An early writing system that developed in Mesopotamia in the 3000s B.C.E. that featured impressions on clay tablets using a wedge-shaped stylus.
What is cuneiform?
100
The rule of the people or “mob rule,” as some Greeks called it.
What is democracy?
100
The Sumerian epic that recounts a universal flood and concludes that all human effort is futile.
What is "The Epic of Gilgamesh?"
100
The “people” who made up 98% of Roman society.
Who are the plebeians?
100
Greek term for over-reaching human pride that angered the gods.
What is hubris?
200
“Sacred carvings” of the Egyptians deciphered by Jean François Champollion in the 19th century C.E.
What are hieroglyphics?
200
The rule of a single aristocrat who came to power by way of popular support from the infantrymen.
What is tryanny?
200
Ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic texts found near Qumran that confirm the diversity of religious beliefs in first century Judaism.
What are the Dead Sea Scrolls?
200
The period of Roman history ushered in by Augustus’s reign that saw an end to the bloody civil wars of the first century before the Common Era.
What is the Pax Romana?
200
The “rulers of foreign lands” who ruled Lower Egypt during the Second Intermediate Period.
Who are the Hyksos?
300
Written language of Rome’s neighbors to the north that has never been completely deciphered.
What is Etruscan?
300
Citizen infantry armies that often used the phalanx formation.
What is a hoplite?
300
Plato’s work on political philosophy that recommends rule by philosopher kings.
What is "The Republic?"
300
The large farming estates acquired by Rome’s elites as a consequence of the wars of conquest.
What is latifundia?
300
This belief system rejects the idea of an ordered universe governed by divine forces; instead, it emphasizes individual agency and proposes that the highest good is the pursuit of pleasure.
What is Epicureanism?
400
Ancient Mycenaean script that tells a lot about the palace culture of the International Bronze Age.
What is Linear B?
400
Political rule by the aristocratic few.
What is an oligarchy?
400
The western monastic rule that emphasized a cycle of daily prayers, lessons, communal worship, and manual labor.
What is St. Benedict's Rule?
400
Unwritten code of Roman society, often translated “the custom of the ancestors.”
What is "mos maiorum?"
400
This belief system teaches that there is one supreme god in the universe, Ahura-Mazda, but that his goodness will be constantly assailed by the forces of evil until the arrival of a final “judgment day.”
What is Zoroastrianism?
500
An alphabetic system composed of about thirty consonant symbols leaving the vowel sounds to be inferred.
What is Ugaritic?
500
Sumerian warrior leaders of the Early Dynastic Period whose prestige earned them the title “big man.”
What is a lugal?
500
Egyptian book of magic spells, formulae, and incantations needed in the afterlife.
What is the "Book of the Dead?"
500
A Roman father had absolute authority within his own household.
What is "patria potestas?"
500
Period of Hebrew history when many concepts of Judaism became standardized including a more consistent worship of Yahweh.