Egypt and the Bronze and Iron Age Near East

This is Unit Two of Western Civilization One, part two of two: from Assyria's rise after the Bronze Age collapse to the Hebrews' return from Babylon in five thirty-eight, and the four procedures the exam tests on this period. Part one ended with the Bronze Age system in ruins and iron spreading slowly through the wreck. Carry one idea through this part. The exam calls the Near East's story political evolution, and the anchor's chain has four stages: the city-state that could not conquer, the kingdom that held one valley, the empire that held its neighbors, and the diaspora, a people that kept its identity without any territory at all. Assyria is the empire, the first that held; the Hebrews carried away to Babylon are the diaspora; and the Phoenicians and Lydians are the exceptions who stayed small and changed everything with an alphabet and a coin. By the end you will be able to say what made Assyria the first empire that held and when it fell. To name what Neo-Babylon, the Phoenicians and Lydia each contributed, and answer the exam's own question on Phoenician cities. To tell the Hebrews' story to five thirty-eight and define henotheism against monotheism. To read the map, sequence the period, compare Egypt with Mesopotamia, and classify an innovation. And to state the four stages and name the exceptions.

Three entries on Assyria and its successor: the army that held an empire, the terror that ran it and the date it fell, and Neo-Babylon's trade and astronomy.

The first empire that held what it took.

WC1 0115 Assyria: The First Empire That Held

Assyria survived the collapse through militarism and became the first empire to hold its neighbors for centuries with a standing army. Two innovations did it: the first permanent cavalry, bred by the mid-eighth century, which made chariots obsolete, and a large trained infantry armed with iron. Ashurnasirpal the Second ruled from about eight eighty, with mounted messengers and waystations. Ashur had no natural borders, so annual campaigns were defense too.

How Assyria ruled, and when it ended.

WC1 0116 Assyrian Rule: Terror, Tribute, a Library, and 612

Assyria ruled by extraction and terror: deportation, mutilation, and yearly tribute. Tiglath-Pileser the Third reached the Mediterranean, Esarhaddon took Egypt in six seventy-one, and Ashurbanipal built a library. Nineveh was sacked in six twelve by Babylon and the Medes, and the state ended in six oh nine. The anchor's third chapter gives six oh nine for both events and its fifth gives six twelve for Nineveh; both dates are right.

Terror kept, trade added.

WC1 0117 Neo-Babylon: Trade, Astronomy, the Zodiac

Neo-Babylon kept Assyria's terror and deportations but emphasized trade, building roads and canals and welcoming foreign merchants even in wartime. Its astronomers and mathematicians were the best yet, predicting eclipses, fixing calendars and devising the zodiac, and Babylon was rebuilt on a monumental scale. It held power about a century before Persia took it. This is the empire that burned Jerusalem in five eighty-six, and the Hebrew entries return to it.

Two entries on the small peoples who changed trade: the Phoenicians with their colonies and alphabet, and Lydia with the first coins.

The cities that gave the West its alphabet.

WC1 0118 The Phoenicians: Tyre, Carthage, and the Alphabet

The Phoenicians were independent cities of present-day Lebanon, Tyre chief among them, trading and colonizing across the Mediterranean. Carthage, their greatest colony, later fought Rome. By thirteen hundred B.C.E. they wrote with an alphabet of sound signs, a small learnable script that the Greeks and Romans adopted. The exam's first sample question asks which cities were Phoenician: Tyre and Carthage, with Tyre's name supplied by the witness texts.

The kingdom that invented the coin.

WC1 0119 Lydia Invents Coinage, About 650 BCE

Lydia in western Anatolia struck the first coins about six fifty B.C.E., the stater, and the Midas legend attaches to its gold. Coins let merchants travel light and let rulers tax more easily, and the idea spread through the Greek cities Lydia bordered. The date rests on the anchor alone; no witness dates the first coins.

Four entries on the Hebrews: the sources and the Covenant, the kings and the split kingdom, three dates the exam expects, and the road from one god among many to one god alone.

A small people whose importance is religious.

WC1 0120 The Hebrews: Sources, Covenant, Canaan

The anchor's frame is secular scholarship, stated as such: the Hebrew Bible was written centuries after the events it tells. Tradition gives Abraham about nineteen hundred, Moses about thirteen hundred, and the Covenant with Yahweh, while archaeology suggests a Levantine origin. The strongest outside evidence is Merneptah's stele naming Israel in Canaan in twelve oh seven. The tradition's account is the tradition's, and the stele is the record.

Kings, a temple, and a kingdom split in two.

WC1 0121 Saul, David, Solomon, and the Divided Kingdom

Iron-armed Philistines forced the tribes to accept a king, Saul, about ten twenty. David took Jerusalem, and Solomon built the Temple with heavy taxes and forced labor, the anchor's one day in three being its own figure. After him ten tribes formed Israel in the north, cosmopolitan and often polytheist, and two formed Judah, poorer, conservative, and home of the prophets.

Three dates that changed a people.

WC1 0122 722, 586, 538: Assyria, Babylon, Cyrus

Assyria destroyed Israel in seven twenty-two, the lost ten tribes. Neo-Babylon burned Jerusalem and the Temple in five eighty-six and deported tens of thousands, the Babylonian Captivity. Cyrus of Persia freed them in five thirty-eight and the Temple was rebuilt, but many stayed in Babylon, and the diaspora begins there. Judah survived seven twenty-two by paying tribute where Israel did not; keep the two kingdoms apart.

From one god among many to one god alone.

WC1 0123 From Henotheism to Monotheism

Henotheism worships one god while admitting others exist; monotheism holds that only one exists. The Prophetic Movement, about seven fifty to five fifty, moved Judah from the first to the second, and exile made Yahweh boundless. Josiah's reforms of six twenty-one compiled the Torah, and in Babylon the customs, the Torah and the rabbis became a portable tradition. The anchor's claim that Judaism introduced the first egalitarian ethic is its own, attributed.

Four procedures the exam tests on this period: reading the Bronze Age map, putting the Near East in order, comparing the two river civilizations, and sorting innovations.

Four regions clockwise, then a question about neighbors.

WC1 0124 Reading a Bronze Age Map: Who Bordered Whom

Map questions on this period shade four or five regions and ask who held which or who shared a frontier. Fix the coastline, then place the Bronze Age regions clockwise: Greece in the northwest, Anatolia in the north, Canaan and Mesopotamia in the east, Egypt in the south. A peninsula with an island civilization to its south is Greece over Crete, Mycenaeans over Minoans after the early fourteen hundreds. Two empires with a contested frontier in Syria are the Hittites and New Kingdom Egypt, settled by treaty with Syria north and Canaan south. The Phoenician cities lie on the coast between them, the strip of present-day Lebanon, with Carthage far to the west. The map moves: after eleven hundred the Hittites are gone, Assyria fills the northeast, and by six seventy-one one power holds both the Nile and Mesopotamia. Check the date before you answer.

Three anchors and two gaps.

WC1 0125 Sequencing the Near East, 3100 to 538 BCE

Given four events out of order, fix three anchors: Egypt's unification about thirty-one hundred, the Bronze Age collapse about twelve hundred, and Cyrus's release of the Jews in five thirty-eight. Everything before twelve hundred is Bronze Age, everything after is Iron Age, and nothing after five thirty-eight belongs here. Hammurabi's code about seventeen eighty comes before the Hyksos about sixteen fifty; Ramses and the Hittites about twelve fifty sit near the end of the Bronze Age; seven twenty-two, six twelve and five eighty-six follow in that order after the collapse. The trap is the Hebrew kings: Saul about ten twenty is an Iron Age monarchy the Bronze Age powers never met, and it belongs in the gap between twelve hundred and seven twenty-two.

Five pairs that answer the exam's favorite comparison.

WC1 0126 Egypt and Mesopotamia Compared on Five Features

The exam sets Egypt against Mesopotamia and asks which statement fits which. Five features, each with a paired answer. The river: the Nile predictable, the Tigris and Euphrates capricious. The ruler: the Egyptian king a living god keeping ma'at, the Mesopotamian king a god's representative, the ensi. The monument: the pyramid a tomb, the ziggurat a temple. The outlook: Egypt confident across thousands of years, Mesopotamia pessimistic under gods that could not be trusted. The record: scribes and papyrus in a dry climate against cuneiform on clay for taxes. Capricious gods and toil is Mesopotamia; a ruler whose divinity balanced the cosmos is Egypt; a stepped temple serving as a bank is Mesopotamia. Both had scribes, both were redistributive, both kept slaves; the pairs are contrasts of emphasis, and the Nile thesis is the anchor's, attributed.

Sort each innovation by the constraint it removed.

WC1 0127 Classifying an Innovation: Bronze, Iron, Alphabet, Coin, Cavalry

The exam asks what an innovation changed, not who invented it, so name the constraint each one removed. Bronze removed copper's softness but added dependence on distant tin. Iron removed the dependence on trade but added the difficulty of working it. The alphabet removed the need for a scribal class. Coinage removed the weight of goods from trade and eased taxation. Cavalry removed the chariot. A metal that favored large rich states because its ingredients came from far apart is bronze; a script a merchant could learn in weeks is the alphabet; mounted archers after breeding war horses is Assyria's cavalry by the mid-eighth century; wealth in a purse and a king who could tax it is Lydia's coinage. Do not classify by date alone, since iron was known in the Bronze Age and bronze weapons lasted into the Iron Age.

One capstone entry: the four stages of political evolution across units one and two, and the peoples who did not fit the pattern.

Four stages, and the exceptions that make the questions.

WC1 0128 The Fertile Crescent's Political Evolution: City, Kingdom, Empire, Diaspora

The exam's phrase is political evolution, and the two units supply four stages, each solving a weakness the last exposed. The city-state: Mesopotamia's walled cities with patron gods, priests and kings, warring a thousand years without any one holding the others, because walls beat conscripts. The kingdom: Egypt, where the Nile's predictability, the king's divinity and a redistributive economy held one valley for centuries, with no drive to expand until the Hyksos taught the New Kingdom that harmony must be defended abroad. The empire: Sargon held cities by force and lost them to resentment, Ur III held them by records and lost them to invasion, and Assyria combined both with a standing army, cavalry, iron, deportation and terror, the first empire that held, until six twelve and six oh nine. Neo-Babylon added trade, and Persia, in the next unit, replaced terror with leniency. The diaspora: when Babylon burned Jerusalem in five eighty-six and carried Judah away, a people kept its identity through customs, a written Torah and teachers, and when Cyrus let them return, many stayed; a tradition had become portable. The stages are not a ladder. Egypt never became an extraction empire, and the Phoenicians stayed city-states and grew rich by trade under whoever ruled. The exam asks which people did what, and the answer is usually the exception: the Phoenicians for trade and the alphabet, the Hebrews for monotheism, Egypt for stability. The anchor's egalitarian claim is its own; the survival of a community without territory is the record.

Look at what you can now do. You can say what made Assyria the first empire that held, permanent cavalry and iron infantry, how it ruled by deportation and terror, and that Nineveh fell in six twelve and the state in six oh nine. You can name Neo-Babylon's trade and zodiac, the Phoenicians' colonies and alphabet with Tyre and Carthage as the exam's answer, and Lydia's coins. You can tell the Hebrews' story from the Covenant through Saul, David and Solomon to seven twenty-two, five eighty-six and five thirty-eight, and say that henotheism admits other gods where monotheism denies them. You can read the Bronze Age map clockwise from Greece, sequence the period from three anchors, compare Egypt with Mesopotamia on five features, and classify an innovation by the constraint it removed. And you can state the four stages, city, kingdom, empire, diaspora, and name the exceptions that make the questions, which is this part's one idea. Unit three opens on the people the exam treats third, the Greeks, and the empire they fought.