Transcription
Okay, good morning. Uh, we are doing Mesopotamia today. This is the Bronze Age. Uh, we did Egypt last class. We are doing Mesopotamia today. In the next class, we will finish with the Indus Valley. Okay, so, uh, before I begin, um, I want to make three general points about the study of history and how civilizations develop. Okay.
The first point is this: Every culture has a mythology. Mythology is the collective worldview of the people that lets them understand the reality around them. Okay. So, another idea that we can say is mythology is a shared reality, and every civilization has mythology. So, for example, today our mythology would be science and history, right? We think they are two objective but they're actually mythologies. They're a shared reality, and every civilization would have its own mythology, and that's what makes, makes the culture unique. Okay. So that's the first point. So, what we will do today to better understand Mesopotamia is to compare and contrast its mythology with that of the Egyptians.
Second point is, um, there's an idea called the dialectic, and this was an idea proposed by the German philosopher named Frederick Hegel in the 19th century. He believes that history is driven by opposing ideas. So, whenever you have one mythology or one idea, there always must arise another opposing idea that challenges it, and that's what drives history. And history is always moving towards a synthesis of ideas. Okay. So, the example would be, there's capitalism, and the opposing idea would be communism. The synthesis of the idea would be socialism. And what's really important to understand is that ideas can be living things that change over time.
The third idea I want to introduce is the idea of diversity and differentiation. And the idea here is, we humans have some fundamental natures about us. So, for example, we're all religious in some aspect. Another fundamental, um, instinct about us, we strive to be different, and that's why diversity is the iron law of society. Okay. So, the example is, in a family, all the siblings will be different. In a classroom, the students will be different. And you could be a student way in a classroom, and then you go to another classroom, and you figure out the students there are similar to you, so you will change as a person to differentiate yourself from other people. Okay. So that's also another principle of history. Societies strive to be different from each other. They strive for diversity and differentiation. We cannot make generalizations about societies. The, the only thing that we can say is societies or cultures fall into a spectrum, okay, and they're usually defined by the by the elite or generalizations. Okay. So, this is another way of saying, today I'm, I'm going to make very broad generalizations about these societies and civilizations, and, um, they're useful for our purposes, but I want, I want you to be aware that these are simplifications, these are generalizations. Okay.
All right, so let's start. Okay. So, uh, Mesopotamia is a very different culture and civilization than Egypt because of its geography. Okay. So, if you look at the geography of Egypt, it has natural boundaries. So, for example, to the, um, west is the Sahara Desert. To the north is the Mediterranean Sea. Um, to the east is the, uh, Red Sea. Okay. And then to the south, um, are the cataracts. So, it makes it hard to travel up the Nile from the south. Okay. So, there are really only two access points into Egypt which can be easily defended: the south and also from the Levant, okay, which is basically Israel, Syria, Jordan. And because of its natural boundaries, Egypt doesn't really feel threatened by external enemies, right? Also, it has the Nile River, which is the foundation of its civilization. Remember last class, we talked about how the Nile, uh, um, was very generous. It flooded predictably every season, and so it made agriculture very productive in Egypt, which allowed them to sustain a very large population, which then can be used to create monuments like the pyramids. Okay. So, for most of its history, Egypt was stable and prosperous.
Mesopotamia is completely different. Okay. So, first of all, Mesopotamia, which is in what we call, um, Iraq today, it has no natural boundaries. Mesopotamia, uh, is Greek for the land between two rivers. These two rivers are the Euphrates and the Tigris. Okay. Euphrates, the Tigris. To the, um, west of Mesopotamia would be Arabia and the Levant. Okay. To the north would be Anatolia. To, um, the east of the Zagros Mountains. The thing about Anatolia is it itself is a very prosperous place, so it will become eventually, um, home to certain empires like the Hittites, who will always threaten Mesopotamia. Okay. So, Anatolia is a threat to Mesopotamia. The people of Arabia and the Zagros Mountains are nomads, and as we know, nomads are a very aggressive people, and so they will constantly launch raids against Mesopotamia, which threatens its safety. Okay. So, Mesopotamia throughout its history has always been at war with its neighbors. The other thing about Mesopotamia is, even though it's fertile, it's part of something called a Fertile Crescent, okay, which extends from Mesopotamia into the Levant. Okay. It's called the Crescent. The Euphrates and Tigris don't really cooperate. Um, they're very chaotic. They change course all the time, and so, uh, the only way to tame this Euphrates and the Tigris is through irrigation. Okay. Because if you farm too close to the bed, the riverbank, you're going to get flooded. Okay. So, they had to develop irrigation in order to tame the Euphrates and the Tigris. Okay. So, the geography of these two cultures are very different, and therefore the history is very different. For most of its history, Egypt was unified as an empire. It was very stable. But Mesopotamia, H, was always in flux. Okay. So, the first great civilization of Mesopotamia were the Sumerians. They were eventually conquered by the Akkadians, and then you have the Assyrians and the Babylonians. And these four civilizations are what we call Mesopotamia. Okay.
Okay, any questions so far before I go into the brief history of Mesopotamia? Okay. Yeah, that's a good question. Okay. But what is the relationship between these four relationships? The Sumerians, the Akkadians, uh, the, the Babylonians, and the Assyrians? Okay. So, the very first civilization were the Sumerians, and then they were eventually united by the Akkadians. Okay. So, Sumeria was not really an empire. It was a culture and a civilization that was divided into city-states, like the Greeks, okay, before the conquest of the Macedonian and the Akkadians under Sargon of Akkad, or Sargon the Great, united, um, the city-states and gave us the idea of, um, Sumerian civilization. After the Akkadian empire fell, North Mesopotamia became the Assyrian Empire. South Mesopotamia became the Babylonian Empire. They all saw themselves as heirs to the Sumerian civilization. So, even though they're different civilizations, they share a common mythology, which I will discuss later in the class. Okay. Does that make sense? Great.
Okay, so I'm gonna talk very briefly about how Mesopotamia developed. Okay. So, remember that in the beginning, agriculture first appeared in two places: Anatolia and the Levant. Then there was something called the 8.2 kiloyear event, and we can see this as dramatic climate change that radically changed the geography and the climate of this world. Okay. And because of the cooling in temperature, the people in the Levant and the people in Anatolia were forced to spread out. So, went to, they went to Europe, they went to Egypt, they went to Mesopotamia. And when they did that, they spread agriculture. And remember, agriculture, the mythology is the mother goddess, which meant that they were mainly peaceful, agrarian people, who were very artistic. So, this is a very peaceful, stable world. But then you have the 5.9 kiloyear event. Okay. So, this is, this is about 6,000 years ago, 4,000 BCE, and again, you saw a radical change in temperature, which again forced migration and forced, um, the civilizations to change. Okay. One of the major changes in Mesopotamia is the founding of a place called, um, Uruk. Okay. Uruk. And Uruk is interesting. Sorry, it's here. Uruk is interesting because it is considered the first city of the world, and so this is the beginning of what we call civilization. Okay. The modern idea of civilization. And it has about 40,000 people, and this is what we considered the beginning of the Sumerian civilization. And the Sumerian civilization is considered the cradle of civilization. It is the beginning of the foundations of modern civilization. They gave us irrigation technology, they gave us mathematics, they gave us astronomy, they gave us writing, cuneiform writing, they gave us the legal system, okay, they gave us hierarchy and religion. So, there was an explosion of innovation, uh, with the founding of Uruk.
Now, Uruk eventually would become a huge city, which compelled the people to migrate and found cities that are similar to Uruk. Okay. They're basically colonies, and they're, and they're scattered throughout Mesopotamia. Okay. These are city-states that at first were part of the Uruk civilization, but eventually they became, um, prosperous and wealthy, themselves, and so they broke away from Uruk. And this led to tension and conflict, and maybe sometimes even outright warfare. But please remember, like, during this time, the idea of like massive warfare that we would see during the Greek and Roman periods, it's still pretty absent. There's conflict, it's short-term, and they're, and they're, and they have conflicts in order to reserve, to resolve like territorial disputes, or trade disputes, but they're not trying to wipe each other out. Okay.
Um, one of the great mysteries is where the Sumerians come from. We have this problem because when we discovered cuneiform and we translated the Sumerian language, we discovered the spoken language is very different from the surrounding regions who spoke something called a Semitic language. Okay. So, the language spoken in the area are part of a Semitic language group, but Sumerian is not part of that group. There's not enough similarities. Also, there is no other language like Sumerian in the world. It's what is called a language isolate. It is unique, and so this has puzzled scholars for decades, and quite honestly, no one knows why this is the case. Okay. No one knows. There are different theories. One theory is the, the Sumerian people are people who came from Anatolia and settled, uh, in the Euphrates because it was good for agriculture. Okay. So, that's one theory. But there are other theories. There are other people who believe the Sumerians came from the Zagros Mountains. Okay. There are other people who believe they came from Arabia and settled. And then there's another group of people who believe the Sumerians are people who came from the Indus Valley. Okay. We'll talk about the Indus Valley next class. But all you need to know is the Indus Valley, it is a very advanced civilization. It's very large, 5 million people, and it covers three major areas: Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Northwest India. It is larger than Egypt and Mesopotamia combined. Okay. So, people believe that the Indus Valley sent a colony to Mesopotamia which founded Uruk, and it makes sense because it's actually pretty easy to get from Indus Valley to Uruk because of the Arabian Sea. Okay. So, these are the different theories.
But then there's another theory, okay, which I think makes the most sense, which is this: Sumerian is a creole language. It was invented by a melting pot of cultures and languages, and it's very similar to the Mandarin we speak today, right? Where Mandarin didn't exist, but because you had so many different cultures coming to, uh, the palace, they had to create their own language in order to communicate with each other. We call that language today Mandarin. Okay. Does that make sense?
Okay. So, why do I think this idea makes the most sense? And again, uh, just to be absolutely clear, no one knows, and we'll probably never know the answer. But I believe the theory that Sumerian is a creole language, this theory makes the most sense because of this: Why was Uruk able to develop into the first city? What makes it special? The answer is this: It is at the center of the world. Okay. So, let me explain. From Uruk, you're able to access the Indus Valley, you're able to access the Arabian Desert, you're able to go north to Anatolia and the Zagros Mountains. Okay. And these civilizations, we know traded with each other because it's the Bronze Age, right? Because to make bronze, you need to create an alloy between tin and copper. But also, what's important to understand is, we humans have been trading with each other since the beginning because we like to explore and we like to experience different cultures. Okay. So, that's what explains why Uruk was able to prosper so fast because it's a center of the world. To get anywhere, you have to go through Uruk. Okay. But if that's the case, if it's a trading center of the world, it makes sense for it to be also a multicultural and multilingual community of people, right? Because these traders from Arabia, Anatolia, the Zagros Mountains, also let's not forget about the Yamnaya, who are up here in the steppes, they also trade with these people. People from the Indus Valley. It makes sense for them to come together in a trading community and develop their own language, their own culture, which spreads. Also, because this is a melting pot, it's really an immigrant culture, they're able to bring the most advanced ideas from all around the world and combine them together, which creates new inventions like writing, like legal systems, like mathematics, like astronomy. Okay. And that's why Sumer became, Sumerian became the cradle of civilization because of the meeting place of the world's cultures and ideas, and because of the very instability of the environment, meaning they have to tame the Tigris, Euphrates, and because they were always threatened by outside enemies, they had to develop a new culture and new mythology based on struggle. Right? The Egyptians can afford to be passive and fatalistic, let the gods decide. But because this is an immigrant community, they have to focus on struggle and achievement, which is very much like America today. Okay. Does that make sense? So, again, this is my theory of the Sumerian people, where they came from, and why they are what, why they are who they are. Okay. Any questions so far before I continue?
All right. So, next, next, what I want to do is I want to compare Egyptian mythology with Mesopotamian mythology to show how the geographic and cultural difference translates into the mythology, the shared reality of the people. Okay. So, let's, uh, look at Egypt first. All right. So, again, Egypt is a very ancient civilization, and their mythology is extremely complex. They have different versions of the same stories, okay, but I'm going to give you the generalization which will be useful for our purposes. Okay. So, let's look at Egypt, and then we'll look at Mesopotamia.
Egypt. Egypt believed the first god was Ra. Okay. There are, there are other gods who, who they believe to be the first god, like Atum and Amun, okay, but let's just say the first god is Ra, who is a sun god. He comes to our world and he creates life. He basically gives life to everything, okay, including humans, and as such, we worship him. But eventually, we start to become misguided, and we start to worship another god, a false god. Ra becomes angry and kills many of us. But after he kills many of us, he has tremendous regret, and he decides his time is up. He should give his crown to someone else. Okay. This other god becomes Osiris. Osiris is a great god because he gives people civilization, which includes cities, which includes the pyramids, which includes writing. Okay. So, it's Osiris who gives us civilization.
Now, here's a brother named Set, and Set is very jealous of the fact that Osiris is worshiped by the people. So, he plots to usurp the throne from Osiris. So, what he does is this: He builds a sarcophagus, a tomb. He presents it to Osiris and says, "Osiris, my great king, this sarcophagus is the most beautiful and comfortable sarcophagus in the world. You will love lying in here." And Osiris is like, "Oh, that's interesting. Let me try." So, Osiris gets into the sarcophagus, and Set closes it forever. Okay. Then he kills Osiris and dismembers his body. Osiris has a wife, Isis, and when she hears upon, she hears about the death of her husband, she looks for his body and assembles it together. H, but she can't find the head. And then Osiris becomes the god of the underworld. Okay. After Osiris is reassembled, he impregnates Isis. They have a son named Horus. Horus eventually grows up, and he's angered by the fact that his uncle Set has usurped his throne. Okay. So, the two are going to battle, and the gods who judge all tell them they have to challenge each other to a duel. Okay. So, they have a series of duels. One duel is they both turn into hippopotamuses and they try to, to, um, stay in the river for the longest time possible. Horus seizes an opportunity to kill Set. He tells his mother Isis, "While Set is distracted, while he's a hippopotamus, take a spear and kill him." And Isis agrees, but when she tries to kill Set, she is paralyzed with fear, and she fails. Horus, in anger, strikes, beheads, uh, her mother. Her mother, he doesn't kill her, but she loses her head. That's how angry he is. Okay. So, Isis and Horus continue their challenge. Eventually, Set decides to poison Horus, but before he can do so, Horus first poisons him. Then Horus becomes king, and he gives Egypt the institution of kingship. So, every pharaoh is a direct descendant of Horus or another reincarnation of Horus. Okay. That is the Egyptian myth of creation.
Now, the Mesopotamians. They have a different myth of creation called the Enuma Elish. From up high, the Enuma Elish. And this is the story of the Enuma Elish. There are two gods: the first god is Tiamat, Tiamat, who is, who is basically saltwater. Then you have Apsu, who is freshwater. The two great gods get together, they give birth to other gods, their children. These gods then give birth to other gods. Eventually, Apsu gets annoyed with his children because children are loud and he can't see, so he resolves to kill all his children and bring peace to the world. Tiamat finds out about Apsu's diabolical plan. He warns, she warns her children. The gods get together and they kill Apsu. Tiamat is enraged by the death of her consort, and she resolves to raise a great army and destroy her children. The gods get together and they decide, they elect Marduk, who is the son of the god, so he's, he's basically a third-generation god. Okay. They elect Marduk to lead them in battle against Tiamat. Okay. So, you have these two massive armies converging against each other, and then Tiamat turns into a huge water serpent and challenges Marduk to a duel. They fight. Marduk unleashes whirlwinds into the mouth of, uh, Tiamat, and that sort of, like, dizzies her, and then Marduk strikes her down. After he kills her, she uses her body to create the world. She uses half of her body to create the sky, and she uses another half of the body to create the continents. Okay. He creates the moons, and he creates the stars. He creates the entire universe, basically, from the body of Tiamat. After that, the gods all decide to rest in peace, but they need people to take care of them. They need people to watch the land, to farm and till the land. So, they create humans as their slaves. Humans. And that's how the Enuma Elish ends. Okay. Each city has its own god, and the humans in that city must revere and take care of that god to be their slave for all eternity.
All right. So, as you can see right away, there are massive differences between Egyptian mythology and Mesopotamian mythology. The first major difference is, um, the gods are benevolent, right? The gods give us everything, we just sit back. The gods will give us life, they will give us civilization, they will give us kingship, they will give us pyramids. So, all all we have to do is respect and revere and worship the gods. We humans don't need to participate in the order of things. But in the Enuma Elish, we find out that gods are extremely violent and they demand our servitude. They're our masters. Okay. So, we must constantly work to please the, um, gods. That's one major difference. Second major difference is, as you can see, uh, from the Egyptian mythology, the main virtue that wins out is cleverness, okay, deception, trickery. And you can say this is because for the longest time, Egypt was an empire. So, what mattered was not the ability to go to war, but the ability to to manipulate, um, eternal politics. What we call palace intrigue. And this is no different from China, right? Because remember in China, we have something called, uh, Sun Tzu, The Art of War by Sun Tzu, that is a manual on palace intrigue, right? How to trick other people. It's not a manual on how to go to war. Okay. But here, the value that is most most prominent in Mesopotamia is bravery or strength, okay, not cleverness. There's no trickery going on. It's just pure power, pure bravery. And the third major difference is, in Egypt, they believe the gods are helping each other. They build on top of each other's legacies. That's what progress is, that's what improvement is. But in Mesopotamia, they believe in something called creative destruction, which is to say, in order to create something new, you must destroy the old. Tiamat represents the old, therefore she must be destroyed, and from the old, you can build a new civilization, but you must first destroy the old. And conflict is a source of creativity. Okay. Does that make sense? And again, they have these two different mythologies because they're reflecting the shared reality of the different geographies and history. Okay.
Okay, any questions so far before I continue? Are you clear? Okay. Right. Great. Okay. All right, let's continue. All right. Okay.
So, both Egypt and both Mesopotamia, they are in a struggle to prove their mythologies are the best. Okay. The reason why is, remember that this is a time when all these civilizations are trading with each other, but, but also what's important to understand is there's a lot of migration going on, and people have a choice. If you're not happy here, you can always, uh, move somewhere else. Okay. There isn't any idea of like nation or culture or race. People have autonomy. Okay. So, you need to constantly prove that your civilization is the best to attract people, which provides the labor to drive your civilization. Right. So, the Egyptians created something called the pyramids. The pyramids to show the people around them, we are favored by the gods, because it's only the gods who could inspire us to build the pyramids. Okay. So, now the people in Mesopotamia have a problem because how do you compete against the pyramids? I mean, at first, they tried. They created things called the ziggurats. The ziggurats, which are temples to house the gods. But then they did something that was completely different, and which made them immortal, just as the pyramids made the Egyptians immortal. They created something called The Epic of Gilgamesh, and today we celebrate The Epic of Gilgamesh as the first work of world literature. Okay.
So, let me first explain the plot of The Epic of Gilgamesh and show you, um, how it reflects Mesopotamian culture and values, and then explain the meaning of it. Okay. So, The Epic of Gilgamesh. So, there was a king of Uruk, okay, the first city, um, Uruk. He's, and he's the king of the first city, and he's a demigod. Okay. He's huge, he's a giant, and he's very brave. The problem is, even though he's built this great city, Uruk, high walls, prosperous land, advanced civilization, he gets bored very quickly. He starts to bully the people around him. So, he sees young men, he challenges them to a fight, and he beats them up. He's a bully. He also rapes all the young women in Uruk, and this drives their parents to pray to the gods for relief. So, the gods decide to try to create an equal to Gilgamesh, and his name is Enkidu. Enkidu. Enkidu is made of clay. The two fight, and even though Gilgamesh defeats Enkidu in battle, Gilgamesh is happy because he thinks he's found a good friend, someone equal, who he can share adventures with. So, the two become great friends, the best of friends. They go on on these adventures together, and these adventures are tremendous challenges. For example, they challenge gods to battle, and at first, they're afraid, but through their friendship and through their bravery, they're able to triumph in the end. There's a god named Ishtar, and she falls in love with Gilgamesh because he's so heroic, but Gilgamesh rebuffs Ishtar because Gilgamesh, basically, knows that Ishtar wants to turn him into her sex slave. He doesn't want that. He wants his freedom. He wants to prove he's a great hero. Ishtar feels rejected, feels ashamed, so she sends something called the Bull of Heaven to destroy Uruk. Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight the Bull of Heaven and they kill this great bull. The gods now are really pissed off at Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and they decide that Enkidu must die. So, they inflict a disease on Enkidu, which kills him. At this point, Gilgamesh is heartbroken. He's lost his best friend. At the same time, he knows death is waiting for him. He has all these accomplishments, he's a great king, he's built this great city, but eventually he must die. He does not want to die. He fears death. So, he hears about this immortal man, this man who has lived forever and who will live forever, and he decides to seek him out. On his journey, he has to overcome many hurdles. And along the journey, along the journey, everyone implores him, "Gilgamesh, give up this vain project. Immortality is for the gods. We are humans, we must die. That's what makes us different from the gods. Enjoy your life, drink, be merry." But Gil, but Gilgamesh refuses to turn back and he insists on continuing on his journey. Eventually, he finds this immortal man, who explains to him he was made immortal because he survived the great flood. The gods created humans, but the humans became too loud for the gods, so the gods resolved to kill them. But this man, this one man, was favored by one god, so he was told about this plot, and he built a boat and put a lot of animals in the boat in order to escape. And this is, this is the basis of the, uh, story of Noah's flood in the Bible. Okay. After the flood receded, this man came down and built an altar to worship the gods. The gods felt regret for what they did, so in compensation, so, to compensate, they promised never to do this again, to never destroy humanity again, and also they grant this man immortality. Okay. But this is just a one-off. The gods will never do this again. And so, the man tells Gilgamesh, "The search for immortality, it's pointless. Just go home." But Gilgamesh refuses to give up. So, the man challenges Gilgamesh to not sleep for seven nights and six days. Sorry, six days and seven nights. Okay. Gil tries, but he can't do it. So, it's all futile. And then he goes home. But the moment he goes home, he has an epiphany. He sees the great walls of Uruk. He sees the people happy in Uruk, and he realizes this is what immortality is. Immortality is not living forever. Immortality is to be remembered by the people who love you. So, the irony of all this is, he goes on this search for immortality, he fails, but because he goes on this search, because he goes on this quest, he becomes immortal because his story, his struggle, is remembered and celebrated by the people in The Epic of Gilgamesh. Okay.
So, this is a reflection of the values of Mesopotamia. The point is in the achievement. The point is not in the victory. The point is in the exploration. The point is in the struggle. And that's why the Mesopotamians were so innovative. But that's also why they went to war with each other all the time. Okay. And this is the beginning of the idea of literature, where memories can be shaped in such a way that become so beautiful that it becomes implanted in the minds of others for centuries, which will inspire them to greater heights of achievement. Okay. So, now we have the beginning of literature, and that is the legacy of Mesopotamia. The legacy of the Egyptians were a testament to the tremendous creativity of humans in Egypt. The humans in Egypt. But The Epic of Gilgamesh is also a testament to the tremendous creativity of that civilization. And if you think about it, The Epic of Gilgamesh was written because it is in a dialectic with the pyramids, right? The Epic of Gilgamesh is also saying to the pyramids, "Immortality, it is an illusion. Eventually, these pyramids will collapse. For the pharaoh to seek immortality is a delusion. What matters is for the pharaoh to look after the well-being of his people here and now, because that's why he will be loved and remembered for eternity. He will die if his people die. But if you, your people, live on because of your contributions, then you'll be remembered forever. You'll become immortal, right?" And that's the story of Gilgamesh. Okay.
Any questions? Is this all pretty clear? Okay. All right.
So, I will make a final point about these stories. Within these stories, we can see the evolution of societies over time. So, let's go back to the story of the Enuma Elish. So, remember, Tiamat and Apsu create the world. That's the first story. Then, uh, the gods are created, okay, and they inhabit the world. That's the second story. And then Tiamat and Marduk go to war, and then from the victory of this war, Marduk creates the universe. Okay. So, basically, we're seeing three different mythologies embedded within this mythology, which gives us the idea of social change and evolution in Mesopotamia at this time. Okay.
So, the first story is Tiamat, right? Who's Tiamat? She's the mother goddess, right? She's the one who gives life. So, this shows Mesopotamia as an agricultural society. Then you have the emergence of the gods, which the urban people would celebrate. And then, finally, you have the battle between Tiamat and, uh, Marduk, and this shows the battle between the old society with the new society, the urban and the agricultural. The agricultural is egalitarian, it is peaceful. The urban is patriarchal. Right? So, why, how do we explain or how do you justify the transition from an egalitarian society to a patriarchy? The answer is this: the answer is embedded in the mythology, right? Tiamat represents chaos. Marduk represents order. So, even though we are letting go of the old, we're destroying the old, it's to create a more peaceful and orderly world. So, remember, Tiamat is the water serpent, and for the longest time, we believe the water serpent, the water serpent represents life and divinity. Okay? Because if you think about it, the serpent, water serpent, looks like the river, and the river is the basis of all civilization, right? So, and this is true for most civilizations. In China, what do we call the water serpent? Dragon. Right? The problem is the river floods, and if you flood too much, you destroy civilization. So, it's chaotic. And that's why it's important to have a patriarchy or an urban elite because they can use, they can help us command us to create irrigation, to build walls, which will tame the river and the water serpent. Okay. Does that make sense? So, within this mythology, we are seeing the evolution of society from an egalitarian one to a patriarchy.
Also, we are in The Epic of Gilgamesh, we are witnessing the transition from a, um, society based on a a great king to one that is more organized around a bureaucracy. Right? Because remember, the story starts with the king going on all these adventures. The story ends with the king coming back and recognizing what matters is the well-being of his people, and for that, you need a bureaucracy to manage everyday affairs. Okay. And so, this, this represents, uh, this you can interpret this as representing the beginning of a bureaucratic elite, which will help the king order the world in a way that brings more stability and prosperity to the people. But at first, but first, the king must recognize his own hubris. He must become humble. So, the great fear of the Mesopotamians is their king will become like the pharaoh, who will channel all resources to building this monument, which will create inequality, corruption, and waste in society, which will lead to massive suffering during times of drought. Okay.
Any questions? Um, yeah. So, um, Mesopotamian irrigation was very advanced because the Tigris and Euphrates were very uncooperative. They would change course all the time, so they had to develop very, very advanced irrigation systems that would change over time. The thing about, um, Sumeria is because it's trading and because there are different, different city-states, this is, it becomes a hotbed of innovation because if one city-state creates a really good irrigation system, another city-state could just copy it really easily. Okay. Does that make sense? Any more questions?
Okay. So, next class, we'll discuss the Indus Valley civilization. Okay. And the Indus Valley civilization, if we just use the analysis we did today, we're basically geography is destiny, you would think the Indus Valley civilization is very much like the Egyptian civilization, where you have a monarchy, you have centralized authority, where they build these great monuments. Okay. The irony is, when you look at the Indus Valley civilization, and it's a huge, huge civilization, they have very advanced technology, they have like these big cities that are very well-designed, they have plumbing, they have sanitation, they even have air conditioning, these towers that sort of like trap hot air. People live for a very long time, like, I think over half of the population will live past 55, which is incredible, which is an incredible achievement. But what is startling about this civilization, the Indus Valley civilization, is it's peaceful and it's egalitarian. So, it's a complete mystery as to why they're so different from Egypt and Mesopotamia. Okay. Because again, Egypt, it's a centralized empire. Mesopotamia is always at war. Okay. So, next class, we will look at the Indus Valley civilization and try to resolve the paradox as to why it is advanced, um, prosperous, but at the same time, peaceful and egalitarian. Okay.