Not on the test

Thanks to Andrew Kern at CiRCE for this one.

To the Autumnal Equinox

Monday, September 22, is the autumnal equinox. Scientifically it means that the sun is right over the equator. How sterile! Nonetheless, it is when the sun begins to shift toward the southern hemisphere, thus transitioning us away from summer and into fall (or autumn). Our days will get a little cooler (in the northern hemisphere anyway) and our nights will get even cooler as well (read tolerable). My air conditioning bill will go down!

Autumn and Winter are my two favorite seasons (not that I particularly despise any of them) because they are the ones where I am most likely to ge to sit by a fire, have a cup of hot apple cider, smoke my pipe and enjoy a book. One of the reasons I appreciate being a teacher is that I have a few weeks around Christmas to do just that.

In honor of the Autumnal Equinox, I offer up some poetry devoted to autumn (by better hands than mine).

Leaves, by Elsie Brady

How silently they tumble down
And come to rest upon the ground
To lay a carpet, rich and rare,
Beneath the trees without a care,
Content to sleep, their work well done,
Colors gleaming in the sun.

At other times, they wildly fly
Until they nearly reach the sky.
Twisting, turning through the air
Till all the trees stand stark and bare.
Exhausted, drop to earth below
To wait, like children, for the snow. 

Nothing Gold Can Stay, by Robert Frost

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold,
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Biblical Importance of Sumer

Sumer is incredibly relevant to the student of ancient history who seeks to understand the world of the Bible. According to the book of Genesis, Abraham came from Ur. There were several cities called Ur in Mesopotamia, but there are good reasons to believe that the Ur of southern Mesopotamia is the Ur of the Chaldees that Genesis speaks of. For one thing, the names are consistent not only with Akkadian/Sumerian names, but the description of Terah’s business is convincing. Another reason to identify Ur with Abraham is the polytheism on Abraham’s father Terah. Terah left Ur to go to Haran in northern Mesopotamia. Haran was known as a religious center for the worship of Nanna, the moon god. Ur shares this identity for southern Mesopotamia. Finally, according to our best reckoning, Terah fled Ur when the Gutians invaded. This helps us identify the chronology for Abraham as well.
Why is it important to know about Mesopotamia to understand Abraham? Abraham had a polytheistic past and this plays a large role in his life in Canaan. Abraham had to undergo the same sanctification that we do. Understanding this helps us understand some of the choices Abraham made and hang-ups that he had.
For example, the concept of land was very important to people from Mesopotamia. Perhaps very different from other cultures at the time, Mesopotamians like Abraham placed a heavy emphasis on land. They were a business people. Writing had been introduced there to help keep track of inventory and business transactions, and only later used for religious purposes. The cities of Mesopotamia are among the first anywhere to be true cities. The archaeological layouts allow us to see well-defined cultural centers all stationed around a center of worship. The nomadic lifestyle of the surrounding cultures would have seemed very odd to most Mesopotamians. Thus when God comes to Abraham in Haran and tells him to leave and go “to a land that I will show you” (Gen. 12:1) we must understand it in this context.
Another important issue to keep in mind is language. As already noted the reign of Sargon introduced a non-Sumerian element into this culture that would have required bilingual (Sumerian and Akkadian) language. This helps us understand how Terah could successfully travel nearly 600 miles and settle in Haran. This also helps us understand how Terah was so successful in Haran. Being from the Sumerian city of Ur, he would have understood a multiplicity of languages and so could likely have integrated into the more Akkadian culture of Haran.
How does Abraham’s pagan past help us understand his relationship to God? One way is that this was the first time a personal deity had made himself known. To Abraham all gods would have been frustratingly transcendent. Yahweh shows himself to be personal and very much desirous of Abraham’s well-being. God is very much interested in our personal well-being. This is a means for Him to bring glory to Himself, but still very different from the gods Abraham would have known. Another way his past helps us understand the richness of his life is that of the promise. Abraham follows God’s leading based on nothing more than a promise. The newness of this comes through when Sarai laughs at the thought of bearing a child in her old age, even at the promise of a god. These people would not have been used to a god who made Himself known, but the thought of making and keeping promises would have been almost ludicrous to them.
However, Abraham’s worldview does make for some issues for us as Christians. In what world does it make sense to let your wife be taken into a king’s harem, twice? In what way can we understand some of the things that Abraham does that make us cringe with disbelief? It is here that we must attribute his own struggle with his old paganism. Perhaps it has not been totally washed away.
The history of Mesopotamia holds great importance for the student of the ancient world. It helps us understand our own past as descendants of Abraham and builds connections to the world the Bible is situated in.

Sumer to 2040 BC

Sargon’s empire was strong and powerful, but no human kingdom lasts forever. Around 2274 BC, Gutians invaded from the Zagros Mountains to the East. The Gutians shared a language with the Akkadians but not a culture. Unlike many of the other conquerors before them, they had no desire to replace the Akkadian culture with their own, they simply wanted to destroy. They were barbarians in the truest sense of the word. Oftentimes we see people referred to as barbarians, an essentially Greek word that means someone who does not speak Greek. Rarely do we see them live up to the name. Herodotus will call the Persian horde barbarians, but they are as civilized as the Greeks are. The Romans will call the Carthaginians barbarians, but they too had the form of civilization. Only the Germanic tribes much later will seem to fulfill the barbarian name as well as the Gutians.
The Gutians invaded the outskirts of Sargon’s empire first, now controlled by his son. By the time Naram-sin came to the throne, the invasion was well underway and the empire was all but doomed. Naram-sin did not help anything. He expanded the empire to the north along the river valley but left the east undefended and it was quickly overrun by Gutians. They cut the empire in half and invaded nearly every major city in the plain of Shinar. Kish fell, followed by Nippus, Uruk, Lagash, and finally Ur. Anarchy followed. The king lists suggest that no one was able to hold the empire together by asking “Who was king, who was not king?” Sargon’s great empire was gone.
All was not lost. Around before 2280 the city of Lagash gained its freedom from the Gutians. The most famous of these rulers, Gudea, is able to begin trade again. He shows his humility in the statues he has made of himself. Rather than showing himself as a military conqueror, he is dressed in priestly garments with his hands folded.
Following Lagash, a revival of trade and strength flowed from the lower portions of Sumer and spread freedom throughout the plain. Uruk was freed next, followed by Ur and finally Nippur. The king holding most of this newly freed Sumer together was Utuhegal (2280-2277 BC). Utuhegal was not as important as his general and son-in-law, Ur-Nammu whom he left in Ur after driving the Gutians out. Utuhegal went on to continue fighting the Gutians. Ur-Nammu began to consolidate power in Ur and Uruk and amassed his own army. In 2278 he slaughtered his former master and father-in-law and became king of Sumer. He initiated the Third Dynasty of Ur (2278-2170 BC).
The Third Dynasty of Ur was a kind of cultural renaissance for Sumer. Ur-Nammu rebuilt roads and cities and revitalized the land. This renaissance lasted until 2040 BC with the center of influence changing a couple of times. In 2040 BC, the first dynasty of Babylon came to power over Mesopotamia.

Knee Deep in Research

I haven't posted anything recently because I am knee deep in research. Every once in a while, until I get a draft of my thesis, I may post something I find interesting from my research.
Here is an interesting quote from Donald Davidson...
"A civilization cannot feed and flourish upon perishable things. Only imperishable at its center can give it life. Nothing is more imperishable than poetry. In comparison, the material works of science and industry are but fleeting trifles. No civilization of the past has ever lived without poetry. Our civilization can hardly be an exception."

Let's End Women's Suffrage

Not really, but this video once again shows the sorry state of our educational machine in America.
Enjoy!

Sargon the Great (2335-2279 BC)

While the Sumerians fought among each other for cultural and political dominance, the city-state model was changing around them. Semites from the mountains of Zagros and the plains of Elam had been invading for centuries, but had never managed to gain a strong foothold in the southern river valley of Sumer. One location that Semites had controlled was Akkad, to the north of Sumer.
The ancient world is full of myths and stories that are retold over and over again. Over the course of this year we will see the same stories many times. Many of these stories will be familiar to us from biblical accounts. For instance, the narrative of the Flood in Genesis has similar stories from all over Mesopotamia, like the one in the Epic of Gilgamesh. This should not cause us to question the authenticity of the biblical story, but to confirm it. If, as the Bible insists, we are all descended from the sons of Noah every nation should have some collective memory of the Flood. That these stories are similar proves their veracity. That they are different, shows us how man corrupts the things of God when he does not focus his attention on God’s character and worship.
Sargon the Great provides one of the first examples of the river narrative in antiquity. The stories of antiquity are full of this imagery. According to legend, Sargon was set adrift on the Euphrates River shortly after his birth. The goddess Inanna guided his basket to the shores of the city of Kish. Sargon was raised there and eventually given the role of cupbearer to the king of Kish, Ur-Zababa. This river narrative will remind us immediately of Moses, but we see it in many other narratives as well. It becomes a standard narrative for divine providence in the overthrow of a civilization or kingship.
In course of time Sargon overthrew Ur-Zababa and declared himself King of Universal Dominion. Sargon invaded many of the southern Sumerian cities and conquered almost all of them. He joined the disparate Sumerian city-states into an empire of great size. He moved the capital of his empire to Akkad (Agade). In the fifty-five years of his rule he amassed an empire that stretched from the Persian Gulf to the mountains of southern Turkey. The entire river valley of Mesopotamia was his. The new kingdom was called the Akkadian Empire (sometimes called the kingdom of Agade). Sargon established Sumerian culture throughout his kingdom, though he was of Semitic origins himself. Cuneiform became the dominant writing in the empire and would remain so for a thousand years. Three of his descendants reigned after him. The last was Naram-sin who ruled from 2255-2219

Sumer to 2335 BC

This section of our text will focus on the historical development of Sumer during what is called the Early Dynastic period. This period is complicated by the lack of written records as we discussed above. There is also a lack of internal cohesion among the city-states in Sumer. Some scholars refer to this period as a era of civil war and territorial conflict. From around 2900 BC through 2335 BC, the center of power in Sumer shifted often and with much bloodshed.
The map shows several important cities in Sumer. These cities were largely independent of each other and most of them were the center of Sumer at one time or another.
During the Early Dynastic period, these cities rivaled each other for cultural and political dominance. They would conquer each other often. We know this because at this time in the archaeological record, city walls begin to show up. The city-state paradigm is not one known for promoting peace. We will see how the city-state is an evolutionary model in political theory that either advances to imperialism or to republicanism, or is subject to civil war and self-destruction. We see the former in Rome and later European countries and the latter in the Greek cities of Athens and Sparta.

Sumerian Religion

We will take a moment here to give a short introduction to the gods and goddesses of the Sumerians. Before we deal with them particularly, let us spend a moment on the topic of polytheism. Polytheism is the belief in multiple gods. It should be seen as antithetical to monotheism, the belief in one god. Christianity, Judaism and Islam to a lesser extent, are monotheistic religions. Most cultures in the ancient world were polytheistic.
Polytheistic religions have a multitude of gods and goddesses to perform various functions. Many of us are already aware of this in Greek or Roman mythology. Zeus and Jupiter were the chief gods and all others had positions below them in some way. There were messenger gods and gods of war and other such functions. In Sumerian religion, the gods tended to be a little more territorial. There were gods that performed natural or cosmological functions, but they were almost always tied to a city or cities in the region as well. The following chart should give us an idea of some of the more important deities in the Sumerian pantheon.

Deity Name	Patron City	Function
An (Anu)	Erech (Uruk)	Chief god
Enki	Eridu	god of water, wisdom and fertility
Enkil	Nippur	god of rain, wind, and air
Inanna	Erech (Uruk)	goddess of love, fertility, and war
Nanna	Ur	god of the moon
Utu	Larsa	god of justice and the sun
Marduk	Babylon	god of storms and lightning

The layout of Sumerian cities is actually important when the question of religion comes up. Sumerians laid their cities out around the central temple of whatever god or goddess was home to that city. The ziggurat would be in the center of the city and everything radiated from that central point. Coupled with the raised elevation of the ziggurat, we can begin to see how the idea of a “high place” was shared by Sumerians as well as others.