Gates Charles. Ancient Cities: The Archaeology of Urban Life in the Ancient Near East and Egypt, Greece and Rome

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

“urban” and “urbanism.” The Romans distinguished between population centers of different

scales, between city, town (oppidum), and village (vicus), and so do we. The absolute population of

a city need not be big, but the city is larger than a town, a village, and a hamlet (to rank the English

words for settlements in descending order, according to size). In demographic terms, a city exists

as such only by virtue of its contrast to towns and other smaller settlements. These definitions

are relative, however, and can vary according to the position of the observer. For the resident of

a village, any larger settlement might seem worthy of the title of city.

In addition, a city (or town, etc.) as a place of habitation is defined in opposition to the coun-

tryside. Yet, although opposed in definition, city and countryside are in fact mutually dependent.

The resources of the countryside (land, raw materials, agricultural products) support the city,

while the city administers and protects the countryside.

That a city is a place attracting a concentration of people indicates the city has something to

offer. The lures are often economic, with sources of livelihood based on a natural resource (such

as copper, on Cyprus) or a geographical situation advantageous for commerce (a harbor, for

example, or a natural crossroads) or an ecological base fostering agricultural prosperity. Attrac-

tions might be military (thanks to a defensible location) or ideological (choices made by the ruler:

he has picked the place as a capital, or his family may come from there; or the place witnessed

a sacred event or shelters a sacred object, either of which gives the place sanctity and draws

pilgrims). These economic and ideological factors can change or disappear with time. A harbor

might fill with silt, the area becoming malarial (as at Roman Paestum), thereby killing off both

trade and agriculture. Military and defense requirements might change, and new ruling families

might base themselves elsewhere.

The city thus becomes characterized by the functions that it serves. Such functions may

include a ceremonial or ritual role, in which the city may be understood as the center of the uni-

verse, or reflecting cosmic or divine truths. The city might also serve as an administrative center

or as a commercial center, or some combination of the above three. Whatever they may be, such

functions reflect the city’s dominant role in a society. Indeed, for Mumford (1938: 3), the city is

“a point of maximum concentration for the power and culture of a community.”

The social organization of the urban population indeed has much to say about the nature of a

city. Cities, at the top of the hierarchy of settlements, are a product of socially stratified societies.

The city happens when the group living in a community is larger than an extended family unit,

a band, or a tribe, and is organized into something more diversified than a military, political, or

religious unit (such as a fort, a national capital, or a monastery). Further, city dwellers cannot

possibly know each other; they are too numerous for that. The concept of “city” thus implies

social distinctions among its populace. Just as the urban–rural contrast denotes difference, so

too within the city we find contrasts between rulers (elite groups) and the ruled, between richer

and poorer. Differences in work, with specializations of occupation, some more prestigious than

others, also contribute to the social hierarchy. In addition, inhabitants might be marked by ethnic

and religious differences. Hence Wirth’s 1938 definition of a city: “a relatively large, dense, and

permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals.” These social distinctions can affect

the appearance and layout of a city, with monumental temples and palaces erected in certain

areas, but with commercial and industrial establishments and lower-class residential neighbor-

hoods grouped elsewhere.

A related definition of the city would be socio-economic: the city is a unit that supports itself eco-

nomically, and extends its economic and political influence over an area broader than its immedi-

ate territory. A detailed definition of this sort was offered in 1950 by the Australian prehistorian

V. Gordon Childe in an investigation of the origins of cities in the Ancient Near East, distilled

2 INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION 3

in an article tellingly entitled “The Urban Revolution.” For Childe, the earliest true cities were

marked by ten criteria or conditions:

1 Concentrations of a relatively large number of people in a restricted area.

2 Developed social stratification.

3 Although most citizens were farmers, some pursued non-agricultural occupations: craft

specialists, priests, traders, administrators, etc.

4 The production of an economic surplus and its appropriation by a central authority, such as

a king or a deity.

5 Writing, to record economic activity and the myths, events, and other ideological issues that

served to justify the discrepancies between the privileged and lower classes.

6 Exact and predictive sciences, to forecast the weather for agricultural production.

7 Monumental public architecture, which could include such structures as temples, palaces,

fortifications, and tombs.

8 Figural art.

9 Foreign trade.

10 Residence-based group membership, in which people of all professions and classes could

share in a sense of community.

Childe’s list has been criticized as inadequate to explain the variety of urban formations

around the world (see Hansen 2008). But his criteria are a useful starting point to explain the rise

of urbanism in the Old World. When his criteria are applied to south-west Asia, they place the

origin of cities in the fourth millennium BC, when writing was developed. But several of these

characteristics appeared earlier, in the Neolithic period, as attested at various villages and towns

largely explored after Childe’s article of 1950. We shall explore these issues in the next chapters,

Chapters 1 and 2, when we examine the early cities of the Levant, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia.

The concept of the city thus contains demographic, geographic, social, economic, and ideo-

logical aspects. Cities are rich, full, many-faceted; reducing the city to a single, all-purpose defini-

tion seems neither possible nor even desirable. Let us use the considerations presented above as

a point of departure. As we analyze the variations on the theme of the city created by different

cultures in different periods, we shall be able to deepen our understanding of the urban experi-

ence in our featured region, the Mediterranean basin and the Near East.

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

Information about ancient cities comes from various sources:

1 Buildings in continuous use from antiquity to the present, such as the Pantheon, a temple

built in Rome in 118–25, later converted into a church; and the continuation into modern

times of ancient urban layouts, as in the street systems of such cities as Aosta (northern

Italy), originally founded as a Roman military colony, Augusta Praetoria, in the later first

century BC.

2 Standing monuments no longer in use, but with their ancient functions documented in liter-

ary sources, such as the pyramids of Egypt.

3 Archaeological excavations and surveys. They reveal the material remains of ancient cities:

city plans, architecture, art, small finds (such as pottery, metal tools, stone objects). Care-

ful recording of find spots can illuminate how these objects were used by ancient people.

4 INTRODUCTION

Offerings found in undisturbed burials can be especially helpful, for tombs are closed con-

texts that connect objects perhaps of different styles and sources. Material remains give

evidence for plans and types of spaces, for the religious and political character of a culture,

for contacts with other cities and cultures. Patterns perceived among material objects and

their material contexts can lead to new understandings of their role in ancient life, clarifying

relationships that eluded or did not interest ancient writers.

4 Ancient written sources about cities and their monuments, their inhabitants and their activi-

ties. Pausanias’s account of his travels in Greece in the second century AD gives invaluable

descriptions of sites and monuments, for example. Also surviving in written form are a huge

mass of legends, information sometimes complemented or even authenticated by archaeo-

logical findings (as at Troy), but sometimes not (Atlantis).

Types of written materials include tablets, inscriptions, manuscripts (often the surviving

copies date from post-antique times), and small items such as coins and seals. Texts can give

details which other material objects cannot, such as names (of persons, cities, states, build-

ings, objects, topographical features), dates or periods of time, events and actions, usage

and behavior, and ancient people’s interpretation of a culture, including its symbolic and

religious elements. Although ancient written materials can clarify or complement material

remains, they can also be irrelevant or unreliable. Caution is often needed.

5 Ethnography, the systematic recording of the life styles of the living cultures of modern

times, can offer a rich spectrum of explanations for the functions and meanings of mate-

rial objects used in antiquity. Ethnoarchaeology is ethnographic field work applied specifically

toward illuminating the behavior of ancient peoples who created objects preserved in the

archaeological record.

DETERMINING DATES

The narrative of ancient cities presented in this book is arranged roughly in chronological order,

from earliest (Neolithic) to latest (late Roman Empire). Dates are routinely supplied; they offer

a framework for learning and appreciating the evolution of cultures. Dates are the glue that link

events one to another. It is the larger chain, or mosaic, of dates, the when, combined with infor-

mation on what happened and where that allows us to trace the unfolding of human achievements

and, eventually, to understand how and why these developments took place. But dates for ancient

events are often difficult to determine with accuracy. The frequent appearance in this book of

the abbreviation “ca.” meaning circa, or approximately, indicates how imprecise our knowledge

can be. The problems of dating, puzzles with which all archaeologists wrestle, are introduced at

various points in the text; some introductory remarks are also offered here.

There are two different types of dates: the relative and the absolute. A relative dating simply

places one occurrence earlier or later than another. For example, this pot was made earlier than

that bronze dagger. An absolute date assigns a precise calendar date: the pot was made in 4000

BC, the bronze blade in 2300 BC. The conventional framework for absolute dates used in Western

civilization is the Julio-Gregorian calendar, based on a solar year of 365¼ days, decreed by Julius

Caesar in 46 BC, later corrected under Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. The system of recording dates

as either before or after the birth year of Jesus (but without a Year Zero) was established in the

sixth century AD by the monk Dionysius Exiguus, who proposed the birth of Jesus as the mea-

suring point for dates and calculated this event to have happened 753 years after the foundation

of the city of Rome. Hence the dating conventions of

BC and AD, “Before Christ” and “Anno

INTRODUCTION 5

Domini” (“In the Year of the Lord” = “After Christ”) and the recently coined equivalents with-

out Christian reference, BCE (“Before the Common Era”) and CE (“Common Era”), and the

enshrining of 753 BC as the traditional foundation date of Rome.

Relative dating of archaeological materials is determined primarily through seriation and the

interpretation of stratigraphy. Absolute dating is calculated by means of such scientific tech-

niques as radiocarbon measurements and dendrochronology (analyzing and matching the pat-

terns formed by the annual growth rings of trees), and, in historical periods, through information

provided by written documents, especially the recording of astronomical observations whose

dates can be converted to our Julio-Gregorian calendar.

Seriation

Seriation means the arranging of items in an order, or series. In archaeology, seriation indicates the

ordering of human-made artifacts in a sequence of assumed date of manufacture, from earliest

to latest. Style is the key to the arrangement; style is the combination of visual, compositional, and

technological features that characterize an artifact. Objects are grouped on the basis of shared

stylistic features, such as details of shape, decorations, and materials and techniques used, and on

the frequency of their occurrence. Because such features change over time, a sequence of stylistic

development can be proposed for any particular artifact type. Pottery, a standard artifact made

in the regions and periods treated in this book, is commonly analyzed in this way. A classic early

formulation of pottery seriation was developed in the 1890s by the British archaeologist W. M.

Flinders Petrie while studying Egyptian predynastic ceramics in order to help date tombs. Ide-

ally, the validity of any sequence will be confirmed by evidence from stratigraphical excavations

(see below) or from independent historical evidence. Sometimes, however, as in the case of the

kouroi, the life-size nude male sculptures produced by the Greeks from the late seventh to the

early fifth centuries BC, the seriated sequence established by twentieth century art historians fol-

lows assumed laws of stylistic development (a progression from abstraction to naturalism) that

are not easy to verify in excavations and that may in fact be incorrect.

Stratigraphy and the formation of tells

The concept of stratigraphy is basic in archaeological analysis. Stratigraphy can be clearly

explained by a look at the formation of tells, the hill-like remains of multi-period habitations that

are a characteristic feature of the Near Eastern landscape.

The Near East is dotted with hills, some smaller, some larger, many of which are not natural

rises but rather the accumulated remains of ancient settlements. Sometimes the ancient sites are

still occupied by modern villages, if the surrounding fields remain productive, but sometimes the

ruins lie isolated in wasteland. Such artificial hills are called tells, tepes, or höyüks (hüyüks), after

the Arabic, Persian, and Turkish words for them.

The tells of the Near East owe their striking appearance to a favored building material, air-

dried mud brick. In many parts of the Near East, in Sumer (southern Iraq), for example, stone

and wood are scarce. Houses and temples were thus built of bricks. Laborers mixed soil rich in

clay with a temper such as straw (to prevent cracking), formed bricks in a mold, and then set

them out in the sun to dry. The bricks would harden sufficiently for building purposes. Baking

them in a kiln was considered too costly, a needless expenditure of fuel. Roofs consisted of reeds

or small branches laid across a few larger branches, the whole sealed with a layer of clay; nor-

mally this surface could support people. An application of whitewash (lime plaster) protected the

6 INTRODUCTION

outer walls from wind and rain. Inside, floors were usually beaten earth, but occasionally coated

with plaster.

Sooner or later the house would have to be replaced. It may have been collapsing from old

age, its walls weakened by moisture seeping in through capillary action or by roots, or by roots

infested with insects or even snakes. Perhaps new owners had different intentions for the land

on which it stood. Had the house been built of stone, that stone would have served to make the

new house. But sun-dried mud bricks are just dirt. The elements erode the bricks or reduce them

to dust. Since there were no bulldozers to push the debris away, the new builders simply leveled

the area, packing the rubble into the spaces between the surviving wall stubs, and began the new

building on top of the remains of that old house. Now the ground level had risen a foot or two.

And so it continued, generation upon generation, the surface of the tell gradually rising higher

and higher.

For archaeologists, defining the levels of occupation, or strata, is of paramount importance.

The abandoned building – or the layer of ash, or the huge garbage pit cut deep into the mound

– contains not only decayed mud brick or discarded soil, but the remains of human actions as

well. Fragments of the pot which the child knocked over and broke, the lamb bones the dog was

given after the family finished dinner, the gold coins that grandmother buried in the corner just

before the invaders sacked the city: all these objects are grouped together within the remains of

a single stratum. They can be contrasted, then, with the objects found in earlier and later strata.

Indeed, as noted above, the styles of artifacts change through time, thus providing another useful

distinction to help us date what we discover. Eventually, by matching, say, our pot fragment with

one found at another site – that one too from a well-defined level – we can link the sequence of

strata at our site with the sequence at that other site.

This study of the strata of occupation is known as stratigraphy. If we can determine which

strata come earlier or later than others, we are able to place them, and the objects found in them,

in a relative sequence. I say “if” because the situation I have described is the ideal. In reality,

strata can be difficult to identify: irregular in shape, or of soil type barely distinguishable from

other deposits, or cut deep into earlier levels (building foundations or garbage pits, for example).

Stratigraphy thus becomes an interpretive art, a skill for which some, but not all, archaeologists

have a gift.

Absolute dates: radiocarbon determinations

Thanks to the invention of calendrical systems and writing in Egypt and Mesopotamia and the

keeping of historical records, absolute dates can, with varying degrees of reliability, be assigned

to occupation levels beginning in the late fourth and especially the third millennium BC (see

below). For earlier, pre-literate periods, the attribution of absolute dates remained a matter of

guesswork until the development of the carbon 14 dating method just after the Second World

War by Willard Libby of the University of Chicago. Researchers have continued to refine the

calibrations of dates, notably through testing of dendrochronological samples from such long-

lived trees as the bristlecone pines of the south-west United States.

All organic material contains a small amount of carbon 14, the radioactive isotope of carbon,

in a fixed ratio to the amount of non-radioactive carbon (atomic weight: 12). But the radioactive

carbon 14 is unstable, and little by little it disintegrates into nitrogen and a low energy radiation.

Over the course of approximately 5,730 years, half the original amount disappears. After an

additional 5,730 years, the remaining carbon 14 is once again reduced by half. The regular car-

bon 12, meanwhile, has remained constant. So the ratio between the quantity of carbon 14 and

INTRODUCTION 7

carbon 12 is continually changing, but at a predictable rate. Libby and his colleagues monitored

the time span of the changing ratio, and promoted its application for the dating of materials from

archaeological excavations. The archaeologist sends a sample of a find with high organic content,

for example burnt wood or seeds (the burning helps preserve the item), to a laboratory equipped

to measure its carbon 14 content. After comparing that content to the list of known ratios, an

absolute date can be assigned. Radiocarbon date determinations can extend back 50,000 years,

although earlier than 35,000 BC the precision of measurements decreases because of the increas-

ingly minute amounts of carbon 14 remaining in a sample.

The method is not foolproof. A margin of error always accompanies any radiocarbon determi-

nation: for example, “3540 BC, plus or minus 80 years.” The plus or minus indicates the standard

deviation: that is, there is a 66 percent probability that the date falls somewhere between 3460

and 3620 BC. If you double the deviation (to plus or minus 160 years, using our example), then

the probability increases to 95 percent.

Furthermore, samples can be contaminated (say by modern ants who have set up housekeep-

ing in an ancient deposit and carry in food and other items from outside) or difficult to interpret

(what if beams from a 500-year-old tree were used in a new house or burned as firewood?). And

scientists themselves have continued to debate such aspects as the actual length of the half-life

of carbon 14 and whether or not carbon 14 always disintegrated at the same rate. Despite these

difficulties, the radiocarbon method of dating remains invaluable for determining chronology in

prehistoric and even early historic times.

Absolute dates: historical records in Egypt and Mesopotamia

Writing, the systematic use of signs that correspond to elements of a language, was invented

separately in different places and times around the world. In the Near East and eastern Mediter-

ranean, the first writing systems were Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, developed

in fairly quick succession in the later fourth millennium BC. Recording systems already existed,

however, from the notched bones of the Upper Paleolithic (15,000–10,000 BC) to the clay tokens

of the Neolithic. But history proper, based on written records and with events whose dates can

be correlated with the Julio-Gregorian calendar, begins around 3100 BC in Egypt and in the mid-

third millennium BC in southern Mesopotamia.

The organization of Egyptian history according to dynasties, or ruling families, is the work of

Manetho, a Greek-speaking priest who lived in Alexandria during the early Hellenistic period,

late fourth to early third centuries BC. His writings have not survived independently, but are pre-

served in edited form in the texts of such late Roman authors as Julius Africanus and Eusebius;

his information has been supplemented by surviving Egyptian king lists of the sort he would

have consulted. Manetho chronicled thirty dynasties that spanned some 2,500 years, listing the

kings in each with the length of their reigns. Despite inaccuracies, his work remains the invalu-

able framework for the study of Egyptian history.

The absolute chronology of this historical framework depends upon ancient sightings of the

star Sirius (Sothis, for the Greeks, the “Dog Star”). Especially important are the observations

recorded in the seventh year of the reign of the Twelfth Dynasty pharaoh Senwosret III; in the

ninth year of the Eighteenth Dynasty ruler Amenhotep I; and in Roman imperial times, in AD

139. The first sighting is generally calculated as 1872 BC, the second as 1541 BC. The accuracy of

the ancient reports is not, however, completely certain. Moreover, the place where the observa-

tion was made was not specified; a northern location such as Memphis or Heliopolis is assumed,

but if the astronomers were watching in the south, at Thebes or even at Elephantine on the

8 INTRODUCTION

southern border of Egypt proper, the dates would be slightly different. Such uncertainties give

a flexibility of forty-two years for the start of the Twelfth Dynasty, 1979 BC (high) or 1937 BC

(low), and a play of eleven years for the start of the Eighteenth Dynasty, 1550 BC (high) or 1539

BC (low).

Other difficulties in establishing an accurate absolute chronology include occasional conflict-

ing reports in ancient documents concerning the length of individual reigns and the numbers

and lengths of possible coregencies. Despite these problems, the absolute chronology can be

extended back to ca. 3100 BC, the beginning of dynastic history, thanks to such king lists as the

Turin Canon of Kings, a papyrus document written in the Nineteenth Dynasty now in the col-

lection of the Egyptian Museum in Turin, Italy. From the later Eighteenth Dynasty on, Egyptian

chronology is agreed upon; during the first millennium BC, frequent correlations with Assyrian,

Babylonian, and Hebrew sources produce accurate time determinations.

Mesopotamian chronology is more complex than the Egyptian, because of the many states

in the region, each with different methods of recording the passing of time. From 910 to 668

BC the chronology is secure, thanks to the Babylonian Chronicles, with their daily astronomical

observations, and to the Neo-Assyrian Eponym Lists, lists of kings and high officials whose

names were used as labels for individual years. Before 910 BC, the lists have unbridgeable gaps.

As a result, different reference points are needed to establish the absolute chronology for earlier

periods.

The backbone of historical reconstructions for third millennium BC Sumer is the Sumerian

King List, a chronicle compiled ca. 2100 BC listing the kings of various cities from the previous

500 years and the lengths of their reigns. But problems remain. Because the clay tablets can be

fragmentary and their contents contradictory, matching the sequence from one city with that of

another is difficult. Further, while the relative sequence of dynasties and kings seems credible,

the attribution of absolute dates to the events and periods is not reliable. And information about

the earliest periods contains a heavy dose of myth and cannot be taken literally. The eight kings

of the earliest era were said to have ruled for thousands of years each. This epoch ends with a

great flood, an event that recalls the story near the beginning of the Hebrew Bible. Archaeologi-

cal exploration has revealed traces of flooding at various sites, but the remains date to different

periods, suggesting localized rather than general flooding. After the flood, the list of kings begins

to inspire more confidence. The list picks up with King Etana of Kish, and moves eventually to

Gilgamesh, the fifth king of the First Dynasty of Uruk and subject of the best known of Meso-

potamian narratives, the Epic of Gilgamesh. This period may correlate with the Early Dynasty (ED)

II period. The picture provided by the King List and other texts becomes clearer still in the ED

III period, by now the middle of the third millennium BC.

The absolute chronology of the first half of the second millennium BC depends on an astro-

nomical observation. At the time of a new moon in the sixth year of the reign of the Babylonian

king Ammi-saduqa, the planet Venus was spotted on the horizon just before dawn. Such a com-

bination occurs once every sixty-four or fifty-six years, an event not quite rare enough to provide

an absolute date with complete certainty. Ammi-saduqa ascended the throne ninety-four years

after the death of the important king Hammurabi; Babylon itself was destroyed thirty-one years

after Ammi-saduqa’s death by the Hittites under Mursili I. This sighting leads to not one, but

four possibilities for the absolute chronology of Babylonian history at this time: for the start of

the reign of Hammurabi 1848 BC, 1792 BC, 1728 BC, or 1696 BC; and for the fall of Babylon 1651

BC, 1595 BC, 1531 BC, or 1499 BC. The chronological systems based on these dates are known as

high, middle, low, and ultra-low. Not even the radiocarbon dating method can settle the dispute,

because the margin of error in the determinations is too great. Although each system has its

INTRODUCTION 9

ardent champions, we shall follow the low chronology, the system preferred at present by the

majority of specialists on Near Eastern chronology.

With the first millennium BC we are much more secure. Our own Julio-Gregorian calendar

was developed by the Romans of the late Republic. Like the Mesopotamian and Egyptian calen-

drical systems of the time, many of the various dating systems used by the Greek city-states

and Hellenistic kingdoms can be linked to this calendar. With this, the framework for absolute

chronology is firm.

ABOUT TERMINOLOGY

Information about dating, relative and absolute, is used to help establish a relative framework

of cultural developments to which period titles are given: the Hellenistic period, the late Roman

Empire, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and so on. These names are artificial, but they are helpful

markers for student and specialist alike.

The terms Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods (= Old, Middle, and New Stone

Ages), Bronze Age, and Iron Age were developed in the nineteenth century to describe different

stages in the technology practiced by humans. The prime material used for making tools deter-

mined the names. A progression from simpler to more sophisticated technology was assumed.

Continuing research, however, has revealed these definitions as too simplistic, for they hide

other important factors of human development. For example, the Neolithic period – where

our story begins, in Chapter 1 – is now defined by the introduction of food production (agricul-

ture and animal husbandry) and pottery making, with simple metallurgy (working of copper and

malachite) appearing, too. The picture is even more complicated because traditional subsistence

methods, such as pastoralism, continued to be practiced. Regional variations, with the presence

and absence of such features, can blur the definition. These period titles are thus more usefully

seen as umbrella designations convenient to indicate a certain time span within which various

combinations of technological and cultural features occurred.

Finally, as we shall see in the chapters ahead, different regions have their own specialist termi-

nology for denoting cultural developments and chronological distinctions. In Mesopotamia, the

“Bronze Age” is defined by terms rooted in history: the Protoliterate or Uruk, Early Dynastic,

and Akkadian periods, and the like. Similarly, Bronze Age Egypt is divided according to histori-

cal dynasties (as mentioned above), grouped within the larger units of the Old, Middle, and New

Kingdoms. With patience and attention, the beginner should be able to absorb in short order

these cumbersome structures of terminology.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

Metric vs. American/imperial weights and measures

Metric measurements are used throughout. The abbreviations used, with their American or

imperial equivalents, are:

Distances

cm = centimeter. One centimeter = 0.39 inch. One inch = 2.54 cm

m = meter. One meter (100 centimeters) = 3.28 feet = 1.09 yards

km = kilometer. One kilometer (1,000 meters) = 0.62 mile. One mile = 1.61 km

10 INTRODUCTION

Area

ha = hectare. One hectare = 10,000 m

= 2.47 acres. One acre = 0.41 ha. One square mile =

259 ha

Weight

kg = kilogram. One kilogram = 2.20 pounds. One pound = 0.45 kg

Spelling ancient names

The names of persons and places of the cultures treated in this book can often be spelled in sev-

eral ways, because different languages have interpreted foreign names in their own way. English

has anglicized the most familiar, such as Athens (for Athenai). Ancient peoples did likewise,

with the Greeks, for example, hellenizing Egyptian names, and the Romans latinizing Greek

names. An additional difficulty is posed by Egyptian and cuneiform scripts, whose often uncer-

tain pronunciation can provoke debates among scholars; transliterations in English are still being

changed.

I aim to use names as given in the language of the culture to which that person or language

belonged. If the person or place was Greek, I shall use the Greek version of the name. But com-

plications often arise. If a place is both Greek and Roman, the Latin version will be preferred. If

an English version is well known, such as Athens, that will be used. The goal is to avoid confu-

sion, even at the occasional expense of consistency.

PART ONE

CITIES OF THE NEAR EAST AND

THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN:

NEOLITHIC, BRONZE AGE, AND

IRON AGE