1. Aim: How did the authority of the State assert itself and grow?
What kept it in check?

2. Government originally arises from the need to:
Organize irrigation and food production
Protect and seize surplus food
Create order among many families and tribes living together
Protect trade and commerce - or exploit it!

3. Later, government also acts to protect hierarchical social structures
Code of Hammurabi:
Laws were rigged to favor the elites and upper classes
Protect property, establish social and gender relations

4. Organized Religion becomes a tool of elite social classes to ensure compliance
From nature spirits to gods in human form, and with human motives
Who do these gods most resemble in Mesopotamian society?
Just as gods rule humans, kings rule their subjects

5. Creating “Organized Religion”
Powerful gods “become” male
Each city-state has its own god
As kingdoms are assembled, each city’s god becomes part of an assembly of gods

6. Creating “Organized Religion”
Rulers “conquer” the temple - family members becomes priests and priestesses
Ruler is a god or a god’s intermediary

7. Who can contest the king’s will?

8. Who can contest the king’s will?
Common people: who may demand that the king abide by community norms or traditions
Nobility: large landholders or warriors who can exercise power over their localities
Priests: representing god’s will
Other kings

9. What are the difficulties kings face in maintaining their empires?

10. What were the difficulties kings faced in maintaining their empires?
Different languages, ways of life
Unrest over taxation and plunder; peasant rebellion
Regional nobles and vassals
Ambitious generals
Paying for army outposts in farflung regions
Invasion from better armed pastoralists or adjacent kingdoms seeking plunder

11. The conflict between centralizing kings and the many forces of decentralization will be a theme of ‘State-Building” all year