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• Crete.
• Wealth, magnificence, palaces.
• Peaceful
• Invaded and overpowered by the Mycenaeans. -
– Competing nobles vied for power.
– Collapse of central authority.
– Failure of irrigation system. -
– Restoration of strong pharaohs.
– Return of order and authority.
– Egypt expands south; conquest of Nubia.
• Acquisition of gold
– Extension of trade with Palestine, Syria, and Crete -
• Borrowed heavily from Minoan culture.
• Traders.
• Internally divided and contentious
• Warriors
• Discovered by Heinrich Schliemann in 1870s. -
• Collection of written laws.
• Law rested on the authority of the gods.
• Penalties varied by social status and by extenuating circumstances. -
– Nobles gain in power at expense of that of pharaohs.
– Loss of Nubia.
– New Kingdom (1570-1085, began when Hyksos were driven from Egypt.
– Egyptians no longer complacent about their borders. -
– Aggressive and expansionist
• Reached to Euphrates River.
– Amenhotep IV, (1369-1353, bce)
• Became Akhenaton
• Monotheism!
– Not accepted by -
– Aggressive
– Well-trained army
– Extensive use of iron weapons and tools -
– Siege weapons
– Armor
– Efficient administrators
– Nineveh sacked by Chaldeans in 612 bc -
• Migrations / Invasions.
• Dorians Peloponnesus.
• Ionians Attica, and later Asia Minor.
• Eventually trade and urban life revived.
• Writing using borrowed Phoenician alphabet. -
– After the death of Solomon
-- Fell to Assyrians
– Assimilated into Assyrianculture.
– Ten “Lost Tribes” -
• Contemporary of Solon
• Sought to understand the order of nature
• Believed water was the basic element
• Omitted the gods from his account of origins of nature
• Sought natural explanations only.
• First recorded prediction of a solar eclipse. -
– Nebuchadnezzar
– Hanging Gardens -
• Rejected Thales’ ideas about centrality of water.
• “Boundless” was the source of all things.
• Explained the creation of the world and all things in it by natural means and without relying on gods or creation myths. -
• Nature of things is to be found in Mathematical Relationships
• Musical scale represented in math.
• Religious mystics who believed in transmigration of souls
• Therefore refused to eat meat because it contained former humansouls. -
– Cyrus the Great
– Cambyses
– Satraps
– Respected local traditions and religions
– Universal language, Aramaic
– Roads, weights, coins
– Zoroaster / Zarathustra
– Ahura Mazda
– Ahriman
– Rejected polytheism & blood sacrifices
– Stressed ethical behavior -
--Persians capture Babylon.
--King Cyrus permits Jews to return to Jerusalem
--Temple rebuilt by 515 bce -
• Period of outstanding achievement in sculpture, politics, drama, architecture, and philosophy.
• Dramatists
• Aeschylus
• Sophocles
• Euripides
• Historians
• Herodotus
• Thucydides -
Greeks defeat Persians at Marathon
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• Many Greek city-states unite in a rare display of unity and cooperation to oppose the Persian invasion.
• Delian League -
• Significant land victory for Greeks.
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• Sought the improvement (perfection) of the individual character, the achievement of moral excellence.
• Moral values:
• Attained from regulation of life according to objective standards which are arrived at through rational reflection.
• Subject all human beliefs to reason
• Remove tradition, authority, myth, superstition
• Tireless and endless introspection.
• An exchange or dialogue based on reasoned arguments.
• Students become thinking participants in the acquisition of knowledge. -
• Delian League (Athens) versus Peloponnesian League (Sparta)
• Peloponnesian League invaded Attica
• Inflicted damage but not decisively so.
• Plague kills 33% of Athenians, including Pericles.
• Truce in 421 bce.
• Athenians attempt to colonize Sicily.
• Sparta resumes fight against Athens and defeats the city in 404.
• Delian League is dissolved.
• Athenian walls are reduced
• Athenian navy is reduced
• End of Athenian hegemony
• Shatters the spirit of Hellenic society.
