It is surely no accident that the first civilizations to develop high levels of political centralization, urbanization, and technology were situated in river valleys where rainfall was insufficient for reliable agriculture. Dependent as they were on river water to irrigate the cultivated land that fed their populations, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus Valley civilization channeled significant human resources into the construction and maintenance of canals, dams, and dikes. This required the formation of political centers that could organize the necessary labor force.
In both Egypt and Mesopotamia, kingship emerged as the dominant political form. The Egyptian king’s divine origins and symbolic association with the forces of renewal made him central to the welfare of the entire country and gave him a religious monopoly superseding the authority of the temples and priests. Egyptian monarchs lavished much of the country’s wealth on their tombs, believing that a proper burial would ensure the continuity of kingship and the attendant blessings that it brought to the land and people. Mesopotamian rulers, who were not normally regarded as divine, built new cities, towering walls, splendid palaces, and religious edifices as lasting testaments to their power.
The unpredictable and violent floods in the Tigris-Euphrates Basin were a constant source of alarm for the people of Mesopotamia. In contrast, the predictable, opportune, and gradual Nile floods were eagerly anticipated events in
Egypt. The relationship with nature stamped the worldview of both peoples. Mesopotamians nervously tried to appease their harsh deities so as to survive in a dangerous world. Egyptians largely trusted in and nurtured the supernatural powers that, they believed, guaranteed orderliness and prosperity. The Egyptians also believed that, although the journey to the next world was beset with hazards, the righteous spirit that overcame them could look forward to a blessed existence. In contrast, Gilgamesh, the hero of the Mesopotamian epic, is tormented by terrifying visions of the afterlife: disembodied spirits of the dead stumbling around in the darkness of the Underworld for all eternity, eating dust and clay and slaving for the heartless gods of that realm.
Although the populations of Egypt and Mesopotamia were ethnically heterogeneous, both regions experienced a remarkable degree of cultural continuity. New immigrants readily assimilated to the dominant language, belief system, and lifestyles of the civilization. Mesopotamian women’s apparent loss of freedom and legal privilege in the second millennium b. c.e. may have been related to the higher degree of urbanization and class stratification in this society. In contrast, Egyptian pictorial documents, love poems, and legal records indicate respect and greater equality for women in the valley of the Nile.
I Online Study Center ACE the Test
How did Mesopotamian civilization emerge, and what technologies promoted its advancement?
What role did the environment and religion play in the evolution of Egyptian civilization?
What does the material evidence tell us about the nature of the Indus Valley civilization, and what is the most likely reason for its collapse?
In Mesopotamia farmers settled and adapted to the uncertain environment of the river plain. The first of these peoples to produce written records were the Sumerians. Some Sumerian towns grew into city-states composed of an urban center that ruled the surrounding agricultural land. At first the primary leaders of these states were priests, but they gave way to kings who assumed all manner of religious, administrative, legal, and military responsibilities. Mesopotamia developed sharp social divisions that were reflected in the class-based penalties set down in the Law Code of Hammurabi. Mesopotamian religion involved gods that embodied the uncertain forces of the environment, and the people strove to appease those gods through public, state-organized religion focused on temple precincts maintained by priests. To transform the natural environment and human society, the Mesopotamians developed various technologies, including the cuneiform writing system, irrigation, bronze casting, and techniques for producing monumental architecture.
The civilization of Egypt was protected by desert and marshy seacoast and shaped by the predictable flooding of the Nile River, which enabled the Egyptians to be relatively self-sufficient and secure. As the Sahara Desert dried, the population in the Nile Valley increased and political organizations became more complex; eventually small units unified into a single kingdom under a divine king, the pharaoh. Egyptian society was less urban than Mesopotamian society and also less stratified. Peasants made up the majority of the population, slavery was limited, and women enjoyed more freedoms and legal protections than their Mesopotamian counterparts. Egyptian religion embodied the orderly and benign environment of the Nile Valley and involved a complex vision of the afterlife. Much of the kingdom’s wealth went for religious purposes: preparing for the afterlife and glorifying the pharaoh, both in life and death. To serve the needs of religious observance the Egyptians developed technologies that enabled them to construct monumental tombs and temples, and their interest in mummification made them well schooled in chemistry and medicine.
In the fertile Indus Valley emerged a large urban civilization represented by the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro. Both cities display a striking uniformity of planning and construction, each including high brick walls, streets arranged in a rectangular grid, and other common features. The artifacts of these cities exhibit standard shapes and styles. Material evidence also points to trade contacts between Indus Valley cities and the resource-rich regions to the north and Mesopotamia to the west. Among its important technologies this civilization produced a writing system that remains undeciphered. The civilization collapsed when the cities were abandoned. The most likely cause of this collapse was “systems failure” resulting from ecological changes in the river valley and along the coast.
World History
