Olympic Games (interesting, actually)

[Tiglath Pileser III]

Hi guys,

I just flipped through the thread and have picked up quite an education.

Firstly may I state that the Gilgamesh Games revealation and site was not meant to antagonise or upset people. On the contrary it was intended to allow educated people such as yourselves to make the paradigm shift needed to trace back our shared culture, civilisation and traditions back to the Middle East where it all began.

Mankind may have evolved in Africa but civilisation (erroneously divided into Eastern and Western) evolved naturally in the Middle East. This artificial dividing line, that was created during the age of Colonialism, is an element of Edward Said's Orientalism. A theory whose framework is reinforced by the media and depicts one side, the West, as progressive, democratic, ethical and liberated as opposed to its "Other," the East, which is always depicted as regressive, autocratic, undemocratic and despotic.

But if you were to believe that the Greeks infused something fundamentally new into the subjects they touched, and it is this 'newness' that forms the characteristic aspect of Western civilization, then it would be impossible to find in the "Gilgamesh Games" that spirit and that hero-worship which in truth belongs to the Greek Olympics alone.

I also realise that we can spend countless hours arguing about what element of civilisation was miraculously created in Greece as opposed to evolved in the Middle East. However the majority of the elements such as Religion, Maths, Science, Time, Literature, Athletics, that you refer to as "Western civilisation" naturally evolved in the land between two rivers that is today known as Iraq. But in the end highly subjective terms, such as the one above, will be used to diminish the true source of these achievements.

I ask that opponents of the culutral continuity between East and West simply fall back on the proven scientific approach to proving any theory.

Refer to the source.

Regards,
David Chibo
www.gilgameshgames.org

[SigniferOne]

Mankind may have evolved in Africa but civilisation (erroneously divided into Eastern and Western) evolved naturally in the Middle East. This artificial dividing line, that was created during the age of Colonialism, is an element of Edward Said's Orientalism. A theory whose framework is reinforced by the media and depicts one side, the West, as progressive, democratic, ethical and liberated as opposed to its "Other," the East, which is always depicted as regressive, autocratic, undemocratic and despotic.

There is a problem in following Said's lead, because he was not a Classicist or even a historian, and many of his ideas are flatly false. The depiction of East as "Other" began not by ignorant Europeans in the 18th and 19th century Colonialism, but by the very Greeks themselves who said, "Look we are democratic, while those other Persians are not". And in truth, they weren't wrong. Thus it was thought in the West ever since. Let's see, you said that the East was unfairly described as "regressive, autocratic, undemocratic, and despotic". Can you actually successfully dispute any of those terms?

I also realise that we can spend countless hours arguing about what element of civilisation was miraculously created in Greece as opposed to evolved in the Middle East. However the majority of the elements such as Religion, Maths, Science, Time, Literature, Athletics, that you refer to as "Western civilisation" naturally evolved in the land between two rivers that is today known as Iraq.

I also realize that you're not of my persuasion, and so these arguments may fall on deaf ears (which is also why I would've hoped that Jona clarified which side he stood on on this issue); but Greek pagan religion didn't evolve in Iraq; Greek pseudo-science started from Chaldaeans, but Greek science didn't; Math is a complicated issue since even the Egyptians had to know math to build the Pyramids, but I find no compelling evidence to link Archimedes to Babylon, since there never was an Archimedes equivalent in Babylon; I find it difficult to see how the drama of Aeschylus or History of Herodotus came from Babylon, perhaps you could enlighten me?; and Athletics we've intensely discussed in this thread. The simple fact of physically competing with someone else wasn't invented in Greece (nor was it invented in Babylon, and is most likely a primordial institution). But the ideals that we associate with athletics -- the chiseled glistening athletes, the training regimen, the egalitarian nature -- come directly from the Greeks. Babylonian culture was not egalitarian, and they never worshiped the human body (they never sculpted the Discobolus). If Babylonians/Persians ever depicted perfect human form, we could discuss the issue, but since they didn't, I find it hard to find ground to.

[Jona Lendering]

I am afraid that I no longer know how to respond. For instance:

Could you show me how this surge of Babylonian translations changed Aristotle's science, or the Botany of Theophrastus? Or the historiography of Thucydides and Ephorus? Did something in these translations have to do with the mathematics or inventions of Archimedes?

The first examples are of course irrelevant because they are earlier than the surge of Babylonian translations. The same applies to the two historians, who are -needless to point out- not scientists but scholars, or perhaps one should say: moralists. So, these examples were beside the point. Besides, it must be noted that Aristotle sort of lost the war against the new science after c.300 (and Epicurean criticism, I must add); all Aristotle's books are now lost - what we have are his college dictates, published by Alexander of Aphrodisias the beginning of our era.

Which brings us to Archimedes, and you can read the answer in an earlier post: it is his method - using mathematics to describe the phenomena. That is a Babylonian method (system-A and system-B for example); no one denies that it was transplanted to Alexandria (sources mentioned above: Simplicius, Calippean Calender Reform, Astronomical Canon, Ibn Khaldun); and as far as we know, that is where Archimedes picked it up.

What to think of:

Greek pseudo-science started from Chaldaeans

Simply wrong. The Greeks already had a full panoply of magic practices in the fifth century.

I might go on. I might point out that by your own definition of science, that it should be true, the Almagest and the Geography are bad examples - the heliocentric theory is simply wrong and you can circumnavigate Africa. In fact, I might add, the mathematics of the Almagest are a step backward, because you need algebra, as the Chaldaeans and Kepler understood, not the geometrical approach. Ptolemy is just as great, good, or bad, as Kidinnu; the heliocentric system is just as bad, good, or important, as system-A.

I might add that after I have explained that Babylonian science is, whatever it is, not superstituous, your remark that it is superstituous is an ignoratio elenchi. The correct refutation would have been to prove that system-A and system-B are religious after all.

And this is why I now terminate my contributions to this thread. I can continue to explain, but the balance between the amount of time I spend here and the results I achieve, is not very promising. I must now make a choice: if I stay, I must start to explain what an ignoratio elenchi is (because you obviously do not recognize it), perhaps point out why a counterfactual thesis is not permitted, and explain that your remark about the comments in the Loeb boils down to accepting the Loeb translator's argumenta ad hominem. In short, if I continue, I must explain the most basic rules of evidence.

One final remark. I am Dutch. I think I can write more or less correct English, but I will always remain as blunt as my compatriots. Where an Englishman says "this is an interesting chapter", a Dutchman will say "I couldn't make sense of it", and where someone in England would say "this is very detailed", the Dutch say "the author confuses important and unimportant things". I am afraid that this final reply is also more blunt than I want it to be; if I sound impolite now that I break off my contributions, I apologize.

Summa summarum: I have referred to types of sources. I have referred to modern publications. Read the original sources and read articles/books by people who can judge both Babylonian and Greek information, I'd say, and ignore the innuendo of classicists contributing to the Loeb series.

[Eleatic Guest]

However the majority of the elements such as Religion, Maths, Science, Time, Literature, Athletics, that you refer to as "Western civilisation" naturally evolved in the land between two rivers that is today known as Iraq.

And Egypt?

Anyways, first: that "land between two rivers that is today known as Iraq" is anything but a purely geographical notion, since it housed over the millenia a myriad of different civilizations. We always have to keep that in mind.

Second, perspective: why stop at Mesopotamia? There is always a before. Jericho is five thousand years older than Babylonia and Assyria, and so are a number of proto-cities in what is today Anatolia and Persia. The basics of agriculture, medicine, religion, astronomy, pottery, stone building, town walls, irrigation are far older than the oldest civilizations in what is today Iraq. Does not that put Mesopotamia in the same class of dependent civilization receiver, as some orientalists put the Greeks? I believe very much, if we use a consistent set of criteria.

Third, we should be cautious about wholesale credits: the elements you mentioned above, were most certainly all present in Mesopotamia in sometimes more, sometimes less elaborate fashion. At their time very much unsurpassed. But the Greeks gave them a whole new quality by their discovery of critical thought, and that revolutionary development - which today more than ever determines our world views - was genuinely Greek. I think if orientalists would acknowledge that, just as much as classicists need to value the fundamental contribution of the orient, there would be no need of disagreements.

Regards

[Jona Lendering]

But the Greeks gave them a whole new quality by their discovery of critical thought, and that revolutionary development - which today more than ever determines our world views - was genuinely Greek. I think if orientalists would acknowledge that, just as much as classicists need to value the fundamental contribution of the orient, there would be no need of disagreements.

The trouble is that orientalists will immediately acknowledge that; take the article on the Pythagorean Theorem referred to above, or read the book by Pivot. The problem is, in my view, that several ideas about Greek brilliance have now been refuted, and that classicists simply refuse to read orientalist publications.

To give one very simple example - not about science, something that can easily be accepted within the paradigm of classics: the reign of Alexander. Waldemar Heckel is a serious specialist, who consistently refuses to look at the cuneiform sources (more...).

I might add another innocent detail: the date of Alexander's death, 11 June 323. The press release about that Oliver Stone Alexander movie, written by a normal journalist who unprejudicedly simply went to the library, had that correct. In the movie itself, which was based on advise by Lane Fox, they offer the wrong date. Nothing terribly shocking, nothing that might not be corrected, no loss of face involved: still, classicists don't look for oriental sources.

Final example: take the book on Hellenism from the Routledge History of the Ancient World. Not a single reference to recently discovered cuneiform sources - the author admits that he knows nothing about it, but does not think that this is a reason to invite someone else. The editorial board has been sleeping too, which is all the more shocking because they had instructed Amelie Kuhrt, who had written the two volumes on the Ancient Near East, not to go beyond Alexander, because somebody else would cover that. That did not happen.

[SigniferOne]

I think if orientalists would acknowledge that, just as much as classicists need to value the fundamental contribution of the orient, there would be no need of disagreements.

The problem is that we're talking about different levels of fundamentals here. The Orient's fundamental contribution was that it created the notion of these disciplines in the first place; i.e. any Classicist would acknowledge that there wouldn't be a Homer were it not for Gilgamesh and some of the Egyptian writings to have been created first. Homer didn't invent writing. It had to be handed down to him. But what Homer et al. did was that they revolutionized and instituted fundamentally new and unique qualities that were completely lacking in Gilgamesh, and that were never developed outside of the Greek tradition.

Let me paraphrase this with another analogy. The Orient's fundamental contribution was to invent walking as such (let's just say). Without walking how could there even be Greek Olympics or any other such things? But the Greeks took the Oriental creations and transformed them into something completely more advanced, so much so that it has not been created outside of the Greeks (by that very same Orient).

Unfortunately we don't look on walking as anything special today. We don't revere walking and reward expert professionals in it with medals and aplomb. We revere chiseled muscles and perfect human shape, which is precisely the unique Greek contribution. We revere the powerful and profound Aeschylus drama over the primitive and ineffective Egyptian stories.

The principle is that Aeschylus et al. developed a conscious understanding of plot, theme, action, the same literary devices used today. The Greeks took the rather meaningless physical competition existing before them and made it egalitarian and hero-worshipping. So that an athlete isn't just some guy who eats and sleeps and does his movement, but he epitomizes human perfection.

Again I point to the Discobolus. This represents the fundamental shift of the Greeks, because the Orient has never worshipped the human body, and never chose to depict, or even care about, human details or human anatomy.

[Tiglath Pileser III]

Hi James,

I could discuss Sennacherib's water screw pump - claimed by Archimedes - that was used to irrigate the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh, not Babylon as erroneously passed down by Greek writers.

I could discuss architectural designs of Greek temples and projects such as the aquaduct of Sennacherib - used to irrigate the same gardens - 400 years before its Roman counterpart.

I could show that military tactics, such as the Phalanx were depicted on the Stele of Vultures, that siege engines and military engineers, sappers and even hoplite armour and shields all have their antecedents in the Middle East.

However it would all be ignored simply because of your subjective gut feeling. However your mind has clearly been made up before even listening to the Oriental side of the story. This is quite ironic since you claim that reasoning and scientific method are attributes that are distinctly Greek.

Meanwhile your walking analogy is clearly demeaning as it shows that you have not even bothered to read the article or consider the parallels set out in the table below:

http://www.gilgameshgames.org/ggamestable.html

I will be the first to admit that a couple of the parallels may be attributed to coincidence or even debunked by new evidence. However there are so many parallels that it makes it very hard to deny that the games evolved in the Middle East and eventusally made it to Greece.

In addition it is my belief - and I admit it is subjective - that the Olympic Games actually regressed the Gilgamesh Games - much like the adoption of the Caduceus and medicine regressed Eastern medicine (See: http://www.aina.org/news/20051024194557.htm ). My evidence for this is that the Gilgamesh Games has a coherent theme that emerges when all paralells are considered unlike its Greek equivalent, which attributes everything to antiquity, legend and myth.

The only remaining question is are you willing to trace our cultural bridge back to the Middle East and rediscover the source of our "Western" heritage, culture and tradition by taking a second look at the Oriental sources?

[Sergey Lenkov]

Well, make that today. I was wrong: it's not the Epic of Gilgamesh that is being quoted by Homer, but the Babylonian Creation Epic (Enuma Enlil). It's Iliad 14.200-201, 246, 301-302; Oceanus and Tethys playing the roles of Apsu and Tiamat.

Thank you!
It's really quotation - not the same mythological sterotype?

[Tiglath Pileser III]

And Egypt?

Of course Egypt and Persia also were influenced and influenced the development of our common civilisation however soley due to its ideal location

Anyways, first: that "land between two rivers that is today known as Iraq" is anything but a purely geographical notion, since it housed over the millenia a myriad of different civilizations. We always have to keep that in mind.

The numerous ancient empires that took root in Mesopotamia raised civilisation and transmitted it to the West where it was lost during the dark ages and rediscovered by the ancestors of the Mesopotamians - the Arabs.

Second, perspective: why stop at Mesopotamia? There is always a before. Jericho is five thousand years older than Babylonia and Assyria, and so are a number of proto-cities in what is today Anatolia and Persia. The basics of agriculture, medicine, religion, astronomy, pottery, stone building, town walls, irrigation are far older than the oldest civilizations in what is today Iraq. Does not that put Mesopotamia in the same class of dependent civilization receiver, as some orientalists put the Greeks? I believe very much, if we use a consistent set of criteria.

That is illogical. Besides Jericho is also a part of Mesopotamia. Civilisation began in the Middle East soley due to its ideal location not due to any genetic prediposition and definately not as Zacharia Sitchin will stupidly claim due to alien knowledge transmitted to the ancient Sumerians.

Third, we should be cautious about wholesale credits: the elements you mentioned above, were most certainly all present in Mesopotamia in sometimes more, sometimes less elaborate fashion. At their time very much unsurpassed. But the Greeks gave them a whole new quality by their discovery of critical thought, and that revolutionary development - which today more than ever determines our world views - was genuinely Greek.

That is a subjective opinion reinforced by the framework of Orientalism that surrounds our Western world and is transmitted through our media. Already after having discovered only a very small percentage of all cuneiform tablets and having translated only a fraction of them the so called "pillars of Western civilisation" appear to trace back to the Middle East where they logicaly evolved. Now imagine what would happen if we dedicated a fraction of our time and resources discovering and translating our cuneiform tablets.

I think if orientalists would acknowledge that, just as much as classicists need to value the fundamental contribution of the orient, there would be no need of disagreements.

Perhaps dividing us between the East and West and between Orientalists (which I feel is a derogatory term) and Classicists (or Occidentalists) is the problem. Perhaps a term such as Civilisationist would be more appropriate. That is a term that would better suit the universalism that the Gilgamesh games website is ultimately trying to achieve.

Thanks,
David Chibo
Http://www.gilgameshgames.org

[SigniferOne]

I could discuss Sennacherib's water screw pump

Sure you could, but no modern scholar accepts it.

I could show that military tactics, such as the Phalanx were depicted on the Stele of Vultures

You could, but again no modern scholar believes it.

that siege engines and military engineers, sappers and even hoplite armour and shields all have their antecedents in the Middle East.

Hoplite shields and armor were not a technological innovation, so I don't know why you would try to find their Eastern antecedents as a proof of anything.

Meanwhile your walking analogy is clearly demeaning as it shows that you have not even bothered to read the article or consider the parallels set out in the table below:

http://www.gilgameshgames.org/ggamestable.html

I have looked at the list, and considered it at great length. What's shocking is that 90% of the items on that list are completely irrelevant to the spirit of the games; it is a a careful compilation of Olympic aspects that are utterly incidental: the "banquet", the "votive offerings", the "guardian". Who cares if there was a statue of Zeus there? Does it really matter? All of the supposed parallels you listed were irrelevant to the nature of the Olympics, which was the hero-worship of the human body. But the aspects of the Olympics that were actually distinctive, you wrapped up and mentioned in just one lonely category out of eleven: "athletic events". Did they have some sort of athletic events? Yes. Did Babylonians have some sort of athletic events? Yes. Then we have a match, Babylonian Olympics!

This would be a bit like comparing modern Sports to what went on in the Roman Colosseum: Do our stadiums have the Colosseum shape? yep! The exactly same proportions? check! Did both have team activities? check! Both had spectators? check. Then let me rush to the presses with my article, "Soccer in the Roman Colosseum". Or, maybe a parallel article: "Bloody Spectator Sports in a French Sports Stadium." Why not? All of my comparison points seem to match right?

This is a sleight of hand scholarship, not the real thing.

Also, I am stunned that anybody would try to defend the Assyrian pyramids made out of skulls. I think this may just dissuade me from further responses.

[Wander]

I think I'm detecting a lack of open minds here. History, like any other study, should always be open to revision when sufficient supporting evidence is presented.

Speaking for myself, I can say I'm convinced that the "Classicists" haven't given the "Orientalists" -- or the civilizations they espouse -- enough credit. They Olympics may have been specifically Greek, but they didn't invent competition, thought, reasoning, or art, and I fail to see that "the worship of the human body" is an all-surpassing achievement.

I personally would love to see translations of the undeciphered cuneiform tablets -- what else would we learn?

[Sean Manning]

I could show that military tactics, such as the Phalanx were depicted on the Stele of Vultures

You could, but again no modern scholar believes it.

Name three who don't (as opposed to scholars like Victor Davis Hansen who seem to ignore it).

I've finished reading that site through, and I think their basic argument is sound, but their conclusions go too far. Its now clear that there were sacred sporting events in Mesopotamia, and that these have definite similarities with the ancient Olympics. It does make some leaps in time. For example, we don't know if the custom recorded in the Death of Bilgames poem was still common by the Iron Age. The text about the Abu festival is from the early second millennium BCE. The oval temple with evidence of athletic events is from 3000 BCE, so again we have a very great gap between the Mesopotamian evidence and the foundation of the Olympics. (The idea of running a race atop the outer wall of a temple is also hard to believe!) It also uses evidence from other events when they can't find a parallel with the little we know about the Gilgamesh games. For example, since the earliest Olympics were a running event not a wrestling event like the Gilgamesh games, he argues that they were modeled on the foot-race of Nabu. I don't understand the argument that page makes for some of its points, such as the connection between the laurel wreath of victory in Greece, and Gilgamesh's poplar leaves, is also weak. But some of the parallels are convincing.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Greeks borrowed the idea of sacred games from the Hittites, including some bits from the major Babylonian games. That would make the four pan-Hellenic games just like astronomy, or the alphabet, or other foreign ideas which the Greeks borrowed and put their own unique twist on. How close and direct was the borrowing? I'm not sure. But its definitely worth studying some more!

Perhaps my difference with Siginfer (and the author of the Gilgamesh Games) is that the Olympics have nothing to do with my sense of “what is the West?â€

[Eleatic Guest]

The problem is that we're talking about different levels of fundamentals here. ...Let me paraphrase this with another analogy. The Orient's fundamental contribution was to invent walking as such (let's just say). ... Unfortunately we don't look on walking as anything special today. We don't revere walking and reward expert professionals in it with medals and aplomb. We revere chiseled muscles and perfect human shape, which is precisely the unique Greek contribution.

I think I know exactly what you mean (I understood you that way all along the way). There is an excellent German term for that notion: "Erfindungshöhe", literally translated "height of inventiveness". The Erfindungshöhe of the Greeks was in many ways such that, while they drew from the basic contributions of the older civilizations in the Middle East, they added so much own originality that their contributions can be considered to be genuine inventions or contributions to world civilization in their own right. That is also my view.

[Eleatic Guest]

Do not get me wrong, Tiglath Pileser. Give me a pen, and I will sign any paper which maintains that the Fertile Crescent, along with Egypt ad occasionally Anatolia, harboured the most advanced civilizations until 600 BC or so - globally.

But you listed a couple of things below, which I immediately recognized as the kind of mistakes orientalists, who insist too much on the priority of the Middle East, are prone to do: You underrate the amount of originality the Greeks and Romans gave in their time to these things.

I could discuss Sennacherib's water screw pump - claimed by Archimedes - that was used to irrigate the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh, not Babylon as erroneously passed down by Greek writers.

Yes, you can do that, but you have to mention that in the very same paper John Peter Oleson refuted this hypothesis by his co-author. And Oleson is widely known to be the most conservative among English specialists on ancient water power (just compare with the views of Lewis, Orkander and Wilson).

I could discuss architectural designs of Greek temples and projects such as the aquaduct of Sennacherib - used to irrigate the same gardens - 400 years before its Roman counterpart.

Yes, you can do that, but you should also mention that the aqueduct of Sennacherib was a singular case in Mesopotamia, while there are more than 600 Roman aqueducts known. That it featured a 70 m long corbel arch bridge, while Roman aqueducts often rested for kilometers on true arches. That the per capita amount of water for imperial Rome (300 l) still exceeds the one of New York. That the Romans used siphons, and lead pipes several tens of thousand tons heavy (aqueduct of Gier), none of which AFAIK known in Assyria.

I could show that military tactics, such as the Phalanx were depicted on the Stele of Vultures, that siege engines and military engineers, sappers and even hoplite armour and shields all have their antecedents in the Middle East.

Yes, you can do that, but you wont find there catapults, which were a genuinely Greek innovation. You will also note that Assyrian siege towers rarely exceeded the height of 8 m, while there are - admittedly overengineered - examples in the Greek world which hit the 40 m mark, were clad with iron plates, and featured artillery throwing up to 78 k projectiles.

You will also note that Greek slingers used lead bullets, which clearly outranged the traditional Near Eastern sling (see the account of Xenophon). You will also note that while Assyrian infantry used two types of body armour (scale and lamellar), Greek and Roman forces used at different times at least 4 types in battle: scale, lamellar, mail, the lorica segmentata (and perhaps the musculata).

These are all examples which hopefully illustrate the point I am trying to make, and I believe SigniferOne, too: namely that the Greeks originally adopted many influences from the east, but brought science, (sports) culture and civilization to another level through their originality. In that sense, I believe, the Greeks are still rightfully portraited as a civilization which made itself.

[SigniferOne]

These are all examples which hopefully illustrate the point I am trying to make, and I believe SigniferOne, too: namely that the Greeks originally adopted many influences from the east, but brought science, (sports) culture and civilization to another level through their originality. In that sense, I believe, the Greeks are still rightfully portraited as a civilization which made itself.

Exactly.

In exactly the same way, one could say that somebody like Aeschylus was a writer who "made himself" -- although it was the early man who had to discover writing for him, and that the Phoenicians taught him their alphabet.