Chapter 2 Notes:Agrarian-Urban Centers of the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean- Priestess Endeduann lived at the end of the third millennium BCEand was Sargon of Akkad’s (ruler of mesopotamias first kingdom)daughter- Agrian-urban society: a type of society characterized by intensiveagriculture and people living in cities, towns, and villagesAgrian Origins in the Fertile Crescent- Farmers began settling in the two great river valleys of the Tigris-Euphrates, present day Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, and the Nile in EgyptGeography and Environment- West: Thrace, Greece, islands in the Agean Sea; mountainous, forests- East: Anatolia (modern Turkey), Levant (modern Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine)- Fertile Crescent: The Levant, the Taurus mountains of southeastern Anatolia, the Zagros Mountains of southwestern Iran- Agrarian Society: at a minimum, people engaged in farming cereal grains on rain-fed or irrigated fields and breeding sheep and cattleThe Natufians- Lived in semi permanent hamlets in the Jordan and Euphrates valley- Each hamlet consisted of about 60 inhabitants, contained a few semicircular pit houses made of stone foundation, posts, thatched walls&roof- Buried the dead under abandoned homes/edges of settlements- Removed skulls of ancestors and venerated them in altars - Neolithic Age: period from ca. 9600 to 4500 BCE when stone tools were adapted to the requirements of agriculture, though the making of sickles and spadesSelective Breeding of Grain and Domestic Animals- Collect grain- Plant fields- used animals for fertilization- Farmers domesticated pulses (edible seeds of pod-bearing plantsex: chickpeas and lentils)Euphrates and Nile Floods- First farmers settled where the Euphrates and Tigris united and dispersed into swampland, lagoons, and marshes- Flood because of snowmelt- Good land for plant and animal life- Established Ubaid culture of villages- Floods softened hard soils and got rid of salt deposits- Silt carried by the Nile fertilized the fields annually before planting - First agricultural settlements in the Fayyum (swampy depression off the Nile SW of modern CairoEarly Towns- Mesopotamian towns trade nonlocal goods via assemblies- Assemblies: gathering of either all inhabitants or the most influential persons in a town; later, in cities, assemblies and kings made communal decisions on important fiscal or juridical matters- Irrigation accumulated agriculture surplus- Sharecroppers: farmers who received seed, animals, and tools from landowners in exchange for up to two thirds of their harvest- Nomads: people whose livelihood was based on the herding of animals, such as sheep, goats, cattle, horses, and camels; moving with their animals from pasture to pasture according to the seasons, they lived in tent camps- Priestly families eventually stopped farming their own land, making tools, pottery, loth, and leather goods, and gave the responsibility to specialized craftspeopleTemples- Wealthy land owners turned small clan shrines and communal grain stores into town shrines- Kilns, granaries, workshops, breweries, and administrative buildings surrounded the temples- Wealthy land owners ran administration of all cult rituals in the temples, provision of labor in the temple fields, crops, and animalsThe World’s First Cities- City, city-state: a place of more than 5,000 inhabitants without farming inhabitants (craftspeople, merchants, administrators), markets, and a city leader capable of compelling obedience to his decisions by force- Lived on food they got from exchange for their own handiwork- Uruk was the first city in Mesopotamia and was founded near Eridu around 4300 BCE- Started the Bronze AgeCuneiform Writing- Script on clay tablets using signs denoting objects and sounds from spoken language- Invented by administrators- First time history could ever be recordedKingdoms in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Crete- With the plow, metal tools, city leaders expanded their landholdings- New areas of lowland far from riverbanks now available for farming- Overflow basins for floodwaters to protect the ripening grain fieldsKingship in Mesopotamia- More cities grew, borders developed, fights over access to water food etc- Wars broke out over need for provisions- City’s assemblies chose leaders form priestly leaders - Leader gets independence from assembly and claimed kingshipAkkadia and Babylonia- Empire: large multiethnic, multilinguistic, multireligious state consisting of a conquering kingdom and several defeated kingdoms- Hammurabi: best known king of Babylonia; ordered the engraving the entire code of Babylonian law onto a 7 foot slab of basaltPatriarchy- Increased patriarchal structure in society- Wars among city states and kingdoms created new patterns of gender relations- War captives provided cheap labor as slaves in temple households and wealthy residences, gave the priestly king as a decisive edge in beginning the restricting of agrarian urban society- Social classes riseEgyptian Kingdoms- First city was Hierankopolis- Cities along river downstream- Rulers of cities develop into small scale kings- First pharaoh unified all Egyptian lands stretching from upper Egypt down the Nile to the delta- First king claimed divine birth from Egypt’s founder god (Horus)Hieroglyphs, Bureaucracy, and Pyramids- Develop Hieroglyphs in Egypt- Limited to royal inscriptions- Hieratic: a less elaborate version of hieroglyphs used in bureaucratic documents- Write on papyrus- more expensive but more practical than the Mesopotamian clay tablets- Papyrus: made of a special kind of Egyptian reed, the core of the reed was cut into strips, laid crosswise, and pressed into texturedsheets- Royal palace and temple became large, elaborately hierarchical organizations in which everything was minutely regulatedo Food rations distributed to the palace administrators, priests, craftspeople, and laborerso Use arithmetic to calculate quantities of bread, beer, and meato Tiber for shipyardso Flax for the linen-weaving workshops- Biggest bureaucratic achievement of the Old Kingdom was Pharaoh Khufu’s construction of a pyramid near modern Cairo as a funeral monument for himself.- Workforce consists of laborers working off their annual 1 month labor service to the king- Most pharaohs focus on large scale agricultural projects, mining of metals, and long-distance trade- Egyptian exports consisted of jewelry and art made of gold - Dig for copper and turquoiseThe Minoan Kingdom- Place-state: a city or