Religious Life of Semitic People - Term Paper Example

 «Religious Life of Semitic People» I t would be very difficult to argue against the importance of early Mesopotamian culture, because it is the earliest known instance of a city culture as opposed to rural ones. The title Mesopotamia refers to the land which lies between two rivers, these being the Tigres which lies to the east and the Euphrates to the west, and which now lies within the borders of modern Iraq. In the earliest chapters of the Bible, in Genesis 2 v14, the Euphrates is referred to as flowing out of the Garden of Eden, so it seems that the Biblical writers seem to have felt that this area was where humanity began. Geographic factors were important Uruk's growth. The city was located in an alluvial plain. The people of the area were able to domesticate native grains from the nearby foothills. This together with the wide variety of edible vegetation that would grow insuch an area meant it was able to support a large population on one site. The Mesopotamians were a Semitic people, that is they spoke one of the Semitic languages from which modern day Hebrew and Aramaic are derived, and were genetically Caucasians. Tradition they were from descended from Shem, son of Noah. Their civilization existed mainly on the banks of the Euphrates, this being where land was most fertile and therefore capable of producing enough crops to support a city state. There was also the early domestication of animals such as sheep and goats were also domesticated. The cities had many of the attributes that we recognize in modern times at a period in history when the majority of the world’s people were still hunter gatherers. The area had been home for thousands of years to hunters, fishermen and farmers who exploited its fertile soil, the ready supply of water from its rivers and the consequent abundance of fish, birds and animals. The City of Uruk Archaeologists have uncovered various layers of habitation, the deepest, known as Uruk XVIII or the Eridu period can be dated to about 5000 B.C.E. and represents the founding of the city. The excavators then refer to the other layers as follows:- Uruk XVIII-XVI Late Ubaid period (4800–4200 BCE) Uruk XVI-X Early Uruk period (4000-3800 BCE) Uruk IX-VI Middle Uruk period (3800-3400 BCE) Uruk V-IV Late Uruk period (3400-3000 BCE); The earliest monumental temples of 100Eanna District are built. Uruk III Jedet Nasr period (3000–2900 BCE); The 9 km city wall is built Uruk II Uruk I The cities seem to have been in response to the collective need of the settlers to organise together such things as irrigation and trade. City life soon became a popular life style. Sabloff and Lamberg-Kalovsky in ‘Ancient Civilization and Trade ( 1975) page 306, mentions an increase of 100% in the size of the city of Susa from the earliest times of Uruk to its middle period, without any apparent increase in the area of land under cultivation, and something similar must have happened with regard to Uruk. At its peak Uruk is considered to have had as many as 50,000 inhabitants. The cities, behind their strong walls, offered protection, social amenities, the opportunity to worship and to buy more easily available goods in a wide variety and so the cities grew. They were on the bank of rivers, which allowed trade with distant communities, but also supplied fresh water and could be used for irrigation. Dams and weirs were constructed to control flow, just as they are today. In the land outside the walls wooden ploughs broke up the soil ready for planting. Carts were also made. Cattle provided milk and other dairy products as well of course as meat and leather. Petr Charvát describes in ‘Mesopotamia before History’, 2002, ( page 61) the finding of a communal sheep or cattle fold with bitumen lined water trough and manger for stock food. Various fruits were grown and from some of these alcoholic drinks, probably discovered by accident, were made. The collection of wild food diminished as cultivated crops became available. Pigs became a domesticated animal – something impossible to more nomadic groups. Often pigs were slaughtered at an early age – less than one year old, which suggests that this was a common meat source. One image mentioned by Charvát ( page 99) is of a man climbing to pour grain into a large silo. He also reports that sickles made from hard baked clay have been found on the site of Uruk ( page 99). Such clay sickles continued to be used alongside metal edged tools when these alter came into use in much the same way that in modern society some people adopt new technology earlier than others .Triangular hoes were also used by cultivators. As well as distant trade there would of course local trade which allowed people to specialize e.g. become bakers, metal workers, artists etc. There were pottery makers for instance. In their book of 1975 ‘Ancient Civilization and Trade’ Sabloff and Lamberg-Kalovsky describe ( p 297) the finding of ceramic kilns in various areas. In around 3200 B.C.,Uruk, sometime spelt Erech, was the largest settlement in southern Mesopotamia and almost certainly in the world. It lay about 250 km south of modern Baghdad. The name is thought to have given Iraq its modern name. The site has been excavated in great detail be various German archeologists over a period of almost 100 years as described by Petr Charvát ( chapter 5) The city seems to have begun as two separate settlements called Kullaba and Eanna, which later in the Uruk period amalgamated to form a town which eventually covered an area of 80 hectares. The excavation revealed certain layers representing the city over time, for instance clay tokens were found in lower layers, but more complex cylinder seals were found at level VII. Copper tools were used at one time, but disappear by level VI. Bone was used throughout the city’s life to make awls, spatulas and whistles. So it can be seen how the city gradually grew from a small semi-rural community into a complex city state with sophisticated needs. In the Early Dynastic period, (2900–2350 B.C.), the city walls which were 9.5 km long, enclosed an area of 450 hectares. There may have been as many as some 50,000 people within the walls at its peak. It was a true city, continuously inhabited for a period of 10,000 years from 5,000 B.C.E. until 5,000 C.E., although from the 3rd millennium B.C.E. it did diminish in its importance, loosing perhaps 40% of its people according to Sabloff, page 307. The city was not just a collection of homes, but also had public buildings such as temples and schools where a chosen few learned to be scribes using the wedge shaped ( cuneiform) letters. Its large mud brick buildings were not just utilitarian shelters, buildings decorated with mosaics of painted clay cones which the inhabitants embedded in their walls, both of their homes and the public buildings. Charvát ( page 92) quotes Mallowan and Rose , who in 1935 described the finding of hundreds of blocks of variously colored clays, and there were also palettes where stones of different hues would be crushed. Gypsum was used as a plaster on facades according to Charvát ( page 49). On the river side quays were constructed for shipping and there were warehouses and other commercial buildings. Houses often had two stories with both fire places and sanitary systems. It is possible that people dwelt in extended families judging by the size of rooms and houses, though Charvát says this is unclear. (page 36) although he also suggests that the use of seals suggests extended kinship relationships. Seals reveal many aspects of social life e.g a circumcised penis, a couple embracing on one side of a seal with on the other a baby in a nappy. There were even large-scale sculptures in the round as described on the Museum of Metropolitan Art’s web page ‘The First City’. Other artistic methods emerged at this time, relief carving and the casting of metal using the lost-wax process. Trade Because people were city dwellers they were no longer as self sufficient as the more rural dwellers and so relied on trade in order to obtain the various goods they required or wanted to obtain. Sabloff, Page 306, describes how certain mass-produced craft items and administrative services were traded in exchange for both labor and local agricultural produce. Goods were traded easily up and down the rivers. But trade requires records and so simple pictographs were developed and different shapes would represent the various commodities being traded. At first these were tokens placed inside clay balls which were then sealed and only broken at the other end to check the correct number of goods had arrived. For example a ball might contain 5 tokens for sacks of wheat as described on the web site Ancient Mesopotamia. Later the symbols were pressed into the outside of the balls and later still the symbols were drawn on flat clay tablets in order to provide records of the management of goods and the allocations of rations for the workers involved. The earliest tablets are simple pictographs, labels and lists. From these pictographs cuneiform writing would later develop, that is writing using an alphabet consisting of groups of triangular or wedge shapes pressed into wet clay. This seems to have been a gradual process with the triangular forms becoming more common over time. It is known that the city traded as far afield as the Nile delta, because artifacts from Uruk have been discovered there. During the Early Dynastic period when city-states such as Uruk dominated Mesopotamia, the city rulers grew in importance and increasingly they sought to express this sense of power by the acquisition and display of luxury materials. At this time the city was surrounded by a high wall, which according to tradition had been built on the orders of King Gilgamesh, a semi mythical figure Although he may have been an actual king of Uruk in around 2700 B.C. and is included in the list of kings of Sumaria, Gilgamesh became an epic demigod hero of many later stories and epics with mythical elements. Goods, often from abroad, were acquired in two ways, either by simple trade or by conquest. At this time Uruk was surrounded by a massive wall, which according to tradition and the tales about him, was built on the orders of King Gilgamesh. Religious life Public buildings included Eanna (house of An) a temple complex dedicated to the goddess Inanna, otherwise known as Ishtar, who was worshipped as the goddess of love, fertility and war. She was associated with the star Venus. Her worship carried on in the Greek and Roman civilizations as Aphrodite or Venus, who shared exactly the same attributes as Uruk’s Ishtar as described on the Atlas Tour web page ‘Uruk( Akkad), Iraq. There was also a sanctuary dedicated to Anu, the god of the sky which originally belonged only to Kebulla, This has on its north west corner a ziggurat, the stepped pyramid type structure with outside steps and from which the priests carried out their rites at the top. The people believed that the gods could be annoyed or pleased by human behavior and were capable of both punishing or rewarding them. The people trusted the priests to be in contact with the gods and so let them know what was required of them. This gave the priesthood huge power and authority. The temple rests on large limestone blocks, which are connected by mortar, these being placed in a foundation pit according to Charvát ( page 101) It seems most likely that the temples were originally built on platforms at ground level, but gradually higher and higher levels added to these earlier foundations. What remains of the internal fittings of the temple includes water features which suggest that washing was part of temple ritual. Fire was also used, probably for its cleansing properties. There was a belief that such edifices as this temple joined heaven and earth in some mystic way. The creation and maintenance of such a building would involve a large number of laborers as well as more skilled workers. The wall surfaces would have mosaic ornamentation made up of pegs of red sandstone, alabaster and grey stone chips applied to black, bituminous limestone. This degree of specialization meant that these various people would require organising and also feeding, as they would have little spare time for hunting or cultivating their own crops, which helps explain the importance of trade to these people. I f they couldn’t hunt or grow food they had to obtain it in some other way. In the area of the temples records were found which revealed that the people paid tithes and that the temple too traded its goods. The city had a school building where scribes could learn their trade. Reading, writing, including grammar as well basic mathematics and history were on the curriculum, almost certainly only for boys. It is from such early beginnings as a trading language that ultimately literature such as the writing of poems and stories began. Petr Charvát entitled his 2002 book ‘Mesopotamia before History’, but these people were writing their own history as they went. One way in which change can be seen is the fact that the dead are beginning to be interred in communal cemeteries outside the city as described by Chavrát ( page 91,) though children who died were still buried under houses. Grave goods are seen in these later graves and the bodies are no longer in supine positions but crouched with their hands in front of their faces. The presence of grave goods is indicative of belief in an after life. Crops and trades Society was ordered on patriarchal lines, with boys usually learning their father’s trade. Most women and girls were occupied in traditional womanly tasks such as grinding corn to make bread and weaving linen and wool. Flax was grown, and despite the earliness of this civilization, they had discovered the complicated process of turning the plant fibres into linen thread. Canals were dug, some as long as 5 km, Charvát, page 59, in order to provide water for crops. Charvát also reports that it was in this area where both date palms and vines were first cultivated. Fish would be obtained from the river, some to eat and others to dry for later use or to trade. Cooked fish has also been found in temple sites where it had been used as offerings to the gods. They were able to trade with other people over long distances, both to benefit from their surplus goods in a profitable way, and also to get items, especially luxuries e.g. the lapis lazuli found in the royal Mesopotamian tombs which may well have come all the way overland from the Afghan-Pakistan border region, although this is not certain as there are small deposits elsewhere in the world. Ceramics were quite sophisticated, with various styles of decoration and handles. Even at this early period the potters had discovered the best composition of the clay paste used for making vessels and other ceramic items. Artificial stone for statuettes was made from a combination of gypsum and sand as recorded in 1993 by Becker and Heinz. Charvát describes on page 30 how they resorted on occasions to mixing various types of raw materials if the kind of paste they wanted could not be found easily in its raw state. The firing temperature used at this early period varied between 850 and 1100 degrees centigrade. They would color and decorate their wares – often with incised lines hatched at various angles. Red and black were favored colors as was cream or white. Such pottery as was produced by these specialist potters would of course have a ready market, both locally and at a distance. It would be exchanged for materials not available locally, but nevertheless wanted by the citizens, such as alabaster. One kiln site excavated revealed hundreds of bowls. Charvát suggests that it was the potters who first discovered how to smelt copper by accident, because they used materials that contained copper and iron to color their goods. Flint working were only at a distance of 16 kilometers, but the more exotic obsidian was also used for cutting edges, though Charvát states, page 30, that these were not created locally but imported complete and ready to use. Stone objects were traded by people who lived in the higher lands with those who lived on the river plains. Herdsmen would bring their flocks from the summer pastures on higher land down to the city markets. Stone workers were able to cut materials with a hardness on the Mohs scale of 4-7, something that required metal cutting tools as described by Charvát, page 68. Cattle were used for the first time known as beasts of burden and also to pull carts for transport. Fashions Because of the pictures preserved in the dry air we know that the women wore clothing that covered them from neck to ankle, though the right arm and shoulder would be left bare. They wore their hair long, often in braids twisted around their heads. Men were often clean shaven, despite having no metal blades, but beards were also worn. They were bare-chested. Both sexes wore earrings and necklaces and, on special occasions, headdresses. As in all societies there was a social hierarchy and although similar styles of clothing were worn be all the richer people seem to have had more luxurious fabrics and brighter colors. Conclusion From small beginnings great empires grow. It was people from this region who would later found the might empire of Babylonia which stretched from the Persian Gulf right across the Mediterranean. From their early recording methods all the literature we now have was born. Indeed it was a citizen of Uruk, Gilgamesh, an early king, who is the hero of one of the earliest heroic tales known, preserved on clay tablets found in the library of of the 7th century BCE king of Assyria, Ashurbanipal. From their ideas and organization we have our modern cities. Even at this early stage of history people acted in similar ways to modern people of the 21st century and had similar concerns and ways of dealing with their problems. They may be separated by millennia of time, but a close examination of their society shows many parallels with modern society – their social hierarchy, their desire for exotic goods. They asked the important questions of life as is still done. They had a need for a spiritual aspect to their lives and we can recognise their acceptance of new ideas, so different to those of earlier generations. They were able to make sophisticated use of the materials available to them, both locally and at a distance. These are all things that we, as modern people still do and still value even after 9,000 years. Works Cited Genesis Chapter 2, King James Bible Electronic Sources Becker, A. and Heinz, M. (1993) Uruk-Kleinfunde I. Stein. AUWE, vol. 6. Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern. quoted by Charvát ( page 102) Charvát, P. Mesopotamia before History, Routledge, London, 2002, Questia Online Library, 10th December 2008, http://www.questia.com/read/108070732?title=Mesopotamia%20before%20History Clothing, What did the Sumarians Wear?, 11th December 2008 http://www.shrewsbury-ma.gov/schools/Central/Curriculum/ELEMENTARY/SOCIALSTUDIES/Mesopotamia/ancient_mesopotamia.htm#clothing Ancient Mesopotamia, 11th December 2008, http://www.shrewsbury-ma.gov/schools/Central/Curriculum/ELEMENTARY/SOCIALSTUDIES/Mesopotamia/ancient_mesopotamia.htm#religion Lapis Lazuli, 11th December 2008 http://www.gemstone.org/gem-by-gem/english/lapis.html Sabloff, J. and Lamberg-Kalovsky,Ancient Civilization and Trade, Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1975, Questia Online Library, 11th December 2008, http://www.questia.com/read/78144510?title=Ancient%20Civilization%20and%20Trade Sumerian Kings list: translation, 10th December 2008 http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/section2/tr211.htm The First City, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 2003, 10th December 2008, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/uruk/hd_uruk.htm Uruk, ( Akkad), Iraq, Atlas Tours, 10th December 2008, http://www.atlastours.net/iraq/uruk.html Read More