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Break, 15 minutes: 8 pm; Discussion 9:30, dismiss end of class.
The Japanese islands have a rich and detailed history, and the stories that they tell to explain where their people came from are a fantastic story to check out.
This video from The Big Myth is a basic, animated look into the origin story of Japan, featuring IZANAMI and IZANAGI, the first deities whose very children were the islands themselves!
http://www.bigmyth.com/ For more world mythology, myth comics, articles, gods, goddesses and supernatural fun, head over to Mr. P's MYTHOPEDIA: https://www.facebook.com/MrPsMythopedia/ http://mrpsmythopedia.wikispaces.com/
We will review the answers after the video.
Between heaven and earth what is there?
In the darkness what was there?
The heavier material became what?
Heavier and lighter became what?
Could they exist without each other?
All things in the world have what properties?
Who were the two first beings?
Since there was no land what happened when Izanagi thrust a jeweled-tipped spear into the waters?
How are Izanami and Izanagi related?
Did the ritual of walking have to be performed correctly?
How many great islands are there in Japan?
Who did Izanami give birth to and who was she?
Who was her consort?
What did the remainder of the children become?
https://youtu.be/XO5D-24g8Mk
Between heaven and earth what is there?
Darkness
In the darkness what was there?
An enormous egg.
The heavier material became what?
Earth
Heavier and lighter became what?
Yin and yang.
Could they exist without each other?
No.
All things in the world have what properties?
Yin and yang, feminine and masculine
Who were the two first beings?
Izanami and Izanagi
Since there was no land what happened when Izanagi thrust a jeweled-tipped spear into the waters?
Islands
How are Izanami and Izanagi related?
Husband and wife
Did the ritual of walking have to be performed correctly?
Yes
How many great islands are there in Japan?
Eight
Who did Izanami give birth to and who was she?
The Sun Goddess, Amaterasu
Who was her consort?
The moon
What did the remainder of the children become?
gods or elements
The earliest cultures expressed important truths through myths. Myths are stories which reveal truth, in particular, religious truth. For the Japanese the creation myth is still important for the Japanese self-understanding.
On the other hand, cultures, as they advance to civilizations, such as Egypt and Greece, an additional element becomes critical for preserving important truths and this is with the establishment of writing.
History, myth, theater, and all public events have an entertainment value.
The first written languages arranged by the approximate dates of the oldest existing texts recording a complete sentence in the language.
It does not include undeciphered scripts, though there are various claims without wide acceptance, which, if substantiated, would push backward the first attestation of certain languages.
It also does not include inscriptions consisting of isolated words or names from a language.
A written record may encode a stage of a language corresponding to an earlier time, either as a result of oral tradition, or because the earliest source is a copy of an older manuscript that was lost.
An oral tradition of epic poetry may typically bridge a few centuries, and in rare cases, over a millennium.
An extreme case is the Vedic Sanskrit of the Rigveda: the earliest parts of this text may date to c. 1500 BC, while the oldest known manuscript dates to the 11th century AD, a gap of over 2,500 years.
Similarly the oldest Avestan texts, the Gathas, are believed to have been composed before 1000 BC, but the oldest Avestan manuscripts date from the 13th century AD.
Because of the way languages change gradually, it is usually impossible to pinpoint when a given language began to be spoken.
In many cases, some form of the language had already been spoken (and even written) considerably earlier than the dates of the earliest extant samples provided here.
For languages that have developed out of a known predecessor, dates provided here are subject to conventional terminology.
For example, Old French developed gradually out of Vulgar Latin, and the Oaths of Strasbourg (842) listed are the earliest text that is classified as "Old French".
Similarly, Danish and Swedish separated from common Old East Norse in the 12th century, while Norwegian separated from Old West Norse around 1300.
Writing first appeared in the Near East at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC.
A very limited number of languages are attested in the area from before the Bronze Age collapse and the rise of alphabetic writing:
the Sumerian, Hurrian, Hattic and Elamite language isolates, Afro-Asiatic in the form of the Egyptian and Semitic languages and Indo-European (Anatolian languages and Mycenaean Greek).
In East Asia towards the end of the second millennium BC, the Sino-Tibetan family was represented by Old Chinese. There are also a number of undeciphered Bronze Age records:
Proto-Elamite script and Linear Elamite the Indus script (claimed to record a "Harappan language") Cretan hieroglyphs and Linear A (encoding a possible "Minoan language") the Cypro-Minoan syllabary.
Week 2 Explore
Review: the importance of writing to Western Civilization and the heritage from the Jerusalem tradition.
The God of Grace in Judaism and the Hebrew Bible
Overview
The vision of God in Judaism and its scriptures represents a revolutionary view of God, Who creates humans to be the recipients of His divine benefits without any expectation of entitlement. In other words, the God of the Bible is a God of grace. This understanding is expressed remarkably consistently throughout the history of covenants God makes with His chosen people. This view of God has had an important effect on our attitude toward other people and on the unique Western idea of the proper role of government.
This is the story of how God created the heavens and the earth and everything in it.
Eye for an Eye: One of the Greatest Ideas in History, 5:22
Nowadays, many people, particularly those living in Western civilization, no longer regard their society as morally superior to any other. In this video, Dennis Prager lays out how this view does not spring from intellectual rigor, but from intellectual laziness.
https://youtu.be/UrakW1DjApo
How important is writing for civilization?
Animated map shows how the world's first written languages spread, 2:35
The introduction of writing systems changed the world. It allowed humans to physically express thoughts and language, as well as record events for future generations to study. Although different writing systems developed independently in different areas of the world, many are tied together by common roots. John Haywood of Princeton University chronicles the spread of writing systems in "The New Atlas of World History: Global Events at a Glance."
Ancient History Sourcebook: Egyptian Love Poetry, c. 2000 - 1100 BCE
I. Your love has penetrated all within me Like honey plunged into water, Like an odor which penetrates spices, As when one mixes juice in... ......
Nevertheless you run to seek your sister, Like the steed upon the battlefield, As the warrior rolls along on the spokes of his wheels.
For heaven makes your love Like the advance of flames in straw, And its longing like the downward swoop of a hawk.
II. Disturbed is the condition of my pool. The mouth of my sister is a rosebud. Her breast is a perfume. Her arm is a............bough Which offers a delusive seat. Her forehead is a snare of meryu-wood.
I am a wild goose, a hunted one, My gaze is at your hair, At a bait under the trap That is to catch me.
III. Is my heart not softened by your love-longing for me? My dogfoot-(fruit) which excites your passions Not will I allow it To depart from me.
Although cudgeled even to the "Guard of the overflow," To Syria, with shebod-rods and clubs, To Kush, with palm-rods, To the highlands, with switches To the lowlands, with twigs,
Never will I listen to their counsel To abandon longing.
IV. The voice of the wild goose cries, Where she has seized their bait, But your love holds me back, I am unable to liberate her.
I must, then, take home my net! What shall I say to my mother, To whom formerly I came each day Loaded down with fowls?
I shall not set the snares today For your love has caught me.
V. The wild goose flies up and soars, She sinks down upon the net.
The birds cry in flocks, But I hasten homeward, Since I care for your love alone.
My heart yearns for your breast, I cannot sunder myself from your attractions.
VI. Thou beautiful one! My heart's desire is To procure for you your food as your husband, My arm resting upon your arm.
You have changed me by your love. Thus say I in my heart, In my soul, at my prayers: "I lack my commander tonight, I am as one dwelling in a tomb."
Be you but in health and strength, Then the nearness of your countenance Sheds delight, by reason of your well-being, Over a heart, which seeks you with longing.
VII. The voice of the dove calls, It says: "The earth is bright." What have I to do outside? Stop, thou birdling! You chide me!
I have found my brother in his bed, My heart is glad beyond all measure. We each say: "I will not tear myself away."
My hand is in his hand. I wander together with him To every beautiful place. He makes me the first of maidens, Nor does he grieve my heart.
VIII. Sa'am plants are in it, In the presence of which one feels oneself uplifted!
I am your darling sister, I am to you like a bit of land, With each shrub of grateful fragrance.
Lovely is the water-conduit in it, Which your hand has dug, While the north wind cooled us. A beautiful place to wander,
Your hand in my hand, My soul inspired My heart in bliss, Because we go together.
New wine it is, to hear your voice; I live for hearing it. To see you with each look, Is better than eating and drinking.
IX. Ta-'a-ti-plants are in it! I take your garlands away, When you come home drunk, And when you are lying in your bed
When I touch your feet, And children are in your.......... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I rise up rejoicing in the morning Your nearness means to me health and strength.
Source:
From: George A. Barton, Archaeology and The Bible, 3rd Ed., (Philadelphia: American Sunday School, 1920), pp. 413-416.
This text is part of the Internet Ancient History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts related to medieval and Byzantine history.
Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. No representation is made about texts which are linked off-site, although in most cases these are also public domain. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use.
This video documents Ancient western civilization from it's beginning, in 3500BC, to it's end with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476AD. It provides a good overview of the time period and puts the different civilizations and cultures in perspective to each other, hope you enjoy. It's advised that it be watched in HD and fullscreen mode as this will give the best detail on the map. Western civilization began in approximately 3500BC with the emergence of the first cities, in an area of land known as the fertile crescent. From there civilization spread westward, into Greece, Italy and North Africa. As this happened the old cultures from the chalcolithic period continued to dominate central and northern Europe. Eventually these gave way to the mass migrations of the time and a new tribal system developed. But the spread of civilization continued and the Roman empire extended it into Northern and central Europe, where it stayed until it's fall in 476AD.
The Western heritage has two essential elements, represented by Athens and Jerusalem. Philosophy has its roots in ancient Greece and seeks to answer such questions as, “What is the good?” and “What is the best way for man to live?” The idea of monotheism first arose with the ancient Hebrews. These two elements together gave rise to Western Civilization and later to the American Founding.
The Greek Miracle
Overview:
The emergence of the polis as a political form distinguished Greece from its neighbors in the ancient Near East. The polis was a small community—originally grouped around a citadel—governed by a council and a public assembly, and defended by a hoplite phalanx. Oikonomia (household management) was structured in such a way as to enable full political participation of the household in the city, through words and deeds worthy of note. The individual man who engaged in reasoned speech (logos) thus had an importance in the Greek community that was unusual compared to the other civilizations of the Near East, which were generally organized as hydraulic societies based on irrigation and public works, governed by a sacral monarchy, and administered by a bureaucratic class using the technology of syllabic script.
Ancient Greek Athletics and Female Status
Chapter 4 (p. 118), Olympics. Chapters 4 (pp. 113-114), women in Sparta; For Athens later, see pp. 137-8.
THE WOMEN: WERE THE ANCIENT OLYMPICS JUST FOR MEN?
Along with the athletic contests held at ancient Olympia, there was a separate festival in honor of Hera (the wife of Zeus). This festival included foot races for unmarried girls. Although it is not known how old the festival was, it may have been almost as old as the festival for boys and men.
Little is known about this festival other than what Pausanias, a 2nd century AD Greek traveler, tells us. He mentions it in his description of the Temple of Hera in the Sanctuary of Zeus (model, courtesy of British Museum, shown above and plan shown below), and says that it was organized and supervised by a committee of 16 women from the cities of Elis. The festival took place every four years, when a new peplos was woven and presented to Hera inside her temple.
Plan of the Sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia in the 5th century BC showing the Temple of Hera, the Hera Altar, and the stadion. (Plan from H. V. Herrmann, Olympia, Heiligtum und Wettkampfstatte, fig. 111.)
Pausanias gives us a description of a girl's attire for the Hera games of the 2nd century AD. The girls wore their hair free down their back and a tunic hanging almost as low as the knees covering only the left shoulder and breast. The costume that Pausanias describes may have been the traditional costume at Olympia and possibly elsewhere for centuries.
Unmarried girls had a number of advantages at Olympia. They not only had their own athletic contests of the Hera festival in which to participate, but they were also allowed to watch the men's and boys' contests of the festival of Zeus. Married women, on the other hand, were not allowed to participate in the athletic contests of the Hera festival, and were barred on penalty of death from the Sanctuary of Zeus on the days of the athletic competition for boys and men. We don't know whether or not the women allowed the men to watch the girls' contests!
The lady is a champ...
Attic Red Figure Amphora, ca. 490 BC. A winged Nike (goddess of victory) hovers above the ground, holding a flowering tendril and a smoking censer. The shape of the amphora is similar to those awarded to victorious athletes in the Panathenaic Games at Athens and therefore may have been a victory prize. Museum Object Number: 31-36-11.
HUM111 Music for Week 2
In this week's readings (chaps. 3-4), there is no direct mention of a musical selection. However, there is much we can learn about ancient music with a little exploration.
ANCIENT MUSIC: We have visuals and even some remains of musical instruments from early cultures (like Mesopotamia), and some ancient literary references to music and instruments. We even have some lyrics.However, they did not have sheet music or recording, so it is very difficult to reconstruct what any ancient music sounded like until we get to the later age of some traditional religious chants and music that have been passed down. But, it will be Week 5 (chaps. 9-10) before we reach that point. However, here in Week 2, we can still learn a great deal about ancient music of various cultures, and we can be grateful for a few attempts to reconstruct the sound.
Week 2: Chapters 3 and 4
MUSIC of Ancient Egypt
Chap. 3, pp. 86-7 (fig. 3.21) Ancient Egyptian music
It almost seems strange that we should know as much as we do about ancient Egyptian music and at the same time have little or no idea of its real nature. We have texts, representations and even extant instruments but virtually nothing on the actual musical compositions that were composed. Musical instruments ranged from very simple, such as percussion instruments, to very complex, such as harps. Some instruments were strictly (at least in design) Egyptian, while others apparently came to Egypt from the Near East. Of course, the most basic instruments were percussion and the simplest of these were human hands, used for clapping. Clapping to music is often displayed by singers depicted in Old Kingdom tombs, and even today remains an important aspect of modern Egyptian music. However, the earliest instruments in evidence are boomerang-shaped clappers, which are not only known in Egypt but also from southern Palestine as early as the fifth millennium BC. During
the pharaonic period, clappers were often decorated with hands or Hathor faces. There were also smaller clappers or castanets. However, drums did not actually appear until the Middle Kingdom. Initially, these seem to have been drums in the shape of a barrel made from hollowed tree trunks, which became popular in military bands. Drums in the shape of a goblet and wheel-thrown pots with skin covered tops and open bottoms were introduced around 1750 BC from the Palestinian region. When circular frame drums with a skin stretched across a wooden hoop were introduced during the New Kingdom, other forms of percussion instruments appear to have lost ground. Of course, there was also the sistrum which was a metal rattle or noisemaker, consisting of a handle and a frame fitted with loosely held rods that could be jingled. These were used especially in the worship of Isis.
Finally, there were almost certainly bells, and during the Late Period, Egyptians became acquainted with symbols consisting of a pair of concave discs about 15 centemeters across that were attached to the player's hand with leather straps. Though simple, percussion instruments can produce interesting and complex music, particularly if used in ensembles. One such large ensemble is depicted in the Middle Kingdom tomb of a singing instructor named Khesuwer. He is shown coaching ten sistrum players and ten hand clappers who have been arranged in neat rows, indicating a highly disciplined performance. Typically, however, percussion instruments cannot produce different pitches, so the use of wind and stringed instruments also became an important aspect of Egyptian music. Both string and wind instruments were used by the ancient Egyptians as early as the Old Kingdom and before. We can recognize a number of types of wind instruments, including flutes, parallel double-pipes and divergent double-pipes. Of these, the flute is the oldest and is depicted on a predynastic shard as well as on a slate palette from Hierakonpolis. Hence, the instrument could possibly have been invented in Egypt. The original flutes never disappeared altogether and have survived to this day under the Arabic names of nay and uffafa.
Scene showing a male on the left playing a flue, and on the right a parallel double pipe
At first, all of these instruments were made of reeds, though later, the earlier reed pipes were imitated in bronze. They could be short, or as long as a yard in length. There were usually three to five finger-holes. The various types of pipes differed in the construction of the mouth-end of the pipe. Flutes had a sharp wedge resting just outside of the lips. Pipes had a loosely fitting mouthpiece furnished with double and single vibrating lamellae. None of these mouthpieces have ever been unearthed, so their details are unknown, but the parallel pipes that have survived resemble modern Egyptian folk clarinets, called a zummara, with one lamella. Divergent pipes, which only appear at the beginning of the New Kingdom, are similar to Greek aulos that had double lamellae like the modern oboe.
A more complex instrument to produce was the trumpet, such as that found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. These were made of silver and bronze, with mouthpieces of gold or silver. They were sometimes inlaid with gold. Trumpets seem to have had mostly a military use, though they became associated as well with gods such as Amun, Re-Horakhty and Ptah. Though we find the first examples of the trumpet at the beginning of the New Kingdom, it is possible that they existed as early as the Old Kingdom. Instruments made from animal horns do not appear in any reliefs, but it should be noted that there are terracotta models of such instruments dating to the New Kingdom. Stringed instruments mostly consisted of lyre, lutes and harps. There were three types of lyre consisting of thin, thick and giant. The thin lyre was used throughout the Fertile Crescent and the Egyptian lyres of this style were merely the southern extension of this form with no local characteristics. Thin lyres were introduced into northern Syria around 2500 BC, and the first depictions in Egypt that we know date to around 1900 BC. They became common in Egypt about five hundred years later.
Thick lyre with larger dimensions and more strings than the thin variety briefly appear in Anatolia around 1400 BC. However, they were used in Egypt from about 2000 BC and into the Greek Period in Egypt. Giant lyres became popular during the reign of Akhenaten. Some were even large enough to accommodate dual players. Though giant lyre players can be seen wearing Canaanite costumes, there are no giant lyres yet known from the Palestinian region. However, in Mesopotamia, giant lyres are known from engraved seals found at Uruk and Susa that date to around 2500 BC.
Lutes, similar to mandolins, made their appearance in Egypt during the New Kingdom. They had already gained popularity in the Near East at the beginning of the second millennium BC. Though they gained wide acceptance in Egypt, their use was mostly abandoned during the Hellenistic age, only to reappear once more after the Muslim invasion of Egypt in the mid-seventh century AD. Lutes were typically made with a long oval resonating body made from wood and perhaps partially covered with leather and partially by a thin sheet of wood with an opening to release the sound. Most all of the instruments were patterned after examples found elsewhere in the Near East, as were stringed instruments such as the lyres and lutes. However, though the harp seems to first appear in Mesopotamia in about 3000 BC, the harps that showed up in Egypt in 2500 BC take on a shape that is uniquely Egyptian. Stringed instruments were more complex than either percussion or wind instruments, and many were indeed finely made with precious materials. For example, we know that King Ahmose possessed a harp made of ebony, gold and silver, while Tuthmosis III commissioned "a splendid harp wrought with silver, gold, lapis lazuli, malachite, and every splendid costly stone."
There were two primary designs for Egyptian harps. The arched harp became dominate in pharaonic Egypt. It was made with a sound box which was joined smoothly to a curved rod encircled by collars for individual strings. The strings stretched between their collars and a rib in contact with the skin over the box. When the collars were rotated, the tension and thus the tuning of the attached strings changed. The second type of harp was angular, with a rod that was stuck through a hole in an oblong box. This arrangement resulted in a sharp angle between the rod and box. Arched harps in a shovel shape were used exclusively during the Old and Middle Kingdom's, though their size and the position in which they were played varied. However, the New Kingdom a variety of new shapes and sizes of harps appear.
They seem to all have been more or less equally popular. Some of these were considerably different than the earlier shovel harps shaped like a hunting bow, though all had the smooth curve characteristic of arched harps. During the Late Period, Egyptians sought the glory of their former empire and looked reflected this desire in archaized designs in architecture, as well as in harp design. The basic shovel harps were reintroduced, but by the Greco-Roman period, the variety of shapes was much reduced. Though angular harps appear to have been invented in Mesopotamia around 1900 BC, and there they replaced arched harps very quickly, in Egypt their adoption took and complete replacement of the arched harp took more than a millennium. However, when the Egyptian finally did embrace the instrument, they did so with enthusiasm and also with considerable talent. One ancient writer, Athenaeus, reports that an Alexandrian angular harp player's music was so popular that citizens in Rome went about whistling his tunes in the streets.
Surviving angular harps differ from their earlier counterparts in having many more strings. Most of the arched harps have fewer than ten strings, and some as few as three. On the other hand, angular harps typically have twenty-one and as many as twenty-nine strings. Perhaps the Egyptian reluctance of adopting the angular harp implies a reluctance to expand the pitch range of their harp music, but that seems to have changed by the end of the first millennium BC. This also implies an early conservatism in Egyptian music, which was an observation confirmed by Plato's assertion that Egyptians "were forbidden to introduce any innovations in music". Should this be surprising to us? Considering the Egyptian's formality and structured approach to visual art, perhaps not.
It is very possible in fact that much of the music corresponded in many ways to its visual counterpart. Of course, human vocals were an integral part of almost all Egyptian music, and many scholars maintain that instrumental music on its own did not exist in ancient Egypt. Likewise, unaccompanied vocals were also rare. In many instances, we also see a singer accompanying him or herself, such as a singing harpist. Scholars have sought to discover some form of musical notation system from ancient Egypt, but alas, have been unable to do so. However, some less precise information is available. During the Old Kingdom, singers within ensembles usually made arm and hand gestures, and Hans Hickmann claimed that these arm positions communicated pitches to the musicians.
However, recent research seems to refute his theories, and it is now believed that such movement was simply spontaneous responses common to singers even today, though it has also been suggested that these movements may indicate basic stop or start commands. There is extant a terra-cotta figurine from the Late Period that may be adorned with musical notation. This figure portrays an angular-harp player facing a scribe, who's writing tablet contains signs. Not much survives beyond a few long horizontal lines crossed by numerous vertical strokes. If these signs do represent musical notation, one might expect the length of the verticals to indicate pitches, but the lengths are insufficient to differentiate among the twenty-one strings of the angular harp. By the early Greek Period, we do finally find definite musical notation on an Egyptian papyri. However, both the music and the notation system is Greek.
Throughout the entire pharaonic period, musicians are often shown in ensembles, though in the Old Kingdom singers were frequently accompanied by a single instrument. During the Old Kingdom, such a group might consist of singers, hand clappers, several harps, a flute and a clarinet style pipe. Originally, only men played the full range of instruments while women seem to have been confined to harps and percussion. However, towards the end of the Old Kingdom, other female musicians appear, and by the Middle Kingdom, mixed gender ensembles are common. In fact, by the New Kingdom, exclusively female groups become predominate.
Various titles provide some information on musician's social organization. The best documented of these were referred to a "hnr". They sang, danced and clapped hands in temples, palaces and funerary settings. This type of group flourished from about 2500 through 1500 BC and during the Ramessid Period. At first, these groups had only female members and overseers, but males integrated these ensembles during the 5th Dynasty and became the sole overseers of such groups during the Middle Kingdom. Royal women were frequently members of these groups, which were attached to palaces, temples and funerary estates. They performed secular music along with sacred singing and also performed for the deceased. The female members of the group wore light dresses and hair braided into plaits, with balls dangling from the ends. Men usually wore narrow belts or kilts.
Other titles denote temple songstresses (or chantresses) who served deities such as Hathor, Osiris and Isis. The number of titles meaning "Temple Singer" seems to indicate a diverse role for sacred music. These songstresses routinely performed in priestly rituals, but there were also grand events such as one that was staged on the occasion of Amenhotep III's sed-festival. Tomb drawing of this extravaganza depict long rows of singers, percussionists and dancers and we are told that their music "opened the doors of heaven so that the god may go forth pure". There were also several deities associated with music. One of Hathor's titles was "mistress of music" and she was considered the goddess of singers. Bes was often depicted playing instruments, even outside of Egypt, including the lyre, harp, tambourine and the oboe like divergent pipes. Another obscure deity known as the Blind Horus has been identified as the "harp god", though some scholars believe he was simply a patron of the harp players. However, many harpists are depicted as blind, or even blindfolded. Music also played a part outside of its sacred role. In Old Kingdom tombs, female family members are shown playing instruments, singing and dancing for the tomb owner, a theme that is also repeated in New Kingdom tombs. Private tombs of the Old Kingdom also show occasional scenes of music among farm workers, such as depictions of a flutist wandering about while men cut sheaves of barley.
Women clappers and a single divergent double-pipes player
Some tomb scenes provide us with clues to the forms of Egyptian music. For example a song written in an Old Kingdom tomb appears to have been sung antiphonally by two groups. One group asks a question and the second group answers it. The first group begins with a call and a question, "Oh, Western Goddess! Where is the shepherd?" The second group responds, "The shepherd is in the water beneath the fish. He talks to the catfish and greets the mormry-fish.", The song is concluded with the call, "Oh shepherd of the Western Goddess." The song is accompanied by a scene depicting sheep trampling seeds in the field. The calls and the questions are shown next to the foreman, indicating that he is probably the lead singer. The answers are sung by helpers who drive the sheep across a field.
This antiphonal song dates to about 2200 BC, and is considered to be among the oldest known in literature and music. A larger musical form, the rondo, has been suggested for a harper's song, which decorate the walls of some New Kingdom tombs. In these, a harpist, and in some rare examples, a lute player, is shown beside an extensive text. The text usually begins by describing the inevitability of death and the futility of life. In these, the reader is encouraged to lie for the moment when told, "Make holiday...put incense and fine oil together beside you...put music before you...give drunkenness to your heart every day." Some scholars believe that songs were performed in the tomb, while others believe they were intended for life beyond the tomb. Most likely, the songs were sung at a banquet held in the tomb to buoy the spirits of the living.
We have no idea of the music for these compositions, but a song in one of the tombs contains a phrase that recurs intermittently seven times. Hickmann suggested that this refrain corresponded to a reoccurring melody, making it similar to a modern rondo. This type of song also is found in Old Kingdom tombs, but in those they are shorter and have an entirely different character than their New Kingdom counterparts. There, the harpist shares the sage with an ensemble. Altenmuller analyzed the the texts and their visual settings and concluded that the music belonged to a tomb ritual intended to bring back the deceased from the underworld. During this brief spiritual reincarnation, the tomb owner was known as "the deified one", and was enabled to join the musicians by the sheer power of their music. Throughout the world, music has played an important role in almost all civilizations from the very earliest stages of mankind, and Egypt was no exception. Certainly even today, music is ver
References:
TitleAuthorDatePublisherReference Number Atlas of Ancient Egypt Baines, John; Malek, Jaromir 1980 Les Livres De France None Stated Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, The Shaw, Ian; Nicholson, Paul 1995 Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers ISBN 0-8109-3225-3 Egyptian Treasures from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo Tiradritti, Francesco, Editor 1999 Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN 0-8109-3276-8 Life of the Ancient Egyptians Strouhal, Eugen 1992 University of Oklahoma Press ISBN 0-8061-2475-x Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, The Redford, Donald B. (Editor) 2001 American University in Cairo Press, The ISBN 977 424 581 4 Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, The Shaw, Ian 2000 Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-815034-2 Valley of the KingsWeeks, Kent R. 2001 Friedman/Fairfax ISBN 1-5866-3295-7
Also see the interesting articles athttp://www.utahloy.com/m6egypttech/muu2.htm
Music & Dance
The Musical Instruments of Ancient Egypt
A wide variety of musical instruments were played. Some of these instruments included ivory and bone clappers, harps and lutes, and percussion instruments such as drums, sistra, cymbals and the like.
There are four basic types of musical instruments in Ancient Egypt. These are: idiophones, this includes clappers, sistra, cymbals and bells. These instruments were particularly associated with religious worship and the music used in these rites and ceremonies.
Membranaphones, these instruments included tambourines, which were usually played at banquets, social gatherings and the like, as well as drums which were used in both military processions and in religious functions.
Aerophones include the flute, double clarinets, double oboes, trumpets and bugles. The latter were mostly used in connection with the army and military processionals. The earliest example of aerophones is the reed flute.
Detail of a flute player and listener from the tomb of Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep, 5th Dynasty.
Chordophones consisted of three types: the harp, which was an indigenous Egyptian instrument, the lute and the lyre, which were imported from the Asiatic invaders.
This wooden model represents a girl playing a harp. Note how she holds it against her body. In real life she probably would have rested it on a stand whiles she played it.
Professional dancers and musicians entertained at social events, and traveling troupes gave performances in public squares of great cities such as Waset (Thebes) and Alexandria.
References Used: David, A. Rosalie"The Egyptian Kingdoms" Hart, George "Ancient Egypt"Manniche, Lise"Music and Musicians in Ancient Egypt" Manniche, Lise"Ancient Egyptian Musical Instruments" Steedman, Scott "Pocket Ancient Egypt"
The first great culture to infuse its entire society with the magic of music and dance was that of Ancient Egypt. The Ancient Egyptians enjoyed life to its fullest and no celebration in Ancient Egypt would have been complete without music and dancing. At parties, singers and dancers performed to the music of harps, lutes, drums, flutes, cymbals, clappers and tambourines. During festivals, crowds chanted and clapped, carried along by the vibrant rhythm of Egyptian orchestras, while dancers performed amazing feats, leaping twirling and bending their bodies in time with the music.
Most of Egyptian secular and religious life was marked by the performance of music and dance. This important aspect of daily life of the Egyptians is depicted as early as the Pre-Dynastic periods. Ceremonial palettes and stone vessels indicate the importance that music had even in the earliest of periods. The importance of music in daily life in Ancient Egypt is underscored by the large number of musical instruments found in museum collections around the world.
In many banqueting scenes found within the tombs of the Ancient Egyptians, the banquets appear to be more secular. Shown in these scenes are an idealized rather than any actual event. The basic components of these scenes changed very little throughout Egypt's history, until the New Kingdom. Around the 18th Dynasty, there is a marked change of character, in the song, dance and the overall "feel" of these scenes. At this time we see a marked sense of erotic significance. Lotus flowers, mandrakes, wigs and unguent cones, as well as men and women clothed in semi-transparent garments and the gestures of the banquet participants. Music, love and sensuality go hand in hand in most civilizations, ancient as well as modern, and in different spheres. Overall music is a major component of life, an important piece of both secular and religious life.
Probably the best indication of the Ancient Egyptian's enjoyment and value of music and dance is a satirical papyrus wherein an ass is playing a large harp, a lion with a lyre, a crocodile with a lute, and a monkey with a double oboe.
Dance in Ancient Egypt
Dance was far more than just an enjoyable pastime in Ancient Egypt.During the Pre-Dynastic period were found depictions of female figures, perhaps of Goddesses or Priestesses, dancing with their arms raised above their heads. The act of dancing was undoubtedly an important component of ritual and celebration in Ancient Egypt.
People from every social class were exposed to music and dancing. Manual laborers worked in rhythmic motion to the sounds of songs and percussion, and street dancers entertained passers by. In normal, daily life musicians and dancers were an important and integral part of banquets and celebrations. Dance troupes were available for hire to perform at dinner parties, banquets, lodging houses, and even religious temples. Some women the harems of the wealthy were trained in music and dance. However, no well-born Egyptian would consider dancing in public. The Nobility would employ servants or slaves to entertain at their banquets to a offer pleasant diversion to themselves and their guests.
Elizabeth 'Artemis' Mourat, professional dancer and dance-scholar categorized the dances of Ancient Egypt into six types: religious dances, non-religious festival dances, banquet dances, harem dances, combat dances, and street dances. There were certain ritual dances that were crucial to the successful outcome of religious and funerary rites. This is particularly true of the Muu-Dancers. These dancers wore kilts and reed crowns and performed alongside funeral processions.
With the emergence of the cult of Wasir (Osiris in Greek) dance was a crucial element in the festivals held for both He and Aset (Isis in Greek) His sister-wife. These festivals occurred throughout the year. Dance was also important in the festivals dedicated to Apis.
The act of dancing was inseparable from music, and so the depictions of dance in Pharaonic tombs and temples invariably show the dancers either being accompanied by groups of musicians or themselves playing castanets or clappers to keep the rhythm. Little distinction seems to have been made between dancing and what would be considered today as acrobatics. Many dancers depicted in the temple and tomb paintings and reliefs show dancers in athletic poses such as cartwheels, handstands and backbends.
Detailed study of the depiction of dancers has revealed that the artists were often depicting a series of different steps in particular dances, some of which have been reconstructed. Movements of Egyptian dances were named after the motion they imitated. For instance, there were "the leading along of an animal," "the taking of gold," and "the successful capture of the boat."
Men and women are never shown dancing together, and the most common scenes depict groups of female dancers often performing in pairs.
My body says, my lips repeat:
Holy music for Hathor, music a million times,
Because you love music, million times music.
Stela of King Wahankh Intef II
M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol. 1, p.95
Workers harvesting flax are being accompanied by a fluteplayer. The overseer Iankhef leaning on his staff of office exhorts the musician: "O fellow, blow and do not oppose our officialdom!"
Hermann Junker, Zu einigen Reden und Rufen auf Grabbildern des alten Reiches, p.32f.
Music in all its forms, be it simple clapping, singing or playing instruments had an important place in ancient Egyptian life. It was heard in temples as part of worship, during processions and holidays, at parties, and, as one may suppose, in the evenings when the light had become too low to do any work and people continued to sit together for a while. It also had economic importance: Boring drudgery was made more bearable by chanting or by listening to music, making workers more efficient.
Musical instruments
Egyptian musical instruments were well developed and varied. They included string instruments such as harps, lyres, lutes, percussion instruments like drums, rattles, tambourines, bells (first used during the Late Period) and cymbals (Roman Period), wind instruments like flutes, clarinets, double pipes, trumpets, and oboes.
Singers and flute player
Tomb of Nebamen, New Kingdom
Excerpt. Courtesy Jon Bodsworth
Flutes were among the first musical instruments used. Double flutes were at first made of two parallel pipes, but later the two pipes were separated and set at an acute angle. They are still used in Egypt today.
Military trumpeter Source: Dümichen, Johannes [Hrsg.], Die Flotte einer aegyptischen Koenigin aus dem XVII. Jahrhundert vor unserer Zeitrechnung und altaegyptisches Militair im festlichen Aufzuge auf einem Monumente aus derselben Zeit abgebildet: nebst einem Anhange enthaltend ... als ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Schifffahrt und des Handels im Alterthume, Leipzig, 1868, plate X
Double oboes were known since about 2800 BCE. They had two pipes of unequal length, the longer was used as a drone or to play notes that the shorter pipe couldn't hit.
In the second century BCE the Alexandrian Ctesibios invented the hydraulic organ which used water pressure to deliver air to the organ-pipes.
Harps, developed from the hunting bow and used since the Old Kingdom, were triangular or arc-shaped. They usually had eight to twelve strings made of animal gut; and both men and women played them - sitting, standing or kneeling. At times their soundbox was tapped or beaten, described in inscriptions as sqr bn.t - striking the harp [10]. They were generally made of wood and probably did not project very far. Harps were often decorated and could be expensive works of art
[My majesty made] a splendid harp wrought with silver, gold, lapis lazuli, malachite, and every splendid costly stone
From the Coronation inscription of Thutmose III
James Henry Breasted Ancient Records of Egypt, Part Two, § 165
During the New Kingdom there were harps of various shapes and sizes, the number of their strings was increased, and their sound boxes were improved. Some of the harps had columns, but these were rare.
The large sized instruments were often covered with flowery or geometrical ornamentations. In one picture on a tomb, a harp is shown with a jaguar's skin, an instrument for rich people. Harps were played at parties, social gatherings, and ceremonial events, often in conjunction with other instruments, such as double pipes and rattles.
The marks on the instrument's neck have been interpreted by some as being frets.
The New Kingdom lute consisted of a small oblong wooden sounding box, flat on both sides, with six or eight holes, and a long neck, often decorated with ribbons, from which two to four strings were strung. It was played with a plectrum or bare fingers. Similarly to modern string instruments different notes were played by pressing the strings against the neck of the instrument at various spots seemingly marked by frets.
Another string instrument classified as a guitar because of its flat back and curving sides, may not have looked much like a modern guitar. It was improved if not invented by the Egyptians.
Sekhmet and Bes were sometimes associated with percussion instruments, in particular with frame drums. The sistrum and the menat, two small flat slabs of wood or ivory similar to a castanet, were generally dedicated to Hathor, the goddess of banquets and music making. But the sistrum was also used in the worship of the other gods, the Aton during the Amarna Period
Votive ivory clappers
...... the Great King's Wife, his beloved, abounding in her beauty; her who sends the Aton to rest with sweet voice, and with her two beautiful hands, bearing two sistrums, the mistress of the Two Lands, Nefernefruaton-Nofretete, living forever and ever.
From the tomb inscriptions of Ay
James Henry Breasted Ancient Records of Egypt, Part Two, § 995
or Ptah
......... by command of this thy son, who is upon thy throne, lord of gods and men, sovereign celebrating the jubilees like thee [when thou] bearest the two sistrums .....
From the inscription of Ramses II in the temple of Ptah at Memphis
James Henry Breasted Ancient Records of Egypt, Part Three, § 414
Harpist and drummer
Saite period
Photo by E. Brugsch
Tambourines were either round or square, played by hand, and were mainly used during popular or religious festivals. They came into use during the New Kingdom.
Music was part of religious ceremonies [7] and musicianship was highly valued and mentioned on mortuary stelae of, among others, Pesheremehit, son of housemistress and musician of Min Tediusir and of the priest Pehet
... that they may give a mortuary offering of bread, beer, oxen and geese, incense, clothing and everything good and pure to the spirit of Osiris the priest, the - yz, the hzk-priest, Pehet, deceased, called Nesihor ..... offspring of the housemistress, the musician of Min, Tesheremehit, deceased.
From the stela of Pehet. Akhmim. Ptolemaic Period
Thomas George Allen: Egyptian Stelae in Field Museum of Natural History, 1936
or the songstress of Amen Inaros, daughter of another songstress
... that he may give a mortuary offering and offerings of food and beer to Osiris the songstress of the temple of Amon, Inaros, deceased, the possessor of worthiness [in the presence of] the great god, the lord of the sky; daughter of Harkheb, deceased .... Her mother was the songstress of Amon and Horus, Tesherenetyah, deceased ....
From the stela of Inaros. Roman Period
Thomas George Allen: Egyptian Stelae in Field Museum of Natural History, 1936
During the New Kingdom the singers' titles of Smaj.t and Hsj.t became quite common among the female relatives of high officials. In contrast to the Servant of the God, Hm.t nTr, of the Old and Middle Kingdoms who had served female deities only, these songstresses officiated at ceremonies of male gods too.
Some ceremonial texts used during the worship of Isis or Nephthys for instance have survived. Their structure seems to imply that they were sung alternatingly by two priests and included solo passages interpreted by priestesses [4].
In Old and Middle Kingdom tombs inscriptions of songs can be found, hymns sung to the accompaniment of a harp. These Harpers' songs praised the dead and death, keeping the name of the deceased alive by repeating it:
The singer Tjeniaa says:
How firm you are in your seat of eternity,
Your monument of everlastingness!
It is filled with offerings of food,
It contains every good thing.
Your ka is with you,
It does not leave you,
O Royal Seal-bearer, Great Steward, Nebankh!
Yours is the sweet breath of the north wind!
So says his singer who keeps his name alive,
The honorable singer Tjeniaa, whom he loved,
Who sings to his ka every day.
Stela of Nebankh from Abydos
M. Lichtheim Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume 1, p. 194
The somewhat hedonistic Harper of a King Intef who ruled during the First Intermediate Period or the Middle Kingdom, saw the ephemeralness of this life and was also much less positive than earlier harpers about the chances of an afterlife, but during the New Kingdom there was a religious revival:
This land which has no enemies: [All] [its (lit. our)] kindred [rest in it] since primeval times. Those who come into being in aeons upon aeons, they will [all (?)] return to it. There is no lingering in the Beloved Land (i.e. Egypt). There is no one who will not reach it (i.e. the afterworld). The time spent on earth has the nature [of a dream]. It is said, "He may be [whole], he may be whole!" about him who reaches the West. He who travels north and south will finally land(?) on the bank. [How beautiful] is your journey when you are united with the lords of Eternity.
Harper's song, tomb of Thutmose (TT 32), reign of Ramses II
After the transliteration and German translation on the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae web site
Altägyptisches Wörterbuch, Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften => 4. Poetische Literatur => Harfnerlieder => Texte seit LÄ II, 1977 => Djehutimes (TT 32)
Singing, often accompanied by the clapping [6] of hands, was integral to Egyptian culture, sacred and secular. Tedious long-drawn-out jobs like grinding corn were accompanied by chanting, though whether these were songs praising the master of the house as suggested by some tomb inscriptions
May all the gods of this land give strength and health to my master
After Pierre Montet, La vie quotidienne en Egypte
is open to doubt.
At banquets singers played an important part. In the Story of Wenamen, Zakar-Baal, when he wanted to distract Wenamen
....... sent out his letter-scribe to me (i.e. Wenamen), he brought me two jars of wine and a ram. He sent to me Tentno, an Egyptian (female) singer, who was with him, saying: "Sing for him; let not his heart feel apprehension."
From the Report of Wenamen
James Henry Breasted Ancient Records of Egypt, Part Four, § 589
Herodotus, who was better placed than any other man of his time to compare between different cultures, often saw similarities which were probably just happenstance:
Besides other customary things among them which are worthy of mention, they have one song, that of Linos, the same who is sung of both in Phoenicia and in Cyprus and elsewhere, having however a name different according to the various nations. This song agrees exactly with that which the Hellenes sing calling on the name of Linos, so that besides many other things about which I wonder among those matters which concern Egypt, I wonder especially about this, namely whence they got the song of Linos. It is evident however that they have sung this song from immemorial time, and in the Egyptian tongue Linos is called Maneros. The Egyptians told me that he was the only son of him who first became king of Egypt, and that he died before his time and was honoured with these lamentations by the Egyptians, and that this was their first and only song.
Ancient Egyptian music was based on a minor pentatonic scale of five tones without halftones. This fact can be inferred from the positions of the holes on flutes .
During the New Kingdom, when foreign conquest brought Egyptians into closer contact with Asiatic peoples and their music and many new instruments and with them new sound qualities were introduced, they also encountered the scales prevailing in the Near East. On the whole they seem to have preferred keeping their traditional tonality, although some musicologists think that during this period they began to use a heptatonic scale.
The Greeks who settled first in the Delta, and since the third century BCE in many places upstream, above all in the Fayum, must have had an even greater impact on Egyptian music. These influences were mutual. Pythagoras (c.580-500 BCE) who created a musical theory based on mathematics, was brought up in Egypt. Egyptian music must have changed a great deal during the last couple of millennia. We have even less clues to what the music sounded like than we have to how the Egyptian language was pronounced. One should therefore be very wary when extrapolating. To get an idea of what the ancient music may have sounded like, coptic church music, and Nubian and Egyptian folk music might be helpful. A recording called "The Music of Upper and Lower Egypt" and published by Ryko, was done by the Grateful Dead while they were on tour in Egypt of folk singers and musicians.
There were many occasions for ancient Egyptians to display their joy of life, one of them was the enthronement of a new king:
All the people of all the dwellings of the court heard; they came, their mouths rejoicing, they proclaimed (it) beyond everything, dwelling on dwelling therein was announcing (it) in his name; soldiers on soldiers [were shouting (?)], they leaped and they danced for the double joy of their hearts.
The coronation of Queen Hatshepsut
J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Part Two, § 238
But unfortunately, apart from a number of depictions, little is known about ancient Egyptian dancing. It seems to have been uni-sex.
Acrobatic dancers, Karnak;
Excerpt from a photo by M.Audrain
Mixed gender pair dancing as we know it today was unknown. Egyptian dancing may heve been influenced by the Nubian tradition, which became very popular in Rome during the days of the empire, and is still alive in parts of the Sudan today. Dancers from the south were brought to Egypt and seemingly much admired.
Egyptian choreography appears to have been complex. Dances could be mimetic, expressive - similar to modern ballet with pirouettes and the like, or gymnastic, including splits, cartwheels, and backbends.
A few pictures of acrobatic dancers have been found, generally depicting a number of dancers performing the same movement in unison. For sociable banquets the dancing girls were often selected from among the servants or the women living in the harem of the nobleman in whose house the party was held; possibly professional dancers were also hired for these occasions. Pictures of such gatherings show girls performing slow elegant dance steps, which may have alternated with wild acrobatic movements.
Public celebrations were accompanied by dancing, be it spontaneous or orchestrated
All the people of all the dwellings of the court heard (of the coronation of Hatshepsut); they came, their mouths rejoicing, they proclaimed (it) beyond everything, dwelling on dwelling therein was announcing (it) in his name; soldiers on soldiers [were shouting (?)], they leaped and they danced for the double joy in their hearts.
James Henry Breasted Ancient Records of Egypt, Part Two, § 238
Dancing was also part of religious functions. According to tomb depictions staid ritual dances seem to have been performed by the muu, men wearing crowns of reeds. [9][2][3][8]
One of a line of dancers with weights fastened to their pigtails, dancing to clapping.
It has been suggested that by lifting their legs they were revealing their pudenda as part of fertility rites.
Old Kingdom
The dancing women at the festivities of Hathor were less restrained, if depictions are anything to go by. One of the highpoints of these celebrations were energetic dances similar to those depicted in the tomb of Nenkhetifkai at Sakkara (see picture in the left margin).
Herodotus, at times not the most reliable of witnesses in his eagerness to make foreign cultures as comprehensible to his Greek audience as possible, was struck by the absence of organised dancing at the feast of Osiris, equated by the Greeks with Dionysos, and reported that
... the rest of the feast of Dionysos is celebrated by the Egyptians in the same way as by the Hellenes in almost all things except choral dances....
Herodotus, Histories II
while pilgrims to Bubastis
... sail, men and women together, and a great multitude of each sex in every boat; and some of the women have rattles and rattle with them, while some of the men play the flute during the whole time of the voyage, and the rest, both women and men, sing and clap their hands; and when as they sail they come opposite to any city on the way they bring the boat to land, and some of the women continue to do as I have said, others cry aloud and jeer at the women in that city, some dance, and some stand up and pull up their garments.
Herodotus, Histories II
Exotic dancers exercised a special attraction. When Harkhuf was on his way back from Yam [5] with a dwarf, he received instructions from Pepi II to return as fast as possible.
....... Come northward to the court immediately; [...] thou shalt bring this dwarf with thee, which thou bringest living, prosperous and healthy from the land of spirits, for the dances of the god, to rejoice and gladden the heart of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Neferkere, who lives forever.
Pepi, who was still a child at the time, may have been more impressed with the diminutive size of the dancer than with the spiritual powers the dwarf from the land of spirits attempted to express through his movements.
[1] It seems it's not as straightforward. Thomas Hare (Stanford), knowledgeable in Japanese music, suggests that by tilting the flute, altering the position of one's lips and half-holing one can achieve a number of different scales and that the ancient Egyptians might have done just that. At least in the case of Japan the most easily played scale, used in folk music, doesn't seem to have been the oldest according to historical evidence. [5] Yam: tribe and region in Nubia [6] Clapping:
Songs to the harp are made for you,
One sings to you with clapping hands;
Hymn to the Nile
M. Lichtheim Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume 1, p.208
Clapping and stomping also had magical qualities. They were often used to keep daemons at bay. [7] During part of the Osiris worship, prior to the god's mummification, music was seemingly deemed to be inappropriate but was taken up again with the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, the joyful event of revivification. This ritual silence may have been the inspiration for a handful of Late Period writings prohibiting music. [9] In the Tale of Sinuhe the protagonist got homesick when he thought of how wonderful his funeral would be back home:
A funeral procession is made for you on the day of burial; the mummy case is of gold, its head of lapis lazuli. The sky is above you as you lie in the hearse, oxen drawing you, musicians going before you. The dance of the mww-dancers is done at the door of your tomb; the offering-list is read to you; sacrifice is made before your offering-stone.
M. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol.1, p.229
[10] Hermann Junker ed., Grabungen auf dem Friedhof des Alten Reiches, Band IV: "Die Mastaba des Kai-em-anch", Wien und Leipzig 1940, p.87
Composer Douglas Irvine tries to reconstruct ancient Egyptian music, but there is a lot of guesswork in the endeavor:http://www.aldokkan.com/mp3/mp3.htm;
Egyptian Music
Comparison Between Egyptian Music and Spanish Flamenco
Criteria
Egyptian Music
Traditional Spanish Flamenco
Images
Early development
The music and singing in the life of Egypt had considerable attention since the 1st Dynasty, c. 3000 BC
Music in the North of the Iberian Peninsula has a clear Celtic influence which dates to pre-Roman times, Southern flamenco music is certainly reminiscent of Eastern influences, Moors and Jews starting form 711 A.D.
State Sponsorship
priests and senior clergy and the state, headed by the Pharaoh all gave music special attention
Flamenco sprang from the lower levels of Andalusia society, and thus lacked the prestige of art forms among the middle and higher classes
Religious Role
- Highly developed Music was an integral part of religious worship in Egypt, and had a central role in the religious rituals, hymns and prayers.
- Hathor was the patron of music.
Folk music - no religious role
Musical instruments
Large variety
All the major categories of musical instruments percussion, wind and stringed were represented in pharaonic Egypt.
Instruments were frequently inscribed with the name of the owner and decorated with representations of the goddess Hathor of music.
Few instruments
- There is disagreement as to whether primitive flamenco was accompanied by any instrument or not
- Classical flamenco used only guitar and hand clapping as a rhythmic accompaniment
Musicians
Professional musicians occupied a variety of positions and social levels in Egypt:
- The highest status belonged to temple musicians a position frequently held by women.
- Musicians connected with the royal household were held in high esteem, as were certain gifted singers and harp players.
- Somewhat lower on the social scale were musicians who acted as entertainers for parties and festivals, frequently accompanied by dancers
- There is little evidence for the amateur musicians in pharaonic Egypt.
Amateur Gypsies and dancers
Musical characteristics
Rhythmic music? - most musical scenes show dancers accompanied by musicians playing instruments
- Egyptians did not notate their music, so attempts to reconstruct pharaonic music remain speculative.
- Representational evidence can give a general idea of the sound of Egyptian music:
Music was based on a scale of 5 tones without halftones. This fact can be concluded from the position of holes on flutes
Ritual temple music was largely a matter of the rattling of the sistrum, accompanied by voice, sometimes with harp or percussion.
Party scenes show naked female acrobatic dancers performing the same movement in unison.
Both male and female voices were used in Egyptian music.
- Originally Vocal music - primitive flamenco consisted of unaccompanied singing (cante)
- Later, the songs were accompanied by flamenco guitar (toque), rhythmic hand clapping (palmas), rhythmic feet stomping (zapateado) and dance (baile)
- Prior to the Middle Kingdom, depictions of harpists feature men as the chief musicians. Harps and other instruments were used for praise singing and entertainment at ritual, court, and military events.
- Harps were favorite instruments during the New Kingdom and were shown in the hands of processional female musicians performing alone or in ensembles with singers, wind instruments, sistrums, and rattles.
- Playing techniques varied as shown in paintings, including one and two handed playing
Characteristics
- Egyptian harps were made of wood, inlaid with bone and faience.
- Harps varied greatly in form, size and the number of their strings.
- They are represented in the ancient paintings with 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 17, 20, 21,and 22 strings
- There was two types of harps:
1. The small shoulder harps shaped as shallow arches. These were used during the Old and Middle Kingdoms. Most of the arched harps have fewer than ten strings
2. The larger angular harp was invented in Mesopotamia around 1900 BC They replaced the arched harps during the New Kingdom, but their full adoption in Egypt took more than a millennium.
This implied an early conservatism in Egyptian music, which was an observation confirmed by Plato's assertion that Egyptians "were forbidden to introduce any innovations in music"
Historical Developments
- The ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt are credited for introducing the harp, known to date from about 5,000 years ago.
- Egyptian arched harps appear in depictions of the Old kingdom strating from the 4th Dynasty onwards, these developed from the hunting bow
- Romans spread the use of harps in their vast empire, One ancient writer, Athenaeus, reports that an Alexandrian angular harp player music was so popular that citizens in Rome went about whistling his tunes
- During the middle ages in Europe however a further development took place: adding a third structural member, the pillar, to support the far ends of the arch and sound box. The 'Triangular Frame harp' is depicted in manuscripts and sculpture from about the 8th century
- In the early 19th century the harp lost popularity with Western music composers, being thought of primarily as a woman's instrument after Marie Antoinette popularised it as an activity for women.
- Consists of a pair of slightly concave metal plates which produce a vibrant sound of indeterminate pitch
- The ancient Egyptian cymbals closely resembled modern examples, the British Museum possesses two pairs of Egyptian cymbals which are thirteen centimetres in diameter, found in the coffin of Ankhhape a sacred musician
Historical Developments
- Known in Europe since the Middle Ages, they were introduced into the European orchestra by Nikolaus Adam Strungk in 1680
- In Egypt Cymbals are used today in Egyptian belly dances
Flutes known as ugads, were among the first musical instruments used
Characteristics
- Ancient Egyptians used very long flutes 90 cm in length and about 1.5 cm wide, the performer generally sat on the ground
- They were made of nile bamboo, though later were imitated in bronze. The bamboo is characterisied by the presence of nodes which tends to narrow the diameter of the air column at each node.
- The Egyptians blew the instrument through a lateral opening near one end, producing the modulations by means of holes on the sides. Flutes had usually five to seven finger-holes.
- Double flutes made of two parallel pipes were known since the Old Kingdom. They had two pipes of unequal length, the longer was to play notes that the shorter pipe couldn't hit.
Historical Developments
- The flute was invented in ancient Egypt, and are depicted on a predynastic palettes from Hierakonpolis
Some ancient Egyptian flutes have survived, preserved in tombs by the arid desert climate.
- The pan flute was used in Greece from the 7th century BC, and spread to other parts of Europe during the Roman period. It was shorter than the Egyptian counterpart and did not exceed 30 cm in length
- Flutes almost disappeared from Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, until the Crusades brought Europeans into contact with the Arabs. and are still used in the Balkans and the Basque regions of Spain
- They never disappeared from te Egyptian culture and have survived to this day under the Arabic name of nay
The sistrum was a sacred instrument in ancient Egypt, used in dances and religious ceremonies, particularly in the worship of Hathor
Characteristics
- It consisted of a handle and a U-shaped bronze frame, 30 cm in width.
- When shaken the small rings on its movable crossbars produced a sound that ranged from soft tinkling to loud jangling.
Historical Developments
- The sistrum was revived in 19th century Western orchestral music, appearing in Act 1 of the opera Les Troyens.
- Sistra are still used in the rites of the Egyptian Coptic churches
- The trumpet was not a military instrument. The sound it created were related to rebirth motifs, a transition from one stage to another. As such, they were utilized in:
During funerary processions to wake up the deceased. As such, it was attributed to Osiris, the principle of resurrection.
To announce both the new day at dusk and the end of the night at dawn. Trumpets in temple rituals always appeared in pairs. With the typical two horns: one was sounded at dawn, the other at dusk.
-They were generally 60 to 90 cm long, and made of bronze, with mouthpieces, and with bells at the other end.
Historical Developments
- Horns appeared in Ancient Egypt since the New Kingdom, and wer known as Buq meaning mouth
The Earliest known examples are the bronze and silver trumpets from Tutankhamen tomb
- In Roman times, trumpet playing was a guarded craft. The trumpet players were often among the most heavily guarded members of a troop armies, as they were relied upon to relay instructions to other sections of the army.
- The Buq survived in the Spanish term 'Alboque' for the trumpet
- Improvements to instrument design and metal making in the Renaissance period led to an increased usefulness of the trumpet as a musical instrument
I learnt the incredible melody heard in this video, from an amazing CD, "Music of the Ancient Sumerians, Egyptians & Greeks" by "The Ensemble De Organographia". This video features my arrangement for solo lyre, of the academic reconstruction of this ancient Egyptian melody, from c.1400BC!! The scale used, was taken from a three-holed Egyptian vertical flute, still in a playable condition. The images in the video feature incredible, vibrant illutrations of ancient Egyptian Theban Banquets and ancient Egyptian dancers...
The academic reconstruction of the melody heard here, was deciphered from illustrations on a tomb painting of a Banquet Scene found at Thebes - the specific hand gestures of the individuals depicted in this scene were found to be an example of an ancient system of musical notation often used in antiquity, called called "Chironomy" - this is a system of hand gestures which were used, to denote both the pitch and ornamentation of a melody.This ancient lost art is discussed at length in this fascinating article:
The Theban Banquet Scene depicting these chironomy genstures, shows a scene of four rows of seated guests preparing to attend a banquet, with the guests on the left of each row displaying these chironomy signs, depicting the melody being played by the musicians on the sitting on the right.
My Albums of Ancient Lyre Music are available, anywhere in the world, from iTunes:
Also, my 3 CD albums, "King David's Lyre; Echoes of Ancient Israel", "An Ancient Lyre" & "Lyre of the Levites" are available anywhere in the world from CD Baby:
See this article by Armand D'Angour for an update on current insights and evidence that may help scholars reconstruct the sound of ancient Greek music:http://www.bbc.com/news/business-24611454. There is a link of a brief audio clip early in the article.
How did ancient Greek music sound?
By Armand D'Angour .
Greek theatre used music with the drama. But what did it sound like?
Dr David Creese plays a song originally found on stone inscriptions from ancient Greece on an eight-string "canon" instrument
The music of ancient Greece, unheard for thousands of years, is being brought back to life by Armand D'Angour, a musician and tutor in classics at Oxford University. He describes what his research is discovering.
"Suppose that 2,500 years from now all that survived of the Beatles songs were a few of the lyrics, and all that remained of Mozart and Verdi's operas were the words and not the music.
Imagine if we could then reconstruct the music, rediscover the instruments that played them, and hear the words once again in their proper setting, how exciting that would be.
This is about to happen with the classic texts of ancient Greece.
It is often forgotten that the writings at the root of Western literature - the epics of Homer, the love-poems of Sappho, the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides - were all, originally, music.
Dating from around 750 to 400 BC, they were composed to be sung in whole or part to the accompaniment of the lyre, reed-pipes, and percussion instruments.
Finding the pitch
But isn't the music lost beyond recovery? The answer is no. The rhythms - perhaps the most important aspect of music - are preserved in the words themselves, in the patterns of long and short syllables.
The instruments are known from descriptions, paintings and archaeological remains, which allow us to establish the timbres and range of pitches they produced.
And now, new revelations about ancient Greek music have emerged from a few dozen ancient documents inscribed with a vocal notation devised around 450 BC, consisting of alphabetic letters and signs placed above the vowels of the Greek words.
The Greeks had worked out the mathematical ratios of musical intervals - an octave is 2:1, a fifth 3:2, a fourth 4:3, and so on.
The notation gives an accurate indication of relative pitch: letter A at the top of the scale, for instance, represents a musical note a fifth higher than N halfway down the alphabet. Absolute pitch can be worked out from the vocal ranges required to sing the surviving tunes.
While the documents, found on stone in Greece and papyrus in Egypt, have long been known to classicists - some were published as early as 1581 - in recent decades they have been augmented by new finds. Dating from around 300 BC to 300 AD, these fragments offer us a clearer view than ever before of the music of ancient Greece.
The research project that I have embarked on, funded by the British Academy, has the aim of bringing this music back to life.
Folk music
But it is important to realise that ancient rhythmical and melodic norms were different from our own.
Temple of Poseidon: The music might have sounded unfamiliar to modern ears We must set aside our Western preconceptions. A better parallel is non-Western folk traditions, such as those of India and the Middle East.
Instrumental practices that derive from ancient Greek traditions still survive in areas of Sardinia and Turkey, and give us an insight into the sounds and techniques that created the experience of music in ancient times.
So what did Greek music sound like?
Some of the surviving melodies are immediately attractive to a modern ear. One complete piece, inscribed on a marble column and dating from around 200 AD, is a haunting short song of four lines composed by Seikilos. The words of the song may be translated:
While you're alive, shine: never let your mood decline. We've a brief span of life to spend: Time necessitates an end.
The notation is unequivocal. It marks a regular rhythmic beat, and indicates a very important principle of ancient composition.
In ancient Greek the voice went up in pitch on certain syllables and fell on others (the accents of ancient Greek indicate pitch, not stress). The contours of the melody follow those pitches here, and fairly consistently in all the documents.
Tuning up
But one shouldn't assume that the Greeks' idea of tuning was identical to ours. Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD provides precise mathematical ratios for numerous different scale-tunings, including one that he says sounds "foreign and homespun".
Dr David Creese of the University of Newcastle has constructed an eight-string "canon" (a zither-like instrument) with movable bridges.
When he plays two versions of the Seikilos tune using Ptolemy's tunings, the second immediately strikes us as exotic, more like Middle Eastern than Western music.
The epitaph of Seikilos is carved on stone. Pic: National Museum of Denmark The earliest musical document that survives preserves a few bars of sung music from a play, Orestes by the fifth-century BC tragedian Euripides. It may even be music Euripides himself wrote.
Music of this period used subtle intervals such as quarter-tones. We also find that the melody doesn't conform to the word pitches at all.
Euripides was a notoriously avant-garde composer, and this indicates one of the ways in which his music was heard to be wildly modern: it violated the long-held norms of Greek folk singing by neglecting word-pitch.
However, we can recognise that Euripides adopted another principle. The words "I lament" and "I beseech" are set to a falling, mournful-sounding cadence; and when the singer says "my heart leaps wildly", the melody leaps as well. This was ancient Greek soundtrack music.
And it was received with great excitement in the Greek world. The historian Plutarch tells a moving story about the thousands of Athenian soldiers held prisoner in roasting Syracusan quarries after a disastrous campaign in 413 BC. Those few who were able to sing Euripides' latest songs were able to earn some food and drink.
What about the greatest of ancient poet-singers, Homer himself?
Homer tells us that bards of his period sang to a four-stringed lyre, called a "phorminx". Those strings will probably have been tuned to the four notes that survived at the core of the later Greek scale systems.
Professor Martin West of Oxford has reconstructed the singing of Homer on that basis. The result is a fairly monotonous tune, which probably explains why the tradition of Homeric recitation without melody emerged from what was originally a sung composition.
"What song the Sirens sang," is the first of the questions listed by the 17th Century English writer, Sir Thomas Browne, as "puzzling, though not beyond all conjecture".
"The reconstruction of ancient Greek music is bringing us a step closer to answering the question."
Chap. 4: p. 105 discusses the epic poems (Iliadand Odyssey) attributed to Homer; these poems were sung. Homer is believed to have been a "bard", a singer of songs and of epics like these.
Chap. 4, pp. 123-124 (fig. 4.28) ancient Greek music (archaic age)
Lyric poetry (like that of Sappho)--sung to music of a lyre. These were short poems (songs ) of nature, love, etc. See the lyric poems on pp. 123-124. The term "Lyric poetry" originates from such ancient poems that were designed to be sung to the music of the lyre.
Here is a YouTube of a bit more modernized presentation of the same tune--with the Greek lyrics (from an actual ancient epitaph) and an English translation below the YouTube:
Lyre 'n' Rhapsody - Oson Zeis (Epitaph of Seikilos/Ancient Greek Music), 4:34
Seikilos Epitaph (1st C. A. D.)
Oson Zeis
Ancient Greek
Ὅσον ζῇς, φαίνου,
μηδὲν ὅλως σὺ λυποῦ•
πρὸς ὀλίγον ἐστὶ τὸ ζῆν,
τὸ τέλος ὁ xρόνος ἀπαιτεῖ.
Modern Greek
Όσο ζεις να λάμπεις, καθόλου μη λυπάσαι
Λίγη είναι η ζωή, το τέλος ο χρόνος απαιτεί.
English
As long as you live, shine
Feel no grief at all
Life is short
Life demands its toll
Music by
Lyre 'n' Rhapsody
Music by
Lyre 'n' Rhapsody
Aliki Markantonatou- Composition, Archean Lyre, Vocals
Areti Miggou- Percussions, arrangement-performance on Daouli and Udu, Vocals
Athena Chioti- Vocals
Guest
Dianna Deligianni- Vocals, Vocal Composition on track 6 (Seikilos)
Nenad Radosevic- Audio Engineering/ Production
Video by
Andreas Markovic
Music and Video Production By
Sound Arch Productions http://www.sound-arch.com
https://youtu.be/8Vkcolt-nmU
If you go to the following link, please scroll down to the very bottom and click on the last video (time 7:19) called "Ancient Greek Music". Some interesting information appears on screen while you listen (4:05):
The history of Greece and Rome can be looked at in two different ways. It can be seen as forming a single whole, all the way from the emergence of the Greek city state (the polis) in the eighth century BC to the enormous expansion and eventual disintegration of the Roman Empire, a society which rested on Roman military and political power but whose culture, literature, and arts were truly Greco-Roman. It can also be seen as two separate stories: first, the rise of the Greek polis from poverty and obscurity to the self-confidence splendors of the 'classical' period in the fifth century BC, its extension over great areas of Asia by the conquest of Alexander, and its eventual subjugation by the Roman legions. Then there is the second story: the small city of Rome fighting its way to supremacy, first in Italy, and then in the whole of the Mediterranean basin; losing its republican constitution and becoming an empire; conquering and exploiting the cities and kingdoms of Greece, and ruling the world until the barbarians gradually became too strong and transformed the empire into a number of states which rested on quite different practices and beliefs. Each of these two perspectives contains some important truth (p. 1, The Oxford history of Greece and the Hellenistic world, Boardman, et. al).
Thanks to the British Museum! Go help choose their first YouTube series: https://youtu.be/luXVd6M-wQM The Rosetta Stone is one of the most famous archaeological finds in history: and it was the key to cracking Egyptian hieroglyphics. And while it took scholars years to work it out, there was one clue in there that helped unlock everything that followed. After hours in the British Museum, I went to explain...
In spite of their best efforts, the authorities of ancient Egypt never were able to resolve the problem of tomb robbing. Their best effort, Deir el-Medina, started to fail even before the decline of the New Kingdom and their earlier efforts were clearly unsuccessful; otherwise, there would have been no reason to construct the village and new necropolises.
Although some scholars have pointed to a decline in religious belief during the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (2040-1782 BCE) as a reason for the increase in tomb robbing, this claim is untenable. The evidence for a lack of religious belief in the Middle Kingdom comes from literary works, not inscriptions or official records, and can be interpreted in a number of different ways. Further, as noted, the problem of tomb robbers existed long before the Middle Kingdom.
Ancient Egyptians robbed the tombs of the wealthy for many of the same reasons people rob others in the present day: excitement, money, and a kind of empowerment in taking what one does not own. The argument that these people should have behaved better considering their belief system also does not hold up since it seems quite clear that many people, throughout history, may profess a belief they cannot live. All of the threats and all of the promises of punishment in the afterlife and terrible hauntings in this one could not deter anyone when, given the chance, they could break into a tomb and walk back out with a king’s treasure.
How did the Egyptians grapple with mortality? Is there an afterlife, and does this life impact it? Explore Egyptian myths of gods and goddesses, and consider the great achievements that resulted.
What are the three cultures that make up ancient Greece?
What were the Cycladic, Minoan, and Mycenaean cultures?
There is not Greece as we conceive of nations in the modern world and our understanding of the nation-state.
Instead those who shared Greek culture were associated with the ancient name of the area: Hellas. Two terms related to Greek civilization should be kept in mind: Hellenic and Hellenistic.
Hellenic is the culture the Greeks attribute to their civilization.
Classical Greek culture, especially philosophy, had a powerful influence on ancient Rome, which carried a version of it to many parts of the Mediterranean Basin and Europe. For this reason Classical Greece is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture and is considered the cradle of Western civilization.
As I would summarize this period: the Romans conquered the Greeks militarily; and yet, the Greeks conquered the Romans culturally. The three cultures that make up ancient Hellas begins with the Cycladic (map below).
Cycladic civilization (also known as Cycladic culture or The Cycladic period) is an Early Bronze Age culture of the Cyclades, Greece, in the Aegean Sea, spanning the period from approximately 3200–2000 BC.
The name "Cyclades" derives from the islands that form a circle ("kyklos" in Greek) around the sacred island of Delos, in the Aegean Sea.
Greek mythology mentions that the Cyclades were created by Poseidon, which transfigured the Nymphs Cyclades into islets when they angered him.
The Cycladic civilization flourished in the 3rd millennium BC, mostly because of the strategic geographical position of the island complex as well as of their mineral richness.
Every island presents its special characteristics and its own beauty; however, all of them share the fascinating coexistence of blue and white in the Cycladic architecture, the endless sandy beaches, the rocky landscapes the traditional settlements, the blue color of the sky and the Aegean Sea, the wind and the blinding sunshine.
https://youtu.be/umNf888sVc8
The significant Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Cycladic culture is best known for its schematic flat female idols carved out of the islands' pure white marble centuries before the great Middle Bronze Age ("Minoan") culture arose in Crete, to the south. These figures have been stolen from burials to satisfy the Cycladic antiquities market since the early 20th century. Only about 40% of the 1,400 figurines found are of known origin, since looters destroyed evidence of the rest.
A distinctive Neolithic culture amalgamating Anatolian and mainland Greek elements arose in the western Aegean before 4000 BC, based on emmer wheat and wild-type barley, sheep and goats, pigs, and tuna that were apparently speared from small boats (Rutter).
Excavated sites include Saliagos and Kephala (on Keos), which showed signs of copper-working. Each of the small Cycladic islands could support no more than a few thousand people, though Late Cycladic boat models show that fifty oarsmen could be assembled from the scattered communities (Rutter).
When the highly organized palace-culture of Crete arose, the islands faded into insignificance, with the exception of Delos, which retained its archaic reputation as a sanctuary through the period of Classical Greek civilization (see Delian League).
The chronology of Cycladic civilization is divided into three major sequences: Early, Middle and Late Cycladic.
The early period, beginning c. 3000 BC segued into the archaeologically murkier Middle Cycladic c. 2500 BC. By the end of the Late Cycladic sequence (c. 2000 BC) there was essential convergence between Cycladic and Minoan civilization.
There is some tension between the dating systems used for Cycladic civilization, one "cultural" and one "chronological".
The next Hellenic culture is the Minoan.
Minoan
The Minoan civilization was an Aegean Bronze Age civilization that arose on the island of Crete and other Aegean islands such as Santorini and flourished from approximately 3650 to 1400 BCE.
It was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of British archaeologist Arthur Evans. Will Durant referred to it as "the first link in the European chain."[2]
The Minoans!!! Ancient Civilization of Crete, Greece in 3D High Definition, 3:59
The Minoan civilization was an Aegean Bronze Age civilization that arose on the island of Crete and other Aegean islands and flourished from approximately 3650 to 1400 BC.[1] It was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century through the work of British archaeologist Arthur Evans. Historian Will Durant referred to it as "the first link in the European chain."[2]
It was not until roughly 5000 BC in the late Neolithic period, that the first signs of advanced agriculture appeared in the Aegean, marking the first signs of civilization. The term "Minoan" refers to the mythic King Minos. Minos was associated in Greek myth with the labyrinth and the minotaur, which Evans identified with the site at Knossos, the largest Bronze Age Minoan site. The poet Homer recorded a tradition that Crete once had 90 cities.
The Minoans were primarily a mercantile people engaged in overseas trade. Their pottery provides the best means of dating. As traders and artists, their cultural influence reached far beyond the island of Crete — throughout the Cyclades, to Egypt's Old Kingdom, to copper-bearing Cyprus, Canaan, and the Levantine coasts beyond, and to Anatolia. Some of its best art is preserved in the city of Akrotiri, on the island of Santorini, very near the Thera eruption.
Though we cannot read their language (Linear A), and there is much dispute, it is generally assumed there was little internal armed conflict in Minoan Crete itself, until the following Mycenaean period. The armed Mycenaeans or the eruption at Thera are two popular theories for the eventual demise of Minoan civilization around 1,400 BC.
https://youtu.be/P3Ez8drCIvc
There is recent stone tool evidence that humans – either prehuman hominins or early modern humans – reached the island of Crete perhaps as early as 130,000 years ago; however, the evidence for the first anatomically modern human presence dates to 10,000–12,000 years ago.[3][4] It was not until 5000 BCE in the Neolithic period that the first signs of advanced agriculture appeared in the Aegean, marking the beginning of civilization.
Mycenaean
The "Palace" and Grave Circle A at Mycenae, c. 1600-1100 B.C.E., 4:12
Speakers: Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Harris More free lessons at: http://www.khanacademy.org/video?v=S7...
Why would these structures be built where they are?
Various theories have been proposed for the end of this civilization, among them the Dorian invasion or activities connected to the “Sea People”.
Additional theories such as natural disasters and climatic changes have been also suggested. The Mycenaean period became the historical setting of much ancient Greek literature and mythology, including the Trojan Epic Cycle.
Who was Homer and what did he write?
“Literature & Liberal Arts”
Overview
The word “literature” comes from the Latin word that means writing. Writing is akin to reason and speech, which are distinctively human gifts: they distinguish us from other animals on earth. The phenomenon of literature is essentially human.
A letter from John Adams to his wife Abigail, written on May 12, 1780, encapsulates this course on the Great Books. Adams writes that his task is to make a revolution and to be a statesman for the sake of something beyond himself, and to which he must be obedient, which is summed up in the phrase found in the Declaration of Independence: “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”
Likewise, investing the time and effort in reading great literature prepares us for something beyond ourselves. Great literature invites us to think about those times and places when our honor will be tested, and when our souls will be revealed for what they are.
Discussion Questions
What does it mean to say literature is “essentially human”?
How is John Adams’ description of his task as a statesman analogous to the study of great books?
How can reading great literature help to prepare the human soul for honorable deeds?
"Homer's Iliad"
Overview
Homer’s Iliad can be best understood by examining some of its major major themes: rage, desire, delusion, deception, disaster and double-dealing, death and outrage, responsibility and evasion, and ultimately, glory. The poem tells the story of the Trojan War, and of Achilles, the greatest warrior of the Greeks.
The Iliad is a poem of rage: Rage is the first word of the poem, and Achilles’ rage is a major theme of the story.
The Iliad is a poem of desire, especially the characters’ desires that make them who they are, but also lead to their destruction.
The Iliad is a poem of delusion: The characters are constantly blaming the gods for their troubles instead of their own free will or choices.
The Iliad is a poem of deception, perhaps most notably in the case of Achilles’ friend Patroclus, who dies in battle because of Achilles’ lie.
The Iliad is a poem of disaster and double-dealing, especially the double-dealing of Achilles that leads to the disastrous death of his friend.
The Iliad is a poem of death and outrage: Achilles re-enters the battle against Troy after the death of Patroclus and kills numerous Trojans, including Hector, dragging his body around the walls of Troy.
This outrage turns Achilles’ glory from a high into a low point.
The Iliad is a poem of responsibility and evasion: Achilles has been evading his responsibility, but at the same time he is responsible for the death of his friend.
The Iliad ends when Zeus says he will bring the fighting to an end and grant Achilles his glory—a glory that Achilles wins not through battle, but by returning Hector’s body to his father. Achilles’ glory is to be free of his rage, which is the beginning of virtue.
Recommended Readings
"Illiad" - Homer https://online.hillsdale.edu/file/The-Iliad-Readings.pdf
Discussion Questions
How do the characters' desires both make them who they are, but also lead to their destruction?
Discuss the rage of Achilles. How does it make him great, but also lead to his downfall and eventual transformation?
What does the Illiad have to teach us about free will?
“Homer’s Odyssey”
Overview
Homer’s Odyssey—which tells the tale of the Greek hero Odysseus and his journey home after the fall of Troy—is one of the great works of Western Civilization. With this poem, Homer establishes the context in which the great cultural and political flowering of 5th century Athens takes place.
Though the Odyssey tells a story, it is not merely entertainment: It begins by invoking the Muse, in part because it is an attempt to discern meaning in a life that can be mysterious. Many aspects of life are easy to discern but difficult to understand. It is also an appeal to memory, without which we lose our identity as individuals, nations, and civilizations.
The main character Odysseus is a man of many turnings, well-traveled, and experienced. Rhetorically clever, though never merely deceptive, he exhibits a deep understanding of human nature. His words and deeds provide lessons about human nature that are still applicable today.
The poem addresses timeless themes of Western Civilization—including home, order and disorder, hospitality, fidelity, and loyalty. A pattern of good and bad representations of each major theme runs through the entire work. For example, social order or public peace begins in marriage, as represented by the unmovable marriage bed of Odysseus and Penelope, and the best claim to glory is not war but home and family.
Recommended Readings
"The Odyssey" - Homer https://online.hillsdale.edu/file/The-Odyssey.pdf
Discussion Questions
Why does Homer begin by invoking the Muse?
How does the cleverness of Odysseus reveal timeless truths about human nature?
What are some major themes of the poem, and how are they represented by Homer?
View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-science... Homer's "Odyssey" recounts the adventures of the Greek hero Odysseus during his journey home from the Trojan War. Though some parts may be based on real events, the encounters with monsters, giants and magicians are considered to be complete fiction. But might there be more to these myths than meets the eye? Matt Kaplan explains why there might be more reality behind the "Odyssey" than many realize. Lesson by Matt Kaplan, animation by Mike Schell.
ORIGINAL TRANSLATION A 1-25 Cherish the wrath in song. Goddess. Of Peleus' son Achilleus' destructiveness. The tens of thousands of Achaians whose pains were set into place. Many strong souled heroes, to Hades gone before there time. They then the spoils and tools of war beseech birds of prey of all kinds. This be Zeus' everlasting council. 5 Out, should we not then, with the first that set them apart in rivalry Atreides, also king of the high council of men, and Zeus-like Achilleus. Who shall we say of the Gods set common rivalry upon both warriors? Leto's and Zeus' son: Since then, ruling lameness through disease, upon the army he let loose this evil. Causing the tribes to perish. 10 It was pointless for Chryseus to prepare prayers for Atreide. While then coming quickly around the ships of the Achaians in a fury, he had also brought for his daughter the fixed ransom. With wreaths in hand as well as far-shooting Apollo's golden high sceptre. And releasing it always upon the Achaians. 15 The Atreides' then naturally were two. Commanders of the people. ‹‹Atreides and also you other Achaians with the well-wrought greaves. To you may the Gods grant, them who have bed-chambers on Olympus, complete destruction of Priam's city. Blessing your home-coming afterwards. The child of mine release friends. The ransom accept. 20 Regard with awe Zeus' son far-shooting Apollo.›› There the other Achaians of which all shouted out to accept in reverence the holy and pure ranson. But not Atreides Agamemnon who chose to delight in anger. Yet badly he discharged.
Holding the highest of word he spoke:
https://youtu.be/kSDO9FnWFWA
When he lived, as well as whether he lived at all, is unknown. Herodotus estimates that Homer lived no more than 400 years before his own time, which would place him at around 850 BCE or later.
Pseudo-Herodotus estimates that he was born 622 years before Xerxes I placed a pontoon bridge over the Hellespont in 480 BCE, which would place him at 1102 BCE, 168 years after the fall of Troy in 1270 BCE. These two end points are 252 years apart, representative of the differences in dates given by the other sources.
The importance of Homer to the ancient Greeks is described in Plato's Republic, which portrays him as the protos didaskalos, "first teacher", of the tragedians, the hegemon paideias, "leader of Greek culture", and the ten Hellada pepaideukon, "teacher of [all] Greece".[3]
Homer's works, which are about fifty percent speeches, provided models in persuasive speaking and writing that were emulated throughout the ancient and medieval Greek worlds.
Fragments of Homer account for nearly half of all identifiable Greek literary papyrus finds in Egypt.
VIDEO
Homer was some kind of poetic genius such as comes along every once in a while. A more likely scenario than West's [a scholar], better grounded in the scholarship, would imagine a man named Homer who dictated the Iliad and, later, the Odyssey (which never repeats a story told in theIliad), to a scribe in the very earliest days of alphabetic literacy.
He made use of oral stories of widely different kinds concerning the Trojan war, its heroes, and a wonderful story about a man who returned in disguise and killed a band of blackguards who besieged his house and threatened his wife.
In a sense, by casting his poems in an unprecedented writing technology, the very technology that West employs in his scholarship, Homer created the Western world with all its science and its other wonders. Homer has also supported generations of scholars—for that, at least, we should be grateful.
Everything you need to know to read Homer's "Odyssey" - Jill Dash, 4:56
An encounter with a man-eating giant. A sorceress who turns men into pigs. A long-lost king taking back his throne. On their own, any of these make great stories. But each is just one episode in the "Odyssey," a 12,000-line poem spanning years of ancient Greek history and legend. So how do we make sense of this massive text? Jill Dash shares everything you need to know to read Homer's "Odyssey.”
https://youtu.be/8Z9FQxcCAZ0
The Greeks of the sixth and early fifth centuries BCE understood by the works of "Homer", generally, "the whole body of heroic tradition as embodied in hexameter verse".[59]
Other works, such as the corpus of Homeric Hymns, the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog-Mouse War"), and the Margites, were also attributed to him.
Herodotus, the first historian, mentions both the Iliad and the Odyssey as works of Homer.
He quotes a few lines from them both, which are the same in today’s editions.
The passage quoted from the Iliad mentions that Paris stopped at Sidon before bringing Helen to Troy.
From the fact that the Cypria has Paris going directly to Troy from Sparta, Herodotus concludes that it was not written by Homer. The doubting process had begun.
There he won with a hymnos and took away the prize of a tripod, which he dedicated to the Muses of Mount Helicon, where he first began with aoide, “song.”
One of the vitae, the “Certamen”, picks up this theme. Homer and Hesiod were contemporaries, it says.
They both attended the funeral games of Amphidamas, conducted by his son, Ganyctor, and both contended in the contest of sophia, “wit.”
In it, one was required to ask a question of the other, who must reply in verse.
Unable to decide, the judge had them each recite from their poems.
Hesiod quoted Works and Days; Homer, ‘Iliad’, both as they are now, but neither poem can have been the modern.
Hesiod cannot have described beforehand the very event in which he was participating.
The Iliad is supposed to have been written already.
It is not called that, however. The victory was given to Hesiod because his poem was about peace, but Homer’s, about war.
After the contest, Homer continued his wandering, composing and reciting epic poetry.
The “Certamen” mentions the Thebais, quoting the first line, which differs but little from the first line of the Iliad as it is now.
It had 7000 lines, as did the subsequent Epigoni, with a similar first line.
The “Certamen” qualifies the attribution to Homer with “some say ….” Subsequently he wrote the epitaph for Midas’ tomb, for which he got a silver bowl, and then the Odyssey in 12,000 lines (today’s is 12110).
He had already written the Iliad in 15,500 lines (today’s is 15693). Just these three epics alone are 34,500 lines, word-for-word, we are asked to believe, without reference to the rest of the prodigious Epic Cycle.
Then he went to Athens, and to Argos, where he delivered lines 559-568 of Book 2 of the Iliad with the addition of two more not in the current version.
Subsequently he went to Delos, where he delivered the Hymn to Apollo, and was made a citizen of all the Ionian states. Going finally to Ios he slipped on some clay and suffered a fatal fall.
The term “Epic Cycle” (Epikos Kuklos) refers to a series of ten epic poems written by different authors purporting to tell an interconnected sequence of stories covering all Greek mythology.
Themes were selected from them for Greek drama as well.
The name appears in the Chrestomathia of Eutychius Proclus, a synopsis of Greek literature, known only through further abridged fragments written by Photios I of Constantinople. No etymology was given. Evelyn-White hypothesizes that they were “written round” the Iliad and Odyssey and had a “clearly imitative” structure. In this view Homer need have written no more than the Iliad, or the Iliad and Odyssey, with the Homeridae responsible for all the rest. The unity of theme and structure came from the close association of the authors in the guild or school.
Proclus does not subscribe to the authorships of the “Certamen”. He provides the names of other authors where they were available in his sources. These 10 epics, of which only Photius’ abridgements of Proclus’ synopses survive, and scattered fragments of other authors in other times, are as follows.
The Theban Cycle consists of three epics:[64] “Story of Oedipus” (Oidipodeia), 6600 lines by Cinaethon of Sparta, floruit 764 BCE;[65] “Thebaid” (Thebais), attributed to Homer;[66] and “Epigoni (Epigonoi), attributed to Homer.[67] The Trojan Cycle consists of six epics and the Iliad and Odyssey, eight in all:[62] “Cyprian Lays” (kupria) in 11 books, attributed to either Homer, Stasinus, a younger contemporary of Homer, or one Hegesias;[68] “Aethiopis” (Aithiopis) in five books, sequent of the Iliad, which is a sequent of Cypria, by Arctinus;[69] “Little Iliad” (Ilias Mikra) in four books by Lesches of Mitylene, floruit 660 BCE;[70] “Sack of Ilium” (Iliou Persis) by Arctinus;[71] “Returns” (Nostoi) by Agias of Troezen,[72] floruit 740 BCE; and “Telegony” (Telegonia), by Eugammon of Cyrene, floruit 567 BCE.
A basic documentary on the role of the Polis in ancient Greek society.
https://youtu.be/6r3kY4p5beY
Similar to what we saw earlier: why would this be a particularly advantageous to place a city?
The Ancient Greek city-state developed during the Archaic period as the ancestor of city, state, and citizenship and persisted (though with decreasing influence) well into Roman times, when the equivalent Latin word was civitas, also meaning "citizenhood", while municipium applied to a non-sovereign local entity.
The term "city-state", which originated in English (alongside the German Stadtstaat), does not fully translate the Greek term.
The poleis were not like other primordial ancient city-states like Tyre or Sidon, which were ruled by a king or a small oligarchy, but rather political entities ruled by their bodies of citizens.
The traditional view of archaeologists—that the appearance of urbanization at excavation sites could be read as a sufficient index for the development of a polis—was criticised by François Polignac in 1984 and has not been taken for granted in recent decades: the polis of Sparta, for example, was established in a network of villages.
The term polis, which in archaic Greece meant "city", changed with the development of the governance center in the city to signify "state" (which included its surrounding villages).
Finally, with the emergence of a notion of citizenship among landowners, it came to describe the entire body of citizens.
The ancient Greeks did not always refer to Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and other poleis as such; they often spoke instead of the Athenians, Lacedaemonians, Thebans and so on.
The body of citizens came to be the most important meaning of the term polis in ancient Greece.
When planning new cities or in establishing colonies a polis was the goal.
The Greek term that specifically meant the totality of urban buildings and spaces is ἄστυ (pronounced [ásty]).
The polis in Ancient Greek philosophy
Plato analyzes the polis in The Republic, whose Greek title, Πολιτεία (Politeia), itself derives from the word polis.
The best form of government of the polis for Plato is the one that leads to the common good.
Greek urban planning and architecture, public, religious, and private (see Hippodamian plan)
Temples, altars, and sacred precincts: one or more are dedicated to the poliouchos, the patron deity of the city; each polis kept its own particular festivals and customs (Political religion, as opposed to the individualized religion of later antiquity). Priests and priestesses, although often drawn from certain families by tradition, did not form a separate collegiality or class; they were ordinary citizens who on certain occasions were called to perform certain functions.
Political life: it revolved around the sovereign Ekklesia (the assembly of all adult male citizens for deliberation and voting), the standing boule and other civic or judicial councils, the archons and other officials or magistrates elected either by vote or by lot, clubs, etc., and sometimes punctuated by stasis (civil strife between parties, factions or socioeconomic classes, e.g., aristocrats, oligarchs, democrats, tyrants, the wealthy, the poor, large, or small landowners, etc.). They practised direct democracy.
Publication of state functions: laws, decrees, and major fiscal accounts were published, and criminal and civil trials were also held in public.
Synoecism, conurbation: Absorption of nearby villages and countryside, and the incorporation of their tribes into the substructure of the polis. Many of a polis' citizens lived in the suburbs or countryside. The Greeks regarded the polis less as a territorial grouping than as a religious and political association: while the polis would control territory and colonies beyond the city itself, the polis would not simply consist of a geographical area. Most cities were composed of several tribes or phylai, which were in turn composed of phratries (common-ancestry lineages), and finally génea (extended families).
Social classes and citizenship: Dwellers of the polis were generally divided into four types of inhabitants, with status typically determined by birth:
Citizens with full legal and political rights—that is, free adult men born legitimately of citizen parents. They had the right to vote, be elected into office, and bear arms, and the obligation to serve when at war.
Citizens without formal political rights but with full legal rights: the citizens' female relatives and underage children, whose political rights and interests were meant to be represented by their adult male relatives.
Citizens of other poleis who chose to reside elsewhere (the metics, μέτοικοι, métoikoi, literally "transdwellers"): though free-born and possessing full rights in their place of origin, they had full legal rights but no political rights in their place of residence. Metics could not vote, be elected to office, bear arms, or serve in war. They otherwise had full personal and property rights, albeit subject to taxation.
Slaves: chattel in full possession of their owner, and with no privileges other than those that their owner would grant (or revoke) at will.
How did the Greeks represent the ideal?
The kouros was seen as the ideal of the Greeks.
What does kouros mean?
A kouros (Ancient Greek: κοῦρος, plural kouroi) is the modern term[1] given to free-standing ancient Greek sculptures which first appear in the Archaic period in Greece and represent nude male youths.
Marble Statue of a Kouros (New York Kouros), c. 590–580 B.C.E. (Attic, archaic), Naxian marble, 194.6 x 51.6 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) More free lessons at: http://www.khanacademy.org/video?v=Ax...
https://youtu.be/Ax8vcxRtmHY
In Ancient Greek kouros means "youth, boy, especially of noble rank."
The term kouros, was first proposed for what were previously thought to be depictions of Apollo by V. I. Leonardos in 1895 in relation to the youth from Keratea, and adopted by Henri Lechat as a generic term for the standing male figure in 1904.
Such statues are found across the Greek-speaking world, the preponderance of these were found in sanctuaries of Apollo with more than one hundred from the sanctuary of Apollo Ptoios, Boeotia, alone.
These free-standing sculptures were typically marble, but also the form is rendered in limestone, wood, bronze, ivory and terracotta. They are typically life-sized, though early colossal examples are up to 3 meters tall.
The female sculptural counterpart of the kouros is the kore.
Who or what inspired the rise of democracy in Athens?
The Cyclades
Minoan Culture in Crete
Minoan Painting
Minoan Religion
One Goddess or Many?
The Palace of Minos
The Legend of Minos and the Minotaur
Mycenaean Culture on the Mainland
The Homeric Epics
The Ancient Greek Hero (Hours 6-11): The Hero in Epic and Iconography | HarvardX on edX |About Video
1:44
The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours (Hours 6-11): Signs of the Hero in Epic and Iconography
Focusing on the interaction of Homeric epic and the visual arts, this is the second of five modules on the Ancient Greek Hero as portrayed in classical literature, song, performance, art, and cult.
HUM 2.2x. The second of five modules in The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours, “Hours 6-11: Signs of the Hero in Epic and Iconography” explores the interactions of text and image in a culture where the “text” is not a written document but a live performance and where the “image” is not based on anything that is written down but exists as a free-standing medium of the visual arts, expressing the same myths that are being systematically expressed by the medium of Homeric poetry. Almost all of the images we will be studying are samples of a form of vase painting known as the “Black Figure” technique. We will practice how to “read” such a medium, analyzing what it tells us about ancient Greek heroes like Achilles, in conjunction with our “reading” the performance tradition of the Homeric Iliad itself.
It is important to keep in mind, as we read these images and texts together, that the myths expressed by these media were meant to be taken very seriously. In the ancient Greek song culture, myth was not mere fiction. Just the opposite: myth was a formulation of eternal cosmic truths! So, the myths conveyed by the images of the paintings we will study are just as “truthful,” from the standpoint of ancient Greek song culture, as are the related myths conveyed by the Homeric Iliad. We need to read both the texts and the images of these myths as an accurate formulation of an integral system of thought the expresses most clearly and authoritatively all those things that really matter in life.
Additionally, this module foregrounds the historical fact, explored more fully in the third module (“Hours 12-15: The Cult of Heroes”), that the heroes who were characters in the myths of ancient Greek epic, lyric, and other verbal media were at the same time worshipped as superhuman forces by the communities where their bodies were thought to be hidden from outsiders. When we take for example the Homeric Odyssey, we find that the main hero of this epic, Odysseus, was a cult hero, not only an epic hero. And the agenda that center on the idea of a cult hero, like the prospect of immortalization after death, can be clearly seen in the overall plot of the Odyssey, especially in the memorable scene where the hero experiences his homecoming to Ithaca at the same moment when the sun rises as he wakes from a mystical overnight sleep while sailing homeward.
See other courses in this series:
Module 1, “Hours 1-5: Epic and Lyric”
Module 3, “Hours 12-15: Cult of Heroes”
Module 4, “Hours 16-21: The Hero in Tragedy”
Module 5, “Hours 22-24: Plato and Beyond”
Although the story covers only a few weeks in the final year of the war, the Iliad mentions or alludes to many of the Greek legends about the siege; the earlier events, such as the gathering of warriors for the siege, the cause of the war, and related concerns tend to appear near the beginning.
Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles' looming death and the sack of Troy, prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly, so that when it reaches an end, the poem has told a more or less complete tale of the Trojan War.
The Iliad is paired with something of a sequel, the Odyssey, also attributed to Homer. Along with the Odyssey, the Iliad is among the oldest extant works of Western literature, and its written version is usually dated to around the eighth century BC.[2] Recent statistical modelling based on language evolution gives a date of 760–710 BC.[3] In the modern vulgate (the standard accepted version), the Iliad contains 15,693 lines; it is written in Homeric Greek, a literary amalgam of Ionic Greek and other dialects.
It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second oldest extant work of Western literature, the Iliad being the oldest. Scholars believe it was composed near the end of the 8th century BC, somewhere in Ionia, the Greek coastal region of Anatolia.[2]
The poem mainly focuses on the Greek hero Odysseus (known as Ulysses in Roman myths) and his journey home after the fall of Troy. It takes Odysseus ten years to reach Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan War.[3] In his absence, it is assumed he has died, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus must deal with a group of unruly suitors, the Mnesteres (Greek: Μνηστῆρες) or Proci, who compete for Penelope's hand in marriage.
It continues to be read in the Homeric Greek and translated into modern languages around the world. Many scholars believe that the original poem was composed in an oral tradition by an aoidos (epic poet/singer), perhaps a rhapsode (professional performer), and was more likely intended to be heard than read.[2]
The details of the ancient oral performance, and the story's conversion to a written work inspire continual debate among scholars. The Odyssey was written in a poetic dialect of Greek—a literary amalgam of Aeolic Greek, Ionic Greek, and other Ancient Greek dialects—and comprises 12,110 lines of dactylic hexameter.[4][5] Among the most noteworthy elements of the text are its non-linear plot, and the influence on events of choices made by women and serfs, besides the actions of fighting men. In the English language as well as many others, the word odyssey has come to refer to an epic voyage.
The Odyssey has a lost sequel, the Telegony, which was not written by Homer. It was usually attributed in antiquity to Cinaethon of Sparta. In one source, the Telegony was said to have been stolen from Musaeus by Eugamon or Eugammon of Cyrene (see Cyclic poets).
The Rise of the Greek City-States
Behavior of the Gods
The Polis
What was significant or distinctive about Sparta as a polis?
In antiquity the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (Λακεδαίμων, Lakedaímōn), while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement on the banks of the Eurotas River in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese.
Around 650 BC, it rose to become the dominant military land-power in ancient Greece.
Given its military pre-eminence, Sparta was recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces during the Greco-Persian Wars.
Between 431 and 404 BC, Sparta was the principal enemy of Athens during the Peloponnesian War, from which it emerged victorious, though at a great cost of lives lost.
Sparta's defeat by Thebes in the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC ended Sparta's prominent role in Greece.
It then underwent a long period of decline, especially in the Middle Ages, when many Spartans moved to live in Mystras.
Sparta was unique in ancient Greece for its social system and constitution, which configured their entire society to maximize military proficiency at all costs, and completely focused on military training and excellence.
Its inhabitants were classified as Spartiates (Spartan citizens, who enjoyed full rights), mothakes (non-Spartan free men raised as Spartans), perioikoi (free residents, literally "dwellers around"), and helots (state-owned serfs, enslaved non-Spartan local population).
Spartiates underwent the rigorous agoge training and education regimen, and Spartan phalanges were widely considered to be among the best in battle. Spartan women enjoyed considerably more rights and equality to men than elsewhere in the classical antiquity.
As the battle rages, Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey) attempts to rally support in Sparta for her husband. The story is framed by a voice-over narrative by the Spartan soldier Dilios (David Wenham). Through this narrative technique, various fantastical creatures are introduced, placing 300 within the genre of historical fantasy.
300 was released in both conventional and IMAX theaters in the United States on March 9, 2007, and on DVD, Blu-ray Disc, and HD DVD on July 31, 2007. The film received mixed reviews, receiving acclaim for its original visuals and style, but criticism for favoring visuals over characterization and its depiction of the ancient Persians in Iran, a characterization which some had deemed racist; however, the film was a box office success, grossing over $450 million, with the film's opening being the 24th largest in box office history at the time. A sequel, 300: Rise of an Empire, which is based on Miller's unpublished graphic novel prequel Xerxes, was released on March 7, 2014.
This is Sparta, 3:22
https://youtu.be/QkWS9PiXekE
The Sacred Sanctuaries
The sacred geography of ancient Greece, 6:49
The sacred geography of Ancient Greece.
The ancient Greek wised men claimed that the ancient Greek sanctuaries and cities were not founded in random places, but there was a mathematical and geometrical link between them. This claim meant to be proved nowadays by the use of modern resources. The equal distances between cities and sanctuaries that continually are being discovered, is the evidence that ancient Greece is a vast geometric world. The huge question is how the ancient Greek succeeded to use perfectly such a technology without the modern tools we have today? Which is the lost knowledge that it hasn' t been reached nowadays? A big thanks to my dear friend Kassandreia for the translation in English Music song : Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygene 2
https://youtu.be/fS4MeCZJ4XI
Olympia and the Olympic Games
The ancient origins of the Olympics - Armand D'Angour, 3:19
View full lesson:
http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-ancient-origins-of-the-olympics-armand-d-angour#review
Thousands of years in the making, the Olympics began as part of a religious festival honoring the Greek god Zeus in the rural Greek town of Olympia.
But how did it become the greatest show of sporting excellence on earth? Armand D’Angour explains the evolution of the Olympics.
Lesson by Armand D'Angour, animation by Diogo Viegas.
A man and woman are working in a government laboratory when the man discovers that a fellow scientist has perished during time travel. The female scientist offers to go in his place for the purpose of warning the Athenians of their doomed democracy. When she arrives in Ancient Athens, she meets an Athenian man whom she attempts to warn. Meanwhile, they discuss the differences between American and Athenian democracies before the female scientist heads back to the future, only to meet her own doom.
https://youtu.be/7hsJQTndbCM
Female Sculpture and the Worship of Athena
Athenian Pottery
Oakley: Athenian Potters and Painters, 2:14
Classical studies professor John Oakley previews the upcoming Athenian Potters and Painters conference as well as the complementary exhibition at the Muscarelle Museum of Art.
4:40 Consider these two great epics of heroes and choices, along with their virtues and flaws. Dip into these bedrock stories of the western tradition.
To meet the overall objectives we will cover the following topics in Part 1:
Minoan culture
The Minoan civilization flourished on the island of Crete from 2700 B.C. to 1450 B.C. Most historians believe it was destroyed by the Mycenaeans from the Greek mainland. The Mycenaean civilization consisted of powerful monarchies that flourished between 1600 B.C. and 1100 B.C. After the collapse of this civilization, Greece entered a period known as the Dark Age. Food production decreased, and the population declined. At the same time, Greeks sailed extensively on the Aegean Sea and settled on islands and in Asia Minor. Iron replaced bronze in the making of tools and weapons. During the eighth century, the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, and Homer wrote his famous epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, chronicling the Trojan War.
https://blackboard.strayer.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/HUM/111/1116/Week3-1116/Lecture2/player.html Alexander and the Hellenistic Era
http://gmicksmithsocialstudies.blogspot.com/2012/07/world-history-i-chapter-4-ancient_5032.html
Question 1: Multiple Choice
Why did the Neolithic era witness increased pottery creation?
Given Answer:
Fragile pottery was impractical for Paleolithic hunter-gatherers.
Correct Answer:
Fragile pottery was impractical for Paleolithic hunter-gatherers.
Question 2: Multiple Choice
The Ise shrine is razed and then rebuilt every 20 years to
Given Answer:
ritually celebrate renewal.
Correct Answer:
ritually celebrate renewal.
Question 3: Multiple Choice
According to the most recent discoveries, Stonehenge was constructed as a
Given Answer:
burial ground.
Correct Answer:
burial ground.
Question 4: Multiple Choice
In the Zuni emergence tale, the Pueblo people originated in
Given Answer:
the womb of Mother Earth.
Correct Answer:
the womb of Mother Earth.
Question 5: Multiple Choice
Japanese emperors claimed divinity as
Given Answer:
direct descendants of the sun goddess.
Correct Answer:
direct descendants of the sun goddess.
Question 6: Multiple Choice
Why is the Epic of Gilgamesh a first in known literary works?
Given Answer:
It is the first to confront the idea of death
Correct Answer:
It is the first to confront the idea of death
Question 7: Multiple Choice
What classic struggle do Gilgamesh and Enkidu represent?
Given Answer:
Nature versus civilization
Correct Answer:
Nature versus civilization
Question 8: Multiple Choice
What were ziggurats most likely designed to resemble?
Given Answer:
A mountain
Correct Answer:
A mountain
Question 9: Multiple Choice
Which of the following differentiates the Hebrews from other Near Eastern cultures?
Given Answer:
They worshipped a single god
Correct Answer:
They worshipped a single god
Question 10: Multiple Choice
As noted in the chapter's "Continuity and Change' section, what most distinguishes Mesopotamia from Egypt?
Given Answer:
The Egyptians had a more limited form of writing
Correct Answer:
The Egyptians were united by a more stable succession of rulers
3 The Stability of Ancient Egypt FLOOD AND SUN 67
The Nile and Its Culture 68
Egyptian Religion: Cyclical Harmony 70
Pictorial Formulas in Egyptian Art 71
The Old Kingdom 74
The Stepped Pyramid at Saqqara 74
Three Pyramids at Giza 75
Monumental Royal Sculpture: Perfection and Eternity 78
The Sculpture of the Everyday 79
The Middle Kingdom at Thebes 81
Middle Kingdom Literature 81
Middle Kingdom Sculpture 81
The New Kingdom 83
Temple and Tomb Architecture and Their Rituals 83
Akhenaten and the Politics of Religion 87
The Return to Thebes and to Tradition 89
The Late Period, the Kushites, and the Fall of Egypt 91
The Kushites 92
Egypt Loses Its Independence 92
READINGS
3.1 from Memphis, “This It Is Said of Ptah” (ca. 2300 bce) 71
3.2 The Teachings of Khety (ca. 2040–1648 bce) 95
3.3 from Akhenaten’s Hymn to the Sun (14th century bce) 88
3.4 from a Book of Going Forth by Day 90
FEATURES
CONTEXT
Major Periods of Ancient Egyptian History 70
Some of the Principal Egyptian Gods 71
The Rosetta Stone 77
CLOSER LOOK Reading the Palette of Narmer 72
MATERIALS & TECHNIQUES Mummification 86
CONTINUITY & CHANGE Mutual Influence through Trade 93
4 The Aegean World and the Rise of Greece TRADE, WAR, AND VICTORY 97
The Cultures of the Aegean 97
The Cyclades 98
Minoan Culture in Crete 99
Mycenaean Culture on the Mainland 102
The Homeric Epics 105
The Iliad 107
The Odyssey 108
The Greek Polis 110
Behavior of the Gods 112
The Competing Poleis 113
The Sacred Sanctuaries 114
Male Sculpture and the Cult of the Body 118
Female Sculpture and the Worship of Athena 120
Athenian Pottery 121
The Poetry of Sappho 123
The Rise of Athenian Democracy 124
Toward Democracy: Solon and Pisistratus 124
Cleisthenes and the First Athenian Democracy 125
READINGS
4.1 from Homer, Iliad, Book 16 (ca. 750 bce) 128
4.1a from Homer, Iliad, Book 24 (ca. 750 bce) 108
4.2 from Homer, Odyssey, Book 9 (ca 725 bce) 130
4.2a from Homer, Odyssey, Book 4 (ca. 725 bce) 108
4.2b from Homer, Odyssey, Book 1 (ca. 725 bce) 109
4.3 from Hesiod, Works and Days (ca. 700 bce) 112
4.4 from Hesiod, Theogony (ca. 700 bce) 112
4.5 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian Wars 113
4.6a–b Sappho, lyric poetry 124
4.7 from Aristotle’s Athenian Constitution 125
FEATURES
CONTEXT The Greek Gods 114
CLOSER LOOK The Classical Orders 116
CONTINUITY & CHANGE Egyptian and Greek Sculpture 126
Question 1: Multiple Choice
Why did the Egyptian sculptors idealize rulers in their sculptures?
Given Answer:
The rulers' perfection mirrored the perfection of the gods themselves
Correct Answer:
The rulers' perfection mirrored the perfection of the gods themselves
Question 2: Multiple Choice
Why are archaeologists so certain that Egypt had contact with other civilizations?
Given Answer:
Egyptian artifacts have been discovered throughout the Aegean, Mediterranean, and Mesopotamian worlds
Correct Answer:
Egyptian artifacts have been discovered throughout the Aegean, Mediterranean, and Mesopotamian worlds
Question 3: Multiple Choice
Which god did the Egyptians believe the king personified?
Given Answer:
Horus
Correct Answer:
Horus
Question 4: Multiple Choice
Why is Nebamun Hunting Birds a sort of visual pun?
Given Answer:
The artist depicts actions that reflect sexual procreation, not hunting
Correct Answer:
The artist depicts actions that reflect sexual procreation, not hunting
Question 5: Multiple Choice
The Egyptian word for sculpture is the same as the word for what other act?
Given Answer:
Giving birth
Correct Answer:
Giving birth
Question 6: Multiple Choice
Why is the palace at Knossos known as the House of the Double Axes?
Given Answer:
Representations of double axes decorated it
Correct Answer:
Representations of double axes decorated it
Question 7: Multiple Choice
What are the three orders of classical Greek architecture?
Given Answer:
Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian
Correct Answer:
Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian
Question 8: Multiple Choice
What is the Greek concept of arête?
Given Answer:
Being the best one can be
Correct Answer:
Being the best one can be
Question 9: Multiple Choice
The term ceramics comes from which of the following?
Given Answer:
Kerameikos, a cemetery in Athens
Correct Answer:
Kerameikos, a cemetery in Athens
Question 10: Multiple Choice
How do Minoan frescoes differ from Egyptian frescoes?
Given Answer:
Minoan frescoes appear on walls of homes and palaces, not tombs
Correct Answer:
Minoan frescoes appear on walls of homes and palaces, not tombs
Question 1: Multiple Choice
Why were Egyptians buried with Books of Going Forth by Day (Books of the Dead)?
Given Answer:
To help them survive the ritual of judgment
Correct Answer:
To help them survive the ritual of judgment
Question 2: Multiple Choice
Why did Egyptian artists paint human's faces, arms, legs, and feet in profile?
Given Answer:
They believed it was the most characteristic view
Correct Answer:
They believed it was the most characteristic view
Question 3: Multiple Choice
The Egyptian word for sculpture is the same as the word for what other act?
Given Answer:
Giving birth
Correct Answer:
Giving birth
Question 4: Multiple Choice
Why did the Egyptians bury their dead on the west side of the Nile?
Given Answer:
Because of the symbolic reference to death and rebirth, as the sun sets in the west
Correct Answer:
Because of the symbolic reference to death and rebirth, as the sun sets in the west
Question 5: Multiple Choice
Why can the reliefs on Ramses II's pylon gate at Luxor be viewed as propaganda rather than historical?
Given Answer:
The battle scene they describe was not the major success depicted
Correct Answer:
The battle scene they describe was not the major success depicted
Question 6: Multiple Choice
How do Minoan frescoes differ from Egyptian frescoes?
Given Answer:
Minoan frescoes were painted with oil, not water-based, pigment
Correct Answer:
Minoan frescoes appear on walls of homes and palaces, not tombs
Question 7: Multiple Choice
What new architectural form did the Mycenaeans develop to bury their kings?
Given Answer:
Tholos
Correct Answer:
Tholos
Question 8: Multiple Choice
As discussed in the chapter's "Continuity and Change," which of the following cultures seems to have had the greatest influence on Archaic Greek sculpture?
Given Answer:
Cycladic
Correct Answer:
Egyptian
Question 9: Multiple Choice
What is the Greek concept of arête?
Given Answer:
Being the best one can be
Correct Answer:
Being the best one can be
Question 10: Multiple Choice
Why are the more than 100 Aegean islands between mainland Greece and Crete known as the Cyclades?
Given Answer:
The islands form a rough circular shape
Correct Answer:
The islands form a rough circular shape
Question 1: Multiple Choice
Why were Egyptians buried with Books of Going Forth by Day (Books of the Dead)?
Given Answer:
To provide instructions for resurrection
Correct Answer:
To help them survive the ritual of judgment
Question 2: Multiple Choice
Why did the Egyptians believe that a good deity like Osiris required a bad deity like Seth?
Given Answer:
Opposites were necessary for balance, harmony, and cycles
Correct Answer:
Opposites were necessary for balance, harmony, and cycles
Question 3: Multiple Choice
What is one of the greatest changes that took place during the Middle Kingdom?
Given Answer:
Writing and literature moved from the sacred to the imaginative
Correct Answer:
Writing and literature moved from the sacred to the imaginative
Question 4: Multiple Choice
Why are archaeologists so certain that Egypt had contact with other civilizations?
Given Answer:
Egyptian artifacts have been discovered throughout the Aegean, Mediterranean, and Mesopotamian worlds
Correct Answer:
Egyptian artifacts have been discovered throughout the Aegean, Mediterranean, and Mesopotamian worlds
Question 5: Multiple Choice
Why was deciphering the Rosetta Stone so significant?
Given Answer:
The Stone provided the key to reading hieroglyphs
Correct Answer:
The Stone provided the key to reading hieroglyphs
Question 6: Multiple Choice
The term ceramics comes from which of the following?
Given Answer:
Kerameikos, a cemetery in Athens
Correct Answer:
Kerameikos, a cemetery in Athens
Question 7: Multiple Choice
Why are the more than 100 Aegean islands between mainland Greece and Crete known as the Cyclades?
Given Answer:
The islands form a rough circular shape
Correct Answer:
The islands form a rough circular shape
Question 8: Multiple Choice
Why is the palace at Knossos known as the House of the Double Axes?
Given Answer:
Representations of double axes decorated it
Correct Answer:
Representations of double axes decorated it
Question 9: Multiple Choice
How do Minoan frescoes differ from Egyptian frescoes?
Given Answer:
Minoan frescoes appear on walls of homes and palaces, not tombs
Correct Answer:
Minoan frescoes appear on walls of homes and palaces, not tombs
Question 10: Multiple Choice
What are the three orders of classical Greek architecture?
Given Answer:
Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian
Correct Answer:
Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian
Question 1: Multiple Choice
The Egyptian word for sculpture is the same as the word for what other act?
Given Answer:
Giving birth
Correct Answer:
Giving birth
Question 2: Multiple Choice
Why did the Egyptians believe that a good deity like Osiris required a bad deity like Seth?
Given Answer:
Opposites were necessary for balance, harmony, and cycles
Correct Answer:
Opposites were necessary for balance, harmony, and cycles
Question 3: Multiple Choice
What creature, part crocodile, part lion, and part hippopotamus, would devour the unworthy deceased at the final judgment?
Given Answer:
Ammit
Correct Answer:
Ammit
Question 4: Multiple Choice
Why was the Palette of Narmer created?
Given Answer:
For a votive gift to a god or goddess
Correct Answer:
For a votive gift to a god or goddess
Question 5: Multiple Choice
Why is Nebamun Hunting Birds a sort of visual pun?
Given Answer:
The artist depicts actions that reflect sexual procreation, not hunting
Correct Answer:
The artist depicts actions that reflect sexual procreation, not hunting
Question 6: Multiple Choice
What are the three orders of classical Greek architecture?
Given Answer:
Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian
Correct Answer:
Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian
Question 7: Multiple Choice
Why do we think the Cycladic figurines served a mortuary function?
Given Answer:
Most were found in graves
Correct Answer:
Most were found in graves
Question 8: Multiple Choice
Why is the palace at Knossos known as the House of the Double Axes?
Given Answer:
Representations of double axes decorated it
Correct Answer:
Representations of double axes decorated it
Question 9: Multiple Choice
The term ceramics comes from which of the following?
Given Answer:
Kerameikos, a cemetery in Athens
Correct Answer:
Kerameikos, a cemetery in Athens
Question 10: Multiple Choice
What is the Greek concept of arête?
Given Answer:
Being the best one can be
Correct Answer:
Being the best one can be
Question 1: Multiple Choice
What is Imhotep's distinction?
Given Answer:
He is the first artist or architect whose name survives
Correct Answer:
He is the first artist or architect whose name survives
Question 2: Multiple Choice
Why was deciphering the Rosetta Stone so significant?
Given Answer:
The Stone provided the key to reading hieroglyphs
Correct Answer:
The Stone provided the key to reading hieroglyphs
Question 3: Multiple Choice
The Egyptian word for sculpture is the same as the word for what other act?
Given Answer:
Giving birth
Correct Answer:
Giving birth
Question 4: Multiple Choice
Which god did the Egyptians believe the king personified?
Given Answer:
Horus
Correct Answer:
Horus
Question 5: Multiple Choice
What kind of government was found in Ancient Egypt?
Given Answer:
Theocracy
Correct Answer:
Theocracy
Question 6: Multiple Choice
How do we know that the Mycenaeans were a warlike people?
Given Answer:
Battle and hunting scenes dominate their art and massive stone gates
Correct Answer:
Battle and hunting scenes dominate their art and massive stone gates
Question 7: Multiple Choice
What is the Greek concept of arête?
Given Answer:
Being the best one can be
Correct Answer:
Being the best one can be
Question 8: Multiple Choice
What new architectural form did the Mycenaeans develop to bury their kings?
Given Answer:
Tholos
Correct Answer:
Tholos
Question 9: Multiple Choice
Why are the more than 100 Aegean islands between mainland Greece and Crete known as the Cyclades?
Given Answer:
The islands form a rough circular shape
Correct Answer:
The islands form a rough circular shape
Question 10: Multiple Choice
What is the bull associated with in Minoan art?
Given Answer:
Male virility and strength
Correct Answer:
Male virility and strength
Question 1: Multiple Choice
According to the most recent discoveries, Stonehenge was constructed as a
Given Answer:
burial ground.
Correct Answer:
burial ground.
Question 2: Multiple Choice
Japanese emperors claimed divinity as
Given Answer:
direct descendants of the sun goddess.
Correct Answer:
direct descendants of the sun goddess.
Question 3: Multiple Choice
The Shinto main sanctuary at Ise is always built of wood to
Given Answer:
demonstrate reverence for the natural world and tradition.
Correct Answer:
demonstrate reverence for the natural world and tradition.
Question 4: Multiple Choice
Paleolithic cave paintings may have been intended to do all of the following EXCEPT
Given Answer:
commemorate the dead buried in the caves.
Correct Answer:
commemorate the dead buried in the caves.
Question 5: Multiple Choice
The Ise shrine is razed and then rebuilt every 20 years to
Given Answer:
ritually celebrate renewal.
Correct Answer:
ritually celebrate renewal.
Question 6: Multiple Choice
What was the Mesopotamian ruler's role in religion?
Given Answer:
To act as intermediary between the gods and humans
Correct Answer:
To act as intermediary between the gods and humans
Question 7: Multiple Choice
What new technology followed agriculture in defining Mesopotamia?
Given Answer:
Metallurgy
Correct Answer:
Metallurgy
Question 8: Multiple Choice
What did lost-wax casting enable the Mesopotamian sculptors to create?
Given Answer:
More lifelike-looking bronze pieces
Correct Answer:
Larger and more lightweight bronze pieces
Question 9: Multiple Choice
What was the role of the Hebrew prophets in the era following Solomon's death?
Given Answer:
To provide moral instruction according to the laws of the Torah
Correct Answer:
To provide moral instruction according to the laws of the Torah
Question 10: Multiple Choice
Why is the Epic of Gilgamesh a first in known literary works?
Given Answer:
It is the first to confront the idea of death
Correct Answer:
It is the first to confront the idea of death
Question 1: Multiple Choice
Why was the Palette of Narmer created?
Given Answer:
For a votive gift to a god or goddess
Correct Answer:
For a votive gift to a god or goddess
Question 2: Multiple Choice
What radical change in Egyptian religion did Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) decree?
Given Answer:
He mandated worship of one god exclusively
Correct Answer:
He mandated worship of one god exclusively
Question 3: Multiple Choice
What was left behind by the Nile's annual flooding?
Given Answer:
Deep deposits of fertile soil
Correct Answer:
Deep deposits of fertile soil
Question 4: Multiple Choice
What is one of the greatest changes that took place during the Middle Kingdom?
Given Answer:
Writing and literature moved from the sacred to the imaginative
Correct Answer:
Writing and literature moved from the sacred to the imaginative
Question 5: Multiple Choice
The Egyptian word for sculpture is the same as the word for what other act?
Given Answer:
Giving birth
Correct Answer:
Giving birth
Question 6: Multiple Choice
As discussed in the chapter's "Continuity and Change," which of the following cultures seems to have had the greatest influence on Archaic Greek sculpture?
Given Answer:
Egyptian
Correct Answer:
Egyptian
Question 7: Multiple Choice
What new architectural form did the Mycenaeans develop to bury their kings?
Given Answer:
Tholos
Correct Answer:
Tholos
Question 8: Multiple Choice
What is the Greek concept of arête?
Given Answer:
Being the best one can be
Correct Answer:
Being the best one can be
Question 9: Multiple Choice
According to Greek legend, why did Greece sink into a Dark Ages around 1100 BCE?
Given Answer:
Dorians from the North overran Greece
Correct Answer:
Dorians from the North overran Greece
Question 10: Multiple Choice
What are the three orders of classical Greek architecture?
Given Answer:
Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian
Correct Answer:
Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian
Question 1: Multiple Choice Correct Why in part did Sparta form its own Peloponnesian League? Given Answer: Correct Athens' use of Delian Fund leagues to rebuild its acropolis Correct Answer: Athens' use of Delian Fund leagues to rebuild its acropolis out of 3 points Question 2: Multiple Choice Correct What qualities define Hellenistic art? Given Answer: Correct Animation, drama, and psychological complexity Correct Answer: Animation, drama, and psychological complexity out of 3 points Question 3: Multiple Choice Correct Why does Sophocles' Antigone oppose her uncle, Creon? Given Answer: Correct She believes that burying her brother is her democratic right Correct Answer: She believes that burying her brother is her democratic right out of 3 points Question 4: Multiple Choice Correct Why did fifth-century Greeks not see themselves as at the mercy of the gods? Given Answer: Correct They believed natural forces were knowable, not punishment from a god Correct Answer: They believed natural forces were knowable, not punishment from a god out of 3 points Question 5: Multiple Choice Correct With which cult was drama originally associated? Given Answer: Correct The cult of Dionysus Correct Answer: The cult of Dionysus out of 3 points Question 6: Multiple Choice Correct Why did Augustus permanently banish the poet Ovid from Rome? Given Answer: Correct For indiscretion and writing Ars Amatoria, a guidebook for having affairs Correct Answer: For indiscretion and writing Ars Amatoria, a guidebook for having affairs out of 3 points Question 7: Multiple Choice Correct What is the symbolic heart of a Roman domus? Given Answer: Correct The atrium Correct Answer: The atrium out of 3 points Question 8: Multiple Choice Correct Why was the Arch of Titus constructed? Given Answer: Correct To celebrate Titus's sack of the Second Temple of Jerusalem Correct Answer: To celebrate Titus's sack of the Second Temple of Jerusalem out of 3 points Question 9: Multiple Choice Correct Why, by the end of the third century, were the Romans justified in feeling politically and culturally threatened by the Christians? Given Answer: Correct Christians made up nearly one-tenth of the empire's population Correct Answer: Christians made up nearly one-tenth of the empire's population out of 3 points Question 10: Multiple Choice Correct Why was the Pantheon constructed with a 30-foot-diameter oculus (hole) in its roof? Given Answer: Correct To symbolize Jupiter's ever-watchful eye over Rome Correct Answer: To symbolize Jupiter's ever-watchful eye over Rome
Question 1: Multiple Choice Correct According to the most recent discoveries, Stonehenge was constructed as a Given Answer: Correct burial ground. Correct Answer: burial ground. out of 4 points Question 2: Multiple Choice Correct Paleolithic cave paintings may have been intended to do all of the following EXCEPT Given Answer: Correct commemorate the dead buried in the caves. Correct Answer: commemorate the dead buried in the caves. out of 4 points Question 3: Multiple Choice Correct In prehistoric times, communication with the spiritual world is thought to have been largely conducted in Given Answer: Correct Caves. Correct Answer: Caves. out of 4 points Question 4: Multiple Choice Correct Why can the potter’s wheel be considered one of the first mechanical and technological breakthroughs in history? Given Answer: Correct It allowed artisans to produce uniformly shaped vessels in short periods of time. Correct Answer: It allowed artisans to produce uniformly shaped vessels in short periods of time. out of 4 points Question 5: Multiple Choice Correct The Great Serpent Mound differs from most Hopewell mounds in its Given Answer: Correct absence of burial sites. Correct Answer: absence of burial sites. out of 4 points Question 6: Multiple Choice Correct As noted in the chapter's "Continuity and Change' section, what most distinguishes Mesopotamia from Egypt? Given Answer: Correct The Egyptians were united by a more stable succession of rulers Correct Answer: The Egyptians were united by a more stable succession of rulers out of 4 points Question 7: Multiple Choice Correct What classic struggle do Gilgamesh and Enkidu represent? Given Answer: Correct Nature versus civilization Correct Answer: Nature versus civilization out of 4 points Question 8: Multiple Choice Correct What is the Persian Zoroaster's greatest contribution to religious thought? Given Answer: Correct The emphasis on free will Correct Answer: The emphasis on free will out of 4 points Question 9: Multiple Choice Correct What was the role of the Hebrew prophets in the era following Solomon's death? Given Answer: Correct To provide moral instruction according to the laws of the Torah Correct Answer: To provide moral instruction according to the laws of the Torah out of 4 points Question 10: Multiple Choice Correct What does Hammurabi's code tell about the position of Mesopotamian women? Given Answer: Correct They were inferior to men, on the same level as slaves in some ways Correct Answer: They were inferior to men, on the same level as slaves in some ways
Question 1: Multiple Choice Correct Among prehistoric paintings, what is distinctive about the painting of a bird-headed man, a bison, and a rhinoceros in Lascaux Cave? Given Answer: Correct It is one of the few cave paintings to depict a human. Correct Answer: It is one of the few cave paintings to depict a human. out of 4 points Question 2: Multiple Choice Correct Which of the following statements reflects the changed thinking regarding prehistoric art due to the discovery of Chauvet Cave? Given Answer: Correct Art did not necessarily evolve in a linear progression from its early days in prehistory. Correct Answer: Art did not necessarily evolve in a linear progression from its early days in prehistory. out of 4 points Question 3: Multiple Choice Correct The Anasazi built their kivas with a small, round hole in the floor to Given Answer: Correct represent a belief that their ancestors emerged from the depths of the Earth. Correct Answer: represent a belief that their ancestors emerged from the depths of the Earth. out of 4 points Question 4: Multiple Choice Correct The Great Serpent Mound differs from most Hopewell mounds in its Given Answer: Correct absence of burial sites. Correct Answer: absence of burial sites. out of 4 points Question 5: Multiple Choice Correct Paleolithic cave paintings may have been intended to do all of the following EXCEPT Given Answer: Correct commemorate the dead buried in the caves. Correct Answer: commemorate the dead buried in the caves. out of 4 points Question 6: Multiple Choice Correct Why is the legend of Sargon I considered a "rags to riches" story? Given Answer: Correct Child abandoned at birth grows up to be king Correct Answer: Child abandoned at birth grows up to be king out of 4 points Question 7: Multiple Choice Correct What does Hammurabi's code tell about the position of Mesopotamian women? Given Answer: Correct They were inferior to men, on the same level as slaves in some ways Correct Answer: They were inferior to men, on the same level as slaves in some ways out of 4 points Question 8: Multiple Choice Correct What was the Mesopotamian ruler's role in religion? Given Answer: Correct To act as intermediary between the gods and humans Correct Answer: To act as intermediary between the gods and humans out of 4 points Question 9: Multiple Choice Correct What did lost-wax casting enable the Mesopotamian sculptors to create? Given Answer: Correct Larger and more lightweight bronze pieces Correct Answer: Larger and more lightweight bronze pieces out of 4 points Question 10: Multiple Choice Correct What classic struggle do Gilgamesh and Enkidu represent? Given Answer: Correct Nature versus civilization Correct Answer: Nature versus civilization Question 1: Multiple Choice Correct What do the Hopewell culture’s elaborate burials tell about them? Given Answer: Correct They had an extensive trade network. Correct Answer: They had an extensive trade network. out of 4 points Question 2: Multiple Choice Correct Implying a community’s sense of historical continuity, what was buried beneath some of the Neolithic Çatalhöyük houses? Given Answer: Correct human bodies and skulls Correct Answer: human bodies and skulls out of 4 points Question 3: Multiple Choice Correct Japanese emperors claimed divinity as Given Answer: Correct direct descendants of the sun goddess. Correct Answer: direct descendants of the sun goddess. out of 4 points Question 4: Multiple Choice Correct Venus of Willendorf’s original red color is suggestive of Given Answer: Correct menses. Correct Answer: menses. out of 4 points Question 5: Multiple Choice Correct The Anasazi built their kivas with a small, round hole in the floor to Given Answer: Correct represent a belief that their ancestors emerged from the depths of the Earth. Correct Answer: represent a belief that their ancestors emerged from the depths of the Earth. out of 4 points Question 6: Multiple Choice Correct Which of the following differentiates the Hebrews from other Near Eastern cultures? Given Answer: Correct They worshipped a single god Correct Answer: They worshipped a single god out of 4 points Question 7: Multiple Choice Correct What were ziggurats most likely designed to resemble? Given Answer: Correct A mountain Correct Answer: A mountain out of 4 points Question 8: Multiple Choice Correct What about the Royal Standard of Ur illustrates social perspective or hierarchy of scale? Given Answer: Correct The most important figures are represented as larger than others Correct Answer: The most important figures are represented as larger than others out of 4 points Question 9: Multiple Choice Correct What new technology followed agriculture in defining Mesopotamia? Given Answer: Correct Metallurgy Correct Answer: Metallurgy out of 4 points Question 10: Multiple Choice Correct Why did visitors to the ziggurats often leave a statue representing themselves? Given Answer: Correct To serve as prayer offerings to the gods Correct Answer: To serve as prayer offerings to the gods
Question 1: Multiple Choice Correct Why was deciphering the Rosetta Stone so significant? Given Answer: Correct The Stone provided the key to reading hieroglyphs Correct Answer: The Stone provided the key to reading hieroglyphs out of 4 points Question 2: Multiple Choice Correct How are the figures on the Palette of Narmer similar to those on the Mesopotamian Royal Standard of Ur? Given Answer: Correct The king is shown as larger than anyone else Correct Answer: The king is shown as larger than anyone else out of 4 points Question 3: Multiple Choice Correct What creature, part crocodile, part lion, and part hippopotamus, would devour the unworthy deceased at the final judgment? Given Answer: Correct Ammit Correct Answer: Ammit out of 4 points Question 4: Multiple Choice Correct On what measure are the squares in the Egyptian grid system based? Given Answer: Correct One clenched fist Correct Answer: One clenched fist out of 4 points Question 5: Multiple Choice Correct How can we tell that an Egyptian statue portrays a lesser person? Given Answer: Correct Lesser persons' statues were often made of less permanent materials Correct Answer: Lesser persons' statues were often made of less permanent materials out of 4 points Question 6: Multiple Choice Correct How do we know that the Mycenaeans were a warlike people? Given Answer: Correct Battle and hunting scenes dominate their art and massive stone gates Correct Answer: Battle and hunting scenes dominate their art and massive stone gates out of 4 points Question 7: Multiple Choice Correct How do Minoan frescoes differ from Egyptian frescoes? Given Answer: Correct Minoan frescoes appear on walls of homes and palaces, not tombs Correct Answer: Minoan frescoes appear on walls of homes and palaces, not tombs out of 4 points Question 8: Multiple Choice Correct According to Greek legend, why did Greece sink into a Dark Ages around 1100 BCE? Given Answer: Correct Dorians from the North overran Greece Correct Answer: Dorians from the North overran Greece out of 4 points Question 9: Multiple Choice Correct The term ceramics comes from which of the following? Given Answer: Correct Kerameikos, a cemetery in Athens Correct Answer: Kerameikos, a cemetery in Athens out of 4 points Question 10: Multiple Choice Correct What new architectural form did the Mycenaeans develop to bury their kings? Given Answer: Correct Tholos Correct Answer: Tholos
Hand in at the end of class and I will return your Learning Story next week.
3 The Stability of Ancient Egypt FLOOD AND SUN 67
The Nile and Its Culture 68
Egyptian Religion: Cyclical Harmony 70
Pictorial Formulas in Egyptian Art 71
The Old Kingdom 74
The Stepped Pyramid at Saqqara 74
Three Pyramids at Giza 75
Monumental Royal Sculpture: Perfection and Eternity 78
The Sculpture of the Everyday 79
The Middle Kingdom at Thebes 81
Middle Kingdom Literature 81
Middle Kingdom Sculpture 81
The New Kingdom 83
Temple and Tomb Architecture and Their Rituals 83
Akhenaten and the Politics of Religion 87
The Return to Thebes and to Tradition 89
The Late Period, the Kushites, and the Fall of Egypt 91
The Kushites 92
Egypt Loses Its Independence 92
READINGS
3.1 from Memphis, “This It Is Said of Ptah” (ca. 2300 bce) 71
3.2 The Teachings of Khety (ca. 2040–1648 bce) 95
3.3 from Akhenaten’s Hymn to the Sun (14th century bce) 88
3.4 from a Book of Going Forth by Day 90
FEATURES
CONTEXT
Major Periods of Ancient Egyptian History 70
Some of the Principal Egyptian Gods 71
The Rosetta Stone 77
CLOSER LOOK Reading the Palette of Narmer 72
MATERIALS & TECHNIQUES Mummification 86
CONTINUITY & CHANGE Mutual Influence through Trade 93
4 The Aegean World and the Rise of Greece TRADE, WAR, AND VICTORY 97
The Cultures of the Aegean 97
The Cyclades 98
Minoan Culture in Crete 99
Mycenaean Culture on the Mainland 102
The Homeric Epics 105
The Iliad 107
The Odyssey 108
The Greek Polis 110
Behavior of the Gods 112
The Competing Poleis 113
The Sacred Sanctuaries 114
Male Sculpture and the Cult of the Body 118
Female Sculpture and the Worship of Athena 120
Athenian Pottery 121
The Poetry of Sappho 123
The Rise of Athenian Democracy 124
Toward Democracy: Solon and Pisistratus 124
Cleisthenes and the First Athenian Democracy 125
READINGS
4.1 from Homer, Iliad, Book 16 (ca. 750 bce) 128
4.1a from Homer, Iliad, Book 24 (ca. 750 bce) 108
4.2 from Homer, Odyssey, Book 9 (ca 725 bce) 130
4.2a from Homer, Odyssey, Book 4 (ca. 725 bce) 108
4.2b from Homer, Odyssey, Book 1 (ca. 725 bce) 109
4.3 from Hesiod, Works and Days (ca. 700 bce) 112
4.4 from Hesiod, Theogony (ca. 700 bce) 112
4.5 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian Wars 113
4.6a–b Sappho, lyric poetry 124
4.7 from Aristotle’s Athenian Constitution 125
FEATURES
CONTEXT The Greek Gods 114
CLOSER LOOK The Classical Orders 116
CONTINUITY & CHANGE Egyptian and Greek Sculpture 126
Briefly, what is your Learning Story for Week 1?
Week 2 Discussion Option A
"Egyptian Love Poetry and Mummies" Please respond to the following, using sources under the Explore heading as the basis of your response:
From the samples of Egyptian love poetry, identify one (1) or two (2) lines that you especially enjoy or find interesting, and compare this poetry to some aspect of modern life. Next, describe two (2) aspects of Egyptian mummification and the early Egyptians’ beliefs related to mummification that you find surprising or intriguing. These funerary practices were driven by certain Egyptian ideas of the afterlife; compare these to modern beliefs and practices.
"Ancient Greece and Athletics" Please respond to the following, using sources under the Explore heading as the basis of your response:
Describe the ancient Greek competitive character, and compare the ancient Olympics (as a festival featuring athletics) to the Olympics today, identifying any major differences. Explain what the Olympic rules regarding females and evidence, such as the "running girl" artifact, reveal about female status and Greek athletics in particular Greek city-states.
Explore
Ancient Greek Athletics and Female Status
Chapter 4 (p. 118), Olympics. Chapters 4 (pp. 113-114), women in Sparta; For Athens later, see pp. 137-8.
What Questions do you have after learning about this week’s material?
What material needs to be reviewed next week?
HUM 111 Week 2
What is your reaction to Egyptian Love Poetry?
Were the ancient Olympics just for men?
What do we know about Egyptian music? Instruments? Does the music sound like any other music?
How did ancient Greek music sound? What instruments are found?
How did the Rosetta Stone unlock hieroglyphics?
What are the steps of mummification?
How would you summarize ancient Greece? What are the three cultures?
Where did the Greeks build, such as in Mycenaean Greece, and why?
Who was Homer, not Simpson, and what did he write?
What is a myth? What is science?
What do we know about the Greek polis?
What does kouros mean and how did sculpture evolve?
What else did you learn about the Greeks? Athens vs. Sparta, sacred geography, Olympics, democracy
Question 1: Multiple Choice Correct Why was the Palette of Narmer created? Given Answer: Correct For a votive gift to a god or goddess Correct Answer: For a votive gift to a god or goddess out of 4 points Question 2: Multiple Choice Correct What radical change in Egyptian religion did Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) decree? Given Answer: Correct He mandated worship of one god exclusively Correct Answer: He mandated worship of one god exclusively out of 4 points Question 3: Multiple Choice Correct What was left behind by the Nile's annual flooding? Given Answer: Correct Deep deposits of fertile soil Correct Answer: Deep deposits of fertile soil out of 4 points Question 4: Multiple Choice Correct What is one of the greatest changes that took place during the Middle Kingdom? Given Answer: Correct Writing and literature moved from the sacred to the imaginative Correct Answer: Writing and literature moved from the sacred to the imaginative out of 4 points Question 5: Multiple Choice Correct The Egyptian word for sculpture is the same as the word for what other act? Given Answer: Correct Giving birth Correct Answer: Giving birth out of 4 points Question 6: Multiple Choice Correct As discussed in the chapter's "Continuity and Change," which of the following cultures seems to have had the greatest influence on Archaic Greek sculpture? Given Answer: Correct Egyptian Correct Answer: Egyptian out of 4 points Question 7: Multiple Choice Correct What new architectural form did the Mycenaeans develop to bury their kings? Given Answer: Correct Tholos Correct Answer: Tholos out of 4 points Question 8: Multiple Choice Correct What is the Greek concept of arête? Given Answer: Correct Being the best one can be Correct Answer: Being the best one can be out of 4 points Question 9: Multiple Choice Correct According to Greek legend, why did Greece sink into a Dark Ages around 1100 BCE? Given Answer: Correct Dorians from the North overran Greece Correct Answer: Dorians from the North overran Greece out of 4 points Question 10: Multiple Choice Correct What are the three orders of classical Greek architecture? Given Answer: Correct Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian Correct Answer: Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian Question 1: Multiple Choice Correct How can we tell that an Egyptian statue portrays a lesser person? Given Answer: Correct Lesser persons' statues were often made of less permanent materials Correct Answer: Lesser persons' statues were often made of less permanent materials out of 4 points Question 2: Multiple Choice Correct What is one of the greatest changes that took place during the Middle Kingdom? Given Answer: Correct Writing and literature moved from the sacred to the imaginative Correct Answer: Writing and literature moved from the sacred to the imaginative out of 4 points Question 3: Multiple Choice Correct Why did the Egyptians go to such lengths to preserve the dead? Given Answer: Correct They believed the deceased's ka and ba would not recognize a decomposed body Correct Answer: They believed the deceased's ka and ba would not recognize a decomposed body out of 4 points Question 4: Multiple Choice Correct What radical change in Egyptian religion did Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) decree? Given Answer: Correct He mandated worship of one god exclusively Correct Answer: He mandated worship of one god exclusively out of 4 points Question 5: Multiple Choice Correct Why is Nebamun Hunting Birds a sort of visual pun? Given Answer: Correct The artist depicts actions that reflect sexual procreation, not hunting Correct Answer: The artist depicts actions that reflect sexual procreation, not hunting out of 4 points Question 6: Multiple Choice Correct Why is the palace at Knossos known as the House of the Double Axes? Given Answer: Correct Representations of double axes decorated it Correct Answer: Representations of double axes decorated it out of 4 points Question 7: Multiple Choice Correct How do we know that the Mycenaeans were a warlike people? Given Answer: Correct Battle and hunting scenes dominate their art and massive stone gates Correct Answer: Battle and hunting scenes dominate their art and massive stone gates out of 4 points Question 8: Multiple Choice Correct What is the bull associated with in Minoan art? Given Answer: Correct Male virility and strength Correct Answer: Male virility and strength out of 4 points Question 9: Multiple Choice Incorrect How do Minoan frescoes differ from Egyptian frescoes? Given Answer: Incorrect Minoan frescoes present dimension, unlike the Egyptian flat composite Correct Answer: Minoan frescoes appear on walls of homes and palaces, not tombs out of 4 points Question 10: Multiple Choice Correct What is the Greek concept of arête? Given Answer: Correct Being the best one can be Correct Answer: Being the best one can be
Thick lyre with larger dimensions and more strings than the thin variety briefly appear in Anatolia around 1400 BC. However, they were used in Egypt from about 2000 BC and into the Greek Period in Egypt. Giant lyres became popular during the reign of Akhenaten. Some were even large enough to accommodate dual players. Though giant lyre players can be seen wearing Canaanite costumes, there are no giant lyres yet known from the Palestinian region. However, in Mesopotamia, giant lyres are known from engraved seals found at Uruk and Susa that date to around 2500 BC.
Various titles provide some information on musician's social organization. The best documented of these were referred to a "hnr". They sang, danced and clapped hands in temples, palaces and funerary settings. This type of group flourished from about 2500 through 1500 BC and during the Ramessid Period. At first, these groups had only female members and overseers, but males integrated these ensembles during the 5th Dynasty and became the sole overseers of such groups during the Middle Kingdom. Royal women were frequently members of these groups, which were attached to palaces, temples and funerary estates. They performed secular music along with sacred singing and also performed for the deceased. The female members of the group wore light dresses and hair braided into plaits, with balls dangling from the ends. Men usually wore narrow belts or kilts.
Workers harvesting flax are being accompanied by a fluteplayer. The overseer Iankhef leaning on his staff of office exhorts the musician: "O fellow, blow and do not oppose our officialdom!"
Egyptian musical instruments were well developed and varied. They included string instruments such as harps, lyres, lutes, percussion instruments like drums, rattles, tambourines, bells (first used during the Late Period) and cymbals (Roman Period), wind instruments like flutes, clarinets, double pipes, trumpets, and oboes. 
Flutes were among the first musical instruments used. Double flutes were at first made of two parallel pipes, but later the two pipes were separated and set at an acute angle. They are still used in Egypt today. 
Sekhmet and Bes were sometimes associated with percussion instruments, in particular with frame drums. The sistrum and the menat, two small flat slabs of wood or ivory similar to a castanet, were generally dedicated to Hathor, the goddess of banquets and music making. But the sistrum was also used in the worship of the other gods, the Aton during the Amarna Period 
For sociable banquets the dancing girls were often selected from among the servants or the women living in the harem of the nobleman in whose house the party was held; possibly professional dancers were also hired for these occasions. Pictures of such gatherings show girls performing slow elegant dance steps, which may have alternated with wild acrobatic movements. 
Dancing was also part of religious functions. According to tomb depictions staid ritual dances seem to have been performed by the muu, men wearing crowns of reeds. [9][2][3][8] 
Angular harp
Arched harp 
Why did the Neolithic era witness increased pottery creation?
Fragile pottery was impractical for Paleolithic hunter-gatherers.
Minoan frescoes were painted with oil, not water-based, pigment
