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Drakon-Deus
Undefeatable Hero
Qapla'
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posted December 11, 2015 10:18 AM |
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Ancient states and cultures discussion
After a year and a half  in university as History major, I can say I am fascinated by more cultures than the modern and medieval ones, and Ancient and Imperial Rome and Greece and Eastern Rome or the Celtic culture, which I still am open to discuss, of course.
I think Mesopotamia is fascinating, with Sumer, Babylon, Akkad and the like, especially how they mixed society and religion, as is very much Ancient Egypt for me, and also Ancient China, and the more exclusivist (not that it was a bad thing) Israel and India. I didn't get to study anything about Japan.
I don't have a particular topic in mind, but I would appreciate opinions on any matter, and Celtic culture, Eastern Rome, Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece, especially Athens, and China in particular.
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Homer171
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted December 11, 2015 04:25 PM |
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Interesting topic. I'm afraid I don't have much knowlage on ancient cultures but I have read filosophy, what ideologies started from where and how some of them are really present current day.
I like the idea: we can look to future by looking our history. It explains alot. 
Please share us DD what have you found interesting.
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Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.
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markkur
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Once upon a time
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posted December 11, 2015 04:42 PM |
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One of the most interesting events in the eastern Med was the huge volcanic eruption at Santarini and the subsequent sunami that more or less wiped out the Minoans and brought down 3 of the 4 powerful empires in the region.
Egypt survived and recorded that the "sea-peoples" were running amok in the region. For years experts have thought they were another race or culture etc. but to me it makes more sense that the sea-peoples were the survivors of the catastrophic event that had wrecked empires. When the rulers and their kingships fell, chaos ensued...i.e. trade collapsed and the folks that were left banded together for security and survival. And if their food, crops and everything else was gone...no doubt they banded together and went looking to find and take what they needed or wanted.
Related; Many now think that Homer did not make up Atlantis and that he was referring to the Minoans...since they were centuries ahead of any other civilization. It is now thought that the volcanic blast wiped out the glorious city that Homer described because the city had been built on the center of the dormant volcano. Further, Troy was also thought to be Myth but ofc, it too was found.
The most interesting of the Chinese rulers to me was the 1st of the Chin. Can't remember his name but the one that made his tomb contain a river of mercury etc. and he also had the life-sized clay army buried in the ground. The last I heard the Chinese government is waiting till they have the necessary safety equipment before they open his tomb. They also have to consider the possibility defeating any booby-traps if they exist.
Btw, I think another interesting culture was Persia at the time of Cyrus the great.
Good luck with your studies!
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Homer171
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted December 11, 2015 05:45 PM |
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Yeah that Atlantis sure where nice place, wish you all where there 
Did not know most of those Markkur, interesting
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Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.
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Drakon-Deus
Undefeatable Hero
Qapla'
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posted December 11, 2015 05:59 PM |
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Thank you markkur, I really hadn't heard of that before. Great to find out. Egypt always struck me as strange, and it seems that even other civilizations of the time agreed... I would like to expand on this before discussing others, that are nonetheless fascinating to me.
And I will have to finish the studies in the future, unfortunately, right now college has become too expensive to continue. I'll make sure to get a job to maybe move a little closer to going back, and never forget to live, and learn.
It's said that when the Greek Herodotus came to Egypt, he wrote that they were the opposite of the rest of the world. And while many Greeks traced their lineage to a god, the Egyptians believed that gods never came to them, however the pharaoh was divine to them.
And their depictions of the afterlife and their concepts of energies and the soul are interesting too, as well as the myths. I find this mysticism to be all-around fascinating, and it never ceases to amaze me, much more than warfare and politics, to be honest.
Homer, well, there are more things, but I will say a few things with Mesopotamia, Akkado-babylonian and Sumerian cultures as we called them in course , and I believe you know of the legend of Gilgamesh and the famous Hammurabi's code of laws.
Apart from that, society was divided into classes with specific terms and regulations and very large differences of income, however a person could change social status for better or worse through his actions.
Women depended on the status of the husbands, however they could ask for a divorce if their reasons were proved to be true, and they had advantages in society, unlike women who were forced to become prostitutes or inkeepers and seen as lower.
And an interesting but also terrifying thing to me: when a king died, basically all of his wives, servants as well as treasures had to go with him, example the cemetery in Ur.
And the religion was very well detailed too, gods were quite diverse, although they had many gods, they still had great organisation.
For myths I find very interesting the basic story of how humans came to exist: Tiamat, goddess of chaos and usually depicted as a dragon, was destroyed by the chosen of the rest of the gods, Marduk, and so the blood of an evil being Tiamat that went into the earth formed humans.
Also, I learned that for Sumerians, all gods just meant one side of the divine and not completely separate entities.
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Horses don't die on a dog's wish.
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Homer171
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted December 12, 2015 12:37 AM |
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Drakon-Deus said:
Homer... I believe you know of the legend of Gilgamesh and the famous Hammurabi's code of laws.
Yeah, I know about Gilgamesh legend (Final Fantasy VIII GF Eilodon right  )
What reminded me of Dinosaurs! I know bible mentions Behemoth and Leviathan. There is this scene, i think it was in Job where there's an animal what attacks whit it's tail, now that you don't see everyday.
In some tv document they found Brachiosaurus (or any sauropod really) hieroglyph or some sort.
Do you know any cultures that had some knowlage about dinosaurs?
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Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.
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Svartzorn
Known Hero
Dead struggling with death.
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posted December 12, 2015 04:57 AM |
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I have some pending books on the History of Africa. I would like a lot to know better ancient african civilizations.
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Death to the world.
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Drakon-Deus
Undefeatable Hero
Qapla'
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posted December 12, 2015 07:04 AM |
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Homer: It is the Leviathan you speak of. It could very well be symbollic language, but it never ceases to amaze me how similar beliefs of ancient cultures were regarding such beasts. Just a little info
That reminds me, if you have not read Thomas Hobbes' political and religious work "Leviathan", I recommend it, not about the monster itself though.
Svartzorn: I'm afraid we never had a course for that, except Egypt, which was really different in its own way from traditional Africa, as well as from Europe and Asia. However, I would like to discuss Ethiopia, particularly their Orthodox tradition.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted December 19, 2015 02:27 AM |
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History starts in Sumer.
On the lands of current Irak, more than 5000 years ago, four big cultures initiated a long process of civilization: Sumerians, Akkadiens, Assyrians, Babylonians created the first realms and known empires, it was the human househome that we call Mesopotamia, that is to say the land between two (meso -in greek: in the middle of) rivers (potamos in greek): Tigris and Euphrates. In the heart of a world of clay, under a scorching sun, with nothing but rudimentary tools at disposal, they gave birth to the first cities. The legend says they built temples brushing the clouds and palaces akin to vergers in the desert... But only remained dust. We owe to them major discoveries: writing (allowing them to record their epics, their fears, their aspirations), calculation, time division, the wheel.
Their civilization began with the progressive transition of the nomad stockbreeders community toward sedentary life in locations we can call cities. Exemple "Uruk", the city of "pens" where we kept cattle. It was a long evolution from years 10000 (Neolithic, domestication of animals and plants, then 7500, the first villages, 5000, irrigation) to 3300: the Uruk period: inventions of wheel, of sail, of potter tower (allowing to produce much bigger ceramic objects), of metal alliance, of writing and of first cities. Writing was indeed an essential tool regarding tons of commercial, juridical, religious, politic and cultural activities.
Gilgamesh was the legendary king of Uruk. The town had two districts, with its own temple: Anu's, god of Sky and Constellations, and his daughter's Ivanna (Ishtar), goddess of love and of war, governess of life and death. The first written documents of history of humanity were found at Uruk and date from the period of its splendour, around 3200 B.C. It was one of the most populated cities of the world.
Gilgamesh's epic is one of the most ancient poem of mankind, written on 12 tablets of clay. In quest of glory, he meets his double, wild, Enkidu, who becomes his inseparable friend. They fight along horrendous fantastic animals. Enkidu dies, then Gilgamesh starts to seek for the plant of immortality. He discovers it, brings it back, but while leaving it on the shore as he was bathing, a snake steals it and it's the snake who through his sloughing gains immortality. Gilgamesh then accepts his mortal condition, comes back to his city where he will reign with higher wisdom.
Near the end of Uruk's period, around 2550, hegemony on the low Mesopotamia fell into the hands of the harbouring city of Ur. From there arrived products and commodities of oriental regions. Its commercial influence went from Egypt to Anatolia, and from the Levant to valley of Indus!
In the middle of the 3rd millenium B.C. probably existed in south of Mesopotamia around 18 big city-states (model benefiting from well organised political and social structure), spread around 30000km2. There occurred conflicts between neighbouring cities regarding irrigation canals and influence areas for example.
The enigma of Sumerians: where did they come from? It's during the second half of our XIXth century that archaeologists discovered their existence.
1st hypothesis: It would be an immigration (around 3750), coming from Anatolia, or Iran or India.
2nd hypothesis: This people was already established in the south of Mesopotamia since 5000. More in the north the semitic element prevailed. The term "semitic" calls back to Middle-East populations and of a part of Africa speaking one or another of the numerous semitic languages coexisting with one another, suggesting the origin of Sumerians comes directly from Mesopotamia.
To be continued...
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Drakon-Deus
Undefeatable Hero
Qapla'
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posted December 19, 2015 02:53 AM |
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Good. I'd like for the next lecture to be on Egypt, Mr.G.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted December 19, 2015 04:14 AM |
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Edited by artu at 04:16, 19 Dec 2015.
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markkur said:
The most interesting of the Chinese rulers to me was the 1st of the Chin. Can't remember his name but the one that made his tomb contain a river of mercury etc. and he also had the life-sized clay army buried in the ground. The last I heard the Chinese government is waiting till they have the necessary safety equipment before they open his tomb. They also have to consider the possibility defeating any booby-traps if they exist.
That would be Qin Shi Huang who also gave his name to the country: China (We still call it Çin).
The ironic thing was, he was trying to find a potion of immortality and one of his "doctors" believed the answer was drinking mercury, which was eventually what got him killed and through a horrible, unbearable sickness.
Terracota (the underground city/tomb) is also mind-blowing indeed.
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Are you pretty? This is my occasion. - Ghost
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Drakon-Deus
Undefeatable Hero
Qapla'
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posted December 19, 2015 04:53 AM |
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Our professor mentioned that he gave the name, and the land was for a long time NOT known as China, before him.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted January 11, 2016 12:45 AM |
bonus applied by Corribus on 19 May 2016. |
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Unification of Sumerian cities : by the end of the conflicts between the two cities of Umma and Lagash for the control of more fertile lands and commercial routes, the king of Umma, Lugal-zagesi (2340-2316 BC) was the winner and became the first absolute lord of all the Fertile Crescent on all the Mesopotamian plain, with Uruk as great capital. But the city-states kept on willing to hold their independence. The true creator of the first Mesopotamian Empire was the king Sargon the Great (2340 – 2284 BC) from Akkad. Sargon the Akkadian had the upper hand on Lugal-zagesi the Sumerian. Both people were strangers to each other, the akkadian language was semitic, but the mix of these two communities sumero-akkadians has been the manufacturing secret of Mesopotamian civilization. Sargon then went to the north towards the actual irakian Kurdistan, then to the west as far as north of Syria. From the arabic-persian gulf to the shores of the Mediterranean sea the world belongs to Mesopotamia. Between the Tigris and Euphrates the land is poor and flat. The country has very few prosperity : clay and reed, the water from both rivers, bitumen, genius of men. All the rest, mines of copper and tin, wood, stone, has to be sought elsewhere. This first empire has most probably been a space of economical trades closely supervised rather than a state in the modern meaning of the term. However Sargon founded in the XXIVth century before our era, in a little extended town his own capital, Agade, which remained the center of the world during a century and a half... before being forgotten and lost : it is indeed the last big capital of Antiquity which escaped until this day to the archaeologists : we still didn't located it. But she probably was very close to the actual Bagdad. In Agade, Sargon installs a centralised administration, the first of its kind. The empire is divided in provinces where the citizens of Agade held governments and replaced the old Sumerian nobleness. It was a formidable age of affluence and wealth.
But this historic king is also a fictional hero. His legend says that his mother, a great priestess, gave birth to him in secret. She put him in a rush basket, whose opening she closed with bitumen. The destiny of such a child is of course to change the world and the story will be borrowed by the Bible to the Mesopotamians to become the one of Moses saved from the water : the mother of Moses fills in the cradle with bitumen, material impossible to find in Egypt, yet typical from Mesopotamia! Sargon, Moses, Romulus and Remus, Cyrus the Great, all were "exposed" from birth, it is the myth of the promised child to an exceptional destiny, the one of the civilizing hero or founder of an empire. His birth infringes social, political or religious balances and thus his life is being threatened. The fate allows him to survive by breaking ties with his ancestors. With Sargon, the infringement holds from the status of his mother who as a great priestess was not allowed to procreate. As to Moses it is the revealed menace in dreams to the Pharaoh that his destiny threatens the established order. And it is the case of Luke Skywalker in the modern myth that is Star Wars (1977), where a child threatened by the fury of his father is hidden and secretly bred by a group of farmers, or still in Superman (1978), where the child from planet Krypton is being dispatched by his father on Earth with supernatural knowledge and powers in order to defeat evil. And it was the case of King Arthur, taken away from his mother by Merlin to get entrusted to adoptive parents, before revealing himself brandishing Excalibur, destined to be the king of the world.
The legend made Sargon travel until Anatolia and in the shores of Cyprus or made him face the revolts of all the provinces of the empire when he was old and reconquer all of the lost lands. But this heroic chapter has an historical foundation: it was his grandson, Naram-Sîn (2260-2223 BC), one of the latest sovereigns of the dynasty of Agade and the most brilliant, who achieved it, by triumphing over the three big cities of Kish, Ur and Uruk, and the coalitions elected by the people against him. After the victory, Naram-Sîn deifies himself while still alive, the king is no longer the first of men, his legitimacy comes from the gods. But the power from a monarch stays distinct from the religious power.
After the death of Naram-Sîn, the regions and cities of Sumer progressively gained back their independence. But Mesopotamia was invaded by the Gutians and followed a century of chaos and confusion. Then the cities of Lagash (with their king Goudea, a fair prince, wise, pious and good administrator) and Uruk were at the origin of a "Sumerian Renaissance" : it was the monarchs of the third dynasty of Ur. The king Ur-Nammu (2112 ?-2095 BC) restored the Sumerian as official language and built in Ur the first Ziggurat of Mesopotamia, established a juridical codex, probably the most ancient in history of mankind. Then the empire started to collapse under the last reign of the third dynasty (2016 ?-2004). Ur got wrecked in 2004, as it is related in the poem in 12 chants Lamentations on the ruin of Ur, preserved in the Louvre.
Sumer disappeared as a political entity and the Sumerian language finally got extinguished. And this is how ended the history of the first civilization of mankind.
Coming next, Assyria and Babylon...
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Drakon-Deus
Undefeatable Hero
Qapla'
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posted January 11, 2016 12:49 AM |
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Thank you for that piece of history on Mesopotamia, Galaad. The cradle of civilization deserves its reputation.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted January 21, 2016 01:41 PM |
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You're welcome. Next one is not coming right away, but is on its way.
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Locksley
Promising
Famous Hero
Wielding a six-string
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posted January 21, 2016 09:31 PM |
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Edited by Locksley at 21:38, 21 Jan 2016.
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I've always thought it's fascinating how old the story about the world saving boy growing up secretly and finding his powers is.
A question about another real guy who has become idolized in a similar way. A year or so (maybe more) ago newpapers told about a newly discovered grave in ancient Greece, which was thought to possibly be Alexander's or his relative's. Has anyone heard anything about those excavations since then?
To every Egypt lover:
There's an amazing touring exhibion with perfect copies of every object found in Tutankhamon's grave, if you can't go to the originals. I visited the tour three years ago and could almost not leave because how they placed layers and layers and layers of coffins, masks, boxes, more boxes, room sized boxes and finally whole rooms around the dead pharaoh.
Of course everything was top quality craftmanship, priceless and incredibly beutiful and well made and soaked with symbolism.
The whole story or World of a people explained in one place.
And then there was all the grave gifts of useful objects, furniture, tools, jewelry, wagons, weapons, food, clothes, you name it, as good as new (which is it was, but it was exact copies). I remember it became very easy to imagine an egyptian come walking into the monter and feeling home.
There were two sets of everything. One set was arranged as it was found in the grave. The second set was presented and explained object by object (or rather groups of objects) as in any good museum.
There's also a supposedly (I don't know, haven't been there) very nice similar copy-exhibition at Highclere castle, home to the Earl Carnarvon who helped Howard Carter finding Tutankhamon. Of course, Highclere's also the Downton Abbey castle, making it a perfect double tourist trap.
Some of the smaller boxes (and a random statue):
The biggest box:
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TDL
Honorable
Supreme Hero
The weak suffer. I endure.
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posted January 22, 2016 12:22 AM |
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Byzantine empire is so often overlooked but it has some of the weirdest stuff. I haven't delved that much, but as far as I remember, they had a group of people high in power who had to have their funsacks cut just for the lulz (otherwise they just wouldn't get the position).
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Articun
Supreme Hero
As i dream, so shall it be!
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posted January 29, 2016 01:01 PM |
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What is interesting about the Egyptians is that they believed that this life we live is actualy the state of death and that the true life begins only after death, when the soul the freed from the confines of the body. What i also find astonishing about them is that they considered that Maat (the cosmic justice) is something every single egyptian should fight for by doing his job right and by being humble and just himself. If even one Egyptian was not just, them Ishfet (anarchy, injustice) would seep slowly into life and corrupt it. This shows a state of living which gives importance to every single person, no matter how low the occupation he or she had. Also, the ancient Mysteries were kept alive much longer in ancient Egypt rather than the other civilizations. Greeks did endure as well but not as true to the knowledge as the Egyptians.
In general, there are many things we can say about the Egyptians that even today feel like out of place because our mindset has changed dramaticaly. We wouldn't try to preserve someone today because in his life was such a mystic and just person that his KA (or energy body) could continue to fertilize life in the land (as they did with their Pharohs and great priests etc).
Books by Christian Jacq try to capture that feeling of the ancient Egyptian life.
Finally, although greek myself (cypriot to be exact), i am not so much fascinated by Greek culture of the ancients because they had much less mysticism in general. Philosophy was indeed a nescessary step for our evolution as a species but in time it lost a great deal of the metaphysics (in its true sense as "after the physical" as aristotle had named the studies of Being and Creation and cosmic laws) and theology and the greatest sin philosophers commited was that they made philosophy something purely of the mind instead of the practise it once was. Philosophy just as yoga was a state of being, a set of advices to help a person have a specific lifestyle and mindset that woul allow him to truly BE.
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markkur
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Once upon a time
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posted January 29, 2016 04:04 PM |
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Locksley said:
Has anyone heard anything about those excavations since then?
Greetings Locksley
Iirc, some think it was Agamemnon's tomb. I saw a vid not that long ago, might query youtube for general Greek finds but I think what I saw was within an episode of one of Michael Woods' fine presentations on the Trojan era. I think I posted a link in the Docs thread. Btw, even if I'm wrong and it was in something else; that series is one of the best I've seen, so you will not be wasting your time...if you "dig" archeology. <slygrin>
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Drakon-Deus
Undefeatable Hero
Qapla'
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posted January 29, 2016 04:53 PM |
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@Articun
You're correct, and the Egyptian spirituality was arguably the most interesting part about them compared to other cultures for me as well, not that other cultures weren't.
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