The ancient Near East

Ancient History

Egypt was more successful than Mesopotamia in developing a single unified state after the Bronze Age began in about 3000 BCE until the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great in the late fourth century BCE. Geography is a major reason for Egypt's greater success with political and cultural unification. Moreover, prior to the Bronze Age the city-states of Mesopotamia were already more well-developed, politically and economically powerful than were the villages of Egypt. By the time King Sargon unified Mesopotamia, the region's city-states already had political and economic institutions in place that undermined the supremacy of the central government. When compared with Mesopotamia, Egypt's Upper and Lower Kingdoms were less politically, economically, and culturally developed at the time of unification by King Menes. With one main river, the Nile, as the economic focal point of Egypt, the state also maintained social order easier than did Mesopotamia with its more complex and varied geographic terrain. Furthermore, Egypt's fairly uniform culture made its people easier to rule vs. The more diverse cultures that comprised Mesopotamia by the time Sargon took power. Egypt's centralized systems of government, religious power, and economics therefore took root easier and with more stability than did Mesopotamia's. As a result, Egypt's long history as a single unified state is unique among ancient civilizations.

In the second millenium BCE, when Sargon unified the region between the Tigris and Euphrates, Mesopotamia was a collection of city-states. Sumer, Akkad, and other distinct zones had long since been cohesive city-states with their own temples, kings, and agriculture-based economies. Even during the first centuries of the Bronze Age, Mesopotamian city-states were relatively independent and self-sufficient. Agricultural prosperity was a by-product of living in the Fertile Crescent, the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Moreover, each city-state boasted advanced irrigation techniques that increased water flows during dry seasons and took full advantage of flood waters when it was wet. The strength of individual city-states in Mesopotamia eventually precluded successful unification. When kings like Sargon attempted to unite the various city-states of Mesopotamia under one leader, they eventually failed. Sargon's Akkadian empire lasted only a few hundred years, compared with several millennia of unified Egypt under the pharaohs.

Thus, one of the main reasons why Mesopotamia was rarely unified was because of the region's early development. With advanced civilizations already in place by the beginning of the Bronze Age, Mesopotamia's political, economic, and social structures were too fragmented to make unification or centralized government possible. Although most of the city-states did trade with one another and borrowed ideas, language, religious rites, literature, and technology, they did not perceive themselves as a cohesive civilization. Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian literature reveals the extent to which city-states were tantamount to any centralized government in Mesopotamia. Most Sumerian and other Mesopotamian texts refer to powerful city-states like Ur. When individual cities like Thebes or Memphis are mentioned in Egyptian literature they are shown to be parts of a whole, not independent and self-sufficient like the Mesopotamian city-states. Furthermore, political and social fragmentation made Mesopotamia more vulnerable to conquest and internal strife than Egypt was. Mesopotamian lugals (great men, or kings) helped strengthen their individual city-states and fortify them against neighbor rivals.

Mesopotamia was also a large geographic zone that extended northwards to the Mediterranean. With the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers as well as the Mediterranean Sea, Mesopotamia was geographically as well as socially and politically diverse. Its geographic position along several great and easily navigable bodies of water meant that Mesopotamian city-states carved out individual niches for themselves. Their niches needed to be protected on a local level; centralized powers lacked the trust of the citizens of each city-state. Citizens instead labored for their city-state kings, and remained loyal to local gods as well.

Egypt posed a far different geographic picture. With only one main river running north and south through the entire land, Egypt could more easily view itself as a geographic and political whole. Citizens of various villages in Neolithic Egypt depended on each other to manage Nile flood waters and divert them for agricultural needs. Managing the flood plains of Egypt became a primary motive for a centralized system of government that could manage the river for the needs of all the people, who benefitted from cooperation.

Moreover, by the beginning of the Bronze Age, Egypt was not as technologically or socially advanced as their Mesopotamian counterparts. their political systems were far less developed too, and although Egyptian religion had taken root in most of the communities of Upper and Lower Egypt temples had yet to reach their characteristic grandiose size until the pharaonic period. The rise of the great pharaohs meant an enormous boost in wealth and political power to the demigod/kings who could commission the large architectural projects that epitomize dynastic Egypt. During the Old Kingdom, massive pyramids flanked the Giza plateau, and later tombs and temples proved the might of pharaonic wealth and power. Egypt was therefore easier than Mesopotamia to manage and control under one centralized government because prior to the first King Menes, Egypt was comprised of relatively small and simple agricultural villages. Mesopotamia, on the other hand, was made up of city-states that had substantial wealth and power bases as well as centers of learning and technology. It is naturally easier to unify a series of already interdependent villages than a network of rival city-states.

The unification of Lower and Upper Egypt proved enormously successful for several reasons. First, the centralized theocratic government imposed one state religion that in turn became a major source of social order. In Mesopotamia, the city-states had unique identities that might have precluded religious unification. Second, a centralized government in Egypt enabled control of the Nile delta for economic purposes. To do so in Mesopotamia would have been more difficult given the more varied geographic terrain and the presence of more than one river. Similarly, Egypt was less vulnerable to foreign invaders than Mesopotamia was. Geography therefore played a major role in determining the differences between ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt.

Egypt's system of language and writing; their sophisticated systems of astrology and calendar-making; and their technological developments all followed from unification. Unification allowed cultural flourishing to take place primarily by increasing economic prosperity. In Mesopotamia, on the other hand, systems of writing and language; technology and science had already been in place by the time Sargon and other kings attempted to unify the region. The city-states were already fairly prosperous and thus did not attribute their prosperity or their learning to the central government but to their local histories.

Ancient Mesopotamia was relatively diverse socially, especially when compared with ancient Egypt. Semetic and non-Semetic languages of Mesopotamia were based on similar phonemes but individual city-states developed their languages and later, systems of writing, differently from one another. Their differences created unique cultural identities for Mesopotamian city-states. In Egypt, a common language evolved and only after unification did hieroglyphs and other emblems of Egyptian culture emerge. The Egyptian people began viewing themselves as a unified culture as the society evolved organically, as a whole. In Mesopotamia, cultural evolution took place long before unification was possible. Unification failed to give Mesopotamian people new identities or reasons to identify with a distant centralized government. Mistrust of neighboring city-states also led to the eventual dissolution of the Mesopotamian central government that Sargon initiated.