archaic societies:  legitimation by a literate priesthood

  Ancient Egypt, 53

  The Mesopotamian Empires, 63

  Conclusion, 69

The second of the three main stages of societal evolution is the intermediate stage, characterized by the development of written language.  There are cases in which predominantly primitive societies interpenetrate with literate cultures, one instance being the Nupe following their conquest by the Islamic Fullani.  The Nupe are peripheral to an essentially foreign religio-cultural complex, whereas in a fully intermediate society, an indigenous literate tradition is constitutive of the culture.  We distinguish two principle substages of intermediate society, the archaic and the advanced intermediate.  By archaic, we mean the first stage in the evolution of intermediate society, that of craft literacy and cosmological religion.  The advanced stage is characterized by full upper-class literacy and, on the cultural side, by a historic religion, one which had broken through to philosophical levels of generalization and  systematization.¹  Such religions develop for the first time conceptions of a supernatural order differentiated from any order of nature. 

¹ Robert N Bellah, “Religious Evolution,” The American Sociological Review, June 1964. 

52  ARCHAIC SOCIETIES

            An archaic cosmological religio-cultural system systematizes the constitutive symbolisim of the society more than the cultural system of any primitive society.  This cultural elaboration depends of the literacy of priesthoods and their capacity to maintain a stable written tradition.  The literacy is, however, still esoteric and limited to specialized groups – hence, it is craft literacy.  Besides the religio-magical, its specialized use is for administrative purposes.  Only in advanced intermediate societies is literacy centering about the mastery of a literary tradition a characteristic of all upper-class adult males - e.g., the upper-caste Hindus or the Chinese gentry.  A cosmological cultural system is usually interpreted for the society by temple priesthoods.  The priesthoods administer cults, the ritual benefits of which are no longer rigidly ascribed to underlying kinship and local community structures as in primitive societies.  The temple itself may become a focus of the social organization - e.g., in economic connections.  In general, the function of cultural legitimation has become differentiated, generalized, and, though closely bound to the highest echelon of the society (e.g., the king), entrusted to the priestly groups.² 

            On the political side, there is a parallel differentiation.  All archaic societies have an administrative apparatus elaborated beyond the level of such societies as the Shilluk or Bemba.  Both priestly and administrative functions are usually controlled by lineages rather than appointed individuals, particular statuses typically being hereditary.  Moreover, the political and religious offices often overlap.  They are, however, sufficiently distinct so that one can regard religious and secular stratification as being differentiated.  Yet each tends to crystallize about a three-class pattern: the top, associated with  the charisma of the monarch and the exercise of his combined religious and political authority; a middle group responsible for the more routine functioning of the society; and the mass of the common people, who are tillers of the soil.  The last also includes craftsmen and even merchants, who become increasingly prominent with further development, particularly as functionaries of the great households or temples, standing in client-like relations with the leading proprietary lineages.³   

            This further differentiation accounts for a shift away from the pattern prescribed by the two types of advanced primitive society we touched on at the end of Chapter 2.  The two cases of archaic society which we will discuss in the present chapter, ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, exemplify a reversal compared to the Shilluk and the Bemba.  Egypt had a highly developed institution of divine kingship.  At the same time, the structure of the society was not segmental in the Shilluk manner, but hierarchical and bureaucratic.  In Mesopotamia, kingship was not fused with divinity, but the underlying base of the society was segmental.

² Ct. Talcott Parsons, “Evolutionary Universals in Society," The American Sociological Review, June 1984.

³ As archaeologists have emphasized, these developments usually also involve developments in urbanization. The comparative evidence on this point is summarized in Courses Toward Urban Life, edited by Robert J. Braidwood and Gordon Willey (Chicago: Aldine. 1962). 

ARCHAIC SOCIETIES  53

This segmentation developed in the form of the urban communities - rather than kinship groups - that were the important member units of the society.  The development of the intermediate level in the societal structures impelled this difference.  Given the cosmological level of cultural symbolization, the organization of such a complex society (compared, for example, to the Shilluk) required a tightly controlled apparatus of both ritualization and political administration.  In the case of Mesopotamia, however, the relative decentralization of the religious system permitted the constituent structural units greater autonomy.  But the political apex of Mesopotamian society was not nearly so stable as that of Egypt.  Archaic societies have emerged independently in many parts of the world, in the Indian subcontinent, China, Southeast Asia, and the New World (the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas).  I have chosen to examine Egypt and Mesopotamia because they have been so thoroughly investigated by archaeologists and because of their historic connections with advanced societies. 

            My treatment of advanced intermediate societies will be organized in two chapters, the distinctions between which are complicated but not arbitrary.  Chapter 4 will deal with cases which achieved high organizational levels and maintained continuity in their basic patternings over some centuries, but which failed to generate the transition to the modern phase of social evolution upon their own resources and developmental potentialities.  I view these societies in the perspective of Max Weber; the problem is why they did not develop the combinations of modernizing factors that appeared in the modern West. 

            Chapter 5 will deal with two cases of a different order - namely, Israel and Greece in critical periods of their development.  Both were tiny societies compared with Egypt, Mesopotamia, or Persia; their political independence was precarious, and both lost it.  They were not important in the civilizational complexes of their own time, yet both produced cultural innovations for the long-run future: the religion of Jahweh and the secular culture of Greece.  In combination with other factors, these served to lay the foundations for the emergence of the modern societal type and deserve special treatment. 

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