(accessed 18 October 2019).3 Hammurabi's Code (2019). Hammurabi’s Code: An Eye for an Eye. http://www.ushistory.org/civ/4c.asp (accessed 18 October 2019).
4 Hawass, Z. (2019). Chronology of Ancient Egypt. http://www.guardians.net/hawass/chronology.htm (accessed 18 October 2019).
5 Sutherland, A. (2018). Mysterious 11,000 – Year‐Old Tower Of Jericho: Was World's First Skyscraper A Symbol Of Power Or An Ancient Time‐Keeping Device? Ancient Pages. http://www.ancientpages.com/2018/08/31/mysterious‐11000‐year‐old‐tower‐of‐jericho‐was‐worlds‐first‐skycraper‐a‐symbol‐of‐power‐or‐an‐ancient‐time‐keeping‐device (accessed 18 October 2019).
Notes
1 1 Approximately four centuries later, around 3100 BC, civilization appeared in the Nile River Valley of Egypt. It then appeared in the Indus River Valley of India around 2500 BC, and in the Huang Ho (or Yellow) River Valley of China about 1500 BC. The spread of civilization in ancient history, and contacts between ancient civilizations is an interesting topic, but beyond the scope of this survey. Dates of events in ancient history are always approximate and vary widely from one source to another.
2 2 A city and the surrounding territory controlled by it are commonly referred to as a city-state, kingdom, or city-state kingdom.
3 3 The term “Indo-European” refers to a group of languages that originated in the Eurasian Steppes about 6000 years ago.
4 4 The cataracts are shallow sections of the Nile River where rocks, small islands, and whitewater rapids make navigation difficult or impossible. There are six cataracts.
5 5 The name of the unifier of Egypt is disputed. Some credit Menes, or Scorpion II, rather than Narmer. The consensus appears to be that Menes and Narmer were the same person, and Scorpion II was a king during the pre-dynastic period. The title “pharaoh” was not used for the Egyptian kings until the reign of Thutmose III (c. 1479–1425 BC) during the period of the New Kingdom, or Empire.
6 6 The authenticity of the famous Nefertiti bust was called into question in 2009 in a somewhat sensationalized news release by the Swiss art historian Henri Stierlin (Fake claims 2009). Stierlin has since been proven to be mistaken (Dell'Amore 2009).
7 7 Ramses II is remembered for his remarkable family. He may have had as many as 200 wives and fathered as many as 100 sons and 60 daughters, two of which were included among his wives.
8 8 Most scholars consider the Hebrew Scriptures to contain passages of reliable history and an indispensable primary source for studying Ancient Near Eastern history.
9 9 Dates for Moses are largely speculative and bound up with the problem of dating the Hebrew exodus from Egypt. According to the Jewish calendar, Moses was born on the seventh of Adar of the year 2368 from creation or c. 1393 BC. The same difficulty arises when trying to determine the dates for Abraham, Joseph, Jacob, and Joshua.
2 The Ancient Greeks and Their World
Chronology
c. 2500–c. 1100 BC Minoan‐Mycenaean Periodc. 1700–c. 1450 BC Height of Minoan Civilizationc. 1600–c. 1450 BC Mycenaean Periodc. 1500 BC Eruption of Thera (Santorini)c. 1100–c. 800 BC Greek Dark Agesc. 1184 BC Fall of Troyc. 800–700 BC Iliad and Odyssey written downc. 800–c. 480 BC Archaic Period776 BC First Olympic Gamesc. 510–c. 323 BC Classical Period499–449 BC Persian Wars454–404 BC Athenian Empire431–404 BC Peloponnesian War428/427–348/347 BC Plato384–322 BC Aristotle323 BC Death of Alexander the Greatc. 323–c. 31 BC Hellenistic Period
Ancient Greek civilization can be conveniently divided into five historical periods. The first is the Aegean, or Minoan‐Mycenaean, civilization (c. 2500–1100 BC), when Greek civilization was centered on the island of Crete and around the city of Mycenae on the Greek peninsula. The period after the collapse of the Minoan‐Mycenaean civilization is called the Greek Dark Ages (c. 1100–800 BC), a period during which writing, and with it many aspects of what might be called “civilization,” disappeared. The Dark Ages was followed by the Archaic period (c. 800–500 BC), a period during which the polis, or city‐state, appeared and became the basic political, social, economic, and cultural unit of Greek civilization. The Classical period (c. 500–338 BC) includes the golden age of Greek civilization and culture and the rapid decline and end of the independent city‐state. The fifth and final period is known as the Hellenistic. It is the period from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC to 30 BC, when Ptolemaic Egypt, the last of the Hellenistic kingdoms, was incorporated into the Roman Empire. It was during the Hellenistic period, that Greek culture spread throughout the ancient Mediterranean world.
Minoan Civilization
The Bronze Age civilization centered on the island of Crete, that reached its height between approximately 1700 and 1450 BC, is known as “Minoan.” The designation is attributed to the English archeologist, Sir Arthur Evans (1851–1941), who began excavations on the site of Knossos in 1900. During the following three years, Evans unearthed the ruins of what appeared to have been a palace complex he described as “labyrinthine.” Like most well‐educated English gentlemen at the turn of the twentieth century, Evans was familiar with Greek mythology. The complex layout of the unearthed ruins, together with discoveries such as a double‐axe symbol found engraved on columns and depictions of individuals leaping over the backs of bulls, led Evans to associate the palace with the legend of King Minos of Crete, who kept a monster, part bull and part human, in a labyrinth.
Minoan Crete was the center of a vast trading empire that extended well beyond the Aegean Sea and the Greek mainland. They established trading posts in Syria and Egypt and other locations in the Near East and as far west as Sicily and Spain. The need for tin in the production of bronze connected Minoan Crete with such distant locations as Britain and Afghanistan, if only indirectly. Much like the tramp steamers of the nineteenth century that connected Europe with the world beyond its shores, the Minoans played a key role in the diffusion of the more advanced civilizations of Egypt and Southwest Asia to the emerging civilizations along the Mediterranean coast of Europe.
Much of what is known about Minoan life and culture has been deduced from the archeological evidence, rather than the written record. The Minoans were not Greeks, nor was their language Greek. What language they spoke remains unknown and unclassified. The earliest Minoan script is called “Cretan hieroglyphs” and has not been deciphered. A later script referred to as Linear A was in use between c. 1850 and c. 1400 BC. Like Cretan hieroglyphs, it has not been deciphered. A third script, Linear B, was first used in Knossos between
