The Birth of Civilization in the Near East

by Henri Frankfort

Footnotes

[1]A. N. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York, 1933), pp. 13, 14.

[2]O. Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (München, 1920).

[3]“Der Aufbau der europäischen Kulturgeschichte,” in Schmoller’s Jahrbuch für Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reiche, XLIV (1920), 633 ff.

[4]O. Spengler, op. cit., I, 153.

[5]O. Spengler, op. cit., I, 29.

[6]Spengler’s position is invalidated in his own terms by Bergson’s criticism of a deterministic view of life in nature.

[7]O. Spengler, ibid. Leopold von Ranke has expressed a similar idea in the splendid and simple phrase, “Alle Epochen sind unmittelbar zu Gott.”

[8]History, II, 35.

[9]O. Spengler, op. cit., I, 15. Incidentally, this quotation illustrates the very point at issue by emphasizing the almost insuperable difficulty of formulating an alien mode of thought. In transposing the words of a German contemporary I have been obliged to blur his thoughts and lose shades of meaning at almost every step: Seele, eminent historisch veranlagt, urweltliche Leidenschaft, Sorge, derive their overtones and deepest meaning from a world of thought which includes, at the very least, German literature of the romantic period; these terms, therefore, hardly bear translating. It is obvious that the disparity of terms and concepts is immeasurably greater where an ancient civilization is concerned.

[10]See my Ancient Egyptian Religion, New York, 1948, and Kingship and the Gods, Chicago, 1948.

[11]O. Spengler, op. cit., I, 224 f.

[12]Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture (New York, 1934), 23-4.

[13]Ibid., 250.

[14]Ibid., 46.

[15]Ibid., 254.

[16]Horizon, Vol. XV, No. 85 (London, January 1947), 25-6.

[17]A Study of History, I, 176.

[18]Op. cit., I, 193.

[19]Op. cit., IV, 130.

[20]R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford, 1946), 328-30, especially 328-9. The whole section should be read, since our quotations give but an inadequate impression of its cogency.

[21]R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford, 1946), 328-30, especially 328-9. “There is only one genuine meaning for this question. If thought in its first phase, after solving the initial problems of that phase, is then, through solving these, brought up against others which defeat it; and if the second solves these further problems without losing its hold on the solution of the first, so that there is gain without any corresponding loss, then there is progress. And there can be progress on no other terms. If there is any loss, the problem of setting loss against gain is insoluble.”

[22]A Study of History, III, 216.

[23]Op. cit., I, 159.

[24]Op. cit., III, 381.

[25]Ibid. et passim.

[26]Op. cit., I, 172-3. Edgar Wind, “Some Points of Contact Between History and Natural Science,” in Philosophy and History, Essays Presented to Ernst Cassirer (Oxford, 1936), 255-64, shows that the latest developments of science, which make it so much less “exact,” lead to the raising of questions by scientists “that historians like to look upon as their own.” But if these latest developments have made science more “humanistic,” Wind is over-optimistic when he says that “the notion of a description of nature which indiscriminately subjects men and their fates like rocks and stones to its ‘unalterable law’ survives only as a nightmare of certain historians.” For many of them (not to mention sociologists) it seems still to be a cherished ideal.

[27]A Study of History, e.g., I, 143.

[28]Op. cit., V, 28.

[29]These texts have been discussed by Kurt Sethe, Amun und die acht Urgötter von Hermopolis. “Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Klasse,” No. 4. Berlin, 1929.

[30]A Study of History, I, 137. It is, perhaps, not unnecessary to add that Toynbee’s scheme would be no more relevant to Egyptian history if he shifted the date of his “time of troubles” to the second or even the first millennium B.C. The error is one of method, not of chronology.

[31]Op. cit., III, 377.

[32]Op. cit., III, 248-377. In the history of individuals Toynbee applies it not only to the Buddha or to saints who of their own free will withdrew from society in order to clarify their mission and the message which they were to preach, but also to men like Thucydides, Dante, and Macchiavelli, who were exiled, and bitterly lamented their banishment even though it did not destroy their powers to create. They worked in a solitude not of their choosing and never returned at all, however effective their work may have proved to be in the course of time. Toynbee also applies the formula of “Withdrawal-and-Return” to social groups in a manner which fails to explain anything, as, for instance, when he states that the Nonconformists, after the Restoration, reacted on persecutions by “withdrawing into the realm of private business in order to return omnipotent, a century and a half later, as the authors of the Industrial Revolution” (Ibid., 334). Thus, the interplay of dire necessity and circumstances of every description is reduced to a formula which confuses the issue by a theological implication (withdraw in order to) which in more than one place (e.g. in the image of the climbers and the mountainside) turns Toynbee’s account of the facts into mythology. I am purposely avoiding a discussion of Toynbee’s examples taken from the Near East or Crete, since I should then have to correct his facts and should become a “critic aiming instruments at bits and pieces” (Horizon, XV [London, January 1947], 50.) Readers interested in a detailed criticism by an authority on European history (who likewise considers principles rather than isolated errors) are referred to the essay of Professor P. Geyl in Journal of the History of Ideas, IX (New York, 1948), 93-124.

[33]Part of Volume I and the whole of Volume II are devoted to its discussion.

[34]Op. cit., III, 214.

[35]Op. cit., III, 215.

[36]We have actually adopted this method in Archeology and the Sumerian Problem, SAOC 4 (Chicago, 1932), an example followed by Anton Moortgat, Frühe Bildkunst in Sumer (Leipzig, 1935); but the latter book suffers from the confusion caused by an inadequate delimitation of the successive periods.

[37]It would be simple enough if we could equate the beginning of history with the introduction of writing, as is often done. The equation holds good for Egypt where the oldest inscriptions refer to the first identifiable events and personalities and thus, as records of battles and royal names, form the earliest raw material of Egyptian history. But in Mesopotamia this is not so; there civilization took shape, and writing appeared, well before historical documents in the narrow sense came into being. We shall see that this difference between Egypt and Mesopotamia was due to the different purposes which writing and art were made to serve; but it illustrates that generalizations about history and prehistory are hazardous even within a limited field.

[38]So, e.g. J. S. Slotkin, “Reflections on Collingwood’s Idea of History,” in Antiquity, No. 86 (June 1948), 99. Against this misconception see Helmuth Plessner, Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, Berlin, 1928.

[39]For a penetrating study of this matter see Gertrude Rachel Levy, The Gate of Horn, A Study of the Religious Conceptions of the Stone Age and Their Influence upon European Thought, Faber & Faber (London, 1948).

[40]On the so-called Libyan palette: Capart, Primitive Art in Egypt, 236-7, Figs. 175, 176.

[41]L. Borchardt, Das Grabdenkmal des Königs Sahure, II (Leipzig, 1913), 10 and Plate I.

[42]W. F. Edgerton and J. A. Wilson, Historical Records of Ramses III (Chicago, 1936), 67 f. Wreszinski, Atlas zur altaegyptischen Kulturgeschichte, III, Plate 66.

[43]Sir Aurel Stein, An Archaeological Tour in Gedrosia (Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India, No. 43), 34; cf. 6-7.

[44]R. J. & L. Braidwood, in Antiquity XXV, No. 96 (December 1950), 189-95.

[45]D. A. E. Garrod and D. M. A. Bates, The Stone Age Of Mount Carmel, Oxford, 1937.

[46]These “teeth” show a peculiar gloss produced by the silica in the stalks of grasses so that we are certain that they were used for cutting cereals. (Cecil E. Curwen in Antiquity, IV [1930], 184-6; IX [1935], 62-6.)

[47]G. Caton-Thompson and E. W. Gardner, The Desert Fayum (London, 1934), 45 and Plates XXVI, XXVIII, XXX.

[48]Journal of Near Eastern Studies, IV (1945), 269, 274, and Fig. 37.

[49]R. Girshman, Fouilles de Sialk, I (Paris, 1938), 17 ff. and Plates VII, LIV.

[50]Walter B. Emery, The Tomb of Hemaka (Cairo, 1938), 33 and Plate 15.

[51]W. M. Flinders Petrie, Tools and Weapons (London, 1917), 46 and Plate LV, 7.

[52]P. Delougaz, The Temple Oval at Khafajah (Chicago, 1940), 30-1, Figs. 26, 27.

[53]C. F. C. Hawkes, The Prehistoric Foundations of Europe (London, 1940), 82-4.

[54]C. Daryll Forde, Habitat, Economy and Society (London, 1934), 35: “In Owen’s valley several groups took advantage of favourable conditions to irrigate patches of ground. The growth of bulbous plants and grasses is patently more luxuriant wherever abundant water reaches them, and this was achieved artificially by diverting from their narrow channels the snow-fed streams flowing down from the Sierra Nevada. In spring, before the streams rose with snow-melt, a dam of boulders, brushwood and mud was thrown across a creek where it reached the valley floor.... Above the dam one or two main ditches, sometimes more than a mile long, were laboriously cut with long poles to lead the river water out on the gently sloping ground over which it was distributed by minor channels.... After the harvest the main dam was pulled down.... There was, however, no attempt at planting or working the soil, and none of the cultivated plants grown to the south of the Colorado were known.”

[55]V. Gordon Childe, Man Makes Himself, 109, states that some of these villages, when completely excavated, covered no more than from 1½ to 6½ acres, lodging from eight to ten households. In The Town Planning Review, XXI (1950), 6, he states that sixteen to thirty houses was the normal figure of a local group which he estimates at 200 to 400 souls.

[56]John Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, 2nd ed. (London, 1822), 348-50.

[57]Percy E. Newberry, Egypt as a Field of Anthropological Research, Smithsonian Institution, Annual Report for 1924 (Washington, 1925), 435-59.

[58]It seems as undesirable, therefore, to speak here of a neolithic “revolution” as it is to refer to our theme as an “urban revolution” (see below, [p. 61], [n. 10]). Both terms, used by V. Gordon Childe, place the changes in parallelism with the “industrial revolution,” but the word “revolution” in this phrase is already used figuratively; it does not refer to an event such as the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution, but to a change of conditions. And by extending its use in this sense, an impression of violent, and especially of purposeful change is made which the facts do not suggest.

[59]R. U. Sayce, Primitive Arts and Crafts (Cambridge, 1933), 27 ff.

[60]An attractive guess is made by V. Gordon Childe, Man Makes Himself (Oxford, 1939), 87-90. For a recent discussion of the problem which accentuates our uncertainties, see André Leroi-Gourhan, Milieu et techniques (Paris, 1945), 96-119.

[61]E.g. G. Caton-Thompson and E. W. Gardner, The Desert Fayum (London, 1934), 46 and Plate XXVIII. Guy Brunton and Gertrude Caton-Thompson, The Badarian Civilization (London, 1928), 64 ff. Jacques de Morgan, Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse, XIII (Paris, 1912), 163 and Plate XLIII.

[62]Seton Lloyd and Fuad Safar, in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, IV (1945), 271.

[63]This point has been emphasized by Robert J. Braidwood in lectures and papers. See Human Origins, an Introductory General Course in Anthropology, Selected Readings, Series II, 2nd ed. (Chicago, 1946), 170 ff., 181 ff. See also Linda Braidwood, ibid., 153 ff. The Braidwoods, excavating in 1948 for the Oriental Institute at Jarmo near Sulimanieh, found remains of a settlement perhaps even older than Hassuna. See [p. 29], [n. 9] above.

[64]S. Passarge, Die Urlandschaft Aegyptens (Nova Acta Leopoldina, N.F., Vol. IX, No. 58, Halle, 1940), 35.

[65]In 1923 an expedition going to Qau el Kabir in Middle Egypt found no trace of a Ptolemaic temple which Champollion, a hundred years earlier, had marked on his maps on the east bank of the Nile; the river had destroyed both the ruins and the village of Qau and subsequently cut a new bed (G. Brunton, Qau and Badari [London, 1927], 2-3, Plate I).

[66]Rudolf Anthes, Die Felseninschriften von Hat Nub (Leipzig, 1928), 52 ff., 95 ff.

[67]Brunton, Mostagedda (London, 1937), 67; Sir Robert Mond and O. H. Myers, Cemeteries of Armant, I, 7.

[68]Amratian is called “Early or First Predynastic” or “Naqada I” in the older literature.

[69]Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods (Chicago, 1948), 348, n. 4, and Index, Africa, Hamites. Badarian objects have been found, not only in Middle and Upper Egypt (at Badari, Mahasna, Naqada, Armant, and Hierakonpolis—see Brunton in Antiquity, III [1929], 461), but in Nubia (Brunton, The Badarian Civilization [London, 1928], 40), in the northern provinces of the Sudan (report of the discoveries of Mr. Oliver Myers of Gordon College, Khartoum, in The Times [London] of March 31, 1948), in the desert fifty miles west of the Nile in the latitude of Abydos (Man, No. 91 [1931]), and again far to the south, four hundred miles west of the Nile in the latitude of Wadi Halfa (Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XXII [1936], 47-8).

[70]Also called “Naqada II” or “Middle Predynastic.” Note that “Late Predynastic” or “Semainean” has been proved a chimera. The remains so labelled belong to the Gerzean period, which thus leads right up to the First Dynasty. See Helene J. Kantor, in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, III (1944), 110-46. When we use “late Predynastic” we mean the last part of the predynastic period, in other words, late Gerzean.

[71]A. Lucas, in Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XVI (1930), 200 ff.

[72]Nature, XII (October 1932), 625; Lucas in Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XIII (1927), 162-70; XIV (1928), 97-108.

[73]The Egyptian language has been explained as a common tongue imposed upon a country where several dialects existed, in the same manner as the French of Ile de France became the official French language, and “Hochdeutsch” the vehicle of communication for all Germans. Now this ancient Egyptian language included two recognizable Hamitic strains—one Southern or Ethiopian, the other Western or Berber—and also one Semitic strain (see the studies of Ernst Zyhlarz in Africa, IX [London, 1936], 433-52; Zeitschrift fur Eingeborenensprachen, XXIII [1932-3], 1 ff.; XXV [1934-5], 161 ff.).

[74]It would be possible to assume that the Semitic elements entered through the Wadi Hammamat from the Red Sea, but this leaves the Gerzean innovations unexplained and ignores the arguments put forward by K. Sethe, “Die Aegyptische Ausdrücke für rechts und links und die Hieroglyphenzeichen für Westen und Osten,” in Nachrichten von der Königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Phil.-Hist. Kl., 1922, 197-242.

[75]It even affected the physical type of the population; see G. M. Morant, “Study of Egyptian Craniology from Prehistoric to Roman Times,” in Biometrika, XVII (1925), 1-52.

[76]Brunton, The Badarian Civilization, 48. The assumption finds strong support in the tradition that Menes, the first king of the First Dynasty, reclaimed all the land from Wasta to Cairo before he founded Memphis at the north end of the strip so reclaimed. Such an enterprise presupposes some established skill in work of that nature.

[77]For a criticism of the hypothetical construction of Egyptian prehistory in terms of united Upper and Lower Egyptian kingdoms in conflict with one another, see my Kingship and the Gods, Chapter I, 349, n. 6; 350, n. 15; 351, n. 19.

[78]The head of the Persian Gulf was perhaps 125 miles to the north of Basra; or this area may have been a lagoon, separated from the Gulf by the “Bar of Basra.”

[79]The oldest of these is marked by various kinds of simple pottery wares (Hassuna ware) decorated with incisions or merely burnished to a high gloss. In addition there were sickles with flint “teeth” and underground silos for grain storage. Sheep, goats, oxen, and asses were kept. In a second stage appears fine painted pottery, called Samarran—an offshoot of a ceramic tradition at home in Persia. It was, in its turn, displaced by another type of pottery called Tell Halaf, which is found from the Gulf of Alexandrette to the region east of Mosul. The archaeological material is fully discussed in Ann Louise Perkins, The Comparative Archaeology of Early Mesopotamia (Chicago, 1949).

[80]See the article and photographs of Melvin Hall in Asia (New York), February 1939.

[81]This stage of their ceramics had been known from a small site near Erech (A. Nöldeke and others, Neunter Vorläufiger Bericht.... Uruk-Warka, Berlin, 1938, Plates 36-40), when it was found well represented at Abu Shahrein (Eridu): See Illustrated London News, 11 September 1948, p. 305; Sumer, IV (Baghdad, 1948), 115 ff. There is nothing against calling this pottery “Eridu ware” as long as its historical connections are not obscured. It is quite gratuitous to claim that “Al Ubaid people” can no longer be called the earliest settlers in southern Mesopotamia, for the Eridu ware is simply an earlier stage of the Al Ubaid ware. If quibbles about names are disregarded, it remains true that the earliest settlers of the plain descended from Persia; the new ware shows an earlier stage of their ceramics than has hitherto been found in the plain but it was already known from the western edge of the Highland, e.g. Tepe Khazineh near Susa (J. de Morgan, Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse, Paris, 1908).

[82]C. Leonard Woolley in Antiquaries Journal, X (1930), 335.

[83]Fulanain, The Marsh Arab, Haji Rikkan (Philadelphia, 1928), 21.

[84]Ancient Eridu. Illustrated London News, 31 May, 1947, 11 September, 1948; Sumer, III (Baghdad, 1947), 84 ff.; Orientalia, XVII (Rome, 1948), 115-22. Sumer, IV (1948), 115 ff. shows the development from a very small and primitive village shrine in the earliest layer to a building recognizable in its main features as the prototype of later temples.

[85]After T. Jacobsen in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, V (1946), 140.

[86]We cannot say for certain whether its bearers were the Sumerians who created the earliest civilization of Mesopotamia in the subsequent—the Protoliterate—period. But no decisive proof for a later arrival of the Sumerians has been offered, and the continuity in cult and architecture support the view that they were the dominant element in the Al Ubaid period, as they remained throughout the third millennium in the south of the country. See also [p. 51], [n. 1 below].

[87]The earliest tablets, of the Protoliterate period, seem to be written in Sumerian. They use the Sumerian sexagesimal system (with units for 10, 60, 600, and 3600) and refer to Sumerian gods like Enlil. But Sumerian has no clearly recognized affinity to other tongues.

It is important to realize that the term “Sumerian,” strictly speaking, can be used only for this language. There is no physical type which can be called by that name. From Al Ubaid times until the present day, the population of Mesopotamia has consisted of men predominantly belonging to the Mediterranean or Brown race, with a noticeable admixture of broad-headed mountaineers from the north-east. This is, for instance, true of the Early Dynastic period, as the skulls from Al Ubaid and Kish show. Skeletons of the earliest known inhabitants of the plain, found at Eridu and Hassuna, have been briefly discussed by C. S. Coon in Sumer, V (1949), 103-6; VI (1950), 93-6. They represent “rather heavy-boned prognathous and large-toothed mediterraneans.” The much-discussed problem of the origin of the Sumerians may well turn out to be the chase of a chimera.

[88]A. J. Wilson in Geographical Journal, LIV (London, 1925), 235 ff.

[89]W. K. Loftus, Travels and Researches in Chaldaea and Susiana (London, 1857), 7-8. On 17 May 1950 the correspondent of The Times reported from Baghdad that “after a break in the Tigris bund ... about 2000 mud houses have already collapsed.”

[90]“Tell Uqair,” by Seton Lloyd and Fuad Safar, in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, II (1943), 131-58.

[91]It is sometimes said that the Sumerians, descending from a mountainous region, desired to continue the worship of their gods on “High Places” and therefore proceeded to construct them in the plain. The point is why they considered “High Places” appropriate, especially since the gods worshipped there were not sky gods only but also, and predominantly, chthonic gods. Our interpretation takes its starting-point from “the mountain,” not as a geographical feature, but as a phenomenon charged with religious meaning. Several current theories have taken one or more aspects of “the mountain” as a religious symbol into account and we do not exclude them, but consider them, on the whole, subsidiary to the primary notion that “the mountain” was seen as the normal setting of divine activity.—The whole material referring to the temple towers, and the various interpretations which have been put forward, are conveniently presented in André Parrot, Ziggurats et Tour de Babel (Paris, 1949).

[92]The basic work on the subject of early Mesopotamian writing is Adam Falkenstein, Archaische Texte aus Uruk (Leipzig, 1936).

[93]A few words may be added here about the early development of writing; although true pictograms—images of the objects ([Fig. 13])—occur, many of the most common objects are rendered by simpler tokens: either highly abbreviated (and hence conventional) pictures, such as a figure with two curved lines across one end (No. 4), which represented the horned head of an ox (the sign means “ox”), or, more often, purely arbitrary signs, such as a circle with a cross—the commonest sign of all—meaning “sheep.” The system, therefore, is a collection of abstract tokens eked out with pictograms. The range of notions which could be expressed was enlarged by certain combinations. The sign for “woman” combined with that for “mountain” meant “slave-girl,” since slaves were foreigners generally brought from Persia. The sign for “sun” could also mean “day” or “white.” That for “plough” could mean either the tool or its user, the ploughman. Even so the script was of limited usefulness. It could not render sentences, for it could not indicate grammatical relations. Its signs were ideograms which listed notions; and that was what the script was, first of all, required to do. But even within the Protoliterate period a further step was taken towards writing as the graphic rendering of language. We find that the arrow sign, for instance, was soon regarded, not as a rendering of the notion “arrow,” but as a rendering of the sound “ti,” which means arrow. For the arrow sign was also used to render the notion “life” which likewise sounded “ti.” This shows that the rendering of speech rather than notions had become possible. The development of writing consisted of a series of makeshifts and compromises introduced piecemeal when the shortcomings of the system being used became noticeable. Some signs acquired a variety of sound values. Some were used to clarify the sense of other groups, although they themselves were not pronounced at all. (These are called determinatives.) Thus “ti” when it meant “arrow” (and certain other implements) was accompanied by a sign which by itself read “gish” and meant “wood,” but which, used as a determinative, merely indicated that an implement of wood was referred to. Similarly, place-names were accompanied by the sign “ki,” meaning “earth,” divine names by the star sign, and so on. Nevertheless, the fact that phonetic values became attached to most of the signs made the rendering of grammatical endings, and, in short, of true speech, possible.

[94]From Protoliterate times onwards, officials, and later also private persons, owned seals with which they could mark merchandise or documents. The shape of these seals was peculiar and remained characteristic for Mesopotamia until the end of its independent existence in Hellenistic times. They were small stone cylinders carrying on their circumference an engraved design which could be impressed on a tablet or on the clay sealing of a jar or bale of goods. Since the purpose of the seal design was the making of an individual and recognizable impression, its engraving at all times challenged the inventiveness of the Mesopotamian artists, who responded with outstanding success. (In our illustrations the rolled-out impressions, not the seals themselves, are shown. But see Figs. [35]-9.)

[95]The inlays consisted of terra cotta plaques set in among the clay cones which covered the walls. The carved figures were executed in stone and fixed to the wall with copper wire through loops drilled in their backs ([Fig. 18]).

[96]The same applies to the “urban revolution”—a phrase often used to describe the birth of civilization. This term has been introduced by V. Gordon Childe, whose great achievement has been the replacement of period-distinctions, which had only typological significance, by others which suggest socio-economic differences. However, in the later editions of his Dawn of European Civilization, in Man Makes Himself, and in What Happened in History, his point of view has assumed a Marxist slant which applies to ancient Near Eastern conditions inappropriate categories. His recent article, “The Urban Revolution,” in The Town Planning Review, XXI (Liverpool, 1950), 3-17, and his recent L. T. Hobhouse Memorial Lecture, “Social Worlds of Knowledge” (London, 1949), seem to embody, however, a change of viewpoint. As regards the term “urban revolution,” it can in no way be applied to Egypt, as we shall see, even if we should accept it, with the qualifications stated in our text, for the transition from prehistory to history in Mesopotamia.

[97]This matter has been studied by Professor Elizabeth Visser in her inaugural lecture “Polis en stad” (Amsterdam, 1947), who quotes Busolt-Swoboda, Griechische Staatskunde, II, 920 and also Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth, 228: “Greek civilization is, in a sense, urban, but its basis is agricultural and the breezes of the open country blow through Parliament and the market place.”

[98]G. M. Trevelyan, English Social History (London, 1946), 28.

[99]We have discussed elsewhere the feeling of anxiety which pervades Mesopotamian religion: Kingship and the Gods (Chicago, 1948), 277-81.

[100]Journal of Near Eastern Studies, V (1946), 137.

[101]A. Deimel published and discussed the texts. See his “Die sumerische Tempelwirtschaft zur Zeit Urukaginas und seiner Vorgänger,” Analecta Orientalia, II (Rome, 1931), 71-113. His pupil, an economist, published a study on which we have largely drawn: Anna Schneider, Die Sumerische Tempelstadt, “Plenge staatswissenschaftliche Beitrage,” IV (Essen, 1920). The Protoliterate tablets offer a sufficient basis for the view that the organization of Early Dynastic times continued in most respects that which was created at the beginning of Mesopotamian history.

[102]The city god was, for political purposes, and often also as regards the importance of his temple, the chief god of the city. But “the chief god owned only his own temple’s land. His relationship to the other gods may most probably be compared to that of the headman of a village to other landowners and their holdings in the village.” (Thorkild Jacobsen in Human Origins, An Introductory General Course in Anthropology, Selected Readings, Series II (Chicago, 1946), 255.

[103]Schneider, op. cit., 35.

[104]The illustration shows a reconstruction, warranted in all essential details, of an Early Dynastic temple excavated at Khafajah by the Iraq Expedition of the Oriental Institute. The magazines were built against the inside of the oval enclosure wall. They surround entirely the platform supporting the shrine and the open space in front of it. See P. Delougaz, The Temple Oval at Khafajah (Chicago, 1940).

[105]Cambridge Ancient History, I, 499.

[106]This has been demonstrated by Professor Thorkild Jacobsen in lectures at Chicago.

[107]V. Gordon Childe, Man Makes Himself, 152 et passim. In Social Worlds of Knowledge (London, 1949), 19, he concurs, however, with the view expressed in our text.

[108]P. P. Howell, in Man, No. 144 (1947).

[109]R. H. Lowie, Are We Civilized?, 108.

[110]After Anna Schneider, op. cit., 54.

[111]M. David, “Bemerkungen zur Leidener Keilschriftsammlung,” Revue de l’Histoire du droit, XIV, 3-6, has pointed out that the “Staatssozialismus” of early Sumerian times was only fully replaced by a free economy under the First Babylonian Dynasty, about 1800 B.C. Under the Third Dynasty of Ur, private property could consist of houses and the gardens belonging to them, but not of arable fields, which belonged to the temple or to the king.

[112]Schneider, op. cit., 93 f.

[113]This seems the most probable interpretation of the fact that even holders of allotments received rations during four months. Schneider, loc. cit., 92, views this as payment for corvée; but since many holders of allotments, such as craftsmen, worked for the temple all the year round, this seems less likely.

[114]Thorkild Jacobsen, “Primitive Democracy in Ancient Mesopotamia,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, II (1943), 159-72.

[115]The word has not yet been found in Protoliterate texts, a fact which does not prove, of course, that the institution was unknown in that period, although it does make a prima facie case for that assumption. On the monuments (Figs. [15], [44]) a bearded figure in a long garment is throughout the main actor. He wears his hair wound round his head and gathered in a chignon at the back, a style usual with rulers in the Early Dynastic period. But it should be remembered that the Protoliterate objects on which he appears derive from Erech where, according to the Epic of Gilgamesh, there was a permanent king in very early times. (This was possibly connected with the cult of Inanna.) Note, however, that even Gilgamesh consulted the assembly and the elders before he embarked on a course of action which entailed the risk of war (Journal of Near Eastern Studies, II, 166, n. 44). At Erech the ruler was called, not lugal, but en, “lord.”

[116]The enumeration recalls the so-called “Royal Tombs” of Ur, where, under conditions which are as yet obscure, a courtly society had been buried in all its splendour. The riches discovered in these tombs, which belong to the very end of the Early Dynastic period and appear far removed from the simple co-operative society of the ideal temple community which we have described, recall Homer and Malory rather than Hesiod and Piers Plowman. Since Sidney Smith suggested in 1928 (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society [1928], 849 ff.) that these rich tombs, containing numerous attendants killed when the main occupant was buried, derived from the performance of a “fertility rite,” the discussion has continued without leading to a decisive conclusion. See my Kingship and the Gods, 400, n. 12.

[117]Translation of Col. xii, 25-6, after Thorkild Jacobsen.

[118]The head is uninscribed but represents in all probability one of the Akkadian kings. The eyes were inlaid with precious materials and had been chiselled out by robbers.

[119]This view has been refuted by Thorkild Jacobsen, “The Assumed Conflict of Sumerians and Semites in Early Mesopotamian History,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, LIX (1939), 485-95.

[120]Frankfort, Cylinder Seals, 227 ff.

[121]M. E. L. Mallowan, “Excavations at Brak and Chagar Bazar,” Iraq, IX (London, 1947).

[122]Walter Andrae, Die Archaischen Ischtar-Tempel in Assur (Leipzig, 1922).

[123]Journal of the American Oriental Society, LIX (1939), 490.

[124]However, Lugalzaggesi, whom Sargon overthrew, had assumed the title of “King of the Land.”

[125]L. W. King, Chronicles concerning Early Babylonian Kings, II, 5; Sidney Smith, Early History of Assyria, 93.

[126]So F. W. Geers and Thorkild Jacobsen; see Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods, 406, n. 35.

[127]Frankfort, loc. cit.

[128]The Akkadian rulers were themselves apparently too close to the period of local autonomy to draw up a single king list for the whole land. This was done under Utuhegal (ca. 2100 B.C.), the destroyer of the Gutian invaders who had overthrown the rule of Akkad. Utuhegal’s “pride in new independence and in the ‘kingship’ which had been brought back” led to the compilation of the country-wide list in which the traditional lists of local rulers of the important cities were combined (Thorkild Jacobsen, The Sumerian King List, Chicago, 1939). Thus a conception of kingship established by the Sargonid dynasty was projected into the past.

[129]Iraq, IX (1947), 15.

[130]H. Frankfort, S. Lloyd, and T. Jacobsen, The Gimilsin Temple and the Palace of the Rulers at Tell Asmar (Chicago, 1940), 4, 177-80.

[131]Near Abydos, in Upper Egypt ([Fig. 51]).

[132]The name is written with the sign of the scorpion, but we do not know how it was pronounced.

[133]Alexander Scharff, “Archaeologische Beitraege zur Frage der Entstehung der Hieroglyphenschrift,” Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Abt. (1942), Heft 3, 10, n. 17. Gunn, Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Egypte, XXVI, 177 ff., had seen in the rekhyt the people from Lower Egypt. Gardiner, Ancient Egyptian Onomastica, I, 100-8, discussed the use of the word at length and hesitated to accept Gunn’s conclusion because in later times they are not confined to Lower Egypt; but by then the term, and the use of the lapwing sign, had become purely conventional.

[134]We confine ourselves to this, the most obvious, aspect of the Narmer palette as a work of art. But its extraordinary significance for the history of art has recently been fully discussed by H. A. Groenewegen-Frankfort, Arrest and Movement, An Essay on Space and Time in the Representational Art of the Ancient Near East (London and Chicago, 1951), 20-3.

[135]For the unique features of this scene see H. A. Groenewegen-Frankfort, op. cit., 19.

[136]The so-called Bull and Lion palettes. See Capart, Primitive Art in Egypt, 238, Fig. 177; 242, Fig. 181; or Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods, Figs. 27 and 28 and 91 ff.

[137]The evidence for the early date is linguistic. Junker’s view on the date of the text is ill-founded. See Frankfort, op. cit., 352, n. 1. In chapter ii of this work English renderings of the major part of the Memphite Theology are given.

[138]In recent excavations at Saqqara, W. B. Emery has discovered the tombs of high officials of the kings of the First Dynasty, but there is no evidence, as far as I can see, that there were royal tombs there.

[139]Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods, chapter ii.

[140]The reader conversant with the role of Osiris in the Egyptian theory of kingship may here be reminded of the fact that the “Interment of Osiris” was localized in the “Royal Castle” by the Memphite Theology, and that this interment, as well as the resurrection of Osiris in the Djed pillar, was annually performed at Memphis.

[141]Frankfort, op. cit., 19-23.

[142]See G. M. Morant, “Study of Egyptian Craniology from Prehistoric to Roman Times.” Biometrika, XVII (1925), 1-52.

[143]The rural character of the Egyptian commonwealth became apparent also in times of internal conflict. The wars between the Sumerian city-states find their Egyptian counterpart in struggles in which large parts of the Nile valley appear united under rival chiefs: a Theban family of Antefs and Mentuhoteps leading Upper Egypt against the royal house residing at Herakleopolis; or Kamose or Ahmose leading, first the Thebaid, then the whole Nile valley, against the foreign Hyksos in the Delta.

[144]We may note in passing that the rudiments of the official hierarchy were established in the First Dynasty. Cylinder seals of that period (Figs. [35], [36]) bear titles (and presumably names) of officials. The investiture with a cylinder seal confirmed the official in his function, and the term ś‘ḥw, which is usually translated “noble,” in reality means “he who owns a seal of office”—in other words, a high official.

[145]This may have been a contributory cause to the extreme scarcity of legal and administrative documents, the main cause being the perishable nature of the Egyptian writing materials—leather and papyrus; but when the king’s decision is the source of law, the need of codes and statutes is much reduced (see my Ancient Egyptian Religion, 43-6). In any case, the rarity of written documents obliged us to telescope in this chapter evidence much more widely spread through time than we used in our description of Mesopotamia. We have attempted to stress the features of society which we believe to have been present well-nigh from the first and which remained fairly permanent. But we are aware of the danger that we have distorted our sketch of conditions in the early part of the third millennium B.C.

[146]Kees, Kulturgeschichte, 210.

[147]Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XIII (1927), 200.

[148]Junker, Giza, III (Wien, 1938), 172 ff.

[149]The change was a slow one. Methen (whose career under the Fourth Dynasty we have described) thought it worth while to record in his tomb the possession, not of a large estate, but of a country seat of about 2½ acres, provided with a garden, with vines, figs, and other good trees, and a pond.

[150]H. Frankfort, Ancient Egyptian Religion (New York, 1948), Chapter iii.

[151]Gardiner in Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XXVII (1941), 19.

[152]This is an over-simplified description of the significance of the scenes of daily life found in the tombs. For a more penetrating treatment, see H. A. Groenewegen-Frankfort, Arrest and Movement, 28-44.

[153][Fig. 29], a relief from the Old Kingdom, shows, in the upper register, the harvesters with their sickles; on the extreme left is an overseer; the third figure from the left plays a long pipe, while his companion sings, holding the side of his face, as oriental singers do to this day. In the second register donkeys are brought to carry the harvest home. The register below shows various incidents in the transport; the bottom register shows how the sheaves are stacked.

[154][Fig. 30], a wall painting from the New Kingdom, is best “read” from the bottom upwards. At the left bottom corner teams of oxen draw ploughs, while sowers, holding a bag with seeds, sprinkle the grain with uplifted hands. Farther to the right men are shown breaking the ground with hoes. Behind the three of them shown on the right we see a girl drawing a thorn out of the foot of her friend.

The second register from below shows the grain being cut—one of the labourers takes a swig from a water jar handed him by a girl who stands in front, a basket hanging from her shoulder. Farther to the right the grain is carried away in hampers (underneath one of these, two girl gleaners are fighting and tearing each other’s hair); and, on the far right, it is forked out in readiness for threshing. The threshing is done by bullocks who trample the grain—this is shown at the extreme right of the third register from below. To the left women winnow the grain, their hair wrapped in white cloth against the dust. The tomb owner watches in a kiosk and receives two water jars. Behind the kiosk squat the scribes who note the yield of the harvest while the grain is shovelled into heaps.

The upper register shows the deceased in his function as “Scribe of the fields of the Lord of the Two Lands.” On the left are shown a group of his officials, dressed in white, pencase in hand, busy measuring the grain on the stalk; their attendants (with bare bodies) hold the measuring cord. A peasant (followed by his wife who carries a basket on her head with further gifts) offers something to the tax officials, to propitiate them. But on the right, before the kiosk of the tomb owner and near the mooring-place of the boat which brought his subordinates to the scene, a peasant, who apparently defaulted, is beaten, while another kneels and prays for grace.

[155]“The Eloquent Peasant” is a tale of such an appeal. See Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, IX (1923), 7 ff., and a short discussion in my Ancient Egyptian Religion, 46, 146-50. For the conception of maat, ibid., 49-58.

[156]For a detailed discussion of the building of the pyramids, see I. E. S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt, Pelican Books, chapter vii.

[157]T. Eric Peet and C. Leonard Woolley, The City of Akhenaten, Part I (38th Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Society), London, 1923.

[158]Gardiner in Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache, XLIII (1906), 43.

[159]Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Tübingen, 1924), 24.

[160]Junker, Giza, V (Wien, 1941).

[161]Op. cit., 52 ff.

[162]Junker, Giza, IV (Wien, 1940).

[163]After Griffith, Deir el Gebrawi, II, 30.

[164]Gardiner, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XXVII (1941), 22.

[165]After Kees, Kulturgeschichte, 40.

[166]Ibid., 41.

[167]Gardiner, Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, XXXVII (1915), 117; XXXIX (1917), 133.

[168]F. M. Powicke, The Reformation in England (Oxford, 1941), 31.

[169]This subject has been studied in the works named on [p. 124], [n. 5]. Since the last of these was published during the war and is hardly known abroad, we have included in this Appendix more matter dealt with on a previous occasion than would otherwise have been justifiable.

[170]Phrased differently, one might say that we had, without justification, used the expansion of the Indo-European and Arabic-speaking peoples as an analogy for the changes observed in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

[171]Frankfort, Cylinder Seals (London, 1939), 293.

[172]The reader unacquainted with these cylinders may identify the figures as follows. In [Fig. 37] he will see some hieroglyphs which appear, reversed, at the extreme left in the impression of [Fig. 38]. To the right of them one sees the offering table with two crescents representing loaves of bread; over these a man extends his hand. He is seated on a bed with legs ending in bull’s or lion’s feet (such beds have been found in the graves at Abydos). His long hair is rendered in a crosshatched mass. In [Fig. 39] is a similar figure, facing to the right. His hair is rendered with a straight line.

[173]In order not to overload this Appendix with footnotes, we shall refer only to the most important monuments. These are conveniently collected in J. Capart, Primitive Art in Egypt, London, 1905. Detailed discussions with references will be found there and in the following three works: H. Frankfort, Studies in Early Pottery of the Near East, I (London, 1924), 117-42; A. Scharif, “Neues zur Frage der ältesten Aegyptisch-Babylonischen Kulturbeziehungen” in Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache, LXXI (1935), 89-106; H. Frankfort, “The Origin of Monumental Architecture in Egypt” in American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, LVIII (1941), 329-58. In this last article, I have formulated disagreement with certain ideas propounded by Scharff, especially as regards cylinder seals, and have shown (op. cit., 354, n. 55) that the relief of shell in Berlin (also depicted by Capart, op. cit., 83, Figs. 50-1) is a purely Mesopotamian object, and therefore irrelevant to the present discussion.

[174]They occur on the Small Hierakonpolis palette: Capart, op. cit., Fig. 172.

[175]See also the University College knife-handle (Capart, op. cit., 72, Fig. 37) and the Berlin knife-handle (Capart, op. cit., 73, Fig. 38.)

[176]Gebel el Arak knife-handle ([Fig. 23]); Small Louvre palette (Capart, op. cit., 235, Fig. 174); Lion palette (Capart, op. cit., 239, Fig. 178 plus 241, Fig. 180); Zaki Youssef Saad, Royal Excavations at Saqqara and Helwan, 1944-5, Supplément aux Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Egypte, 166, Fig. 14.

[177]The Egyptian manner of representing carnivores and their prey is shown in the central row of animals on the Hunters’ palette ([Fig. 25]) where they appear in headlong flight. See also the Small Hierakonpolis palette and Egyptian renderings of the historical periods. In Mesopotamia the prey is rendered as unaffected by the attack; our [Fig. 14], for instance, can be matched by a seal (Frankfort, Cylinder Seals, Plate V a) where a lion is shown striking his claws into a bull’s hindquarters. The bull stands as in our figure. This is but one example from many. Another instance of this rendering in Egypt is found on a macehead from Hierakonpolis (Capart, op. cit., 97, Fig. 68) with alternating dogs and lions, each of which attacks the one before him with teeth and claws. This type of design, a circular interlocking by activation of the individual figures, is characteristic for Mesopotamia and occurs on numerous cylinder seals, on the silver vase of Entemena, and on the macehead of Mesilim of Kish in the Louvre.

[178]See Frankfort, Cylinder Seals, Epilogue et passim.

[179]See Frankfort, “The Origin of Monumental Architecture in Egypt,” in American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, LVIII (1941), 329-58. In this article we have not only discussed the detailed technical similarities between recessed brick building in the two countries but also demonstrated the inadequacy of prevalent explanations of the Egyptian examples, “irrespective the fact that they failed to account for the contemporary construction of similar buildings in Mesopotamia.”

[180]This does not imply that they must have been mean structures. In Uganda, for instance, no fewer than a thousand men are continuously engaged in the royal enclosure on building and repairs (John Roscoe, The Baganda, 366).

[181]See also Borchardt, “Das Grab des Menes,” in Zeitschrift für Aegyptische Sprache, XXXVI (1898), 87-105.

[182]This is the Riemchenverband, observed by the excavators of Erech (E. Heinrich, Schilf und Lehm, 40) and of Tell Asmar (Delougaz and Lloyd, Pre-Sargonid Temples in the Diyala Region [Chicago, 1942], 169, Fig. 127).

[183]In our [figure] and in the tomb of Neithotep (“Das Grab des Menes”—see [n. 2], above), the structures, like the Babylonian temples, appear to stand on a brick platform; but in reality a low revetment was built up against the outside of the walls after these had been built up—complete with recesses—from the foundations. In Babylonia this apparent platform is called a kisu.

[184]Our [Fig. 48] shows the impressions of these round timbers in the brick work of the White Temple at Erech, of which [Fig. 45] shows the plan. [Fig. 49] shows a wooden sarcophagus found in a First Dynasty tomb at Tarkhan in Egypt, which imitates a recessed building with a similar strengthening of round timbers. [Fig. 50] shows an actual tomb found at Abu Roash in Lower Egypt with some timbers still in place.

[185]The Egyptian designs (Figs. [42], [44] left, [43]) are supposed to render a palace façade, an assumption incapable of proof and ignoring the fact that the tombs have recesses on all four sides. But whatever the original of this design may have been, its abbreviated rendering in Egypt resembles an abbreviated rendering of temples in Mesopotamia ([Fig. 44] right) very closely.

[186]At Abydos three of these, perhaps built under the Second Dynasty, survive. See Petrie, Abydos, III (London, 1904), Plates V-VIII.

[187]Scharff, Archaeologische Beiträge zur Frage der Entstehung der Hieroglyphenschrift (München, 1942).

[188]See Kingship and the Gods, 20 and 350, n. 15.

[189]We have shown that in early Mesopotamian script words sounding alike (e.g. “to live” and “arrow”) could be written with the same sign and the meaning clarified by the addition of determinatives which were not pronounced but indicated what kind of notion was rendered. In Egypt from the first we find the same devices in use. The hieroglyph depicting a rib can also be used to render the verb “to approach,” in which case two legs are added as a determinative. Just as in Mesopotamia the picture of the arrow became a phonetic sign for ti, so the Egyptian signs become phonetic signs. There is, however, a difference. In Mesopotamia both consonants and vowels were rendered by the sign. In Egypt the vowels were ignored, and only the consonantal skeleton of the word was rendered. This was natural to the Egyptians, because the consonants of their words remained constant while the vowels changed in the conjugation and declension (as with us the verb “to break” has in the past tense “he broke”). To turn to our example, the picture of the rib stood for spir when it meant rib, soper when it meant “to approach,” and so on. (This is the vocalization in Coptic, the latest stage of Egyptian which used the Greek alphabet and, therefore, wrote vowels.) The phonetic value of the sign of the rib is therefore spr. In this way the Egyptians adapted the notion of how language might be rendered (which they evidently got from Mesopotamia) to the peculiarities of their own language. I do not want to suggest that Egyptian necessarily calls for a script in which only the consonants are written. Scharff (loc. cit.), points out that Hebrew and Arabic developed in their punctuation a method of rendering the changing vocalization alongside the permanent consonantal skeleton of the words.

Some of the phonetic signs of Egyptian consist of only one consonant. In a discussion concerned with Egyptian writing there would be no reason why they should be mentioned in particular, since they do not differ in principle from the other signs. But in a wider historical context the signs with the value of a single consonant are of unique importance: they seem to be the distant ancestors of the alphabet.

[190]Petrie, Royal Tombs, I, Plate 19, No. 11.

[191]Scharff, op. cit., 55.

[192]Some features of Mesopotamian civilization remain almost unaltered during the Protoliterate period, hence it is very important that the Egyptian links can be proved to derive from the latter part, which is known to be a time of expansion in any case. The evidence for the synchronization of the rise of Dynasty I in Egypt with the later part of the Protoliterate period in Mesopotamia consists of three groups:

(a) The cylinder seals found in Egypt all belong to the “Jamdat Nasr” style and do not include any of the earlier style, known from seal impressions found in Archaic Layer IV at Erech. Likewise absent are examples of the brocade style which succeeds the Jamdat Nasr style in Early Dynastic I. Thus the upper and lower limits of the period during which contact took place are defined.

(b) The small bricks used in recessing at Naqada and Saqqara ([Fig. 46]) are predominant in the later part of the Protoliterate period in Mesopotamia. In the earlier part larger bricks are commonly used; in the subsequent Early Dynastic period the bricks are plano-convex.

(c) During the Protoliterate period Mesopotamian buildings were decorated all around with elaborate recesses (Figs. [45], [48]); and this is the decoration found in the earliest monumental buildings in Egypt, the tombs at Naqada, Abydos, Saqqara, etc. In Early Dynastic Mesopotamia simplified recessing all around became the style; and the multiple recessing was reserved for towers flanking temple entrances ([Fig. 19]). These towers are introduced in Mesopotamia in the later half of the Protoliterate period as a seal impression shows ([Fig. 42] right). The abbreviated renderings of recessed buildings in Egypt show both flat buildings and buildings with towers ([Fig. 42], left; [43], [44]), a combination which corresponds neither with the earlier part of the Protoliterate period nor with the Early Dynastic period in Mesopotamia but only with the later part of the Protoliterate period. Again, the upper and lower limits of the period of contact are defined.

[193]This object is depicted in Capart, op. cit., 100, Fig. 70, and Scharff, Die Altertümer der Vor- und Frühzeit Aegyptens, II, Plate 22, No. 108.

[194]There are no parallels in Egypt in historical times for the ships with vertical prow and stern, while the Mesopotamian belem—represented in silver, e.g. in the Royal Tombs at Ur—assumes that shape. See Woolley, The Royal Cemetery, Plate 169, and, for older literature, Frankfort, Studies in Early Pottery of the Near East, I, 138 ff.

[195]Petrie, Koptos (London, 1896), Plates III, IV, V 4; Capart, loc. cit., 223, Fig. 166.