The Ancient Near East as History

Author(s): Burr C. Brundage

Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Apr., 1949), pp. 530-547
Published by: American Historical Association
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The Ancient Near East as History

BuRu C. BRUNDAGE

A NEW historical survey of the trends in and the major characteristicsof the
Ancient Near East is earnestly needed at the present time. The reasons for
this need are threefold. First, archaeology is again on the move after the
breathing space enforced by wartime conditions and may soon be expected
to produce a steady stream of new material. Secondly, advanced techniques
of interpretation are being applied to accumulated knowledge in various
areas of the field and bid fair to revolutionize it. Thirdly, it is worthy of
note that the "old" history of the Ancient Near East, even as set forth in
Breasted's full and imaginative prose, failed to enlist adequate support for
the development of the field. The general reader, as well as the historian,
has been made aware of the glamour and color in the studies undertaken by
Orientalists and in the results of excavations, but few ever really grasped the
pertinence of these studies to general history.
Historians now rccognize the fallacy in the assumption that only those
antecedent civilizations which have generously contributed to the making
of our own great Western civilization are worthy of their prime interest.
The teleology of human progress is so imperfectly understood, so hotly debated, that no historian today can undervalue a human adventure in the
past simply because it is not immediately ancestral to our contemporary
civilization. Western civilization, with all its global ramifications, conceivably
will not be the last adventure of man on earth, and who knows from what
unthought of and unrelated source its successor will spring?
The realization of such possibilities is the basis of the new history of the
Ancient Near East now being erected upon the solid foundations of the
old. Without injury to the prestige of classical or Islamic studies, the dignity
of the history of the Ancient Near East is being raised and its profound implications for man, if not specifically for us of Western civilization, are by
now apparent.
There is an obvious advantage in treating the Ancient Near East as a
unit rather than as a disparate bundle of civilized and semicivilized states and
nations.' Whatever similarities and common trends are present in all or
1 The term "Ancient Near East" is awkward. It is, however, inclusive and is in common
use. The expression "Ancient World" will be avoided in this paper as it is generally used to include both the Ancient Near East and Hellenic society as well, i.e., Greece and Rome. The
term "civilization-cluster"which is used later refers to such groups of related cultures and civilizations.

530

The Ancient Near East as History

53I

most of these civilizations will by this method become evident. The achievement of such a vantage point will be of the highest value in the further intensive study of the Ancient Near East and will clarify relationships, at present obscure, between the Ancient Near East and succeeding or related civilization-clusters-Indic, Hellenic, Far Eastern, Byzantine, and Islamic. The
usefulness of this hypothesis concerning the common nature of the Ancient
Near East will become clear after we have established a working definition
of the Ancient Near East.2
The various parts of the definition to be attempted are as follows: (a)
the identification of components; (b) the identification of temporal limits;
(c) a statement of the "abstractedethos," i. e., those characteristicsand modes
imposed upon the peoples and institutions of the Ancient Near East by the
dominant problems facing them, first, as they enter onto the stage of history,
and secondly, after their initial success in dominating their environment;
and lastly (d) a statement of the nexus or relationship of the civilizations of
the Ancient Near East with other civilization-clusters neighboring it in
space and time.

The Ancient Near East is not a geographical concept. From one point of
view it is a culture-complex of vast proportions. From another point of view
it is a period in past time when a related group of civilizations lived by certain specific human values (to be described more fully below). However, if
we are to make sense, we must also construe these civilizations spatially on
the basis of their remains and of written accounts of them by others. Where
was the Ancient Near East then, what peoples inhabited it, and what civilizations flourished in it?
The Ancient Near East was that area within which the major civilizations and related cultures interacted strongly upon one another. In periods
of intense military and commercial activity, such as the Amarna Age or the
years of the Medo-Persian empire, the area extended to the outer limits of
recognizable influence. As periods of reduced vitality succeeded, these extreme limits collapsed inwardly, sometimes to the very borders of the major
civilizations. We should note that, in establishing our farthest limits, it is not
enough that influences from the core areas pass outward like waves, but
that, from the outlying cultures affected, vigorous influences or actions must
2 It might be well at this point to inform the reader that the present paper is a project for
a longer work. It is an outline, and in its present undocumented form, is to be understood as a
hypothesis only. While hoping to establish the larger validity of the hypothesis, the writer is
under no illusion that all parts will emerge unchallenged.

Burr C. Brundage

532

return upon these same core areas with recognizable impact. Such cultures as
the Indic, the Scythian, the Ethiopian, or the Chinese were all the recipients
of impulses originating in various areas within the Ancient Near East, but
they failed to reciprocate markedly. They, and like civilizations, are therefore excluded from our definition.
Having now determined what civilizations and cultures the Ancient
Near East did not include, we are in a position to discover and itemize
those which it did include. The list which appears below is divided into three
categories: competent civilizations, absorption civilizations, and peripheral
cultures. With the exception of the first category, which is basic and complete, the list is intended to be suggestive only;3 furthermore, it disregards
sequential considerations.

COMPETENT
CIvILIzATIoNs

Sumero-Semitic'

Egyptian
Minoan
Israelite

MAJOR ABSORPTION

MAJOR PERIPHERAL

CIVILIZATIONs LOCATED

CULTURES LOCATED

AccORDING To HOMELAND ACCORDINGTO HOMELAND

Zagros
Elamite
Medo-Persian
Sasanid

highland5
Gutean
Kassite
Lullu

Anatolia'
Hittite
Lydian

Carian
Lycian

3 It cannot be emphasized too strongly that such a listing is at best approximate and at
worst subject to criticism in almost every particular.This is due partly to the rapidity with which
Ancient Near Eastern studies and archaeology are moving, and partly to the incidence of the
author's own judgment. In a paper of this kind there is no room to adduce the reasoning behind each listing or explanations for seemingly arbitrary omissions. The system of evaluation
used does not consider each culture for itself but only in its relationshipsto the other cultures of
the Ancient Near East. Thus some of the cultures of South Arabia, for instance, might be considered culturally potent enough to be classed as absorption cultures if one is thinking of the
influence of that area upon Ethiopia. But Ethiopia is outside our field of interest; we exclude
all comparisonsbut internal ones (i.e., within the Ancient Near East).
4 The original Sumerian transmuted by and including Akkadian, Amorite, Assyrian, and
Chaldaeanelements.
5 The Zagros cultures, like those of Anatolia, are in most respectsstill very unclear. An important temporal division can be made, however, at that point in time when the Aryan-speaking
peoples first appear in the highlands. So little is known about the Guti, for instance, that it is
presumptuous to assume that that culture is peripheral and could not possibly be classed with
the absorption civilizations. The Kassite culture is a similar case. The cultures of eastern Cilicia
and Cappadocia,and of north Syria seem to form an important linkage group (not appearing in
the list) between central and western Anatolia on the one hand and Syria-Paleqtineand Mesopotamia on the other.

The Ancient Near East as History

COMPETENT
CIVILIZATIONS

533

MAJORPERIPHERAL
MAJOR ABSORPTION
LOCATED
CULTURES
LOCATED
CIVILIZATIONS
TO
TOHOMELAND
ACCORDING
ACCORDING HOMELAND

Syria-Palestine
Canaanite (exclusive
of Israelite)

Hurrian
Phoenician

Aegean basin
Mycenaean
Cycladic

Caucasian highland
Haldian
early Armenian

Cis-Oxian Iran
Bactrian
Parthian

North African steppe

Libyan
Nubian
North Arabian steppe7
Amorite
Aramaean

Edomite
Nabataean
Sea-land
Suti
South Arabia
Himyarite
Minaean
Sabaean

The four competent civilizations, Sumero-Semitic, Egyptian, Minoan,

and Israelite, represent the main cultures around which the others may
logically be grouped. They form indeed the central core which the historian
must bear constantly in mind in any serious study of the period. We define
them as "competent" in reference to original and vital achievement carried
on over an appreciable period, as well as to the fact that even in their most
inactive periods they continued to influence and stimulate contiguous cul6 Includes Punic civilization as a distant outlier in the western Mediterranean.
7 Undoubtedly some of the cultures in this item overlap. They range from purely beduin
cultures, such as the Suti (Egyptian Setiu), to relatively civilized peoples, such as the Nabataeans.

534

Burr C. Brundage

tures. So immense was the cultural and intellectualweight of these giant

civilizations,so successfullydid each maintainits specialethos over the centuries-or at leastthe outwardappearanceof it-that they attaineda longevity
rarelyequaledin history.One of them, the Israelite,may with some justice
be said to have survived,in its tenaciousmodern descendant,down to the
present.8

The absorptioncivilizations,as the term implies, laid the groundwork

for their laterachievementsupon a checkeredsubstratumof materialand intellectualborrowingsfrom the competentcivilizations.Indeed, throughout
their historiesthey continuedto evinceremarkableassimilativeand adaptive
traits.It was not a historicalaccidentthat the alphabet,supremeproductof
culturalborrowing and adaptation,should have arisen in the area of the
absorptioncivilizations.The cultural friction to which these civilizations
were subjectedby their more powerful neighborsstimulatedthem to advances significantin the history of progress.We may thereforelook upon
them as only a little less creativeculturallythan the competentcivilizations.
Any pictureof the mechanicsof culturalinterchangein the AncientNear
East will perforcebe focused most sharplyon the absorptioncivilizations,
for it was undertheir mediationor in their streetsand palacesthat the competent civilizationsmet. The lack of direct contactbetweenthe competent
civilizations,becauseof fortuitousbarriersof sand and sea, is one of the
8 The inclusion of
Israelite in the list of competent civilizations needs explanation. The
Israelite civilization was in a sense a sport-in the Ancient Near East but not wholly of it. In
origin Israelite was a peripheral culture from the north Arabian steppe, similar to the Suti,
Amorite, and Aramaean-speaking peoples; most probably it formed a part of one or more of
these beduin cultures from time to time. At any rate, during a formative period in its early history
it seems to have oscillated along the middle Euphrates region, where it received that intellectual
and legalistic cast so distinctive of the Sumero-Semitic civilization. Over this foundation were
spread Egyptian and Canaanite influences, after it had moved over the Jordan and settled down
in an area of absorption civilizations. Seemingly it should then have followed the course of either
an absorption or a peripheral culture. It remains one of the profound mysteries of history that
Israel should have produced instead the first great, and as yet unsurpassed,intellectual, religious,
and ethical corpus of speculation. The intensity and utter preoccupation in which the historical
Israelites dealt with this new light, and the consequent moral and ethnic expansiveness of their
civilization, gave it a power out of all relation to their numbers or to the stage of their material culture. Because of this abounding vitality we must class Israel as a competent civilization;
because of its multitudinous connections with the Land of the Two Rivers, with Egypt and with
Syria, we must class it as Near Eastern. But Israelite civilization did not partake to any great extent of the common nature of the Ancient Near East (referred to later as the "abstractedethos"),
and it therefore presents us with an exceedingly knotty problem of classification.The insistence
of the great Israelite thinkers that God is transcendent, above and outside of nature, effectively
removed them from the milieu of their times. The rigor with which they proclaimed the inner
duty of man isolated them from the intellectual and religious life around them. Early Christianity is also a competent civilization, but is not to be included within the circuit of the Ancient
Near East. As is well known, Christianityis a blend of Hebrew and Hellenistic traits-including
some distinctly Ancient Near Eastern elements-but because of the overpowering predominance
of Hellenism in the part of the world in which it was conceived, it continued to effect its
growth within a rigidly Roman (Hellenistic) framework, turning naturally to the West for its
greatest achievements. As a matter of fact Christianity displayed a notable lack of permanent
success in the areas pre-empted by the competent civilizations of the Ancient Near East.

The Ancient Near East as History

535

very significantfacts of Ancient Near Easternhistory.It contrastsvividly

with the conditionsof our own civilization-cluster(Western civilization),
wherein many of the competent civilizations,such as France, Germany,
England,Spain,Italy,etc., have existedside by side for centuries.
By virtue of their politicalor culturalattractiontowardone or more of
the competentor absorptioncivilizations,the peripheralculturesfall within
the compassof the Ancient Near East. The latterculturesdiffer from those
describedabove in the paucity and limitationof their contributionto the
life of the Ancient Near East. They were playerson the culturalside lines.
Whenever events drew them more closely into the circle, their behavior
usually assumed the aspect of purely commercialactivity or of barbarian
conquest,insteadof the steadyreciprocatingfrictionof one relativelyequal
mass upon another.When sedentary,the peripheralculturesoften played
the part of middlemenbetweenthe Ancient Near East and the world outside, whether that outside world took the form of an inchoatejumble of
barbariantribes or anothercivilization-cluster,such as that of the Hellenic
world.
We have now broken our componentsinto three categoriesdescriptive
of the relativeoriginalityand potencyof their respectivecultures.Two valid
generalizationsmay be extractedfrom the list. First, that in the ordergiven
(competentcivilization,absorptioncivilization,and peripheralculture) there
is discernible(with the exception of the north Arabian steppe cultures)
an ever-increasingdistancefrom the great centersconcomitantwith a rough
progressionin time. This can only be interpretedto mean that, regardless
of minor fluctuations,the area of the Ancient Near East continuedto expand, by land to the east, by sea to the west.9The secondgeneralizationregards the increasinglywarlike and barbaricappearance(mentionedabove)
of the nameson the list as we cast our eyes along it, so much so that finally
many of the peripheralculturesappearin much the same relationto, the
Ancient Near East as the barbariantribes and kingdoms of the first half
of the first millenniumA.D. do to the Roman empire."0
9 Greek, Macedonian, Roman, and Byzantine attack checked and finally completely dissolved
this expansion to the west.
10 Recalling Toynbee's "barbarianwar-bands." Note might be made here of Toynbee's general views regarding the Ancient Near East, inasmuch as they are expressive of an attempt to
deal largely with the subject. Toynbee is excessively weak in his treatment of certain phases of
the Ancient Near East. At the outset of his monumental history, he commits a fundamental
error which vitiates much of his argument. He defines an "intelligible field of study" as a
"society," or "group" of allied civilizations, examples being the society of Western Christendom,
which includes Great Britain, France, Spain, etc., and the Hellenic society, which includes Greece
and Rome. He then proceeds, however, to discover six societies in the period and region of our
interest, Sumeric, Babylonic, Egyptiac, Minoan, Hittite, and Syriac, some of which are not
groups at all, but individual civilizations corresponding to Great Britain, or France, or Spain,
and according to his definition, therefore, not "intelligible fields of study."'To each case he at-

536

Burr C. Brundage
II

In the informed popular mind there persiststhe quite justifiableconception of the alpha and omega of the Ancient Near East as, respectively,
the inventionof writingin the fourthmillenniumB.C., andthe fall of Babylon
in 539B.C. (or the defeatof DariusIII at the handsof Alexanderin 33I B.C.).
The Hellenisticand Romanperiod,as well as the Parthianand Sasanianempires are vaguelyconsideredas existingin a kind of penumbralstate,neither
fish nor fowl. Some scholarstreat this millenniumwhich follows the imposing work of Cyrusthe Persianas if it were but an aspectof Hellenic or
Byzantine history, while others view it through pre-Islamicspectacles.In
effect few have felt themselveson solid groundwhen dealing with it.
Obviouslya dividing point does exist in history,which we can represent
by the date of the fall of Babylonin 539 B.C. But we would be misrepresenting the facts to assume that that date representsthereforethe terminusad
quem of the Ancient Near East. Before this date the several civilizations
and cultureshad each glowed in its settingwith intermittentflashes,a world
of diversecolors and discreteparts.Beginningwith that year, Achaemenid
domination unrolled rapidly and smoothly over a now widely extended
area, solidifying the whole and creating the first Pax Orientalis.Because
the Achaemenidempire and its two successors,the Parthianand Sasanian
empires, nourishedthe essential spirit and prestige of the Ancient Near
East,we must admitthat 539B.C. is only the closingof a chapterin its career.
We must look furtherto fix on a date at which point we can with justice
state that the Ancient Near East is no more.This date we equate with the
tempts to apply that pattern which he developed from a study of the Hellenic society, namely, a
period of growth, a time of troubles, a universal state, in which period arise both external and
internal proletariats (barbarian war-bands and the universal church respectively), and lastly an
interregnum which includes a V3Zkerwanderungof the barbarians and the gestation of a new
society in the universal church. Such a compressed statement of course does grave injustice to
Toynbee's theory, which is more fluid than the above would suggest. In some cases he badly
strains his argument; in others he barely skims the surface. His treatment of the Sumeric society
is indecisive and reveals little understanding of its paramount importance as a grand exemplar
in the world of the Ancient Near Eastern civilizations. As a matter of fact, Toynbee seems unaware of the importance of lateral influences of one civilization upon another. To him they affect each other mainly as they give birth to a new society or are born from one. Like sticks in a
children's game they seem to be laid end to end. His treatment of the relationshipof the Minoan
to the Syriac society is quite fanciful in this regard. The Syriac society, whose period of growth
begins ca. II25 B.C. and ends with the collapse of Solomon's kingdom, possesses apparently no
progenitors at all, except-in a vague and uncrystallized way-Minoan Crete. Three obvious
absurdities can be corrected here: (i) the Syriac society is older than II25 B.C.; (2) it had
definite cultural and spiritual forces playing upon it from the beginning from both Egypt and
Mesopotamia; and (3) the currents of culture moved not only from west to east between Crete
and Syria-Palestinebut just as strongly from east to west. In justice to Toynbee, the historian
of the Ancient Near East must acknowledge that, in spite of his fumblings, he is one of the very
few historians outside the field who ever cast more than a casual glance inside. In so doing he
has recognized the prime importance of this area of study and has announced its merits to the
whole field of history.

The Jncient Near East as History

537

first successfulchallengeflung by the rising power of Islam againstthe last

of the Sasanidemperorsin the year 632 A.D. The objectionmay be entered
here that,if we carrythe AncientNear Eastinto Parthianand Persiantimes,
how do we know that it does not projectinto the period of the Caliphate?
Admittedly Islam carriedon isolated pieces of Ancient Near Easternculture, irrigationagriculture,commercialpatterns,etc.'1Its advent,however,
led ultimatelyto the deletion of those tongues, such as Coptic, Aramaic,
and BabylonianSemitic,in which had been enshrinedmost of the religious
and intellectuallife of the Ancient Near East. This languagefrontieris an
importantdividing line between the Ancient Near East and Islam.
The several periods of Ancient Near Eastern empire, Sumerian,Akkadian, Babylonian,Egyptian,Assyrian,Achaemenid,Parthian,and Sasanian, had all been merely conquestsof opportunity,without any compelling
creedor messageto broadcast.As a consequencethe fundamentalsof Ancient
Near Easternlife remainedvirtuallyintact and the rate of change of the
variousculturalelementswas scarcelydisturbed.Islam on the contrarywas
impelled outwardby a positive idea. The introductionof this idea turned
out to be the catalystwhich regroupedold elementsof the Ancient Near
East to such an extent that their former configurationswere no longer apparent.In this mannerwe say that Islam terminatedthe period of the Ancient Near East.12
We must now turn our attentionback to the beginnings.Unavoidably
we are vague at this point. Only when much more materialhas been recovered by the archaeologistwill we be able to visualizethe generalconnections
between mesolithicand neolithicculturesand the Ancient Near East.
11 It is not this simple. New civilizations do not arise phoenix-like from the ashes of
predecessor civilizations and cultures. They result from a recombination of selected elements,
which in former combinations had become inert. Thrown into this potpourri are novel features
from the rising civilization. This mass of heterogeneous elements is then grouped to accord
with the several dominant problems facing the new civilization. The decay of civilizations is
erroneously conceived if we insist that all of the various elements-intellectual, esthetic, technological, etc.-begin to break down as the end approaches.A civilization is not an organism;
and therefore, even as the over-all inertia of final extinction settles upon it, it is entirely possible
-and it often happens-that certain vigorous elements, ideas or institutions, are at that moment
either in a state of gestation or are actually operative.
12 The degree and quality of affiliation of Islam to its predecessor, the Ancient Near East,
calls for more intensive research. The motivating power of political Islam was Arabian, but its
whole background and orientation were Syro-Palestinian,and specificallyJudeo-Christian.Owing
to the fact that the Israelite and early Christian civilizations were not totally within the Ancient
Near East (see footnote 8), however, this relationship can not be cited to disprove our contention that the rise of Islam implied the end of the Ancient Near East. An outstanding difference
between the abstracted ethos of the Ancient Near East and that of Islam is to be found in the
fact that Islam offered no sacraments, mysteries, or hierarchy of priests, as did most of the religions of the Ancient Near East. Islam did not conceive of man as being as closely enmeshed in
the web of Nature and natural forces as its predecessorcivilizations did. In view of this, Hitti's
statement that "the Moslem conquests may be looked upon as the recovery by the Ancient Near
East of its early domain (The Arabs: A Short History [Princeton, 1943], p. 47)" is manifestly
incorrect,

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Burr C. Brundage

This much does seem evident now, however. If the abstractedethos of

the AncientNear East is to be locatedwith referenceto the centralproblem
facing it, namely,how the state could best aid in maintainingthe essential
harmony of nature, and consequentlythe well-being of mankind-which
problemwas solved throughsacramentsand manipulationof the gods and
other powers-then we are justifiedin establishingour terminusa quo at
the point of man'sfirstawarenessof this problem.And this point of necessity
must precedethe inventionof the art of writing."3Writing,at least in those
Sumeriancenterswhere it appearsin its oldest form, evolvedpartiallyas an
adjunctof the systematizationof temple life, and is thus subsequentto it in
point of time. And temple life in turn reflectsthe emergenceof that ethos
which we recognizeas essentiallyAncient Near Eastern.The beginningsof
the Ancient Near East are thus pre-literate;this much we can say.
III
We assume for conveniencethat every recognizablecivilizationor culwhich may be made up of
ture possessesan ethos, or essentialcharacteristic,
one dominatingtraitor many.Our need to postulatethe existenceof civilization-clusters,or relatedfamiliesof civilizations,must of coursetake into account the ethos of each component.Vital dissimilaritiesamong these ethoi
must constantlybe bornein mind, but for purposesof classificationthe similaritiesare moreimportant.The sum of all these similardominantcharacteristics we shall term the "abstractedethos" of the civilization-clusterunder
consideration.Using it as a kind of yardstick,not only can we measurethe
amount of departurefrom the norm of each componentbut with equal
value we can applyit to othercivilization-clusters.
It is evident that change alters this abstractedethos profoundlyas the
historyof the Ancient Near East unfolds. But it is equallyevident that the
originalconfigurations,becausethey did succeedinitiallyin maintainingsociety, will tend to reveal a persistenceout of all proportionto their inner
merit. Some of the elements making up this initial abstractedethos are:
(a) conceptionof the utter immersionof man in nature; (b) richnessand
immediacyof religiouslife; (c) inabilityto adduceabstractions;(d) prominence of the conceptof the PrimevalChaos.
We may assumethat some at least of the aboveelementspossesseda respectableantiquityeven by the beginning of our period. Coupledwith the
13 E. A. Speiser's recent discussion would seem to bear this statement out. Studies in the
History of Culture: Some Sources of Intellectual and Social Progress in the Ancient Near East
(Washington, 1942), pp. 57, 58, 6I.

The Ancient Near East as History

539

potentialitiesof irrigationand terraceagriculture,metallurgy,and an increasinglycomplex village life (in the processof becomingcity life), these
elementscombinedto produceman'sfirst group of competentcivilizations:
Sumero-Semitic,Egyptian,and Minoan.14
The conceptionof the utter immersionof man in natureis a corollary
to Wilson's excellent statementof the consubstantialityof the elements of
the Egyptian'suniverse,and is also implied in Jacobsen'ssomewhatsimilar
statementregardingthe Mesopotamianuniverse.15The peoples of the Ancient Near East were newly sprung from their neolithic earth and had as
yet no appreciationof their own potentialities.Child-likeand direct, th-ey
felt intenselythe overpoweringsimilaritiesbetweenthemselvesand the stuff
of nature: conception,birth, ripeness,and death. Disassociationfrom nature in any sense would have appealedto them as neitherdesirablenor possible. The power of their point of view is attestedby the frequencywith
which it continuesto crop out in more highly articulatedculturesof later
times.We can best understandit by comparingit to the apartnessof man and
naturein Greekand Romanthought.In this latterinstancemen had discovered an essential point of differencebetween themselvesand the rest of
nature.This differenceresidedin their intellectualand reasoningfaculties,
which plainly were extractedfrom nature because they could be focused
uponit.
The richness and immediacy of religious life to the nations of the
Ancient Near East is truly impressive.Not even in medievaltimes has society so thoroughlyconcentratedthe totalityof its intellectual,philosophical,
and ethical speculationwithin the apparatusand imagery of religion. A
case can be madefor the assumptionthat the AncientNear Easternreligions
are the monumentspar excellenceof the Ancient Near Easterncivilizations
and that only through assiduousinvestigationof these religionscan we arrive at a correctperspectiveof the period.In this respectthe contrastwith
Islam and with the classicalworld is instructive.Islam became essentially
politicalonce it had leaped the barrierbetween desertand cultivatedland,
and no one would ever suggest that any religion whatsoevermotivatedthe
actions of the Hellenistic states.
14 Israel, because of its late arrival upon the scene, was faced with patterns of life and
thought that had been operative, in theory at least, for several centuries in the area of the Ancient Near East, but which had by that time in part ceased to fulfill their original functions.
The new imperatives of life in that area, and not those early imperatives which produced the
original abstractedethos, were the ones which activated late-coming Israel. The particularethos of
Israelite civilization thus departs widely from the abstractedethos of the Ancient Near East as
a whole.
15 H. Frankfort, et al., The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (Chicago, I946), pp.

62-7I,

I49.

540

Burr C. Brundage

The awkwardnessdisplayedby the Ancient Near Easternmind in dealing with abstractionsagain evincesthe newnessof his world.The classicexample of this awkwardnessis the failure of the Old Kingdom scribe in
Egypt to extractfrom his clumsysyllabarythe very serviceablealphabetembeddedin it. In generalthe mind of this periodwas limitedin its expression
to that circleof ideas which could be broughtout in the imageryof the concrete. The great nature religions of the Sumerians,the Egyptians, the
Canaanites,etc., are clear examples of such nonabstractthinking.
The prominenceof the conceptof the PrimevalChaos,the Nun of the
Egyptians,the Tiamatof the Babylonians,mayperhapsbe tied to the peculiar
circumstancessurroundingthe origins of civilized life in the Ancient Near
East. Unlike the Hellenic, Byzantine,Far Eastern,medieval,and Western
worlds, the Ancient Near East had no civilized predecessors.16
This point
needs stressing.The uniquenessof that which the Sumerian,the Egyptian,
and the Minoancreatedstood out in their minds in startlingcontrastto the
unrelievedgloom and heavy inertnessof its matrix.Chaoshad been but recently overpowered;its menace was still omnipresent.Haunted by its implications,becausefamiliar with its manifestations,the imaginationof the
AncientNear East dwelt upon the conceptof PrimevalChaoswith a fascination unknown to the mythopoeicmind of other civilization-clusters
farther
removedfrom the actualityof chaosin point of time.
For how long a period did the original abstractedethos which we have
just consideredprovidea way of life for men and statesin the Ancient Near
East? We have noted the transcendentimportanceof religion in the abstractedethos; perhapswe can now utilize it, along with other data mentioned below, for purposesof measuringchange in that ethos.
As far back in time as we can see, the great naturereligionsin the area
dominatedthe scene. We may date those beginningsroughly to the early
partof the fourthmillenniumB.C. In the secondhalf of the thirdmillennium
we can perceivea change in the making. The much-increasedcomplexity
and weight of materialculture by this time have told on the older provincialisms,brokenthem down to some extent, and paved the way for empire. Here we have the earlieststratumof empires,those of Old and Middle
Kingdom Egypt, of Akkad,Ur III, and of the First Dynastyof Babylon.In
the seventeenthcentury B.C. the short-livedempire of the Hyksos king
Khayanaleads directlyto that prolongedand startlingperiodof empireinauguratedby the EighteenthDynasty of Egypt.
16 Thus the only civilization-cluster which
we could logically use here for comparativepurposes would be the Mayan-Mexican group. The relations between this and the civilizationcluster located in the Andean highlands are obscure, otherwise we would be tempted to use
this latter also for use in comparisons.

The Ancient Near

East as History

54I

Concomitant with this second layer of empire appear three other new
phenomena, that of personalism, and-contesting the field now with the
nature religions-the first inklings of revealed religion. Springing from the
latter is the concept of the future, generally taking the form of a Heaven
in the afterworld, or a Promised Land in this. With the appearance of these
four elements we are made aware that the original abstracted ethos has been
altered. It must be emphasized, however, that these new elements could not
radically transmute the still continuing old forms (imposed by the original
abstracted ethos) which by now gave off a heavy odor of sanctity. Also we
must note that these new elements develop continuously throughout the
whole of the latter period of the Ancient Near East. We bring them in at
this point because by now they have become sufficiently powerful to affect
the whole life of the Ancient Near East.
It is unnecessary to expatiate upon this new abstracted ethos which was
supplementing and in part displacing the old. An example will make clear
the relationship between the first and second layers of Ancient Near Eastern empire. The Old and Middle Kingdom empires, although appreciable
in extent, did not react markedly upon Egypt. The New Kingdom empire
of the Eighteenth Dynasty on the other hand was a cultural partnership
(witness the accelerated linguistic and cultural borrowing between Egypt
and Syria-Palestine in this period), which fact serves to distinguish it from
those anterior empires.
The empires of Akkad, or Ur III, and of the first Babylonian dynasty
were short-lived but important predecessors of the Assyrian empire. The
relationship they bear to the Assyrian empire, however, may well parallel
that between the aforementioned Egyptian empires, though the evidence is
not as clear.
The Minoan thalassocracy was an early, significant, and apparently farflung empire, perhaps contemporary in its origins with the rise of the New
Kingdom of Egypt. The imperial state raised up by David and Solomon in
the hills of Palestine and in Trans-Jordan may be mentioned here, but it
obviously does not represent the real significance of the fourth competent
civilization. The political skills of Israel were certainly not notable-in fact
they were decidedly inferior. The extrapolated Carthaginian empire is considered below (see footnote 2I) as simply an aspect of Phoenician sea power.
Following the Assyrian, appear the Neo-Babylonian, the Medo-Persian,
the Parthian, and the Sasanian empires.17 A fairly consistent progression
17 The four periods of alien intrusion
following the collapse of the Medo-Persian empire
are omitted from this discussion (the Alexandrine empire, the states of his successors,the Roman,
and the Byzantine empires), not because they were not of large significance in the development
of Ancient Near Eastern culture and thought but because they represent in part the imposition

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Burr C. Brundage

can be discerned as these empires work up from the crude Egyptian efforts
to the well-integrated and sophisticated Achaemenian empire, the first successful world-state. Following this high-water mark, the Ancient Near East
slowly contracted to a fraction of the area it had once so fully occupied.18
It has sometimes been said that the Ancient Near East never surpassed
-in art, in technology, or in thought-the achievements of Old Kingdom
Egypt, of Middle Minoan II, and of early dynastic Sumer, that after these
periods we meet with less and less virile cultures. Toynbee reflects this in
his emphasis on the earliest period as being in general the most highly
creative in the life of a civilization. This does not always square with the
facts, at least in regard to the Ancient Near East. Admittedly the flowering
of these periods has a freshness and vitality which charm and amaze. We
cannot, however, escape the conclusion that vitality and creativeness were
simply transferred to other fields of human activity as those great periods
waned; they were not lost.19In the exciting hurly-burly of the Egyptian and
Assyrian empires much of value did vanish; nevertheless human ingenuity,
artistry, and thought continued to bear fruit. We may deplore the overlay of
artifice and imitation gathering like thick verdigris on these empires, but
we do not forget that the problems which faced them were vastly different,
and surely more complex, than those which faced their progenitors. As societies progress, they generally produce larger populations, which in turn
offer challenges that absorb much of their political energy.
Decay seems to have set in in each of these three competent civilizations
during the height of their imperial adventures. The Minoan thalassocracy
foundered suddenly and without a trace, so completely as a matter of fact
that, as a component of the Ancient Near East, it was thenceforth removed
from the scene. In the New Kingdom, Egypt's massing of resources carried her rapidly toward world dominion. The brilliant, if repressive, empire
of the abstracted ethoi of two foreign civilization-clusters,with which we do not have space to
deal.
18 The collapse of the original abstractedethos allowed experimentation with empire: it did
not make it inevitable. It is interesting to observe that it was the competent civilizationsEgyptian, Minoan, and Sumero-Semitic-which initiated the first successful imperial ventures.
Apparently they had retained enough drive, left over from their more flourishing days, to accomplish this. But those empires which followed were constructed by either absorption civilizations (Medo-Persianand Sasanian) or peripheralcultures (Parthian). It is the date 539 B.C., mentioned earlier in this paper, which separates the empires emanating from the great core areas
from those imposed upon those areas by their lesser brothers of the Ancient Near East.
19 The stability and prosperity of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt was a political triumph
of no small magnitude, considering the painful break with Memphite tradition and the rampant
separatism of the rural nobles. Surely Late Minoan II representsa tour de force of overseas organization on the part of an island poorly provided with natural resources. Nor can we underestimate the outpouring of skill and energy from Babylon in the days of Hammurabi, the fine
sense of order and legal sanction which is evident in that period.

The Ancient Near East as History

543

which resultedproducedthe AmarnaAge and then fell away in a diminishing series of thrusts and counterthrustsinto the Twentieth Dynasty. Geographicalisolationand unhamperedfood productionenabledEgypt to nurse
the ghost of imperialpretensionsdown into the reign of Amasis,last king
but one of the Twenty-sixthDynasty.
The Sumero-Semiticcivilization, which had been experimentingwith
empiresfrom at least the time of Sargon of Akkad, developeda relatively
high standardof efficiencyin administrationunderthe Assyrianconquerors.
The Assyrianempire was a successfuladvanceover the Egyptianexperiment,even if measuredin termsof extentonly, and yet its fall was as precipitous and completeas that of the Cretanempire.Sufficientfacts are not yet
at hand to explain adequatelyor to isolatethe obviouslyimportantcultural
weaknessesin Sumero-Semiticlife that caused such an amazing collapse.
The Neo-Babylonianempire was only a fleeting image of its Assyrian
predecessor.
All of the empires mentionedabove were merely curtain-raisers
to the
grand accomplishmentof the imperialpurposeunder the gifted rulers of
the Achaemenidhouse.
Personalismis a necessarycorollaryto the AmarnaAge, althoughit did
not spring up full blown at that preciseperiod.The fragmentationof group
objectivesincidentupon enteringinto the complexclimateof empireoffers
greaterfreedomto the privilegedindividualand weakensto just that extent
the canons of group thinking. The new and unusualopportunitiesoffered
to the individualby the wealth,the bureaucracy,and the intellectualstimulation of empirespurredon his sophistication.In Egypt the plethoraof New
Kingdom tombs,as well as the evidenceof a growing classof civil servants,
bear witness to this graduallychanging way of life in the Ancient Near
East. The employmentof Aramaeansand Greeksby Assyrianand Persian
overlordspoints in the same direction.20
The frescoesfrom the imperialpalaceat Knossospresentus with a lively
arrayof courtiersand fashionableladies.It is impossiblenot to reactin an
essentiallycontemporarymanner to the ease, individualism,and grace of
20 Thie new interest in the individual
is explicitly illustrated by the story of the Egyptian
priest Wenamon. This is one of the first psychological novels in history, a piece of work concerned solely with secular and human events, and grouped around the two protagonists of the
story, Wenamon and Zakar-Baal,prince of Byblos. The contrastwith the Middle Kingdom Sinuhe
is instructive. Sinuhe is a character in a dream, only dimly outlined. The story deals with his
utter misery at having been forced into the uncouth society of the beduin, and his relief and
joy at finally regaining his station in Egyptian society in the protecting shadow of the throne.
Sinuhe is any Egyptian living in exile. Wenamon is distinctly himself and could not possibly be
mistaken for anyone else. From Sinuhe to Wenamon there has occurred interesting progress in
the direction of increasingpersonalism.

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these ancients.Surelythe court of Minos had proceededfar in the direction

of personalismby this time.
Much of the Old Testamentrevealsa highly developedsense of the individual as viewed apart from his society. Jeremiahand Ezekiel come to
mind here. Koheleth,in his fin de sieclewisdom, surveysthe world as a
complete individual, reminding us of the combined characteristicsof La
Rochefoucauld,Chateaubriand,and Baudelaire.
The change in the abstractedethos from the naturereligionsto revealed
religionis a conspicuouslandmarkin the developmentof the AncientNear
East and of the world in general. It is so intimatelyassociated,however,
with both empire and personalismthat separatetreatmentis justifiedonly
for purposesof organization.Actually the three should be consideredas
facets of one phenomenon.
In the period of the great nature religions,a messiah,a common man
from the soil or the bench,claimingto be the son of a god, would have been
unthinkableand in the last degree sacrilegious.The nature religions had
grown up as the bone and fleshof the earlystatesof the AncientNear East.
They had had no specificbeginnings,except as the civilizationsthemselves
had had specificbeginnings,and thereforeseemedeternal.They needed no
prophets,for to their devoteesthey were as self-evidentas the state itself. It
followed that as long as the early states retainedtheir pristinevigor, their
congeners,the nature religions, would also remain active and intelligible.
But when these statesventuredout into the ways of imperialism,by just
so much were the naturereligionsforced to extend their orbits.This extension both fertilized and strainedreligiousspeculation;nevertheless,the nature religionswere able to adaptthemselvesonly clumsilyto these new conditions. Essentiallythey failed to fulfill the religiousdesiresof those masses
of people who were gaining accessto the lower levels of the Ancient Near
Eastern cultures,thus leaving the field open to the youthful force of revealedreligion.
The religionspreachedby the messiahsand prophetsof this periodacted
like prodigiousearthquakes,shatteringthe ancientstructuresof empireand
society-and with incredibleforce casting up younger empires and more
exalted intellectualand religious concepts.Ikhnaton,Moses, Isaiah, Jesus,
Zarathustra,Mani-such men were only the foremostof many individuals
who arose to castigatethe past and announcethe future. The world still
reverberates
to the echoesof this momentousdevelopmentout of the Ancient
Near Easternpast.
Through these revealed religions man was first confronted with the

The Ancient Near East as History

545

preachmentthat there could be such a thing as a futurefor both individual

and society,a future differentfrom that which the past had contrived.The
evidence of tomb burials in the Ancient Near East does not militate against

this argument,for such a future life for the individualwas designedto be

an exact replica of past life on earth. Stirredby the great prophets,men
were now fired by thoughtsof a future which could be differentfrom the
past, and more desirable.It is no coincidencethat the naturereligionsstress
beginningsin their cosmologies,while the religionsof the prophetstend to
stressblessedand hopeful endings, a PromisedLand either on earth or in
heaven.The conceptof a future added immeasurablyto man's store of intellectualtools. Furthermore,it weakened perceptiblythe spiritualrigidity
to which he had so far been accustomed.
IV
We have alreadymentionedhow the Ancient Near East was connected
terminally with its successor,Islamic culture, and so we need consider
furtheronly the relationshipsof the Ancient Near East with the Hellenic,
the Byzantine,the Indic, and the Far Easterngroups.
To make clear these relationshipswe must first note that the Ancient
Near East is enclosedon all sides by sea and desert,except along the north
where mountain valleys and steppe afford generally easy access into the
region. Such physicalisolationgoes far toward explainingthe geographical
longevity of the Ancient Near East.
The desertbarrierforms a vast semicircularshield on the south, and includes the Libyan and Nubian deserts,the Rub al Khali, the barrencoastal
regionsof ancientGedrosiaand the salt pans of inner Iran. This practically
continuouszone of aridityis piercedat two pointsby long northwesterlyfingers of the Indian Ocean,the Red Sea, and the PersianGulf, each of which
probesup into the heart of the Ancient Near East. Along these waterways
passedinfluencesto and from the Indus valley and the Far East.The ports
of entryappearto have been the Yemen and the Bahreinregionrespectively,
althoughfuture investigationway well include Oman.
On the west, except for the narrow Hellespontineand Bosporanlandbridges,the approachwas guardedby wide stretchesof sea; these waters
were dominatedby Orientalkeels for roughly 2,500 years.The disappearance of the Minoan thalassocracyin the late fifteenth century signalized
changing conditions,but control continued to be exercised,through the
Mycenaeanperiod and the Viking-likerazzias of the Sea-Peoples,down to

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the tremendousrecrudescenceof Ancient Near Eastern sea power under

Achaemenidand Carthaginianrule.2"At Salamisand Himera (480B.C.) that
sea power was severelyhandled.The captureof Tyre in 332 B.C. by Alexander, and the close of the Punic Wars in 146 B.C. gave final masteryof these
watersto the Hellenic world.
For the early period,however,the significantpoint of contactbetween
the AncientNear East and the new Hellenicworld strugglinginto birthwas
that areaof westernAnatoliathat cradledthe Carian,Phrygian,Lydian,and
lonian cities and states.The failure of historiansto see all these cultures,
Asiatic as well as Greek,as stirringwith a new commercialand intellectual
ferment,has led them to explainIonic culturein termsof spontaneouscombustion, an urban flowering createdalmost entirely out of the admittedly
exceptionalcharacteristics
of the Ionian Greeksthemselves.Needless to say,
this view can no longerbe held withoutplentifulmodification.Ionia,though
inhabitedby Greeks,was still an appanageof the Orient,and a creditable
partof the advancesachievedtherewas due to new techniquesin scienceand
thought createdin the older centersto the east. Thus there appearsto have
been a much smootherjoining of the two civilization-clusters,
during the
dawn of Greek culture,than has heretoforebeen imagined.The propulsive
forces of civilizationflowed without perceptiblebreak at this crucialpoint
from one world to another,from East to West.
The loss of maritimesupremacywas nearly fatal to the Ancient Near
East, and from that blow there was no recovery.Like a great wave the
Hellenic world broke in upon it, engulfing all of Anatolia,Syria-Palestine,
and Egypt-an immense and productiveportionof the Ancient Near East
which had nourishedthree of its four competentcivilizations.The Ancient
Near East was thus forced back and from this point on pivoted on the
middle Tigris and the Iranianhighlands.But the rude shock of these reverseshad fanned the dying embersof AncientNear Easternvitalityin the
persons of the Parthianand Sasaniandynasts,and these two houses succeeded in establishingan uneasypoliticalequilibriumalong the line of the
Euphratesfor over seven hundredyears.
A thousandyearsof intermittentwarfaretie the East and the West to21 The brilliant rise of the
Carthaginian empire at about this time represented an extension and renewal of the Ancient Near Eastern sea arm in the Western Mediterraneanof epochal
proportions.It was staged in an area originally opened up by the Minoans, followed by the SeaPeoples and the Phoenicians, and thus caps a long tradition of westward expansion. The rapid
growth of the Hellenic world in Greece, Italy, and Sicily, cut athwart the life lines tying
Carthaginian civilization into the Ancient Near Eastern complex. Thus it was insulated and
thrown upon its own resources at an early date. The Punic Wars are as much a chapter in the
extinction of Ancient Near Eastern control of its western sea approachesas the defeat at Salamis
or the fall of Tyre to Alexander the Great.

The Ancient Near East as History

547

gether.22The absorptionby one protagonistof a largefragmentof the other

produceda permanentchannel,leadingfrom the olderto the younger,along
which flowed religious stimuli from both layers of Ancient Near Eastern
religion,as well as profoundestheticinfluences.The influencesfrom West
to East were not nearly so lasting or far-reachingin their effects, being
limited largelyto the militaryarts.In brief (outside of that close and peaceful connectionoriginallyestablishedin the civilizationsof westernAnatolia)
the nexus betweenthe AncientNear East on the one hand and the Hellenic
and Byzantine worlds on the other was that of immediateand close antagonism,resultingfor the Ancient Near East in uttersterility.
The relationshipbetweenthe Ancient Near East and the Far East was
otherwise.Separatedby tremendousdistancesby sea, and a successionof
knew each other only
nomadic tribesby land, the two civilization-clusters
through peaceful exchange of goods, and the impulsion eastwardof the
techniquesof civilizationin the earliestperiod.The nexus betweenthe Ancient Near East and the Indic culturesis obscure;it may fall into the above
pattern,exceptthat directcommunicationby sea may be postulatedbetween
the two from the very earliestperiod.
Our discussionmust close with that summarydefinitionof the Ancient
Near East which we set out in the beginningto discover.The AncientNear
East then is that group of cultureswhich clusteraround,and include, the
four competentcivilizations,Sumero-Semitic,Egyptian,Minoan,and Israelite. Its origins in time are shroudedin mists, but it closes with the rise of
inIslam, a definitedate. It is distinguishedfrom othercivilization-clusters,
sofar as its abstractedethos is concerned,by certainunique characteristics
which are visible to us at the outset. Subsequentlythis abstractedethos
changesradically.The Ancient Near East is relatedto all civilization-clusters neighboringit, but the nexus is differentin each case.
Cedar Crest College,Allentown, Pennsylvania
22 The heavy friction between the Ancient Near East and the Hellenic world eventually
rubbed off that part of the latter farthest to the east, thereby producing Byzantine culture. The
Byzantine emipire,however, carried on unchanged the Drang nach Osten initiated by Macedonia
and Rome; so the fundamental relationship between East and West continued unaltered.