World History in a Year (Week 22) - 700s BC
The 700s BC lay at the beginning of a pivotal change in world history: the emergence of widespread debate about religious, philosophical, and ethical questions such as the meaning and purpose of life, what individual moral goodness looked like, and what kind of government and policies were desirable. This transformation, termed the Axial Age by philosopher Karl Jaspers, ran mainly from the 500s to 300s BC, and during that time it saw the emergence of Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Jainism and Greek philosophy, among others. A parallel development in the same period was the development of many academic disciples and ways of thought: political theory, history, linguistics, science.
Although the main Axial period was, as stated, the 500s to 300s BC, some Axial developments predated this period. This was particularly the case in ancient Israel, where the core Axial changes happened earlier (700s to 500s BC) than in the other main Axial regions (Greece, India, and China) and took somewhat different forms. As previously noted, in China one of the foundations of Axial thought had already been laid by this time: the idea of the Mandate of Heaven, that a dynasty’s legitimacy was conditional on ethical behaviour.
In 700s BC Israel one similar development was underway (condemnation of powerful people behaving unjustly), along with a new one (an emphasis on ethical behaviour over ritual). Both of these would be important parts of the Axial Age in multiple areas, and both were major changes from the typical functioning of religion in ancient states up until this time.
My main source on the Axial Age, by the sociologist Robert Bellah, describes three types of religion. First, religions that existed in non-state societies, typically oriented around rituals for interaction with powerful supernatural beings who could be helpful or harmful, but who were not necessarily considered gods. Second, the religions of early states, which underlay the power of kings and priests: one of the key roles of the king was to ensure the proper sacrifices and rites were carried out to satisfy the gods and prevent famines or other disasters. And thirdly, the Axial religions, which made religion a matter of ethics and belief and debate and contested claims, and of individual worship and feeling.
Thus, attacks on ritual on on the behaviour of the powerful would have been antithetical to the typical role of religion in an ancient state up to that time. The Biblical book of the prophet Amos from the 700s BC in ancient Israel is a striking example of this change. After condemning a number of neighbouring kingdoms for, essentially, commission of war crimes, Amos turned his sights on economic injustice within the kingdom of Israel:
“They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals
They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground,
and deny justice to the oppressed.
…You levy a straw tax on the poor and impose a tax on their grain.
Therefore, though you have built stone mansions, you will not live in them;
though you have planted lush vineyards, you will not drink of them.”
Building upon this came God's denunciation of ritual and elevation of ethics:
“I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
…But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!”
There were some glimmerings of similar patterns in Greece, where the poet Hesiod also denounced oppression of the poor by rulers. (I don't have any quotes here; I have a copy of the Bible on hand but I don't have a copy of Works and Days.) This was just one element in a sweeping transformation in Greek life at the time. Contact by Phoenician traders, either in the late 800s BC or early 700s BC, produced a new alphabetic Greek script developed from the Phoenician one, restoring literacy after centuries of its absence. The Iliad and Odyssey date from the 700s BC. City-states, politically independent but with a shared Greek identity, and with non-monarchical governance, emerged. The first Olympic Games were held.
Changes were also underway in Italy. The Etruscans established city-states in the north of the peninsula. The legendary foundation of Rome by Romulus is also set in the 700s BC; and while that was a legend, an ancient wall dating from this century does suggest that this was when Rome became a unified community with a coherent identity, rather than a collection of villages. Greeks and Phoenicians set up colonies in Sicily, which was a Mediterranean breadbasket and hot property.
Whereas the stage setting for Greece’s Axial Age was a cultural renaissance, the stage setting for China’s Axial Age was a collapse. In 771 BC the Zhou dynasty suffered a severe military defeat from a northern people they called the Quan Rong, who captured their capital near the present-day city of Xi’an. The Zhou lost the core of their territory and moved east, setting up a new capital near present-day Luoyang, not far from the sites of earlier Xia and Shang capitals. From this point the real power of the Zhou monarchy was broken, though some prestige remained: the rest of the 700s through 500s BC would be marked by noble houses with different regional territories jockeying for control of the Zhou king. This is known as the Spring and Autumn Period, after the Spring and Autumn Annals (‘spring and autumns’ is a poetic way of saying ‘years’) in which it was recorded.
In later records, the loss of Zhou power was attributed to a frivolous ruler, with a story similar to the Boy Who Cried Wolf. King You was enamoured of a concubine who loved to see the beacons lit and the military forces called in, and he did it multiple times to amuse her. By the fourth time the military were sick of this and did not come, and of course this time was the real warning of the Rong invasion. This was also stated as coming after decades of neglect of a key ritual. The story is almost certainly fictional, but it shows that the concept that dynasties rose on fell on the merits and responsibility of their ruler continued.
Also in East Asia, rice farming was introduced to Japan, beginning what archaeologists call the Yayoi period. (Until relatively recently historians considered the start of the Yayoi period to be much later, around 300 BC, but new carbon dates indicating earlier origins are increasingly accepted.) Many features point to this being driven by immigration from the Korean Peninsula. Rice farming did not develop gradually, but was introduced in fully-fledged form, with irrigation canals and tools matching those on the mainland, and other Korean practices like burying the dead under dolmens (one large stone set horizontally on two vertical ones, like Stonehenge’s trilithons) came with it.
Coming back to where this post started, one of the main impetuses for ancient Israel and Judah’s Axial Age (to be precise, Amos was from Judah but prophesied in Israel) was the Assyrian Empire: assertion of ethics over power, of the rule of a God who valued justice and morality, came in the face of temporal imperial power on a scale the world had not previously seen. Indeed, Assyria has been termed the world's first empire.
From the 740s BC to the end of the century, Assyria conquered westward as far as the Mediterranean; northward to strike a serious blow against Urartu, sacking its religious centre of Musasir; and southeast to conquer Babylon (a hold that remained tenuous and contested by frequent Babylonian rebellions). Unlike in the 800s BC, when they had mainly sought loot and tribute, this time the Assyrians incorporated conquered regions into their empire: as puppet states if they submitted, as provinces if they resisted or rebelled. The Phoenician city of Sidon was conquered, and Tyre made a protectorate, and heavy taxes imposed.
The consequences of Assyrian conquest elsewhere went far beyond taxation. The Assyrians engaged in systematic ethnic cleansing, most famously in their deportation of virtually the entire population of the northern kingdom of Israel following its conquest in 722-721 BC. Many other groups faced a similar fate: one estimate, based on Assyrian royal inscriptions boasting of deportations, has the Assyrians deporting 4.5 million people during the period from the 800s to 600s BC. For Assyria, this served two ends. First, detaching conquered people from their land and culture by moving them either to the heartland or to different border areas minimized their capacity to rebel. Second, it gave Assyria a captive labour force for agriculture and for the construction of royal palaces, temples, and monuments; and Assyria was in need of civilian labour due to the large share of their population conscripted into the military. Some members of deported populations were also conscripted into special military units, particularly if they had desirable skills. The lands of a deported people might be left empty, or - if they were had valuable resources or trade connections - might be resettled by Assyrians from the heartland or other areas of the empire.
Other states surrounding Assyria, none equaling it in power but all fighting with it at some points, included Phrygia in central Anatolia, Elam in western Iran, and Egypt.
In the latter half of the 700s BC, Egypt – at that time ruled by Libyans – was conquered by the state of Napata in Sudan, successor of the middle bronze age Kerma kingdom. The Napatans followed Egyptian religion and regarded this as a liberation of Egypt from Libyan control and a restoration of Egypt's religion and culture. They allied first with the priesthood of Amun in Thebes (Luxor) to conquer Upper Egypt (the southern part), and then under a later king extended their conquest to the northern part around Memphis (Cairo). In the Bible, when King Hezekiah of Judah made an alliance with Egypt against Assyria, it was the Napatans he was allying with.
This had fateful consequences for both Judah and Egypt - Judah more immediately. Sennacherib of Assyria invaded and captured every walled city in Judah except for Jerusalem, and then laid siege to Jerusalem; the siege and capture of one city, Lachish, is detailed in an Assyrian bas-relief at their palace in Nineveh. However, Sennacherib departed without capturing Jerusalem. The Bible attributes this to divine intervention; most historians attribute it to Hezekiah paying Sennacherib a large amount of tribute (an action which is also stated in the Bible), and Sennacherib deciding that, with authority restored and the the rebellion crushed, a further siege was not necessary. Assyria's military campaigns over the next few years were reduced in extent, so it's not impossible that things went less well than Sennacherib claimed.
I recognize there's been a lot of Bible stuff in this post; the collision of archaeologically-documented events, Biblical accounts, and some major religious changes all in the same area were interesting to me.
2087
jacobvanloon
dededos
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