Class Systems & Status Quo of Ancient World

The purpose of this research is to examine ways in which the Babylonian, Israelite, and Greek states maintained a condition of inequality and assured the persistence and protection of an elite class. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context for exploring the class systems of the ancient world and then to discuss the approaches that each society took to the project of preserving the social status quo, with a view toward suggesting the impact on ancient social practices on societies of subsequent historical periods.

The social order of Babylonia was derived from the Hammurabi Code, which was detailed and hierarchical in nature and which provided a rule of law in a well-defined class system. According to Pfeiffer, Babylonian society comprised three social classes. The awelum was the aristocratic class, comprising businessmen, feudal lords, large landowners, military leaders, palace bureaucrats, and temple priests. The mushkenum, or middle class, comprised freedmen, small landowners, tenant farmers, merchants, and craftsmen. Wardum were slaves. Babylonian society appears to have been organized around issues of property and military activity, which suggests that the protections and obligations of the law mainly concerned the elite. However, the introduction to the Code describes Hammurabi as the champion of the downtrodden.

Warriors were of special significance in Babylonia. Many code provisions deal with land rights and restrictions, particularly for militar

Israel whose mythic history thus serves the function that in other cults belongs to an incarnation or manifestation of God. . . . And the force of this Jewish principle of identification, not with God, who is transcendent, but wit the People of God . . . is even so strong that for a valid act of orthodox worship there must be present at least ten males above the age thirteen (the minyan). The individual has no relation to God save by way of this community, or consensus. Plainly, Israelite culture was first and foremost patriarchal and male-centered. The story of Adam and Eve, says Campbell, "is clearly a patriarchal inversion (giving precedence to the male) of the earlier myth of the hero born from the goddess." Elsewhere, Leviticus (12:2,5) explains that women are unclean after childbirth--seven days if it's a boy, two weeks if it's a girl--another example of the relative status of men and women. The concept of the consensus is no less powerful than patriarchy, for a society organized around consensus above all can be explained. This in turn explains the development of formal, written theological systems and moral rationales for those systems, as well as ceremonial rules and the reinforcement of institutional memory by autho

Category: History - C