100 Documents That Changed the World Read online

  The oldest extant version, consisting of bamboo strips found in Guodian, has been dated to about 300 BC; it is held in the Shanghai Museum. Westerners did not begin to learn of the I Ching’s existence until the 18th century and the first complete publication (in Latin) occurred in Germany in the 1830s. Scholars agree it is a composite work that was frequently copied and revised over the course of many centuries.

  The ancient Chinese practice of cleromancy entailed casting lots (usually sticks or stones) to determine divine intent, and the I Ching remains its most sophisticated example. In this case, the divining is done by tossing yarrow stalks or coins, which is called ‘casting the I Ching’. After posing a question and casting, the order they form can be looked up to reveal its cosmological significance. The document offers 64 readings, and each chapter consists of a different six-line hexagram made up of long or short stalks.

  The Hsü hexagram, for example, reveals: ‘Hsü intimates that, with the sincerity which is declared in it, there will be brilliant success. With firmness there will be good fortune; and it will be advantageous to cross the great stream.’ This answer is then open to interpretation.

  Transformation is the central idea behind the I Ching. All living things change through time and I Ching defines change in terms of Yin and Yang. Yin is negative, dark and feminine; Yang is positive, bright, and masculine. The I Ching professes that all change can be understood in terms of the relationship between the two. When they are in balance, there is harmony.

  The I Ching indicates whether a given action will bring good fortune or misfortune, but it is not a fortune-telling book. It provides many basic precepts about life’s vicissitudes such as the following: ‘Before the beginning of great brilliance, there must be chaos. Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish in the crowd.’

  The ancient work also has much to offer in the study of Chinese civilization.

  These bamboo sticks date to around 300 BC and are the oldest extant examples of the I Ching.

  Code of Hammurabi

  (1754 BC)

  A French archaeologist in the former Babylon kingdom unearths an artefact that documents the world’s most ancient yet surprisingly advanced legal code. Many of its provisions reflect a deep commitment to justice under the rule of law.

  A 2.25-meter-high stele of black basalt in the shape of a large index finger once stood in Babylon for all to see. At the top of the volcanic rock was an engraved depiction of the state’s ruling king, Hammurabi, sitting on his throne, receiving the Mesopotamian god of law, justice and salvation, Shamash. And beneath them, the carvers had inscribed long columns of text on both sides of the stone.

  In 1901 a French archaeologist discovered the object in what is now Khuzestan Province, Iran. Conquerors had apparently removed it from Sippar (in present-day Iraq) on the eastern bank of the Euphrates sometime in the 12th century BC. Translation from its ancient Akkadian language revealed that the stone proclaims a comprehensive legal code – the code of Hammurabi – consisting of a lengthy prologue invoking the power of the gods and the king, a long list of laws and an epilogue. ‘LAWS of justice which Hammurabi, the wise king, established,’ the epilogue states. ‘A righteous law, and pious statute did he teach the land. Hammurabi, the protecting king am I.’

  Hammurabi, the sixth Babylonian king, was an able administrator who ruled a multi-tribal and multi-ethnic Mesopotamian empire of walled cities, fertile fields and irrigation canals from about 1792 to 1750 BC. His sophisticated code has been dated to about 1754 BC.

  Nearly half of these 282 laws deal with issues of liability and other business matters; another third address a range of domestic relations such as paternity, inheritance, adultery and incest. But commercial interests often govern domestic affairs. Marriages, for example, are treated as a business arrangement.

  Modern legal scholars are especially interested in the code’s elaborate punishment provisions, as its inclusion of the principle of lex talionis (an eye for an eye) predates Mosaic Law, the Law of Moses, by two centuries or more. The code’s system of scaled punishments adjusts penalties according to grades of slave versus free and other marks of social status.

  The penalties are harsh: a total of 28 crimes, ranging from adultery and witchcraft to robbery and murder, warrant the death penalty. Yet King Hammurabi also claims to seek to protect the weak and to foster justice for all his people. Thus one statute establishes that a judge who has handed down an incorrect decision shall be fined and removed from the bench. Others display the earliest known example of the principle of presumption of innocence – a protection that wouldn’t appear in Western legal codes until much later.

  The original stele found in 1901 is on display at the Louvre in Paris. Additional stones bearing the code are in other museums as well.

  The stele is 2.25 meters tall and depicts a seated King Hammurabi directing Shamash, the Mesopotamian god of law. Beneath this relief are the king’s 282 laws (see detail), which cover 28 crimes that warrant the death penalty, including adultery, witchcraft, robbery and murder.

  This 285–250 BC papyrus is the oldest known fragment of The Odyssey. It contains lines from Book 20 that do not appear in standard versions. Other third-century BC examples show that Homer’s texts contained local variations that were subsequently standardized by Alexandrian scholars.

  A page from the oldest complete manuscript of The Iliad. Known as Venetus A, this AD 900 version is handwritten on vellum and contains five levels of scholarly annotation.

  Homer’s The Iliad and The Odyssey

  (c. 750 BC)

  Preserved for 3,000 years by memory, writing, and print, the two greatest epic poems from ancient Greek culture have served for millennia as a pillar of Western literature, leaving scholars to speculate about the genius or geniuses who created these timeless classics.

  Plato, writing in 400 BC or so, called Homer ‘the teacher of [all] Greece’. Five hundred years later, the Roman rhetorician Quintilian called him ‘the river from which all literature flows’, and 1,400 years after that the French novelist and stylist Raymond Queneau commented: ‘Every great work of literature is either The Iliad or The Odyssey.’ Yet little is known about the ascribed author, Homer, including his true ancestry and biography, whether he was really blind as ancient historians later claimed, and even when and whether he lived.

  What is known is that Homer is credited with having written the two great epic poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey, in about 750 BC, although some modern historians have dated their origins to more than 1,000 years before that and others have suggested different time frames.

  The Iliad depicts the siege of Ilion or Troy during the Trojan War, and while the account takes up 24 books, it covers only a few weeks of a long war, offering passages such as, ‘Like cicadas, which sit upon a tree in the forest and pour out their piping voices, so the leaders of Trojans were sitting on the tower.’

  The Odyssey focuses on the character Odysseus and his 10-year perilous journey from Troy to Ithaca after the end of the war, also telling what has befallen his family when he was away. ‘Tell me, muse, of the man of many resources who wandered far and wide after he sacked the holy citadel of Troy, and he saw the cities and learned the thoughts of many men, and on the sea he suffered in his heart many woes.’ Composed in 12,110 lines of dactylic hexameter, the poem also features a modern plot.

  Most historians believe the works were orally transmitted and performed over a long period, perhaps for centuries, before they were eventually written down, and certainly no first manuscript has survived from 3,000 years ago or more. The oldest known fragments of The Odyssey, written on papyri and discovered in the sarcophagi of mummified Greek Egyptians dated to 285–250 BC, are displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The oldest complete manuscript version of The Iliad, handwritten on vellum and dated to about AD 900, is known as Venetus A, and it has been preserved at the Marciana Library in Venice since the 15th century. Each page contains 25
lines of Homeric text, accompanied by scholia (marginal notations and annotations) which were inscribed by editors in Alexandria sometime between the first century BC and the first century AD. A fine photographic facsimile edition was made in 1901 and scholars have recently completed a greatly improved version using the latest digital imaging technology.

  The Art of War

  (512 BC)

  An ancient Chinese military treatise ranks as the greatest primer ever written on warfare strategy and tactics, providing a timeless and savvy guide for many field generals over the ages; it is also consulted by corporate executives, trial lawyers and other serious competitors.

  ‘The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.’ So begins history’s greatest published meditation on warfare, the literary origins of which remain in dispute. Some authorities wonder whether it was authored by a fabled Chinese military leader named Sun Tzu or Sunzi, if indeed he really existed; others suggest that the ideas may have been compiled and modified by many hands over a long period. Everyone, however, agrees that the work is very ancient: an archaeological discovery in Shandong in 1972 unearthed a nearly complete bamboo scroll copy, known as the Yinqueshan Han Slips (206 BC–AD 220), which is nearly identical to modern editions of The Art of War.

  Considered the greatest of China’s Seven Military Classics, the work was first translated into French in 1772 and partially put into English in 1905, and its readers have long marvelled that the document’s guidance never seems to have become outmoded. Commanders from Napoléon Bonaparte to Generals Võ Nguyên Giáp and Norman Schwarzkopf have credited its teachings for some of their successful military strategies and tactics. In a 2001 TV episode of The Sopranos, the mobster Tony Soprano tells his psychiatrist, ‘Here’s this guy – a Chinese general, wrote this thing 2,400 years ago and most of it still applies today.’

  The Art of War consists of 13 chapters. Each grouping offers wise and time-tested instruction on a key aspect of warfare. Written in plain but lucid terms, the text presents basic principles and strategies on when and how to fight, providing cardinal rules such as ‘He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces’ and ‘He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks.’

  Sun Tzu considers war a necessary evil to be avoided whenever possible. All wars should be waged swiftly or the army will lose the will to fight and ‘the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.’ ‘There is no instance of a country having benefitted from prolonged warfare.’ ‘All warfare,’ he writes, ‘is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.’

  The text identifies the six main ‘calamities’ that a general might expose his army to: 1. flight; 2. insubordination; 3. collapse; 4. ruin; 5. disorganization; and 6. rout. Conversely, a great general will have the ‘power of estimating the adversary, of controlling the forces of victory, and of shrewdly calculating difficulties, dangers and distances.’

  These bamboo strips, known as the Yinqueshan Han Slips, date from 206 BC–AD 220 and are the oldest extant example of the sixth-century BC Art of War text.

  An 18th-century bamboo edition of The Art of War commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor (1711–99), the sixth Qing Emperor of China.

  This fragment from the Dead Sea Scrolls is taken from The Book of War. Written in Hebrew, it dates to AD 20–30 and tells the story of a 40-year battle between the forces of good and evil.

  Dead Sea Scrolls

  (408 BC–AD 318)

  Discoveries in caves of the Judean Desert yield caches of ancient manuscripts containing some of the earliest known pieces of the Old Testament and other writings from early Hebrew culture. Their ownership and meaning can prove controversial.

  In November 1946 a young Bedouin shepherd was searching for a stray amid the limestone cliffs that line the northwestern rim of the Dead Sea, around Qumran in the West Bank, when he came upon a cave in the rocky hillside. Upon casting a stone into the dark entrance, he heard clay pottery breaking, so he ventured inside to investigate. He found several large earthen jars with sealed lids. In them were long objects wrapped in linen – old scrolls covered with writing he couldn’t decipher.

  Over the next three months the Arab youth and three companions retrieved and sold seven of the mysterious objects to antiques dealers in Bethlehem without knowing their true value.

  When Professor Eliezer Lipa Sukenik of Hebrew University glimpsed what was written on one of the scrolls, he shook with excitement. ‘I looked and looked,’ he later recalled, ‘and I suddenly had the feeling that I was privileged by destiny to gaze upon a Hebrew scroll which had not been read for more than 2,000 years.’

  Over the next nine years the number of discoveries in the region grew to more than 900 scrolls and fragments. The writers had scrawled their accounts on animal hide or papyrus, using reed pens and varied brightly coloured inks. Most of the texts are written in Hebrew, with some in Aramaic, Greek, Latin and Arabic.

  The collected documents became known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. And they created an international sensation, for several reasons. Because scholars placed their origin at between 408 BC and AD 318 – a crucial moment in the development of monotheistic Judeo-Christian religions – the manuscripts hold great historical, religious and linguistic significance on issues that are often fiercely disputed.

  As new technologies have developed, samples of the scrolls have been carbon-14 dated and analysed using DNA testing, X-ray, and Particle Induced X-ray emission testing and other techniques. This indicates that some of the scrolls were created in the third century BC, but most seem to be originals or copies from the first century BC. A large number relate to a particular sectarian community.

  The scrolls represent what are probably the earliest known copies of biblical texts, including most of the books of the Old Testament, as well as many additional writings. Together they shed light on the Old Testament’s textual evolution. Findings from the scrolls have leaked out over several decades, yet even today the contents of certain documents have not been publicly revealed and analysed, which has generated even more controversy.

  Some of the scrolls are currently on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where their ownership and meaning remains hotly contested.

  One of the pottery jars found in the caves of Qumran. These lidded clay containers were used for storing the Dead Sea Scrolls.

  Mahabharata

  (c. 400 BC)

  The world’s longest epic poem, which includes Hinduism’s most widely read sacred scripture, the Bhagavad Gita, as one of its seven principal parvas (sections), ranks as one of the greatest literary achievements in history – one of the high points of Indian culture for more than 2,000 years.

  Along with the Ramayana, the Mahabharata is one of ancient India’s greatest Sanskrit epics – a saga of such staggering size it takes close to two full weeks to recite, with over 100,000 shloka (couplets) and long prose passages that combine to form a total length of 1.8 million words.

  With a title that has been translated as ‘The Great Tale of the Bharata Dynasty’, the core story follows the struggle for the throne of Hastinapur, the kingdom ruled by the Kuru clan, which is waged by the Pandavas and the Kauravas. It includes innumerable episodes about the role of kings, princes, sages, demons and gods. The deeply philosophical work embodies the ethos of Hinduism and Vedic tradition, recounting much of Indian culture’s sacred history, and is told with a scope and grandeur that dwarfs all other epic works.

  Some of the events described in the Mahabharata are supposed to have occurred as far back at 1000 BC, while the oldest extant text has been dated to the eighth or ninth century AD, according to Professor Rajeswari Sunder Rajan of
Oxford University, writing in 2000. Teams of scholars have laboured for decades in an effort to ascertain how the document may have evolved to reach its final form between the third and fifth centuries. One research team has gathered and compared many manuscripts of the huge epic to compile a master reference series of 28 volumes.

  The Mahabharata is usually attributed to Rishi Vyasa, a revered mythical figure in Hindu traditions who is both an author and a main character in the story. Vyasa says one of his aims is to explain the four purusarthas (goals of life) that lead to happiness, and this deep didactic aspect has made the work the foundational guide to Indian moral philosophy and law.

  Some scholars suspect that roots of the epic may lie in actual events that happened several centuries before the Common Era; others accept the work as a compendium of swirling and crisscrossed legends, religious beliefs and semi-historical accounts that nevertheless provide a rich picture of Hindu life and philosophy in ancient India.

  All agree it is impossible to prove if or when Vyasa really lived, or to disentangle facts from fiction in the labyrinthine epic, in part because much of Vyasa’s storytelling is recited by his sage disciple, Vaisampayana, and the rich narrative employs an exceedingly complex ‘tale-within-a-tale’ structure which is common to many traditional Indian religious and secular works. A short excerpt conveys its highly embellished style: