World History I
Start Date: 01/13/2026
Week I:
Dating
● BC- Before Christ; AD- Anno Domino; BCE- Before common era;
CE-Common Era
● The last number of a century is the only one that actually matches
the number of the century. EX: The 20th century ended in 2000.
● How many centuries have you lived in? One
● History- That which happens after the invention of writing.
Human Evolution
● Homo Habilis: appears c. 2.5 million years ago
● Homo erectus: appears c. 1.5 million years ago
● Homo sapiens: appears c. 250,000 years ago
● Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis: fl. C. 200,000- 30,000 years ago.
● Homo Sapiens Sapiens: 200,000- 150,000 years ago. Coincides
roughly with the arrival of the ice age.
● Cave paintings found at Lascaux, France, ca. 14,000 BC.
Thousands of years before the invention of writing.
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● No one would have lived in the caves and light is low. Possibly
religious in nature. Ex: Sympathetic magic.
● Also engaged in carving. Ex: The “Venus of Willendorf” ca.
24,000-22,000 BC. Presumed to be religious and for fertility.
● Another example is The “Venus of Renancourt” c. 21,000 BC
Four Early River Valley Civilizations
● Nile (Ancient Egypt)
● TIgris-Euphrates (Ancient Mesopotamia and Babylonia)
● Indus-Ganges (Harappan and Vedic Civilization)
● Yellow River (Shang)
The Near East and Eastern Mediterranean
● After the last ice age farming is invented in the Ancient near east as
game moved north to cooler climates.
● Permanent settlement began to happen Ex: The “Agricultural
Revolution” Gobelki Tepe
● Sedentary Agriculture brought trade, warfare, and
● Catal Huyuk: May have had 6000 people as early as 6000 BC.
● Two arguments for a city Populations and Monumental Public
Works
The Agricultural Revolution
● Emergence of specialization Ex: Pottery, Weaving, etc…
● Materials necessary for tools and weapons began to be traded over
large areas. Ex: Obsidian
● Sometimes after 4500 BC copper is smelted.
● Sometime between 4500, and 3000 Bronze is smelted by
combining copper and tin.
Bronze Age Mesopotamia
● Civis=citizen
● Civitas=City, community, state
● Civilization
● Sumer
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● Bronze Age ca. 3200- 1200 BC
● Mesopotamia- The land between two rivers; the Tigris to the NE,
and Euphrates to the SW.
● Lagash, Uruk, Ur,
● Cuneiform (Syllabic Pictographic) Sumer invented writing around
3200 BC.
● Flood myths abound throughout the world. Believed by many to be
localized to Mesopotamia.
● No central govt in sumer for around 900 years, mostly independent
city states
● Abraham comes from Ur.
● Creation of large utilitarian public works such as churches (Teeter
claims they’re not necessary I disagree).
Bronze Age Sumer
● Wheeled transport was invented, not used anywhere else until 1000
years later. Pyramids were built without wheels
● Lunar Calendar- 12 lunar months = a year. Needed an extra month
every so often due to being 11 days short.
● Anthropomorphic Deities: Deities which are human but can change
and shift. Such as changing from a human into a bull
● Ziggurat: Big terraced platforms with a shrine for a god at the top.
Some people suggest these are the inspiration for the tower of
Babel.
Bronze Age Mesopotamia
● Sargon the Akkadian, about 900 years after the founding of Sumer,
conquered south sumer to the persian gulf.
● 2371-2316 BC
● Akkadian - Semitic language group
● Sargon is said to have been placed in a reed basket as a baby in
order to save his life.
● Amorites (Ammuru): Built city on the east bank of mesopotamia.
Also a semitic people.
● Babylon
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● Hammurabi- 1792-1750 BC
● Code of Hammurabi: a code of hundreds of laws; first known
written law code.
● Akkadian began to replace sumerian and akkadian tablets were
found using Cuneiform.
● The Stele of Hammurabi, 18th c. BC.
Bronze Age Babylon
● Code of Hammurabi
○ No equality before the law
○ “Let the buyer beware” caveat emptor
○ “An eye for an eye” lex talionis
● Epic of gilgamesh
● Mathematics: Duodecimal
● Babylon sacked by Hittites 1595 BC
Week II: Bronze Age Egypt And the Hittites
● Lower Egypt is in the north while upper Egypt is in the south.
● The nile flows north
● “Egypt is the gift of the Nile”
● Almost all the population is concentrated on the banks of the Nile
● Easily isolated with oceans, and desert, and the sinai peninsula not
providing easy access to the land.
● Egyptian civilization was remarkably constant for around 3000
years.
● There really aren’t any egyptian histories, just a framework
● Manetho was an egyptian priest of the 3rd century BC. Which is
long after Egyptian history. He sets a framework for around 30
dynasties.
○ Early Dynastic Period: Dynasties 1-3
○ Old Kingdom Dynasties: dynasties 4-8
○ !st Intermiediate period: Dynasties 9-11
○ Middle Kingdom: dynasties 12-13
○ 2nd Intermediate Period: dynasties 14-17
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○ New Kingdom: dynasties 18-20
○ Post Empire:
● Papyrus was a plant which could be laid crosswise beaten and then
used as paper.
● If kept dry it could be preserved hundred of thousands of years.
● It was used all the way into the middle ages.
● Writing itself first appeared in Egypt around 3000 BC. Possibly
inspired by Sumer.
● Three ways of writing for the egyptian language
○ Hieroglyphics: Priestly writing; combo of pictograms syllabic
symbols and alphabetic
○ Hieratic: cursive version of hieroglyphics
○ Coptic: Language of the pharaohs in alphabetic form;
language of the Egyptian Church for Egyptian Christians; 90
percent of Egypt is muslim but 10 percent is christian, the
largest in the middle east.
● Ability to read Hieroglyphics recovered due to the Rosetta Stone. It
had a Greek translation on the bottom.
Upper and lower Egypt
● Supposedly a king of upper egypt conquered the lower egypt,
depicted in the Narmer palette.
● Combined the crowns of upper and lower Egypt
● The temple of ISis at Philae 4th century B.C. he still wears the same
crown
Dynasty 4
● The old kingdom
● Age of the Pyramids
● Large giant tombs
● The king of Egypt was considered a god. Said to rule by the
principle of Ma’at.
● Ma’at was the concept of justice or right.
● Religion and the state in ancient egypt was one. Theocracy
● Step pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara.
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● Every king in the old kingdom constructed step pyramids
● Dynasty four created the pyramids we know now.
● The old kingdom does eventually collapse, possibly due to the
expense of pyramids, but also due to internal strifes.
Intermediate period 1
● Each dynasty was essentially a different family trying to take over
Middle Kingdom
● The god king of the old kingdom was now a shepherd of the people.
● Middle kingdom sometimes considered egypts classical age
● The delta eventually was conquered by the Hyksos, aka the sea
people those bastards. Someetimes thought to be amorites
● Introduced the chariot to Egypt
New Kingdom
● Driven out by the founder of the 18th Dynasty
● Egypt took a path of empirical expansion.
● Isis, Osiris, and Horus
● Osiris was a king of Egypt who taught the people things, he was
killed by his brother Set. To make sure he's dead he cuts his body to
pieces and scatters it across the Nile. Isis finds pieces and finds
the piece which helps conceive their son Horus. She puts him
together and resurrects him.
● The dying and rising of Osiris could represent the rising and falling
tides of the nile.
Egyptian Achievements
● Gave us the solar calendar. Noticed the sun rises aligned with the
star Sirius once every 365 days. So used it to base their year.
● Mathematics they discovered pie, and 360 degrees around a circle.
The late Bronze Age 1600-1200: The Hittite Empire
● The Hitties (khati)
○ Indo-European
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○ English: Father
○ German: Vater
○ Latin, Greek: Pater
○ Sanskrit: Pitar
● Hittite empire rivaled egypt in the late bronze age
● Hittite Empire is the Oldest known Indo- European civilization
● There’s nothing particularly well known about the Hittites
● Used Cuneiform for writing
● We have letters between Egyptian pharaohs and Hittite kings.
● Their empire vanished only to be discovered in the last century
● They had a religious symbol of a a double headed eagle
Hatshepsute
● Wife and half sister of one Pharoah
● Upon his death his power should’ve been to his son but she seized
power.
● She proclaimed herself not queen but king
● She used masculine pronouns in her inscriptions
● Reigned 1504-1482 BC
● She was a pretty great ruler, however, after her death her stepson
had her erased.
Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV)
● More has been written of him than any other Egyptian ruler
● Akhenaten espoused a god Aten who was in the disk of the sun.
Said he was the only god.
● Monotheism- belief in only one god period.
● He builds a capital city and names is Akhetaton, now known as
Amarna
● Some argue he did this for secular motives, however, he had an
intense devotion to his god.
● Akhenaten was depicted as deliberately (probably) realistic.
● He was buried at Amarna, with a hymn to Aten.
● Succeeded by Tutukamen, who undid all Akhenaten did.
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End of the Bronze Age
● Ends with a series of upheavals throughout the middle east,
knocking out the Egyptians and destroying the Hittite empire.
○ 1177 a recommended book on the bronze age collapse
● Also a series of invitations by the “sea peoples” which aided in the
bronze age collapse.
● We know nothing about the sea peoples, we know they’re more
than one people. Thats about it
● Around 1232, there is an assault on the Egyptian delta by the sea
peoples which a pharaoh repulses.
● 1190 Ramses III claimed to defeat another attack of the sea
peoples.
● He captures one
● Their known as the Peleset
● He settles them on a region of the coast and it becomes Palestine
● In the Bible they are known as the Philistines.
● Arameans begin to settle the destroyed regions, speaking aramaic,
which is a semitic language that would become the common
language of the ancient Near East.
The Assyrian Empire and later
● Biggest Empire we've seen yet
● Is a big enemy of Israel
● Takes its name from the city Ashur in the upper tigris euphrates
valley.
● The capital was Ninevah
● Assyria had almost annual campaigns to collect tribute
● These guys were straight up EVIL
● Assyrian rulers were fond of sculptures and lion hunting.
● Whenever a ruler died subjects would revolt commonly then need to
be reconquered
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● Tiglath-Pileser III 744-726 BC, Great General and Administrator who
stole the throne, created near east's first tightly ran empire.
● Would forcefully move entire populations, to create control
Ancient Palestine
● TP takes over israel and judah as vassal states.
● Then tp dies in 746, and Palestine revolts
● Israel joins in and Judah does not, the revolt fails and is defeated.
● Northern kingdom israel is destroyed in 722: “The ten lost tribes of
Israel”
● Hezekiah then revolts against Syria, Jerusalem is besieged by
Sennacherib.
● The city is saved by an Angel of Death according to the Bible, in the
Greek tradition a horde of mice eats the Assyrian archers
bowstrings.
● Sennacherib was assassinated later
● For a bit of the 7th century Assyria had control of Egypt to
Mesopotamia
● A king of Judah Josiah marches to meet the Egyptians to keep
them from relieving the Assyrians. Battle of Megiddo 609 BC.
Armageddon traces back to this battle.
● Assyria collapses by 605 BC.
● Left behind no great literature, only left behind the blueprint for a
tightly organized empire.
After Assyria
● New babylonia
● Media
● Lydia
● egypt
Week III:
● Neo babylonia (chaldeans)- Most beneficiary of the fall of Assyria;
controlled mesopotamia, syria, palestine, and juda; semitic people;
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famous as astronomers; chaldean meant astronomer; birth of
astrology;
○ King Nebuchadnezzar- defeated judah, destroyed jerusalem,
and temple of solomon 586, reconstructed Babylon.
○ Ishtar Gate and Hanging Gardens
○ Wife was a Nubian Princess
○ Son and Grandson allowed Babylon to fall to Persia
● Media- The Medes, in Daniel the Laws of the Medes adn the
Persians. Indo-European speaking people; good relations with
Babylon;
● Lydia- used the fall of Assyria to head west; the Lydians; the Lydian
king marched to meet the Medes; then an eclipse happened that
made them stop. Conquered the Greeks
○ capital known as Sardis
○ King named Croesus
○ May 28 585 BC was the battle that was interrupted by the
eclipse
○ Invention of coinage 650 BC
● Egypt
● These powers ruled for about 60 or 70 years
The Persian Empire
● Persia comes from Persis
● Were vassals of the Medes by the 6th Centrury
Aechemenid Persia
● Media, Medes
● Cyrus 599-530 BC
● Conquest of Susa, Media, Lydia, and Babylon
● Lydia sent a messenger to see the oracle of apollo at Delphi, the
oracle said hed destroy a great empire if he fought the persians
● They fought, it was inconclusive, he dismissed his men as summer
was ending, then Cyrus attacked anyway.
● Conquers Babylon and releases the israelites and they rebuild the
temple of Solomon.
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● Tell his son Cambyses to govern one portion then Cyrus dies and he
becomes king
● Cambyses goes to conquer egypt
● Smerdis (Bardiya)- Cambyses younger brother, decided he should
be king, Cambyses executes him secretly and tells a story he was
imprisoned on the persian gulf for disloyalty.
● In susa adn persepolis the royal chamberlain has a younger brother
who looks like Smerdies, both Zoroastrians, Led a revolt while
Cambyses is in Egpyt
● Cambyses dies on the way back
● One day a harem girll notices false Smerdis ears are clipped and
tells her father who realizes the trickery
● Leads a revolt, heads of seven noble families debate what to do for
king, they ride off have their horse face east, then whoeveers horse
neighs first at sunrise gets to be king
● Darius 521-486 BC- winner of the horse contest; royal cousin;
○ THe Behistun inscription o fDarius I told teh same
succession story
○ Decides to go conquer Europe all around the black sea
○ It didn’t go well]
○ Cythians beat him back through scorched earth strategies
○ Did manage to add some of Greece and Bulgaria
○ Stretched from southeastern europe to india
● Satrap, Strappy (ies)- districts ruled by a persian governor
● Royal road- had horse stations to allow quick messaging; neither
rain nor snow nor might, may keep this servant from his appointed
grounds
● The Daric
● Persepolis, susa
● Zoroastronism- based on the teachings of zoroaster; he existed but
we dont know when he was; is a king of dualism,
● Magus, Magi
● Ahura Mazda, Ahriman
● USed aramaic as a common trade language
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Joseph
● Joseph is taken to egypt and predicts dreams of the pharoah
earning his family a spot, which then grew into twelve tribes
● A new pharaoh (Possibly after overthrowing the Hyksos) rose who
knew not the deeds of Joseph and saw the numerous Israelites and
then enslaved them and killed their firstborn to not have them rebel
The Exodus and Conquest of Palestine
● Moses- Egyptian name Mses similar to Ramses, means dedicated
to Ra. Possibly means dedicated to a god with no name. Hes never
called a prince in the Bible.
● Sinai Peninsula- Where Moses escaped to and worked as a
shepherd and got married. Ran into God in the form of a burning
bush.
● Mt. Sinai- Where Moses met God, God tells him to free his people
from Egypt. Moses asks what to call him and calls him “I Am Who I
Am”. God also said to tell them “The LORD the God of your Fathers,
The God of Abraham, The God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, etc…”
● Lord, YHWH (too sacred to say out loud), some say they think it's
pronounced Yahweh. Translators of the Septuagint translated it as
Kyrios which means Lord. Vulgate translation used Dominus which
means Lord. There's also the name Adonai. They put the vowels of
Adonai in to not accidentally Say Yhwh. Yahowah aka Jehova is
where that comes from.
● Semitic languages had no vowel
● Date of Exodus is about 1280-1270 BC but that's disputed
● Zero evidence outside of the Bible to corroborate the Exodus.
● One Pharoah did however, left an inscription behind about an
invasion north of Palestine, where he supposedly destroyed Israel.
Which is the earliest non biblical mention of Israel.
● Once Moses gets the ten commandments they’re placed in the Ark
of the Covenant.
From Exodus to Settlement
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● Joshua takes control, he’s instructed by God to wipe out and take
the land of the Philistines and Canaanites.
● philistines - indo european sea people who arrived soon after teh
Israelies.
● Canaan, Canaanites- Appear at first in Genesis 10 as one of the
sons of Haam kush, Egypt, kut, and Canaan. Moses said cursed be
Canaan to be a slave of slaves to his brothers.
● Baal, Astarte, Asherah- Fertility worship; Canaanite gods; Practiced
worship through temple prostitution, and child sacrifice.
● In the Book of Joshua, the invasion is shown as two military
campaigns to the north and South in quick conquest.
● Jericho- Canaanite city known for its large walls, and being brought
down by Israelites.
● Book of Judges- Israel is conquered, God sends a Judge, Israel is
freed, they turn from God, cycle is repeated. Israel multiple times
took gods from other people like Baal and Astarte.
Early Israelite Monarchy
● Samuel- the Last Judge who transitioned the tribes into a
monarchy; raised as a boy and dedicated to God from birth. Grows
to Judge all of Israel, he gets old, and his sons are wicked. The
people ask for a King. The people insist they want a king
● Saul 1020-1000 BC: Picked from the tribe of Benjamin. Led
Israelites into battle and wins. God tells him to wipe out everything
of their foes but Saul keeps their sheep and gold. So he sends an
evil spirit upon Saul to torment him. Drives him crazy.
● David 1000-960 BC: Comes from the tribe of Judah. David plays
harp for Saul and the music soothes Saul. David fights Goliath and
defeats him with a sling. With that victory David is taken into Sauls
circle as a General. David is friends with Saul's son Jonathan.
David's victories make Saul jealous and Jonathan tells him to run.
He becomes leader of a group of men and becomes a mercenary.
Philistines and Israelites fight davids not there saul and jonathan
die in the Batlle. David becomes king of Judah, then extends his
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rule over all Israel. The first Act is to make Jerusalem his capital,
and become the city of David. Then he leads the arc into the city
dancing and leaping for joy. Under David his kingdom becomes
more organized. Under David there’s expansion and reaches its
greatest physical extent going from Damascus to the Gulf of
Aqaba.
● Bathsheba: David commits adultery with her (possibly rape theres
definitely a power dynamic). Tries to trick her husband Uriah the
Hittite and then murders him. God is angered, and punishes him by
killing his firstborn from Bathsheba. Nathan the prophet breaks the
news to him. Bathsheba decided that if she bears another son it
should be king, that king is Solomon
● Solomon 960-921: Son of David, Wisest king in the history of the
world. Was given a choice by God to have wealth, power, and blank,
he asks for wisdom instead and God gives him all three. Wrote the
book of Ecclesiastes. Kept together the kingdom of Israel. Built the
Temple of God in Jerusalem. Solomon received help from Hieram
from the city of Tyr, a Pheonician city.
● Phoenicia: Never called Pheonicia in the Bible or by the
Phoenicians, but as Canaan and Canaanites. Worshiped Bail. One
of the great traders of the ancient world. Set up many colonies
along the mediterranean. May have even sailed down Africa or up
to Britain. One such colony grew to be Carthage. Responsible for
the invention of the alphabet around the 11th or 10th century, a
system of 22 symbols with no vowels. Every alphabetic system
today stems from Pheonicians alphabet.
● Tyre, Sidon, Biblos- Three Pheonician city states.
● Biblos- Transit point for Mediterranean trade, including lots of
papyrus from Egypt to Greece. A roll of papyrus began to be called
a Biblos because so much was shipped.
● Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines, which included not
israelite women who brought foreign Gods. Taxed heavily, and
worked people hard. After he dies Israel breaks into Isreal and
Judah.
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