Unit 1 Terms

1.Fertile Crescent - An arc of rich farmland in Southwest Asia, between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea.

2.Mesopotamia - An ancient region in west Asia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, now part of Iraq.

3.City- state – A city and its surrounding lands functioning as an independent political unit.

4.Dynasty – A series of rulers from a single family.

5. Cultural diffusion – The spreading of ideas or products from one culture to another.

6.Polytheism – A doctrine of or belief in more than one god or in many gods.

7. Empire – A political unit in which a number of peoples or countries are controlled by a single ruler.

8.Hammurabi - 18th century B.C. or earlier, king of Babylonia.

9.Delta – A marshy region formed by deposits of silt at the mouth of a river.

10.Pharaoh – a title of an ancient Egyptian king.

11.Theocracy – a form of government in which God or a deity is recognized as the supreme civil ruler, the God's or deity's laws being interpreted by the ecclesiastical authorities.

12.Pyramid – a quadrilateral masonry mass having smooth, steeply sloping sides meeting at an apex, used as a tomb.

13.Mummification – to make (a dead body) into a mummy, as by embalming and drying.

14.Hieroglyphics – designating or pertaining to a pictographic script, particularly that of the ancient Egyptians, in which many of the symbols are conventionalized, recognizable pictures of the things represented.

15.Papyrus – an ancient document, manuscript, or scroll written on this material.

16.Hyksos – a nomadic people who conquered and ruled ancient Egypt between the 13th and 18th dynasties, c1700–1580 b.c.: believed to have been a Semitic people that originally migrated into Egypt from Asia.

17.New Kingdom – the period in the history of ancient Egypt, 1580–1085 b.c.,
comprising the 18th to 20th dynasties, characterized by the predominance of Thebes.

18.Hatshepsut – 1495–75 B.C., queen of Egypt.

19.Thutmose III – 1475 b.c., Egyptian ruler: conqueror of the Middle East.

20.Nubia – a region in S Egypt and the Sudan, N of Khartoum, extending from the Nile to the Red Sea.

21.Ramses II – 1292–1225 b.c., king of ancient Egypt.

22.Kush –an area mentioned in the Bible, sometimes identified with Upper Egypt.

23.Piankhi – was the hereditary ruler of the kingdom of Cush on the Upper Nile in what is now the northern Sudan.

24.Meroe – a ruined city in Sudan, on the Nile, NE of Khartoum: a capital of ancient Ethiopia that was destroyed

25.Palestine – Also called holy land. Biblical name, Cannaan an ancient country.

26.Torah – the Pentateuch, being the first of the three Jewish divisions of the Old Testament.

27.Abraham – the first of the great Biblical patriarchs, father of Isaac, and traditional founder of the ancient Hebrew nation.

28.Monotheism – The doctrine or belief that there is only one God.

29.Covenant – an agreement, usually formal, between two or more persons to do or not do something specified.

30.Moses – the Hebrew prophet who led the Israelites out of Egypt and delivered the Law during their years of wandering in the wilderness.

31.Judah – the Biblical kingdom of the Hebrews in S Palestine, including the tribes of Judah and Benjamin.

32.Phoenicians – a native or inhabitant of Phoenicia.

33.Monsoon – the seasonal wind of the Indian Ocean and southern Asia, blowing from the southwest in summer and from the northeast in winter.

34.Harappan Civilization – This culture existed along the Indus River in present day Pakistan.

35.Reincarnation – the belief that the soul, upon death of the body, comes back to earth in another body or form.

36.Karma – Hinduism, Buddhism. action, seen as bringing upon oneself inevitable results, good or bad, either in this life or in a reincarnation.

37.Siddhartha Gautama – Was given the name buddah (the awakening) and also was the son of a Nepalese Rajah.

38.Enlightenment – the state of being enlightened.

39.Nirvana – a place or state characterized by freedom from or oblivion to pain, worry, and the external world.

40.Mandate of heaven – a political theory of ancient China in which those in power were given the right to rule from a divine source.

41.Feudalism – the feudal system, or its principles and practices.

42.Confucius – Chinese philosopher and teacher.

43.Filial piety – in Confucian thought, one of the virtues to be cultivated, a love and respect for one's parents and ancestors.

44.Bureaucracy – government by many bureaus, administrators, and petty officials.

45.Daoism – philosophical system developed by Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu advocating a simple honest life and noninterference with the course of natural events.

46.Legalism – strict adherence, or the principle of strict adherence, to law or prescription, especially to the letter rather than the spirit.

47.I Ching – an ancient Chinese book of divination, in which 64 pairs of trigrams are shown with various interpretations.

48.Yin and yang – ) two principles, one negative, dark, and feminine (yin), and one positive, bright, and masculine (yang), whose interaction influences the destinies of creatures and things.

49.Qin Dynasty – the Chinese dynasty (from 246 BC to 206 BC) that established the first centralized imperial government and built much of the Great Wall

50.Autocracy – government in which one person has uncontrolled or unlimited authority over others; the government or power of an absolute monarch.

51.Allah – the Supreme Being; God.

52.Muhammad – founder of Islam

53.Islam – the religious faith of Muslims, based on the words and religious system founded by the prophet Muhammad and taught by the Koran, the basic principle of which is absolute submission to a unique and personal god, Allah.

54.Hijrah – the flight of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina to escape persecution a.d. 622: regarded as the beginning of the Muslim Era.

55.Mosque – a Muslim temple or place of public worship.

56.Hajj – the pilgrimage to Mecca, which every adult Muslim is supposed to make at least once in his or her lifetime: the fifth of the Pillars of Islam.

57.Qur’an – the sacred text of Islam, divided into 114 chapters, or suras: revered as the word of God, dictated to Muhammad by the archangel Gabriel, and accepted as the foundation of Islamic law, religion, culture, and politics.