of Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar wished to remake Babylon as the most remarkable and beautiful city in the world. It was laid out on both sides of the Euphrates River, joined together by a single bridge. Through the middle of the older, eastern sector, ran the Processional Way, an avenue also called “May the Enemy Not Have Victory” (Fig. 2.17). It ran from the Euphrates bridge eastward through the temple district, past the Marduk ziggurat. (Many believe this ziggurat was the legendary Tower of Babel, described in Genesis 11 as the place where God, confronted with the prospect of “one people … one language,” chose instead to “confuse the language of all the earth,” and scatter people “abroad over the face of the earth.”) Then it turned north, ending at the Ishtar Gate (Fig. 2.18), the northern entrance to the city. Processions honoring Marduk, the god celebrated above all others in Babylonian lore and considered the founder of Babylon itself, regularly filled the street, which was as much as 65 feet wide at some points and paved with large stone slabs. Marduk’s might is celebrated in the Hymn to Marduk (Reading 2.5), found in Ashurbanipal’s library: 56    PART ONE   The Ancient World and the Classical Past M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 56 19/11/2013 10:08 R EAD IN G 2 .5 from the Hymn to Marduk (1000–700 bce) Lord Marduk, Supreme god, with unsurpassed wisdom. … When you leave for battle the Heavens shake, when you raise your voice, the Sea is wild! When you brandish your sword, the gods turn back. There is none who can resist your furious blow! Terrifying lord, in the Assembly of the gods no one equals you! … Your weapons flare in the tempest! Your flame annihilates the steepest mountain. No trace survives of the city’s famous Hanging Gardens, once considered among the Seven Wonders of the World, and only the base and parts of the lower stairs of the Marduk ziggurat still remain. But in the fifth century bce, the Greek historian Herodotus (ca. 484–430/420 bce) described the ziggurat as follows: There was a tower of solid masonry, a furlong in length and breadth, on which was raised a second tower, and on that a third, and so on up to eight. The ascent to the top is on the outside, by a path which winds round all the towers. … On the topmost tower, there is a spacious temple, and inside the temple stands a couch of unusual size, richly adorned with a golden table by its side. … They also declare that the Fig. 2.18 Ishtar Gate (restored), from Babylon. ca. 575 bce. Glazed brick. Staatliche Museen, Berlin. The dark blue bricks are glazed—that is, covered with a film of glass—and they would have shone brilliantly in the sun. View the Closer Look for the Ishtar Gate on MyArtsLab CHAPTER 2   The Ancient Near East   57 M02_P0030-0065_CH02.indd 57 19/11/2013 10:08 god comes down in person into this chamber, and sleeps on the couch, but I do not believe it. Although the ziggurat has disappeared, we can glean some sense of the city’s magnificence from the Ishtar Gate, named after the Babylonian goddess of fertility. Today, the gate is restored and reconstructed inside one of the Berlin State Museums. It was made of glazed and unglazed bricks, and decorated with animal forms. The entire length of the Processional Way was similarly decorated on both sides, so the ensemble must have been a wondrous sight. The gate’s striding lions are particularly interesting. They are traditional symbols of Ishtar herself. Alternating with rows of bulls with blue horns and tails, associated with deities such as Adad, god of the weather, are fantastic dragons with long necks, the forelegs of a lion, and the rear legs of a bird of prey, an animal form sacred to the god Marduk. Like so much other Mesopotamian art, it is at once a monument to the power of Nebuchadnezzar, an affirmation of his close relation to the gods, and a testament to his kingdom’s wealth and well-being. The Persian Empire In 520 bce, the Persians, formerly a minor nomadic tribe that occupied the plateau of Iran, defeated the Babylonians and freed the Jews. Their imperial adventuring had begun in 559 bce with the ascension of Cyrus II (called the Great, r. 559–530 bce), the first ruler of the Achaemenid dynasty, named after Achaemenes, a warrior-king whom Persian legend says ruled on the Iranian plateau around 700 bce. By the time of Cyrus’s death, the Persians had taken control of the Greek cities in Ionia on the west coast of Anatolia. Under King Darius (r. 522–486 bce), they soon ruled a vast empire that stretched from Egypt in the south, around Asia Minor, to the Ukraine in the north. The capital of the Empire was Parsa, which the Greeks called Persepolis, or city of the Persians, located in the Zagros highlands of present-day Iran (Fig. 2.19). Built by artisans and workers from all over the Persian Empire, including Greeks from Ionia, it reflected Darius’s multicultural ambitions. If he was, as he said, “King of Kings, King of countries, King of the earth,” his palace should reflect the diversity of his peoples. The columns reflect Egyptian influence, and, especially in their fluting, the vertical channels that exaggerate their height and lend them a feeling of lightness, they reflect the influence of the Greeks (see Chapter 4). Rulers are depicted in relief sculptures with Assyrian beards and headdresses (Fig. 2.20). In typical Mesopotamian fashion, they are larger than other people in the works. These decorations further reflect the Persians’ sense that all the peoples of the region owed them allegiance. The relief from the stairway to the audience hall, where Darius and his son Xerxes received visitors, is covered with images of their subjects bringing gifts to the palace—23 subject nations in all, including Ionian, Babylonian, Syrian, and Susian, each culture recognizable by its beards and costumes. Darius can be seen receiving tribute as Xerxes stands Watch the video about Persepolis on MyArtsLab The CONTINUING PRESENCE of the PAST See Marjane Satrapi, page from the “Kim Wilde” chapter of Persepolis, 2001, at MyArtsLab Fig. 2.19 Palace of Darius and Xerxes, Persepolis, Iran. 518–ca. 460 bce. The palace stands on a rock terrace 545 y...