OMG Ground-Breaking Political And Philosophical Thoughts
"Ground-breaking" is the secret code word for "everybody has retrod this ground at least a thousand times before and I have nothing new to add here, just some stupid ramblings while I'm waiting to head up to Bloomington". It's Columbus Day and most of the courthouses are closed, if you're wondering why I'm not at work. It's possible that the office could call with something for me, but they're not likely to, and if they don't call by noon they're not liable to.
So I was thinking about the ancient world, which happens from time to time, and somehow I got onto Alexandria, and then I was thinking how breathtakingly ignorant I am of the ancient Near East. (Actually, the more I learn about anything, the more ignorant I realize I am.) Part of that is that I'm not terribly interested in Egypt, Persia, Babylon, etc. for their own sakes; I feel like I should know something about them so that I can be aware of what the Greeks and Romans were contending with when they came into those areas. ("Greeks" may be a misnomer. The Hellenistic world was secretly Macedonian.) And then I followed this line of thought for a while, and remembered various pseudohistorical claims I'd read that Greek philosophy was ganked from Egyptian, which can't be true because most of Greek philosophy (or at least Greek political philosophy) is about how best to live in a polis, or about the ideal polis. These, frankly, are not Egyptian concepts, since Egypt was what we'd call an absolute monarchy from its beginnings right up to the Roman conquest. It's sort of difficult to philosophize about a concept that doesn't exist in your cultural frame of reference.
And then I sort of started thinking about Christian Jacq again, and the idea in his novels that Pharaoh did have a responsibility to the country. To me, as a product of the late twentieth/early twenty-first century in a democratic society, with all that that entails, that's not a foreign concept, given that a large part of American political theory is that leaders have a responsibility to their people. But I wonder if the ancients would have had that concept at all, or would have understood it the same way; in the democratic poleis of Greece, I think it might have been similar (not so sure about Sparta). Given that the concept of ma'at was such a big part of Egyptian religious thought and culture, some idea of responsibility and reciprocity may well have existed, though I doubt it would have been the same as ours.
Hmm. Must geek on this some more.
So I was thinking about the ancient world, which happens from time to time, and somehow I got onto Alexandria, and then I was thinking how breathtakingly ignorant I am of the ancient Near East. (Actually, the more I learn about anything, the more ignorant I realize I am.) Part of that is that I'm not terribly interested in Egypt, Persia, Babylon, etc. for their own sakes; I feel like I should know something about them so that I can be aware of what the Greeks and Romans were contending with when they came into those areas. ("Greeks" may be a misnomer. The Hellenistic world was secretly Macedonian.) And then I followed this line of thought for a while, and remembered various pseudohistorical claims I'd read that Greek philosophy was ganked from Egyptian, which can't be true because most of Greek philosophy (or at least Greek political philosophy) is about how best to live in a polis, or about the ideal polis. These, frankly, are not Egyptian concepts, since Egypt was what we'd call an absolute monarchy from its beginnings right up to the Roman conquest. It's sort of difficult to philosophize about a concept that doesn't exist in your cultural frame of reference.
And then I sort of started thinking about Christian Jacq again, and the idea in his novels that Pharaoh did have a responsibility to the country. To me, as a product of the late twentieth/early twenty-first century in a democratic society, with all that that entails, that's not a foreign concept, given that a large part of American political theory is that leaders have a responsibility to their people. But I wonder if the ancients would have had that concept at all, or would have understood it the same way; in the democratic poleis of Greece, I think it might have been similar (not so sure about Sparta). Given that the concept of ma'at was such a big part of Egyptian religious thought and culture, some idea of responsibility and reciprocity may well have existed, though I doubt it would have been the same as ours.
Hmm. Must geek on this some more.