The Ancient World: Peoples, Powers, and Politics
A Time Before Abraham and Sarah
From Abraham to the Time of Moses
One God, One People
Hundreds
of years before the people of Israel took over the land known as
Canaan, their ancestors came from Mesopotamia, a land between the
Tigris and Euphrates rivers far to the east. In fact, the word
Mesopotamia means, “land between two rivers.” Israelites trace their
history back to Abraham, whose father Terah came from Ur (Gen 11.26-28).
Abraham and his wife Sarah traveled north with Terah along the
Euphrates River valley to a place called Haran, which was located in
the far northwestern part of Mesopotamia. Terah wanted to settle in the
land of Canaan, to the southwest and near the Mediterranean Sea, but he
died in Haran (Gen 11.31,32).
At Haran, God spoke to Abraham and told him to go to Canaan, the land
promised to Abraham's descendants. Abraham followed God's commands and
went to Canaan around 1900 B.C.
Chapters 12-50 of Genesis tell
about Abraham and Sarah's journeys and how their children and
grandchildren lived as wandering herders (nomads). One of Abraham's
grandsons, Jacob, was also known by the name Israel, which means “one
who wrestles with God” (Gen 32.27,28). Jacob had twelve sons, including Joseph, who became an important leader in Egypt (Gen 41.37-57).
At the end of Genesis, Jacob and his family, who were the ancestors of
the people of Israel, travel to Egypt and are about to become the
slaves of the Egyptian people. How would God's people become the nation
of Israel and live in the land God promised to give them if they were
slaves in another land? More will be said about this later. First, it
will be helpful to take a look back to the centuries before Abraham was
born and find out more about the peoples and nations that existed in
the ancient Near East.
Genesis 11.26-25.11
tells about the life of Abraham and how he traveled from his home, Ur,
on the Euphrates River in the east, and eventually settled in Canaan.
When Abraham was living in Haran in northern Mesopotamia, the Lord told
him to go to the land that would be shown to him. The Lord said he
would bless Abraham and make his descendants a great nation (Gen 12.1-3).
Abraham is an important ancestor of the people of Israel, who would
later conquer the Canaanites and settle in the land originally promised
to Abraham.
A Time Before Abraham and Sarah
The
most important civilizations of the ancient Near East developed in
great river valleys. In the east was Mesopotamia, located in the river
valleys and plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. In the west
was Egypt, which grew to be a strong nation beside the Nile River, the
longest river in the world. In between lay the land of Canaan, west of
the Jordan River. The Jordan River, fed by mountain streams, flowed
past fertile land that could be used for growing crops. Perhaps even
more important, Canaan was a kind of land bridge that connected Egypt
and other peoples of the Mediterranean kingdoms to the people of
Mesopotamia, Babylonia, and Assyria.
Discoveries
at Jericho show that people lived in villages in Canaan, Egypt, and
Mesopotamia even before 5000 b.c. (For more on Jericho, see the
article “Archaeology and the Bible."
However, the first true civilization arose around 4000 B.C. in southern
Mesopotamia near the Persian Gulf. At that time, the Sumerian people
moved into the area, possibly from south central Asia. The Sumerians
built cities, made canals to bring water to their fields, and created
hand-painted pottery. Around 3500 b.c. they invented a system of
writing called cuneiform. From 2860 to 2360 b.c., the Sumerian culture
was made up of a number of powerful city-states. Each city-state had
its own ruler and another leader who was in charge of the city's
temple, which was built to honor the god of that city. Sumerians
worshiped many different gods. These gods formed a kind of heavenly
council led by Enlil, god of the storm. When conflicts arose between
city-states, they were thought to be a result of conflicts among the
gods. The Sumerians were one of the first people to develop a legal
code, laws that reflected their sense of right and wrong. They believed
that earthly (human) laws should reflect the laws of the gods.
The
Akkadian people also lived in Mesopotamia, just north of the Sumerians.
Around 2360 b.c., the Akkadian rulers gained power and created a true
empire in Mesopotamia. They built palaces, which replaced the temples
as the centers of power. Gradually, their language began to replace the
Sumerian language.
While cultures were
developing in Mesopotamia, Egyptian culture was developing in Africa.
Before 3000 b.c., Egypt was divided into two main kingdoms, one in
Upper Egypt (south of Cairo) and the other in Lower Egypt. (Though
called “lower” because it is downstream in the Nile Delta, Lower Egypt
is actually in northern Egypt.) The kind of writing known as
hieroglyphics had already been invented. Around 2900 b.c., Egypt began
to unite into one kingdom. This period (2675-2180 b.c.) is known as the
Old Kingdom.
Egyptian
religion centered on the nation's leader, the pharaoh, who was not
simply appointed by a god (as in Mesopotamia) but was considered to be
a god. All of Egypt and its resources belonged to the pharaoh. No law
code was developed in Egypt because the word of the pharaoh was the
law. Egyptians believed that the world existed in a changeless order
from the time of creation, and had a repeating rhythm like the floods
of the Nile River. In this period, the Egyptians believed in many gods,
but the main one was the pharaoh, the god-king, who was thought to live
in the world of the gods after he died.
During this period, many
cities sprang up in Canaan as well, but no single city-state dominated
the others. The language of the Canaanites was likely the ancestor of
the Hebrew language, the language spoken by the Israelite people. The
Canaanite peoples also believed in a number of gods, such as Baal, the
most powerful of all gods, and Astarte, the goddess of fertility.
Two
centuries or so before the time of Abraham, the great kingdoms in both
Mesopotamia and Egypt suffered confusing and difficult times. The Guti
and other peoples from the north invaded Mesopotamia and defeated the
Akkadians. Eventually, in Egypt, rival pharaohs each claimed to be the
true leader of Egypt. Without one leader, local towns formed their own
governments. Then, nomadic peoples (wandering herders) entered Egypt,
causing more confusion. Irrigation of fields was not kept up, which led
to food shortages and starvation (famines). In Canaan, nomadic peoples
invaded and destroyed many cities. The area became dotted with small,
poorly constructed villages.
In the century
before Abraham, the Sumerian people, led by the kings of Ur, defeated
the Guti people and once again ruled in Mesopotamia. But soon after,
the Sumerian language began to disappear as the Sumerian and Akkadian
peoples became more mixed. The Akkadian language became an important
international language used throughout much of the ancient Near East.
In Egypt, a powerful family in the city of Thebes (Upper Nile) was able
to reunite the land and finally put an end to confusion. Egypt then
entered a stable and prosperous period known as the Middle Kingdom.
Writing in the Ancient World. It
is difficult to say exactly when human beings first began to record
their thoughts in writing, but sometime before 3000 b.c. a pictorial
method of recording language was being used in Mesopotamia.
Hieroglyphics were a form of pictorial writing used by the ancient
Egyptians. A scribe in the pharaoh’s court would have needed to know
seven hundred different hieroglyphics to keep the court records. At
Sumer, however, the pictorial symbols developed into what is called
cuneiform, a combination of pictorial and phonetic (sound-based)
symbols to represent sounds and words. Alphabetic writing is a system
of recording language that uses purely phonetic symbols (letters). Most
cultures can represent all the words in their language using fewer than
thirty letters. The Phoenicians, who lived on the eastern coast of the
Mediterranean Sea, are credited with having invented the alphabet
around 1500 b.c. The Greeks and the Hebrews quickly adopted alphabetic
writing.
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From Abraham to the Time of Moses
During
the nearly six hundred years between the time of Abraham and the time
of Moses, Amorite people who were centered in Babylon ruled the land of
Mesopotamia. Later, the Assyrians from the north took over the area.
Cities such as Mari and Babylon became powerful and had many beautiful
temples and palaces. The Babylonian ruler named Hammurabi (1792-1750
b.c.) is known for his famous law code, which has similarities to laws
in the Old Testament. For example, the “eye for eye, tooth for tooth”
law in Exodus 21.23-25 is similar to some of the laws in Hammurabi’s
Code. When Hittite invaders from the north defeated the Babylonians and
ended their rule, much of the Near East entered a period of confusion.
Also
around this time, Egypt had moved into a period known as the Middle
Kingdom (around 2181 b.c.), which followed the Old Kingdom. The Middle
Kingdom lasted until the Hyksos people invaded around 1800 b.c. The
Hyksos were probably from northwest of Mesopotamia, north of the
Mediterranean Sea, and they may have worshiped the gods of the
Canaanites (see above). They ruled in Egypt for nearly two hundred
years, until Egyptian rulers, who created what is known as the New
Kingdom around 1600 b.c., drove the Hyksos out. Some time around the
beginning of the New Kingdom, the descendants of Jacob (Israel)
traveled to Egypt seeking food, because of a famine in Canaan (Gen 41.56–42.2; 46.1-4).
They apparently stayed on in Egypt for many generations. Eventually,
these descendants of Abraham, who were known as Hebrews, became slaves
in Egypt (Exod 1.8-14).
A child called Moses was born to Hebrew parents in Egypt at a time when
the pharaoh of Egypt was trying to cut down the Hebrew population by
having Hebrew male babies killed (Exod 1.1-22).
Moses’ mother and sister were able to save Moses from this fate and
eventually he was adopted by pharaoh's daughter and raised in the royal
household (Exod 2.1-10). When he was a young man, Moses killed an Egyptian guard and had to escape from Egypt (Exod 2.11-15). He later returned (Exod 4.18-20),
probably during the reign of the Egyptian pharaoh Rameses II (1279-1212
b.c.). Finally, with God's help, Moses led the Hebrew people out of
Egypt and toward the land God had promised to give Abraham and his
descendants–Canaan.
Egypt. The
life-giving waters and fertile banks of the Nile gave birth to one of
the great civilizations of the ancient world, thousands of years before
the time of Christ. Some of its oldest monuments, the Great Pyramids
(tombs of kings called “pharaohs”) and the mysterious Sphinx, were as
ancient to the people of Jesus' day as the Coliseum in Rome is to us
today. The Egyptians built the Temple of Karnak, with its great
columns, as a model of the universe, and the Temple of Luxor as a model
of the human body. Rameses II, famous for his building projects,
erected a huge statue of himself at Abu Simbel. Some believe he may
have been the pharaoh ruling Egypt when the Israelites set out for the
promised land.
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One God, One People
The
people who left Egypt with Moses were not yet known as the people of
Israel. They did not yet really know the God who had chosen Abraham and
who called Moses to return to Egypt to free his people. This God was
known by the name “I Am,” or Yahweh in Hebrew (Exod 3.13-15). Yahweh
later gave the Law to Moses as the people wandered in the Sinai desert.
The very first commandment in the Law said that the people were not to
worship any other gods except Yahweh (Exod 20.1-3).
While the peoples of the ancient Near East worshiped many gods, the
people who eventually entered Canaan and became known as the people of
Israel were to worship and follow only one God.
The
people of Israel lived in a world that had seen many struggles and wars
between peoples. The lands of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan had
changed hands many times. Wars would be part of Israel's history as
well. But the Israelite people also lived in a world that had already
made great progress in terms of building, writing, and art. Just as God
had acted in history to open the way for them, they now were about to
take their place in world history and make contributions that continue
to affect us today.
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