The Scythians Summary

Ever since visiting Egypt, I have had a huge interest in knowing more about the country. It is the first of the great territorial states that arose from ashes of chaos. Like many other countries drought brought catastrophe to their growing society. What interest me the most about the Hyksos in the New Kingdom Egypt, is how they figured out how to master the art of making horse chariots. They thundered into battle with their war chariots with superior bronze axes and composite bows. They were able to easily defeat other lands and the pharaoh’s soldiers. I found that they were able to conquer most others by having the chariots. It was some kind of power through a horse driven machine. They did not want to destroy their new founded lands, but

Who were the Hyksos? The name comes from the Greek version of the Egyptian hekau khasu, an epithet meaning ‘rulers

Herodotus’s The Histories uses the culture of different peoples as a category of historical explanation in order to explain the entire story behind the conflict between the Greeks and the Persians, though his conception and account of culture has been a topic of debate for many decades. Herodotus’ method when exploring the culture of other peoples is to compare them to the known culture, his own culture, of Greece. Through the comparison of ‘the other’ to Greece, Herodotus not only explains the culture and traditions of other countries or people, but he also affirms Greek identity by constantly comparing or relating to Greek customs in order to show the likeness or stark differences of cultures. Many scholars have, however, criticized Herodotus for doing this; naming him an ethnocentric for introducing all other peoples and cultures as inferior to his own. This essay will seek to expose whether Herodotus is an ethnocentric or a cultural relativist by exploring the ways in which Herodotus refers to ‘the other’ and the customs and culture of these people. Through the exploration of the Egyptians and the Scythians in Herodotus’s The Histories, this essay will determine that Herodotus’s conception of culture develops from a cultural relativist perspective rather than an ethnocentric point of view, where he uses his own well-known culture as a basis for explaining other cultures and customs, while respecting their difference as being of equal value in their own land, as Greek

The Role of Themistocles in the Greek Defeat of the Persians in 480 - 479 BC.

When people wonder about Ancient Greece the first thing that comes to their minds is Greek mythology; gods and goddesses that have helped shape many historical events. “In ancient Greece, stories about gods and goddesses and heroes and monsters were an important part of everyday life.” (“Greek Mythology.”) The civilization showed that numerous characters and stories helped shape Greeks. The beliefs the Greeks had with mythologies was they understood the meaning behind all the characters that are known today. However, to the Greeks, they were not just characters, these were their gods and goddesses who gave them meaning and understanding of the world around them. Worshiping the gods and goddesses helped them with their religious rituals and the temperament of the weather. A famous wine-jar that was made during this time period was “Achilles killing the Amazon Queen Penthesilea, 540-530 BCE, black-figured amphora”. (Khan Academy) The civilization that they lived in grew around their worship and achievements.

The trade and economy of the Egyptians were influenced by the invaders. The Hyksos brought with them the knowledge of metals, weapons, and a horse drawn cart know as and a chariot. These developments increased trade, economic expansion and the growth of cities. The trading of Bronze and Copper contributed to a major part the of the development and enlargement of Egyptian cities. Bronze and copper were used to made tools and weapons. The new technology spread by trading, traveling, conquest, and migration. The introduction of the crossbow to the Egyptians created a new revolution in

But it was difficult for them to grow and store crops, so most traded with farming communities at the edge of their grazing lands. The pastoralists would exchange livestock products for agricultural produce and manufactured goods. This way, pastoralists gradually created far-reaching systems of trade that from Siberia to India and from China to the Mediterranean. With the spread of pastoralism, Inner Eurasia now had channels of communication across Eurasia.

Civilization flourished during the Neolithic period (7,000-3,000 BCE) (Orfeas Organisation-Greece, n.d.). The Bronze Age (3,000-1,100 BCE.), “saw major advances in social, economic, and technological advances that made Greece the hub of activity in the Mediterranean” (History of Greece: Bronze Age, n.d.). During this time period, there were three different civilizations that identified people at this time. These three civilizations were called the Cycladic civilization which was developed in the Aegean Islands; the Minoans which occupied Crete; and the Helladic which was the civilization of the Greek midland (History of Greece: Bronze Age, n.d.). The Helladic civilization was also called the “Age of Hero’s”, during the Mycenaean era. The Helladic civilization was the source of the mythological heroes such as Hercules, and epics such as the Odyssey (History of Greece: Bronze Age, n.d.). The considered first most advanced civilization in Europe was the Minoans (History of Greece: Bronze Age, n.d.). The Mycenaean philosophy (para. 2) “had a great deal of influence with its legends and Greek language on what later became the splendor of Classical Greece” (History of Greece: Bronze Age, n.d.). The culture that outlasted the Cyclades and the Minoans where the Mycenaeans. They had lengthened their impact over the mainland, Aegean Islands, Crete and the shore of Asia Minor by the end of the 10th c.

The symbols Scylla and Charybdis represent two invincible monsters in Greek mythology. On one hand, Scylla represents a terrible, cruel, and unassailable monster. His view pleased neither man nor a god. She possesses twelve deformed dangled feet, and six exceeding long necks at the end of each a monstrous mouth containing three row of thick, close, and full of Black Death teeth to catch the unfortunate passing by. On the other, Charybdis not only lies in the depths of the seas as a liquid mass, but also swallows up water and ships three times daily and then spits them out three times a day. Charybis is before all a sea gulf and represents the dangerous fury of the waves and eddies in the sea. Their celebrity is such that the language has kept

Odysseus had many adventures throughout his life, but the most important one were the ones between Troy and Ithaca. During these adventures, three important theories explained the myths of Odysseus’s encounters. The theory of social charter theory, feminism and ritual theory can all be related to some of the outrageous adventures that Odysseus had to go through.

Many people believe that we live in a parallel with someone else, a person that we will inevitably never meet. But of course, there’s no so such thing as ‘never’, so there’s a chance the stories will meet. They might intertwine themselves together, such as in The Odyssey. This whole concept is so perfectly stated by Bruce Catton, “And there is a headlight, shining far down the track, glinting off the steel rails that, like all parallel lines, will meet in infinity, which is after all where this train is going”. This quote is powerful, the lines will never meet, until they do. The two lines can be on the same track, going the same speed, to the same place and not know about the other until they meet. The story of Odysseus and Agamemnon has striking similarities, not meeting until one point, where the stories barely brush up against each other. But that small window of meeting shows an entire other story which has already been told, with a different set of names, places and problems. Homer created these character parallels as a way to explain things, to say things twice, to really help us understand.

There have been many proposed theories to the great hero Odysseus’ return to Ithaca. Odysseus has wandered long and far to make his return to his home soil. He fought Cyclopes, fled from cannibalistic Giants, spent seven years on a nearly deserted island, and literally went to hell and back just to breathe the air of his motherland. There has been great debate on what kept the enduring hero from giving up. He could have accepted his fate as an immortal on the Island of Calypso or allowed his will power to dwindle and fallen into the jaws of Charybdis. What did the hero truly desire so much that he refused the will of the Gods to reach his native land. It was his beloved wife Penelope.

Long distance trading had made it possible for people from different cultures to interact. Silk roads were one of the famous trade routes that were used in the ancient time. It stretched from China to central Asia and westward. It merged into one big series of routes. Traders traveled segments of the route, passing their goods on to others who took them further along the road, and in turn, passed them on again. The effect of long-distance exchanges altered the political geography of Afro-Eurasia. The Middle East became a commercial middle ground between the Mediterranean and Indian. The horse-riding nomads of Inner Eurasia made long-distance trade possible. Kushan empire in Afghanistan and the Indus River basin embraced a large and diverse

The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Odysseus both are poems that have since early times been viewed as stories that teach the reader valuable life lessons, almost like a self-help book in today’s society. They both teach a lot of the same general lessons but there are some key similarities and differences throughout both works. Such as perseverance, and the inevitability of death are both lessons that are taught in each poem but they are presented to the reader through different interpretations. In the Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey there are two main characters both viewed as heroic figures in which the develop a greater knowledge of human mankind and immorality.

While the Iranian plateau was increasingly Iranianized, the Iranian tribes known as Scythians by the Greek