A few days ago I discussed Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic Wars. In that article I proposed the hypothesis that Caesar modeled himself after Alexander the Great in his ambitions to be a world conquering hero. Alexander was not the first world conquering hero, however, since he himself explicitly tried to model himself after the Persian kings. The Persian kings, in turn, modeled themselves after their Babylonian and Assyrian predecessors. Ever since the reign of Sargon of Akkad (2334-2279 BC), Mesopotamian kings tried to present themselves as world conquering heroes who, with the help of the gods, established their righteous rule over the earth. Like Julius Caesar, these Assyrian and Babylonian kings issued yearly reports of their campaigns, in which they recorded their victories and other impressive deeds. Since Assyrian kings did not have to deal with pesky senators who thought absolute monarchy was a bad idea, they could be very explicit and in-your-face with their ambitions of world conquest. They also didn’t use the neutral sounding third person, but made sure that they used the first person wherever possible. One of the most interesting and best preserved Assyrian royal inscriptions is Sennacherib’s Taylor Prism.
Month: August 2016
Oral tradition as history
Most written accounts of historical events are based on information from oral tradition. Whether we are dealing with early reports or historiographical works written centuries after the events, the information was spread by word of mouth before it reached the author. For this reason alone historians should familiarize themselves with the ways in which oral tradition preserves and transmits memories of historical events. In order to judge the reliability of a source, one should always try to reconstruct the way by which the information reached the author, for even the most objective narrator is only as reliable as his most reliable sources. Despite the importance of oral tradition in history, a truly systematic study of oral tradition started relatively late. One of the founding fathers of this systematic study is the Belgian anthropologist Jan Vansina, whose Oral Tradition as History (1985) is still authoritive to this day.
Caesar’s commentaries on the Gallic Wars
Caesar’s commentaries on the Gallic Wars – the Commentarii de Bello Gallico – are one of the most accessible Latin texts. Because of it’s clear prose, straightforward message and lack of complex poetic constructions, it is often used as a practice text for students of Latin. This, in turn, has made the Roman conquest of Gaul one of the most widely known episodes in Roman history. Moreover, it has given schoolchildren of all times the chance to read the work of one of history’s greatest generals: Julius Caesar. Whether you love him or hate him, Caesar certainly was a talented writer in addition to being a great general. He managed to captivate the people of Rome with his commentaries on the Gallic Wars, which contributed greatly to his political success. It is therefore of great importance to understand the political context of his work.
Haua Fteah – Resistance to agriculture during the Neolithic
The transition to agriculture is perhaps the most pervasive change in human history. The agricultural revolution allowed mankind to settle down, to grow in number and to develop various crafts that were not directly related to the collection of food. This in turn led to the rise of cities and states that could effectively rule millions of people. Because the sedentary agricultural people had many advantages over the nomadic hunter-gatherers, their way of life came to dominate the world. From 9000 BC onward, farming spread slowly and steadily across the world. However, the agricultural revolution was not always a smooth one-way process, as this research by Gulio Lucarini illustrates. In fact, the benefits of agriculture were not always as obvious as they appear to us now and in some regions the agricultural revolution even met with resistance.
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Who were the three Wise Men?
According to the Gospel of Matthew, wise men from the east visited Jesus shortly after his birth. Having followed a star that signified the savior’s birth, they had come to worship the new king and to bring gifts in the form of myrrh, frankincense and gold. This episode in the Nativity story has baffled many people ever since. Because Matthew doesn’t give a lot of background information on these wise men and the reasons of their visit, the narrative has been subject to many different interpretations. However, with today’s knowledge of Ancient Near Eastern cultures, we might just be able to understand this episode a little better.
Reconstructing the history of the Indo-Europeans
About two centuries ago linguists became increasingly aware of the similarities between the European and South Asian languages. They concluded that these languages must have had a common ancestor. The question who the speakers of this proto-language were, from which Greek, Latin, Sanskrit and many others were descended, has concerned scholars ever since. Unfortunately, the search for these proto-Indo-Europeans has had some destructive side effects in modern history, including the racial doctrines of the nazi’s. Nevertheless, despite all the pseudo-scientific and racialist ideas that this subject has inspired, there has been a lot of quality research on the proto-Indo-Europeans as well in recent decades. One of the most distinguished post-WWII scholars of Indo-European studies is James Patrick Mallory, who has spent most of his career trying to find the proto-Indo-European homeland and to reconstruct the migration patterns of their descendants. The conclusions of his investigations have been published in his monograph In Search of the Indo-Europeans (1989).
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Xiongnu, Chionites, and Huns
In ancient times the steppes of Central Asia were home to numerous tribal federations. Since the proto-Indo-Europeans had first domesticated the horse around 4000 BC and started using it for warfare, a new way of life had originated on the plains of southern Russia. Originally, this way of life was restricted to Indo-European speaking peoples, but somewhere during the first millennium BC the Turkic, Mongolian and Tungusic tribes north of China started adopting this lifestyle as well. They soon became masters of equestrian warfare and formed a mighty tribal federation known as the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu were probably the most succesful and longest lived tribal federation in history, changing shape, homeland, and names over the course of centuries. Beside Xiongnu, these tribes were known as Chionites, Hephtalites, Huna, and Huns. Who were these people?
Sima Qian – Records of the Grand Historian
Ancient China has an incredibly rich historiographical tradition that is nearly as vast and complex as that of the Greeks. At the basis of this tradition lay Sima Qian’s ‘Records of the Grand Historian’, a monumental work on China’s history that spans the period between the reign of the mythical Yellow Emperor and that of the Han emperor Wu, Sima Qian’s contemporary. Sima Qian has been called the Chinese Herodotus, which at first glance seems to be a textbook example of the Eurocentric tendency to compare great eastern people to their western counterparts, but there are indeed some significant similarities between the two. Nevertheless, Sima Qian’s magnum opus – the Records of the Grand Historian, has a lot of unique Chinese characteristics as well.
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The best way to learn Akkadian
Akkadian has been one of the most influential languages in history. For
thousands of years it was the lingua franca of the Near East and the vast majority of cuneiform sources was written in this language. Knowledge of the Akkadian language and the cuneiform script in which it was written enables you to explore the Ancient Near East yourself. But how do you learn this difficult language and this even more complex script without going to university? Luckily, there is a way to learn Akkadian and the cuneiform script in no more than three months.
The life of Cyrus the Great – Rise of the Persian Empire
The swift rise of the Persian Empire is one of the most remarkable developments of Antiquity. Within mere decades this new superpower subdued all the lands between the Aegean Sea and the steppes of Central Asia, including world powers like Lydia and Babylon. Most of these conquests were carried out by one man: Cyrus the Great. How did he bring such a vast area under his rule in such a short time?
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