Humans ceased being hunters and gatherers and began to domesticate animals and cultivate crops. Agriculture enabled human beings to take control of their environment rather than be controlled by it. A technological revolution followed. New tools to cultivate the land and clear forests appeared, along with methods of collecting, storing, and using water from the nearby rivers to irrigate fields. Agricultural centers, or villages, appeared consisting of a group of individuals living together, mutually dependent on one another. As agriculture spread, trade in surplus crops and necessary tools and resources followed.
Discoveries of certain of the Neolithic communities by archeologists are very revealing. Jericho, located in the Jordan valley, was first settled sometime between 10 000 and 9 000 BC. By around 9 400 BC Jericho occupied about 10 acres (4 ha). There were more than 70 circular dwellings made of sun‐dried brick measuring about 15 ft. (4.6 m) across. Estimates of the size of the population vary anywhere from 200 to 300 upward to 2000 or 3000. The village was surrounded by a stone wall more than 12 ft. (3.7 m) high and nearly 6 ft. (1.8 m) wide at the base. Inside the wall stood a stone tower more than 12 ft. (3.7 m) tall with an internal stone staircase. Outside the stone wall was a moat approximately 10 ft. (3.8 m) deep.
The wall served as a defense against potential enemies. The purpose of the tower remains shrouded in mystery. Two archeologists from Tel Aviv University, Roy Liran and Ran Barkai, after studying how the setting sun on the summer solstice interacted with the tower and the surrounding landscape suggest that “the tower was built not just as a marker or a time‐keeping device, but as a guardian against the dangers present in the darkness cast by a dying sun's last rays of light” (Sutherland 2018). The dead were buried within the village, often under the floor of the dwelling in which the deceased is assumed to have lived. The skulls were covered in plaster, painted, and placed in the walls. The practice may be evidence of some sort of ancestor worship, but like so much else, that explanation is speculation.
Even more interesting is the Neolithic settlement located in southern Anatolia (modern Turkey) called Çatalhöyük (sometimes spelled Çatal Höyük or Çatal Hüyük), which existed from approximately 7500 to 5700 BC. The site was discovered in the late 1950s and first excavated between 1961 and 1965. Excavations and research by an international team of archeologists began in 1993 and are ongoing.
With a population that ranged between 3000 and 8000, Çatalhöyük was much larger than Jericho. It consisted of about 32 acres (approximately 13 ha) of mud‐brick dwellings closely packed together without streets or alleyways. Access to the individual dwellings was through holes in the roofs. The life of the community took place largely on the roofs of what must have resembled a large beehive‐like structure. Each dwelling had an oven and furniture that consisted of mud‐brick platforms under which deceased family members were buried. The floors were covered in reeds. The walls were covered in bright white plaster, often decorated with colorful frescos. Paintings of bulls on the walls, plastered skulls of oxen embedded in the walls, and the presence of bull horns suggest some sort of religion centered on the worship of bulls, like the religion that appeared later in Minoan Crete (see Chapter 2). One scene painted on a wall depicts a village with a mountain, perhaps Mount Hasan, an inactive volcano. Some art historians regard the painting as the first painted landscape in history.
Most importantly, the people of the Neolithic villages like Jericho and Çatalhöyük did not possess the ability to read and write. Hence, there is no evidence of religious or philosophical thought, no recorded attempts to wrestle with those perennial questions of meaning and purpose. Writing is the defining characteristic of civilization, and so, as impressive as their technologic achievements were, most scholars regard these Neolithic villages as proto‐civilizations. To locate the birthplace of civilization, and at the same time, provide some explanation of the difference between a Neolithic village and a civilization, we must look to the fertile land that lies between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, an area known as Mesopotamia, or the “land between the rivers.”
Figure 1.1 Map of the ancient Near East: The Birth of Civilization.
Birth of Civilization
The cradle of civilization lay in the southern most area of Mesopotamia known as Sumer where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers empty into the Persian Gulf. The Sumerians called themselves “the black‐headed people” and their home “the land of the black‐headed people,” or simply “the land.” It was in Sumer around 3500 BC that the first cities appeared, and most important, it was in Sumer sometime between 3300 BC and 3100 BC that people first learned to write.1
Writing was a byproduct of urbanization. Trade between the cities of Sumer required the ability to communicate. Using a reed with the end cut off, scribes made wedge‐shaped marks in small clay tablets that were then allowed to dry in the sun. At first, they made marks that represented objects (pictographs), and then marks that represented sounds (phonograms). This style of writing is known as “cuneiform,” meaning “wedge‐shaped.”
Scribes were trained in schools that taught not only the art of writing and reading, but law, medicine, and astrology. Literature appeared as scribes began to write down stories about the gods and heroic figures. The Epic of Gilgamesh, considered by many to be the first great work of literature in history, was written down sometime around 2150 BC. It tells the story of Gilgamesh (“Bilgamesh” in Sumerian), king of Uruk, and his companion Enkidu.
In the first half of the epic tale, Gilgamesh and Enkidu go on a series of adventures including a journey to the Cedar Forest, the dwelling place of the gods. There, they defeat the giant monster Humbaba (“Huwawa” in Sumerian), guardian of the Cedar Forest. Gilgamesh spurns the advances of Ishtar, goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex. Ishtar punishes Gilgamesh for his impudence by convincing the gods to kill Enkidu.
The death of Enkidu leads to Gilgamesh's quest to find the meaning of life and death. It is this second half of the epic that is of greatest importance, for in the attempt to answer the perennial questions of meaning and purpose, the Epic of Gilgamesh becomes more than an epic tale; it becomes a work of philosophy, another characteristic of a civilization.
Some of the stories related in the Epic of Gilgamesh have counterparts in the Old Testament book of Genesis. The flood account in Genesis bears a striking resemblance to the flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh. The two stories have at least 20 points of similarity leading to the obvious conclusion that there must be some connection, but there are significant points in the two accounts that differ. Some who subscribe to the school of thought known as “Panbabylonism,” which asserts that the Hebrew Bible and Judaism are derived from Mesopotamian (Babylonian) mythology, consider the Genesis flood story to be modeled after that in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Others consider both to be myths with spiritual significance, or accounts of an actual flood that occurred at some time in the past.
Religious beliefs are at the heart of any given civilization's identity. Ultimately, a people's worldview, or understanding of what is real, determines every aspect of life. Since worldview and religious belief are entwined, how a society is governed and organized, as well as its literary and artistic expressions, are rooted in its religious beliefs. Not surprisingly, temples with gods and priests who interceded on behalf of the people were the center of life in Sumerian cities.
For the people of Sumer and Mesopotamia in general, both life and the afterlife were gloomy at best. People were only the pawns of capricious gods who controlled
