The Birth Of Western Civilization: Tigris And Euphrate

The Birth of Western Civilization

Around 4000 B.C.E, the first people settled down next to the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia and alongside the Nile in Egypt. It wasn’t until another 1000 years that these civilizations began writing down what went on around them. This began a domino effect of people recording events, real or myth, that impacted them on an individual and a grander scale. Through these archives, one can analyze the congruencies and discrepancies between the culture that survived between the Tigris and Euphrates and the society that blossomed beside the Nile. Around 3000 years after the first settlements appeared, on of the best-known societies cropped up. It may be unknown to most that the Greeks before the Macedonians

took over were much different after they conquered the city-states. These two societies also have their share of similarities and differences. Most prominent are the overlaps and disparities between the topics of women, slaves, religion, and the law.
One of the first things settlers in Mesopotamia and Egypt wrote down were laws, most famous among them was Hammurabi’s Law Code in Mesopotamia, containing approximately 250 laws.

The largest category of these laws dealt with family matters like marriage, inheritance, and adoption. It’s in this category that woman are labeled the property of their father before marriage. Though they may be under the ownership of their father, women are still entitled to a piece of their father’s estate. This may take the form of a dowry or profits from the land. As their father, men could choose whomever they saw fit to marry their daughter. Once married, the woman now belongs to her husband. As a product of their status as property, women could be damaged by having relations with a man she wasn’t married to. If both the man and woman committing adultery were wed, they could both possibly be put to death. Just as in Mesopotamia, Egyptian women were entitled to a dowry. If they were adulterous, however, they lost their dowry to their husband. In addition to losing her property, an adulterous woman could be subject to punishment. Bullough, Shelton, and Slavin state, “We have two folktales form the Middle and New Kingdom of women committing adultery: in the first the woman was burned to death; in the second her husband hilled her and threw her corpse to the hounds” Meanwhile, the men, just as in Mesopotamia, aren’t considered sinful if they slept with another woman. In both Egypt and

Mesopotamia, there is an obvious double standard when it comes to adultery, with women, unfortunately, getting the shorter end of the stick.
By contrast, women in Egypt lived much freer lives then their Mesopotamian counterparts, considering they weren’t legally property. In fact, women in Egypt had the right to own and transmit property and even paid taxes. Possibly the most surprising fact was that some women even ruled Egypt. When compared to Mesopotamia, where women aren’t even allowed govern themselves, Egypt was on the other end of the spectrum concerning the amount of power a woman in their society could possibly hold. There existed some limitations, however. Hatshepsut, on of the more well known female pharaohs, ruled as a king rather than a king. Though this distinction may not seem very important, but it illuminates a problem with women holding the throne. Seeing as, Egyptians devised all their ceremonies and titles to fit a male monarch, changing all these tradition-rich practices to fit a queen was apparently too much of a hassle. One could conclude then, that these female pharaohs weren’t taken as seriously as their male counterparts, since the titles couldn’t be bothered to be changed to fit their sex.
It’s hard to imagine what the women of the past actually lived through since most of the history is one-sided. Bullough, Shelton, and Slavin, however, organized their article in a way that made it easy to gauge the differences and similarities in how women were treated in these differing cultures. The general similarities and minute disparities made for an interesting read. Overall, Bullough, Shelton, and Slavin depicted Egyptian attitudes towards women to be more akin to modern attitudes than that of Mesopotamia and did it in a fairly entertaining manner.
Hammurabi’s Law Code and other ancient law documents dealt with much more than just family relations. Slavery was a part of everyday life in Mesopotamia and Egypt, so it’d make sense that laws concerning slavery made up a good chunk of these codes. Prisoners of war were the first source of slaves in the ancient world, but that didn’t prevent natives from becoming slaves. There were three ways a native of the land could become a slave: parents selling their children, adults selling themselves, and defaulting of debts. Mendelsohn reports interest rates as high as, “20-25% on sliver and 33(1/3)% on grain”, making debt slavery the most common form of enslavement. At first, it seemed that if one defaulted on a debt, they became the property of the creditor for life, but both the Hebrew Bible and Hammurabi’s Law Code set limits on the longevity of the debtor’s servitude. Mendelsohn writes that for the Hebrews, “a debtor-slave is free after six years of service,” and Hammurabi, “demands the release of a debtor-slave in the fourth year”. The process of become a slave was pretty universal, but obtaining freedom is different depending on their location and circumstance.
For the Hebrews, the notion of a man owning another man wasn’t in line with their religion. But as Mendelsohn states, “In Babylonia the person who sold himself received his purchase price and as a result he became a slave, the property of another man”. In Babylonia then, a self-seller couldn’t be freed, because they were true chattel slaves. The Palestinians, however, didn’t give a man a sum of money when he sold himself into slavery. Therefore, he never became property of another man and could be freed. Mendelsohn states that, “According to Biblical law…he who sold himself into slavery is to be freed in the year of jubilee”. This is second among five ways a slave could be freed in the Bible.
Mendelsohn’s article did a great job of explaining the different types of slaves in each civilization and the rules surrounding their predicament. It was incredibly easy to skim through to find paragraphs containing desired information. Mendelsohn, did make it hard to find passages about specific civilizations, because he tended to jump from location to location when talking about certain topics rather than organizing it by geography.
Oddly enough, sometimes laws concerning punishment criminal cases weren’t all that common. James, referring to how Egyptians determine punishment states that, “The principle here seem clearly to be that criminal wrong-doing should be dealt with arbitrarily and physically…On the other hand, legal processes ought to be invoked for the settlement of non-criminal cases”. So not only are crimes not being investigated, but also there’s no trial held either, simple a capricious punishment administered. Concurrently, in Mesopotamia, Hammurabi’s Law Code has assigned pretty specific guidelines for punishment. Most famous among them is, “an eye for an eye”. Not only are there guidelines for punishment, but also witnesses, written evidence, and a written verdict were all required in cases held in Mesopotamian courts. So far Mesopotamia looks like the ideal place to have your trial in the ancient world, if you were rich. In both Mesopotamia and Egypt, getting ones case heard if they were nobody was impossible. According to James, “position and influence mattered in ancient Egypt just as they have mattered in other countries and other societies”. No matter where one went to have their case heard, if they had no importance, there was very little chance their case would be heard.
James did a wonderful job illustrating the Egyptian legal system though the use of literary works of the time, but literary works aren’t the same as law codes. Since there were so few law codes and the ones that did exist were vague, it’s very difficult to determine what the actual practices of the legal system were. I also wish he had had some sort of comparison between other civilizations’ law code’s or their possible practices to paint a better picture of the law in the ancient world.
From the start of myths and folklore, polytheism was a popular idea among many different people.

It wasn’t until the Hebrews came along did monotheism become a practice. Soler states that on of the chief ideas between the Hebrews was that, “Man has been made ‘in the image’ of God (Gen. 1:26-67), but he is not, nor can he be God”. This was a bit different than the Mesopotamian and Egyptian idea that the king was often divine. He was either chosen by the gods or was a god. And in Egypt around the Middle Kingdom, the common people could even hope to join the gods in the afterlife. So the Jews could never have the opportunity to be as divine as their God as the Mesopotamians and Egyptians did, but they did have a more reasonable and logical God. The Jewish God promised his people that as long as they followed his rules, they wouldn’t be punished. Unfortunately for the Mesopotamians and Egyptian, no such promises were

made.
For the Hebrew’s, a good majority of the guidelines set out by their God dealt with the food they ate. These changed as time went on, but a permanent diet was put in place when Moses appeared. Originally, meat eating was prohibited, but according to Soler, “Meat eating, then, will be tolerated by Moses, but with two restrictions. The [taboo] against blood will be reinforced, and certain animals will be forbidden”. This is where the distinction of “clean” and “unclean” food comes into play. Clean food can be consumed while unclean food cannot. Animals were categorized by their habitat, either land, water, or air, and then deemed safe to eat or not if they met additional requirements. One such requirement was, “Everything in the waters that has fins and scales…you may eat”. This passage in the Hebrew Bible excludes animals like mollusks, shellfish, and eels from the diet. Though these rules may seem like torture to pork-lovers, it’s truly interesting to see a society deciding what is and isn’t ok to do and the justification of their choice.