The Birth of Civilization in the Near East

Our subject is the birth of civilization in the Near East. We shall not, therefore, consider the question how civilization in the abstract became possible. I do not think there is an answer to that question; in any case it is a philosophical rather than a historical one. But it may be said that the material we are going to discuss has a unique bearing on it all the same. For the emergence of Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilization has some claim to being considered as the birth of civilization in a general sense. It is true that the transition from primitive to civilized conditions has happened more than once; but the change has mostly been induced—or at least furthered—by contact with more advanced foreigners. We know of only three instances where the event may have been spontaneous: in the ancient Near East, in China, and in South and Middle America. However, the genesis of the Maya and Inca civilizations is obscure, and for China we must count with the possibility—some would say the likelihood—of a stimulus from the West. But no appeal to foreign influence can explain the emergence of civilized societies in Egypt and Mesopotamia, since these lands were the first to rise above a universal level of primitive existence.
In the sequel we shall leave this aspect of our subject to one side: in other words, though the fact that in the Near East civilization arose spontaneously, and for the first time imparts a particular weight and splendour to the events, we are specifically concerned with the events themselves. And here, at the very outset, a difficulty must be faced.
It seems easy to deal in a general way with civilizations as entities; at least this is commonly done. Arnold Toynbee, in his Study of History, distinguishes without hesitation twenty-one civilizations—“specimens of the species,” belonging to the “genus societies”—by what he believes to be an empirical method. But consider the problem which arises when we want to study the genesis of any one civilization in particular! We cannot merely assume that it is an entity and has a recognizable character of its own; we are bound to make that character explicit in order that we may decide when and where it emerged.