Chapter 3 River Valley Civilizations

Egypt

Egypt: Gift of the Nile  The Nile River spans the length of Egypt from south to north.  Provides natural irrigation along with man-made irrigation systems and has predictable, annual flooding  The land outside the Nile Valley is desert, which helped Egypt from invasion  These factors meant rule from indigenous governments

Organization of Egyptian History  Predynastic Period (Pleistocene-c BCE)  Early Dynastic Period (c BCE)  Old Kingdom ( BCE)  First Intermediate Period ( BCE)  Middle Kingdom ( BCE)  Second Intermediate Period ( BCE)  New Kingdom ( BCE)  Third Intermediate Period ( BCE)  Late Period ( BCE)

Earliest Egypt: Before the Kings  Agriculture sustained life  B.C.E. grasses ground into foods; 6000 B.C.E. seeds ground into flour  Drought in the Sahara led to more Nile settlement  Strings of villages along Nile by 3600 BCE (Nagada I Period)  Cities dependent on cereal agriculture  Linked by trade along the river but trade was not central to their economy  Little evidence of social stratification  Walled towns emerged by 3300 BCE in Upper Egypt

The Written Record  Writing began early in Egypt ( BCE)  Almost simultaneously with Sumerians  May have learned cuneiform from Sumerians and adopted their owns trop of hieroglyphics  Writing based on system of hieroglyphics written on stone, pottery, or papyrus  Writing used for business and government to 2400 BCE  Provide lists of the earliest kings of Egypt recorded by the nomes (administrative units)  Manetho wrote the first Kings List

Unification and the Rule of Kings  Early Dynastic Period ( BCE)  3100 BCE- unification established unified Egypt from peoples who came to the Nile and melded into a single ethnicity  Menes is often noted by historians as being the first king, but there is support for earlier kings  Kings grew in power with unification and were seen a gods  Responsible for keeping the forces of nature balanced and annual flooding of the Nile  National religious ideology, centralized control of political administration, and artistic productivity during this period

The Gods and Unification  Osiris = order (ma’at) and virtue  Seth = disorder and evil  Isis = sister/wife of Osiris, defeated Seth’s plot to destroy Osiris  Seth cut Osiris into fourteen pieces and scattered him across Egypt  Isis collected the pieces of Osiris (symbolizes unification of Egypt)  Isis conceived Horus  Horus defeated Seth in battle and made Osiris in charge of the underworld  Horus was the first Egyptian god to be worshipped nationally  Often depicted as a falcon  Kings believed that if they lived order lives, they would be united with Osiris after death

The Afterlife  Belief in afterlife led to practice of mummification of the dead  The pyramids were created for the burial places of the kings  As early as 3100 BCE, kings and members of the court were buried in tombs (mastabas)  Suggests social stratification

From Villages to Cities  Egypt has no record of independent city-states  Walled towns that emerged around 3300 BCE suggest new stratification  In early Dynastic Egypt, selected villages held administrative headquarters  Egypt’s cities had a religious base as well as an administrative one  Population in Egypt increased to 2.5 million by BCE  The largest towns were the political capitals (Thebes administrative capital)  Shaduf irrigation (bucket and wheel) carried water further out from the Nile

Architecture: The Pyramids  In the third dynasty ( BCE) the king’s architect elaborated the mastaba into the monumental pyramids  As power grew, the Old Kingdom rulers spent fortunes constructing pyramid tombs and mummification  The greatest pyramids were built during the fourth dynasty ( BCE)

Disintegration of Old Kingdom  Central authority weakened and provincial officials (nomarchs) asserted their power  Collected taxes and built private armies  Death rates increased with famine and drought  In 2181 BCE, the Old Kingdom fell  Period of disunity, called First Intermediate Period, lasted a century  Nomarchs held local power  Over time, two separate centers came to content for power; Herakleopolis and Thebes

The Middle Kingdom  About 2050 BCE, King Mentuhotpe of Thebes defeated the north and reunited the kingdom (The Middle Kingdom)  Fine arts and literature flourished  Autobiography of Si-nuhe”,  More organization and power than before  Efficient administration spread power south to Nubia and into the Middle East  Egypt became an empire, ruling over distant, foreign people  Middle Kingdom ended in part because the Nubians drove out the Egyptians and the Hykos (Semitic-people form Sinai) invasion

Akhenaten  Modern excavations unearthed the ruins of the ancient capital, Akhetaten, created by King Amenhotep IV, known as Akhenaten (r BCE)  Challenged social order of Egypt  Adopted monotheistic religion devoted to Aten, god of the sun  Akhenaten moved his capital 200 miles north of Thebes to the desert  City was destroyed by later kings and the capital was moved back to Thebes  Former religious traditions restored

Indus Valley

Roots of Indus Valley Civilization  Not discovered until 19 th century  The first city discovered was the 4500-year-old city of Harappa  Two years later, a second city 200 miles southwest was discovered at Mohenjo-Daro  Cities were both about 3 miles around, large enough to hold populations of 40,000

Roots of Indus Valley Civilization  The region of the Bolan Pass yielded artifacts back to 7000 BCE  What was the relationship between this civilization and Mesopotamia??  Innovation; grown independently from Mesopotamia  Written records scarce in Indus Valley

Mysteries of the Indus Valley  Urban settlements date to 7000 BCE  Goods traded by boat along Indus and into the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia  Crafts include pottery making, dying, bronze, and bead making  First known use of cotton for textiles occurred in the Indus Valley

Mysteries of the Indus Valley  By about 2500 BCE, a civilization of 1000 sites reached its apex  Extensive public baths and sewage systems  Regular plan suggests organization and bureaucracy  No monumental buildings  No evidence of social stratification

Legacy of Indus Valley  Artifacts suggest equality, efficiency and public conveniences that changed little over time  Sign of successful or stagnant civilization  No apparent central city  Cannot decipher language to answer historical questions  Was succeeded by and blended with the Aryan civilization  Some Harappan practices adopted by Aryans  Aryans learned farming from Harappans  Image of god similar to Aryan god Shiva

Review Questions  What kinds of information are available in the written records of Egypt and Mesopotamia, but not the Indus Valley? Why?  In light of the discovery and likely origins of the Indus Valley civilization in the foothills of the west, and its extension north and south, is it appropriate to call it the “Indus Valley civilization”? Why or why not? What other name might you give it?  What is the evidence that scholars use to argue that the Indus Valley civilization was more egalitarian than the civilizations of the Nile and Mesopotamia?

Compare/Contrast  Create a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting any two of these early civilizations:  Mesopotamia  Egypt  Indus Valley