Primary Sources for Chapter 2
Wanderers and Settlers: The Ancient Middle East to 400 B.C.
Study Guide | Art History | Links
Paleolithic Tools: Before writing only stone objects survive to tell human history.
Content Question: How does the page categorize the various kinds of tools?
Analysis Question: How are these tools a combination of both form and function?
Evaluative Question: What do these tools say about human creativity?
Code
of Hammurabi: Some of the earliest rules of civilization.
Content Question: What are the main kinds of problems that the laws deal with?
Analysis Question: How are such laws similar to the Ten Commandments or laws today?
Evaluative Questions: How do such laws reflect a more complex agricultural society? Does it depend on how one defines the details?
The full text may be found here.
Other Sources:
The Reign of Sargon of Akkad: A brief summary of the first great conqueror’s accomplishments.
Content Question: What are Sargon’s success and failures?
Analysis Question: How do some of his actions provoke counterreactions?
Evaluative Question: How do these events reflect the challenges of civilized life?
For more on Sargon, go to http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch03.htm.
The Rise and Fall of Practically All Middle Eastern Empires
Cyrus Cylinder: The recorded claims (with a picture) of Cyrus “the Great,” founding shah of the Persian Empire.
Content Question: For what specific deeds does Cyrus take credit?
Analysis Question: How does he place his actions in a religious context?
Evaluative Questions: How could some of these actions be interpreted as the “first declaration of human rights?” How does Cyrus compare and contrast with other rulers (e.g. Hammurabi, Julius Cæsar, Augustus, Charlemagne, William “the Conqueror,” Louis XIV, or Napoleon)?
A complete transliteration and translation of the Cyrus Cylinder can also be found here.
Other Sources:
K.C. Hanson's Collection of Ancient Documents: some interesting sources from Mesopotamia to Rome.
Akhenaten's Hymn to the Sun can be found here, with additional material on the pharaoh and his times.
The complete text of the Egyptian Book of the Dead (in a translation from 1895 by E. A. Wallis. Budge) can be found here or here or here or here.
A selection therefrom is the so-called “Negative Confession” where the soul of the dead person being judged for worthiness proclaims what the living person has not done in life. How is this different from the Ten Commandments?
Primary Source Project Links
Sources on Families
