egyptians

Archaeological records show that the horticulturists of the Nile had settled in the long and narrow valley of this river about seven millennia ago. Herodotus called Egypt "the gift of the Nile", for without it, the place would be a sandy desert. The Nile flows northward for nearly 6.5 thousands km from central mountainous Africa to the Mediterranean Sea. When the season of rains had been coming to central Africa, the Nile had overflowed its banks and deposited a fertile layer of soil, which could support a numerous gardening population.

The early prehistoric dwellers on the Nile inhabited the terraces or plateaus left by the river as it cut its bed. The remains of their tools and implements show their gradual development from hunters and gatherers to settled gardeners. Evidence of organized settlements has been found mainly in their cemeteries. The artifacts, produced during that time, were put into the grave with the body for the use of the spirit in the next life, thus preserving a great quantity of such personal goods as pottery, tools, and weapons. The pottery was often decorated with painting that reflects the life of the time. Images of birds and animals common to the land bordering the Nile abound, and from the latter part of the prehistoric (pre-dynastic) period come elaborate depictions of many oared-boats. At the beginning, most of their implements, the gardeners of the Nile chipped from stone; later, they more often used copper for beads and simple tools. They used cosmetic palettes (made of stone) for grinding eye paint, and carved small sculptures and figurines from ivory or modeled them in clay. Gold, copper, stone, and other natural resources were abundant along the riverbed. Within two millennia, the Nile gardeners learned how to control the river and they had built some irrigation systems.

They were tribal and locally minded, but their wealth was growing and capturing the imagination of the neighboring pastoralists. At about the 31^st century BC, the Semitic nomadic tribes from the mountainous region of present-day Syria and Lebanon conquered the Nile delta, and then expanded south into Nubia and north as far as Syria.

The history of ancient Egypt is usually divided into three large (half of a millennium) periods of stable ruling and corresponding small (a couple centuries) transitional periods of civil wars and following nomadic invasions (the Egyptian Dark Ages – when the changes of the upper class and its language occurred). The Old Kingdom or Pyramid Age continued from 2686 to 2181 BC, the Middle Kingdom (2040-1786 BC), and the New Kingdom (1570-1085 BC).

The Egyptian State building followed the pattern and practice of the Mesopotamians but in a slower pace. The slower development of the Egyptians was based on the geography of the country, which had been united by the Nile and, at the same time, semi-isolated from outside cultural influences by the vast deserts. This semi-isolation fostered a slower and more continuous artistic and language patterns, because the new waves of the nomadic invasions (and corresponding changes of the upper class and its language) rarely reached Egypt.

Egyptian has a longer recorded history than any other language, for nearly five millennia. It is the only member of the Hamitic linguistic family, which include Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian, Late Egyptian, Popular Egyptian and Coptic. Words in Old Egyptian, as in following Egyptian languages, tend to be formed from roots typically consisting of three consonants. The stable meaning of the root is altered by different vowel patterns. However, forms of verbs and the Old Egyptian syntax vary markedly from forms of verbs and syntax of the following Egyptian languages. Spoken and literary Old Egyptian differs considerably. Most of the formal inscriptions on tombs, temples, pillars, and statues were written in Old Egyptian, and approximations of living speech are preserved only in practical documents such as business records and letters.

Based on the existing literary evidence the Hamitic linguistic family has been divided into five eras. Old Egyptian (the 30^th through the 22^nd centuries BC) was the written language of the Early Dynastic Period through the Old Kingdom (0-6^th Dynasties). The classical Egyptian literary language is believed to reflect the speech of around the 22^nd century BC. Middle Egyptian was dominant from the 20^th through the 13^th centuries BC. Late Egyptian began to develop during the 2^nd Dark Age and came into general use in the New Kingdom (the 15^th through the 10^th centuries BC). Middle Egyptian had been used by the 18^th Dynasty (the first dynasty after the 2^nd Dark Age) and was still used in monumental inscriptions in the 4^th century BC (under the Persians). The speech of the 15^th century BC shows markedly grammatical and phonetic changes from the earlier language. In the 7^th century BC, during the Late Period, Popular (Demotic) Egyptian became the accepted literary language and remained so through the Persian, Greek, and Roman domination of Egypt into the 4^th century AD.

Popular Egyptian was written with a distinctive cursive script and represented the speech of around the 7^th century BC. The last era of the Egyptian language was Coptic, which was initially in use concurrently with Popular Egyptian. It was written in Greek characters, with additional seven signs from Popular Egyptian for sounds not common to Greek. Beginning with the 3^rd century AD, it was used for Christian literature. Between the 8^th and the 14^th centuries, the Arabic language gradually supplanted Coptic. The latter is still in use today as the liturgical language of the Christian Coptic Church.

The Egyptians developed three forms of writing: hieroglyphics, and two cursive scripts (hieratic, and popular). Hieroglyphic writing is pictorial writing, used for formal inscriptions. Hieratic cursive was used before Egypt’s conquest by the Semitic Assyrians, c. 650 BC, and popular cursive was used between 650 BC – 450 AD. All three used to use ideograms, syllables (consonants only), single letters, and determinatives (interpretive aids for signs having more than one meaning). The writing, as in the Semitic linguistic family, did not represent vowels, and thus (except for Coptic) scholars could trace the phonetic evolution of the language only through consonants. After the popular cursive, Byzantine Greek was in use. The latter was supplanted by Arabic script.

Through each epoch, we will follow from the "hard" evidence of rocks and metals to the "soft" evidence of Egyptian literature, which is characterized by a wide diversity of types and subject matter. From early times, the Egyptians used to use such literary devices as simile, metaphor, alliteration, and punning.

The scientific literature of ancient Egypt includes legal, administrative, and economic texts; hymns to the gods; mythological and magical texts; instructive literature, known as ‘wisdom texts’; extensive collections of mortuary texts; and scientific treatises, including mathematical and medical texts. The popular literature includes stories, poems, biographical and historical texts, and private documents such as letters. Some authors of several compositions dating from the Old and Middle Kingdoms were revered by the later generations of the Egyptians. However, most of these authors came from the educated upper class of government officials, and what they wrote was meant to be read by educated bureaucrats. Indeed, many school-texts of the Middle Kingdom were composed as political propaganda, to teach (or better say, to brainwash the students who learned to read and write by copying these texts) to be loyal to the ruling dynasty.

Before the Egyptian State emerged, the Neolithic gardening settlements of the Nile were concerned with the raising of vegetables, grains, and animals. These settlements slowly gave way to larger groupings of people. When the Nile gardeners became able to produce enough surpluses for maintaining a large bureaucracy and the need to control the Nile floodwaters through big dams and canals had increased, the necessity eventually led to the emergence of city-states. The multiplied Semitic pastoral tribes, in order to survive, conquered several of the city-states in the Nile delta, stabilized the central government, thus creating the new agricultural society – the Egyptians. In a couple centuries, a new Egyptian society was organized and, by the 29^th century BC, the Egyptian upper class was firmly established. The centralized bureaucracy was at work, handling a large and well-trained army and organizing the construction of irrigation systems and pyramids (kings’ tombs) on a large scale that required the cooperative efforts of millions.

From early times, the Nile gardeners believed in a life after death. This belief dictated to the alive that, the dead should be buried with material goods to ensure well being of the dead, who, in their eternity, became the gods. It was implied that reciprocity of the dead would follow and they would care (from below) for the alive. The regular patterns of nature (the annual flooding of the Nile, the cycle of the seasons, and the progress of the sun, moon and planets that brought day and night) were considered gifts of the gods for the people of Egypt. The Egyptian culture was rooted in a deep respect for order and balance of nature. Change and novelty were not considered important in themselves; consequently, Egyptian art was based on relatively rigid tradition. Manners of representation and artistic forms were worked out early in Egyptian history and were used for more than three millennia. The art styles were so rigid because the primary intention of the Egyptian artists was to reflect the content of the object (a living creature or a thing), not its form. They tried not to create an image of an object as it looks to the eye of a living human being, but rather to express the truth (the essence) of this object. They tried to imaging how it would be in its eternity. That is what the meaning of the Latin word ‘art’ is.

The Egyptians considered their king (pharaoh) as more than just a human being because they believed that the king was responsible for ensuring compliance with a divine order for the universe. Because the king was considered as the total embodiment of the clerical and state bureaucracies, art (in its main forms) was devoted principally to royal service. Thus, the links between divine and earthly power were expressed in many ritual objects. One of the ritual objects (made about 31^st century BC and decorated on both sides in low relief) was commemorated to the victory of King Narmer’s northern army over his southern enemy. On one side of this carved stone palette, the king (wearing the crown of the north) is shown behind his troops that are marching on the enemy and defeating it. On the other side, Narmer (wearing the captured crown of the south) is shown subjugating the leader of the south.

The notion that Narmer was wearing the enemy hat, while leading his troops into the battle, is unreasonable, preposterous, and just "politically correct". It was designed only to promote the unfounded notion that Upper Egypt (and thus, central Africa) and not Mesopotamia was the primary stimulus of the Egyptian progress. Those so-called scientists apparently do not understand the meaning and relativity of the Greek word progress, which means ‘to move forward’; however, moving forward in a circle, your finish may be at your start.

The logical beginning of the depicted event is on the top of the palette (on the left), which was meant to be read from above. It is comprised of three registers that lie below the heads of the cow goddess of love (Hathor) and the king’s name. The heads of the cow goddess of love (the most respected divinity of the nomadic people) imply that She guards the king from all sides. At the first register, Narmer (wearing the crown of Lower Egypt) leads his warriors (who have upraised standards) into the decisive battle. Hanging from the behind of Narmer’s tunic is a ritual bull’s tail (each hair of which means a soldier), which served to identify the king with the bull as a figure of power and the symbol of the upper class. After the battle, the enemy is slaughtered and unification of Lower and Upper Egypts is a fact. The unification is expressed on the second register, where two felines (as the ancestral spirits of the Egyptians roped by the bearded priests), with their elongated necks, form an indented circle (unity). The indenture that was limited by the circle probably served for mixing pigments. That is why this is the topside of the palette and why it was meant to be viewed from above. In the lowest register, a bull (as a manifestation of the power of the upper class and Narmer himself) subdues the fallen upper class of the enemy.

The bottom of the palette is comprised of two registers that lie below the heads of the cow goddess of love, which guard the king’s name (the box between the cow heads). The scene, which depicted in the upper register, shows Narmer (already wearing the captured, tall, conical crown of Upper Egypt), who threatens the kneeling enemy leader (who is nearly the same size as Narmer) with a mace. Narmer holds the enemy leader by the hair, thus symbolizing conquest and domination. Over the head of the kneeling enemy is the falcon that symbolizes the sky god of kingship (Horus). The falcon sits on the top of Narmer’s boat that floats among the six (remember the Mesopotamian magical number, from which 60 minutes and 360 degrees of a circle are derived) papyrus plants, which represent Lower Egypt (from where and by what means Narmer came to the victory battlefield). Behind Narmer is his servant, who holds Narmer’s sandals. Narmer took off the sandals because he stands on the holy ground (as the Moslems take off their shoes when entering their holy ground – a mosque, or like the Koreans, when they enter a friend’s home). During the first dynasty of the Old Kingdom servants were killed in order to accompany the dead king to his afterlife; however, by the Middle Kingdom, the Egyptians considered that the paintings and statues would be adequate substitutes. In the lower register, the partisans of the enemy leader are fleeing from only seeing Narmer.

The important event that was reflected on the palette depicts one of the historical stages that led to unification of Egypt, and at the same time, it shows that the country had two distinct parts (Upper Egypt in the south and Lower Egypt in the north). These two distinct parts counter-balanced each other after each Dark Age, and did not allow the Egyptians to work out a systematic ideology and to be completely one nation under one God. Later, we will see why, but for now, the most impressive evidence of the Mesopotamian influence may be seen in the earliest Egyptian pyramids, called mastaba (from the Arabic word ‘a bench’ of mourning). The kings of the early dynasties had tombs at Abydos and Saqqara (near the capital of the Lower Egypt, Memphis) built in imitation of the Mesopotamian ziggurats with shrines on top of them.

In the 3^rd Dynasty the architect and prime-minister Imhotep built for King Zoser, who ruled 2737-2717 BC, a burial complex at Saqqara, that included a stepped stone pyramid and a group of shrines and related buildings. Designed to protect the remains of the king, the great Step Pyramid is one of the oldest examples of monumental architecture preserved; it also illustrates one of the phases toward the development of the true pyramid. Apparently, Imhotep traveled through Sumer and saw the ziggurats. After that, he constructed the pyramid at Saqqara, the shape and size of which was nearly the same as those of ziggurats. He placed six (remember the Sumerian magic number) mastabas of decreasing size on top of each other (in the shape of pyramid) over a tomb some 30 meters underground. The experimentation with the stepped pyramids followed and they were constructed from different numbers of levels (mastabas). About two centuries later, the three most famous pyramids were constructed at Giza, about 50 km north of Saqqara.

The architecture of the Old Kingdom (from the 3^rd through the 6^th dynasties) can be described as monumental, rectangular, and frontal. The native limestone and granite were used for the construction of large-scale royal temples and royal and private tombs. The pyramid complex at Giza (where the kings of the 4^th Dynasty were buried) illustrates the high intellectual level of Egyptian architects, who could construct monuments that remain wonders of the world.

The Pyramid of Khufu was about 146-m high, 230-m along each side of its base, and contained about 2.3 million rectangular blocks with an average weight of 2.5 tons each. The other two major pyramids at Giza were that of Khafre (Khufu’s son) and that of Menkaure (Khafre’s son). They were built to preserve and protect the bodies of the kings for eternity. Each pyramid had a valley temple, a landing and staging area, and pyramid temple or cult chapel where religious rites for the king’s spirit were performed. Around them, a royal cemetery grew up, containing other upper class members’ mastaba tombs. For the most part these tombs were constructed from rectangular blocks of stone over shafts that led to a chamber containing the mummy and the offerings, but some tombs were cut into the limestone plateau. From the evidence of tombs at Giza and Saqqara it appears that the Egyptians built their tombs imitating their real houses, which they arranged on the streets in the well-designed towns and cities. Because houses and even palaces were built of unbaked mud bricks, they have not survived. The temples and tombs, built of stone and constructed for eternity, provide most of the information on the customs and living conditions of those Egyptians.

From the early figures of clay, bone, and ivory (in the pre-dynastic period) Egyptian sculpture developed quickly. By the time of the 3^rd Dynasty, large statues of the rulers were made as resting-places for their spirits. Egyptian sculpture is best described by the terms rectangular and frontal. The rectangular block of stone was first cut out of a rock; then, the design of the figure was drawn on the front and the two sides. The resulting statue was meant to be seen mainly from the front; a timeless image meant to convey the essence of the person depicted and not a momentary impression.

The Egyptian artists were not interested in showing the dynamic of a figure. Figures were posed rather at rest (in static forms). From the beginning of the dynastic period, the Egyptian sculptors understood human anatomy but idealized it because they idealized their kings and gave the kings’ images a great deal of heavenly dignity. A seated stone figure of Khafre (about 25^th century BC) embodies all the important royal qualities. The king sits on a throne decorated with an emblem of the united lands, with his hands on his knees, head erect, and eyes gazing into the far distance as if he contemplates over the long-run interests of the Egyptians. A falcon of the sky god of kingship (Horus), a son of a goddess of a king’s throne (Isis) behind him symbolizes his divine right of kingship.

Several forms were developed to depict private persons. In addition to seated and standing single figures, paired and group statues of the deceased with their family members were also made. Sculpture was of stone, of wood, and (rarely) of metal. Paint was applied to the surface and the eyes were inlaid in other materials (such as rock crystal) to increase the lifelike appearance of sculptures that depicted workers engaged in the crafts and food preparation. These sculptures were meant to be included in the tomb as substitutes of the actual relatives and servants. The images of relatives were meant to entertain the royal spirit in his afterlife. The images of servants were meant to serve the royal spirit in his next life. When the sculpture technique became so advanced that the production of the image of the lower class individual became cheaper than killing him, then, the images substituted the actual servants. Thus, the necessity to kill the actual servants (after the death of their master) fell away. Thus, the Old Kingdom canon that prescribed increasing naturalism for decreasing social status was worked out.

Relief sculpture on the walls of temples depicted and immortalized the king in relation to the Egyptians and their gods. In the chambered superstructures of private tombs, the occupant was shown receiving offerings, enjoying, and observing the various activities he had taken part in while living.

The method of representing the human figure in two dimensions, either carved in relief or painted, was dictated by the desire to preserve the essence of what was shown. Consequently, the typical depiction combines the head and lower body as seen from the side, with the eye and upper torso as seen from the front. The most understandable view of each part was used to create a complete image.

This rule (the Egyptian canon) was applied to the images of the king and other members of the upper class, but the images of the middle and lower class workers were not so rigidly enforced. When some complicated actions had to be conveyed with the use of other points of view of parts of the body, they were used; however, the face was rarely shown frontally. Relief carving was usually painted to complete the lifelike effect, and many details were added only in paint; however, purely painted decoration is seldom found in remains of the Old Kingdom Age.

The Egyptian painters illustrated the various agricultural techniques and methods of caring for flocks and herds, the trapping of wild animals, the variety of food and culinary techniques, and the processes of building houses, boats and other kinds of crafts. They arranged their illustrations on the walls of tombs in registers (bands), which were meant to be read as continuous narratives of the timeless occupations. The painters and sculptors (working in relief) acted as a team, with different stages of the work assigned to different members of the team.

Pottery of the pre-dynastic period (that was made with rich decorations) was replaced by beautifully made, but undecorated wares, often with burnished surfaces, in a variety of useful shapes. Pottery of the first dynasties served all the purposes for which glass, china, metal, and plastic are used today; consequently, it varied from vessels for eating and drinking to large storage containers and brewer’s vats. Jewelry was made of gold and semiprecious stones in forms incorporating plant and animal designs, because agriculture was the main source of existence.

Throughout the history of Egypt, the decorative arts were highly dependent on the agricultural motifs. The number of illustrations in tombs give much information about the design of chairs, beds, stools, and tables, which were, generally, of simple design, incorporating plant forms and animal feet. The columns of the temples and palaces were designed in the same plant-like forms. From the age of the 6^th Dynasty came the oldest surviving metal statue, made of copper an image of Pepi I, who ruled 2395-2360 BC.

The Pyramid Texts are the mortuary texts that were carved inside the pyramids of kings; they are the oldest preserved literature. The mortuary texts were designed to ensure the dead ruler’s rightful place in the afterlife. These texts incorporate hymns to the gods and daily offering rituals. Many autobiographical inscriptions from private tombs recount the deceased’s participation in historical events. Although no stories or ‘wisdom texts’ were preserved from the Old Kingdom, some Middle Kingdom manuscripts may be copies of Old Kingdom originals. Such a copy may be "The Instruction of the Vizier Ptahhotep" composed of maxims illustrating basic virtues – such as moderation, truthfulness, and kindness. This ‘wisdom text’ proclaimed that virtues should govern human relations, and it described the ideal person as a just administrator.

By the end of the 6^th Dynasty’s rule, the clerical and local bureaucracies began to take over the Egyptian central civil bureaucracy. The priests and local governors gained in social status and personal wealth and gradually undermined the divine and absolute authority of the king. The power of the central bureaucracy had been weakened, and henceforth, the local bureaucrats chose to be buried in own provinces rather than near the royal burial places.

The extreme expenditure of human and material resources on the army and on pyramids by the central bureaucracy led to demoralization and corruption of the central bureaucrats, and the 6^th Dynasty declined and died out. The collapse of the central bureaucracy led to the civil war when rival families competed for the throne and had no time and money to look around for the nomadic tribes. The irrigation system required constant maintenance, but nobody had taken responsibility for it. The lower class Egyptians were starved to death and the country was depopulated.

Following the breakdown of the Old Kingdom, private individuals appropriated the Pyramid Texts and supplemented them with new incantations. Since then, these texts were painted on the coffins of commoners, who also had their tombs inscribed with autobiographical texts, which often recounted their exploits during this time of political unrest. To this 1^st Dark Age (c. 2181-2040 BC) are attributed various laments over the chaotic state of affairs. One of these, "The Dialogue of a Man with his Soul", is a debate of commoners on a theme of suicide. The earliest example of the songs sung by harpists at the funerary banquets of the upper class, advises "Eat, drink, and be merry, before it’s too late!" Moreover, an anonymous Egyptian poet of that time thus reflected the situation:
The wrongdoer is everywhere….
Plunderers are everywhere….
Nile is in flood, yet none ploughs for him….

Thus, Egypt became an easy prey for the nomads, who would be the Egyptian new and more organized upper class.

The 1^st Transitional period (the 7^th through the 10^th Dynasties) was a time of anarchy and civil wars. Artistic traditions of the Old Kingdom survived only when the strong rulers emerged in Thebes, the capital city of Upper Egypt. The rulers of Thebes, who employed the Nubian tribesmen as their mercenaries, reunited the country and made healthy conditions for the middle-class activity. Under Mentuhotep II of the 11^th Dynasty (who ruled Egypt from 2040 to 2010 BC and united it in the Middle Kingdom period), the Egyptians artists and artisans created a new style of the mortuary monuments. The pyramid complexes of the Old Kingdom were their inspiration. On the West Bank of the Nile, at Thebes, the Egyptians constructed a valley temple connected by a causeway to a temple, nestled in the rocky hillside. The walls were decorated with reliefs of the king in the company of the gods.

The ideology of the Egyptians had the dominating influence in the development of their culture (as in every other culture), although it did not develop into a national religion, in the sense of a unified theological system. The unification of the Egyptian ideology was not completed because of the shifts of central power from the descendants of the different nomadic tribes. The Egyptian upper class has been comprised from the Semitic Dynasties that ruled from Memphis, then, from the Nubian Dynasties that ruled from Thebes. The Egyptians were ruled by the Libyan Dynasties from Sais, Tanis, and Bubastis, by the Aryan Dynasties from Persepolis, Alexandria, Rome, and Constantinople, by the Semitic Arabs again, and so forth. Thus, the Egyptian system of faith had not been systematized. Although the efforts in this direction were made, but they were weak and sporadic, leaving only an unorganized collection of ancient myths, nature worship, and innumerable deities. In the most influential and famous of these myths, a divine hierarchy is developed and the creation of the earth is explained.

According to the earlier Egyptian accounts of creation, at first, only the ocean existed. Then, the sun (Ra) came out of an egg (a flower – lotus, in some versions) that appeared on the surface of the water. The sun and water brought forth two sons, the air (Shu) and earth (Geb), and two daughters, the clouds (Tefnut) and sky (Nut). The sun ruled over all. The earth and the sky later had two sons, Set and Osiris, and two daughters, Isis and Nephthys. The younger brother (Osiris) succeeded his father (Ra) as king of the world because his sister-wife (Isis) helped him. However, the elder brother (Set) hated his younger brother and killed him. (You can see from where Moses took his scenario of Cain killing Abel.) Isis then embalmed her husband’s body with the help of Anubis, who thus became the god of embalming. The powerful charms of Isis resurrected Osiris, who became king of the netherworld, the land of the dead. The son of Osiris and Isis, Horus, who later defeated Set in a great battle, became the king of the world.

From this myth of creation came the conception of the Ennead, a group of nine divinities, and the Trinity, consisting of a divine father, mother, and son. Every local temple in Egypt possessed its own Ennead and Trinity. Most of the Egyptians of the Old Kingdom had known the Ennead that included the sun (Ra) and his children and grandchildren. In the 12^th Dynasty (the second after the 1^st Dark Age) the Nubian sun god (Amon) superseded the Semitic sun god (Ra), and then, in the 18^th Dynasty (the first after the 2^nd Dark Age), the supreme god became the new Nubian sun god (Aton).

From Egyptian, Amon means ‘hiding’; it also spelled as Ammon, Amen, or Amun. Originally, Amon was the sun god of the Nubian nomads; his dominant feature was his reproductive forces. Thus, Amon had been pictured as a ram. Later, the Egyptian upper class had civilized him and pictured him as a human. Amon, his wife, Mut (from Egyptian means ‘mother’), and his son, the moon god Khon (from Egyptian means ‘to traverse the sky’), formed the Trinity of Thebes. Later, the Egyptian upper class made an attempt of unification of these deities. The Egyptian priests identified the sun god (Amon) of Thebes with the sun god (Ra) of Heliopolis, and he became known as Amon-Ra, "the father of the gods, the fashioner of men, the creator of cattle, the Lord of all being". For awhile, this semi-universal sun god became the national god of the Egyptians, but the other deities were worshiped too. The power of the high priest of the sun god (Amon-Ra) rivaled that of the power of the king, provoking political problems similar to modern church-state rivalry, and finally led to the 2^nd Egyptian Dark Age. The biggest temple ever built for Amon-Ra was at Karnak, near Thebes. Later, Amon was worshiped in the ancient Greek colonies of Cyrene, where he was identified with Zeus. Still later, in Rome, Amon was associated with Jupiter.

Hieroglyphs at the temple of Amon-Ra, Karnak, glorify King Sesostris I (Senusret I), the second king of the 12^th Dynasty, who ruled the Egyptians during the years 1971-1928 BC. He was a son of Amonemhet I and the father of Amonemhet II. Sesostris ruled as co-regent with his father during the years 1971-1962, and became a sole ruler from 1962 BC. He led the Egyptian army against the Nubians and the Libyans. Under his command, the Egyptian upper class completed conquest of Nubia and penetrated into Cush. During his reign, the Egyptian middle and lower classes built Karnak at Thebes and Sesostris' own pyramid at Lisht. Sesostris also made his son co-regent in 1929 BC.

At this low relief at Karnak, the bearded Amonemhet I is wearing the conical hat of the Upper Egypt and conducts his son, Sesostris I (a prince of the Lower Egypt who is wearing the Lower Egyptian hat) to their common LORD (Amon-Ra). The latter is waiting of this political novice with his erected penis and, apparently, will soon "know" him in the biblical sense. Thus, Amon-Ra will teach the novice what political power is all about. Thus, the upper class notion of political power converges with the notion of the political power of the lower class prisoners-homosexuals, who think that having somebody sexually makes them the top-dogs of the prison, and thus, they would dominate and take into possession those, whom they would copulate. That is why love can converge with hate. That is why love (Platonic love) can be expressed in the most elevating and poetic words. That is why love (jealous love) can be expressed in the most demeaning and dirty four-letter words. And the writers of the Old and New Testaments thus interpreted this notion:

"I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign LORD will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations". (Isaiah 61:10) "As a young man marries a maiden, so will your sons marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you". (Isaiah 62:5)

"They said to him, 'John's disciples often fast and pray, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees, but yours go on eating and drinking'. Jesus answered, 'Can you make the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? But the time will come, when the bridegroom will be taken away from them [and become the bride himself, VS]; in those days they will fast'." (Luke 5:34)

If you take into consideration the columns of the temple of Ramses II, the stone with the laws of Hammurabi, and the Washington Monument in the scenery with the Capitol Dome, then you will understand what the primary source of political power is.

Some consistency in worship to the sun god might be traced from the worship to Ra, chief of cosmic deities, from whom early Semitic-Egyptian kings claimed descent. Beginning with the 1^st Dark Age, Ra worship acquired the status of a state religion. During the following Nubian-Egyptian dynasties, the sun god Ra was gradually fused with the sun god Amon, thus becoming the supreme god Amon-Ra at Thebes. After the 2^nd Dark Age, during the 18^th Dynasty, the king Amonhotep III renamed the sun god Aton, an ancient Nubian term for the sun as a physical source of daylight. Amonhotep’s son and successor, Amonhotep IV, reformed the Egyptian ideology by proclaiming Aton the true and only god. Thus, Amonhotep IV adopted a monotheistic ideology. From Greek, mono means ‘one’ and theo means ‘god’. The only god became the sun god Aton. Amonhotep changed his own name to Ikhnaton, meaning, ‘Aton is satisfied’. This first great monotheist was so orthodox and iconoclastic that he ordered to delete the plural word gods from all monuments, and he relentlessly persecuted the priests of Amon-Ra. He moved Egypt’s capital down the Nile from Thebes to Amarna, in Middle Egypt. Ikhnaton’s ideology failed to become the national ideology because it was not systematized – the different natural feminine powers were not linked to the masculine power of the sun. Therefore, the priests of the other powers (gods) were resentful to the monotheistic ideology.

The ideology became the main organizing force in the agricultural society because it provided satisfactory explanations for the powers of nature; it helped to ease the anxiety of death, and justified the traditional rules of morality. Every society that wishes-to-survive must allocate its basic resources in the way of matching the social roles with rewards. However, the leaders of a society usually allocate the surplus resources in the way that the lion’s share of them goes to the upper class. To justify such unequal distribution the leaders need a moral ideology. Thus, the moral ideology of the upper class is born, and thus, it becomes the basic part of the society’s culture. All following laws are considered as the commandments of the gods. Religion united people in the common enterprises that were needed for their collective survival, such as conquering territories that are more fertile or construction and maintenance of the irrigation systems. Religion became the special inventions of urban culture. It became organizing instruments in the hands of the ideologists, who shaped the upper class. With this instrument they could discipline, drill, and handle the large masses of people as units in their destructive assaults of "alien" peoples, their extermination, seizures, and enslavement.

The first monotheistic ideology was going in the right direction, but it failed for lack of knowledge. Consequently, it did not survive the death of its originator, although it exerted a great influence on the culture of that and following times, and gave the stimulus for Moses’ monotheistic ideology. Meanwhile, Egypt returned to the ancient and labyrinthine ideology with many powers to look for.

The origin of the local deities is obscure; some of them were taken from the nomadic predecessors of the incoming upper classes, and some were originally the animal gods of the prehistoric Nile-region. Gradually, they were all fused into a complicated religious structure, although comparatively few local divinities became important throughout Egypt. In addition to those already named, the important divinities included the Semitic gods Thoth, Ptah, Khnemu, and Hapi, and the goddesses Hathor, Mut, Neit, and Sekhet. Their importance increased with the political ascendancy of the localities where they were worshiped. For example, a Trinity of the father Ptah, the mother Sekhet, and the son Imhotep headed the Ennead of Memphis. Ancient inscriptions describe Ptah as "creator of the earth, father of the gods and all the being of this earth, father of beginnings". He was regarded as the patron of metalworkers and artisans and as a mighty healer. He is usually represented as a mummy bearing the symbols of life, power, and stability. The main center of his worship was in Memphis.

Consequently, during the Semitic-Egyptian dynasties of Memphis, Ptah became one of the greatest gods in Egypt. Similarly, when the Nubian-Egyptian dynasties of Thebes ruled Egypt, the Trinity of the father Amon, the mother Mut, and the son Khon (that headed the Ennead of Thebes) was given the most importance by the ruling bureaucracy. As the religion became more involved in the affairs of the State, the deities were sometimes confused with human beings that had been glorified after death. Thus, Imhotep, who was originally the chief minister of King Zoser of the 3^rd Dynasty, was later regarded as a demigod. During the 5^th Dynasty, the kings began to claim divine ancestry and, from that time on, were worshiped as sons of the sun god. Minor powers were also given places in local divine hierarchies.

The Egyptian gods were represented with human torsos and human or animal heads. Sometimes the animal or bird expressed the characteristics of the god. The sun god (Ra), for example, had the head of a hawk, and the hawk was sacred to him because of its swift flight across the sky. Hathor, the goddess of love and laughter, was pictured as cow-headed, and a cow was sacred to her. Anubis was given the head of a jackal because these animals ravaged the desert graves in ancient times. Mut was pictured as vulture-headed, Thoth was ibis-headed, and Ptah was given a human head, although he was occasionally represented as a bull, called Apis. Because of the gods to which they were attached, the sacred animals were venerated, but they were not worshiped until the 26^th Dynasty (after the Assyrian domination). The gods were also represented by symbols, such as the sun disk and hawk wings that were worn on the headdress of the king.

Burying the dead was of the primary concern of the Egyptians, and thus, their funerary rituals and equipment eventually became the most elaborate the world has ever known. The Egyptians believed that the vital life force was composed of several psychical elements, of which the most important was the soul (Ka). The soul, a duplicate of the body, accompanied the body throughout life and, after death, departed from the body to take its place in the land of the dead. However, the soul could not exist without the body; therefore, every effort had to be made to preserve the corpse. Bodies were embalmed and mummified according to a traditional method (that was supposedly created by Isis, who mummified her husband Osiris). Moreover, wood or stone replicas of the body were put into the tomb, just in case if the mummy would be somehow destroyed. Than more statue-duplicates the individual had in his tomb, the more chances he had of resurrection. Consequently, exceedingly elaborate protective system of the tombs was designed to protect the corpses and their afterlife equipment from all kind of natural and social disasters.

The soul of the dead supposedly is beset by innumerable dangers while leaving the tomb; therefore, the tombs were furnished with a copy of the Book of the Dead. In part, this book is a guide to the world of the dead, which was designed to overcome these dangers with some charms. After arriving in the land of the dead, the soul was judged by Osiris, the ruler of the dead, who had 42 assistants. The Book of the Dead also contains instructions for proper conduct before these judges. If the judges decided that the deceased had been a sinner, his soul would be condemned to hunger and thirst or would be torn to pieces by horrible executioners. If the decision was favorable, then, the soul went to a kind of paradise (the heavenly realm of the fields of Yaru, where grain grew nearly four meters high, milky rivers with honey banks were flowing, and existence was an extremely pleasurable version of life on this earth).

Consequently, all the necessities for this happy afterlife existence (from furniture to literature) were put into the tombs. As the reciprocal payment for the happy afterlife and his benevolent protection, Osiris required the souls to perform tasks for him, such as working in his grain fields. However, not breaking the reciprocity, the duty of manual labor could be evaded by placing small statuettes (called ushabtis) into the tomb to serve as substitutes for the deceased.

In the Middle Kingdom period, this theory was changed for a more realistic one, because the supreme god became Amon-Ra, and the center of the new cult switched to Thebes. There are a few preserved examples of the Middle Kingdom architecture (the 11^th and 12^th Dynasties). A small building of Sesostris I of the 12^th Dynasty has been recovered from one of the later pylons of the Karnak Temple, for which its blocks were reused as filling material. This small chapel, actually a station for the procession of a sacred boat, may be used to typify the style of the time. Essentially rectangular in design and constructed on the post-lintel (two vertical posts and a horizontal crossbeam) system, this small building has proportions that meant to express its timeless character. The piers are decorated in fine raised relief with images of the king and the gods.

The famines and civil wars were not forgotten and the Egyptian painters and sculptors had attempted to express those feelings and thoughts in their paintings and sculptures. Thus, the artifacts of the Middle Kingdom Age seem to be more realistic than those, which came from the previous Age. The early work of the Middle Kingdom Age directly imitates the Old Kingdom examples in an attempt to restore old traditions and techniques that were lost in the Dark Age. It takes time for the new generations of artists to reinvent the forgotten techniques of their trade. However, the sculpture of the second half of the 12^th Dynasty exhibits an interest in reality. Portraits of rulers such as Amonemhet III and Sesostris III, who ruled 1878-1843 BC, are different from those of the Old Kingdom rulers; these images of the king are only slightly idealized.

These figures were not brought to the godlike images of the earlier Age because relations between the social classes were changed and the memories of betrayal popped up and burst into skepticism. Thus, the ideology of skepticism began to show its ugly face. The new artists reflected in their portraits and sculptures the new kings’ care and concern of the bureaucratic office; however, the bone structure, indicated beneath tight surfaces that imitated skin, produced the predator-type of realism that was not regular before. At all times, statues of the members of the upper class tended to imitate the royal style; and the statues of the upper class individual of the 12^th Dynasty show that kind of realism.

The tombs of the upper class individuals continued to be placed in their own centers of influence rather than at the royal cemetery near the capital city (some kind of the Arlington cemetery). Although many of these tombs were decorated in relief carving like the Aswan tombs in the south, the tombs at Beni Hassan in Middle Egypt were often decorated only with painting. Those that were preserved show that the provincial artisans were trying to adhere to the standards of royal workshops. Some new types and depictions appear, but the old standards served as a guide to the subjects and arrangements. Painting is also illustrated by the decoration of the rectangular wooden coffins typical of this period.

In the Middle Kingdom, the decorative arts were abundantly produced; jewelry was made of precious metals inlaid with colored stone. The art of faience (tin-oxide-glazed earthenware) achieved a new importance for the manufacture of amulets and small figures, such as the blue-glazed hippopotamuses decorated with painted water plants.

Besides already mentioned Coffin Texts, the Middle Kingdom period left numerous texts of ritual hymns to a king and various deities, including a long hymn to the Nile. Private autobiographies containing historical information continued to be inscribed, and rulers began setting up Stella (stone slabs) on which their important deeds were recorded. From the 1^st Dark Age and the Middle Kingdom periods came some stories and instructional texts. The latter were written in the name of a reigning king, who tried to explain his son and successor how his specific political decisions might be bad, and thus influence his future leadership.

"The Satire on Trades" stresses the bad aspects of all possible occupations except the profession of the scribe. "The Story of Sinuhe" narrates of a high-ranking bureaucrat, who fled to Syria and became a rich and important man there at the death of King Amonemhet I. Amonemhet was the first of the 12^th Dynasty, the last dynasty before the 2^nd Dark Age. Amonemhet tried to limit the power of the local and clerical bureaucracies through reorganizing the central government and moving the capital to Faiyum, but his son, Sesostris I, returned it at Thebes. "The Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor" recounts a marvelous encounter of the Sailor with a giant snake on a luxuriant island. "The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant" narrates of a man who was so eloquent pleading for the return of his stolen donkeys that the bureaucrats kept him in protective custody for a while, in order to enjoy his orations. "The Story of King Khufu and the Magicians" is the earliest preserved medical and mathematical papyri of the Middle Kingdom period.

The 2^nd Transitional period (13^th through 17^th Dynasties) was a time of another disintegration of Egypt and anarchy among the ruling bureaucracy. The period of the 13^th Dynasty was a speedy procession of 50 or more rulers in about 120 years. Upper Egypt broke away from the central bureaucracy. The Hyksos, the Semitic nomadic tribes of Syria and Lebanon, took the rotten Egyptian bureaucracy by surprise and established the 17^th Dynasty in Egypt. The Hyksos sacked the land and set themselves up as the upper class and rulers of Lower Egypt. This had a lasting impact on the land, because the Hyksos brought to Egypt new technology (new types of chariots and body armor) and a new and broader view on the Mediterranean world. The new bureaucracy dominated Lower Egypt about a century; however, for the lack of knowledge about native conditions, it became too dependent on the clerical bureaucracy, and soon, degenerated. The reunification of Egypt came from Upper Egypt, and Thebes was reestablished as its capital city. Most of the Hykso-Egyptians had been expelled by the Nubian-Egyptians, but a small portion of them, which collaborated with the newly established upper class, became the middle-class of merchants and artisans. Later, when the Libyan nomads would establish a new upper class and the Nubian-Egyptian would be transferred into the middle-class, the Hykso-Egyptians would probably become the lower class of the forced laborers. However, fearing to become the lower class, the twelve extended families of them would again prefer to become the nomads under the leadership of Moses, who preached the Judaic ideology.

The New Kingdom, beginning with the 18^th Dynasty of the Nubian descent came to power, wealth, and influence, which were materialized through extensive foreign trade and territorial expansion. The kings of the 18^th through 20^th Dynasties were great empire builders and they were generous to the religious architects. The most important deity in Egypt became the local god Amon. Almost every ruler in the New Kingdom had added something to the cult center of Amon, at Karnak. The result is one of the most impressive temple complexes in the human history. Pylon gateways, colonnaded courts, and columnar halls with obelisks and statues created an impressive display of the power of the king and the clerical and state bureaucracies.

On the West Bank of the Nile, near the royal cemetery of Thebes, temples for the gods and the funerary cults of kings were built. During the New Kingdom, the bodies of the rulers were buried in rock-cut tombs in the dry Valley of the Kings, with the mortuary temples at some distance outside the valley. One of the first and most unusual was the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut, built about 1478 BC under the management of the royal architect, Senemut. Situated against the Nile cliffs, next to the 11^th Dynasty temple of Mentuhotep II, and apparently inspired by it, the temple is a vast terraced structure with numerous shrines to the gods and reliefs that depict the queen’s accomplishments. Other rulers did not follow the precedent and continued to build their mortuary temples at the edge of the cultivated land, away from the cliff-side. The rock-cut tombs were deepened into the cliff-sides of the Valley of the Kings in an effort to conceal the resting-places of the royal mummies. The long descending passageways, stairs, and chambers were decorated in relief and painting with scenes from religious texts intended to protect and aid the spirit in the next life.

The Book of the Dead, the mortuary texts of the Middle Kingdom period that were written on papyrus, were meant to be included in the tombs of the New Kingdom period. Among the most famous hymns from this period are those from the reign of Ikhnaton dedicated to the sun god as the sole god. King Kamose, who ruled about 1576-1570 BC, at the end of the 2^nd Dark Age (1786-1570 BC), recorded the early stages of driving the Hyksos-Egyptians out of Egypt (1600 BC). After the early New Kingdom, the number of such royal historical inscriptions increased greatly, while private autobiographical texts gave way to the ideological texts.

Thutmose III boasted his various wars in Syria on his so-called the Poetical Stella and on the walls of the temple at Karnak. Both records describe how the king called in his advisors to apprise the difficult situation. The advisors advised to try the easy way, but he told them that he is not afraid and will dare the more dangerous route. Finally, the king’s course succeeded. The extensive records of the Late New Kingdom rulers were preserved. Ramses II and Ramses III of the 19^th Dynasty left poetic accounts and chronicles of their deeds and military exploits, such as the Battle of Kadesh, where Ramses II "succeeded" against the Aryan Hittites. These instructive texts were directed at low-rank bureaucrats, trying to explain them why acting on the assumption that right thinking and just action (which supposedly would automatically lead to worldly success) is not enough. Instead, the texts promote the idea that a prolonged contemplation and endurance would suffice. Among the stories that were preserve and are worthy to mention is "The Destruction of Mankind", in which humanity is spared from annihilation by getting the goddess Hathor drunk on blood-colored beer. "The Tale of the Two Brothers" is a story of a good younger brother betrayed by his suspicious elder brother.

Under Ramses II, the Egyptians cut into the mountainside and created the gigantic temple of Abu Simbel in Nubia to the south, with four colossal figures of the king in front. This temple was saved from immersion beneath the waters of the new Aswan High Dam. In 1968, the Egyptians cut out facade and halls of the temple of the mountain and moved it to a higher site.

Domestic and palace architecture was built of perishable mud bricks, because the houses and palaces were meant to serve for the mortals. However, remains that were preserved convey an idea of well-designed multi-roomed palaces with painted floors, walls, and ceilings. Houses for the upper classes were arranged like small estates, with residential and service buildings in an enclosed compound. Examples of the middle and lower classes workers’ dwellings were also found. They were clustered together in villages, very much like those of modern Egypt.

The art of sculpture in the New Kingdom reached a new height. The extreme idealism of the absolute monarchy in the Old Kingdom and the bitter realism of the somewhat constitutional monarchy in the Middle Kingdom were replaced with a polite style of the constitutional monarchy that combined beautification with attention to delicate detail (the Egyptian Baroque). Begun in the reigns of Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, this style reached maturity in the time of Amonhotep III. Portraits of the rulers and other members of the upper class of this period are saturated with grace and sensuality.

The art of the time of Ikhnaton (son of Amonhotep III) reflects the ideological reformation that Ikhnaton tried to promote. Ikhnaton worshiped the sun god (Aton) and he insisted that the artists should reflect the new direction. Early in his reign, a realism that verged upon caricature was used. However, this realism developed into a beautifying style, which tend to eliminate all rigid and sharp characteristics of a personality. This style was embodied in the painted limestone head of Nefertiti, Ikhnaton’s wife (c. 1365 BC).

In the New Kingdom relief carving was generally used for the decoration of tombs and temples, but at Thebes, wall painting came to dominate the decoration of private tombs. The medium of painting made possible a wider range of expression than sculpture, allowing the artist to create colorful tableaus of life on the Nile. Funerary rites are illustrated from the procession to the tomb to the final prayers for the spirit.

One of the standard elements of the Old Kingdom canon in the Theban tomb paintings is a representation of a deceased hunting and fishing in the papyrus marshes. His joyful pastimes symbolized his triumph in afterlife over the malign dark forces of this world. The painters showed the local bureaucrats inspecting the exotic merchandise brought to Egypt from all parts of the known world. The crafts of the royal workshops are depicted in meticulous detail, illustrating the production of all kinds of articles, from massive sculptures to fine jewelry.

The decorative arts of the New Kingdom are equal to the sculpture and painting in their high level of accomplishment. The best example of them is in the funerary items from the tomb of Tutankhamen, in which rich materials (alabaster, ebony, gold, ivory, and semiprecious stones) were combined in objects of high artistry. Ordinary objects for the use of the king and other members of the upper class were exquisitely designed and made with great care. Even the pottery of that time partakes in this desire for decorations, which were colorfully painted on the pottery surfaces employing mostly floral motifs. From the evidence of tomb paintings and the decorative arts follows that the Egyptians of that time had optimistic outlook on the life in this world.

Favorable climate in foreign relations during the 18^th and 19^th Dynasties and the first part of the 20^th Dynasty were succeeded by harsh relations with the surrounding nomadic tribes, which multiplied uncontrollably. Ramses III, the last ruler of the 20^th Dynasty (who could successfully defend Egypt from the nomads, which already sacked the Hittites Empire), built an immense mortuary temple (1198-1167 BC) near Thebes. A small palace adjoining the temple was intended for the use of the king during life and by his spirit after death. Ramses III had to be constantly on defensive guarding Egypt from foreign invasions. The battles of these campaigns were recorded in reliefs on the temple walls. However, during the second half of ruling of the 20^th Dynasty, its kings relied whole-heartedly on the clerical and local bureaucracy and neglected the civil central bureaucracy. The result was devastating.

The Libyan nomads captured Egypt and the Libyan leaders created the 21^st through 24^th Dynasties. Some scholars considered this time as the 3^rd transitional period. Its span was more than 350 years. During the 3^rd Dark Age, the central bureaucracy resided at the new capital cities – at Sais, Tanis, and Bubastis in the Nile delta.

Then, the Nubian nomadic tribes conquered Egypt and managed to create the 25^th Dynasty. Becoming overlords of Egypt, the Nubian adopted many Egyptian customs, and took to themselves the traditional role of the upper class with an absolute monarch as their spearhead. They refurbished old temples and erected new ones to the gods of Egypt. They incorporated in their names those of famous kings of the past, and their art imitated scenes and motifs from earlier monuments. Later, the Assyrians invaded Egypt and eventually put an end to the domination of the 25^th Dynasty.

The Assyrians were not able to hold Egypt for long. The appointed vassals of the Assyrians created the 26^th Dynasty at Sais and ruled for nearly 140 years. The restoration of tradition that begun in the 3^rd Dark Age, were continued by the 25^th and 26^th Dynasties. The arts flourished – sculpture and bronze casting became major industries; contacts were made with the Greeks, some of whom served in the Egyptian army as mercenaries. The art of the 26^th Dynasty used many ancient forms, often literally copying motifs from earlier monuments, because the new generations, after the civil and foreign wars, lost touch with traditions, and therefore, should restore interrupted knowledge.

The 26^th Dynasty perished from the Persians, who conquered Egypt. The Persian rulers are counted as the 27^th Dynasty. Egypt later enjoyed a brief period of native rule with a flourishing of the arts in the 29^th and 30^th Dynasties. A second, shorter, Persian domination (31^st Dynasty) ended with the invasion of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. After Alexander’s death, Ptolemy, one of his generals, declared himself king of Egypt and created a family dynasty that ruled until the Roman conquest of Egypt in 31 BC. Under Alexander and the Ptolemies, Hellenistic art and architecture flourished in Egypt. However, the main artistic expression remained under firm influence of the Old Kingdom canon, even if the rulers were not native to the land and (as with the Persians and Romans) were not even residents of Egypt.

The Egyptian art exerted a powerful influence on the cultures of the invaders. Early Greek artists acknowledged a debt to Egypt in the development of their own styles. The Romans carried off countless examples of Egyptian art into Italy and even commissioned copies by Roman artists, as admirers of the Egyptian art forms and as users of the Egyptian religious cults they had adopted. From the subsequent centuries, into the Greco-Roman era, examples from the full range of Egyptian literary forms are known. These forms include new religious compositions, private and royal historical records, instructions, stories, and scientific treatises such as medical, mathematical, and astronomical papyri. "The Instructions of Onchsheshongy" is a collection of largely pragmatic maxims, many of which sound like proverbs. "The Instructions of Papyrus Insinger", which portrays the wise person as being moral and pious and sharply contradict own earlier expressions of belief in rewards in this life. In this period, many stories were written about the adventures of various magicians – such was a cycle recounting the exploits of a legendary king, Petubastis. One largely mythological tale consists of a series of animal fables. Contacts with contemporary Greek artists can be seen through the comparison of the Egyptian and Greek epic cycle and the fables. It can be seen also in Egyptian texts (including prophetic literature) translated into Greek, and in a range of magical texts known in both Greek and Egyptian.

The Byzantines replaced the Romans in the 5^th century; then, the Arabs came in the 8^th century and introduced Islam and the Arabic language. Egypt was ruled as part of larger Islamic empires for several centuries. The Mamluks, a military caste of Caucasian nomadic origin, ruled Egypt from 1250 until their defeat by the Ottoman Turks in 1517. Under Turkish sultans, Egypt was ruled on the Old Persian manner and the Egyptian hereditary viceroy had wide authority. Britain took control of Egypt in 1882, though nominal allegiance to the Ottoman Empire continued until 1914. Egypt was a British colony from 1914 to 1922. A 1936 treaty strengthened Egyptian autonomy, but Britain retained bases in Egypt. Egypt became independent in 1951.

The uprising in 1952, led by General Mohammed Naguib, dethroned King Farouk. When the republic was proclaimed in 1953, Naguib became its first president and premier. Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser removed Naguib and became the Prime Minister in 1954. In 1956, he was voted as the president. Nasser died in 1970 and Vice President Anwar Sadat became the president. He was assassinated in 1981 by a group of Islamic fundamentalists, and Hosni Mubarak became the president.

The river valleys of the Indus and Ganges are considered the birthplace of Indian urbanism. Located on the Indian subcontinent in modern Pakistan, the Indus ancient cities were not discovered by archaeologists until 1924. Myths and legends blur the ancient history of this region. However, it appears that by 4^th millennium BC horticulturists were raising vegetables, grains, and animals along the banks of these mighty rivers. By 25^th century BC, two major cities, Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, and numerous smaller towns had emerged.

There is some evidence that Mesopotamian traders reached the early Indian towns by sailing from Sumeria to the Indus Valley. While the Indians shared some developments – such as complex irrigation and drainage systems and the art of writing – with the Sumerians, they also developed a unique cultural style of their own.

What little is known of the Indus ancient societies suggests that it had large city-states that were well laid-out and well fortified. There were public buildings, palaces, baths, and large granaries to hold agricultural produce. The many artifacts and artworks found by archaeologists indicate that the residents of those city-states had reached a high level of culture before their societies were destroyed.

According to the Rig-Veda, the ancient Hindu scriptures written after the 25^th century BC, Aryan invaders conquered the earliest Indian city-states. The Aryans, who were a nomadic people (who used to pasture their cattle in the area between the Caucasus, Taurus, and Zagros mountains) captured the horticultural city-states and united them into an Indian agricultural federation with a class (caste) system, which persists to the present-day in the Hindu law. The Indian social system, which divides all people into social classes with differing rights and responsibilities, was a formal expression of the ancient Aryan ideology that combines the theory of life and death of an individual with the theory of social interdependency and labor division. Three basic classes (with minor variations in times and localities) persists to the present days; they are: 1) upper class of clerical and military bureaucrats (the Brahmans - priests and teachers, and the Kshatriyas - soldiers); 2) middle class of civil bureaucrats, farmers, and merchants, (the Vaisyas); and the lower class of serfs and slaves (the Sudras and Untouchables), who should serve uncomplaining to the superior two classes.

'Caste' is the term that was first used by the 16th-century Portuguese traders who applied it to one of the many hereditary classes established among the Aryan Hindus. The word 'caste' derived from the Portuguese word 'casta' that denotes family strain, breed, or race. The latter notions in Sanskrit are expressed by the words 'jati', 'hati', and 'varna'. The term 'varna' denotes a group of 'jati' (families or tribes) and approaches to the modern term 'class' or 'caste'; and the latter is  sometimes used  in a general sense to refer to any society that has a rigid hereditary class structure.

The class system of India developed about 3500 years ago when Aryan-speaking nomadic tribes captured the horticultural city-states in the Indus River Valley. The process of conquering northern India started about 2500 BC, and the dust settled about 1500 BC. The Aryan priests, according to the ancient sacred literature of India, divided the new society into a basic class system. Somewhere between 200 BC and 100 AD, the  Law of Manu was written, through which the Aryan priest-lawmakers maintained the Hindu hereditary class society that still survives today.

The lower class of the Sudras and Untouchables has been time to time filled up with the Dravidians, the original horticultural aborigines of India, to whose ranks from time to time were added the pariahs, or outcasts, persons expelled for religious or social sins from the superior two classes into which they had been born. Thus maintained with the Hindu religious laws, the Hindu class system has been requiring little or no violence on the part of the upper class to keep the lower classes under their control.

Claiming the divine revelation, the Hindu clerical bureaucrats proclaimed the  rigid, hereditary membership in the Hindu classes. It means that one must accept and practice the craft or trade of his father,  marry only members of the same class. There are many restrictions on the choice of occupation and on personal contact with members of other classes. The Hindu class system has been maintained for millennia by the clever propaganda of the idea of 'karma' (destiny), according to which, all people are reincarnated on earth, at which time they have a chance to be born into another, higher class, but only if they have been obedient to the rules of their present superior class.  In this way, the idea of destiny has discouraged the lower class people from attempting to rise to a higher class or to cross the class lines . During the past three millennia, the  three basic classes have been subdivided again and again in accord with the times and localities, until today it is impossible to tell their exact number. Some anthropologists estimate range from 2000 to 3000 different classes established by the Brahman laws throughout India, because each region has its own distinct groups defined by craft and fixed by custom.

The complexities of the hereditary class system have constituted a serious obstacle to the social progress in India. The trend today is toward the dissolution of the artificial barriers between the classes. The stringency of the Hindu caste system  was nearly broken down during the two centuries of British rule in India. The obligation of the son to follow the calling of his father is no longer binding, men of low classes have risen to high military ranks, and excommunication (the loss of membership in a class) is not as serious as it may once have been; however, the clerical bureaucracy is still taboo for the lower class people. However, from time to time, the clerical bureaucrats burst from within by ecclesiastical schisms (the most notable of which was the Buddhism) as protest against the extreme exploitation of the class system by the upper class people, who allegedly deviated from the "normal" rule of the Hindu class society.

The main point of the internal dissent was and is the question of property. The upper class ideologists insist that property is necessary for the maintenance of order in the universe. Their lower class opponents insist that property is the external cover of the individual's body that should be dissolved before the individual can unite with the Infinite and Eternal Individual. Only relinquishing himself from wife, children, and other property, the individual can dissolve his own individuality in order to converge with the Infinite Bliss (nirvana).

In recent years, considerable efforts toward eradicating the more visible  social and economic injustices of the Hindu class system have been made by the party of the middle class, led by Mohandas Gandhi, who tried to bolster the Indian social progress  through educational reform. His example of the passive resistance to the British rule, his bestowal of his personal wealth upon the poor, his own life of asceticism, his deep fervor and want-to-give uplifting to the oppressed classes, and his eloquence won for him the reputation of a saint and the surname "Mahatma" that means 'Great Soul'.  The drafted constitution of India, which was published a few days after the assassination of Gandhi by an upper class extremist in January 1948, stated in a special clause under the heading "human rights" -- "Untouchability (read "slavery", VS) is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden".

As I pointed out earlier, the ancient Hindus had been stressing the middle age stage of life -- the husbandry. The main feature of the husbandry was, is, and will be the property -- the mental and physical extension of a being (and not only a human being) into his/its environment. With the help of this extension, the male provides the female and his/its progeny with the necessities of life, hoping to earn the exclusive right for sex with this particular female. And a female needs a particular male, who, she ought to be sure, will not hurt her or her progeny while she is weak. There would be no necessity for the notion of property, if the entire society would consist only of bisexual (or too young and too old) individuals. In such a homogeneous society, a person would forget such possessive notions as 'my' or 'mine' unless a couple of them would encounter with a person of a definite gender, who will introduce them to such kind of pleasure they can die for.

The possessive notions emerge only then when two or more mature males compete between each other for females (for sexual pleasure, if you will). Thus, a male marks his territory, from the fruits of thereof he can provide the peaceful pleasure inside of "his" family, hoping to gain exclusive right for sexual pleasure with a particular female, while waging a constant war outside of his family. A mature female needs a particular male, who, she ought to be sure, will not hurt her or her progeny while she is weak. On these mutual needs they begin to build their system of property. When their need in each other will be weakened and either of them begins fornicate or adulterate, they provoke a war (about the scale of which they can never be sure, remember the Trojan War).

Usually in a human society, the levels of family and its property evolve from the property of a male-female family to the property of a tribe, of a federation of closely related tribes by blood, of a city-state (a federation of tribes that are not closely related by blood), of a state (a federation of city-states), and of an empire (federation of states). That is how the humans can provide for themselves the peaceful distribution of pleasure (sex and other means of existence). The level of family and its property is an indicator of the level of consciousness and fairness of the cooperating adults. When this internal level of consciousness and fairness would drop, a revolution would come, and the external boundaries of an empire would be ruined and the evolution of the state building would start all over again from scratch.

The older and sophisticated we are, the higher level of family and property usually we can embrace; and the ultimate cooperation in the distribution of pleasure comes to an individual (usually with the old age) when he can mentally extend himself to the level of the universe. And as we already know from the dialectics that the extremes do converge into each other and the biggest becomes the smallest; thus, the elders can embrace the universal property (the God or Nature) and, at the same time, to refute any "earthly" property. That is why nearly all religions require celibacy from their own prominent keepers; because sex evokes property and property must be protected, and it means the permanent war with the transgressors of this property.

Now we can understand an oracle of a French anarchist, Proudhon, who liked to say, that 'property is theft'. Indeed, if I am married, "my" wife cannot be a property of anybody else but me, and I cannot be a property of anybody else but her. And it means that I stole her and she stole me from other people. However, if we, as a society (the organized people), managed to agreed that such kind of theft is in the long range interest of everyone (or at least in the long range interest of the majority), then, constitutionally, this 'theft' lost its bad quality and became 'marriage'. That is what a good constitution ought supposedly to do - to separate our long range interests from our minor and short range interests, and to crystallize them into a precise language that we can no longer use the terms of 'theft' and 'marriage' interchangeably.

And usually a religion provides a society with such a kind of constitution, which teaches us what is good and what is bad for us in the long and short runs. By definition, 'religio' means to gather, to unite people, not to divide them. You cannot unite all people (or the majority) around a hate ideology or around an ideology that is not in the long range interests of the majority, but you can temporarily unite some people to hate others because their short range interests blinded them shortly. That is why all world religions appeal primarily  to the human emotion of love, and Sciences appeal primarily to the human reason (a world religion and a science, both can be screwed in the short run, but they cannot be screwed in the long run). Those sciences and religions (like Astrology or Judaism) that could not rise to the full principle of reason or love, will never become the real sciences or the world religions. For instance, because Judaism incorporated abridged reason (the inquisitorial principle of justice) and an abridged principle of love (propagating love only toward the Jews), it will never become a world religion, no matter how hard its proponents will proselytize or will thrash other religions. Later we will see clearer what Judaism is all about, but, for now, we should return to the Hindu texts.

It is worthy to consider how the authors of the old Hindu texts had been changing their attitude toward the earthly property, accumulation of which had not been perceived as the ultimate goal. The Hindu clerical bureaucrats considered 'property' as the necessary ingredient of life without which the sacrificial ceremonies  would not be possible. Corn, oil, and meat of the sacrificial plants and animals would not go up with the smoke of a hearth and then drop down in a rain as the animating forces of life if a part of the crop would not be taken away from the producers as a tax. Somebody, who would enforce and collect those taxes, should be the owner of the population and the territory, which they populate. And without sacrifices, the full circle of life would be stopped; therefore, the real work of the upper class is to do the sacrificial ceremonies on the account of the working class people, yet on behalf of all classes. Therefore, the priests and the soldiers should aspire toward the material wealth because 'a wealthy man is dear to the gods and a poor one is deprived of their favor and thus suffers'. However, material wealth had not been considered as something static ('the more we accumulate, the wealthy we are'), but had been perceived dynamically ('the more we can take and spend as the sacrifice today, the more we will take and spend the next time'). Therefore, the leaders, the kings needed the material wealth in order that their 'fame was expanding'. Therefore , all taxes and booties (the "taxes" on other nations) went on the sacrificial ceremonies and the following lavish feasts. The more numerous were the king's courtiers, the greater expanded 'the fame of the king' and the greater would be his prestige among the relatives and the rest of bureaucracy.

In short, the upper class Hindu ideologists considered taxes as the meal of the king that enabled his body (the state bureaucracy) to grow. The king "eats" the lower rank bureaucrats, who, in their turn, "eat" the lower class people. 'As the cows among the animals, thus and the slaves among the people  are the meal.'

Considering the property dynamically, the upper class Hindu ideologists also considered it as a part of the human body (not as an internal one, but as an external one). Therefore, they analogized an individual (atman) with the hub of a wheel, and his/her property -- with its spokes and rim. From this analogy derived the Hindu concept of birth and rebirth of the universe (God, Nature, or the Infinite Bliss) and its constant/discrete expansion/intensification. And from this analogy derived the Sanskrit word 'swastika' that means 'well-being' and is regarded by the Hindus as a good luck symbol and the wheel of progress/regress. The left bent spokes of the swastika reflect the notion of expanding universe (that grows out), while the right bent spokes represent the intensifying universe (that contracts in). The proponents of the lower classes fairly pointed out that the individual, who tries to unite with the Universe, must relinquish his own external boundaries, which is his property. Now you know the rest of the story and why the German Nazis chose the right bent swastika as their symbol and "their" well-being, and why they "forget" about the left bent swastika.

And we already acquainted with the Hindu theory of the internal development of an individual , as well as with the basic concepts of the Aryan ideology, which later developed into Hinduism and the ideology of the Knowledgeable One; therefore, we can go after the implementation of those theories in other times and other places.

The horticulturists had settled in the valley of the Yellow River (Huang He) by 40^th century BC. By this time, they already knew gardening techniques, made pottery, wheels, and silks, but they had not yet discovered writing or the uses of metals.

The country’s numerous mountain ranges enclose a series of plateaus and basins and furnish a stable water supply and mineral resources. A broad range of climatic types, from the sub-arctic to tropical, and including large areas of alpine and desert habitats, supports a large variety of plants and animals. Mountains occupy about 2/5 of the land, presently called China; mountainous plateaus account for another ¼; and basins, predominantly hilly, in terrain, and located mainly in dry regions, cover approximately 1/5 of the area. Only 1/8 of the total area may be classified as plains.

Occupying the remote southwest extremity of China is the world’s highest plateau of Tibet, which has an average elevation of about 4.5-km above sea level. Bordering ranges include the Himalayas on the south, the Pamir and Karakoram on the west, and the Kunlun Shan and Qilian Shan on the north. The surface of the plateau is crossed by several mountain ranges, which contains the headwaters of many major south and east Asian rivers, including those of the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Mekong, Yellow, and Old-Fellow (Yangtze).

All the major river systems of China, including the three longest (the Old-Fellow, Yellow, and Hsi Chiang) flow generally from west to the Pacific Ocean, where about ½ of the total land area drains. Only about 1/10 of the country’s area drains to the Indian and Arctic oceans. The remaining 2/5 drains in the dry basins of the west and north, where the streams evaporate or percolate to form deep underground water reserves. The northernmost major river that divided China and Russia is the Amur. The Sungari and Liao rivers and their tributaries drain most of the Manchurian Plain and its surrounding highlands.

The major river of North China is the Yellow. It is usually referred to as "China’s Sorrow" because, throughout Chinese history, it has periodically devastated large areas by flooding, because its bed is elevated above the surrounding plain because of the accumulation of silt. The river rises in the marginal highlands of the Tibetan Plateau and follows a circuitous course to the Yellow Sea, draining an area more than twice the size of France. The Old-Fellow River of central China is the longest river in Asia; it has a vast drainage basin and its water-discharge more than ten times that of the Yellow River. The Old-Fellow River rises in Tibet and enters the Yellow Sea at Shanghai. The most important river system of South China is the Hsi Chiang, which enters The South-China Sea at Canton and Hong-Kong.

The Mongolian plateau region that is located in north central China consists mainly of sandy, stony, or gravelly deserts that grade eastward into steppe lands with fertile soils. This is a region of flat-to-rolling plains, partitioned by several barren flat-topped mountain ranges. Along its east border is the higher, forested Khingan Range, east of which is the Northeast region of China, which incorporates the Manchurian Plain and its bordering uplands. The uplands are hilly to mountainous, with numerous broad valleys and gentle slopes.

The North Plain of the Yellow River valley is the largest flat lowland area in China; it consists of fertile soils derived from loess. Most of the plain is under intense cultivation. The Central Plain embraces the Old-Fellow River valley, and it consists of a series of basins with fertile alluvial soils. The Hsi Chiang Basin is predominantly a hilly area with infertile soils; however, fertile, flat, and alluvial valleys border the numerous streams of this region.

The Chinese population is approximately 93% ethnically Chinese (Han). The Chinese are primarily of Mongoloid race and weakly differentiated by ethnic (linguistic) variation. The ethnic minority population is settled over nearly 2/3 of the territory of China. This gives the non-Han peoples of China a significance that counts greater than their percentage of the population might suggest.

Presently, more than 70 million individuals belong to 56 ethnic minorities. Most of these groups are distinguished from the Chinese by language or religion rather than by racial (physical) characteristics. The main ethnic minorities are the Thai-related Chuang (about 15 million), the Hui (Chinese Muslims, about 8 million), the Turk-speaking Uygur (about 7 million), the aboriginal Yi (about 6 million), the aboriginal Miao (about 6 million), the Tibetans (about 5 million), and the Mongols (about 4 million). Other ethnic groups include Koreans, Puyi, and Manchus. The Manchus are descendants of the people who conquered China in the 17^th century and established the Ching or 10^th Dynasty. They are almost indistinguishable from the Han Chinese, because they have literally made the present-day Chinese. Now, we will see how they did that.

The earliest horticultural city-states had developed in the valleys of the Yellow and Old-Fellow rivers by 20^th century BC. Cities were long important marketplaces and administrative centers of a multitude of the independent horticultural States. By the 20^th century BC, they had waged constant wars with each other for the borderlines. In the 17^th century BC the city-states in the valley of the Yellow River were captured by the Manchurian nomadic tribes and were united into an agricultural society under the Shang dynasty.

The Shang dynasty (1766-1122 BC) is the first documented era of ancient China. The first Chinese nation was a highly developed hierarchy that consisted of an upper class (headed by a king), a middle-class of commoners, and a lower class of serfs and slaves. The capital city was Anyang at the Yellow River. The valley of the Yellow River has fertile loess uplands that are found in the central area. Rice and wheat were the leading crops. In present time, cotton, tobacco, peanuts, and sesame are also grown. Some scholars have suggested that traders from Mesopotamia and from Southeast Asia brought agricultural methods to China, which stimulated the growth of ancient Chinese agricultural society. The Chinese of the 1^st Dynasty were known for their use of jade, bronze, horse-drawn chariots, ancestor worship, and highly organized armies.

China has had an organized government since the establishment of the Shang dynasty about 1726 BC, making it one of the oldest nations (class societies) on the earth. Historically, a central bureaucracy administered the political control of the large Chinese population from a capital city and a series of local governments of varying political significance. Like other ancient peoples, the Chinese developed unique attributes.

Their form of writing, developed by 20^th century BC, was a complex hieroglyphic system of picture writing using forms called ideograms, pictograms, and phonograms. Such early forms of Chinese became known through the discovery by archaeologists of oracle bones, with writings inscribed on them. These bones were used for fortune-telling and record keeping in ancient China. The bone was heated with a brand until it cracked. The meaning of the shape of the crack supposedly had the divine nature, which would be interpreted by the priests, and a particular interpretation might be added to the bone.

Presently, the official spoken language of the Chinese is the dialect of North China, which is also known as Mandarin or "standard speech". Some efforts have also been made toward modifying the written language. The use of simplified characters (traditional characters written with fewer strokes or in a type of shorthand) has steadily increased. This has been done to facilitate the government’s goal of broader literacy, because the old system of some 12 thousands hieroglyphs proved to be difficult to remember even for highly educated professional scribes.

Ethnic minorities of China have their own spoken languages, which include Mongolian, Tibetan, Miao, Tai, Uygur, and Kazakh. Formerly, many of the minority languages did not have a written form; the Chinese government, however, has encouraged the development of written scripts for these languages, using Pinyin (the Latinized transcription of Mandarin). These ethnic minorities continue to use their native languages. However, the Mandarin-based dialect is taught in schools, as a second language, and knowledge of it is required throughout China.

One of the early acts of the Chinese Communist party, after it gained control in 1949, was to eliminate legally all other organized ideologies, which we already know as the ideologies of the Skilful Master, Old Master, and Knowledgeable One. The Chinese rendered little resistance to the Communist party’s move because of the quasi-systematized nature of the communist (Marxist-Leninist) ideology. In addition, they did not resist because the first generation of Communists was compassionate to the interests of the lower class people, who comprised 93% of the Chinese. Moreover, they did not resist because all three major Chinese faiths lacked strong systematization or allegiance to the interests of the lower class. The Christianity and Islam were comparatively unknown to the large masses of Chinese. Most temples and religious schools, the communists converted to their own purposes. Only with the communist constitution of 1978, the Chinese were bestowed a few rights for political dissent and the old ideologies were legalized in China. However, the communist constitution also stated that the Chinese had the right to hold no religious beliefs and "to propagate atheism". Of course, by what means the Chinese would ‘propagate atheism’, was left to decide for the local communist bureaucrats.

According to Chinese legends, the Chinese people originated in the Yellow River valley. The legends tell of a creator, Pan Ku, who was succeeded by a series of heavenly, terrestrial, and human sovereigns. Archaeological evidence is very scant, but there is some evidence that rice was grown in eastern China 7.5 thousand years ago and about five centuries later an horticultural society developed in the Yellow River valley. There is strong evidence of the several horticultural societies, which had different pottery cultures from the 40^th to the 17^th centuries BC.

Tradition names the Hsia (c. 1994-1766 BC) as the first hereditary dynasty of a horticultural society in the Yellow River valley, which was subsequently overthrown when the last Hsia ruler fell into debauchery and mistreated his people. However, there is no archaeological record to confirm this story. The Shang is the earliest dynasty for which reliable historical evidence exists.

The 1^st Dynasty (Shang) ruled the agricultural society with several cities, located on the territory of the present-day northcentral Chinese provinces of Henan, Hu-bei, and Shandong and the northern part of Anhui. The capital city (from about 1384 BC) was Anyang, near the northern border of Henan. The economy was based on cultivation of millet, wheat, barley, rice, and silkworms. Pigs, dogs, sheep, and oxen were raised. Bronze vessels, weapons, and other tools, which indicate of a high level of metallurgy and artistry, have been found. The Chinese society under the 1^st Dynasty was a society with an absolute monarchical government. The head of the Chinese State was a king who presided over the military and civil bureaucrats and, at the same time, he was the high priest. Between the military bureaucrats and the middle-class of commoners was a literate layer of the priests that kept the records of government and was practically the civil and clerical Chinese bureaucracy. Territorial rulers were appointed by the king and were compelled to support him in military endeavors. The Chinese of the 1^st Dynasty worshiped their ancestors and a multitude of gods, the principal of whom was known as the Lord on High (Shang Ti).

The account of the fall of the 1^st Dynasty that appears in traditional Chinese histories follows closely the story of the fall of the Hsia’s horticultural dynasty. The last monarch of the 1^st Dynasty was a cruel and debauched tyrant, who was overthrown by a vigorous king of Chou, a State in the Wei River valley, one of the tributaries of the Yellow River. Situated on the northwestern fringes of the Shang domain, the culture of Chou was a mixture of the basic elements of Shang ideology and the certain martial traditions of the Hun nomads of the north and west.

During the Chou dynasty rule (1122-221 BC), the ancient Chinese urbanism had flowered. During this 2^nd Dynasty period the empire was unified, a middle class arose, and iron was introduced. The Skilful Master developed the code of ethics, and the Old Master developed relativism. These two, with the addition of the ideology of the Knowledgeable One, have dominated the Chinese culture for the next 25 centuries.

From the 11^th to the 7^th century BC, under the 2^nd Dynasty, the Chinese Empire was gradually extended over most of present-day north and center of China, including the Old-Fellow River valley. The quick expansion of the Empire territory and the primitive means of overland communications made it impossible for the central bureaucracy to exercise direct control over the broad region, nearly the size of three Frances. The eyes of the central Chinese bureaucracy were bigger than their stomachs, which could not digest what they had. Therefore, they delegated authority to vassals, each of which ordinarily ruled a walled city (or town) with surrounding lands. The lord, whose position was hereditary, headed the hierarchy of these feudal-like provinces. Below him were hereditary fighting men, and, lowest in the social scale, the serfs (peasants) and domestic slaves. In time, these vassal provinces became increasingly autonomous. Under the 2^nd Dynasty, the Chinese society was organized around agricultural production. The land was ideally divided into square tracts, each of which was subdivided into nine square plots forming an equilateral grid. The eight outer plots were assigned to eight peasant families, who pooled their efforts and resources to cultivate the center plot for the support of the upper class. The extent to which this system of land distribution was employed is uncertain, but later dynasties thought that it is the most equitable manner of apportioning land.

Religious practices corresponded to the hierarchical social system. The kings of the 2^nd Dynasty believed that it is Heaven, which gave them a mandate to rule and which sanctioned their political and clerical authority. The kings of the 2^nd Dynasty sacrificed to the Lord on High, now called Heaven (Tien) and to their ancestors. The lords of the provinces sacrificed to the local deities (powers), as well as to their ancestors. Individual families offered sacrifices to their ancestors. If sacrifices were neglected, misfortunes and calamities should be expected. The 2^nd Dynasty was able to maintain effective control over their domain until 770 BC, when their expansionistic policy met the challenge of the communicative technology. After that, several of their provinces rebelled and, together with Mongolian nomadic tribes, forced the Dynasty from their capital city, which was near of present-day Xian.

Subsequently, the 2^nd Dynasty established a new capital to the east, at Loyang, where they were somewhat secure from the attacks of the nomads. However, the late 2^nd Dynasty could no longer be absolute political or military authority over the vassal provincial bureaucracies that were still loyal to them in some matters. In time, some of these local bureaucracies had grown economically and politically more powerful than the central bureaucracy. Then, the 2^nd Dynasty retreated to their clerical authorities and, as representatives and wards of Heaven, they continued the management of the civil bureaucracy through the institution of confirming the rights of provincial lords to rule their lands. Thus, they remained nominal overlords until the 3^rd century BC, though their actual power had been gone long ago.

From the 8^th to the 3^rd century BC, rapid growth of the economy and the middle-class went against a background of extreme political instability and nearly incessant warfare. During these centuries, the economy of China was revolutionized by the invention of iron tools. The iron-tipped and oxen-drawn plow, together with improved irrigation techniques, brought higher agricultural output. The higher surplus could support a steady rise in population and, corresponding to it, increase of the middle class (if not as percentage, then, in absolute numbers). The growth in population was accompanied by the production of new material wealth, and the middle-class of artisans, traders, and merchants became stronger. The communicative techniques were improved by the building of a new type of road; chariots and horseback riding were improved also. The military tactics were adopted from the Mongols, for example, when the Chinese of the northwestern borders learned to use the mounted cavalry units.

Economic integration enabled the provincial rulers to exercise control over greater territory, and they became engaged in a chaotic expansionistic policy. The military bureaucrats of the provinces that lay on the outer borders of China, at their own risk, waged wars with non-Chinese neighbors and expanded at the expense of the less advanced in technology and organization. For the innermost provinces of China, expansionistic policy meant aggression against other Chinese provinces. By the 6^th century BC, in the Yellow River valley, seven powerful Chinese provinces emerged. A few smaller, relatively weak provinces surrounded them. Nominally, they were united under the 2^nd Dynasty, however, in reality, the Dynasty was squeezed and morally and physically degraded; its military and civil authority became increasingly dependent on its clerical authority. Thus, the weakness of the central military bureaucracy and the emergence of the powerful local bureaucracies created increasingly unstable interstate relations and China had submerged under the first wave of its 1^st Dark Age.

During the 7^th and 6^th centuries BC, brief periods of stability were achieved through the organization of the interstate alliances and confederations under the domination of the strongest member. However, by the late 5^th century BC, the system of confederations had proved to be unworkable to protect justly the interests of the weaker members; and the Chinese confederations disintegrated. China of the 2^nd Dynasty was plunged into a condition of interstate anarchy and the second wave of the 1^st Dark Age, which is also known as the Warring States Age (403-221 BC).

The intellectual response of the social classes to the extreme instability and insecurity produced the class ideologies that would shape the growth of the Chinese consciousness for the next two millennia. The earliest and most influential of the middle-class ideologists of that period was, the Skilful Master (Kung Fu-tzu or Confucius). The Skilful Master represented the middle level of the civil bureaucrats, who now were needed to help the military aristocracy to deal with the complicated problems of domestic administration and interstate relations. The Skilful Master directed his proposals to restore the central military and civil bureaucracy of the early 2^nd Dynasty. He believed that the sage rulers, who established the 2^nd Dynasty, had worked to create an ideal society by the example of great personal virtue that was based on reason. Therefore, he tried to create a class of virtuous and cultivated civil bureaucrats who could take over the high military positions of the government and lead the Chinese (showing personal example) to peaceful wealth and prosperity. The Skillful Master thought that wealth and prosperity could be achieved not through territorial expansion, but through intensive use of the present territory, which is possible through the reasonable and just administration of it.

The ideology of the lower class was expressed by the Old Master (Lao-tzu) in his Way and Its Powers (Tao-te Ching) and in the works of the Virtuous Master (Chuang-tzu, c.369-286 BC). This ideology disdained the intricately structured system that the Skilful Master favored for the cultivation of human virtue and the establishment of strong civil central bureaucracy. The lower class ideology advocated a return to the primitive horticultural communities, in which life could follow the most natural course. The central and local military and civil bureaucracies should be discharged and eliminated; it would permit a spontaneous response to nature by the majority of the Chinese, who are the peasants.

The ideology of the upper class was expressed through so-called legalism, the representatives of which reasoned that the extreme contemporary disorders called for new extreme measures. Thus, the legalists advocated the establishment of a social order based on the strict and impersonal (draconian) laws that would govern every minutest aspect of human activity. To enforce such a pedantic system they desired the establishment of a totalitarian State, in which the ruler would have unquestioned (absolute) authority. The legalists urged the transfer all property into the possession of the central bureaucracy, establishment of government monopolies on the production and distribution of the necessities. They also conceived other economic measures designed to enrich the central bureaucrats, strengthen their military power and civil control.

The military, civil, and clerical bureaucracies of the 2^nd Dynasty grew weaker until its regime collapsed in 256 BC. Meanwhile, a new dynasty had been arisen. Following in the riverbed of the upper-class ideology of the extremists-legalists, one of the peripheral provinces of the north, the Manchurian Chin, embarked on a reform program of its military and civil bureaucratic apparatus. In 246 BC, a duke succeeded the throne of the Chinese feudal estate of Chin under the name of Cheng. Duke Cheng subjugated the other feudal estates into which China was divided at that time and, in 221 BC, declared himself the sole master of China, assuming the title of the First Emperor (the Lord of Yellow High – Shih Huang Ti) of the Chin Dynasty. Thus, China got its name from this 3^rd Dynasty.

With the assistance of a cunning legalist minister, the First Emperor fused the loose confederation of autonomous provinces into a centralized military, civic, and clerical bureaucracy, and thus, culturally unified the Empire. The hereditary upper classes of the provincial military aristocracy were abolished and their territories divided into 36 (later 42) provinces governed by bureaucrats appointed by the emperor. The 3^rd Dynasty’s capital city (near the present-day city of Xian that lies at the Xiang River, which is between the Yellow and Old-Fellow rivers) became the first seat of imperial China. The need for intelligent bureaucrats evoked the promotion of educational programs, and a standardized system of written characters was adopted. The use of new characters was made compulsory throughout the Empire. The system of standard weights and measures, coinage, and axle widths were designed to promote internal trade and economic integration of the Empire. The private landowning system was adopted, and laws and taxation were applied and enforced equally and impersonally. The want-to-cut all people on the same cultural manner led the First Emperor to outlaw the ideologies of the middle and lower classes. On the advice of his legalist minister, he decreed that all books that disagreed with the legalists’ ideology of the upper class should be burned. Only the legalists’ ideology of the upper class was legalized, and in 213 BC, the books of all other schools were burned, except for copies held by the imperial library.

Implementing the legalists’ program, the First Emperor also tried the expansionistic policy; and he expanded the territory of his empire far beyond the previous boundaries of China. In the south, his armies marched to the delta of the Red River (in Vietnam). China was expanded in all directions. However, the center of the Empire remained in the Yellow River valley. To integrate the newly gained territories, the Chinese constructed roads and canals. Aside from centralizing the military and civil bureaucracy, unifying and expanding China, the best-known achievement of the 3^rd Dynasty was the building of the major portion of the Great Wall, to protect China from the raids of the nomadic Huns.

Excavation of the First Emperor’s tomb showed a gigantic complex of vast underground chambers surrounding a huge burial mound near Xian. The tomb revealed an army of more than six thousands life-size figures (made of terra cotta) of cavalrymen on horses and infantrymen, fully equipped for attack. Probably, these figurines, like the Egyptian ones, were the substitutes, which supposed to accompany and serve the Emperor, in his conquests in the afterlife world.

The conquests of the 3^rd Dynasty, the Wall building and other legalists programs were accomplished at enormous expenses of material and human resources. The increasing burden of taxation, military service, and forced labor spawned a hot resentment against the rule of the 3^rd Dynasty among the middle and lower classes of the new empire. Moreover, the new bureaucrats (who willed-to-take more wealth and prestige for themselves, and quickly) alienated the literate old aristocracy in provinces.

The successor of the First Emperor got under the influence of a cunning palace eunuch (a la Rasputin). A palace power struggle followed, crippling the central bureaucracy, and the rebellion arose.

From the civil war that marked the last years of the 3^rd Dynasty, there arose a new leader, Liu Pang, emperor of China (206-195 BC), who founded the Han Dynasty (206 BC – 9 AD). A rebel army officer of the generation of the new bureaucrats, having deposed the last emperor of the 3^rd Dynasty, he proclaimed himself emperor under a new name, Kao Master (Kao Tsu). However, he had to fight rivals for actual power, which he secured by 202 BC. The new emperor made a pact with the northern nomadic people, relatives of the Huns, who had been raiding China, promising to give them food and clothing in return for cessation of hostilities. It was the first treaty between two independent powers in the Far East and set the standard of international diplomacy in the region for two millennia.

The 4^th Dynasty, which Kao Master established, was the most durable of the imperial age. The 4^th Dynasty had built on the unified foundation laid by the legalistic 3^rd Dynasty, modifying the extreme legalistic policies that had resulted in the downfall of the 3^rd Dynasty. Burdensome laws were abolished, taxes were sharply reduced, and a free-trade policy was adopted to promote economic recovery. At first Kao Master granted some provinces as hereditary feudal estates to some of his allies and relatives (recreating the hereditary aristocratic class), but in a couple of generations this local hereditary bureaucracy had been eliminated, and almost all China was again under direct rule of the central bureaucracy.

One of the most important contributions of the 4^th Dynasty was the establishment of the middle class ideology of the Skilful Master as the official ideology; and that is why this dynasty had been so durable. While staffing the bureaucratic hierarchy, the emperors of the 4^th Dynasty followed the Skilful Master’s principle of appointing men based on merit rather than birth. Written examinations were adopted as a means of determining the best people. In the late 2^nd century BC, an imperial university was established, in which prospective bureaucrats were trained in the five classics of the Skilful Master’s school (reading, writing, math, history, athletics). Trying to serve well to the interests of all classes, the 4^th Dynasty had implemented its policy based on the Skilful Master’s ideology. However, being eclectic, emperors of the 4^th Dynasty incorporated some ideas from other ideologies and employed popular superstitions to augment and elaborate the spare teachings of the Skilful Master. Thus, they embarked onto the expansionistic policy.

Almost all of what today constitutes China was brought under imperial rule, although many areas, particularly south of the Old-Fellow River, were not yet assimilated. Chinese authority was forced upon southern Manchuria and northern Korea. In the west, the armies of the 4^th Dynasty had fought with the nomadic tribes of the Huns and even penetrated to the valley of the Syrdarya River (in Kazakhstan). Emperor Wu’s expansionist policies consumed the surplus that had been accumulated during the free-trade administrations of his predecessors and necessitated a restoration of the upper class legalistic policies to refill the state treasuries.

Taxes were increased, government monopolies on the production and distribution of necessities revived; inflation had been galloping and the currency was debased, because people lost trust into the bureaucracy. The technology of production had not been substantially improved, and the sufferings of the peasants were aggravated by the population growth that was reducing the size of the individual land holding while the taxation was increasing. During the 1^st century BC, standards of living of the middle and lower classes worsened further. Infants, whose mothers often filled government posts with unqualified members of own family, inherited the throne for several times. Factions that fed on the incompetence of some bureaucrats weakened the central government. Because the factional struggle arose in the center, the large-scale land-holding families in the provinces challenged the tax-collecting authority of the central bureaucracy and acquired a kind of tax-exempt status. While the number of tax-free estates grew, the treasury of the central government shrank and its power dissipated. The burden of the taxpaying commoners and peasants became unbearable. Provincial uprisings and banditry reflected the popular dissatisfaction of that time.

During this period of disorder, an ambitious regent, Wang Mang, deposed an infant emperor, and established himself as the Emperor (9-23 AD). He attempted to revitalize the central government and relieve the conditions of the middle and lower classes. The government moved against the large tax-free estates by nationalizing all land and redistributing it among the actual cultivators. Serfdom and slavery was abolished. The government continued to implement the legalistic policies in the area of governmental monopolies on salt, iron, and coinage; and some new monopolies were established. However, the new emperor temporarily implemented some lower class polices – he fixed prices to protect the peasants from cunning merchants and provided low-interest loans to the needy to begin productive enterprises. However, the resistance of the powerful land-holding class was so great, that the emperor was forced to repeal his legislation against free trade and large land estates. The agrarian crisis intensified, and matters were made worse by the breakdown of major North China water-control systems that had been neglected by the fiscally weakened bureaucracy. A large-scale rebellion broke out in northern China under the leadership of a group known as the Red Eyebrows. Soon, they joined with the large-scale land-holding families, and finally succeeded in killing Wang Mang and reestablishing the rule of the 4^th Dynasty.

Administrative weakness and inefficiency plagued the late 4^th Dynasty (25-220). From the start, the central bureaucracy became demoralized by the appointment of incompetent maternal relatives of the infant emperor. With the help of the court eunuchs, subsequent emperors were able to get rid of these incompetent relative-bureaucrats, but there was a catch – they were replaced with equally incompetent eunuchs. Because the government was again torn apart by factionalism, the warfare between the eunuchs and the bureaucrats erupted in 168. By 184 two great rebellions of the lower class, under the leadership of the adherents of the Old Master’s ideology, had also broken out. For two decades, the faction of the Yellow Turbans ravaged Shandong province and adjacent areas, and only in 215, the general Tsao Tsao was able to pacify another group, the Society of Five Pecks of Rice in Sichuan province.

The Empire of the 4^th Dynasty began to crumble and fall apart. The central bureaucracy had been disintegrating while the large-scale land-holders, taking advantage of the weakness of the central bureaucracy, had been establishing their own private military bureaucracies and the whole armies. Finally, in 220 the son of Tsao Tsao seized the throne and established the Wei dynasty (220-65). However, the other leaders with dynastic aspirations sprang up in other parts of the country and China was broken in three kingdoms. The Shu dynasty (221-263) was established in southwestern China, and the Wu dynasty (222-280) in the southeast. The three kingdoms waged incessant warfare with each other for domination. In 265 Ssu-ma Yen, a powerful general of the Wei dynasty, usurped that throne and established the Western Chin, dynasty (265-317) in North China. China continued to be divided and, by the 4^th century, there were nine small kingdoms.

The main reason for this disintegration of China was the different vision on the necessary policies to implement the interests of the principal landowning families. The land owning aristocracy pursued own interests through the nine-grade controller system, by which prominent individuals in each administrative area were given the authority to rank local families and individuals in nine grades according to their potential for government service. Because the ranking system was arbitrarily implemented, it frequently reflected the wills-to-take of the leading families rather than the merits of those being ranked.

Meanwhile, the Mongolian nomadic tribes seized the opportunity, afforded by the lack of the central government, trying to extend their pastoral lands into the fertile plains of the Yellow River. Invasions began in 304, and by 317, the nomads had annexed the valley of the Yellow River. For the next three centuries, this valley was ruled by the Mongolian dynasties. While the south was ruled by a sequence of four Chinese dynasties, all of which were centered in the area of the delta of the Old-Fellow River.

China was reunited under the rule of the Sui Dynasty (589-618). The first emperor of the 5^th Dynasty was Yang Chien, a military bureaucrat who usurped the throne of the northern Mongolian kingdom. During the next eight years he completed the conquest of the Old-Fellow River valley and established his capital at Xian. The 5^th Dynasty emperors revived the centralized bureaucracy and reinstated competitive examinations for the selection of the best administrators. Although the ideology of the Skilful Master was given preference, the ideologies of the Old Master and Knowledgeable One were also embraced in formulating a new ideology for the empire.

The brief reign of the 5^th Dynasty was a time of intense activity. The Great Wall was repaired at an enormous expense of the human and material resources. A canal system, which later formed the Grand Canal, was constructed to carry the rich agricultural produce of the delta of the Old-Fellow River to Loyang and the north. Chinese control was reasserted over northern Vietnam. However, a prolonged and costly campaign against a kingdom in southern Manchuria and northern Korea, ended in defeat. With its prestige seriously tarnished and its population impoverished, the Empire was again in the fire of a civil war and the 5^th Dynasty fell in 617.

The leader of the rebels, Li Yuan (Sunny), founded the Tang dynasty (618-906). The 6^th Dynasty repaired the central bureaucracy through the system of civil service examinations of recruits. The system was so well designed that its basic form survived into the 20^th century. The apparatuses of the local bureaucracies were restructured as to provide maximum support for the central apparatus, and an elaborate code of administrative and penal law was enacted. The capital city, Changan, became a center of cultural activities. Many ideologies and religions were practiced. Foreign trade was conducted with Central Asia and the West over the caravan routes. The merchant ships from the Middle East run regularly to the port of Canton. The imperial bureaucrats extended their influence over Korea, southern Manchuria, and northern Vietnam. In the west, creating alliances with Central Asian nomadic tribes, the 6^th Dynasty controlled vast territories, up to Afghanistan.

The economic and military strength of the Empire was based on a system of equal land allotments made to the adult male population. The per capita agricultural tax (paid by the allotment holders) was the main source of government income. The basis of the Empire’s military power was the compulsory periodic military service. However, difficulties had mounted because the central bureaucrats continued to give tax-brakes for the large estates and to make large grants of land to those whom they favored. Because of population growth, by the 8^th century, allotment holders inherited greatly reduced plots of land, but the annual tax per capita remained the same. Peasants fled their allotments, thereby reducing government income, depleting the armed forces, and creating banditry. Militia forces could no longer protect frontier areas, and defense was entrusted to the foreign mercenaries and troops.

The early emperors of the 6^th Dynasty were generally able monarchs, including the Empress Wu, a former imperial concubine, who ruled China from 683 to 705. However, the emperor Hsuan Tsung, who ruled from 712 to 756, became enamored of the courtesan Yang Kuei-fei (a la Madam de Pompadour), thus neglecting his duties. The emperor allowed Yang to place her friends and relatives in the essential governmental posts. One of Yang’s favorites was the general An Lu-shan, who quarreled with Yang’s brother over control of the government, hastening a revolt in 755. Peace was restored only in 763, when the allied Central Asian nomads were called to quench the fire in blood. After the rebellion of An Lu-shan, the central government of this Dynasty was never again able to control the troops on the frontiers. Some commandeers of the troops became hereditary dukes and regularly withheld tax-collections that should go to the central bureaucracy. The mercenary system spread to other areas of China, and by the 9^th century, the area that was under effective control of the central government was limited to Shaanxi Province.

During the stagnating period of the 6^th Dynasty, the Chinese culture flowered. The poets Li Po, Tu Fu, and Po Chui and the prosaic Han Yu created their works at this time of political instability. Worsening of the political atmosphere had run jointly with the change of ideologies. During the peaceful and prosperous years of the early 6^th Dynasty, the Knowledgeable One’s ideology had reached the highest point of its popularity. Nevertheless, by the time of rupture of this dynasty, literate bureaucrats became mainly the adherents of the Skillful Master’s ideology. They worked out a new attitude of regarding the ideology of the Knowledgeable One as a disruptive force in the Chinese society. In 845, the central bureaucrats launched a campaign of a full-scale persecution of the adherents of the Knowledgeable One’s ideology. Nearly 5,000 monasteries and 40,000 temples and shrines were destroyed and more than 260,000 monks and nuns of this and other religions were forced to return under the control of the central military and civil bureaucracy.

The political factionalism reflected the bad economic policies of the central bureaucracy, which promoted the creation of the unmanageable handicraft guilds (industrial monopolies), the use of paper money, and commercial centralization. The collapse of the 6^th Dynasty followed and China disintegrated into ten independent States. During following period, the Liao dynasty (907-1125) of the Khitan Mongols, based in Manchuria and Mongolia, extended its influence over the Yellow River valley, and Peking (Beijing) became the capital city of their Chino-Khitan Empire.

In 960, a military leader of a southern province, Chao Kuang-yin, usurped the sovereignty and proclaimed the establishment of the Sung dynasty (960-1279). By 978, the 7^th Dynasty controlled the central and southern river valleys. Until 1126, the capital city of the 7^th Dynasty was Kaifeng, in the Old Fellow River valley; then, the dynasty was forced to move at the southern Hangzhou. Fearing to disperse its military power to the frontiers, the early 7^th Dynasty gravely limited the provincial military bureaucracy and subordinated it to the civil bureaucrats, who had become to dominate every aspect of social life. The civil service examination system was improved to provide the central bureaucracy with a constant flow of talents. The 7^th Dynasty reorganized its central apparatus and made it more effective than it was under the 6^th Dynasty, although the local administrative structure was left untouched. The Chinese culture (its literature, arts, philosophy, and sciences) continued to develop along the lines established by the proponents of the Skilful Master. Education flourished, and the economy continued to intensify and diversify; however, it was not enough to supercede the military weakness of the Southerners.

After repeated defeats in the battles with the northern Khitan Empire, the 7^th Dynasty signed a treaty in 1004, ceding permanently the part of the Old Fellow River valley and agreed to pay an annual tribute to the Khitans. In 1044, after a prolonged struggle with a Tangut nomadic tribe on the northwest border, the 7^th Dynasty again bought peace with a tribute. By the middle of the 11^th century, the 7^th Dynasty experienced serious fiscal difficulties. The population growth was way ahead of the economic growth and famines became more frequent. Expenses, associated with the defense of the northern border, consumed a major portion of annual income and the appetites of the central military and civil bureaucracies were growing. To repair the damage, the military and civil bureaucrats proposed the different measures of reform, and the bureaucracy was torn apart by factionalism.

In 1069, a young emperor of the 7^th Dynasty appointed the able Wang An-shih as his Prime Minister. Realizing that government income was mainly linked to the prosperity of the individual taxpayer, Wang conceived a series of reforms designed to increase government income, reduce expenditure, and strengthen the military. He proposed – the equal land holdings and loans to all peasants, to assist them in planting and harvesting; the elimination of their servitude (the compulsory labor service); a differentiated tax on wealth; and state purchase of surplus commodities for resale or distribution in times of famine. His propositions were partially adopted; however, they were soon abandoned because of the opposition of the bureaucrats, who were connected to the large-scale landholders. In the early 12^th century, prompted by the fiscal and military weakness, the 7^th Dynasty had to ally with the Chin dynasty of northern Manchuria against the Khitan Empire. When confederates defeated the Khitans, the Manchurians turned on the 7^th Dynasty and marched onto their capital; they took Kaifeng in 1126. The 7^th Dynasty retreated to the south.

The economic prosperity and intellectual achievements of the southerners far surpassed those of their northern relatives. Rapid economic development enabled the 7^th Dynasty to strengthen its central bureaucratic apparatus. Chu His (1130-1200) improved the ideology of the Skilful Master by synthesizing it with some metaphysical concepts the Knowledgeable One’s doctrine, to present a more balanced vision of the universe. After the death of Chu His, the 7^th Dynasty bureaucracy deteriorated and collapsed under the pressure of a numerous military forces of the northerners, the growing population of whom necessitated them to expand their territory.

In 1206, a confederation of the Mongol tribes was organized at Karakorum in Outer Mongolia. The Mongols established themselves as a unified power under the leadership of Genghis Khan, and moved on a series of conquests that resulted in the establishment of the largest Empire in the world. The Manchurians first fell to the Mongol armies, which captured Peking in 1215 and subsequently extended their power over the valleys of the Yellow and Old-Fellow rivers. They conquered the southerners in 1279, after Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis, had succeeded to Mongol leadership.

Kublai moved the Mongol capital from Karakorum to a site close to Peking. From there, the 8^th Dynasty ruled the Empire that stretched from Eastern Europe to Korea and from northern Siberia south to the northern rim of India. The 8^th Dynasty adopted much of the bureaucratic apparatus that had existed under the Khitans, Manchurians, and Chinese. The 8^th Dynasty took the Chinese title Sunny (Yuan) and ruled their empire as the Chinese monarchs from 1279 to 1368. The reign of Kublai Khan was the highest point of Mongol power. Communication and trading routes were vastly improved and secured. The traffic from West to East increased correspondingly. Missionaries and traders came to China from Western Europe, bringing new ideas, techniques, foods, and medicines. In his writings, the Venetian merchant Marco Polo vividly portrayed the splendor of the Mongol Empire to the West.

Meanwhile, discontent was growing within the central bureaucracy. The civil bureaucrats, the proponents of the Skilful Master’s ideology, resented the Mongolian military bureaucrats, who were proponents of the legalistic policies and were bigots, chauvinists, and nationalists – they openly spoke against the Chinese holding important offices. The inner tensions of the bureaucracy were mounted by the outer tensions with the middle and lower classes, which were alienated by the galloping inflation and oppressive taxes. In the 1330s and ‘40s, severe flooding of the Yellow River prompted crop failure and famine. Uprisings occurred in almost every province. By the middle of the 14^th century, several major rebel leaders had emerged, and a proponent of the Knowledgeable One’s ideology, a former monk, Chu Yuan-chang succeeded in extending his power throughout the valley of the Old-Fellow River. In 1371, while Mongol military bureaucrats were busy with their internal rivalries, the rebel army marched north and seized Peking. The 8^th Dynasty, as a Chinese Dynasty, ceased to exist and the Mongols withdrew to their base in Mongolia.

Founded by Chu, the 9^th (Ming) Dynasty (1368-1644) established its capital at Nanjing and revived the characteristically Chinese bureaucracy, which existed under the early 6^th and 7^th Dynasties. The civil bureaucracy gained supremacy in the governmental apparatus and the administration of justice was reformed. The central bureaucrats directed the Chinese’ efforts to extend the Great Wall and to improve the Grand Canal. They patronized cultural institutions – literature and arts were flowering, new schools were founding. The empire was divided into 15 provinces, most of which still bear their original names. Three commissioners (finances, military, and judicial) supervised each province. The financial commissioner headed the central bureaucratic apparatus and was directly under the emperor; in the last years of the 9^th Dynasty, the forth person was appointed to supervise those three commissioners.

The early 9^th Dynasty reestablished the system of tributary relations by which the neighboring states acknowledged the power of China and sent periodic tribute to the emperor’s court. During the first quarter of the 15^th century, the Mongolian tribes were decisively defeated, and the capital was moved again into Peking. Chinese naval expeditions revealed the power of the 9^th Dynasty throughout Southeast Asia and India. In these years, maritime relations were initiated between the Western world and China. The Portuguese arrived first, in 1514. By 1557, they had acquired a trading station at Macao. After 1570, trade began between China and Spanish settlements in the Philippines.

However, from the middle of the 15^th century, the power of the 9^th Dynasty began to decline. The quality of the imperial leadership deteriorated and the court eunuchs came to exercise great control over the central bureaucracy, fostering discontent and factionalism among the bureaucrats. The costly defense programs (directed to stop the raids of the Mongols and the Japanese pirates who ravaged the southeast coast throughout the 16^th century) depleted the imperial human and material resources. A seven-year campaign against the Japanese troops in Korea during the 1590s devastated the 9^th Dynasty. In 1619, the Dutch settled in Taiwan and took possession of the nearby Pescadores. Meanwhile, in the latter half of the 16^th century, Jesuit missionaries arrived in China and began to disseminate the Western secular knowledge and Christianity.

The downfall of the 9^th Dynasty was brought by a rebellion originated in Shaanxi province as a response to the inability of the central bureaucracy to provide relief in a time of famine and unemployment. When the rebels reached Peking in 1644, the best governmental troops were deployed at the Great Wall, guarding against invasion of the Manchu, a northeastern nomadic tribe. The emperor decided to accept the aid of the Manchus to drive the rebels from the capital. When the rebels were defeated, the Manchus refused to leave Peking, forcing the 9^th Dynasty to withdraw to South China, where they attempted, unsuccessfully, to reestablish their regime.

Meanwhile, the Manchus established the 10^th (Ching) Dynasty and ruled China from 1644 to 1912. The bureaucratic organization of the 10^th Dynasty was based on the pattern of the previous administration; it was highly centralized in its early period and was decentralized in its late period. A new institution, the Grand Council, headed the central bureaucracy. The Council was directly responsible before the emperor. The chief bureaus in the capital had both heads – a Chinese and a Manchu. The middle level and local bureaucracy and the civil service examinations (that were based largely on knowledge of ideology of the Skilful Master) were retained.

The 10^th Dynasty’s firm rule led to unprecedented peace and prosperity in China in the 18^th century. Later, when the population doubled and production was not expanded at an equal pace, the troubles began and the 10^th Dynasty had declined. The financial resources of the central bureaucracy were depleted by the military bureaucracy, which stationed troops throughout China and enervated the Chinese by generations of peacetime garrison duty to such a degree that they were scarcely capable of bearing arms in their own defense. Corruption among civil and military bureaucrats bloomed.

The 10^th Dynasty resentfully accepted commercial relations with the West in the late 18^th century. Foreign trade was confined to the port of Canton, and foreign merchants were required to conduct trade through a limited number of Chinese merchants, known collectively as the free-traders (cohong); that is how Hong-Kong got its name. China-British trade was the greatest. Initially, the balance of trade was in China’s favor. The British merchants purchased tea and made payments in silver. At that time, the West embraced mercantilist’s doctrine, which stated that the wealth of a nation depends on the quantity of the precious metals in the country, and therefore, the nation should sell more and buy less. The British merchants tried to reverse the balance of their trade and, during the 1780s introduced Indian opium to China. By 1800, the opium market had mushroomed, and the balance of trade shifted in favor of Britain. The increasing opium trade drained the Chinese silver, thus aggravating the fiscal difficulties of the 10^th Dynasty.

In the 19^th century, the imperial bureaucracy rapidly deteriorated under a steady increase of foreign pressures from Britain and Japan. The issue of trade relations between China and Britain produced the first serious conflict. The Brits were anxious to expand their trade contacts beyond the restrictive limits imposed by the governmental monopoly at Canton. To accomplish this expansion, they sought to develop diplomatic relations with the Chinese bureaucrats similar to those that existed between sovereign and equal bureaucracies in the West. China, with its long history of economic self-sufficiency, was not interested in increased trade. International relations, in the view of the Chinese bureaucrats, had to take the form of a tributary system, with British envoys approaching the Chinese court as tribute bearers. Moreover, the Chinese bureaucrats wished-to-halt the opium trade, which was undermining the fiscal and moral basis of the Empire. In 1839, Chinese bureaucrats confiscated and destroyed huge amounts of opium from British ships in the harbor at Canton and applied severe pressures to the British trading community in that city. The British refused to restrict further importation of opium, and the Opium War broke out in late 1839.

The signing of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 put final point of the Opium War. The British bureaucrats sought the trade advantages for their merchants; two years later, the French and the Americans extracted similar treaties. Being under the gun, the 10^th Dynasty obliged for concessions dictated by the imperialistic Western bureaucrats. Implementation of those commercial clauses regarding the expansion of trade fell short of the expectations of the Western bureaucrats. Soon, the British and the French found pretext (casus belli) to renew warfare and during the war of 1856-58, a joint British-French expeditions penetrated to Peking and burned the emperor’s Summer Palace. The Peking Conventions compelled the emperor to ratify the terms of the earlier treaties.

These treaties, known in China as the unequal treaties, guided the Chinese bureaucrats in their relations with the Western bureaucrats until the communist bureaucrats took over China. They changed the course of Chinese social and economic development and permanently handicapped the 10^th Dynasty. By their provisions, Chinese ports were opened to foreign trade, and Hong Kong and Kowloon were ceded to Britain. All treaties included a most-favored-nation clause, under which any privilege extended by China to one nation was automatically extended to all other treaty nations. Eventually, the Western bureaucrats concocted a network of foreign control over the entire Chinese economic and political system. The treaties set the duty on goods imported to China at a maximum five percent of value. This provision was supposedly designed to eliminate the arbitrary imposition of excessive duties. In reality, it left the Chinese bureaucrats unable to levy taxes on imports that would be sufficient to protect domestic industries and to promote economic modernization. Thus, China was turned from a self-sufficient country into a completely dependent one.

In the second half of the 19^th century, the 10^th Dynasty attempted to restore benevolent bureaucratic apparatus, which would follow the Skilful Master’s principles in solving domestic economic and social problems. The 10^th Dynasty would have liked to adopt the Western technology, but only in order to strengthen the power of the central bureaucracy. They still clung to the legalistic policies and did not let to expand the base of the middle-class (free trade), because the latter would start to develop those industries that were necessary for the masses. That is how you can get fast return on your invested capital. However, the objective of the bureaucrats was to develop modern military machine, to become on equal or even to surpass the western bureaucrats and compel them to bring a tribute to the Chinese bureaucrats. The objective of creating the bureaucracy that would be more tolerant to the interests of the middle-class (in accord with the Skilful Master’s ideology) was incompatible with the interests of the 10^th Dynasty bureaucracy to develop modern army. The 10^th Dynasty entrusted the leadership in the modernization program only to those bureaucrats, who graduated from the Dynasty’s civil service examination system. These men did not know how to unite the incompatibles; consequently, their efforts were unsuccessful.

On the brink of the 20^th century, a group of enlightened bureaucrats had surrounded the susceptible Emperor Kuang Hsu (1871-1908). Prompted by the urgency of the situation created by the new spheres of influence of the Western bureaucrats, they instituted a reform program designed to modernize the Chinese economic and political system by transforming it into a constitutional monarchy and improving the educational system. This program struck at the entrenched power of a clique of those high-ranking bureaucrats, who were appointed by Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi. The empress and her clique, with the aid of loyal military bureaucrats, seized the emperor and halted the reform movement. A period of violent reaction swept the country. After a Western expeditionary corpus had crushed the rebellion, the Empress realized the futility of her reactionary policy. In 1902, the central bureaucracy adopted a new reform program and made plans to establish a limited constitutional government on the Japanese model. In 1905, the ancient civil service examinations were abandoned.

Shortly after, a proponent of the Skilful Master’ ideology, Sun Yat-sen had initiated a revolutionary movement dedicated to establishing a republican government – to create the non-hereditary bureaucracy that would promote the interests of the middle and lower classes. During the first decade of the 20^th century, the revolutionaries formed a coalition of overseas Chinese students and merchants and unified the domestic groups that were dissatisfied with the 10^th Dynasty rule. In middle of 1911, uprisings occurred in protest against the railroad nationalization scheme, which the central bureaucrats conceived as a mean to stabilize their broken finances. Three months later, a rebellion broke out at Hankou in central China. The revolutionary society led by Sun took control over the rebellion and spread it to other provinces. The military bureaucracy, reorganized by the general Yuan Shih-kai, was clearly superior to the rebel forces, but Yuan (Sunny) applied only limited military pressure to the rebels, because the military bureaucrats sought for positions in a new republican government for themselves. At the beginning of 1912, Sun Yat-sen stepped down as the president of the movement in order to give this post to Yuan Shih-kai. Consequently, the 10^th Dynasty ceased to exist, and a revolutionary assembly in Nanjing elected Yuan the first president of the Republic of China.

The Chinese republican bureaucracy maintained a feeble existence until the middle of the 20^th century. Although a constitution was adopted and a parliament convened in 1912, Yuan never allowed these bureaucracies to supersede his personal control of the central bureaucracy, particularly the military one. The newly formed Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), headed by Sun Yat-sen, attempted to limit Yuan’s power, first, by parliamentary tactics and, then, by an unsuccessful revolution in 1913. Yuan responded by dismissing the civil bureaucracy (dismissing the parliament and outlawing the Nationalist Party) and ruling through military bureaucracy. Sun Yat-sen took refuge in Japan. From 1923 until his death in 1925, Sun was recognized as the chief executive of the Nationalist Party, which he restructured according to the Soviet Communist system. Virtually, his authority was confined to Canton, where he was supported by the middle and lower classes (shopkeepers, students, the factory workers, and the low-ranking army officers). During his last years, he was trying to achieve national reunification by persuading the leaders of the various bureaucratic factions to abandon their personal ambitions. On the other hand, Yuan tried to establish a new hereditary bureaucracy under his 11^th would-be dynasty and recreate China as a monarchical empire. However, he was compelled by popular opposition to abandon his plans, and he died in 1916. His political power passed to the provincial warlords, who had waged factional wars for more than a decade.

During World War I, the Japanese bureaucrats sought to gain a supreme position in China. In 1915, Japan presented China with the so-called Twenty-one Demands, the terms of which would have reduced the Chinese bureaucrats to the virtual low-ranking Japanese bureaucrats. The Chinese bureaucrats concocted own version of the demands, agreeing, among other concessions, to the transfer of the German holdings in Shandong province to the Japanese bureaucrats. The belated entry of China into the war on the Allied side in 1917 was designed to gain a seat for the Chinese bureaucrats at the peace table and a new chance to check the ambitions of the Japanese bureaucrats. The Chinese bureaucrats expected that the American bureaucrats (in accord with their Open Door Policy) would offer their support. However, at Versailles, the American president withdrew his support of the Chinese bureaucrats on the Shandong issue, in order to counter-balance the Japanese bureaucrats’ withdrawal of their demand for a racial-equality clause in the League of Nations Covenant. The American bureaucrats bitterly opposed this provision because of the possibility of unlimited influx of cheap Oriental labor and worsening the standard of living of the American middle-class. The indignant Chinese delegation refused to sign the Treaty of Versailles.

The Chinese intellectuals (who in the previous decade had tried to find out a system, among the western models and ideals, that would fit to China) were crushed by what they considered the American betrayal at Versailles. When the news reached China, an anti-Japanese protest demonstration (the May Fourth Movement of 1919) erupted at Peking University and swept through the country. A period of re-evaluation of ideas followed. From this re-evaluation, a clear objective emerged – to get rid of China its imperialistic and militaristic bureaucracy (that speaks different languages) and to reestablish the Chinese bureaucracy as speaking one language; thus, the national unity of China would be achieved. Disillusioned by the cynical, self-interest-seeking, Western imperialist States, the Chinese middle-class and its intellectuals became increasingly interested in the Soviet Union and in Marxist-Leninist thought. The Chinese Communist party was organized in Shanghai in 1921. In 1923 Sun Yat-sen agreed to accept Soviet advice in reorganizing the crumbling Nationalist party and its feeble military bureaucracy, and to admit Communists to Nationalist party membership. The three principles of Sun’s ideology were – Nationalism, Democracy, and Socialism. These thundering abstractions were loaded with the anti-imperialistic, anti-western propaganda and an idea of necessity of national unity.

The rejuvenated Nationalist party, under the leadership of the military bureaucracy with the general Chiang Kai-shek as its head, launched a military expedition from its base in Canton in 1926. Chiang sought to reunify China under the rule of the Nationalist party and get rid of the country its imperialistic bureaucrats and warlords. However, before the Nationalist party completed the nominal reunification of China early in 1928, Chiang conducted a bloody purge of the Nationalist party’s Communist members, fearing them as double agents. From then, he relied upon support from the upper class of large-scale land and industry aristocrats and the foreign imperialistic bureaucrats.

The new central bureaucracy, established by the Nationalist party at Nanjing in 1928, was faced with three big problems. First, the center had actually brought only five provinces under its control. The remainder of the country was still governed by local warlords. Second, the central bureaucracy was faced with an internal Communist rebellion in the early 1930s. The Chinese Communists, after being purged from the Nationalist party, split into two factions and went underground. One faction tried to instigate urban uprisings of the middle and lower classes. The other (headed by Mao Zedong) took to the countryside of central China, where it mobilized peasant support, formed a peasant army, and set up several soviet-style local bureaucracies. The first faction eventually joined Mao in central China. The third problem that the central bureaucracy was faced with was the aggression of the Japanese bureaucrats in Manchuria and northern China.

During the 1920s, the Japanese bureaucrats had moderated their policy toward the Chinese bureaucrats. At the Washington Naval Conference of 1922, they had agreed to return the former German holdings in Shandong to Chinese control. However, after 1928, extremists of the Nationalists party clashed with Japanese imperialistic bureaucrats over the control of the South Manchurian Railway. In 1931, the Japanese, under the pretext of an alleged nationalist bombing of the railway, seized it and extended their military control over all Manchuria. The following spring the Japanese transformed the three provinces of Manchuria into the new state of Manchukuo and later made Henry Pu-yi, the last ruler of the 10^th Dynasty as a puppet-emperor of this "State". Early in 1933, eastern Inner Mongolia was incorporated into Manchukuo.

In dealing with these three problems during the 1930s, the central bureaucrats negotiated with the domestic warlords and temporized with the Japanese bureaucrats, giving priority to the suppression of the Communist rebellion. Late in 1934, they succeeded in dislodging the Red Army from its base in central China, but the Communists fought their way across China to the west and then north on the so-called Long March to Shaanxi province. By 1936, they had established a new base in the northwest. As the Japanese bureaucrats intensified their pressure, the popular resistance of the Chinese mounted.

In 1937, the Nationalists and Communists bureaucrats stopped fighting among selves and united against the Japanese bureaucrats. The full-scale war between them began after a skirmish at the Marco Polo Bridge near Peking. By 1938, the Japanese military bureaucrats had seized control of most of east valleys of the Yellow and Old-Fellow rivers, and the area around Canton on the southeast coast. The Nationalist party moved its capital and most of its army inland to Chonqing, in the southwestern province of Sichuan.

During World War II, the bureaucrats of the Nationalist party suffered serious military and financial difficulties while the Communists (with their headquarters at Yanan) significantly expanded their territorial bases and party membership. After serious losses of human and material resources during the battle for eastern China in 1937-38, inadequately trained recruits compensated the Nationalists’ military ‘software’. The restoration of the ‘hardware’ of their army had to be delayed until 1945, when the first large-scale shipments of American military equipment reached the Nationalist bureaucrats. After the losses in 1938, the leadership of the Nationalists was weakened by factionalism. These problems were aggravated by a severe inflation that began in 1939, when the Nationalist bureaucrats (deprived from their main sources of income – the Japanese-occupied sector of eastern China) turned to the printing presses to finance the mounting costs of wartime operations. Despite substantial American financial aid, the inflation worsened, with a consequent growth of corruption among the military and civil bureaucrats and alienation of the middle and lower classes.

Meanwhile, the Communists sat tight in the rural areas behind the Japanese lines. They skillfully organized the peasantry in their support and beefed up the ranks of the bureaucracy of their party and the Red Army. Unity and organizational discipline were maintained throughout a vigorous campaign of Communist propaganda. Large stockpiles of captured Japanese weapons and ammunition were turned over to the Chinese Communists by the Soviet army that occupied Manchuria after the Soviet bureaucrats plunged into the war with the Japanese bureaucrats in the middle of 1945. That is why the Communists bureaucrats emerged from World War II better disciplined and equipped, and a far larger than the Nationalist bureaucrats.

The small conflicts between the Nationalist and Communist bureaucrats quickly converged into a full-scale civil war, and all hope of peaceful solution disappeared. In 1948, the Communist military bureaucrats took advantage of the weak Nationalists and, in the middle of 1949 the Nationalist bureaucracy collapsed and took refuge on the island of Taiwan.

The Communists organized the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a constituent body of 662 members, which adopted a set of guiding principles (so-called Organic Laws) for governing the country. In essence, the Communist principles did not differ from the Nationalist principles. The Communists also wanted the national unity under one language-speaking bureaucracy – Nationalism; however, their earlier (Marxist) interpretation of the word ‘nation’ was that the whole world should be a nation. Later, they returned the Nationalists’ interpretation of the word ‘nation’. They also wanted the creative activity of the masses – Democracy, but this activity should be controlled by the Communist bureaucrats – Socialism.

In essence, the Communists bureaucrats returned to the legalism of the upper class and dismantled the Skilful Master’s ideology of the Nationalists. Now we will look how they implemented their principles.

The conference elected the Central People’s Government Council, which was supposed to serve as the supreme policymaking organ of the State while the Conference was not in session. Mao Zedong, as the chairman of the Communist party, reserved for himself the post of the chairman of the Council – thus, the actual head of the new bureaucracy became its nominal head. This camouflage was very important to the communist bureaucrats to conceal for a while their identity and to pretend that their left hand does not know what their right hand is doing.

The Council (in accordance with the delegated by the Conference rights) set up the various organs of the central and local bureaucracies. At the national level, the Government Administrative Council headed by Zhou Enlai performed both the legislative and executive functions of the bureaucracy. Subordinate to the Administrative Council was more than 30 ministries and commissions responsible for the control of various aspects of the people’s activities. Thus, the communist bureaucrats, proclaiming themselves the People’s Republic of China, organized themselves as a Republican Empire in 1949.

In the first years of the Chinese Republic, the Communist bureaucrats resorted to terror, in order to eliminate all actual and potential opposition. In 1951, the Communist bureaucrats stated that between October 1949 and October 1950, more than 1 million so-called counter-revolutionaries were executed. Some foreigners estimated that actually 2 million people were slaughtered by the Communist bureaucrats in this purge.

The second task of the Communists was to reconstruct the economy, which had been disrupted by decades of the domestic warfare. They took severe measures to restore communications, check inflation, and reestablish the order necessary for the development of the economy. Land reform was started in 1950 and was followed by the formation of mutual-aid teams, cooperatives, and collective farms. The Communists’ economic policy consisted of the systematic organization of the individual farmers into the agricultural communities in order to ease the control for the production and distribution of the produce. The efficiency of the bureaucratic control of the agricultural production was necessary to channel the agricultural surplus for the creation of the heavy industry that was needed to forge the modern military equipment. The private industry was gradually brought under joint state-private ownership for the same purpose. The Communist bureaucratic control over the private industry was accomplished through a series of programs involving state seizure of a controlling interest, through intimidation of some private owners, and through fixed compensatory payment to those of them in whose expertise the Communist bureaucrats still needed.

In 1953, after the Communist bureaucrats took control over most localities, they initiated the election of people’s congresses at the local level. These, in their turn, elected congresses at the higher administrative level, and so forth to the imperial level. A hierarchy of elected congresses was completed in 1954 with the election of the National People’s Congress, which consisted of several thousands congresspersons and was clearly unworkable. Consequently, this Congress approved without any pondering the draft constitution submitted by the Central Committee of the Communist party.

The 1954 constitution, which replaced the Organic Laws of 1949 as the basic law of the land, confirmed the domination of the Chinese Communist bureaucracy and introduced a new structural change designed to deeper the centralize bureaucratic control.

The basic policy of the Communist bureaucracy was to transform China into a socialist society, i.e., the legalists’ ideal society where every minutest activity of an individual would be prescribed by the ruling bureaucracy. To this end, Marxist-Leninist education and propaganda were employed extensively. Youths were directed to look at the leaders of the Communist party and their State rather than to own families for leadership and security. Women were promised a position of equality by new marriage laws that banned polygamy, sale of children, and interference with the remarriage of widows; the Communists promised women equal rights with respect to employment, ownership of property, and divorce. The non-communist-legalist ideologies were strictly controlled; foreign missionaries were forced to leave; and Chinese clerical bureaucrats, who were collaborating with the Communists, were placed over the clerical bureaucracies of different denominations. Intellectuals were subjected to a specialized program of thought reform directed toward eradicating anti-Communist ideas.

Coming to national control, the Communist bureaucrats attempted to take control over the areas they considered to be within the "historic" boundaries of China. In 1950, Chinese Communist military bureaucrats invaded Tibet and forced the Tibetans to accept the control of the Chinese bureaucracy. In 1954, when the military-industrial-complex (MIC) became working and replenished the modern military equipment, Zhou Enlai officially declared that the liberation of Taiwan from the Nationalist bureaucrats was one of the principal Communist objectives. Chiang Kai-shek, in his turn, had asserted from time to time the intention of his bureaucracy to re-conquer the mainland, but having not much the human and material resources, his promises turned out to be empty threats. However, Taiwan, under the protective American umbrella, is still the pain in the Communist bureaucrats’ necks.

During the 1950s, the Chinese Communists’ foreign policy reflected the Marxist interpretation of the word ‘nation’; consequently, China and the Soviet Union signed a treaty of friendship and alliance. The Soviet Communist bureaucrats made some concessions to the Chinese Communist bureaucrats, including the abrogation of Soviet privileges in Manchuria. In return, during the Korean War, the Chinese Communist bureaucrats aided the North Korean Communist bureaucrats against the American bureaucrats. After a truce was concluded in 1953, the Chinese accelerated the flow of military aid to Communist insurgents fighting the French bureaucrats in Vietnam.

The first five-year plan initiated in 1953 and carried out with the assistance of the Soviet Communist bureaucrats emphasized the military-industrial-complex (MIC) at the expense of the consumer-producing industries. The slogan of the Communist plan was to materialize the Great Leap Forward. Soviet aid and the enthusiasm of the lower class contributed greatly to the early success of the modernization-program. However, later, the rigid control (imposed on the economy by the Communist bureaucrats in order to increase agricultural production, restrict consumption, and speed up industrialization) led to the development of skepticism in the masses. Thus, the open and concealed resistance to the regime has been born in the lower class. The economy became badly disorganized, and industrial production dropped by 50 percent in 1959-1962.

The situation became worse in 1960 when the Soviet bureaucrats withdrew their aid because the Soviet economy was under the same pressure – the Soviet MIC (military-industrial-complex) consumed nearly 2/3 of their GNP (Gross National Product). Thus, the Soviet Communist bureaucrats, unable to overpower the Western bureaucrats, had to move toward peaceful coexistence with the latter. The situation resulted in the tensions between the two leading Communist bureaucracies. Their alliance deteriorated rapidly and, in 1962, the Chinese Communists openly condemned the Soviet Communists for withdrawing their missiles from Cuba. The Chinese Communist bureaucrats still maintained the basic Marxist goal of a worldly bureaucracy and considered the aggression and revolution as the only means to achieve this goal and overpower the nationalistic Western bureaucracies. The Chinese leader Mao Zedong accused Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev of modern revisionism and of the betrayal of the Marxist-Leninist ideals. Consequently, the Soviet Communists no longer helped to modernize the Chinese MIC. The Chinese bureaucrats began to compete openly with the Soviet bureaucrats for the leadership in the Communist bloc and, consequently, returned to the Nationalists’ interpretation of the word ‘nation’ and embarked on the expansionistic course.

In 1962, when Chinese troops advanced across the Indian borders, the aggression lowered the prestige of the Chinese Communists among the neutral national bureaucracies of Asia and Africa. The active part played by Chinese embassy bureaucrats in instigating a Communist revolution in Indonesia, resulted in their expulsion from Indonesia in 1965. Consequently, the large Chinese population abroad (Diaspora) felt the impact of the failure of the Chinese bureaucracy, suffering enormous loss of life and property. Burma and Cambodia, although remaining on friendly terms with China, continued their close relations with the Soviet Union. Only Albania remained an indisputable ally of China.

As the Communist bureaucrats tried to modernize the Chinese MIC, differences appeared between their leaders and factionalism began to flower. Every ideology tends to split when it applies to different classes. Mao and his adherents favored a pure Marxist-legalist ideology, with the goal of a worldly bureaucracy. However, some bureaucrats, who came into the Communist party from the literate middle-class (intellectuals and professional people), saw the Skillful Master’s ideology as a more rational and moderate approach, which would lead to the creation of an efficient and productive Chinese society. In 1956, Mao, concerned over his inability to brainwash the middle-class, launched a campaign of extermination of the anti-Communist ideas under the slogan – "let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend". The Chinese intellectuals were urged to speak out their complaints so that the Communist bureaucrats might identify and resolve their problems. Thus, Mao propagated the campaign of free criticism of all bureaucratic policies. Of course, not only the "bad" ideas were supposed to be exterminated, but also their proprietors; consequently, the Communist secret service was at work and piled files on those dissidents who openly criticized the Communist bureaucrats. Following arrests and convictions of the dissidents in 1957 re-imposed the strict control of the freedom of expression.

Thereafter, the division between the Maoists-legalists and the moderates (the proponents of the Skillful Master’s ideology) widened. The Maoists’ influence was further diminished by the economic failures of the ‘Great Leap Forward’ policy. In 1959, Mao retired as the head of the State bureaucracy; however, he continued to be the head of the Communist party bureaucracy. The moderates, headed by Liu Shaoqi, became too independent. Thus, in 1966, Mao and his supporters launched the so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to eradicate the remains of so-called bourgeois ideas and customs and to recapture the revolutionary zeal of the previous generation of the middle and lower classes. From German, burg means ‘walled city’ and bourgeoisie meant just ‘citizens’, particularly the middle class. When the Communists cry foul against bourgeoisie, you now know who is actually under their metaphorical fire.

Students calling themselves Red Guards, joined by the illiterate youth of the lower class, took to the streets in pro-Maoist, sometimes violent, demonstrations. The Maoists made the moderate state bureaucrats and intellectuals their primary targets. Many high-ranking bureaucrats, including head of State, Liu, were expelled from the Communist party and, consequently, were deprived of their positions in the State bureaucracy.

During the 1967-1968 bloody purge of the moderates, the Communist bureaucracy had weakened. In some provinces of China, the "rebellions" that were organized by the Maoist civil bureaucrats, slipped into anarchy. Therefore, the military bureaucracy, led by the Maoist Lin Biao, had to restore order. The students were sent back to schools or to labor camps in remote areas.

The so-called Cultural Revolution had an adverse effect on the foreign relations of the Chinese Communists. The Red Guards inspired riots in Hong Kong, causing economic and social chaos there. Pro-Maoist propaganda and agitation in the overseas Chinese Diaspora strained relations with many states, especially with the Soviet Union. Tension between these two empires mounted and the Maoists accused the Soviet bureaucrats of having an imperialistic policy after the Communist-bloc occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, organized by the Soviet Communist bureaucrats. In 1969, the Maoists attacked the Soviet border guards on the Ussuri River in Manchuria and created an explosive situation between the two Communist bureaucracies.

However, Mao emerged victorious from his Cultural Revolution and was greatly honored by the lower class. The Communist bureaucrats allowed the remaining intellectuals to speak out more freely; however, the former did not allow the latter to organize formally around any ideology. However, to improve the economy, the Communist bureaucrats were compelled to promote the knowledgeable moderates in high-ranking positions. By 1973, it became clear to the Maoists that, to protect own authority, they needed a new thought-reform campaign, which would attack the ideology of the Skillful Master. After this campaign, Mao’s extreme legalism was reflected in a new national constitution of 1975. Nevertheless, the moderate Deng Xiaoping was named deputy to the Premier Minister Zhou.

During the 1970s, foreign relations of the Chinese Communist bureaucrats improved. In 1971, they were admitted to the UN, replacing the Nationalist bureaucrats of Taiwan. In 1972, the American bureaucrats agreed to withdraw their troops from Taiwan. The Communist bureaucrats established diplomatic relations with the Japanese bureaucrats.

Chairman of Party bureaucracy Mao and Premier of State bureaucracy Zhou both died in 1976 and a struggle for power between the moderates and the extremist-legalists began again. At the beginning, the legalists took advantage by preventing the moderate Deng Xiaoping from being chosen Premier and then having him ousted from his other bureaucratic posts. As a compromise, Hua Guofeng, a neutral bureaucrat without close ties to either faction, became Premier. During Hua’s rule, the need for economic progress necessitated the policies of the moderates. Consolidating their position, the moderates implemented Mao’s tactic of internal struggle and launched a campaign against of the so-called Gang of Four (Mao’s widow - Jiang Qing, and three other extremist-legalists). These four were arrested and charged with various crimes and expelled from the Communist party. Then, Hua succeed Mao as the party chairman. He concentrated on stabilizing politics and fostering economic development. To carry out this program he appointed the moderates to high positions. In 1977, a moderate, Deng, was reinstated as first deputy premier and in his other posts.

The emphasis on the moderate policies was reflected in the 5^th National People’s Congress of 1978. As these internal adjustments were being made, relations with Vietnam worsened. The influence of the Soviet Communist bureaucrats on the Vietnamese Communist bureaucrats was growing, and the Chinese minority in Vietnam felt most acutely the policy of closing down private businesses in the recently captured Saigon. The result was an exodus of ethnic Chinese who streamed into southern China, clogging its welfare facilities; by 1979, Chinese bureaucrats were compelled to close their borders. When later Vietnamese bureaucrats invaded Cambodia and toppled the Cambodian bureaucrats, who were closely collaborated with the Chinese Communist bureaucrats, then, the latter retaliated and sent their troops into Vietnam. Although these troops were withdrawn in 1980, the Vietnamese bureaucrats now looked on their remaining Chinese minority as the fifth column and pressured them to leave. Hundreds of thousands fled by sea, often in overloaded, rickety boats. Many of them reached safety in other countries, but some perished in the sea.

To counteract the Soviet-Vietnamese encirclement, the Chinese bureaucrats intensified their foreign contacts. In 1979, they established full diplomatic relations and made some trade agreements with the American, Japanese, and West-European bureaucrats.

During the 1980s, the moderates became dominant in the Chinese party and state bureaucracies. Deng Xiaoping, retaining behind-the-scenes, influenced the internal and external policies. Eager to expand trade and industry by attracting foreign investment, the moderate bureaucrats took a far less dogmatic stance on economic policy than on questions of the human rights.

In 1980, Hua Guofeng resigned the premiership and the moderate Zhao Ziyang, a Deng supporter, succeeded him. In 1981, after a trial of the Gang of Four, accompanying with extensive propaganda of the moderates, the four "gang" members were convicted and imprisoned. Then, another moderate and ally of Deng, Hu Yaobang, replaced Hua as the top dog of the Communist party bureaucracy. A new state constitution and a new Communist party charter were adopted in 1982. The former revived the largely ceremonial office of president (previously state chairman), which Mao had abolished in 1968.

In 1987, a wave of student demonstrations, calling for increased democratization and freedom of expression, rolled throughout China. Hu Yaobang was forced to resign and Zhao Ziyang became acting head of the Communist party bureaucracy. Hu’s death in 1989 sparked a new wave of pro-middle-class and pro-democracy demonstrations, which surged in May when the head of the Soviet (military and civil) Communist (clerical) bureaucrats, Mikhail Gorbachev visited Peking to end the 30-year tensions between the two bureaucracies of the same Communist ideology. The protesters occupied Tienanmen Square (the central square of Peking) until the legalist military bureaucrats called in armored troops, stormed the city center, and killed nearly 400 students. In the following political crackdown, many thousands dissidents were thrown into prisons, the moderate Zhao Ziyang was dethroned, and the legalist Jiang Zemin became the head of the Communist bureaucracy. In 1993, the 8^th National People’s Congress rubber-stamped Jiang as the head of the State bureaucracy.

However, the necessity of economic progress calls for a moderate approach and a decentralized bureaucracy. Recently, under the light of the TV cameras, the head of the Chinese bureaucracy even dared to argue with the head of the American bureaucracy about the problems of the human rights. More important, the Communist bureaucrats have not dared to dismantle completely the Hong-Kong free-trade system after they acquired formal control over it. The incorporation of the Hong-Kong moderate bureaucracy into the rigid structure of the Communist-legalist bureaucracy will eventually lead to domination of the middle-class and its moderate bureaucracy in the Chinese society. Although the Communists attempted to create the non-hereditary bureaucracy, they created it only formally. In essence, every member of the Central Committee of the Communist party has tried to promote his relatives to high-ranking position in the party and state bureaucracy based not on the relatives’ merits, but on their loyalty to them. Thus, they created the tribal-faction, bloodthirsty dragon, which will ultimately topple and devour the inherited communistic bureaucracy.

Meso-America is the term used to describe the ancient settlements of Mexico and Central America. Urban culture arose in the Americas much later than in the Middle East. Whether Native Americans reinvented the tools of the epoch of the agricultural State, such as farming and writing, or whether they were brought from the Oriental societies is not clear. The earliest elaborate agricultural State, known in the Americas is that of the Olmec of central Mexico. The Olmec society lived in the lowlands (the present-day Veracruz and Tabasco States of Mexico) from about 16^th century BC. They left artifacts ranging from tiny jade carvings to huge monuments such as the volcanic rock statues at San Lorenzo. These monuments suggest the existence of an organized and diverse society with leaders who could command the work of thousands of artisans and laborers. Other early city-states in the Americas include the Chavin of Peru, the Chono of Chile, the Tehuelche of Argentina, the Tupians of Brazil, and the Inca of Peru. However, the only consistent historical data we have today is that one of the Meso-American cultures.

The Olmecs were a Meso-American people who established the region’s first horticultural villages. They lived along the central coast of the Gulf of Mexico, just west of the Yucatan Peninsula in the swampy basin of the jungle rivers of the present-day Mexican states of Vera Cruz and Tabasco. Over time, they extended their influence through the highlands of Mexico, the Valley of Mexico, known as the Anahuac, Oaxaca, and westwards to Guerrero. The Olmecs were a loose confederation of villages and towns that flourished between 16^th and 10^th centuries BC; after that it was declining until the Mayans overrun it in 600 BC.

The Olmecs were the first Americans, who used stone as architectural and sculptural material, even though it had to be hewed in the Tuxtla Mountains (about 100 km from the nearest agriculturally useable valley). Their colossal stone heads of males (about 2.7-m high) can be seen today, in the city of Villahermosa. Their writing, a numerical system, was the precursor of Meso-American writing. The Olmec urban culture established own patterns that influenced its successors for centuries to come.

Present-day San Lorenzo was the place of their oldest known fortified town, which the Mayan nomads destroyed in around 900 BC. During the transitional Dark Age the new upper class replaced the old tribal allegiance and a new city was built (near present-day La Venta), in an axial pattern that influenced urban development in Central America for centuries. A mounded earthen pyramid (about 30-m high) was erected; it was the center of a complex of temples and plazas and it is considered as one of the earliest cultural centers in Meso-America.

Starting from the 9^th century BC, the Mayan group of related nomadic tribes forced their influence on the territory of the present-day Mexican states of Veracruz, Yucatan, Campeche, Tabasco, and Chiapas, and also in the greater part of Guatemala and in parts of Belize and Honduras. The Maya (who occupied the Yucatan Peninsula) is the best-known tribe of that loose confederation of the nomadic tribes, which conquered the horticultural Olmecs; that is why the entire group of conquerors is named after them. Among the other important tribes was the Huastec (from whom the later Aztecs took their name) of northern Veracruz; the Tzental of Tabasco and Chiapas; the Chol of Chiapas; the Quiche, Cakchiquel, Pokonchi, and Pokomam of the Guatemalan highlands; and the Chorti of eastern Guatemala and western Honduras. With the exception of the Huastec, these tribes had been occupying the compact and contiguous territory. They were all part of a confederation of the nomadic tribes, who conquered the Olmec horticultural confederation and established themselves as the Mayan upper class in between 9^th and 6^th centuries BC.

The newcomers were short, dark, broad-headed, and muscular. The Mayans established the agricultural class society that formed its economical base on the crop of maize. Cotton, beans, squash, manioc, and cacao were also grown. The techniques of spinning, dyeing, and weaving cotton were highly perfected. The Mayan conquerors brought into the newly established society the knowledge of domesticating dogs and turkeys. However, they had no knowledge of how to use the draft animals and, correspondingly, they had no wheeled vehicles.

The Mayan middle and lower classes produced fine pottery. Cacao beans and copper bells were used as units of exchange. Copper was also used for ornamental purposes, as were gold, silver, jade, shell, and colorful plumage (the latter later become the Aztecs’ obsession). However, metal tools were still unknown. The Mayan tribes were ruled by hereditary chiefs who were descended in the male line and who delegated authority over village communities to the cities’ chieftain-kings (who, in their turn, were in loose confederation with each other). The confederation of the chieftain-kings was considered as the primary proprietor of the territory and the people; thus, these chieftain-kings parceled the land to the village chiefs, who parceled it out to the commoners.

The Mayan urban culture produced a remarkable architecture, of which great ruins remain at a large number of places, including Palenque, Uxmal, Mayapan, Copan, Tikal, Uaxactun, and Chichen Itza. These sites were vast centers for religious ceremonies. The usual plan consisted of a number of pyramidal mounds, often surmounted by temples or other buildings, grouped around open plazas. The pyramids, built in successive steps, were faced with cut stone blocks and generally had a steep stairway built into one or more of their sides.

The substructure of the pyramids was usually made of earth and rubble, but sometimes it was made of mortared stone blocks. The typical construction consisted of a core of rubble or broken limestone mixed with mortar, and then faced with finished stones or stucco (a form of plasterwork used as a coating on interiors and exteriors of buildings, usually composed of concrete, gypsum, and sand). The stone walls were also frequently laid without mortar. Wood was used for door lintels and for sculpture.

The arch was not known, but its effect was approximated in roofing buildings by making the upper layers of stone of two parallel walls approach each other in successive projections until they met overhead. This system produced narrow and dark interiors because they required very heavy walls, which could sustain rare, small, and narrow windows. Therefore, the interiors and exteriors were painted in bright colors. Because little or nothing could be done with the contemporary technique of illumination to improve the impression from the interiors, most of the attention was directed to the exteriors, which were lavishly decorated with painted sculpture, carved lintels, stucco moldings, and stone mosaics. The decorations were arranged in wide friezes contrasting with bands of plain masonry.

Commoners’ dwellings, by form, probably resembled the adobe (a Spanish word for sun-dried clay bricks and for a structure that is built from such bricks) and the skin-, snow-, or palm-leaf-huts seen today among Mongolian, Eskimo, and Mayan descendants.

In 1952, at Palenque, archeologists discovered the sarcophagus of Pacal, a Mayan ruler, who lived from 603 to 683 AD, and ruled from 615 until his death. The glyphs of the sarcophagus provided the scholars with a detailed Mayan dynastic history. Inside the sarcophagus the corpus of Pacal, whose face was covered by a life-sized mosaic mask of jade. Mother-of-pearl discs served as ear-spools, several necklaces of tubular jade beads garlanded the chest, and the fingers were decorated with jade rings. Each hand and mouth held a large jade, and two jade figurines lay beside the corpse. One of the figurines represented the sun god. It implied that the king would rise again like the sun in the east after his journey through the Otherworld. Such a custom was documented for the Maya, Aztecs, and Chinese.

In 1946, archeologists discovered the murals (wall paintings) among the ruins of Bonampak. These murals reflected the most important events in the Mayan life in the late 8^th century AD, just before their confederation collapsed and many cities were captured by the Tolmecs. The Bonampak murals narrate a story of a successful battle, its aftermath, and the celebration of the victory. The miserable naked captives plead for life to the great lord Chaan-muan, the ruler of Bonampak, who is arrayed in a jaguar-skin battle jacket and sandals, and surrounded by his lieutenants and priests. One of the spectators is the ruler's principal wife, who came for celebration from Yaxchilan (as the glyphic text narrates). She is wearing a white gown and red robe, and her left-hand waves with a Chinese folding screen-fan.

When the Mayan nomads conquered the Olmecs and created the Mayan agricultural class society, their upper class developed a method of hieroglyphic notation to record their material and spiritual needs (their economy, politics, and religion). Images of their history and rituals were carved and painted on Stella (stone slabs or pillars), on lintels, on stairways, and sarcophagi. Records were also painted in hieroglyphs and preserved in books of folded sheets of paper made from the fibers of the maguey plant. After conquering the Meso-America, the Spanish upper class tried hard to eradicate the Mayan upper class writings and customs. Thus, the Spanish inquisitors nearly succeeded in that task. Only three examples of these books have been preserved: the Codex Dresdensis, which is presently in Dresden; the Perez Codex, which is now in Paris; and the Codex Tro-Cortezianus, which is now in Madrid.

The Mayan clerical bureaucrats used these books as their textbooks, as almanacs that contained such topics as agriculture, weather, disease, hunting, and astronomy. The Mayan prognostications were based on a calendar system so sophisticated that it extended for 5 billions years ago, nearly the same as the contemporary scientists estimate the age of the earth.

Taking into consideration the Mayan dwellings, burial customs, some of their luxurious things, and the knowledge of pottery- and papermaking, I am dare to support the theory that the Mayan nomads derived from the Manchurian nomads. The latter probably crossed over the Bering Strait in the deer- or doggy-sleds pursuing the deer-herds somewhere between four and three millennia ago. Some of them settled on the new continent and multiplied; the excess of he population moved south, thus colonizing the Americas. The Chukchi of northeast Siberia and Eskimos of Alaska also did not know the wheel until recently, because they have 8-9 winter-months in a year, and the sled is more convenient to use on the snowy- or marshy ground.

Although the descendants of the Maya (about six million people that live presently in Yucatan peninsula, Guatemala, and Honduras) are mostly Catholics, they speak various Mayan dialects and they have a distinctive culture. Their relationship with the Mexican, Guatemalan, and Honduran upper classes are very strained and full of violence and bloodshed. As soon as among them appear the middle-class intellectuals, you can hear from your TV sets about the death-squads, which the extremists of the Mexican, Guatemalan, and Honduran upper classes (as their predecessors-inquisitors did) hire the hangmen to exterminate the knowledge among the Mayan descendants about their noble past. Despite of, or better say, because of the upper class violent policy toward them, which directed to keep them in the subservient state, the Mayan descendants have helped the decipherers of Mayan writings to find the key to understanding the Mayan ancient writings. Although the Mexican or Guatemalan Maya do not understand the glyphs of their previous upper class, they still use vocabulary that lies behind many of those glyphs.

However, the linguistic situation is very complex, because the Mayan language consists of more than 30 spoken dialects, as the Mayan confederation consisted of more than 30 tribes. The more circulated of these dialects are Cholan, Yucatec, and Huastec. However, there are several others of closely affiliated dialects, including those of the Aguacatec, Cakchiquel, Chanabal, Chontal, Chorti, Chuj, Ixil, Jacaltec, Kekchi, Mam, Motozintlec, Pokomam, Pokonchi, Quiche, Tzental, Tzotzil, Tzutuhil, and Uspantec. Some of these dialects are as close as, say, Russian and Ukrainian or as English and Duch; and some are different as Russian and Polish or as English and German. A principle difference is hidden between Cholan and Yucatec. The very name of the latter is derived from the Spaniards' mistake. When the conquistadors had asked the Mayans of the Yucatan peninsula, "How do you call your land," the Mayans had answered,"Uic athan," which means 'we do not understand you'. The monumental texts at Copan and Palenque are in Cholan, while three surviving codices are in Yucatec. Therefore, not all glyphs are deciphered yet.

As it turned out, the Mayan systems of writing were logographic and phonetic syllabic. The Mayan numbers were deciphered first. Like the Hindus, the Maya used the idea of place value. But where the Hindus have a place value that increases from right to left in multiples of 10 (i.e., 1, 10, 100, 1000, etc.), the Maya placed the value that increases from bottom to up in multiples of 20 (i.e., 1, 20, 400, 8000, etc.). Probably, the Maya took the combination of the fingers and toes of a human being as their base value, whereas the Hindus took only the fingers. The Mayan numerical system was more advanced than that of the Babylonians, because the Maya understood the value of zero. They symbolized zero as a shell, as if saying, 'the form means something, although the essence of it has gone'. A dot stood for 1 and a bar -- for 5.

The Mayan priests determined their chronology with an elaborate calendar system. The year began when the sun crossed the zenith on July 16^th and consisted of 365 days. The 364 days were divided into 28 weeks of 13 days each. The New Year had begun on the 365^th day. Moreover, 360 days of the year were divided into 18 months, with 20 days in each. The additional 5 days, called transitional, made (with 360 days) altogether a 'vague year'. The year called "vague" because the Mayan priests ignored the extra quarter of a day in a solar year. The series of weeks and the series of months both ran independently from each other. However, they both started on the July 17^th and after every 260 days (that is 13´20) the week and the month began on the same day (either on April 2^nd or on April 3^rd). Although highly complex, the Mayan calendar was very accurate, and the Mayan clerical bureaucracy was revered in the middle and lower classes for their knowledge of timing to sow and to crop.

The Mayan religion centered about the worship of a large number of supreme powers. Chac, a god of rain, was the most important of them. Among other supreme deities were a creator god (Kukulcan, who was the precursor of the Toltecs’ and Aztecs’ Quetzalcoatl) and a sky god, Itzamna. The Mayan priests believed that the each heavenly power had complete control over certain units of time and of all peoples’ activities during those periods.

For the lack of the material data, the origin of the Mayan society is highly debatable and, therefore, depends on biases and prejudices of those scientists who interpret the meager archaeological evidence. However, most of them agree that the Mayan nomadic tribes began to take form as early as 1500 BC. At 1000 BC, the Mayans multiplied immensely and moved into the river-valleys. During the 1^st Meso-American Dark Age (1000-600 BC), they established themselves as the upper class among the Olmecs. After that, their urban life prospered for nearly a millenium, and after the 2^nd Dark Age (from 600 to 900 AD) their urbanism declined and was diffused by the northern nomadic tribes of the Toltecs, who became the new upper class.

However, the Maya left us Teotihuacan (a Mexican archaeological site about 40-km northeast of Mexico City) that contains the remains of the earliest city in the Western Hemisphere. Teotihuacan grew from a small Olmec settlement to an important Mayan-Olmec city shortly before the beginning of the new era and flourished until about the 7^th century. By its size and population, it can be compared with the Athens of the Classical period (at its greatest extent, Teotihuacan covered about 21 sq. km and had a population of close to 125,000). Its monuments include the Pyramid of the Sun (one of the largest structures that was ever built by the pre-Hispanic Americans), the Pyramid of the Moon, and the Avenue of the Dead (which is a broad highway, flanked by ruins of temples). The people of Teotihuacan had close contacts with the Mayan relatives of the Yucatan and Guatemala, and had an important influence on later empire builders – the Aztecs.

Although some autonomy was preserved by the Mayan cities, during the Post-Classic period (from 9^th century to the 16^th century, when the Spaniards arrived into the Americas), the Mayan descendants played the role of the middle and lower classes in the Toltec and Aztec societies on the Yucatan peninsula. The first invaders, who came from the mountains that surround the Mexico Valley, became the builders of the new Toltec society; and as such, they were strongly influenced by the Mayan art styles. Chichen Itza and Mayapan became their prominent cities. For a while the Toltec Confederation of the city-states maintained peace, but after a period of revolutions and civil wars their cities were abandoned. The Spaniards easily overcame the resistance of the Aztecs and established themselves as the Mexican upper class because the Toltec-Mayan middle and lower classes helped them. However, after the new upper class was established and its policies toward the lower classes became the same as those of the Aztecs, the Mayan descendants redirected their resistance. The Mexican upper class did not subdue the last resistance of the Mayan descendants until 1901. In the late 20^th century the Aztec-Toltec-Mayan descendants continued to make up the bulk of the middle and lower classes of the rural population in those lands where they used to use to be the upper and middle classes.

The Toltecs, following the example of the Mayans, started to build their empire after their clergy lost power and the military bureaucrats took control of the upper class. The Toltecs’ army used its superior force to dominate neighboring societies. The Toltecs built their capital at Tula (sometimes called Tollan). The ruins of this city, about 64 km north of Mexico City, include three pyramidal temples. The largest of them, which is surmounted by 4.6-m columns in the form of stylized human figures, is thought to be dedicated to the Plumed Serpent (Quetzalcoatl), an ancient deity the Toltecs adopted from the Mayans. According to legend, a rival Toltec deity, Tezcatlipoca, drove Quetzalcoatl and his followers out of Tula around the 10^th century. They moved south and eventually developed the Toltec-Mayan city of Chichen Itza into their capital and an important religious center.

The Toltec Empire declined in the 12^th century, as the Chitimecs and other nomads invaded the Central Valley and eventually sacked Tula. The Toltecs in the south became the middle-class, and the Mayans and Olmecs became the lower class of the new, Aztec dominated society.

The Aztecs were the nomadic Mayan tribe of Huastecs who had become dominant in the central and southern Mexico from the 14^th to the 16^th centuries. They are best known for the establishment of an empire that drew its power on its ruthless military bureaucracy, which forced the neighboring societies to pay heavy tributes and forced them to conduct religious sacrifices of humans and animals. Their mythical northern homeland they called Azatlan; sometimes they also called themselves the Mexica.

After the Mayan Confederation conquered the Olmecs (in between 10^th and 6^th centuries BC), the Huastecs, as the late arrivals, were allotted to occupy several valleys, and one of them was the swampy area on the western side of Lake Texcoco, which is located in Mexico’s Central Valley. The part of the Huastecs, who occupied this narrow piece of dry land, assumed the name of the Aztecs. During the Toltec Empire, the Aztecs, as the members of the Mayan confederation, were forced to pay heavy tributes.

That the Aztecs were able to reverse this disadvantage and to create a powerful empire within two centuries was due in part to their belief in a legend. According to this legend, they would establish a great society in a marshy region where the food would be abundant, and the people would see a cactus that would grow out of a rock, and an eagle that was perched on the cactus would eat a snake. Supposedly, the priests (to quiet down the murmur of the migrants) had seen this vision when they first arrived in this marshy and hostile region. This belief has been entrenching among the Aztec-Mayan descendants for centuries, and even today the eagle, cactus, and serpent appear on all Mexican paper money.

As the Aztecs grew in number, they established a superior military and civil bureaucracy. By 1325, they founded the city of Tenochtitlan (located on the site of present-day Mexico City). The Aztecs converted the lake’s shallow bed into the highly productive gardens formed by piling up mud from the lake bottom to the floating islands that fringed the oval main island. These artificial islands were supported on a network of branches and water grass. At first, the farmers could tow them with canoes. Then, as trees sent down roots, they became permanent island farms, called chinampas. Causeways and bridges were built to connect the city to the mainland, aqueducts were constructed, and canals were dug throughout the city for easy transportation of goods and people. When the Spaniards arrived there, they called it the Venice of the New World. Religious structures dominated the city’s landscape. They were (like the Mayan pyramids and the Sumerian ziggurats) stepped, limestone-faced pyramids on which temples were erected. Bridges carried the streets over the network of canals that laced the city. An aqueduct brought drinking water from Chapultepec, a rocky height nearby.

Tenant farmers lived in wattle-and-daub huts on these islands. The upper and middle class people lived in houses of stone and adobe in the older sections of the city. Each house was built around a patio and raised on a platform for protection against lake-floods. The majority of the Aztec population was the lower class of tenant farmers (serfs). There were also farmers, traders, and craftsmen, who comprised of the bulk of the middle-class.

Aztec society was divided into three classes: the upper class of nobility, the middle class of commoners (maceualtin), and the lower class of serfs and slaves (tlalmaitl). The status of the latter was similar to that of an indentured servant. Although children of poor parents of commoners could be sold into servitude, it was often only for a specified period. Slaves could buy their freedom, and those who escaped from their masters and reached the royal palace without being caught were given their freedom. The commoners were allotted a plot of land and, as long as it was cultivated, it was a lifetime ownership, where they could build their houses. However, the serfs and slaves were not allowed to own property; they were tenant farmers and urban servants. The nobility was comprised of the priests and the military and civil bureaucrats, as by birth as well of those (especially warriors) who earned their rank in the battlefields.

The Aztec bureaucracy had grown from their tribal relationships, which were divided into families and clans. Each clan had its own elected officials and sent representatives to the council of the tribe. The council appointed officials to govern the four quarters, in which the tribe was organized. The council also elected and advised the military chief, who led the tribe in wars and alliances. A second chief supervised civil affairs. Although the system was theoretically democratic, in reality the chiefs of the military and civil bureaucrats were selected from powerful families, because in time it became hereditary. Land was held in common by the tribes. The council apportioned shares to heads of families. Some state-land was allotted to provide food for chiefs and priests.

Some laws were designed to protect commoners and even slaves from many injustices of the upper class, but the bulk of them sought to severely suppress the crimes and disorder of the lower class people. The latter laws would rather protect the interests of the rich and mighty. For example, the Aztecs punished the thievery of growing corn by slavery or execution. They used their organization and power to provide a lavish life-style for the upper class in their capital. Montezuma II lived in a splendid palace, which had beautiful gardens and menageries, and he was served by thousands of slaves.

In Aztec religion numerous gods ruled over daily life. Among these were the sun god (Uitzilopochtli) and moon goddess (Coyolxauhqui), who was believed to be murdered by her brother the sun god. There were also the rain god (Tlaloc) and the inventor of writing and the calendar, who was also associated with resurrection and with the planet Venus (Quetzalcoatl). Human and animal sacrifices were an integral part of Aztec religion. To obtain the gods’ aid, the Aztecs had performed penance and took part in innumerable elaborate rituals and ceremonies. Human sacrifice played an important part in the rites. The Aztecs clergy reasoned that life was man’s most precious possession; therefore, it was the most acceptable gift for the gods. As the Aztec nation grew powerful, more and more sacrifices were needed to keep the favor of the gods. Although the prisoners of wars were usually used for less important rituals, at the dedication of the great pyramid temple in Tenochtitlan, 20,000 captives were sacrificed. The Aztecs practiced cannibalism. Sometimes they ate the flesh of their victims, believing that they would then absorb the virtues of the slain. The sacrificial victims were thought to win a high place in paradise.

The warriors’ code of honor was to die in a battle for the emperor or to volunteer for sacrifice in a major ritual for the prosperity of the "country" (meaning the upper class). The volunteer would ascend the steps of the pyramid, take some drug (usually made of coca); then, the priests would stretch him across a convex stone; his heart would be ripped out with a sharp knife and sacrificed to the gods.

Religion was the great controlling force in Aztec life. In architecture and sculpture, the Aztecs reserved their best efforts for building and decorating huge temples. They had picture writing (hieroglyphics) and number symbols with which they recorded religious events and historic annals. They had learned from the Mayans how to determine the solar year accurately. With this knowledge, their priests kept an exact solar calendar. An almanac gave dates for fixed and movable festivals and listed the various deities who held sway over each day and hour. The Aztecs used pictographic writing that was recorded on paper or animal hides.

Religion and custom governed many details of child rearing; thus, even the number of tortillas was customarily prescribed to be fed at various ages. Children were taught courtesy, respect for their elders, truthfulness, and self-control. Aztec boys learned practical tasks from their fathers at home, then went to school at the age of 15. Here older men of each clan taught the boys the duties of citizenship, religious observances, the history and traditions of their people, and arts and crafts. Training for war included learning to use the javelin, bows and arrows, and wooden war clubs with sharp blades of obsidian. In college, the young men and women studied for the priesthood.

Because of Tenochtitlan's location and the superior organization of the Aztec bureaucrats, the Aztecs and their capital city had been flourishing. Goods were brought into the city by tribute agreements with subjugated peoples, and many goods were exported from it to be traded in other parts of the Aztec Empire and Central America. A trade system linked the far parts of the empire with Tenochtitlan. Soldiers guarded the traders, and troops of porters carried the heavy loads, for the Aztecs had no pack animals. Canoes brought the crops from nearby farms through the canals to markets in Tenochtitlan. Their chief produce included corn, beans, peppers, squash, alligator pears, tomatoes, tobacco, cotton, and turkeys. Since the Aztecs had not invented money, their trade was carried on by barter. Change could be made in cacao beans. By the time the Spaniards, headed by Cortez, arrived in 1519, the great market in Tenochtitlan was attracting up to 60,000 people daily.

The Aztecs formed their empire through military alliances with the Toltecs and the remaining Mayans, thus expanding their rule from central Mexico to the Guatemalan border. In the early 15^th century, Tenochtitlan ruled jointly with the city-states of Texcoco and Tlateloco (present-day Tacuba). Within a century, the Aztecs acquired control over nearly all of the military bureaucracies of the confederate city-states, leaving them autonomy for clerical and civil authorities. By the end of Montezuma II’s reign, in 1520, 38 tributary provinces had been established. However, some of the tribes at the fringes of the Aztec Empire remained fiercely resistant to the Aztec rule. Because the Aztecs did not take the civil bureaucracies of the subjugated people under own control, the last Aztec emperor, Montezuma II, did not have a firmly organized empire. When vassal tribes and cities revolted, he had no governors or standing armies to control them. Thus, the Aztecs had to re-conquer them. This weakness in the structure of the Aztec bureaucracy, the class division of the Aztec society and the internal strife within the far-flung tributaries of the Aztec Empire had allowed Cortez and a handful of Spaniards to conquer the Aztecs in about two years. Cortez and his soldiers were aided throughout their campaign by rebellious tribes and cities. In addition to domestic problems that contributed to the downfall of the empire, its emperor, Montezuma II, naively believed that Cortez was the god Quetzalcoatl (the Plumed Serpent).

More than one million descendants of the Aztecs live presently near Mexico City. They and other descendants of Maya are the largest aboriginal group in Mexico. These people are mainly the lower class of the illiterate tenant farmers, whose ties to the modern Mexican upper and middle classes and their culture are very slim. These people retain their ancient language and practice a blended religion consisting of a large dosage of Aztec-Mayan beliefs and a small dosage of Roman Catholicism.

By about the 25^th century BC, an urban life had emerged on the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea. In the beginning of the 20^th century, excavations at the site of Knossos revealed the existence of a horticultural society, named by archaeologists as Minoan (after a mythical king, Minos). The Minoans probably settled in Crete before 30^th century BC.

There is evidence that Egyptian and Sumerian traders soon reached the Minoans and established own outposts in Crete. Despite the Egyptian and Mesopotamian influence, the Minoan gardeners developed their own unique culture and, by about 20^th century BC, large city-states with elaborate and luxurious palaces were built, and the sea trade was flourishing.

The Minoans had a hieroglyphic (pictographical) writing system, comparable with those of other ancient societies. The Minoan ideology seems to have centered on the fertile mother goddess of love and on the powerful father god, who was pictured as a bull or snake. The Minoans are known for their beautiful and colorful wall paintings and their fine pottery. At about the 14^th century BC, Minoan horticulture began to decline, because of inter-city wars, the invasions of the Aryan Dorians and Ionians from Greece and Asia Minor, and the migrations of the refugees of the Aryan-Mycenae-Trojan (nomado-horitcultural) Wars of the 1^st European Dark Age.

The Cretans had, through their history, at least three distinct scripts. One script was hieroglyphic and two other scripts were logographic and syllabic, so called -- Linear A and Linear B. The hieroglyphic script had been found on seal-stones; it resembles the Egyptian hieroglyphs and is probably the oldest one, occurring as early as 1900 BC. Linear A had been found inscribed on clay tablets, mainly at a Minoan palace in the south of Crete.

Very little Linear A had been found at the north of Crete, at Knossos, the city that was built by the later Aryan invaders and refugees, who had used exclusively Linear B. Although Liner A and B are visibly related, they have many incongruent signs. Linear A script probably evolved from the hieroglyphic script, and it lasted until the collapse of the Minoan State in the late 15^th and early 14^th centuries; neither script was deciphered yet. Linear A was the script of the Minoan horticulturists, while Linear B was the script used by the Aryan Dorian and Ionian invaders, who conquered Knossos and other parts of Crete. Some signs of Linear A strongly resemble those of the later Linear B. It is possible that the would-be Greeks borrowed some signs from the conquered horticulturists and made some adjustments for the rest of them, which would accommodate their own customs.

Presently, scholars can substitute the sound values of Linear B in the Linear A inscriptions, and obtain some words; however, since they do not know Minoan, they cannot be sure if the words are correct or not. Therefore, Linear A remains essentially undeciphered. Nevertheless, the scholars are sure that the language behind the Linear A script is not the archaic Greek, as that one behind the Linear B script. There are several personal names on a clay tablet with the Linear A script. Among those names, in the second row from the above, is distinctively Persian name 'Reza,' who bought 5^1/2 (liters or gallons) of wine. Moreover, the name for total is 'ku-ro', instead of being 'to-so,' as in Linear B script. Taking into consideration the method of producing the tablet itself and the Persian name, we can only vaguely suppose that there was some Mesopotamian influence in the Minoan State.

After the Minoan society on Crete and adjacent islands was destroyed, its ideology passed onto the Greek invaders of Knossos and further, to the mainland.

The earlier sources of information about the Hittites came from the records of the 19^th Egyptian Dynasty and from some passages in the Bible. Moses called the Hittites ‘Sons of Heth’; the later prophets called them the Syro-Hittites. In 1906, the Hittites’ royal archives were discovered in excavations at Bogazkoy (in present-day Turkey). The excavated artifacts cast doubts on some information gathered from Egyptian sources. For example, the Egyptian records describe certain battles the Egyptians with the Hittites as victorious for the former and as defeats for the latter. However, the Hittites’ records show the opposites, which corroborate with some facts; for example, the Egyptian king Ramses II claimed a great victory over the Hittites, but the latter continued to maintain their hold on Syria. The importance of the Hittites’ archives is that information, extracted from them, helped to decipher the Hittite language, thus revealing some unknown aspects of their culture (such aspects as literature, ideology, political organization, and legislation).

Most of the texts found in the archives were written in the Hittite language, but a few treaties and state letters were written in Akkadian, the international language of that time. A few texts also were written in the Hurrian language of southeastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia. Generally, the Hittites used the cuneiform system of writing taken from the Babylonians. Although the hieroglyphs were used during the late period of the empire, most of the hieroglyphic inscriptions belong to the period after its downfall. The historical records and stories of the Hittites witness about their relatively high-developed culture.

Hittite, Luwian, Palaic, Lydian, and Lycian form the Anatolian subfamily of Indo-European languages, which survived in cuneiform inscriptions on tablets. The first three languages were alive before 10^th century BC; the last two languages were still alive before 2^nd century BC. The Hittites called their language Nesian (after Nesa, the first town that they settled, near the site of present-day Kayseri, Turkey; it was known to the Romans in the 1^st century as Caesarea Cappadociae). Luwian was spoken in the country called Arzawa (west of Hatti) and in Cilicia (south of Hatti). Palaic was spoken in the country called Pala, north of Hatti. Lydian was spoken in northwestern Anatolia. Lycian derived from Luwian and the Lycians lived in the southwest of Asia Minor. The Hittite cuneiform texts date to 16^th century BC; they are the oldest written records of any Indo-European language.

From the data that the scholars have got from artifacts follows that a new agricultural nation was established in the Near East around 17^th century BC – the Hittites in Asia Minor. The Aryan nomadic tribes from the Taurus Mountains penetrated the valley of the Halya River and captured several city-states of the Hattic-speaking horticulturists, thus creating the Hittite nation (1680-1200 BC).

The ancient people of Asia Minor and the Middle East (inhabiting the land of Hatti on the central plateau of what are now Anatolia, Turkey, and some areas of northern Syria) were a people speaking a non-Indo-European agglutinative language. The first wave of the Aryans, who invaded the region, became known as Hatti, about 19^th century BC. These Aryan nomads imposed their language, culture, and rule on the earlier inhabitants of the gardening (horticultural) villages in the Halya River valley. The first town, captured by the Hatti, was Nesa. In 18^th century BC, they conquered the town of Hattusha, near the site of present-day Bogazkoy. This site was later occupied by several ancient cities, including Pteria, a city of Cappadocia. Pteria, according to Herodotus, witnessed the defeat of the Lydian army of King Croesus that was inflicted by the Persian army of King Cyrus the Great in the 6^th century BC.

During the next century, these gardening towns had developed into the city-states. In the 17^th century BC, the second wave of the Aryan nomads captured these city-states and organized them into an agricultural Hittite nation. The principal crops of the new agricultural nation were wheat and barley, and cattle and sheep were raised. The Hittites also had rich mineral resources of copper, lead, silver, and iron. Their metallurgical techniques were advanced for that time; they may have been the first people to develop a substantial iron industry. At first, they used iron only for ritual objects, but later, applied it for tools and weapons. Because iron ore was more readily available than copper or tin (necessary to make bronze), the iron tools and weapons spread throughout the Near East after 12^th century BC.

In the 17^th century BC, the Hittite Kingdom was founded by the Hittite leader Labarna, who ruled about 1680-1650 BC. King Labarna established the 1^st Dynasty and settled his capital in Hattusha. Labarna conquered nearly all of central Anatolia and extended his rule to the Mediterranean Sea. His successors extended Hittite conquests into northern Syria. Mursili I, the second ruler of this dynasty, conquered what is now Aleppo, Syria, and raided Babylon about 1595 BC. Mursili’s assassination was followed by a period of internal struggle for leadership. That struggle resulted in the weakness of the Hittite military bureaucracy; however, the Hittites bureaucrats managed to survive when they elected Telipinu as their king, who ruled them from 1525 to 1500 BC. To ensure the stability of the kingdom, Telipinu issued the code of laws with a strict rule of the royal succession. Despite this measure, the dynasty continued to decline, mired in the internal struggle.

The Hittite king acted as the supreme priest, military commander, and chief judge of the land. In other words, he was simultaneously a head of the clerical, military, and civil bureaucracies. During the 1^st Dynasty’s rule, an advisory council of the upper class (pankus) assisted a king; later, in the imperial period, this council was dissolved. The empire was administered by provincial governors acting as deputies of the king. Territories beyond the empire were frequently ruled as vassal kingdoms, and formal treaties were made with their rulers.

The most impressive achievement of the Hittite Empire was its system of the civil bureaucracy (particularly, its legislative body and the administration of justice). The law codes of the Hittites reveal a strong influence of the code of Hammurabi. However, the Hittite judges were far more lenient to the convicts than the Babylonian judges. The Hittite judges rarely resorted to such punishments as the death penalty or a bodily mutilation, both of which were characteristic of other agricultural nations (class societies) and empires of the contemporary Middle East. Moreover, the Hittite justice bureaucrats based their decisions rather on the principle of monetary restitution than on retribution or vengeance. The Babylonians confined the use of the principle of the monetary restitution exclusively to the upper class. The Hittite judges applied the principle of restitution more evenly to all classes of their society. They punished the thieves, for example, by compelling them to restore the stolen object and to pay some additional compensation for moral loss. The Hittites thought that money could repair a few moral principles, but the full restoration of morality depended on their gods.

The Hittites had worshiped various gods. A repeated phrase in their state documents is an invocation to the ‘thousand gods of Hatti’. Scholars have traced Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Hurrian, Luwian, and other peoples’ influences in the Hittite collection of the gods. In the sanctuary of Yazilikaya (near Bogazkoy), the Hittites cut series of reliefs into rock. The reliefs depict two long processions of gods and goddesses advancing toward each other. The majority of the gods are unknown, but the two powers, heading the procession, are the storm god (or weather god) and the sun goddess (the main powers, whom the Hittites worshiped).

A part of the Hittite ideology (their mythology – the first, hypothetical stage of science) represents a combination of elements that reflect the diversity of cults within their Empire. Certain epic poems contain myths of Hurrian and Babylonian origin. In their myths, the Hittites had reflected on a family of successive generations of the heavenly powers who ruled the universe; among those powers was a monstrous power, which challenged the rule of the last heavenly king. The Hittite myths are similar to the Greek myths that contain in Hesiod’s Theogony, and may have been the prototypes of the latter. The Hittite myths might have reached the Greeks through the Myceno-Trojan and Minoan ascendancy into Greece (1400-1200 BC). The Trojans are known to have been in western Anatolia at that time; they have traded with Hittite-held Syria. The Hittite records refer to contacts between the Hittite kings and the kings of Ahhiyawa, which some scholars identify with the Achaeans. However it might be, whether or not some elements of the Hittite ideology were picked up by the Greeks, it is definite that many of them survived in Anatolia until the first Romans came into Asia Minor in 190 BC. At that time, the survived descendents of the Hittites still worshiped such powers as the Great Mother and the storm god (called Jupiter Dolichenus by the Romans).

The art and architecture of the Hittites reveal the influence of nearly all the contemporary cultures of the ancient Near East, and especially of the Babylonians. Nevertheless, as any other people in a concrete environment, the Hittites achieved a certain degree independence of style that made their art distinct. Their building materials were generally stone and brick, but sometimes they used wooden columns. Their massive palaces, temples, and fortifications frequently served as models for the later generations of the Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks for their functionality and intricate carved reliefs on walls, gates, and entrances.

About 1450 BC, the 2^nd Hittite Dynasty was founded. The best known king of this Dynasty was Suppiluliuma, who ruled about 1380-1346 BC. He dethroned his unable brother during a period of foreign invasions and took the leadership. After defending his territory and defeating his main enemy (the king of Mitanni in northern Mesopotamia), he led his army farther into Syria. His further conquests were made possible by a weakening of the Egyptian Empire during the reign of the Ikhnaton, who was busy, chopping the heads of his priests, trying to stuff them with his monotheistic ideology. During the last half of the 14^th century BC, the Hittites’ territories extended westward to the Aegean Sea, eastward into Armenia, southeastward into upper Mesopotamia, and southward into Syria as far as present-day Lebanon. The success of the Hittite military bureaucracy depended on its well-designed hierarchy, on well-trained soldiers, and on their tactics. The Hittites army applied mass attacks, using light, horse-drawn chariots to demolish the enemy lines, while foot soldiers used effectively their battle-axes and short curved swords. The Hittites frequently conflicted with the Egyptians. Thus, the Hittite Kingdom under Suppiluliuma became a great empire, with many peoples of differ languages and ruling by one central bureaucracy. Thus, the Hittite Empire became on equals with the Egyptian Empire.

The two empires struggled for control of Syria until a battle was fought in Kadesh, Syria, between the Hittite army under King Muwatalli (ruled about 1315-1296 BC) and the Egyptian army under King Ramses II. Although Ramses claimed a great victory, he complained between the lines that even "right" decisions sometimes do not fulfil expectations. Because the Hittites continued to maintain their occupation of Syria, it is probable that Ramses concocted his historical books in order to maintain order among own bureaucrats. Later, King Hattusili III, who ruled the Hittites from 1289 to 1265 BC, concluded a treaty of peace and alliance with Ramses and gave him his daughter in marriage. Thereafter, relations between the Hittites and Egyptians remained friendly until the end of the Hittite Empire. As usual, the Empire fell apart under the internal struggle among the Hittite bureaucrats and the external pressure of the new wave of the nomadic invaders at the brink of the 12^th century BC.

The internal conflicts between the clerical and civil bureaucrats preceded the downfall of the empire, and following external invasions and confusion aggravated it. Consequently, the empire disintegrated into numerous city-states with monarchical form of governing. The most famous of those city-states was Carchemish, in northern Syria. Intermingled ethnic groups, called Syro-Hittites, consisting primarily of the Aryans, who mingled with the previous inhabitants of the Hittite Empire’s area, populated these city-states. The rulers of the Syro-Hittite city-states started to use the Luwian language, in which hieroglyphics were employed for writing. The Aramaeans conquered two of these city-states in the 10^th century BC; however, both of them remained independent, until the Assyrians (led by King Sargon II) captured them. Even after the Assyrians conquered Syria, they still called it Hatti.

The Phoenicians settled a narrow strip of territory on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, in Lebanon and Palestine by the 25^th century BC. The territory, about 320 km long and from 8 to 25 km wide, is bound on the east by the Lebanon Mountains. The northern boundary is considered to be formed by the Eleutherus River (present-day Kebir), which forms the northern boundary of Lebanon. The southern boundary was Mount Carmel, a short mountain ridge in present-day Israel. A peak of the ridge is also called Mt. Carmel; it is 546-m high. Mt. Carmel is famous for connections with biblical characters and events. The ridge is 21-km long and 5 to 13-km wide. It extends in a northwesterly direction from the Lebanon Mountains, to the Mediterranean Sea, near the port of Haifa.

The inhabitants of this area had a homogeneous urban culture and considered selves a single nation. However, Phoenicia was not unified into a state or as a part of an empire until the 18^th century BC; instead from the 25^th century BC it was a loose confederation of horticultural city-states, one of which usually dominated the others. The main goal of this confederation (loose union) was the mutual defense of the city-states from nomadic invasions. The most important of these cities-states were Simyra, Zarephath (Sarafand), Byblos, Jubeil, Arwad (Rouad), Acco (Acre), Sidon (Sayda), Tripolis (Tripoli), Tyre (Sur), and Berytus (Beirut). The two most dominant city-states were Sidon and Tyre, which alternated as the centers of the confederation.

The Phoenicians, as Homer called them, related to the Canaanites of ancient Palestine (the territory that lies south of the Mt. Carmel along the coast). The Canaanites, as Moses called them, were the Semitic-speaking inhabitants of the land of Canaan. According to Moses, the Israelites, during the late 12^th century BC, captured the Canaanite cities. By the end of the reign of King Solomon (10^th century BC), the Canaanites had been firmly made the middle and lower classes of Israel, stirring among the Israelites a controversial ideological influence of their past. The Canaanite ideology was based on the principle of duality of the male-female universe – the Canaanites worshipped the Baal and Ashtoreth (Astarte).

From Phoenician, baal means ‘owner or lord’. Lord, among Semitic nomads, was the name of innumerable earthly male powers (gods) that controlled all life in this world, especially fertility of the soil and of domestic animals. Because the various Lords (powers) were not everywhere in the same degree of importance, they were not conceived as identical; thus, every locality had preferable combination of the benevolent powers. The name Lord formed a part of the names of various gods, as the Lord of the Covenant (Baal-Berith) of the Schechemites, and the Lord of Flies (Baal-Zebub) of the Philistines, from whom the name of Palestine came. The nomadic Jews learned the worship of Lord (Baal) from the horticultural Canaanites. Except for the offerings of fruits and the first born of cattle, little is known about their rituals. Their shrines were simple altars with the symbol of the Canaanite female power (Ashtoreth – Lady) set beside them. Lady was the supreme female power, the goddess of love and fruitfulness. Lady symbolized the female principle, as Lord symbolized maleness. Sacred pillars were often erected near the altars – the pillars apparently represented the male power and the niche – the female power. The Romans called her Astarte. Lady’s name (like that of Lord) was frequently mentioned by Moses. Lady has been identified with various Greek female powers: the goddess of the moon (Selene), the goddess of wild nature (Artemis), and the goddess of love and beauty (Aphrodite). Lady (Ashtoreth) probably derived from the Babylonian goddess of love (Ishtar). The name Lord (Baal) was compounded with many Chaldean, Phoenician, Assyrian, Jewish, and Carthaginian personal and place-names (such as Baal-bek, Eth-baal, Jeze-bel, Hasdru-bal, and Hanni-bal), as well as the name of Lady (Ashtoreth).

The Aryan Hurrians named their earliest city-state in honor of the truth god (Asha) – Ashur (the modern village of ash-Sharqat, on the western bank of the Tigris River, Iraq). The unearthed city wall was built (according to an inscription) by the Hurrians, who cuptured the horticultural pre-Hurrians under the leadership of the chieftain Kikia, who ruled Ashur before the 25^th century BC. The city was dedicated to a masculine power of Truth (Asha). Later, when the Semitic-speaking Amorites captured the city, they rededicated it to a feminine power of Love (Ishtar, whom the Poenicians called Ashtoreth, the Greeks called Aphrodite, and the Romans called Astarte). Thus, the Amorites launched the first ideological war that would go through millennia. For "surety", ‘there is no truth and justice in love and war’.

Some biblical scholars now believe that the Hebrew language was derived from Canaanite, and that the Phoenician language was an early form of Hebrew. Recent discoveries indicate that, before the Hebrews’ conquest of the south of Canaan, the Canaanites were included in the Phoenician confederation of the city-states. The confederation did not help the Canaanites against the Hebrews because the Phoenicians were busy protecting themselves against the wave of the Aryan nomads, who broke the Hittite Empire and Myceno-Trojan urban culture on the brink of the 12^th century BC and, later, would form the Greeks.

Historical data indicates that the Canaanites and Phoenicians founded their first settlements on the Mediterranean coast at about the 25^th century BC. Early in their history, they developed under the influence of the Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian cultures. In the 19^th century BC, the Phoenicians, Canaanites, and Egyptians were zapped by the wave of the Semitic nomadic Hyksos of the Lebanon Mountains and Syrian steppes. The Hyksos took the Egyptian bureaucracy of the 16^th Dynasty by surprise and established the 17^th Egyptian Dynasty, which ruled from Memphis (Lower Egypt) until the Nubian nomads drove them away in the early 15^th century BC. The Hyksos sacked the land and set themselves up as the upper class and rulers of the Lower Egypt, Canaan, and Phoenicia. Thus, Egypt became an empire. This had a lasting impact on the Egyptian urban culture, because the Hyksos brought to Egypt new technology (new types of chariots and body armor) and a new and broader view on the Mediterranean world. The new bureaucracy dominated Lower Egypt, Canaan, and Phoenicia for about a century. However, for the lack of knowledge about native conditions, the Hykso-Egyptian military and civil bureaucracy became too dependent on the clerical bureaucracy. Soon, it degenerated and fell under the Nubian nomads, who established the 18^th Egyptian Dynasty and ruled the Egyptian Empire from Thebes (Upper Egypt). The Egyptian Empire of the 18^th Dynasty included in itself Upper and Lower Egypts and Canaan. The Hittites had held Phoenicia from the late 15^th to the early 11^th century BC.

The reunification of Egypt came from Upper Egypt, and Thebes was reestablished as its capital city. Most of the Hykso-Egyptians were expelled, but a small portion of them (the middle-class of merchants and artisans, who later, under the leadership of Moses, would become the Jews) was left untouched. On the brink of the 13^th century BC, the Jews (made by Moses nomadic, to learn the skill and spirit of war) sacked Canaan and established themselves as the Hebrews. (A Jew is a proponent of the Judaic ideology, a Hebrew is a citizen of the Hebrew State, and an Israeli is a citizen of modern Israel.) Nevertheless, the Phoenician city-states managed to become independent from the Aryan and Hebrew nomads.

While self-ruling, the Phoenicians became the most notable traders and sailors of that time. The fleets of their coastal city-states traveled throughout the Mediterranean and even into the Atlantic Ocean, and other nations (class societies) competed to employ their ships and crews in own navies. Concerning their maritime trade, the Phoenician city-states founded many colonies, notably Utica and Carthage in North Africa, on the islands of Rhodes and Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea, and Tarshish in southern Spain. Tyre was the leader of the Phoenician city-states before the Assyrians subjugated them again during the 8^th century BC. When the Assyrians fell during the late 7^th century BC, nearly all Phoenicia (except for Tyre, which succeeded in maintaining its independence until about 538 BC) was incorporated into the Chaldean Empire of Nebuchadnezzar II. In 539 BC, all Phoenicia became part of the Persian Empire. Under the Persian rule, Sidon became the leading city of Phoenicia.

When the Macedonian Greeks invaded Asia and defeated the Persians in 332 BC, Sidon, Arwad, and Byblos capitulated to the Macedonians without resistance. The Tyreans again refused to submit, and it took Alexander a 7-month siege to capture the city. After this defeat, the Phoenicians gradually lost their separate identity, as they were absorbed into the Greco-Macedonian Empire. The cities became Hellenized, and, in the year 64, when the territory was made part of the Roman province of Syria, even the name of Phoenicia disappeared from the Roman lexicon.

The most important Phoenician contribution to the urban culture was their alphabet, purple dye (called Tyrian purple), and the invention of glass. The Phoenician industries, particularly the manufacture of textiles and dyes, metalworking, and glassmaking, were highly valuable in the ancient world.

Each city-state had own Lord and Lady, and the temple was the center of the Phoenicians’ social life. The Phoenician language was originally the language of the Aramaeans (from Aramaic, aram means ‘highland’, in contrast to the lowland of Canaan), country northeast of Palestine, between the Lebanon Mountains and the Euphrates River, roughly corresponding to present-day Syria. The Aramaeans were the several nomadic tribes, relatives of the Amorites and Hyksos, who captured the region of Phoenicia and Canaan in the 18^th century BC. Their language was a dialect of the Assyro-Babylonian (Semitic) language, which used to be used in Syria from the 3^rd millenium BC and which, after the 10^th century BC, became the international language of the Middle East.

The Assyro-Babylonian language (also known as Akkadian) was the oldest known member of the Semitic languages, written and spoken in Mesopotamia from the 3^rd to the 1^st millennium BC. After the Semitic nomadic Akkadians conquered the Sumerian city-states (under the leadership of Sargon the Great, who founded the Akkadian Dynasty that ruled the Sumerians from 2335 to 2279 BC), Akkadian gradually displaced Sumerian. From the 24^th century BC, Akkadian was first written down in the cuneiform script, taken from the Sumerians. This script was not well adapted to writing the Akkadian (Semitic) sounds. Later, many of the difficulties were eventually solved by orthographic reforms of the Amorites, Elamites, and especially in the time of the Babylonian king Hammurabi. At the time of the breakup of the Sumero-Akkadians, on the brink of the 2^nd millenium BC, the Sumero-Akkadian language was in general use throughout Mesopotamia. Apparently, it also has been adapted as a political and religious language by the Elamites to the east and by the Gutians, Lullians, and Hurrians to the north and northeast.

The Sumero-Akkadian language, deciphered in the 19^th century, was written with about 600 word or syllable signs. It had 20 consonant and 8 vowel sounds. Verbs had two tenses, past and present-future. Nouns were dualistic (feminine or masculine), as well as the Sumero-Akkadian ideology. Nouns also were singular, dual, or plural in number; they were declined in the nominative, genitive (possessive), and accusative cases.

In the 19^th century BC, the Sumero-Akkadian language broke up into two major dialects, Babylonian in the south and Assyrian (actually Ashurian, because the Arameans, who captured Ashur, became known as the Assyrians) in the north, each of which gradually underwent a number of changes. Babylonian became the dominant form and, even in Assyria, it was used for literary purposes and for other ideological inscriptions. The Assyrian dialect was used for economic and legal documents. The history of the Babylonian dialect is usually divided into four periods: Old Babylonian (c. 1950-1500 BC), Middle Babylonian (c. 1500-1000 BC), Neo-Babylonian (c. 1000-600 BC), and Late Babylonian (c. 600 BC – 75 AD).

During the Old Babylonian period, the use of the Babylonian dialect spread over most of Syria, Phoenicia, and Canaan as the diplomatic and commercial language of the upper and middle classes. After the 15^th century BC, during the period of the clashes between the rival empires of the Egyptians, the Hittites, Babylonians and Mitannians, Middle Babylonian was the language of almost all-diplomatic correspondence and of treaties between those empires.

In the 12^th century BC, when Syria and Asia Minor were overrun by various waves of the Aryans and Canaan was captured by the Semitic Hebrews, the cultural and linguistic continuity in the Phoenician and Canaanite-Hebrew areas seems to have not been radically disturbed. After 900 BC, when the expanding Assyrian Empire came to include large numbers of Aramaeans, the Aramaic language began gradually to supplant Assyrian as the spoken language, even in Assyria. Meanwhile, Aramaic-speaking tribes, including the Chaldeans, had conquered Babylonia. These tribes soon assimilated Babylonian culture and gradually made Aramaic the speech of the upper and middle class population. By the Hellenistic period, Aramaic had replaced Babylonian almost completely as the spoken language. Nevertheless, Babylonian was retained as the ideological language (science, religion, law, and literature), much as Latin was used in Europe after the breakup of the Roman Empire. This situation prevailed through the Hellenistic period (323-146 BC) into the period of Parthian rule, when, at least in the cities of Babylon and Erech (Uruk), Babylonian was still used by the priesthood and by the Chaldean astronomers. The last known text in the Babylonian language is an astronomical tablet from Babylon that dates from 75 AD.

Aramaic survived the fall of the Assyrian Nineveh (612 BC) and the Chaldean Babylon (539 BC) and remained the official language of the Persian Empire (539-332 BC). Ancient inscriptions in Aramaic have been found over a vast area extending from Egypt to China.

Before the 3^rd century BC, Aramaic had become the language of the Jews in Palestine. Jesus preached in Aramaic, and parts of the Old Testament and much of the rabbinical literature were written in that language. Christian Aramaic (called Syriac) also developed an extensive literature, especially between the 4^th and 7^th centuries; after that, the Arab nomads conquered the region and Aramaic began to decline in favor of Arabic. Aramaic survives today in Eastern and Western dialects, mostly as the language of Christians living in a few scattered communities in Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran.

When the Hykso-Egyptians were expelled from Egypt by the Nubian nomads in the early 15^th century BC, a small portion of them, who collaborated with the newly established upper class, became the middle-class of merchants and artisans. Later, when the Libyan nomads would establish a new upper class and the Nubian-Egyptian would be transferred into the middle-class, the Hykso-Egyptians would probably become the lower class of forced laborers. Thus, fearing to become the lower class, the twelve extended families of them would prefer to become again the nomads under the leadership of Moses, who preached the Judaic ideology. This small group of the Jews left Egypt at the beginning of its 3^rd Dark Age in the late 12^th century BC and roamed through Sinai Desert for forty years.

While roaming through the Wilderness the Jews multiplied and learned the warrior skill and thereafter, under the military leadership of Joshua, conquered several cities in Palestine. The Jews started their conquest from capturing Jericho, as a biblical writer put it – ‘by marching around it and blowing rams’ horns until its [fortification] walls collapsed’. However, all that is known for surety is that Jericho was a relatively poor town at that time. Nevertheless, it controlled access to the Jerusalem plateau that is vital to the security of all Palestine. Whoever controlled Jerusalem was likely to control much of the economic and political (military and diplomatic) traffic of the ancient Near East. Therefore, the capture of Jericho would have been a major triumph for the Jews. Probably, the Jews approached the town from the Sinai. They would have been discouraged from taking a more direct route by the presence of several fortified positions protecting the main road. Instead, they took a long loop around to the south of the town and circled back from the east to get the town from unprotected side. That is why the biblical writer so euphemistically expressed this event.

Capturing several cities, the Jews settled and became a nation – the Hebrews. The term Hebrew is applied in the Bible to Abraham (Gen. 14:13). Etymologically, the name Hebrews seems to mean ‘those who pass from place to place’ or ‘nomads’, a designation applied to them by the agricultural Amorites (who themselves, only a millenium before, were nomads). It is generally assumed that the Hebrews are the people called Habiru or Habiri in the tablets, written about 1400 BC, and found at Tell Amarna in 1887, Egypt. These tablets witnessed that Habiru was the name of one of the Hyksos nomadic tribes, who captured Lower Egypt, Canaan, and Phoenicia, and established themselves as the upper class of those areas in 17^th and 16^th centuries BC. This assumption coincides with biblical tradition. In Gen. 40:15, Joseph explains to the Egyptians that he had been kidnapped from "the land of the Hebrews". In Exod. 2:6, an Egyptian princess recognizes Moses as "one of the Hebrews’ children". The implication of these sources is that in early times the would-be Hebrew were known among ethnic groups of the Egyptians as the Habiru or nomads. In later times, the Israelites and Judah applied the name of Hebrew to themselves, as in Jonah 1:9.

The Hebrew language was a dialect of Hyksoan, and consequently, a dialect of Middle Babylonian. After the Jews captured the Canaanites, they became an agricultural nation – the Hebrews. However, the Hebrew did not form a strong nation with a central bureaucracy. Instead, they organized a loose confederation of the city-states, which circled around common ideology and belief in one power, one god, Yahweh. When there was a threat of a foreign invasion, the patriarchs of each tribe would decide whether to engage in joint action or not. The Hebrew confederation was loose because the structure of their military bureaucracy was organized by the tribal membership. Each patriarch of a tribe (or his son) was the military commander of a troop, compiled from the members of his tribe. This military organization was the same as that of Homer’s Greeks, who siege Troy (and nearly at the same time). When a tribal troop was on a march and a chieftain did not have an adult son, then a nearest adult male relative would be a judge, who would head the civil bureaucracy during the war time. Only the clerical bureaucracy was centralized.

This loose Hebrew confederation lasted for nearly two centuries, while there was no a strong empire around them. At the south, the Egyptians were weak under the Libyan-Egyptian Dynasties and in their 3^rd Dark Age. At the north, the Hittite Empire was demolished by the would-be the Greeks. At the east, from 1100 BC, Aramaean tribes from the Syrian steppe halted Assyrian expansion for the next two centuries and, with related Chaldean tribes, overran the Assyrian Babylon. Only after 910 BC, the Assyrians fought these tribes again and managed to expand their territories. The only real enemy for the Hebrews was the internal enemy – the lower class of the original horticulturists of the land, the Philistines (from whom the name Palestine derives). The Philistines were deprived their lands by the Canaanites and were concentrated in the unfertile coastal regions of Palestine. Under the Canaanites, they became the middle and lower classes of the merchants, artisans, fishermen, and forced laborers. Under the Hebrews, the Canaanites became the middle class, and the Philistines became exclusively the lower class of the serfs and slaves. Their frequent riots and rebellions compelled the Hebrews to consolidate their military and civil bureaucracies in the office of a king. Thus, at the brink of the 1^st millenium BC, the Hebrew united under King Soul to fight the rebellious five Philistine cities. Under his successor, David, the Hebrews temporarily suppressed the resistance of the Philistines and Canaanites and captured Jerusalem in about 996 BC. Under David’s son, Solomon (Peaceful), the Hebrews engaged in active trade with the Phoenicians. Under King Solomon, the Hebrews built a royal palace in Jerusalem and beside it a temple – their spiritual center. From David’s times to 722 BC there were no fewer than six reconstructions of Jerusalem’s fortifications, indicating that the city had been recaptured several times by the Edomites, Ammonites, and Moabites (the Philistine tribes).

In the 13^th century BC, the Hittites invented the use of the iron-made tools and weapons and passed this knowledge onto the Phoenicians, who, in their turn, passed it onto the Hebrews. The use of the iron-tipped plow improved agricultural productivity and the Hebrew population significantly increased. The old tribal allegiance weakened as urban life expanded. Differentiation by wealth began even among the Hebrews themselves. The populous families with the limited lot of land could not afford the same level of taxation the families of few. The economic disparity grew and the land aristocracy emerged. Many Hebrew people were transferred into the middle and even lower classes. The inner opposition to Solomon’s high-taxes (needed to cover his lavish life-style) and his favoritism to the southern region (including Jerusalem) led to the rebellion of the northern Hebrews and the division of the Hebrew kingdom. After Solomon’s death, in 922 BC, the southerners, loyal to Solomon’s son, organized the Judah kingdom, and the northerners – the Kingdom of Israel.

In 722 BC, the Assyrians captured, first, Israel, and then, Judah. Thereafter, Palestine had been a province of different empires (the Assyrian, Chaldean, Persian, Macedonian, Parthian, Roman, etc.). Consequently, the followers of Yahweh and the Mosaic Laws have become known as the Jews, because they have not had sovereign civil and military bureaucracy. The Jews became mixing with the middle and lower classes of descendents of the Canaanites and Philistines. Their language had also been mixed, and became known as Canaanite or Judean (after the kingdom of Judah). Modern Hebrew, the only vernacular tongue based on an ancient written form, was developed in the 19^th centuries.

Hebrew (as a living language, in which most of the Old Testament was written) dates from the 12^th to the 2^nd century BC. Capturing the Canaanites and Philistines, the Jews became the upper class of the Hebrew confederation of the city-states; later, the Hebrew kingdom; and later, the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. The latter was adjoined to Phoenicia. Thus, it is probable that Hebrew in its earliest form was almost identical to Phoenician, because the latter also was a dialect of Middle Babylonian and Hyksoan as the language of the Phoenician upper and middle classes. From about the 6^th century BC, the Jews in Palestine became the middle and lower classes under the rule of the Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Persians. Thus, Aramaic came in use both as speech and as secular writing because it was the international language of the middle classes of those empires. The Jews outside Palestine spoke the language of the countries in which they had settled. However, Hebrew was preserved as the ideological language of the Jews, who had the will-to-rule and to be the upper class. Nevertheless, through the centuries, Hebrew has undergone periodic literary revivals, in accord with the Jews’ ever evolving thirst-for-power.

Linguists divide the Semitic languages into two centers, from which these languages derived – the Syrian Steppes (from where the Assyro-Babylonian or Akkadian language came) and the Arabian Desert (from where the Arabic Language came). The oldest attested Semitic language, with the oldest Semitic literature, Akkadian was spoken in Mesopotamia between about the 22^nd and 4^th centuries BC and used as a literary language until the 1^st century. From Akkadian had derived Phoenician, Ugaritic, Hebrew, and Aramaic (including Syriac).

From Arabic derived such dialects as Maltese and south Arabic, now spoken in parts of the southern Arabic Peninsula, and the languages of Ethiopia. The classical Ethiopic language, now surviving only as a literary and liturgical language; Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia; and regional Ethiopian languages such as Tigre, Tigrinya, and Gurage.

In Semitic languages, words are typically based on a series of three consonants. This series, called the root, carries the basic meaning. Superimposed on the root is a pattern of vowels (or vowels and consonants) that signifies variations in the basic meaning or that serves as an inflection (such as for verb tense and number). For example, in Arabic, the root k-t-b refers to writing, and the vowel pattern a-i implies ‘one who does something’. Thus, katib means ‘a writer’. Other derivatives of the same root include kitab that means ‘a book’, maktub means ‘a letter’, and kataba means ‘he wrote’. The close relationship of the Semitic languages to one another can be seen in the persistence of the same roots from one language to another. For example, s-l-m means ‘peace’ in Assyro-Babylonian, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, and other languages – salaam or shalom mean ‘peace onto you’. In Semitic languages, related consonants typically fall into three subtypes: voiced, unvoiced, and emphatic; an example is the series transliterated g-k-q from Arabic and Hebrew (the q is pronounced farther back in the throat than k).

Except for two non-deciphered scripts used by the ancient Canaanites, and the Latin alphabet as used for Maltese, Semitic languages have historically been written in three scripts. Assyro-Babylonian was written in cuneiform signs, and Ugaritic used a cuneiform alphabet. Phoenician was an alphabetic script; one of its earliest examples is inscribed on the Moabite stone (9^th century BC, discovered in 1868 and now in the Louvre, Paris). From the Aramaic variant of Phoenician, the modern Arabic and square Hebrew alphabets developed; Phoenician also gave rise to the Greek and Etruscan alphabets. Like the Phoenician, the Hebrew and Arabic scripts are alphabets of consonants only; special marks for vowels apparently came into use in about the 8^th century. The third script, the South Arabic, may or may not have been another variant of the early Phoenician script. The consonantal alphabet also was used in Ethiopia in the 1^st millennium BC, from which derived the syllabic scripts that are used for modern Ethiopian languages. From its beginning, the first stroke of the Ethiopian script was written from right to left, and the second stroke – from left to right; however, under the Greek influence, the Ethiopians started to write only from left to right.

The original Hebrew alphabet consisted only of consonants; vowel signs and pronunciation currently accepted for biblical Hebrew were created by the Biblical commentators (also known as Masoretes) after the 5^th century. These commentators also standardized various dialectal differences. The vocabulary of biblical Hebrew is small. Concrete adjectives are used for abstract nouns. The paucity of particles, which connect and relate ideas, and the limitation to two verb-tenses (perfect and imperfect) cause an ambiguity regarding time concepts; various syntactic devices were employed to clarify relations of time. A past action was indicated by the first in a series of verbs being in the perfect tense. All following verbs are in the imperfect; for present or future action, the first verb is in the imperfect tense and all subsequent ones in the perfect.

Hebrew was the principal literary language of the Jews until the 19^th century, when European languages came into use for works of modern Jewish scholars, and Yiddish became a vehicle of literary expression. Hebrew was established again as the official language of Israel, in 1948 or nearly 26 centuries after it had ceased to exist as a language of a state bureaucracy.

The Hebrew ideology was expressed in the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament). The period of creation of the Hebrew ideology may be divided chronologically into seven periods. The first three periods of creation of this ideology were devoted to the writing of various portions of the Old Testament.

In the first period, which extended from about 1250 to 950 BC, were written the major parts of the Judaic ideology (the Mosaic laws and the wanted Jewish social organization) and many of the lyrics found in the Old Testament.

To the second period (c. 950-586 BC) belong most of the historical narratives concerning the kings of Israel and Judah, some of the Psalms, and the oracles of certain prophets.

During the third period (586-165 BC) the books of the Bible known as the Writings, specifically, Ecclesiastes, Job, Proverbs, and a large part of the Psalms were composed. Many apocryphal (that were not included in the Bible) writings also originated during this time, and Jewish scholars living in Egypt translated a major portion of the Old Testament.

In the fourth period of the legal interpretations (also known as Midrash, 165 BC – 135 AD) had been actually started during the Babylonian captivity. From Hebrew, darash means ‘interpretation’. These interpretations consisted of the writings of different rabbis about the laws and customs set forth in the Old Testament. The material contained in the interpretive writings is divided into three groups – the traditional law (Halakah); a deduction of the traditional law from the written law (Halakic Midrash); and legends, sermons, and interpretations of the narrative parts of the Bible and concerning ethics and theology rather than law (Haggadic Midrash). The forms and styles of these writings show considerable flexibility, ranging from parables to sermons to codification of laws.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were also written in this period; they are attributed to the Jewish monastic communities of the Essenes, who were organized on a communal basis and practicing strict asceticism. The order, with about 4000 members, existed in Palestine and Syria between the 2^nd century BC and the 2^nd century AD. Its chief settlements were on the shores of the Dead Sea. Various groups have been set forth as possible prototypes for the Essenian order.

Chief among them are Tsenium (from Hebrew, means the ‘modest or chaste ones’), Hashshaim (the ‘silent ones’), Hasidim Harishonim (the ‘ancient saints or elders’), and Nigiyye Had Daath (the ‘pure of mind’). Each of these words was characteristic of the order, the fundamental teachings of which were love of God, love of virtue, and love of one’s fellow humans. Important features of the Essenian organization were the communal property that was distributed according to need, strict observance of the Sabbath, and scrupulous cleanliness that involved washing in cold water and wearing white garments. Swearing, taking oaths (other than oaths of membership in the Essenian order), animal sacrifices, the making of weapons, and participation in trade or commerce was prohibited. Most of these prohibitions do not apply to the modern Hasidic Jews. The latter wear exclusively black garments, leaving white color only for underwear, as saying, ‘our deeds might be seen as purely black and evil, but our intentions were purely white and good’.

The philosopher Philo Judaeus and of the historian Flavius Josephus were writing in this period. Among other ideological Jewish works of this period were a number of the apocalyptic writings of the Old Testament, including those ascribed to Moses, the prophet Daniel, the patriarch Enoch, and the priest and reformer Ezra.

The major accomplishment during the fifth period (135-475) was the Talmud. The version known as the Palestinian Talmud was completed, and the version known as the Babylonian Talmud took shapes.

In the sixth period (470-740) the Babylonian Talmud was completed, some early versions of the interpretations that concerned ethics and theology were collected and (as the marginal notes – Masora) were added to the Hebrew Scriptures.

In the seventh period (740-1088), the earliest Hebrew prayer books were compiled and the first dictionary of the Talmud was written. Rhymed Hebrew poetry was first written in the 8^th century, and the forms and rules of modern Hebrew poetry originated in the 10^th century. In the early part of this period, the centers of Judaism shifted into northern Africa and Italy, and later, into Spain, and Egypt. The period ended with the completion of a Masoretic text in the form of a book or codex that is now in the collection of the Saint Petersburg Public Library and from which the standard Hebrew Bible is printed in our times.

The sacred Hebrew Scriptures are also the parts of the Christian Bible and Islamic Koran. However, the Bible of Judaism and the Bible of Christianity are different. The Jewish Bible consists of the Hebrew Scriptures. It was compiled of 39 books that were originally written in Hebrew, except for a few sections in Aramaic. The Christian Bible consists of two parts – the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament. The Old Testament had been structured in two slightly different forms by the two principal divisions of Christendom. The version of the Old Testament used by Roman Catholics is the Bible of Judaism plus seven other books and additions to books. Some of those additional books were originally written in Greek, as was the New Testament. The Protestants used the 39 books of the Jewish Bible as the version of the Old Testament. The Protestants called other books and additions to those books the Apocrypha.

The term Bible is derived from the Greek biblia, ‘books’, the diminutive form of byblos, the word for ‘papyrus’ or ‘paper’ that was exported from the ancient Phoenician city-state of Byblos. By the time of the Middle Ages, the books of the Bible were considered a unified entity.

The order as well as the number of books differs between the Jewish Bible and the Protestant and Roman Catholic versions of the Bible. The Jewish Bible consists of three parts – the Mosaic Laws (Torah); the Prophets (divided into the Earlier and Latter); and the Writings (including Psalms, wisdom books, and other diverse literature). The Christian Old Testament organizes the books according to their type of literature – the Five Books (Pentateuch) that correspond to the Mosaic laws; historical books; poetical or wisdom books; and prophetic books. In my view, the Jewish Bible was compiled more reasonably, because the prophets were prophets since they saw history before it happened. However, the Christian Bible was compiled two centuries before the Jewish Bible; thus, the compilers of the latter had more time to contemplate on the historical perspective of the books. The Protestant and Roman Catholic versions of the Old Testament place the books in the same sequence, but the Protestant version includes only the 39 books that are found in the Jewish Bible. The New Testament includes the four Gospels; the Acts of the Apostles, a history of early Christianity; Epistles, or letters, of Paul and other writers; and an apocalypse, or book of revelation.

The Islamic Koran is a collection that was compiled by the followers of Muhammad a few years after his death in 632. From Arabic, quran means ‘to read’. A version that was authorized by the Islamic clerical bureaucracy was compiled in the early 650s by a group of Arabic ideologists under Uthman ibn Affan (c. 575-656). They attempted to destroy all other versions of the Koran, but some of those versions survived and had been adapted by some Islamic communities.

The Koran was divided into 114 chapters (suras) of various lengths. The Koran contains the Islamic ideology (its religious, civil, and military legal codes). The main doctrine laid down in the Koran is – only one God and one true religion exist. All will undergo a final judgment and the just human beings will be rewarded with eternal bliss but the sinners will be punished with eternal pain. When humankind turned from truth, God sent prophets to lead the way back. The greatest of those prophets were Moses, Jesus Christ, and Muhammad. Punishments and rewards are depicted with vivid imagery and are exemplified by stories, many of which also are found in the Jewish and Christian Bibles and Apocrypha. Laws, directions, and admonitions to virtuous behavior were paralleled to those of the Jewish and Christian Bibles, and of the Hindu Scriptures. As the Christians partake symbolically of the "blood and body" of the Christian upper classes (camouflaged under the name of "Jesus Christ") through their ritual of Communion, so do the Muslims partake the ideological context of the Islamic upper classes (masked under the name of "Allah") through reciting their Scriptures.

The Koran is the center of gravity of the Islamic universe, without which the Muslim tradition would not be materialized. To the Muslims (the surrendered to God), the ideological context of the Koran is the same as that one of the Bibles to the Jews and the Christians, and is considered to be God's holy Word. The Christians believe that God's Word has come down into reality as a human being, Jesus Christ. However, the Muslims believe that God has been sending his Word to the humans as a written book and its living "recitation" (koran) -- the two interchangeable and complementary God's reincarnations through sacred speech.

Muhammad's success as a nation builder out of the Arabic nomads had rested on his balanced character and charismatic personality -- he had not only taught on a great variety of public interests but also has expressed his judgments in such a way that his students have not been diminished by his authority, but inspired to imitate his behavior. Like Moses, Muhammad had led the unruly nomadic people as a military commander, judging and promoting them in accord with the unified and apparently non-contradictory rules (God's laws). Although Muhammad had a large family and was a public figure, yet he managed to balance his public life with a disciplined private life of retreat, meditation, prayer, and temporary abstinence of food and sex. After Muhammad's death, his followers have been seeking guidance through the reality by remembering his words and behavior, which were preserved in a written book and verbal traditions that together embody the "submissive" (islam) way of life or the beaten track (sunna) to "success" in "this" world and "salvation" in "that" world.

Muhammad taught that God created the heavens and the earth and that His angels carry out His decisions and communicate with humans through prophetic dreams and inspirations. God has entrusted the pre-Muhammad prophets with His message of mercy and final judgment, with salvation in paradise for believers and damnation in hell for infidels. Tempered by compassion to all humans, God's justice requires Him to communicate His message to them; and because the Arabic nomads were the last people receiving the God's message through Muhammad, they were entrusted to call all peoples to submit (Islam) themselves to One God. Thus, Muhammad called upon the polytheistic Arabic nomads to reorganize themselves into the "purified" and orderly "community" (umma).

To constitute the disorganized nomadic tribes into an orderly state, the compilers of the Koran used such words as "lord" (caliph or deputy of God on earth), through whom and whose institutions the unified rules of social behavior would be imposed. Therefore, in the Arabic countries, the notion of god's caliphate has been persisting ever since and has its deepest meaning that each individual submits own desires and commits himself in this life to the rule of God, who rules on the earth through the upper class bureaucrats; however, the commoners and laborers have the opportunities to rise in the social hierarchy through their abilities and knowledge. The Muslims believe that God alone is able to bring about his servants' worldly success, but the individual's efforts are also necessary. Faith and works both procure God's blessings and rewards, but the faith of a faithful is essentially God's gracious gift.

According to the compilers of the Koran, the God endowed the humans with the divine nature to please Him, while contemplating their devotion to Him and mirroring His virtues and glory. To satisfy Himself, God separated humans from Himself but provided them with certain capacities as well as with the revelations of the Scriptures; however, the humans would be ungrateful and guilty of both moral and intellectual error if they would not submit themselves to God through living in this world by faith in His greatness, by abiding hope in His mercy, and obedience to His rule, which is delivered through the worldly bureaucracy. If the commoners and laborers would persist in their individualism and self-satisfaction, they would be doomed. Those who would not submit selves to God (read, to the bureaucrats), whether by outright refusal by hardiness of heart and obscurity of reasoning or by placing their egos ahead of God's ("country's") service, would reject their own "true" nature (fitra, karma, or destiny). Although the humans cannot destroy their destiny, which God has been providing along with their individual freedom to imagine and to choose, they can fail to enter the paradise.

Therefore, the Islamic scholars accentuate the individual's free will rather than his fatalism, as the Hindu scholars do. However, his freedom is neither his permission of self-indulgence nor his guarantee of his worldly or heavenly success. Rather, the individual's free will is his necessary condition of being in this world and thus separated from God, whereas God's will and compassion are the final cause of this separation and the future unity.

The Muslims believe that they have been called by God to establish a righteous political and social order on earth. They suppose that the only way to live gratefully as the God's deputies on earth is to make full use of what God bestowed onto them. Consequently, their fundamental doctrine includes the belief in the divine unity (tawhid) that requires a unified human religious community as well. This assumption was borrowed from Judaism and has been easy to declare rather than to understand, moreover, to apply in everyday life. In fact, the entire theological superstructure about the Koran is a facilitation to realizing this unity.

The second important assumption of the Islamic doctrine is the belief in angels as the divine appointees and helpers in the myriad tasks of God. This assumption was borrowed from Zoroastrianism.

The third important assumption of the Islamic doctrine is the belief in prophecy and sacred books, especially of that of Muhammad and the Koran, as the final "seal" of the historic cycle of prophecy. Shaping this belief in his followers, Muhammad followed in the foot-steps of Moses, who hated all contemporary prophets as potential competitors in the market of ideas but would not mind glorifying them after killing them.

The fourth important assumption of the Islamic doctrine is the belief in the Judgment Day when all the dead would be raised and judged, and the righteous would be saved in eternal heavenly bliss but the unbelievers would be cast down into hell. This assumption came into Islam from Christianity.

The fifth important assumption of the Islamic doctrine is the belief in Divine Decree and predestination. The ways of God are mysterious to humans, who nevertheless received enough freedom to make responsible moral decisions; in other words, who were indoctrinated sufficiently to play by the rules of the upper class.

After publicly declaring and witnessing that "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God", a Muslim usually performs a formal worship (Salat), which he observes at dawn, at noon, during the mid-afternoon, just after the sun-set, and in the evening. A prescribed rituals are required to perform each of these times; however, each worshipper may also perform additional ones. A prime prerequisite for a worship is ritual "purification", which is achieved by washing of the face, head, ears, mouth, nostrils, hand and arms to the elbows, feet and ankles, while praying for mental and bodily purity and guidance from the above on this matters. If a devotee experiences a "major" impurity, such as recent contacts either with a sexual partner or with the saliva of pigs or dogs, then he is obliged to take a ritualized full bath of the entire body. Based on this sensual division between "pure" and "impure" substances for an individual, the Judaic and Muslim scholars have been analogizing into the realm of social behavior, where they have been erecting such abstract categories as "permitted or forbidden" and "right or wrong", which always bear a class bias or prejudice of their speakers. "Cleanliness is next to godliness" is an obsessive ideal among the Muslims as it is among the Orthodox Jews, Christian Puritans, and the Nazis.

The Muslims believe that almsgiving (Zakat) purifies the remaining property of the giver, because it is strongly symbolizes the total submission of the giver to the One, almighty God. The almsgiving symbolizes the social conscious of the giver, who supports other Muslims with his wealth, thus increasing not only cohesiveness and security of the Muslim community, but also renders it purer. God has endowed his creatures with wealth and asks humans to return it through works that enhance their own community.

Fasting (Sawm) is another ritual of purification; it is prescribed for the Muslims for the entire month of Ramadan (a lunar month of the Islamic calendar, somewhere between mid-November and mid-December). In this month, it is forbidden to a Muslim to have such pollutants as food, drink, smoke, sex, and medicine from dawn to dark. This ritualized hiding of their "sins" from the sunlight, the Muslim scholars drew from their ancestral "infidel" Arabs, who worshiped the sun-god as the main deity of their pantheon.

Another ritual of purification for a Muslim, which is not an obligatory one but depends on personal (material and spiritual) circumstances, is his pilgrimage (Hajj) to Mecca and other sacred places. This ritual derived from the ancient Egyptian beliefs in saintly person, who provide their spiritual power and blessings to the living community. The returning pilgrim is considered as a living saint, who is honored with the title Hajji and resides in a sacred house marked by the symbols of the Islamic spiritual centers (Mecca and Medina).

Another ritual of purification of a Muslim is his perseverance and assertiveness (Jihad) of basic beliefs in God. There are the greater and the lesser assertions of faith. The greater jihad means that a Muslim has an inner, spiritual struggle with own demons and needs for repentance; whereas, the lesser jihad means the "holy war" against the foes of the Islamic bureaucrats. The lesser assertion of Islamic faith may mean defending the status quo, and it may mean spreading Islam by force.

The term "fundamentalists" was coined in the early 20^th century to characterize the American conservative Christian Protestants who asserted five key-beliefs of their doctrine -- the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, his physical resurrection, the infallibility of the Scriptures, the substitution Atonement, and the Second Coming of Jesus in his physical form. Although the Muslim bureaucrats agree only with the belief in the infallibility of the Scriptures (Koran, of course), yet, among the American propagandists, the term stuck with the most conservative and militant Muslims. Now the term "fundamentalists" is usually applied to the conservative and militant bureaucrats of all religious denominations, whereas the conservative and militant secular bureaucrats are called "hardliners".

Some fundamentalists assert their beliefs through preaching, teaching and other forms of communication in religious schools, universities, and in the media. Other fundamentalists assert their beliefs politically, supporting either the hardliners or the opposing revolutionaries; but in either case, they would not mind to use the terrorist methods, whether against outsiders or against the internal "weaklings"

The middle and lower class believers, who are concern to maintain as "pure" a version of their faith as humanly possible, are not usually organized into specific political or cultural groups. Most of them are moderate, tolerant, and devoutly observant, without being extremists. However, they can be easily manipulated by the unscrupulous fundamentalists and can be aroused mightily when they perceive a threat to their interests and to their community as a real one, because the commoners and laborers inhabit at least three spiritual areas  -- in the first one, they identify selves with the present national bureaucracy as, for example, the Americans or the Italians; in the second one, they identify selves with the past tribal (ethnic) bureaucracy as the Irish Americans or the Jewish Americans; and in the third one, they identify selves with the religious bureaucracy as the Catholic Christians or the Sunni Muslims.

Although the Muslims welcome and warmly embrace newcomers into their community, they expect that the newcomers will become new kind of persons with Islamic convictions and habits, and rather sooner than later. Life cycle stages are junctions at which both the structure and dynamic of every cultural life intersect. Consequently, all cultures have rites of passage from one stage to another, whether they occur in religious or in secular social spheres, or in both together. The Muslims have no a formal rite of passage for entry into their audlthood. To become a Muslim, an individual need only utter sincerely that "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God". It is usual for an uncircumcised adult male convert to Islam to undergo the circumcision rite and to change his present name for the Arabic one.

Islamic rites of passage begin at birth and continue to death, and they are mirror many of those of the Jews and the Hindus. Thus, upon the birth of child someone prays in the infant's ear, and at the seventh day, the ceremony of naming the baby is conducted; the latter consists of the animal sacrifices and of shaving the baby's tuft of hair. When a child begins to talk, simple words and phrases are taught, then, training in reading and reciting the Koran starts. Boys an girls may play together, but they are separated as puberty approaches. Circumcision of boys is often performed in infancy, but some undergo it at age seven and some -- at the onset of puberty. The latter case accompanies with reciting the Koran, reasoning that knowledge of God's teaching enables the boy to distinguish between right and wrong, which, going along with his bodily male potency, shapes him as a full-fledge member of the Muslim community, who from now on enjoys all his rights and responsibilities.

Although all humans are born, develop, mature, pass through a marriage, grow old, and die, the Muslims assert that this natural cycle of human life can be reinforced in the specifically Islamic way. But so far, we saw nothing peculiar in the Arabic customs that the Aryan nomads would not have also. The men of the latter, for instance, have long been looking upon their women like some kind of cattle, which was paid for and should be cared for (because it is a necessary "evil", without which the men would become extinct), but ruled with the iron fist.

Traditionally, the Muslim parents forbid their daughters to go out looking for husbands, though they may express their preferences and may even refuse someone selected for them; but it is a duty of the parents to be matchmakers for their children. A man might propose marriage, though not directly to the prospective bride but to her father or other male guardian. The fiancé and fiancée are not allowed to be alone until marriage, though they may sometimes enjoy the company of each other in the presence of parents.

Islamic propriety prescribes certain degree of close blood relationship, within which a man and a woman may not marry, and thus, to be socially associated with each other, probably because not only the cattle suffers from hemophilia and degenerates without expanding the genome pool. The Koran does not prohibit socialization of women among themselves or of men among themselves. However, it is customary for the Muslim women to eat in a separate room when non-relatives arrive for a fist.

Because in agricultural and nomadic societies a rare woman works outside of her home, the division of labor between husband and wife (and flowing out of it certain rights and responsibilities of the family members) are more clear than that one in an industrial society, where a woman often necessitated to be the breadwinner.

The Koran permits to a Muslim man to marry up to four wives concurrently, if he may afford to treat them equally. Women are prohibited to have several husbands at a time. A Muslim man may marry a non-Muslim woman, but a Muslim woman may not marry a non-Muslim man. However, both genders can have a divorce. The commoners and laborers cannot afford several wives, and therefore, their families are usually monogamous. However, it was a common practice in the early epoch of Islamic expansion when many men died young in the battles and the Muslim societies had a significant surplus of women. So, the differences of social status of the Muslim women and men are rather economic and temporary than ideological and permanent as the Islamic ideologist claim through the Koran and its superstructure.

At the funeral and memorial observances, the Muslims usually recite the thirty-sixth chapter of the Koran, which vividly summarizes this stage of life cycle as follows -- "Who will revive these bones when they have rotten away? Say: He will revive them Who produced them at the first, for He is Knower of every creature. (36:77-78)" The body of the deceased must have its final bath and be wrapped in a plain white cloth. The coffin is not necessary, because the burial must be finished the same day as the death occur, but not after sundown -- probably that the soul receiving angels would not dispatch mistakenly the deceased into the hell. The funeral prayer consists of four parts. When the funeral procession arrives at the gravesite, the first chapter of the Koran is recited. The traditional grave is to two meters deep with a shelf hollowed out on one side, where the deceased is placed with the head directed toward Mecca. After the day of burial, the relatives of the deceased usually have a commemorating reception. The Egyptian Muslims hold such an observance on the fortieth day after the death.

As you might notice, there are many customs common to the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Hindus, because people have been framing their culture, their ideology based on the economic necessities, and not vice versa. And the economic conditions of the nomadic life have been pretty much the same across the board, as to the Hebrew nomads as well as to the Arabic nomads. Therefore, the only real difference between Koran and the Christian Bible consists in what a group of nomads adjusted the Jewish Bible and the Hindu Scriptures for their own needs. Koran is a result of an adjustment of the Jewish Bible and the Hindu Scriptures to the needs of the Arabic nomads who wanted to become the upper class. The Christian Bible is a result of an adjustment of the Jewish Bible and the Hindu Scriptures to the needs of the Aryan nomads who wanted to become the upper class.

The Bibles and Koran are the ideological books, not only by virtue of their content but also in terms of their use by the Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The Bibles and Koran are read or cited in all services of public worship, their words shape the basis for preaching and instruction, and they are used in private devotion and study. The language of the Bibles and Koran has formed the prayers, liturgy, and hymnody of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Without these books, these three religious denominations would have been virtually speechless.

The external and internal importance of these books differs considerably among the various groups (sects) of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. However, all adherents ascribe some degree of authority to it. Many confess that their Book (Bible or Koran) is the full and sufficient guide in all matters of faith and practice because it is the direct Word of God. Others view the authority of their Book in the light of tradition, or the continuous belief and practice of their congregation since apostolic (prophetic) times.

Early Christianity inherited from Judaism and took for granted a view of the Scriptures as authoritative. No formal doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture was initially propounded, as was the case with Islam, which held that the Koran was handed down directly from heaven. However, Christians generally believed that the Bible contained the Word of God as communicated by his Spirit – first, through the patriarchs and prophets, and then, through the apostles. Indeed, the writers of the New Testament books appealed to the authority of the Hebrew Scriptures to support their statements about Jesus Christ.

The actual doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible by the Holy Spirit and the infallibility of its words arose as the biblical criticism of the 19^th century. This doctrine holds that God is the author of the Bible in such a way that the Bible is His Word. Many hypotheses explaining the doctrine have been suggested by the Jewish and Christian ideologists. The hypothesis range from a direct, divine, verbal dictation of the Scriptures to an illumination that aided the inspired writer to understand the truth he expressed, whether this truth was revealed to him or he learned it through experience.

The doctrine of infallibility in the Christian theology stated that in matters of faith and morals the clerical bureaucracy is protected from real error by divine dispensation (distribution of God’s mercies) to its teachers-bureaucrats as well as to its lay-students. The doctrine is generally associated with the Roman Catholic Church, but it is also applied to the Orthodox Church and to the Orthodox Synagogue. The doctrine is widely rejected by Protestants on the grounds that only God can be described as infallible.

The Roman-Catholic ideologists asserted that the entire church (as a society of the clerical bureaucrats and lay-members) is infallible. It cannot err in matters of faith because, from bishops to laity, it shows universal agreement in matters of faith and morals. However, the church takes into its considerations only the deeds of its bishops and other bureaucrats, leaving its lay-members aside from its policies that touch their faith and morals. Only the following persons in the church (those who hold its highest bureaucratic positions) are believed (by the same bureaucrats) to proclaim the Christian doctrine infallibly:
1) the entire body of bishops in union with the Pope (the bishop of Rome) when it teaches with moral unanimity;
2) the ecumenical council that receives papal approval;
3) the Pope alone, under certain conditions.

According to the definition, promulgated in 1870 by the First Vatican Council, the Pope exercises an infallible teaching office only when:
he speaks ex cathedra, that is, in his official capacity as pastor and teacher;
he speaks with the manifest intention of binding the entire church to acceptance;
the matter pertains to faith or morals taught as a part of divine revelation handed down from apostolic times.

The church bureaucrats have never considered the Pope as infallible in his personal or private views. Since the middle of the 19^th century, only two ex cathedra pronouncements have been made in the Roman Catholic Church:
the definition of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in 1854 by Pope Pius IX;
the definition of the Assumption of the Virgin in 1950 by Pope Pius XII.

Proponents of the infallibility doctrine do not regard this doctrine as something miraculous or as a second sight. Rather, they considered the doctrine as a grace, or a divine gift that is grounded in their ideology. Proponents of the infallibility doctrine pointed to many scriptural passages, such as the farewell discourses in John, especially the promise of the Spirit of truth (John 14:17, 15:26, and 16:13). They hold that the church (a society of believers) derives this gift from God, who alone is the ultimate source of infallibility. The infallibility doctrine rooted in the Bible and in the ancient traditions of the church, neither of which can be contradicted. Therefore, the clerical bureaucrats consider the infallibility doctrine as a gift that they ought to exercise with the utmost care in the service of God and to exclude the novel doctrines and other innovations from the pondering of the lay-members.

On the other hand, the opponents of the infallibility doctrine quick to point out that the church (a society of its believers) lives and acts in this world and among the larger society of unbelievers. The church is a society inside the larger society, and therefore, it must live by the laws of this larger society, which has own bureaucracy (military and civil). Besides, the above mentioned passages of John bestow the full and direct authority on the individual-believer, not on the middleman-bureaucrat. In John 14:15-17, 15:26-27, 16:13, a biblical author said:

"If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever – the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you…. When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me; but you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning…. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come".

What these passages are all about is that when the individual becomes reasonable, he surrenders to the society (which acts through bureaucrats) a part of his individual rights that concern his long run interests. This part of his former rights turns into his present responsibilities. Only that part of his individual rights that concern his short-run interests stays as his present individual rights because it will not have time to be converted into the rights of the society. Otherwise, the individual will dissolve into the society and the latter will become the individual or both will be annihilated. Thus, the individual will have full authority. The problem is that he will have it only when the Counselor (the Spirit of truth, the Reason) will arrive onto him. Until then, the individual is under the guidance of the clerical (ideological) bureaucrats, and the latter, when they are weak, may be under the guidance of the military and civil bureaucrats.

Nevertheless, who and how will define when an individual become reasonable? Of course, the individual’s self-assertiveness is the final judge of his maturity. However, the society also must check upon an individual’s readiness to be a full-fledged citizen, and the best society devises the best hierarchical system of its bureaucracy for this purpose. The best bureaucracy is one which does not hinder the development of the individual through concealing information and pretending to be knowledgeable of all truth, like those Communist and Nationalist leaders, who took Moses for their model. Therefore, the system of the bureaucracy should be based on the merits of the individuals, who will become the bureaucrats, in order that they can help others to fulfil themselves and to be happy (without making others miserable).

The importance of their Books among the Jews, Christians, and Muslims may be explained broadly in their external and internal influence. The external influence lies in the power of custom (creed and tradition). The religious groups confess that their Books guide them through the centuries. In one sense a religious community is the author of its Scriptures, having developed them, cherished them, used them, and eventually canonized them as the Book (that is, developed a list of bureaucratically approved biblical books). However, the internal influence of the Books can be seen in the power of their content on the majority of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims. The ancient Jews, Christians, and Muslims knew of many more religious books than the ones that constitute their present Books. However, their Books had been cherished and used because of what their authors said and how they said it. The clerical bureaucrats canonized these Books because the authors of the books had been so popular (had been read and believed so widely). Thus, the external tradition converges with the internal creed (system of beliefs), and we should acknowledge that the Books of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims truly are the foundation of their ideologies and customs.

It is commonly known that the Bibles and Koran, in hundreds of different translations, are the most widely distributed books in human history. Moreover, in all their forms, the Books have been enormously influential, and not only among the religious communities that hold them sacred. The cultural development of whole continents was deeply indebted to biblical themes, motifs, and images. Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible into German (that was completed in 1534) started the Protestant Revolution against the papal authority and the infallibility of the clerical bureaucracy. The latter, in its turn, prompted the questioning of the infallibility of the military and civil bureaucracies and the development of the system of checks and balances among the bureaucrats.

It is remarkable that Christianity includes within its Bible the entire scriptures of a competing ideology, Judaism. The term Old Testament (from Latin, testament means ‘covenant’) came to be applied to those Scriptures based on the writings of Paul and others. These early Christians distinguished between the "Old Covenant" that God made with the patriarchs and Moses, and the "New Covenant" established through Jesus Christ (Heb. 8:7). It is because the founders of the Christian Church claimed the authority of the New Testament based on the predictions of some prophets of the Old Testament, that the latter was included in the Christian Bible. However, what was special about those Old Covenants? There were nine of them until Moses died, and several more after that. The Covenants are the real issue of the Bible, because all authorities are derived from them. However, before we look at the essence of the Book, we should ponder on its form.

The Old Testament may be viewed from many different perspectives. From the viewpoint of literature, the Old Testament is an anthology, a collection of many different books. The Old Testament is by no means a unified book in terms of authorship, date of composition, or literary type; instead, it is a virtual mini-library.

From the external point of view that looks upon the books of the Old Testament as a mini-library, its component parts may be identified as laws, narratives, poetry, prophetic works, or apocalypses. Most of these are broad categories that include various distinct types (genres) of literature that meant to influence the reader’s mind from different sides – through his conscious and through his subconscious. The books of law and historical narratives were intended to influence the reader’s conscious. The books of poetry, prophecies, and apocalypses were intended by their writers to influence the reader’s subconscious. None of these genres are limited to the Old Testament; all genres are found in other ancient literature, especially that of Mesopotamia. Certain types, such as letters (epistles), autobiography, drama, and satire did not find their way into the Old Testament. To be more interesting, some of the Old Testament books were written in several literary genres. For example, Exodus contains narrative, laws, and poetry; most prophetic books include narratives and poetry in addition to prophesies as such.

Most of the Old Testament books are narratives; that is, they report the events of the past. If they have a plot, characterization of the participants, and a description of the setting where the events occurred, then they are stories. On the other hand, many narratives of the Old Testament are histories – although they do not fit the present scholarly definition of the term ‘history’. A history is a written narrative of the past that is guided by the facts, as far as the writer can determine and interpret them, and not by some aesthetic, religious, or other ideological consideration. However, most of the "historical" books have been written by the victors, who would likely to be bias to themselves and prejudiced against their foes. The historical narratives of the Old Testament are popular rather than critical works, because the writers often used hear-says that passed through many non-eyewitnesses. Moreover, all these narratives were written for an ideological purpose – to persuade the reader in something that was important to the writer. For instance, such books as Genesis through Nehemiah (except 2 Samuel and 1 Kings) can be called the histories of the divine dispensation of the clerical authorities. The authors of these books were primarily concerned with showing how God was active in human events and how He managed the dispensation of the authorities on the clerical bureaucrats. The so-called Throne Succession history of David (2 Samuel and 1 Kings) comes from the authors who were more concerned about the origin of the military and civil authorities. The writers were sensitive to the details of historical events and characters, and they interpreted the course of affairs in the light of human motivations and interests. Nonetheless, they could see the hand of God moving behind the scenes of those human interests.

Other narrative books (such as Ruth, Jonah, Esther, Tobit, Judith, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon) are short didactic stories. They were designed to teach the reader that it is in his interest to go along with the bureaucrats, anointing by God. It is likely that such books developed from folktales or legends. The book of Genesis was composed (as most of the other narrative books), of numerous individual stories, most of which were written from independent oral storytellers. The patriarchal stories in Genesis have been called legends, sagas, and family-tribe stories. Many of them were designed to teach to be "politically correct".

The poetic books of the Old Testament include Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and in the deutero-canonical books and the Apocrypha, Sirach and the Prayer of Manasseh. Hebrew poetry has two major characteristics – one is parallelism of lines or other parts. For example, the meaning of one line may be restated or paralleled by a second line, as in Ps. 70:1:
"Hasten, O Lord, to save me;
O Lord, come quickly to help me".

These two lines are synonymous. On the other hand, the second line in the unit may state the positive side of the first line’s point, and visa versa, as in Prov. 13:21:
"Misfortune pursues the sinner,
but prosperity is the reward of the righteous".

Parallelism can extend in some instances to three or more lines, and its function (as any repetition) – to ease the remembrance. The other major feature of Hebrew poetry is rhythm, which has been based on the number of accents in each line. One of the more easily recognized meters is that of the qina, in which the first line has three beats or accented syllables and the second line, has two.

The poetic books include diverse genres, but the most typical are the various songs of worship (Psalms) and wisdom poetry. Moreover, the Bible contains one book of love poetry, the Song of Songs. This lyrical poetry meant to be sung. Many of these songs are hymns-songs in praise of God and His works on behalf of the Jews. Others are communal laments or complaint songs, which were prayers-petitions that were sung by the Jews, who were faced with troubles.

The wisdom poetry includes collections of wisdom sayings and short poems, as in the book of Proverbs, and long compositions such as Job, Ecclesiastes, and Sirach. The shorter wisdom materials are proverbs, sayings, and admonitions, commonly only two lines long. Most of them were undoubtedly popular sayings and clichés; others were creative compositions. The subject matter of the wisdom sayings ranges from practical advice how to live a good and successful life to a reflection on the obedience to the divinely revealed law. The author of Job concerned primarily with the question of the suffering of the righteous, and the author of Ecclesiastes pondered sadly the meaning of life in the face of death.

Most of the prophetic books also were written in Hebrew poetry. Prophets were known in the ancient Near East, and ancient Egyptian writers produced literary works called ‘prophecies’; however, the Jews creatively changed the form of own prophecies. Most Hebrew prophetic books contain three kinds of literature: narratives, prayers, and prophetic speeches. The narratives mainly are stories of prophets’ deeds on behalf of the Jews. These stories either attributed to the prophet himself or told by some third person. They include vision reports, reports of symbolic actions, accounts of prophetic activities such as conflicts between the prophets and their opponents, and historical narratives or notes. One book in the prophetic collection, Jonah, is actually a story about a prophet, including only one line of prophecy as such (Jonah 3:4). The prayers include hymns and petitions such as Jeremiah’s complaints.

Speeches prevailed in the prophetic literature, for the essence of prophetic activity was to announce the word of God concerning the immediate future. The most common pattern of the prophecies is the combination of punishment and salvation. The prophecy usually gives reasons for the punishment – whether it was injustice of the military and civil bureaucrats toward the lower class people, or the clerical bureaucrats were arrogant to them, or when there were no other means to persuade the political opponents. The prophecy spelled out the kind of punishment that would fall down on the transgressor – whether it would be military or natural disaster. The prophets usually announced about salvation as about God’s impending intervention to rescue all Jewish believers. Most of the prophetic speeches started from the words as revealed to the prophets by God; usual formula was – "thus says the Lord".

The apocalypse (revelation), as a distinctive literary genre, developed among the Jewish writers in their period of the post-Babylonian Captivity that lasted from 586 to 538 BC. A revelation contains the disclosure of future events through the description of a lengthy and detailed dream or vision report. It makes use of highly symbolic and often bizarre images, which in turn are explained and interpreted. Apocalyptic writings generally reflected the author’s historical view of his own era as a time when the evil powers (Devil) were gathering to make their final struggle against the good powers (God), after which a new age would be established. Daniel, Isaiah, Zechariah, Ezekiel, and two Esdras are such apocalyptic books.

During and after the Babylonian Captivity, some Jews learned the Middle Persian and Parthian languages. Later, these Jews would become known as the Pharisees – the learned ones in Farsi. The Pharisees were the Jewish sectarians, who actively resisted (from the 2^nd century BC) to the Greek influences that threatened to undermine the ideology of the Mosaic laws and decrease the Jews’ will-to-be the upper class. They originated as the Hasidic Jews. The Pharisees wished that the clerical, military and civil bureaucrats were directed and measured by the standard of the Mosaic laws, without regard for the priestly and aristocratic Sadducees, who collaborated with the Greco-Macedonian bureaucrats. The Medieval Christian ideologists drew the derivation of the name Pharisees from the Hebrew word parash that means ‘to separate’. It was very convenient for those ideologists "to separate" the staunch opponents of Jesus from their flock. However, sectarians usually pick a name for own sect that will reflect the gist of what they all about. Therefore, I think that the Pharisees took their name from Parthian (Farsi or Parsi, a dialect of Iranian), the language with which they did most of their works. These works were mainly in apocalyptic genre and in the riverbed of the Zoroastrian and Manihean teachings. By the way, the Latin word pars means ‘part’, and parsing means ‘to take word or sentence apart’.

Although Old Persian and Avestan had close affinity with Sanskrit or the Aryan language, Middle Iranian was represented not only by Middle Persian and the closely related Parthian language but also by several Central Asian tongues. Parthian was the language of the Arsacid Parthian Empire (c. 250 BC – 226 AD). Although Parthian is known mainly through inscriptions of the early kings of the following Sassanid Persian Empire (226-641), Parthian declined when the Parthian Empire expired. However, during the Arsacid period, Parthian influenced Persian. Thus, the language of the Sassanid Persia was Middle Persian, often called Pahlavi, the term that was usually applied to the form of the language used in certain Zoroastrian writings. Middle Persian has a simpler grammar than Old Persian and was usually written in an ambiguous script with multivalent letters, adopted from Aramaic, which was the international language of the Persian and Parthian empires. Middle Persian declined after the Arab conquest of Persia in the 7^th century. Consequently, these would-be Pharisees also learned the Zoroastrian and Manichean teachings. Thus, between the 3^rd century BC and the 1^st century AD, the Jewish writers produced numerous other apocalyptic works that were never considered as canonical or apocryphal. Among those writings were Enoch, the War of the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, and the Apocalypse of Moses.

Most Jewish and Christian ideologists agreed that the Jews had produced the books of the Old Testament at the different places and in the period over a millenium. Consequently, we may examine the books and their component parts in terms of their authorship. Virtually all the books of the Old Testament went through a long process of transmission and development before they were collected and canonized. That process usually involved many people, such as storytellers, authors, and editors. These ideologists had been constantly monitoring upon the pulse of their listeners and readers with one prevailing thought – how to provide the clerical bureaucrats with the best proof of their authority to rule.

According to Jewish and Christian tradition, Moses was the author of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. The tradition stemmed partially from the Jewish designation of them as the books of Moses, but that meant concerning Moses, because nowhere in the books themselves such a claim was made. In the Middle Ages, Jewish scholars realized a problem with the tradition. Although Deuteronomy (the last book of the Pentateuch) reports the death of Moses, the Pentateuch is actually anonymous and composite work. The Pentateuch was compiled on the basis of numerous duplications and repetitions, including two different designations of the deity, two separate accounts of creation, two intertwined stories of the flood, two versions of the Egyptian plagues, and many others. Therefore, modern scholars have concluded that the writers of the Pentateuch drew upon several different sources, each from a different writing team and a different period.

The sources differ in vocabulary, literary style, and ideological perspective. The oldest writers are the Jehovists (Yahwists), from their use of the divine name Jehovah (Yahweh). Their works are usually attributed to the 10^th or 9^th century BC, and they are mainly concerned with origin of the clerical authority. The second team of writers is the Elohists, from their use of the general name Elohim for God; their works are usually ascribed to the 8^th century BC and mainly concern with military bureaucracy. The next team is Deuteronomists; their work was limited to that book and a few other passages. This work is attributed to the late 7^th century BC, and it mainly concerns the civil bureaucracy. The last is the Priestly Writer, for his emphasis on clerical law and other priestly concerns. His work is attributed to the 6^th or 5^th century BC. The Jehovists included a full narrative account from creation to the conquest of the Canaanites by the Hebrews. The Elohists made the discrete narrative about different family-tribes; their earliest material concerns Abraham. The Priestly Writer concentrated on the covenant and the revelation of the law at Mount Sinai, beginning with a narrative of the creation.

None of the writers of these documents were spontaneously creative authors. Rather, they worked as editors who collected, and organized older material with a general idea – to prove the right of the clergy to rule the Jewish society. Being under the pressure of this necessity, as one recent view suggests, the compilers of the Pentateuch collected and compiled the individual stories under the headings of several major themes, such as Promise to the Patriarchs, Exodus, Wandering in the Wilderness, Sinai, and Taking of the Land. Thus, the basic form of Pentateuch took shape by about 1100 BC.

Legal matter is prominent in the Jewish Bible to such a degree that the term Mosaic Laws or Torah is applied in Judaism to the first five books, and in early Christianity to the entire Old Testament. Legal writings dominate in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. The Greek translators of the Old Testament called the fifth book of the Bible – Deuteronomy. From Greek, that means ‘second law’, because it does contain numerous laws. Moreover, the Jewish sect of Samaritans acknowledged only these Five Books, because they considered them as reflecting the gist of their beliefs.

According to the Jewish and Christian ideologists, the will of God was revealed to the Jews through Moses when the covenant was made at Mount Sinai. These ideologists have recognized two major types of Mosaic laws– the direct and the reflective. An example of direct laws is the Ten Commandments. The direct laws usually found in collections and are short and unambiguous statements of the will of God for the behavior of the Jews among themselves and toward the non-Jews (Gentiles). The direct laws are either positive commands or negative prohibitions.

On the other hand, reflective laws usually consist of two parts – conditions and consequences. The first part states the conditions:
"If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods’".

The second part states the consequences:
"…do not yield to him or listen to him. Show him no pity. Do not spare him or shield him. You must certainly put him to death. Your hand must be the first in putting him to death, and then the hands of all the people. Stone him to death, because he tried to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again". Dt. 13:6,8-11).

The reflective laws are parallel in form, and frequently in content, to laws found in the Code of Hammurabi and other ancient Near Eastern law codes.

In recent years, the books of Deuteronomy through 2 Kings were ascribed as a unified account of the Jewish history from the time of Moses (c. 1250 BC) to the Babylonian Captivity in 586 BC. Because the literary style and ideology are similar to those of Deuteronomy, this account is called the Deuteronomistic History. Based on the last events it reports, among other evidence, it seems to have been written in Babylon about 560 BC. However, it is possible that the basic concept of the historical proof of the right of the Jewish clerical bureaucracy to rule was conceived earlier.

These "historic" writers intended to record the history of the Jews. They worked as other historians would, by collecting and organizing older sources (written and oral). They used materials of many kinds, including stories of the prophets, earlier histories, and even court records. However, it is clear that they worked similarly to the ideologists, who already had firm convictions about the course and meaning of the events that only would be recorded. These biblical writers expressed their convictions by the way they organized the material and by placing speeches, which had been put into the mouths of the major characters (as in Josh. 1). The writers believed that the Jewish clergy and other intellectuals had fallen to the Babylonian military bureaucrats because of their disobedience to Mosaic laws, especially in their worship to the false gods.

Virtually on all pages of the Old Testament, their authors called the attention of the readers to the reality and importance of "history", as they knew it, for their purpose, of course. The Pentateuch and the historical books contain salvation histories; the prophets constantly refer to events of the past, present, and future. The envisioned Jewish history of the Old Testament was organized in a series of pivotal events or periods – the exodus (from the family-tribe stories to the conquest of the Canaanites), the state and monarchy, the Babylonian Captivity, and the return to Palestine with the restoration of the Jewish clerical organization.

The idea of the complete sacred Jewish book dates at least from 621 BC. During the reform of Josiah, the vassal-king of Judah, when the temple was being repaired, the high priest Hilkiah discovered "the book of the law" (2 Kings 22). The scroll was probably the central part of the present book of Deuteronomy. Thereafter, the Hebrew Bible became the Holy Scripture, and it became such in three stages. The sequence of becoming corresponds to the three parts of the Hebrew canon: the Mosaic Laws (Torah), the Prophets, and the Writings. Based on external evidence it seems clear that the Mosaic laws, became the Holy Scripture between the end of the Babylonian exile (538 BC) and the separation of the Samaritans from Judaism, probably by 300 BC. The Samaritans recognized only the Mosaic laws as their Bible. The second stage was the canonization of the Prophets. As the superscriptions to the prophetic books indicate, the recorded words of the prophets came to be considered the Word of God. The second part of the Hebrew canon was closed by the end of the 3^rd century BC.

In the meantime, other books were being compiled, written, and used in worship and study. By the time the book of Sirach was written (c. 180 BC), an idea of a tripartite Bible had developed. The content of the third part, the Writings, was formed after the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in the year 70. By the end of the 1^st century, the rabbis in Palestine had established the final list. Besides, most of the decisions had already been made in practice: the Mosaic Laws, the Prophets, and most of the Writings had been serving as the Scriptures for centuries. Controversy developed around only a few books in the Writings, such as Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs. On the other hand, many other religious books, also claiming to be the Word of God, were being written and circulated. These included the books in the present Protestant Apocrypha, some of the New Testament books, and many others. Consequently, the Jewish bureaucrats tried to establish a Bible in accord with their basic interest – how to prove their relationship to God and draw from this relationship their authority to rule Jewish society.

The second canon (what is now the Roman Catholic version of the Old Testament) was cooked first as a translation of the earlier Hebrew books into Greek. The cooking process began in the 3^rd century BC, outside of Palestine, because Jewish communities in Egypt and Asia Minor needed the Scriptures in the language of their milieu. The additional books in this Bible, including supplements to older books, arose for the most part among such non-Palestinian Jewish communities. By the end of the 1^st century, when the earliest Christian writings were being collected and disseminated, two versions of the Holy Scriptures were already in existence – the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Old Testament (known as the Septuagint). The major Greek version is called the Septuagint (means ‘seventy’) because of the legendary 72 (on the manner of the membership of Moses’ Council of Elders) Jewish ideologists, who translated the Mosaic laws in the 3^rd century BC. The legend is probably accurate because the first Greek translation included the Mosaic laws and few other books, and it was done in Alexandria in the 3^rd century BC. Nevertheless, only the Christian bureaucrats recognized the additional books of the Septuagint. The writings of the Fathers of the Church contain numerous different lists, and the longer of them prevailed.

The last major step in the history of the Christian canon took place during the Protestant Reformation. When Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, he rediscovered that the Old Testament had originated in Hebrew. He removed from his Old Testament the books that were not in the Jewish Bible and established them as the Apocrypha. This step was an effort to return to the presumed earliest "purity" of the text, and to establish, in opposition to the inherited authority of the church bureaucracy, the authority of the imaginary and "pure" clerical bureaucrats, who were elected based on their merits.

All contemporary translators of the Bible attempt to recover and use the oldest text, presumably closer to the original and "purer". However, the original copies or autographs exist nowhere. There are hundreds of different manuscripts that contain numerous variant readings; consequently, every attempt to determine the "best" or "pure" text of a given book or verse must be based on the interpretation of a clerical ideologist.

Concerning the Old Testament, the main distinction is between texts in Hebrew and the versions or translations into other ancient languages. The most reliable Hebrew texts are the Masoretic texts. They were produced by the Jewish ideologists (called the Masoretes), who were active from the early Christian centuries into the Middle Ages. They also provided the text with punctuation, vowel points (the original of the Hebrew text contains only consonants), and various notes. The standard printed Hebrew Bible of the present-day use is a reproduction of a Masoretic text written in 1088. The manuscript (in the form of a book or codex) is in the collection of the Saint-Petersburg Public Library. Another Masoretic manuscript, the Aleppo Codex from the first half of the 11^th century, were chosen as the basis for a new publication of the text that has been preparing at the Hebrew University in Israel. The Aleppo Codex is the oldest manuscript of the entire Hebrew Bible; however, it dates from more than a millennium after the latest biblical books were written and two millennia after the earliest ones.

Most of the Jewish ideologists acknowledge the superiority (in several details) of the Greek versions of the Old Testament to the Masoretic versions because the former offer readings that are based on older Hebrew texts. Many of the Greek manuscripts are much older than the manuscripts of the full Hebrew Bible; they were included in copies of the entire Christian Bible that date from the 4^th century. The major manuscripts are the Codex Vaticanus (in the Vatican Library), Codex Sinaiticus, and Codex Alexandrinus (both in the British Museum).

Numerous other Greek translations (such as of Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, and Lucian) were made by the Fathers of the Church; thus, in the 3^rd century, the Christian ideologist Origen, after studying the problems, came up with a solution. He prepared a Hexapla (from Greek, means ‘six parts’) – an arrangement in six parallel columns of the Hebrew text, the Hebrew text transliterated into Greek, Aquila, Symmachus, the Septuagint, and Theodotion. There were other versions, such as the Syriac (of the 1^st century), the Old Latin (translated from the Greek Septuagint in the 2^nd century), and the Vulgate (translated from Hebrew into Latin by St. Jerome in the 4^th century).

Also, there were the versions of the Aramaic Targums. When Aramaic replaced Hebrew as the language of everyday life in the Assyrian, Chaldean, Persian, and Parthian empires, translations became necessary, first accompanying the oral reading of Scriptures in the synagogue and later set down in writing. The Targums were not literal translations; rather they paraphrased or interpreted the original. The two major Targums are those that originated in Palestine and those that were revised in Babylon.

Despite all differences in its form, the ideological content of the Old Testament stays the same – to prove the authority of the bureaucracy. Taking into consideration that the writers of the Five Books of Moses expressed the gist of the Jewish ideology using Moses as their mouthpiece, we can look at this ideology more carefully while taking Moses as our mouthpiece.

Despite the appearance of different conflicts (for example, two different interpretations of creation are preserved side by side) the ideology of the Old Testament is coherent and systematic. The most obvious ideological themes of the Old Testament expressed the relations of the Jewish priests with Yahweh (the personal name of God, the God of the Jews, of their world, and of their history).

Two themes are fundamental to the Old Testament – covenants and laws, which are closely related. Covenants refer to the pact between Yahweh (the ideologists meant themselves – ‘the Jewish bureaucracy’) and Israel (they meant ‘the middle and lower classes’) sealed at Mount Sinai. The language concerning those covenants has much in common with that of ancient Near Eastern treaties; both are sworn agreements sealed by oaths. The law was understood to have been given as a part of the covenant, the means by which the Jewish bureaucracy became and remained the "people of God" (they meant ‘the upper class’). The law contains regulations for behavior in relation to other peoples (they meant ‘Gentiles’) as well as rules concerning religious practices and relations toward other fellow-Jews of the lower classes. The latter part is far more important for the biblical ideologists because the justice between the nations (class societies) is a prerogative of Yahweh (the Jewish bureaucrats), but the justice between the fellow-Jews can be tested through the righteousness of each Jew. That includes fairness in all affairs among the Jews themselves, care for own weak, and the establishment of the Just Jewish institutions.

People, in general, realize the vastness of God (Nature or Cosmos), a tiny particle of which they are. Inability to understand all own internal and external connections and mutual dependency evokes our fear. Exaggerated fear is called superstition. Underestimated fear is called reckless bravado (machismo) and moronic ignorance that usually leads to extreme atheism. As Spinoza said, ‘Ignoratio non est argumentum!’ In prehistoric times, among horticulturists and nomads, the exaggerated fear prevailed; and the main reason for that state of mind was their own ignorance. In any event, all tribes went through idolatry, worshiping either to the articles of human handicraft or to the visible natural objects. The Jewish patriarchs probably devoted themselves to the god of their particular family-tribe. Each chieftain established a special attachment to a particularly social power (god) that had helped his fathers, hoping that this particular power also would protect and assist him and the members of his clan. Thus, the Jewish ideology started as polytheism, and not until the prophets, did the Jews explicitly deny that other gods existed and proclaimed that Yahweh stood alone.

Immediately a question is popping up – why the monotheistic idea became the central point of the Jewish ideology only from Moses? I think that the transition from a tribe to a nation requires concentration of social power in the central bureaucracy, and particularly, in a monarchical political leader, like Moses. The Jewish ideologists described this transition from a tribe to a nation through a series of covenants (agreements) with Father-God. That is why Father, as the Jewish ideologists described Him in the Old Testament, summoned to Himself one of Noah’s descendants, Abram, in order to deliver through him his descendants to the real understanding of Himself. Thus, God formed an alliance with Abram and his descendants. Abram first became teaching that God, the creator of heaven end earth, is one in all His transformations. In the process of this teaching, Abram’s authority increased and he became known to his followers as Abraham. However, before making the covenant with Abraham, God made several agreements with others.

At the beginning of this world, Father was the supreme governor over Adam and Eve, not only because He was their creator, but also because they agreed on His condition. The terms of His first covenant were next – He would give them life in paradise, requiring from them only not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve broke this agreement. The matter of the problem, of course, was not in that material apple, eating which would do you no physical harm, but the problem was in that prohibition. If you broke an agreement through breaking its forbidding (negative for you) part, thus rejecting the admission of the supreme authority of your ally (in the negative, for you, part of the agreement), then, you would voluntarily reject the positive (for you) part of the agreement. Thus, you would deny not only his right to control you and to command to you, but your own right to ask for his support.

Because the covenant with Adam lost its power (authority) and the situation became "hot," requiring the Flood for the extermination of Adams’ sinful descendants and the creation of the law-abiding people, Father made the new agreement with Noah.

"Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall upon all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon every creature that moves along the ground, and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hands. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.
‘But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. And for your lifeblood I will surely demand an accounting. I will demand an accounting from every animal and from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man.
‘However shed the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made man.
‘As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.’" (Gen. 9:1-7).

Noah’s descendents multiplied without "sinning", but created the too powerful Babylonian Empire. This empire became so powerful that could afford to build the skyscraper of the Babel Tower, thus causing the jealousy of "God" (I mean ‘the Jewish ideologists, who craved for that power’). What is the plausible solution for this conflict? Of course, it is the self-distraction of the imperialistic Babylonian bureaucracy, because it accumulated too many nations (class societies) with different languages under its control. The excessive number of languages transformed the order into the disorder, and "Father" (I mean ‘the Jewish ideologists’) needed to resume a new covenant, now with Abram:

"On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates – the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites’." (Gen. 15:18-21).

Saying that, the Jewish ideologists realized that this agreement was unrealistic one, because it lacked the negative part – Abram and his descendents had gotten only the positive (for them) agreement, without paying anything for those lands and slaves. Therefore, the ideologists were needy to create the second agreement with Abram:

"When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless. I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.’
Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, ‘As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations [class societies, VS]. No longer will you be called Abram [from Hebrew means ‘exalted father’, VS]; your name will be Abraham [means ‘the father of many’, VS], for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.’ [One’s property is one’s means of existence (in the present, as well as in the future, through one’s descendants) that one must defend against encroachments of others. VS]
Then God said to Abraham, ‘As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner – those who are not your offspring. Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.’
God also said to Abraham, ‘As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah [means ‘princess’, VS]. I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.’
Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, ‘Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?’ And Abraham said to God, ‘If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!’ [Ishmael was a son of Abram, who was born by Abram’ slave-woman. The Islamic ideologists drew the line of Mohammed’s descent from Ishmael, and the Christian ideologists drew Jesus’ descent from King David. No wonder that the product of the Semitic Jewish ideologists (the Hebrew Scriptures) provided the foundation for the two out of four world religions – Christianity and Islam. The other two world religions (Hinduism and Buddhism) are the creatures of the Aryan ideologists. VS]
Then God said, ‘Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac [means ‘laughter’, VS]. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. And as for Ishmael [means ‘a hearer of God’], I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year.’" (Gen. 17:1-21).

It appears that the ‘father of many’ (Abraham) served to the Jewish ideologists as a mouthpiece, through which they expressed own interests. Even before this agreement, the earthly father (conscious Abraham) acknowledged the heavenly father (subconscious Abraham) as his own overlord and hadn’t hesitated in the existence of the latter. Acknowledging his own subconscious as the creator of heaven and earth, the earthly father transferred himself from the state of the hesitated and excited reason into the state of its stable faith, which usually comes with old age. And such stabilizing faith of the earthly father (Abraham) consisted not in that he believed in the existence of his own heavenly reflection (God) but in that that his own subconscious promised him and his descendants "bright future" in the Canaanites’ land. Our subconscious usually reflects our present or past wishes and wants (interests). Thus, the positive part of the agreement between God and Abraham reflected the Jewish ideologists’ will-to-take the Canaanites’ land and want-to-establish themselves as the upper class. However, they did not wished-to-pay dearly for it; therefore, it would be enough for the Jews to pay by the temporarily pain of circumcision for the eternal stability of their minds (the will-to-be).

The Jewish ideologists were not interested in giving us the details of the earthly father’s authority over his own family-tribe. However, it appears that Abraham was the only interpreter of all tribal laws (civil as well as clerical), and consequently, he was the supreme ruler in his tribe. However, it would be impossible if his sons, relatives, and slaves did not follow his orders (commands). Consequently, Abraham’s subjects could violate the tribal law only in a case when they either would not submit to Abraham’s commands (i.e., would acknowledge the alien gods) or would not be circumcised. Indeed, only Abraham could tell them what God (Abraham’s subconscious) was and how they ought to treat Him. Those subjects, who (after Abraham’s death) became Isaac’s subjects, also could not be sinful while they had acknowledged Isaac’s authority and followed his commands. The same string of reasoning follows toward the God’s covenant with Jacob.

From how the Jewish ideologists had designed their Bible, we can see that God’s agreement with Abraham had been resumed: first, with Abraham’s son, Isaac, and then, with Isaac’s son, Jacob. The idea was that every generation of subjects should actively and voluntarily confirm (ratify) their part of the covenant (constitution); otherwise, they would be held for passive and inanimate objects. The passive state of mind of the members of the lower classes would be disgusting and repulsive not only for all members of the upper class, but also for some intelligent members of the lower classes. That is why I think that a constitution would be far better designed (as to reduce resistance of the lower classes) if it has an amendment that would prescribe a confirmation of the entire old constitution (or with some new amendments) by each new generation of citizens. The latter regenerates approximately in 20 years; therefore, a referendum about the constitution should be held once in every 20 years. Each generation of citizens should actively express their will-to-be ruled under a certain code of laws. Only then, they would know this code of laws, would act according to it, and would feel themselves as free individuals who voluntarily gave to certain individuals, chosen from themselves, the right to rule all of them.

In the 8^th covenant of God with Moses, the Jewish ideologists showed own want-to-restore themselves as the upper class. In order to do that, the Hebrews must alienate themselves from the rest of the Egyptian population, causing them some trouble and stealing the gold, jewelry, and clothing from them. Therefore, God promised easy exit from Egypt and emphasized the necessity of the people’s unity through their mutual crime and the connection between generations, as if sons should pay for the sins of their fathers.

"Then he said, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob…And I will make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward this people, so that when you leave you will not go empty-handed. Every woman is to ask her neighbor and any woman living in her house for articles of silver and gold and for clothing, which you will put on your sons and daughters. And so you will plunder the Egyptians.’" (Exod. 3:6). [As if the Hykso-Egyptians had not been plundering the poor Egyptians enough for centuries. VS]

However, when the people that exited Egypt had felt themselves free and found themselves burdened under the totalitarian rule of Moses, then, by Mount Sinai, God offered them, through Moses, of course, to renew the old covenant in the next words:

"Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." (Exod. 19:5-6).

Hence, to the "bright future" of the "cannon fodder" in the Canaan land, the Jewish ideologists generously added the state of being ‘a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation’.

"The people all responded together, ‘We will do everything the LORD has said." (Exod. 19:8).

In this last covenant, in the first time appears the expression – the ‘kingdom of priests’. This expression means a State with the monarchical form of rule of a high priest, who is the head not only of the clerical bureaucracy but is also the head of the military and civil bureaucracies as well. Although God was the supreme overlord of the Hebrews as their creator and ally, with whom Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses concluded the treaties, all that (the act of creation and the treaties) was in the past, but the power (the force and wisdom) is necessary today. However, today, only that one possesses all of those qualities to whom everyone transferred own will-to-rule (i.e., either Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob, or Moses, or, in short, a supreme lawgiver). And the latter will define what is appropriate and decent in the service of God and what is not, because only he heard the God’s word without a middleman, through his own subconscious.

It seems to me that exactly because the Hebrews unanimously strike a bargain by Mount Sinai with their leader – Moses, they constituted own kingdom of priests. Precisely this event was implied by the Jewish ideologists, who cared more about the military bureaucracy and who put words in the mouth of God, Who said to Samuel, when the Hebrews asked to give them a material king:

"And the LORD told him: ‘Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected as their king, but me’." (1Sam. 8:7).

And Samuel thus replied to the Hebrews:

"But when you saw that Nahash king of the Ammonites was moving against you, you said to me, ‘No, we want a king to rule over us’ – even though the LORD your God was your king.  Now here is the king you have chosen, the one you asked for; see, the LORD has set a king over you." (1Sam. 12:12-13).

It appears that exactly by Mount Sinai, the nomadic Habiru people crossed the thin line in order to become the agricultural Hebrew people and transformed themselves from tribal life to life as a nation by establishing the social divisions among themselves and differentiating between clerical, military, and civil bureaucracies.

"At that time I said to you, ‘You are too heavy a burden for me to carry alone. The LORD your God has increased your numbers so that today you are as many as the stars in the sky. May the LORD, the God of your fathers, increase you a thousand times and bless you as he has promised! But how can I bear your problems and your burdens and your disputes all by myself? Choose some wise, understanding and respected men from each of your tribes, and I will set them over you.’ You answered me, ‘What you propose to do is good’. So I took the leading men of your tribes, wise respected men, and appointed them to have authority over you – as commanders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens and as tribal officials.  And I charged your judges at that time: Hear the disputes between your brothers and judge fairly, whether the case is between brother Israelites or between one of them and an alien. Do not show partiality in judging; hear both small and great alike. Do not be afraid of any man, for judgment belongs to God. Being me any case too hard for you, and I will hear it. And at that time I told you everything you were to do." (Dt. 1:9-18).

This differentiation was expressed by the Jewish ideologists through the Mosaic Laws, which largely prescribed from the 20^th chapter of the Exodus and to the end of the Pentateuch, i.e., until Moses’ death. A few of these laws reflect the people’s long-term interests, and as such, are axiomatic or essential, because they are obvious and are not require further proof of their usefulness. And as the essential laws, they oblige people to respect them because of their welfare and profit for all, and essentially, in all times. Therefore, these laws were attributed to God Himself and called the moral laws or the laws of nature. Such natural laws are the Ten Commandments, which prescribe an individual that he/she ‘Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.’ (Exod. 20:12-17 or Dt. 5:16-21).

Other laws, which reflect middle and short-term interests of the majority of the people, usually require that the leaders (lawgivers) give the people explanations about usefulness of the proposed laws. Therefore, the Ten Commandments, were written on the stone tablets and were kept in the Ark of the Covenant; the rest of the laws were written in the Book of the Law, which was placed "beside the Ark of the Covenant of the LORD your God." (Dt. 31:26). It was done so that the middle and short-range laws, by necessity, could be changed; however, the Ten Commandments could not be changed, hence, they were put in the Ark.

All moral laws were considered by the Jewish ideologists as the Word of God, but not vice versa. God’s words: "I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand," (Dt. 32:39) are the Word of God, but not a law; it is just an establishment of a fact. The Word of God is what God said by Himself onto an individual, through the individual’s subconscious. However, what we have, came to us through the prophets and ideologists. The Jewish ideologists have been calling the prophets’ books as the Word of God, although these books contains only the God’s words that He said onto the prophets and the words of the prophets themselves. Therefore, we have to believe to the prophets that their memory and their interpretations were correct. However it could be, we should look upon what the Jewish ideologists supposed who have had the right of the interpretation of the already existing, written Word of God.

It appears that, while Moses was alive, all rights to interpret the God’s Word were concentrated in his hands. If it would be not so, then everybody would have the right to interpret the Word of God. However, from Moses’ prohibition and grave penalty for transgression of it we can see that the right of interpretation belonged nor individuals nor their gatherings. Moses severely prohibited to the private persons to communicate directly, and not through him (Moses), with God.

"The LORD said to Moses, ‘I am going to come to you in a dense cloud, so that the people will hear me speaking with you and will always put their trust in you’. Then Moses told the LORD what the people had said.  And the LORD said to Moses, ‘Go to the people, and consecrate them today and tomorrow. Have them wash their clothes and be ready by the third day, because on that day the LORD will come down on mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.  Put limits for the people around the mountain and tell them, ‘Be careful that you do not go up the mountain or touch the foot of it. Whoever touches the mountain shall surely put to death. He shall surely be stoned or shot with arrows; not a hand is to be laid on him. Whether man or animal, he shall not be permitted to live. Only when the ram’s horn sounds a long blast may they go up to the mountain.’ …The LORD replied, ‘Go down and bring Aaron with you. But the priests and the people must not force their way through to come up to the LORD, or he will break out against them.’ So Moses went down to the people and told them." (Exod. 19:9-13,24-25).

The rebellion of Korah, Dathan, Abiram, and two hundred fifty elders unambiguously confirmed that neither private persons nor their gatherings should not claim that God could speak through them, and thus, they also would have the right to interpret the God’s Word. The Jewish ideologists thus pictured the resolution of this civil war:

"As soon as he [Moses, VS] finished saying all this [the invective against Korah, Dathan, and Abiram and other rebels, VS], the ground under them split apart and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them, with their households and all Korah’s men and all their possessions. They went down alive into the grave, with everything they owned; the earth closed over them, and they perished and were gone from the community.  And fire came out from the LORD and consumed the 250 men who were offering the incense." (Num. 16:33-35).

The savvy reader understands, of course, what lies behind this euphemistic language and what the atrocities of a civil war actually mean. That the right to interpret the Word of God did not belong to the appointed leaders either, we can see from the analogous conflict between Moses (a political leader) – on the one side and his brother Aaron (an appointed leader) together with their sister Miriam – on the other side. The conflict arose when Aaron and Miriam imagined that the political authority in a new agricultural society would still be based on the family or tribal tights. The Jewish ideologists resolved this family feud in such a manner:

"The anger of the LORD burned against them, and he left them. When the cloud lifted from above the Tent, there stood Miriam – leprous, like snow. Aaron turned toward her and saw that she had leprosy; and he said to Moses, ‘Please, my lord, do not hold against us the sin we have so foolishly committed. Do not let her be like a stillborn infant coming from its mother’s womb with its flesh half eaten away.’ So Moses cried out to the LORD, ‘O God, please heal her!’ The LORD replied to Moses, ‘If her father had spit in her face, would she not have been in disgrace for seven days? Confine her outside the camp for seven days; after that she can be brought back.’  So Miriam was confine outside the camp for seven days." (Num. 12:9-15)

Thus, from these sides, the absolute monarchical power of a political leader was secured; but with the competition of the other political leaders (prophets, one of whom Moses was) the situation was more complicated. Because the Word of God was that word, which was considered as the God’s word by the true political leader (true prophet), consequently, we (the people) can believe in the Word of God only then, when we surely know who the hell is the true prophet.

The Hebrews became religious (subconscious) believers into Moses’ doctrine apparently only after his death and only after they really captured the Canaanite land, which was promised them by God through Moses and their forefathers – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Therefore, the Jewish ideologists prescribed to the Jews two signs, by which the Jews should discern a real political leader (prophet), namely – if he has been foreseeing the future and if he has been believing in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

"If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and announces to you a miraculous sign or wonder, and if the sign or wonder of which he has spoken takes place, and he says, ‘Let us follow other gods’ (gods you have not known) [the ideologists meant you did not hear from them, because you did not "know" their god either, VS] ‘and let us worship them,’ you must [!] not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. The LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love him with all your heart and with all your soul. It is the LORD your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him. That prophet or dreamer must be put to death, because he preached rebellion against the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery; he has tried to turn you from the way the LORD your God commanded you to follow. You must purge the evil away from among you." (Dt. 13:1-5).

"If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him." (Dt. 18:22).

"But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded him to say, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, must be put to death." (Dt. 18:20).

However, what does it mean to "speak in the name of other gods"? Alternatively, what does it mean "does not take place or come true" after the words of a prophet had been spoken? For, it is highly arguable what "took place" and what did not, what "came true" and what did not. Indeed, nearly all forecasters predicted the future in the vague words and riddles, because they have seen or heard God either in their night-dreams or in their daydreams and nobody else could corroborate their visions. Therefore, to discern a real prophet we (the people) should judge upon his words only consciously (reasonably), and it means – to have our judgement only posteriori, i.e., only after the predicted future becomes the past. Thus, the books of those prophets, whom the Jews had killed for their predictions, later, when the predicted events became useful to consider as the materialized ones, then those books were declared by the Jewish ideologists as the really prophetic, and consequently, the Word of God.

From the following citation, we can conclude that, while Moses was alive, the interpretation of the Word of God did not belong to other political leaders (prophets) also:

"At once the LORD said to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, ‘Come out to the Tent of Meeting, all three of you.’ So the three of them came out. Then the Lord came down in a pillar of loud; he stood at the entrance to the Tent and summoned Aaron and Miriam. When both of them stepped forward, he said, ‘Listen to my words: ‘When a prophet of the LORD is among you, I reveal myself to him in visions, I speak to him in dreams. But is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles; he sees the form of the LORD. Why then were you not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?"" (Num. 12:4-8).

Thus, all competing (political) leaders (prophets) were ruthlessly removed from the scenery of the present life. Those appointed leaders (like the seventy elders in their prophetic sayings) were instigated and inspired by Moses. It can be seen from the episode when the Hebrews craved for the Egyptian food:

"So Moses went out and told the people what the LORD had said. He brought together seventy of their elders and had them stand around the tent.  Then the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke with him, and he took of the Spirit that was on him and put the Spirit on the seventy elders. When the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied, but they did not do so again.  However, two men, whose names were Eldad and Medad, had remained in the camp.  They were listed among the elders, but did not go out to the tent. Yet the Spirit also rested on them, and they prophesied in the camp. A young man ran and told Moses, ‘Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp’.  Joshua son of Nun, who had been Moses’ aide since youth, spoke up and said, ‘Moses, my lord, stop them!’  But Moses replied, ‘Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the LORD’s people were [such, VS] prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!’  Then Moses and the elders of Israel returned to the camp. Now a wind went out from the LORD and drove quails in from the sea. It brought them down all around the camp to about three feet above the ground, as far as a day’s walk in any direction." (Num. 11:24-31).

So, it appears that Moses was the only herald of the God’s Word because the Jewish ideologists assumed that there should be only one political leader while a nation is under construction. This idea has a sense because a newly born (and unified under one leadership) nation has more chances to survive as a nation among competing (for the territory and slaves) nations. Therefore, only Moses had the right to interpret the Word of God; and consequently, this right did not belong either the private individuals or their gatherings, either the appointed leaders or the political ones (prophets). Only Moses had the sovereign power, for not Aaron but only Moses got the supreme power from God; and there, where one man defines the form of a future State, he necessarily carries out the control over the religious and civil matters (including the law giving and law enforcing).

After Moses’ death, the interpretation of the God’s Word transferred to the high priest, Eleazar. It follows from the 8^th covenant, in which the Hebrew State was called as a kingdom of priests; and such terminology is usually in use when the ideologists assumed that the supreme civil power belongs to the office of the high priest. That the civil and military bureaucrats were under the guidance of the religious bureaucrats can be seen from calling Joshua to supervise over the civil and military matters:

"So the LORD said to Moses, ‘Take Joshua son of Nun, a man in whom is the spirit, and lay your hand upon him. Have him stand before Eleazar the priest, and the entire assembly and commission him in their presence.  Give him some of your authority so the whole Israelite community will obey him.  He is to stand before Eleazar the priest, who will obtain decisions for him by inquiring of the Urim before the LORD. At his [Eleazar’s, VS] command he [Joshua, VS] and the entire community will go out, and at his command they will come in.’ Moses did as the LORD commanded him. He took Joshua and had him stand before Eleazar the priest and the whole assembly. Then he laid his hands on him and commissioned him, as the LORD instructed through Moses." (Num. 27:18-23).

It is clear that only the high priest could communicate with God through the sacred object, which he had worn on his chest (Urim). Consequently, only the high priest (Eleazar) could interpret the Word of God and, in the name of God, to reign all the Hebrews. The high priest (Eleazar) would "obtain decisions" and the president (presiding over the civil bureaucrats) and commander-in-chief (heading the military bureaucrats) – in this particular case, Joshua – should execute those decisions. The expression – "give him some of your authority" – shows that the formal head of the civil and military bureaucracy (Joshua) had not had the supreme power and was in service, first, to Moses, and then, to Eleazar. Thus, nearly for two centuries after Moses’ death and until the inauguration of the king Saul, the Hebrews had had the kingdom of priests. In this time, called the times of the Judges, the supreme civil and military power was in the hands of the heads of the clerical bureaucracy, who had the right to interpret the Word of God. In accord with the 8^th covenant with God, the Hebrews have become the kingdom of priests and should stay as such one until the people themselves would change the form of their State, with God’s permission, of course. Although, during the 12^th and 11^th centuries BC, the Philistines and Canaanites were generally subdued, the international climate changed for the worse for the Hebrews. The Egyptians and the Assyrians overcame their respective Dark Ages and moved forward for a new quest for Empire.

"After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the LORD and served the Baals… They provoked the LORD to anger because they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. In his anger against Israel the LORD handed them over to raiders who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the LORD was against them to defeat them." (Judges, 2:10-15).

At the end of the 11^th century BC, the Hebrews virtually refused to obey the commands of the high priest and only recognized him as a formal head of their State, like the present-day British Queen, who serves basically for ceremonial purposes. The internal and external unrest required a more capable and direct leader, whom the Hebrews could respect as a military hero. When they were besieged by the nomads from the north, the Assyrians from the east, and the Egyptians from the south, then they expected the message of the God’s will not from the high priest but from the local political leaders (prophets). Thus, the latter became the actual judges of the Hebrews. It was happening because the divisions between the clerical, civil, and military bureaucrats were not defined in the erected at the Mount Sinai the constitution of the kingdom of the priests. The officials, who should execute the laws and punish the transgressors, were not defined; therefore, the punishment depended on the mob and each mobster decided the fate of a convict based on own mood, which largely depended on the opinion of the local leader ("kulak" in Russian, "prophet" in Greek). Thus, gradually, the prophets became the reigning power over the Hebrew crowd.

{The same situation of the actual transfer of power in the hands of the local leaders a la Rasputin occurred in Russia after 1904, when she was defeated by Japan, Stolipin’s privatization of the state’s lands was in progress, and the corruption of the central bureaucracy reached its apogee. Another time it occurred after her defeat in Afghanistan in 1980s. This state of the Russian minds is still in progress. The absolutism either has to be victorious and expansionistic or people withdraw their hopes (for better life) and trust (that with the hereditary bureaucracy they can achieve that better life) from the central bureaucracy and transfer their trust onto the local leaders.}

At the end of the 11^th century BC, the Hebrew State was between a rock and a hard place; to defend themselves effectively, the Hebrews needed a unified (and therefore, strong and efficient) military bureaucracy. Gradually, the military bureaucrats prevailed over the clerical and civil bureaucrats. Thus, the supreme power of God, realized through a high priest, gradually transferred onto the military leader (king).

"When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as judges for Israel…. But his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice. So all the elders of Israel gathered together at Ramah. They said to him, ‘You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all other nations have’. But when they said, ‘Give us a king to lead us,’ this displeased Samuel; so he pray to the LORD. And the LORD told him: ‘Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected as their king, but me. As they have done from the day I brought them up out of Egypt until this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are doing to you. Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do.’
Samuel told all the words of the LORD to the people who were asking him for the king. He said, ‘This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your menservants and maidservants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the LORD will not answer you in that day.’
But the people refused to listen to Samuel. ‘No!’ they said. ‘We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.’" (1Sam. 8:1-20).

It can be seen from here that the judicial power was also submitted to the office of the king; and it meant that a king and his staff would judge the Hebrews, i.e., trying the laws to the people’s deeds and interpreting the laws. Consequently, the right to interpret the laws was shifted to the office of the king. Because the Hebrews did not know other laws beside the Word of God, then, the kings became their sole interpreters. The example of the newly found the Deuteronomy, which was considered to be lost, shows that the power to acknowledge this book as a Word of God did not belong either priests or prophets, but only the kings. Therefore, this book was acknowledged and approved by the king Josiah.

"Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. He went up to the temple of the LORD with the men of Judah, the people of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets – all the people from the least to the greatest. He read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the LORD. The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the LORD – to follow the LORD and keep his commands, regulations and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.
The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the priests next in rank and the doorkeepers to remove from the temple of the LORD all the articles made for Baal and Ashrah and all the starry hosts. He burned them outside Jerusalem…He took the Asherah pole from the temple of the LORD to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem and burned it there. He ground it to powder and scattered the dust over the graves of the common people. He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes, which were in the temple of the LORD and where women did weaving for Asherah. Josiah brought all the priests from the towns of Judah and desecrated the high places, from Geba to Beersheba, where the priests had burned incense. He broke down the shrines at the gates – at the entrance to the Gate of Joshua, the city governor…. He removed from the entrance to the temple of the LORD the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun…. He pulled down the altars the kings of Judah had erected…. Even the altar at Bethel, the high place made by Jeroboam son of Nebat, who had caused Israel to sin – even that altar and high place he demolished. He burned the high place and ground it to powder, and burned the Asherah pole also. Then Josiah looked around, and when he saw the tombs that were there on the hillside, he had the bones removed from them and burned on the altar to defile it, in accordance with the word of the LORD proclaimed by the man of God who foretold these things.
The king asked, ‘What is that tombstone I see?’ The men of the city said, ‘It marks the tomb of the man of God who came from Judah and pronounced against the altar of Bethel the very things you have done to it.’ ‘Leave it alone,’ he said. ‘Don’t let anyone to disturb his bones.’ So they spared his bones and those of the prophet who had come from Samaria.
Just as he had done at Bethel, Josiah removed and defiled all the shrines at the high places that the kings of Israel had built in the towns of Samaria that had provoked the LORD to anger. Josiah slaughtered all the priests of those high places on the altars and burned human bones on them. Then he went back to Jerusalem. (2Kings 23:1-20).

So, the Medieval Christians, the modern Nazis and Communists were not the inventors of the nasty custom to burn the books of their opponents and sometimes the opponents themselves.

Each time, when the upper classes of the Israelites and Judas were loosing their sovereignty (first, to the Assyrians, then, to the Babylonians, and then again, to the Persians, and so forth), the Jewish ideologists had been considering the prophets only as the subconscious heralds of God. Hence, the conscious civil and clerical bureaucrats (who collaborated with the newly established military bureaucrats) should interpret their messages. On the other hand, when the Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian, Roman, etc., empires were declining and the central military bureaucrats of those empires were loosing their authority to the local civil and clerical bureaucrats, then, the Jewish ideologists were considering the prophets and mob-rulers as the conscious law-givers. Hence, the admonitions and instructions of the prophets in the name of God should be taken seriously and without interpretations.

The middle and lower classes of the Jews, from the times of Abraham, should obey and follow their own lords (bureaucrats) – Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Eleazar, Saul, David, Solomon, etc. They should obey in all matters, except those orders that contained the direct insult to God. Such insults could be – first, the negation of God as the natural overlord of the Jews (that means the negation of the necessity of the social order, in general). And second, the idolatry or cultivation of an alien god, even if the god was one, but had the different name from that that the Jewish ideologists prescribed to their god. In all other matters, the middle and lower classes of the Jews should submit themselves to their clerical and civil bureaucrats, who, in their turn, could submit themselves to the military bureaucrats, even if the latter were the aliens. For instance, if any bureaucrat would order a Jew to kill elders, women, and children (which is clearly contradicts to the Word of God), then, it would be the fault of that bureaucrat who gave such an order. It would not be the fault of the submissive subordinates who executed the order and whose duty was to execute orders, not to discuss them. Therefore, we can see in the Pentateuch such apparent contradictions, as – ‘do not kill, do not steal, etc.;’ and, at the same time:

"The LORD said to me, ‘See, I have begun to deliver Sihon and his country over to you. Now begin to conquer and possess his land.’
When Sihon and all his army came out to meet us in battle at Jahaz, the LORD our God delivered him over to us and we struck him down, together with his sons and his whole army. At that time we took all his towns and completely destroyed them – men, women and children. We left no survivors. But the livestock and the plunder from the towns we had captured we carried off for ourselves." (Dt. 2:31-35)

However, for the nomads, who were trying to settle down and to become an agricultural nation "to kill" aliens and "to steal" their land and possessions were not the same as "to kill" a fellow-Jew or "to steal" his possessions. And if you hear nowadays as a Big Brother tells you that, "‘Freedom’ is ‘Slavery’" or "the essence of the problem depends on what ‘is’ is," then you know where it came from, and most important, why the Hollywood and lawyers will always defend this kind of propaganda. Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term ‘genocide’ in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, defined it as a specific class of mass murder. He cited cases of genocide that occurred as far back as the Roman destruction of Carthage, when a city-state was physically destroyed and its entire population either put to the sword or sent into slavery. The Jew always sees a straw in the eye of others, but never see a log in his own.

The ambivalence was happening with the Hebrews because the possession of the livestock still prevailed over the possession of the land in the system of their external values, which are largely responsible for the survival of a subspecies (ethnic group). In this period of their development, the Hebrews were still setting on fire the captured cities while living themselves in tents.

"So the LORD our God also gave into our hands Og king of Bashan and all his army. We struck them down, leaving no survivors. ‘At that time we took all his cities. There was not one of the sixty cities that we did not take from them – the whole region of Argob... All these cities were fortified with high walls and with gates and bars, and there were also a great many unwalled villages. We completely destroyed them, as we had done with Sihon king of Heshbon, destroying every city – men, women and children. But all the livestock and the plunder from their cities we carried off for ourselves.’" (Dt. 3:3-7).

In the following conquest of the east bank of the Jordan River, it appears that the Hebrews had been gradually changing their attitude toward the livestock as the main property. They ceased to destroy the captured cities, but their inhabitants continued to be massacred. The land had become the main property and its distribution became the main function of the leader of the new nation. The Jewish ideologists thus described Moses’ dispensation of the "captured" (read – stolen) land:

"Of the land that we took over at that time, I gave the Reubenites and the Gadites the territory north of Aroer by the Arnon Gorge, including half the hill country of Gilead, together with its towns. The rest of Gilead and also all of Bashan, the kingdom of Og, I gave to the half tribe of Manasseh…. Jair, a descendant of Manasseh, took the whole region of Argob as far as the border of the Geshurites and the Maacathites; it was named after him, so that to this day Bashan is called Havvoth Jair. And I gave Gilead to Makir. But the Reubenites and the Gadites I gave the territory extending from Gilead down to the Arnon Gorge…and out to the Jabbok River, which is the border of the Ammonites. Its western border was the Jordan in the Arabah, from Kinnereth to the Sea of the Arabah (the Salt Sea), below the slopes of Pisgah.
I command you at that time: ‘The LORD your God has given you this land to take possession of it. [Therefore, they always "take into possession"; but if somebody takes something into possession from them, then, it will be "stealing". VS] But all your able-bodied men, armed for battle, must cross over ahead of your brother Israelites. However, your wives, your children and your livestock…may stay in the towns I have given you, until the LORD gives rest to your brothers as he has to you, and they too have taken over the land that the LORD your God is given them, across the Jordan. After that, each of you may go back to the possession I have given you.’" (Dt. 3:12-20).

Here, Moses openly speaks that it is he (by his own power that is the synergy of those will-to-take powers that each Jew transfer to him at the Mount of Sinai), who gives the Jews those cities with their lands. He does so that they could become the upper class of the Hebrew nation and could not care about their guilty conscious because he (Moses) takes onto his own shoulders all their sins. Wasn’t that Hitler’s speech? – it was so long ago that my memory refuses to serve me well. ‘God is with us, but we, with swords in our hands, must "take" the land into our possession’ – this creed of the ancient Jewish ideologists was not denounced by the contemporary Jewish ideologists. Therefore, the Islamic ideologists will continue to consider the Jews as the potential international terrorists and the Israelites as able to commit more genocide toward the Arabs, because:

"Every place where you set your foot will be yours: from the desert to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates River to the western sea. No man will be able to stand against you. The LORD your God, as he promised you, will put the terror and fear of you on the whole land, wherever you go." (Dt. 11:24-25).

That is very inspiring political program for the Jews and very frightening one for the adherents of Islam. We should acknowledge that the further development of the Hebrews’ interests led the Jewish ideologists to realization that the land by itself will not give them the comfort of life. There should be some lower class people (you may call them ‘serfs,’ ‘slaves,’ ‘Palestinians,’ or whatever) to take care about it. Realizing that, the Jewish ideologists instructed their soldiers not to destroy all the "captured" cities and not to "destroy" all their inhabitants.

"When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle [It is not you come to plunder their city, but they come to plunder own city, therefore, it is "they engage you in battle." It is always useful to pinpoint a scapegoat that our minds would be righteous, thus making our wrath ruthless. VS], lay siege to that city. When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the LORD your God gives you from your enemies. This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.
However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them – the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites – as the LORD your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshipping their gods, and you will sin against the LORD your God." (Dt. 20:10-18).

Through all the rest of the Deuteronomy, the Jewish ideologists admonished the Jews to submit themselves to their commands and laws. They instigated the people (as Alic Boldwin) to "put" to death those who "entice" to idolatry (read – ‘dissidents’ who disagree with the upper class ideologists). They enticed the people do not eat something that were "impure" (that is how the people could easily discern such ‘dissidents’). They admonished each other to "release" a fellow Hebrew, who was sold to them into slavery for debt after his/her seven-year-hard labor, but it does not relate to a slave-alien.

Thus, we can say that the Word of God, in essence, contains the responsibilities of the middle and lower classes of the Jews to their upper class. The latter has its responsibilities only to God; and if it is not enough for you, then, you are a dissident and must be "put" to death, because a Jew shall not "kill". Therefore, it can be positively concluded that the Jewish Bible and Old Testament are the highly efficient ideological instruments of the upper classes, which has been applying these instruments to brainwash the middle and lower classes of the respective nations.

But what about the New Testament (Gospels)? To understand the meaning of the New Testament, we should look closer at the history of the Roman Empire.

romans

This page was created with the MS Front Page by Victor J. Serge and revised on 04/13/03