Old Egypt

1) Are the similarities between early Egypt and Sumer so great that the two civilizations ought to be regarded as influencing each other? Why,  or Why not?

I'd say no, for it doesn't seem that Egypt and Sumer ever effected each other. I believe this was mainly because firstly Early Egypt was surrounded by desert and was isolated for the oust part along with Egypt and Sumer being separated by the Medateranian Sea. They were both very different from each other, so they would probably not have understood the other's culture. For instance, Egypt's culture completely revolved around the Nile.

3) How does the architecture of Egypt and Sumer reflect the worldviews of the two early civilizations?

For Egypt, the pyramids reflect their worldview greatly. Firstly, the enormousness of the pyramid shows that the king was  a person of great importance. Then the tomb itself. The way the king is buried along with the hieroglyphics shows three things. Firstly, life after death, secondly, the gods, and thirdly, order life, death, and ressurection.

Code of Hammurabi

Today I will be blogging on some of the paragraphs in the core of Hammurabi.

2) The first thing i see when I look at this is that "justice" is often based off of luck, but I think that they believed it had more to do with the divine than luck. 

5) In this paragraph, it shows that the judicial group were highly important, and judging was a big deal in the country. The judges weren't above the law, but instead were held highly accountable to the correct judgment of other citizens.

9) This helps with two things in the country. Thievery and false accusations. If a person were to buy a stolen item, this law protects them from being in trouble for an accidental purchase, and the thief gets highly punished for his actions.

26) This law helps and hurts the country. It discourages people from not going to war because they could lose their main way of life, and be "put on the streets", but in another way it kind of helps someone to be a mercenary. The hired person could easily become the owner of a fairly nice house.

32) This law seems strange at first until you read the last phrase. Basically, if a captured person can buy his freedom, but only with his house, he shall not give his house, but the community will pay for his freedom. This law is intriguing because it makes no sense that the community would have to pay for a captured person, but The reason why he shall not give his house is beacause that was like their identity. I was like giving your debit card or driver's license. I am not quite sure how I feel about this one.

Justice on a silver platter

Today in class I was asked what form of justice should be done to criminals. The same be done to the criminal as the criminal did to another person, or some other form of punishment that might not be near as bad. This is hard because I see the pros and cons of both sides. I think the same be done to the person would be good in most cases and would threaten criminals, but I don't think it is right for us to kill, even if the other person sees it fit. That's where the other form comes in. if someone gets killed, they're sentenced 15-20 years in jail. If the person killed several, the number gets lengthened by 10 years. Of course this doesn't include everything. A friend asked, "What if someone sells drugs? Do they just get drugs sold back?" Although he said it jokingly, this brings up a real point. If something like this happens, they should be sent to jail or given a fine dealing with the seriousness of this.

Analysis of the Epic of Gilgamesh

1) The various versions of the Mesopotamian Epic can help us understand some of the history and the cultures which produced. Fist, it tells us that since there was not only one version, it shows that is wasn't sacred. My guess is that it was something like superman and batman. That tells us that they had heroic figures like we do today, and we probably get our heroic writings from the epic style of writing.

4)It is strange the way current writings differ from ancient ones. Stories such as the Epic of Gilgamesh were written not by one author, but by the nation in several different versions. This is the exact opposite of current writings which are written generally by one person, and anyone who copies another can be fined for copyright. Originality back then wasn't just coming up with something, but instead working off of another persons idea. I personally like this, for many of my ideas I get from talking with other people, theorizing, and working off of that.

Cities

Today I have a few questions that I have been asked. What would a person looking at a modern city see as the largest and most important building or buildings? What does this suggest about priorities of modern culture, as opposed to ancient cultures? What is or are the most valid criteria of whether a culture should be regarded as a civilization? What qualities ought to be present in a society for it to be considered "civilized"? So here I go on answering these questions.

In a city, I'd say a person would see it's capitol building or the mayor's work building as the most important. Why? Because the capitol is seen as the highest area in the city, or the mayor is the one who runs the city. I'd say these, or the best restaurants they have been to in that city. Can you tell I'm hungry? This suggests that the priorities lie with how laws and regulations matter to people to make sure that they are in a safe environment... or that they are hungry, versus the ancient culture where they matter more on their gods being with them when they need help. When I think civilization, the criteria that comes to mind are ordered and sustained. I have chosen these because a civilization must be able to live for many more years to come and people need to be able to work together. There are many qualities such as few killings/fights and not in the news very often for wrong reasons. This can also bee seen as people able to live well together and nothing illegal known to be going on in that civilization.

Zeus flavored ice cream?!

In my class we are planning to make an ice cream bar with custom flavors named after Greek and Babylonian gods. I need to come up with two flavors, so here are the two I've come up with. First is Zeus flavored. this flavor has vanilla (or any other flavor of ice cream) with shock rocks. This will give the cool illusion that there is "lightning" in the ice cream. I think people will love it. Next is The Horned Serpent. This will be chocolate or strawberry ice cream for the body, wiped cream for the venom, and lastly chocolate chips for the horns. I think this should make a great sunday.

Enuma Elish and the Theogony

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. been busy, but that's now why I'm here today. I'm here to compare the two ancient creation stories in the Enuma Elish and the Theogony.

Let's start with analyzing the similarities. In both the Theogony and the Enuma Elish, they start with these giant elemental gods. and they come up with the lower gods and eventually demi-gods. this can be seen on pages 6-8 in the Theogony, and pages 228-232 in the Eluma Elish. Next is that a demi-god takes over as ruler of earth. In the Theogony, Zeus overthrows his father and gains rule over the other gods, and in the Eluma Elish, Marduk over throws Tiamat. That reminds me of another similarity. the gods fight and tear each other down. this is important to keep in mind, for the gods in both stories created man.

Next are the dissimilarities. The larges is the definition of immortal. Greeks believed that immortals could not be killed, but the Babylonians believed they could, and that they did kill each other. Also, power was different. Greek gods had power through "things", but Babylonian gods used "things" and spells. they used their words just as much, and if not then more, as they used"things." Two examples are Zeus's famous lightning bold, and Marduk's spoken power along with his lightning bolt. when Marduk spoke, his words were law. It's interesting to see how these two creation stories related to each other, but were not the same.