Starting Of Greek Civilization

[Rameses the Great]

Ok, thank you. I have a personal question, Pantagthus where do you thing Greece would be if Egypt did not exist? Hypothetically speaking of course.

[Pantagathus]

Ok, thank you. I have a personal question, Pantagthus where do you thing Greece would be if Egypt did not exist? Hypothetically speaking of course.

That is a question for another thread perhaps...

 

However, maybe you should ask it the other way around. I seem to have never heard the term "Egyptian Greece" but of course I have heard of "Hellenistic Egypt"... :smartass:

[edgewaters]

Phoenicians also played a large role in the development of Greek civilization (though probably not in its initial formation).

[Bryaxis Hecatee]

I see many of you are mixing things up : periods and civilizations are thrown in the debate when it is more complex than that.

 

First let's remember some chronology : after the neolithic period the first cultural group we can identify in Greece is the Minoan culture in Crete. They had numerous contacts with the near east and Egypt, as shown both by objects found in Crete and Minoan elements found in Egypt or the Levant. For example one may think about Ramses II the Great's palace at Pi Ramses which was decorated by Minoan frescoes, as were other palaces of the amarnian period ( give or take one century before Ramses the Great ) found in Syria.

 

At the same period we can see in Cyprus many influences coming from Anatolia and the Hittite culture.

 

Then the peoples on the mainland of Greece got themselves organized, build cities and states, made war, and conquered Crete which, by this time, had been weakened by unknown elements, one of which might have been the Thera/Santorin volcano explosion.

 

The Mycenaean culture then achieved it's greatest period, including maybe the Trojan War ( of which some think they have found traces in Hittites archives ) before succumbing to the dorian invasion which destroyed most areas and made writing ( Linear B script ) disappear from Greece, thus beginning the "dark ages". During this period massive population movements happens, including intensive colonial activity, leading to the occupation of western Anatolia by peoples linked with Attica, the only area of Greece which seems to have avoided destruction during the doric invasion.

 

During this period more near-eastern elements are incorporated into the Greek culture as shown by the apparition of some gods like Diane/Artemis, honored at Ephesus and clearly an incorporation of the Anatolian Great Godess.

 

The lay of the land and the fact no one was able to dominate the neighboring areas outside of a small radius then meant that land property came to many small landowners, and soon there was not enough land for everyone. This had two consequences : the first was the second colonization wave, from the 8th century to the 6th, the one we know under the name of "Apoikia" during which southern Italy was colonized and cities like Massalia or Cyrene were founded. This period led to a renewal of contact with areas with which contact had been almost completely severed such as Phenicia and Egypt, including the sending of mercenaries to the Pharaos. The second consequence was the rise of a specific kind of warfare born out of agricultural necessities : the hoplite warfare when well to do farmers clashed in a battle supposed to decide of the ownership of an area without protracted warfare.

 

This kind of warfare had political implications too since it was a battle between equals, not servants of a lord. This led to new concepts build around participation of every landowner to the state's decisions. Thus were formed oligarchies and later, when factions fought for power, tyranies. In some cities, this process stopped rather early ( Sparta for example ). But in others like Athens they sought definite solutions to these troubles.

 

The hopplite warfare proved to be most superior to the oriental warfare methods as shown at Marathon. But by this time some athenians had understood that the lands available to Athens were too small to feed it's growing population. Thus they depended increasingly upon the sea, which meant they needed a fleet. This in turn meant manpower, more than the landowners ( who had to work their fields ) could provide : the job was given to the poors who, after Salamine, grew aware of their power and asked for an access to the decisions concerning the State's affairs : democracy was born.

 

During the same period, in Anatolia, Greek cities were able to produce enough riches to support an aristocratic caste which had not to work and thus had a lot of time on their hands, time they spent in thinking about the world around them. They initiated a new kind of thinking, philosophy, which had consequences on the way they saw the world and interacted with it, leading to scientific discoveries, mostly in the mathematics.

 

The contacts with the rest of the Mediterranean world in the 8th to 6th century BC also gave ideas to artists who did then looked at Egyptian statues and developed their own version of it, the archaic Kouroi and Kore, which they sculpted in an increasingly detailed way. They also build new concepts on what statue should show, and decided that it needed to show an idealized view of the world and mostly of the human being, not a realistic one ( Roman pathway ) nor a stylized one ( Egyptian pathway ). This led to classical sculpture, culminating in the 4th century before the hellenistic period which had other canons.

 

The elements I gave here are a rapid presentation of elements put in their chronological order, showing multiples phases of developments and multiples influences, with some examples for each, but are in no way a complete presentation of this very interesting topic.