THE POWER STRUGGLE BETWEEN GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS AND CLERGYMEN IN THE ANCIENT HISTORY

Abstract

People, who shifted their lifestyles from hunter-gatherer societies to settled lives dominated by agricultural activities, first began to live in villages and then in cities. The concepts ‘to govern’ and ‘to be governed’ began to appear in time among the crowded population settled in cities. Clergy members became administrators in the Mesopotamian city-states where the urbanization first started. The clergy members having a hierarchy in their own merits, owing to the organized structure brought about by the religious belief in the first periods of humanity, formed a temple-centered administration system. When secular governors supported by the armies appeared in cities, the clergy members had been ruling, struggles began between these two social classes. In this paper, it will discuss the struggle between secular governors and clergy members who had taken over in the first Mesopotamian city-states, focusing on the Urukagina and Akhenaton samples.

Keywords

• mesopotamia, city-states, urbanization, ancient egypt, urukagina