Sources on the cultural history of ancient civilizations. Artistic culture of civilizations of the Ancient World (except Antiquity)
6.1. Culture and its understanding in the East
If we could look at a map of the Old World around the 1st millennium BC. e., then three belts of cultures could be discovered: the first belt would be formed by the cultures of the civilizations of the Ancient East. They formed a strip of states stretching from west to east from Ancient Egypt to China. As a rule, the beginning of their formation dates back to the VI-IV millennia BC. e. The end falls at the beginning of our era. The second belt would consist of cultures of “barbarian” societies - peoples who are at the tribal stage of development, who have switched to agriculture or cattle breeding, but have not yet created their own statehood. These cultures adjoined the belt of cultures of civilizations from the south and north. All of them, some earlier, some later, also switch to the civilizational path of development. Above the second belt, to the north and below it, to the south, stretches the third belt - archaic cultures of pre-agricultural communities, peoples who used stone tools and were mainly engaged in hunting, gathering and fishing. These are the tribes of Siberia, the Far East, the coast of the Arctic Ocean, on the one hand, and the peoples of the southern countries, the Pacific Islands, the Indian Ocean, the tribes of Tropical and South Africa. Most of them survived until the 19th and early 20th centuries, and some of them will probably enter the 21st century.
The cultures of the civilizations of the Ancient East are the most ancient civilizations known to us. S. N. Kramer published the book “History Begins in Sumer” in 1965 - and he was close to the truth. In many ways, we can judge the culture of ancient civilizations from written sources left to us by the Sumerians. But no less material is provided by data from archeology, philology and other sources. Researchers have long been attracted to the culture of the East in general, and the ancient East especially. A unique culture has developed here, which differs from the European one. In the twentieth century, we got used to looking at the East “condescendingly”, from top to bottom, believing that this is a catching-up type of culture, doomed to lag behind the culture of the West and undergo periodic modernization. But this state is the result of development over the last 3-4 centuries - a short moment in history. For most of historical time, the culture of the East was ahead of the West. The East “gave”, Europe “took”. No wonder the saying appeared: “Light from the East.” And whether this situation will return again, in the 21st century - who knows? At least, the role of Eastern culture now, at the turn of 2000, is clearly increasing, and interest in Eastern culture is also growing. Therefore, it would be impossible to avoid the question of the peculiarities of the emergence of this culture.
The culture of the East differs from the West in many ways. Even the concept of “culture” in the West and East carries different meanings. The European understanding of culture comes from the concepts of “cultivation”, change, transformation of a product of nature into a human product. The Greek word "paideia" (from the word "pais" - child) also means "transformation". But the Chinese word (hieroglyph) “wen”, similar to the concept of “culture”, pictographically goes back to the outline of the symbol “decoration”; "decorated man" Hence the main meaning of this concept - decoration, color, grace, literature. “Wen” is opposed to “zhi” - something untouched, aesthetically rough, spiritually unrefined.
Thus, if in the West culture is understood as the totality of both material and spiritual products of human activity, then in the East culture includes only those products that make the world and man “decorated”, “refined” internally, “aesthetically” decorated.
6.2. Formational uniqueness of the culture of the East
What formational type is Eastern culture classified as?
K. A. Vitfogel characterized “Eastern society” as a primitive communal system with an exploitative state. F. Tokei believed that Han China (from the 2nd century BC) was already feudal and remained so until the 19th century. F. Teukei, and after him J. Chenault, believed that the “atypical” line of historical development was already formed by the culture of Ancient Greece, and, consequently, by European culture. While the rest of the world, including eastern cultures and civilizations, followed the natural path. Similar theses were defended by E. S. Varga and L. A. Sedov.
In order to justify the correct existence of the “Asian mode of production”, and therefore a special “Asian”, “Eastern” type of culture, it was necessary to justify four parameters:
special, Asian, level of development of productive forces;
a special system of property relations;
special methods of appropriation of surplus product by exploiters;
a non-slavery, but at the same time, non-feudal class structure.
In general, it was not possible to identify these parameters.
Thus, there is no need to talk about a special “Asian” type of culture of the East, but we can and should talk about the uniqueness of the culture of the East. After all, one and the same basis “can reveal infinite variations and gradations in its manifestation.”
Yu. V. Kachanovsky identified five main features in which the uniqueness of the historical development of the East is manifested:
1. a stronger tendency to preserve community structures;
2. important economic role of the state;
3. establishment of supreme ownership of land;
4. the tendency for the development of feudalism without a large landowner economy;
5. centralized, despotic power.
The characteristic features of “Asian” society and its culture include:
to characterize the productive forces - the level due to their artificial non-increase;
as a special system of property relations - a system of state-bureaucratic, hierarchical relations;
as special methods of appropriating surplus product - the method of exploitation of knowledge, preventive redistribution of surplus product due to the possession of knowledge;
as a non-slave-owning and, at the same time, non-feudal class structure - a specific class-caste, hierarchical division of society with a special place in it for a colossal layer of bureaucrats, engineers and scientists.
Despite some common cultural features of the civilizations of the Ancient East:
the early transition to bronze as the main material of culture (although stone tools were also preserved for a long time) and
the spread of slavery, which exists alongside the communal peasantry, the confrontation between the state-temple and communal-private sectors of the economy, etc.,
These cultures retain the differences that give rise to three models of civilizations.
6.3. Models of culture of civilizations of the Ancient East
The first model of the culture of civilizations takes shape in Mesopotamia. The culture of Mesopotamia is preceded by the civilization of Jericho (6th millennium BC), Tochal-Kiyuk (6-5th millennium BC). In the 5th-4th millennium BC. e. civilization arises in upper Mesopotamia. Initially, statehood in this area arises in the foothills, and only later descends into the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. In the 4th-3rd millennia BC. e. civilization also covers the lower Mesopotamia - Sumer appears.
On the flooded lands in the valley of the Euphrates River, agricultural peoples began to receive a huge surplus product for those times. But the need for its conservation and distribution, as well as the organization of community joint work to regulate water flows and create irrigation structures, very early led to the creation of the state. This state included both the city and the surrounding territory. It was proposed to call it a nome, in contrast to the polis, the city-state. Nomes in ancient Sumer were located on a river or irrigation canal, rather than on a trade route, indicating little development of trade.
The temple was the center for organizing work and storing surplus product. The temple was the center of the city, the state. That is why such a state is called a “temple” state. The rulers of the "ensi" - the state - called themselves not by the name of the territory or city, but by the name of the god of this or that temple. Temples were the main owners of the land, the priesthood performed both secular functions - control and organization of work, and sacred ones - holding religious events. The priests of the temple were both government officials and employees of the city administration.
The gods are the owners of the territory, its guardians. But they are also personified forces of nature, astral bodies, cosmic elements. Each nome had its own gods. There was a struggle between the nomes; the victory of the nome led to the victory of the patron god. He occupied a dominant place in the pantheon of gods. Ancient Eastern religion is communal. Dogmas have not yet formed here; they have not yet been united into a system. The main thing in such a religion is ritual, rite, cult, and not faith, feeling, mental conversion, love. The feeling of faith and love for God will appear later. By the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. e. (XXIV century BC) the nomes are united into a single state. It resembled a military alliance and remained fragile. The ancient Sumerians spoke a language unknown to us. It did not belong to the Semitic group of languages. But it was they who invented writing, first patterned - pictography, then syllabic - cuneiform.
Sumer was at enmity with the Akkadian kingdom, which was formed by Semitic tribes. It was located in the middle Mesopotamia. As a result of a long struggle, Sumer was conquered and a state was formed that united the middle and lower Mesopotamia under the rule of Sargon the Ancient. In the XXII century. BC e. the kingdom of the Sargonids disintegrates under the pressure of the Zagros tribes, and in the 21st century, the newly centralized state “Ur of the Chaldeans” is formed, where Abraham comes from. Hundreds of thousands of clay tablets-documents remained from the Ur dynasty, huge ziggurats - temple complexes - decorated the cities, a strict reporting system developed, which was monitored by the bureaucracy. All the king's subjects were called slaves. A report has been preserved - a sign from a shepherd, in which he reports where he grazed his cattle. There is a sign about the decommissioning of two pigeons for the royal kitchen. But all this has passed. A new state is being created - Babylon. The story continued. The second model of the culture of civilization took shape in Ancient Egypt, in the Nile Valley. In terms of language, the population of Ancient Egypt belongs to the Semitic-Hamitic group, that is, it is related to the Hebrew, Aramaic, Akkadian languages, but there is a certain relationship with the Berber-Libyan, Kumite, and Gadic languages. Archaeologists have found traces of Paleolithic cultures on the territory of Egypt, but it is impossible to associate them with one or another ethnic group. Copper products appeared in this area very early - in the V-IV millennia BC. e., but the period of systematic spread of bronze begins later - in the 2nd millennium BC. e. and only among the elite. Until the Ptolemies, farmers used stone products. Hence the well-known conservatism of culture. The annual floods of the Nile brought rich harvests even without the improvement of tools.
The formation of civilization in Ancient Egypt occurs in the 4th-3rd millennia BC. e., around the same time as in Sumer. Initially, there were up to 40 nomes in Egypt - centers, in all likelihood, of tribal principalities. The borders of the nomes were quite stable and remained throughout history. The entire territory was divided into two parts: Upper and Lower Egypt. This division is also quite stable. Pharaoh was called "Lord" of "both lands." Initially, nomes were formed, then the nomes united into two kingdoms, and then the unification of kingdoms and lands into a single state took place. The state plays a leading role in unifying the country. The pharaoh combined the functions of a “king” - the head of the executive and judicial powers, a “leader” - a leader in war, and a high priest performing religious functions. The main cult, reflecting the idea of state unity, was the cult of the pharaoh. Pharaoh is a living god on earth. The well-being of the country and the productivity of the fields were associated with the activities of the pharaoh and his health. The hepset ritual existed for a very long time. It was a ritual run of the pharaoh, during which the ruler demonstrated his strength, health and, as it were, was reborn again - renewed. The ritual had religious significance, as it symbolized the high productivity of the fields. By order of Pharaoh, the Nile flooded. The entire population of Ancient Egypt was called the “slaves” of the pharaoh, although there were also free community members, artisans, etc. But they were obliged to work a certain amount of time for the state. Here the state-temple sector very quickly absorbed and subjugated the community-private sector.
The third model of civilization culture is the Hittite-Achaean one. It arises later, after the addition of Mesopotamian and Egyptian and in other geographical and climatic conditions. Here the state-temple sector does not form a single whole. The state-temple complex does not concentrate the bulk of the surplus product in its hands; it remains in the hands of the community-private sector, we would say “civil society.” As a result, this model of culture is not characterized by the unlimited power of the king. Among the Hittites, royal power was limited to the council of the nobility, and an oligarchy dominated in Trier. The states of this model had the character of military alliances, rather than unitary states. The culture of the Achaean, Hittite, Mittani, and Egyptian empires in Syria during the New Kingdom, etc., developed according to this model.
One of the cases of such a variant of the development of culture and civilization is ancient culture. In this case, a special version of the community-private sector arises - policy property, while state property receives weak development.
In the future, we will talk about the first two models of culture of the ancient civilizations of the East, because it was they who determined the specifics of its development for many years.
6.4. Specifics of the development of Eastern culture: from antiquity to modernity
Research by paleoanthropologists shows that during the Stone Age, "from the African savannas to the Czechoslovakian hills and east of China itself, people formed a single giant genetic community... in which... there was an ongoing exchange of physical and behavioral traits." Thus, the culture during the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods was more or less uniform and homogeneous among all peoples.
But the transition to barbarism and then civilization leads to unevenness in the development of cultures.
The first civilizations arise in the East: China, India, Sumer, Egypt. Thus, Eastern culture is ahead of Western culture. “Oh Solon, Solon, you Greeks are like children...” says the Egyptian priest in Plato’s “Dialogues” and this is true. In both the first and fifteenth centuries of our time, the “new era,” the Chinese “in general were far ahead of Europe.” And not only the Chinese. The same can be said about other peoples of the East, for example, the Arabs of the 8th-13th centuries. Moreover, some researchers believe that the Neolithic, Hellenistic and Renaissance periods most closely brought together the cultures of the East and West.
At the same time, the East lags behind the West in many areas of culture in modern times, which laid the foundations of industrial culture.
Why is there this lag?
For example, the reason for the East's lag is the lack of its own Mediterranean Sea. But why did this circumstance not influence the lag of the East during the Neolithic period? That is, the geographical, natural factor does not apply.
Maybe scientific, technical?
There is a widespread opinion about the “cultural” lag of the East (in particular, China). But is it? Until the 15th century. The East was ahead of Europe in its cultural development: some talk about the “Eastern Renaissance”. For example, gunpowder was invented in China in the 9th century. BC e., mechanical watches - in the 8th century. BC e. (that is, 6 centuries earlier than in Europe). Paper was invented in 105 AD. e. (that is, they were almost 1000 years ahead of Europe), printing text from a board - in the 9th century. n. e. (that is, 600 years earlier than in Europe), and the printing method has been known in China 400 years longer than in Europe. In 130 AD e. Chinese Chang Heng invented the seismograph. Already in the 7th century. n. e. arched-segment bridges are being built. 15 centuries earlier, iron production began in China and iron-smelting technology was discovered. In the 1st century BC e. Chinese astronomers discover sunspots. After 1700 years they will be “discovered” by Galileo. The first porcelain factory appeared in China in 1369. Porcelain production here was based on a high degree of division of labor. China is the birthplace of silk and the compass. It is in China that the gateway is invented and the largest canals are built. The Chinese invented the stern rudder and were the first to master sailing on tacks, etc. Europe did not yet know this.
By the Renaissance, the East was ahead of the West in cultural development. Why is there a lag? It cannot be explained either by geographical or natural factors, or by scientific or technical factors.
We can discover certain parallels in the development of culture in the East and West. The emergence of the first civilizations began in the 3rd millennium BC. e. In the II-V centuries. n. e. There were clashes with “barbarians” (the Romans called them “barbari”, the Chinese - “hu”, “huzhen”). Feudalism began to develop around the same time - I-VII centuries. n. e. By the VII-VIII centuries. n. e. powerful states-empires are emerging.
The development of spiritual culture begins. As in the West, in China it takes place under the slogan of turning to the “ancient” “gu wen” - in China, in Europe - the Carolingian Renaissance. But the term itself - “fugu” (return to antiquity) appears later, just like the term “Rinascimento” by Giorgio Vasari (XVI century). Moreover, not all Chinese antiquity is taken as a model, but only “classical.” In China, thinkers appealed to the authorities of the 1st century: Sima Qian, Simo Xiangzhu, Yang Xiong. served as treatises: "Yijing" ("Book of Changes"), "Shijing" ("Book of Songs"), "Shujing" ("Book of History"), the works of Confucius. It is interesting that in Europe the peak of the Renaissance does not fall in Italy, where it originated, but in England. In eastern culture - in Japan, during the period of Genroku (1688-1704) (Fig. 6.8), and not in China. Subsequent cultural eras, for example, the Enlightenment, are very similar in content. A galaxy of enlighteners appears in Japan , there is a promotion into the arena of “enlightened monarchs”: Kangxi, Yong-cheng, Qiang-Long, etc. In the Chinese monument of the 14th century “History of the Song” the times of “Wei” and “Liuchao” - from the 3rd century. until the 7th century - are assessed as "Middle Ages".
At this time, cultural elements similar to European ones appeared here. By the 7th century Yan Shi-chu gives an edition of five ancient texts: “I Ching”, “Shi Jing”, “Shu Jing”, “Chunqiu”, “Liji”. They constitute the canon, the “approved text” - “dingben”. Then the comments that Kung Ying-da considered “correct” were selected - “zhenyi”, that is, canonization occurs.
Canonization also occurs in literature: a “select in literature” - “Wensuan” - appears, therefore a closed, dogmatic system of texts is formed, which are sanctioned by political and religious authorities.
In Europe at this time, Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica and other Summa... were published. The practice of interpreting texts, phrases, words is also emerging - it is called “shungu”, in the West - exegesis.
Thus, medieval culture has a lot in common:
1. dogmatism as a worldview;
2. interpretation of texts as a method of knowledge;
3. scholasticism as a form of pseudoscience.
There is also a desire to overcome these outdated phenomena.
Nakamura Tekisai in the preface to “Jin Si Mu” wrote: “It is believed that in the ideological world of Confucianism, with the advent of the Song period (the 10th century, it serves as a date for a new era), a new era began. ... The doctrine was proclaimed in nature ... For scientists In the Han and Tang times, it was considered most important to give as many interpretations as possible."
But the same thing happened in Europe! Francis Bacon wrote that we are given two books: the Book of Scripture, in which the will of God is revealed, and the Book of Nature, in which the power of God is revealed. Thus, this is not yet a rejection of the text, authority, faith, but a step to the side.
In the East, this process of secularization proceeded faster. Acquiring knowledge is the very first, but not the most important; the most important thing is to achieve moral and intellectual human heights,” the philosophers of the Sung school believed. Thus, knowledge and morality are considered in unity. Moreover, morality is considered a higher value.
The main thing in the culture of the civilization of the Ancient East is the preservation and restoration - if something is broken - of order, organization, law. Subjects must support the law - they must pay taxes on time, pay taxes, and fulfill duties. Courtiers and courtiers must also know the law - the ritual, the ceremonial to which court life was subject. If order was violated, for example, taxes were not received, this was perceived as the wrath of the gods, as the death of culture. World order urgently needed to be restored.
From the need to preserve the established world order, a science was born: if the boundaries of the fields were washed away by a flood, they must be restored in the same form in which they existed before the destruction. If the yard, the owner, pays a tax, then it is necessary to calculate whether he pays it correctly. The progress of field work, river floods, and dry seasons are cyclical. We need to know the pattern of these cycles, and for this we need astronomy: “The great Sothis sparkles in the sky - the Nile overflows its banks.”
But art also affirms and reflects the existing order, the cosmos. In the cultures of ancient kingdoms, art plays a very important role: it is a means of maintaining the universe, implementing law and order. If at the archaic stage art connected and brought a person together with others, now it puts him in front of the world of the gods, allows him to see their life, to participate in the ritual of maintaining the existence of this world. The interest of the artist of the ancient world revolves exclusively around the life of the gods and the figure of the king. But the king is both a divine being (like, for example, the Egyptian pharaoh - the living god of the sun Ra), and the head of state (empire), and an ordinary person. Therefore, the ancient Egyptian artist depicts the pharaoh not only in the world of the gods (where he, as it were, supports with world order by other gods). The pharaoh is depicted in war - he races in a chariot, crushing enemies, while hunting he kills lions with a bow, in his palace he receives foreign embassies, in everyday life he rests with his wife. Since the pharaoh has associates and servants, and they, in turn, have their own etc. until the slaves, who no longer have anything, the divine power spreads through the sacred king to all his people. Therefore, in the center of the ancient drawing and painting of the canonical type there is always the figure of the sacred king; from it to the periphery, images of other people diverge in waves - the queen, the king’s entourage, military leaders, scribes, farmers, artisans, slaves, prisoners. The task facing the ancient painter and in general art - to maintain world order and law - contributed to the development of a pictorial canon: the formation of a stable, unchanging composition, preference for peace over movement, ritual poses over ordinary, natural ones; variety of scales of the depicted figures (the king was depicted on one scale, the largest, and the rest, in accordance with the position, on increasingly smaller scales); highlighting preferential viewing directions (crowd in front of the temple, front of troops or work). The last point explains why the multilateral traversal, depiction and vision of objects, as if in different projections, was replaced by a different method of depiction - all types united around the main thing.
But the Ancient East left its mark on the culture of civilization, giving it specific features that distinguish it from the culture of the West.
6.5. Features of “Eastern” culture in comparison with “Western”
1. The basis of the written culture of the West is the alphabet - a set of signs expressing sounds. Eastern culture is characterized by a hieroglyph that fixes meaning.
The West is characterized by an atomic system of alphabetic writing, analysis as the main method of recognizing sounds and further synthesis of meanings. Independent meaning and semantic load are carried by individual parts of the word: root, suffix, prefixes, etc. They convey the grammatical meaning to the whole - the word. Behind the word there is a concept - a form of thinking. The figurative content of the object in the concept is actually absent, reduced.
European concepts, for example, “man” or “individual” are perceived purely atomically. But the Japanese concept of “NINGEN” (person) means both the social relations that are established between individuals and the individual himself.
2. The use of synonyms in Western culture is based on the conceptual content of words, regardless of the graphic shell of the word. True, in Old Scandinavian poetry the technique of sound alliteration was widely used
In Eastern culture, the branching of meanings is built according to the type of visual image. Here the symbol and metaphor are defined by graphic figurative identities characterized by a hieroglyphic symbol. The shell of the concept itself is not an external form, but a meaningful form.
3. In Western culture, language is assigned the role of a means of expression, translation of meaning. In Eastern culture, a hieroglyph not only conveys meaning, but contains it within itself. The hieroglyph is the unity of purpose (concept) and means (image).
4. In Western culture, therefore, it is possible that there is a discrepancy between “goals” and “means”. In the East, means are understood as the unfolded content of the goal.
5. In Western culture, this is the basis for the difference between goals and means, the difference, the contradiction between technology, technology and values, morality, and the personal and emotional world of man. In Eastern culture, the development of technology, technology and morality, values are inseparable. Hence the special role assigned to nature conservation.
6. In Western culture, science is aimed at transforming nature, hence nature is perceived as a force alien to man. “Experience” is a method of modern science, derived from the word “torture”. Man “tortures” nature, forcing it to reveal its secrets through violence. In Eastern culture, science seeks identity, the unity of nature and man, nature and culture.
7. For European culture, “understand” means to give a repeatable result, that is, to “reproduce.” Hence we have a specific world of transformed forms generated by our culture - both not natural and not social. For example, scientific language. For Eastern culture, “to understand” means to get used to this world, to feel your own, human, involvement in this natural world. Therefore, the cultural world is as close as possible to the natural world. Example - "Rock Garden". Characterized by the desire to preserve nature as much as possible, on a larger scale. For example, the art of creating bouquets is ikebana.
8. Western culture is characterized by anthropocentrism, while Eastern culture is characterized by nature-centrism. Man is not the center, not the starting point, but an element of the integral system “nature - culture”.
9. Western culture is characterized by “materialism”, “commodity fetishism” - “buy, buy, buy”, the instinct of the owner. For the eastern one - “minimization” of needs. For example, in the decoration of a traditional Japanese house.
10. The West is characterized by the recognition of an impersonal, anonymous perception of culture: “everyone is a consumer.” Eastern culture is characterized by the personal nature of culture formation: there is a “Teacher”. This is explained by the fact that the linguistic translation of the text coincides with the transmission of meaning: there is no need for an intermediary, interpreter, or commentator. In Eastern culture, a situation persists where, without commentary, a translation loses some of its content. For example, the Koran has seven layers of commentary.
11. Extra-textual silence means absence of meaning - in Western culture. In Eastern culture, silence is a way to comprehend meaning.
12. In Western culture, the goal of science is truth. It has practical benefits. In the East, the goal of knowledge is the development of values that go beyond utilitarianism.
13. In Western culture, knowledge and morality are separated. The main question of science is: “truth - untruth”. In Eastern culture, knowledge is a means of moral improvement. The main question is the relationship between good and evil.
14. In Western culture, comprehension of the universal and laws is the main goal. The individual is inexpressible directly in language, in science. In Eastern culture, the focus is on individuality, the singular.
For example, European medicine copes well with epidemics, with mass diseases, but fails in the treatment of mental illnesses, in contact with a specific person, oriental medicine, on the contrary, is more powerful when influencing an individual, say, through acupuncture.
15. The interpretation of “humanism” is also different in the East. The term "humanism" was introduced in Italy by Coluccio Salutati and Leonardo Bruni. They borrowed it from Cicero. In China, Han Yu introduces the term "REN", distinguishing his path from the path before him. But the content of this term (“Paths”) is different. Confucius preached love for man, Han Yu preached love for everything, for the world, understood pantheistically and spiritually.
Thus, Eastern humanism was not anthropocentric. Zhang Ming-dao said: “My soul is the same as the soul of grass, trees, birds, animals. Only a person is born having accepted the middle Heaven-Earth.” Thus, this is a kind of ecological worldview, “nature-centrism.”
Chapter 4
4.1.
4.1.1.
4.1.2.
4.1.3. "Axial" culture of India
4.1.4. "Axial" culture of China
4.2.
4.2.1.
4.2.2.
4.2.3.
4.3
4.4
Antiquity as a new type of culture and civilization
Antiquity left a legacy to world culture of the experience of a democratic structure of society and the richest myth-making, the greatest works of literature and art, the laws of harmony and beauty of the human body, the accuracy of mathematical proofs and the diversity of philosophical ideas, freedom of spirit and the acquisition of the Christian faith. Ancient culture (the culture of ancient Greece and Rome) became the foundation of the entire European civilization. It is to this that literary genres and philosophical systems, the principles of architecture and sculpture, the foundations of astronomy, mathematics, and natural science, which determined the appearance of cultural Europe, go back. Antiquity, whose thousand-year-old culture has accumulated priceless and unsurpassed treasures of the human spirit, has a unique expressive, sensual, “physical” character and retains an unusually attractive force for its descendants.
Cultural genesis of Antiquity. "Axial Age"
A number of facts indicate that around the 2nd - 3rd centuries. BC. many civilizational formations are losing their former quality. At the turn of our century some of them are gradually disappearing from the world map as vibrant and unique regional cultures (Mesopotamia, Egypt). Others undergo significant changes - although they continue their historical existence, but clearly in a different capacity: Minoan (Creto-Mycenaean) Chinese, Indian civilizations.
K. Jaspers, in his famous work “The Origins of History and Its Purpose,” cites a number of, in his opinion, indicative facts that appeared in the period from the 8th to the 2nd centuries. BC: almost all known major trends in Chinese philosophy appeared in China: Confucianism, Taoism, Modism, etc.; in India the Upanishads (interpretations of the Vedas) are created; At the same time, the life of Gautama Buddha, the formation of Buddhism and other variants of religious and philosophical thought occurred; in Iran the teachings of Zarathustra spread; in Palestine - the teachings of the prophets Isaiah, Elijah, Jeremiah, Second Isaiah; in Ancient Greece (which took the baton from the Aegean culture) - a powerful phenomenon of Homer and physical philosophers, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and later Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
It is amazing that such bright and widely varying cultural phenomena arise almost simultaneously, but independently of each other, and at the same time have a certain commonality.
“The new that arose in this era...,” writes Jaspers, “comes down to the fact that man is aware of being as a whole, of himself and his boundaries. The horror of the world and his own helplessness are revealed to him. Standing over the abyss, he poses radical questions, demands liberation and salvation. Realizing his boundaries, he sets higher goals for himself, cognizes absoluteness in the depths of self-consciousness and in the clarity of the transcendental world.” In other words, philosophy appears as a special form of exploration and knowledge of the world.
The development of a new type of consciousness is also facilitated by the need for new forms of social structure. In all the largest ancient states, there is an era of fragmentation into smaller entities, between which military strife arises. This era, marked as “troubled”, “dark” times, ends with the formation of new large state associations - empires: India, China, Persia - in the East, in the West - the Hellenistic empire of Alexander the Great and then the Roman Empire.
The era of unrest intensified the social need for a return to old, patriarchal forms of life, interpreted as an idea of the once-existing “golden age” - the era of brotherhood and the absence of antagonisms, the ideal existence of humanity. At the same time, objectively, these social cataclysms stimulated a conscious search for new social relations, understanding of social functions and roles of a person - i.e. active attitude to the forms of socio-political structure. And parallel to this process is the process of ethical self-determination, the development of ethical categories of cultural consciousness. The ideas of education, reform, and self-knowledge begin to play a major role.
In the 1st millennium BC. a new economic basis of society is being formed - a system of slave relations, slave production. Slavery and slavery now emerge as a fundamental and universal economic force. A classic slave state appears.
A.F. Losev notes that a necessary prerequisite for slave production is the need to partially liberate a person from the unconditional domination of communal clan authorities and provide him with at least some minimum of personal initiative in the conditions of growth of the occupied territory, population growth, trade relations, and the complication of all industrial and social life. This necessary minimum of initiative was provided by the initial division of labor into physical and mental labor. The liberation of part of society from physical labor created the conditions for slavery - on the one hand, for the powerful rise of the entire ancient culture, primarily spiritual, intellectual, artistic - on the other.
The common thing that connects these facts with each other is the appearance a new subject of culture - an individual, individual.The type of cultural consciousness that dominated in the previous era - generic - is being replaced by individual-tribal, which in the sphere of philosophy manifests itself as reflection, a conscious search for truth, in social life - activity in the reconstruction of society and the emergence of all ethical issues, in production - the emergence of the subject of ownership and the formation of economic property relations.
Individuation, i.e. The “maturation” of an individual person, his separation of values from the tribal, community collective is a gradual and progressive process, which is one way or another observed in all variants of archaic civilizations. In Egyptian culture, in particular, it was expressed in the weakening of visual canons in art (the so-called “Amarna line”), the increase in individual, portrait characteristics of the depicted to the detriment of the typical, generic, repeating. In Mesopotamia, a specific understanding of time as linear and irreversible was early noted, and therefore, interest in the topic and problem of death / immortality grew here earlier than in other archaic cultures (cf. the myths about Gilgamesh and his search for immortality). The cult of an exceptional “personality” - a pharaoh, ruler, king - half-man, half-god - looks like a universal mechanism of individuation in early civilizations. The value of this cult lay in the fact that, along with the divine principle, the human principle is somehow noticed.
These changes indicate that early civilizations are becoming a thing of the past and a new stage in the civilizational history of mankind begins - Antiquity.
The scientific literature has not yet developed a tradition of consistent differentiation between archaic and ancient civilizations. K. Jaspers was one of the first to make such a distinction with the help of his historiosophical concept "Axial time".
Axial culture of India
Significantly later than Vedism, namely in the 6th century BC, it began to form Buddhism . Its founder Buddha- the creator of Buddhist teachings - belonged to the Kshatriya family and was a prince of the reigning house. His real name is Siddhartha Shakyamuni, he was born in 563 BC. in Lumbini (Nepal). When he turned 40 years old, he “achieved enlightenment” and began to be called Buddha - “enlightened one.”
Being the first world religion in the history of mankind, Buddhism contained at the heart of its doctrine the idea of salvation, called "nirvana". Only monks can achieve nirvana, but everyone should strive for “liberation.” Unlike Hinduism, Buddhism proclaimed the possibility of salvation - nirvana, regardless of social class. A righteous life and good deeds are what lead a person to “liberation.” Buddha called for following the “eightfold path” - righteous views, behavior, efforts, speech, way of thinking, memory, lifestyle, self-deepening. The moral and ethical side of the teaching played a huge role in Buddhism. Buddhism did not recognize the existence of a creator god who gives birth to the world and man with a destiny determined by God. He put forward ideas about the universal equality of people by birth, about the democratic nature of the Buddhist monastic community (sangha), and opposed caste barriers.
Buddhism proclaimed four “noble truths”: 1) life is suffering; 2) the root of suffering is the thirst for life; the comprehension of truth is more valuable than the plant and animal state; 3) by destroying the thirst for life, suffering is destroyed; the path to freedom is liberation from sensual seduction; 4) there is a path leading to the destruction of suffering; the satisfaction from idleness of mind and body is terrible.
Buddhism says that it is difficult to restrain the soul, and only by calming it, renouncing desires and attachments, can a person maintain mental balance. Peace of mind is achieved by preventing all evil and supporting good.
Buddhism is not devoid of cosmological ideas, according to which three spheres should be distinguished: higher spirituality - the “pure” spiritual principle, average spirituality, where deities and bodhisattvas are located (beings who have achieved enlightenment, but out of compassion for the world refuse to enter nirvana), low spirituality - the world of samsara, where the constant rebirth of the soul occurs.
The social and moral orientation of Buddhism has attracted many people to the ranks of its adherents. Having captured the minds and hearts of many peoples of Asia, Buddhism became a world religion. However, in its homeland, Buddhism was supplanted by Hinduism, but did not disappear without a trace, leaving deep traces on Indian culture.
Axial culture of China
After the collapse of the Zhou kingdom, Ancient China entered a new historical era. Time from 722 to 481 BC. was sometimes called “Spring” and “Autumn”.
In the 7th century BC. the seven most powerful destinies form an alliance that was supposed to prepare the country for the creation of a centralized state. The unification of the seven rulers did not become strong enough, and in the 5th century. BC, a sharp struggle for supreme power breaks out between them, called the era of the “Warring States,” which lasted almost two centuries. In the struggle between the strongest states of Qin, Yan, Chu, Wei, Zhao, Han and Qi, the kingdom of Qin wins. His victories over his neighbors were facilitated by the new organization of the army: young people were placed in the attacking detachments, and elderly warriors in the defending detachments.
Having conquered six kingdoms of rivals and carried out massacres there, the ruler of Qin, named Zhen-Wang, declared himself “Huangdi” (emperor), and began to be called Qin Shi Huang. In the lands under his control, he put an end to the power of appanage rulers and divided the entire country into regions and districts. By the will of Huangdi, managers of administrative-territorial divisions were appointed. Uniform written signs were introduced, measures of weight and length were streamlined, and uniform laws were approved. Qin Shi Huang considered strict adherence to the laws to be the main condition for order in the country. The rioters were subject to execution. The family was responsible for the behavior of each member. The strength of the patriarchal family and kinship ties was maintained.
Fundamental changes are also taking place in the development of productive forces. Iron smelting was mastered, and iron tools were distributed, allowing the process of developing crafts and production to accelerate. Active work is underway to create hydraulic structures in large river basins. Irrigation was associated with the transition to an intensive farming system. Since that time, the development of the culture of irrigated agriculture has become the key to the progress of Chinese civilization.
Trade and craft cities with a large population of up to 500 thousand people are growing. Roads and canals are built, a unified monetary system appears. The Qin army becomes one of the most combat-ready, and the state takes on the features of a military-bureaucratic despotism.
Qin Shi Huang started construction Great Wall of China- Wan Li Chang Cheng (walls ten thousand li long). Magnificent palaces were erected, and the tomb of Qin Shiuhandi himself can compete with the pyramids of Ancient Egypt. Over the course of 37 years, about a million people built it on Mount Li. The bottom of the tomb and its walls were lined with lacquered stones and jasper. There were also models of sacred mountains and mercury-filled copies of seas and rivers with swimming fish and birds. Therefore, the ceiling was given the appearance of a starry sky with models of famous planets. It is known that after the death of the sovereign, several hundred girls were buried with him, including ten of his sisters.
The Qin state entered the history of ancient Chinese civilization as the classical period of its spiritual and intellectual culture. A huge number of philosophical teachings, the development of humanities, mathematics, physics, astrology, and writing were the most important stage in Chinese cultural construction. Let us recall that it was then that the main directions of philosophical thought of Ancient China emerged: Confucianism and Taoism.
Soon after the death of the first Huangdi, a powerful internecine uprising broke out, in which Liu Bang, the volost chief, was victorious. In 202-206. BC. he was proclaimed emperor and became the founder new Han dynasty.
The new Han Empire (206-220 BC) became one of the strongest powers of the ancient world. For the national history of China, this was the stage during which the unification of the ancient Chinese people took place. The history of the Han Empire is generally divided into two periods: 1) Early Han (206 BC - 8 AD); 2) Later Han (25-220 AD).
Having come to power, Liu Bang abolished the harsh Qin laws and eased the heavy burden of taxes and duties. Slavery continued to be the basis of production, and the slave trade developed rapidly. Liu Ban Wudi (“Warrior Sovereign”) waged continuous wars of conquest, annexing the northwestern lands to his empire.
At the same time, China is establishing ties with many countries on Great Silk Road, stretching for 7 thousand km from Chan'an to the Mediterranean countries. Precious metals, iron, artistic items made of bronze, bones, clay, and, of course, silk were brought to the West from the Han Empire. They exported colorful carpets, fabrics, glass, jewelry, corals, horses and camels. Thanks to foreign trade, the Chinese borrowed many agricultural crops from Central Asia: beans, grapes, nuts and pomegranates.
However, Wudi's aggressive foreign policy exhausted the Han state, which led to discontent among the broad masses. A wave of uprisings allowed the politician Wang Mann (9-23 BC) to carry out a palace coup and overthrow the Han Dynasty. Wang Mang reformed the state, as a result of which land belonging to aristocrats was confiscated, state monopolies on iron, salt, wine were strengthened and fixed prices were established, and the purchase and sale of slaves was prohibited.
But Wang Mang's reforms failed, and Tuan Wudi (25-57 BC), who founded the late Han Dynasty, ascended the imperial throne. This period was the dominant cultural achievement of Ancient China. The lunisolar calendar was improved, a compass was invented, a prototype seismograph was constructed, and a celestial globe was built. Mathematicians invented negative numbers and refined the meaning of the number “π”. Silk makers and manufacturers of lacquer products have achieved amazing skill. The great achievement of Ancient China was the invention of paper made from wood fiber and ink. In literature, the song and poetic genre, which is closely associated with the glorification of nature and its poeticization, reaches its greatest rise. During the Qin-Han era, the main features of traditional Chinese architecture took shape, and the beginnings of portraiture and monumental sculpture appeared.
Despite apparent prosperity, the late Han empire concealed deep contradictions in its socio-political model. The crisis that broke out went down in history as the uprising of the Yellow Turbans. The rebels were dealt with harshly, but further division of power ended with the death of the Han Empire, which split into three independent kingdoms: Wei with its capital in Luoyang, Wu with its capital in Jiankang, and Shu with its center in Chengdu...
Model of existence.
The idea of Antiquity about the existential universe was embedded in ancient Greek culture and was associated with the idea of order, since it was conveyed by the concept "Space". This concept contained a vision of the world as a certain ordered system (Greek kosmos meant both “universe” and “order reigning in the universe”).
“Initially it [the word “cosmos” - Auto.] was attached either to the military system, or to the state structure, or to the decoration of a woman who had “put herself in order” and was transferred to the universe by Pythagoras, the seeker of the musical and mathematical harmony of the spheres.”
It is no coincidence that the mythology of the Greeks interpreted the emergence of the world, of all things, from Chaos - an indefinite, foggy yawning abyss, devoid of any ordering principle. Thus, Cosmos not only arises from Chaos, but is also opposed to the established order and organization - to disorder and elements.
Space was understood as something visible, audible, tangible - i.e. as sensually perceived, material, constantly in flux. But besides this, the Cosmos is also animate and intelligent, which, as can be seen, likened it to a person, a subject. As we will see more than once later, the “human dimension” is one of the fundamental features of the entire ancient culture.
The rational principle inherent in the Cosmos is conveyed by the ancient Greek concept Logos, which also meant the laws that govern the Cosmos immanently (from within). The rationality of the Cosmos, the inseparability (syncretism) of the Cosmos and the Logos means cosmologism of ancient life. The birth of cosmological ideas marked the birth of all European rationalism.
The ancient mentality is characteristic absolutize the Cosmos, i.e. consider it as the only eternal and independent being. There is nothing higher and more perfect than nature. Deification of the Cosmos ( pantheism) did not exclude polytheism- ideas about the pantheon of gods that do not stand above the Cosmos, on the contrary, personify its individual ideas, laws, “special cases” (as they say today - the laws of nature). In this picture of existence, it is not so much the gods who create the world, but the world who creates the gods. The ancient gods are intermediaries between the Cosmos and the human world.
The laws of the Cosmos, projected onto the world of people, are the essence of their destinies. One of the most important categories of ancient European culture is category of Fate, Rock(Greek tuche, Latin fatum). Through them, ancient man comprehended the operation of the laws of objective necessity in his life. However, Rock controls not only people, but also the gods: it is by obeying him that the gods determine the individual destinies of people. The gods themselves do not have power over Fate and cannot know everything that awaits the human race and themselves.
In Aeschylus's tragedy about Prometheus, it is shown that all the gods, even Zeus himself, are subordinate to Fate, and that they are not given the opportunity to know the hidden perspectives of existence. Only the titan Prometheus (whose name, by the way, means “seeing before, predicting”) revealed the future of Zeus and his own, which gave him the opportunity to endure the immeasurable suffering to which the Almighty doomed him, and ultimately allowed him to emerge victorious from the battle with the head of Olympus.
The gods, including Zeus, are completely unaware of all the vicissitudes of existence; they, in essence, are almost as blind as people. Following their weaknesses often makes them slaves to many passions and leads to undesirable consequences.
So, the ancient understanding of the Cosmos fatally.
The ancient chronotope tends to represent the existential space as huge, self-sufficient, self-enclosed, “spherically” complete, and time– as a historically changeable and at the same time cyclically repeating existence. An extrapolation of the concept of outer space to the human world is the ancient Greek concept of ecumene and its Roman correlate - the “great empire”. In both cases, the developed, “formulated” space is contrasted with a certain “barbaric” world, where uncontrolled elements reign.
The infinity of existence implied a countless series of changes undergoing by the Cosmos, and at the same time, the inviolability of the order reigning in it. Ultimately, “the world seemed to man to consist of a certain ontologically conservative foundation, unaffected by time, pushed into the depths of the past or true existence, and a motley shell, constantly replaced in the course of time, determined by today’s tastes and needs.” The search for the primary source, the first impetus of movement, is alien to the ancient cultural consciousness, just as the idea of an absolute time reference point is inaccessible to it.
As in the archaic era, in the days of Antiquity, in principle, any historically recorded and significant event could become a point for the linear counting of time. Thus, in the Greek tradition, chronology was most often carried out according to the reigns of archons (kings), sometimes - according to the Olympic Games, among the Romans - it was correlated with one or another consulate, and later, more and more often, with the date of the mythological foundation of Rome (753 BC. ). However, these principles of chronology never acquired a general cultural character.
In general, the cultural consciousness of ancient European peoples, preserving such a feature as traditionalism, enriches reflection. This leads to the fact that pre-reflective mythological consciousness gives way to reflexive-mythological (historical, philosophical-scientific, religious, artistic).
Model of a person.
In the ancient picture of the world, man did not occupy the privileged position that modern European culture later assigned him; here it is not the Cosmos that “serves” man, but man – the Cosmos, or more precisely – those supra-individual and supra-human principles that are eternal and objective. In other words, ancient culture has not a subjective, but an object value orientation.
An ancient personality is not yet a personality in the usual sense of the word. She builds herself not on the principle of correlation with other, spiritually unique individuals, but on the principle of correlating herself as a part with a collective whole. In other words, in Antiquity personality is understood not spiritually, but physically, naturally, as a living human body(A.F. Losev).
People are a creation (emanation) of the Cosmos and the cosmic ether. Dying, they dissolve again in it, like a drop in the sea... Life is like a theater stage, people are like actors playing roles in a play composed by the Cosmos. However, against the backdrop of archaic and oriental civilization, the European idea of the subject looks fundamentally different.
If the cultural heroes of the archaic era were gods and kings, then the cultural standard of the ancient era becomes Human, defending his right to relative individual freedom. The ancient hero has a half-divine origin, but he is destined for the fate not of a god, but of a man.
Fatalism in the understanding of the Cosmos does not exclude subject activity, but, on the contrary, presupposes it. A.F. Losev gives the following chain of reasoning: “Is everything determined by fate? Wonderful. So, fate is above me? Higher. And I don't know what she will do? Don't know. Why shouldn't I then do as I want? If I knew how fate would treat me, I would act according to its laws. But this is unknown. So, I can still do as I please. I am a hero. Antiquity is based on a combination of fatalism and heroism."
The activity of the subject presupposes a bright creative principle, with the help of which the Mind organizes and subjugates destructive chaotic forces. The man of Antiquity is ready not only to contemplate, but also to act. His activities are aimed at transforming, improving, “cultivating” being. It is then that the idea of “culture” (the functional equivalent is the ancient Greek “paideia”) appears.
Thanks to his rational and creative nature, man in Antiquity was actually deified, and the Cosmos was humanized, i.e. two principles - subjective and objective - strive towards each other, they are balanced and harmonized. This balance of the universal-universal and the individual is what made Antiquity “the norm and an unattainable model” (K. Marx), so attractive to subsequent cultures.
Literature
Ancient civilization/ Rep. ed. V.D. Blavatsky. - M., 1973
Antiquity as a type of culture/ Rep. ed. A.F. Losev. – M., 1978
Bonnar A. Greek civilization. In 3 volumes - M., 1992
Vinnichuk L. People, morals, customs of Ancient Greece and Rome. - M., 1983
Gasparov M.L. Entertaining Greece: Stories about ancient Greek culture. – M., 1996
Ancient civilizations/ Under general ed. G.M. Bongard-Levin. - M., 1989
Zelinsky F.F. History of ancient culture / Ed. and approx. S.P. Zaikina. 2nd ed. – St. Petersburg, 1995
Culture of Ancient Rome: In 2 volumes/ Rep. ed. E.S. Golubtseva - M., 1985
Kumanetsky K. History of culture of Ancient Greece and Rome / Transl. from Polish V.K. Ronina. - M., 1990
Losev A.F. History of ancient aesthetics. Results of a thousand years of development: In 2 books. - M., 1992
Miretskaya N.V., Miretskaya E.V. Lessons from ancient culture. – Obninsk, 1996
Sokolov G.I. Art of Ancient Greece. - M., 1980
Suzdalsky Yu.P., Seletsky B.P., German M.Yu. On Seven Hills: Essays on the Culture of Ancient Rome. – M., 1965
Takho-Godi A.A. Greek mythology. – M., 1989
Tronsky A.M. History of ancient literature. - M., 1988
Chistyakova N.A., Vulikh N.V. History of ancient literature. –L., 1993
Chapter 4
CULTURE OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS
4.1. Antiquity as a new type of culture and civilization
4.1.1. Cultural genesis of Antiquity. "Axial Age"
4.1.2. “Axial” civilizations of “Western” and “Eastern” types
4.1.3. "Axial" culture of India
4.1.4. "Axial" culture of China
4.2. Typological characteristics of European Antiquity
4.2.1. Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome as local civilizations of European Antiquity
4.2.2. The mental and value core of ancient culture
4.2.3. Typology of cultural practice
4.3 . Cultural practice in ancient Greece
4.4 .Cultural practice in Ancient Rome
FEATURES OF THE FORMATION OF RIVER AGRICULTURAL CROPS
Social formations, which are called ancient, or ancient, civilizations, began to appear in different regions of the Earth no earlier than 10 thousand years ago. From about this time, three “channels” of development emerged in the history of mankind. Some tribes continue the traditions of the Old Stone Age. Some of them - up to the 20th century (Bushmen, pygmies, aborigines of Australia, many inhabitants of Oceania, the Far North, the Amazon basin, individual mountain peoples, etc.). They remain mainly gatherers, hunters, and fishermen. But in different regions of the Earth there was a spontaneous discovery of the possibilities of active cattle breeding and targeted farming. On one and the other basis, more or less large associations of tribes arise, the formation of ethnic groups begins and the formation (at least in its infancy) of a fundamentally new organization of social life - state structures. Both pastoralists and farmers, for their specific production and for a life different from that of tribal communities, need (albeit to varying degrees) the development of crafts.
But pastoral associations are initially less stable than agricultural ones. Developed cattle breeding requires constant movement of livestock (to new pastures). Pastoralists are nomads. Their centers of associations and crafts are poorly organized. And the craft itself is limited by the needs of a modest life, adapted for movement, as well as by the needs of waging wars and making weapons. As pastoralists moved, they inevitably encountered other pastoralists and invaded the lands of farmers. During serious invasions, assimilation occurred and new communities of people were formed. Often, the victorious pastoralists, becoming the elite of the mixed (with part of the defeated) society, adopted the customs, traditions, and culture of the conquered farmers, although they brought something of their own into all this. Actually, pastoral associations (kingdoms, khanates) like the Scythian, Hunnic or Mongolian were at times very powerful, primarily in military terms. They gave rise to some of the values of their civilizations, their pastoral culture: the very methods of domestication and breeding of livestock, leather dressing, epics, songs, norms of relationships, etc. And yet, these associations turned out to be less stable than the agricultural - settled ones, the values of their cultures – less materialized, not so diverse.
All associations of people later called ancient cultures or ancient civilizations were primarily agricultural, although they were influenced by pastoralists and themselves engaged in limited pastoralism, along with agriculture. Moreover, there were apparently quite a lot of primitive cultures that used agriculture. But only a few of them became civilized, having found themselves in special conditions in which agriculture could become the main factor in fundamental changes in people's lives. This happened where agriculture turned out to be an effective type of economic activity (even with primitive cultivation of the land), a type of economy that creates significant surpluses of production. Not all climate zones were suitable for this. All ancient agricultural civilizations appeared in a fairly warm climate zone. In addition, they all arose in the valleys of large rivers or intermountain hollows. Water and natural river silt or natural mineral fertilizers (in mountainous regions), made it possible, with certain technology, to obtain grain yields of up to 200, or even up to 300 grains per sown grain.
On the basis of agricultural production with such rich possibilities, all the features and achievements of ancient civilizations and ancient cultures developed. They are called both civilizations and cultures. And this is completely justified. For the difference between what we consider today to be civilization and culture was only just beginning to emerge at that time. The achievements of early civilizations, including the use of what was created (discovered) by primitive people (the fire they mastered, the artificial tools and techniques they created, certain skills) - all this acted not only in the actual civilizing function, but also in the cultural, although would be at the vital level of culture. And all this also creates opportunities for the generation and development of spiritual culture, for the storage and transmission of spiritual experience.
The transition to civilization was associated with a departure from natural existence, with the creation of an artificial habitat, with the stratification of the population, with the appearance of organized violence and slavery in people’s lives. But this transition made it possible to create an organized society, gave the opportunity to use increasingly diverse resources to improve the comfort of life and for the emergence of knowledge, enlightenment, for spiritual growth, the flourishing of construction and architecture, for the development of artistic activity.
Taken together, interconnected civilizational and culture-forming processes became possible and were realized where societies of settled farmers developed. This happened in the valleys of such great rivers (with powerful floods) as the Tigris and Euphrates (Ancient Mesopotamia), the Nile (Ancient Egypt), the Indus and Ganges (Ancient India), and the Yellow River (Ancient China). It is not for nothing that these crops are often called agricultural river crops. Somewhat later in time, similar civilizations developed in the valleys of the mountains of Mesoamerica. All named and
Some other ancient civilizations are unique, unlike one another in many ways. And all of them, in terms of civilizational and cultural development, are clearly similar and have common features.
First of all, agriculture, which provided the opportunity for the formation of ancient civilizations, was irrigation agriculture, which required the combined efforts of many people inhabiting the valley of one river (or one area in a mountain ravine). Irrigation devices that ensure watering of land, distribution of water, and its conservation in dry times (special reservoirs) - these structures are complex, requiring constant care and clear authority control.
One river - one power. Irrigation agriculture predetermined the processes of centralization, the unification of disparate tribes and their unions. Control centers were created and cities emerged.
In general, civilization is a type of development of society that is associated with the presence of two interacting factors - the city factor and the rural factor (among the nomads, the first factor was very poorly formalized; they did not have cities). For farmers, the city became the center of administrative structures, concentrated the army, wealth, crafts, and trade. The countryside solved problems of production of agricultural products. Rural areas (periphery) and cities are connected by water and land routes.
In ancient civilizations, movement was limited mainly to its closed territory. One of the common features of all ancient cultures is their relative isolation. And in connection with this - the dominance of the vertical over the horizontal, both in the structure of society and in thinking. Ancient cultures, therefore, are agricultural, river and “vertical” cultures.
These civilizations developed along rivers (or in intermountain areas), and usually a narrow strip of habitat was surrounded by desert, steppe, and mountains. This (in some cases, the sea or ocean) limited horizontal movement. And the thought rushed up and down. The entire worldview of the inhabitants of ancient civilizations is cosmogonic. The whole world of transcendental existence went up and down. The gods were located in the heavenly world. And either the Sky itself (as in Ancient China) turned out to be divine, or, more often, the main deity of a given civilization was identified with the Sun, which gave people everything. Harvests depended on the Sky and the Sun; the sun provided light and warmth. But it could also burn crops. The sky and the sun are extremely important for agriculture. The land is just as important. The grain is sown in the ground and sprouts from the ground. After death, a person goes into the earth. And if the Gods are above, then the ancestors (and some Gods) exist in the underworld, or pass through it before getting to heaven.
The verticality of ancient cultures was also expressed externally: in the tendency to build ever higher structures, temples and pyramids; in the device
earthly life, society, in its hierarchy. One of the reasons for the latter was the emergence of the division of labor. Namely, the emergence of managerial work, the emergence of crafts, and the identification of serving the gods and intellectual work as a special type of activity. It is also important that new peoples usually flow into the territory of civilization from the moment of its formation, since existence within the framework of such an organization provides obvious advantages. Among them, perhaps the most important is protection from the endless permanent state of war of everyone with everyone, so characteristic of primitiveness. Finding themselves in a new environment, the arriving tribe had to find an economic gap that would allow the newcomers to exist comfortably. But the main activities - those that were considered the most prestigious - were already occupied by the indigenous population. Therefore, it was necessary to invent something ourselves. Inventions led to greater diversity in both the world of goods and the world of services. But the tribe that arrived earlier, having “staked out” their area of activity, did not allow those who arrived later to enter it, thereby creating a closed community inaccessible to others. The earlier the tribe arrived, the higher the social status of the class it formed. This is how a hierarchical ladder was created, the existence of which contributed to the establishment of the vertical as the main meaning-forming construct of antiquity.
Moreover, the hierarchy was usually quite rigid: moving up in it was impossible, while moving down was quite free. For example, in China during the Qin era, if there were several sons in a family, only the eldest remained in the class to which he belonged by birth. The rest went down one step. In general, the preservation of hierarchy was considered a matter of paramount importance, because order was conceived only in this form. It was not just the basic, but the only, conceivable as an organizing, principle of being. In primitive times, a person felt himself to be a kind of particle merged with the community, practically indistinguishable and equal to others of the same kind. Now, a person’s sense of self has taken the path of determining his place in the world, in a strictly organized system. It is very important that this place is not just occupied by me, but it represents a factor that determines me as a member of the community and a person. That is, a place in the hierarchy is essentially significant for a person. It essentially organizes a person for life.
Indeed, a society formed according to a hierarchical principle is particularly harmonious and stable. But this principle worked not only in the organization of society; any organization was built in this way. Even the family, which was thought of as an analogy of the state, and, accordingly, vice versa. Thus, in China, the emperor was not only the head of the hierarchical ladder, but was also considered the father and mother of the people. And he should have obeyed as unconditionally as the father’s authority in the family is unconditional. Moreover, any attempt on the power of the father was punishable by the most
in the most cruel way, precisely because it was thought of as an attempt to undermine the power of the emperor, to whom he was supposed to show filial piety. He was considered the unlimited ruler of his subjects and their property. “There is no land that does not belong to the emperor; he who eats the fruits of this land is a subject of the emperor.” The whole country was thought of as one big family, where the father was the emperor. Therefore, to act against the father means to act against the emperor. This kind of crime was punished with incredible cruelty. And it’s not just that the government was despotic. Society simply defended itself from those who were capable of pushing it to the level of a structureless state, to a pre-civilization level. At one time, the following punishments for parricide were established: the murderer was quartered, his younger brothers were beheaded, the house was destroyed, his main teacher was executed by strangulation, neighbors living on the right and left were punished by cutting off their ears (They had to hear and take them where they should), others they gouged out their eyes (they had to see and prevent the crime). The murder of a father, of course, is a terrible crime, but the cruelty of the punishment was connected precisely with the fear of returning to a structureless state, “communitas.”
The ancient man's sense of himself as a civilized, cultural person was embodied in many factors of his existence created by himself. But the main thing was the vertical structure of the world and the determination of one’s place at a certain level in this world. This brought order to life, within which a person could navigate and somehow settle down. It was very important that this order acquired an external, and therefore authoritarian, character. All ancient state formations were predominantly tyrannical or totalitarian. One of the reasons for this was that for ancient man the authority of a certain higher order in relation to him turned out to be extremely important. A certain ideal-connecting layer of existence, in accordance with which a person lived. Otherwise he felt lost, everything was wrong. The Chinese have a saying: “Neither elder nor younger.” Its meaning is that in this case, everything is mixed up and spoiled, that is, the norms and gradations that structure society have broken down. That is why in all ancient civilizations a clear hierarchy was established, both in the exercise of power and in the position of layers of the population in relation to each other. The division into varnas (or castes) in Ancient India is only the most expressive example of the hierarchy of classes. Their relationship had to be maintained, because otherwise the orderliness of life, based on the general laws of the universe, would collapse. Therefore, there was no sense of injustice in the fact that there were higher and lower strata. On the contrary, as expressed in one of the ancient Egyptian texts: it is unfair if the prince is dressed in miserable rags, and the son of a poor and hungry man is dressed in luxurious clothes. It is the preservation of everyone’s position that is important, because the orderliness of existence is vitally important. Residents of ancient states knew that violations of this orderliness led to terrible disasters. After all, at the same time
Culture of ancient civilizations
1. Culture of ancient Egypt. Mythology and religion
The most famous of the ancient civilizations is Ancient Egypt. This civilization arose in the second half. 4th millennium BC and completed its development along with the fall of the Egyptian state at the end of the 6th century. BC, when in 525 the Persian king Cambyses included Egypt into his empire. The origin and features of the existence of Egyptian civilization were largely determined by geographical and climatic conditions. The main part of Egypt is a green strip teeming with life, interspersed with desert areas. There is almost no rain in Egypt, and only the waters of the Nile make life possible where otherwise there would be bare sand. Only 3.5% of the territory of modern Egypt is cultivated and inhabited. The natural isolation of Egypt gave rise to a sense of isolation, so that the ancient Egyptians were convinced of their superiority over the surrounding tribes. The Egyptians usually called themselves “people”; they did not call foreigners that way, showing little tolerance towards other peoples. However, anyone who lived in Egypt, spoke Egyptian, and dressed like an Egyptian, regardless of race or skin color, could become “people.” In ancient times, the population of Egypt led a rather crowded lifestyle. An Egyptian for entire millennia BC. frozen in the developed forms of culture and did not easily succumb to the influence of other peoples: he was terribly conservative in public life, and in religion, and in art. Meanwhile, this country excites the imagination centuries later. “No country in the world presents such wonders, such amazing works of art, as Egypt” (Herodotus).
Since ancient times, Egypt has been divided both geographically and culturally into 2 parts: the narrow basin of the Nile Valley and the wide delta. Upper Egypt has connections with Africa. Lower Egypt faces the Mediterranean Sea and is connected to Asia. These two areas have always been aware of their separation. One of the tasks of the state was to unite the people living in Upper and Lower Egypt into a single nation. Power and responsibility for both areas was concentrated in the hands of the god-king. There were two viziers, two treasurers and often 2 capitals. The gods of the 2 parts of Egypt: Set (Upper Egypt) and Horus (Lower Egypt) also competed with each other. But in the personality of the pharaoh these two gods were represented in equal parts.
Mythology and religion of Ancient Egypt.
A detailed study of Egypt and its religion began from the time of the famous French scientist Champollion (1790-1832), who unraveled the secrets of Egyptian written characters. Preserved in inscriptions on tombs and mummies, as well as in papyrus scrolls, the monuments of Egyptian writing are written in two ways - hieroglyphic (each sign denotes a whole word or concept) and hieratic (the sign denotes a separate sound or syllable).
1) “Book of the Dead” (Book about “perth em geru” - “exit from the day”) - a guide for the dead to stay in the afterlife. It consisted of 165 chapters of unequal length, which included magical formulas and spells with the help of which the soul of the deceased can overcome all the dangers of traveling through the underworld; also hymns and songs in honor of the gods as guidance to the deceased. Some chapters are devoted to the presentation of rituals that are included in the procedure for preparing the mummy of the deceased for burial; prayers and spells that are pronounced during these rituals. In ancient times, passages from the Book of the Dead were written on tombs and mummies. And then they began to write it on papyrus scrolls, which were placed in the hands of the deceased.
2) "Pyramid Texts" - a collection of texts carved on the walls of internal corridors and chambers in the pyramids of some pharaohs. These texts are a collection of magical formulas and religious sayings.
3) Liturgical books with the text of prayers and an indication of the rituals performed during various sacred ceremonies, for example, the rites of services in honor of the god Osiris in the Abydos and Amun in the Theban temples, the rite of embalming and burial of the deceased. Some of these rituals are preserved in inscriptions on temples and tombs with corresponding illustrations.
4) Litanies (collections of hymns) in honor of the sun god, “Hymn to Aten”, the legend of the god Ra, “The Book of what is in the Duat” (i.e. in the place of the eternal residence of the sun), “The Book of Hades” and etc.
5) Many papyrus scrolls have been preserved with various kinds of spells against demons for illnesses and other everyday misfortunes.
The Egyptian lived only to satisfy his religious needs: he devoted his wealth and the fruits of extensive industrial activity to the construction and decoration of temples and tombs; all his literature was distinguished by a religious spirit. The researcher of Egyptian religion is struck by its dual character, the mixture of the most sublime ideas about deity with the grossest superstitions, reaching the fetishism of savage tribes. “In Egypt,” wrote Lucian, “the temple is a large and magnificent building, decorated with precious stones, gold and inscriptions; but if you go there and look at the deity, you will see a monkey or an ibis, a goat or a cat.” The veneration of animals was considered an official cult in Egypt. The Egyptians most worshiped those animals that, in their opinion, were in a mystical relationship with the source of life and prosperity in Egypt - with the Nile River and its periodic floods. For example, ibis, falcon, cat, etc. The gods were depicted together with their animal symbols and with the heads of the animals symbolizing them, for example, Horus was depicted with a falcon’s head, Hathor with the head or horns of a cow, Osiris with a bull or ibis, Khnum with a ram, Amon with a ram or falcon, etc. Or the image of the gods was completely replaced by the image of the corresponding animal, for example, Horus was depicted by a falcon. This indicates that the Egyptian religion was once a totemism, when each clan or family chose an animal as its patron and worshiped it.
Along with the veneration of animals, the monuments of Egyptian writing contain sublime ideas about deity, which are characteristic only of monotheistic religions. In prayers and hymns, individual deities, especially Ra and Amon-Ra, are attributed the properties of limitlessness, independence and absolute unity, thereby eliminating any thought about the plurality of gods. For example, Egyptian inscriptions: “He is eternal and unique, and there is no one next to him; he is the eternal spirit. He is hidden and no one knows his face; he is the truth and lives through the truth; he is life, and only through him is everything have life..." But since such expressions are applied not to any one deity, but to each of the main deities to whom they turn in prayer, some scientists are inclined to see catenotheism in this. The essence of catenotheism is that in the consciousness of the person praying, the deity to whom he turns at a given moment with prayer becomes a limitless and absolutely unified being among all other gods. But many scientists see in such expressions about a single deity signs of pure monotheism and, in explaining its origin, admit that the initial religious development of the Egyptians began with faith in a single God.
In Egyptian religion, one can distinguish, on the one hand, folk beliefs with its animism, fetishism, belief in magic and spells, and on the other, a theological system developed by the priests. It was the priests who grouped the Egyptian gods, bringing polytheism (polytheism) into a more or less coherent system. The most famous theological center in Ancient Egypt was located in Heliopolis. Among the most revered gods in Egypt is
Ra is the sun god, the source of life, the main patron of Egypt,
Horus is the embodiment of the solar deity, Ra in his daily movement across the firmament, the son of Osiris and Isis. The symbol of Horus was the winged solar disk, and the sacred bird was a falcon or hawk soaring above the earth,
Ptah is a creator god, he created the world, gods and people with his word and thought; the center of his cult is the city of Memphis,
Amon-Ra is the solar god, when the tax center of Thebes turned into the capital of Egypt, the local god Amon became the king of the gods, the patron saint of the pharaoh; the sacred animal of Amun-Ra is the ram,
Osiris - god of fertility, solar god, god of the underworld, originally a local god in Abydos,
Isis is the sister and wife of Osiris, mother goddess, patroness of marital love and motherhood,
Thoth is the patron of sciences, the inventor of writing. In the underworld, Thoth appears in the role of the great scribe during the judgment of the deceased. His sacred bird is the ibis or baboon,
Maat - goddess of wisdom
Hathor is the goddess of love and fun, her animal is a cow, etc.
The beginning of many festivals and processions in Egypt was laid by the famous myth of Osiris and Isis. It is conveyed in the most detailed form by Plutarch. Osiris began to be seen as a being of divine origin and an unusual destiny: he was mutilated by the forces of evil, died, rose from the dead, became the king of the Underworld and judge of the dead. Osiris became the source and giver of life: “Whether I live or die, I am Osiris, I enter and reappear through you, I disintegrate in you, I grow in you... The gods live in me, for I live and grow in the grain that nourishes them. I cover the earth, whether I live or die - I am Barley. I am indestructible. I introduced Order... I became the Lord of Order. I arise from the body of Order" (Quoted from M. Eliade). “From the example of a man rising from the dead and achieving eternal life, he turned into the cause of the resurrection, and the right to grant eternal life to mortals passed from the gods to him,” noted the famous Egyptologist B. Wallis.
Set, in the minds of the Egyptians, was the god of destruction, solar heat, and barren sandy desert; subsequently he was identified with the evil spirit - the serpent Apep and began to be considered the culprit of everything that the Egyptian recognized as evil in the physical world - darkness, desert, illness, death, even red hair. The animals dedicated to him - a crocodile, a donkey and a hippopotamus - also caused disgust. Seth is the idol of modern Satanists.
The magic of words.
The cosmogony outlined in the Book of the Dead was based on ideas about the “hills of creation” - small hills that appear after the decline of the Nile waters, teeming with living creatures. At the top of the spontaneously arising primary hill of creation, the sun god Atum appeared. Next, Atum created his own names, calling with them the parts of his own body. As a result of this process of creating names, all other gods arise, giving rise to everything that exists. Thus, the act of pronouncing a new name is an act of creation - the magic of the word is present in the ancient mythologies of many peoples, including the Egyptians. The ancient world believed in the internal unity of word and object. The name was perceived as a certain part of its bearer or even as its representative, i.e. like himself. Therefore, the name should be used with caution, since the inappropriate use of the name of a certain creature or the name of a certain object can have tragic consequences.
The Egyptians believed that all phenomena of the surrounding world were, in principle, consubstantial, although they were named in a variety of ways. One phenomenon has many names. For example, for an Egyptian the sky is a woman, a cow, and a river along which the sun floats. A consequence of the idea of the consubstantiality of all elements of the Universe was the principle of free replacement, rearrangement of things, interchangeability of objects and images.
Deification of royal power.
The king of Egypt was one of the gods, the main mediator between gods and people, the only authorized priest of all gods. The title of the pharaoh was “son of Ra,” whose main concern was the country of Egypt, understood as “daughter of Ra.” The result was a divine couple: Egypt - the only daughter of Ra and Pharaoh - the son of Ra. Pharaoh was considered precisely the physical son of the sun god. Ra supposedly personally visited the earth to give birth to rulers. And if the mothers of the pharaohs were earthly women, then in relation to the fathers there was a substitution: Ra took on the appearance of a ruling king. The Pharaoh's personality was too sacred to be addressed directly. Therefore, they used circumlocutions like “it was ordered” instead of “he ordered.” From one of these periphrases, “peraa” (“Great House”), the word pharaoh comes. The king in ancient Egypt was responsible for everything: for the defense of borders, for food, for water, for the weather and the change of seasons. When the time came for the Nile to flood, he threw papyrus into the river with the order to begin the flood, he also began plowing, and he also cut the first sheaf of the new harvest. He was seen as the life force of all Egypt, as its Ka.
Egyptian ideas about the afterlife.
Ideas about the afterlife focused on the myth of Osiris. The secret fear of death among the Egyptians was overcome by the magic of eternity: if God reigns in death, then life and death are continuous - death continues life. The afterlife is a repetition of earthly life with all its activities and pleasures. The funeral of the deceased pharaoh was accompanied by a funeral rite, where the story of Osiris was symbolically reproduced. The new pharaoh was considered the incarnation of Horus. Later, burial rituals were performed in honor of the deceased rich and noble people. Ordinary community members and slaves were buried without any ceremony, simply buried in the sand.
In the underworld, the deceased appears before the court of Osiris, then the afterlife begins, which is in every way similar to the earthly one. Therefore, the deceased had to be equipped with everything necessary for this life, right down to his own body. Hence the custom of embalming (since Osiris was restored to life only in this way through the efforts of his loved ones). Embalming applied not only to people, but in ancient times to animals. In addition to the mummy itself, a portrait statue of the deceased was placed in the tomb, and the portrait should be very similar, since the life force of a person - “Ka” - must recognize its earthly shell and move into it. In addition to the body and the statue, wealth should also be provided to the deceased. Many small figurines - “ushebti” - replaced the deceased servants. On the walls of the tombs there were paintings and reliefs depicting a string of earthly events - wars, feasts, hunts, etc. These images, a story about earthly life, were located in walled-up burial chambers and were not intended for inspection, containing an independent life principle. The work of an artist was considered sacred, and leading architects, sculptors and painters were high-ranking officials and priests.
It was in ancient Egyptian culture that for the first time the idea of man’s universal responsibility for his own life was expressed quite clearly, albeit in a mythological form. It was believed that the fate of the deceased depended entirely on the moral character of earthly life. In “The Conversation of a Disappointed Person with His Soul,” the poet, who has seen the hidden perfection of the Universe, is balanced, calm, inspired, feeling the inviolability of his own soul as a metaphysical particle of universal inevitability and indestructibility.
Like the smell of lotuses
Like the feeling of a person sitting on the shore of intoxication...
Death stands before me today,
Like the sky cleared of clouds.
Death stands before me today,
Like the feeling of a person wanting to see his home again.
After he spent many years in captivity.
The ultimate goal of the deceased is to get into the boat of Ra and travel with the sun god or end up in the blissful fields of Osiris, where the deceased finds complete contentment and pleasant work.
Akhenaten's cultural revolution.
During the era of the New Kingdom - mid-XVI - early XI centuries. BC in Egypt, the descendants of Abraham, the Jews, who had knowledge of the one God, were enslaved by Pharaoh. It is believed that Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (XIV century BC), as a highly educated person, could not have been unaware of the religion of the ancient Jews. The essence of the cultural revolution of Amenhotep IV was that by introducing a single legislative act, the pharaoh rejected the entire ancient pantheon of gods and introduced monotheism, recognizing Aten as the only god not only of the Egyptians, but also of all other peoples: “there is the god Aten, who is the only correct and true god solar disk." The new deity Aten was the solar disk itself, which was depicted as a light circle emitting rays, each of which ended in a human hand - a symbol of the bestowal of blessings on earth. After a clash with the Theban priests, Amenhotep IV closed all the old temples, took the new name Akhenaten (“pleasing to Aten”) and began building a new capital, Akhetaten, “The Firmament of Aten.” At the beginning of the 19th century, archaeological excavations began in the vicinity of this city, and in 1912, an intact portrait of Nefertiti was found on the territory of the current Arab village of Tell el-Amarna. Since then, the art of Akhenaten’s era has been called Amarna. The Amarna period was an ancient Egyptian revival, which was characterized by vivid images, the predominance of secular culture over priestly culture, and an interest in lyrical motifs. On the reliefs, Akhenaten either admires his beautiful wife, or both of them are depicted playing with their children, or crying at their daughter’s deathbed. The material of the sculpture has also changed. Hard and cold rocks were replaced by soft, porous limestone. In the temples of the new capital there were no longer gloomy halls; they had no roof. The vernacular language was introduced into royal inscriptions and official decrees, and the pharaoh abandoned the strict conventions of etiquette.
This sickly pharaoh, almost a freak, who was destined to die very young, discovered the religious meaning of the “joy of life.” The prayer found in his sarcophagus contains the following lines: “I go to breathe the sweet breath of your lips. Every day I will contemplate your beauty... Give me your hands, filled with your spirit, so that I can be imbued with you and live in your spirit. any moment of eternity, say my name - it will always answer your call!
Loyalty to Aten reached the recognition of monotheism, which undermined the idea of deification of the pharaoh himself, and left the priests without work - the reform ended with the death of Akhenaten.
Features of ancient Egyptian art.
The artistic traditions of Egypt were distinguished by their consistency, and the art was monumental in nature. The thirst for eternal existence left a deep imprint on all aspects of Egyptian culture. The creative genius worked in the name of immortality. Therefore, the artist’s work was considered sacred, and leading architects, sculptors and painters were high-ranking officials, often priests. Art was considered the bearer of eternal life, so it depicted not a fleeting action, but its frozen, minted form. Meanwhile, Ancient Egyptian art did not neglect the depiction of mere mortals - servants, slaves. The reliefs and drawings that decorated the walls of the tombs revealed everyday life: fighting boatmen, artisans at work, farmers, shepherds, and fishermen were depicted. A shepherd milks a cow, a maid gives a necklace to her mistress, a flock of geese walks - this was not an image of the fleeting, but phenomena permeated with the metaphysical light of Eternity.
The formation of Egyptian culture was greatly influenced by the megalith - the culture of stone slabs, tombs and obelisks. The stone belongs to eternity and saves a person from disappearing into earthly nature. The magic of the megalithic stone ensured that the deceased remained eternally in death. The idea of the boundless power of the gods, including the pharaoh, was embodied in the monumental structures of tombs and temples, in grandiose statues with an expression of unearthly dispassion and greatness. For example, the tomb of Ramses (Thebes, 1370 BC); tomb of Nebomun (1400 BC). The temples were brightly painted. The most famous of them are the temples of Amun-Ra in Luxor and Karnak, which are a complex of 100 vast rooms, huge courtyards, columns that were covered with reliefs; countless alleys, passages and colossal statues of gods, sphinxes, obelisks.
There were 2 types of tombs in ancient Egypt:
· above-ground structures (pyramids);
· tombs carved into rocks (rock tombs).
In Giza, to this day, there are three huge pyramids - the tombs of the pharaohs Cheops, Khafre and Mikerin. The Pyramid of Cheops has a height of 146 m, and the length of the base of each face is 230 m. The gigantic structures of the necropolis in Giza were erected during the era of the Old Kingdom - in the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. Adjacent to the pyramids were low mortuary temples, at the foot of which there were rows of tombs of the pharaoh's courtiers and relatives. The guardian of the necropolis is a colossal sphinx with the face of Pharaoh Khafre, carved out of a rock similar in shape to the body of a lying lion.
Sculptural images of reigning pharaohs and deities, often with the heads of animals and birds, were carried out according to strict, rigid patterns. All figures were painted. The walls of the tombs were covered with contour or pictorial paintings with scenes from everyday life, wildlife, landscapes, animals, and birds.
Music. Music played a great role in the life of Egyptian society. The musical instruments used were the harp, lute, oboe, flute, clarinet, various types of drums, the noise instrument sistrum, etc. Music accompanied labor processes, mass festivals, religious rites, and events associated with the cult of the gods Osiris, Isis, Thoth; it was heard at ceremonial processions and during palace entertainment. Since ancient times, the art of cheironomy existed in Egypt, combining choir conducting and “airy” musical notation (in ancient Egyptian - “sing” literally - making music with the hand). Among the images there are often ensembles of harps. During the period of the New Kingdom (XVI-XI centuries BC), at the court of the pharaoh, along with the local chapel, the Syrian chapel was introduced. Military music is developing. During the Hellenistic period, the first organ (hydraulos - water organ, 3rd century BC) was built in Alexandria, the cultural center of Egypt of this period.
The Egyptians sought harmony with nature, and were afraid to disrupt the natural processes occurring in it. A sense of admiration for natural beauty permeates all facets of everyday human life. Near the houses of wealthy, noble people, gardens were laid out, artificial ponds were created, gazebos were built where one could spend time listening to the playing of the harp, flute, lute, and enjoy the dancing of odalisques. Boat trips were his favorite pastime. The Egyptians did not part with natural beauty even at home: a lotus blossomed on the handle of a spoon, a wine glass was made in the shape of a flower, and the ceiling overhead turned into a starry sky. The facades of the buildings were brightly painted.
2. Literature, education and science in Ancient Egypt
The Egyptian language became dead already in the 3rd century. R.H., when it was replaced by Coptic. From the 7th century R.H. The Coptic language was supplanted by the language of the conquerors - the Arabs. The basis of Egyptian writing (late 4th millennium BC) was pictography (pictorial writing), when each word or concept was depicted in the form of corresponding drawings. Later it became more complex into hieroglyphic writing, with each sign denoting a word or concept. The materials for writing hieroglyphs were stone (walls of temples, tombs), wood (sarcophagi, boards), and leather scrolls. They wrote with a brush made from the stem of the calamus marsh plant, one end of which the scribe chewed. A brush soaked in water was dipped into a recess with red or black paint (ink). In the 8th century. BC several characters merge into one character - the so-called demotic (folk) letter appears. There were 21 characters. Writing instruction took place in special scribal schools and was available mainly to representatives of the ruling class. Knowledge brings a person closer to beauty, the ancient Egyptians believed. Thus, the author of one teaching says: “Dig deep into the scriptures and put them in your heart and then everything you say will be beautiful.”
The literature of Ancient Egypt is rich in genres:
· Processed myths - cycles about the suffering of Osiris and the wanderings through the underworld of the god Ra. On their basis, theatrical mysteries were organized.
· Philosophical works: “In Praise of Death”, “Papyrus of Ani”, dialogue “Conversation of a Disappointed Man with His Soul”. Among them, “The Harper’s Song” especially stands out - here, for the first time, the theme of doubts about the possibility of an afterlife existence, the idea of enjoying the joys of earthly existence, enters the world of poetry.
...Do your work on earth
At the behest of your heart,
Until that day of mourning comes to you.
The weary of heart does not hear their cries and cries,
Lamentations do not save anyone from the grave,
So celebrate this wonderful day,
And don't exhaust yourself.
You see, no one took their property with them.
You see, none of the dead came back (Per. A. Akhmatova).
· Didactic teachings, biographies of nobles, religious texts (prophecies of sages, mainly concerning the need to obey gods and priests, respectively). Among the “Teachings”, the “Teachings of Kakemn”, “Teachings of Ptahhotep” stand out: “do not be hard-hearted because of your success, for you have become only the custodian of what is given by God”, “What pleases God is obedience”, “ truly, a good son is a gift from God."
· Folklore: “labor” songs, parables, sayings, fairy tales. For example, “The Tale of Truth and Falsehood”, “The Tale of the Shipwrecked Man”, “The Tale of Sinukhet”. The famous story “The Tale of Sinukhet” tells about the nobleman Sinukhet from the inner circle of the late king; fearing for his position under the new pharaoh, he flees from Egypt to the nomads of Syria. He achieves a lot, but yearns for his native Egypt. Coming back. Moral - happiness is only at home.
Scientific knowledge.
The Egyptians understood the disastrous dissemination of scientific knowledge in the world, so science was carried out by priests who took a vow not to disseminate the knowledge gained. “I have never blocked the flow of rivers,” one of the pharaohs wrote about himself. The Egyptians never risked encroaching on the natural course of natural development - and the irrigation system created in Ancient Egypt was not forced.
Determining the beginning, maximum and end of the rise of water in the Nile, the timing of sowing, and the measurement of land plots stimulated the development of mathematics and astronomy. The Egyptians had a number system close to decimal, they knew addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and had ideas about fractions. An accurate calendar was formed, dividing the day into 24 hours. The Egyptians invented water and sundials and distinguished between fixed stars and wandering planets. The stars were grouped into constellations.
Throughout Western Asia, Egyptian doctors who had specializations were famous. Mummification of corpses contributed to the development of anatomy. The doctrine of blood circulation and the heart as its main organ. “The beginning of the doctor’s secrets is knowledge of the course of the heart” (Ebers papyrus). This was also due to the important role the Egyptians assigned to the heart (Eb), which, according to their ideas, was weighed on the scales of Osiris in the afterlife. 10 medical papyri were discovered, which can be considered a kind of medical encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Specialization of doctors. A variety of surgical objects were found.
Of particular interest are the ancient Egyptian encyclopedia-dictionaries (collections of terms) on the topics: sky, water, earth, peoples. The name of the compiler of the oldest Egyptian encyclopedia is the scribe Amenemope, son of Amenemone (New Kingdom).
3. Culture of Ancient Mesopotamia
The vast fertile country located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is known collectively as Mesopotamia or Mesopotamia. Here, in the lower reaches of these rivers, in ancient times there were two states, Babylonian (or Chaldean - after the name of the dominant tribe) to the south, closer to the Persian Gulf, and Assyrian - to the north. In general, the history of the civilizations of Ancient Mesopotamia includes a number of stages:
· History of Sumer (28-22 centuries BC);
· The period of the rise of the Akkadian kingdom (24-22 centuries BC),
· Period of the Old Babylonian Kingdom (19-16 centuries BC),
· History of the Assyrian kingdom (10-9 centuries BC),
· The period of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom (12-7 centuries BC).
Many adhere to the fact that the starting point for the spread of civilization, including to Egypt, was the culture of Mesopotamia. With the fall of Babylon in 538 BC. under the attacks of the Persians, more than 3.5 thousand years of history of Mesopotamian civilization ends.
The cities of Mesopotamia have long since turned into heaps of ruins. The catastrophic worldview of a Mesopotamian inhabitant was largely determined by the special climatic conditions of their habitat: the Tigris and Euphrates, unlike the Nile, overflow violently and unpredictably, sweeping away dams and flooding crops. In ancient times, hot winds blew and heavy rains fell in Mesopotamia. And the spirit of Mesopotamian civilization reflected the unrestrained and unpredictability of nature.
Religion and mythology.
The inhabitants of Meospotamia did not see the cosmic order as strong and indestructible as it seemed to the Egyptians. Behind the order in the cosmos were many individual divine wills. Space was considered a special space state. The gods of Mesopotamia resisted the magical powers of the earth. Earth-Tiamat is killed by the gods and becomes the foot of their heavenly world. The essence of the gods manifests itself as arbitrariness, limited by the balance of forces. Man has no magical connection with the earth, because immortality goes to the gods, whom man must serve, trusting in their mercy. Humans were created by the gods to serve them. Man is insignificant before the arbitrariness of the gods, but in return, the opportunity to operate with a world devoid of magical protection is revealed to him, which leads to the flourishing of crafts, trade and science. The polytheism of Ancient Mesopotamia was formed from the belief in good and evil spirits (animism), the deification of unpredictable forces of nature, on which the fertility of the soil and, in general, human contentment depended (pantheism - “all-god”); the gods were anthropomorphic (human-like). The highest power in the Universe belonged to the assembly of gods. “President” – god Annu (god of the sky), executive functions – god Enlil – son of Anu, “Lord of the Breath”, deity of the space between heaven and earth; Enki is the “lord of the earth”, the god of underground fresh waters, the god of wisdom. Thousands of other gods, including Sin - the god of the moon and the plant kingdom, Ramman - the god of thunder and all atmospheric phenomena, Marduk - the god of the morning sun, Ishtar - the goddess of birth, love and fertility, etc. In honor of the goddess Ishtar, there was a temple in Uruk, where temple prostitution, self-torture, self-castration, and orgies in her honor were practiced.
The name of King Hammurabi (1792-1750 BC) is associated with the rise of the Babylonian state, through whose efforts the god Marduk was declared the supreme god of Babylon - the idea of the creation of the world and people was associated with him.
Civilization, which considers the entire Universe as a state, considered obedience and unconditional acceptance of power to be the first virtue of man. The power of father, mother, older brothers and sisters. In each house there was also a small sanctuary for a personal god, where the owner of the home worshiped him and performed daily sacrifices. The reward for obedience is protection from a personal god. If a person was sick, which, according to Mesopotamian ideas, was associated with the act of a demon superior in power to a personal god, then the latter was asked to use his connections in divine circles to fight the demons. With the help of incantations and spells, the priest tried to persuade the demon not to harm the person. This is very similar to shamanism. So, life is full of dangers; by obedience one must win the favor of a personal god, who can “through connections” help achieve a person’s goals.
After the death of a person, his soul forever found himself in the afterlife, where a very “unhappy” life awaited it: bread made from sewage, salt water, etc. Only those for whom the priests on earth performed special rituals were awarded a tolerable existence. Although Babylonian sources sometimes mention the islands of the blessed, where there is no suffering or illness.
Cult and morality of the Assyro-Babylonians.
The cult of the Assyro-Babylonians was centered around sacrifices. The sacrifice was looked upon as the food of the gods, who enjoyed the smell of the dishes and libations brought: vegetables, honey, oil, fish, animals and birds. Under exceptional circumstances, human sacrifice was practiced. In everyday life, incantations and spells were of particular importance; amulets and talismans were common. If necessary, they turned to the priest-exorcist, who resorted to burning various herbs and roots on a brazier at the patient’s bedside with the utterance of spell formulas, the patient was tied with a magic cord, and the figure of a malicious demon made of clay, dough or wax was destroyed. The priests told fortunes using the entrails of sacrificial animals; the cheapest was fortune telling on water (a little oil was poured into the water, or vice versa, and the “signs” were interpreted). Of the Babylonian holidays, Tsakmuku (Akita) is most often mentioned, which was celebrated as a sign of the victory of the spring sun over the dead winter at the beginning of the new year and approximately coincided with the Jewish Passover (around the 15th of the spring month of Nisan). On this day, local deities were brought from all cities to Babylon (“God’s gate”); later this holiday turned into the glorification of Marduk, to whom other deities came to bow. There were festivals of harvest, darkness and lamentation.
The priests were a closed caste that had extensive knowledge in the fields of astronomy, medicine, secret sciences, etc. The priests had their own schools, in which their children, who received priestly dignity by inheritance, learned the secrets of their ministry.
The concept of sin among the Babylonians was associated, first of all, with the idea of violating the will of the gods, failure to fulfill religious requirements and rules of worship. Although there are also high moral concepts, for example, penitential psalms. The most beautiful Babylonian prayer is to all gods (and those whom the one praying does not know): “Oh, Lord, great are my sins! Oh, god, whom I do not know, great are my sins!... Oh, goddess, whom I do not know , my sins are great!.. Man knows nothing, he does not even know whether he is sinning or doing good... Oh, my Lord, do not reject your servant! My sins are seven times seven. Blot out my sins!" (Quoted by E. Mircea). The prayer was accompanied by kneeling, prostrating and flattening the nose (on the ground).
The family was mostly monogamous. For cheating on her husband, the wife was punished by drowning, but if her husband forgave her, then she and her seducer were freed from punishment. A husband was not punished for cheating on his wife; he could only be punished for seducing the wife of a free man. If the wife did not manage the household well (was lazy, spent a lot of money, etc.), the husband had the right to marry someone else and make his previous wife a servant in the house.
Meanwhile, by the time the Persians arrived, the Assyrian-Babylonian civilization was in a severe not only economic and environmental, but also spiritual crisis: sexual promiscuity and moral degradation reigned in the cities. The most famous cities of Ancient Mesopotamia, which became household names to denote the spiritual state of the peoples, were Sodom and Gomorrah, Sidon, Tire, Carthage and, finally, Babylon, which in the Bible is called “the mother of harlots and all the dirty tricks of the earth.”
Writing, literature.
The appearance of writing dates back to 5 thousand BC. Monuments of Babylonian writing have been preserved on metal, stone, and baked clay tiles. The content of these monuments is very diverse: stories about ancient kingdoms, the construction of temples, fortifications, wars with neighboring peoples; collections of astronomical information, spells, hymns, mythological tales. Important are the findings of lists of gods, which indicate their distinctive properties, functions, and the nature of their cult. Ancient monuments are written ideographically: here each sign serves to designate a word or concept. Later monuments were written phonetically (wedge-shaped writing): sounds here are indicated by a peculiar arrangement and combination of one sign - a wedge or a spear tip. The material for writing was mainly clay tiles, bundles of which, like books, have reached us.
Literature of Ancient Mesopotamia included:
· An epic of a sacred nature is a detailed description of incidents from the lives of kings and deities (for example, the Babylonian work “The Epic of Gilgamesh”).
· Philosophical dialogues. For example, “Dialogue of Master and Servant”, “Dialogue about Human Insignificance” (// “Babylonian Ecclesiastes”).
· Collections of jokes, parodies.
· Children's works.
Architecture, sculpture.
Temples for the gods were built in the form of a chapel, but next to it a brick tower of several floors was erected: on top of it there was also a small chapel. Such stepped towers reached up to 90 meters in height, and were called ziggurats (for example, the Tower of Babel). In the main part of the temple there was a mysterious compartment, the entrance to which was closed with a curtain; Precious written monuments of a people or city were kept here. Later temples were often adapted for astrological purposes.
The sculpture exhibited primitive realism, a lack of liveliness—thick and majestic figures.
Among the best works of Ancient Babylon is the Stella of Hammurabi. This monument is one of the oldest documents in the field of law. The code of laws carved on it makes it possible to study the administrative and economic system of Babylon. Hammurabi humbly stands before the god of the sun and justice Shamash, who hands the king symbols of power - a magic ring and a rod.
The role of music in Ancient Mesopotamia was very great. Even sacrifices were made in honor of musical instruments. According to the Sumerians, their gods were not only music lovers, but also musicians. In the state hierarchy, musicians stood after gods and kings. The names of the musicians indicated the chronology. There were court ensembles (up to 150 people) that performed public concerts. By the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. – a variety of instruments: drums, sistrums, flutes, oboes, harps, lyres, lutes, etc.
Since the flood of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers reached excessive heights, residents had to build artificial structures to hold back the water pressure on the other side. The need for irrigation forced them to build irrigation systems and carry water to the fields through sewerage. The fight against nature, on the one hand, contributed to the development of agriculture, cattle breeding, gardening, became an impetus for cultural development, and on the other hand, led to an environmental crisis. Mesopotamian civilization was crudely consumerist, for example, energy consumption per capita was 200 thousand kJ per day (20 kJ is enough for modern man).
In the states of Ancient Mesopotamia, the foundations of mathematical knowledge were born, a decimal counting system was developed, and the division of the clock dial into 12 parts was established. Babylonian priests knew how to calculate the movement of the planets and the time of revolution of the Moon around the Earth. In Mesopotamia, the Pythagorean theorem was discovered long before Pythagoras. They knew the number "pi" (= 3), and were able to calculate area and volume. But the calculations were very approximate, especially in terms of time and age, for example, a hard road is long, an easy road is shorter. The inhabitants of Mesopotamia knew chemistry and medicine, but without theory. Astronomy was studied in synthesis with astrology.
TOPIC 5. CULTURE OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS
If we look at a map of the world and mentally plot on it the states that existed in ancient times, then before our eyes there will be a gigantic belt of great cultures, stretching from northern Africa, through the Middle East and India to the harsh waves of the Pacific Ocean.
There are different hypotheses about the reasons for their occurrence and long-term development. The theory of Lev Ivanovich Mechnikov, expressed by him in his work “Civilizations and Great Historical Rivers,” seems to us the most substantiated.
He believes that the main reason for the emergence of these civilizations were rivers. First of all, a river is a synthetic expression of all the natural conditions of a particular area. And secondly, and this is the main thing, these civilizations arose in the bed of very powerful rivers, be it the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates or Yellow River, which have one interesting feature that explains their great historical mission. This peculiarity lies in the fact that such a river can create all the conditions for growing absolutely amazing crops, but it can overnight destroy not only crops, but also thousands of people living along its bed. Therefore, in order to maximize the benefits of using river resources and minimize the damage caused by the river, collective, hard work of many generations is necessary. Under pain of death, the river forced the peoples who fed near it to unite their efforts and forget their grievances. Everyone performed their clearly established role, sometimes not even fully realizing the overall scale and focus of the work. Perhaps this is where the fearful worship and abiding respect felt for rivers comes from. In Ancient Egypt, the Nile was deified under the name Hapi, and the sources of the great river were considered the gateway to the other world.
When studying a particular culture, it is very important to imagine the picture of the world that existed in the minds of a person of a given era. The picture of the world consists of two main coordinates: time and space, in each case specifically refracted in the cultural consciousness of a particular ethnic group. Myths are a fairly complete reflection of the picture of the world, and this is true both for antiquity and for our days.
In Ancient Egypt (the self-name of the country is Ta Kemet, which means “Black Land”) there was a very branched and rich mythological system. Many primitive beliefs are visible in it - and not without reason, because the beginning of the formation of ancient Egyptian civilization dates back to the middle of the 5th - 4th millennium BC. Somewhere at the turn of the 4th - 3rd millennium, after the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, an integral state was formed led by Pharaoh Narmer and the famous countdown of dynasties began. The symbol of the reunification of the lands was the crown of the pharaohs, on which together were a lotus and papyrus - respectively, signs of the upper and lower parts of the country.
The history of Ancient Egypt is divided into six central stages, although there are intermediate positions:
Predynastic period (XXXV - XXX centuries BC)
Early Dynastic (Early Kingdom, XXX - XXVII centuries BC)
Ancient Kingdom (XXVII - XXI centuries BC)
Middle Kingdom (XXI - XVI centuries BC)
New Kingdom (XVI - XI centuries BC)
Late Kingdom (8th - 4th centuries BC)
All of Egypt was divided into nomes (regions), each nome had its own local gods. The central gods of the entire country were proclaimed to be the gods of the nome where the capital was currently located. The capital of the Ancient Kingdom was Memphis, which means the supreme god was Ptah. When the capital was moved south, to Thebes, Amon-Ra became the main god. For many centuries of ancient Egyptian history, the following were considered the fundamental deities: the sun god Amon-Ra, the goddess Maat, who was in charge of laws and world order, the god Shu (wind), the goddess Tefnut (moisture), the goddess Nut (sky) and her husband Geb (earth), the god Thoth (wisdom and cunning), the ruler of the afterlife kingdom Osiris, his wife Isis and their son Horus, the patron saint of the earthly world.
Ancient Egyptian myths not only tell about the creation of the world (the so-called cosmogonic myths), about the origin of gods and people (theogonic and anthropogonic myths, respectively), but are also full of deep philosophical meaning. In this regard, the Memphis cosmogonic system seems very interesting. As we have already said, at its center is the god Ptah, who was originally the earth. Through an effort of will, he created his own flesh and became a god. Deciding that it was necessary to create some kind of world around himself, Ptah gave birth to gods who helped in such a difficult task. And the material was earth. The process of creating the gods is interesting. In the heart of Ptah the thought of Atum (the first generation of Ptah) arose, and in the tongue - the name “Atum”. As soon as he uttered this word, Atum was born from the Primordial Chaos. And here the first lines of the “Gospel of John” immediately come to mind: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1-1). As we see, the Bible has powerful cultural roots. Indeed, there is a hypothesis that Moses was an Egyptian, and, having led the people of Israel to the Promised Land, retained many of the customs and beliefs that existed in Ancient Egypt.
We find an interesting version of the origin of people in the Heliopolis cosmogony. God Atum accidentally lost his children in the primordial darkness, and when he found them, he cried with happiness, the tears fell to the ground - and from them people emerged. But despite such a reverent history, the life of an ordinary person was completely subject to the gods and pharaohs, who were revered as gods. A person had a clearly assigned social niche, and it was difficult to go beyond it. Therefore, just as there were dynasties of pharaohs above, so below there were centuries-old dynasties, for example, of artisans.
The most important in the mythological system of Ancient Egypt was the myth of Osiris, which embodied the idea of an ever-dying and ever-resurrecting nature.
A vivid symbol of absolute submission to the gods and their governors, the pharaohs, can be the scene of the trial in the afterlife kingdom of Osiris. Those who came to the posthumous trial in the halls of Osiris had to pronounce the “Confession of Denial” and renounce 42 mortal sins, among which we see both mortal sins recognized as such by the Christian tradition, and very specific ones, associated, for example, with the sphere of trade. But the most remarkable thing was that to prove one’s sinlessness it was enough to utter a renunciation of sins, accurate to the point of a comma. In this case, the scales (the heart of the deceased was placed on one bowl, and the feather of the goddess Maat on the other) would not move. The feather of the goddess Maat in this case personifies the world order, strict adherence to the laws established by the gods. When the scales began to move, the balance was upset, a person was faced with non-existence instead of continuing life in the afterlife, which was the most terrible punishment for the Egyptians, who had been preparing for an afterlife all their lives. By the way, it was for this reason that Egyptian culture did not know heroes, in the sense that we find among the ancient Greeks. The gods created a wise order that must be obeyed. Any change is only for the worse, so the hero is dangerous.
The ancient Egyptians’ ideas about the structure of the human soul, which has five components, are interesting. The main ones are Ka (astral double of a person) and Ba (vital force); then come Ren (name), Shuit (shadow) and Ah (shine). Although, of course, Egypt did not yet know the depth of spiritual self-reflection that we see, suppose, in the culture of the Western European Middle Ages.
So, the time and space of ancient Egyptian culture turned out to be clearly divided into two parts - “here,” that is, in the present, and “there,” that is, in the other world, the afterlife. “Here” is the flow of time and the finiteness of space, “there” is eternity and infinity. The Nile served as the road to the afterlife kingdom of Osiris, and the guide was the “Book of the Dead,” excerpts from which can be found on any sarcophagus.
All this served the cult of the dead, which steadily occupied a leading position in ancient Egyptian culture. An important component of the cult was the funeral process itself, and, of course, the ritual of mummification, which was supposed to preserve the body for the subsequent afterlife.
The relative immobility of cultural consciousness served as one of the important reasons for the strange immutability of ancient Egyptian culture for about 3 millennia. And conservation of customs, beliefs, norms of art, etc. has intensified over the course of history, despite serious external influences. For example, the main features of ancient Egyptian art, both in the Ancient and New Kingdoms, remained canonicity, monumentality, hieraticism (sacred abstraction of images), and decorativeness. For the Egyptians, art played an important role precisely from the point of view of the afterlife cult. Through art, a person, his image, life and deeds were immortalized. Art was the “road” to eternity.
And, probably, the only person who seriously shook not only the foundations of the state system, but also cultural stereotypes, was the pharaoh of the 18th dynasty named Akhenaten, who lived in the 14th century BC during the era of the New Kingdom. He renounced polytheism and ordered to worship only one god, Aten, the god of the solar disk; closed many temples, instead of which he built others dedicated to the newly proclaimed deity; being under the name of Amenhotep IV, he took the name Akhenaten, which translated means “Pleasing to Aten”; erected a new capital Akhetaten (Heaven of Aten), built according to completely different criteria than before. Inspired by his ideas, artists, architects, and sculptors began to create new art: open, bright, reaching towards the sun, full of life, light and solar warmth. Akhenaten's wife was the beautiful Nefertiti.
But this “sacrilege” did not last long. The priests were sullenly silent, the people grumbled. And the gods were probably angry - military luck turned away from Egypt, its territory was greatly reduced. After Akhenaten’s death, and he reigned for about 17 years, everything returned to normal. And Tutankhaten, who ascended the throne, became Tutankhamun. And the new capital was buried in the sands.
Of course, the reasons for such a sad ending are deeper than the simple revenge of the gods. Having abolished all the gods, Akhenaten still retained the title of god, so monotheism was not absolute. Secondly, you cannot convert people to a new faith in one day. Thirdly, the implantation of a new deity took place by violent methods, which is completely unacceptable when it comes to the deepest layers of the human soul.
Ancient Egypt experienced several foreign conquests during its long life, but always kept its culture intact, however, under the blows of the armies of Alexander the Great, it completed its centuries-old history, leaving us a legacy of pyramids, papyri and many legends. And yet, we can call the culture of Ancient Egypt one of the cradles of Western European civilization, whose echoes are found in the ancient era and are noticeable even during the Christian Middle Ages.
For modern culture, Egypt became more open after the work of Jean-François Champollion, who in the 19th century solved the mystery of ancient Egyptian writing, thanks to which we were able to read many ancient texts, and above all, the so-called “Pyramid Texts”.
Ancient India.
A characteristic feature of ancient Indian society is its division into four varnas (from Sanskrit “color”, “cover”, “sheath”) - brahmans, kshatriyas, vaishyas and sudras. Each varna was a closed group of people occupying a certain place in society. Belonging to Varna was determined by birth and inherited after death. Marriages took place only within a single varna.
Brahmins (“pious”) were engaged in mental work and were priests. Only they could perform rituals and interpret sacred books. Kshatriyas (from the verb “kshi” - to own, rule, as well as destroy, kill) were warriors. Vaishyas (“devotion”, “dependence”) made up the bulk of the population and were engaged in agriculture, crafts, and trade. As for the Shudras (the origin of the word is unknown), they were at the lowest social level, their lot was hard physical labor. One of the laws of Ancient India says: a sudra is “a servant of another, he can be expelled at will, killed at will.” For the most part, the Shudra varna was formed from local aborigines enslaved by the Aryans. The men of the first three varnas were introduced to knowledge and therefore, after initiation, they were called “twice-born.” This was prohibited for Shudras and women of all varnas, because, according to the laws, they were no different from animals.
Despite the extreme stagnation of ancient Indian society, in its depths there was a constant struggle between the varnas. Of course, this struggle also involved the cultural and religious sphere. Over the centuries, one can trace the clashes, on the one hand, of Brahmanism - the official cultural and religious doctrine of the Brahmins - with the movements of Bhagavatism, Jainism and Buddhism, behind which stood the Kshatriyas.
A distinctive feature of ancient Indian culture is that it does not know names (or they are unreliable), therefore the individual creative principle has been erased in it. Hence the extreme chronological uncertainty of its monuments, which are sometimes dated within the range of a whole millennium. The reasoning of the sages is concentrated on moral and ethical problems, which, as we know, are the least amenable to rational research. This determined the religious and mythological nature of the development of ancient Indian culture as a whole and its very conditional connection with scientific thought itself.
An important component of ancient Indian culture were the Vedas - collections of sacred songs and sacrificial formulas, solemn hymns and magical spells during sacrifices - “Rigveda”, “Samaveda”, “Yajurveda” and “Atharvaveda”.
According to the Vedic religion, the leading gods were considered: the sky god Dyaus, the god of heat and light, rain and storms, the ruler of the universe Indra, the god of fire Agni, the god of the divine intoxicating drink Soma, the sun god Surya, the god of light and day Mithra and the god of the night, the keeper of eternal order Varuna. The priests who performed all the rituals and instructions of the Vedic gods were called brahmins. However, the concept of “Brahman” in the context of ancient Indian culture was broad. Brahmanas also called texts with ritual, mythological explanations and commentaries on the Vedas; Brahman also called the abstract absolute, the highest spiritual unity, which ancient Indian culture gradually came to understand.
In the struggle for hegemony, the Brahmins tried to interpret the Vedas in their own way. They complicated the rituals and order of sacrifices and proclaimed a new god - Brahman, as the creator god who rules the world along with Vishnu (later “Krishna”), the guardian god and Shiva, the destroyer god. Already in Brahmanism a characteristic approach to the problem of man and his place in the world around him crystallizes. Man is a part of living nature, which, according to the Vedas, is completely spiritualized. There is no difference between man, animal and plant in the sense that they all have a body and a soul. The body is mortal. The soul is immortal. With the death of the body, the soul moves into another body of a person, animal or plant.
But Brahmanism was the official form of the Vedic religion, while others existed. Ascetic hermits lived and taught in the forests, creating forest books - the Aranyakas. It was from this channel that the famous Upanishads were born - texts that brought to us the interpretation of the Vedas by ascetic hermits. Translated from Sanskrit, the Upanishads mean “to sit near,” i.e. near the teacher's feet. The most authoritative Upanishads number about ten.
The Upanishads lay down a tendency towards monotheism. Thousands of gods are first reduced to 33, and then to a single god Brahman-Atman-Purusha. Brahman, according to the Upanishads, is a manifestation of the cosmic soul, the absolute, cosmic mind. Atman is the individual-subjective soul. Thus, the proclaimed identity “Brahman is Atman” means the immanent (internal) participation of man in the cosmos, the original kinship of all living things, affirms the divine basis of all things. This concept would later be called “pantheism” (“everything is God” or “God is everywhere”). The doctrine of the identity of objective and subjective, bodily and spiritual, Brahman and Atman, world and soul is the main position of the Upanishads. The sage teaches: “That is Atman. You are one with him. You are that.”
It was the Vedic religion that created and substantiated the main categories of religious and mythological consciousness that have passed through the entire history of the cultural development of India. In particular, from the Vedas the idea was born that there is an eternal cycle of souls in the world, their transmigration, “samsara” (from the Sanskrit “rebirth.” “passing through something”). At first, samsara was perceived as a disorderly and uncontrollable process. Later, samsara was made dependent on human behavior. The concept of the law of retribution or “karma” (from Sanskrit “deed”, “action”) appeared, meaning the sum of actions performed by a living being, which determines the present and future existence of a person. If during one life the transition from one varna to another was impossible, then after death a person could count on a change in his social status. As for the highest varna - brahmanas, it is even possible for them to liberate themselves from samsara by achieving the state of “moksha” (from Sanskrit “liberation”). The Upanishads record: “As rivers flow and disappear into the sea, losing name and form, so the knower, freed from name and form, ascends to the divine Purusha.” According to the law of samsara, people can be reborn into a variety of beings, both higher and lower, depending on their karma. For example, yoga classes help improve karma, i.e. practical exercises aimed at suppressing and controlling everyday consciousness, feelings, and sensations.
Such ideas gave rise to a specific attitude towards nature. Even in modern India, there are sects of the Digambaras and Shvetambaras, who have a special, reverent attitude towards nature. When the first ones walk, they sweep the ground in front of them, and the second ones carry a piece of cloth near their mouths so that, God forbid, some midge does not fly in there, because it could once have been a person.
By the middle of the first millennium BC, great changes were taking place in the social life of India. By this time, there are already a dozen and a half large states, among which Magatha rises. Later, the Maurya dynasty unites all of India. Against this background, the struggle of the kshatriyas, supported by the vaishyas, against the brahmanas is intensifying. The first form of this struggle is associated with bhagavatism. “Bhagavad Gita” is part of the ancient Indian epic tale Mahabharata. The main idea of this book is to identify the relationship between a person’s worldly responsibilities and his thoughts about the salvation of the soul. The fact is that the question of the morality of social duty was far from idle for the kshatriyas: on the one hand, their military duty to the country obliged them to commit violence and kill; on the other hand, the death and suffering that they brought to people cast doubt on the very possibility of liberation from samsara. God Krishna dispels the doubts of the kshatriyas, offering a kind of compromise: every kshatriya must fulfill his duty (dharma), fight, but this must be done with detachment, without pride and fanaticism. Thus, the Bhagavad Gita creates a whole doctrine of renounced action, which formed the basis of the concept of Bhagavatism.
The second form of struggle against Brahmanism was the Jain movement. Like Brahmanism, Jainism does not deny samsara, karma and moksha, but believes that merger with the absolute cannot be achieved only through prayers and sacrifices. Jainism denies the sanctity of the Vedas, condemns blood sacrifices and ridicules Brahmanical ritual rites. In addition, representatives of this doctrine deny the Vedic gods, replacing them with supernatural creatures - genies. Later, Jainism split into two sects - moderate (“dressed in white”) and extreme (“dressed in space”). They are characterized by an ascetic lifestyle, outside the family, at temples, withdrawal from worldly life, and contempt for their own physicality.
The third form of the anti-Brahmanical movement was Buddhism. The first Buddha (translated from Sanskrit - enlightened), Gautama Shakyamuni, from the family of Shakya princes, was born, according to legend, in VI BC from the side of his mother, who once dreamed that a white elephant entered her side. The childhood of the prince's son was cloudless, and moreover, they did everything they could to hide from him that there was any kind of suffering in the world. Only after reaching the age of 17 did he learn that there are sick, weak and poor people, and the end of human existence is miserable old age and death. Gautama embarked on a search for truth and spent seven years wandering. One day, having decided to rest, he lay down under the Bodhi tree - the Tree of Knowledge. And in a dream four truths appeared to Gautama. Having known them and become enlightened, Gautama became Buddha. Here they are:
The presence of suffering that rules the world. Everything that is generated by attachment to earthly things is suffering.
The cause of suffering is life with its passions and desires, because everything depends on something.
It is possible to escape from suffering into nirvana. Nirvana is the extinction of passions and suffering, the breaking of ties with the world. But nirvana is not the cessation of life and not the renunciation of activity, but only the cessation of misfortunes and the elimination of the causes of a new birth.
There is a way by which one can achieve nirvana. There are 8 steps leading to it: 1) righteous faith; 2) true determination; 3) righteous speech; 4) righteous deeds; 5) righteous life; 6) righteous thoughts; 7) righteous thoughts; 8) true contemplation.
The central idea of Buddhism is that a person is able to break the chain of rebirths, break out of the world cycle, and stop his suffering. Buddhism introduces the concept of nirvana (translated as “cooling, fading”). Unlike Brahmanical moksha, nirvana does not know social boundaries and varnas; moreover, nirvana is experienced by a person on earth, and not in the other world. Nirvana is a state of perfect equanimity, indifference and self-control, without suffering and without liberation; a state of perfect wisdom and perfect righteousness, for perfect knowledge is impossible without high morality. Anyone can achieve nirvana and become a Buddha. Those who achieve nirvana do not die, but become arhats (saints). A Buddha can also become a bodhisattva, a holy ascetic who helps people.
God in Buddhism is immanent to man, immanent to the world, and therefore Buddhism does not need a creator god, a savior god, or a manager god. At the early stage of its development, Buddhism came down primarily to the identification of certain rules of behavior and moral and ethical problems. Subsequently, Buddhism tries to cover the entire universe with its teachings. In particular, he puts forward the idea of the constant modification of everything that exists, but takes this idea to the extreme, believing that this change is so rapid that one cannot even talk about being as such, but one can only talk about eternal becoming.
In the 3rd century BC. Buddhism is accepted by India as an official religious and philosophical system, and then, breaking up into two large directions - Hinayana (“small vehicle”, or “narrow path”) and Mahayana (“big vehicle”, or “broad path”) - spreads far outside India, in Sri Lanka, Burma, Kampuchea, Laos, Thailand, China, Japan, Nepal, Korea, Mongolia, Java and Sumatra. However, it must be added that the further development of Indian culture and religion followed the path of transformation and departure from “pure” Buddhism. The result of the development of the Vedic religion, Brahmanism and the assimilation of beliefs that existed among the people was Hinduism, which undoubtedly borrowed a lot from previous cultural and religious traditions.
Ancient China.
The beginning of the formation of ancient Chinese culture dates back to the second millennium BC. At this time, many independent states-monarchies of an extremely despotic type were emerging in the country. The main occupation of the population is irrigation farming. The main source of existence is land, and the legal owner of the land is the state represented by the hereditary ruler - the van. In China there was no priesthood as a special social institution; the hereditary monarch and sole landowner was at the same time the high priest.
Unlike India, where cultural traditions developed under the influence of the highly developed mythology and religion of the Aryans, Chinese society developed on its own basis. Mythological views weighed much less heavily on the Chinese, but nevertheless, in a number of positions, Chinese mythology almost literally coincides with Indian and the mythology of other ancient peoples.
In general, unlike the ancient Indian culture, which was subject to the colossal influence of mythology, which fought for centuries to reunite spirit with matter, atman with brahman, ancient Chinese culture is much more “down to earth”, practical, coming from everyday common sense. It is less concerned with general problems than with problems of social and interpersonal relations. Magnificent religious rituals are replaced here by a carefully developed ritual for social and age purposes.
The ancient Chinese called their country the Celestial Empire (Tian-xia), and themselves the Sons of Heaven (Tian-tzu), which is directly related to the cult of Heaven that existed in China, which no longer carried an anthropomorphic principle, but was a symbol of a higher order. However, this cult could only be performed by one person - the emperor, therefore, in the lower strata of ancient Chinese society, another cult developed - the Earth. According to this hierarchy, the Chinese believed that a person has two souls: material (po) and spiritual (hun). The first one goes to the ground after death, and the second one goes to heaven.
As mentioned above, an important element of ancient Chinese culture was the understanding of the dual structure of the world, based on the relationship of Yin and Yang. The symbol of Yin is the moon; it is feminine, weak, gloomy, dark. Yang is the sun, the masculine principle, strong, bright, light. In the ritual of fortune telling on a mutton shoulder or turtle shell, common in China, Yang was indicated by a solid line, and Yin by a broken line. The result of fortune telling was determined by their ratio.
In the VI-V centuries BC. Chinese culture gave humanity a wonderful teaching - Confucianism - which had a huge influence on the entire spiritual development of China and many other countries. Ancient Confucianism is represented by many names. The main ones are Kun Fu Tzu (in Russian transcription - “Confucius”, 551-479 BC), Mencius and Xun Tzu. Teacher Kun came from an impoverished aristocratic family in the kingdom of Lu. He went through a stormy life: he was a shepherd, taught morality, language, politics and literature, and at the end of his life he achieved a high position in the public sphere. He left behind the famous book “Lun-yu” (translated as “conversations and hearings”).
Confucius cares little about the problems of the other world. “Without knowing what life is, how can you know what death is?” - he liked to say. His focus is on man in his earthly existence, his relationship with society, his place in the social order. For Confucius, a country is a big family, where everyone must remain in his place, bear his responsibility, choosing the “right path” (“Tao”). Confucius attaches particular importance to filial devotion and respect for elders. This respect for elders is reinforced by appropriate etiquette in everyday behavior - Li (literally “ceremonial”), reflected in the book of ceremonies - Li-ching.
In order to improve order in the Middle Kingdom, Confucius puts forward a number of conditions. Firstly, it is necessary to honor old traditions, because without love and respect for its past, the country has no future. It is necessary to remember ancient times, when the ruler was wise and intelligent, officials were selfless and loyal, and the people prospered. Secondly, it is necessary to “correct names”, i.e. the placement of all people in places in a strictly hierarchical order, which was expressed in the formula of Confucius: “Let the father be the father, the son the son, the official the official, and the sovereign the sovereign.” Everyone should know their place and their responsibilities. This position of Confucius played a huge role in the fate of Chinese society, creating a cult of professionalism and skill. And finally, people must acquire knowledge in order, first of all, to understand themselves. You can ask a person only when his actions are conscious, but there is no demand from a “dark” person.
Confucius had a unique understanding of social order. He defined the interests of the people, in whose service the sovereign and officials were, as the highest goal of the aspirations of the ruling class. The people are even higher than the deities, and only in third place in this “hierarchy” is the emperor. However, since the people are uneducated and do not know their true needs, they need to be controlled.
Based on his ideas, Confucius defined the ideal of a person, which he called Junzi, in other words, it was the image of a “cultured person” in ancient Chinese society. This ideal, according to Confucius, consisted of the following dominants: humanity (zhen), sense of duty (yi), loyalty and sincerity (zheng), decency and observance of ceremonies (li). The first two positions were decisive. Humanity meant modesty, justice, restraint, dignity, selflessness, and love for people. Confucius called duty a moral obligation that a humane person, by virtue of his virtues, imposes on himself. Thus, the ideal of Junzi is an honest, sincere, straightforward, fearless, all-seeing, understanding, attentive in speech, careful in deeds person, serving high ideals and goals, constantly seeking the truth. Confucius said: “Having learned the truth in the morning, you can die in peace in the evening.” It was the ideal of Junzi that Confucius laid as the basis for the division of social strata: the closer a person is to the ideal, the higher he should stand on the social ladder.
After the death of Confucius, his teaching split into 8 schools, two of which - the school of Mencius and the school of Xun Tzu - are the most significant. Mencius proceeded from the natural kindness of man, believing that all manifestations of his aggressiveness and cruelty are determined only by social circumstances. The purpose of teaching and knowledge is “to find the lost nature of man.” The state system should be carried out on the basis of mutual love and respect - “Van must love the people as his children, the people must love Wang as their father.” Political power, accordingly, should have as its goal the development of the natural nature of man, providing it with maximum freedom for self-expression. In this sense, Mencius acts as the first theorist of democracy.
His contemporary Xunzi, on the contrary, believed that man is naturally evil. “The desire for profit and greed,” he said, “are innate qualities of a person.” Only society through appropriate education, the state and the law can correct human vices. In essence, the goal of state power is to remake, re-educate a person, and prevent his natural vicious nature from developing. This requires a wide range of means of coercion - the only question is how to use them skillfully. As can be seen, Xunzi actually substantiated the inevitability of a despotic, totalitarian form of social organization.
It must be said that Xunzi’s ideas were supported not only theoretically. They formed the basis of a powerful socio-political movement during the reign of the Qin dynasty (3rd century BC), which was called legalists or “legists”. One of the main theoreticians of this movement, Han Fei-tzu, argued that the vicious nature of man cannot be changed at all, but can be limited and suppressed through punishments and laws. The legalists' program was almost completely implemented: uniform legislation was introduced for all of China, a single monetary unit, a single written language, a single military-bureaucratic apparatus, and the construction of the Great Wall of China was completed. In a word, the state was unified, and the Great Chinese Empire was formed in place of the warring states. Having set the task of unifying Chinese culture, the legalists burned most of the books, and the works of philosophers were drowned in outhouses. For concealing books, they were immediately castrated and sent to build the Great Wall of China. They were rewarded for denunciations, and executed for non-denunciations. And although the Qin dynasty lasted only 15 years, the bloody rampage of the first “cultural revolution” in China brought many victims.
Along with Confucianism, Taoism became one of the main directions of the Chinese cultural and religious worldview. After the penetration of Buddhism into China, it entered the official religious triad of China. The need for a new teaching was due to the philosophical limitations of Confucianism, which, being a socio-ethical concept, left unanswered questions of a global ideological nature. Lao Tzu, the founder of the Taoist school, who wrote the famous treatise “Tao Te Ching” (“Book of Tao and De”) tried to answer these questions.
The central concept of Taoism is Tao (“right path”) - the fundamental principle and universal law of the universe. The main features of the Tao, as defined by Yang Hing Shun in the book “The Ancient Chinese Philosophy of Lao Tzu and His Teachings”:
This is the natural way of things themselves. There is no deity or “heavenly” will.
It exists forever as the world. Infinite in time and space.
This is the essence of all things, which manifests itself through its attributes (de). Without things, Tao does not exist.
As an essence, Tao is the unity of the material basis of the world (qi) and its natural path of change.
This is an inexorable necessity of the material world, and everything is subject to its laws. It sweeps away everything that interferes with it.
The basic law of Tao: all things and phenomena are in constant motion and change, and in the process of change they all turn into their opposite.
All things and phenomena are interconnected, which is carried out through a single Tao.
Tao is invisible and intangible. Inaccessible by feeling and cognizable by logical thinking.
Knowledge of Tao is available only to those who are able to see harmony behind the struggle of things, peace behind movement, and non-existence behind being. To do this, you need to free yourself from passions. “He who knows does not speak. The one who speaks does not know.” From here the Taoists derive the principle of non-action, i.e. prohibition on actions contrary to the natural flow of Tao. “He who knows how to walk leaves no traces. He who knows how to speak does not make mistakes.”