Hist 101 1st Edition Exam 1 Study Guide Lectures 1 8 Lectures 1 2 Mesopotamia 1 The Epic of Gilgamesh recounts the story of Gilgamesh ruler of a city called Uruk his friendship with the former wild man Enkidu and his sadness and fear after Enkidu s death Uruk was a real city in ancient Mesopotamia According to the Epic of Gilgamesh what features made the city so praiseworthy 2 What does the Epic of Gilgamesh tell us about how humans in ancient Mesopotamia viewed friendship aging and death Do their views seem more similar or different to modern American views attitudes towards these things 3 Historians love law codes as sources partly because of the following rule of thumb If something is legally forbidden then you can assume that a lot of people were doing it Following this rule after reading the Code of Hammurabi what would you say were the problems and conflicts that troubled ancient Babylonia 4 The Code of Hammurabi is famous as the source of an eye for an eye p 28 as a principle of law and justice But do we really see absolute equality in the code in the sense that the punishments precisely fit the crimes What does the Code of Hammurabi tell us about social divisions and distinctions in Babylonian society 5 What do both of these sources tell us about the status of women in early Mesopotamian civilization 6 Thinking about both of these sources what would you say it meant to the ancient Mesopotamians to be civilized Note how the wildman Enkidu became civilized by the way In other words what did it mean and what did it take for different people to live productively together And what might a future historian reading three thousand years from now about how we today view crime punishment justice and rule conclude about our definition of civilization Lectures 3 4 Ancient Egypt 1 From The Instruction of Ptah Hotep what can you determine about social rank social mobility and social hierarchy in ancient Egypt Does it seem similar or different from what we see in The Code of Hammurabi 2 What seems to be the relationship in the Instruction between virtuous behavior on the one hand and between having other people s good opinion and respect on the other That is did Ptah Hotep think it mattered if one was a good person if nobody knew it 3 According to The Book of the Dead what counted as morality in ancient Egypt Does this morality seem familiar to you or strange 4 Hymn to the Aton is a celebration of Aton the sun disk god and comes from Egypt s short lived experiment with monotheism For what did the Pharoah Akhenaton praise Aton 5 How would you characterize the feelings that Akhenaton seems to have for the god Love Respect Fear All of the above 6 In the Hymn to the Aton would you say that Aton is a universal God for all people or instead just a god for Egyptians 7 A Letter from the Hittite Queen to Ramesses II can be confusing to read as Queen Puduhepa wife of Hittite King Hattusili III often refers back to earlier events and earlier letters that they have exchanged She also refers to Pharoah Ramesses II as my brother refers to her own husband as your brother and quotes Ramesses as calling her my sister What is the main disagreement between Puduhepa and Ramesses 8 What does this letter tell you about the Pharoah s expectations about how he should act as king and how his fellow rulers should act toward him Lectures 5 6 Near East 1 From The Book of 1 Kings Solomon s Construction of Yahweh s Temple in Jerusalem what can we determine about how the ancient Hebrews thought that God Yahweh should be worshipped That is what assumptions and principles about Him seem to be in play 2 The Annals of Ashurnasirpal II of Assyria proves that history books are not always boring From King Ashurnasirpal s celebration of his rule how would you characterize Ashurnasirpal as a king and the Assyrians as a people and as conquerors 3 From this reading what can you determine about the options the Assyrians enemies had in dealing with them What might be the pros and cons of each Which option would you choose if you were a neighboring king to the Assyrians and why 4 The Annals of Ashurnasirpal mentions some of the Assyrians gods and goddesses including Ninurta Enlil Assur Ishtar and Shamash What is the connection between the Assyrians religion and their warfare 5 The Greek historian Herodotus wasn t a Persian and we ll get to him next week After reading his Customs of the Persians would you say that the Persians seem different from or rather similar to the other peoples i e Mesopotamians Egyptians Hebrews Assyrians we ve read about so far 6 The Torah Laws takes us back to the ancient Hebrews from question one Do we see the same social distinctions and social hierarchy in The Torah Laws that we saw in The Code of Hammurabi 7 Think about both The Torah Laws and The Book of Isaiah Prophecies How would you describe the relationship between the Hebrews and Yahweh in those two texts How does it compare to the relationship between the Assyrians and their gods that appears in The Annals of Ashurnasirpal II of Assyria Lectures 7 8 Greece Rome 1 In Hesiod s Works and Days what is the author s attitude towards work What are the gods attitudes towards it What can we tell about a Greek society that had this kind of attitude 2 Spartan Society and Values includes the Spartan poet Tyrtaeus The Spartan Creed How do you think Tyrtaeus would define Spartan glory 3 The other half of Spartan Society and Values is Xenophon s description of The Laws and Customs of the Spartans Does Xenophon seem to admire the Spartans a k a the Lacedaemonians According to Xenophon what are the most unusual aspects of Spartan society and why did their legendary lawgiver Lycurgus design Spartan life in this way 4 Would you have enjoyed living in the Sparta that Xenophon describes Why or why not 5 In The Second Persian Invasion of Greece the Greek historian Herodotus recounts one of the most famous episodes in military history the defeat of the Spartan 300 under King Leonidas by the Persians under Emperor Xerxes at the pass of Thermopylae in 480 B C According to Herodotus what advantages did the Persians have on the one hand and the Greeks on the other What was the motivation of Leonidas and the 300 in not abandoning their post 6 The action of Sophocles play Antigone has a complicated backstory which we ll discuss in class This play concerns Antigone daughter of the dead King Oedipus of Thebes her sister Ismene and their brothers Eteocles and Polyneices who