The value concept of eunomia, mentioned above, introduces the last part of my present investigation. Here I will move in the other direction, from Greece back to the Near East. In the archaic period, Greek political thought focused on justice, order, the conditions that fostered communal well-being, and the qualities needed for successful leadership; by contrast, on aristocratic abuse of power and tyranny; more generally, on individual and collective responsibility for the common weal; finally on equality, dependence or servitude, and freedom. The question is whether such political ideas, values, and concepts might have had analogs in the older civilizations of West Asia and Egypt and, if this was the case, whether these might have influenced Greek developments. I focus here on two examples: good order and freedom.
In the archaic Greek world, eunomia describes the ideal of a well-ordered community (Ostwald 1969: 62-95; Meier 1990b: 160-2, and bibliog. in Raaflaub 2004b: 55 nn164-6). According to recent suggestions (Fadinger 1996; see also Bernal 1993; for critical discussion, see Barta 2006), Solon was inspired during his travels by the Egyptian concept of ma‘at and realized it in Athens in his version of eunomia. That Solon imported laws from Egypt, we saw earlier, is highly implausible. Here an effort is made to derive from Egyptian models not only a law but a political concept that played a crucial role in archaic political thought. How plausible is this?
To be sure, Solon could have known, directly or indirectly, about Egyptian concepts of order. But does the extant evidence support this? Ma‘at is an ancient, comprehensive, and very complex concept, that is imagined as divinely sanctioned from the beginning of creation, represented by a deity, and contrasted with isfet, its exact opposite and negation (Assmann 1990, 1993; Quirke 1994; Morschauser 1995). It is insufficiently defined by terms like truth, justice, or order.
Ma‘at defined the divine ordinances by which the universe was originally set into motion and properly maintained... In the immanent realm, ma‘at fixed the parameters of Egyptian society itself, setting out the limits for the proper and discretionary exercise of power by those who ruled toward those over whom they had authority. Ma‘at encompassed specific ethical requirements, characterized as both the official and personal responsibilities of the socially advantaged toward their inferiors, as well as the obligations of subjects toward the state - which was embodied by the figure of the king... While social roles and expectations may have varied according to position, the concept of ma‘at, nevertheless, provided a moral standard, by which every member of society, king and commoner, could be evaluated and judged... [Moreover, ma‘at] was the ultimate determinant of an individual’s ability to achieve a meaningful existence beyond death. (Morschauser 1995: 101-2)
Ma‘at described the place of the individual in society, of society in the pharaonic state, and of the state in the cosmic, divine order (Assmann 1990: 17-18).
By contrast, eunomia, derived from eunomos (having, observing good customs), was much more limited and modest. In the archaic period it was a communal concept; when it described individual behavior (as probably in Od. 17.487), such behavior was appraised in a communal context. Even if, for example, Hesiod may have believed in the divinity of Eunomia, making her, like Dike (Justice) and Eirene (Peace) one of the three Horai (goddesses of the seasons, of growth and fertility: Theog. 901-3; see Hanfmann 1951: 1. 94-103; LIMC 3: 700 s. v. ‘‘Eirene’’) and linking her genealogically to Zeus, such deities differed in nature from the major gods. Essentially, Eunomia appears in early Greek thought as a personified value, enhanced by being inserted into divine hierarchy. It is recognized as central for communal well-being already in Hesiod (above) and thus long before Solon, and in Sparta (Alcman 64 Campbell 1982; Tyrt. 1-4 West; Andrewes 1938) as well as Athens (Solon 4 West). Hence it was one of the earliest and most important Greek value terms with panhellenic significance. Solon’s use and hymnic celebration of eunomia can be explained sufficiently in a Greek context and by his intertextual discussion with Hesiod (Raaflaub 2000: 40-1).
Furthermore, ‘‘vertical solidarity’’ typical of ma‘at (that is, the responsibility of the strong and powerful for the well-being of the weak and powerless: Assmann 1993) is less important in Solon’s thought and reforms than ‘‘horizontal solidarity’’ in the community (that is, the citizens’ responsibility for each other). The latter is realized, for example, in legislation that establishes security of and equality before the law, in the introduction of a special assembly (heiliaia) serving as a court of appeals and/or primary court in communally important cases, and in the right of every citizen who wanted (ho boulomenos) to take legal action on behalf of an injured third party, presumably in cases where this party was unable to act or was the community itself (Hansen 1999: 30). Finally, those aspects of ma‘at that most easily lend themselves to a comparison with eunomia in fact lost their importance in Egyptian thought and religion at least 400 years before Solon’s time (Assmann 1990: 259).
For all these reasons, direct Egyptian influence on Solon’s concept of eunomia is unlikely. Even if it is possible to observe a number of analogies (Barta 2006) and even if Solon was sufficiently familiar with Egyptian concepts of order to justify the assumption of external influence on his thought and action, this impulse was not specific but vague and general; it showed a direction and did not provide detailed instructions; it was adapted thoroughly to the conditions in and needs of Solon’s society (so too Fadinger 1996: 209-10) - and thus transformed so profoundly that it is virtually unrecognizable.
What about liberty? In a social context, liberty denoted free status in contrast to that of the slave and other dependents, and freedom from obligations or taxes. In this sense, liberty probably was recognized as a value wherever slavery and power structures imposing obligations and other forms of dependencies existed, even if its role and significance may have been rather modest (O. Patterson 1991). In this sense, too, liberty is well attested in the earliest written documents of Greek civilization, the Bronze Age Linear B tablets and archaic epics (Raaflaub 2004b: 19-45). At least in the Greek and Roman worlds, however, the observation and experience of such obligations and of slavery apparently was insufficient to cause awareness of liberty as a political value and the creation of a corresponding political terminology (Raaflaub 2003a: 175-83; 2004b: 42-4; contra: O. Patterson 1991, 2003). Rather, the emergence of political uses of liberty was prompted by incisive political changes: in Greece these included the oppression (‘‘enslavement’’) of citizens by a tyrant (Forsdyke, this volume, chapter 15; mentioned explicitly for the first time in Solon’s poems: 4.18;
9.3-4 West) and the threat of a community’s loss of liberty through subjection by an outside power. It was this threat, which they succeeded in overcoming, against all odds, in the Persian Wars, that prompted the Greeks to forge a new word for the abstract notion of‘‘freedom’’: eleutheria. Earlier, they had not needed a noun for this concept! (Raaflaub 2004b: ch. 3; see also Wallace, this volume, chapter 11; for Rome, see Wirszubski 1950; Raaflaub 1984).
It appears that this last step, toward a politicization of the concept of liberty, was not taken in ancient societies outside the Greco-Roman world, neither in China (Raaflaub 2004b: 284 n17) nor in the ancient Near East. In Egypt, as Siegfried Morenz states, ‘‘the concept of freedom does not exist’’ (1973: 314 n1); in the earlier German edition, he adds: ‘‘therefore we must resist searching for... political-social freedom’’ (1960: 144 n1). Indeed, as far as I can see, efforts to deduce such a concept from extant texts do not lead beyond individual freedom of action, decision, and will, individual initiative, freedom of movement, or freedom from obligations and taxes (Morenz 1973: ch. 4 and 137-8; LdjA 2: 298-304). In Mesopotamia, too, freedom is used exclusively for exemption from obligations, taxes, or deliveries in kind, and for personal freedom which is realized by manumission or the flight of slaves (Szlechter 1952; RdA 3.2: 110-11; Snell 2001). No one will underestimate the human suffering caused by slavery or the significance of corresponding patterns of behavior and statements in extant documents, but these have nothing to do with political freedom. Finally, the Hebrew Bible
Knows of freedom almost exclusively only as a social state: The free stands in opposition to the slave. Thus the Hebrew terms for ‘‘free’’ and ‘‘freedom’’ ..., which are not witnessed very frequently, often occur in discussions of slavery and manumission... Though the redemption of Israel from slavery in Egypt is cited in support for the manumission of Hebrew slaves in the seventh year..., the OT [Old Testament] does not develop a theology of freedom on the basis of the Exodus. Rather, Israel was ransomed in order to be God’s servants..., and the language used to describe this event is primarily that of ‘‘redemption,’’ not of ‘‘freedom.’’ (ABD 2: 855)
Hence the Septuagint too uses eleutheria and related terms exclusively in connection with slavery. A political concept of freedom emerges, under Hellenistic influence, for the first time in Maccabees (D. Nestle 1972: 288; Ostwald 1995: 43).
Overall, then, in the realm of social freedom, Greece shares a range of concepts and ideas with the ancient Near East, although, as explained earlier, it is perhaps more plausible to think here of parallel developments rather than terminological or conceptual dependence. In the realm of political freedom, no path leads from the Near East to Greece: here the Greeks made their own discovery, with long-lasting consequences for western thought and ideology (O. Patterson 1991; Raaflaub 2004b; see also Wallace, this volume, chapter 11).
World History
