OVERVIEW of the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix
The Pre-Amarna and Post-Amarna Eras
from 3000 B.C.E. to 539...479 B.C.E.

1. TWO OF THE GREAT QUESTIONS of human life are: how are people united? and how are people divided? As students of Humanities, we know these questions are important because they lead to the great personal question: how do we fit into the variety of ways of being human? Living in a society like the contemporary United States, we are constantly pushed to understand ourselves more in terms of what divides us from other people than in terms of what unites us with people who live both near and far away, and in either case seem quite different than ourselves.

1.1. We live in a world, and in a society, that is deeply divided: where surface differences outweigh deep similarities; where short-term views count for more than long-term views; where recent, artificial boundaries mask ancient, shared heritages.

1.2. In the United States, we own an abundance of terms to express our divisions. Many of them seem ethnic: African, Irish, Hispanic, Jewish, Asian. However, if we consider these five terms as examples, we must realize that each refers to geography at least as much as cultural groupings or kinship. On the other hand, how about the distinction we often hear between "East" and "West," a distinction that sounds geographical but actually makes little geographical sense. When Muslims, for instance, refer to "Western" values, they often mean materialistic values. Does this imply that such values are found only in certain geographical locations? Or, to refer to a more general East-West division, why is Europe "west" of China?

1.3. But, you might say, at least Europe and China occupy different continents. There's a big geographical term: continents. Sometimes continents make simple geographical sense. Australia is surrounded by water. But what separates Europe from Asia? or North America from South America? If you forgot fifth-grade geography, would you know when you crossed the line? Let's assume you wouldn't. Does that mean some of the divisions among continents are political, or cultural, or the fantasy of people who have the social power to create such a fantasy?

1.4. Raising these questions is not to imply that geography is irrelevant. Human options are grounded in specific geographical locations. What the questions suggest is that we may have the basic human geography wrong. What if we used our geographical sense of human life in a different way? We could use it as a way of first exploring the deepest connections among groups of human beings - deep connections that have been long forgotten and ignored amidst the momentum of recent social and political events, the sorts of events that generated the names of the continents we learned in the fifth grade. To explore such deep connections, we have to suspend our idea of geographical continents and begin to search for cultural continents.

2. TO GET A FOCUS FOR OUR EXPLORATION, we will concentrate on one ancient, and lost, continent. From this continent many different human possibilities emerged. For those of us who live in the United States, it is the land of our shared cultural roots. The ancient continent is not a geographical continent as we think of such. It is a cultural continent.

2.1. If we journey to what we now call the Middle East, southern Europe (Greece and maybe Italy), north Africa, Turkey, and the islands in the eastern half of the Mediterranean Sea, and if we move back a few thousand years in time, we encounter one of the elemental cultural continents. Because the hub of these territories in ancient times was the eastern half of the Mediterranean Sea, the continent may be called the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Continent. Or we could call it the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix. Here is a label based on a geographical sense of human connections.

2.2. Some of our current political labels reflect developments within the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix. The labels matter. For instance, to say "Middle East" presumes an immense trajectory of development from its Ancient Mediterranean origins. "Middle East" derives from a Persian-Islamic synthesis as viewed by Europeans over the last few hundred years. The idea of "Europe" itself derives from a Romanic-Germanic synthesis.

2.3. During the Ancient Mediterranean era, the primary geographical units may be represented by six labels: 1) Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), 2) Egypt, 3) the Aegean (modern Greece and maybe Italy), 4) Anatolia (modern Turkey), 5) Canaan (modern Israel, Syria, and Jordan), and 6) Arabia (from which wave upon wave of fierce migrants known as Semites flowed northward over the millennia to blend with the peoples of Mesopotamia, Canaan, and Egypt). The geographical subcontinent of India, though developing in its own manner, was also connected in many ways to the Ancient Mediterranean world.

3. A CONCEPT OFTEN USED instead of the "Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix" is the "Fertile Crescent." In 1916, the Egyptologist James Henry Breasted coined the term "Fertile Crescent," because, as he explained, there was no name, either geographical or political, for the "great semicircle" which includes Mesopotamia and Canaan /Breasted 101/. Breasted saw the Fertile Crescent as the farmable area between the mountains to the north and the desert to the south. It was the area where settled life based on agriculture began.

3.1. Although he was an Egyptologist, Breasted did not include Egypt in the Fertile Crescent, because (a) it is separated from Canaan by a spur of the Arabian Desert, and (b) it was not open to the great migrations from the mountains and desert which determined the cultural make-up of Mesopotamia and Canaan. Today, scholars usually consider the Fertile Crescent to include Egypt /so Hallo and Simpson 11/.

3.2. Despite the fact that the term "Fertile Crescent" is still widely used, there are severe problems. One problem is that farming did not begin in the Fertile Crescent -- where massive and sophisticated human effort is required -- but in the upland areas to the north /Hallo and Simpson 11/. Breasted's basic claim was wrong!

3.3. In addition, scholars in the last four decades have demonstrated that the Cultural Matrix includes more territory than Breasted could have realized in 1916. It is centered on the eastern half of the Mediterranean Sea. Egypt, Anatolia, the Aegean, and the Arabian Desert must be set alongside of Canaan and Mesopotamia.

3.4. Breasted's honest mistake would support what had become a baldfaced lie motivated by obvious political agendas. Classicists had long argued that "Greece" (the Aegean) developed independently of the Ancient Near East (the rest of the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix). Breasted's Fertile Crescent seemed to give strong support to this argument. From the sixteenth century on, the argument about Greek independence became entwined with the view that Greece was far superior to its neighbors. It follows that later societies who adopt the Greek heritage are also superior to their neighbors. During the late nineteenth century, this view reached its apex in a deliberate academic cover-up of the connections between the Aegean and the rest of the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix.

4. WE NEED TO STUDY the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix. Less than a hundred years ago, little was known about it apart from Egypt, Canaan, and the Aegean. By the end of the nineteenth century scholars had begun to rediscover something of the overall contours of the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix. Archaeology -- the methodical digging up of long abandoned cities -- provided the key to the rediscovery. Our knowledge is still fragmentary, depending, more than anything else, on collections of ancient texts. (A lot of the descriptive vocabulary used for the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix comes from archaeological discoveries - so it is accidental and not very consistent.)

4.1. On 13 January 1902, a 51-year-old scholar named Friedrich Delitzsch, the most famous student of Mesopotamia in his time, stood before the Oriental Society in Berlin, at a meeting attended by even the emperor of Germany himself, to speak on the subject of "Babylon and the Bible." At the beginning of his address, he raised a question that is still basic: why should modern nations who trace part of their heritage back to the Bible be so interested in the old cultures of Mesopotamia? Having raised this question, he answered it as follows: the real source of their cultural heritage is to be found in the cultures of ancient Mesopotamia, not the Bible.

4.2. Today we can raise the same question: why should we study "The Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix"? Our answer must echo and expand the thoughts of Friedrich Delitzsch. First, this is where we discover the shared roots of all peoples strongly influenced by Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. Second, this is where we discover the starting-point of human civilization. Finally, this is one place to discover the deepest drives that motivate human beings.

5. ABOUT TEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO, peoples of the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix began to adopt a settled existence and invent their particular forms of civilization. By five thousand years ago, they had begun to record their lives and beliefs in written texts that modern scholars have rediscovered and translated. For this practical reason, we begin our study of the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix around 3000 B.C.E. ("B.C.E." is an abbreviation for "Before the Common Era" (of Judaism and Christianity). "Common Era" is an inclusive way of referring to the same events that are denoted by the abbreviations "B.C." (Before Christ) and "A.D." (Year of the Lord). "C.E." is the inclusive equivalent for "A.D." It is also possible to take the "C" as "Christ" or "Current," although such interpretations may skew the actual sense of the abbreviation.)

5.1. The Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix would endure for twenty-five hundred years -- until the Persian Empire, a mighty power from the east, conquered all of the Ancient Mediterranean World except the Aegean. In 539 B.C.E., the Persians sacked the city of Babylon in Mesopotamia, a feat which opened the way for the establishment of the largest empire that had ever existed. The westward thrust of the Persian Empire finally ended in 479 B.C.E., when the Hellenes turned back the last Persian threat against the Aegean. Accordingly, the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix began around 3000 B.C.E. and ended in the period from 539-479 B.C.E.

5.2. The incomplete Persian conquest caused the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix to divide and evolve into new cultural stages. The Persian Empire lasted until 331 B.C.E., a general date for the Greek conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great. With the Persian Empire, two lines developed for the transmission of the Ancient Mediterranean heritage to future generations. These lines would intermingle in complex ways down to the present time. For instance, both lines would develop distinctive versions of the religious heritage of the Jews, the transmitters of the Hebrew/Israelite version of the Mediterranean legacy.

5.2.1. For the first line we look to the Persians. In addition to their own heritage, the Persians learned from the Assyrians and Neo-Babylonians -- the two great empires that had immediately preceded them. This knowledge, combined with their own traditions, would influence the development of what is now called the "Middle East."

5.2.2. In the Aegean the "Hellenes" (who later become known as the "Greeks") would combine their Mediterranean heritage with their own traditions, which included influence from the north (modern Europe) to produce a second line of transmission.

6. WITHIN THE LIFE-SPAN of the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix, a special time of turmoil and transition formed the basic dividing-line. This time is named the Amarna Age, an era which lasted from about 1400 to 1190 B.C.E. The name is taken from the ancient city in Egypt where modern scholars first found information about this crucial turning-point in the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix.

6.1. In 1887, a peasant woman combing the ground at the site of Amarna, the capital of Egypt during the thirteenth century B.C.E., found some fragments of clay tablets. Her find excited the interests of archaeologists, and Sir Flinders Petrie took over the excavation of the site in 1892.

6.2. Petrie's excavation produced a few dozen texts called the "Amarna Letters." These letters preserved correspondence with other cities and countries in the rest of the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix. For the first time, modern scholars began to see that Amarna signified more than a city or an Egyptian religious reform and artistic style: it marked a whole new age in Ancient Mediterranean affairs -- an age so basic that it divides the entire Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix into a "Pre-Amarna" and a "Post-Amarna" phase. It is called the "Amarna Age" because our modern knowledge of it began with the archaeological excavation of the ancient city of (Tel-)Amarna in Egypt.

6.3. The Amarna Age was a time of trouble and a time of opportunity.

6.3.1. The troubles combined disasters such as drought and earthquakes with social upheaval. Egypt's representatives in Canaan constantly complained about the "Hebrews," a social class composed of troublemakers who lived on the fringes of cities. Since the discovery of the Amarna letters, scholars have found evidence for similar unrest all over the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix, with wave after wave of migrants upsetting the settled life-styles of all the old cultures.

6.3.2. At the end of the Amarna Age, invasions by the "Sea Peoples" of the Aegean destroyed the old Canaanite and Anatolian ways of life along the East Mediterranean coast, caused the Egyptians to permanently retreat into their past, and twisted the value-systems of the inland societies of Mesopotamia in violent and degraded directions.

6.3.3. Opportunity came in the form of continuous and large-scale migrations throughout the entire era. Seen by the established peoples as a threat to orderly society, the mass movements of population-groups produced a period of syncretism (cultural mixing) and cosmopolitanism. In the great urban centers of the Amarna Age, diverse ideas and values came together. In 1929, a discovery by a peasant led to the excavation of the Amarna Age city of Ugarit (Tel Ras Shamra). Initially led by Claude Schaeffer, the excavations still continue! Ugarit was the dominant city of northern Canaan during the Amarna Age. The tablets from Ugarit show the positive side of the Amarna Age as a period of syncretism -- the great cosmopolitan era of the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix. Information was traded as never before. Such sharing was grounded literally in language: the scholars of Ugarit had to read and write seven different languages, plus their own. The diverse ideas and styles of the old and powerful peoples met (and collided) in the great urban centers of this time of cultural blending.

6.3.4. The texts from Ugarit also advanced modern understanding of the collapse of Pre-Amarna culture. Canaan and Anatolia fell around 1190 to a combination of earthquakes and invasions by "Sea Peoples" from the Aegean. We know of no site that was not completely destroyed at this time. In Ugarit, the end came so suddenly that an oven filled with clay tablets was abandoned while the tablets were still baking! The experiences of the Amarna Age -- an unprecedented succession of revolutionary ideas, destructive wars, massive invasions, and physical catastrophes such as earthquakes -- produced an ongoing trauma that brought an effective end to the cultural leadership of the old river-valley societies in Egypt and Mesopotamia. There the Amarna collapse was not as dramatic as in Canaan and Anatolia, but it was just as deadly. The civilizations lingered on, sometimes with great power, but they lost their cultural momentum. In preserving its individuality, Egypt only looked backward, while the Assyrians of Mesopotamia selected a violent and degrading value-system from their cultural heritage.

7. AS THOUGH TO MARK THE NEW POSSIBILITIES for human experience opened by the cosmopolitan spirit, another development would open opportunities and present challenges. Archaeologists sometimes classify eras by their predominant metals. The Pre-Amarna Era is known as the "Bronze Age." Around 1200 B.C.E. a new metal became prominent. Post-Amarna Culture can be labeled the "Iron Age."

7.1. The predominance of iron over bronze enabled a change from the old powers and ways of doing and thinking to a new era in which two societies emerged to dramatically affect the future of the world. Remember that the Ancient Mediterranean story could have ended with the transition to the Iron Age -- EXCEPT two new societies emerged from the Amarna Age: the Hebrews in Canaan and the Hellenes in the Aegean. The same events that led to disaster for the old cultures provided opportunity for the two new cultures.

7.1.1. During the Amarna Age, the Philistines from Caphtor (Crete and other East Mediterranean islands and coastal areas) dominated southern Canaan, while the Mycenaeans from Caphtor dominated southern Greece. As  the Hebrews and the Hellenes triumphed over the Philistines and the Mycenaeans, they generated great epics to memorialize their victories. The Hebrew Epic centered around the events leading to the establishment of the Davidic monarchy, and it is found in the Christian and Jewish Bibles. Memories of the "Trojan War" provided the basic material for the Hellenic Epic, which is found in the works of Homer. The two epics have much in common, revealing the ongoing contacts between the poets and minstrels who contributed to each epic. That is, the epics of the Hellenes and Hebrews belong to the same branch of Ancient Mediterranean literature. /see Gordon 1965: 101-02/

7.1.2. That Hellenic and Hebrew civilizations have a common background in the Pre-Amarna Cultural Matrix comes as no surprise. The Hebrews lived at the center of the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix. For the Hellenes, there were two long-time connections between the Aegean and the rest of the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix. There was the overland connection to Mesopotamia and Canaan, which ran through Anatolia. And there was the sea. By sailing on the Mediterranean, the peoples of the Aegean maintained steady contacts with the peoples of Egypt and North Canaan, and through them to the further reaches of the Ancient Mediterranean. /see Gordon 1965: 102/

7.2. Both the Hebrews and the Hellenes looked to the past and to the future. These vibrant cultures became the twin pillars of the major extensions of the Mediterranean tradition into Greco-Roman society, and then into Byzantine, Islamic, and European societies. Both the Hebrews and the Hellenes blended some of the greatest achievements of the past with their own new ideas and values to shape the destiny of billions of future human beings. Each preserved values and concerns of the past that remain part of the deepest aspects of the human heritage, and each contributed innovations of its own. Together the Hebrews and the Hellenes pointed to a future that could not have been built on the foundation laid by either group alone.

7.2.1. The most famous contribution of the Hebrews to the future was their notion of a covenant between them and one God. This covenant is called the Mosaic Covenant. After the Post-Amarna era, this notion would develop into the religious ideal of monotheism. (The first evidence for the idea of monotheism comes from 180 B.C.E., although the idea is commonly misread back into Hebrew culture.) By characterizing humans as "creatures-for-righteousness" (that is, beings who find their meaning and purpose in life through obedience to God), the Mosaic Covenant contained an emphasis on ethics, pursued by the Hebrew prophets,  that would become profoundly influential. It also suggested an egalitarian view of the orders of society that previously had only existed in the Minoan society of the Aegean. Less noticed, but no less important, is the Hebrew emphasis on writing, and therefore on literacy and education.

7.2.2. Meanwhile, the Hellenes accepted the old religious ideals of the pantheon. In fact, they derived the principal figures in their pantheon from their Pre-Amarna heritage. They also passed on the Mesopotamian view of humans as hero(ine)s-of-achievement, and in the process found the confidence to conceive a new form of politics, a new way of looking at the physical world, and a new emphasis in art and architecture that put humans at the center of all phases of human life. These developments were connected to the past, but at the same time opened novel possibilities for the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix.

7.3. The emergence of the Hebrews and Hellenes did not cause the great Pre-Amarna societies to disappear. In Egypt, life would go on -- in the same way it had for the previous two thousand years! The lack of innovation in Post-Amarna Egyptian society caused the Egyptian influence on the future to be channeled more through contributions to Hebrew and Hellenic societies, rather than through any direct impact.

7.4. In Mesopotamia, the Assyrians offer a somewhat different story. The Assyrian Empire was the worst, and at the same time, the most powerful and longest lasting of all the Mesopotamian empires. It dominated the Ancient Mediterranean world throughout most of the Post-Amarna era. It was a first millennium dinosaur that looked backward and drew on its violent past. While the forward-looking cultures of the Hebrews and Hellenes lived on past the post-Amarna era and provided the basic ideals for the further development of Mediterranean culture, the Assyrian empire died without noticeable lament in its own time (and, indeed, with a lot of boisterous enthusiasm in some quarters).

7.4.1. Emerging from the Amarna Age as the leading Mesopotamian power, Assyria was immediately invaded from the north (by the Mushku), the desert (the Semites), and Canaan (the Aramean tribespeople). The Assyrians of the eleventh century experienced decline and disaster. Aramean pressure cut off Assyria's trade routes through Canaan (upon which the Assyrian way of life depended), leading to economic difficulties and social unrest. An internal rebellion effectively put an end to the central government for several decades. /Saggs 101-103/

7.4.2. In the tenth century the pressure eased, The last third of the century saw a new Assyrian dynasty (founded by Ashur-dan) came to power. The new dynasty determined to reestablish the economic and military power of Assyria. Military measures were strong. In a famous case, Assyria wiped out an entire enemy kingdom (the Temanites) west of the Euphrates, city by city, finally taking the king and a few of the remaining leaders to Assyria as show-pieces in the Assyrian political "zoo." As other kings fell in line, Assyria reopened its trade routes, once again collected tribute from the peoples it had conquered, rebuilt its ruined administrative buildings, and regained control over its own economic destiny. /Saggs 104-106/

7.4.3. As the first millennium unfolded, the policies of Assyrian kings became increasingly brutal. Kings frankly and with relish described the brutalities they inflicted on recalcitrant peoples /see Saggs 107, on Ashur-nasir-pal II/. One of the common phrases in Assyrian royal annals refers to the treatment of conquered populations. For the dead, "their corpses I formed into pillars"; for the living, "their boys and girls I burned in the fire" /Saggs 239/. In a milder vein, the Assyrians popularized the practice of deporting whole groups to distant lands, where they would be dispersed and their cultural memory forgotten / Saggs 239/.

7.4.4. A dead civilization. AND YET, the heritage from this, the meanest of all Mesopotamian cultures, Pre- or Post-Amarna, has made a lasting impact on the ongoing formulation of Mediterranean ideas and values. Not the noblest ideas or highest values perhaps -- but some central ideas and values that Mediterranean peoples are just now moving beyond. From their pre-Amarna heritage (for example, Hammurabi), the Assyrians learned that management requires bureaucracy. But where Hammurabi attempted to inspire his civil-servants by stating ideals, the Assyrians valued policy over ideals. If you've ever heard: "We've got to go by our policy," you've heard a distant echo of the Assyrian contribution to human social evolution! In addition, it was the Assyrian influence on the Persians that would give shape to the eastern branch of the Mediterranean tradition.

8. WITH ALL THE ABOVE DEVELOPMENTS IN MIND, we divide the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix into the Pre-Amarna Cultural Matrix (including the Amarna Age) and the Post-Amarna Cultural Matrix. The dates are 3000-1190 B.C.E. (Pre-Amarna) and 1190 - 539...479 B.C.E. (Post-Amarna).