Welcome to the Ancient Wisdom Bookstore 3
Ancient Civilizations

Here we explore the ancient civilizations of Sumeria, Assyria,
Babylonia, China. Ancient Egypt, Nubia, Ancient Greece and Rome.

There are entire libraries devoted to each and every one of these ancient civilizations.
I have simply created a bookstore of "introduction" only.
It will be up to you to continue to study that which you find compelling,
of interest, or that you may remember from a past life.

LionHeart
June 2009

Why did great civilization's fall?

The history of humankind has been marked by patterns of growth and decline.
Some declines have been gradual, occurring over centuries.
Others have been rapid, occurring over the course of a few years.
War, drought, natural disaster, disease, overpopulation, economic disruption:
any of these can bring about the collapse of a civilization.
Internal causes (such as political struggles or overfarming) can combine
with external causes (such as war or natural disaster) to bring about a collapse.

Ozymandias
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Sumeria

Sumer was a civilization and a historical region
located in Southern Iraq (Mesopotamia),
known as the Cradle of civilization.
It lasted from the first settlement of Eridu
in the Ubaid period (late 6th millennium BC)
through the Uruk period (4th millennium BC) and the
Dynastic periods (3rd millennium BC) until the rise of
Babylon in the early 2nd millennium BC.
The term "Sumerian" applies to all speakers of the Sumerian language.

The cities of Sumer were the first to practice intensive,
year-round agriculture (from ca. 5300 BC).
However, it should be noted that such agriculture appeared independently
in multiple civilizations close to the same time as Sumer.
The surplus of storable food created by this economy allowed
the population to settle in one place instead of migrating after crops and grazing land.
It also allowed for a much greater population density,
and in turn required an extensive labor force and division of labor.
This organization led to the necessity of record keeping
and the development of writing (ca. 3500 BC).

Examples of Sumerian technology include:
the wheel, cuneiform, arithmetic and geometry, irrigation systems,
Sumerian boats, lunisolar calendar, bronze, leather, saws,
chisels, hammers, braces, bits, nails, pins, rings, hoes, axes, knives,
lancepoints, arrowheads, swords, glue, daggers, waterskins, bags,
harnesses, armor, quivers, war chariots, scabbards, boots, sandals and harpoons.

Sumerians believed that the universe consisted of a flat disk enclosed by a tin dome.
The Sumerian afterlife involved a descent into a gloomy netherworld
to spend eternity in a wretched existence as a Gidim (ghost).

More Sumer background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer

Inanna: From the Myths of Ancient Sumer
by Enheduanna, Kim Echlin, Linda Wolfsgruber (Illustrator)

Inanna, Lady of Largest Heart : Poems of the Sumerian High Priestess
by Judy Grahn (Foreword), Betty De Shong Meador

In Search of Zarathustra :
The First Prophet and the Ideas That Changed the World
by Paul Kriwaczek

Zend Avesta of Zarathustra
by E.B. Szekely (Author)

The Sumerians :
Their History, Culture, and Character
by Samuel Noah Kramer

Sumerian Mythology:
A Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium B.C.
by Samuel Noah Kramer

Assyria and Babylonia

Babylonia and Assyria were two of the greatest nations the history of mankind has brought forth.
These two great Mesopotamian civilizations were best known for their
massive armies and instruments of war.
This is not surprising, since they were rarely at peace with one another.
They were, however, heavily influenced by each other,
as well as their predecessors, the Sumerians.
Much of what we taken for granted today,
the arts and science of industry and invention,
were bequeathed to us from these ancient cultures.

Assyria was a political state centered on the Upper Tigris river,
in Mesopotamia (Iraq),
that came to rule regional empires a number of times in history.
It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur '

The modern discovery of Babylonia and Assyria
begins with excavations in Nineveh in 1845,
which revealed the Library of Ashurbanipal.
Decipherment of cuneiform was a formidable task
that took more than a decade, but by 1857,
the Royal Asiatic Society was convinced that reliable reading
of cuneiform texts was possible.
Assyriology has since pieced together the formerly forgotten history of Mesopotamia.
In the wake of the archaeological and philological rediscovery of ancient Assyria,
Assyrian nationalism has come to strongly identify with ancient Assyria.

Babylon was a city-state of ancient Mesopotamia,
sometimes considered an empire,
the remains of which can be found in present-day
Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers (55 mi) south of Baghdad.
All that remains of the original ancient famed city of Babylon today is a mound,
or tell, of broken mud-brick buildings and debris in the fertile
Mesopotamian plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in Iraq.
Although it has been reconstructed,
historical resources inform us that Babylon was at first a small town,
that had sprung up by the beginning of the third millennium BCE
(the dawn of the dynasties).

The town flourished and attained prominence and political repute
with the rise of the First Babylonian Dynasty.
It was the "holy city" of Babylonia by approximately 2300 BCE,
and the seat of the Neo-Babylonian Empire from 612 BCE.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were one of the
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

A History of Babylonia and Assyria
by Robert William Rogers

Myths and Legends of Babylonia and Assyria
by Lewis Spence

The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria:
Its Remains, Language, History, Religion, Commerce, Law, Art and Literature
by Morris, Jr. Jastrow

Ancient Greece and Rome

The term ancient Greece refers to the period of Greek history
lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion,
to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth.
It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided
the foundation of Western civilization and shaped cultures
throughout Southwest Asia and North Africa

Greek culture had a powerful influence on the Roman Empire,
which carried a version of it to many parts of the Mediterranean region and Europe.
The civilization of the ancient Greeks has been immensely influential on
language, politics, educational systems, philosophy, science, and the arts,
inspiring the Islamic Golden Age and the Western European Renaissance,
and again resurgent during various neo-Classical revivals in
18th and 19th century Europe and the Americas.

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community
founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC.
Located along the Mediterranean Sea,
it became one of the largest empires in the ancient world.

In its centuries of existence,
Roman civilization shifted from a monarchy to an oligarchic republic
to an increasingly autocratic empire.
It came to dominate Western Europe and the
Mediterranean region through conquest and assimilation.

The Western Roman Empire went into decline and disappeared in the 5th century AD.
Plagued by internal instability and attacked by various migrating peoples,
the western part of the empire, including Hispania, Gaul, Britannia and Italy,
broke up into independent kingdoms in the 5th century.
The eastern part of the empire, governed from Constantinople,
comprising Greece, Anatolia, Syria and Egypt, survived this crisis,
and despite the loss of Syria and Egypt to the Arab Islamic Empire,
revived and would live on for another millennium,
until its last remains were finally annexed by the emerging Turkish Ottoman Empire.
This eastern, Christian, medieval stage of the Empire is
usually referred to as the Byzantine Empire by historians.

Roman civilization is often grouped into "classical antiquity" with ancient Greece,
a civilization that inspired much of the culture of ancient Rome.
Ancient Rome contributed greatly to the development of
law, war, art, literature, architecture, technology and language in the Western world,
and its history continues to have a major influence on the world today.

The Ancient Mysteries: A Sourcebook :
Sacred Texts of the Mystery Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean World
by Marvin W. Meyer (Editor)

Ancient Mystery Cults
by Walter Burkert

The Cults of the Roman Empire
by Robert Turcan, Antonia Nevill (Translator)

Marcus Aurelius

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
(often referred to as "the wise")
April 26, 121– March 17, 180)
was Roman Emperor from 161 to his death in 180.
He was the last of the "Five Good Emperors",
and is also considered one of the most important Stoic philosophers.
His tenure was marked by wars in Asia against a revitalized Parthian Empire,
and with Germanic tribes along the Limes Germanicus into Gaul and across the Danube.
A revolt in the East, led by Avidius Cassius
who previously fought alongside Lucius Verus against the Parthians, failed.
Marcus Aurelius' work Meditations,
written in Greek while on campaign between 170 and 180,
is still revered as a literary monument to a government of
service and duty and has been praised for its "exquisite accent
and its infinite tenderness."

Marcus Aurelius Meditations
by Marcus Aurelius, Gregory Hays (Translator);
Let facts and common sense be your guide:
1. View yourself as a part, and only a part, of nature.
2. Accept your fate without complaining. Don't waste time judging.
3. Don't be surprised that there are offensive people.
4. Accept that things change, including your body. So accept that you will die.
5. Things repeat: a life of 40 years may see as much as one of 1000 years.
6. While you're worrying about death, your mind may go. Make the best of it while it's intact.
7. Some stress is normal. You may be surprised how much you can endure,
especially if you realize its for the best that you do so.
8. We weren't born to feel great, we were born to help others.
9. Why value that which can't offer you security?

The Spiritual Wisdom of Marcus Aurelius
by Alan Jacobs
So what will guide us?
I answer unequivocally -
Philosophy!
So keep your `will' free
from violence,
superior to pain and pleasure.
Never drift aimlessly
nor hypocritically,
but accepting all that
happens wholeheartedly
with a big yea-say!
Await death cheerfully
so the elements may be dissolved
and consciousness
return to its source.
Nothing is ever wrong if it follows
the `Nature of Things'.

To read regularly one or two verses from
`The Spiritual Wisdom of Marcus Aurelius
is to remove oneself from the transitory nature of the day-to-day
and be immersed in a transcendent wisdom,
one which is as true for the Romans as it is for us today.

Plato & Socrates
Plato was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues,
and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world.
Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle,
Plato helped to lay the foundations of natural philosophy, science, and Western philosophy.

Plato was originally a student of Socrates,
| and was as much influenced by his thinking as by what he saw as his teacher's unjust death.
Plato's sophistication as a writer is evident in his Socratic dialogues;
thirty-five dialogues and thirteen letters have traditionally been ascribed to him,
although modern scholarship doubts the authenticity of at least some of these.
Plato's writings have been published in several fashions;
this has led to several conventions regarding the naming and referencing of Plato's texts.
Although there is little question that Plato lectured at the Academy that he founded,
the pedagogical function of his dialogues, if any, is not known with certainty.
The dialogues since Plato's time have been used to teach a range of subjects,
mostly including philosophy, logic, rhetoric, mathematics, and other subjects about which he wrote.

Plato Complete Works
by Plato, John M. Cooper (Editor), D. S. Hutchinson (Editor)

Republic
by Plato, Robin Waterfield

Socrates Cafe:
A Fresh Taste of Philosophy
by Christopher Phillips

Ancient China

Ancient Chinese civilization originated in various city-states
along the Yellow River valley in the Neolithic era.
The written history of China begins with the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1550BCE - ca. 1046 BCE).
Turtle shells with ancient Chinese writing from the Shang Dynasty
have been carbon dated to as early as 1500 BCE.
The origins of Chinese culture, literature and philosophy,
developed during the Zhou Dynasty (1045BCE to 256 BCE) that followed the Shang.
It was the longest lasting dynasty and spans the period in which
the written script evolved from ancient oracle script to the beginnings of modern Chinese writing.

The feudal Zhou Dynasty eventually broke apart into individual city states,
creating the Warring States period.
In 221 BCE, Qin Shi Huang united the various warring kingdoms
and created the first Chinese empire.

Successive dynasties in Chinese history developed bureaucratic systems
that enabled the Emperor of China to directly control the vast territories.
The conventional view of Chinese history is that of a dynasty
alternating between periods of political unity and disunity
and occasionally becoming dominated by foreign asian peoples,
most of whom were assimilated into the Han Chinese population.
Cultural and political influences from many parts of Asia,
carried by successive waves of immigration, expansion, and assimilation,
merged to create modern Chinese culture.

The Art of War
by Sun Tzu

Tao Te Ching:
An Illustrated Journey
by Lao Tzu, Stephen Mitchell

The Complete Works of Lao Tzu:
Tao Teh Ching & Hua Hu Ching
by Laozi, Hua Ching Ni

The I Ching Book of Changes
Please visit our Pagan Bookstore 3 for a more concise interpretation.

What are the most widely read and commented upon works in history?
The Bible? The Vedas? The Quran? How about the I Ching?
Every major thinker in Chinese history has had something to say about it.
Passed down from generation to generation, it has been admired, studied, and put into practice.
In 1973, archaeologists unearthed a number of silk manuscripts dating back to 168 B.C.
Included in the find was a version of the I Ching and four commentaries previously lost.
The text itself differed in places from the accepted version, especially in the arrangement of the hexagrams.

I Ching Workbook
by R.L. Wing

The Illustrated I Ching
by R.L. Wing

I Ching
by Edward L. Shaughnessy (Translator)

Ancient India & Tibet

The known history of India begins with the Indus Valley Civilization,
which spread and flourished in the north-western part of the Indian subcontinent,
from c. 3300 to 1300 BCE.
Its Mature Harappan period lasted from 2600-1900 BCE.
This Bronze Age civilization collapsed at the
beginning of the second millennium BCE
and was followed by the Iron Age Vedic period,
which extended over much of the Indo-Gangetic plains
and which witnessed the rise of major kingdoms known as the Mahajanapadas.

In one of these kingdoms Magadha, Mahavira and Gautama Buddha
were born in the 6th century BCE, who propagated
their Shramanic philosophies among the masses.

Later, successive empires and kingdoms
ruled the region and enriched its culture -
from the Achaemenid Persian empire around 543 BCE,
to Alexander the Great in 326 BCE.
The Indo-Greek Kingdom, founded by Demetrius of Bactria,
included Gandhara and Punjab from 184 BCE;
it reached its greatest extent under Menander,
establishing the Greco-Buddhist period with advances in trade and culture.

Beginning in the mid-18th century and over the next century,
India was gradually annexed by the British East India Company.
Dissatisfaction with Company rule led to the First War of Indian Independence,
after which India was directly administered by the British Crown
and witnessed a period of both rapid development of infrastructure and economic decline.
During the first half of the 20th century,
a nationwide struggle for independence was launched by the Indian National Congress,
and later joined by the Muslim League.
The subcontinent gained independence from Great Britain in 1947,
after being partitioned into the dominions of India and Pakistan.

Tibetan history, as it has been recorded,
is particularly focused on the history of Buddhism in Tibet.
This is partly due to the pivotal role this religion has played
in the development of Tibetan, Mongol, and Manchu cultures,
and partly because almost all native historians of the country were Buddhist monks.

Tibet is situated between the two ancient civilizations of China and India,
separated from the former by the mountain ranges to the east of the
Tibetan Plateau and from the latter by the towering Himalayas.
Tibet is nicknamed "the roof of the world" or "the land of snows".
The Tibetan language and its dialects are classified
as members of the Tibeto-Burman language family.

Construction of an early history of the Tibetan region by western sources
relies primarily on ancient Chinese histories supplemented
with limited archaeological findings.
Chinese and "proto-Tibeto-Burman" languages may have split
sometime before 4000 BC.
The Chinese began growing millet in the Yellow River valley
and the Tibeto-Burmans remained nomads; Tibetan split from Burmese circa 500.

In Search of the Cradle of Civilization
by Georg Feuerstein

Early India :
From the Origins to AD 1300
by Romila Thapar

The Rig Veda
by Anonymous, Wendy Doniger (Translator)

The Secret Teachings of the Vedas:
The Eastern Answers to the Mysteries of Life
by Stephen Knapp

The Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita

The Upanishads are Hindu scriptures that constitute the core teachings of Vedanta.
They do not belong to any particular period of Sanskrit literature:
the oldest, such as the Brhadaranyaka and Chandogya Upanishads,
date to the late Brahmana period (around the middle of the first millennium BCE),
while the latest were composed in the medieval and early modern period.
The Upanishads have exerted an important influence on the rest of Hindu Philosophy,
and were collectively considered one of the 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written
by the British poet Martin Seymour-Smith.
According to Indian authorities upanishad means
'setting to rest ignorance by revealing the knowledge of the supreme spirit'.
Other dictionary meanings include "esoteric doctrine" and "secret doctrine".

The Upanishads speak of an universal spirit (Brahman)
and of an individual soul (Atman), and at times assert the identity of both.
Brahman is the ultimate, both transcendent and immanent,
the absolute infinite existence, the sum total of all that ever is, was, or shall be.

The Upanishads also contain the first and most definitive explications
of the divine syllable Aum or OM, the cosmic vibration that underlies all existence.
The mantra "Aum Shanti Shanti Shanti"
(the soundless sound, peace, peace, peace)
is often found in the Upanishads.
'Devotion to God' (Sanskrit: bhakti) is foreshadowed in Upanishadic literature,
and was later realized by texts such as the Bhagavad Gita.

The Bhagavad Gita, or "Song of God", is an important Sanskrit Hindu scripture.
It is revered as a sacred scripture of Hinduism,
and considered as one of the most important religious classics of the world.
The Bhagavad Gita is a part of the Mahabharata, comprising 700 verses.

The teacher of the Bhagavad Gita is Krishna,
who is regarded by the Hindus as the supreme manifestation of the Lord Himself,
and is referred to within as Bhagavan—the divine one.
The Bhagavad Gita is commonly referred to as The Gita for short.

The content of the Gita is the conversation between Krishna and Arjuna
taking place on the battlefield before the start of the Kurukshetra war.
Responding to Arjuna's confusion and moral dilemma,
Krishna explains to Arjuna his duties as a warrior and prince
and elaborates on different Yogic and Vedantic philosophies,
with examples and analogies.

This has led to the Gita often being described as a concise guide to Hindu philosophy
and also as a practical, self-contained guide to life.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi describes it as a lighthouse of eternal wisdom
that has the ability to inspire any man or woman to supreme accomplishment and enlightenment.
During the discourse,
Krishna reveals his identity as the Supreme Being Himself (Svayam bhagavan),
blessing Arjuna with an awe-inspiring vision of his divine universal form.

The Upanishads
by Eknath Easwaran (Translator)

The Bhagavad Gita
by Eknath Easwaran (Editor)

God Talks with Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita
by Paramahansa Yogananda

Autobiography of a Yogi
by Paramahansa Yogananda

For more books by Yogananda please visit our
Spiritual Teacher Bookstore..and our Tribute to Yogananda

Third Eye
by T. Lobsang Rampa

Wisdom of the Ancients
by T. Lobsang Rampa

The Tibetan Book of the Dead
by Robert Thurman (Translator), Huston Smith (Introduction)

For books by the Dalai Lama please visit our
Spiritual Teacher Bookstore

The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching
by Thich Nhat Hanh

For more books by Thich Nhat Hanh please visit our
Spiritual Teacher Bookstore

Siddhartha
by Hermann Hesse

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization in eastern North Africa,
concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River
in what is now the modern nation of Egypt.
The civilization began around 3150 BC with the political unification
of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh,
| and it developed over the next three millennia.
Its history occurred in a series of stable periods, known as kingdoms,
separated by periods of relative instability known as Intermediate Periods.
After the end of the last kingdom, known as the New Kingdom,
the civilization of ancient Egypt entered a period of slow, steady decline,
during which Egypt was conquered by a succession of foreign powers.
The rule of the pharaohs officially ended in 31 BC
when the early Roman Empire conquered Egypt and made it a province.

The many achievements of the ancient Egyptians included
a system of mathematics, quarrying, surveying and construction techniques
that facilitated the building of monumental pyramids, temples, obelisks,
faience and glass technology, a practical and effective system of medicine,
new forms of literature, irrigation systems
and agricultural production techniques, and the earliest known peace treaty.

Egypt left a lasting legacy:
art and architecture were copied and antiquities paraded around the world,
and monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of tourists and writers for centuries.
A newfound respect for antiquities and excavations in the early modern period
led to the scientific investigation of Egyptian civilization
and a greater appreciation of its cultural legacy for Egypt and the world.

The Soul in Egyptian Metaphysics
by Manly P. Hall

The Egyptian Book of the Dead :
The Book of Coming Forth by Day
by Mnata A. Ashbi
I Know myself, I know myself, I am One With God!
From the Pert Em Heru

The Passion of Isis and Osiris :
A Gateway to Transcendent Love
by Jean Houston

The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
by Richard H. Wilkinson

Sacred Sexuality-Ancient Egyptian Tantric Yoga
by Muata Ashby

Ancient Nubia

In ancient times Nubians were depicted by Egyptians as having very dark skin,
often shown with hooped earrings and with braided or extended hair.
Ancient Nubians were famous for their vast wealth,
their trade between central Africa and the lower
Nile valley civilizations, including Egypt,
their skill and precision with the bow, their 23-letter alphabet,
the use of deadly poison on the heads of their arrows, their great military,
their advanced civilization, and their century-long rule
over the united upper and lower Egyptian kingdoms.

Nubia is the homeland of Africa's earliest black civilization
with a history which can be traced from 2000 B.C.
onward through Nubian monuments and artifacts,
as well as written records from Egypt and Rome.
In antiquity, Nubia was a land of great natural wealth, of gold mines,
ebony, ivory and incense which was always prized by her neighbors.
Nubians are the people of northern Sudan and southern Egypt.
With a history and traditions which can be traced to the dawn of civilization,
the Nubian first settled along the banks of the Nile from Aswan.
Along this great river they developed one of the oldest and greatest civilizations in Africa.
Until they lost their last kingdom (Christian Nubia)
only five centuries earlier the Nubians remained as the main rivals to Egypt,
the other great civilization of North East Africa.

Kush - The Jewel of Nubia:
Reconnecting the Root System of African Civilization
by Miriam Ma'At-Ka-Re Monges

The Black Pharaohs:
Egypt's Nubian Rulers
by Robert G. Morkot

The African Origin of Civilization:
Myth or Reality
by Cheikh Anta Diop

Ancient Christianity

The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English
by Geza Vermes (Translator)

The Gospel of the Essenes
by Edmond Bordeaux Szekely, Purcell Weaver

Essene Gospel of Peace: Book 1
by Edmond Bordeaux Szekely

The Way of the Essenes :
Christ's Hidden Life Remembered
by Anne Meurois-Givaudan, Daniel Meurois-Givaudan

The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ:
The Philosophic and Practical Basis of the Religion of the Aquarian Age of the World
by Levi H. Dowling

The New Jerusalem Bible : Leather Edition
by Henry Wansbrough

The Urantia Book
by Urantia Foundation

The Celts and Vikings

The Encyclopedia of Celtic Wisdom:
The Celtic Shaman's Sourcebook
by Caitlin Matthews, John Matthews

A History of the Vikings
by Gwyn Jones