Aegean Civilization (around the Aegean sea)
- Phoenicians and their colony of Carthage became the greatest martime power then
- Carthage - land trading with Central Africa
- reflected a sense of quality and quantity in marketable goods -- barter trade, iron became the first currency
China
- Chinese writing 'created a special reading class..the ruling and official class. Their necessary concentration upon words and classical forms, rather than upon ideas and realities, seems...to have greatly hampered the social and economic development of China...' --> too laborious and inflexible to meet the modern need for simple and lucid communication
Temples & the move from priestly to secular governments
- 'the desire to propitiate unknown forces, the primitive desire for cleansing and the primitive craving for power and knowledge'
- shrine and entrance faced the same direction, often east, facing the sunrise on Mar 21 & Sept 21, the equinoxes
- the earliest governments were essentially priestly governments -- but the 'incapacity for efficient military leadership and their inevitable jealousy of all other religious cults' led to the rise of secular kingship
- the court became a centre of writing and records
- the conquest of any city included the subordination of its god in the temple of the conquerer's
- Cyrus set up the Persian Empire in Babylon with the blessing of Bel-Marduk 539 B.C
- In Egypt, the Pharaoh is treated as a god, with power and importance exceeding that of any priest
- Egypt - the great god Ammon Ra
Social and political developments of emerging civilizations
The social and political development of Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations:
1) Priesthood and the temple
2) Court system
3) 'tillers of the soil' : free peasants, serfs, farmers
4) Artisan class
5) Herdsmen
6) Merchants - shipowners, traders
7) Retailers
8) Independent property owners
9) Domestic servants
10) Gang workers - prisoners of war, debt slaves
11) Mercenary soldiers
12) Seamen
The social and political development of Indian civilizations:
1) Royal and aristocratic class
2) Mercantile class
3) Artisans
4) Farmers
5) Herdsmen
Caste system:
1) Brahmins: teachers and priests
2) Kshatriyas: warriors
3) Vaisyas: herdsmen, merchants, land-owners
4) Sudras
5) Pariahs: outcasts
The social and political development of Chinese civilization:
1) Literary class
2) Farmers
3) Artisans
4) Mercantile class
-- difference would be the landowners as land and possessions are divided among his sons
Old Testament
- sacred literature of the Jews who had returned to their city Jerusalem after being recently deported to Babylon
- position of Judea and Jerusalem is between the Mediterranean (west) and the desert beyong Jordan (east) ; through it lies the road between Hittites, Syria, Assyria, Babylon (north), Egypt (south) --commentary on the history of the people around it
- first 5 books, Pentateuch, begins with the Creation of the world and mankind
- what is Palestine today was at the time the land of Canaan, inhabited by the Canaanites
- when the Hebrews under Joshua pursued their subjugation of the land, they came against the Philistines in the south, the Canaanites and Phoenicians in the north -- the Hebrews are not victorious and desert the worship of their god Jehovah -- they mix their races with the Philistines
- book of Kings begins with King Solomon (960 B.C) - Solomon builds a palace for himself, a temple for Jehovah where the Ark of Covenant abode, and appointed priests to guard the ark --> created a central sacred abode
- for the Jews who returned, it was 'an age of historical inquiry and learning in Babylonia'
- they developed leading ideas that:
1) 'all the people were pure-blooded children of Abraham'
2) a promise made by Jehovah to Abraham that he would exalt the Jewish race above all others
3) Jehovah was the greatest and most powerful of tribal gods, and the 'only true god'
4) the Jews, as a people, were the chosen people of the one God of all the earth
5) the coming of a saviour who would realize the promises the Jehovah
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