Notes

Week 3 9/11 Notes
Egypt
- there was a pharaoh (also called a god-king)
- pharaoh owns all the land, ruler of all
- peasants work for the pharaoh
- scribes: the literate elite who serve the pharaoh and take care of moving goods

The life of a loaf of bread in egypt
- wheat collected
- gathered in granaries
- distributed to baker
- baker bakes it
- bread sent to granary
- redistributed

Temple Administration
- House of Heaven (main temple)
- received stored distributed goods
- democratically governed
- factory for textile/pottery production

Life of bread in Uruk
- wheat collected by peasants
- gathered in temples
- distributed to baker
- they bake it
- bread sent to temples
- redistributed

life of bread in Archaic Greece
- wheat collected by independent farmers
- traded to baker for other baked bread or for a favor
- baker bakes bread from the grain
- baker trades it to other neighbors

Archaic Egalitarianism
- egypt: most people are equally low (before the god-king)
- uruk: everybody has equal say in distribution
- greece: everybody equally able to work and generate profit, correction mechanism to keep in place

Who is Hesiod?
- poet
- smallholder
- born in ascra, boetia
- helicon
- father from modern turkey (was an immigrant)
- he grows grain and suggested his brother grow grain and grapes

*grapes were used as wine in egypt and it was a very common to have*

Who is Perses?
- brother of Hesiod
- takes more than his fair share of inheritance
- bribed the judge
- lazy wastrel, who won't work
- he sucks because of ^


Primary issue of Works and Days
- Life sucks
- GET OVER IT
- and GET A JOB

Why does life suck?
- We're going to blame Prometheus. He tricks Zeus, Zeus hides fire, He steals it, Zeus makes Pandora.

Life before Pandora
- you did not have to work as hard before her
- she let out all negative feelings out of the jar

Ages of Man:
- golden
- silver
- bronze
- heroic
- iron

Golden Age
- first race of articulate folk
- nothing to do with hard work or grief, old age was never a problem
- good health
- when they die, they just fall asleep

Silver Age
- not as fine as the first
- they didn't live very long
- lack of wits
- most of life is spent in childhood
- when the adults were dying, it left no one to watch the children
- nobody was making sacrifices and giving their blessings to the gods so Zeus started wiping them out

Bronze Age
- ash trees
- monstrous and heavy
- all they cared about was fighting and war
- didn't eat any food
- killed each other off and went down to the chilling halls of Hades

Heroic Age
- all died fighting in great wars
- when they died, Zeus granted them a life apart from other men
- lived in the Isles of the Blest, free from all care

Iron Age
- a day does not go by that a man does not come face to face with some trouble
- this generation sucks
- nobody will get along with each other the same anymore
- they are afraid that Zeus will destroy this generation as well