Civilizations flourish only to decline!

by Amal HEWAVISSENTI

Before the world's first civilizations, human life was limited to small, scattered communities, making their transit to varied places in the primary quest for food. The emergence of the first human civilizations, more than 5,000 years back registered a landmark in human history. History unveils that they chose to settle in arable areas best for agriculture, learned to build permanent structures, expressed their creativity through art and established organised societies kept united by dictatorial rulers and common values and beliefs. The term "ancient civilization" is used to refer to a vast array of complex societies which came into being somewhere between 3500 BC and AD 1500 throughout the world even though most people think of Egyptians or the Romans when they refer to ancient civilizations.

These pre-industrial civilizations practically occupied vast territories centered on cities. They counted more on human labour than machinery for manufacturing goods, harvesting of crops, building of public works, and for other pursuits central to their society.

As these societies were extremely complex, they felt the need for an effective form of Government, a monarchy and a class of nobles, officials, and priests who formed the centre of the society. However, in spite of their achievements, most civilized states were remarkably unstable and short-lived because they rose to prominence rapidly, achieved a brief brilliance, and then declined or collapsed only to be succeeded by another state.

Since long-distance trade happened to be the lifeblood of ancient civilizations, merchants formed an important social class in urban societies, which transported commodities by land, river and sea to and from distant lands. For instance, southern Mesopotamia lacked metals, and therefore imported them from the nearby highlands, and Mesopotamian cities, in return exported grain, dates and fine clay vessels.

With the long distance trade practices, the need sprang to keep accurate records of complex commercial transactions and almost every early civilization developed a record keeping system, generally in the form of written scripts.

Every civilization gave its uppermost priority to erect elaborate public buildings such as royal palaces, temples, fortified citadels, and massive city walls because such investments provided a focus for the state, served as symbols of official religious beliefs and proclaimed the power of the King. Most interestingly, everyone of these civilizations developed a set of distinctive religious beliefs in which the ruler was typically regarded as a living god or the crucial link between the people and the other gods.

Inscriptions on temple walls commemorated these beliefs and the art, together with the elaborate public ceremonies had the sole objective of promoting these religious values. The warrior priests of the Moche (Peru) for instance, appeared before their subjects in glittering gold and silver dress that shone brilliantly in the rays of the sun.

All rulers of early civilizations, whether Egyptian Paraoh, Minoan King, Chinese emperor or Maya lord, were well aware that public performance was highly critical to ensuring obedience among their subjects. Consequently, each of these civilizations could not have been successful without exceptional individuals with strong leadership capabilities. Although the names of most of these ancient leaders have been lost in the course of time, some have endured through the ages or have been discovered through archaeological research.

Mesopotamian civilization

Of the most primeval civilizations, which developed in the Middle East, the world's first civilization sprang up in Mesopotamia which is proved to be a highly fertile region centred on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq.

By around 5500 BC, farmers started settling in a small territory called Sumer in southern Mesopotamia. Some of these early farming villages gradually developed into towns with their own network of irrigation canals, fields and religious shrines. These early settlements developed into the very first civilization. By 3500 BC, Sumerian cities such as Erech and Ur developed rapidly into significant religious and commercial centres and the typical city had a massive stepped temple named Ziggurat, which had a shrine on the top dedicated to the city's god or goddess. Historical evidence confirm that the temple served both as an administrative centre and a place of worship. It included store rooms for merchandise and the grain which was enough to feed hundreds of non-farmers, artisans, seamen and traders living in the city. City officials created written records by inscribling clay tablets with Cuneiform while the powerful rulers of the city governed with their extensive political and military powers.

The Sumerian civilization reached its highest after 2900 BC as a collection of mini city states with their own territory, irrigation canals, or patron gods but these city states were in constant conflict with each other for dominance in the territory. Technology, religion and language made the people strong.

They were brilliant investors who developed bronze and copper metallurgy and were among the first to use the wheeled vehicle and the sailing vessel.

New Kingdoms had developed upstream of Sumer around the cities of Akkad and Babylon by 2350 BC. In northern Mesopotamia, prominent cities had emerged along Tigris river, in what was to become Assyria in later centuries. Sargon of Akkad, a powerful ruler, conquered the entire southern Mesopotamia but Akkadian domination endured only for a century before Guitians, from what is now Iran, suppressed its domains. Around 2200 BC, the third dynasty of Ur ruthlessly conquered its neighbours and established an empire that had its domain so far as Assyria and eastward to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, but the empire was surprisingly conquered by Elamite armies from the east.

Babylonia and Assyrian civilizations

The Akkadian and Ur empires followed the Mesopotamian tradition of large, highly unstable empires which developed through military conquest, trade, ruthless governance, and the payment of tribute. The Babylon controlled trade with the eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. The sixth King of Babylon was Hammurabi, who reigned from 1792 to 1750 BC and is best known for his written code of 285 laws, which was publicly demonstrated on granite columns throughout the empire.

Historians unanimously agree that Hammurabi was a powerful military man but more importantly he was an efficient administrator who moved heaven and earth to improve irrigation and construct public works.

Hammurabi's empire drastically declined after his death and subsequently, the Assyrians, upstream Tigris river, rose to prominence as the Babylon's empire dilapidated. For centuries, they had controlled all trade down the Tigris river to Babylon and were very conspicuous during the reign of King Assur-uballit (1365-1330 BC) who established a vast empire through ruthless conquest and efficient administration. He took particular care to maintain diplomatic relations with the Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Hittites.

Assur-uballit's imperial state also collapsed following his death but it was revived in the 800 BC under a number of powerful kings who expanded their domains by means of conquests and bragged about their prowess of achieving victories in great friezes that were carved on their ramparts. At the peak of its power, Assiriya's empire spread into Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean coast until the last great Assyrian King Ashurbanipal died in approximately 630 BC with no successor making the empire fall apart rapidly.

Babylon in no time became independent of Assyria and an alliance of Persians and Babylonians successfully overthrew the Assyrian capital at Nineveb in 612 BC. For more than forty years, Mesopotamia was dominated by King Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian empire which extended as far as the eastern Mediterranean.

Though Nabuchadnezzar's capital was protected by two walls, and filled with mud-brick palaces, elaborate gardens it simply became a part of the Persian empire when the armies of Cyrus, the Great of Persia captured Babylon in 539 BC.

Egyptian Civilization

The Nile river in northern Africa slices through the eastern Sahara desert like a green arrow, a totally fertile oasis flowing through some of the driest landscapes on earth.The valley is narrow except for north of the modern city of Cairo where it becomes a low-lying delta before flowing into the Mediterranean Sea and around 4000 BC, the Nile fertilized the land along its banks, allowing local people to develop agriculture and establish small towns.

Large Kingdoms such as Nekhen in the Upper Egypt and Buto in Lower Egypt competed for political supremacy by 3000 BC and after generations of diplomacy and war, a ruler of Upper Egypt named Narmer united the two halves of the country into a single state and established a flourishing civilisation that would become one of the most successful in history. Ancient Egypt was ruled by a vast array of successive Kings or Pharaos who served as the sole representatives of the Sun God Re who was foremost among the many gods worshipped by the people. The Egyptians were credulous of life after death, so they mummified their dead, which process preserved the corpse in order that it could be used by the deceased in what we call afterlife.

They also built pyramids as burial chambers for early Pharaos and the construction of these mammoth structures, specifically the three great Pyramids in Giza, required the labour of thousands of people over decades. The Egyptians were the first ever to develop a system of hieroglyphic writing which involved pictures that represented whole words or ideas that were inscribed on stone monuments and written on Papyrus. Moreover, ancient Egypt reached its peak after 1550 BC under prominent Pharaos such as Amenhatop III, Seti I and Rameses II. It colonized Nubia, a territory south of Aswan in Sudan and turned the Nubian Kingdom of Kush into an Egyptian province. Egyptian Civilization extended its borders into eastern Mediterranean lands and assumed the control of strategic trading harbours along the coast. It then declined when a number of conquerors, including Assyrians, Nubians and Persians invaded the Nile around 1075 BC.

Hittites

A group of people called Hitties created a civilization in current Turkey and achieved territorial power through conquest diplomatic and political strategy. While they adopted much of the customs from the people they conquered, they were of higher prowess to retain their unique identity and at its peak, they competed with Egypt for control of the vital trade routes that ran on the eastern Mediterranean coast lands. King Suppiluliumas went ahead with tougher measures to expand the empire as far as the borders of modern Lebanon. The Hittite Kings ruled from the Capital City of Bogazkoy which lay surrounded by several miles of walls and obtained much of their grain from their fertile lands in Syria. Consequent on a fatal battle with Egyptians at Kadesh, in the 1280s BC, they formed an alliance with the Pharaos because trade was too valuable to be disturbed by war.

The Hittites were the first people to melt iron on a large scale, probably in the highlands south of Black Sea. Because of the fact that iron was ideal for making weapons and tools that needed tough, sharp edges, the Hittite rulers guarded their new technology, but by 1200 BC, iron working had spread through the Mediterranean world.

Political upheavals and invasions from the north, as well as widespread drought that hit the eastern Mediterranean, caused Hittite Civilization to collapse about 1200 BC into a collection of small city-states which became a part of the Persian empire centuries later.

Mycenaeans and the Minoans

In complete contrast to Mesopotamians and the Egyptians, the Minoans Civilization, which developed about 1900 BC, did not centralize its functions on cities; but on palaces that served as shrines, ceremonial centers, store houses and royal residencies. The largest palace, which was originally built about 1930 BC, was Knossos in northern Crete, which was a two storey structure, centered on a courtyard, with walls decorated with pictures of gods, goddesses and acrobats leaping over bulls. Historical records prove that Minoans sailed as far as modern Syria and throughout the Aegean Sea while the palace of Knossos remained the hub of a civilization which thrived off trade with distant lands such as Egypt.

The most dramatic event which unfolded in Minoan history is the eruption of a volcano in 1688 BC on Santorini Island, which caused massive ash falls over Crete and left the agriculture beyond redemption. Although the Minoan Civilization was not threatened by the volcanic eruption, Knossos and other Minoan palaces were razed out by fire and Mycenaean rulers from Greece came to seize the dominance over the Aegean World. Mycenaean Civilization, which derived its name from Mycenae, a vital walled fortress in Southern Greece, was also centered on Palaces and flourished by 1600 BC.

Fragmental sections of surrounding walls still stand as does a celebrated gateway topped with two carved lions. Somewhere in 1870s, the German archaeologist Henrich Schliemann excavated the graves of Mycenaean lords, located just inside the walls and came out with miraculous finds which revealed vital clues about the social life of the civilization. He discovered that the lords had been buried with their very weapons and were wearing masks of gold depicting their features.

The Minoans and Mycenaeans used well developed written scripts commonly known as Linear A and B, to record their administrative details of Palace life and trading activities.

Being the undisputed forerunners of Greek, these scripts have been partially deciphered. Yet little is known about religious beliefs adopted by Minoans and Mycenaeans but there are remnants of evidence to support the existence of a religious belief which involved a mother goddess responsible for the fertility of the soil. Mycenae continued to dominate the Mediterranean trade routes but soon the civilization collapsed as a result of a combination of factors inclusive of foreign invasions, severe droughts, political unrest etc.

To be continued...