Ancient Med Lecture Notes
Lecture 1:
Ancient med world 1
-Common era
-BCE
-centuries: 5th Century BCE= 490-400 BCE
-Third Century CE=200-299 CE
Approaches to the Ancient World:
-Comparative literature : Zeitgesit
-French/evolutionary school
Reception:
-our reading of a text is a meditated, not direct.
-That meditation is worth studying
Intertextuality
-Meaning is relative, not absolute
roman eagle-symbol of power
symbol of authority- misolinis budge of sticks with axe next to it "likter's" (goon squad)
carried them! unties bundle of sticks and will beat people if they step out of line axe for
really bad people
Interextuality In Action
Vergil, Gerogia 4.1-7
"Next i'll speak about the celestial gift of honey from the air,
Maecenas,give this section too your regard.
I'll tell you improper sequence about the greatest spectacle
of the slightest things,and of brave generals,
and a whole nation's customs and efforts,tribes and battles.
Labour, over little: but no little glory, if favourable powers
allow, and Apollo listens to my prayer.
What is History? "This is the record of what herodotus of Halicarnassus has learned by
inquiry, displayed here so that human achievements shall not be lost in the passing of
time and that the great and marvellous deeds--those done by Greeks and those done by
barbarians -- should have their due renown, and especially to show why the two fought
against each other."
2 core components of history:
1. Evidence (Kinds and relationships)
2. Emplotment (theories and models)
Lecture 2:
ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt:
3. agricultural revoluton : 5500 BECE
4. urban revolution: 3100 BCE
-cuneiform
• War between Umma and lavash 2500
• Sargon of Akkad unites Mesopotomia: 2240 BCE
-Enheduanna Ziggurat
• Reign of Hammurabi: 1792-1750
• Hittite Sack of Babylon: 1600
• Narmer Unifies Egypt: 3000 BCE
• Old Kingdom: 2575-2134
-Mastaba, Djoser I: ca.2670
• First Intermediary Period: 2134-2040
• Middle Kingdom: 2040-1640
• Second Intermediary Period: 1640-1532
-Hyksos
• New Kingdom: 1532-1069
-Hatshepsut: 1473-58
Akhenaten: 1363-1347
"Fertile Cresecent" Irrigated by Tigris and Euphrates
• Cities benefited from trade
• Tokens represented certain goods-trade
• later was changed to cuneiform tablet with practice wedge-marks
• centralized,effective authority allows for population expansion and growth' but this
means you need more land! and all communities around are doing the
same=contact=conflict
• First historical event: war between lavash and Umma, 2400 BCE
• war was totally at the hands of their gods (their patron deity_ divine authority decides
everything in society and fate in general
• stele of the vultures (artistic tablet) 2450
The Standard of Ur: War
• two sided picture; one side represents Ur at War, one represents Ur at Peace=depicts