_The Earth And Its Peoples_ Terms: Chapter 3, The Late Bronze Age In The Eastern Hemisphere, 2200-500 Bce

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Akhenaten

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Egyptian pharaoh (r. 1353-1335 BCE). He built a new capital at Amarna, fostered a new style of naturalistic art, and created a religious revolution by imposing worship of the sun-disk. THe Amarna letters, largely from his reign, preserve official correspondences with subjects and neighbors.

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Daoism

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Chinese school of thought, originating in the Warring States Period with Laozi (604-531 BCE0. Daoism offered an alternative to the Confucian emphasis on hierarchy and duty. Daoists believe that the world is always changing and is devoid of absolute morality or meaning. They accept the world as they find it, avoid futile struggles, and deviate as little as possible from the Dao, of "path" of nature.

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Divination

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Techniques for ascertaining the future or the will of the gods by interpreting natural phenomena such as, in early China, the cracks on oracle bones or, in ancient Greece, the flight of birds through sectors of the sky.

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Fresco

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A technique of painting on walls covered with moist plaster. It was used to decorate Minoan and Mycenaean palaces and Roman villas, and became an important medium during Italian Renaissance.

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Hatshepsut

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Queen of Egypt (r. 1473-1458 BCE). She dispatched a naval expedition down the Red Sea to Punt (possibly Somalia), the faraway source of myrrh. There is evidence of opposition to a woman as ruler, and after her death her name and image were frequently defaced.

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Hittites

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A people from central Anatolia who established an empire in Anatolia and Syria in the Late Bronze Age. With wealth from the trade in metals and military power based on chariot forces, the Hittites vied with New Kingdom Egypt for control of Syria-Palestine before falling to unidentified attackers ca. 1200 BCE.

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Kush

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An Egyptian name for Nubia, the region alongside the Nile River south of Egypt, where an indigenous kingdom with its own distinctive institutions and cultural traditions arose beginning in the early second millennium BCE. It was deeply influenced by Egyptian culture and at times under the control of Egypt, which coveted its rich deposits of gold and luxury products from sub-Saharan Africa carried up the Nile corridor.

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Legalism

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In China, a political philosophy that emphasized the unruliness of human nature and justified state coercion and control. The Qin ruling class invoked it to validate the authoritarian nature of their regime and its profligate expenditure of subjects' lives and labor. It was superseded in the Han era by a more benevolent Confucian doctrine of governmental moderation.

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Linear B

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A set of syllabic symbols, derived from the writing system of Minoan Crete, used in the Mycenaean palaces of the Late Bronze Age for palace records, and the surviving LInear B tablets provide substantial information about the economic organization of Mycenaean society and tantalizing clues about political, social, and religious institutions.

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Loess

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A fine, light silt deposited by wind and water. It constitutes the fertile soil of the Yellow River Valley in northern China. Because leoss soil is not compacted, it can be worked with a simple digging stick, but it leaves the region vulnerable to devastating earthquakes.

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Mandate of Heaven

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Chinese religious and political ideology developed by the Zhou, according to which it was the prerogative of Heaven, the chief deity, to grant power to the ruler of China and to take away that power if the ruler failed to conduct himself justly and in the best interests of his subjects.

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Meroe

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Capital of a flourishing kingdom in southern Nubia from the fourth century BCE to the fourth century CE. In this period Nubian culture shows more independence from Egypt and the influence of sub-Saharan Africa.

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Minoan

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Prosperous civilization on the Aegean island of Crete in the second millennium BCE. THe Minoans engaged in far-flung commerce around the Mediterranean and exerted powerful cultural influences on the early Greeks.

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Mycenae

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Site of a fortified palace complex in southern Greece that controlled a Late Bronze Age kingdom. In Homer's epic poems Mycenae was the base of the King Agamemnon, who commanded the Greeks besieging Troy. Contemporary archaeologists call the complex Greek society of the second millennium BCE "Mycenaean."

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Ramesses II

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A long-lived ruler of New Kingdom Egypt (r. 1290-1224 BCE). He reached an accommodation with the Hittites of Anatolia after a standoff in battle at Kadesh in Syria. He built on a grand scale throughout Egypt.

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Shang

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The dominant people in the earliest Chinese dynasty for which we have written records (ca. 1750-1027 BCE). Ancestor worship, divination by means of oracle bones, and the use of bronze vessels for ritual purposes were major elements of Shang culture.

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Zhou

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The people and dynasty that took over the dominant position in north China from the Shang and created the concept of the Mandate of Heaven to justify their rule. The Zhou era, particularly the vigorous early period (1027-771 BCE), was remembered in Chinese tradition as a time of prosperity and benevolent rule. In the later Zhou period (771-221 BCE), centralized control broke down, and warfare among many small states became frequent.

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Yin/yang

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In Chinese belief, complementary factors that help to maintain the equilibrium of the world. Yin is associated with masculine, light, and active qualities; yang with feminine, dark, and passive qualities.

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Shaft graves

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A term used for the burial sites of elite members of Mycenaean Greek society in the mid-second millennium BCE. At the bottom of deep shafts lined with stone slabs, the bodies were laid about along with gold and bronze jewelry, implements, weapons, and masks.

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Confucius

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Western name for he Chinese philosopher Kongzi (551-479 BCE). His doctrine of duty and public service had a great influence on subsequent Chinese thought and served as a code of conduct for government officials.

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Troy

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Site in northwest Anatolia, overlooking the Hellespont strait, where archaeologists have excavated a series of Bronze Age cities. One of these may have been destroyed by Greeks ca. 1200 BCE, as reported in Homer's epic poems.