About this time last year, I took a World Civ class wherein our professor had us write short summaries at the end of each week to prove that we had done the readings. The following series is my synthesis of that homework, with a little outside material seeping in...
Act One of World History begins. Mankind grubs about for enough calories to fuel the wife and kids, whether that is termites and tubers or big, furry things that require edged tools to bring down. Grandpa Enoch came into possession of fire some time ago and in the light of that flickering flame, those edged tools and other implements were developed by Uncle Tubal-cain, while Uncle Jubal strung the first lute in the name of campfire songs. But even though life is better than before, and somebody in the family has discovered the art of tents and lean-tos, the nomadic life is still pretty tough. Word on the street is that Great-grandpa Cain experimented with planting seeds, so somebody moves down to Ur to repeat the trial. Lo! The seeds sprout, to much rejoicing, and Chief Nimrod holds a tribal meeting to discuss establishing a permanent settlement.
Things go well until Nimrod gets a bit full of it and the families split to form other cities. They maintain Christmas-card contact with Ur via the grandkids of Jabal (the lad who pioneered those nifty tents) who haven’t acclimated to urban life and prefer to stick with tepees, traveling between the farms. Some of these prove problematic and take to raiding settled folk and some from the next valley over actually manage to seize a whole city or two – though their lordship is negligible and short-lived, since they quickly blend in with the natives and disappear. After a while the novelty of exerting power spreads to the city elders who, a la Nimrod, start spreading their influence until one or two cities kowtow to them. A couple, Sargon and Hammurabi, even create mini-empires, but these are as flash-in-the-pan as the raider kings. Meanwhile, some folks get fed up with the war mongering and move out to settle the wild west past Sinai.
Enter young Mizraim, who gets it into his head that the Nile valley would make for good planting. Conditions in the Sahara went south recently, as did communication with those that went past the Nile. No matter, since the new desert and the forbidding rapids below the Nile’s headwaters mean that the valley is all but cut off from the east and therefore unassailable – at least for a few generations. This means that the imperialist tendencies that characterized Ur can be carried out in Egypt without outside interference. Dynasty families come to rule the valley in two distinct regions, and the lower Egyptian king eventually takes the fight to the south and unites the whole river valley, centering all power in his palace. But nothing lasts forever and a severe drought brings the cousins from Palestine running into the Delta. In the ensuing chaos, they run rampant and kick out the resident rulers, while the folks down at Thebes hold out like true Egyptians, biding their time until the flush of victory wears off and the meddlesome loiterers relax.
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