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AP®︎ World History
Ancient Mesopotamia and the Hebrew Bible
High level overview from Ancient Egypt to Babylon with reference to stories from the Old Testament.
Want to join the conversation?
- Is B.C.E the same as B.C? if not, what is the difference?(12 votes)
- B.C.E stands for Before Common Era. B.C stands for Before Christ. They are the exact same, onnly that the latter is from a more religious point of view.(56 votes)
- Are the Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, and Babylonians the only people that lived in Mesopotamia, or are they the only people we need to know right now? Their has to be more, there were about six to ten million people on the surface of the Earth. Also what is a Judeo-Christian?(10 votes)
- Well they aren't the only people because there were hundreds of city states in Mesopotamia, and they like fought and traded and stuff so yeah.(2 votes)
- why isn't the bible considered the mythology of all five of the so-called religeons which are really just all denominations of one, or monotheistic, as they belive in the, Jehova, god, etc. 3:57(0 votes)
- I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to get at, but I'll give it a shot. Monotheism itself is not a religion by itself. It has no uniting doctrine; it's just an adjective meaning one God. Not all monotheistic religions believe in the exact same God, so lumping them into one category wouldn't be fair. For example, Jews believe in the God of the Old Testament (Yahweh/Jehovah), Christians generally believe in the Triune God, and Muslims believe in Allah. Yes, each of these religions follow one God, but they characterize that God differently. These religions also don't all follow the same text. Jews follow the Torah, Talmud, and Mishnah; Christians follow the Bible, with emphasis on the New Testament; and Muslims follow the Qu'ran. I'm not sure what other religions you're categorizing as monotheistic, but monotheistic religions are not all the same and each has their own denominations.(32 votes)
- Isn't the cheops pyramid the most famous of all pyramids?(4 votes)
- Hello lutzhuesing and Jonathan Ziesmer!
The cheops pyramid and the Khufu's pyramid are the same thing, just different names. You could say the great pyramids of khufu or the great pyramid of cheops.
So the cheops is the most famous and so is the khufu since they are refering to the same pyramid.(14 votes)
- n this video, at around, the lecturer says that King Menes unified upper and lower Egypt. In history textbooks and in school it says that King Narmer unified upper and lower Egypt. Are they different names for the same pharaoh or is one right and one wrong? 2:20(0 votes)
- They both refer to the same pharaoh. It is speculated that the name changed from Menes to Narmer when the pharaoh ascended the throne.(7 votes)
- Excuse me, but why did you show the Crimea as a part of Russia?(3 votes)
- what is the difference between temple and empire?(1 vote)
- A temple, in many religions, is a place where religious practices take place, things like worship, sacrifice, and prayer. Since you ask this in the unit relating to the Hebrew Bible, the "Temple" there was the location and building in Jerusalem dedicated to and used for worship of the God of the Hebrews.
An Empire, in contrast, is a political structure. It can be as large as the once-great British Empire, upon which the sun never set because it reached around the world, or it can be as small as the once not-so-great Central African Empire, which only occupied the territory of one medium-sized nation and lasted for only a few years in the 1970s.(4 votes)
- Where are upper and lower Egypt located?(1 vote)
- Upper Egypt is to the south of lower Egypt. The adjective describes elevation, not latitude.(2 votes)
- What does B.C.E and B.C mean? I hope someone can answer my question!(2 votes)
- B.c means before christ, and B.C.E means before common area. Both of them mean the exact same thing(1 vote)
- why are the videos long(1 vote)
- The history that they present took hundreds of years to happen. That much human passion and suffering deserves long videos and thick books.(2 votes)
Video transcript
- [Instructor] In the next
few videos, we're gonna do a very high-level overview
of ancient history. We're literally going to try
to cover 3,000 years of history in a handful of videos. And we're going to focus on not all of the history in the world, and it's worth noting that
there's going to be history in North and South America
that we're not gonna talk about in this video, history in
Africa or parts of Africa that we're not going to
talk about in this video, parts of Europe, parts of the Far East, but we're gonna focus
mainly on the Middle East. So, this yellow line, this is going to be the historical timeline for ancient Egypt. So, that is Egypt. We're talking about that
area right over there. This green timeline right over here, you could view this as Judea. We could also include,
we could include Judea, which is where modern-day
Israel, Palestine. If we're talking about Lebanon, then we could include
Phoenicia right over there. So, I'll just write Judea. Judea. That's a little hard to read. Judea. This blue and red and
white line right over here, this will be Mesopotamia. So, this will be Mesopotamia. We talk a little bit about
that in another video, the area between or around the
Tigris and Euphrates River, mainly in modern-day Iraq,
that region right over there. So, if we say this is
Judea, this is Mesopotamia. And we will also touch a
little bit later on Persia, which is that area there. The ancient Greece. We're gonna talk a little bit
about Rome, about Carthage, and a little bit about the Indus Valley, the Indus Valley civilizations, which is in now modern-day Pakistan. So, with that geographic bearing, and this is a line for, I'll
call this the Indus Valley. Or Indus Valley, or I could say India. And, obviously, India's much more than just the Indus Valley. And even this line over
here, that's China, although I'm not gonna go much
into that into this video. So, let's start about 5,000 years ago. And there were already people in all of the regions that I talk about, but where I'm really highlighting is where you start to have
significant empires develop. And I'll start in Egypt,
where you have the Pharaoh, you have King Menes. He's able to unify Upper and Lower Egypt. And it's a little counter-intuitive; Upper Egypt is actually
south of Lower Egypt, and that's because the Nile
River forms further South and then it flows northward. And so, he's able to unify
Upper and Lower Egypt, Upper's off the map here,
into the Egyptian civilization that we often associate
with ancient Egypt. And it is a very, very, very
long-lived civilization. And this is right at around the same time you have folks living in
Mesopotamia, you have the Akkadians. We're going into deep history now, so we don't know exactly what was going on in the Indus Valley, but we believe that there
were people there as well, and there were people
many, many other places. But now, let's fast-forward. We're gonna go about 500 years. And we associate ancient
Egypt with the pyramids, and, relatively speaking,
the pyramids were built fairly early in the
history of ancient Egypt. They were built about 2500 BCE, or so we're talking about
4,500-4,600 years ago was the time that,
especially the most famous, the Great Pyramid of Giza was built. But now, let's fast-forward even more. And in this narrative
that I'm gonna talk about in this video, I'm going to
introduce some characters from the Old Testament. And a lotta the stories
from the Old Testament, they have bases in
history, but some of them, the historical evidence isn't as clear. But I'm gonna include it because it's so much a
part of Judeo-Christian, Islamic, Western, and
not just Western culture that I think it gives us
an interesting bearing and, frankly, a lotta the
stories from the Old Testament are just really fascinating stories. So now, let's fast-forward to 1700 BCE. And even though that seems like
a very, very long time ago, and it was, it's nice to get our bearings. Because in 1700 BCE, and we're
gonna talk about Hammurabi, who lived in, who ruled over
Babylon, the Babylonian Empire. So, Hammurabi right over here in Babylon, famous for the Code of Hammurabi. He codified a series of laws. We believe Abraham grew up at
around the same time in Ur. And Abraham, we believe
that he was coincident or maybe came a little bit after Hammurabi because a lotta the Old Testament seems to at least be inspired by some of what we see
in Hammurabi's Code. And it's worth noting that even though this seems
like a long time ago, around 1700 BCE, the time of Hammurabi, and it turns a little white here 'cause this is where the Babylonians become one of the dominant
empires in Mesopotamia, even though it seems like a long time ago, it's worth noting that
in the time of Hammurabi and in the time of Abraham, the pyramids were already close
to, what, 700-800 years old. So, they already would've
viewed the pyramids as a very, very old thing. But if we go with roughly the year 1700 for about the time of Abraham, he goes to what becomes Judea and his tribe becomes established there and then ends up, that's
where I have this line going from Mesopotamia to Judea, and we kinda see the
established Judea here. And once again, they're
not the first people there. You had the Canaanites,
you had the Phoenicians, you had many other folks in this region, but this is interesting because it relates to the Old Testament that
many folks are familiar with. And then you have the Old,
so this is around 1700. Let me write this. This is 1700 BCE. And once again, I'll put approximately. And then you go a few hundred years and there isn't a lot of
historical basis here, but based on the Old
Testament, the story of Joseph, Joseph going to Egypt
and becoming the vizier for the Pharaoh and
then his family coming, Joseph, who is Abraham's grandson, according to the Old Testament,
that story happens around, and once again, this is not
established well historically and I encourage you to look up and see if you can find evidence yourself of when folks think this
is, but the best evidence, if this happened, the
best evidence I've seen is it's around 1500
BCE, the story of Joseph and the migration of the Jewish people, or a significant chunk
of the Jewish people, to Egypt, where they get enslaved. And that enslavement is from 1500, they get enslaved by the Pharaoh, 1500, to approximately 1200 BCE. And so, that story, you go all the way from Abraham through Joseph,
this is in the Old Testament, this happens in Genesis, and then we get to the story of Moses, where he sets his people
free, the story of Exodus and the Jews are able
to go back to Jerusalem. Moses leads them, parts the Red Sea, according to the Old Testament, and there established
the kingdom of Jerusalem where you have the famous kings, King Saul, then King
David, then King Solomon; Solomon, who famous for
building the first temple. And now, since I'm already
close to the 10-minute mark, I'll leave you there,
because we've already covered about 2,000 years of history (laughs) in about eight minutes. In the next video, we're
gonna go from about 1,000 BCE to the Roman Empire
and the birth of Jesus.