Values of the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix

"ORDER"
"CONNECTIONS"
VALUES of the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix

A Value-System That Is Integrated by "ORDER"
The Pre-Amarna Cultural Matrix

The Universe and the Nature of Order

1. AS THE SOCIETIES of the Pre-Amarna Cultural Matrix invented their particular forms of civilization, they emphasized the value of order. They had to answer great questions. What does human life mean? How should individuals relate to the society around them? What does all this have to do with the universe itself? What sense of order provides a framework for decoding the ultimate issues of life and death?

1.1. For Pre-Amarna peoples the most basic question about order was: where does it come from? Do humans invent it for themselves, so that the orders of society are all artificial constructs that may be changed at human volition? Or is there a deeper source of order whose origins lie beyond human thought and action? In answering these questions, all the societies of the Pre-Amarna Cultural Matrix viewed order as a gift rather than as an achievement. Humans do not invent order. They receive it ... from the orderly structure of physical reality itself. That is, social order reflects a cosmic order created by deities.

1.2. Such an understanding of order derives from a sensibility that is religious in nature. For Pre-Amarna peoples, religion was not just one social institution among others. It was a way of thinking and feeling that provided normative explanations of all aspects of human experience. The orders of society may be divided into various social institutions: law, politics, economics, family, religion. But from a pre-Amarna point-of-view such divisions are artificial because each social institution manifests the same, unified, coherent, understandable order of reality.

1.3. All ancient peoples expressed their fundamental sense of life, society, and the universe through what we call "myth." Here, myth signifies a story that conveys religious meaning. The fundamental myths of Pre-Amarna societies describe a divine ordering of the cosmos, and Pre-Amarna social institutions applied the god-given order of reality to human activities. If we now tend to value compartmentalization over unity, the religious idea that order is created rather than invented, expressed by Ancient Mediterranean peoples through a mythological worldview, established fundamental links among various aspects of human experience.

1.3.1. The most crucial link is that between heaven and earth. In a narrowly religious sense, the link between heaven and earth means that humans are dependent on deities. For this reason, the ordering of society must mirror the ordering of the universe. Here is one of the most basic and enduring human intuitions: the best society follows a model of order provided by the structure of the cosmos. ("Cosmos" refers to any understanding of the universe as an orderly, rather than a random, construct.) The link between heaven and earth may be readily noticed in Mesopotamian myths. The Enuma Elish tells the story of the creation of cosmic and human order. The Hammurabi Stele spells out the implications of the Enuma Elish for the nature of justice in human society. The Gilgamesh Epic explores the ways in which the orders of human life interact with the orders of the cosmos.

1.3.2. The mythological link between heaven and earth has scientific as well as social implications. Scientifically, it means that the whole cosmos operates according to a single system of order. This scientific view would be lost after Ancient Mediterranean times, not to be rediscovered until Newton's synthesis during the time of the Enlightenment (eighteenth-century Europe).

1.3.3. Politically, the link between heaven and earth means that religion and politics, or church and state, are the same thing. The notion that church and state should be compartmentalized -- to promote better order among humans!? -- is a very modern idea. The modern idea, like Newton's scientific synthesis, comes from the Enlightenment. From the viewpoint of Pre-Enlightenment peoples, the Enlightenment political ideal fragments society in the name of a "scientific" understanding of political reality. But the essential science of the Enlightenment demonstrated, as Pre-Amarna peoples had believed long before, a unified cosmos governed by a single set of principles. Pre-Amarna peoples would never have understood the value -- or the science -- of fragmenting human institutions.

2. THE VARIOUS PRE-AMARNA SOCIETIES reached different conclusions about the nature of order, and in doing so established enduring models of order that have continued to be used in human life. When we examine the overall values-situation, we find that the value of diversity is inherent in Pre-Amarna views of order. There was no push toward a uniform model of order across the spectrum of Pre-Amarna societies: different possibilities seemed to work best for different peoples. The variety of social models we have received from our Pre-Amarna ancestors poses one question of order for us: can social order best be achieved by promoting the diversity of the people in the society? At a later time, the Romans would give an affirmative answer to this question, and their experiment in diversity made deliberate what was largely accidental in the Pre-Amarna Cultural Matrix.

Geography and Values

3. WE CAN FIND A CONVENIENT STARTING-POINT for understanding some of the great Pre-Amarna systems of order by connecting specific notions of order to the physical conditions of societies. We can begin to look at people's values by studying their geography! People interact with their physical conditions. Such interactions produce values. If we start to do this (and it's quite a popular thing to do!), we derive a series of generalizations that can be tested against the actual expressions of the societies.

3.1. The question to be raised here, then, is what are some influential models of social order found in the various regions of the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix? If the theory about a connection between values and geography has any merit, we should expect to find order enacted through different values-strategies in different regions. We should further expect to discover a good deal of diversity. As the individual territories differed, so should the models of order achieved by their peoples.

3.2. Remember that we have divided Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Continent into six basic regions: 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. Each of these regions might be considered a cultural matrix in its own right. Of the six, Arabia is the least decipherable. It was a vast desert. Although it was well populated, its geographical conditions did not give rise to cities and the written records that accompany city life. Speculations about the value-systems of the peoples of the Arabian Desert derive from our understanding of tribal societies as shaped by what we know about the civilizations in the rest of the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix to which Arab peoples (the "Semites") migrated. In other words, such speculations are just wild guesses! So we will bypass Arabia and make some generalizations about the other five regions of the Ancient Mediterranean world.

3.3. Order as CONFRONTATION: The Mesopotamian Cultural Matrix. The Tigris-Euphrates River System dominated Mesopotamian life. In fact, the ancients called Mesopotamia the "Land between the Rivers." The Tigris-Euphrates was an erratic river system. Its flooding brought down rich soil deposits, but the flood-periods could not be predicted with certainty. The uncertainty could cause trouble, and dealing with it required social organization. The possibilities of the river-system, including rich soil for agriculture, water for irrigation, and a convenient means of transportation and communication, led to overproduction, which led to commerce, the buying and selling of goods. Commerce stimulated the development of cities as commercial hubs. City-states arose as cities interacted with the countryside around them, leading to large-scale societies.

3.3.1. They were tough, militaristic societies. The story of Mesopotamia is a long story of one empire after another, with warfare and conquest a constant theme. In addition to their battles with the Tigris-Euphrates and with each other, the peoples of Mesopotamia had to deal with the fact that they were approachable on all sides. This geographical "openness" meant that they frequently had to battle outside invaders.

3.3.2. The ongoing tumult generated by an unpredictable river-system and geographical openness shaped the Mesopotamian view of order. The resulting ebb and flow of people and ideas could enrich the Mesopotamian Cultural Matrix, but more often the ongoing traffic caused disruptions. The peoples of Mesopotamia understood social order as confrontation that leads to domination. As was true of their neighbors, they believed that social order derives from one powerful leader who mediates between the structures of an orderly cosmos and the application of these structures to human society. They were aggressively militaristic, conquest-oriented, and absolute believers in the "winning through intimidation" approach to social interaction.

3.4. Order as STABILITY: The Egyptian Cultural Matrix. In the Nile of Egypt we find a different kind of river-valley than the Tigris-Euphrates. Like the Tigris-Euphrates, the Nile provided for fertile agriculture and a convenient means of communication, trade, and travel. Herodotos' famous allusion to Egypt as "the gift of the Nile" refers to the rich soil deposits left by its annual flooding. But the difference between the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates lies in the fact that the flooding of the Nile, unlike the flooding of the Tigris-Euphrates, was totally predictable. Early on, the Egyptians realized that flood-control would set a premium on social cooperation, and the organization of society provided a key supporting value in Egyptian views of order.

3.4.1. To understand Egyptian views of order, we must realize that the large-scale society engendered by its river system was geographically "closed" on all sides except the north (and to a certain extent the south, but Egypt never faced a serious threat from the peoples south of the Nile). The deserts and water that surrounded Egypt provided isolation, and Egypt was very unified and isolationist. Its government proceeded through three thousand years of "dynasties," at the rate of about one a century. Unlike some Mesopotamian empires, who wanted to conquer everything, Egyptian ambitions for conquest extended only to Canaan, which it wanted as a buffer-zone against Mesopotamia and Anatolia.

3.4.2. The Egyptians understood order as stability. They lived in a physical arena of extreme predictability, and they attempted to take advantage of this predictability through a high degree of social organization and cooperation. For them, finding the right way to do things and then to stick with that way is the key to an orderly society. Scholars often take the great pyramids as a visual symbol of the value of stability.

3.5. Order as THE GOOD LIFE or PREPARATION: The Aegean Cultural Matrix. The overall physical conditions of the Aegean differed from those of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Lacking a river-system, the Aegean had agricultural resources that could be described as "adequate." Its most positive physical characteristics were a mild maritime climate and convenient access to the sea. The physical conditions of the Aegean Islands were better than those of the Aegean Mainland. The mainland was divided by ranges of mountains so eroded that little farmland was available. In considering Aegean views of order, the physical conditions suggest a division between the islands and the mainland.

3.5.1. The Minoans, the most significant Pre-Amarna island society in the Aegean, rejected the idea of war in favor of commerce. They were the great sea-traders of the Pre-Amarna Cultural Matrix. They understood order as the good life, that is, a life of security, peace, and possessions. They were a peaceful, joyous, and elegant culture celebrating the pleasures of gracious living. Such pleasures were achieved through a spirit of cooperation, and their Palace at Knossos provides striking evidence for this spirit. The Minoan notion that order must involve material prosperity was shared by the Egyptians, but, judging from Knossos, the Minoans were open to change in a way that the Egyptians were not.

3.5.2. In the mainland territories of the Aegean, Mycenean society offered a different view of order. Like the Minoans, the Myceneans valued commerce via the sea. However, the physical conditions of the mainland made overall cooperation unfeasible, and Mycenean social order gravitated around strongly fortified city-states, loosely organized into a coalition they called an amphictiony. The main point seems to have been defense. Like the Mesopotamians, the Myceneans understood order as confrontation, but we might say that the Myceneans used the idea of confrontation to interpret order as preparation, while the Mesopotamians interpreted order more in terms of dominance. The striking visual image of the Lion Gate at Mycenae illustrates the notion of preparation in at least two ways. If we look for a geographical explanation of the difference between Mycenean views and Mesopotamian views, it might be that conditions were considerably harsher on the Aegean mainland than in the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley of Mesopotamia. For the Myceneans, at any rate, an orderly society is prepared to confront anything that happens. Order signifies the ability to deal with the unexpected -- by expecting it! If we think of the speed at which changes occur in our lives today, we might want to investigate Mycenean ideas on how to stay prepared.

3.6. Order as PEACEFUL INTERCHANGE or INDEPENDENCE: The Canaanite Cultural Matrix. Canaan was the central territory of the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix. Canaan (southern Canaan in particular) was divided into mountains and plains that fragmented the country from north to south. It had no useable river system, but it did have seaports in the north. In fact, the northern half of Canaan was the commercial center of the entire Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix. Not only did it have the central seaport, but it also had access to two north-south highways that the major powers of Mesopotamia and Egypt maintained during much of the Ancient Mediterranean era.

3.6.1. In Canaan, we discover two models of order. The most successful attempt at overall control centered around the city of Ebla, one of the largest of all ancient cities, about fifty kilometers east of the north Canaanite coast. For two centuries around the middle of the third millennium the Eblaites established an Empire that dominated the vast middle ground of the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix -- from the borders of Egypt to the banks of the Euphrates. Standing at the crossroads of all the major ancient Mediterranean land and sea lanes, Ebla was ideally situated both to become the most important trade-center of its age and to send its merchants throughout the known world, from Mesopotamia to the Aegean, from Anatolia to Egypt. These merchants transmitted not only the goods of Ebla, but its culture as well. In terms of values, what made Ebla remarkable was not its armies, but its policies. The Eblaites of third-millennium Canaan established an empire whose expansion was built on peaceful trade-agreements, providing the model of peaceful interchange as a means of social order. The Eblaites raised a question we still cannot answer: does orderly society depend on a peaceful situation both within and outside the society?

3.6.2. It would seem that most other Canaanites thought the answer was 'NO!'. South Canaanite political structures always reverted to small units, because there was no intrinsic need and very little motivation for large-scale cooperation. Caught between Mesopotamia and Egypt, which were usually at odds, Canaan was the prime target of conquest in the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix. The peoples of southern Canaan seldom had the power to stand on an equal footing with other countries, but they understood order as independence -- and fought for it, usually against hopeless odds, throughout the Ancient Mediterranean Era. These Canaanites prized their independence above all else. For them, an orderly society is made of people who are free from outside control.

3.7. Order as PERSUASION: The Anatolian Cultural Matrix. Anatolian society developed in well-protected mountain plateaus. Anatolia (Asia Minor) is a high table-land rising from the Aegean in the west to the great ranges of modern-day Eastern Turkey. The mountain system continues eastward, and then southward, to the borders of India. Anatolian society developed along rivers such as the Marassantiya (modern Kizil Irmak), which feeds to the north rather than the south. /Gurney 15-16/

3.7.1. Anatolia was the land-bridge connecting the Aegean with Canaan and Mesopotamia. Its strategic position is exemplified by two ancient trade-routes, one leading from the Aegean coast to the east, and the other leading from the Black Sea in the north to Canaan in the south. /Gurney 16-17/

3.7.2. In the mid-second millennium, the Anatolians joined in the conquest-game. From their mountain fastness, Anatolian powers could grow big through expansion, but were commercially and defensively oriented. The greatest power was the Hittite Empire, which dominated the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix from about 1600 until the end of the Amarna Age. Standing between Mesopotamia and the Aegean, and with a strong interest in Canaan, the Hittites used their strength to make conquests, but more importantly, to become the most famous negotiators of the Ancient Mediterranean Cultural Matrix. For them, order meant persuasion, and they built their Empire by making treaties with other people rather than destroying them. The Hittite legacy is the understanding that an orderly society is based on persuasion rather than coercion. People come to reasonable agreements on what is best for both sides. It is true that the Hittites persuaded other people from a position of power, but it is also true that the treaties they made represent the interests of both the stronger and weaker parties.

Values and Perspectives

4. ALTHOUGH THEIR MODELS DIFFERED, Pre-Amarna societies agreed that humans live in the midst of a unified, coherent, understandable order of reality. The order that exists at the divine level of the cosmos (the ultimate level attainable through human language) also governs the most mundane details of daily life.

4.1. Pre-Amarna societies demonstrated a consistent relativism when encountering alternate views of order. Conquering empires, for instance, seldom demanded changes in the lifestyles or beliefs of their subjects. At times, this relativism could even approach tolerance.

4.2. We might observe a tendency toward tolerance in Hammurabi's description of universal ideals which incorporate all people into a system of justice, or we might view Hammurabi's ideals as a grandiose display of ethnocentrism. However, when we consider relationships between two countries such as those described in Hittite treaties, we certainly observe tolerance in action. The treaties delineate the interests of both countries and meld these interests into an agreement that benefits both. From a Pre-Amarna point-of-view, it may be even more significant that the treaties invoke the deities of both countries as divine witnesses to the new order created by the treaties. Pre-Amarna societies deeply appreciated the pluralism of their world - and perhaps the most basic notion of order in the human heritage is that order must be exemplified in different ways by different groups of people.

A Value-System That Is Integrated by "CONNECTIONS"
The Post-Amarna Cultural Matrix
The Connectedness of Things

5. HAVE WE AS MODERN PEOPLE LOST our sense of connections? Are we more interested in our personal goals as individuals than in the future of our world as a community? Can we believe that there such a thing as a "human community"? /on these and other questions about connections, see Boyer/

5.1. Some argue that as we become more and more of a global society, we cannot afford to lose our sense of the connectedness of things. Our Post-Amarna ancestors might look on our dilemma with wonder. For them, the connections among people are so powerful that the concept of the ordinary person as an individual did not even start to emerge until the tail end of the Post-Amarna era. They might also try to teach us that everything is connected, people with people, the living world around them, and the divine.

5.2. The societies of the Post-Amarna Cultural Matrix adapted the views of order they inherited from their Pre-Amarna ancestors to their own concerns. That they did not aim to invent new systems is demonstrated by the fact that they adapted the myths of their heritage rather than generating new myths. But how they adapted their heritage! In the process of adaptation, they rethought the most fundamental "connections" identified in the old systems.

Hebrews, Assyrians, and Hellenes

6. THE NEW CONNECTIONS identified by the Hebrews, Assyrians, and Hellenes would prove the most fruitful for future developments.

6.1. The Hebrews in Canaan applied the Hittite notion of political connections to their experiences of the divine. In the process they developed an idea of the connection between humans and the divine that would become one of the most powerful ideas in human religious thought. The Hebrews discovered that their experience of the divine was comparable to the experience of a political entity making a treaty with the Hittites (or some other superior power). In making this discovery, the Hebrews also realized that they could only experience the divine as one personal being. Since other Ancient Mediterranean cultures experienced the divine as a variety of personal forms, the Hebrew experience was not only remarkable, but it would point the way to the future of Mediterranean religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). It would also eventually lead to an entirely new understanding of the meaning of "creation" as creation-from-nothing, and it would pose an insoluble question about the nature of evil: if the one deity is both powerful and just, how can evil exist? No way has ever been found to combine the three elements (divine power, divine justice, and the existence of evil) of this question into a logical proposition, and people in the Mediterranean continue to struggle with the meaning of life in the face of undeniable evil and suffering.

6.2. The Assyrians in Mesopotamia established a vicious and sad empire that dominated most of the Post-Amarna Cultural Matrix. By rethinking models of administration inherited from their Pre-Amarna precursors in Mesopotamia, they developed techniques that connected people who control with people who are controlled, inventing a theory of management that is only being revised in our own time. For instance, by studying Assyrian techniques as they were adapted by the later Greeks and Romans, the Italian political theorist, Machiavelli, handed on the Assyrian theory of management, even though he didn't know it!

6.3. In the Aegean, the Hellenes adapted their Pre-Amarna heritage to formulate a series of connections. Our understanding of Hellenic values begins with our reading of Homer, and moves on to other fragments of evidence.

6.3.1. The Hellenes reconfigured the political connections of human beings into a concept of "citizenship" that would lead to a system of democracy which would later be revised into a view of government with world-wide ramifications.

6.3.2. Pre-Amarna scribes had conducted widespread empirical investigations of the physical world, yet their theories of the cosmos itself remained grounded in religious mythology. The Hellenes partially disconnected questions about the cosmos from their religious heritage, and connected these questions to abstract theories. In so doing, they initiated a mode of "scientific" investigation that continues into our own time.

6.3.3. With, we might suspect, a lot of help from India, the Hellenes also developed ancient Mesopotamian and Canaanite connections between music and mathematics into new connections between music and human behavior. Their conclusions are virtually identical with, although not as complex as, those drawn in India! The Hellenes also connected musical theory with the nature of "ultimate reality."

6.3.4. From their Egyptian ancestors, the Hellenes borrowed a style of sculpture and then connected it to new views of human anatomy and motion to initiate a novel direction in Mediterranean art.

6.3.5. With these fresh connections, the Hellenic Cultural Matrix would flow seamlessly into the "Greek" Cultural Matrix that followed.

6.4. In identifying new possibilities for connections within old systems of order, the innovations of the Post-Amarna Cultural Matrix established particular and enduring versions of some of the most fundamental institutions and ideas of human culture.