Egypt and the Bronze and Iron Age Near East

This is Unit Two of Western Civilization One, part one of two: Egypt and the Bronze Age world, from Narmer's unification to the coming of iron. Carry one idea through this lecture. Mesopotamia's rivers could not be trusted, and its people expected the worst; Egypt's river behaved, and the anchor links that predictability to a stability that lasted thousands of years. Every feature of Egypt in this lecture, the god-king who kept the world in balance, the pyramids built by paid labor during the flood, the scribes who held the culture together across every period, sits on that foundation. Then the wider Bronze Age world appears, four regions in contact, and its collapse about twelve hundred shows what happened when the trade that held it together stopped. By the end you will be able to say why the anchor links the Nile to Egypt's stability and name its three kingdoms and two intermediate periods. To tell what the Old Kingdom built, who built it, and what its collapse invented. To trace Egypt from the Middle Kingdom through the Hyksos to the New Kingdom's empire. To describe the Bronze Age system, its peoples, and why it collapsed. And to explain why iron replaced bronze slowly.

Two entries on the river that behaved: why the Nile made Egypt stable, and how Egyptian history is divided into kingdoms and intermediate periods.

A river that floods on schedule.

WC1 0101 The Nile and Why Egypt Was Stable

The Nile floods predictably in late summer and leaves silt behind. The anchor links that predictability to Egypt's stability over thousands of years, against Mesopotamia's capricious rivers. Kemet, the Black Land, was a strip ten to twenty miles wide, Upper Egypt upriver in the south and Lower Egypt in the delta. The anchor's claim of harvests three times Mesopotamia's is its own figure, attributed.

Three kingdoms, two chaotic gaps between them.

WC1 0102 Three Kingdoms and Two Intermediate Periods

Egyptian history runs Old Kingdom, First Intermediate, Middle Kingdom, Second Intermediate, New Kingdom: the kingdoms stable, the intermediate periods chaotic. The dates run about twenty-six eighty to twenty-two hundred, twenty forty to seventeen twenty, and fifteen fifty to eleven fifty. The scheme is Manetho's, a priest writing about three hundred B.C.E., and remains standard. Pharaoh, meaning great house, names the king only from the New Kingdom.

Three entries on the Old Kingdom: unification and the god-king, the pyramids and their builders, and the collapse that invented the judgment of the dead.

Unification, and a king who was a god.

WC1 0103 Narmer, Djoser, and the God-King of the Old Kingdom

Narmer united Upper and Lower Egypt about thirty-one hundred B.C.E., a date resting on the anchor alone. From the third dynasty the king ruled as a god keeping ma'at, the sacred order of the world, and Djoser raised the first pyramid about twenty-six sixty. Scribes and hieroglyphs served him, and the surplus went to temples and tombs, not conquest. The witnesses' period dates differ, so say about.

Who built the pyramids, and when.

WC1 0104 The Pyramids: Tombs, Surplus, Free Labor

Every pyramid dates from the Old Kingdom, about twenty-six sixty to twenty-four hundred. Khufu's Great Pyramid holds over two and a half million blocks. The anchor's stated current view is that paid free laborers built them, mostly during the flood. A pyramid is a tomb where the ziggurat was a temple. The slave-built pyramid is the exam's favorite wrong answer; follow the anchor's view.

A collapse that invented an afterlife.

WC1 0105 Collapse, Drought, and the First Nobility

The Old Kingdom fell about twenty-two hundred, probably to drought. Records of the First Intermediate Period describe a world out of balance, and the judgment of the dead, the heart weighed against order, was invented then. Monumental building stopped, the economy diversified, and provincial titles became hereditary, Egypt's first nobility. The anchor offers a second cause, elites seizing power first and weakening the crown; attributed, no verdict.

Four entries from the Middle Kingdom to empire: shepherd kings, the Hyksos who brought bronze, the New Kingdom's conquests, and four pharaohs the exam names.

Kings who called themselves shepherds.

WC1 0106 The Middle Kingdom: Shepherd Kings, Nubia, Papyrus

Mentuhotep the Second of Thebes reunified Egypt about twenty sixty. Middle Kingdom kings stressed their humanity as shepherds of the people while nobles grew stronger. Egypt took northern Nubia for gold, ivory and slaves, papyrus became an Egyptian monopoly, and there were no more pyramids, only literature about fairness and ordinary people. Captives and immigrants were settled among Egyptians to assimilate; expansion meant absorption, not extraction.

Foreign rulers, and the metal they brought.

WC1 0107 The Hyksos and the Arrival of Bronze

About sixteen fifty B.C.E. the Hyksos, whose name means leaders of foreigners, seized Lower Egypt after the Middle Kingdom's end about seventeen twenty, and quickly Egyptianized. They brought bronze, horses and the chariot. Bronze is copper alloyed with tin, harder than either. The anchor's second chapter calls it copper and zinc; its third chapter gets it right, and the course says copper and tin.

Egypt turns to empire.

WC1 0108 The New Kingdom's Empire

Ahmose expelled the Hyksos about fifteen fifty, and the New Kingdom turned to empire with bronze, the composite bow and chariots. Egypt took Canaan and much of Syria by fifteen hundred, ruling through puppet kings and hostage princes, with the anchor's one man in ten conscripted and two administrative regions. The ideology changed: divine harmony now had to be carried abroad by force.

Four pharaohs the exam expects by name.

WC1 0109 Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, Ramses II

Hatshepsut ruled as pharaoh from about fourteen seventy-nine, and Thutmose the Third later erased her from the monuments. Akhenaten, about thirteen fifty-three to thirteen thirty-six, made the sun disk Aten the only god; Tutankhamun restored the old gods. Ramses the Second, twelve seventy-nine to twelve thirteen, fought the Hittites and built Abu Simbel. Akhenaten as curbing the priests is the anchor's theory, attributed.

Five entries on the Bronze Age world: Egypt's constants, the four-region system and the Hittites, the Minoans and Mycenaeans, the collapse, and iron.

What held Egypt together in every period.

WC1 0110 Scribes, Women, and Serfs

Scribes were the anchor's cultural glue across every period, masters of hieroglyphs that took years to learn. Egyptian women were nearly men's legal equals, owning property and bringing suits, a standing the anchor sets against Greece and against Europe before the late eighteen hundreds. Serfs were tied to closed villages. Legal equality for women coexisted with serfdom and slavery, and both are the record.

Four regions, one diplomatic language.

WC1 0111 The Bronze Age System and the Hittites

From about three thousand to eleven hundred B.C.E. four regions traded and fought: Greece, Anatolia, Canaan with Mesopotamia, and Egypt, with Akkadian as the diplomatic language and kings calling each other brother. The Hittites of Anatolia, from about seventeen hundred, adopted conquered peoples' gods rather than imposing theirs, and a treaty with Egypt split Syria from Canaan. The Hittites may have carried Mesopotamian learning to Greece, the anchor says.

Two Greek peoples before the Greeks.

WC1 0112 Minoans and Mycenaeans

The Minoans of Crete were rich by about seventeen hundred B.C.E., with unfortified palaces, frescoes, a merchant marine and the undeciphered Linear A. The Mycenaeans of the mainland conquered them in the early fourteen hundreds and wrote Linear B. Homer's Troy stands in western Anatolia, and the poet is likely mythical. Poor soil made Greece an olive and wine economy, and the anchor calls the Mycenaeans highly predatory.

The century the Bronze Age ended.

WC1 0113 The Bronze Age Collapse, 1200 to 1100 BCE

Between about twelve hundred and eleven hundred B.C.E. the Bronze Age system collapsed. Drought appears in Egyptian and Hittite records, the Sea Peoples struck from twelve oh seven and some settled in Canaan as the Philistines, and Mycenaean palaces burned. Assyria survived but lost the south to Elam. No definitive explanation exists, because the records stop, and Greece entered three dark centuries.

Why the next age took so long to arrive.

WC1 0114 Why Iron Replaced Bronze, Slowly

Bronze needed tin from as far as Afghanistan, so it depended on the long-distance trade the collapse destroyed. Iron needs no alloy and lies everywhere, but it is hard to work, so it spread slowly and bronze weapons persisted for centuries; Egypt was not an iron economy until the seventh century. Iron was cheaper and more available, not better at first.

Look at what you can now do. You can say why the anchor links the Nile's predictability to Egypt's stability, and name the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms with the two chaotic periods between them. You can tell what the Old Kingdom built, tombs on a surplus, who built them, paid laborers during the flood, and what its collapse invented, the judgment of the dead and a hereditary nobility. You can trace Egypt from the shepherd kings of the Middle Kingdom through the Hyksos and their bronze to a New Kingdom that carried harmony abroad by force, and name Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun and Ramses the Second. You can describe a Bronze Age system of four regions writing to each other in Akkadian, the Hittites who adopted every god they met, the Minoans and Mycenaeans, and a collapse the records cannot explain. And you can explain why iron replaced bronze slowly: it needed no distant tin, but it was hard to work. Part two opens on the empire that survived the collapse by militarism, Assyria, and runs through Babylon, the Phoenicians and the Hebrews to the unit's capstone.