The Penguin History of the World

The glory of the empire came to a focus in the cult of Marduk, which was now at its zenith. At a great New Year festival held each year all the Mesopotamian gods – the idols and statues of provincial shrines – came down the rivers and canals to take counsel with Marduk at his temple and acknowledge his supremacy. Borne down a processional way three-quarters of a mile long (which was, we are told, probably the most magnificent street of antiquity) or landed from the Euphrates nearer to the temple, they were taken into the presence of a statue of the god which, Herodotus reported two centuries later, was made of two and a quarter tons of gold. No doubt he exaggerated, but it was indisputably magnificent. The destinies of the whole world, whose centre was this temple, were then debated by the gods and determined for another year. Thus theology reflected political reality. The re-enacting of the drama of creation was the endorsement of Marduk’s eternal authority, and this was an endorsement of the absolute monarchy of Babylon. The king had responsibility for assuring the order of the world and therefore the authority to do so.

It was the last flowering of the Mesopotamian tradition and was soon to end. More and more provinces were lost under Nebuchadnezzar’s successors. Then came an invasion in 539 BC by new conquerors from the east, the Persians, led by the Achaemenids. The passage from worldly pomp and splendour to destruction had been swift. The Book of Daniel telescopes it in a magnificent closing scene, Belshazzar’s feast. ‘In that night’, we read, ‘was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain. And Darius the Median took the kingdom’ (Daniel 5: 30–31). Unfortunately, this account was only written 300 years later and it was not quite like that. Belshazzar was neither Nebuchadnezzar’s son nor his successor as the Book of Daniel says, and the king who took Babylon was called Cyrus. None the less, the emphasis of the Jewish tradition has a dramatic and psychological truth. In so far as the story of antiquity has a turning-point, this is it. An independent Mesopotamian tradition going back to Sumer was over. We are at the edge of a new world. A Jewish poet summed it up exultantly in the Book of Isaiah, where Cyrus appears as a deliverer to the Jews: ‘Sit thou silent, and get thee into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called, The lady of kingdoms’ (Isaiah 47: 5).

5 The Beginnings of Civilization in South Asia

By the middle of the third millennium BC there were in India the foundations of splendid and enduring cultural traditions which were to outlive those of Mesopotamia and Egypt, and which would enjoy a huge sphere of influence. Even now, ancient India is still visible and accessible to us in a very direct sense, through its literature, its religions and its customs. A caste system whose main lines were set by about 1000 BC still regulates the lives of millions. Gods and goddesses whose cults can be traced to the Neolithic are still worshipped at village shrines.

In some ways, then, ancient India is with us still as is no other ancient civilization. Yet though examples of the conservatism of Indian life are commonplace, the region contains many other things too. It has been an area in which great lines of thinking and culture have been forged and from where they have been disseminated. The diversity of Indian life is enormous, but wholly comprehensible given the size and variety of its setting. The subcontinent is, after all, about the size of Europe and is divided into regions clearly distinguished by climate, terrain and crops.

There are two great river valleys, the Indus’ and Ganges’ systems, in the north; between them lie desert and arid plains, and to the south the highlands of the Deccan, largely forested. When written history begins, India’s racial complexity, too, is already very great: scholars identify six main ethnic groups, speaking a number of languages, with Indo-European and Dravidian tongues predominant. Many other groups, attracted by India’s agricultural wealth, were to arrive later and make themselves at home in the Indian subcontinent and society. All this makes it hard to find a focus.