Western Civ Exam 1

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Ninevah

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The capital of the powerfully vicious Assyrian Empire and was known as a very harsh city. Eventually, the city was overtaken by a cooperative effort of the Neo-Babylonians and the Medes of Iran in 612 BC

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Abraham

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A semi-nomadic cheiftan and migrant from northern mesoptamia who sometime between 2000 and 1500 BC left the region for the new-found hope in the belief of one God, or monotheism. Abraham settled in the region north and west of the dead sea where his people would become known as Hebrews. Abraham's actions were significant in that he took a large step toward pure monotheism.

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Covenant

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A formal contract or agreement made between the Hebrew God of the Bible and God's servant Abraham. God's covenant toward Abraham was a promise to protect the Hebrew people and their lands. God also made a covenant with the entire Israelite people in his laws, summarized in the Ten Commandments.

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Cuneiform

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Early form of writing with developmental origins in Mespotamia between 3500 and 3100 BC. It was originally used for economic records and quickly developed into a system of about 600 ideogram-less signs by 2340 BC.

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Rosetta Stone

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The found decree of an Egyptian coronation celebration in 196 BC that was tri-lingually inscripted in Greek, heiroglyphic, and ordinary Egyptian. It was signfificant because its discovery in 1799 led to the modern European deciphering of hieroglyphics.

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Hammurabi

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An Amorite king who from 1792 to 1750 BC ruled in Babylon for 42 years in which he fully devoted himself to creating a Mesopotamian empire. He implemented the famous Hammurabi's code which was technically a list of crimes and their punishments.

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Homer

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A famous Greek poet from about 700 BC who created the epic works of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Homer's works had a small element of truth but mostly reflected Greek culture and values in most dramatic fashion.

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Akhenaton

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At the top of a period of a conflict of power in Egypt, Akhenaton was the instigator of the Amarna reform who forbid the worship of Amun-Re and and replaced him with Aten.

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Sargon

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The most successful attacker within the Sumerian empire around 2300 BC. His conquests included all of Mesopotamia and extended west to the Euphrates River and east into Iran. He exercised loose control as long as Sumerians could monopolize all trade.

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Sparta

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As a great city-state of the Greek empire, Spartans set the standard for citizenship, military preparedness, and austerity. Spartans set their values intently on loyalty, obedience, and disciple; as well as putting much emphasis on societal order. Although they exercised an extremely powerful and effective military, Spartans enjoyed living in isolation from other Greeks and elsewhere.

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Peloponnesian War

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A self-destructive war that that would eventually mark the slow decline of democracy in Greece. In 404 BC, just a single generation after the impresive Greek victory over the Persian empire, the once glorious city-state of Athens fell to Spartan forces.

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hoplite phalanx

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A tightly ordered unit of heavily armed, pike-bearing infantrymen. These military tactics were left virtually unchallenged until the Roman empire in 197 BC

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Thermopylae

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The location of one of the first and most famous battles of the Persian War in 480 BC. The Persians used traitorous assistance to outflank the small army of Spartan elites at the narrow pass of Thermopylae.

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Pericles

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Leader of 5th century BC Athens. He extablished Athens as a great center of art and literature as well as a great empire.

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Knossos

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The largest Cretan palace and first to be excavated that very closely resembled that a Minoan civilization.

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polis

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An urban settlement or "city-state" that existed as early as the 9th or 10th centuries BC. The word polis denotes a community as a whole that corresponds roughly to a nation.

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Thucydides

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A Greek historian that lived around 400 BC and recorded much of the Greek Civil War. As a warrior himself, Thucydides explored the larger themes like the effects of war on society. He also directly recorded speeches by Pericles and others at the time.

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Sophists

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Known as professional teachers of Greek language and speaking, Sophists taught young Athenian all aspects of "human nature" that would help an an aspiring politician. Later, the term would be abused because of the inconsistency of their pupil's actions and remains so to this day.

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Socrates

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Known as the greatest philospher of 5th century BC Greece, Socrates differed from the Sophists. He considered it his patriotic duty to ask questions but was eventually executed by Spartans for "corrupting the youth".

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Plato

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Even as Aristotle's pupil, Plato would grow up to have many independent ideas from his teacher. Plato used deductive reasoning and believed that the senses could be concieved; contrary to Aristotle.

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Macabees

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Jewish Traditionalist family that revolted against the Seleucids to preserve Jewish traditions in about 150 BC.

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Hellenism

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a term used to designate ancient Greece's language, culture, and civilization

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Alexandria

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Explosively growing city in Egypt that Alexander the Great built to replace Athens as the new and improved intellectual center of Greece. Built in 331 BC, the city grew to about half a million people in only 2 centuries; sporting the Library of Alexander and a scientific museum among other institutions.

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Zeno

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Starter of the widely influentual philosophical system of Stoicism. Zeno, a man of Phoenician origin, came to Athens in 313 BC. Stoicism, a philosophy that focused on logic, was essentially that one's purpose in life was to discover their happiness in life and how to get there.