Chapter One
Preface: HUMANISM
To put it simply, Humanists have faith in humankind, and place human rights above that of ruling powers such as government and religion. The first great humanists were Socrates and the mythical Prometheus. More
Socrates (c.470 BC—399) is the only philosopher who admitted that he knew nothing. He asked questions rather than make proclamations. More
Prometheus and Epimetheus were given the task of creating man. Prometheus
shaped man out of mud, and Athena breathed life into his clay figure.
Prometheus had assigned Epimetheus the task of giving the creatures of the earth their various qualities, such as swiftness, cunning, strength, fur, wings. Unfortunately, by the time he got to man Epimetheus had given all the good qualities out and there were none left for man. So Prometheus decided to make man stand upright as the gods did. More
Prometheus stole fire from the gods and brought it to earth for his beloved Humans. For this, he was punished by Zeus.
Other great Humanists include Jesus, who challenged established rules of religion and the state; Martin Luther, who defied the Catholic Church; Galileo, who invented the telescope despite Church laws; Mark Twain, who suggested that slaves were human beings; Voltaire, who mocked the stupidity of government propaganda; Thomas Paine, who defied the British; John Lennon, who thought we should imagine a better world; and so many others.
Chapter One:
Prehistory and Near Eastern Civilizations
Although
science and religion often see things differently, one thing is reasonably
certain: the first vestiges of human life appeared in north-eastern Africa, in
the land known today as
Evidence of Hominids exist from the Paleolithic period, known as the Ice Age, about two million years ago. The most important development as these creatures evolved into Homo Sapiens was the use of tools . . .
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick presents his view of primitive man.
The tribe has been driven away from its waterhole by another, stronger tribe. They are now hungry and thirsty and need to find a way to get food and retain their water hole.
Necessity drove early man to use tools, but art was an inherent part of his nature.
For much of the art analysis in this class, I am indebted to the remarkable Sister Wendy Beckett. Her lectures used here are from tapes in the school’s humanities library.
Some images
from the caves at
Another
cave in
Prehistoric
man often used his own handprint as a design, as in this print from
This
tracing of hands was common, even among the Anasazi People, native
Americans whose pueblo villages I saw in
Other
prehistoric artworks have been discovered.
This miniature head (3.5 cm, (1.5 inches) was carved from ivory. Found
at Brassempouy, near
The Venus of Willendorf is one of numerous similarly shaped, uniquely feminine, statuettes dating to the Upper Paleolithic Period (circa 20 000 to 30 000 BC)
A statement of beauty, obesity, or fertility?
The Venus of Dolni Vestonice, a Czech town, poses the same question.
Later
development showed work with bone and ivory, such as “Bison Licking an Insect Bite,”engraved on a fragment of a spear-thrower made of
reindeer antler La Madeleine,
The Coldstream Stone, found
buried with a human skeleton
An eland with closely associated anthropomorphic figures, its head turned toward the viewer with staring hollow eyes,in its final death throes.
These three
human-animal figures suggest a close association between the dying eland and
the ecstatic experience of dancers, who
enter an altered state of consciousness in which they stumble about, sweat
profusely, and the hair on their bodies stands on end. The site is often
referred to as the Rosetta Stone of southern African
rock art.
This ecstatic physical experience is an important part of ritual in primitive peoples and will become extremely important as we consider other cultures.
As the Hominids developed into Homo Sapiens, and the glaciers of the ice age withdrew, leaving fertile soil behind, the world entered the Neolithic Age (about 8000 B.C.E.), and Man developed agrarian skills, as well as the metals needed to make more sophisticated tools.
Cities developed along the Fertile Crescent,
9000-4500 BCE, called
The three
main cities of
The Sumerians created the first written language, picture writing called CUNEIFORM.
The Epic of Gilgamesh, you might say, is outdated. After all, it was written about 1600 BCE about a king who ruled about 2700 BCE. Well, consider some of the ways in which Gilgamesh appears today: a novel by Robert Silverberg, a choral piece by Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů, an opera by Serbian composer Rudolf Brucci, a play by Jonathan Bayliss, a film by Roger Christian, numerous translations including Klingon, an anime show, numerous comic books, rock bands in three countries, a song by Tourniquet, an episode in Star Trek the Next Generation, numerous video games, and the character Gil Gamesh as a Babylonian pitcher who kills an umpire in a novel by Phil Roth.
The Story of Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh is a tyrannical king of Uruk, city of the
goddess Ishtar. To control his abuses, the gods create Enkidu,
a powerful wild man of the forest. Enkidu is
civilized by a priestess of Ishtar and led to the city where he challenges
Gilgamesh. They fight, but embrace each other as friends when they recognize
their equal strengths. Together they venture out to kill the monster Humbaba, who is guardian of the sacred
"Gilgamesh" is an answer to the Crossword puzzle clue "Enkidu's Friend". The question was answered by John Locke In the Hit Drama Lost episode "Collision", in which John Locke and Mr. Eko first meet, alluding to the parallels in the nature of the two characters.
Among the Sumerian gods and demons is a demon of Hebrew mythology, Lilith. More
You are
bound and sealed,
all you demons and devils and liliths,
by that hard and strong,
mighty and powerful bond with which are tied Sison and Sisin....
The evil Lilith,
who causes the hearts of men to go astray
and appears in the dream of the night
and in the vision of the day,
Who burns and casts down with nightmare,
attacks and kills children,
boys and girls.
She is conquered and sealed
away from the house . . .
Central to
the architecture of all Sumerian cities was the Ziggurat, center of
worship. As it often had towers, it may
well have been the source of the
Sargon and his Akkadians come from the north to depose the Sumerian court and begin the Akkadian empire named after him.
The son of a priestess, Sargon is said to have recorded the following inscription on a cuneiform tablet: “My priestly mother conceived me; secretly brought me to birth; set me in an ark of bulrushes; made fast my door with pitch. She consigned me to the river, which did not overwhelm me. The river brought me to Akki, the farmer, who brought me up to be his son ..... During my gardening, the goddess Ishtar loved me, and for fifty-four years the kingship was mine.”
Sargon, had a daughter who was famous in her own right.
En-hedu-Ana is a title and means "The High Priestess [named] Ornament of the Sky”. Her three existing poems present her as the first feminist author, stressing the equality of woman among man and gods.
EnheduAna in her rolled brim cap and wearing the flounced gown of divinity, is overseeing the pouring of a ritual libation onto a plant stand by a priest, while two priestesses stand behind her, to the right.
Hammurabi
was the ruler who chiefly established the greatness of
The Hammurabi code is the earliest-known example of a ruler proclaiming publicly an entire body of laws, arranged in orderly groups, so that all men might read and know what was required of them. The code was carved upon a black stone monument, eight feet high, and clearly intended to be reared in public view. It begins and ends with addresses to the gods. Even a law code was in those days regarded as a subject for prayer, though the prayers here are chiefly cursings of whoever shall neglect or destroy the law.
The code
then regulates the organization of society. The judge who blunders in a law
case is to be expelled from his judgeship forever, and heavily fined. The
witness who testifies falsely is to be slain. Indeed, all the heavier crimes
are made punishable with death. If a man builds a house badly, and it falls and
kills the owner, the builder is to be slain. If the owner's son was killed,
then the builder's son is slain. We can see where the Hebrews learned their law
of "an eye for an eye." These grim retaliatory punishments take no
note of excuses or explanations, but only of the fact--with one striking
exception. An accused person was allowed to cast himself into "the
river," the
The Civilization of the
“
There is really no place in a Theocracy for Humanism to flourish, as anyone who offended Pharaoh, thought to be the living god, was likely to be killed, so artists took no chances and created flat, idealized images.
Amonhotep III
Humanism
was allowed to flourish, briefly, under Amenhotep IV,
also known as Akhenaten (1352-1336 BC
), who established a new religion in
Akhenaten worshipped Aten, god of the Sun.
Akhenaton shows a whole new attitude to his court . . .
Artists now portrayed people realistically, harshly even, as in this portrait of the pharoah.
Art during Akhenaten‘s reign was real, stressing family life over politics and military achievements.
His wife, Nefertiti, was considered one of the most beautiful women of all time, but even as she grew older, was depicted realistically by artists.
As you can see, much of today’s religious customs are related to Egyptian models. The Egyptians ended their prayers with a reference to the god of the sun, Amen. Pharaohs were said to be the “son of the living god, Osiris, who was murdered, spent a night in the underworld, and was resurrected.
Akhenaton’s
new religion of peace, kindness, and humility flourished only shortly, as he
was soon resented by priests of the old gods who had been displaced by the
Aton. They welcomed the threats to
. . .
. . . Akhenaton is a pacifist who refuses to go to war, believing that killing is a sin against the Aton.
Seeing Akhenaton as a weakling who refuses to fight, his enemies grew bolder and began to destroy the temples and worshippers of the sun god.
. . . The temples of Aton are destroyed and the people slaughtered by the priests of the old religion . . .
. . . Akhenaten, frustrated, seeks and end to his life . . .
. . . as he requested, Akhenaten is poisoned . . .
. . . with a new
. . . Sinuhe, the physician has taken a stand for the monotheistic principles of the Pharaoh and has been arrested . . .
. . . alone in exile, Sinuhe finishes his autobiographical manuscript . . .
There are many unanswered questions about Akhenaten.
Could he be the pharoah whom Joseph helped with his dreams?
Could his philosophy have been the source of Hebrew monotheism?
Was Nubian Gold and Egyptian craftsmanship the source of the ark of the covenant?
And most interesting of all . . .
Was his son, Tutankhamen, actually Jesus Christ, as a number of Egyptian scholars have conjectured?
Next week, you’ll have to read selections from The Illiad and The Odyssey by Homer.
Our Webpage Odyssey Notes Homer Notes