Ancient Lebanon

The area now known as Lebanon first appeared in recorded history around 3000 B.C. as a group of coastal cities and a heavily forested hinterland. The early inhabitants, Canaanites lived in the narrow East-Mediterranean coast and the parallel strip mountains of Lebanon.

Each of the coastal cities was an independent kingdom noted for the special activities of its inhabitants. Tyre and Sidon were important maritime and trade centers; Gubla (later known as Byblos and now as Jubayl) and Berytus (present-day Beirut) were trade and religious centers.

Around 2800 BC Canaanites traded cedar timber, olive oil and wine from Byblos for metals and ivory from Egypt.

The study led by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in England shows that most of the Lebanese ancestry is Phoenician, a maritime culture that flourished for almost 3000 years (c. 3200–539 BC).

It was said that the links go further back to the Canaanites, the historic and biblical people – who include the Phoenician people. They have invented the first alphabet where the Latin alphabet derives from. Also, the Phoenicians were among the first people that produced wine.

The Phoenicians mastered the art of navigation and dominated the Mediterranean Sea trade for over 500 years.

This civilization has left a huge impact in Lebanon. Famous for building cities, the Phoenicians have left an architectural heritage wherever they went.

Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Phoenician cities in the 4th century BCE meant that the Levant came under Hellenistic rule. In Lebanon, philosophy flourished under the influence of the Greeks. Diodoros of Tyre, a member of the Peripatetic school, is a well-known philosopher.

In 64 BC Roman general Pompey added Seleucid Syria and Lebanon to the Roman Empire. Lebanon was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century and remained under its rule for the next 400 years. Lebanon became a republic in 1926 and achieved independence in 1943.
Ancient Lebanon

Rainbow science in history

Rainbow as a scientific problem appears to have been treated first by Aristotle in the history of optics.

As long ago as in the 3rd-2nd centuries BC, Alexander of Aphrodisias tried to describe the rainbow as a phenomenon involving light and colour; he is regarded as the discoverer of the darker region between the primary and the secondary rainbows.

Aristotle (383-322 BC) was the first one to give a complete description of the optical phenomenon, in Book III of his Meteorology. He proposed that the rainbow is actually an unusual kind of reflection of sunlight from clouds. The light is reflected at a fixed angle. giving rise to a circular cone of "rainbow rays. " In the opinion of Aristotle the rainbow comes into existence in a hemisphere, the centre of which is the observer’s eye and the base of which is the horizontal line,

Ibn al-Haytham (965-1039) treated the formation of rainbow in an article called Maqala fi al-Hala wa qaws quzah. In this article he explained the formation of rainbow as an image, which forms at a concave mirror. If the rays of light coming from a farther light source reflect to any point on axis of the concave mirror, they form concentric circles in that point. When it is supposed that the sun as a farther light source, the eye of viewer as a point on the axis of mirror and a cloud as a reflecting surface, then it can be observed the concentric circles are forming on the axis.

The Persian astronomer and mathematician Qutb Al-Dı ̄n al-Shira ̄zı ̄ (1236–1311) and his pupil al-Fa ̄risı ̄, also known as Kama ̄l al-Dı ̄n (1260–1320), tried to give a first mathematical explanation of the rainbow, which was quite accurate for its age, since it was based on the phenomenon of refraction as described in the Book of Optics by Alhazen.

The angle formed by the rainbow rays and the incident sunlight was first measured in 1266 by Roger Bacon. He measured an angle of about 42 degrees; the secondary bow is about eight degrees higher in the sky.

In 1304 the German monk Theodoric of Freiberg rejected Aristot­le's hypothesis that the rainbow results from collective reflection by the rain­drops in a cloud. He suggested instead that each drop is individually capable of producing a rainbow. Moreover, he test­ed this conjecture in experiments with a magnified raindrop: a spherical flask filled with water. He was able to trace the path followed by the light rays that make up the rainbow.

Kama ̄l al-Dı ̄n’s experiments were repeated by Descartes (1596-1650) when he got interested in rainbow. He made some experiments in the light of the sun, with glassy sphere full of water. Standing on foot and directing his back to the sun, he watched through a hole in the glassy sphere, shaking it upward and downward, he finally discovered brightness at the bottom of the sphere. Kama ̄l al-Dı ̄n made similar experiments and obtained the same results as Descartes, many years before him.

In the 17thcentury the rainbow became a strictly physical phenomenon, the object of rigorous investigations according to the law of reflection and refraction.

Rainbow science in history 

Mesopotamia

In Western mythology and religious tradition, the land of Mesopotamia in the ancient period was a land of lush vegetation, abundant wildlife, and copious if unpredictable water resources. As such, at a very early date it attracted people from neighboring, but less hospitable areas. By 6000 B.C., Mesopotamia had been settled, chiefly by migrants from the Turkish and Iranian highlands.

Around 4000 B.C., groups of people began developed so many new ideas that the area has been called the “cradle of civilization.”

Mesopotamia was one of the oldest and broadest cradles of civilization. Unlike Egypt, which was a relatively unified state, it was the site of many different city-states, kingdoms, and empires, frequently at odds with one another, and replacing one another as the locus of power—Akkad, Ur, Babylon, the Kassites, Isin, Assyria—and then tending into the more “modern” Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian, and Sassanian Dynasties.

The people who settled in southern Mesopotamia about 3500 B.C. were a short, stocky, black-haired people called Sumerians (su ̄ mer’ e ̄ uhnz). Their area of Mesopotamia was known as Sumer (su ̄’ mu ̆ hr).

The Greek name Mesopotamia means “land between the rivers.” The Ro-mans used this term for an area that they controlled only briefly (between115 and 117 A.D.)—the land between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, from the south Anatolian Mountains ranges to the Persian Gulf.

In 2340 BC Sargon (a Sumerian in the city of Kish) overthrows the Sumerian king of Nippur. Sargon's new kingdom is called Akkad and Sargon extends his kingdom to Syria.

Mesopotamia

Sumerians and cuneiform script

Writing was invented in order to record business activities in the early Near East. The Sumerians developed a form of pictograph writing that used word pictures like bird, fish, ox of grain etc, around 4000-3500 BC.

The end of the wooden or reed stylus, which struck the clay first, made a wider mark than the shaft, and so came into being the typical wedge-shape impression after which this writing system became known – cuneiform (from the Latin word cuneus meaning wedge).

After the 3rd millennium BC it took a conventional form of linear cuneiform drawings and was written from left to right.

The writing system invented by the Sumerians was soon taken over by other peoples and languages: Aramaic, Persian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Eblaite, Elamite, Hittite, and Hurrian as well as many localized dialects such as the Canaanite Akkadian of the Amarna letters.

Cuneiform, as the script for the Sumerian and Akkadian languages, became the lingua franca of most of the ancient Near Eastern world from before 3000 BC until it was superseded by the alphabetic Aramaic in the seventh to sixth centuries BC.
Sumerians and cuneiform script

Time keeping device developed by ancient Egyptian

Understand the time of day and the seasons was crucial for prehistoric man’s ability to comprehend on for survivals. Once agriculture was invented, the time to plant and harvest could only be predicted by following the changing rhythms of the universe from season to season.

The ancient Egyptians recorded their dates according to the regnal year of the reigning king. So when a new king entered the throne, they started counting ten years again from one.

The ancient Egyptians were the first to introduce the concept of twenty-four hours in a day. Night and day were both divided into twelve hours. Prior to 127 BC, the length of the hours varied depending on the season. Early time keeping devices and calendars depended on the movement of the Sun and Moon.

Around 3500 BC, one of the first timekeeping devices, the gnomon is developed in ancient Egypt.
A gnomon is composed of a vertical stick that casts a shadow on the ground or a stone base when left in the sunlight. Scholars estimate the time by looking at the position of the shadow.

The gnomon is a precursor to the sundial. A sundial is a device for measuring the hour of a day. In general, a sundial consists of the gnomon that is also called the style and the surface engraved with the timescale for indicating the time of a day.

The shadow of the gnomon is projected on the surface. When the sun moves in the sky, the corresponding gnomon’s shadow moves in the surface. According to the position of the gnomon’s shadow, the hour of a day is identified.

And by 1500 BC, in Egypt, the sticks were replaced with monumental decorated spires called obelisks, which were built in city centers.
Time keeping device developed by ancient Egyptian

Bartering in ancient Egypt

In early Egypt, as in other early societies people were every self-sufficient. Each family provided its own food, shelter and clothing. Then, as Egyptian civilization developed, people started to specialize. Money did not exist in ancient Egypt. Instead of making purchases the Egyptians traded their goods and services. This is called bartering

Most of of the trading between Egyptians simply involved swapping one object for another.

Wages in ancient Egypt were paid in food and clothing. Farm workers received wheat and barley in payment for their work. They could exchange a bag of grain to get pottery from a craftsman or clothing from a weaver.

Coins were not used in ancient Egypt until about 500 BC.  Before that time, there existed a system in which metals such as gold were given values based on their weight.

This unit of weight was called a ‘deben’. Deben was not used to buy things, Instead, it was used to set the value of goods and services for bartering.
Bartering in ancient Egypt

Abu Simbel temples

The great temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel and the neighborhood temple built to his beloved wide Nefertari are among the most imposing structures in the world.

Ramses II, the greatest of Egypt’s pharaoh ruled for 66 years beginning in 1279 BC. He was best remembered for what he left behind.

He also left more monuments to himself that did any other pharaoh. His grandest monument was the Great Temple at Abu Simbel in southern Egypt. It was built into cliff along the Nile River.

Ramses wanted to restore Egypt’s glory. He regained territory that had been lost after other nations conquered Egypt.

Constructing the temples on a mountain overlooking the Nile took 30 years. At the front of the main temple which is 100 feet tall, there were four 66-foot tall statues of Ramses.

Egyptians worshipped many Gods. Ramses’ temple was dedicated to the sun god. The temple was but to let sunlight reach 160 feet inside the temple to shine on the statues on two days each year, Ramses’s birthday and the day he was crowned king.
Abu Simbel temples

Badarian culture in Egypt

The prehistory of Egypt is divided into five periods, known as
*Tasian
*Badarian
*Amratean
*Gerzean
*Semainian

The names being taken from the villages near which the principle finds were first identified. When the Badarian culture was discovered, it was found to precede the Amretean.

It was called Badarian because it was identified as al-Badari, near the town of Sohaq in Middle Egypt. It appeared at least by 4400-4000 BC, and perhaps even earlier.

Badarian settlements appear to have been impermanent, but remains of larger more enduring settlements on natural levees on the banks of the Nile may have been discovered by accumulated silt or scoured away by the river.

There are evidence from Badarian settlements shows that the economy of the culture was primarily based on agriculture and husbandry. Among the contents of storage facilities, wheat, barley, lentils and tubers have been found.

Fishing was certainly very important and they fished the Nile extensively. The plastic arts began to be practiced, most notably in human figurine. Badarian pottery features exceptional thinness of its walls, unequaled in subsequent of Egyptians history.

A number of circular constructions at Hammamiya, previously identified as houses, most probably represent small animal enclosures.

The typical Badarian grave was an oval or rectangular pit roofed over with sticks or matting. Graves contained one or more bodies, loosely contracted on their left side, head south.

The body was covered with mats or hides and food and other offerings were place in the graves.
Badarian culture in Egypt

Ancient history of Mesopotamia

The name ‘Mesopotamia’ is from Greek, ‘between the rivers’. It was coined by the Romans for the area between the Euphrates and the Tigris, which for some centuries was Rome’s easternmost province.

In contemporary usage Mesopotamia has acquired a broader meaning, referring not just to the land between the two main rivers but also to their tributaries and valleys, so describing an area that includes not only Iraq but also eastern Syria and south-eastern Turkey.

About 30,000 years ago, groups of Neanderthalers preferred to roam in areas where the climate supported a wide variety of game and edible plants and fruits so a sojourn could be e extended to the maximum length of time.

They lived by hunting wild goats, sheep, cattle and boar, deer, bear, fox and other animals as well as by collecting turtles, molluscs, snails and doubtlessly other edible substances as well.

From about 10,000 BC onward there are hints that the Near East was developing differently from neighboring regions. According to DNA analysis, 2000 years earlier modern man had found his way from East Africa to the Near East, where he encountered Neanderthalers.

Though they lived side by side for long periods, their coexistence ended in total victory for modern man.

In the Neolithic period (10,000 – 6,000 BC) other areas on the lee side of mountain ridges, in Syria and Anatolia became inhabited and the first densely occupied settlements with permanent architecture appeared.

The growing of crops on a regular basis gave rises to more permanent settlements, which historians refer to as Neolithic farming villagers or towns. One of the oldest and most extensive agricultural villages was Catal Huyuk, located in modern-day Turkey.

Its walls enclosed 32 acres, and its population probably reached six thousand inhabitants during its high point from 6700 to 5700 BC.

During the height of the Uruk period (3400-3200 BC), southern Mesopotamia had close economic links to northern and eastern neighboring regions.

The first unified state was that founded by Sargon of Akkad around 2350 BC. The Akkad dynasty was the first experiment with centralization; after it demise the country reverted to the particularism of independent city-sates.
Ancient history of Mesopotamia

Protodynastic in Egypt (3200 – 3050 BC)

The term protodynastic was invented to describe the crucial period encompassing the late Predynastic and the beginning of the Early Dynastic period.

Protodynastic period correspond in Egypt to what is known as Dynastic 0, a time when various princes of Upper Egypt, from Irj-Ho and Scorpion to Narmer, as competing for control of the territory.

The ‘Predynastic’ was the last few hundred years of the long prehistoric period in the Nile Valley, while ‘Early Dynastic’ refers to the first few centuries of the dynastic or pharaoh period.

Protodynastic or Naqada II period was one of rapid social, technological and artistic development that was characterized by the introduction of writing, specialized production, importation on a large scale and the rose of kingship.

It is the last phase of the Naqada culture of ancient Egyptian prehistory, dating approximately from 3200 to 3000 BC. It is the period during which the process of state formation, which had begun to take place in Naqada II.

Although the Naqada II cultures spread throughout Egypt as a single unified culture, the country remained under the rule of several rival regional kings who controlled the resources of smaller regional states. Toward the end of the Naqada II period, the power centers engaged on a series of conflicts.

Around 3050 BC, one of the those leaders Narmer, the last king of Dynasty O and founder of Dynasty I, unified Egypt, thus completing the expansion of the southern Naqada culture into Lower Egypt.
Protodynastic in Egypt (3200 – 3050 BC)

History of Suez Canal

The first canal of the pharaoh led from the Red Sea north and west to an ancient, now dry-branch of the Nile River, which flowed into the Mediterranean Sea.

It has been estimated as being built in the reign of the Egyptian Pharaoh Sestostris I who died in 1926 BC.

This canal was still in use during the reign of Seti I in 1290 BC. It was well-travelled by Egyptians traders for more than 1000 years, but eventually strong desert winds piles sand in the canal and it fell into disuse.

The Pharaoh Necho of the XXVIth dynasty, who ruled Egypt between 609 and 593 BC started to build a new canal from the Pelusiac branch of the Nile through the way of Wadi Tumulat, a natural depression running east and west between the Nile Delta and perpendicular to the Isthmus of Suez.

In the early 1850s the French diplomat and engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps revived earlier French plans to build a canal through the Isthmus of Suez.

He read about the discovery of traces of the ancient canal. It sparked in him to desire to create a modern canal that would provide a direct connection between East and West.

In November 1854, De Lesseps presented his plan to Mohammed Said, Egyptian viceroy. Mohammed Said gave a French company the right to build a canal across Suez. He gave the company a ninety-nine year charter to run the canal.

In April 1859, after having raised only half of the estimated $40 million he needed, the constructions began. 

On 26 July 1956, Gamal Nasser of Egypt declared that the Egyptian would nationalized and run the Suez Canal which a British-French investment company owned.
History of Suez Canal

Early history of Damascus

Carbon-14 dating at Tell Ramad, on the outskirts of Damascus, suggests that the site may have been occupied since the second half of the seventh millennium BC, possibly around 6300 BC.

First century historian Joseph ben Matityahu or Josephus attributed the founding of Damascus to Uz, one of the sons of Aram, son of Shem, son of Noah.

The first reference to the town name as ‘ta-ms-qu’ is on a wall of the Karnak Temple in Luxor in an inscription of Thutmose II. The same spelling occurs in a list of Amenophis II from the fourteenth century. 

‘Dimaski’ or ‘Dimasqa’ appears tree times later in the Tell al-Amarna tablets. The Damascus region, as well as the rest of Syria, became a battleground circa 1260 BC, between the Hittites from the north and the Egyptians from the south.

During the time of Alexander the Great, Damascus was the most important city of Syria and it alone by singular good fortune, almost escaped the ravages of war.

It became a major city of a series of kingdoms during the second and first millennia BC.

Damascus itself was conquered by the fierce chief of Muslim-Arab general Khalid ibn al-Walid in 635 AD. 

Twenty seven years after the capture of the city, Muawiyah the first khalifah of the Umayyad made it the seat of his government and capital of the Arab-Muslim Empire from 661 to 750.
Early history of Damascus

Ancient agriculture in Egypt

Ancient hunters and gatherers moved toward the Nile around 8000 BC as the climate in northern Africa became drier. By about 7000 BC, people had built permanent settlements along the river. Civilization in Egypt grew because of agriculture along the Nile River.

These early farmers, who lived in huts made of poles and sun-dried mud bricks, grew wheat for making bread and barley for brewing beer.

The ancient Egyptians name for their land was Kemet, the ‘black land’ because of the rich black mud left on the rover banks after the midsummer floods receded. The soil in the Nile River Valley was very fertile for farming.

When the flood waters receded in the autumn, crops were sown that grew readily through the warn winter and could be harvested before the next flood.

They used the Nile’s water to irrigate dry land. A network of irrigation canals supplied crops growing farthest away from the river with water.

Life in Egypt improved because Egyptians developed inventions that made the best use of the water from the Nile. They made farming tools to help work the rich soil.

There was also a surplus sufficient to feed other groups of people, such priests and artisans, who were not directly involved in food production, but whose knowledge and skills were highly valued.

They grew wheat, barley, fruits and vegetables. They wore cloth made from the flax they grew. Animals were domesticated for their meat, milk and wool and also trained as beasts iof burden.
Ancient agriculture in Egypt