REVIEW SHEET FOR NEAR EAST TEST

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General comments:

The general advice on the Egypt review sheet applies here too. The format of this test will be similar. Remember to give specific examples when the question asks for that, and of anything you talk about in the essay. Also read the questions carefully and be sure what you write really answers them.

As you study, compare each Near Eastern culture to the rest. How are they similar? How are they different? How do notions of kingship shift from period to period? How about language? laws? artistic styles? etc. etc.

Dates:

You should know the sequence of empires. You should also be able to say what century any given ruler lived in, if dates were supplied on class handouts.

Terms:

You should be able to define the following terms: light well, ziggurat, rhyton, griffin, cylinder seal, cuneiform, horns of consecration, pier and door partitions, stele.

Sites:

You should know what major monuments and/or artifacts are associated with the following sites. Ur, Uruk, Babylon, Knossos, Thera (Akrotiri), Hattusas, Nineveh, Nimrud, Khorsabad, Persepolis

People and gods:

You should be able to identify the following, and explain their importance: Anu, Ishtar, Gilgamesh, Sargon (the earlier one), Naram-Sin, Hammurabi, Suppiluliumas, Minos, Sargon (the later one), Ashurbanipal, Cyrus, Darius

Protoliterate Period

• what steps toward complex urban society have been taken by/in the Late Uruk period?
• what are the criteria for statehood?
• what stages has writing gone through so far?

Early Dynastic Period

• Sumerian royal cemetery at Ur
• cuneiform script develops; Ebla in Syria has an important archive
• Sumerian sculpture--consistently recognizable; what are its typical features?
  • statues
  • steles of Urnanshe, Eannatum
• Information about society comes from the Epic of Gilgamesh
  • Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, has to get citizens's permission before he can fight Kish
• Flood myth parallel to the one in the Bible (Book of Genesis); probably was its model
• kingship: given to man by gods; but Sumerian kings not divine

Akkadian Period

• Akkadian home in Northern Mesopotamia; similar religion, script to Sumer
• Sargon: first to unify Sumer and Akkad
• Naram-Sin: grandson of Sargon
  • his Stele commemorates victory; shows him with horned helmet of a god--a first attempt in the Near East by a king to claim divinity--did not work!

Neo-Sumerian Perod

• Gudea of Lagash fairly independent under Guti
• Ur III period
  • Ur-Nammu: ziggurat, stele, law code--compare to Hammurabi's, Hittites'

Old Babylonian Period

• Hammurabi: established a powerful empire
  • law code: compare to Ur-Nammu's, Hittites'
• Mari--palace of king Zimrilim, archive
• Hittites destroy Babylon in 1595 BCE

Kassite Period

• low period in Mesopotamia
• powerful period for Hittites in Anatolia
  • compare architecture to Mesopotamian
  • relations with Egyptians
  • law code: compare to Ur-Nammu's, Hammurabi's
  • myths: compare to Greeks'
• Assyrians rise and overthrow Kassites c. 1200 BCE
• (1200-1100 a time of decline, destructions, Peoples of the Sea)

Minoan Crete

• main site Knossos--know basic elements of the palace there
• key themes--bulls and bull-leaping, double axes, religious themes
• mother goddess, snake goddess
• contact with Egypt (bull-leaping painting at Avaris, the Hyksos capital in Egypt)
• Thera--exceptionally well preserved site of Akrotiri--buildings, beds, etc.
  • some Minoan, some non-Minoan elements
• wall paintings: what do we learn about from them?

Assyrian Empire

• three kings, and three capital cities
  • what was Ashurbanipal like, the last great Assyrian king?
• what is architecture like? sculptural reliefs?
• what messages of power do the kings send out by words and images?

Neo-Babylonian and Persian Empires

• Babylon becomes great again for 100 years
  • especially under Nebuchadnezzar, who built the hanging gardens
• monuments: Ishtar gate, Ishtar temple, hanging gardens
• Persians sack Babylon, and come to have the greatest empire until Alexander the Great
  • capital at Persepolis (founded by Darius)
• How do these neo- empires resemble their predecessors of the 3rd and 2nd millennia? How are they different?