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142) Geographical locations in the book of Daniel


Daniel 11:


- City of Kittim (ships of Kittim):


Bible Map: Kittim (Cyprus)




kit'-im (kittim, Isaiah 23:12 Jeremiah 2:10; kittiyim, apparently plural of kitti (not found, but compare (4) below); Ketioi, Kitioi, Ketieim, Jeremiah 2:10; Chettieim, Chettein): identified with Sepphoris, which is represented by the modern village of Seffuriyeh.


1. Two Usages of the Name:


In Genesis 10:4 the word is applied to the descendants of Javan, and indicates, therefore, the Greek-Latin races, whose territory extended along the coasts of the Mediterranean, and included its islands. By the side of Kittim are mentioned Elisha, Tarshish, and Dodanim (= Rodanim of 1 Chronicles 1:7), generally explained respectively as Sicily with Southern Italy, Spain and Rhodes. In its narrower sense Kittim appears simply to have stood for the island of Cyprus-it is mentioned between Bashan (= Pal) and the isles of Elisha in Ezekiel 27:6, 7, and with this Isaiah 23:1, 12 agree, Kittim occurring in these passages between Tarshish, Tyre and Sidon.


2. In Its Limited Sense:

The oldest etymology is apparently that of Josephus, who connects Kittim with the well-known old Cypriote city Kition (Citium) (Ant., I, vi, 1), testifying to the settling of the Kittim on the island. This word he further connects with Chethima, from Chethimus, and states that it was on account of Cyprus being the home of those people that all islands were called Chethim by the Hebrews. The derivation of an ancient Chethim from Chethimus, however, would make the m to be a radical, and this, with the substitution of Ch (= Kh) for Kittim, renders his proposed etymology somewhat doubtful.


The statement of Josephus, that "all islands, and the greatest part of the sea-coast, are called Chethim (= Kittim) by the Hebrews," on the other hand, must be taken as the testimony of one well acquainted with the opinions of the learned world in his time. In Jeremiah 2:10 and Ezekiel 27:6 the isles of Kittim are expressly spoken of, and this confirms the statement of Josephus concerning the extended meaning of the name. This would explain its application to the Roman fleet in Daniel 11:30 (so the Vulgate), and the Macedonians in 1 Maccabees 1:1 (Chettieim) and 8:5 (Kitians). In the latter passage the Greek writer seems to have been thinking more of the Cyprian Kition than of the Hebrew Kittim.


4. Colonization of Cyprus:

According to Herodotus (vii.90), Cyprus was colonized from Greece, Phoenicia, and Ethiopia. Referring to the plundering of the temple of Aphrodite at Askalon by the Scythians (i.105), he states that her temple in Cyprus was an offshoot from that ancient foundation, as reported by the Cyprians themselves, Phoenicians having founded it at Cythera, on arriving from Syria. The date of the earliest Phoenician settlements in Cyprus is unknown, but it has been suggested that they were anterior to the time of Moses. Naturally they brought with them their religion, the worship of the moon-goddess Atargatis (Derceto) being introduced at Paphos, and the Phoenician Baal at Kition. If Kition be, then, a Semitic word (from the same root as the Hebrew Kittim), it has been transferred from the small band of Phoenician settlers which it at first designated, to the non-Sem Japhethites of the West. Kition occurs in the Phoenician inscriptions of Cyprus under the forms K(i)t(t) and K(i)t(t)i, the latter being by far the more common (CIS, I, i, 10, 11, 14, 19, etc.).


5. Its Successive Masters:

The early history of Cyprus is uncertain. According to the Assyrian copy of Sargon of Agade's omens, that king (about 3800 B.C. in the opinion of Nabonidus; 2800 B.C. in the opinion of many Assyriologists) is said to have crossed "the sea of the setting sun" (the Mediterranean), though the Babylonian copy makes it that of "the rising sun"-i.e. the Persian Gulf. Be this as it may, General Cesnola discovered at Curium, in Cyprus, a seal-cylinder apparently inscribed "Mar-Istar, son of Ilu-bani, servant (worshipper) of Naram-Sin," the last named being the deified son of Sargon. In the 16th century B.C., Cyprus was tributary to Thothmes III. About the year 708 B.C., Sargon of Assyria received the submission of the kings of the district of Ya', in Cyprus, and set up at Citium the stele bearing his name, which is now in the Royal Museum at Berlin. Esarhaddon and his son Assur-bani-apli each received tribute from the 10 Cyprian princes who acknowledged Assyrian supremacy. The island was conquered by the Egyptian king Amasis, and later formed part of the Persian empire, until the revolt of Evagoras in 410 B.C. The Assyrians knew the island under the name of Yad(a)nanu, the "Wedan" (Vedan) of Ezekiel 27:19 Revised Version (British and American) (Sayce, PSBA, 1912, 26).


6. The Races Therein and Their Languages:

If the orthodox date for the composition of Genesis be accepted, not only the Phoenicians, but also the Greeks, or a people of Greek-Latin stock, must have been present in Cyprus, before the time of Moses, in sufficient number to make them the predominant portion of the population. As far as can be judged, the Phoenicians occupied only the eastern and southern portion of the island. Paphos, where they had built a temple to Ashtoreth and set up an 'asherah (a pillar symbolizing the goddess), was one of their principal settlements. The rest of the island was apparently occupied by the Aryans, whose presence there caused the name of Kittim to be applied to all the Greek-Latin countries of the Mediterranean. Greek and Phoenician were the languages spoken on the island, as was proved by George Smith's demonstration of the nature of the non-Phoenician text of the inscription of King Melek-yathon of Citium (370 B.C.). The signs used in the Greek-Cyprian inscriptions are practically all syllabic.


7. The Testimony of Cyprian Art:


The many influences which have modified the Cyprian race are reflected in the ancient art, which shows the effect of Babylonian, Egyptian Phoenician and Greek contacts. Specimens are to be found in many museums, but the finest collection of examples of Cyprian art is undoubtedly that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Some of the full-length figures are life-size, and the better class of work is exceedingly noteworthy.

 

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143) Geographical locations in the book of Daniel


- The land of Shinar:


What is the significance of the land of Shinar in the Bible? | GotQuestions.org




The land of Shinar is referenced eight times in the Old Testament (Genesis 10:10; 11:2; 14:1, 9; Joshua 7:21; Isaiah 11:11; Daniel 1:2; Zechariah 5:11), always in connection to the geographical location of Babylonia. In certain passages, some versions of the Bible translate the word for “Shinar” as “Babylonia” for clarity’s sake. Shinar is significant for these reasons:


Shinar was the location of the Tower of Babel. Genesis 10:10 mentions that Nimrod, a descendant of Ham, built “Babylon, Uruk, Akkad and Kalneh, in Shinar.” A plain in Shinar was the site chosen to construct the notorious Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–4). As punishment for the people’s wickedness, God confused their language, and thus the land of Shinar earned the name of “Babel” or “Babylon” (Genesis 11:5–9). Babylon and Babylonia both derive their names from Babel, which means “confusion.”


Shinar was ruled by a king that Abraham fought. During Abraham’s time, four kings, including Amraphel, king of Shinar, fought against the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah and three other kings (Genesis 14:1–3, 8–9). After overpowering the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, the four kings plundered the cities, carrying away Lot and all he owned (Genesis 14:10–12). To save his nephew, Abraham and 318 of his men routed the raiding party, defeated the four kings, and recovered Lot, his family, and his possessions (Genesis 14:13–17).




Shinar was associated with temptation. After taking Jericho, the Israelites failed in conquering Ai because of sin in the camp (Joshua 7:10–12). Achan had stolen devoted items from Jericho, which the Lord had specifically commanded against (Joshua 6:18–19). Included in the plundered items was a finely crafted, beautiful robe from Shinar (Joshua 7:21). Because of Achan’s sin, about thirty-six people lost their lives during the failed attempt at taking Ai (Joshua 7:4–5). After his sin was discovered, Achan and his family were stoned to death in accordance with God’s command (Joshua 7:24–26).


Shinar was associated with Babylon’s wickedness. Zechariah the prophet recorded a vision of a basket with a lead cover. The angel guiding Zechariah identified the meaning of the basket: “This is the iniquity of the people throughout the land” (Zechariah 5:6). Then the angel raised the cover of lead, revealing to the prophet that there was a woman in the basket. The angel said, “‘This is wickedness,’ and he pushed her back into the basket and pushed the lead cover down over its mouth” (Zechariah 5:8). The basket with the woman was then carried through air to the land of Shinar where a temple would be built for it (verse 11). This strange vision pictures the suppression of wickedness and its banishment to Shinar/Babylon. In Shinar, the wickedness would eventually be freed and even worshiped (cf. Revelation 17). Shinar is associated with the wicked worship of false gods, and in the end times, Babylon the Great is the center of wickedness and demon worship (Revelation 18:2–3).

Shinar was the location of Judah’s exile. When the nation of Judah was finally taken into exile to Babylonia, Nebuchadnezzar carried off the devoted things of the Lord’s temple and placed them in a temple to the god he worshipped (Daniel 1:1–2). Nebuchadnezzar probably placed the precious items into the temple of Marduk, also called Bel, which was the chief god of the Babylonians. Because of disobedience and idol worship, the Jews were exiled from their land to Shinar (2 Chronicles 36:15–21).


Shinar is a place that will contain a faithful remnant of Israel. Isaiah 11 mentions the future millennial kingdom of the “Root of Jesse” who will “stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious” (Isaiah 11:10). During His reign, Jesus will “recover the remnant that remains of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea” (Isaiah 11:11, ESV). This promise assures us that God’s people will be regathered—even from Shinar—to worship the Lord in His future kingdom.




Shinar is significant in its connection to the world’s historical rebellion against God: everything from the construction of the Tower of Babel to its association with idols, its mistreatment of Israel, and its future association with the Antichrist. Despite the many evils in the land of Shinar, God has preserved His people there. Believing Israelites in Shinar will participate in Jesus’ millennial kingdom in the future, demonstrating God’s grace and redemption.

 

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144) The Administration in Babylon:


Babylonian Empire | Encyclopedia.com

Babylonian Empire​

Type of Government​

Located on the banks of the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), the city-state of Babylon was the capital of two empires over the course of its long history. Both were absolute monarchies. The first was marked by the king’s personal involvement in even the most trivial affairs of state. An ever-expanding bureaucracy, a more powerful priesthood, and greater interaction with distant powers distinguished the second empire from its predecessor.

Background​

Because the term Babylonian Empire can be misleading, a few clarifications are necessary. First, it is important to note that Babylon and Babylonia are not identical. For much of its history, the city of Babylon was only one of a number of independent states in the region called Babylonia. Indeed, it was the conquest of those neighboring states that created the empires. Second, many of the most familiar features of Babylon did not exist until the second empire, often called the Chaldean or neo-Babylonian Empire, arose more than a thousand years after the first. Strictly speaking, however, the term Babylonian Empire refers only to the first incarnation, which began in about 1894 BC and ended three hundred years later.

Urban civilizations had existed in Mesopotamia for more than a thousand years when Babylon first rose to prominence. Because the land between the Tigris and Euphrates was a fertile and well-watered enclave in a barren landscape, it proved extremely attractive to a variety of nomadic peoples. Among those who stayed, abandoning nomadism for a more settled life of farming and trade, were the Amorites. Their union with the more established residents of northern Babylonia, an area known as Akkad, led to the establishment of a new dynasty in Babylon itself. The new king, Sumu-Abum (c. 1894–c. 1881 BC), was an Amorite.

His administration probably resembled those in nearby cities such as Kish and Kazallu. Construction of defensive walls, irrigation canals, and temples was a major preoccupation. Strong city walls were an obvious need in a land crowded with rival states, but the other projects were critical to royal power as well. No king or city in Mesopotamia could survive without active, centralized management of their water resources through canals, levees, and dams. As Sumu-Abum himself understood, one of the most effective ways of waging war against a enemy downstream was to simply divert the river. Less obvious to modern eyes, perhaps, is the benefit Sumu-Abum, his successors, and his rivals derived from their continual construction and reconstruction of temples, an activity that absorbed enormous manpower and a large share of government revenue. However, the basis of a Mesopotamian king’s legitimacy was the perceived closeness of his relationship with the gods. A king who neglected the temples was inviting the wrath of heaven and the fury of his people.

The other major focus of Mesopotamian kings was warfare, usually in the form of temporary, small-scale raids against neighbors. So it was with Sumu-Abum and the first four of his successors. The sixth, however, was Hammurabi (d. 1750 BC), one of the most famous rulers of antiquity. It was Hammurabi’s sustained military success, particularly against Larsa, Babylon’s powerful southern rival, that transformed the relatively prosperous city-state into a major regional power. He is better known, however, for the so-called Code of Hammurabi, a series of hypothetical if-then statements that judges could use as a guide in adjudicating the real cases before them. The code illustrates Hammurabi’s lifelong interest in law and the importance he accorded it in his administration. It also reveals something of his philosophy of kingship, a philosophy that permeated the structural framework of his government.

 

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145) The Administration in Babylon:

Government Structure​

A king’s closeness to the gods should not prevent his personal involvement in the most mundane, trivial, or unpleasant affairs of state. Or so the extensive records of Hammurabi’s administration suggest. These include letters to other heads of state, instructions to subordinates, and propaganda. The overwhelming impression is a paradox: a large bureaucracy designed to bring the smallest details of every facet of government activity to the attention of the king. While most bureaucracies exist to remove from the king or chief executive the burden of routine business, Hammurabi seems to have welcomed it, for reasons about which can only be speculated. Even though most Mesopotamian kings would have handled some legal cases as the court of last resort, Hammurabi involved himself in land disputes between farmers, contract disputes between merchants, and other routine legal business. A personal interest in law may have played a role. Most historians believe, however, that he simply took to heart the king’s traditional role as the guardian of justice. His involvement in diplomatic and military affairs might have had the same motive, if he believed that one of his neighbors was abusing the rights of the people.

Hammurabi’s attention to detail had a significant effect on the structure of his government. Scribes and literate clerks were the foundation of his administration, for it was only through their efforts that he could be kept abreast of state affairs with the thoroughness he demanded. Accurate records were crucial, particularly in the management of the frequent military drafts and the ilkum, a kind of compulsory labor service. After conquering a new territory, the king would send out a small corps of specialists under his immediate command to handle its integration into the empire. Such tasks were ideal training for future monarchs. Hammurabi is known to have sent his sons on diplomatic missions, just as he gave at least one daughter in marriage to an ally. Serious illness toward the end of his life forced Hammurabi to transfer most duties to Samsu-Iluna (eighteenth century BC), his son and successor. Even though it may well have been a difficult decision for Hammurabi, the transfer to Samsu-Iluna was useful in clarifying the succession and avoiding a bitter fight for the throne after the great king’s death.

Despite the turmoil of the centuries between the first and second empires, a basic conservatism prevented radical change in the political structure. Like many other ancient peoples, Babylonians revered the traditions and habits of their ancestors, whom they regarded as closer to the gods. Some change, including the expansion of the bureaucracy as a result of increased trade and territory, was accepted as inevitable. However, any other deviation from perceived tradition was likely to meet resistance.

 

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146) The Administration in Babylon

Political Parties and Factions​

Most political intrigue in the first empire had external roots, as neighboring kings tried to undermine each other’s authority. It is likely that tax burdens and compulsory labor provoked some purely internal dissatisfaction, but little is known for certain. The king’s prestige as the semidivine embodiment of divine order undoubtedly stifled the expression of dissent. Some kings went further, declaring themselves wholly immortal. Many historians suspect that declarations of immortality were primarily a tool of weak or troubled kings to enhance their authority; Hammurabi himself apparently never felt the need to issue one.

Perhaps the most important distinction between the first and second empires is a dramatic increase in the power of the various priesthoods, particularly that of Marduk, Babylon’s patron god. Ironically, the priests’ new power stemmed largely from their ability to harness the people’s reverence for the past. If the authority of the gods was eternal and inviolate, went the argument, the authority of their priests ought to be as well. In fact, many early kings, particularly Hammurabi, kept tight control of the priesthoods. Religion and politics were inseparable in Mesopotamia, but the most successful kings took care to assert their authority over the temples and the priests who staffed them. Over time, this became an increasingly difficult task.


Major Events

After a period of increasing turmoil and internal weakness, Babylon fell to the invading Kassites, an Iranian people, in about 1575 BC. Their rule seems to have had little discernable effect on Babylon’s political structure, but the lack of written records from this period makes certainty impossible. By the middle of the twelfth century, power had passed to another Iranian people, the Elamites, though the powerful Assyrians were soon threatening from the north. They would dominate Babylon for the next five hundred years, until their downfall in about 625 BC at the hands of Nabopolassar (d. 605 BC), the leader of the Chaldean people, who came from what is now Kuwait. During their rule some of the most familiar events of Babylonian history occurred, including the construction of the Hanging Gardens and the conquest of Jerusalem, both of which were the work of Nabopolassar’s son, Nebuchadrezzar II (c. 630–562 BC).

Aftermath​

In 539 BC the Persians, in concert with the priests of Marduk, seized Babylon without a fight. The city’s economic and cultural prominence continued until the Persian king Xerxes I (c. 519–465 BC) plundered it and destroyed its walls after a failed rebellion in 482 BC. The effects of Xerxes’ revenge were permanent.

 

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147) The Administration in Assyria


Assyrian administrative system




In the time of ancient Assyria, the Near East had several different types of governments. There were the Babylonian cities, where power was held in assemblies comprised of tribal and other social leaders of the citizen body. Generally speaking, though, monarchies were the most common system – depending on the government, the head of state would be called the king or maybe a city lord or clan leader. Assyria had a monarch, and by the Neo-Assyrian era the Assyrian kings presented themselves in their inscriptions as the sole creators and maintainers of the empire.

In truth, the Assyrian king was part of a vast state apparatus – at the top of the apparatus, of course – and engaged tremendously not just in exercising power but also in delegating it as well across an empire that at times included far-flung islands such as Cyprus and Bahrain. The machinery of the state including many officials – bureaucrats, military commanders, and cultural elites – who made up a vast administrative body and who are attested to within the abundant letters, reports, and other textual sources which have been excavated and translated.

Territorial control.​

Viewed at the broadest level, areas that were part of the Assyrian state were either provinces or vassals. Both were kept cooperative and loyal not just through punitive, militaristic, ≤i>negative means but also through positive means such as support in maintaining authority and through proximity and inclusion with the royal household. Pesonal family links were a crucial tool for the Assyrian king in keeping stability.

Provinces — these were directly and centrally administered through governors who were appointed by the Assyrian king. Governors had no claim to their office except through the king. Governors were often drawn from the royal court, and over time eunuchs were favored as they had been in the royal court since infancy and had no dynastic ambitions.

• Vassals — these were more locally administered, but were expected to pull the yoke of Assyria as inscriptions say. They had their own local rulers who were often related to the Assyrian household through dynastic marriage. Also, the Assyrian king kept a qepu in the vassal's court to represent Assyrian interests and report back intelligence.
  

On provinces.​

Regions formally incorporated into Assyria were organized as provinces. They were under the full central authority of the king. The king appointed a pahatu or bel pihati for each province, which are often called governors in English but actually translate more closely as proxies – as in, the proxies of the king. When a new king ascended to the throne he held the same authority over them as his predecessor. He could swap out any incumbent governor. This was in contrast to vassal rulers, who generally had their own dynasties and maintained hereditary rule. From the 9th century reign of Ashurnasirpal onwards, the governors were mostly eunuchs (if not entirely so) – royal inscriptions referring to my governors, my eunuchs.

On vassals.​

Vassals were states whose rulers pledged allegiance to the Assyrian king. Their rulers would sign treaties and swear oaths by the gods that their states would pull the yoke of Assyria. This agricultural term does not just reflect being brought under control and made tame, but also carrying a burden and making contributions of labor, financial, or other resources that were very important in the fruitfulness of Assyrian ambitions.

Vassal rulers were held responsible for their own kingdom or city-state. For the most part, they were under local governance. They had some level of autonomy, such as the ability to pass their office on by inheritance. However, they had to accept the presence and authority of delegates from the king. These delegates were known as qepu and represented the Assyrians' interests in their client states' governments – all the while, the qepu would also communicate back to the Assyrian central administration.

 

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148) The Administration in Assyria


The relationship between the Assyrian central administration and its vassals was cultivated and deepened over generations. Dynastic marriages into the Assyrian royal household were normal, as was keeping members of the vassal ruler's family in the Assyrian royal court. These family members were essentially collateral or hostages, but they were given excellent treatment and were expected to be supportive to Assyria when they were returned home.

Generally, vassals were outside the Assyrian heartland and furthest from the central administration. Islands in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf – among them Cyprus, Tyre, Arwad, and Bahrain – as well as mountainous areas in the Taurus and Zagros and the flats of the North Arabian Desert, are examples of far reaches that were treated as vassals. However, there were some vassals – for example, a cluster of Aramaean tribes, or the city-states of the Medes – that were quite close to the heartland but remained difficult to subdue by any means except occasional military submission and exaction of tribute.

Paying tribute and submitting to the Assyrian king had some practical benefit for a vassal. In the event of uprisings, the Assyrian central administration was expected to side with their vassal and quell any threats or popular resistance. However, in the 8th century the calculus of which empire to side with could become exceedingly complicated both for the ruling class and the proletariat. We see that especially in Syria, many vassals defected from Assyria and joined Urartu, which was a major competitor with its heartland in the Armenian highlands.

We see that Tiglath-Pileser III put in place a zero-tolerance policy that was maintained by his successors. His vassal rulers in Syria remained loyal, but the general population there had moved to the Urartian interest sphere and Assyrian rule was weakened. He conducted a military campaign, followed by the elimination of local government and the absorption of the vassal regions as full-fledged, centrally administered provinces of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. These areas were not new to Assyrian political influence, but their status as provinces of a central state was new. These efforts were continued by Tiglath-Pileser III's successors and we see the addition of provinces that amounted to a tripling of the area under central Assyrian control within just a few decades.

Great Ones​

The Great Ones were the most senior Assyrian state officials, usually numbering about 120. The king had to totally trust them and relied on their absolute loyalty. There were several positions making up the Great Ones,

• Regional representatives
  
  • Governors put in place to directly administer provinces.
    
  • The qepu officials assigned to monitor vassals.
    
• Chief Cupbearer
  
• Palace Herald
  

Letters between the king and the Great Ones reveal that his relationship with them provided them enough autonomy and fair treatment to conduct their affairs faithfully, dutifully, and loyally. This was essential to guarantee the Assyrian Empire maintained effective control over distant territories, via the Great Ones. Despite all authority tracing up the king, there was a tremendous amount of mutual trust and respect between the Great Ones and the king himself. Remarkably, reliefs show the king – equal in size and eye to eye – in deep conversations with his highest officials. This indicates they could speak candidly and at ease with the king, within the bounds of appropriate and polite behavior as required by protocol.

From the 9th century BC onward, the composition of the Great Ones changed. Many Great Ones had held their positions through heredity, and belonged to ancient noble families. However, from the reign of Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal onward, these hereditary officeholders were replaced with palace-educated professional bureaucrats – the eunuchs. This provided important stability by centralizing the Assyrian king's power, and also ensuring officeholders were chosen on merit rather than family ties. It was a significant change in the role or royal eunuchs, who previously had been mostly within the palace but now were used throughout the empire in highly visible and powerful roles.

The royal seal.​

When the Assyrian state shifted from a kingdom to an empire, an innovation took place: the royal seal, which was given to each of the Great Ones. The royal seal allowed those who held it to act on the king's behalf. This made it a powerful tool whose implementation coincided with a rising need to delegate power from the king to his officials across a vast territory. Simply possessing the seal was enough to issue commands in the king's stead, and additionally, it could be used on contracts or written orders – it served as a royal authorization as if from the king himself.

However, the royal seal only gave power via the king. The Great Ones had the power to use the royal seal, of course, but they were merely instruments of the king. The royal seal itself was engraved as a seal on a golden finger ring. It depicted the king killing a lion in close combat, symbolizing his strength and his power to tame evil forces. The image was known throughout the empire.

 

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149) The Administration in Assyria

Communication

There was tremendous uncertainty in the Near East for a sender giving a letter or anything else to a messenger who would bring it to the recipient. Anxiety about it meant that only the messenger — and not a single person else — was expected to handle the delivery until giving it to the recipient. The messenger would single-handedly make the delivery, along with a riding animal — and for greater speed but at a greater cost, the messenger would bring two riding animals the animals could take turns rather than one needing to take extended breaks.

The key thing here was that in traversing complicated territories with conflicting political systems, the delivery and its messenger stayed together as the only way to have any sort of guarantee of delivery. Letters were immensely private things, and they were recorded on tablets that were then encased with clay that bore the messenger's seal and sometimes a very brief description of the contents. Messengers were trusted to not only make the delivery but to respect the privacy of the contents. With the transition to alphabetic Aramaic from cuneiform Assyrian, there was an explosion and deepening of literacy among previous illiterate or barely literate levels of society — the Aramization of the Near East — this trust must have become even more important.

On the Neo-Assyrian relay system.​

In the 9th century BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire developed a completely innovative communications strategy. It became possible to send mail and goods from the capital all the way to the Mediterranean at Adana (the ancient Assyrian vassal of Quwe) within five days. This was a distance of 700 kilometers that included rivers, mountain ranges, and steppes. The new system worked by overcoming the challenge of trust, and the inefficient single-messenger-per-delivery system that was traditional. In the traditional system, even with two animals, eventually they would need to rest, sleep, eat, and drink — and even if the animals were able to survive, the messenger himself needed breaks as well. Deliveries that might take one hundred uninterrupted hours could increase to a week in practice. In the new system, there were postal stations every 35 to 40 kilometers across the entire empire. The messenger would bring the delivery to the next postal station, and rather than the package waiting for them to recover it was instead given to a messenger at that postal station who brought it to the next station on its journey. The package never had to come to a standstill and could be transported effectively uninterrupted. (Of note, no postal stations have been excavated yet which limits our understanding.)

We do not know exactly how the exchange worked, or if deliveries were made at night, but it brought a tremendous degree of efficiency. The speed of the Assyrian postal system was not exceeded for two thousand years with the introduction of the telegraph in the 19th century. However, this system was operated by the military and was only available for the royal court and those holding the royal seal — not more than about 150 people. The expense of this system — the mules, the soldier-messengers, not to mention the postal stations themselves maintained across the entire empire — suddenly seems even more expensive when considering it was only for top-level administrative use. It must have had tremendous benefit in supporting the coherence of the empire. The royal seal was put in place alongside the development of the postal system, suggesting it was part of a master strategy for stability, the delegation of responsibility, and the visibility of the king through the golden ring worn by his trusted appointees.

The extremely elite and militarized nature of the relay system suggests that the issue of trust was still present. Although modern people receive mail without needing to consider who exactly of tens and hundreds of people had access to it, this was an entirely new concept in the 9th century BC. However, there was tension between efficiency and increasing the number of people involved in mail handling. This tension was ameliorated in various ways. The relay system was only operated by sworn servants of the state — even the mules were part of the state assets — and the amount of trust the king placed in their service means the postal system itself can be viewed as an extended way that the Assyrian king was forced to delegate tasks as the empire expanded too far for single-handed central control. Also, it was highly efficient but the relay system was only efficient with a low level of throughput to ensure the relays were on standby. When the Neo-Assyrian populace adopted Aramaic, the state explicitly required only Assyrian cuneiform on all official documents. This may have been more than just continuity of the language of recordkeeping, or the deep scribal tradition around cuneiform — it may have been a means to curtail normal people from snooping.

On mules.​

Mules were the backbone of communication. They are the generally sterile offspring of two different species: a horse and a donkey. They do not need as much food or water as a horse — but also have the strength of a donkey, without its stubbornness — and mules can be ridden, which of course is also possible with a horse but is not possible with a donkey. Mules were excellent for long-distance transport in an arid, challenging climate like much of the ancient Assyrian territory.

However, mules were expensive in ancient Assyria — in fact, they are still expensive to this day — and would have cost several times the price of a human. Producing a mule requires forcing a horse and a donkey to mate, which would almost never happen without human interference, and they are almost never able to produce offspring themselves. Skilled professionals are required to produce mules, from the mule's point of conception through its training. Mules were unaffordable to most people, but the Assyrian state used them extensively in transporting communications and goods.

 

[JLG]

There are two parts in the Bible: if you miss one, you can forget the rest!


150) The Administration in Egypt


Ancient Egypt - Ptolemies, Dynasties, Pharaohs


Government and conditions under the Ptolemies

The changes brought to Egypt by the Ptolemies were momentous; the land’s resources were harnessed with unparalleled efficiency, with the result that Egypt became the wealthiest of the Hellenistic kingdoms. Land under cultivation was increased, and new crops were introduced (especially important was the introduction of naked tetraploid wheat, Triticum durum, to replace the traditional husked emmer, Triticum dicoccum). The population, estimated at perhaps three to four million in the late Dynastic period, may have more than doubled by the early Roman period to a level not reached again until the late 19th century. Some of the increase was due to immigration; particularly during the 2nd and 3rd centuries, many settlers were attracted from cities in Anatolia (Asia Minor) and the Greek islands, and large numbers of Jews came from Palestine. The flow may have decreased later in the Ptolemaic period, and it is often suggested, on slender evidence, that there was a serious decline in prosperity in the 1st century bce. If so, there may have been some reversal of this trend under Cleopatra VII.

Administration​

The foundation of the prosperity was the governmental system devised to exploit the country’s economic resources. Directly below the monarch were a handful of powerful officials whose authority extended over the entire land: a chief finance minister, a chief accountant, and a chancery of ministers in charge of records, letters, and decrees. A level below them lay the broadening base of a pyramid of subordinate officials with authority in limited areas, which extended down to the chief administrator of each village (kōmarchēs). Between the chief ministers and the village officials stood those such as the nome steward (oikonomos) and the stratēgoi, whose jurisdiction extended over one of the more than 30 nomes, the long-established geographic divisions of Egypt. In theory, this bureaucracy could regulate and control the economic activities of every subject in the land, its smooth operation guaranteed by the multiplicity of officials capable of checking up on one another. In practice, it is difficult to see a rigid civil service mentality at work, involving clear demarcation of departments; specific functions might well have been performed by different officials according to local need and the availability of a person competent to take appropriate action.

By the same token, rigid lines of separation between military, civil, legal, and administrative matters are difficult to perceive. The same official might perform duties in one or all of these areas. The military was inevitably integrated into civilian life because its soldiers were also farmers who enjoyed royal grants of land, either as Greek cleruchs (holders of allotments) with higher status and generous grants or as native Egyptian machimoi with small plots. Interlocking judiciary institutions, in the form of Greek and Egyptian courts (chrēmatistai and laokritai), provided the means for Greeks and Egyptians to regulate their legal relationships according to the language in which they conducted their business. The bureaucratic power was heavily weighted in favour of the Greek speakers, the dominant elite. Egyptians were nevertheless able to obtain official posts in the bureaucracy, gradually infiltrating to the highest levels, but in order to do so they had to Hellenize.

 

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There are two parts in the Bible: if you miss one, you can forget the rest!


151) The Administration in Egypt


Economy

The basis of Egypt’s legendary wealth was the highly productive land, which technically remained in royal ownership. A considerable portion was kept under the control of temples, and the remainder was leased out on a theoretically revocable basis to tenant-farmers. A portion also was available to be granted as gifts to leading courtiers; one of these was Apollonius, the finance minister of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who had an estate of 10,000 arourae (about 6,500 acres [2,630 hectares]) at Philadelphia in Al-Fayyūm. Tenants and beneficiaries were able to behave very much as if these leases and grants were private property. The revenues in cash and kind were enormous, and royal control extended to the manufacture and marketing of almost all important products, including papyrus, oil, linen, and beer. An extraordinarily detailed set of revenue laws, promulgated under Ptolemy II Philadelphus, laid down rules for the way in which officials were to monitor the production of such commodities. In fact, the Ptolemaic economy was very much a mixture of direct royal ownership and exploitation by private enterprise under regulated conditions.

One fundamental and far-reaching Ptolemaic innovation was the systematic monetarization of the economy. The monarchy also controlled this from top to bottom by operating a closed monetary system, which permitted only the royal coinage to circulate within Egypt. A sophisticated banking system underpinned this practice, operating again with a mixture of direct royal control and private enterprise and handling both private financial transactions and those that directed money into and out of the royal coffers. One important concomitant of this change was an enormous increase in the volume of trade, both within Egypt and abroad, which eventually reached its climax under the peaceful conditions of Roman rule. There the position and role of Alexandria as the major port and trading entrepôt was crucial: the city handled a great volume of Egypt’s domestic produce, as well as the import and export of luxury goods to and from the East and the cities of the eastern Mediterranean. It developed its own importance as an artistic centre, the products of which found ready markets throughout the Mediterranean. Alexandrian glassware and jewelry were particularly fine, Greek-style sculpture of the late Ptolemaic period shows especial excellence, and it is likely that the city was also the major production centre for high-quality mosaic work.

Religion​

The Ptolemies were powerful supporters of the native Egyptian religious foundations, the economic and political power of which was, however, carefully controlled. A great deal of the late building and restoration work in many of the most important Egyptian temples is Ptolemaic, particularly from the period of about 150–50 bce, and the monarchs appear on temple reliefs in the traditional forms of the Egyptian kings. The native traditions persisted in village temples and local cults, many having particular associations with species of sacred animals or birds. At the same time, the Greeks created their own identifications of Egyptian deities, identifying Amon with Zeus, Horus with Apollo, Ptah with Hephaestus, and so on. They also gave some deities, such as Isis, a more universal significance that ultimately resulted in the spread of her mystery cult throughout the Mediterranean world. The impact of the Greeks is most obvious in two phenomena. One is the formalized royal cult of Alexander and the Ptolemies, which evidently served both a political and a religious purpose. The other is the creation of the cult of Sarapis, which at first was confined to Alexandria but soon became universal. The god was represented as a Hellenized deity and the form of cult is Greek, but its essence is the old Egyptian notion that the sacred Apis bull merged its divinity in some way with the god Osiris when it died.

Culture​

The continuing vitality of the native Egyptian artistic tradition is clearly and abundantly expressed in the temple architecture and the sculpture of the Ptolemaic period. The Egyptian language continued to be used in its hieroglyphic and demotic forms until late in the Roman period, and it survived through the Byzantine period and beyond in the form of Coptic. The Egyptian literary tradition flourished vigorously in the Ptolemaic period and produced a large number of works in demotic. The genre most commonly represented is the romantic tale, exemplified by several story cycles, which are typically set in the native, Pharaonic milieu and involve the gods, royal figures, magic, romance, and the trials and combats of heroes. Another important category is the Instruction Text, the best known of the period being that of Ankhsheshonq, which consists of a list of moralizing maxims, composed, as the story goes, when Ankhsheshonq was imprisoned for having failed to inform the king (pharaoh) of an assassination plot. Another example, known as Papyrus Insinger, is a more narrowly moralizing text. But the arrival of a Greek-speaking elite had an enormous impact on cultural patterns. The Egyptian story cycles were probably affected by Greek influence, literary and technical works were translated into Greek, and under royal patronage an Egyptian priest named Manetho of Sebennytos wrote an account of the kings of Egypt in Greek. Most striking is the diffusion of the works of the poets and playwrights of classical Greece among the literate Greeks in the towns and villages of the Nile River valley.

Thus there are clear signs of the existence of two interacting but distinct cultural traditions in Ptolemaic Egypt. This was certainly reflected in a broader social context. The written sources offer little direct evidence of ethnic discrimination by Greeks against Egyptians, but Greek and Egyptian consciousness of the Greeks’ social and economic superiority comes through strongly from time to time; intermarriage was one means, though not the only one, by which Egyptians could better their status and Hellenize. Many native Egyptians learned to speak Greek, some to write it as well; some even went so far as to adopt Greek names in an attempt to assimilate themselves to the elite group.

 

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152) The Administration in Egypt

Alexandria occupied a unique place in the history of literature, ideas, scholarship, and science for almost a millennium after the death of its founder. Under the royal patronage of the Ptolemies and in an environment almost oblivious to its Egyptian surroundings, Greek culture was preserved and developed. Early in the Ptolemaic period, probably in the reign of Ptolemy I Soter, the Alexandrian Museum (Greek: Mouseion, “Seat of the Muses”) was established within the palace complex. The geographer and historian Strabo, who saw it early in the Roman period, described it as having a covered walk, an arcade with recesses and seats, and a large house containing the dining hall of the members of the Museum, who lived a communal existence. The Library of Alexandria (together with its offshoot in the Sarapeum) was indispensable to the functioning of the scholarly community in the Museum. Books were collected voraciously under the Ptolemies, and at its height the library’s collection probably numbered 500,000 or more papyrus rolls, most of them containing more than one work.

The major poets of the Hellenistic period, Theocritus, Callimachus, and Apollonius of Rhodes, all took up residence and wrote there. Scholarship flourished, preserving and ordering the manuscript traditions of much of the classical literature from Homer onward. Librarian-scholars such as Aristophanes of Byzantium and his pupil Aristarchus made critical editions and wrote commentaries and works on grammar. Also notable was the cultural influence of Alexandria’s Jewish community, which is inferred from the fact that the Pentateuch was first translated into Greek at Alexandria during the Ptolemaic period. One by-product of this kind of activity was that Alexandria became the centre of the book trade, and the works of the classical authors were copied there and diffused among a literate Greek readership scattered in the towns and villages of the Nile valley.

The Alexandrian achievement in scientific fields was also enormous. Great advances were made in pure mathematics, mechanics, physics, geography, and medicine. Euclid worked in Alexandria about 300 bce and achieved the systematization of the whole existing corpus of mathematical knowledge and the development of the method of proof by deduction from axioms. Archimedes was there in the 3rd century bce and is said to have invented the Archimedean screw when he was in Egypt. Eratosthenes calculated Earth’s circumference and was the first to attempt a map of the world based on a system of lines of latitude and longitude. The school of medicine founded in the Ptolemaic period retained its leading reputation into the Byzantine era. Late in the Ptolemaic period Alexandria began to develop as a great centre of Greek philosophical studies as well. In fact, there was no field of literary, intellectual, or scientific activity to which Ptolemaic Alexandria failed to make an important contribution.

 

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Ancient Egypt - Ptolemies, Dynasties, Pharaohs

Roman and Byzantine Egypt (30 bce– 642 ce)​

153) Egypt as a province of Rome​

“I added Egypt to the empire of the Roman people.” With these words the emperor Augustus (as Octavian was known from 27 bce) summarized the subjection of Cleopatra’s kingdom in the great inscription that records his achievements. The province was to be governed by a viceroy, a prefect with the status of a Roman knight (eques) who was directly responsible to the emperor. The first viceroy was the Roman poet and soldier Gaius Cornelius Gallus, who boasted too vaingloriously of his military achievements in the province and paid for it first with his position and then with his life. Roman senators were not allowed to enter Egypt without the emperor’s permission, because this wealthiest of provinces could be held militarily by a very small force, and the threat implicit in an embargo on the export of grain supplies, vital to the provisioning of the city of Rome and its populace, was obvious. Internal security was guaranteed by the presence of three Roman legions (later reduced to two), each about 6,000 strong, and several cohorts of auxiliaries.

In the first decade of Roman rule the spirit of Augustan imperialism looked farther afield, attempting expansion to the east and to the south. An expedition to Arabia by the prefect Aelius Gallus about 26–25 bce was undermined by the treachery of the Nabataean Syllaeus, who led the Roman fleet astray in uncharted waters. Arabia was to remain an independent though friendly client of Rome until 106 ce, when the emperor Trajan (ruled 98–117 ce) annexed it, making it possible to reopen Ptolemy II’s canal from the Nile to the head of the Gulf of Suez. To the south the Meroitic people beyond the First Cataract had taken advantage of Gallus’s preoccupation with Arabia and mounted an attack on the Thebaid. The next Roman prefect, Petronius, led two expeditions into the Meroitic kingdom (c. 24–22 bce), captured several towns, forced the submission of the formidable queen, who was characterized by Roman writers as “the one-eyed Queen Candace,” and left a Roman garrison at Primis (Qaṣr Ibrīm). But thoughts of maintaining a permanent presence in Lower Nubia were soon abandoned, and within a year or two the limits of Roman occupation had been set at Hiera Sykaminos, some 50 miles (80 km) south of the First Cataract. The mixed character of the region is indicated, however, by the continuing popularity of the goddess Isis among the people of Meroe and by the Roman emperor Augustus’s foundation of a temple at Kalabsha dedicated to the local god Mandulis.

 

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154)


Egypt achieved its greatest prosperity under the shadow of the Roman peace, which, in effect, depoliticized it. Roman emperors or members of their families visited Egypt—Tiberius’s nephew and adopted son, Germanicus; Vespasian and his elder son, Titus; Hadrian; Septimius Severus; Diocletian—to see the famous sights, receive the acclamations of the Alexandrian populace, attempt to ensure the loyalty of their volatile subjects, or initiate administrative reform. Occasionally its potential as a power base was realized. Vespasian, the most successful of the imperial aspirants in the “Year of the Four Emperors,” was first proclaimed emperor at Alexandria on July 1, 69 ce, in a maneuver contrived by the prefect of Egypt, Tiberius Julius Alexander. Others were less successful. Gaius Avidius Cassius, the son of a former prefect of Egypt, revolted against Marcus Aurelius in 175 ce, stimulated by false rumours of Marcus’s death, but his attempted usurpation lasted only three months.

For several months in 297/298 ce Egypt was under the dominion of a mysterious usurper named Lucius Domitius Domitianus. The emperor Diocletian was present at the final capitulation of Alexandria after an eight-month siege and swore to take revenge by slaughtering the populace until the river of blood reached his horse’s knees; the threat was mitigated when his mount stumbled as he rode into the city. In gratitude, the citizens of Alexandria erected a statue of the horse.

The only extended period during the turbulent 3rd century ce in which Egypt was lost to the central imperial authority was 270–272, when it fell into the hands of the ruling dynasty of the Syrian city of Palmyra. Fortunately for Rome, the military strength of Palmyra proved to be the major obstacle to the overrunning of the Eastern Empire by the powerful Sāsānian monarchy of Persia.

Internal threats to security were not uncommon but normally were dissipated without major damage to imperial control. These included rioting between Jews and Greeks in Alexandria in the reign of Caligula (Gaius Caesar Germanicus; ruled 37–41 ce), a serious Jewish revolt under Trajan (ruled 98–117 ce), a revolt in the Nile delta in 172 ce that was quelled by Avidius Cassius, and a revolt centred on the town of Coptos (Qifṭ) in 293/294 ce that was put down by Galerius, Diocletian’s imperial colleague.

Administration and economy under Rome​

The Romans introduced important changes in the administrative system, aimed at achieving a high level of efficiency and maximizing revenue. The duties of the prefect of Egypt combined responsibility for military security through command of the legions and cohorts, for the organization of finance and taxation, and for the administration of justice. This involved a vast mass of detailed paperwork; one document from 211 ce notes that in a period of three days 1,804 petitions were handed into the prefect’s office. But the prefect was assisted by a hierarchy of subordinate equestrian officials with expertise in particular areas. There were three or four epistratēgoi in charge of regional subdivisions; special officers were in charge of the emperors’ private account, the administration of justice, religious institutions, and so on. Subordinate to them were the local officials in the nomes (stratēgoi and royal scribes) and finally the authorities in the towns and villages.

It was in these growing towns that the Romans made the most far-reaching changes in administration. They introduced colleges of magistrates and officials who were to be responsible for running the internal affairs of their own communities on a theoretically autonomous basis and, at the same time, were to guarantee the collection and payment of tax quotas to the central government. This was backed up by the development of a range of “liturgies,” compulsory public services that were imposed on individuals according to rank and property to ensure the financing and upkeep of local facilities. These institutions were the Egyptian counterpart of the councils and magistrates that oversaw the Greek cities in the eastern Roman provinces. They had been ubiquitous in other Hellenistic kingdoms, but in Ptolemaic Egypt they had existed only in the so-called Greek cities (Alexandria, Ptolemais in Upper Egypt, Naukratis, and later Antinoöpolis, founded by Hadrian in 130 ce).

Alexandria lost the right to have a council, probably in the Ptolemaic period. When it recovered its right in 200 ce, the privilege was diluted by being extended to the nome capitals (mētropoleis) as well. This extension of privilege represented an attempt to shift more of the burden and expense of administration onto the local propertied classes, but it was eventually to prove too heavy. The consequences were the impoverishment of many of the councillors and their families and serious problems in administration that led to an increasing degree of central government interference and, eventually, more direct control.

The economic resources that this administration existed to exploit had not changed since the Ptolemaic period, but the development of a much more complex and sophisticated taxation system was a hallmark of Roman rule. Taxes in both cash and kind were assessed on land, and a bewildering variety of small taxes in cash, as well as customs dues and the like, was collected by appointed officials. A massive amount of Egypt’s grain was shipped downriver both to feed the population of Alexandria and for export to Rome. Despite frequent complaints of oppression and extortion from the taxpayers, it is not obvious that official tax rates were all that high. In fact the Roman government had actively encouraged the privatization of land and the increase of private enterprise in manufacture, commerce, and trade, and low tax rates favoured private owners and entrepreneurs. The poorer people gained their livelihood as tenants of state-owned land or of property belonging to the emperor or to wealthy private landlords, and they were relatively much more heavily burdened by rentals, which tended to remain at a fairly high level.

Overall, the degree of monetarization and complexity in the economy, even at the village level, was intense. Goods were moved around and exchanged through the medium of coin on a large scale and, in the towns and the larger villages, a high level of industrial and commercial activity developed in close conjunction with the exploitation of the predominant agricultural base. The volume of trade, both internal and external, reached its peak in the 1st and 2nd centuries ce. However, by the end of the 3rd century ce, major problems were evident. A series of debasements of the imperial currency had undermined confidence in the coinage, and even the government itself was contributing to this by demanding increasing amounts of irregular tax payments in kind, which it channeled directly to the main consumers—army personnel. Local administration by the councils was careless, recalcitrant, and inefficient. The evident need for firm and purposeful reform had to be squarely faced in the reigns of Diocletian and Constantine.

 

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155)

Society, religion, and culture​

One of the more noticeable effects of Roman rule was the clearer tendency toward classification and social control of the populace. Thus, despite many years of intermarriage between Greeks and Egyptians, lists drawn up in 4/5 ce established the right of certain families to class themselves as Greek by descent and to claim privileges attaching to their status as members of an urban aristocracy, known as the gymnasial class. Members of this group were entitled to lower rates of poll tax, subsidized or free distributions of food, and maintenance at the public expense when they grew old. If they or their descendants were upwardly mobile, they might gain Alexandrian citizenship, Roman citizenship, or even equestrian status, with correspondingly greater prestige and privileges. The preservation of such distinctions was implicit in the spread of Roman law and was reinforced by elaborate codes of social and fiscal regulations such as the Rule-Book of the Emperors’ Special Account. The Rule-Book prescribed conditions under which people of different status might marry, for instance, or bequeath property, and it fixed fines, confiscations, and other penalties for transgression. When an edict of the emperor Caracalla conferred Roman citizenship on practically all of the subjects of the empire in 212 ce, the distinction between citizens and noncitizens became meaningless; however, it was gradually replaced by an equally important distinction between honestiores and humiliores (meaning, roughly, “upper classes” and “lower classes,” respectively), groups that, among other distinctions, were subjected to different penalties in law.

Naturally, it was the Greek-speaking elite that continued to dictate the visibly dominant cultural pattern, though Egyptian culture was not moribund or insignificant. One proof of its continued survival can be seen in its reemergent importance in the context of Coptic Christianity in the Byzantine period. An important reminder of the mixing of the traditions comes from a family of Panopolis in the 4th century, whose members included both teachers of Greek oratory and priests in Egyptian cult tradition. The towns and villages of the Nile valley have preserved thousands of papyri that show what the literate Greeks were reading (e.g., the poems of Homer and the lyric poets, works of the Classical Greek tragedians, and comedies of Menander). The pervasiveness of the Greek literary tradition is strikingly demonstrated by evidence left by an obscure and anonymous clerk at Al-Fayyūm village of Karanis in the 2nd century ce. In copying out a long list of taxpayers, the clerk translated an Egyptian name in the list by an extremely rare Greek word that he could only have known from having read the Alexandrian Hellenistic poet Callimachus; he must have understood the etymology of the Egyptian name as well.

Alexandria continued to develop as a spectacularly beautiful city and to foster Greek culture and intellectual pursuits, though the great days of Ptolemaic court patronage of literary figures had passed. But the flourishing interest in philosophy, particularly Platonic philosophy, had important effects. The great Jewish philosopher and theologian of the 1st century, Philo of Alexandria (Philo Judaeus), brought a training in Greek philosophy to bear on his commentaries on the Bible. This anticipated by a hundred years the period after the virtual annihilation of the great Jewish community of Alexandria in the revolt of 115–117 ce, when the city was the intellectual crucible in which Christianity developed a theology that took it away from the influence of the Jewish exegetical tradition and toward that of Greek philosophical ideas. There the foundations were laid for teaching the heads of the Christian catechetical school, such as Clement of Alexandria. And in the 3rd century there was the vital textual and theological work of Origen, the greatest of the Christian Neoplatonists, without which there would hardly have been a coherent New Testament tradition at all.

 

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156)

Outside the Greek ambience of Alexandria, traditional Egyptian religious institutions continued to flourish in the towns and villages, but the temples were reduced to financial dependence on a state subvention (syntaxis), and they became subject to stringent control by secular bureaucrats. Nevertheless, like the Ptolemies before them, Roman emperors appear in the traditional form as Egyptian kings on temple reliefs until the mid-3rd century, and five professional hieroglyph cutters were still employed at the town of Oxyrhynchus in the 2nd century. The animal cults continued to flourish, despite Augustus’s famous sneer that he was accustomed to worship gods, not cattle. As late as the reign of Diocletian (285–305), religious stelae preserved the fiction that in the cults of sacred bulls (best known at Memphis and at Hermonthis [Armant]) the successor of a dead bull was “installed” by the monarch. Differences between cults of the Greek type and the native Egyptian cults were still highly marked, in the temple architecture and in the status of the priests. Priests of Egyptian cults formed, in effect, a caste distinguished by their special clothing, whereas priestly offices in Greek cults were much more like magistracies and tended to be held by local magnates. Cults of Roman emperors, living and dead, became universal after 30 bce, but their impact is most clearly to be seen in the foundations of Caesarea (Temples of Caesar) and in religious institutions of Greek type, where divine emperors were associated with the resident deities.

One development that did have an important effect on this religious amalgam, though it was not decisive until the 4th century, was the arrival of Christianity. The tradition of the foundation of the church of Alexandria by St. Mark cannot be substantiated, but a fragment of a text of the Gospel According to John provides concrete evidence of Christianity in the Nile valley in the second quarter of the 2nd century ce. Inasmuch as Christianity remained illegal and subject to persecution until the early 4th century, Christians were reluctant to advertise themselves as such, and it is therefore difficult to know how numerous they were, especially because later pro-Christian sources may often be suspected of exaggerating the zeal and the numbers of the early Christian martyrs. But several papyri survive of the libelli—certificates in which people swore that they had performed sacrifices to Greek, Egyptian, or Roman divinities in order to prove that they were not Christians—submitted in the first official state-sponsored persecution of Christians, under the emperor Decius (ruled 249–251). By the 290s, a decade or so before the great persecution under Diocletian, a list of buildings in the sizeable town of Oxyrhynchus, some 125 miles (200 km) south of the apex of the delta, included two Christian churches, probably of the house-chapel type.

 

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157) Egypt’s role in the Byzantine Empire​

Ancient Egypt - Byzantine Empire, Trade, Religion

Diocletian was the last reigning Roman emperor to visit Egypt, in 302 ce. Within about 10 years of his visit, the persecution of Christians ceased. The end of persecution had such far-reaching effects that from this point on it is necessary to think of the history of Egypt in a very different framework. No single point can be identified as the watershed between the Roman and Byzantine period, as the divide between a brighter era of peace, culture, and prosperity and a darker age, supposedly characterized by more-oppressive state machinery in the throes of decline and fall. The crucial changes occurred in the last decade of the 3rd century and the first three decades of the 4th. With the end of persecution of Christians came the restoration of the property of the church. In 313 a new system of calculating and collecting taxes was introduced, with 15-year tax cycles, called indictions, inaugurated retrospectively from the year 312. Many other important administrative changes had already taken place. In 296 the separation of the Egyptian coinage from that of the rest of the empire had come to an end when the Alexandrian mint stopped producing its tetradrachms, which had been the basis of the closed-currency system.

One other event that had an enormous effect on the political history of Egypt was the founding of Constantinople (now Istanbul) on May 11, 330. First, Constantinople was established as an imperial capital and an eastern counterpart to Rome itself, thus undermining Alexandria’s traditional position as the first city of the Greek-speaking East. Second, it diverted the resources of Egypt away from Rome and the West. Henceforth, part of the surplus of the Egyptian grain supply, which was put at 8 million artabs (about 300 million litres) of wheat (one artab was roughly equivalent to one bushel) in an edict of the emperor Justinian of about 537 or 538, went to feed the growing population of Constantinople, and this created an important political and economic link. The cumulative effect of these changes was to knit Egypt more uniformly into the structure of the empire and to give it, once again, a central role in the political history of the Mediterranean world.

The key to understanding the importance of Egypt in that period lies in seeing how the Christian church came rapidly to dominate secular as well as religious institutions and to acquire a powerful interest and role in every political issue. The corollary of this was that the head of the Egyptian church, the patriarch of Alexandria, became the most influential figure within Egypt, as well as the person who could give the Egyptian clergy a powerful voice in the councils of the Eastern church. During the course of the 4th century, Egypt was divided for administrative purposes into a number of smaller units but the patriarchy was not, and its power thus far outweighed that of any local administrative official. Only the governors of groups of provinces (vicarii of dioceses) were equivalent, and the praetorian prefects and emperors were superior. When a patriarch of Alexandria was given civil authority as well, as happened in the case of Cyrus, the last patriarch under Byzantine rule, the combination was very powerful indeed.

The turbulent history of Egypt in the Byzantine period can largely be understood in terms of the struggles of the successive (or, after 570, coexisting) patriarchs of Alexandria to maintain their position both within their patriarchy and outside it in relation to Constantinople. What linked Egypt and the rest of the Eastern Empire was the way in which the imperial authorities, when strong (as, for instance, in the reign of Justinian), tried to control the Egyptian church from Constantinople, while at the same time assuring the capital’s food supply and, as often as not, waging wars to keep their empire intact. Conversely, when weak they failed to control the church. For the patriarchs of Alexandria, it proved impossible to secure the approval of the imperial authorities in Constantinople and at the same time maintain the support of their power base in Egypt. The two made quite different demands, and the ultimate result was a social, political, and cultural gulf between Alexandria and the rest of Egypt and between Hellenism and native Egyptian culture, which found a powerful new means of expression in Coptic Christianity. The gulf was made more emphatic after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 established the official doctrine that Christ was to be seen as existing in two natures, inseparably united. The council’s decision in effect sent the Egyptian Coptic (now Coptic Orthodox) church off on its own path of monophysitism, which centred around a firm insistence on the singularity of the nature of Christ.

Despite the debilitating effect of internal quarrels between rival churchmen, and despite the threats posed by the hostile tribes of Blemmyes and Nubade in the south (until their conversion to Christianity in the mid-6th century), emperors of Byzantium still could be threatened by the strength of Egypt if it were properly harnessed. The last striking example is the case of the emperor Phocas, a tyrant who was brought down in 609 or 610. Nicetas, the general of the future emperor Heraclius, made for Alexandria from Cyrene, intending to use Egypt as his power base and cut off Constantinople’s grain supply. By the spring of 610 Nicetas’s struggle with Bonosus, the general of Phocas, was won, and the fall of the tyrant duly followed.

The difficulty of defending Egypt from a power base in Constantinople was forcefully illustrated during the last three decades of Byzantine rule. First, the old enemy, the Persians, advanced to the Nile delta and captured Alexandria. Their occupation was completed early in 619 and continued until 628, when Persia and Byzantium agreed to a peace treaty and the Persians withdrew. This had been a decade of violent hostility to the Egyptian Coptic Christians; among other oppressive measures, the Persians are said to have refused to allow the normal ordination of bishops and to have massacred hundreds of monks in their cave monasteries. The Persian withdrawal hardly heralded the return of peace to Egypt.

In Arabia events were taking place that would soon bring momentous changes for Egypt. These were triggered by the flight of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Medina and by his declaration in 632 ce of a holy war against Byzantium. A decade later, by September 29, 642, the Arab general ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ was able to march into Alexandria, and the Arab conquest of Egypt, which had begun with an invasion three years earlier, ended in peaceful capitulation. The invasion itself had been preceded by several years of vicious persecution of Coptic Christians by Cyrus, the Chalcedonian patriarch of Alexandria, and it was he who is said to have betrayed Egypt to the forces of Islam.

 

[JLG]

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158) The Islamic conquest was not bloodless. There was desultory fighting at first in the eastern delta, then Al-Fayyūm was lost in battle in 640, and a great battle took place at Heliopolis (now a suburb of Cairo) in July 640 in which 15,000 Arabs engaged 20,000 Egyptian defenders. The storming and capture of Trajan’s old fortress at Babylon (on the site of the present-day quarter called Old Cairo) on April 6, 641, was crucial. By September 14 Cyrus, who had been recalled from Egypt 10 months earlier by the emperor Heraclius, was back with authority to conclude a peace. Byzantium signed Egypt away on November 8, 641, with provision for an 11-month armistice to allow ratification of the treaty of surrender by the emperor and the caliph. In December 641 heavily laden ships were dispatched to carry Egypt’s wealth to its new masters. Nine months later the last remnants of Byzantine forces left Egypt in ships bound for Cyprus, Rhodes, and Constantinople, and ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ took Alexandria in the name of the caliph. The new domination by the theocratic Islamic caliphate was strikingly different from anything that had happened in Egypt since the arrival of Alexander the Great almost a thousand years earlier.

Byzantine government of Egypt​

Ancient Egypt - Byzantine Empire, Trade, Religion

The reforms of the early 4th century had established the basis for another 250 years of comparative prosperity in Egypt, at a cost of perhaps greater rigidity and more-oppressive state control. Egypt was subdivided for administrative purposes into a number of smaller provinces, and separate civil and military officials were established (the praeses and the dux, respectively). By the middle of the 6th century the emperor Justinian was eventually forced to recognize the failure of this policy and to combine civil and military power in the hands of the dux with a civil deputy (the praeses) as a counterweight to the power of the church authorities. All pretense of local autonomy had by then vanished. The presence of the soldiery was more noticeable, its power and influence more pervasive in the routine of town and village life. Taxes were perhaps not heavier than they had been earlier, but they were collected ruthlessly, and strong measures were sanctioned against those who tried to escape from their fiscal or legal obligations. The wealthier landowners probably enjoyed increased prosperity, especially as a result of the opportunity to buy now state-owned land that had once been sold into private ownership in the early 4th century. The great landlords were powerful enough to offer their peasant tenants a significant degree of collective fiscal protection against the agents of the state, the rapacious tax collector, the officious bureaucrat, or the brutal soldier. But, if the life of the average peasant did not change much, nevertheless the rich probably became richer, and the poor became poorer and more numerous as the moderate landholders were increasingly squeezed out of the picture.

The advance of Christianity​

The advance of Christianity had just as profound an effect on the social and cultural fabric of Byzantine Egypt as on the political power structure. It brought to the surface the identity of the native Egyptians in the Coptic church, which found a medium of expression in the development of the Coptic language—basically Egyptian written in Greek letters with the addition of a few characters. Coptic Christianity also developed its own distinctive art, much of it pervaded by the long-familiar motifs of Greek mythology. These motifs coexisted with representations of the Virgin and Child and with Christian parables and were expressed in decorative styles that owed a great deal to both Greek and Egyptian precedents. Although Christianity had made great inroads into the populace by 391 (the year in which the practice of the local polytheistic religions was officially made illegal), it is hardly possible to quantify it or to trace a neat and uniform progression. It engulfed its predecessors slowly and untidily. In the first half of the 5th century a polytheistic literary revival occurred, centred on the town of Panopolis, and there is evidence that fanatical monks in the area attacked non-Christian temples and stole statues and magical texts. Outside the rarefied circles in which doctrinal disputes were discussed in philosophical terms, there was a great heterogeneous mass of commitment and belief. For example, both the gnostics, who believed in redemption through knowledge, and the Manichaeans, followers of the Persian prophet Mani, clearly thought of themselves as Christians. In the 4th century a Christian community, the library of which was discovered at Najʾ Ḥammādī in 1945, was reading both canonical and apocryphal gospels as well as mystical revelatory tracts. At the lower levels of society, magical practices remained ubiquitous and were simply transferred to a Christian context.

By the mid-5th century Egypt’s landscape was dominated by the great churches, such as the magnificent church of St. Menas (Abū Mīna), south of Alexandria, and by the monasteries. The latter were Egypt’s distinctive contribution to the development of Christianity and were particularly important as strongholds of native loyalty to the monophysite church. The origins of Antonian communities, named for the founding father of monasticism, St. Anthony of Egypt (c. 251–356), lay in the desire of individuals to congregate about the person of a celebrated ascetic in a desert location, building their own cells, adding a church and a refectory, and raising towers and walls to enclose the unit. Other monasteries, called Pachomian—for Pachomius, the founder of cenobitic monasticism—were planned from the start as walled complexes with communal facilities. The provision of water cisterns, kitchens, bakeries, oil presses, workshops, stables, and cemeteries and the ownership and cultivation of land in the vicinity made these communities self-sufficient to a high degree, offering their residents peace and protection against the oppression of the tax collector and the brutality of the soldier. But it does not follow that they were divorced from contact with nearby towns and villages. Indeed, many monastics were important local figures, and many monastery churches were probably open to the local public for worship.

The economic and social power of the Christian church in the Nile River valley and delta is the outstanding development of the 5th and 6th centuries. By the time of the Arab invasion, in the mid-7th century, the uncomplicated message of Islam might have seemed attractive and drawn attention to the political and religious rifts that successive and rival patriarchs of the Christian church had so violently created and exploited. But the advent of Arab rule did not suppress Christianity in Egypt. Some areas remained heavily Christian for several more centuries.

 

[JLG]

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159) Alexander's Death

Alexander the Great​

While still processing the grief of Hephaestion's death, Alexander returned to Babylon in 323 BCE with plans for expanding his empire but he would never realize them. He died at Babylon at the age of 32 on 10 or 11 June 323 BCE after suffering ten days of high fever. Theories concerning his cause of death have ranged from poisoning to malaria to meningitis to bacterial infection from drinking contaminated water (among others).

Plutarch says that, 14 days before his death, Alexander entertained his fleet admiral Nearcus and his friend Medius of Larissa with a long bout of drinking, after which he fell into a fever from which he never recovered. When he was asked who should succeed him, Alexander said, “the strongest”, which answer led to his empire being divided between four of his generals: Cassander, Ptolemy, Antigonus, and Seleucus (known as the Diadochi or 'successors').

 

[JLG]

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160) Seleucid Empire

Seleucid empire | Map, Rulers, Location, & Facts

Seleucid empire, (312–64 bce), an ancient empire that at its greatest extent stretched from Thrace in Europe to the border of India. It was carved out of the remains of Alexander the Great’s Macedonian empire by its founder, Seleucus I Nicator. (See also Hellenistic Age.)

Seleucus, one of Alexander’s leading generals, became satrap (governor) of Babylonia in 321, two years after the death of Alexander. In the prolonged power struggle between the former generals of Alexander for control of the disintegrating empire, Seleucus sided with Ptolemy I of Egypt against Antigonus I, Alexander’s successor on the Macedonian throne, who had forced Seleucus out of Babylonia. In 312 Seleucus defeated Demetrius at Gaza using troops supplied by Ptolemy, and with a smaller force he seized Babylonia that same year, thereby founding the Seleucid kingdom, or empire. By 305, having consolidated his power over the kingdom, he began gradually to extend his domain eastward to the Indus River and westward to Syria and Anatolia, where he decisively defeated Antigonus at Ipsus in 301. In 281 he annexed the Thracian Chersonesus. That same year, he was assassinated by Ptolemy Ceraunus, the disgruntled son of Ptolemy I.

Seleucus was succeeded by his eldest son, Antiochus I Soter, who reigned until 261 and was followed by Antiochus II (reigned 261–246), Seleucus II (246–225), Seleucus III (225–223), and Antiochus III the Great (223–187), whose reign was marked by sweeping administrative reforms in which many of the features of the ancient Persian imperial administration, adopted initially by Alexander, were modernized to eliminate a dual power structure strained by rivalry between military and political figures. The empire was administered by provincial stratēgoi, who combined military and civil power. Administrative centres were located at Sardis in the west and at Seleucia on the Tigris in the east. By controlling Anatolia and its Greek cities, the Seleucids exerted enormous political, economic, and cultural power throughout the Middle East. Their control over the strategic Taurus Mountain passes between Anatolia and Syria, as well as the Hellespont between Thrace and Anatolia, allowed them to dominate commerce and trade in the region. Seleucid settlements in Syria, primarily Antioch, were regional centres by which the Seleucid empire projected its military, economic, and cultural influence.

The Seleucid empire was a major centre of Hellenistic culture, which maintained the preeminence of Greek customs and manners over the indigenous cultures of the Middle East. A Greek-speaking Macedonian aristocratic class dominated the Seleucid state throughout its history, although this dominance was most strongly felt in the urban areas. Resistance to Greek cultural hegemony peaked during the reign of Antiochus IV (175–163), whose promotion of Greek culture culminated in his raising a statue to Zeus in the Temple at Jerusalem. He had previously ordered the Jews to build shrines to idols and to sacrifice pigs and other unclean animals and had forbidden circumcision—essentially prohibiting, on pain of death, the practice of the Jewish law. This persecution of the Jews and desecration of the Temple sparked the Maccabean uprising beginning in 165. A quarter-century of Maccabean resistance ended with the final wresting of control over Judea from the Seleucids and the creation of an independent Judea in Palestine.

The Seleucid empire began losing control over large territories in the 3rd century bce. An inexorable decline followed the first defeat of the Seleucids by the Romans in 190. By that time the Aegean Greek cities had thrown off the Seleucid yoke, Cappadocia and Attalid Pergamum had achieved independence, and other territories had been lost to the Celts and to Pontus and Bythnia. By the middle of the 3rd century, Parthia, Bactria, and Sogdiana had gained their independence; the conquest of Coele Syria (Lebanon) and Palestine by Antiochus III (200) and a brief occupation of Armenia made up to some extent for the loss of much of Anatolia to the Romans. The decline accelerated after the death of Antiochus IV (164) with the loss of Commagene in Syria and of Judea in Palestine. By 141 all lands east of the Euphrates were gone, and attempts by Demetrius II (141) and Antiochus VII (130) could not halt the rapid disintegration of the empire. When it was finally conquered by the Romans in 64 bce, the formerly mighty Seleucid empire was confined to the provinces of Syria and eastern Cilicia, and even those were under tenuous control.

 

[JLG]

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161) Antigonid dynasty

Antigonid dynasty | Rulers, History, & Facts

Macedonian history

Antigonid dynasty, ruling house of ancient Macedonia from 306 to 168 bce. The Antigonid dynasty was established when Demetrius I Poliorcetes, the son of Antigonus I Monophthalmus, ousted Cassander’s governor of Athens, Demetrius of Phaleron, and conquered the island of Cyprus, thereby giving his father control of the Aegean, the eastern Mediterranean, and all of the Middle East except Babylonia. Antigonus I was proclaimed king in 306 by the assembled army of these areas.

Demetrius succeeded Antigonus I to the throne, and his son, Antigonus II Gonatas, strengthened the Macedonian kingdom by routing a band of Galatian invaders from Macedonia. In 239 Gonatas died, his resilience and solid work having given Macedonia a sound and durable government. Gonatas’s son Demetrius II (reigned 239–229 bce) at once became involved in a war with the Greek Achaean and Aetolian leagues that lasted until his death. Macedonia was weakened, and Demetrius’s heir, Philip V, was a child. Conditions became so unsettled that the child’s guardian, Antigonus Doson, took the throne as Antigonus III. He marched into Greece and, after defeating the Spartan king Cleomenes III at Sellasia (222), reestablished the Hellenic Alliance as a confederacy of leagues, with himself as president. Doson died in 221, having restored internal stability and reestablished Macedonia in a stronger position in Greece than it had enjoyed since the reign of Gonatas.

Under Philip V, Macedonia first clashed with Rome (215), but Philip seriously miscalculated Rome’s strength, and his defeat at Cynoscephalae (197) led to a peace that confined him to Macedonia. The Hellenic Alliance, which had fallen apart, was replaced by a series of leagues in former Macedonian areas. Above all, the old balance of power was upset and Rome became the decisive power in the eastern Mediterranean.

Philip’s successor, Perseus (reigned 179–168 bce), was recognized as a champion of Greek freedom against Rome. But Perseus’s failure to deploy his full resources brought about his defeat (168) at Pydna in Macedonia and signaled the end of the dynasty.