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Do you have more information or sources on the Gilgamesh Games being pan-Mesopatamian? What were the rules of some of the events like wrestling or boxing? Who could compete? Free citizens? Anybody?
Very briefly, the athletic games began under the Sumerian god Ninurta (3000-2340 BC) at Nippur and were gradually adopted by his son Gilgamesh who took over the festival of Abu as occurs in a cultic calendar dating from post-Old Babylonian times (1800 BC). It appears to have been adopted by the Hittites around 1600 BC who held their own version of the Gilgamesh games.There was also evidence at with evidence of the Gilgamesh Games at the ancient Assyrian capital of Ashur approximately 850 BC.Geographically archaeological evidence of athletic games especially wrestling hves also been found at Badra, Sinkara (Larsa) and Khafaji all cities in Iraq. Whether these were part of the Gilgamesh games festival or part of other pan-Mesopotamian althetic festivals is still not known.This paragraph is taken from the thesis:In fact four hundred years after Homer wrote the Iliad and following in the tradition of Gilgamesh and Achilles, Alexander the Great, during his military campaigns, also mourned the death of his friend Hephaistion with similar extravagant funerary games in 324 BC in the heart of Mesopotamia, at Babylon , in which about 3000 athletes took part.These all outline a tradition that began under the Sumerians and continued right up to the arrival of Alexander the Great.In regards to the athletes it appears as though the GG only had youtng men compete. There is evidence of gymnasiums where they trained and specific dietary requirements. Women meanwhile appear to have performed/competed in festivals for Ishtar.
If we accept this definition, then civilizations are different based on different cultures, industry, and government.WESTERN CIVILIZATION: noun - the modern culture of western Europe and North America
I think there's a fine line between civilisation and nationalism. However I'm arguing that the pillars of civilisation - that had been erroenously atrributed solely to the West - such as law, maths, science, athletics, philosophy, democracy are universal concepts that evolved from nation to nation and empire to empire.
The problem with any democracy in the Middle East is the refusal to separate religion from politics.
It's actually blanket statements like the one above that epitimise Edward Said's Orientalism framework.These statements also conveniently forget that the secular socialist moderate parties of the 1970s were all driven out by US interference, coups and assassinations, radicalising those that remained and driving them into the arms of radical Islam. Let's forget that Hamas began in the Islamic University of Gaza during the 1970s which was funded by Israel and used to polarise Palestinian society and divide and conquer the moderate and secular Fatah party.We conveniently forget that the US was shipping plain loads of Al Quaeda terrorists into the heart of Saraevo in 1999 to kill Serbs two years before they turned on them. We forget that they were arming them with stinger missiles to shoot down Russian planes in Afghanistan.
But I have to ask, 2500+ years later which games are emulated throughout the world from Los Angeles to Moscow to Beijing for their symbolic sense of diplomacy, international cooperation, and fairness in competition? (well, that's looking past the judging and drug scandals that have plagued the games recently )
They only emulation is in the name of the games. Everything else differs widly. Today's games are a corporate dominated mass media advertising campaign designed mainly for the developed world to show off against other nations in retrograde "survival of the fitest" athletics. Using government funding, corporate funding and illegal drugs the ranking of the nations usually mirror the world economic and military power structure.This is in stark contrast to the ancient Greek Olympics which were a pan-Hellenic event meant to unite the Greek states. These in turn differe greatly from the pan-Mesopotamian Gilgamesh Games that were funerary events conducted annualy to appease the dead King Gilgamesh - who returned from the netherworld to take his place as a judge in his statue - and receive immortality.My point is that the further back we go to the root of our modern shared civilisation, the more deeper and meaningful the root story behind it becomes.
Installing a Western-style democracy in Iraq will not work, the culture is just too different.
Forgive me for saying this but your sentence is the height of "Western" arrogance. They very idea that our democracy is so perfect at home and we are now able to export it to a regressive, totalitarian third world nation is the very definition of Orientalism.Noam Chomsky defines what he has called a democracy deficit in the West especially when it comes to foreign policy. We all voted for US withdrawal from Iraq and they promised us that they'd wind down. But they'll be there with their billion dollar embassy and their military base for years to come.We pretend that a proportion of us voting once every four years for candidates that are marketed like toothpaste and who reveal only their qualities and not their policies is democracy. we pretend that once voted into office that these very same politicians continue to follow the will of their constituents instead of corporate interests that are lobbying them on a daily basis.So how about installing democracy at home first before we try and export it to others?
Ditto what Vulture said. Your argument has no merits on its face. Neither I nor anyone else is claiming that Western Culture is self-contained. It is however, distinctly different in its present form than the culture of the Middle-East, Asia, or Africa. Western culture developed differently than did the other cultures of the world. This is not racism, it is recognizing facts without rendering judgment.
I am not talking about culture which will of course vary from geographical location to location. I am talking about civilisation. And the artificial concept that it geographiocally varies. Civilisation and its pillars such as democracy, law, maths, science, philosophy, art...are concepts that are universal across all people. By attributing them solely to the West and use them as Huntington has done in his clash of civilisations theory he is in fact being racist and providing the moral justification for the "war on terror" that has followed.
My main contention is that there is no Westerrn civilisation, just as there is no Eastern civilisation.There is just civilisation and the the so called pillars of Western civilisation such as athletics, democracy, philosophy, religion, law, maths science, all have their precursors in the Middle East. I base this contention not on some retrograde Eugenics theory but because of the geographical location of the Middle East at the confluence of three continents.I hope that helps clarify things.
Nice talking point, but this passage alone points to an anti-western bias in your opinions. You are more than free to have your opinions. However, I find it strange that you immediately go on the offensive and in the process indict western civilisation as a whole as being shallow cultural plunderers. I am waiting for you to claim that the west never invented anything worthwhile and anything good that did come out of the west was really due to eastern influences.
I do not indict Western civilisation as it does not exist. I indict the Western historians who have selectively divided Western and Eastern civilisation much like their theory of Eugenics and Phrenology attempted to divide and categorise people by their racial characteristics.
Lastly, I find it odd that you give credit to wikipedia as an authoritative source on your site here and then expect us or the world to take you seriously. I have waxed eloquent on the shortcomings of wikipedia in a couple of threads: here and here Lastly, I cannot think of any University in the US or Abroad that is willing to accept a citation from wikipedia. At my own school, citing wikipedia is enough to cause a deduction of one letter grade in the assignment in which it was cited. For the simple reason that wikipedia is unreliable as a source.
I used wikipedia only for its definition of Orientalism, as I found it quite accurate. The Gilgamesh games thesis on the other hand is based on original cuneiform source documents and has been reviewed by Assyriologist Professor Simo Parpola.
Actually, the reason I did that is because, in scanning the website, I notice things like “the myth of western civilization” are mentioned. To me that sounds anti-western.
My contention is that the concept of a purely isolated Western civilisation is a myth. This myth was in fact crystalised during the age of European Empires when much of the globe lay at the Western world's feet. They selectively cherry picked attributes of our shared civilisation and attributed them to the Western Greeks conveniently ignoring the wellspring of civilisation in the Middle East. Western history was created to suit European imperial ambitions and was used as a tool of cultural conquest. Elements of this very same cultural conquest were also present in the phrenology, a now debunked science that claimed that Africans and other people of the developed world were inferior due to their measurement of their foreheads. Today however we can all rightly claim that we are all genetically equal and our genetics trace back to Africa where our human family began its first migration.So the concept of a purely Western, or for that matter purely Eastern civilisation has been debunked forever. Civilisation much like genetics cannot be categorised in such a retrograde way.
It's likely the first Olympic type competitions in Greece were held earlier than the 8th century. Pausanias mentions that the 9th century King Iphitus of Elis consulted an Oracle on how to stop the wars in Greece. The answer given was to restore the Olympic games and declare a truce for their duration.
Pausanias wrote during the second century at the time of the Roman Empire. He naturally embelished much of the Greek customs and culture in order to win favour and acclaim from his Roman overlords. It also doesn't matter if the Olympic games were held in 8th century or the 9th century as the Sumerian, Babylonian and even Hittite Games clearly precede them.
Of course Pausanias may or may not be accurate, King Iphitus is sort of a shadowy figure, but there is evidence of growing cult and religious activity in the Olympia area prior to 776, as well as objects depicting chariot races dated around 850-800 BC.
Mallowitz the lead archaeologist at Olympia disputes that contention siting archaedological evidence of stadium wells. Please post original sources for this evidence as I would also like to learn more about the Olympics prior to 776BC.
I called it an anti-thesis because I was defending the thesis of my paper which was the importance and Greek-ness of the Panhellenic games. Yours seemed to lessen that importance, but I could be wrong. I
The Gilgamesh Games stresses cultural continuity not Occidentalism. In seeking to trace ack to the root sources of our combined culture we not only unite our disparate warring nations and people, but we extract a more clearer meaning behind our cultuiral practices. i.e. Annual funerary games conducted to honor the dead and King Gilgamesh.
Firstly stop talking like one of George Bush's speech writers and applying anti-Western labels on anyone that doesn't agree with your point of view. This is especially disheartening for someone who signs off with a quote from an Irish General. The Irish much like the Middle Easterners today were a conquered people who were conquered not only militarily but culturally. Their history was also distorted and revised by the British to diminish them as a people. Now as for the Gilgamesh Games, the chart you mention you are correct in stating that there was no jousting or acrobatic competitions in the first ancient Olympic Games. Perhaps a more accurate and inclusive description of the last column should be pan-Hellenic Games and include both ancient and modern games. The main problem is that as the Greeks were on the borders of the ancient Assyrian empire the higher culture gradually percolated into Greece where it was adopted and hellenised. The first Olympics as the paper states may have begun as a running race with no spectators around 776 BC and then gradually have grown with extra athletic events and competitiors until it became a professionaly organised event by around 704 BC as Mallowitz claims.Finally by calling it an anti-thesis you also fall into the misleading Orientalism framework that has misled countless of historians before you. Maths, science, religion, techynology, writing are already knwon to have begun in the Middle East, however law, women rights, philosophy, democracy and athletics can today finally be traced back to the their original precursors in the Middle East.Either way thank you for critiquing my thesis. It's great that a student such as yourself is daring to challenge conventional wisdom and explore areas of our shared civilisation that are considered "sacred cows."
