by Peter Watson
73. Ibid., page 100.
>74. Ibid., page 101.
75. Ibid., page 17.
76. Ibid., page 102. See Clark, Op. cit., pages 185f for a wider discussion of the impact of iron technology and for an illustration of a Greek iron-smith taken from a black-figured vase.
77. Wertime, Op. cit., page 103.
78. Ibid., page 82.
79. Ibid., page 116. Clark, Op. cit., page 186 discusses the cheapness of later iron.
80. Wertime, Op. cit., page 121.
81. Ibid., page 194.
82. Ibid., page 105.
83. Ibid., page 82.
84. Ibid., pages 197 and 215. Clark, Op. cit., page 170, discusses the role of gold as embellishment in armour.
85. Wertime, Op. cit., page 198.
86. Jack Weatherford, A History of Money, New York: Three Rivers Press, 1997, page 21.
87. Ibid., page 27.
88. Ibid., page 31. See Clark, Op. cit., page 194 for illustrations of early Greek coins.
89. Mithen, After the Ice, Op. cit., pages 67–68.
90. Weatherford, Op. cit., page 32.
91. Ibid., page 37.
92. Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1978, page 152.
CHAPTER 4: CITIES OF WISDOM
1. H. W. F. Saggs, Before Greece and Rome, London: B. T. Batsford, 1989, page 62. Petr Charvát, Mesopotamia Before History, London: Routledge, 2002, page 100. (First published as: Ancient Mesopotamia–Humankind’s Long Journey into Civilization by the Oriental Institute, Prague, 1993)
2. Renfrew, Before Civilisation, Op. cit., page 212, and Rudgley, Op. cit., page 48.
3. Gwendolyn Leick, Mesopotamia, London: Penguin, 2002, page xviii. For Tell Brak and Tell Hamoukar, see: Graham Lawton, ‘Urban legends’, New Scientist, 18 September 2004, pages 32–35.
4. Hans J. Nissen, The Early History of the Ancient Near East, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988, pages 5 and 71. Charvát, Op. cit., page 134.
5. Nissen, Op. cit., page 56. Scientists from the Universities of Georgia and of Maine reported in Science in 2002 that there was a sudden drop in temperature across the world 5,000 years ago, and that this may have encouraged the development of complex civilisations in both hemispheres. A study of ancient fish bones indicates that the temperature fall brought about the first El Niño, the periodic warming of the Pacific, which brings unusual weather patterns every two-to-seven years. Off South America, the fish population rocketed, which may have triggered people to build large temples (to maintain the catch through communal worship). But the change in weather and temperature would have dried out many areas, forcing people in the Old World in particular to congregate in river valleys. Daily Telegraph (London), 2 November 2002, page 10.
6. Nissen, Op. cit., page 67.
7. Ibid., page 56.
8. Ibid., page 69.
9. Leick, Op. cit., page 2.
10. Ibid., page 3.
11. Charvát, Op. cit., page 93.
12. Mason Hammond, The City in the Ancient World, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1972, page 38.
13. Nissen, Op. cit., 72.
14. Ibid., pages 130–131.
15. Ibid., pages 132–133. Charvát, Op. cit., page 134.
16. Hammond, Op. cit., pages 37–38. Charvát, Op. cit., page 134.
17. Ibid.
18. Hans Nissen cautions us that we know so little about the ‘temples’ and ‘palaces’ of Mesopotamian cities that we are not really justified in referring to them other than as ‘public buildings’. Nissen, Op. cit., page 98.
19. The use of this particular word has provoked the idea among some modern scholars that the ziggurats were an attempt to reproduce similar shrines that had been built on natural hills in the original homeland of the Sumerians. This would imply that they had moved down into the Mesopotamian delta from the highlands of Elam to the north and east. Hammond, Op. cit., page 39.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., page 45.
22. D. Schmandt-Besserat, Before Writing, volume 1: From Counting to Cuneiform, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992.
23. Rudgley, Op. cit., page 50.
24. Ibid., page 53.
25. Ibid., page 54. The French scholar who has cast doubt on this reconstruction is: Jean-Jacques Glassner, in The Invention of the Cuneiform: Writing in Sumer, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.
26. S. M. M. Winn, Pre-writing in South Eastern Europe: The Sign System of the Vinca Culture, circa 4000 BC, Calgary: Western Publishers, 1981.
27. Le Figaro (Paris), 3 June 1999, page 16.
28. Saggs, Op. cit. page 6.
29. Ibid., page 7.
30. Nissen, Op. cit., page 74.
31. Ibid., page 76.
32. Ibid., pages 78–79.
33. Saggs, Op. cit., page 83.
34. Rudgley, Op. cit., page 70.
35. Nissen, Op. cit., page 84.
36. Saggs, Op. cit., page 62.
37. Ibid., page 65.
38. Ibid., pages 66–68.
39. Ibid., pages 68–69.
40. G. Contenau, Everyday Life in Babylon and Assyria, London: Edward Arnold, 1954, page 158.
41. Ibid., page 160.
42. Ibid., pages 162–163.
43. Leick, Op. cit., page 66.
44. Nissen, Op. cit., page 138.
45. Leick, Op. cit., page 73.
46. Nissen, Op. cit., page 139.
47. Leick, Op. cit., page 75.
48. David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, page 12.
49. Nissen, Op. cit., page 140. Charvát, Op. cit., page 127.
50. Saggs, Op. cit., pages 78–84.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid., page 81.
53. Nissen, Op. cit., page 136.
54. Saggs, Op. cit., page 98.
55. Ibid., page 104. Most scribes were men but by no means all. The daughter of Sargon of Agade, who was high-priestess of the Moon-god in Ur, became famous as a poet. When scribes signed documents, they often added the names and positions of their fathers, which confirms that they were usually the sons of city governors, temple administrators, army officers or priests. Literacy was confined to scribes and administrators.
56. Saggs, Op. cit., page 105.
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid., page 107.
59. Ibid., page 110.
60. Ibid., page 111.
61. Ibid., page 112.
62. Ibid., page 103.
63. Leick, Op. cit., page 214.
64. Ibid., page 82.
65. Contenau, Op. cit., page 196.
66. William B. F. Ryan et al., ‘An abrupt drowning of the Black Sea shelf’, Marine Geology, volume 38, 1997, pages 119–126. In October 2002 Marine Geology dedicated an entire issue to the Black Sea hypothesis. Most writers were negative.
67. George Roux, Ancient Iraq, London: Penguin, 1966, page 109.
68. Nissen, Op. cit., page 95.
69. Ibid.
70. H. and H. A. Frankfort et al., Before Philosophy, London: Penguin, 1949, page 224. Andrew R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts (2 vols), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
71. Contenau, Op. cit., page 204.
72. Frankfort et al., Op. cit., page 225.
73. Ibid., page 226.
74. Contenau, Op. cit., page 205.
75. Frankfort et al., Op. cit., page 226.
76. Lionel Casson, Libraries in the Ancient World, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001, page 4.
77. Ibid., page 7.
78. Ibid., page 13.
79. Charvát, Op. cit., page 101.
80. Ibid., page 210.
81. Ibid.
82. Leick, Op. cit., page 90.
83. Stuart Piggott, Wagon, Chariot and Carriage, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1992, page 16.
84. Ibid., page 21, map.
&
nbsp; 85. Ibid., page 41.
86. Ibid.
87. Ibid., page 44.
88. Yuri Rassamakin, ‘The Eneolithic of the Black Sea steppe: dynamics of cultural and economic development 4500–2300 BC’, in Marsha Levine et al., Late Prehistoric Exploitation of the Eurasian Steppe, Cambridge, England: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research Monographs, 1999, pages 136–137.
89. Ibid., pages 5–58.
90. Ibid., page 9.
91. Quoted in Saggs, Op. cit., page 176.
92. Arthur Ferrill, The Origins of War, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1985, page 15.
93. Ibid., pages 18–19.
94. Ibid., page 21.
95. Ibid., page 26. In Sumer, writing provides evidence that they had no compunction in raiding mountain peoples to kill, loot and enslave. The ideogram for ‘slave-girl’ is a combination of ‘woman’ and ‘mountain’. Saggs, Op. cit., page 176.
96. Ferrill, Op. cit., page 46.
97. Ibid., pages 66–67.
98. Ibid., page 72. The Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin has used Assyrian sculptural reliefs to study the development of siege techniques in warfare. Sieges became necessary after the rise of armies in the second and first millennia BC had stimulated the building everywhere of fortified sites. Assyrian generals developed a variety of specialised equipment. There was the battering ram and the mobile tower, both on wheels. The discovery of carburised iron encouraged the development of special poles and pikes to scrape away at weak point in city walls. Sieges were never easy: most cities kept enough food and water to live on for more than a year, by which time anything could have happened (when the Assyrians were besieging Jerusalem in 722 BC, they were decimated by plague). Assault was always preferred to a waiting game. See Ferrill, Op. cit., pages 76–77.
99. Saggs, Op. cit., page 156.
100. Roux, Op. cit., page 185.
101. W. G. De Burgh, The Legacy of the Ancient World, London: Penguin, 1953/1961, page 25.
102. Saggs, Op. cit., pages 156–158.
103. Roux, Op. cit., page 187.
104. Ibid., page 171.
105. Ibid., page 173.
106. Saggs, Op. cit., page 160.
107. Ibid., page 161.
108. Ibid., page 162.
109. Ibid.
110. Ibid., page 165.
111. Charvát, Op. cit., page 155.
112. Ibid., page 230.
113. Ibid., page 236.
CHAPTER 5: SACRIFICE, SOUL, SAVIOUR: THE ‘SPIRITUAL BREAKTHROUGH’
1. Brian Fagan, From Black Land to Fifth Sun: The Science of Sacred Sites, Reading, Massachusetts: Helix/Perseus Books, 1998, pages 244–245.
2. The Khonds, a Dravidian tribe of Bengal, offered sacrifices to the earth goddess. The victim, known as Meriah, was either bought from his parents, or born of parents who were themselves victims. The Meriahs lived happily for years, and were regarded as consecrated beings; they married other ‘victims’ and were given a piece of land as a dowry. About two weeks before the sacrifice, the victim’s hair was cut off in a ceremony where everyone assisted. This was followed by an orgy and the Meriah was brought to a part of the nearby forest ‘as yet not defiled by the axe’. He was anointed in melted butter and other oils, and flowers, and then drugged with opium. He was killed by being either crushed, strangled, or roasted slowly over a brazier. Then he was cut into pieces. These remains were taken back to nearby villages where they were buried to ensure a good harvest. Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, London: Sheed & Ward, 1958, pages 344–345.
3. If tears are shed to beg the god to send rain, that is regarded by anthropologists, such as J. G. Frazer, as sheer religion. If tears are shed to imitate the falling of rain, that is sympathetic magic and religion combined: humans act out what they magically induce the gods to do. See also: Eliade, Patterns, Op. cit., page 345. Miranda Aldhouse Green, Dying for the Gods: Human Sacrifice in Iron Age and Roman Europe, London: Tempus, 2001.
4. B. Washburn Hopkins, Origin and Evolution of Religion, New Haven and New York: Yale University Press, 1924, page 116. Royden Keith Kerkes, Sacrifice in Greek and Roman Religions and Early Judaism, London: Adam and Charles Black, 1953, page 31.
5. Hopkins, Op. cit., page 50.
6. Eliade, Patterns, Op. cit., page 86.
7. Ibid., page 88.
8. Ibid., page 90.
9. Ibid., page 91.
10. Ibid., page 217. For the history of the Dravidians, see A.C. Bouquet, Comparative Religion, London: Cassell, 1961, pages 116ff.
11. Eliade, Patterns, Op. cit., page 219. Kerkes, Op. cit., page 92.
12. Eliade, Patterns, Op. cit., page 332.
13. Ibid., page 334.
14. See: Michael Jordan, Gods of the Earth, London: Bantam, 1992, page 106, for ceremonies of allegorical fertilisation in Egypt.
15. Eliade, Patterns, Op. cit., page 342.
16. Ibid., page 343.
17. For the history of maize in Mesoamerica see Barry Cunliffe, Wendy Davies and Colin Renfrew (editors), Archaeology: The Widening Debate, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. And for the maize-mother see Frank B. Jevons, An Introduction to the History of Religions, London: Methuen, 1896/1904, pages 257–258.
18. C. Jouco Bleeker and Geo Widengren (editors), Historia Religionum, volume 1, Religions of the Past, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969/1988, page 116.
19. Eliade, Patterns, Op. cit., page 75.
20. Ibid., page 102.
21. Ibid., page 104.
22. The oldest Indo-Aryan root connected with heavenly bodies is the one that means ‘moon’ (me) and in Sanskrit it is transformed into a word that means ‘I measure’. Words with the same root and the same meaning exist in Old Prussian, Gothic, Greek (mene) and Latin (mensis). Consider the English words ‘commensurate’ and ‘menstruation’. Eliade, Patterns, Op. cit., page 154.
23. Ibid., page 165. See too Jevons, Op. cit., pages 228–229, and Zehren, Op. cit., pages 94–95 and 240–241 for the moon-bull.
24. Hopkins, Op. cit., page 109. E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture: Development of Mythology, Religion, Art, Astronomy etc., London: John Murray, 1871.
25. Ibid., pages 124–126.
26. Ibid., page 130.
27. S. G. Brandon, Religion in Ancient History, London: Allen & Unwin, 1973, pages 147ff.
28. Ibid., page 69.
29. Ibid., page 70.
30. Bleeker and Widengren (editors), Op. cit., pages 96–99.
31. Brandon, Op. cit., page 71.
32. Ibid., page 7.
33. Ibid., page 72. See Zehren, Op. cit., pages 283–284 for discussion of the crescent moon as a ‘sun ship’ sailing before daybreak to the sun and the afterlife (the aureole of the sun).
34. Brandon, Op. cit., page 72.
35. Ibid., page 73.
36. Edwin Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, pages 298–299; George Cordana and Dhanesh Jain (editors), The Indo-Aryan Languages, London: Routledge, 2003; Asko Parpola, ‘Tongues that tie a billion souls’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 8 October 2004, pages 26–27.
37. Bryant, Op. Cit., page 165.
38. Ibid., page 166.
39. Ibid.
40. Brandon, Op. cit., page 87.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., page 86.
43. Jan N. Bremmer, The Rise and Fall of the Afterlife, London and New York: Routledge, 2002, page 1.
44. Ibid., page 2.
45. Brandon, Op. cit., page 74.
46. Ibid., page 75.
47. Ibid., pages 31–32.
48. Ibid., page 76.
49. Bremmer, Op. cit., page 4.
50. Ibid., page 5 and ref. See Jevons, Op. cit., chapter 21, ‘The next life’, for a discussion of Hades.
