[1]A. N. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York, 1933), pp. 13, 14.
[2]O. Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (MÜnchen, 1920).
[3]“Der Aufbau der europÄischen Kulturgeschichte,” in Schmoller’s Jahrbuch fÜr Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reiche, XLIV (1920), 633 ff.
[4]O. Spengler, op. cit., I, 153.
[5]O. Spengler, op. cit., I, 29.
[6]Spengler’s position is invalidated in his own terms by Bergson’s criticism of a deterministic view of life in nature.
[7]O. Spengler, ibid. Leopold von Ranke has expressed a similar idea in the splendid and simple phrase, “Alle Epochen sind unmittelbar zu Gott.”
[8]History, II, 35.
[9]O. Spengler, op. cit., I, 15. Incidentally, this quotation illustrates the very point at issue by emphasizing the almost insuperable difficulty of formulating an alien mode of thought. In transposing the words of a German contemporary I have been obliged to blur his thoughts and lose shades of meaning at almost every step: Seele, eminent historisch veranlagt, urweltliche Leidenschaft, Sorge, derive their overtones and deepest meaning from a world of thought which includes, at the very least, German literature of the romantic period; these terms, therefore, hardly bear translating. It is obvious that the disparity of terms and concepts is immeasurably greater where an ancient civilization is concerned.
[10]See my Ancient Egyptian Religion, New York, 1948, and Kingship and the Gods, Chicago, 1948.
[11]O. Spengler, op. cit., I, 224 f.
[12]Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture (New York, 1934), 23-4.
[13]Ibid., 250.
[14]Ibid., 46.
[15]Ibid., 254.
[16]Horizon, Vol. XV, No. 85 (London, January 1947), 25-6.
[17]A Study of History, I, 176.
[18]Op. cit., I, 193.
[19]Op. cit., IV, 130.
[20]R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford, 1946), 328-30, especially 328-9. The whole section should be read, since our quotations give but an inadequate impression of its cogency.
[21]R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford, 1946), 328-30, especially 328-9. “There is only one genuine meaning for this question. If thought in its first phase, after solving the initial problems of that phase, is then, through solving these, brought up against others which defeat it; and if the second solves these further problems without losing its hold on the solution of the first, so that there is gain without any corresponding loss, then there is progress. And there can be progress on no other terms. If there is any loss, the problem of setting loss against gain is insoluble.”
[22]A Study of History, III, 216.
[23]Op. cit., I, 159.
[24]Op. cit., III, 381.
[25]Ibid. et passim.
[26]Op. cit., I, 172-3. Edgar Wind, “Some Points of Contact Between History and Natural Science,” in Philosophy and History, Essays Presented to Ernst Cassirer (Oxford, 1936), 255-64, shows that the latest developments of science, which make it so much less “exact,” lead to the raising of questions by scientists “that historians like to look upon as their own.” But if these latest developments have made science more “humanistic,” Wind is over-optimistic when he says that “the notion of a description of nature which indiscriminately subjects men and their fates like rocks and stones to its ‘unalterable law’ survives only as a nightmare of certain historians.” For many of them (not to mention sociologists) it seems still to be a cherished ideal.
[27]A Study of History, e.g., I, 143.
[28]Op. cit., V, 28.
[29]These texts have been discussed by Kurt Sethe, Amun und die acht UrgÖtter von Hermopolis. “Abhandlungen der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Klasse,” No. 4. Berlin, 1929.
[30]A Study of History, I, 137. It is, perhaps, not unnecessary to add that Toynbee’s scheme would be no more relevant to Egyptian history if he shifted the date of his “time of troubles” to the second or even the first millennium B.C. The error is one of method, not of chronology.
[31]Op. cit., III, 377.[85]After T. Jacobsen in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, V (1946), 140.
[86]We cannot say for certain whether its bearers were the Sumerians who created the earliest civilization of Mesopotamia in the subsequent—the Protoliterate—period. But no decisive proof for a later arrival of the Sumerians has been offered, and the continuity in cult and architecture support the view that they were the dominant element in the Al Ubaid period, as they remained throughout the third millennium in the south of the country. See also p. 51, n. 1 below. [87]The earliest tablets, of the Protoliterate period, seem to be written in Sumerian. They use the Sumerian sexagesimal system (with units for 10, 60, 600, and 3600) and refer to Sumerian gods like Enlil. But Sumerian has no clearly recognized affinity to other tongues.
It is important to realize that the term “Sumerian,” strictly speaking, can be used only for this language. There is no physical type which can be called by that name. From Al Ubaid times until the present day, the population of Mesopotamia has consisted of men predominantly belonging to the Mediterranean or Brown race, with a noticeable admixture of broad-headed mountaineers from the north-east. This is, for instance, true of the Early Dynastic period, as the skulls from Al Ubaid and Kish show. Skeletons of the earliest known inhabitants of the plain, found at Eridu and Hassuna, have been briefly discussed by C. S. Coon in Sumer, V (1949), 103-6; VI (1950), 93-6. They represent “rather heavy-boned prognathous and large-toothed mediterraneans.” The much-discussed problem of the origin of the Sumerians may well turn out to be the chase of a chimera.
[88]A. J. Wilson in Geographical Journal, LIV (London, 1925), 235 ff.
[89]W. K. Loftus, Travels and Researches in Chaldaea and Susiana (London, 1857), 7-8. On 17 May 1950 the correspondent of The Times reported from Baghdad that “after a break in the Tigris bund ... about 2000 mud houses have already collapsed.”
[90]“Tell Uqair,” by Seton Lloyd and Fuad Safar, in Journal of Near Eastern Studies, II (1943), 131-58.
[91]It is sometimes said that the Sumerians, descending from a mountainous region, desired to continue the worship of their gods on “High Places” and therefore proceeded to construct them in the plain. The point is why they considered “High Places” appropriate, especially since the gods worshipped there were not sky gods only but also, and predominantly, chthonic gods. Our interpretation takes its starting-point from “the mountain,” not as a geographical feature, but as a phenomenon charged with religious meaning. Several current theories have taken one or more aspects of “the mountain” as a religious symbol into account and we do not exclude them, but consider them, on the whole, subsidiary to the primary notion that “the mountain” was seen as the normal setting of divine activity.—The whole material referring to the temple towers, and the various interpretations which have been put forward, are conveniently presented in AndrÉ Parrot, Ziggurats et Tour de Babel (Paris, 1949).
[92]The basic work on the subject of early Mesopotamian writing is Adam Falkenstein, Archaische Texte aus Uruk (Leipzig, 1936).
[93]A few words may be added here about the early development of writing; although true pictograms—images of the objects (Fig. 13)—occur, many of the most common objects are rendered by simpler tokens: either highly abbreviated (and hence conventional) pictures, such as a figure with two curved lines across one end (No. 4), which represented the horned head of an ox (the sign means “ox”), or, more often, purely arbitrary signs, such as a circle with a cross—the commonest sign of all—meaning “sheep.” The system, therefore, is a collection of abstract tokens eked out with pictograms. The range of notions which could be expressed was enlarged by certain combinations. The sign for “woman” combined with that for “mountain” meant “slave-girl,” since slaves were foreigners generally brought from Persia. The sign for “sun” could also mean “day” or “white.” That for “plough” could mean either the tool or its user, the ploughman. Even so the script was of limited usefulness. It could not render sentences, for it could not indicate grammatical relations. Its signs were ideograms which listed notions; and that was what the script was, first of all, required to do. But even within the Protoliterate period a further step was taken towards writing as the graphic rendering of language. We find that the arrow sign, for instance, was soon regarded, not as a rendering of the notion “arrow,” but as a rendering of the sound “ti,” which means arrow. For the arrow sign was also used to render the notion “life” which likewise sounded “ti.” This shows that the rendering of speech rather than notions had become possible. The development of writing consisted of a series of makeshifts and compromises introduced piecemeal when the shortcomings of the system being used became noticeable. Some signs acquired a variety of sound values. Some were used to clarify the sense of other groups, although they themselves were not pronounced at all. (These are called determinatives.) Thus “ti” when it meant “arrow” (and certain other implements) was accompanied by a sign which by itself read “gish” and meant “wood,” but which, used as a determinative, merely indicated that an implement of wood was referred to. Similarly, place-names were accompanied by the sign “ki,” meaning “earth,” divine names by the star sign, and so on. Nevertheless, the fact that phonetic values became attached to most of the signs made the rendering of grammatical endings, and, in short, of true speech, possible. [94]From Protoliterate times onwards, officials, and later also private persons, owned seals with which they could mark merchandise or documents. The shape of these seals was peculiar and remained characteristic for Mesopotamia until the end of its independent existence in Hellenistic times. They were small stone cylinders carrying on their circumference an engraved design which could be impressed on a tablet or on the clay sealing of a jar or bale of goods. Since the purpose of the seal design was the making of an individual and recognizable impression, its engraving at all times challenged the inventiveness of the Mesopotamian artists, who responded with outstanding success. (In our illustrations the rolled-out impressions, not the seals themselves, are shown. But see Figs. 35-9.) [95]The inlays consisted of terra cotta plaques set in among the clay co
the second register donkeys are brought to carry the harvest home. The register below shows various incidents in the transport; the bottom register shows how the sheaves are stacked.
[154]Fig. 30, a wall painting from the New Kingdom, is best “read” from the bottom upwards. At the left bottom corner teams of oxen draw ploughs, while sowers, holding a bag with seeds, sprinkle the grain with uplifted hands. Farther to the right men are shown breaking the ground with hoes. Behind the three of them shown on the right we see a girl drawing a thorn out of the foot of her friend. The second register from below shows the grain being cut—one of the labourers takes a swig from a water jar handed him by a girl who stands in front, a basket hanging from her shoulder. Farther to the right the grain is carried away in hampers (underneath one of these, two girl gleaners are fighting and tearing each other’s hair); and, on the far right, it is forked out in readiness for threshing. The threshing is done by bullocks who trample the grain—this is shown at the extreme right of the third register from below. To the left women winnow the grain, their hair wrapped in white cloth against the dust. The tomb owner watches in a kiosk and receives two water jars. Behind the kiosk squat the scribes who note the yield of the harvest while the grain is shovelled into heaps.
The upper register shows the deceased in his function as “Scribe of the fields of the Lord of the Two Lands.” On the left are shown a group of his officials, dressed in white, pencase in hand, busy measuring the grain on the stalk; their attendants (with bare bodies) hold the measuring cord. A peasant (followed by his wife who carries a basket on her head with further gifts) offers something to the tax officials, to propitiate them. But on the right, before the kiosk of the tomb owner and near the mooring-place of the boat which brought his subordinates to the scene, a peasant, who apparently defaulted, is beaten, while another kneels and prays for grace.
[155]“The Eloquent Peasant” is a tale of such an appeal. See Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, IX (1923), 7 ff., and a short discussion in my Ancient Egyptian Religion, 46, 146-50. For the conception of maat, ibid., 49-58.
[156]For a detailed discussion of the building of the pyramids, see I. E. S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt, Pelican Books, chapter vii.
[157]T. Eric Peet and C. Leonard Woolley, The City of Akhenaten, Part I (38th Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Society), London, 1923.
[158]Gardiner in Zeitschrift fÜr Aegyptische Sprache, XLIII (1906), 43.
[159]Max Weber, Gesammelte AufsÄtze zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (TÜbingen, 1924), 24.
[160]Junker, Giza, V (Wien, 1941).
[161]Op. cit., 52 ff.
[162]Junker, Giza, IV (Wien, 1940).
[163]After Griffith, Deir el Gebrawi, II, 30.
[164]Gardiner, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, XXVII (1941), 22.
[165]After Kees, Kulturgeschichte, 40.
[166]Ibid., 41.
[167]Gardiner, Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, XXXVII (1915), 117; XXXIX (1917), 133.
[168]F. M. Powicke, The Reformation in England (Oxford, 1941), 31.
[169]This subject has been studied in the works named on p. 124, n. 5. Since the last of these was published during the war and is hardly known abroad, we have included in this Appendix more matter dealt with on a previous occasion than would otherwise have been justifiable. [170]Phrased differently, one might say that we had, without justification, used the expansion of the Indo-European and Arabic-speaking peoples as an analogy for the changes observed in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
[171]Frankfort, Cylinder Seals (London, 1939), 293.
[172]The reader unacquainted with these cylinders may identify the figures as follows. In Fig. 37 he will see some hieroglyphs which appear, reversed, at the extreme left in the impression of Fig. 38. To the right of them one sees the offering table with two crescents representing loaves of bread; over these a man extends his hand. He is seated on a bed with legs ending in bull’s or lion’s feet (such beds have been found in the graves at Abydos). His long hair is rendered in a crosshatched mass. In Fig. 39 is a similar figure, facing to the right. His hair is rendered with a straight line. [173]In order not to overload this Appendix with footnotes, we shall refer only to the most important monuments. These are conveniently collected in J. Capart, Primitive Art in Egypt, London, 1905. Detailed discussions with references will be found there and in the following three works: H. Frankfort, Studies in Early Pottery of the Near East, I (London, 1924), 117-42; A. Scharif, “Neues zur Frage der Ältesten Aegyptisch-Babylonischen Kulturbeziehungen” in Zeitschrift fÜr Aegyptische Sprache, LXXI (1935), 89-106; H. Frankfort, “The Origin of Monumental Architecture in Egypt” in American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures, LVIII (1941), 329-58. In this last article, I have formulated disagreement with certain ideas propounded by Scharff, espec