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Early ivilizations



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Early Civilizations ncient Egypt in Context

Bruce G Trigger

The American University in Cairo Press



Copyright © 1993 byThe Am erican U niversity in Cairo Press113 Sharia Kasr el Aini Cairo Egy pt420 Fifth Avenue New York 10018-2729http: www aucpress com

Fou rth paperback printing 2001

All rig hts reserved. N o par t of this publication may be reproduced storedin a retrieva l system or transmitted in any form o r by any means electronicmechanical photocopying recording or otherwise without the priorwritten permission of the copyright owner.

Dar el Kutub No. 3191/95ISBN 977 424 365 X

Printed in Egypt



ContentsPreface vii

Comparative Chronological Chart ix

One The Unique and the General The Comparative Study of E arly Civilizations A D efini t ion of Early Civilization 6City a nd Territorial States 8Comparat ive Studies 4Methodology 7Sources 22

Interpretations 23Conclusion 25

Two Economic Foundations 27Agriculture 28Kinship 34Land Ownership 38Taxation 44Author i ty 46The rmy 49Inequali ty 52

Three Politics and Culture 55Class Hierarchy 55

Social M obil ity 6

Adminis t rat ive Control 64Status Symbols 66Tribute 69Trade 7M o n u m e n t a l Architecture 74Art 8V alues and Lifestyles 84



vi O N T E N T S

Four Religion 86

Concepts of Deity 87

Cosmology 89Humanity and the Gods 94Kings and Gods 98The Destiny of the Individual 1 5Conclusion 1 7

Five Postscript 1 9

Bibliographical Essay 113Sources on the Early Civilizations 113Old and Middle Kingdom Egypt 113Ancient Mesopotamia 115Shang and Western Chou China 117The Classic Mayas 118The Aztecs and their Neighbors 119

Thelnkas 12The Yorubas and Benin 121

References 123

Index 147



Preface

This book is based on four lectures on Ancient Egypt as an EarlyCivilization that I delivered at the American University in Cairo

between April 12 and 15,1992, while I was Distinguished VisitingProfessor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Psy-chology. M y thanks go to the American University in Cairo fo r thisopportunity to return to Egypt and particularly to Professor KentW eeks and h is wife Susan fo r their unstinting hospitality to my w ifeand myself throughout our three-week stay. I also wish to thankGeorge Gibson, the Provost of AUC, and other members of the

university and the Cairo archaeological community for helping tomake our visit a memorable one.

The task I was assigned was to encourage Egyptologists to develop a comparative interest in other early civilizations and at thesame time to help bring the study of ancient Egypt back into themainstream of comparative anthropology. I attempted to do this byconsidering some of the ways in which ancient Egypt resembled

other early civilizations as well as some of the ways in which it wasunique. The positive response to my lectures makes me hope thatthere will be a receptive audience for this book. In preparing mylectures for publication, I have tried to preserve as much as possibleof their original style and organization.

My long-standing interest in the comparative study o f earlycivilizations has been reflected in an undergraduate course titled

The Social Institutions o f Early Civilizations that I have taught a tMcGill University since the 1960s. For the last three years I havebeen working full time on a comparative study of seven earlycivilizations, hoping to reveal more about the nature of factorswhich constrain human behavior. During the calendar years 1990and 19911 was relieved from most teaching and all administrative



viii PRE F CE

duties a t M cGi ll Un iversi ty by a K il lam Research Fellowship adm in-istered by the Canada Council . During 1992 I have c ontinued to

benefit from McGi l l U niv ersity s enlightened policy of sabbaticalleaves.

The present wo rk, besides c om paring an cient Egypt w ith six otherearly civ ilizations, co nstitutes an in terim report o n m y f indings todate. Over the next few years I hope to publish two m ore booksbased on my cur ren t research. One will provide synoptic descrip-t ions of the seven civ il izations that I am inv estigating; the other will

offer a detailed analysis of how and why these civil izations re-sembled and differed from each other.

The theoretica l struc ture of the present book evolved in the courseof prepar ing two earlier lec tures on m y research. T he first was givenin fo rmal ly in the Depar tment of A rchaeology at the Univers i ty ofBergen, No rwa y, w hile I was visiting that univ ersity as a guest of theCenter for the Study of the Sciences and the Hum ani ties in February

1991. The second lecture, titled Constraint and Freedom in theShaping of Early C ivilizations: A W orking Paper, was delivered ayear later in the Depar tment of Anthropology at the U nivers ity ofToronto, dur ing a visit sponsored by the Snider Lectureship Fu nd. wish to thank in particular Professors Randi Haaland and NilsGilje at the U nivers ity of Bergen and P rofessor Ric hard B. Lee at theUniversi ty of Toronto for m ak ing these v isits possible.

The present work has benefited substantially from commentsreceived in both Bergen and Toronto, b ut especially from the ques-t ions and discussions that followed m y lectures in Cairo. I ampar t icular ly grateful to Susan W eeks f or her penetrating questions,to Dr. Joan Oates for va luable comments , and especially to Dr.Barbara W elch for reading and commen t in g on a draf t of the book.The f inal version of the chronological cha r t was d rawn by S im on N .O R ourke, and he and Arnold C. Tovell hav e played indispensableroles in guiding m y m anuscr ipt through press.

would f inal ly like to acknowledge the inspiration I have derivedf rom the work of Robert M cC. Adam s. H is approach, m ore than thatof any oth er anthropologist, has inspired and influenc ed m y studyof early c ivil izations.



1500

1000

500 —

A.D.

B.C.

500

1000 —

1500 —

2000 —

2500 —

3000 —

3500

Mesopotamia

AchaemenidNeo Babylonian

Middle Babylonian

Kassite

Old Bab y lo n ianIsin-Larsa

Ur IIIAkkad ian

Early Dynastic III

Ear ly Dynastic I/II

Jemdat Nasr

Late Uruk

Egypt

Late Period

New K in g d o m

Middle Kin g d o m

Old Kingdom

Ear ly DynasticPeriod

North China

Eastern Chou

Western Chou

Late Shang

Early Shang

Erh-l i- t ou

MayaLowlands

Late Postclassic

Ear ly Postclassic

Terminal ClassicLate Classic

Ear ly Classic

Late Preclassic

Basin ofMexico

Late AztecEarly Aztec

Toltec

Teotihuacan

PeruCoast Hig h lan d s

C h i m u

Mo ch e

Inka

(chiefdoms andsmall states)

H u a r i Tia.

I h u a n a c o

Ch av in deH u a n t a r

Sechin AltoI )

SouthwesternNigeria

YorubaCivilization

1500

— 1000

— 500

A.D.

B.C.

— 500

— 1000

— 1500

— 2000

— 2500

— 3000

^nn

Com parative Chronological Chart of Early Civilizations se e over)



Comparative Chronological Chart of Early Civilizations previous page)

Solid lines show beginnings and ends of civilizations; shaded bandsshow periods discussed in this book. The Maya, Aztec, and Inkacivilizations were terminated by Spanish conquest. Yoruba civiliza-

tion continues to the present, but was transform ed into a modernindustrial society beginning at the end of the nineteenth century.The dates selected as marking the transition from early to laterpreindustrial civilization in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China tend tobe arbitrary. For the first two I have selected their conquest byAlexander the Great, which was quickly followed by major eco-nomic and political changes. In the case of Egypt, however, economic

and political civilization were already underway in the Late Period,while major elements of the Eg yptian religion survived until thecountry s conversion to C hristianity. For China, I have selected themiddle of the Eas tern Chou period c. 550 B .C .as m arking the endof early civilization as defined in this book. The Peruvian cu lturalentities labeled Sechin Alto and Chavin de Huantar may have beenearly states or chiefdom s rather th an early civilizations. There is at

least a possibility that the postclassic Maya had reached the level ofa later pre indus trial civilization . Schele and Freidel 1990).



One

The Unique and the General

concerning Egypt I will now speak at length because nowhereare there so many marvelous things nor anywhere else on earth

are there to be seen so many works of inexpressible greatness.Herodotus istory II 35

Already in Herodotus time Egypt was recognized as an ancientcivilization Its extraordinary accomplishments commanded thewonder and admiration of foreign visitors while many of its customsastonished and even shocked them. Yet ancient Egypt was only oneof many civilizations that developed independently o f each other indifferent parts o f the world beginning about five thousand years ago.

This book will consider ancient Egypt in the light of comparativeresearch I am doing on it and six other early civilizations. It will try

to delineate what features ancient Egypt had in common with otherearly civilizations and to what extent it was unique. The first chapteris a theoretical and methodological introduction and the followingthree chapters deal with the economies political organization andreligious aspects of early civilizations. A final chapter considersbriefly the relevance of these comparisons for understanding thefactors which shaped the development of these societies.

The Comparative Study o f Early Civilizations

Except in relation to the study of the early development of theEgypt ian state where anthropological archaeologists such as Walter



TH E U N I Q U E A N D T H E G E N E R A L

Fairservis 1972), the late Michael H o f fm a n 1979), Ro bert W en ke 1989), an d anthropological ly informed Egyptologis ts such asKathryn Bard 1987, 1992) play a m ajo r role, relations betweenEgyptology an d anthropo logy have n o t been as close as they shouldbe, or even as close as con tacts between the two disciplin es were inthe more remote past. Egyptology began as, and has largely re-m ained, a hu m an istic stud y o f the past. It is characterized by a eepinterest in philology, art history, and to a lesser egree politicalhistory. This has n o t ruled ou t a co n cern with everyday life, as was

demonst ra ted long ago by the works of J. Gardner W ilkinso n 1854)an d A d o lf Erm an 1894). Yet, except in the archaeological researchesof W .M. Flin ders Petrie D ro wer 1985), the s tudy o f everyday life inanc ien t Egypt has no t been a cen tral con cern. I ts un derstand ing hasbeen treated as som ething that em erges n atu ra l ly ou t of fam iliar itywith the data, rather than as a fo rm o f in vestigation that requiresspecial training, as philolo gy an d ar t history do . Egyptolo gists tend

to assum e that n o pa rt icu lar expertise is needed to un ders tand thebehav io r o f the an cient Egypt ians . Yet they are a lso con vinced thatanc ien t Egy pt ian civil izatio n was un ique an d should be studied fo rits o wn sake. A cco rdin g to Christo pher Eyre 1987a:5), the belief thatEgyptian civil izatio n was differen t from tha t o f any o ther society hasdiscouraged Egyptologists f rom t rea t ing in fo rm at io n about o therearly civilizat io n s as a m eans to un derstan d a n cient Egypt better.

An th ro p o lo g i s t s long shared a s imi la r, s t rong commitment tohistorical par t icular ism , a l tho ugh they com bined it with a greateracceptance o f cu l tu ra l re la tiv ism . Early in the twen t ie th cen tury theGerm an-born A m erican an thropolo g ist Franz Boas convinced m ostof h is colleagues th at every cu lture was a un ique produc t o f i ts o wnlargely fo r tu i tous h isto rical develo pm en t an d hence co uld be stud-ied and appreciated only in t e rms of i ts own beliefs an d values

Har r i s 1968:250-89).Yet in the 1960s anthropological archaeology was inspired bycultural-eco logical and n eo evo lution ary tenden cies in social an-thropology to a b a n d o n its t r ad i t iona l commi tmen t to historicalpart icular ism an d begin pay in g greater a t ten tio n to the cross-cul-tu ra l regularities in h um an behavior, which soon becam e pr iv i legedobjects of s tud y. Beginn ing in the 1930s, the c ult ur al ecologist Julian

Steward m ainta in ed that the com parat ive exam ina t ion o f regulari-



The Comparative Study of Early Civilizations

ties in hum an behavior should be the primary object of social scienceresearch, while stigmatizing as parochial the investigation of traits

• t h a t were specific only to historica lly related cu lture s (Stew ard1949). Steward's ecological approach stressed the importance ofs tudying what w as c ross-culturally recurrent and ignoring whatwas un ique . The processual archaeology of the 1960s, which em-bodied Steward's program, stressed the s tudy of ecology, trade , andsociopolitical org an ization , while treating a rt, religion, and valuesas epiphenomenal and hence of little real interest. Con trary to the

Boasian position, science and the evolutionary study of the generalwere privileged at the expense of history and the investigation of theparticular (C aldw ell 1959; W atson, LeB lanc, and Redm an 1971;Binford 1972).

The suppo rters of this paradigm m ade im portan t methodologicalcontr ibut ions to the study of archaeological data and the under-s tanding of early civilizations. Yet, despite Stew ard's formal com-

m itm en t to mu lti l inea r evolution, the major works of this period,even when they did not have a processual orientation, tended totreat all early civilizations as developing along similar lines. Thiswas true of Steward's Cu ltural Ca usa lity and Law : A Trial Form u-lation of the Development of Early Civilizations (1949), Ro bertMcC. Adams ' The volution of Urban Society: Early Mesopotamiaand Prehispanic Mexico (1966), and Pa ul W hea tley's The Pivot of

the Four Quarters (1971), a comparat ive s t udy -o f urbanism inpreind ustrial civil izations.Only in the 1980s did anthropo logical archaeologists once again

become co ncerned w ith the m any aspects of hu m an endeavors, andhence of the archaeological record, that were being ignored as aresult of this nearly exclusive preoccupation with cross-culturalregularities. There also developed a renewed appreciation for the

considerable va riation in hum an beh avior from one culture toano ther. Wi t h i n the context of what has come to be cal ledpostprocessual archa eolog y, religion, ar t, values, and people s per-ceptions of themselves and the world around them came to beviewed as im portant elements in un de rs tand ing hu m an behaviorand ac co un ting for the archaeological record (F lannery and M arcu s1976; Hodder 1986, 1987a, 1987b; Shanks and Tilley 1987; Bintliff1991; Preucel 1991).

A widespread acceptance

of ecological factors



TH E U N I Q U E A N D T H E G E N E R A L

as the principal determinants of human behavior was increasinglyreplaced by a neo-Boasian cultural determinism, which posited that

beliefs transmitted in specific cultural traditions are the main factorsinfluencing human behavior. This approach values the study of thebeliefs of other peoples more than it does the search for generalexplanations of human behavior Wylie 1985:90).

Such developments have been encouraged by a renewed empha-sis in social anthropology on seeing cultural traditions as 'sense-making systems' that shape people's perceptions and values—

hence fundamentally influencing their reactions to new experi-ences. Through the advocacy of scholars such as Victor Turner(1967, 1975), Marshall Sahlins (1976), and Clifford Geertz (1984),these ideas have acquired enormous influence among social anthro-pologists. This development in turn has convinced many archaeolo-gists that the distinctions that processual archaeologists had drawnbetween science and history, evolution and history, and the social

sciences and humanities are unproductive and misleading, andhenceforth should be abandoned. Many archaeologists have alsobecome convinced that it is as important to try to explain behavioraldifferences among peoples as it is to explain similarities. Thosepostprocessual archaeologists who do not deny the value of allcomparative studies have restored to comparative research thegoals it had when an earlier generation of scholars, including V.

Gordon Childe (1934), Henri Frankfor t (1948, 1956), and Kar lWittfogel (1957), exhibited an interest in the differences as well asthe similarities among early civilizations.

M y own work is premised on the assumption that, when it comesto accounting for human behavior, explaining differences is theo-retically as important as explaining similarities. Even aspects ofbehavior that are unique to individual civilizations should be stud-ied. For example, many peoples have conceptualized high placesas points where human beings can gain privileged access to thesupernatural. Only the ancient Egyptians, however, drawing uponthe imagery of islands of high ground emerging from the annualNile f lood, formulated the specific concept of the mound o f creation,upon which order emerged from the primeval sea at the time ofcreation and where it was recreated at the beginning o f each day andevery time pharaoh sat upon his throne. This unique concept



The Comparative Study of Early Civilizations

resonated throughout ancient Egyptian religious thought. Themound of creation unde rlay the heart of every temple and inspiredthe pyramids and obelisks that to outside rs have become the sym-bols of E gyptian civilization. T he full meaning of such symbols canbe understood only through the detailed co ntextu al study of ancientEgyptian beliefs and practices not through the comparison ofancient Eg ypt w ith other early civilizations.

Y et Egyptian civilization also shared important features withm any other early civilizations and in some instances w ith all of

them. K ingship , taxes, and bure auc racy are only a few traits tha t arefound in all early civilizations. The identification and explanation ofsuch common features help scholars to understand every earlycivilization be tter. This is especially im po rtant since/because of alack of information, there is much that we do not know aboutindividual early civilizations. A comparative study of the traitscom mon to all, or even some, of the early civiliz ations may assist us

to understand ancient Egypt better. At the same time, the featuresunique to a ncient Egypt are equally imp ortant for unders tanding allother early civilizations.

The concept of early civilization as a distinctive type of societyimplies an e volution ary view of hum an history. Social evo lutionismhas been sharply attacked in recent decades as a myth that wascreated by W estern European scholars beginning in the eighteenth

century to justify colonial exploitation in many parts of the world Sioui 1992). I do not disp ute tha t there is truth in thischarge, but wouldquestion the further suggestion tha t evo lutionism , as an approach tostudying hum an history, is inherently and inescapably colonialistor racist. In recen t decades archaeological research w hich has beeninspired by an evolutionary perspective has demonstrated thecreativity and progress achieved in prehistoric times by indigenous

peoples around the world. Especially since the 1960s knowledge oftheir achievem ents has played a significant role in un de rm inin g thejustifications offered for colonialism and has helped to encourageindependence movements in m an y cou ntries Robertshaw 1990).

It is also unrealistic to deny the fact of cultura l evolution. Allmodern societies are descended from Palaeolithic hu nter-gatherersocieties. Along the way, those that have abandoned hunter-gath-erer economies have also experienced major changes in social



TH E UNIQUE AND THE G E N E R A L

organization and in the way their members perceive the universeand the place of hu m an beings in it. Evolu tiona ry beliefs cause ha rmwhen anthropologists become so preoccupied with evolutionarychange that they forget the common hum ani ty of all peoples anddeny cu ltura l relativism to the ex tent that they fail to remem ber, forexample, tha t groups that have remained hunter-gatherers have asmuch right as anyo ne else to ha ve their way s of life respected andthat these peoples may, like all others, possess understanding andknowledge that are potentially valuable for all hum an i ty.

To adapt cultural evolutionism to a m odern scientific und erstandingof hu m an behavior, it is necessary to stop v iew ing it as a unil inearprocess with all societies evo lving along a single pa th to a commonfuture. When it came to the s tudy of early civilizations, JulianSteward was a unilinear evolutionist to the same degree as weremost evolutionists of the nine teenth ce ntu ry Stew ard 1949). In theperiod follow ing W orld War II, this was also true of Leslie W hite

1949,1959), neoevolutionary anthropologists such as Elm an Service 1971,1975) and M orto n Fried 1967), and most processua l archae -ologists. In each instanc e unilinea r evo lutionism was based on anunrealistic faith in the cross-cultural regu larity of hum an behavior.

My own view of c ultu ral evolution is more pragm atic and induc-tive. I acknowledge tha t new forms of societies have come into beingdur ing the course of human history and tha t it is impor tan t to

understand the distinc tive properties of each new type of societyand how it has affected existin g ones. Like the Am erican anthro-pologist George P. Murdock 1959) and the B ritish archaeologist V.Gordon Childe 1947), I see c ultu ral evolution as being congruen tw ith the sum total of hum an his tory and the task of anthropologiststo exp lain both the sim ilarities and the differences tha t have charac-terized tha t history. An evolution ism that seeks to accou nt only for

similarities destines itself to be incom plete.

A D efinition of Early Civilization

Early civ ilizatio n, as anthrop ologists use this term, den otes theearliest form of class-based society th at dev eloped in the course ofhum an history. E arly civi l izat ions consti tute the first but not the

only type of preindustrial ci viliza tion Crone 1989). They are or rather



A Definition of Early Civilization

were, since none currently exists) characterized by a high degree ofsocial and economic inequality; power was based primarily on the

creation and control of agricultural surpluses. While the technolo-gies of these societies tended to remain simple, the organization andmanagement of human labor could sometimes be quite complex.These societies were internally stratified in a hierarchy of largelyendogamous classes. E ach civilization was based upon exploitativerelations, in which a king and a small ruling class extracted surplusproduction from the lower classes. These surpluses supported an

elite style of life that wasclearly distinguished from that of the lowerclasses by its luxuriousness and by the creation of monumental art,architecture, and other status symbols. Both slavery and coerciveinstitutions, such as corvee labor and mandatory military service,existed, but they were less developed than in many subsequentpreindustr ial societies. Y et those in control possessed sufficientpolitical power and social sanctions to conserve the stability of their

regimes over long periods. The symbols that were used to concep-tual ize and discuss social relations in such societies were drawnmainly from the sphere of religion, which at its highest levels wassubject to state control Sahlins 1976:211-12). In these societiesdistinctions that a re drawn today between the natural, the super-natural , and the social had little, if any, meaning.

In the past, civil ization has often been equated with literacy

Morgan 1907:12; Childe 1950; Sjoberg 1960:32-34,38; Goody 1986).Yet this association does not hold any more than do attempts todefine early civil izations in terms of other specific traits of materialculture. In Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, and among the Mayas ofCentral America, fu l ly developed writing systems, based onlogographic, phonetic, and semantic—but not on purely syllabic oralphabetic—principles, were created at an early stage in the devel-

opment of civil ization. In highland Mexico, despite considerableemphasis on record keeping for economic and historical purposes,no means was developed for representing speech as opposed toideas, and in Peru and West A frica no indigenous system of writingwas ever developed. Y et there is no obvious difference in the degreeof social, economic, and political development of early civilizationsaccording to whether or not they possessed writing. The Inkas

developed an elaborate system of quipus or knotted cords, as



TH E UNI QUE A N D T H E G E N E R A L

mnemonics for keeping government accounts, and where it was notpossible to record speech professional rememberers kept track of

the past and of other vi tal information for the upper classes. It isinteresting that in each civilization where writing appears to havedeveloped without any evident outside stimulus, it did so at an earlyphase in the history of that civilization. On the other hand, despitea long tradition of idea-writing in highland Mexico, the peoples ofthat region did not develop true literacy prior to the Spani sh conquest.

Anthropologists distinguish early civil izations from less complex

chiefdoms or tribal states and from still simpler tribal agriculturaland hunter-gatherer societies. These smaller-scale societies tendedto be integrated primarily by kinship networks, and social relationsrather than religious concepts played a leading role in mediating allother form s of activities (Fried 1967; Service 1971). Early civilizationswere also different from later, more complex preindustrial societies,such as those of classical Greece, Rome, and Han China, where

weal th was calculated more abstractly in terms of money rather thanland, money payments tended to replace corvees and payments inkind, armies became institutionalized to the point where theircommanders might challenge the power of the state, and internationa lreligions developed in a context in which the natural, supernatural,and social realms became increasingly di fferent ia ted (Heichelheim1958). Early civilizations are also distinguished from still later forms

of preindustrial civil ization, such as the feudal societies of medievalEurope and Japan. It is doubtful that any of these later forms ofpreindustrial civilizations could have evolved had early civiliza-tions not previously arisen in the same or adjacent regions.

City and Territorial States

A ll of the early c ivi l izat ions th at I have studied can be subdividedin to tw o general types according to the nature o f their politicalorganizat ion . I have labeled these city-state systems a nd territorialstates (Trigger 1985a). Charles Maisels 1990) has called them cityand vi l lage states.

City-state systems took the form of a network of ad jacent citystates whose elites tended to compete with one another, often

mil i tar i ly, to control territory, trade routes, and other resources,



City and Territorial States

while at the same time sharing com m on status symbols and makingalliances w ith each other, often through interm arriage amo ng theirruling fam ilies. Each c ity state had a rela tively small territory oftencove ring only a few h und red square kilom eters) and a cap ital city,which frequently was enclosed by a w all. In addition to its capitala city state might have a number of smaller centers as well asnumerous farming villages and ham lets. The four city-state systemsthat I consider in this study are those of ancie nt Sumer, located insouthern Mesopotamia Iraq), prior to the Old B abylon ian period;

the Aztecs and oth er peoples w ho inhabited the Basin of M exico, inhighland M exico w here Mexico City is now located, during thefifteenth and sixteenth centuries A . D . ; th e Mayas of southeasternMexico, Belize, and parts of G ua temala and Honduras dur ing theClassic Period between A . D . 200 and 900; and the Yorubas andneighboring E do-speaking people of Benin in southw estern N igeriadur ing the eighteenth and ninetee nth centuries A . D .

The urban centers of these states tended to be relatively largecommunit ies , wi th p opulat ions ranging from less than a thousandto over a hundred thousand individuals, depending on the ability ofa par t icular city state to control and exact tribute f rom its neighbors.Considerable num bers of farmers frequently lived in such centers inorder to secure greater p rotection for them selves and the ir posses-sions. I t is est im ated tha t in southern M esopotamia in E arly Dynas-

tic tim es ca. 2900-2350 B . C .over 80 percent of the total pop ulationlived in urba n cen ters A da m s 1981:90-94). Am ong the Yorubas,most extended fam ilies had their principa l residences in towns andcities, a l tho ugh some m embers spent much of their lives in smallvillages or hom esteads prod ucing food for the ir relatives.

These cities also supported craft production, which sought tosatisfy the demands not only of the urban elite but of society as a

whole. T he deve lopment of craft specialization and of comm ercialexchanges between town and countryside, as well as betweenneighboring u rba n centers, encouraged the growth of public m ar-kets. These w ere major feature s o f u rban life among the A ztecs andthe Yorubas, and women in both cases played a prominent role in theretailing of goods. W hile the evidence for actua l marketplaces is lessclear for south ern Mesopotamia, the remnants of shop-lined streets

indicate vigorous commercial activity involving large num bers of



1 TH E U N I Q U E A N D T H E G E N E R A L

people. This activity in turn promoted competition among citystates to obtain supplies of exotic raw materials. As a result of

widespread access to goods produced by ful l - t im e specialists andthe development of more intensive agriculture close to urban cen-ters, city states were able to support a considerable number of non-food producers, possibly 10 to 20 percent of the total population.

Other early civilizations formed large territorial states at an earlystage in their development. Ancient Egypt, which consisted of theNile Valley north of Aswan and its adjacent hinterland, was one of

these. In the centuries prior to its un i f ica t ion , small states developedin southern Egypt and various parts of the north. Yet Egypt waspolitically united prior to the development of the court-centeredtradition that was to characterize its elite culture from Early Dynas-tic times to the Late Period H o ff man 1979). Another example is theInka state, which arose in the central highlands of Peru in thef i f teenth century A . D . This state originated in the region around

Cuzco, in the central highlands of Peru, but by the time of theSpanish conquest embraced all the territory located west of theAmazonian rain forest from Ecuador to central Chile. While civili-zations had developed earlier in the coastal and southern highlandregions of Peru, there is no evidence of a major state having existedpreviously in what was to become the heartland of the Inka Empire Keatinge 1988). Inka art and architecture were also differen t from

those of any previous civil ization in the region. A third example ofa territorial state was centered in the eastern and central parts of theYellow River valley of northern China during the Shang ca. 1750-1100 B.C.) and Western Chou 1100-771 B .C .) Dynasties and by theWestern Chou period extended south to include parts of the Y angtzeValley. Although some scholars view northern China at this periodas a network of ci ty states, the evidence concerning the settlement

patterns and administration of this region suggests two successiveterritorial states, although less power fu l city and terr i torial statesmay have existed around their borders Chang 1986b).

Terri torial states developed a hierarchy of administrative centersat the local, provincial, and national levels, but these urban centerstended to have small populations. Even national capitals, with amaximum population of probably no more than fifty thousand

people, were no larger than those of a substantial city state. This was



City and Territorial S ta tes

because these centers were inhabited almost exclusively by theruling class and by the administrators, c ra f t specialists, and retain-ers who served them. Because of the security provided by the statef a rmers tended to live in dispersed homesteads and in villages. Theinternal layout of administrative centers also tended to be decentral-ized. For this reason Egypt was once characterized as a civilizationwithout cities (Wilson 1960).

In territorial states a clearly demarcated two-tiered economydeveloped with distinct rural and urban sectors. Farmers manufac-

tured their own tools and household possessions on a part-timebasis during periods of each year when they were not fully occupiedwith a g r i cu ltu ra l labor. Usually they utilized only locally-availableraw materials a nd exchanged goods a t local markets. E lite c raf tsmen, on the other hand, were employed by the state, either inprovincia l centers or at the national capital, to m an u fac t u r e luxurygoods for the king and the upper classes, often from raw materials

imported specifically for that purpose. Unlike the city state the onlysignificant economic link between rural and urban centers in terri-torial states tended to be the payment of rents and taxes and theperformance of corvees by peasants. The transfer of food surplusesf rom the countryside to urban centers took place principally interms of appropriative rather than commercial mechanisms. Insofara s markets existed, they were usually small and served the needs of

the local rural population and the urban poor.Because of their large size, terr i torial states required large bureau-cracies to ensure the c ollection of taxes that could be used to supportstate act ivi t ies . Peasant communities, while becoming internallymore h ierarchica l within the context of the state, tended to preservemore of their prestate cu l t u re than survived in city states, wherelarge numbers of fa rmers came to reside in or near urban centers.Production wa s less specialized than it wa s in city states full t imespecialists fewer, and the qua l i ty of goods available to farmerspoorer. Farming also appears to have been less intensive in territo-rial states, since there were fewer urban dwellers to feed. Thepercentage of the population not engaged in f a rm ing w as probablyless than 10 percent.

This suggests that, if a c i ty s tate civil iza tion had become involvedin prolonged confl ict w i th a t e r r i tor ia l state, despite the latter s



2 TH E U N I Q U E A N D T H E G E N E R A L

political unity the greater technological and economic develop-ment of the city states would have given them a competitive edge.This might help to explain why Egypt was relatively unsuccessfulwhen it engaged in military competition with the city-based statesof Southwest Asia such as those of the Hittites and Assyrians. Itmight also explain why at a later period the economically moredynamic Greeks were able to resist and finally to conquer thePersian Empire.

On the other hand the government of a territorial state was able

to command the food surpluses and labor of a far greater numberof people than could the government of the largest city state. Hencesuch governments were capable of undertaking projects on animmense scale and could sponsor the work of many more skilledcraf tsmen than could the elites of any city state. No buildings wereerected in southern Mesopotamia that remotely equaled in size orengineering skill the pyramids at Giza although during the Old

and Middle Kingdoms local temples in Egypt seem to have beenconstructed on a more modest scale than were the temples in mostMesopotamian cities. In the city states of Mexico and especiallyamong the Mayas elaborate stone architecture was common. It didnot equal however either in the scale of individual projects or inthe size of the stone blocks used the monumental stone architec-ture that was erected over the very short life span of the Inka

empire.The distinction between the political organization of city and

territorial states appears to be clear-cut rather than a matter of scaleor degree of integration. When city states conquered their neigh-bors they normally compelled them to pay tribute but left theirpolitical institutions and ruling families intact preferring to ruleindirect ly Territorial states sometimes also controlled conquered

neighboring states in this manner as New Kingdom Egypt did thecity states of Palestine and Syria. Inside the borders of territorialstates however local governments were dismantled and replacedby a bureaucracy controlled by the central government. While localpeople often continued to play a role in such administrationsespecially at the village level no semi-autonomous state was per-mitted to threaten the control of the central government. Underthese circumstances interstate tribute was replaced by intrastate



City and Territorial States 3

taxation as the b sis for financing the activities of the cen tral gov ern-ment. Just as the Egyptian kings molded the Nile Valley north o fAsw an into a single state, the Inka rulers soug ht to convert the muchlarger A nde an core, if not the whole, of their em pire into a single state.The control that the central governm ents of these territorial statesexerted w as very d ifferent from the loose political heg em ony andtribute paym ents tha t dom inant M esopotamian c ity states imposed onweaker ones, or that the Aztecs exerted over m uc h of central Mex ico.

The development of these two types of states might have been

related to relative pop ulation densities at the t ime state form ationoccurred—terri torial states perh ps emerging in areas of lowerpopulation density in relation to arable land. Lower populationdensities w ou ld ha ve mad e it easier for def eate d po pu lation s to seekrefuge i n more rem ote areas, w hic h in tu rn would have inhibited thesuccessful consolidation o f any kind of state. In such re s powerwould have had to be based on control o f larger regions. The N ile

Valley nor th of Aswan was an area of overall low populat iondensi ty at the t ime of its first polit ical unif ication B utz er 1976).There is evidence that the pharaohs who established the FirstDynasty not on ly ruled ov er the whole of the Nile Val ley nor th o fA sw an but also sought to enhanc e the natu ral borders of Eg ypt bydepopula t ing adjacent areas of Nub ia , the Sinai Peninsula, andprobably Libya. This made it more d i ff icul t for Egypt ians w ho

objected to the aut h o rit y of these ph araoh s to avoid their rule Hoffm a n 1979). H ow eve r, too few da ta are available to test ageneral hypothesis concerning the re lat ion between popu lat iondensity and the format ion of di fferent k inds of states. It is notencouraging that the Yorubas, who had a city-state system, alsoappear in recent t imes to have had a low absolute populationde ns ity Bascom 1955:452). Bec ause of this, it is unrea l is t ic to ignore

the possibil i ty tha t othe r im po rtan t variables were invo lved .It is s ignif icant tha t city and terri torial states existed both in theO ld Wor ld and the New World and tha t each type developed atvar iou s per iods of h um an h is tory. There is no evidence o f historicalrelat ions between the di fferent occurrences of the same k ind of state;for example , terri torial states such as Old King dom Eg ypt, ShangChina , and Inka Peru o r c i ty-s ta te ne tworks such as anc ien t

Mesopotamia, sixteenth-century Mexico, and eighteenth-century



4 THE UNIQUE AND THE GENER L

Nigeria. Instead, these civilizations seem to provide evidence thattw o d i ffe rent types of political organization developed independently,

at d i f f e ren t periods and in d i f f e ren t parts of the world. Both typesof civilization occurred along major rivers (Egypt, Shang China;Mesopotamia), in highland valleys (Peru; Mexico), and perhaps ifwe include the Khmer state of Cambodia as an example of aterri torial state (Higham 1989), in tropical forests as well (Maya,Yoruba; Khmer). Nor is literacy associated exclusively with one sortof state. Among territorial states Egypt and China developed literacy,

the Inkas did not; among city states the Mesopotamians and theMayas achieved literacy, while the Aztecs an d other highland Mexi-cans remained semi-literate, and the Yorubasdid n ot develop writing.

The development under these varied circumstances of only twobasic types of political organization suggests that there may be onlya limited number of viable ways in which societies at an y particularlevel of complexity can be organized (Murdock 1959:134), a possi-

bility fu r ther indicated by the recent collapse, a f ter a relatively briefduration, of the Soviet variant of industrialized society (Harris1992 . I believe that these limitations at the political level are likelyto be explained in terms of varying costs of decision-making an dpolitical control in d i f f e ren t kinds of societies. (Flannery 1972;Johnson 1973; Adams 1988; Tainter 1988).

Comparative StudiesDuring the past four decades anthropological archaeologists havespent much time studying how early civilization s developed (Adams1966; R.E.W . Adams 1977; Redman 1978; Ho ffman 1979; Jones andKautz 1981). Since archaeology s chief strength is what it can revealabout changes over long periods of time, this seems to be a poten-

tially highly productive approach. However, while these effortshave resulted in major discoveries relating to the development ofspecific early civilizations, the theoretical advances do not seemproportional to the amount of energy expended. There are at leasttwo main reasons for this.

First, the origins of early civilizations everywhere predated theearliest appearance of substantial written records. Ye t there is much

we need to know about the early development of civilizations that



omparative Studies 5

we cannot reasonably hope to learn from archaeological data alone.One needs only to think of the controversies concerning the natureof the social and political organization of the Indus Valley civiliza-tion that remain unresolved for lackof contemporary written records.Second, as a result of prolonged occupation, the earliest levels atmany important sites have been buried under thick layers of debrisfrom later periods. Because of this, archaeologists are limited inw h a t they can learn about the formative stages of civilization atmany key centers. It will take a long time to uncover crucial archaeo-

logical evidence concerning the initial development of many earlycivilizations

For these reasons I thought it worthwhile to attempt a compara-tive study of periods o f early civilizations that are well documentedboth archaeologically and textually. M y ultimate goal was to learnmore about the factors that constrain human behavior by examiningthe similarities and differences in the ways in which a significant

number o f civilizations that had evolved independently, or almostindependently, in d ifferent parts of the world had been structuredand how each o f them had funct ioned

Some archaeologists and anthropologists question the validity ofany kind of comparative study. Especially among anthropologistswho have adopted a struc turalist viewpoint, there has been a revivalof the Boasian position that every culture is unique and that, while

each one can be studied and understood on its own terms, indi-vidua l cultures cannot legitimately be compared with one another.This position has been adopted with respect to the Inkas by manyAndeanists They view Inka civil ization as the expression of au n i q u e set of beliefs that are of great antiquity in the Central Andesand which made, and continue to make, Inka culture fu ndam enta l lydifferent f rom any other (D'Altroy 1987:5). More generally, Ian

Hodder (1986,1987b) has argued that, because each culture is theproduct of its own history, cross-cultural comparison is impossible.It is not clear how forcefully Hodder holds this view, since this claimhas not prevented him from proposing various cross-cultural gen-eralizations of his ow n (Hodder 1982:67).

These historical particularist views reflect the belief that whatMarshall Sahlins (1976) calls cultural reason, by which he meansdecision-making constrained by the idiosyncratic values of specific



6 THE UNIQUE AND THE G E N E R A L

cu l t u r a l traditions, plays a greater role in determining humanbehavior tha n does practical reason, the un iversal ly comprehen-sible calculation of the m ateria l interests of ind iv idua ls and groups.M y own view, wh en beg inning th is study , w as th at the extent ofidiosyncrasies a nd of cross-cultura l regulari t ies was something th atarchaeologists and anthropologists had to determ ine empirically.Nevertheless, I also accepted that previous cross-cultural studieshad indicated enough regularities among societies to suggest t ha tsuch investiga tions were both possible and interesting.

Social anthropologists have long objected to the cross-culturalcomparison of ind ividu al t ra i ts wrenched from their sociopoliticalcontext (Harris 1968:612-33; Ko bben 1952,1973). W hil e I accept tha tthere is m u c h va l id i ty in this criticism, I nevertheless c on tinu e tovalue th is form of cross-cultural comparison as a useful tool forexploring general propositions about relations between d ifferentaspects of c u lt u re (M oore 1961; Ford 1967; Jorgensen 1974; M u rd oc k

1981). The more serious problem is tha t most of the more robustcorrelations tend to be self-evident. It is no great surprise to learn tha tno hunter-gatherer c u ltu re has a divine kingship. On the other ha nd ,most o ther co rrela tions tend to be am biguous 'tendencies' and 'tilts/which suggests that mu l t ip le factors are involved whose interrelationscan be un derstoo d o nly throu gh more detai led stu dy of ind iv idua lcases (Coul t and Habenstein 1965; Textor 1967). Only rarely do

robust correlations emerge t ha t are not self-evident (Betzig 1986).To avoid the problems inherent in non-contextu alized trai t com-parisons, I decided to c o n d u c t a detai led study of seven earlycivil izations located in di fferent parts of the world . I hoped t ha t thisselection wa s large enoug h to co nstitu te a reasonab le sample of thebasic sim ilarities and differences found in all early civi l izat ions andsmall enough so t h a t I could un derstan d each c ivi l izat ion in s truc-

t u ra l and funct ional terms before I a t tempted a c ross-cul tural com-parison. In th is way I sought to answer the social and s t ruc tura lanthropologists ' objection that cross-cultural studies cannot pro-duce useful resul ts because they com pare tr ai ts in isola tion from thefunct ional and historica l contexts w hich endow them w ith behav-ioral significanc e. In presenting the results of a com parat ive s tudy,da ta m ust necessarily be isolated from their social c on tex t. Prior tom y eventua l publ ica t ion of sum m ary descript ions of each civi l iza-



Methodology 9

ness. Neither of these words referred to eternity as we understandit, but instead to a length of timecorresponding to the duration of theexisting cosmic order (Allen 1988:25-27). The Aztecs ascribed toeach human being at least three souls or life forces : the tonalliassociated with the head, which was a source of strength, vigor, andrat ional i ty, and which could be reborn in one s descendants; theteyoli associated with the heart and personality, which eventuallywent to the realms of the dead; and the ihiyotl associated with theliver and with emotion. In life the Aztecs sought to maintain aharmonious relation among these forces, although such an integra-tion could not last beyond death (Lopez Austin 1988:253). Thisreminds us of Egyptian soul concepts, such as b3 k3 and 3h whoseprecise significance is the subject of continuing debate (Baines1991:145). It also calls to mind the possible complexities of meaningthat may underlie poorly understood religious concepts in othercivil izations. As a result of ignorance, it is all too easy to impose our

own concepts on other peoples. Hence for each civilization I haveattempted to determine as much as I can about how they conceptu-alized their world before attempting to translate such conceptsinto a scientific/ cross-culturally applicable terminology. Wherethis exercise does not produce enlightenment, because the originalterminology is not systematically preserved or is inadequatelyunderstood, it at least helps to reveal the limitations of the current

understanding of a particular civilization.I have sought to examine the earliest phase of civilization in each

region for which there is not only good archaeological evidence butalso substantial written records that shed light on aspects of humanbehavior and belief that cannot be ascertained from material culturealone. These written records were produced either by the literateelements in the society being studied or by European visitors and

colonists. A third, non-archaeological, kind of data consists of oraltradit ions and memories of indigenous customs that were recorded byor from native people af ter European contact. M y requirement ofsubstantial written sources means that I never study the earliest stagein the development of civilization in each area. This is especially thecase with c ivilizations that did not develop their own writing systems.Such civilizations had flourished in the Basin of Mexico for over

fifteen hundred years prior to the Late Aztec period and in parts of



2 THE U N IQ U E AND THE GE NE RAL

Peru for an equal time prior to the arrival of the Spanish Sanders,Parsons, and Santley 1979; Keatinge 1988). We also know from ar-

chaeological evidence that at least some Yoruba states, as well as Benin,had existed for many centuries prior to the arrival of Eu ropean tradersand missionaries in West Africa and before the Y orub as learned towrite as a result of Euro pean contact Shaw 1978; Con nah 1987).

On the other hand we have information about earlier stages ofliteratecivilizations.TheseincludeOld and M iddle Kingdom Egypt,Mesopotamia from the Early Dynastic III ca. 2600 B . C . period

onward, and Chinese civilization beginning in the late Shang Dynasty.After my research h ad begun, I added the Classic M aya civilization,w hich, as a result of recent successes in deciph ering its hieroglyphicinscriptions, has joined the ranks of early civilizations whose scriptscan be read. This was especially desirable as it added anothertropical forest civ iliza tion to my sam ple. I w ould hav e liked toinc lud e at least one early civilization from the Ind ian subcontinent,

but not enough information w as a vailable conce rning the Indus andGangetic civilizations to justify ad ding either of them to my sample.The same w as t rue for the Khmer civil ization of Southeast Asia.Probably the most detailed record, both archaeological and literary,of life at a single point in time in any early civilization is that for theA ztecs during the early s ixteenth cen tury. Following the Spanishconquest, Spanish priests and nativ e M exicans recorded an extraor-

dinary wealth o f information co ncerning traditiona l A ztec culture .While the M aya s and A ztecs are historically and cu ltura lly, al-though not linguistica lly, related, I judged that adding the M ayasdid not compromise m y sample, w hich is not a statistica l one. Thevery different environmental settings and different economic andpolitical organizat ions of these tw o groups were reasons for includ-ing bo th. N or is there evidence th at the other civilizations are sim ilarmain ly as a result of histo rical contacts . A nc ien t Eg ypt andMesopotamia communicated with each other at various periodsand both c learly emerged from a N eolithic ecum ene th at extendedover much of No r th Africa and the M iddle East Frankfort 1956).The developm ent of Chinese civilization may have been influence dto some degree by indirect con tacts w ith the civilizations of W esternAsia Ch ang 1962) and there were limited con tacts betw een M exicoand Peru at va rio us periods Ho sier 1988). On the other hand , there



Methodology 2

are unlikely to have been any significant contacts between Chinaand the New World after human groups spread from Siberia intoN orth A m erica sometime be fore 12,000 B C Yet, if the religions of theAztecs, Maya s, and the Shang Dyn asty are all derived from histori-cally-related shamanistic cults dating back to the Palaeolithic pe-riod, this might account for certain similarities among all three(Willey 1985). W hile I do not rule out historical connections am ongvarious civilizations, the fact tha t anc ient Egy pt and M esopotamia,which were separated by only a few hu nd red kilometers and grew

out of historically-related N eolithic culture s, w ere so different indi-cates tha t the seven cases I am s tudying can be treated as essentiallyindependent exam ples of early civilizations. Each represents a stagein the c ul tura l development of a region that con form s to m y defini-tion of an early civilization. That seems to be more important fordetermining how representative m y sample is of the various typesof early civil izations tha n whether or not these societies are totally

pristine or represent the earliest phase in the dev elopm ent of civili-zation in each region.

M y origina l aim w as to exa m ine each society as a way of life thathad existed at a specific point in time, thereby treating it in a mannerapproximating the tra ditio na l anthropological concept of the eth-nographic present. In this fashion I hoped to avoid conflatingpractices that might have existed at different periods in a single

society s d evelopm ent. In practice, however, I did not find it pos-sible, even as an analytical fiction, to l imit m y studies to a singlepo int in time, nor do I now believe th at it w ould hav e been a goodidea to have tried to do so. I accept E van s-Pritch ard s (1962) argu-ment that the best way to learn how the parts o f a cu l ture fit togetheris to observe how they change in relation to one another. Myfindings so far suggest that this is par t icular ly useful for under-

stand ing p olitical organ ization, since bureau cratic struc tures oftenchange rapidly as m embers of the go verning h ierarch y seek to altersuch relations to their own advantage. Hence when I examineancient Egypt I consider both the Old and M iddle Kingdom s, and insome cases use New Kingd om literary texts to illum inate aspects oflife that were not recorded earlier. I try, however, to exclude themajor sociopo litical changes tha t occurred in Egyptian society afterthe end of the Middle Kingdom. Likewise for Mesopotamia I



22 TH E U N I Q U E N D TH E G E N E R L

consider data f rom the earliest appearance of readable texts in theEarly Dynastic III period to the lasting unification of the region

during the Old Babylonian Period ca. 1750 B .C .and for China fromthe Shang Dynasty to the end of the Western Chou. While acknowl-edging that major economic, political, and social changes occurredin these civilizations over such a long time, I believe that theavailable evidence illustrates a particular kind of society that hadmany features in common and was significantly different fro m whatexisted both earlier and later. For the Mayas the period of substan-

tial written documentationcovers approximately six hundred years,while for the Aztecs, Inkas, and Yorubas it spans only one to twohundred years. In each of these cultures, these were times of m ajorsocial change.

Sources

There are numerous problems with data in a study of this sort. Whilearchaeological f indings are far from uniform, they provide theinformat ion that is most comparable from one early civilization toanother. B y far the best archaeological data come from the settle-ment pattern surveys that have been carried out in southern Iraq Adams 1981), the Basin of Mexico Sanders, Parsons, and Santley1979), and in recent years over large stretches of Maya territory

Culbert and Rice 1990). While much has been learned about thesettlement patterns of ancient Egypt, the data base remains lesscomprehensive Butzer 1976). S till less is known archaeologicallyabout settlement patterns in Shang China Wheatley 1971; Chang1980) and Inka Peru Hyslop 1990). Despite these shortcomings,archaeological data, in their concreteness, provide much informa-tion about daily life in early civil ization s. They are also data which,

while they may have been biased by regional patterns of archaeo-logical research, are unlikely to have been deliberately distorted bythe people who produced them.

Written sources, on the other hand, while essential for under-standing many aspects of life, rarely provide unbiased informat ion.The records produced by early civilizations, either in the form ofindigenous writings or of oral traditions recorded under various

colonial regimes, tend to reflect the preoccupations and interests of



Interpretations 3

officials and the upper classes. It is also increasingly being appreci-ated to w h a t a great extent indigenou s peoples m od ified their oraltraditions to adapt them to co lonia l situa tions Gillespie 1989, A pter1992:193-211). In pa rtic ul a r, the na tiv e elites w ho s urviv ed into thecolonial period were anxious to promote an image o f their tradi-t ional cu l tu re , and especially of their personal ancestors, tha t w o uldw in the approval of inf luent ial Europeans. Histories were alsorevised as a way to cope wi th nat iona l defeat and humil ia t ion . Therecords produc ed by colo nists reflected to no less a degree the issues

tha t interested them. In pa rticula r, these inclu ded indigeno us pat-terns o f land o wn ership and tr ibute paym ents, in order to facili tateac quiring control over local resources; and religious belief s, in orderto ass ist Ch ris t ian miss iona ries in s ta mp ingou t t rad i t iona l rel ig ions Duran 1971:34-35 .

Interpretations

Modern interpretat ions o f early civil izations are also ma rkedly biased.U nderstanding and m aking allowances for these biases is vital for thesuccessof any investigation thatdependsmo stly on secondary sources.Anthropological interests in the early civilizations have changedsignificantly in recent decades, as anthropology has shifted its princi-pal focus from a concern w ith social behavior to a renewed interest inculture. Studies of the early civilizations produced in the 1960s weredominated by a ma terialistic perspective that encouraged an interestin subsistence patterns, craf t production, exchange, settlement pat-terns, and to a lesser degree political organization as the most impor-tant factors shaping hum an life. Today there is an esca lating interest inreligious beliefs and cul tural ly determ ined perceptions, bo th fo r theirown sake and as major determinants of social and political behavior.

While the idea list perspective tha t un de rlies m uc h mo dern research isclearly at odds w ith the m aterialism of an earlier era, the research ofthese two periods tends to be com plementary and, when combined,produces richer and more nuanced insights into the nature o f earliercivilizations than the l i terature o f either period does by itself.

Other biases co lor stud ies either o f individu al early civi l izat ionsor o f all of them, the lat ter sor t crea t ing the mo re serious problems

of comparab i l i ty for cross -cul tural invest igat ions . Interpreters o f



4 THE U N IQ U E A N D T H E G E N E R A L

Aztec cu ltu re hav e long been divided between those w ho view theAztec elite as cyn ical im perialists or bloo dth irsty ca nniba ls (Caso1958; Soustelle 1961) and those who see them as philosophersseeking to unders tand the mysteries of life (Leon-Portilla 1963,1992). Inka studies have been dom inated in recent decades by theassumption tha t the Inka state w as constructed by utilizing theex pec tations of reciprocal aid tha t were deeply rooted in the trad i-tions of Central Andean peasant life to validate the increasinglyasym m etrical relationsbetwe en differentclasses (Ma suda, Shim ada,

and M orris 1985). These stud ies read very differently from ThomasPatterson's (1991) invest igat ion of Inka dynastic politics, whichplaces a heavy emphasis on the practice of realpolitik amon g thevar ious branches of the royal family and the ir supporters .

The in terpreta t ion o f anc ient M esopotamian civilization has beenheavily influenced by tha t civilization's historical con nec tions w iththe Old Testament, w hich have stimu lated scholars to seek in it the

origins of W estern civilization. Tha t in tu rn has led them to in terpre ttheir da ta in w ays that probably m ake M esopotamia appear morelike modern Western civilization than w as actually the case, andhence exaggerate th e differences be tween it and oth er early civiliza-tions (B ottero 1992).

Two D utch social anthropologists, Thom as Zuid em a (1964,1990)and Rudo lph van Zan twi jk (1985), have presented extrem ely elabo-

rate s t ructural analyses of Inka and A ztec rel igious beliefs. Of thesestudies one can state, as B arry Kem p (1989:4-5) has about some ofthe more arcane interpretat ions of an cient Egyptian symbolism,that , whi le their con struct ions may be q ui te t rue to the spirit ofancient thought, we have no way of dete rm ining wh ether suchideas ever ac tua lly passed through the minds of the ancients.

The s tudy of anc ien t Egypt has long been dominated by the

rationalist belief tha t all hum an beings share a na ture tha t is similarto our ow n and th at this similarity m akes the ancients imm ediatelycomprehensible to modern scholars. Most Egyptologists I havekno w n seem convinced that the y can dupl ica te in their ow n m in d sthe thought processes of a Hatshepsut, A khenaton, or Ram esses II.A s a resul t of this pervasive uniformitar ianism, Egyptology hasnever produ ced a work of cri t ical theoretical insight com parable to

Leo Oppenheim s ncient

Mesopotamia (1964). This rat ionalistapproach is the opposite of the rom ant ic anthropological assum p-



on lusion 5

tion held by Inka specialists, many o f w hom believe that hu m anna ture i s pow er fu lly m olded b y indiv idu al cul tures and that hence,

wi thout paying careful at tention to the idiosyncratic postulates ofInka cu l tur e, i t i s w ho lly impossible to und erstand Inka behavior.A l thou gh B arry Kemp, w ho has discussed these theo retical issues indetai l , agrees wi th Henr i Frankfor t 1956) tha t certain dist inctivethemes shaped Eg ypt ian cul ture , even he in terpre ts m uch an cientEgy pt ian behavior as being inf luenced by concepts o f self-interestand entrepreneurship that he considers comm on to all hu m an beings.

Finally, I m u s t stress that each of the ear ly civi l izat ions I ams tudy ing w as a com plex inst i tu t ion tha t end ured over m any genera-tions and embraced mill ions of h u m a n beings each of whomthou gh t her or h is ow n tho ug hts and l ived her or h is ow n life. E venthose w ho s tudy the bes t -docum ented ear ly c iv i l iza t ion s are in theposi t ion of the proverbia l b l ind m en t ry ing to comprehend aneleph ant . There is m u c h t h a t is im po r tan t about every ear ly civil iza-

t ion tha t we do no t k n o w and t h a t in some instance s w e m a y neverbe able to l earn . Moreover, what we do know abou t one earlycivil ization is of ten radically d i fferen t f rom what w e know aboutanother. One of the chief benefits of compara t ive s tudy is t ha tknowledge of one early c iv i l izat ion m ay reveal gaps in our k n o w l -edge of o thers and s t im ula te research tha t helps to i l l these gaps.F or example , the str iking archaeological successes achieved in

s tudy ing the se t t lement pat terns of southern Iraq and the Basin ofMexico hav e chal lenged E gyptologists to seek more com prehensivein format ion about ancient Egyptian sett lement pa t terns .

Conclusion

In the chap ters tha t fol low I wi l l no t be able to describe in detail eachof the ear ly c iv i l iza t ion s tha t I have been studying. I will try,however, to ascertain some of the ways in which ancient Egyptresembled oth er ear ly civi l iza t ions and some o f the ways in w h ichit w as unique. Cross-cul tural paral lels m ay p rovide Egyptologis tswi th new ins igh ts in to the n a t u r e o f anc ient Egy pt ian c iv i l iza t ion ,while those aspects tha t a re un ique to Egypt m ay help anthropolo-gists to under s tand be t t e r the n a tu r e o f ear ly civi l izat ions and of

h u m a n i t y a s a whole . No do ub t Egyptologists w il l consider some of



6 TH E U N IQ U E A N D T H E G E N E R A L

my generalizations about ancient Egypt to be premature question-able or even plain wrong. There is little about ancient Egypt or any

other early civilization that is not subject to debate among special-ists. I ask Egyptologists to treat my statements not as evidence of theuselessness of what I am attempting but as a challenge to debateissues that are significant not only for their discipline but for thegeneral understanding of early civilizations. When it comes to thestudy of ancient Egypt Egyptologists and anthropologists havemuch to learn f rom each other and their d i ffe rent orientations are

a potential source of mutual benefi t Rather than trying to turnEgyptologists into anthropologists or anthropologists intoEgyptologists I suggest that specialists in either discipline can besthelp each other by continuing to do what they have learned to dobest.



Two

Economic Foundations

Compared with some other early civilization s, relatively little atten-tion has been paid to how the economy of anc ient Egypt func t ioned.The main reason for this is the lack o f large num bers of economictexts, such as those that are avai lable fo r Mesopotamia and to am u ch lesser exten t for the A ztecs. The f amou s letters of the EleventhDynasty mortuary priest, Hekanakhte, reveal a tight-fisted andirascible o f f i c i l w ho rented extra land, lent sub stantia l am ou nts ofgrain, and had at his disposal su rplu s copper, oil, and clo th w ov enfrom f l x grown on his estate, all of which h e used for comm ercialtransactions. T o t hememb erso fh i shou seho ld , inc lud ingh i s m other,he issued m on thly food rations in the same m anner as w as done toworkmen employed on state projects (James 1962). A t the level ofhu m an interactio n, these letters a re sufficiently detailed that theyinspired Agatha C hristie s novel Death Comes a s the End

Y et we can no t learn from these letters su ch basic facts as on wh a tterms H ekan akh te held his estate at Nebeseyet or w hether the menof his hou seho ld w ere really his sons, or m erely ten ants. T he sameholds t ru e fo r m ost other ancient Eg yptian economic texts. Only fo ra small number, such as the ones from the New Kingdom tombworkers village at Deir al-Medina (B ierbrier 1982), a re adequate

contextual data available. A comparative perspective is useful forgaining insights into topics abo u t w hic h relatively little is k n o w n . Ihope th at Eg yptologists m ay draw from the fo l lowing discussion abroader awareness of economic issues that are worth addressingwith respect to ancient Egy pt .

7



gri ulture 9

w atered by ha n d and ha ve the ir soil renew ed w ith silt tha t collectedin the in te rvening canals and ditches . Ev en with in their capital city,Tenocht i t lan , wh ich was bu ilt on island s near the shore of a n etwo rkof lakes in the center of the valley, the Aztecs practiced chinampaagr icul ture on small f ields behind their homes. These fields werefertilized w ith household organic waste. T he m ain chinamp as tha t fedTenocht i t l an were located in the shallow lakes to the west a nd southof the city. B y bu i ld ing an ex tensive series of dikes, the Aztecs suc-ceeded in reg ula ting lak e levels and red uc ing salinity in those areas.

It iscalculated that about 120 square kilometers of ch inampas had beenconstructed by 1519. A t th at t im e, the B asin of M exico is estimatedto have had an overa l l po pu la t ion den s i ty of abou t 200 people persquare ki lometer and as m a n y as 500 persons per squ are kilometerof arable lan d Sanders, Parsons, and Sa ntle y 1979:219, 378-80 .

T he M ayas, who lived in the tropical forests of southern M exicoand C entral A m erica, had a relatively dispersed settleme nt pattern.

Even in urban centers, this l f t much room fo r gardening aroundtheir ind iv id ua l re s iden t ia l com pounds . These gardens , like thesmall ones ad jacent to Aztec hom es, w ere no doubt heavi ly fertil-ized w ith household waste and m ult icrop pe d. O utside the urbancenters , where the terra in was sui table , the Mayas developedch inam pa s and irrigated fields, w hich they m ult icroppe d, as well asterraced hillsides. Th ey also con tinu ed to practice less labo r-inten-

sive s lash-and-bu rn a gricu l ture . They are estimated to have m ain-tained over large areas a population density that averaged 180people per square ki lom eter, com paring fa vo rably w ith that o fpre indus t r i a l Java and China Cu lbert and Rice 1990:26). N eith er theAztecs nor the Ma y a s had any large domestic anim als . They keptdogs a nd turkeys, both o f w hich they ate .

In other early civilization s, on ly one crop w as grown each year on

mos t f ields and par t of the terra in w as used for grazing. Mostpe asan t villages in the Cen tral A nd es were located betw een 2500and 3500 meters above sea level. T he villagers grew corn in theval leys below and potatoes on the colder slope s above. O n the stillh igher up land s, they pastured cam el-l ike l lam as and alpacas w hichpro vide d them w ith woo l and m eat. Because of the steep slopes andi r regular rainfal l , these com m unit ies f requent ly constructed ex ten-sive terraces, w hic h they irrigated w ith runoff . They also established



3 E C O N O M I C F O U N D AT I O N S

small colonies at lower altitudes to plant chili, cotton, and othercrops that would not grow on the mountainsides.

The Mesopotamians, living in a desert environment, constructedelaborate irrigation works on the broad, gentle backslopes of thelevees that f lanked the lower stretches of their main rivers. Al-though the lower part of the Euphrates River was at that timedivided into several branches, it and the Tigris were hard to control.Both rivers were at their lowest when crops had to be planted in theautumn and in flood when they were ripening in the spring. This

required barriers to prevent the destruction of crops. Other majorproblems were salinization, loss of soil fert i l i ty and disposal ofsurplus water. For all these reasons, considerable engineering andagronomic skills were required to construct and maintain even themedium-sized irrigation systems that were utilized prior to the latefirst millennium B C Multicropping and date-growing tended to belimited to gardens located along the tops of levees, while the

backslopes were used to grow barley and wheat. Fields left infa l low marshland, and steppe land that received suff icient winterrains were used to graze cattle, sheep, and goats. The main grazinglands were located between and beyond the areas of irrigationagriculture. Robert McC. Adams 1981:90,148-49) has estimated apopulation density of only thirty people per square kilometer ofarable land during the Ur III Period, and a total population for

southern Mesopotamia a t that time of about 500, 000.Prior to the Ptolemaic era, the Egyptians generally grew only one

crop per year, except in kitchen gardens which were watered byhand or with shadufs. TheNile f loods were, however, more predict-able than those of the Tigris and Euphrates and subsided before thelate autumn when wheat, barley, and other crops were planted.Becau se the river sank below the level of the f loodplain during the

summer, the soil also tended to be self-rinsing and salinization wasnot a m ajor problem. The basin agriculture practiced by the Egyptiansuti l ized abandoned natural levees running parallel to the course o fthe river. These were reinforced with lateral embankments andsupplied with i r r igation ditches to control the entry and exit of floodwaters. In this way, it was ensured that even land located on highground in relation to the river was covered by water long enough toproduce a crop. These systems were easier to construct and m ain ta in



gri ulture 3

than w ere the Mesopotamian irrigation works, especially in the farsouth of Egyp t, w here the na tura l basins were smaller tha n theywere in central Egypt and the Delta. It used to be believed thatann ual deposits of N ile silt m aintaine d the fertility of the fields, butit is now clear that this involved crop rotation, fallowing, andpas turing cattle on the stubble so tha t their m anu re fertil ized thesoil, as that of wild herbivores had don e prior to the development ofagriculture. I t appe ars tha t pastoralism was essential to sustain theEgyptian ag ricu ltura l cycle (H un t 1987). Karl Butze r s (1976:83)

population estimates of 1.2 m illion people for the Old K ingdom and2 m illion for the M iddle Kingdom yield pop ulation densities of only93 and 108 persons per square kilometer of arable land . Even if wewere to al low a pop ulat ion as high as 3 million, which I do notconsider unreasonable, the populat ion density would have beenonly 176 people per sq uare kilometer, far short of the 500 people persquare kilom eter estimated for arable land in the Basin of Mexico.

Little is know n about agriculture in Shang China. It wa s based o ngrowing sorghum, millet, and other crops on easily worked loesssoils relying m ain ly on rainfall, and on dom estic anim als. Hence itprobably supported a relatively low population density. The sim-plest subsistence economy associated with an early c ivilization wasthat of the Yorubas. Large numbers of Yorubas lived in urbancenters, but fields extended far from these towns and often were

worked by family members who resided part-time or full-time inscattered homesteads and hamlets. Farms were sufficiently dis-persed to allow families to rotate fields as the soil became exhauste d,observing a seven to twenty year fallow, w itho ut having to movetheir houses. Although fields and forests we re sometimes locatedbetween the inner and o uter walls that surrounded Y oruba towns,and although land close to towns and cities seems to have been

worked more intensively than land farther away, there was nointensive infield cult ivation around Yoruba urban residences aswas the case w ith the Mayas and the A ztecs. Da ta from recent time ssuggest an overall pop ulation density of only thirt y to sixty peopleper square kilometer for the Yoruba an d Ben in kingdom s (Bascom1969:2; Ead es 1980:2; B ra dbury 1957:14).

The origin of civilization has often been attributed to increasingpopulation pressure w ith in natura lly circumscribed areas (Cohen



gri ulture

ture also required the deve lopm ent of organizationa l skills. M ost ofthe labor needed to construct and maintain irrigation works, ter-races, and chinampas could be organized at the village or districtlevel, alth ou gh the big dikin g projects carried ou t by the Aztecs andsome of the major terracing done by the Inkas were state projects, aswas the agricultural development of the Fayyum in M iddle King-dom Egypt. In most of the early civilizations plan ting and harvest-ing seem to have been accomplished collectively or on a labor-swapping basis by teams of relatives or neighbors, altho ugh the

crops harvested from specific plo ts of land belonged to singlefamilies or individuals . These forms of cooperation m ust haveprovided a m odel for organizing larger village and district projects.The once popular idea that the need for larger irrigation systemsresulted in despotic state control at an early stage in the development of civiliz ation Stew ard 1949) failed to appreciate the small-scale and piecemeal nature of most hydraulic works in the early

civilizations. Large, state-managed irrigation systems appear tohave been a product of the state rather than the reverse A dam s 1965).

Agricultural tools generally remained prim itive in the early civiliza-tions. The Inkas , Aztecs, and Shang Chinese relied on wooden diggingsticks equipped w ith foot-bars to turn the soil, w hile their cuttingtools were made of stone. The Mesopotamians and Egyptians em-ployed light, oxen-draw n plows to conserve soil moisture and prepare

the soil for planting; M esopotamian plows were also equipped w ithdrills to plant seed. While the Mesopotamians began to use copperhoes and sickles during the Early Dynastic Period, as late as theMiddle Kingdom the E gyptians continued to edge their cutting toolsw ith chipped flint. Th e Y orub as had no use for plows in connectionw ith their slash-an d-bu rn agriculture , but they equipped their hoesand other agricultural tools with iron blades. The com plexity of the

tools ava ilable in each early civilization does not correlate w ith theintensity of a gricu ltural produc tion; nor do any of these civiliza -tions appea r to have had tools as elaborate as those possessed by thetribal societies of Iron Age Europe. This suggests that there is noclose corre lation betw een types of ag ricu ltura l tools and either theintensity of agricu ltural production or the com plexity of society.

There is also no ev iden t corre lation between the intensity ofagr icul ture and the general nature of the environment . The least




intensive system in my sample was that of the Yorubas whoinhabited a tropical forest and savannah environment. But theMayas who also lived in tropical forests used a combination ofchinampas irrigation terracing and slash-and-burn agriculture tosupport a higher population density than appears to have beenachieved in Egypt and Mesopotamia. There is no support for JulianSteward s 1949) claim that early civilizations came into existenceonly as a consequence of the development of water management insemi-arid environments. Furthermore the civilizations that devel-oped in highland Mexico and Peru were institutionally as complexand varied as those in the much larger river valleys of EgyptMesopotamia and northern China.

Finally, there is no clear correlation between intensity o f agricul-ture and the architectural achievements o f these early civilizations.The smallest amount o f monumental architecture has survivedfrom the Yoruba and ancient Chinese civilizations which had two

of the least intensive subsistence economies. There is no evidencehowever that the highly efficient subsistence systems practiced inthe Basin of Mexico resulted in more monumental architecturethroughout that region than was produced by the Mayas Egyp-tians and Mesopotamians. In Chapter Three I will demonstratethat , while agr icul tural surpluses are needed to produce monumen-ta l architecture the extent and nature of such architecture are

determined primarily by political and religious factors.

Kinship

In the early civ ilizations, kinship tended to remain important withineach class although specific kinship arrangements varied consider-ably f rom one civilization to another. There were also differencesamong classes within the same civilization with the upper classesgenerally placing greater emphasis on tracking genealogies andhaving more generations of the same fami ly living together thanwas the case for peasant families.

Yoruba society was based on patrilineal descent. Especially in thenorthern regions of Yoruba territory large numbers of kin related inthe male line lived together in one or more self-governing extendedfamily compounds. While personally-acquired property was inher-



Kinship 35

ited by daughters as well as by sons, lineage property had to pass toa man s sons or, if he had none, to his younger brothers. In order to

protect their patrilineal landholding patterns, Yoruba spouses wereforbidden to inherit from one another.

The Aztecs and the Tnkas lived in nuclear or small extendedfamilies. The Aztecs emphasized patrilineal descent, but also de-rived significant social status from their mothers families. Bothsons and daughters inherited property from their parents, andhousehold utensils usually passed to a woman s daughters. The

Inkas appear to have practiced double descent, which involvedwomen inheriting goods and offices from their mothers and menfrom their fathers. B oth Aztec and Inka peasants were members ofendogamous landowning groups. This arrangement minimized thedangers of the group losing property through inheritance.

The Mesopotamians emphasized patrilineal descent and at leastsome extended fam ilies appear to have possessed various rights in

common. Women could inherit property, but in wealthy familiesthis right was often curtailed by having some female members joincelibate religious organizations in order to ensure that their prop-erty would eventually return to their fam ilies.

The ancient Egyptian expression for marriage, grg-pr, to found ahouse/ suggests that a nuclear family residence was an ideal,although among wealthy families, such as that of Hekanakhte,

several generations of adults seem to have lived under a single roof.Egyptians were frequently identified by citing their father s ormother s name as well as their own, and in the Late Period someindividuals are reported to have possessed genealogies that ex-tended back over many generations. Yet they did not recognize anyformally constituted descent groups.

The Egyptians are notable for not having any primary k in termsother than those which applied to the nuclear fam ily; they had nospecial words for aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, cousin, or even forgrandparents and grandchildren (O Connor 1990). The extremelyabbreviated kinship terminology of the Egyptians, with its specificterms covering only three generations, contrasts with the seven-generational one of the Aztecs. In the N ew Kingdom even the wordsfor husband hy) and wife hmt) tended to be replaced by those usedfor brother sn) and sister snt), a usage that left brother and sister the



ins ip 7

their hu sban ds not only in r i tua ls but also in ad m ini stra t iv e act ivi-ties. In M esopotam ia, kings w ives m anaged large estates and theirdaughters were made h igh priestesses in an e ffo r t to consolidateroyal control over cit ies. In Shang China some women, probablyw ives of the king, played im po rtan t roles in the palace bure au crac y,served as royal envoys, and in a t least one ins tance commandedarmies. These women seem to have per fo rmed m any of the sametasks th at palace eu nu ch s w ere to do in C hin a in later t im es. Sincethese w om en probab ly came f rom var io us noble fam il ies and d i ffe r-

ent par ts of the k ingdom , they bro ug ht w i th them k now ledge tha ta l low ed them to car ry out imp or tan t ad m inis t ra t iv e dut ies . In Aztecand other h igh land Mex ican societies, on th e oth er han d, the femalemember s of royal f ami l ies appear to have had little, if any, pu bl icrole.

There is no ob viou s co rrela t ion between the var ied k inship sys-tems and types o f f ami ly o rganizat ion and ei ther the env i r onmen ta l

sett ings o r pol i t ica l s t ructure s of these civ i l izat ions. It seems as if aconsiderable var iety o f domest ic ar rangements w as compat ib lew ith the h ierarch ical s t ru ctu res and adm inistrat io n tha t were neces-sary to m ain tain these societies. Because o f this, it is l ike ly th a t therelat ions betw een m en and w om en and the organization of f am i lyl ife th at prevai led in each region bef ore the rise of civil ization playeda s igni f icant role in de termining specific aspects of the k insh ip

orga nizat ions t h at were associated w ith each civi l izat io n.Changes in some o the r aspects o f f ami ly l ife appear to hav e beenmore u ni l ine ar. W omen were subordinate to me n in all of the ear lycivilizations, both in public and with respect to decision-makinginside the f ami ly. R elat ions between the sexes were colored bypervasive inequal i ty a nd therefo re were probably m ore un equa lthat in many, but not all , earlier societies. Th ere is h istorical evi-

dence tha t the f r eedom of wom en decl ined as a resul t of the rise ofboth the A ztec and the In ka states (Brumfie l 1991; Silv er bl at t 1987).Y et the role o f w o m e n in the ear ly c iv i l izat ions does not seem to h avebeen general ly as disa dv an tag ed as i t w as to become in m any laterpre indus t r i a l societies, suc h a s those of classical G reece and Rome .

The social and legal posit ion of wom en also appe ars to hav e beenmor e favorable a m ong the Y orubas, Inkas, M ayas, and possibly the

Chinese than i t w as among the A ztecs and M esopotamians. A nc ien t



8 E C O N O M I C F O U N D A T IONS

Egyptian society was exceptional in the degree to which womenenjoyed equality before the law; even when married they had the

right to manage their own property and to sell or bequeath it towhomever they wished. Egyptian men on the other hand seem tohave been obliged to leave at least one-third of their possessions totheir widows.

In general the position of women appears to have been morefavorable in territorial states than it was in city-state systemsperhaps because l ife at the peasant level in territorial states was less

t ransformed from what it had been prior to the rise of the state andbecause upper class women had more political roles to play in thesmall ruling elites of these societies. Y et the relatively high positionof women in Yoruba society warns us that these arguments shouldnot be pushed too far. It seems that specific cultural traditionsexerted an important influence alongside structural considerationsin shaping the role played by men and women in early civilizations.

Land Ow nership

Because agriculture played such an important role in the economyof the early civilizations patterns of land ownership might be•expected to be crucial for understanding these societies. Yet we f indan unexpected amount of variation in forms of landholding.

It h as been argued that in many if not all early c ivi l izat ions kingsor gods claimed eminent domain over the whole land. Many earlycommentators suggested that this concept excluded the possibilityof private ownership; everyone being in effect a tenant if not a slaveof the king. In general however such claims as were made by earlyrulers seem to have amounted to no more than an assertion ofsovereignty equivalent to those made by modern states. Among the

Yorubas for example land could not be sold or given to foreignerswi thou t obtaining the permission of the king. The king howeverdid not have the right to possess any land that belonged to his people.

In some of the early civilizations large amounts of land wereowned collectively. The Aztec c lpulli was above all an endoga-mous landowning group. Each calpulli had its own headmanselected from a specific lineage as well as i ts own deity cult center

and school. Its able-bodied men constituted a separate regiment in



Land Ownership 9

the Aztec army. The population of the Aztec capital w as dividedamong twenty some say eighty) calpullis. Most ca lpu l l i memberswere fu l l - t ime or part-time farmers bu t urban calpullis also con-tained substantial numbers of ful l - tim e artisans, such as goldworkers,lapidaries, potters, and feather workers; a single craft w as usuallyassociated with a specific calpulli. The calpullis made up of long-distance traders and the royal fam ily probably contained no f arm -ers, although the members of these groups owned land that wasworked for them by others. W h il e in some parts of Mexico calpulli

land was regularly reassigned to accord wi th the changing needs ofmember famil ies this does not appear to have been the practice inthe southern part of the Basin of Mexico . A s a result, individualfamilies w i th in the core of the Aztec empire came to hold unequala m o u n t s of land. If the occupant did not wish to work some or all ofhis land, he could rent it to someone else. No one, however, had ther ight to sell o r expropriate calpul l i territory. If a particular f ami ly

died out, i ts share of land automatically reverted to the collectivity.Highland Peruvian society w as s imilarly made up of a large

number of ayllus Each ayllu collectively possessed its own land,and had its own hereditary leader and cults. Every fami ly w asallotted a share o f land sufficient for its needs which were reappor-tioned on a regular basis. The members of an ayl lu assisted eachother to cultivate their land and carry out collective labor projects

that benefited the entire group. They were also responsible forattending to the needs of members of the group who were sick,orphaned, or called away to work on state labor projects.

Among the Yorubas, the most important landholding group wasthe patri l ineal extended family ; only unclaimed land belonged tothe community. Each extended fami ly would own the plot of landon which its compound stood in an urban center, as well as plots of

fa rmland at various distances from the town. This farmland wasinalienable and some of it was worked for the support of f ami lychiefs and corporate activities. The rest was divided among theind iv idual famil ies that made up the extended family. The totalamount of land that was owned varied according to the wealth ands tatus of pa r t i cu la r extended families. These factors also deter-mined whether the land was worked primarily by fam ily members

dependents, or slaves.



4 E C O N O M I C F O U N D A TIONS

In Shang China, the situation is less clear. Blocks of land appear tohave been worked by patrilineal extended families feu) , but we are

uncertain whether these groups owned the land. The fact thatgovernment decrees relocated extended families f rom one part ofthe kingdom to another and assigned them to serve new lordssuggests that at least some extended families worked, but did notown, the land. Tsus persisted over approximately seven genera-tions and the largest of them contained about a hundred nuclearfamilies. At this stage f issioning occurred as some groups moved

away to occupy new land.In Mesopotamia, extended families owned large tracts of land, but

even in the earliest documented periods such land could be soldsubject to the collective agreement of its owners. In the course of thethird millennium B.C., holdings of this sort appear to have beenconverted into privately or inst i tut io nal ly owned land at an acceler-ating rate. As a result, land of this sort must have accounted for an

ever-declining portion of the total.For Old Kingdom Egypt, the situation is fa r f rom clear. During this

period, ever more estates were created for the benefit of the crown,royal cult establishments, and temples. We do not know, however,whether prior to t ha t time each village had owned its own land and what extent this form of ownership might have persisted in areasuna ff e c t e d by the creation of estates. It is also unclear if the creation

of estates extinguished existing peasant communities rights to thesoil, or if these communities were incorporated into estates withtheir land rights in tac t but subject to additional obligations to payrents to the estate. While it has been asserted that little land re-mained under the corporate control of villages, one small settle-ment, Nag c al-Deir, displayed remarkable social con t inu i ty throughthe Old K i n g d o m — a l t h o u g h it became less egalitarian and gener-

ally more impoverished as the economic demands of the stateincreased during the Third and Fourth Dynasties (Reisner 1932). Forancien t Egypt, it is impossible to determine much about the natureof social and economic relations that fell outside or below thepurview o f official interest and hence written records.

In every early civilization, there were also privileged forms oflandholding. Each Aztec calpulli set aside land that was worked byall its members fo r the support o f the calpulli s leader and temple.



Land Ownership 41

With in each c i ty s ta te in th e M exican hig hlan ds, local rulers inher-ited land as pa rt of their royal patrimo nial possessions, wh ile other

land w as reserved for the suppor t of government officials andimpor tan t state ac tiviti es, such as w aging war. Plots o f land wereexchanged as m arr iage presents am ong the rulers of di fferent citystates. Aztec kings also granted land in conquered territories tovictor ious w arr iors , members of the nobil i ty , and to Aztec templesat the state and calpull i levels. This land was worked by localfarmers unde r the supervis ion of Aztec state officials and the

surp lus p rodu ce delivered to its ow ners. A s a resu lt of these trans -actions) rulers, nobles, and ou t s tan d in g war r io rs often owned orhad the use of land in several d ifferent city states. This helped tocement all iances am on g all ied states and st iffened the resolve ofmembers of hegemonic states to ensure that their city remaineddominan t . M uch o f th is land was cu l t iva ted not by macchualli or free commoners / but by mayeque or serfs/ These in di vi du als

w ere bo un d to the soil and did n ot pay taxes, but were required toserve in the arm y and remain ed subject to the laws of their city state.Whi le the calp ulli s retained possession of their com mu nal lands inthe Aztec city state and among the Aztecs closest allies, it appearstha t an increasing amount of land in adjacent par ts of the AztecEmpire was rapidly falling under the control of the Aztec state andi nd iv idua l h igh -rankin g Aztecs .

Prior to the Ink a conquest, each ay llu, like each M exican calpulli ,had ap pa ren tly set aside land for the supp ort o f its leader and hisfamily and for the group s ritual activities. Following their con-quest, the Inka s exprop riated a dd itio n al land to suppo rt the stateand the religious cu lts it established and pat ronized througho ut th eempire. To preven t un d ue h ards hip to peasants, at least part of thisland appears to have been physically brought into existence after

the Inka conquest through extra terracing and hydraulic worksrath er tha n created b y confiscating existin g holding s. Peasants wereobliged to cul t iv ate this land before working their own, but wereprovided wi th seed by the government insti tutions and temples towhom the land belonged. The peasan ts also h ad to be fed by theseins t i tu t ions as long as they worked such lan d. In retur n , the entireharvest belonged to the state or temple. Ay l lu members were also

conscripted to tend herds belonging to the state and to temples.



42 ECONOMIC FOUND A TIONS

The Inka king attempted to increase state revenues by creatinglarge estates wh ich he assigned to him self, to the cults of dead rulers

to members of the nobili ty, and to the support of the army. Theselands were tax-free and, after being assigned to individuals, wereinh eri ted by all of their descendants. Like ayllu lands, they could n otbe sold, transferred, or d ivided. The peasants who had originallyowned these lands of ten were resettled in other parts of the empire.Estates were cultiv ated either by corvee labor, wh ich was b rou gh tfrom elsewhere to work for sho rt periods of time, or by yanacona

peasants who had been removed from their communities andturned into serfs. The percentage of the harvest tha t the governmentand members of the upper classes collected from these estatesgreatly exceeded w ha t they could ha ve obtained as taxes from landworked by ayllu s. There is evidence that the a m o u n t of land held inthis fashion was increasing rap idly in the final years of Inka rule.

In Mesopotamia, far more land w as inst i tut ionally or privately

ow ned w hen the earliest w ritt en records become available than w asthe case am ong the Aztecs and Ink as. Th e m ain owners weretemples, palaces, and a sm all num ber of princely fam ilies. Some kin -based communities persisted inside and outside these estates butsuch groups appear to hav e been gra du ally losing their control ofland a s a resul t of collective sales. The estates w ere partly cu ltiva tedby laborers, w ho w ere paid w ith subsistence ration s and by being

assigned sm all parcels of land w hich they cu ltivated to supply therest of their needs. Other portions of these estates were share-cropped or rented to sm all farm ers. State and temple officials weref requent ly paid for their services by being assigned the use ofmoderate sized tracts of land. These could in turn be rented share-cropped or w orked w ith paid laborers to produce an income. A ll ofthe land on tem ple estates, by wh atever contractual arrang em ent itw as cu ltiv ate d, appears to hav e been supplied w ith seed draf tanimals , plowmen, and equipment from central stores. The peakdemand for agr icultu ral labor was partly supplied by gangs of daylaborers w ho followed the p lan t ing and harvest from south to nor ththrough M esopo tamia each fall and spring. Aside from slaves, thesem ust hav e been among the poorest mem bers of society.

In Old K ingdo m Egyp t, estates existed by the reign of Snefru ca.2600 B .C . . The most important of these were owned directly by the



Land Ownership 4

crown and some were used to support the king and his relatives.Others werecreated to provide for the funerary cults of kings and high-ranking officials this task being assumed as a royal responsibility. Stillother estates belonged to temples and private individuals. Revenuesfrom these estates circulated in highly complex ways. A private tombmight receive food supplies from royal property and cult lands, specialland endowments, and private funerary estates, as well as through thecontractual reversion, or re-use, of offerings from royal funerary cults,temples, and other tombs. This income supported the low-ranking

officials who attended to the tomb s ongoing funerary cult.Officials and royal kin were able to derive wealth from privately

owned lands that they inherited, purchased, or were given by thestate, from lands that they held so long as they performed officialduties, and from payments that they received for performing priestlyoffices in temples and royal mortuary cults. By appointing govern-ment officials to priestly offices relating to funerary cults, i t was

•possible for kings to return to administrative use some of theincreasing amounts of land that were being devoted to such cults.The government also appears to have been actively developing newestates, especially in the underpopulated Delta region. These werepeopled with peasants from elsewhere in Egypt and prisoners ofwar, who were destined to become peasants. It is not clear, however,to what extent peasants were free to move—or could be forced to

move—from one region to another. Their apparent scarcity sug-gests that it might not have been easy to prevent adventurouspeasants from moving to areas of economic development, whereworking conditions were probably more favorable.

Estates assigned to support specific government institutions orthe funera ry cults of high-ranking individuals were widely distrib-uted throughout Egypt. This gave government off icials a vested

interest in supporting the unity of the state. It is very d i ff icul t for anytime in Egyptian history to determine how much land was ownedfreehold by individuals or as some kind of conditional, though ofteninheritable, grant from the crown. Even records of land sales do notalways resolve this question, since it is often not clear whetherfreeholds or use-rights were being transferred.

It is tempting to see varying combinations o f collective, institu-

tional, and private ownership of land constituting an evolutionary



44 ECONOM IC FOUNDATIONS

sequence that can be used to separate early civilizations into moreand less advanced types. To some extent this interpre tation appears

to be borne out by developmental changes observed wi th in theAztec Inka Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations althoughonly in the latter two are these sequences o f long dura tion. Yet theequ ally well attested long-term viability of m a n y different fo rms ofland ownership indicates that all these forms were compatible withearly civilizations as a general stage of development. Here too w eseem to be dealing w ith an aspect of social org aniz ation in w hich

historical par t iculari t ies played a significant role.

Taxation

The p rincipa l economic feature com m on to all the early civil izationswas the insti tutionalized app rop riation of surpluses from the lowerclasses by the ruling group. Because the early civilizations werebased on agriculture mo st of the appro priation took place in termsof foodstuffs which peasants were induced to produce and thensurrender to the upper classes. Aztec ca lpull i members in additionto sup por t ing their corporate inst i tu t ions paid a grain tax to thecentra l government . In Peru and possibly in China as well as tosome extent in highland Mexico the grain tax took the form ofcul t ivat ing fields belon ging to the state or to m em bers of the nob il-

ity. In Old K ingdom E gypt taxes were levied on grain and livestockproduced by estates and peasant communities. These taxes werefixed by a bie nn ial census w hich in early times probab ly involv edthe k ing and his cour t t ravel ing up and d o w n the coun t ry andconsuming part of what was due on the spot. Later tax revenueswere am assed in kind in the provincia l sp3t) capitals from w h i c hrevenues not required to manage government affairs at the local

level were fo rwarded to the royal cour t at M emphis.At the same time surp lus agr icul tural p rodu ct ion f low ed in to the

hands of the upper classes in the form of rents w hich were paid bypea sants to lan do w ne rs and land ho lder s. In the case of the Az tecsthese included the fees paid by f a rmers for land they rented fromcalpul l i mem bers who did not engage in agric ulture themselves andthe produce owed to members of the nobi l i ty by the serfs w ho

worked their esta tes . A no ther ar rangem ent w hich was generally



Taxation 5

even more favorable to the landholder, was sharecropping. Thisshort- term co ntra ct w ith a ten an t fa rm er required the l andho lde r toinvest more of his own cap i ta l in the production of a crop and toassum e m ore risk, but gave him a significantly larger share of thecrop. Am o ng the Yorubas, the direct taxation of ag ricultural pro-duction took the form of presenting only token am ou nts of food tothe king or his representat ives a t annual festivals. However, theYoruba k ing and members of the no b il i ty derived revenues fromtaxing food be ing bro ugh t in to the cities for eve ryday consumpt ion ,

presumably even f rom the f a rms w here i t wa s g rown. The Yo ru b aup per classes also ow ned larg e estates, wh ich were w orked for themmainly b y slaves and debtors.

Governments der ived fur ther revenues by taxing the sale andm o v e m e n t of a wide var ie ty of goods. T he Y oru b as levied tolls onraw ma te r ia l s a nd m anu f ac tu red goods passing b etw een states a ndth rough city gates. The Aztec state taxed market sales and the

ancient Eg y p t ia n s a re reported to have had to sur render a port ion oftheir hand ic ra f t p roduc t ion to the government . In all of the. ea rlycivilizations, corvee labor w as extracted f rom commoners , especially during s lack periods in the ag r icu l tu ra l cycle. Am ong theAztecs this invo lved m ilita ry service, wo rking on sta te con structionprojects, serving in royal palaces, and keeping public areas of thecity c lean . The Inka rulers fed, c lothed, and housed those w ho

performed corvee labor and this seem s to have been done in Egyp tas w ell . A ztec arm ies were supplied w ith food by conquered stateslocated a long their m arc h routes. In most early civilizations, peasantw om en were required to w eave c lo th for l andowners and the state;H e k a n a k h t e expected h is tenants wives to p roduce c lo th for h im .

All of these a rrang em ents resul ted in a d isproport ionately largea m o u n t of the surp lus product ion and l abor of the lower classes

fa l l ing u n d e r the control of a sma ll ruli ng eli te. Because of this, itm attered less w ho ow ned land tha n w ho had the r ight to controlagr icu l tu ra l surpluses and peasan t labo r. This expla ins why a widevariety of l a n d o wn in g and lan dho ld ing systems a nd m a n y differentw a y s of tax ing goods were ab le to supp ort very similar sociopoliticalstructures. It also justifies the suggestion that these societies shareda comm on t r ibu ta ry mode of p roduc t ion (Amin 1976:9-16). The

basic features of th is mode of p roduct ion were the abi l i ty of aprivileged elite to extra ct sub stantia l surpluses from commoners



46 ECONOMIC FOUNDATIONS

and that, contrary to arrangements in modern societies, the controlof these surpluses was more important than the ownership ofproperty. The level o f agricul tural productivity in the early civiliza-tions was so low that in territorial states it probably required at leastnine peasant fam ilies to support a single fam ily that did not producef o o d . Since the latter included those o f full-t im e craf tsm en as well asof bureaucrats and members of the nobility, the number o f familieswhose members were exempt f rom all f o r m s of manual labor wasconsiderably fewer. Because o f the somewhat more efficient pro-

ductive systems in city states, it is possible that the ratio o f non-foodproducers to peasants there was somewhat higher.

Authori ty

Rulers and off ic ia ls in all o f the early civil izatio ns sought to projectan image of power and authority. In ancient Egypt the stick andwhip were symbols o f off ice and a few scenes in Old Kingdomtombs depict local scribes being flogged in the presence of high-ranking off icials fo r failing to deliver the required taxes. Yet, inreali ty, there were serious limits to the exercise of power in the earlycivil izations. In societies where productive capacities were severelylimited, a ruling class would not be inclined to utilize resources formanagerial purposes that reached far beyond the minimum thatwas necessary to perpetuate the system, since doing so increasedadministrative costs, thus diminishing the resources that the rulingclass could use for its own purposes. One way to minimize admin-istrative costs was to delegate power f rom higher to lower levels inan administrative hierarchy, a practice that in the past led scholarsto see evidence of feudal structures in the early civilizations.

While numerous titles existed which suggest a detailed division of

labor in the administration of most early civilizations, powers wereoften no t specifically defined and higher-level offices tended toconfer a general and far-reaching, rather than a clearly defined,authority on their holders. The Egyptian viziers t3ty) carried outmany funct ions at the national or if there was more than one vizierthe regional level and provincial governors did the same in theirdistricts. This wholesale delegation of power was a relatively inex-

pensive and structurally undemanding way to administer a large



8 ECONOMIC F OUND A TIONS

Large New Kin gdo m Egyptian houses such as those excavated atAmarna, which were built inside walled enclosures and Mayahouse complexes, which faced onto central courtyards, providefurther examples of a concern for security at the family level.

The legal systems th at were administered by the central govern-ments suggest that these governments wished to minimize theirdirect involvement in m aintaining order. Law codes such as that ofthe Mesopotamian king Hammurabi, claimed to embody themonarch's desire to dispense justice in such a manner as to protect

the weak from the powerful. Yet in this code and many otherscommoners were punished more severely for offenses committedagainst the upper classes than upper class people were for crimesthey committed against commoners. The one exception was theAztec legal system, wh ich pun ished nobles m ore severely for a widerange of offenses, including drunkenness, than it did commoners.Nobles were assumed to be endowed w ith stronger spiritual pow-

ers than were comm oners and h ence able to resist tem ptatio n moreresolutely. This m ad e their m isbehavior a betrayal o f class idea ls.Fu rtherm ore, in all these societies, com m oners who contempla ted

seeking legal redress against nobles k new that they wou ld have toface judges w ho belonged to the upper classes and whose na tura lsym pathies w ould be wi th mem bers of their ow n class. M embers ofthe upper class also had more resources to bribe judges. In addit ion,

severe pe nalties were often inflicted on those who brought unprov-able charges against someone. The unlikelihood of winning a casem ust hav e deterred all but the most determined com mon ers frompressing charges ag ains t their superiors. Co ntrariw ise, the threat oflegal action perm itted nobles to coerce m embers of the lower classes(Offner 1983:82). Hence the legal system tended to reinforce th epower of the upper classes, while discouraging ordinary peoplefrom having recourse to it. The Eg yp tian Tale of the EloquentPeasant, w hi ch describes how the king rescued someone wro nglyaccused of theft by a powerful official, is ov ertly a story ab out justicebeing don e to a common man. Y et it carried the message that justicewas really done in that case only because the p easant 's exceptionaleloquence had en ter ta ined the king (L ichtheim 1973:169-84). All ofthis suggests that in early civilizations the state was n ot anx ious toexpend energy by intervening in aspects of human behavior thatcould be kep t self-regulating.



The Army 9

The Army

Addi t iona l evidence fo r such a policy is the limited force thatofficials ac tua l ly had at their disposal. Wars against other stateswere normally waged by armies composed of conscripted common-ers led by nobles, only a few of whom were fu l l - t ime militaryofficers. Every Aztec boy was trained to be a soldier, most of themin the tclpochcalli or boys schools run by the ca lpul l i s . Yorubaarmies were raised by the leaders o f patrilineages amongst theirkinsmen, followers, and slaves. The Inka, Egyptian, and Chinesestates also raised conscript armies. In some instances territor ialstates were able to use conscripts from one part of their largekingdoms to suppress uprisings in other parts. Elman Service (1975)has maintained that conscript armies were the only armed forceavai lable to the ru ler sof theear lyc iv i l iza t ionsand on these groundshas proposed that the early civi lizations were not t rue states butch ie fdom-l ike theocracies. Morton Fried (1967) disagrees, arguingthat physical force played an important role in the management ofearly civilizations.

The Aztec state promoted commoner soldiers who had capturedat least four prisoners of war to the rank o f quauhpilli or semi-nobles/ and granted them estates or revenues that exempted themfrom the need to perform manual labor. In return, these warriors

were required to serve as guards at the royal palace fo r part of eachyear and to protect the state s supplies of weapons, which werestored between campaigns in armories near the main temples. Theyalso trained young warriors, arrested people when ordered to do soby royal officials and formed elite corps within the army. They andthe hereditary nobles who led the Aztec army constituted a sizablebody o f professional soldiers at the disposal of the state.

In Mesopotamia, a t least b y Ear ly Dynastic III times, kings con-trolled professional, well-trained m i l itary units equipped with metalhelmets, specialized weapons, and un i fo rms . Some of these soldiersbatt led from chariots, but most were armed with long spears andfough t on foot in phalanx formations. These soldiers probablyformed the nucleus of the larger conscript armies that served thestate in wartime. The increasing intercity confl icts that encouraged

the creation o f corps o f professional soldiers also provided the



5 E C O N O M I C F O U N D A TIONS

justification for Mesopotamian military leaders to increase theirlandholdings and to dominate the political life of cities. Revenues

from the royal estates paid for m anufac tu r ing military equipmentand professional soldiers were granted land to support themselvesand their families. Unlike Aztec professional soldiers, who re-mained members of their calpullis, Mesopotamian ones were boundto their kings by closer and more personal economic and social ties.

Among the Yorubas, whose city states were politically the leastcentralized in my sample, even Oyo, the largest kingdom, had no

national standing army. Yet in wartime, lineage heads and the rulersof subordinate towns were obliged to supply soldiers and food forthe army. They were also responsible for training their followersand helping to arm them. In addition to recruiting troops fromamong his followers, each chief supported a number of full-timesoldiers who acted as his bodyguard. Some of these were equippedwith horses. Ambitious chiefs sought to acquire large numbers of

male slaves to per form agricultural work and to augment thenumbers o f recruits available fo r m i l itary campaigns. The Oyo armywas not led by the king, as it was at least in theory in most other earlycivilizations but by the Basorun, a high official who headed adifferent patrilineal group from that of the monarch. Despite itsdecentralized nature, the Oyo army was for several centuries apowerful force in West Africa. The kings of Benin, who were

poli t ical ly more powerful than those of the Yorubas, recruited alarge number of young men who acted as their bodyguard, messen-gers, and to enforce their wi l l . For as long as they served the king,these men were forbidden to marry or wear clothes. Yoruba kingshad a much smaller number of male retainers, who, among otherduties, served as their bodyguard.

Apart from a significant difference in scale, the military arrange-

ments in territorial states were generally similar to those in citystates. From an early period, the Chinese rulers did not depend onlyon conscripts levied by subordinate rulers but also established astanding army that in the Western Chou period was composed offourteen divisions, eight of which were stationed around the royaladministrative center of Ch eng-chou. They also garrisoned manyfront ier forts. The problems posed by the dual need to defend the

exposed borders of the Chinese state and to curb internal divisive-ness probably explain the existence of a large professional army.



The Army 5

The Ink as likewise, in add it ion to u t i lizing peasant levies wereengaged in crea ting a profession al arm y. Those dra w n into theseforces were m en from specific ethnic groups noted for their valorand ind ivid ua l peasants who had displayed notable courage andresourcefulness in battle. These soldiers and their families wereexcused from pay ing any form of tax other than their mil i taryservice. U nl ike the m ilita ry conscripts, who rem ained in the arm yfor only a short period, pro fessional soldiers app ear to ha ve servedthroughout their act ive life. Control over regiments of seasoned

veterans w ho had served und er his father in the prolonged warswhich tha t k ing ha d waged on the nor thern f ront iers o f the empire),assured Atawal lpa , the last Inka king, victo ry over the larger forcesof his half-brother Wa sk h a r in their struggle for succession to thethron e. The creat ion of such regim ents el im inated the need to ro ta teconscripts in the middle of long cam paig ns, increased the level ofprofessionalism w i t h i n the a rmy, and created forces loyal to the

king ra ther than to local lords. In Cuzco, the k ing had a palace guardcomposed of two tho usa nd soldiers, as well as a personal body gu ardof one hundred h igh - rank ing officers. Garr isons and border fortswere defended by settlers chosen for their loy al ty to the Ink a state.The families assigned this d u ty rotated their tasks: everyo ne helpedto grow food for the group, while the men took turns guard ing the fort.

W e are relat ively poor ly in fo rm ed about the armies of O ld and

M i d d l e K ing do m Eg ypt. Foreign w ars seem to have been fough tlargely w i t h peasant conscripts, but the royal court , provincialadminis t ra t ive centers, and border fort ifications must have beenguarded by professional soldiers. Com panies of Eg yp tian spearmenand N ub ian a rchers are depicted marching in format ion in modelsfrom the tomb o f M esehti a t Asyut Trigger 1976:202). Mercenaries,recruited from among the Medjay, a pastoral people w ho lived in

the Ea stern Desert, app ear to ha v e served as a police force. One oftheir tasks was to h elp co llect taxes from recalci tran t peasants. Foroperat ions of this sort Eg yp tian officials m ay have preferred to relyo n fo re igne rs . The E gy p t i a n a rm y became l a rge r an d moreprofessionalized af ter the s tar t of the N ew Kingdom , when chariotsand other new w eapon s were intro du ced . In Ram esside t imes,increasing n u mb e r s of foreign mercenaries were drawn into astandin g ar m y. In div id ua l soldiers w ere rem unerated by beinggranted f a rms or sm all estates.




Yet despite the evidence for professional soldiers in all of the earlycivilizations, Service is correct that armed force does not appear tohave been as important, or the military institutionally as autono-mous, as they were to be in many later and more complexpreindustrial civilizations. Moreover, while some professional sol-diers were wholly freed from manual labor, others appear to havespent part of their time cultivating their land grants. They differedfrom peasant conscripts mainly in the extent o f their military train-ing, their equipment, and their obligations for military service. This

may part ial ly explain the relative ease and speed with which theAztec Inka, and Yoruba states succumbed when challenged bymore highly organized European military forces. It also raises aninteresting question concerning the level of exploitation in earlycivilizations.

Inequality

It is d iff icul t to measure degrees of exploitation in the early civiliza-tions. Long ago Ulrich Wilcken estimated that the Ptolemaic gov-ernment extracted about t en times more wealth from the Egyptianpeople than had been collected previously (Weber 1976:226). Whileboth the population and the productivity of Egypt were signifi-cant ly greater in the Ptolemaic period than they had been before,

this still indicates a higher level of ex ploitat ion than in earlier times.Likewise, slavery appears to have been a less extensive and lessoppressive institut ion in the early civilizations than it was in classi-cal Greek and Roman society. Herodotus reported that K h u fu andKhafre the builders of the two biggest pyramids at Giza, wereremembered as tyrants who had ignored the worship of the godsand oppressed the people, while their successor, Menkaure, who

had built the much smaller third pyramid, was celebrated as agenerous and good king. Herodotus account has been dismissed asa dragoman s invention or alternatively been interpreted as a garbledmemory o f Akhenaton s reign (Aldred 1968:260). Yet it rings true tothe archaeological evidence and to the way ancient civilizationsworked. If the first two kings had pushed their personal demands onthe economy to the point where their behavior endangered the unity

of the state, Menkaure made a timely ad ju s tmen t after which no



Inequality 5

ruler (except pe rhaps Akhenaton) ever t r ied to monopol ize theweal th o f E g y p t for his ow n e n d s to such an exten t again. A ll of thisevidence suggests that exp loi tation was not as severe in the earlycivi l izat ions as it w as in m a ny m o re developed prein du str ial ones.

A uth o r i t y d id no t go un challenged in any early civil ization. W eknow tha t the fa i lure o f the state to pay royal tom b builders soon le dto r owdy demons t r a t i ons in the late N ew Kingdom (Bierbrier1982:41). Moreover, despi te the ir d iv in e o r divinely protected sta-tus, m any k ings in the ear ly civ i l izat ion s w ho proved to be weak, o r

excessively tyrannical , fell v ict im to assassination, and Egypt iankings were no except ion. Yet no one in the ear ly civi l izat ionsappears to have challenged the concept of a system based uponinequal i ty or its c laim to ref lect the n a t u r a l ord er established by thegods at the t ime o f c rea t ion .

The early civil izations were societies in which inequal i ty w asaccepted as a norm al con di t ion and in jus t ice viewed as a personal

rather than a systemic evil (W eber 1976:258). E ve ry child w as borninto a family that had been shaped in the image of the state. Thesubord ina t ion o f child to parent , and to varying degrees o f wi fe tohusband, w ent fun dam en ta l ly unq uestioned, as did corporal pu n-ishm en t as a m eans of en fo rcin g obedience an d discip line (Trigger1985b). It w as a wo r ld in w hich the terms father / king/ and godwere m e taphors fo r each othe r and for power. If peasant com m uni-

ties had been eg ali tarian prio r to the r ise of the state (w hic h w as n ota lways the case), no ne rem ained so a f terw ard s . These com m un i t ieshad t he i rown grada t ionso f pow er and w ealth; their m ost adv antagedm em bers strengthen ed their po sition s by act ing as intermediar iesbetween their fel low v i l lagers and the state. This refu tes K arl M arx smode l of the A siatic m o d e o f pro du ct ion , w hich assumed that in theear ly civi l izat ion s eg al i tar ian peasant com m un it ies con st i tuted the

un chan gin g economic basis of e xp loitativ e states (M arx 1964; Baileyand Llobera 1981). B ecause of the pervasiveness of inequ al ity, noone who l ived in the ear ly civ i l izat ion s qu estioned the norm alcy o fth is cond i t ion . If eg al i tar ianism w as k n o w n , it was as a f ea tu re ofsome of the d espised, barbar ian societies that existed beyond theborders of the c iv i l ized wor ld .

Peasants were also locked into a si tuat ion in which their well-being depended on ru lers who could defend them from externalat tack and m a i n t a i n the in ternal o rder on wh ich the systems o f



5 ECONOMIC F OUND A TIONS

production had come to depend Because they made their livespossible, the benefits tha t rulers provided to peasan ts were f ar from

intangible. Hence, so long as rulers did not exp loit their subjectsbeyond con ven tional l imits, their rule was accepted. Cap able rulersrecognized this and took care not to alienate the passive su ppo rt ofthe peasantry by overtaxing or otherwise oppressing them Weber1976:63). They also encouraged support by rew arding their moreactive fol lowers with gifts and offering them opportunities forpersonal betterm ent. W hile the presents that rulers gave to higher

officials often were of substantial value, peasants no rm ally receivedfrom government officials and priests only a special allotment ofbeer and meat on feast days, a small retu rn of w h a t the peasantsthemselves had paid in taxes. Yet so long as a show of goodwill wasmaintained, the benefits of a system that worked outweighed theevident lack of reciprocity in m aterial goods. The nex t cha pter willexamine the political means b y w hich order and equil ibrium were

m aintaine d in the early civilizations.



Three

Politics and Culture

Political a nd economic power in the early civilizations were closelylinked a nd reinforced rathe r tha n competed w ith one another. It hasrecently been a rgue d th a t sociopolitical forces were more im por tantdeterminants of preindustrial, class-divided societies than wereeconomic forces Giddens 1981), and th at even the modern worldsystem is shaped by political facto rs no less than by economic ones Giddens 1985). It is c lear that in the early civilizations politicalpower was a necessary means to obtain and protect wealth, whilethe control of w ealth w as essential to ma inta in power. Bu t unlike ina m odern indu stria l society, there appears to have been little opportunity for economic and political interests to compete with oneano ther Eise nstadt 1963). This is s tr ikingly dem onstrated by thetotal exclusion from political life of merchants whose wealth w asderived solely from comm ercia l gain. W hether an ana lys t assignscausal p rim ac y to sociopolitical or econom ic factors, or rejects thisdist inct ion as a false dich oto m y Ed ens 1992:134), any funct ionalanalysisof early civi l izat ionsrequiresthateconom ic and sociopoliticalfactors b e treated as parallel and m utu ally reinforcing.

Class H ierarch y

Every ear ly civilization h ad a class and status hierarchy w hich, l ikethe t r ibutary method o f appropriating surpluses described in thelast chapter, w as general ly s imilar, a l tho ug h d i ffe r ing in detail ,from one early c ivi l izat ion to ano the r. In these societies, social



6 POLITICS AND C U LT U R E

mobili ty w as ca re fu l ly controlled f rom the top, even though theneed to learn most skills from parents or close relatives greatly

restr icted it in any case.At the top of each hierarchy stood a king, whose principal duty

was to see that the system worked. Kings were responsible for thedefense of the realm, for maintaining order and for managingrelat ions with the supernatural. Kingship generally descendedpatr i l ineally either from father to son or among brothers, beforepassing to the next generation. In some states not included ;n our

sample, such as that of the Ashantes of modern Ghana, it wasinherited matrilineally. In these cases, however, kings sought tomarry in such a way as to ensure that their descendants inherited thethrone (Wilks 1975:371). Because of the need for effective militaryleadership, only in rare and exceptional circumstances d id womenwield royal power and then usually only as regents. For the samereason, the inheritance of kingship w as rarely determined by male

pr imogen i tu re . Among the Inkas and the ancient Egyptians, thethrone ideally passed to a son of the king by his principal wife— yetthe king appears to have had the right to decide which of his sonswas best suited to succeed him. In Egypt, to conduct the funera l ofthe previous ruler was a fu r ther requirement for succession. In bothsocieties, the death of a king was regarded as a time of crisis andarmed conflicts to decide the succession were not unknown. In an

effort to avoid such conflicts heirs were sometimes publicly desig-nated, or even installed as co-rulers, during their predecessor s reign.The Aztec king w as chosen f rom among the male members of the

royal patrilineage by a council composed of the highest officers ofthe realm, most of whom were members of the royal family. Inmaking this selection, the military and political skills of each candi-date were ca re fu l ly scrutinized. Another branch of the Aztec royalfamily monopolized a second office that of the cihuacoatl whichmeans l i terally Snake Woman. This official who despite his titlewas a man, acted as regent when the king died or was absent f romthe city, supervised many routine fiscal and legal matters, and wasregarded by the Aztecs as a co-ruler, though subordinate politicallyto the king, or tlatoani. This Aztec dual kingship was modeled ontheir concept of the supreme divinity, the Lord and Lady of Dual-ity/ with the Snake Woman representing the female side. In less



Class H ierarchy 7

tightly integrated realms, such as those of the Y orubas and possiblythe early Shang C hinese, the kingship rotated among a number o f

patrilineag es b elong ing to the royal clan. In some still less p ow erfulhighland Mexican and Yoruba states, several kings/ heading dif-ferent ethnic or kin sh ip groups, ruled these groups simultaneously,while cooperating to govern the realm.

The king was also the leader of the nobility. This class w ashierarchically ordered: the highest rank usually consisted of theimm edia te mem bers of the royal family, follow ed by descendants of

previous kings, members of o ther powerful fam ilies—includingones whose ancestors had ruled states that had been inco rporatedinto the rea lm— and finally descendants of individuals who had beenpromoted to noble ran k in recognition of their ab ilities and serviceto the s tate. W hile the comp osition of the no bi l i ty and the formalityof its defini t ion tended to vary from one civilization to another,membersh ip in th is class, once ac hieved, w as usually hereditary.

Nobles were exemp t from phy sical labor and enjoyed a comfortablelifestyle that w as supported by family and personal landholdings,government subsidies, and the em olum ents they received for thestate offices they held. W hile not all nob lem en held pub lic office, thehighest ad m inist ra t ive , religious, and m il i tary posi t ions in the statewere filled by members of this class. The nobili ty thus played amajor role in decis ion-m aking and adminis t ra t ion and its leading

m emb ers to vary ing degrees shared po wer w ith the king. A m ongthe Yorubas, for exam ple, respon sibilities for various governmentaltasks were divided among the leaders of h igh-ranking l ineagegroup s. W ealth and pow er depended upo n retaining control ofparticular offices and con t inu ing to forge marriage all ianc es w ithroyal ty a nd o ther leading fam ilies. A noble lineage th at failed to dothis w as destined to decline in power and wealth over time.

Next in the h ie rarchy was a mixed group that is often labeled a middle class/ although this term is a misnomer since the p oliticaland econom ic s ta tus of these peo ple differed radical ly from tha t ofthe b ourgeoisie in m ode rn societies. I propose to call them depen-dent specialists/ Some members of th is group m ay have ownedsmall estates a nd hence enjoyed a cer tain degree of f inancial inde-pendence. Most of them, how ever, depended upon the state or uponmembers of the nobil i ty for m u c h of th eir income, w hic h took the



8 POLITICS AND CULTURE

form of salaries, rights to use land, and direct payments for services.The members of this class lacked political power and were in effect

clients of the state or of individual members of the nobility for whomthey worked.

Within this group there was a marked social s trat if ication, de-pending on whether the work an individual did more closelyresembled that done by nobles or peasants. The highest-rankingmembers of this class were minor bureaucrats, who kept recordsand carried out administrative tasks but did not set policies. They

included scribes, full-time priests, and high-ranking artists andengineers. These individuals, together wi th the more educatedmembers of the nobility, monopolized the specialized technicalknowledge that was available in early civilizations. Like the nobil-ity, they did not labor with their hands. The Middle Kingdom Satire on the Professions genre ref lects the scorn with whichancient Egyptian scribes regarded those who were socially inferior

to them Lichtheim 1973:184-92).Also of e facto high status in some of the early civilizations were

merchants who engaged in long-distance trade. They supplied theluxury goods desired by the nobility and successful merchantsbecame quite wealthy. Yet, for reasons we shall consider below, theywere unable to transform their wealth into political power and eventheir social standing was of ten f raught with ambiguity.

Next in the hierarchy of dependent specialists came professionalsoldiers. They worked with their hands rather than with their heads,but like the higher orders they did not produce anything tangible.Their commanders were usually members of the nobility. Of mark-edly lower status were the full-time c raft smen, the most importantof whom were the specialists who produced luxury goods for theupper classes. Some of these c r a ft smen sold their products to the

upper classes; others were employed by the state or by members ofthe nobility. Despite their skills, craftsmen were regarded as inferiorto the dependent specialists we have already considered because,like peasants, they worked with their hands. Nevertheless, becausetheir products were highly valued, they lived far more comfortablythan did most peasants.

A final group of dependent specialists were the attendants who

looked af ter the personal needs of the king and members of the



Class ierarchy 9

nobility. Most were manual laborers, and they constituted thelowest level of dependent specialists. However, those individuals

who attended directly on major figures might derive considerablepersonal influence from their position. In ancient Egypt, Peru, andhighland Mexico, dwarfs and hunchbacks, who were not consid-ered suited for agricultural labor, were recruited as attendants forthe king and the nobility. In Old Kingdom Egypt, some of them wereeither trained as goldsmiths or placed in charge o f goldwork. It hasbeen suggested that this was because they were easily recognizable

and hence could be apprehended easily if they attempted to stealanything. This does not, however, account for the more general useof dwarfs as personal servants by the nobility. Some attendants whowon royal favor were made members of the nobility.

The peasant class was by far the most populous in the earlycivil izations and must have constituted at least 80 percent of thetotal population. As we have seen in Chapter Two, while peasants

were regarded as free members of society their legal status variedconsiderably both within and among the ancient civilizations. InInka and Aztec society, most peasants collectively owned the landthey worked; while the rest were bound as serfs to land owned bythe state or the nobility. Both groups enjoyed security of tenure bu tdid not have the freedom to move elsewhere. In Egypt andMesopotamia, some peasants may have owned freeholds, but their

tenure w as easily lost as a consequence of indebtedness. As institu-t ional and private ownership of land increased, a growing numberof peasants found themselves renting or sharecropping land, orreduced to being agricultural laborers. Each of these relations exposed them to an increasing degree of economic exploitation.

There were few slaves in the early civilizations. Many wereforeigners captured in war or obtained through the slave trade.

Others were citizens enslaved as a result of indebtedness includingfailure to pay taxes) or as a punishment for committing crimes. TheAztecs did not acquire many slaves as a result of military action, sincethey sacrificed most of their prisoners to the gods. The ShangChinese also killed large numbers of prisoners of war in religiousrituals. In the Early Dynastic Period, the Mesopotamians slaughteredma n y male captives after battles and m ay have blinded others for useas unskilled laborers, but female prisoners were set to work in large




weaving establishments. Presumably the Aztec sand Mesopotamiansfeared that it would be d i fficu l t to control large numbers of maleprisoners who came from nearby states and could escape easily. TheEgyptians on the other hand appear to have readily utilized maleprisoners as agricultural laborers and mercenaries.

Not being free slaves constituted the lowest class in society. Yetthey were employed at varying levels in the early civilizations.While most worked as household servants or agricultural laborerssome became soldiers or even bureaucrats. The ajele or agents/

whom the Alaf in or king of the hegemonic Yoruba state of Oyoinstall ed to keep an eye on the rulers and councils of tributary stateswere usually selected from among his slaves. By being inducted intothe royal Shango cult they were able when necessary to entertrances that made them temporarily as embodiments of the godShango at least the equals of local rulers. Highly-placed slaves oftenwere valued for not having an y f ami ly interests that they might pu t

ahead of those of their owners.While some slaves were badly treated especially those employed

in workshops and as farm laborers the legal condition of slaves wasnot as bad as it was to be in many later civilizations. Among theAztecs debt slaves could buy their freedom slaves retained ther ight to marry and own property and their children were born free.Some Aztec and Yoruba slaves were allowed to go on living at home

bu t either they o r other family members had to perform a stipulateda m o u n t o f work for their owners. T he absorption of slaves into thegeneral population rather than their fa i lure to reproduce appearsto have been the major reason their numbers remained low. Ingeneral the upper classesdepended for support on a self-sustainingpeasantry rather than o n slaves.

I have not reserved a special place for priests in this hierarchy.Religious activities were carried out by highly trained ful l- t imespecialists but also on a part-time basis by volunteers or even ascorvee labor. The most important positions in religious hierarchieswere invariably occupied by members of the nobility lesser ones bydependent specialists and peasants. Much of the harder physicallabor associated with m a in ta in ing temples was performed by priestsdrawn from the peasant class. While m ajor positions among theAztecs were usually filled by fu l l - t ime personnel and the more



Social Mo bility 61

menial ones on a part-tim e basis in Old K ingdom Egypt even high-ranking priests were government officials who performed ritualduties on a rota tio na l basis. There is no evidenc e th at priests c onsti-tuted a special class or even a clearly dem arcated order in any of theearly c ivilizations.

Social Mobility

In the ea rly c ivilizations, c lass m ob ility w as extremely limited. Itwas most frequ ent in societies that were experiencing rapid internaldev elop m ent and in states that were ac qu iring hegemony over theirneighbors. A buoyant economy made it possible for indigenouspersons and fo reigners alike to move upw ard in the social hierar-chy. Amo n g the Aztecs, for example, com moners w ho had c ap turedat least four prisoners in battle were promoted to the lowest level ofthe nobility. They no longer had to perform m anu al labor, could livein stone houses, and were allowed to wear f ine c lo thing and specialinsignia. They were also permitted to marry women f rom thehered itary nobility, w hic h assured tha t the c hildren of such mar-riages became ful l members of th at class. On the other hand , oncethe A ztec empire ceased to expand, King M oc tezum a II took stepsto l im it vertic al m obility. He forbade the sons of noblemen to at tendcour t un less they were of noble descent on their m others side aswell (D ura n 1964:222-24). This ac tion barred sons by secondarywives and c oncub ines from gaining access to higher off ices of state,which had formerly been open to them . On the other han d, a limitednumber of peasants and c raftsm en s sons w ho demonstrated anapti tude for the priesthood or for administrative careers wereallowed to attend the calmecacs or special schools/ where themembers of the nob ility were instruc ted.

It seems likely that in Egypt and Mesopotamia a few sons ofprosperous commoners were able to attend fee-charging schoolsand, by learning to w rite, rise to become scribes o r even adm inistra-tors. B eginning in the Old Kingdom, the li terature and tomb inscrip-tions of Egypt stressed the ideal of the self-made and self-reliantman, who achieved success as a result of his personal abilitieswinning him the favor of the king and of other high-ranking offi-

cials. Eg yptian wisdom li terature also emphasized the importanc e



6 PO LI TI C S A N D C U LT U R E

of respecting such men for their achievements and not despisingthem for their lowly origins. Yet, even if Eyre (1987a:38) is correct

tha t ancient Egyptians believed that vertical mobility was right,both up and down the social ladder, this was almost certainly anideal that was realized only to a very limited degree, if at all, in thelives of most Egyptians.

In order to conserve their privileges, classes tended to be endoga-mous in the early civilizations. Peasants married within narrowgeographical limits, o f ten the same community or even the same

communal landowning group, such as the Aztec calpulli and thePeruvian ayl lu The upper classes, on the other hand, intermarriedon a national and even an international scale. The Aztec rulerssought to link vassal states more closely to them by encouragingintermarriage between women belonging to the Aztec royal fam ilyand high nobility and the rulers of these states, thereby ensuringthat in fu tu re generations these states would be ruled by individuals

who had kinship ties to their hegemonic masters. Such marriagesplayed a s ign ificant role in consolidating the interests of the upperclasses on a geographical scale that it was impossible for the lowerclasses to match. These broader ties reinforced the power of thenobil i ty in their dealings with the peasantry.

Royal kinship ties also served as a basis for integrating territorialstates. In Shang China, the king appears to have married women

f rom leading clans in many parts of his kingdom. Many of theregional rulers of the Western Chou period were patrilineal kin ofthe Chou king, and other local rulers tended to be related throughmarriage to the Chou royal fam i ly In this way, a large region washeld together by a network of kinship ties that united its rulers asmembers of a single large fami ly While this did not precludeoccasional rebellions against the ce ntral government, it provided an

effective basis for governing a regional state over several centuries.On a m yth ica l level, the rulers of the principal Yoruba states and

Benin claimed descent f rom Odudu wa, the god who had created theworld af ter he had climbed down f rom the sky at Ife. This claimprovided the Yoruba states with a sense of historical and religious,as well as cultural, unity. Before 1897, parts of the bodies of the deadrulers o f Benin were buried at Ife in recognition o f that city s

primordial sanctity. In each of these cases, kinship—real or fictional—



Social Mo bility 63

distinguished the ru lin g classes from the people over whom theyruled.

Polygyny and concubinage werecom m on amo ng the upper classesin the early civilization s. The Inka ruler had o ne chief wife, who wasoften his sister o r half-sister. One Aztec ruler, M o ctezum a II, isreported to have had two wives and, while m ost Egyptian pharaoh shad only one mtnsw wrt or queen/ others were m arried to m orethan one concurrently. In addit io n, m any rulers had harems con-taining hundreds or even thousands of women and produced a

large num ber o f progeny (Betz ig 1986). Such behavio r was im itatedon a lesser scale by members of the nobility and other favoredindividuals . Support ing large numbers o f descendants o f thesegroups represented a poten tial bu rden fo r the state.

A m o n g the Inkas, it was the custom f or all o f a ruler s children,except for the one w ho succeeded him as king, to co nstitute apanaqa or hered itary royal kin group, whose chief du ty was to care

in perpetuity f or the m u m m if ie d body of the dead king. This gro upwas co rporately endow ed w ith the dead king s palaces, sufficientagricultural land to support his descendants, and his personalpossessions. The pan aqas played a m ajor role in the po litical life o fthe Inka state, with their indiv idual im po rtance depending o n ho wwell they m aintained p o litical and m arital t ies with the reigningm o narch (Patterson 1991). In general, the descendants o f m ore ancient

kings appear to have been less well endo wed and less po liticallypowerful than were the descendants o f more recent rulers. Whilethis may have been because the older panaqas were the artificialcreations o f Pachakuti , the king who founded the Ink a em pire, itm ay also hav e been caused by the period ic realloca tion o f resourcesfrom o lder panaqas to newly fo unded ones (Farrington 1992).

By contrast , almost all the wealth o f a Yoruba oba or king,

belonged to his office and hence was inherited by his successor,leaving his other children w ith high status but few possessions. Inorder to m ain tain their standa rd o f living, the oba s male descen-dants frequently so ugh t to integrate them selves into their m o therspatrilineal families and thereby claim a share o f these familiesresources. As a result, after a few generatio ns, a dead Yo ruba kinghad few, if any, l iving descendants apart f rom the reigning m on archand his children.



6 P O L I T I CS A N D C U LT U R E

In Egypt during the Fourth Dynasty, many of the highest stateoff ices were occupied by sons and other male relatives of the

reigning pharaoh, although this practice was abandoned later in theOld Kingdom. While the rank of p t, or nobility/ as opposed to rhyt,or commoner/ may have designated primarily the descendants off o r m e r kings, there is no evidence that these individuals weremembers of formal groups that had special economic privileges. Inthat respect, the Egyptians treatment of the descendants of kingsresembled that of the Yorubas more than it did that of the Inkas.

Administrative Co ntro l

The early c iv i l iza t ions were governed by bureaucracies which,although markedly limited in scope, played a majo r role in coordi-nating many d i ffe ren t kinds o f activities that were o f interest to thecentral government. These included collecting grain taxes andmarket dues, administering state property, keeping state records,and supervising mining, foreign trade, state construction projects,specialized production, and defense operations. The power of rul-ers to control the state depended to a large degree on their ability todirect the bureaucracy that managed its affa i rs .

In city states, power tended to be shared at the top levels by moregroups than in territorial states. Councils and other f o rms of consul-

tation, as well as allocating d i f f e r e n t powers to specific groups,played an important role in the l ife of such states. Among theYorubas, for example, the oba had to share power with the chief titleholders of the leading lineages in his kingdom. These men collec-t ively had the power to depose the king, ju s t as his consent wasrequired to c o n f i rm the appointment of any one of them. Oyo, thestrongest of the Yoruba states, was governed by the king and a

counc i l of seven hereditary leaders. One o f these leaders, the Basorun,commanded the army and acted as regent; hence it was in hisinterest to have minors on the throne.

Mesopotamian leaders appear to have possessed l i t t le if any,more power in Early Dynastic I times than did the Yoruba rulers.Even later, the lugals, or kings/ although they commanded thearmy and exercised considerable control over the economy, for a

long time had to share power with the leaders of the m a j o r temple



POLITICS AN D C U LT U R E

government. Governors were required to report personally to theking on a regular basis and royal inspectors made f requent tours of

the empire searching for signs of dishonesty and rebelliousness.In Egypt, while there may have been considerable continuity in

leadership at the village level, it is unclear what happened to thelocal elites after the country was unif ied at the beginning of the FirstDynasty. There is no evidence that the rulers of the small politiesthat were drawn into the Egyptian state were allowed to retaincontrol of their power bases. During the Old Kingdom, the Egyptian

administration had a strongly centralized and bureaucratized charac-ter. In the course of their careers, of ficials held many positions whichtook them successively to different parts of the realm. The ideal wasto climb towards an exalted position at the royal court and ultimatelyto be buried near the tomb of a pharaoh that they or their ancestorshad served. Late in the Old Kingdom, leading officials succeeded inbringing individual provinces and an increasing range of powers

under their hereditary control. While this feudal type of adminis-t rat ion is frequently blamed for the collapse of the Old Kingdom, itwas retained during the Middle Kingdom until Sesostris III carriedout his program of renewed centralization. While older studies ofancient Egypt stressed slow swings in the balance of power betweenthe central government and the provinces, more recent ones haveshown that significant changes were made in bureaucratic structures

reign by reign or even several times by the same king (Strudwick1985 . This appears to have resulted from attempts by Egyptianrulers to retain control over the bureaucracy as political and eco-nomic circumstances, and the bureaucracy itself, kept changing.

Status Symbols

In all the early civilizations, rank was expressed in terms not only ofpower but also of lifestyle. The upper classes lived in more elaboratehouses, wore fancier clothing and jewelry, and surrounded them-selves with more luxuries and com forts than did ordinary people.While Aztec commoners were content to sacrifice quails, tortillas,maize, and flowers to their deities, the nobility sacrificed captives,cacao, exotic feathers, a nd jade ornaments. Yet these status symbols

were always in danger of being challenged as a result of status



tatus ymbols 7

emulation by the lower classes. Part of the authority of kings in theearly civilizations was expressed in terms of their ability to protectthe exclusivity of s tatus symbols and to reserve for themselves theright to bestow the privilege of using them on their loyal followers.

Status symbols were sometimes protected by sumptuary lawswhich restricted the use of prized items to the upper classes. The ztec government carefully regulated the kinds of clothing thatcould be worn by different classes. Only members of the nobilitywere allowed to wear sandals clothes made from imported cotton

long cloaks and jade ornaments or to live in houses that were madeof stone and were more than one story high. s a sign of submissionno one apart from the king and the cihuacoatl was permitted towear sandals inside the royal palace. Cloth that was ornamentedwith particular designs and colors w as limited to certain classes aspecially patterned blue cloth being reserved for the king. ny m anwho was caught wearingclothes or ornaments above his station was

subject to punishments including the death penalty.The Aztec kings could grant exemptions to these sumptuary laws

as a reward for service to the state. ny commoner whose leg wasscarred in battle w as permitted to wear a long cloak while thosewho had captured several prisoners were allowed to live in stonehouses and wear clothes and ornaments made of gold and preciousstones. The more successful warriors were the more elaborate cos-

tumes they were authorized to wear and the more prominent werethe roles assigned to them in state rituals. The granting of highlyvisible privileges served asan inducement for commoners to be valiantwarriors and encouraged members of the hereditary nobility to emu-late one another. On the other hand a m an who failed to participate inthe capture o f even one prisoner was not allowed to cut off the lockof hair that all youths were required to wear so thisbecame a lasting

source o f shame and humiliation for him. In these ways Aztec kingswere able to use sumptuary laws to encourage behavior that servedthe interests of the state and to penalize behavior that d id not.

Inka sumptuary laws forbade commoners to possess many sortsof goods or even more material wealth than was deemed necessary.In Inka as in Aztec society luxury goods were among the mostvalued rewards for service. The Inka rulers monopolized the miningand

smelting of precious

metals and the

manufacture of gold and



8 PO LI TI C S A N D C U LT U R E

silver objects, including all forms of personal ornaments. The pre-cious metals that were mined throughout the empire all had to beforwarded to Cuzco and nothing manufactured from these metalswas allowed to leave the capital without royal permission. Personalornaments, cups, and dishes made of gold and silver were amongthe gifts that the Inka ruler presented to high-ranking officials asrewards for their loyalty and service. The Inka government alsomanufactured large amounts of fancy cloth cumbi). It was wovenby weavers who worked ful l time for the state and by the aclla, or

Virgins of the Sun. The Inka state collected these women in child-hood from their ayllus as a form of tribute. Those who were not usedfor human sacrifices or distributed as concubines among membersof the nobility spent the rest of their working lives serving inreligious cults and weaving. High quality cloth was widely distrib-uted by the state among members of the nobility and as rewards forspecial services. A peasant who performed outstandingly in the army

was presented with luxury goods, special insignia, extra land, andpossibly extra wives. He might also be given a minor administrativepost, such as being made the leader of ten or even fifty families.

The king of Benin s regulatory powers over foreign trade gavehim considerable control over luxury goods. Ivory, which was usedto manufacture ornaments and ritual objects, could be obtainedonly with the king s permission. Although bronze and brass were

worked by members of a special guild, whose workshops were notlocated in the palace, m ajor bronze objects could be cast only on theking s orders. Bronze human heads, used in ancestral rituals, wereproduced only for the king. The casting of such objects for the altarof a deceased monarch was an important part of the installation ritesof his successor. Another highly valued status item was red coralbeads, which were strung into regalia for high-ranking officials.

Only the king could own these beads, and he allocated them to officeholders for their l i fe t im e only. These beads had to be returned to thepalace periodically for special festivals in which the blood of ahuman sacrifice was poured over them to renew their power.Special cloth that was worn only by the king and high-rankingofficials w a s woven in the palace.

Lit t le attention has been paid to the systematic study of status

symbols in ancient Egypt. Yet insignia, dress, and ornaments varied



Tribute 9

according to rank and class (Watson 1987). Some of the royal regaliawere regarded as imbued with supernatural powers, and hymnswere addressed to the royal crowns (Lichtheim 1973:201-2 . Moreattention to this subject seems to be in order.

The importance of status symbols in the early civilizations madethe kings ability to control their use and bestow them on deservingfollowers a source of power. While too generous a distributionwould depreciate the material and symbolic value of these items,the more generous a ruler could be—without diminishing his re-

sources—the easier it would be for him to command the support ofhis followers.

Tribute

A n important source of wealth for kings, especially in city-statesystems, w as tribute levied on conquered states. The Aztecs col-lected large amounts of food clothing, wood, pottery, jewelry,paper, animal skins, feathers, rubber, slaves, and even a few liveeagles in this manner. The amount of tribute w as determined by theresources of the conquered state and the degree of loyalty it haddisplayed; states that had resisted or rebelled against Aztecsuzerainty were taxed more heavily than those which had not. Tominimize transportation costs, distant states paid their tribute inlight-weight luxury goods, while nearer ones were required todeliver bulkier items. Cotton, cocoa, rubber, and rare bird feathersfrom the lowlands were especially valued because these items werenot available in the Basin of M exico or the surrounding highlands.Tributary states in the Basin of Mexico were also called upon toprovide labor and to supply the stone and gravel needed for publicconstruction projects in and around the Aztec capital.

Tribute goods were brought every eighty days to the Aztec capitaland stored in the royal palace. In theory all these goods were theproperty of the king, in his capacity as the head of the Aztec state andthe leader of its army. The king distributed these goods as rewardsto loyal followers office holders, and outstanding soldiers. He wasalso able to reward members of the nobility, val iant soldiers, andtemples down to the calpulli level w i th grants of land in conquered

states, the surplus produce of which was delivered directly to them.



Trade 7

f rom parts of Nubia that were controlled by the Egyptians and howmuch originated beyond the borders of their empire. The economic

importance o f Nubia and its tight political integration into theEgyptian state are evident in the tribute lists of Thutmoses III, wheregoods delivered to the royal treasury were recorded as taxes b3kw),while the givings of individual Syrian and Palestinian princesappeared as tribute inw) (Trigger 1976:110). Given the agriculturalriches of Egypt and the capacity of the Egyptian kings to obtainwealth through taxation, its empire appears to have been primarily

a means a defense and of securing access to exotic raw materials,rather than a m ajor source of wealth as was the Aztec empire.

Trade

Interregional trade was conducted differently in city-state systemsand territorial states. Between city states, which were of ten at warwith one another, it occurred most effectively if traders had anarm s-length relationship with the political structures. It has beensuggested that in early times the Mesopotamian traders worked asagents or temples or kings and in return received allotments of landor fixed salaries rather than seeking to profi t f rom their activities.Yet by the periods for which reasonable documentation is avail-able, the Mesopotamian traders had their own guilds or associations

and derived profi ts by selling goods at higher prices than they hadpaid for them. Merchants from neighboring states established rela-tions of trust that made it possible for them to extend credit to oneanother and developed techniques of payment that did not requirethe immediate exchange of goods. Their systems of accountingforeshadowed banking techniques of later times. Such relationswere strong enough even to survive wars between the traders

respective states.Among the Aztecs and their neighbors, long-distance traders, or

members of the pochteca, constituted separate calpullis, whichdiffered f rom all but the royal ones in having no farmers as mem-bers. Trading was thus a hereditary and, except by means of per-sonal adoption, a closed profession. Individual merchants sought toprofi t from their transactions and, within their own calpulli, were

stratified according to age and wealth. To achieve high status



72 P O L I T I C S N D C U LT U R E

among the pochteca it was necessary for a young man to acquirewealth so that he could feast other traders and their families.

Pochteca calpullis were headed by old men who like other calpullileaders acted as their spokesmen in dealings with the government.Groups of long-distance traders lived in the main urban centersthroughout highland Mexico and assisted each other to transactbusiness. While they accepted commissions to buy and sell goodsfo r kings and members of the nobility much of their business waslinked to the markets of the cities where they lived and traded.

Yoruba long-distance traders were less fo rm al ly organized thanwere their Mesopotamian and Aztec counterparts. Many of themwere women and a significant number of both sexes belonged to royallineages. Traders often traveled in large groups accompanied by anarmed escort to protect them f rom raiders but each member of sucha group would buy and sell goods and arrange for porters on her orhis own account. They generally bought and sold their goods

through local brokers who dealt with the city markets. In manycities guilds o f leading merchants provided storage and lodging fo rtraders f rom other towns and acted as agents fo r their wares.

In each of these three city-state systems long-distance tradersderived p rof i t s f rom their work and some became quite wealthy. Inhighland Mexico their commercial dealings with kings and mem-bers of the nobility were a source of mutual pro fi t The pochtecas

also enriched the state through the market taxes the governmentlevied on the goods they sold there. The Aztec traders acted as spiesfo r the government both within and beyond the borders o f the empireand in return the Aztec kings undertook to avenge traders who werekilled by foreigners. This occasionally provided the Aztec king withan excuse for declaring war on hostile or uncooperative states.

On the other hand relations between merchants and the Aztecmilitary elite were colored by antagonism. The Aztecs believed thatreal social mobility was achieved only as a reward for outstandingmil i ta ry service which implied that the p rof i t s merchants madef rom trade were somehow ignoble. Individual warriors proclaimedtheir high status openly and proudly. Yet however rich a merchantbecame and however luxurious his home life was he felt constrainedto appear in public as a simple commoner barefooted and dressedin maguey fiber clothes. Merchants could also win a certain amount



Trade 7

of honor by sacrificing slaves that they had purchased, but only ifthey were also able to buy the assistance o f high-ranking warriors toperform the ritual. A slave could only be sold fo r sacrifice af terrepeated charges of bad behavior had been substantiated.

In Mesopotamia, there is evidence o f a similar, though less strik-ing, ambiguity in the status o f merchants. There the merchants hadclose commercial relations with temples and palaces and the headof their guild o r association often appears to have been granted apalace title. Y et merchants seem to have lived in the harbor area o f

cities where foreigners stayed, rather than inside the city proper.They also appear to have invested their profits in land and, whenthey could live comfo r tab ly o ff such investments, abandoned tradeand moved into the city (Oppenheim 1969:11). Among both theA ztecs an d the Mesopotamians, it appears that close contacts withmerchants in other, o f ten hostile, communities rendered merchantssuspect among their own people, thereby exacerbating the belief

that their way of acquiring wealth was not as respectable as owningland o r being a warrior.

A m o n g the Yorubas, there is no evidence of such an att itude. Lessof a distinction was drawn between local a nd long-distance tradeand traders included the wives and sons o f reigning kings. In townswhere there were no merchants guilds, local notables frequentlyacted as brokers and landlords fo r traders. Trading was socially

more highly valued by the Yorubas than it wa s by the Aztecs andMesopotamians .In the two territorial states fo r which there is adequate documen-

ta t ion a d i ffe rent situation is apparent. The Inka rulers allowedentrepreneurs to continue trading with regions beyond the bordersof the empire, especially to the north. These traders were able toobtain goods that were no t available within the empire, and, like the

Aztec traders, provided intelligence that assisted in the expansionof Inka rule. W i th in the empire, however, the government appearsto have deliberately discouraged interregional trade. Peasant com-muni t ies moved towards greater self-sufficiency after the Inkaconques t made i t easier f o r Andean f a rming groups to secure landat lower altitudes, where they could grow their o w n tropical crops.The transport o f luxury goods f rom o ne part of the Inka state to

ano ther a nd their distribution increasingly fell

under the control o fthe central government.



7 P OLITIC S A ND C U LT U R E

n Egypt, foreign trade appears to have been carried o ut either bygovernment off icials or by traders w ho were controlled by thecentra l government. Thus the government regulated the distribu-tion within Egypt o f products such a s ivory, ebony, gold a ndincense f rom the Sudan a nd lapis lazuli, cedar wood, a nd olive o ilfrom southwestern Asia. The government also directed rock quar-rying gold mining, and turquoise extraction in the Nile Valley, theadjacent deserts, and the Sinai Peninsula. Royal workshops playeda crucial role in tr ans fo rming these ra w materials into highly-valued

l uxury goods. This made the upper classes dependent on the centralgovernment fo r most of the luxury goods they desired both foreveryday l i fe and to assure their well-being af ter death. Although,during the Old and Middle Kingdoms, the Egyptian pharaohs onlysporad ica l ly obtained large quantities o f booty that they could useto reward their supporters their control over exotic raw materialsconstituted a n equivalent source of power. The sage Ipuwer s lament,

during the First Intermediate Period, that a fragmented land wa s n olonger able to obtain the cedar wood needed to make coff ins to burythe noble dead indicates how important i t wa s to be able to providesuch material (Lichtheim 1973:149-63). Natron, on the other hand,which wa s mixed with water fo r daily ablutions a s well a s used toe m b a l m the dead, w a s brought into the Nile Va l ley f rom nearbydesert areas to the west at least partly by peasant entrepreneurs.

These two examples suggest that one of the ways in which therulers o f large terri torial states consolidated their power was byreplacing purely entrepreneurial exchange with the governmentcontro l led ac quisi tion and distribution of luxury goods. This helpedto bolster support for the central government among the upperclasses and was equivalent to the control over tribute that wasexercised by the rulers of hegemonic city states. In Shang China,

specific lineages a re known to have engaged in trade. t is not clear,however, what relations these traders had with the state.

Monumental Architecture

n early civilizations, rulers and states expressed their power byproducing monumental architecture on a vaster scale than anyone

else. Elsewhere I have argued that, even in the smallest societies



Mo/7 urn entalA rch itecture 75

human beings seek to con serve energy in activities relatin g to theproduction and distr ibution of food and o ther material necessities;therefore all human societies understand the principles of leasteffort and of conserving energy. Because of this, one of the mostbasic and u niv ersa lly com prehensible ways in which power can beexpressed is th rough the conspicuous consumption o f energy.Monumen ta l architecture, as a high ly visible and enduring form o fcon sumption, plays an im po rtant role in shaping the political andeconom ic behavior o f hu m an beings in m o reco m plex societies. This

explains why, as systems based on inequality developed, m o nu -men tal architecture began to loom large in the archaeological record(Trigger 1990). A related material manifestation o f power was theinvestment o f large amo un ts o f energy in pro du cing small , highlycrafted w orks— such as jewelry and ceremo nial vessels— often fromrare and exotic m aterials.

The m o nu me ntal architecture o f the early civilization s represents a

combinat ion of engineering skill, bureaucratic management, andaesthetic q ua lit ies wh ich indicate th at more th an massive labor w entintocreating it . U nfortunately, very little is known about the specialistswh o designed and supervised these pro jects. Zoser s vizier Imho tepmay have conceived of the Step Pyram id, the first large stone stru ctu reto be built in Egypt, but more than Imhotep and largecrewso f masons,laborers, and bu reau crats were needed to translate h is concept into

reality. It is only throu gh the study o f mo nu men tal architecture f roman engineering po int of view that we can hope to learn more abou tthe specialists whose kno wledge and skill played such a cruc ial rolein shaping th e archaeo logical record of the early civilization s.

Only four basic kin ds o f mo nu me nta l a rchitec ture ar e f o u n d in th eearly civil ization s: fo rt ifications, palaces, temples, and tombs. Thelast thr ee are in effect hou ses for rulers, gods, and the dead. W e do

no t f ind in the early civil izatio ns the large public baths, theaters,arenas, and o ther specialized pu blic bu ildin gs that were co nstructedin classical Greece and Rome. Even markets were usually openspaces located in f ront of, or between , major pub lic bu ildings, ra therthan structures in their own right. In many early civilizations, apalace was literally called a king s hou se (in Eg yptian pr-nsw , atemple a god s house hwt-ntr) and a tom b a house for the deadhwt-k3,

tom b chape l ). Yet, in extending these distinctions to all



7 POLITICS A ND C U LT U R E

early civilizations, we risk imposing our own categories on the data.Many Maya temples were built for the interment and cults of dead

rulers, Inka royal palaces served as tombs for the kings who builtthem, and Yoruba a fins or palaces/ were cult centers and commu-nity buildings as well as the residences of kings.

Fortifications clearly had a practical function, but the scale andelaboration of many of them indicate that they were also symbolicstatements. Mesopotamian and Yoruba cities were surrounded bywalls. Although intercity w arfare was common among the Aztecs

and neighboring peoples of highland Mexico, their cities rarelypossessed such fortifications and Classic Maya cities only occasion-ally had ramparts, such as the ones running between swamps at thenorth and south ends of Tikal. While this difference partly mayreflect the fact that one of the major goals of warfare in highlandMexico an d among the Mayas was to capture prisoners for sacrificethe burning of temples and levying of tribute on defeated cities gave

their inhabitants compelling reasons to resist conquerors. The high-land Mexicans and Mayas achieved this not by building wallsaround their cities, but by fortifying public buildings and individualhomes so that enemy forces could be resisted after they had entereda city. The massive ramparts of Early Dynastic Uruk were regardedin later times as a testimonial to the former greatness of thisMesopotamian city and their construction as the most enduring

physical accomplishment of i t s hero-king Gilgamesh. InMesopotamia, city walls, through their massiveness and scale,expressed the greatness of one city state compared with another.Defeated cities often were required to breach or tear down theirwalls as a sign of submission.

The system of border fortresses at the Second Cataract of the Nilehas been described as one of the major construction projects of the

Middle Kingdom, far exceeding in size and elaboration what w asrequired for trade and defense on Egypt's southern frontier. Whilethe final word has not been said on how great the threat to Egypt'sborder w as at this period, the size and m agnificence of these forts—asan expression of the power of the Egyptian state—must have been amajor factor discouraging any challenge to Egyptian authority fromthe south. Hence the hypertrophy (Adams 1977:187-88) of theseforts m ay have been intended to play a sig nificant practical role.



Monumental Architecture

Within territorial states urban centers rarely appear to have beenenclosed within walls except perhaps during times of severe mili-

tary threat. However palaces temples and administrative centerswere frequently surrounded by elaborate enclosure walls whichnot only facilitated the guarding of such structures but also turnedthem into major expressions of the power of the central government.The original White Wall inb hd), which came to symbolize the unityof Egypt was undoubtedly a fortified palace and administrativecenter that according to tradition Menes the founder of the First

Dynasty had established near the border between Upper andLower Egypt after he had united the whole country. Its color wasthat of victorious Upper Egypt. Likewise the rectangular wall ofstamped earth dating from the Early Shang period at Cheng-chouwhich measures approximately 1900 by 1700 meters appears tohave enclosed palaces and administrative buildings.

In Egypt as well as Inka Peru and Shang China major urban

centers took the form of dispersed settlements where the elite livedin special enclaves while cult places burial grounds and settle-ments of craftsmen lesser functionaries retainers and farmerswere scattered around. This dispersed pattern of settlement likelyreflected the social exclusivity of the elite who wished to avoidliving in close proximity to their subjects; an exclusivity also reflectedin the tendency of Egyptian kings to be buried separately even from

their immediate families at various intervals in Egyptian history.This sort of settlement was possible in territorial states because therewas less need for defense against external attack. The Inka fortressof Sacsahuaman which was an important feature of the Cuzcolandscape apparently served r i tual as well as defensive roles.

In territorial states capitals also tended to shift from one place toanother. This is reported to have happened on six occasions in thecourse of the Shang Dynasty for strategic and ritualistic reasons. TheWestern Chou capital also moved a number of times particularlydur ing the early history of the dynasty. In Egypt the primary royalresidences and burial places were located in the Memphis areadu r ing most of the Old a nd Middle Kingdoms although the preciselocation of royal residences m ay have shifted from one reign toanother. Even in the N ew Kingdom Memphis and later Pi-Ramessesin the eastern Delta were m ajor centers of court life although kings



8 P OL I T I C S A N D C U LT U R E

were buried and had their main cult center far to the south at Thebes.The massive remains of Akhenaton s city at Amarna indicate how

quickly a new capital could be constructed on a hitherto unoccupiedsite if an Egyptian king wished to do so.

Although Cuzco was regarded as the center of the Andean world,Inka kings who remained away from it for long periods on militarycampaigns constructed New Cuzcos at places such as Tomebambain Ecuador and Inkawasi on the south coast of Peru. In these cities,as well as in major provincial capitals, streets, hills, plazas, and

buildings were given the same names, and presumably served thesame funct ions as did their counterparts in Cuzco, even thoughtheir layouts did not necessarily bear much resemblance to one other.

In all three territorial states, kings had to spend much timet ravel ing around their domains. This must have encouraged themto establish multiple centers where they could discharge the numer-ous duties connected with kingship. While capital cities were indis-

putably the centers of city states, the presence of the court, whichwas often mobile, or perhaps more precisely the presence of theking, tended to constitute the center of a territorial state.

Although temples, palaces, and tombs were the largest and mostimpressive buildings erected in the early civilizations, each type ofstructure was not equally important in all of them. Temples aregenerally the oldest archaeologically attested monumental build-

ings (Wheatley 1971). Among the Aztecs, Mesopotamians, andMayas, they remained the most prominent public structures. Ineach of these societies the p la tform s on which the most importanttemples were constructed evolved into large pyramidal structures.While small temples might be erected throughout city states, thelargest and most elaborate ones were located in the center of thecapi tal . These symbolized the power and the un i ty of the state.

Among the Aztecs and their neighbors, the capture and burning ofthe shrines atop its central pyramid symbolized the conquest of astate. Like the walls around Mesopotamian cities, the size andsplendor of the central temple complexes in these city-state civiliza-tions reflected the relative importance of the cities themselves.

The Inkas constructed elaborate stone temples, but they were notdistinguished architecturally or in terms o f central location from

major palaces and administrative buildings. On the other hand,



Monumental Architecture 9

t radit ional Y or ub a temples were relative ly small structures an dmain state shrine s were located in the more public areas o f the royal

palaces. The palace at Benin, whose ruler exercised more powerthan did neighboring Y orub a kings, contain ed a series of impressivecom pou nds, each dedicated to the cu lt of a dead monarch. Chinesetemples and ancestral shrines were also located within palacecomplexes. Like the other bu ildin gs in these complexes, the templeswere timber beam s tructu res covered w ith thatched ro ofs and hadwalls and p la tforms mad e of stamped earth. Prior to the New

K ingdom , Egy ptian temples appear to have been simple, oftensmall, s tru ctu res bui l t m a in ly of m udbr ick . Al thou gh it is clear tha tEgypt ian kings were invo lved in cul t activit ies in various parts ofEgypt a l ready in the First D yna sty, it is cur ren tly debated whetherthe central government w as directly invo lved in bui ld ing temples inprovincia l centers du ring the Old K ingdo m (O Connor n.d.) orw hether this was left to local officials (Kemp 1989:65-66 . How ever

this question is resolved, it app ears th at temples w ere relative ly lessimp ortant in territo rial states th an they w ere in city states.

Palaces were con structed in all the early civilization s we havebeen studying, but only am ong the Chinese and Yo rubas did theyconsti tute the focal po in t of cities. Temples occupied the centralposit ion in four early civil izations, whi le in Cuzco the center of thepolitically d o m i n a n t half of the city was occupied by palaces and

tha t of the subordinate half by the m ai n temple. Palaces generallyserved no t on ly as royal residences but also as ad m ini stra tivecenters, meeting places, storehouses, barracks, and workshops.

The Aztec, M esopo tam ian, and M aya palaces were located n earthe center of ci ty-state capitals, adjacent to the ma in temp le precinctand in some cases inside it. Each successive Aztec mo narch appearsto have bui l t a new palace, wh ile leav ing those of his predecessorss tanding. As the power of the Aztec and Mesopotamian kingsincreased, so too did the size o f th eir palaces a nd palace staffs. It isunclear whether the Late Classic Ma ya rulers and their families livedentirely in the ston e palace com plexes adjacent to the m ain templesor w he the r these complexes were used m ain ly for official functionsand elabo rate,butlessd urab le, dom estic qu arter s were located nearby.Yoruba palaces occupied large walled areas, but mu ch of theirinterior w as forest land where the king perform ed various r i tuals .



Art 8

pyramids of the Fourth Dynasty stand as mute evidence of thepower of rulers to uti l ize the resources of a nation for their ownglorification, as well as of the great im portance ascribed to m ortu arycults in Egyptian society. These pyramids also bear witness to thehigh ly centralized adm inistration tha t controlled E gypt at that time.

In g eneral, i t appears that territorial states expended more energyon the bur ial and funerary cul ts of dead mo narchs tha n did citystates. This w ou ld correlate w ith these rulers con trol over morea b u n d a n t resources and w ith their less nuan ced claims o f d ivini ty.

The M ayas are the one app aren t excep tion. Ye t they focuse d theirmain expenditure less on the burial of kings and more on theworship of the ir spirits in tem ples wh ere they w ere identified w ithmajor gods This situation more closely resembles the Egyptianroyal funerary cults of the N ew Kingdom and those of the Khm ers(Higham 1989), th an i t does E g yptian practices of earlier times.

The a m o u n t of energy expended on monumental archi tecture

varied am ong the early civil izations. The least impressive bu ilding swere constructed by the Yorubas and the Shang Chinese. Thiscorrelates with the dece ntralized political stru ctur e of the Yorubacity states and perhap s w ith the relatively we ak integration of theShang state. In the other early civilizations, large and du rablestructures were erected in both territorial and city states. In citystates, there was probably more emphasis on monumental con-

structions that g lorified the comm unity, while in territorial statesthese constructions tended to glorify ind ivid ua l mon archs. Thisdist inct ion is not, however, clear-cut. A m on g both the Aztecs andthe Me sopo tamian s, palaces increased in size along w ith the powerof their kings. The rulers of the Mayan city states seem to haveerected more monumental buildings than did the less divinizedheads of the city states in highland M exico. This may in part have

been because m an y of the smaller states in hig hlan d M exico were aspolitically decentralized as w ere the Yo ruba kingdom s.

Art

Each early civilization developed an elite art that w as more formaland sophisticated than that produced by peasants in the same

society. It was also so stylistically different from the elite art pro-




duced by any other early civilization that not even a casual modernobserver is likely to mistake an E gyptian wo rk of art fo r an Aztec ora Chinese one.

V.K. Afanasieva 1991:128) has suggested that the art producedprior to the early civilizatio ns depicted hu m an beings if at all, onlyas integral pa rts of nature and that the emphasis on hum an figuresin the art o f the early c ivilizatio ns reflects a new self-confidence andsense of power resulting from a greater control over nature. Thereis, however, no support for this as a universal generalization.

Natural ist ic hu m an figures, w ith special emphasis on a nthrop o-morphic deities, kings, and members of the nobility, play a m ajorrole in the elite art of the ancient Egyp tians, M esopotamians, Aztecs,and Mayas. An anthropomorphic emphasis is absent, how ever,from the art of the Inkas and the Shang Chinese. Ch ang 1983) h asinterpre ted Shang state art as being largely inspired by shaman isticthemes. Sim ilar themes, a ltho ug h rendered in a very different style

that focused on the depiction o f hu m an beings also appear to hav eplayed a prom ine nt role in M aya art Schele and M iller 1986). TheYorubas produced naturalistic statues of rulers for cul t purposesbut many of their representations, whether of hu m an beings or ofanim als, were rendered in a high ly abstract fo rm . The elite art of theearly civilizations tends to be them atically and icono graphically, aswell as stylistically, high ly variable.

The art style of each civilization, which often evolved very quic kly K em p 1989:19-63; Townsend 1979), was adopted by the di fferentgroups of craftsm en who worked in stone m etal, wood, and ivory.All of these cr afts m en m ust hav e been striving to please a rich andpowerful clientele w hich valued fine workmanship and appreci-ated a unified style as a concrete expression of its power and classuni ty. The art isans who produced these goods either sold theirproducts on the open market, worked for members of the upperclasses on com mission, o r were in some fashion bound to the serviceof wealthy patrons. When the Inka kings conquered the coastalkingdom of Chimor, which was noted for the high quality of itsm etallurgy, they are reported to have depo rted the best m etallur-gists to Cuzco w here they became yanaconas or dependents boundto th e Inka state, who presumably produced goods in the Inka style.On the other han d, w hen the A ztec or Y oruba rulers wished to have



Art 8

f ine works of art produced for them , they in vited skilled c raf t sme nto work fo r a t ime at th e palace an d rew arded them r ichly for theirservices.

The e xcellence of wha t these artists could produce was largelyde te rmined by the w e alth that purchasers or patron s were able a n dwil l ing to in vest in the ir wo rk. W hen artis ts en joyed the sponsorshipof powerfu l kin gs, cost ceased to be a s ignif ican t factor i n f luen c ingthe production of luxury goods Texts from N e w Kin gdom Egyptrecord that the pha rao hs lavished praise an d ma ter ia l rew ards on

the skilled craf tsmen w ho decorated their tombs an d carved thecolossal stone statues of these monarchs. The pharaohs also sup-plied these w orkers an d the i r families w i th a large support staff ofgarde n ers, f ishe rme n , wa ter carriers , potters , clothes w ashers, an dgrain g r inders who m ade their l ives ones of re la t ive ease an d luxury(Eyre 1987b:173, 183). Eli te craftsmen who were employed by theEgyptian s tate we re also able to work w ith the most expen sive raw

mater ia ls and , by means of a very complex division of labor, toachieve a high degree of specialization in their w ork.

In Ben in , the k ing rewarded members of the brass-smithin g guild,who produced the bron zes used in the cu l ts of deceased rulers, w it hslaves, cowrie -shell mon ey, an d o ther gifts. So tha t they did not haveto rely on ly on thei r earnin gs , however, the members of this guildalso possessed f a rms tha t were worked for them by dependents an d

slaves. W hile their produc tion of major works of art w as limited by theking s desire that he alon e should possess such treasures, the qu ali tyof the i r work was m a i n t a i n e d as the k ing supported a sufficientnumber of highly qualified specialists to produce w hat was needed

It i s not surpris ing tha t wha t ma n y a rt h is tor ian s have judged tobe the f ines t art of the e ar ly civi l izat ion s was produced in the twolongest-lived terr i tor ial states: the s tone sculpture an d relief ca rv in g

of O ld K in g dom Egyp t and the b ronze ceremon ia l vessels of ShangChina . By comparison , the ar twork of the much smaller an d moredecentral ized Mesopo tamian city s tates tended to be crude an damateur ish , a l though i t rapidly improve d w hen i t came un der thepa t ronage of such hegem ons as the k ings of the Akka d ian Dynas tyand of Ur I I I . On the o the r han d, sculp ture an d p a in t i ngs of g rea tpower an d o r ig in al i ty were crea ted in such city states as AztecTenocht i t lan , the Yoruba r i tual c en t e r of I fe , Ben in, an d var ious



8 POLITICS AND C U LT U R E

M aya realms. T he production of such w orks seems to correlate w ithperiods of exceptional power and prosperity in these states. The

f luctuat ing nature of hegemonic power in city-state systems maytherefore explain the episodic nature o f such artistic creativity.

Values and L ifestyles

Each c ivilization appears to have evolved an elite ideal, shared tovaryin g degrees by the entire pop ulation, about the natu re of theind iv idua l and wh at con st i tuted a good life. These view s m ade eachearly civ ilization distinct from the rest and appear to support thehuman is t belief that each civilization w as unique. The E gyptiansgeneralized the values of the bureaucracy. Efficiency, good man-ners and the ab ility to remain o utw ardly calm in the face of severeprovocations were considered keys to success and happiness. Onlythe ancient Eg yptians are kno w n to have deified outstanding wisemen and bureaucrats (Janssen and Janssen 1990:68). Tomb reliefsalso ind icate tha t the E g yp tian elite delighted in natu re and thebucolic life of rur al estates.

Such ideals were far removed from the Aztecs glo rification ofwarfare and their grim belief that the du ty of hu m an beings was toshed their blood in order to sustain the cosmic orde r. For the A ztecs,human life was an a rduous and far from happy affair, for which

human beings nevertheless had to pay dearly. The role of theind iv idual was to serve the collectivity and the cosmos throu ghcon t inuous acts o f self-sacrifice. While the A ztecs took pleasure inflowers, poetry, songs and fine works of art, their enjoy m ent wastempered by a preoccupation with the transience of all earthlythings. The somber themes of Aztec art, w ith its strong em phasis ondeath , contrasted w ith the E gy ptians celebration of life, both in this

world and the next . The cruel forms o f hu man sacrifice practiced bythe Aztecs have caused many Egyptologists to wonder if suchpeople can really be considered to hav e been civilized .

The M esopotam ians emphasized an urban-centered, commercialview of life. This led them to conceive of their deities as landowners,and h um an beings a s serfs whose d ut y w as to attend to their needs.The Yorubas, on the other hand, have long glorified individual

aspirations, self-prom otion, and rivalry, wh ich encourage both



Values and Lifestyles 8

individual and intergroup competition. These activities have inspired Yoruba praise chants and shaped their public religious

rituals, which to a considerable degree focus on power strugglesbetween different levels of government and am ong indiv idualchiefs and untit led big men (A pter 1992).

Specific a t t i tudes towards life clearly influenced hu m an behaviorin the early civilizations. The ancient Egyp tian bureaucrat s attitudeto warfare was very different from tha t of the A ztec official s andthis difference in tu rn influenced everyday life in these two civiliza-

tions. In pa rt, these differences m ay reflect the specific ecological ordemographic problems faced by in divid ual civil izations. Y et thisappears to explain only a small portion of the variation. Thatcivilizations which shared a tr ibutary form of expro priating sur-pluses, sim ilar class struc tures, and a lim ited range of variations intheir po litical org an ization should have evolved such d istinctivea t t i tudes towards life suggests th at these outloo ks— like elite art

forms—were to a large degree the produ cts either of random varia-tion or of pre-existing, idios yn cratic c ult ur al patterns being alteredby funct ional co ns train ts only to a very limited degree.

The ap par ent looseness of conn ections betwee n these values andthe basic structure s of early civilizations raises the qu estion of howfar such beliefs impacted on their fu nd am en tal economic andsociopolitical or ga niza tions . Ben eath their w idely va rying ideals,

the economic and sociopolitical beha vioral patterns of the variousearly civilization s w ere v ery sim ilar. W heth er the highest ideal of asociety was for a man to be an ou tstan din g w arrior, land ow ner, o rbureaucrat, those w ho were successful sought to sustain theirpower and lux ur io us lifestyles at the expense of the peasantry andm a n u a l workers. This involved them in many similar kinds ofactions and prom oted nu m ero us parallel att itudes, thu s accou nting

for the convergences w e hav e alread y no ted.In this chap ter and the preceding one, I have tou ched m any timeson questions of religious beliefs in these civilizations and the rolethey played in shaping the archaeological and epigraphic recordsthat are their heritage. There is no way to consider the relationsbetween b eliefs and b ehavior with ou t taking account o f religion.



Four

Religion

When I began my comparative study of early civilizations I as-sumed tha t, because of the inflexibility of the natural laws whichrestrict hum an behavior and also because o f the re lative freedom ofthe hum an imaginat ion, the greatest a m oun t of regularity w ould befound in subsistence patte rns an d other form s of economic b ehav iorand the m ost cross- cultu ral va riatio n in art styles and religion. Infact, I encoun tered an unexpected amount of diversity in subsis-tence pattern s, econom ic activities , and family organizat ion, but agenerally sim ilar tri bu ta ry relations hip and class system, and onlytw o main types of political organization. To my surprise I alsodiscovered a basic uniformity in the pattern of religious beliefsshared by all seven civil izations in my sample. It was only in artstyles and cu l tura l values that I found particu laristic va riation from

one early civilization to the next .A r athe r sim ple type of cross-cultural re gu larity occurs even in the

realm of sym bols. E leva tion on a dais or throne, or being ca rried ina litter, are symbols o f power in m any parts o f the world, and easilyrecognized as such. Kings are m etaphorically identif ied in manycul tures w i th the sun an d with raptors such as eagles and hawks,powerfu l felines such as lions and jag ua rs, and large, aggressive

herbivores, such as bulls and rams. On the other hand , it is no t hardto understand why the description of a king as a grasshopperleaping up to heaven was soon ab andon ed in the one cu l ture thathappened to th ink of it Fa ulk ne r 1969:156). K ings and noblesf requent ly trace the ir origins to strangers in order to m inimize theirkinship and ethn ic obligations to the people they do m ina te Feeley-

86



R LIGION

pologists and monotheistic theologians. This label has inhibited,rather than encouraged, a detailed understanding o f the religions ofthe early civilizations. In such societies, deities of varying powersand authority were thought to control every aspect of natural andsocial life. Some of these were natural forces, others deceased ances-tors, with no lineclearly separating the two. Deities patronized wholesocieties, cities, families, crafts, and individuals. They could berelated to each other as husband-wife, parent-child, or brother-sister,although that did not prevent them from competing and quarreling

with one other as human beings do. The realm o f the supernaturalmirrored the conflicts that occurred in the natural and social worlds.

It would appear that in many of the early civilizations politicalstruggles were expressed in religious terms rather than handleddirectly. While the power o f the Aztec central government expandedat the expense of the older right of the calpullis to regulate their ownaffairs, the A ztec kings donations of conquered land to calpulli gods

helped to maintain an appearance of reciprocity between these com-peting levels of Aztec society. In the same manner, objections to theabuse of royal power in ancient Egypt often took the oblique form ofrequests that the king observe his filial duty to attend to the welfare ofthe cults of provincial deities Bevan 1968:214-68).

It is unclear to what extent deities of the early civilizations werethought to be separate from one another or merely represented

different facets of a holistic supernatural power. A single deity oftenmanifested itself in the form of a human being, or in animals andnatural objects such as rocks or stars. Such deities could also take uptemporary residence in ritual objects, statues, and human beings,when the latter fell into trance states or were appropriately dressedas deities. Mesopotamian deities, like classical Greek ones, haddistinct personalities, at least in epic poetry, so it is easy to treat them

as individuals. Yet, in the earlier phases of Mesopotamian civiliza-tion, these deities appear to have been less clearly personified andmore closely identified with various forces of nature (Jacobsen1976). In a t least some early civilizations, the essence of deities w asbelieved to be the power or force behind their concrete manifesta-t ions rather than the m anifestat ions themselves.

Ancient Egyptian deities never had very clearly defined person-alities (Morenz 1973:142). Moreover, they merged with each other ina bewildering variety of ways and individual deities of lesser



Cosmology 9

im portan ce were sometimes treated as attributes of a small num berof m ajor creator gods such as Amon, Re, and Ptah. This could be

interpreted as indicating that the other gods were not so muchseparate c reation s or descen dants of the creator god as more specifi-cally defin ed aspects of the energy that this deity represented. Thismay be wh a t the Egyptians meant when they claimed that thecreator god had turn ed himself into millions (H orn un g 1982:126).In the same ma nner, the Aztecs appear to have regarded all of theirgods as em an atio ns of the suprem e deity Om eteotl, the 'Lord and

Lady of D uality . ' From this deity, wh ich resided in the thirteenthand highest heaven and w ascomprised of every qu ality that existed,flowed the energy th at created the universe and all th at lived in it,including hu m an beings and the various gods.

Hence it m ay b e tha t, behind the m ult ipl icity of deities that wererecognized in each of the early civilizations, there was a singledivine power, w hich united particularities such as male and female

and of which the i nd iv id ua l d eities were specific expressions. In theeyes of most worshipers the question of the one or the many(Ho rnun g 1982) may not have been a pressing issue, any more thanmedieval Christ ians gave much thought to whether individualstatues of the V irgin M ary represented the same or separate objectsof vene ratio n (Cur l 1982:38). As society grew more differentiated, sotoo did the supernatural .

Cosmology

In all the early civilizations, the cosmos was conceived as extraordi-narily t iny , compared to m odern scientific m odels. The earth w as aflat disk, or a square, only a few hundred to a few thousandkilometers across, sometimes surrounded by an ocean. Above it

were one or more celestial realm s tha t were the home of the sun, themoon, and the stars and below the earth one or more subterraneanlevels thro ug h w hich the sun w as usu all y tho ug ht to travel at night.The M ayas may have believed tha t the heavens and the underworldrotated each day, so tha t the night sky provided hum an beings witha view of the underworld and the place of the dead (Schele andMiller 1986:42). Beyo nd such ordered realm s lay an infinite watery

chaos, or nothing.



90 RELIGION

Each c iv i l iza t ion viewed itself as being located at the cen ter of theearthly plane, s ignifying its importance in terms of the scheme of

creation. Mo st of the early civilizations also saw the wo rld as beingdivided into f ou r quarters, w hich were associated w ith t he cardinaldirections and to which var ious at t r ibutes and powers were as-signed. The center co ns tituted a f if th region, which played a privi-leged role in com mu nicat ing between the human wor ld and thesu pernatu ral realms above and beneath the earth. The Aztecs lau dedtheir c apital city of Tenocht i t lan as being the founda t ions of the

heavens (Leon-Port i l la 1992:83). Its ma in temple w as believed to belocated at the exact po int w here the cosmic forces tha t f lowed dow nf rom the heavens and u p f rom the un derworld at the f o u r quar tersof the earth came together before returning to these supernaturalrealms. Hence this temple, and by extension the Aztec state, stoodat the center not only of the earth but also of the cosmos. Thefounders of the Aztec state had been led to this spot by their god

Huitz i lopocht l i , w ho had revealed i ts iden tity by the presence of aneagle perched upon a cac tus . The Mayas regarded every royalancestra l temple as a celestial tree w hic h facili tated comm unica tionbetween the hum an rea lm and the supernatura l .

The an cien t E gyptia ns seem to hav e defin ed in mo re detail thanany o ther early c ivi l izat ion the n a tu r e of the chaos out of which thegods and the ordered wo rld had emerged. An endless expanse o f

da rk, opaque, turg id water, such as had existed everyw here beforethe t ime of creation, con tinu ed to exist beyond the realm o f the gods.The Egypt ian universe was in fact a small bubble o f d ivinelyordered activity (m3 t} existing w ith in a menacing infini ty o f disor-der or no n-existence.

The early civi l izat ion s f requent ly con ceptua lized their cosmos asbeing not only small but also short-l ived or unstable. The Aztecs

believed that successive destructions and recreations of the un i -verse occu rred a t in tervals o f on ly a few hundred years . The highgods su rvived these cataclysm s, bu t d i ffe rent ones were do m ina ntduring each successive era and the hu m an- l ike beings tha t hadexis ted du rin g earl ier creat ion s surviv ed only as a nim als in the next .Th e Aztecs were no t certain wh en the cu rren t era, the 'Fif th Sun /wo u ld come to an end but they believed t h at i t w ou ld last on ly solong as the sun, a ided by hu m an sacrifices, remained strong enough



Cosmology 9

to resist the forces th at threatened the existing cosmic order. I t is notcertain whether the Aztecs believed th at this destruction w ould befollowed by an othe r creation or whether the F ifth Sun representedthe final ordered state of the universe.

The Meso potam ians reported th at their universe h ad been threa t-ened by ch aos but had been saved by the invention of kingship at atime when o nly the gods had existed. This had p rovided the leadershipthat perm itted the gods to defeat the forces of chaos, wh ich requ iredslaying an older generation of deities. Still later, the anger of certain

gods at the noise caused by rapidly increasing num bers of h um anbeings had resulted in the nearly com plete destruction of hum an i tyby means of a universal f lood, fo llowing wh i c h the h u m a n life spanand h u m a n fertility had been m ark edly reduced. Th ereafter, no th u m a n ac t ions but the unp redictable favor o r anger w hic h the godsdirected towards individual c ities and their rulers accoun ted for thechanging fortunes of city states. A city abandoned by its patron deity

could not hope to escape d estruc tion at the hands of its enemies.The M aya s viewed history as occurr ing in complex cycles of

varying length, some of wh ich took mill ions of years to complete.Because of these recu rringc yc les events were preordained to repeatthemselves, so tha t a detailed know ledge of the past allowed edu-cated Mayas to foretell the future. Some gods were stated to havebeen born on specific dates in these cycles; hence they m ust h ave

died at othe r points. H um an history w as charac terized by f requentreversals of fortune, which left little hope for the long-term surviva lof any specific po litical order.

The Inkas, like the Aztecs , seem to ha ve believed th at successivedestructions and recreations of the universe had occurred in theremo te past. Yet they saw other major transform ations, such as kingPachakut i s found ing of their empire, as cataclysms/ or t ransfor-

m ations, tha t fundam ental ly altered the nature of the universe butdid not destroy it or h u ma n i t y. The Inkas defined their sacredmission as being to impose a divin ely sanctioned way of life uponthe peoples of the wo rld, whic h required them to suppress all formsof violence and evil.

The E gy ptian s believed the cosmos to be especially threaten ed bydisorder at th ree times— sunset, the low point in the an nu al cycle of

the Nile, and the death of a king—but were confident that their



R LIGION

rulers and the gods were able to overcome such threats. The Egyp-tians seem to have believed that the universe might eventually lapse

back into chaos, which would involve even the gods dissolving intothe rep ti l ian an d amphibious forms in which they had existed beforethey had emerged from the primeval waters at the beginning oftime. Y et the Egyptians appear to have remained confident that theuniverse as it no w existed would last fo r a long time.

Thorki ld Jacobsen has suggested that the instability of theMesopotamian environment w as reflected in the Mesopotamians

fear o f changes in divine favor, while the greater ecological stabilityof Egypt encouraged hope that chaos could be successfully resistedfor a long time Frankfort et al. 1949:137-40). It seems possiblehowever, that the cosmic insecurity of the Mesopotamians reflectedto a far greater degree the political instability of their city-statesystem, while the Egyptians optimism was the result of the politicalorder which their territorial state was able to maintain over long

periods (Trigger 1979).The Aztecs and their city-state system shared to a far greaterdegree the insecurity and pessimism of the Mesopotamians. TheInkas, and possibly the Chinese, like the Egyptians, appear to havehad greater faith in the stability o f thecosmos.Thiscontrast betweenthe beliefs held in territorial and ci ty states suggests that a politicalexplanation o f the differences between Egyptian and Mesopotamian

att i tudes m ay have cross-cultural app licability. Bu t despite varyingdegrees of optimism and pessimism all the early civilizationsappear to have entertained doubts about either the immortality o fthe gods or their unequivocal willingness to help humanity. Like theinhab itants of all complex societies, those who lived in early civili-zat ions appear to have been aware of the potentially devastatingimpacts of ecological or political fai lure and to have projected thesefears into the supernatural realm.

The people who lived in the early civilizations also perceivedfewer differences between themselves and their deities than dothose who think in terms of monotheistic religions and o f a singledeity that transcends the natural world. Many gods were believedto be capable of aging and dying, being killed, or losing their powerand few of them were thought to be omniscient. Even high godscould be deceived by other deities or by clever mortals. People also



Cosmology 9

believed that all human beings might share in the power thatconstituted the gods to varying degrees and for varying lengths of

time. The Aztecs thought that by dressing kings, priests, and sacri-f icial victims in the costumes of deities, these people temporarilybecame their incarnations. Through spirit possession, even majorgods could enter into the bodies of Yoruba worshipers.

Tha t the ancient Egyptians, like the peoples of other early civiliza-tions, did not distinguish as we do between the natural, supernatu-ral, and social realms renders improbable Martin Bernal s (1987,

1991 e ffo r t s to trace the origins o f classical Greek religion a ndphilosophy back to Egyptian sources. It is probable that some Greekphilosophers actually studied in Egypt a nd that certain schools o fGreek philosophy were i n f lu en ced by Egyptian ideas. Yet it isimpossible to discover in the surviving corpus of Egyptian writingsthe divergent basic postulates, the skepticism, and the radical hu-man-centeredness that predominated in classical Greek philoso-

phy. The Greeks clearly distinguished between the natural and thesupernatural, while some of their philosophers, such as the Epicu-reans, went so far as to reject the supernatural altogether. Thisseparation made it possible for the natural and the supernatural tobecome the subject matter of science and theology respectively.

Whi le people in the early civilizations were able to accumulatep r a c t i c a l knowledge, because their conceptualization o f the cosmosdid not

d i f f e r e n t i a t e between the

natural and the

supernatural theydid not conceive of natural science as we understand it. The Greeksalso perceived the social realm as being separate and d i f f e ren t f romboth the natural a nd the supernatural. Their selection o f the indi-v i d u a l human being a s a fundamental object o f interest implies anew vision of human beings and their relationship to the world. Tomake his point, Bernal is going to have to do more than propose thatthe real wisdom o f the ancient Egyptians wa s oral a nd esoteric a ndtherefore cannot be f o u n d in their written records or express hisd i s sa t i s f ac t i o n with a n evolutionary view of the development o fh u m a n understandings o f reality. Much a s w e m a y admire ancientE g y p t i a n civilization, we must also acknowledge that the basics t r u c t u r e o f Greek philosophy wa s d i ffe ren t f rom Egyptian thoughtand much more like our own than was that of ancient Egypt or anyother early c i v i l i za t i o n .



R LIGION

Humani ty and the Gods

W e can now proceed to examine the propositions that were held inearly civi l izat ions concerning relations between human beings andthe gods. It was believed in each of these civi l izat ions that the godshad created the world and kept it funct ioning. The gods had alsocreated human beings and provided them with appropriate meansto nourish and care for themselves. Through their control overnature, the gods supplied the energy which ensured that the cropswould grow an d t h a t animals and human beings would reproducethemselves. Each early civil ization directed much of its philosophi-cal speculation and worship towards those elements of nature uponwhich its material well-being depended.

A t the head of the Aztec pantheon stood the gods Tlaloc andHuitzi lopocht l i , whose principal shrines were atop the main pyra-m id t h a t stood at the center of the Aztec capi tal . Tlaloc was an

anc ien t water god, concerned with springs lakes, and rain clouds,and hence a v i tal deity for farmers in a semi-arid environment.Huitzi lopocht l i was the solar god whom the Aztecs viewed as beingresponsible for maintaining the cosmic order during the period ofthe F ifth Sun. In addition to helping to make the crops grow he wasthe tutelary deity of the Aztec state and was closely associated withits military conquests, and hence with its prosperity, at the time of

the Spanish conquest. Each day Huitzilopochtli was born a t dawn,conquered his enemies—the moon and stars—crossed the sky intriumph, and then died and descended into the underworld. At thehead of the Mesopotamian pantheon stood three gods representingthe power inherent in the sky En), the storm clouds Enlil), and thewaters under the earth Enki) , a ll deities of vital concern to acivil ization that depended heavily upon irrigation agriculture and

pastoral ism.The Egyptians conceptualized their physical and spiritual uni-verse in terms of two main axes. One was an east-west axis, alongwhich the sun moved through the sky each d ay from birth to deathand back along which it traveled each night, either above the sky orbelow the earth, to be reborn the following morning. The south-north axis was traced by the Nile River, which flowed out of the

primeval waters in the regions of the cataracts and back into them



Hum anity and the Gods 9

when it reached the Mediterranean Sea. Through their endlessrepetition of these cycles, the sun and the N ile R iver provided all the

necessities of life for the people o f Egypt. The east and south wereregions that symbolized life and cyclical rebirth to the ancientEg yptians, w hile the west and no rth symbolized both death and thehope of life after death. The idea of survival after death w as associatedboth with tombs, ideally constructed on the west side of the NileValley, and m etaphorically w ith the never-settingcircum polar stars.

For th e Mayas, the north, which was the princ ipal direction from

which rains came, was associated with life, while for the Aztecs,living in the colder and m ore arid highlands, the same direction wasassociated w ith cold w ind s and death. Fo r all of the early civiliza-tions, ag ricu lture was not only their principal source of livelihood,but also the means by which the gods sustained hu m an life. Agricul-ture therefore supplied the basic concepts in terms of which rela-tions between the gods and h um an beings could be analyzed.

It is not p ar tic ul ar ly surprising tha t in the early civilizationshu m an beings depended on supernatural forces to sustain hu m anlife. More surprising from a modern transcendental religious per-spective is the proposition that hum an beings saw th eir role in thecosmic orde r as being to sustain the gods. W hile the docum entationis not complete for all of the early civilizations, it appears that inmost, and probably all, of these societies deities were believed to

depend upon sacrificial offerings to assure their well-being. Il'yinand Diakonoff (1991:378) have likew ise noted tha t in V edic India because it was believed th at the world exists and tha t people th riveonly thanks to the gods and because the gods live by sacrificialofferings, sacrifices were the main duty of believers. Th is beliefdiffers not only from the modern transcendental religions, whosedeities are believed to require no hu m an support, but also from thereligions of small-scale societies, in w hich hu m an dependence onthe supernatu ral forces th at an im ate na tur e is perceived greatly tooutweigh those forces' dependence on human beings.

The M esopotamians m aintained that the gods had created hum anbeings to be the ir servan ts. In order to care for their needs thesedeities had to be provide d w ith f lourishing estates and with com-fortable dwellings, priestly servants, food, and clothes. TheMesopotamians believed that their deities could survive without



9 RELIGION

human assistance, but that human beings had been created torelieve the gods of the need to work in order to sustain themselves.They recounted that after the great flood the gods became hung ryand began to repent hav ing sanctioned the destruction of hum anity.After they crow ded like flies around the smoke of U tnapish tim 's(the Mesopotamian equivalent of No ah) sacrifice, which transm it-ted to them the essence of food produced by h u ma n beings, theyforgave the god Enk i for having surreptitiously saved a smallremnant of huma ni ty to repopulate the w orld. A later Mesopotam ian

text suggests that if sacrifices were w ithheld, a de ity could be forcedto ask for them as a dog begs food from its ma ster (B otte ro 1992:255).While we have no similar myths describing relations betweenEgyptians and their gods, their deities also m anifested themselvesin images w hich lived in temples, w ere tended by priestly servants,and were offered meals in the same fashion as was done for w eal thymortals and the i l lustrious dead.

The one possible exception to this patte rn may be the Y orubas.Among them, sacrifice is said to have expressed the worshiper sgrati tude, fulfilled vows, established communion between humanbeings and the gods, averted the anger of the gods, purified taboobreakers, cured epidem ics, an d strengthened the worshiper againstenemies and evil powers (Ajisafe 1924:141-42). Moreover, the highgod O lorun, the 'K ing of Heaven/ had no priests or tem ples. Yet

w h a t w e hav e been told abo ut Yoruba beliefs appe ars to have beenheavily influenced by Islam and Christ ianity. The descriptions ofr i tuals in w hich food and h um an blood w ere offered to the gods andto ancestral spirits suggest that these offerings were intended tonourish the gods. Through acts of worship, which normally in-volved sacrifices, the powers of individual gods were enhance d, justas the potency of egungun or 'ancestral spirit/ masks was restored

and the spirits

of dead hu m an s were called back into

the h u ma n

realm at grave shrines (Barber 1991:75-78).A m on g the A ztecs and the Mayas, the preferred offering was

h u m a n flesh to deities of the earth and blood to those of the sky.From childhood un ti l o ld age, h um an beings ritu ally drew bloodfrom various parts of their bodies and spattered it on strips of barkcloth, w hich they offered to the gods. A ztec priests w ere especiallyassiduous in observing such ritua ls. For M aya rulers, blood letting



Humanity and the Cods 9

was part of a process of seeking visions that permitted contact withtheir dead ancestors and the high gods. In highland Mexico, the

choicest offerings were warriors who were killed in battle or takenprisoner and sacrificed. The Aztecs believed that such offeringswere necessary to sustain the power of the sun and prevent thepresent creation f rom coming to an end. This mission, which wasaltruistic in the sense that it claimed to benefit all humanity, pro-vided an ideological justification for the wars that created andsustained the Aztec Empire. As the empire grew, the Aztec kings

offered human sacrifices on an ever increasing scale as testimonialsto their power and devotion to the gods.

Despite the special emphasis that the Aztecs placed on humansacrifices, such sacrifices were offered throughout highland Mexicoand everyone agreed that they were essential for maintaining notonly the power of the sun but all of the other natural processes onwhich human life depended. If maize was the gods primary means

for sustaining human life, the strength of the gods had in turn to besustained by sacrificing human beings. Agricultural produce andhuman lives were key elements in an energy flow that kept bothhuman beings and the gods alive. Among the Maya city states, thesupreme offer ing to the gods was the lives of kings and othermembers of royal lineages who were captured in battle. Suchprisoners might be kept for years, un t il a ritually auspicious occa-

sion occurred for offer ing such a sacrifice.Among the Inkas, Shang Chinese, and Yorubas, vegetable andan ima l usually domestic animal) sacrifices were routinely made todeities, as they were in Egypt and Mesopotamia. In the first threecultures, human beings were also sacrificed. While victims werekilled as offer ings, some were additionally used to carry messagesto the gods and to dead ancestors, a custom also reported for theAztecs. Among the Yorubas and Chinese, a large number of thesevictims were prisoners of war or slaves. The Inkas frequently usedchildren collected as tribute f rom subject peoples. Some Inka andYoruba sacrificial victims become deities and their burial places cultcenters. Among the Aztecs, slaves who were used to impersonatedeities in religious rituals increasingly were sacrificed to these gods.

Retainers, willingly or unwillingly, were slain to serve kings andhigh-ranking members of the nobil i ty af ter death. While there is



R LIGION

evidence of retainer sacrifice for a brief period in the early phases ofEgyptian and Mesopotamian civilization, it does not appear to have

survived for long in societies where human victims were not regu-larly sacrificed to the gods. Among th e Aztecs, Mayas, and Yorubas,a few victims were killed in the course of high status funerals;among the Shang Chinese and the Inkas, the numbers rose as highas several hundred in some royal burials and included many youngwomen. While retainer sacrifice was a form of conspicuous con-sumption and thus a symbol of power for rulers), the fact that it

occurred only in societies where human beings were regularlysacrificed to the gods implies the equation of rulers or at least deadones) and the supernatural. It is in keeping with other patterns ofconspicuous consumption that retainer sacrifice occurred on am u c h larger scale in territorial than in city states.

The main function of sacrifice in early civi l izat ions was to channelenergy into the supernatural realms in order to sustain, animate,

and propitiate deities and hence to assure supernatural support fo rthe continuation of the natural and social orders. The fact that suchofferings were believed to be as important for assuring the well-being of the supernatural powers as the support of supernaturalpowers was for human beings constitutes further evidence of howm u c h more equal relations between human beings and the godswere in early civilizations than in later ones, when the gods came to

be viewed as wholly transcending their creation and hence requir-ing no material sustenance from human beings.

Kings and Gods

Kings in early civilizations played a special role in mediatingbetween their societies and the supernatural. Ordinary human

beings had only limited contact with the supernatural, but theycould sometimes request the help of deities directly, through prayers,divination, and offerings. Individual families and small communi-ties often had patron deities o r communicated with the supernatu-ral through divinized ancestors. It has been suggested that in ShangChina all of the high gods were derived from ancestral spirits Allan1991). Yet, while important in China and other parts o f East Asia, as

well as in West Africa and Peru reliance on dead ancestors as



Kings and Gods

tutelary spirits was not universal, contrary to what some evolution-ary anthropologists have asserted (Friedman and Rowlands 1978).

In Egypt and Mesopotamia, the spirits of such ancestors may havebeen occasionally requested to intercede with the gods on behalf oftheir living descendants, but the dead appear to have been morefeared and exorcised than solicited for help. In these civilizations,individuals regularly sought to enlist gods associated with nature,rather than their dead ancestors, as their personal patron spirits.

In Mexico, each Aztec calpulli had its own temple and patron

deity who was served by specially appointed priests. The Peruvianayllus honored local spirits to whom the welfare of crops, animals,and the community itself was believed to be linked. The priests whoserved such deities were normally men and women who were tooold for fa rm labor. In both civilizations land was worked commu-nally to support such rituals.

However, despite cults at the individual, fam ily and community

levels, relations between the human world and the supernatural onewere not completely open or transparent. The king, standing at theapex of human society, constituted the most important l ink betweenhuman beings and the deities upon whom the welfare of societydepended; relations between these two realms were mediated byr i tuals tha t only kings or their deputies could perform. A Chinesemyth concerning the severance of communication between heaven

and earth states that in early times all human beings had access tothe supernatural world through shamanic visions. Even tual ly how-ever, the king became the chief shaman for the nation and only he orhis deputies could communicate with the high god, Shang-ti (Chang1983:44-45). Maya rulers similarly sought to enter into direct com-munion with gods and dead ancestors by means of trance-inducedvisions. It was only in the king s name that offerings were made to

the gods in temples throughout Egypt, to the royal ancestors, and intheory to all of the dead in their tombs. These relations werepredicated on the belief that the relations between the social and thesupernatural realms, on which the welfare of both human beings asa whole and the gods depended, had to be mediated through theking.

Because of their close associations with the gods, kings wereascribed divine attributes, although the nature of these varied from



1 R ELI G I O N

one early civilization to another. The least divinized monarchs werefound in Mesopotamia. There the institution of kingship was said tohave descended from heaven, where it had been established by thegods. Some of the early kings were deified after death and livingkings of the Akkadian and Ur III dynasties claimed divine status,writing their name after the same classificatory sign that was usedto indicate a god. However, this claim failed to win lasting approvaland later, more powerful kings abandoned such pretensions.Mesopotamian kings were viewed as the mortal servants of the

gods, except perhaps in the course of certain rituals in which theyand priests or other members of their families impersonated thegods and may have become their temporary incarnations. InMesopotamian thought, a king seems to have enjoyed much thesame position in respect to his city s deity that a foreman did inrelation to an estate owner.

Mesopotamian kings might expect the favor and protection of

such deities in return for their good behavior and effective conductof their city s affairs. Yet they dreaded offending the gods, lest thisfavor be withdrawn. This could occur either because of personalmisconduct or because the ruler had unwittingly erred in perform-ing or failing to perform some r i tual . Ironically, Mesopotamia is theonly early civilization in whose legends proud or impious kings areportrayed as taunting and insulting the gods. Such behavior how-

ever, inevitably illustrated the inability of even the most ambitiousmortals to oppose the power of the gods. Mesopotamian rulerssometimes sought to escape divine punishment by temporarilyappointing a substitute king whose death might assuage divineanger Bottero 1992:138-55).

In many early civilizations, kings claimed to be descended fromgods. The obas who ruled in Benin and the leading Yoruba states

were descendants of Oduduwa, the deity who had descended fromheaven to create the world. Aztec kings claimed descent from thegod Quetzalcoatl (one of the four sons of Ometeotl) and Maya rulerslikewise traced their lineages back to major deities in their pan-theon. The Shang Chinese ruler appears to have viewed the su-preme deity, Shang-ti, as the ancestor of the Shang royal house. Thefounder of the Tzu clan, to which the Shang royal fam ily belonged,

was born as the result of a mortal woman being impregnated by a



Kings and Gods 1 1

swallow or a phoenix, who may have been the high god Chang1976:167; Allan 1991:19-56 . The Inka rulers claimed that their

ancestor Manco Capac, the first Inka ruler, was descended fromViracocha, the creator god, and Inti, the sun god. It is also possiblethat as a result of the belief that each successive pharaoh was the sonof his predecessor, Egyptian rulers viewed themselves as lineardescendants of the gods Re, Geb, Osiris, and Horus, who hadsuccessively ruled Egypt in earliest times. With the possible excep-tion of the Egy pti an ones, these m yths proclaimed div ine descent

not only f or the king but also for his m any consanguineal relatives.All of the Aztec nobility claimed descent, through either theirfathers or their m others or both, from the first Aztec king, who washimself a descendant of Quetzalcoa tl; hence all of these people weredescendants of th at god. The children of a vertica lly mobile Azteccom m oner became m embers of the nobility if he m arried a womanwho belonged to tha t class by birth.

This progressive dilu tion of divinity among an increasing n um berof people caused reigning monarchs to assert additional, moreperson al li nk s to the gods. The late Shang k ings appa rently claimedto be the heads of the senior lineage descended from Shang-ti, whichgave them the exclusive right to offer sacrifices to dead kings and tocommunicate through these ancestors with the high god. EachYoruba oba was regarded as a reincarna tion of the previous mon-

arch. In Ben in, this claim of divinity was maintained to the extentthat it was punishable by death for anyone to say th at living kingsslept, ate, washed , or died.

The Y oruba, M aya, and Aztec kings were endowed w ith divin epowers in the course of prolonged coronation rituals, which in-volved fasting and penance as well as being invested with regaliaassociated with the gods. In their corona tion rites, the A ztec kingswere dressed as va rious deities, after which they waged a war inorder to demonstrate their newly acquired powers by capturingm an y prisoners, whose sacrifice con sti tuted the final phase of theirinstallation. It was claimed that, like the gods, the Aztec rulerM octezuma II regularly had his tonalli-soul strengthened by meansof prisoner sacrifices. At their funerals, Aztec kings were again,dressed in the costumes of leading gods in order to be identifiedwi th them prior to their crem ation.



1 2 RELIGION

Many Egyptian kings specifically claimed to have been procreatedby major gods, who were presumed to be present in their father s body

at the time they were conceived. Under these circumstances, it was notillogical for a king to claim to be the son of more than one god. Yet thesacred status of Egyptian kings seems to have been established onlyduring the coronation ritual which followed the entombment of theprevious ruler. This sacred power was symbolized by regalia, suchas crowns and royal stools, which were themselves regarded asdivine. By means of thecoronation rituals, the Egyptian king became

the sole intermediary who could serve the gods and hence maintainthe flows of energy on which the continued functioning of the cosmosdepended. It has been suggested that natural catastrophes may haveled to the slaying of Egyptian kings who were believed to beincapable o f maintaining the cosmic order Bell 1971).

In the early civilizations, kings varied from being the favored, ifharassed, servants of the gods to entities in whom divine powers

became immanent to varying degrees. Kings had to validate theirpowers through devotion to the gods, observing various taboos,winning battles, and sometimes performing dramatic penances.The principal role of the king in religious terms was to function asa mediator between the human realm and that of the gods. Kingsclaimed a privileged role in communicating with the high gods,sometimes directly and sometimes through their deceased ances-

tors. The rulers of B enin have been described as living vehicles forthe mystical forces that ensured the vitality of the kingdom and asbeing able to deploy magical powers for the good of their people(Bradbury 1973:74). More spec ifically, kings played an essential rolein the sacrificial rituals that were regarded as essential for sustainingthe supernatural. Thus, whether they were considered mortal,divine, or something in between, kings were a pivotal element in the

process by which human beings sustained the gods and the gods inturn sustained the natural order on which all human beings de-pended for their survival. For an ancient Egyptian, Inka, or Aztecruler to claim that without his continual intervention the cosmicorder would be threatened with collapse would have been a state-ment of precise belief, not a metaphorical boast Shafer 1991:67). Inall the early civil izations, kings were regarded as essential if not onlythe human realm but also the universe were to function normally.



Kings and Cods 1 3

This cosmic vision, or understanding of the nature of the universe,closely paral leled the t r ibutary relat ionship on which the socialorganization of all the early civilizations was found ed. Just as thepeasants supp orted the upp er classes by prod ucing su rplu s food forthem, so the people of these early civiliz atio ns provided the super-natura l w ith surplus energy from the hum an realm. The peasantsalso recognized tha t, if order were not m aintained in the social andcosmic realms, i t wou ld be impossible for them to produce the foodon which their own survival depended. The gods and the upper

classes w ere the refore seen as play ing ma nag erial roles th at w ereessential for everyone. Y et it was equal ly the case that w ithou t thelabor of the peasants, neither earthly rulers nor the gods couldsurvive. The king mediated between the human world and thesupernatural . Hence he was inferior to the high gods but at the sametime essential for ensuring the energy f lows on which the survivalof the universe w as t hough t to depend.

Because of this, it is not surprising that , in every case we haveexamined, kingship involved a m i x tu re of d ivine and morta l a t-tributes. The New Y ear s ri tua ls in Mesopo tamia, which reenactedthe creation of the world and the establishment of kingship reaf-firmed the para llelism between the earth ly and heaven ly realms(Hoo ke 1958). In Eg yp t the same word (M ) referred to the appear-ance of the king upon his throne and the sun rising upon the eastern

horizon (R edford 1967:3-27). The generational cycle in which oneking succeeded another complemented the d aily cycle of the sunand the an n u al cycle of the Nile flood. R oyal succession was essen-tial to the othe r cycles, because it renewed the power by which thegods and hence the universe was maintained. In an intellectualworld in which kingship was believed to be deeply involved inmain ta in ing the cosmic order, such paralle ls expressed w h at w as

seen as both the cen tral ideology and the practical role of kingship.It is tempting to suggest that in ci ty states, where the proxim itybetween a ru ler and his subjects .was greatest, the fewest divin equalities would be attributed to the king. In territorial states wheresubjects might rarely even glimpse their ruler and his impact ontheir l ives was norm ally mediated throu gh m any levels of govern-ment, it might have been easier to gain acquiescence to more far-

reachingclaims abo ut kings possessing

divine powers. This argum ent



4 R LIGION

may be partly sustained by data f rom Mesopotamia where thehuman nature of the ruler w as clearly recognized. Among the

Aztecs and the Yorubas the ruler exhibited more o f a divine naturebut in these cases he appears to have been ritually as well asphysically secluded f rom his subjects except during the perfor-mance o f specific ceremonies. For the Aztecs there is evidence thatthis seclusion increased as the power of the monarchy grew. TheM a y a rulers also claimed more divine attributes than didMesopotamian ones but their settlement patterns were more dis-

persed and because o f that regular contacts between ruler andsubject may have been more limited.

Amo n g the territorial states both the Inka and the Egyptian rulersclaimed to be the sons and possibly the earthly manifestat ions ofthe gods. Peruvians were encouraged to believe that their rulerswere the earthly counterparts of the sun god and perhaps of thecreator god as well. Egyptian kings may have been viewed as divine

only in the sense that their bodies like cult images in temples werethe receptacles in which various gods could manifest themselves.But by being in this respect potentially the incarnation of anyEgypt ian god the Egyptian king became the lynch-pin that spiritu-ally united all of the cult centers and hence the whole territory o fEgypt. The Shang kings may have claimed to be the descendants oreven the earthly embodiments of Shang-ti. B ut the contemporary

written records are too meager and later accounts to o edited byConfucian scholars for us to be sure whether that was so. It ispossible that at least prior to death the Shang monarch like thesucceeding Western Chou ones was viewed as essentially humanDespite such gaps in our knowledge the available evidence doesnot contradict the proposition that in general claims of royaldivini ty varied according to the degree o f social and geographicaldistance that existed between a ruler and the bulk o f his subjectsand hence were more extreme in early territorial states than in citystates.

As Mesopotamia was gradually united to become a territorialstate its rulers laid claim to greater d ivini ty. Yet this process did no tsucceed and was soon abandoned. It thus appears that the basicMesopotamian concept o f kingship was established during theperiod o f city states and thereafter was resistant to change even



The D estiny of th e Individual 1 5

when political conditions were radically altered. This suggests thatthe concepts of monarchy that formed at an early stage might persist

for as long as a particular cultural tradition survived. This resemblesthe development of writing, which either evolved at an early stageor did not develop indigenously, and which quickly adopted basicprinciples that did not change s ignificantly thereafter.

The Destiny of the Individual

Equal ly important fo r understanding the social structures o f earlycivi l izat ions are the views that were held concerning the origin andfate o f ordinary individuals. In the sixteenth century, the Aztecsmaintained that the gods had created human beings only severalhundred years previously, at the beginning of the Fifth Sun. Thesegods had mixed their own blood with bones of people, who hadlived during an earlier creation, that the god Quetzalcoatl hadmanaged to recover f rom the world of the dead. The Aztecs alsobelieved, however, that each human being came into existence onthe orders of Ometeotl, the divine force that was the source ofeverything. In the womb, the fe tus was nourished by energy thatcame, not f rom the sun, but directly f rom this supreme deity.

The Aztecs accepted that the principal task of human beings wasto sustain the order of the universe, with l i t t le hope of their ownlong-term survival. At death, the life forces that were united in anind iv idua l became disaggregated. The fate o f those parts of anind iv idua l tha t survived with some kind o f identity intact depended, not on tha t person s conduct while alive, but on the circum-stances in which she or he had died. Warriors and sacrificial victimsjoined the sun and, after fo u r years, were transformed into birds andbut terf l ies that could live eternally without working. Women whodied in childbirth, after similarly attending the sun for fou r years,became malevolent spirits that haunted the world at night. Victimsof drowning and of various diseases that caused swelling, as well aspeople sacrificed to fert i l i ty deities, went to join these deities inwatery paradises under the earth. The vast major i ty of humanbeings who had died an ordinary death were condemned to enterthe underworld, where, after f ou r years of hardship and wandering,

they reached oblivion in the lowest level.



1 6 RELIGION

The Me sopo tam ians believed th at the spirits of the dead w ent tolive in a gloomy underw orld that was visited by the sun at night, but

otherwise was devoid of cheer and happiness. There they wereruled by the gods of the dead and their fearful assistants. Even kingsalthough they were accompanied by sacrificed retainers and tooksteps to enhance their position after death by offering feasts andpresents to the deities of the underworld, lived an etiolated exist-ence in the ir lapis laz uli palaces. H um an beings had been created toserve the gods and, w ith rare exceptions, such as U tnapish t im, who

was a l lowed to live etern ally at the edge of the world, after deaththeir souls found themselves in an underwor ld tha t was littledifferent from the graves in w hich th eir bodies had been buried.

The souls of the M aya s seem to h ave descended after dea th into aregion of dankness and foul odors. There they were ruled by afearsome set of deities kn ow n as the Lords of D eath. The souls ofMaya rule rs were, however, believed to be capable of outwi t t ing the

Lords of Death and escaping from the underworld by being rebornas the sun, moon, or planet Venus; that is, by becom ing identifiedwith gods associated w ith celestial objects tha t could rise into thedayt ime sky. Maya rulers were able to com m unicate w ith theirdescendants by means of vision trances. The Yorubas seem to havehad a m ore o ptim istic view. They believed in reincarnation, but thecult of dea d ancestors indic ates th at some aspect of hu m an beings

continued to survive in a separate form after death and w as believedcapable of influencing the w elfare of the ir descenda nts.In the A nde an highlands, the bodies of the dead were mum mif ied

by freeze drying and wrapped in numerous layers of cloth gar-ments. They were kept in caves and stone tombs where, like thegods, they received offerings and occasiona lly were brou ght ou t tojoin in religious r i tuals . The bodies of dead Inka rulers were k ept intheir pa laces, wh ere they were ass iduo usly cared for by their de-scendants. Dead kings and qu eens were fed daily, dressed in freshclothes, visited one another, and participated in major state rituals.They also acted as oracles and thus continued to play a role in Inkapolitics. In effect, the bodies of dead rulers, and to a lesser degreethose of commoners, became wacasor objec ts in wh ich sup erna turalpow er could manifest itself. Like m an y other gods, M anco Capac,the first Inka ruler, was venerated in the form of a stone ra ther than



The Destiny of the Individual 107

as a m u m m y. The A ndeans clearly believed tha t the dead continuedto exist and were capable of influencing the living.

The Shang Chinese viewed in div idu als as having mu ltiple soulsor life forces. W hile thepo or corporeal life force, descended into theearth with the body, ev entu ally reaching a region called the YellowSprings/ the hun or ethereal soul ascended into the heavens andbecame a supe rnatu ral s pirit capable of helping or harm ing livingdescendants, especially pa trilin ea lly related ones. The kings andnobles worshiped these celestial spirits in special ancestral temples.

In these temples, recent gen eratio ns of ancestors w ere ind ivid ua llyvene rated, wh ile older ones w ere worshiped collectively. Deadkings were consulted by means of oracles on matters ranging frommajor state policies, such as w hether to attack a neighbo ring princi-pal i ty, to f inding out w hich ancestral spirit was responsible for atoothache in the royal family. The royal ancestors were also asked tointercede with Shang-ti on behalf of the k ing. Human sacrifices

appear to have been offered periodically at the royal tombs and inthe ancestral temples. This suggests that the souls of at least theupp er classes w ere believed to co ntinu e to exert a major inf luenceover society after death.

The ancient Egy ptian s saw the dead achieving im m ortality partlyby becom ing integrated into the continuo usly self-renewing naturalcycles of dea th and rebirth th at con stituted their nhh eternity. Butthe dead also surv ived by becom ing an O siris. In this state the spiritof the deceased, liv ing in her or his tomb, co ntin ued to be su stainedby the offerings received from k3 priests or recorded in pic ture s andinscriptions in the tomb. This was the dt or static, etern ity, linked tobut differentiated from the cycles that renewed the universe. In thesetwo forms, the spirits of the dead could continue to flourish untilboth the universe and the gods themselves lapsed back into chaos .

In general, hu m an beings seem to have had a lower self-image ofthemselves in city states tha n in territorial ones. This cor relates withthe lower self-image that the inhabitants of at least some city- statesystems had of themselves as servants of the gods. In territorialstates, rule rs gen erally claimed m ore ex tensive div ine powers thanthey did in city states. It has often been assumed that the corollaryof such exalted claims w ou ld be a very low evaluation of the cosmicsignificance of the peasant, who, in Egypt for example, was long



8 R LIGION

imagined to have had no hope of personal immortality prior to theFirst Intermediate Period. This opinion does not correspond with

w ha t is known about peasant burials at places such as Nag c al-Deir,where offer ings and fun erary cults are evident in the Old Kingdomcemeteries Reisner 1932 . The higher image o f the ruler and his fateafter death m ay have raised rather than lowered the expectations o fordinary people.

Conclusion

The similarity of the basic structures o f religious be liefs among theearly civilization s, despite the cultural part iculari ty of their expres-sion, raises important questions. Religion can no longer be treated, it ever was, as simply an epiphenomenal expression o f social oreconomic relations. Ye t the parallelisms between the t ributary modeof production and the religious beliefs outlined above suggest thatthe religious thought of the early civilizations was shaped to asignificant degree by the experience o f life in these societies. I willbriefly consider the implications o f this in the concluding chapter.



Five

Postscript

I hope tha t the preceding observa t ions wi l l help to makeEgyptologists and anthropologists more aware of the kinds ofregu lari t ies and diversities found in early civi l izat ions. T he regu-larities tend to be more co m m on at the general, stru ctu ral level; thediversities at the level of specific social arrangements and beliefs.Y et there is also significant cross-cultural uni formi ty in the realm ofsymbols and more diversi ty than I had imagined in subsistencepatterns and economic relations.

I t is necessary to be aware of the broad range of al ternativearra ng em en ts tha t are possible in the early civilization s when at-tempting to reconstruct the na tu re of life in any one of them.Wi t h o u t such awareness, scholars risk falling prey to preconcep-tions that lead them to ignore and misinterpret their data. Perhaps

the most strikin g examp le of such a misconception was the wide-spread acceptance of Kar l W ittfog el 's (1957) concep t of orientaldespotism. This construct, w hich dom inated the interpretation ofearly civil izations in the 1950s and 1960s, was o nly challenged afterRobert M cC. A da m s' (1965) de tailed stud ies o f set tlement p atternsin I raq revealed th at large irrigation systems in that region were apro du ct , rather than a cause, of the state. Th is freed scholars to ask

qu estion s abo ut aspects of different early civil izations th at they hadhith erto ignored and to formu late new theories abou t the develop-ment of these societies. No less insid iou s in its restricting influenceon the s tudy of early civi l izat ion s has been Kar l Polanyi's di ct u mthat there were no profit-oriented economic exchanges in thesesocieties (Polany i, Arensberg, and Pearson 1957). This misunder-

109



P O S T S R IP T

standing, which it has taken much time and e ffo r t to dispel dis-torted an unde rstan ding including my o wn ) o f the eco nom ic andsocial o rganizatio n o f early civilizatio ns fo r several decades.

It is clearly impo ssible to pr o vide a co m plete pictur e o f the rangeof alternative w ays of organizing early civilizations, pa r tly becauseit would take to o long and partly because the early civilizatio nswere highly complex. Much of the evidence that is necessary toco mpr ehend this co mp lexity is still missing and som e catego ries o fin format ion may never be recovered. The rest because of the

inherent difficulties o f the pro blems being addressed, we are o nlybeginning to unde rs tand . Nevertheless, I hope that I have pro mo tedsome awareness o f al tern ative ways o f behavio r in so cieties at thisear ly stage o f develo pment .

I w o u ld like to finish by br ief ly co nsider ing the theo retical imp li-cat ions o f my f indings. When I began this study, I expected todiscover tha t, because o f eco logical co nstraints, the differences in

economic s tructures would be l imited and there would be morevariation in sociopolitical organization, religious beliefs, and artstyles. In fact, I have f o und that a w ide var iety o f econo mic behavio rwas associated w ith early civilizations, the one constant being theproduct ion o f surpluses that theupperclassesappro priated thro ugha tr ibuta r y relationship. Y et I have been able to discover only o nebasic f o r m o f class hierar chy, two general fo rm s o f po lit ical o rgani-

zation, and a single basic religious paradigm that constituted asuperna tura l coun te r pa r t to the t r ibutar y relationship. I have do cu-mented significant va r ia t io n f r o m o ne early civil izatio n to anotheronly in term s o f ar t styles and cu l tura l values. The l imited va riab ili tyin po lit ical o rg anizatio n suggests that only a few f o r m s o f po liticalorganization were adequately efficient to survive fo r a significan tlength o f time .

Far f rom underm ining my f ai th in a materialist analysis o f humanbehavior, the discovery that early civil ization s with d iff ering eco-nomic and sociopolitical systems had evolved a fundamental lysimilar set o f re l igio us beliefs conf i rms this faith. R eligiou s beliefsare linked, bo th in general and also in specific terms, to the centr aleconomic inst i tut ion o f ear ly c ivi l izat io ns— the t r ibutary relat io n-ship. T his suggests that in the f o rmulat io n o f religio us beliefs wha t

Sahlins has called practical reaso n has played a far more impo r tan t



Postscript

role than h e and other cu ltur al particu larists w ou ld ascribe to it, andthat, as a consequence, cu ltura l reason, which is dominated by the

idiosyncratic va lues of in div idu al cultures, has played a less signifi-cant role.

To accept this pos ition is not to deny that cu ltura lly conditionedperceptions play a significant role in shaping all forms of humanbehavior. Y et it raises the possibility th at the nature o f p ractical andcu l tu ra l reason and of the roles they play has been misconstrued.Elsewhere I have argued that in all the early civilization s conspicu-

ous consu m ption w as elaborated as the deliberate violation of auniversally understood principle of the conservation of energy, inorder to m anifest and reinforce political auth or ity (Trigger 1990). Ihav e also suggested th at in all the early civil izations the concept ofhierarchy was taken for granted as the norm al condition o f h umanlife (Trigger 1985b). Th is at tit ud e clearly limited w hat people w holived in these societies were able to con ceptualize as reasonable

alternatives to existing conditions. Yet the fact that this att i tudedeveloped indep end ently in all the early civiliza tion s suggests tha tit mus t have begun as a manifestation of practical rather than ofcu l tu ra l reason, which by def init ion is idiosyncratic to specificcu l tu ra l traditions. I t w as clearly in everyone s interests that earlycivi l izat ions should funct ion. Th erefore, consensus abo ut the ac-ceptable range of var ia t ion in social relatio ns had a practical role to

play in political transaction s. On the other hand, once established,the belief in the Tightness o f h ierarchy w as essentially similar to theidiosyncratic constraints on human behavior that were specific topart icular cu l tu ra l traditions. The only difference might be that abelief in hierarchy cou ld be more easily underm ined by practicalexperience th an could a specific religious concept, w hich mig ht bereinterpreted as social con dition s chang ed.

It would be tempting to argue in a postmodernist vein thatSahlins dichotom y between practical and cultural reason is mis-leading and ought to be abando ned. That, however, is a debatewhich I do not wish to pursue at this point, since doing so mightdiver t a t tent ion from another issue that is more relevant to thepresent s tud y. W hile I do not deny th at cu ltur al traditions providethe intellectual mater ial with which individuals and groups ap-proach new problems, and tha t they there fore exert a significant role



U P OS TS C R IP T

in de te rmin in g the na tu re of cultu ral change m y f ind ing s indicatethat p ractica l reason plays a greater role in shaping cultu ral changethan many postprocessual archaeologists and postmodernist anthropologists are prepared to ad m it. This encourages me to accordgreater imp ortanc e to an evolution ist analysis and less im portan ceto a cu l tura l par t icular is t one than I would have done when I beganmy study . A par ticu larist approach is necessary to un derstan dmany aspects of early civilizations. But it is clearly a mistake toignore or even to un derestim ate the impo rtance of evolut ion ism as

those w ho w ould privilege cu l tura l reason would have us do.



Bibliographical Essay

Sources on the Early Civilizations

This bibliograph ical essay is intended to assist readers who wish tolearn more about everyday life in the seven early civilizationsdiscussed in this book. It a lso c ons ti tutes the factual basis on whichm y c laims conce rning in div idu al civilizations are based. I hav e c itedalmo st exclusively work s tha t are av ailable in the English languag eand books in preference to ind iv idua l papers. I hav e also lim ited thebibliography to studies that in my opinion remain relevant for

un ders tand ing p ar t icu la r early c ivi l izat ions. Pub lications tha t havebeen superseded by more recent f indings have been omit ted .

Old and Middle Kingdom Egypt

The most successful Egyptological syntheses relate to poli t icalhistory, art history, and to a lesser degree religious beliefs. Studies

de alin g w ith everyday l ife/ al tho ug h curre ntly fashionab le, tend tobe po pu lar in orien tation and often lack a social science perspective.M any o f them also con tain num erous factual errors.

Trigger, Kemp, O Connor, and Lloyd (1983) and Kemp (1989) arethe two most am bitiou s at te m pts at writ in g ancient Egyp tian socialhistory. Three of the papers in the f i rst work were writ ten forVo l u m e 1 of The Cambridge History of frica (1982) and for this

reason do not prov ide a balanced pic ture of Egypt s interactionswith southwestern Asia and the Medi terranean region. Kemp ss tudy a t tem pts to complement t rad i t iona l state-centered interpre-ta t ions of Egy ptian social orga nization with a greater emphasis o ni nd iv idua l in i t iat ive. Both books deal with the New Kingdom as

113



4 B I BL IO G R A P H I CA L E S S A Y

well as with earlier periods. James (1984) presents an excellentpicture of everyday l i fe in the New Kingdom, although he does not

attempt to describe the l i fe cycle of individual Egyptians. Malek andForman (1986) o ffer a lavishly illustrated account o f l i fe in Egyptduring the Old Kingdom, but their written treatment of the subjectis superficial.

Butzer (1976) provides a comprehensive account of ancient Egyp-t ian subsistence patterns and the ecological challenges with whichthe ancient Egyptians had to cope. Park s 1992) recent study of

ancient Egyptian floodplain agriculture stresses variability in ac-cess to water as a major factor promoting class s tratif ication, but hem ay underestimate the bu ffe r ing effect o f l ow population density.Although now out of date in many respects, Kees (1961) culturaltopography is valuable fo r understanding the history and culture ofancient Egypt. Eyre (1987a) provides an extremely usefu l synthesisof what is known about the organization of labor in the Old King-

dom. This paper should be read together with Eyre s (1987b) ac-count of labor in the New Kingdom. Edwards (1985) study of thepyramids contains much i n fo rma t io n about Old Kingdom andMiddle Kingdom engineering and organizational practices. David s 1986) examination o f the Middle Kingdom royal work force is no tparticularly informative on this topic. On the other hand, Bierbrier s 1982) study o f the New Kingdom royal tomb builders is full o f

i n fo rmat ion about the organization o f labor and daily l i fe.Baer (1960) and Strudwick (1985) provide valuable studies of the

changing administrative structures o f the Old Kingdom. Kanawati s(1977,1980) interpretations are more controversial, but his findingsare of considerable interest. Uphill (1988) summarizes informationabout Egyptian towns and cities, while Fischer (1968) examines thepoli t ical leadership of the provincial center at Dendera prior to theMiddle Kingdom.

O Connor (1990) examines ancient Egyptian f ami ly organizationand social structure and Wenig 1969) and Watterson (1991) studythe role of women in ancient Egyptian society. Despite its decep-t ively modest title, Wenig s book is a s ignificant contribution tosocial history. Watterson s treatment of social organization is notalways consistent. Watson (1987) examines clothing, Decker 1992)



n ient Mesopotamia 5

sports and games and M. and J. Janssen (1990) growing up whileM anniche (1987) studies concepts of sexuality, largely on the basis

of New Kingdom data. The various genres of ancient Egypt litera-ture during the Old and Middle Kingdoms are presented byLichtheim (1973), and for the New K ingd om in Lichthe im (1976).

Although his interpretation has become increasingly con trover-sial, Fr an kf or t (1948) rema ins the point of departure for any studyof Egyp tian kingship. The role of royal women in mythology andpolitical life has been exam ined by Troy (1986). M ajor recent w orks

dealing with Egyptian religion include Morenz (1973), Hornung(1982), and Sh afer (1991). A llen (1988) presents a comprehensiveaccoun t of early Egyptian cosmology.

Ancient Mesopotamia

The bulk of research on M esopotamia in the third m illennium B C isreported in scholarly article s pub lished in highly specialized jour-nals. M any of these are based on the analysis of ind ivid ua l cun ei-form tablets. Only in recent years has a sign ifica nt num ber ofsynthesizing m onographs and collective w orks begun to appear.

The limitations of Assyriology as a field, and hence of our knowledgeof anc ient M esopo tamian civilization , have been considered byOppenheim (1964). Th is theme has been taken up by Bottero (1992),although in my opinion more ethnocentrically, and hence less success-fully, than by Oppenheim. W hile Bottero rightly stresses the need tounderstand Mesopotamians behavior in terms of their perceptionsand values, not ours, he is preoccupied with tracing th e origins ofWestern science and religious beliefs in ancient M esopotamia.

For a general history of ancient Mesopotamia, see R ou x (1980).The archaeological evidence concerning the development of

Mesopotamian civilization has been synthesized by Gates andGates (1976), Redm an (1978), and most recently by Nissen (1988).The most recent general synthes is of w h a t is known about S umeriancul ture i s H uo t (1989). This is a careful ly researched and judiciouswork . The nearest to a com prehensive account of Sum erian civiliza-tion avai lable in En glish is K ram er (1963), supp lemented by Kramer(1981). Kr am er s w ork, however, like Bottero s, iscolored by a desire



6 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSA Y

to discover in Mesopotamia the origins of Western civilization. Thisresults in Mesopotamian data being ethnocentrically interpreted to

accord with Western values. Crawford (1991) offers a comprehen-sive survey of Sumerian civilization based mainly on archaeologicalevidence. The sections o f Adams (1966) dealing with Mesopotamiaprovide a brief b ut valuable summary of this civilization.

Jacobsen (1982) discusses ancient Mesopotamian subsistence pat-terns. Adams (1981) summarizes the results of many years researchon changing settlement patterns and irrigation systems in southern

Iraq from the beginnings of agriculture to modern times. H is workis essential for understanding the settlement patterns anddemography of the period we are considering. Walters (1970) exam-ines the organization of irrigation projects that related to the city ofLarsa and Foster (1982) the administration of institutional landduring the Akkadian period.

Important Soviet contributions to understanding the economic

and political structure of ancient Mesopotamia are found in twovolumes edited by D iakonoff (1969,1991), as well as in Diakonoff 1974). This work has refuted the view that the economy ofMesopotamian city states was wholly dominated by temple estates(Falkenstein 1974). Diakonoff s findings have been accepted by agrowing number of Western scholars including Maisels (1990).Other papers on the economy of ancient Mesopotamia have been

edited by Lipinski 1979) and Powell (1987). Snell 1982) examinesaccounting and pricing in ancient Mesopotamia, Y offee (1977) theeconomic role of the crown in the Old Babylonian period, and Siegel 1947) slavery during the Ur III period.

Lerner (1986) discusses the position of women in Mesopotamiansociety and Stone (1987) evidence concerning the kinship organiza-tion of a small section of the city of Nippur. Gibson and Biggs (1987)

include papers dealing with bureaucracy and Engnell (1967) exam-ines aspects of divine kingship. Jacobsen (1976) offers the bestgeneral survey of early Mesopotamian religion, which he treatsfrom a developmental perspective. A wide range of topics relatingto early Mesopotamian culture is covered in collections of paperswritten by Jacobsen (1970) and Bottero 1992).



Shang and Western hou hina 7

Shang and Western Chou China

Although numerous site reports, monographs, and papers relatingto ancient China have been published in the Chinese language, thel i terature regarding this civilization published in English is prob-ably less abundant than that relating to any other early civilization.This literature is, however, supplemented by a number of unpub-lished Ph.D. dissertations.

Archaeological data relating to the early development of Chinese

civilization have been expertly synthesized by Chang (1986a). Amore descriptive account of archaeological data available prior to1960 is provided by Cheng for the Shang (1960) and Chou (1963)periods. Ho (1975) discusses th e long-term development of variousaspects of Shang civilization.

The principal synthesis of information relating specifically toShang civilization is Chang (1980). Hsu and Linduff (1988) summa-

rize and discuss what is known about the Western Chou period.Wheatley 1971) examines urbanism in ancient China, although h isinterpretat ions are influenced by evolutionary preconceptions andhis data are less recent than those available to Chang (1986a). Shangconcepts o f the supernatural are discussed by A llan (1991) and therelationship of myth and ritual to Chinese kingship by Chang 1983). Various aspects of Shang settlement, kinship, and religion

are examined b y Chang (1976). A variety of topics relating to theShang period, ranging from subsistence practices to religion, arecovered in volumes edited by Keightley (1983) and Chang (1986b).Keightley (1978) also assesses oracle bone texts as a source ofinformation about Shang history and culture. Literary informationrelating to Western Chou political and social organization has beensynthesized by Creel (1970). Granet s (1958) synthesis of ancient

Chinese social organization, based on later literary sources, is ofinterest but is now outdated and must be used with great caution. Itis comparable to reconstructions of life in ancient Egypt basedmainly on records from the Ptolemaic and Roman periods Wilkinson1854).



8 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESS Y

The Classic Mayas

Because of m ajor alterations in the understanding of Maya subsis-tence patterns and demography and rapid advances in the deci-pherment of Maya hieroglyphs, even relatively recent studies ofMaya civilization must now be used with great caution and mostolder ones have become obsolete. That leaves a literature which issmaller and in many respects narrower than that available for anyof the other early civilizations, except Shang China. The kinds ofinformat ion available about these two civilizations are, moreover,very d ifferent from each other.

The cultural history of the Mayas is summarized by Coe 1987)and Blanton, Kowalewski, Feinman, and Appel 1981). The originsand collapse o f Classic Maya culture are discussed in works editedby R .E .W . Adams 1977) and Culbert 1973). Current interpretationsof Maya subsistence patterns are found in Harrison and Turner 1978) and Flannery 1982), as well as in some papers in Clancy andHarrison 1990). T he population history of the Mayas is examinedon a regional a s well as a general level in Culbert and Rice 1990).Ashmore 1981) has edited papers dealing with lowland Mayasettlement patterns and Wilk and Ashmore 1988) papers discuss-ing household and community organization. Marcus 1976) exam-ines the political organization of the Classic Maya period and papers

in Culbert 1991) draw on recent hieroglyphic decipherments toexamine Classic Maya political history. Schele and Friedel 1990)offer a semi-fictionalized version of the same material that is notwi thou t scholarly interest. M ontm ollin 1989) examines the politicals tructure of a Maya polity in the Rosario Valley in southeasternMexico. Schele and Miller 1986) draw upon iconography, writtentexts, and Maya religious beliefs to offer a new interpretation of the

ideology of Classic Maya kingship. A general survey of Mayareligion is provided by Carrasco 1990), while papers edited byHanks and Rice 1989) examine Maya iconography and religiousbeliefs.



The ztecs and their Neighbors 9

The Aztecs and their Neighbors

M ore generalizing w orks have been published abou t the Aztecs inrecent years than about any other early civilization. Historicalbackground and detailed information about settlem ent patterns inthe Basin of M exico are provided by Sanders, Parsons, and San tley(1979). Davies (1980) supplies a history of the Aztecs based onconventional interpretations of indige nou s M exican sources. Hodge(1984) discusses the po litical and social organiza tion of small statesin the Basin of M exico im m ediately prior to the Spanish conquest.

The oldest com prehensive scholarly acc oun t of Aztec life tha tremains useful is Soustelle (1961). Soustelle was strongly influencedby Caso s (1958) view s con cerning the importance of mil i tarymysticism as a dominant theme in Aztec culture. More recentaccounts have been published by Bray (1968), Berdan (1982),Townsend (1992), and derivatively by Pagan (1984). Clendinnen s

(1991) survey of Aztec life lays special em phasis on its psychologicalaspects and on the role of wom en. Adam s (1966) com parison ofAztec and M esopotam ian societies provides im po rtan t insights intoAztec economic and poli t ical organization. For those interested insixteenth-century European accounts o f Aztec life, the best avail-able in English are by Diego Duran on Aztec history (1964) andreligion (1971) and the writings of Bernardino de Sahagun (1950-

82), edited by Dibble and Anderson.Aztec subsistence patterns and ecology are discussed in a number

of papers edited by W olf (1976). Hassig (1985) prov ides a tho rou ghtreatment of Aztec commercial activities in the early sixteenthcentury and of Aztec w arfare (1988). Barlow (1949) presents a nowsomewhat dated, but still useful, survey of the extent of the Aztecempire and its tributary system. Offner (1983) studies the legal

system , w ith special reference to the allied state of Texcoco. O rtiz deMontellano (1990) has published a major study of Aztec beliefsconcerning health, nutrition, and medicine. Lopez Austin (1988)provides a magisterial survey of Aztec concepts of the self, thehu m an body, and the universe, which painstakingly define s theinterrelations among these concepts. Zantwijk (1985) examinesAztec cosmological symbolism and its relations to Aztec social



12 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESS Y

organization, a subject treated more briefly in the f irst half ofCarrasco 1990). The symbolism of the Great Temple in the Aztec

capital of Tenochtitlan is discussed by Broda, Carrasco, and MatosMoctezuma 1987). The origins of Aztec monumental art are tracedby Townsend 1979). Leon-Portilla 1963,1992) discusses the philo-sophical beliefs of the Aztecs, identifying an alternative tradition tomilitary mysticism, and Gillespie 1989) examines Aztec concepts ofhistory.

TheInkas

Cultural development in the Andean region is traced by Lumbreras(1974) and Keatinge 1988). Unfortunately, very little is knownarchaeologically about the origins o f the Inka state.

The earliest modern scholarly synthesis o f Inka culture is by Rowe(1944). Despite recent controversies about the nature of Inka historyand kinship, it remains valuable. More recent accounts include ashort book by Metraux 1965) and a more detailed one by Kendall(1973). Sixteenth-century accounts of Inka life available in Englishinclude the observations of Pedro de Cieza de Leon 1959) andBernabe Cobo s accounts of Inka history 1979) and about theirreligion and customs 1990).

The cultural ecology of the Andean region is discussed in Masuda,

Shimada, and Morris 1985). Moore 1958) and Murra 1980) discussthe economic organization of the Inka state. Various aspects of thepolitical economy of the Inka empire are examined in Collier,Rosaldo, and Wirth 1982), Murra, Wachtel, and Revel 1986), andD Altroy 1987). The role of women in Andean society, and howtheir status was adversely affected by the rise of the Inka state andthe Spanish conquest, are examined b y Silverblatt 1987). Zuidema

advances his controversial interpretations of Inka history, socialorganization, landholding, and r i tual behavior in two successivebooks (1964,1990). His ideas about the Inka royal lineages have beensignificantly modified by Farrington (1992). Conrad and Demarest(1984) advance their equally controversial theory of divided royalinheritance as a cause of imperial expansion, which Farrington alsorejects. Patterson 1991) discusses factionalism and alliances within



722 BIBLIOGR PHIC L ESS Y

t ha t are used for the study of Yoruba history. A jayi and Smith (1971)examine Yoruba warfare in the nineteenth century.

Mabogunje (1962) and Krapf-Askari (1969) study Yoruba urban-ism. jo (1966b) documents Yoruba palaces. Hodder and Ukwu 1969) discuss marketing systems among the Yorubas and the Ibos.Lloyd s (1962) monograph on Yoruba land law also provides impor-tant information about regional variations in Yoruba settlementpatterns and social organization. Ajisafe (1924) documents tradi-t ional Yoruba laws and customs and Awolalu (1979) discusses

Yoruba religious beliefs and sacrificial rites. Apter 1992) examinesthe relations between Yoruba kingship and religious beliefs andhow these relate to political activity. Like Barber, he provides moredynamic insights into traditional Yoruba behavior than do mostearlier studies. Valuable nineteenth-century accounts of Yoruba lifeare found in the travel narrative of W.H. Clarke 1972) and theYoruba history written by the O yo Yoruba convert to Christianity

Samuel Johnson 1921).Bradbury (1957,1973) provides the best general accounts of Benin

social organization. Egharevba (1960) has recorded a traditionalhistory of Benin and Ryder (1969) traces changes in Benin societysince the late f if teenth century. Connah (1975) reports on the archae-ology of Benin and Forman, Forman, and Dark (1960) on Benin courtart.



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Index

aborigines, A ustralian 17accounting systems 71

see lso quipu cll Inka temple wom en) 68Ad ams, Ro bert McC. 3, 30,109administration, see bureaucracyadministrative costs 46, 47Afanasieva, V.K. 82agricultural implements 28, 33agricultural laborers 42, 59, 60agriculture 10 11 17 23 28-34 38-

40, 42, 44, 46, 50, 73, 8 6,95,97,103,109

state projects 33

see lso basin agricu lture),fallowing, food, irrigation,multicropping, peasants,rotation of crops, slash-and-bu rnagriculture

jele Yoruba roya l age nt) 60Akhenaton Egyptian king) 24 52-

53,78Akkadian Dynasty M esopotamia)83 100

Alafin King) of Oyo 60Amarna Egyptian city) 48, 78Amenhotep III Egyptian king) 80Amon E gyptian god) 89ancestors, ancestral spirits 88 90

96-99 101 102 106-7animals, domestic 29-31 33 50 86 99

anthropology 2 6,15, 23-26 2887-88 99,109,112see lso Boas, Boasian anthro-pology, social anthropology

anthropomorphism in art) 82app ropriation of resources) 11,44archaeology 3 5 14-15 17 19 22

52-53 75 78see lso postprocessual archae-ology, processual archaeology

architecture 7 10 12 34 74-81armies 8 37 39 41 42 45 49-52

56,64, 68-70see lso soldiers, wa rfa re

armories 49art elite) 3 7 10 17 28 81-34 86

see lso style

art history 2, 83artists 58Ashante k ingdom 56Asiatic mode of production 53assassination 53Assmann, Jan 18Atawallpa Inka king) 51attendants 11 50 58-60 70 77 79

97-98,100,106authority 46,53, 111 yllu Peruvian landow ning group)

39, 41, 42, 47 ,62 , 68, 99Aztecs,

army 39, 49,50docu me ntation about 20economy 38-41 69-72

modern views about 23-24political organ ization 18 56 62

65, 69, 72, 88 97

religion, values 19 24 48,66,67,84 89-97 100 101 105

settlement 9, 22, 29,69

147



148 INDEX

social organization 18,35-37,39,60,61,72,101

subsistence 28-29,31see also calmecac calpullicihuacoatl Fifth Sun,Huitzilopochtli, Ometeotl,pochteca Quetzalcoatl,telpochcalli Tlaloc

backslopes 30bale (Yoruba compound head) 47Bard, Kathryn 1bark cloth 96basin (agriculture) 30-31Basorun Yoruba official) 50,64Benin 9, 20, 31,50, 62, 68, 79, 83,

100-102Bernal, Martin 93

bias,in data 22-23,25,27,110in interpretation 17-19, 23-25,109-10

Binford, Lewis R . 17blinding of prisoners) 59blood (human, divine) 84,96-97,105Boas, Franz 2

Boasian anthropology 3,4,15bodyguards 50,51bureaucracy, bureaucrats 5, 11, 12,

21-23,36,37,41,42,43,46 1̂7,49,51,54,57,58,60,61,64-66,68,74,75, 79, 81,84, 85,103see also administrative costs,governors, viziers

Butzer, Karl 31burial, see interments

calmecac see schoolscalpulli (Aztec landowning group

38-41,44, 47, 49,50,62,65, 69,71-72,88, 99

capital cities 9-11,44, 69, 77-80

cataclysms (legendary) 90, 91see also floods

cause and effect 87,109census 44center (cosmological) 90cen tralizat ion 66, 73Chang, Kwang-chih 82chaos 89-92,107Ch eng-chou (Chinese city) 50, 77chiefdoms 8, 49

Childe, V . Gordon 4, 6children 36,49,53,63,67,68,96,97Chimor (Peruvian kingdom) 82chinampa (raised field) 28-29,33,34China (ancient),

a rmy 50economy 40, 74political organization 56,62religion, values 99,107settlement 10,22, 77social organization 37subsistence 31seea/soShang Dynasty, Shang-ti,Western Chou Dynasty

Christianity 28,87,89,96Christie, Agatha 27cihuacoatl (Aztec official) 56,67circumscription 31cities, see urban centerscity states, city state system

8-14,38, 41, 46,50, 64, 65,69,70-74, 76, 78, 79, 81,84,91, 92,98,103,104,107

classes (social) 6,7,34,48,55-62,67,68,82,85,86,101,110see also commoners, hierarchy,upper classes

clients 58cloth, cloth production 27,36, 45,

50,59-60,67, 68, 70see also bark cloth



Index 49

clothes 61,66,67, 69 70 72 88 93101,106

coercion 7,49colonialism, colonies 5,23,30,32,52commoners 7, 45,48, 61,64-£7,101

see also craftsmen dependentspecialists, peasants

comparative studysee cross-cultural comparison

concubines 61 63 68

Confucianism 104conscription see corveeconspicuous consum ption 75,98,111construction 64 6979,80

see also architecturecontact between cultures) 13-14,

17, 20-21contextual study 5,16-17coronation 68,101,102correlations statistical) 16corvee 7, 8,11,39,42,45, 49-51,60cosmos, cosmic order 4,19,84, 89-

98,102-3,105,107see lso creation, earth, heavens,underworld

councils 56,64courts,

judical 47royal 44,51,61,66, 78

craftsmen craft production9-12,17, 23, 28,39,45,46,58,

61,68, 70, 74, 77, 82-83creation,

concept or act of 53 89-91,94,97,105mound of 4-5reenactment of 103

creator gods 89,101,104crops 29^1, 36,94,97,99cross-cultural comparison, 2-5,15-

19,25

of seven early civilizations 1, 7-9,11-14, 28,32-34,36-38,43-48,

56-57,59-61,64, 72-73, 76-86,92,97-99,103-4,107see also correlations, regularities

cults 79,80,88,97, 99,100,103,104,106,107see also funerary cults, Shangocult

cultural determinism, see deter-

minismcultural ecology, see ecologycultural evolutionism, see evolu-

tionismsee also multilinear evolutionism,unilinear evolutionism

cultural reason 15,111-12cultural relativism 2,6,110-11cultural tradition, see traditionsCuzco Inka capital) 10,51, 68, 77-

80,82cycles cosmic) 91, 95,97, 98,102-

3,107

dead, realm of 89,95,105-7see lso underworld

debtors 45,59,60decision-making 16defense,

external 50,53,56,64, 77internal 47,56

Deir al-Medina Egyptian town) 27deities,

nature of 84,88-94,96-98needs of 88,95-98,102,103roles of 38, 88, 91,94,95,97-104,106tutelary 38,88,91,94,98-99see also creator gods, Ometeotl

delegation of power) 46-48Delta Egypt) 31,32,43, 77



150 INDEX

dependent specialists 57-60 82

depopulation 13

determinism, cultural 4, 23development of civilization 1-2, 28

dichotomy 4,55, 111

differences, see idiosyncraticvariation

dikes 29, 33directions cardinal) 90,95documentation, see archaeology,

oral traditions, written recordsdouble descent 35drunkenness 48dwarfs 59

early civilization definition) 5-8,21, 25, 44

Early Dynastic Period,

Egypt 10M esopotam ia 21, 32, 33, 49, 59,64, 70, 76, 80

earth 89-90 99,103ecology, c ult ura l 2-4 14 17 28, 92,

110

economy 11 27-28 52 55 61 85

86,109,110

see also agriculture, craftsmen ,trade

education 56effect, see cause and effectefficiency 110egungun Yoruba religious society) 96Egypt Old and M iddle Kingdoms),

arm y 51economy 27 40 42-43 52-5370-71 74modern views about 25political organization 10 12 18

46, 56, 63, 64, 66, 88religion, values 12 18 19 24 61-

62, 68-69 84 88-96 101^ 107

settlement 10 11 22 25 31 32

social organization 35-37 61

study of everyday life in 2subsistence 30-31see also m3 t,p I f rhyt Sed Festival

Egyptology,nature of 2,24, 84relations with anthropology 2,25-26 109

elite, see upper classes

elite cul ture 10see also art elite)

Eloquent Peasant, Tale of the Egy ptian) 48

emic perspective 18eminent domain 38En M esopotamian god) 94endogamy 62

energy, conservation of 75, 111see also power

engineers, engineering 30 58 75

Enki M esopotamian god) 94,96Enlil M esopotamian god) 94Entemena M espotamian king) 70environment 17,37,92

see also tropical forestenvironmental degradation 32Epicureans 93epiphenomena 3,108Erman, Adolf 2estates 32 37 40 42-45 49 50 57

95 100eternity 18-19 107ethnographic present 21eunuchs 37Euphrates River 30Europe 33 52

Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 21evolutionism , cultu ral 3-6, 87-88

93 99 112

exploitation 41 52-54 59



Index 75

expropriation of land) 41extended families, see family

Eyre, Christopher 2,62organization

Fairservis, Walter 1-2fallowing 30,31family, family organization 9’17,

27,34-37,39-40,47,49,50,53,56,57,62-64, 74,86,98,101

farmers, see peasantsfasting 101Fayyum 33felines 86feudalism 8,46,66Fifth Sun Aztec concept) 90-91,

First Dynasty Egypt) 13,66,77,79First Intermediate Period Egypt)

floods,

94,105

74,108

legendary 91,96of rivers 4,30,103

distribution 70production 9,28,36see also agriculture

75-77,80

food,

forts, fortifications 9,31,47,50, 51,

Fourth Dynasty Egypt) 40,64,81Frankfort, Henri 4’25Fried, Morton 6,49funerary cults 42,43,77-81,83,96,

106,108

gardens 29-31Geb Egyptian god) 101Geertz, Clifford 4genealogies 34,35general systems theory 14gifts 54

Gilgamesh Mesopotamian king) 76Giza 12,52

gods, seedeitiesgoldsmiths 59governors 46,65 46grasshopper king as) 86grazing land 29‘30Greece classical) 8,12,37,52/ 75,

guards 49

guilds 68,71-73,83

87,88,93

Hammurabi Babylonian king) 48Han Dynasty China) 8heavens 86,89,90,94,99,100,103,

Hebrews 87hegemony 13,32/ 41,60-62,74,83,84Hekanakhte Egyptian landowner)

27,35,45herbivores 8

Herodotus I, 52hierarchy social) 10,11,21,37,46,

106,107

55 57 58 60 61 65 66 71-72110,111

28,44,110-12historical part ic ula~sm -4, 15-16,

history 3, 4,91Hodder, Ian 15Hoffman, Michael 1Horus Egyptian god) 101houses 9 29 47-48 61 66 67 75 76Huitzilopochtli Aztec god) 90,94

human beings,destiny 97, 99, 102,105-8mythical origins 105as object of study 93role 95-96,98,102self-image 17,107-8see also sacrifices, human

humanities disciplines 2,



152 INDEX

hunchbacks, see dwarfshunter-gathe rer societies 5-6, 8

16,17, 87hydraulic theory of origin ofcivilization 33 34

Ibo32idealism 23ideology see religionidiosyncratic variation 1 2 4-6 15

16 24-25 28 84-S6 108-11see also c ultu ral relativism ,historical particularism

Ife 62, 83images of gods) 96,104Imhotep 75immigrants 32inb hdj see M emphis

incarnations 88 93 97 100 101 104see also trancesincest 36, 63indebtedness, see debtorsIndia 20 95individuals, see hum an beingsInd us Valley civilization 15, 20industrial civilizations 14 55

inequality 7, 37, 53, 75infield cultivation, see gardensinheritance 34-35 38 42 43 63 64

see also successionInkas,

army 51economy 39 68 73modem views concerning 15,24,25

political organiza tion 24,63, 65-66 106religion, values 24 67-68 91101 106-7settlement 10 22 29social organ ization 35subsistence 36see also aclla ayllu Cuzco,

Inkawasi, Inti panaqa quipuTomebamba, toqrikey

Viracocha, yanaconaInkawasi Inka town) 78interments,

general 98 106 108royal 56 62 63 76-78 80-81 98101 102

Inti Inka sun god) 101Ipuw er Egyptian author) 74

irrigation 28-34 41 94 109Islam 87, 96

Jacobsen, Thorkild 92Judaism 87justice 53

Kahun Egyptian town ) 47

Kemp, Barry J. 24, 25Khafre Egyptian king) 52Khmer 14, 20, 81Khufu Egyptian king) 52kings kingship

economic function 7,38, 39 41-45 58 59 68-70 72 83 88 103political function 5 47-54 56

57,62, 64-70 72, 73, 76, 78, 79,81 86 91 97religious role 56 79 91-93 96-103 107religious significance 81 86 8797-108role of dead kings 43 62 63 6877, 79 80 100 106 107

substitute kings 100terms for 18see also coronation, interments,seclusion, succession

kin terms 35-36 37kinship 8

see also family organization,panaqa



Index 153

labor-swapping 33Lagash M esopotamian city) 70

land ownership 23 35 38-45 50 5157, 59, 63, 65, 68, 69, 73, 80, 84see also sales of land

law 17, 48, 56see also legal codes, punishments,sumptuary laws

least effort, principle of 75legal codes 48

levee 30Libya 13lifestyles, see valueslineages, see family organizationliteracy, see wr i t inglugal M esopotamian term for

king) 64luxury goods see status symbols

m3 t, see orderMaisels Charles 8Manco Capac Inka king) 101 106man ual labor 57-59 61

see also agricultura l laborersmarkets 9,11,36,45,64,70,72,75,82

marriages 35 36 38 41 56 57 60-63marsh lands 30Marx, Karl 53materialism 16 23 110matrilineal descent 56Mayas,

decipherment of script 20religion, value s 89-91 95-97

100,106settlement 9, 22, 29subsisten ce 29, 31

meat 29see also animals, domestic

Medjay people 51M emphis Egyptian capital) 44 77M enes Egy ptian king) 77

M enkaure Egyptian king) 52mercenaries 51,60

merchants 55 58 70-74see also pochteca, trade

Mesehti Egyptian official) 51Mesopotamia ancient southern),

army 49-50econom y 40, 42, 70, 71modern views about 24political organiza tion 64-65

religion, values 48 84 88 91-9294-96 100 103 104 106settlem ent 9, 22, 30, 32,109social organization 35 37 61 73subsistence 30see also lugal, S umerians

metallurgy 28 33 67-68 82 83metaphors 87 95

middle class see dependentspecialists

m ining 64, 67-68 70, 74mobility,

geographical 43,59,62, 77 78social 49 54-59 61-62 72 101

M octezuma II Aztec king) 61 63 101money 8 83monotheism 87 92moon 89 94 106m orality 17multicropping 28-30multilinear evolutionism 3Murdock, George P. 6myths 99 101

Nagc

al-Deir Egy ptian tow n) 40 108nature,

natural realm 7 8 82 87-88 92-95 98 99 102human 24, 25

neoevolutionism 2 6 17New K ingdom Egypt) 12 21 27

35 48 51 53 70 77 79-81 83



154 IN EX

Nile River, N ile Valley 4 13 30 3174, 76, 91, 94-95 103

nobility, see upper classesNubia Nubians 13 51 70-71Nunamiut Eskimos) 17

oba Yoruba, Benin kings) 63 64100 101

obelisk 5Odu duwa Yoruba god) 62 100offerings, see sacrificesofficials, see burea ucratsOld Bab ylonian Period 22Olorun Yoruba high god) 96Ometeotl Aztec high god) 56 89

100 105Oppenheim Leo 24, 70oracles 106 107

oral traditions 19, 22-23 93order vs.chaos) 4 53 56 90-92 103 105oriental despotism 109origins,

of rulers 86of civilization 14-15 31-34

Osiris Egyptian god) 101 107Oyo Yoruba kingdom ) 50 60 64

Pacal Maya king) 80Pachakuti Inka king) 63, 91palaces 42 45 47 49 51 63 67-70

73, 75-81 83 106Palenque Maya city) 80Palestine 12 70 71panaqa Inka royal lineage) 63pastoralism 31 32 41 94patrilineal descent 34-36 39 40 50

56 57 62 63 107 t Egyptian nobility) 64Patterson, Thomas C. 24peasants 9 11 18 24 35, 36 38 39-

46, 51 53-54 58-62 68 74 7785 103 107-8

penances 101 102Persian Empire 12

Peru, see InkasPetrie, W.M .F. 2philology 2philosophy 28 93Pi-Ramesses 77plants, see cropspochteca Aztec merchants) 71-72Polanyi, Karl 109

police 51political organization 8 14 21 23

37 55 85 86 88 92 110polygyny 63polytheism 87population,

density 13 17 28-32 34distribution 9pressure 31-32see also depopulation

postprocessual archaeology 3 4 112power

political 7 13 46 47 53 55 5758 62-66 69 70 74-77 79 8284-36 88 97 104supernatural 80 82 87-90 9394 96-98 101-3 105-7

practical reason 16 24-25 110-12prayers 87 98preindustrial civilizations 6-8 29

47 52 53 55priests 36 37 43 54 58 60 61 93

96, 99 100 107primogeniture 56prisoners of war 32, 43, 49 59-61

67, 76, 97 101privileges 62,67processual archaeology 3 4 6profit, profit motive 71 72,109property, private 38 40 42 46 60

see also land own ership



n ex 55

provinces 10 11 44 46 51 65 6678 79 88

Ptah Egyptian god) 89Ptolemaic era 30 52punishments,

legal 46^8 59 67 101divine 100physical 53

pyramids Egyptian) 5 12 52 81

queens 36-37 56 63 106Quetzalcoatl Aztec god) 100 101 105quipu 11-12

racism 5rainfall 29-31raptors 86, 90rationalism, see practical reasonrations 27, 42Re Egyptian god) 89 101reason see cultural reason,

practical reasonrebellions 62, 65, 66, 69, 70reciprocity 24 54 88record keeping 7-8 64regalia 68-69 101 102regents 56, 64regicide 102regularities, cross-cultural 1 2-6 14-

17 25 28 85-87 108 109reincarn ation 106relativism, see cultural reasonreligion,

beliefs 17 23 24 28 86-89 93103 108 110 111social role 3, 7, 8, 34, 88see also cults, deities, kings,penances, prayers, priests,sacrifices, trances

relocation, forced 40, 42, 43renewals of cosmos) 94-95 107

rents 11 18 27 39 40 42 44 59reproduction human 32 94

retainers, see attendants yt Egyptian commoners) 64rituals, see cultsrivers 14 30 34

see also Euphrates, Nile, TigrisRome 8 37 52 75rotation,

of crops 31of service 51, 61

royal families 24 37 39 43 56 5762-64 72 97 100 101

sacrifices,human 59 66 68 73 76 80 84 9093 95-98 101 102 105-7plant, animal 66 95-99 101102 106 108

Sacsahuaman Inka fortress) 77Sahlins, Marshall 4 15 110 111sales of land 38 40 42 43salinization 29 30sample of early civilizations) 16

18 20 21San Bushmen) 17Satire on the Professions Egyptian) 58schools 38 49 61science 3, 4, 93scribes 46 58 61seclusion royal) 104Second Cataract of Nile) 76Sed Festival Egyptian) 80self-control, self-reliance as an

ideal) 61, 73, 84serfs 41 42 44 59 84servants, see attendantsService, Elman 6 49 52Sesostris III Egyptian king) 66settlement pattern studies 22 23

25 28-29 47 104 109



156 INDEX

shamanism 21 82 99Shang D ynasty 10, 21, 23, 59, 62, 74,

77 80 81 83 98 100 101 104 107see also China ancient)

Shango cult Yoruba) 60Shang-ti Chinese god) 99-101 104

107sharercropping 42 45 59similarities, see regularitiesSinai Peninsula 13, 74

sky, see heavensslash-and-burn agriculture 29, 31,

33 34slavery 7 18 39 42 45 49 50 52

59-60 69, 70, 73 83 97Snefru Egyp tian king) 42social anthropo logy 4social sociopolitical) organization

5-8 16 28 33 36 37 45 85 8788 93 98 99 103 110 111

social sciences 3, 4social stratification, see classes,

hierarchysociopolitical forces 3, 34 55soil fertility 30, 31soldiers 49-52 58 60 67 69 70 72,

73 97 105soul, concepts about 19 96 101 105-7Soviet Union 14spies 72states 43, 45

formation 13see also city states, territo rial states

status symbols 7 9 11 28 58 6166-70 73-75 83

Step Pyramid 75steppes 30Stew ard, Ju lian 2-3, 6, 34strangers in myth) 86stratification, social, see classes,

hierarchy

stratigraphy 15strikes labor action) 53

structuralism 15 16 24style art) 82 86 110subsistence patterns, see ag riculturesuccession 51 56-57 63 64 103

see also kingsSumer see MesopotamiaSumerians 32sumptuary laws 67 68

sun 86 89-91 94-95 97 101 103-6supernatural 7 8 18 56 87-90 92

93 98 99 102 103 110see also deities

surplus economic) 7 11 12 34, 4144^6 55 103 110

symbols 5 7 24 25 76 78 86-8795 102 109

swidden agriculture, see slash-and-burn agriculture

Syria 12, 70, 71

taxes 5 11 13 18 41, 42 44-46 5152 54 59 64 65 70-72

technology 7 17 28 87technological determinism 28telpochcalli see schoolstemples 5 12 38, 42, 43, 47, 49,64,

65, 70, 71, 73, 75-81 90 94, 96,99 104 107

temp le property 40-43 65 69 95Tenochtitlan Aztec capital) 29 83 90terracing 29 32-34 41territorial states 8 10-14 38 46 49

50 62 65-66 71 73-74, 77-79 8183 92 98 103 104 107

Thebes Egyptian city) 78theocracy 49Third Dy nasty Egypt) 40Thutmoses III Egyptian king) 71Tigris R iver 30



Index 57

Tikal M aya city) 76Tlaloc Aztec god) 94

tolls 45tombs 43,66, 75-76, 78, 80,83,84,

95-97,99,106,107Tomebamba Inka city) 78tools 11, 33

bronze, copper 28iron 33stone 33

see also agricultural im plemen tstoqrikey see governorstrade3,17, 23

government regulation of 73-74local 9,11,36lon g d istan ce 8, 36, 39, 58, 59,64, 68, 70-74see also merchants

traditions, cultural 16,38,105, 111traitors 47trances 60, 88, 93, 96-97, 99,106transportation costs 32, 69tree celestial) 90tribes 8tributary mod e of production 45-

46,55,85,86,103,108,110

tribute 9,12,13, 23, 65, 68-71, 74,76,97

tropical forest 14, 20, 29, 34Turner, Victor 4Tzu clan Chin a) 100

Um m a Mesopotamian city) 70underworld 89, 90, 94,105-7

uniformitarianism 24uniline ar evolutionism 3, 6universals, see regularitiesupper classes 7, 23,34,38,41, 42, 44,

45,47^9,57-69, 72,74,77,82,85,86,97,101,103,107,110

Ur III Dyn asty M esopotamia) 30,83,100

urban centers 9-11, 29, 31, 32, 47,70, 72, 73, 76-79, 91

Uruk Mesopotamian city) 76Utnapishtim MesopotamianNoah) 96,106

values 2-4 15, 84-86,110Venus planet) 106villages, hamlets 9,11,12,17, 31,

40, 44,53, 66, 73, 77, 98

Viracocha Inka god) 10 1Virgin M ary 89visions, see trancesviziers 46

walls, see fortificationswarfare 41, 49-51, 59,67, 72, 76, 84,

85, 94, 97,101,102see also soldiers

W askhar Inka king) 51wealth 8, 32, 36, 39, 43,53,55,57,

58, 63, 68,69, 71-73,83weapons 28, 49-51weaving, see clothWenke, Robert 1

Western Chou D ynasty 10, 22,50,62, 77,104see also China ancient)

Wheatley, Paul 3White, Leslie 6Wilcken, U lrich 52Wilkinson, J.G. 2wisdom literature Egyptian) 61-62

Wittfogel, Kar l 4,109women,

roles of 9,36-38,45,53,56,59-60,62,63,68, 72, 73,98-100,105status of 35-38, 61,101see also aclla

writing 7-8,14-15,19-20,22,105see also record keeping



158 INDEX

written records 19-20 22-23 2740,93

yanacona Inka retainers) 42,82Yorubas and Benin)

army 49,50economy 28 38 39 72 73political organization 57,60, 62-64,81religion values 84-85 93 96

100,106

settlement 9 13 31social organization 9 34-36 47

60subsistence 31see also ajele Alafin baleBasorun egungun obaOduduwa, Olorun, Oyo,Shango cult

Zantwijk Rudolf van 24

Zuidema, Thomas 24

early civilizations ancient egypt in context.pdf

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