There is often huge linguistic, cultural and even genetic difference between rulers and ruled, much, much more so after the advent of ‘civilization’.
About 3000 years ago, a mountain people from the Badakshan area of Central Asia (northeastern Afghanistan and southeastern Tajikistan), an important trading center through which a “Silk Road” passed, became tempted by thoughts of wealth in lowlands to their west, which they were becoming strong enough to consider appropriating. These people of Kamboja, or Kambujiya, had strong belief in hierarchy, divine will and the right of might. To them, to be able to take was a mandate to do so, within the natural, moral compass and order of things. How could it be else-wise?
In the 9th century BCE they took Persis (now Fars Province of Iran, where Shiraz is), then Anshan (in the Zagros mountains of southwestern Iran), a quite ancient civilization, and soon the whole Iranian plateau.
The empire at around 500 BCE stretched from the Indus Valley in the east to Thrace and Macedonia; it eventually controlled Egypt and encompassed approximately 8 million square kilometers; in 480 BCE it is estimated to have had 50 million people. At its greatest extent, it had absorbed the modern territories of Iraq, Syria, Armenia, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, most of Turkey, parts of Libya, Georgia and Azerbaijan, much of the Black Sea coastal regions and extensive parts of Central Asia, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Oman. They may well have been the root of the Ksyatriya caste, India’s ruling and military elite who were in charge of protecting society by fighting in wartime and governing in peacetime, and Gautama Buddha was most likely one of them (see the work of Ranajit Pal, who faces much disparagement but seems to me spot on, at least about some things).
Some of these Persian Kshatriyas created the Srivijaya maritime empire, a splinter group from which met other Kambojas who had come overland (through Afghanistan, south of the Himalayas to Bengal and eventually following the path of the Mekong) to the Tonle Sap in what was then the kingdom of Chenla (Zhenla) and what is now Cambodia. These two groups, united by racial background, world-view and Indo-European language, would have had trouble communicating verbally after a millennia of differing influences on their language, but they saw the locals (who mostly spoke Austronesian language) in quite the same way. Together they enslaved the local aboriginals, built the extensive Angkor Wat complexes, became known as the Khom and eventually formed the core of Siamese royalty and what became Thailand. As less than 1% has great difficulty holding in slavery over 99%, when drought and the Black Plague hit about 1300 CE, the Angkor Empire started to crumble, its edifices, by the time of the rise of Ayudhaya, left as a bad memory to become over-run by jungle, and the Khom were almost forgotten.
The term ‘Khom’ gets used for the Ancient Khmer lettering used in Thailand's Buddhist temples to inscribe sacred Buddhist mantras and prayers, with its own script, one sometimes used with some minority languages of southern Laos. A century ago there was an independence movement there (as well as in parts of far southeast Issan, Thailand). Led by Ong Keo (องค์แก้ว) then Ong Kommadam (both were assassinated), the plan was to throw out all foreigners and bring back holy rule. The Kom, Kam or Kamboj are also a tribe in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in the lower part of the Bashgul Valley, also known as Kam Kamboj. Pre-Angkorian Khmer (used 600 – 800 CE) is only known from words and phrases in Sanskrit texts; Angkorian Khmer (Old Khmer) was subsequently used (until the 13th c. CE) as a language of government, but that does NOT mean it’s what rulers spoke at home. Other, accredited scholars have connected the names Kom and Kata with ancient Kamboja, but discussion of this seems to be frowned upon by Thailand’s ruling elite in Bangkok.
Jit Phoumisak, called by some the only Thai intellectual, wrote about Khom rulers of Angkor, and seems as a result to have been executed. David K. Wyatt of Cornell University, the foremost historian on Thailand, might well have wanted to write on it, too, but wanted even more to be able to return to Thailand for visits, and so did not, although some of his later writings show interest in the surrounding controversies.
Srivijaya, like the Dutch and British East India Companies, merely expropriated ports, with “factory” warehouses, and didn't attempt administration of colonies (Ligor, now Nakorn Sri Thammarat, Thailand, a possible exception), but the Khom rulers of the Khmer (pronounced “kha-may”, the first syllable just like the Thai word for slave) raised rule to an art form, beguiling a gullible public with magical incantations and other bewitchery for half a millennium.
This is fascinating: in his “A history of Cambodia” David Chandler says, “In the 17th century, according to Dutch sources, foreign traders were required to live in specific areas of the new capitol, Udong, reserved for them and to deal with the Cambodian government only through appointed representatives, or shabandar.”
Wikipedia says, “Shāhbandar (Persian: شهبندر, lit. “harbourmaster”), was an official of the ports in Safavid Persia and one also known on other shores of the Indian Ocean. The Shahbandar (Port Master) was in charge of the traders and the collection of taxes. The office of shahbandar first appeared in Persia, and from there spread throughout the Indian Ocean basin.” Chandler doesn’t mention Persians though.
Yup, Persian influence in SE Asia goes WAY back. As Dr. Ranajit Pal put it, “evidence has revealed the presence of Siddhartha Gautama, the man who became Buddha, as far west as Persia. Family seals and records found at Persepolis, the ancient capital of the fourth Persian Emperor, Darius the Great, have been identified and associated with the names of Siddhartha Gautama and his father, Suddhodana Gautama. … Even the Indus Culture (India) is a colony of the Sumerian Empire, ...”
I was researching to write about Vasco de Gama for one of my novels, and ended up parroting others who had him meeting (and battling with) Arab traders in the Arabian Sea area, as if Persians would not have come down from the Persian Gulf… I’ve corrected that now. Clearly, Persians did travel and interact to the east and south of their home area, and why not? I’ve yet to have solid evidence for my speculations about their possible influence on Angkor, yet, though.
Seems likely to me that well before Persians became bureaucrats for Cambodian and Thai kings, they traded through a large coastal area extending until Chinese influence and control became too strong to deal with. Over centuries, they became knowledgeable in methods of control, lost interest in colonization or active political control in preference to manipulations through trade (for the most part), doing what Portuguese, Dutch and British later did with their “East India” companies. A break-away group forged Angkor, though, and kept an empire until Han population explosion and conquest of Han people by Mongols changed the socio-political situation enough that an alliance with T’ai peoples, emigrating for safety’s sake from their Southern Chinese homelands, seemed an appropriate recourse. Pressures from Vietnamese peoples may have contributed.
Anyway, mangroves clogging the northern shores of the Gulf of Siam were reduced in extent sufficiently that a new port city on the ChaoPraya River could be built, and a descendant of Shan/Lanna royalty invited to come rule. The rulers of Angkor and their hangers-on, Chinese merchants from Kwantung and others formed a new elite for this new city, which they called Ayudhaya, after a mythological city from the Ramayana tale. Eventually integration of their descendants with locals created the distinction from Malays that has become much more noticeable over the last century. Cambodia was left with neither a strong elite nor much of a trading community (except for Cham Vietnamese who took control of the ports that had exported their forest products), lost population and area and became a kind of satellite state controlled by Siamese and Vietnamese rivals.
This explains more to me than any other scenario I have encountered, and leaves fewer holes, less confusion, and so, utilizing Occam’s Razor, I accept it without the kind of proofs Western academicians prefer.
But I do have this: Tibet and Altai are high-altitude places a series of conquerors descended from. Tajikistan might be another. People from there, or other mountains nearby, conquered Persia and almost Ancient Greece. Their Achaemenid Empire was huge but historians have underestimated it, I think. They didn’t only go West, but also East, along the Old Silk Road and to the headwaters of the Mekong, down that river and finally to Cambodia, the name of which comes from them. Marco Polo’s ludicrous account of descending steadily downhill for three months, into what is now Myanmar, may well be a reflection of this, taken from stories Turk traders heard from Tajiks. After Cambyses II, (a Tajik descendant, I am suggesting), son of Cyrus the Great and uncle of Xerxes, died in a Libyan sandstorm (or something close enough), some of his people turned back and tried India instead, forming the Kshatriyan caste of India and then the Srivijayan maritime empire based in Ligor and Java. One of their explorers, finding descendants of Tajik traders near Tonle Sap, decided to go for real empire instead of just trading, and with the help of a “5th column” of distant relatives, was able to found the Angkor Empire. In 1431, secrets of kingship gleaned over two millennium were used to found Ayudhaya, a trading partner for Southern Chinese loathe to remain subjects of Beijing (or Xanadu, X’ian, of Mongols, Ming or Qing). To accomplish this, when they were overthrown by a successful slave revolt, they allied themselves with T’ai princes pushed south not only by Mongol conquests but by Han Chinese population expansion. Later, others from Persia formed the backbone of Thailand’s Chakri Dynasty’s bureaucracy… Mountain people who ate fresh meat and forest products tended to be much hardier than lowland grain-eating agriculturists, and sometimes found opportunity to enrich themselves through their strength and simultaneously gain revenge on the “civilized” folk who despised them. To maintain supremacy, they found elaborate, formal high-church-like ceremony endowed with purported accouterments of power and embellished with semblances of magic importantly helpful. The pageantry, as it often does, worked, but they had to continually work at it, becoming, in a way, increasingly slaves to their slaves. Thus the switch to “maritime empire,” which was often equally rewarding but less demanding. Ports in India, Indonesia and at Ligor became havens of luxury. Then some, as happens, sociopathically aspired to God-hood. Wealth and power weren’t enough; adulation and sycophancy were desired also. And so, Babylon, Constantinople, Angkor, Xanadu (X’ian) and perhaps Ayudhaya, although in its case, the mountain people must have been at greater remove from their ancestral mountains. I suspect it was similar with the Aztecs. Incas, however, stayed in their mountains (and I know little of their pageantry, except that they had plenty). I suspect that secrets of mass-manipulation have been handed down. This theory might help explain mafia influence in some current governments… Capishe?
To solidify and clarify this concept of a magical importance to god-kings, I made a short history of early ‘civilization’:
The emergence of humanity into what we call civilization is shrouded in mystery; recent archaeology has given us more than myth and legend, and science may soon offer us even more. Today the earliest settlements with several thousand inhabitants known are from the 31st century BCE - cities which housed tens of thousands, at Memphis in Egypt and Uruk of Sumur (Iraq). A 7,000-year-old town by the Nile, across from Luxor, held homes of some important people of Egypt’s First Dynasty - Abydos, a “lost city” believed to date from 5,316 BCE, could have been part of the first capital of one of the earliest Egyptian empires.
The origin of Mesopotamia dates further back; there’s no known evidence of any other civilized society before them. Somewhere around 8000 BCE people there began agriculture, and slowly started to domesticate animals for food as well as to assist in farming. Mesopotamia is credited with being the first place where truly ‘civilized’ societies took shape, about 3300 BCE. It’s unclear to me how Abydos and the early First Dynasty of Egypt weren’t civilized, but nevermind.
People had been creating art beforehand, but that considered culture, not civilization. As Mesopotamia arose, it refined and formalized systems, combining them to form civilization. This began in the highlands (freer from insects and germs and with hardier animals), then moved to where there was better soil, plus ease of irrigation and travel for trade, in lowland Iraq (Babylonia, Sumer and Assyria).
The origins of agriculture in the Near East can be attributed to multiple centers rather than a single core area and that the eastern Fertile Crescent played a key role in the process of domestication. Early cultivation was of wild barley, goat-grass and lentil, all wild ancestors of modern crops. 9800 years ago, domesticated emmer wheat appears. Plants including multiple forms of wheat, barley and lentils together with domestic animals later accompanied farmers as they spread across western Eurasia, gradually replacing the indigenous hunter-gather societies. This didn’t improve living standards, just eliminated need to be nomadic, and allowed for some rapid population growth. People became somewhat smaller with the nutritional changes, but also found strength in numbers.
Around 10,200 BCE Fertile Crescent cultures with pottery (7600 to 6000 BCE) and from there spread eastwards and westwards. Notable was Jericho, the world’s first town (settled around 8500 BCE and fortified around 6800 BCE). The convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers produced rich fertile soil with water for irrigation. The civilizations that emerged around the rivers are the earliest known non-nomadic agrarian societies. From about 6500 to 3800 BCE urbanization began. Agriculture and animal husbandry were practiced in sedentary communities in Northern Mesopotamia, and intensively irrigated agriculture began in the south.
About 3200 BCE, as the two earliest civilizations developed in the area where southwest Asia joins northeast Africa, great rivers are a crucial part of the story. The Sumerians settled between the mouths of the Euphrates and the Tigris. Egypt developed in the long narrow strip of the Nile valley. Ancient Egypt, one of the oldest and culturally richest civilizations, is known for its prodigious culture, with a majestic civilization that resided by the banks of the Nile. It coalesced around 3150 BCE (according to conventional Egyptian chronology) with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first Pharaoh. This wouldn’t have been possible had there not been settlers around the Nile valley as early as 3500 BCE - people who fished in the river… but could hardly do very successful hunting and gathering away from the river, in Egypt’s desert lands.
The first god-kings may have been Pharaohs, 5000 years ago. There’s not a lot to go on about that, beyond myths told in hieroglyphs, but we know that magic was resorted to in endeavor to influence Nile floods. Everything depended on the Nile for the people there, but the Nile well resisted puny human efforts to exert any control at all. Record-keeping facilitated anticipation and prediction. Useful flood-gates and canals could be constructed given sufficient central guidance, as also could be grain storage. Central Command was also helpful with crop rotation, but a heavy responsibility, failures at which could easily provoke dangerously disruptive wrath. For social stability anger needed to be controlled, contained and deflected, better than the river could be. To install awe for those in charge could minimize social instability and maximize benefits the river continually brought. So the charade of deification hardly seems strange. It worked well for 3000 years.
The Chinese had two great rivers; when the first god-king somewhat less legendary than the “Yellow Emperor” first occurred isn’t clear; earlier, to be sure, than the first great emperor we’ve records of. From Mesopotamia we know of Cyrus becoming god-king soon after 550 BCE; maybe he initiated the idea there, maybe he’d heard tales from Egypt &/or China.
Rivers offer two main advantages to a developing civilization. They provide water to irrigate the fields, and they offer the easiest method of transport for a society without paved roads. Rivers also played an important role in the civilizations of the Indus, and later, many other places (particularly in Cambodia and Thailand, and along the Mississippi).
King Hammurabi, who ruled from Babylon around 2000 BCE, drew up the first recorded set of laws. His “Code of Hammurabi” set down harsh penalties for those who broke the laws—“an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Punishment fit the crime. These early laws provided everyone, regardless of their class or rank, at least some protection from their neighbors, but punishments differed between the ‘superior’, normal and slave classes.
It’s not known whether contact with Mesopotamia inspired the first civilization of India, but by about 2500 BCE the neolithic villages along the banks of the Indus combined into a unified and sophisticated culture. The Indus civilization, with large cities at Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, expanded over a larger region than Egypt and Mesopotamia combined. It survived, in remarkably consistent form, for about 1000 years. Over 4,000 years ago in the valley of the Indus River (which flows through Pakistan), people enjoyed an ever-improving standard of living, learning to use bronze and copper to make cooking utensils as well as weapons. Mohenjo-Daro had streets paved with bricks and lined with shops.
The Harappan, or Indus Valley Civilization, planned cities in advance, but apparently a massive, centuries-long drought brought the culture into a slow decline, from which it never arose. This is nothing more than a theory, but it helps explain other cultural declines in the area. Beginning sometime in the 25th century BCE, the Harappans developed their language with a script of nearly 500 characters (which have still to be completely deciphered). Noteworthy artifacts include seals made of soapstone depicting animals and mythical creatures. The peak phase of this civilization lasted from 2600 BCE to around 1900 BCE - a sophisticated and technologically advanced urban culture, the first in the region. Its people achieved great accuracy in measuring length, mass, and time. Based on artifacts excavated, it’s evident the culture was rich in arts and crafts. After collapse, the ruins of the Harappan civilization provided a template for the various other cultures which sprang up after it.
Europe’s biggest prehistoric civilization, the Vinca, existed for nearly 1,500 years. Beginning in the 55th century BCE, it occupied land throughout Serbia and Romania. Named after a present-day village near the Danube River, where the first discoveries were made in the 20th century, the Vinca worked metal, were perhaps the world’s first civilization to use copper (they excavated the first mine in Europe). Though the Vinca had no officially recognized form of writing, examples of proto-writing, symbols which don’t actually express language, have been found on stone tablets dating from 4000 BCE. Archaeologists unearthed toys (animals and rattles) from among other artifacts. The Vinca had organized specific locations for trash, with their dead all buried in a central location.
The next region to develop a distinctive civilization centers on the Aegean Sea, about 2000 BCE. The bays and inlets of the rugged coastal regions of Greece, and the many small islands strung like pearls across this relatively sheltered sea, made this an ideal area for trade (and piracy). The Aegean civilization, which began on Crete, stands at the start of the very lively tradition of Mediterranean culture. Surely the reader knows some about that!
Around 3000 BCE the wheel made transportation of good easier and quicker. Mesopotamia was known for metalwork, wool textiles, pottery and foods (dried fish, barley, wheat). Copper, tin and timber were imported. The oldest known wheel found in an archaeological excavation is from Mesopotamia, and dates to around 3500 BCE. By this time, humans were planting crops, herding domesticated animals, engaging in semi-organized fighting and paying for social hierarchy.
Wheels might have been thought of, as they were in Mexico and made for toys but for nothing else, but didn’t obtain utility until metal tools became available to chisel fine-fitted holes and axles. The wheel isn’t just a cylinder as in a Flintstone cartoon; connecting it to a stable, stationary platform presented a serious challenge. The ends of the axle, as well as the holes in the centre of the wheels, had to be nearly perfectly smooth and round, or too much friction between components would hinder and even prevent turning. The axle had to fit snugly in its holes, but with enough room to allow them to rotate freely.
Wheels were first used by potters. A 5,500-year-old wheel from Mesopotamia (Sumeria) was a potters’ wheel; use of wheels for pottery-making likely dates even further back. Wheels for transportation may have first been invented either in Mesopotamia or the Eurasian steppes. An early image of a wheeled cart was found in Poland, and others elsewhere in the Eurasian steppes. The earliest well-dated depiction is on the Bronocice pot (c. 3500 – 3350 BCE) found in southern Poland, and depicts a vehicle with a shaft for a draught animal, four wheels and lines connecting them probably representing axles. The ‘Ljubljana Marshes Wheel’ was found in the capital of Slovenia and dated to 3150 BCE. Linguistic evidence is used to support the claim that the wheel originated in the Eurasian steppes.
The development of proto-writing in Harappa around 3300 BCE was followed by Chinese oracle bone script and Mesoamerican writing from about 2000 BCE. Chinese civilization may have begun about 1900 BCE, although ancient Chinese historical records like the Bamboo Annals mention the Xia Dynasty, for which there is no archeological evidence. The earliest Chinese dynasty for which there is both archeological and written evidence is the Shang Dynasty (1600 to 1046 BCE), sites from which revealed the earliest known Chinese writing, the oracle bone script. The longest consistent civilization is that of China. Its vast empire seems set apart from the rest of the world, fiercely proud of its own traditions, resisting foreign influences. Its history begins in a characteristically independent manner, with no identifiable precedents. Shang texts use characters recognizably related to Chinese writing today.
At Ban Chiang, in Udon Thani, Thailand, graves from about 2100 BCE were uncovered. Bronze making there may have begun c. 2000 BCE, as evidenced by crucibles and bronze fragments. Bracelets, rings, anklets, wires and rods, spearheads, axes and adzes, hooks, blades, and little bells were found. The date of 2100 BCE was obtained from rice phytoliths from inside a grave vessel of the lowest grave. Later analysis suggests that the initial settlement of Ban Chiang took place by about 1500 BCE, with the transition to the Bronze Age about 1000 BCE. Politics seems to have hindered progress with this.
Rice cultivation may have begun quite early along the now submerged Sundaland (the Sunda Shelf), possibly even earlier than barley and lentils in Iraq. Savanna vegetation from the last glacial period, in now submerged areas of Sundaland, suggests a continuous savanna corridor connecting modern mainland Asia to Java and Borneo. Vegetation there may have been dominated by tropical rainforest, with only small, discontinuous patches of savanna vegetation, but a savanna corridor would have allowed for savanna-dwelling fauna and early humans to go from the modern Malaysian Peninsula to Borneo. A 50-150 kilometer wide savanna corridor down the Malaysian Peninsula, through Sumatra and Java, and across to Borneo, is strongly suggested by the composition of bat guano deposits in Sundaland. Life in coastal areas may have been safer from large predators than further inland, but changing sea levels would have caused humans to move away from their coastal homes and culture, farther inland and upland, throughout Southeast Asia. This forced migration would have caused these humans to adapt to the new forest and mountainous environments, fostering development.
A 2009 genetic study published by the 2009 Human Genome Organization Pan-Asian SNP Consortium found that Asia was originally settled by humans via a single southern route from Africa via India, into Southeast Asia and what are now islands in the Pacific, then later up to the eastern and northern Asian mainland. Similarities were found between populations throughout Asia with an increase in genetic diversity from northern to southern latitudes. Although the Chinese population is very large, it has less variation than the smaller number of individuals living in Southeast Asia, because the Chinese expansion occurred recently, within the last 3,000 years, following the development of rice farming. Genetic research from 2008 indicates that islands which remain from Sundaland were likely populated as early as 50,000 years ago, contrary to the hypothesis that they were populated as late as 10,000 years ago from Taiwan. Historical linguistics supports the theory that the home of the Austronesian languages is the main island of Taiwan. Australian Aborigines have been proven resident in that continent from 31,000 BCE. Aboriginal Australians diverged from Papuans some 37,000 years ago, well before the Australian land mass separated from New Guinea roughly 10,000 years ago. It’s widely accepted that Aborigines have been in Australia well over 40,000 years.
Early accounting dates to ancient Mesopotamia. Related to developments in writing, math and money, early auditing systems of ancient Egyptians and Babylonians go back more than 7,000 years. Documents from ancient Mesopotamia show lists of expenditures, and of goods received and traded. The development of accounting, along with that of money and numbers, were related to the taxation and religious trading activities. All emerged in the context of controlling goods, stocks and transactions in the temple economy. People relied on primitive accounting methods to record the growth of crops and herds. Because there was a natural season to farming and herding, it was easy to count and determine if a surplus had been gained after harvests or the weaning of young animals.
Between the 4th and 3rd millenniums BCE, the ruling leaders and priests in ancient Persia had people oversee financial matters. In Godin Tepe (گدین تپه) and Tepe Yahya (تپه يحيی), cylindrical tokens used for bookkeeping on clay scripts were found in buildings that had large rooms for storage of crops. Godin Tepe scripts had only tables with figures, while in Tepe Yahya, they also contained graphical representations. The invention of a form of bookkeeping using clay tokens was a huge leap. During the 1st millennium BCE, commerce and business expanded, as did the role of the accountant. Phoenicians invented a phonetic alphabet for bookkeeping purposes. An individual in ancient Egypt held the title “comptroller of the scribes”.
After 550 BCE, the Achaemenians Cyrus, Darius, Cambysus and Xerxes perfected a new form of semiotic narrative to excuse (whitewash) extension of class and power differentiation and separation, and enhance the empowerment of a predatory, grasping elite. Ritual forms to placate the deprived masses, allow empire building and lavish entitlement for a hereditary few were perfected. This required intermediary levels of managers, overseers, officers and bureaucrats who of necessity had to believe in and support the system exploiting them and the serfs and slaves they direct, shepherd and lead to slaughter. Emblems of rank and privilege became icons: crowns, robes, scepters, diadems, signet seals, thrones and flags joined images and effigies as not only representations but actual implements of power (well, purportedly, anyway), the real object being the total differentiation of rulers and ruled. Eventually lawyers, doctors, journalists, and business executives became priests in this caste differentiation, with bankers as the real power behind figurehead royalty.
An army needs a command center, tents, footwear, reserve weapons, a commissary and kitchens, quartermasters, and in ancient times livestock (to pull wagons, for food, and to ride into battle). All the organization involved demanded relatively sophisticated trade: stockpiles of weapons and gear, tools, bandages, salt, flags and other insignia… things which would be purchased rather than foraged for. So there must have been bursers, pursers, treasurers, coffers, rudimentary bankers with some expertise in exchange rates, accounting, securities and watch-guards. These might act in an intermediary way between political and military rulers (generals like Pompey, Crassus and Caesar had no reliance on treasurer-bursers, and so things easily got out of hand).
At any rate, there was always someone who did accounts, arranged for purchasing, storing and disbursing according to need, and it wasn’t just supply sergeants. Tabulated planning is a responsibility generals and heads of state delegate to appropriately trained and connected functionaries, who find themselves in positions of considerable power and influence, especially when making arrangements outside of the power structure, as often required. Experience suggests that much of their work involved discretion, secrecy and cunning.
Perhaps the first people to fill these positions came from the ranks of those who first gained expertise in animal breeding (and selling). Also, just perhaps, the first really good animal breeders might have been mountain people who couldn’t as easily replace stock as those on the steppe, savanna or prairie. This is just to imagine why folk from Armenia or Tajikistan might have been able to take Persia from the Assyrians and Babylonians (before 500 BCE). I think descendants of those folk were prominent in the Srivijaya maritime empire, organized the building of Angkor Wat, and contributed to history in other, interesting but seldom acknowledged ways.
In 387 BCE, a Gallic war band of Brennus, king of the Senones (from the SE of what is now France then NE Italy) took Rome and held it for several months. The Romans hadn’t yet perfected the fighting style that later made their legions famous; many scattered at the first charge of wild-haired, bare-chested Galls, who only wanted a bit of fun and removable wealth, quite a lot of which they took away. Had they had something to offer, they might well have gained a lot more.
Suppose various refugees from the new agriculturally-supported cities of the Tigris-Euphrates wandered to mountainous areas – criminals, escaped slaves, young adventurers, elders turned recluses, the unfortunate, deformed, humiliated or angered – where they met livestock breeding nomads of much less limited social and intellectual horizons… These horsemen, shepherds, dog breeders and fighting men might have progressed in ways those in the flood-plain had not, due to their mobility, to necessity, to observation of greater variety, and maybe even through ideas brought by the refugees.
Their stronger livestock, better fed, might well have produced a lot more shit, shit useful as fertilizer, for hotter firing of pottery, for warmth where there was little else to burn. A new pottery glaze was once of quite a lot of value. Not only their livestock would have been bigger than that in the flood-plain; they themselves would have been, and practice in warfare might well have taught them useful techniques. But what they really needed, and apparently got, was a “fifth column” – refugees to reinsert into the farming and urban society they came to lust to conquer.
To do better than Brennus’ band, though, they needed to stay, and to manage that they needed to offer something. Too offer more, offer improvements, hope, variety and confidence. These cannot be forced. But better ideas for defense, savvy policing, successful trade, entertainments and pageantry, even clothing, might well have been (at least somewhat, sometimes) possible. Advancement opportunities through new occupations (smithing, marketing, performing, sewing, building and maintenance, rodent killing, tax accounting, overseeing, bucket and wheel manufacture…) could have been suggested by returnees even before military victory, making for more permanent conquest. But instead of the ‘more’ anticipated, they got another kind of more.
With the new “narrative” (as modern academics like to call it) and anticipation of more opportunity, they got more taxes, more mandatory military service, more training to subservience, homogeneity and acquiescence, more regimentation under and even more lavishly pampered elite, more worries, sorrows and headaches, more law, more fear.
With more promise, more mirage and then disillusion – eventually leading to a new invasion by a new order of barbarians promoting then establishing new ideals, greater glories, a better future. With resultant further distancing from that horrible, animalistic, uncivilized hunter-gatherer Garden of Eden. But hey, one now had shiny tokens of somewhat more durability than unprocessed, unpackaged food…
For as long as we’ve had records of social interactions, we’ve had evidence of petty despots, petty tyrannies, injustices and excesses. These might be within small family units in unimportant villages, by unusually strong and skilled warriors or by petty bureaucrats. Once it was most often royalty, now it is perhaps more often elite bankers, members of uniformed services or even elected officials.
Cyrus the Great, or Cyrus II of Persia (in Old Perisan Kourosh or Khorvash; ~576 – July 529 BCE), was the founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, first ruled in Anshan, then conquered the Medes and then the Babylonian Empire. His “Cyrus Cylinder” is considered to be the first declaration of human rights. He was the first ruler whose name was suffixed with the words the Great (Vazraka in Old Persian), a title adopted by many others after him. Alexander the Great overthrew the Achaemenid dynasty two centuries after the death of Cyrus.
Cyrus’s notions of human rights influenced Thomas Jefferson and the US Constitution. The “Cyrus Cylinder” decreed religious tolerance, and end to slavery, freedom of choice of profession, and expansion of the empire. The cylinder, along with Biblical and other historical statements, substantiates the idea that Cyrus allowed the nations he conquered to practice their various religious beliefs - an unprecedented tolerance. He assisted captive peoples, including Jews, to return to their lands of origin, giving grants both from the Imperial treasury and also from his own personal fortune. In the Bible, he is known as Koresh - mentioned twenty-two times in the Old Testament Book of Isaiah, where he is unconditionally praised.
Promising religious freedom and human rights, as Cyrus did, was just part of a Big Lie. For government to ‘return’ something it took away is hardly largesse, especially when it makes things easier for government, instead of more difficult. “Freedom” given to bolster power is hardly that, just a bad image or caricature of it.
When Cyrus defeated the Babylonians, he became “king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four sides of the world.” He incorporated sub-kingdoms, including Syria and Palestine, into his empire, the largest the world had seen. At the end of his rule, the Achaemenid Empire stretched from Asia Minor and Judah to the Indus River. A large super-state of many dozens of countries, races, and languages, under him it ruled by the single administration of a central government. Centuries later, the administrative techniques created by Cyrus and his successors were adopted by the Greeks and Romans. Modernized versions of his administrative divisions remain in use.
After Cyrus’ death, his son eldest son, Cambyses II, succeeded him as king of Persia. Cambyses continued his father's policy of expansion, capturing Egypt, but then died in a sandstorm, marching on Libya, after only seven years of rule. An impostor named Gaumata became the sole ruler of Persia for seven months, until killed by Darius, a grandson of Arsames, who ruled Persia before Cyrus’ rise.
Chakravartin (Sanskrit cakravartin, Pali cakkavattin) refers to an ideal universal ruler who rules ethically and benevolently over the entire world, it’s chariot “rolling everywhere without obstruction”. The devarāja cult grew from it, or at any rate is closely related. It taught of monarchs as divine universal rulers, manifestations of Shiva or Vishnu. Possessed of transcendental qualities, the king is the living god on earth. The concept gained its elaborate manifestations in ancient Java and Cambodia. Monuments like Prambanan, Borobudur and Angkor Thom and Angkor Wat were erected to celebrate the king’s divine rule on earth. The devaraja cult of Jayavarman II associated the king with Shiva, whose divine essence was represented by a phallic idol housed in a mountain temple. The king was deified in an elaborate and mystical ceremony, in which the divine essence of kingship was conferred on the ruler through the agency of that linga. The safeguarding of the linga became bound up with the security of the kingdom, and the great temple architecture of the Khmer period attests to the importance attached to the belief.
The devaraja concept enables a monarch to claim divine authority, ensuring political legitimacy to manage the social order and its economic and religious aspects. It also exalts the king as a living god, thus demanding the utmost service and devotion of his people. It also enabled the king to embark on large scale public works and grand projects, by mobilizing their people to create and maintain elaborate irrigation systems for agriculture, and to construct grand monuments and temples.
Jayavarman II is widely regarded as the king that set the foundations of Angkor, beginning with a consecration ritual in 802 on sacred Mount Mahendraparvata, now known as Phnom Kulen, to celebrate the independence of Kambuja from Javanese dominion (that of the “neighboring Chams”, or chvea – or perhaps of their Srivijarian rulers). At that ceremony Prince Jayavarman II was proclaimed a universal monarch (Kamraten jagad ta Raja in Cambodian), or chakravartin, Lord of the Universe.
No inscriptions authored by Jayavarman have been found, but he is mentioned in some written long after his death. He appears to have been of aristocratic birth. “For the prosperity of the people in this perfectly pure royal race, great lotus which no longer has a stalk, he rose like a new flower,” declares one inscription.
At Angkor Wat, built under Suryavarman II in the early 1100s CE, one finds bas-relief depictions of the Ramayana/Ramakein/Reamker epic from northeast India, about a perfect king, Rama of Ayodhaya. Maybe this was depicted in Ayutthaya, but still is at Wat Po (Wat Phra Jerubon, 152 depictions in stone) and Wat Pra Kaeo (178 scenes painted in vivid color), both in the City of Angels, Bangkok.
The Ramayana is a marvelous exhibition of elitist propaganda which clarifies what lisping, bejeweled Aristotle taught Alexander son of Phillip: that a ruler must be better in all ways than everyone else. One shudders at thinking how things might have been for leadership, and for the rest of us without these glorious educational exemplars. Rama knew that all who seek asylum must be given protection, that victory without honor isn’t victory at all, and learned that honors, especially kingship, must not be accepted lightly. He exemplifies strength, humility, reverence, loyalty, duty, charity, discipline, generosity, honesty, honor and fortitude, he was valorous and magnanimous, prudent and merciful. He surely inspired many, perhaps even more than Aristotle inspired Alexander. How Sita felt as she jumped to immolate herself… well, surely she understood that Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion, that sacrifices must be made and that the state comes first. Anyway, the flames turned to flowers at her proximity. And anyway, that was just an illusion of the perfect wife, that so many animals sacrificed their lives for (according to the Kurma Purana)…
In the 350 years between the rise of Cyrus II and that of Jayavarman II, “universal rule” centered in Persia, Rome and Constantinople. Egypt had been great until then, but after Cleopatra VII (60-30 BCE) was for almost two millennia a colony. India had empire, as did China, but they were racially hidebound, except in terms, sometimes, of trade. Srivijaya, which seems to have somehow gained from Phoenician experience, didn’t conquer or administrate outsiders. But Jayavarman did – he seized an opening, a rare opportunity to assert divinity. Nothing like the Islamic leadership which for the most part dropped that pretense, but involving a hereditary caste of entirely superior beings (socially, anyway, if not biologically) responsible for all that was good (purportedly). It worked for a while: about four centuries. Then the devaraja god-king, overthrown by Thais, moved to Phnom Penh (1434) while much of the court was forced to Ayutthaya, which adopted much of that convention, tradition and observance. About 1500 CE Ayutthaya became a great trading center and the biggest city in the world, a reality now for the most part forgotten, although that its size and wealth compared favorably to that of the Paris of Louis XIV under King Narai (1656–88) has not.
Pressures from other ‘universal rulers’ – Javanese, Mongols, Burmese, maybe Mughals (though I think not directly) and eventually the Dutch VOC in Indonesia, Catholics of various stripe, the British East India Company, “Western” drug merchants, “overseas” Chinese, and French colonialists all constrained Ayutthaya and its successor capitol KrungThepMahanakorn (Bangkok), limiting horizons. But Jayavarman and his successors made a good stab at empire (“universal” or not) with influence remaining today.
Early Roman Emperors used the title princeps (first citizen), and were leaders of a Republic. After Diocletian took power in 284, senate ratification was but a useless formality. But in 285 Diocletian took on a co-emperor, Maximian. In 286 Maximian took the title of Augustus (after the first emperor, who’d resolutely refused recognition as a monarch, despite changing his name from Octavian to one meaning “sacred” or “revered”). In inscriptions, Diocletian and his cohorts are referred to as “restorers of the whole world” who succeeded in “defeating the nations of the barbarians, and confirming the tranquility of their world”. A new style of ceremony was developed, emphasizing the distinction of the emperor from all other persons. The quasi-republican ideals of Augustus’ were abandoned; Diocletian wore a gold crown and forbade the use of purple cloth to any but emperors. His subjects had to prostrate themselves in his presence (adoratio); the more fortunate were allowed to kiss the hem of his robe. Circuses and basilicas were designed to keep the face of the emperor perpetually in view. The emperor, a figure of transcendent authority, beyond all but power and glory, had his every appearance stage-managed. This adoration led to eventual deification or apotheosis. This type of honor, or Imperial Cult, dated back to Alexander of Macedon, who considered himself not the son of Phillip II but of Zeus. Emperor Augustus was treated as a deity during his reign; altars and temples were built to honor him, although none in Rome itself (at least while he lived). Although he may have considered himself the son of a god, he never permitted himself to be called a god. Upon his death, the Senate would deify him - as would happen to many who followed after. Caligula and Nero deemed themselves gods while still alive, but were considered too odious to maintain the honor after death.
The Western Roman Empire collapsed in the late 5th century, but in the east, emperors continued to rule from Constantinople (‘New Rome’); these are called “Byzantine emperors” but didn’t use that title, calling themselves “Emperor (or King) of the Romans” (βασιλεύς) until their city fell to Ottoman Muslims in 1453. Basileus and megas basileus had been used by Alexander and successors in Ptolemaic Egypt, in Asia (e.g. the Seleucid Empire, the Pergamon and by non-Greek, but Greek-influenced states like the Pontus) and Macedon. The feminine counterpart is basilissa (queen), meaning both queen regent (like Cleopatra VII) and queen consort. By the 4th century basileus was used officially only for the two rulers considered equals to the Roman Emperor: the Sassanid Persian Shahanshah (‘king of kings’), and to a lesser degree the King of Axum, who was rather peripheral. Consequently, the title acquired the connotation of “emperor”; barbarian kings of the “Dark Ages” were but rēx or rēgas, hellenized forms of the Latin title rex, king.
Islam had caliphates with caliphs, persons considered a successors to the Islamic Prophet Muhammad (Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullah). They were purportedly leaders of the entire Islamic community, but the Shi’a/Sunni split limited that reality. The caliphates developed into multi-ethnic trans-national empires including the Rashidun Caliphate (632–661), the Umayyad Caliphate (centered in Damascus, 661–750), the Abbasid Caliphate (Shi’i tolerant, Baghdad, 750 to the Mongol sacking of 1258 but continuing in Egypt to 1520), and the Ottoman Caliphate (which established the Ottoman Empire in 1517). Other hereditary caliphates existed with much lesser importance. The term caliph derives from the Arabic word khalīfah (خَليفة), which means “successor”, “steward”, or “deputy” and was long considered a shortening of Khalifat Rasul Allah (“successor of the messenger of God”) until studies of pre-Islamic texts showed that the original meaning of the phrase was “successor selected by God.” The first caliphate, the Rashidun Caliphate, was established right after Muhammad’s death in 632; four Rashidun caliphs, chosen through shura, a process of community consultation that some consider to be an early form of Islamic democracy, directly succeeded Muhammad. The fourth caliph, Ali, who, unlike the prior three, was from the same clan as Muhammad, is considered by Shias to be the first rightful caliph and Iman, after Muhammad. A civil war between supporters of Ali and supporters of the assassinated previous caliph led to the establishment of the Umayyad Caliphate, in 661. The Abbasid Caliphate was established in 750.
Sunnis hold that a caliph should be elected by Muslims or their representatives; Shiites that a caliph should be an Imam chosen by God from Muhammad’s direct descendants. In simpler terms, the Sunni majority favor election while the Shia minority favor bloodline. Ayatollahs are another thing, Iranian religious leaders, from a term for “reflection of God” “sign of God” and not heads of state – at least until the overthrow of the Shah and initiation of the Iranian Islamic republic, the political head of which is a non-religious leader, the president. Most Shi’is await the 12th Imam while ‘temporarily’ relying on Mujtahid scholars who might become marja-e taqlid mullahs, hojjat-ol Islam, ayatollah and even ayatollah al-uzma – an elaborate hierarchy not matched within Sunni Islam.
These divine rulers have never been just kings of us (as in ‘us vs them’), but of all, (in a conditional, optimistic kind of way) - kinda like the USA being the “world’s policeman” – no?
The Normans, Aztecs and Mughals were also invaders who told the conquered what to believe. Might didn’t just make right, but proved, or better yet, was an aspect of, divine guidance. They were doing God’s will. Many still accept this attitude. Others have learned to see it differently.
“I’ll let you worship freely as long as you recognize that that is a privilege that comes from ME, the God-King Universal Ruler from whom all good things come (including your privilege to be silly).
Less expensive force needed to be exerted, chances for rebellion were lessened, need for duplicity by many folk eliminated while potential threats to public order became less hidden. It’s win-win! But the Big Guy wins the most, mostly for seeming to have done something he didn’t really do (as he has NOT really relinquished control).
Control is only given up, or lost, after it is asserted too much, as controllers are only human (assertions to the contrary notwithstanding) and when cracks begin to show sharks begin to tear flesh. It is ALWAYS the way.
Given that humans go power-mad, abuse authority and forget so much so easily, it’s naieve at best to think that strength brings happiness. Nothing is as dangerous as unfulfilled demigods who can’t even remember how all that they’ve gotten was supposed to be fulfilling, and no longer have any idea of what they want.
Early empire seems to have led to trade without empire (promulgated by the Phoenicians) and then to empire with mass slavery and inevitable power-collapse such as seems to be happening now. Our notional investment communities with their ‘limited liability’ seem to do something I call “money farming” wherein which earnings of the many can be harvested by the few through manipulation of gullibility (aka fashion, materialistic competitiveness, or short-sighted greed: the kind of thing that leads to lack of co-operation and sharing and indulgence in cosmetic surgery, over-priced printer ink, pools and hot-tubs, ‘play-stations’, pleasure boats, private airplanes, world travel, hired friends, security systems, expensive perfumes, exercise equipment, diet fads and fancy hats and sunglasses – feelings of need for which far too many of us slavishly adhere to).
Money having become firmly god-king, or at least the empowering tokens of god-kings, we now seem to be finding it suddenly less accessible or rewarding, more distant and confusing. But take comfort in this: Pharaohs notwithstanding, separation between a class of the deified and the class of the slaving produces gross instability. Social collapse would cause much agony and death, but a phoenix arising from ashes might not take many generations.