The Asiatic Mode of Production and the History of Napata–Meroe

Introduction

Before beginning to study the prevailing method of production in the Kingdom of Napata Meroe, and before resolving the issue of the extent of possible benefit from the abstract concepts that were put forward by European thinkers, and using them as an analytical tool in studying the characteristics of the socio-economic development of society in ancient Sudan, it is necessary to praise the enormous efforts made by a group of Arab and non-Arab researchers to discuss sociological generalizations regarding the development of Eastern and African societies in general. The totality of these valuable researches and efforts formed a basis on which this theoretical introduction study was based. It may contribute to some extent in presenting a methodological basis that serves as a tool for accessing the problem of the characteristics of the cultural, economic and social development of the Kingdom of Napata Meroe.

It seems to us that many contemporary Arab and non-Arab researchers have followed an approach that we say sought to extract elements from the opinions of European thinkers, starting with Aristotle, passing through the opinions of Bernier, Harrington, Machiavelli, and Montesquieu, ending with the opinions of Adam Smith, Hegel, and Karl Marx. It is noted that these researchers began to apply the elements they deduced to historical data, assuming that this is equivalent to theoretical analysis, regardless of the validity or invalidity of the formulas on which they relied. Such a form of treatment resulted in a situation in which many research studies targeting Eastern and African societies lacked an accurate theoretical base.

In general, we say that the current discussions about the methods of production that prevailed in social structures in the East and Africa in ancient times, and many of whose features still remain, are characterized by some weaknesses that we must point out if we intend to avoid falling into theoretical errors. When studying any phenomenon of human culture, there is an issue that presents itself, first of all, and it is not possible to move forward in the task without stopping at it carefully, which is the issue of concepts and definitions. Without this initial step that would define the concept and clarify its boundaries,  the researcher may find himself pursuing what is far from the subject of his study, or being drawn into secondary aspects. However, the problem facing the researcher when he tries to begin his study by defining and clarifying concepts is that he cannot arrive at a satisfactory definition before he has gone a long way in investigating his concepts. Because a definition that does not come as a result of careful and in-depth study will reflect the researcher’s whims, prior positions, and own projections, instead of being an objective guide for him. Hence, the researcher finds himself facing a real dilemma related to the method. This is because a prior definition is necessary in order to clarify and define the field of research, but at the same time he cannot arrive at such a definition before he satisfies the concepts on which he researches and analyzes.

Hence, we see that the study of concepts must proceed in two stages. The first aims to reach an accurate definition of the concept based on a general and loose initial definition, which would limit the researcher’s effort and focus it within a general sector or a more comprehensive concept that includes the smaller concept that he is dealing with. As for the second stage, it returns to the starting point with a clear and precise definition of the concept, and it is accepted again now that it has become specific and distinct from the rest of the concepts similar to it or overlapping with it.

Framing the concepts of social structure and mode of productionConceptual framing

When attempting to propose a theoretical framework for studying any society, the beginning must be to address two basic concepts: social formation, and mode of production. Here we must say that the French researcher Louis Althusser has made a pioneering contribution to the ongoing research towards the concrete development of the concept of social structure, considering it as “social practice,” which exists as a complex whole that includes several elements: economic practice, political practice, ideological practice, and theoretical practice (1). The sum of these elements in their unity is what can be called “social practice.” Regardless of the characteristics of each of these elements, each one of them has its own unchangeable structure within which the decisive raw material is transformed into a specific product, a transformation that is necessarily affected by the work that uses specific means of production. Therefore, the so-called economic practice requires the transformation of natural raw materials into “social products” through the systematic and regular use of the means of human labor [the means of production]. As for the so-called political practice, it exists in the form of a transformation that affects the prevailing social relations, creating new relations, while practice exists. Ideology is in the form of the transformation that affects the living relations of the “self” towards the world through the means of ideological conflict, and the final practice, theory, exists in the form of the transformation of existing concepts within the framework of ideological treatments into practical knowledge through the means of abstract work that moves in the field of concepts that define the field in which the problem of science is raised. Althusser believes that within the framework of the unity of these practices, economic practice remains the decisive force in the social structure in the end, and it remains precisely the structure of the internal relations of the various other elements. Althusser's last opinion is this, which we will return to later.

The concept of production method can be defined by specifically addressing economic practice. At its basic level - that is, production in general - this economic practice contains specific elements: the product, its means of production, and the subject of work. However, at the same time there is the unproductive worker who appropriates the surplus labor. In order to achieve and complete the production process, all these elements must necessarily come together. This coalescence process takes place through two forms of relationships. The form in which the joining process takes place is what distinguishes the different stages that are called production methods. The surplus labor existing in labor processes and resulting from the fact that production has exceeded the limits of the simple requirements for reproducing the necessities of the labor used, this surplus gives a surplus product subject to multiple forms of expropriation at different stages. These forms of expropriation are the product of specific relations of production which, once established, create a differentiated system of possession of ownership and control over the means of production for the productive worker and the non-productive worker. Production relations establish a dominant form of extracting surplus labor in the relevant mode of production, and extracting this surplus labor has priority over production processes as long as it constitutes the latter.

Therefore, the particular method of production exists as a special dual unit of several elements and constitutes a kind of special combination of production relations and forms of labour, and is formed on the basis of the prevailing relations of production. It is also the case that from “production in general, and from its common phenomena” it is possible, as Althusser points out, to begin to determine “production in particular,” that is, production at a certain stage, just as it becomes possible to begin to determine the specific method of production.

So, as long as the method of production exists as a dual composition of several elements, and as long as this composition is what will necessitate any of the practices (economic, political, ideological, or theoretical), it constitutes the decisive factor within the framework of social practice. Therefore, when studying the economic systems of societies prior to the emergence of capitalism, it is simply necessary to determine the forms in which these practices are combined, and the nature of those dual elements must be determined, as long as any method of production exists as a structure. prevailing, as a unity of different forms of labor under the dominance of a specific method for extracting surplus labor that is necessitated by the dominance of specific production relations; In other words, through the unity of the various dual elements in the mode of production, the relationships within which surplus labor is extracted prevail, those relationships through which production processes are formed. This means that the analysis of any method of production cannot start from the mere identification of the elements and their unity in the production process, that is, from the mere division of labor (2). This is because the process of extracting surplus labor is not accomplished specifically through the production process, as long as the production process in itself depends on the process of extracting surplus labor and is formed through it. Therefore, the prevailing relations of production, the existing relationships between the producer and the non-producer, which form the initial basis for analyzing the particularity of any method of production, will remain absent once the analysis is reduced to the level of the production process only.

Asian production pattern: the problem of defining the concept

Many researchers in the issues of Eastern and African societies have fallen into this gap, which has led them to generalize the use of the concept of a specific method of production to the point where it loses its distinctive character completely, or to the point where production relations are confused with relations of acquisition. An example of this is the definition that Sherif Al-Dashuni puts forward for the so-called Asian mode of production that Karl Marx referred to in his work “Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy.” Al-Dashuni says, “In general, and with a lot of transcendence, one can describe these societies with the Asian style of production as intermediate societies that range from a classless (primary) society to a class society. Class relations and individual ownership have not yet crystallized clearly. Despite the presence of the phenomenon of slave labor (in the palaces of kings and princes), society in general cannot be described as relying on such a form of work. This type of work does not represent the basic relationships because the slave society needs a higher level of production, trade, and the accumulation of wealth” (3). There is no doubt that such a definition completely contradicts the distinctive characteristics of the Eastern production method as long as it neglects the concept of the basic role of irrigation and other major works and the absence of private ownership of land in establishing this method.

As for the researcher Sheno, he goes further than Al-Dashuni and says that “the Asian mode of production is a statement that should be defined in relation to production itself, and it should express the social relations created to meet the needs of production. Its “basic law” cannot appear neither at the level of production techniques, nor at the level of geographical requirements (irrigation and dry climate), nor at the level of forms of social and political organization (tribal aristocracy and bureaucracy), but rather at the level of production itself... The mode of production is a special, qualitative form of exploitation of nature and man together, and the mode of production requires At the same time, it is a technical organization of work, a form of cooperation, a social organization of work, and a form of social coercion. If we coordinate the observations made in this regard, we find that the Asian method of production is characterized by a combination of the collective activity of rural communities and the economic intervention of a state authority that exploits and rules those groups at the same time. Sheno asked a question whether this idea of ​​“supreme economic leadership” entails other functions, “such as monitoring agricultural cycles, maintaining roads and monitoring their security, and military protection of villages against raids by nomads or armies of foreign invaders. The state assumes direct responsibility for some sectors of industrial production that develop the potential of rural commons, for example in the field of mines and mining” (4).

There is no doubt that by expanding the concept of the Asian mode of production in this way, Al-Dashuni and Sheno strip the concept of its actual content as an analytical tool. Such attempts mean nothing in reality except an abstract simplification of the distinctive features of the Eastern mode of production and reducing them only to what characterizes the first sign of the emergence of the state and the ruling classes in a society that is still based primarily on the basis of the rural community. There is no doubt that it is possible to prove the fact that in every case there is a royalty paid by the village subscriptions to meet the costs required by the tasks related to the public interest, including the interest of a religious or magical imaginary nature, and gradually the tribal aristocracy begins to appropriate these royalties, and coexists for a specific “democratic” transitional period based on the rule of the rural community with a government of an increasingly authoritarian nature at the top.

Once the wrong trend is established that simplifies the Eastern method of production and reduces it to a mere concept that expresses the reality of merging the rural community with an exploitative central authority (by breaking), Al-Dashuni and Sheno have no difficulty in discovering the so-called Asian mode of production in Africa in the pre-European colonial period, and in pre-Columbian America, and even in Mediterranean Europe (the Cretan Mycenaean culture), but we find that after the completion of this simplification process, we have lost everything that is Asian, or all What exactly is “Eastern” in such an expansive, comprehensive category? I believe that such confusion arises as a result of a lack of awareness of productive relations and the social division of labor, which constitutes the actual basis of the class structure itself.

This is the first abyss that must be crossed when analyzing pre-capitalist production methods in the East and Africa if we want to avoid the illusion of simply recognizing the unity of the existing theoretical elements in the production process. After that, the task at hand becomes more difficult as long as it is necessary to uncover the production relations that allow the extraction of surplus labor from the direct producers in the studied production method. This relationship must be established not by studying the production process, but rather by beginning to analyze the entire process of reproduction of the economic system in its relationship to the social structure itself. This is the task facing the current research  which seeks to analyze the mode of production that prevailed in the social structures of the Napata and Meroe kingdoms. We must study production in its connection with other aspects - circulation, distribution, etc. And in its detailed composition with other levels. Only after this can we raise the issue of the existence of specific production relations that necessitate the production system and help it reproduce itself, and which provide a basis for the social division of labor on the basis of which the class structure arises.

Therefore, in all cases, our research must start initially from examining the economic structure as a system, study the detailed structure of this structure within the framework of the social structure, and use the basic abstract concepts of practical methodology instead of simply applying them to the various production processes. The method of production must be analyzed as an environment in which production relations prevail over the forces of production, as a structure in which production relations impose a specific development of the forces of production. This is also the case, rather than creating a edifice of analysis based on the insistence on the existence of a contradiction between production relations and productive forces, it would be more useful to begin with an analysis of the specific models of development that specific production relations impose on productive forces in different production methods. This point in particular is of utmost importance when analyzing social structures in the East and Africa, since it becomes possible to begin analyzing those social forms only in the case of the dynamism of the prevailing mode of production and how the detailed synthesis of those dynamics in the social structure can establish the possibility of the emergence of elements of a new mode of production.

The issue of transition from one mode of production to another takes place as a coalescence of different processes: the dynamism of the previously dominant mode of production, the synthesis of the elements of the nascent mode, and the detailed synthesis of other modes of production in the social structure to ensure the establishment and reproduction of the new mode. Only by analyzing the mutual relationship between these processes in the transition phase becomes it possible to define a plan for studying the historical-cultural development of ancient Eastern and African societies, as long as these processes are ultimately concerned with determining the structure of those societies and their evolutionary tendency.

Asian production method and its dynamism

After all this, we now move on to presenting the foundations for formulating the concept of structure and reproduction of the method of production that prevailed in ancient Eastern social structures and its dynamism. We begin our approach to the issue by giving a comprehensive description of the basic characteristics of the social structure in which we believe an Asian mode of production prevails. My approach relies on the enormous volume of archaeological, epigraphic and ethnographic data that has accumulated in unlimited quantities, and which sheds light on various aspects of life in ancient Eastern and African societies.

Within the framework of ancient Eastern and African social structures, production in labor processes is organized on the basis of the rural community, and the production unit consists of members of one family or a combination of several families, and these shares are initially limited within the framework of the production of materials for their own consumption. As for the organization of production in the division of labor, it is, in most cases, somewhat similar to the description given by Hegel of the rural community system in India: “With regard to private property, the Brahmins have a great advantage, which is that they pay taxes and the prince gets Half of the income from the land of others and the remaining half must cover the costs of agriculture and the supplies of those working on it. The very important problem is whether the agricultural land in India is considered the property of the farmer or the property of the so-called owner of the farm. The entire income that enters any village is divided into two parts, one of which is allocated to the prince (the Raja) and the other part is allocated to the farmer. There are also proportional shares distributed to the mayor of the place, the judge, the water controller, the Brahman who supervises matters of worship, and the astrologer. (He is also one of the members of the Brahman, and he announces good days and bad days), the blacksmith, the carpenter, the potter, the man who collects clothes to be washed, the barber, the doctor, the dancing girls, the musician, and the poet, and this order is fixed and does not change, and is not subject to the will of anyone. That is why all political revolutions pass by the Indian indifferently because his fate does not change” (5).

It can also be similar to the description given by Chayanov of the “natural economy” that existed in Russia in the nineteenth century: “After each family unit exchanges its goods with other family units, and the exchange may even be with neighboring village communities, it delivers the value that constitutes the unit’s “total economic product,” and then a portion of the necessary material expenditures for the year is deducted from this value, leaving the family with the portion of the value that it produced for its own use. During the year, then this value becomes the base from which production is carried out for the next year” (6). The important point here is that the “income” of the family unit has its own determinants: the size and composition of the family, and the productivity of the family’s labor force. This last inevitable element, which is of the utmost importance for family income planning, also has its own reasons, according to Shayanov’s opinion: “The degree of self-exploitation is determined by a certain balance between the family’s need for self-sufficiency on the one hand, and the amount of toil and trouble necessary for the work itself on the other side. Each monetary unit of the growing product of the family’s labor can be viewed from two standpoints: first in terms of its importance for consumption in order to satisfy the family’s needs, and secondly in terms of the amount of toil and trouble expended.” To acquire it” (7). It is clear that as the product acquired through hard work increases, the importance of the self-esteem of each new monetary unit acquired for consumption decreases, but the toil and effort expended to acquire it, which will require an increasing amount of exploitation, will increase, as long as the balance between the two elements is not achieved, meaning as long as the toil and effort in work remain self-appreciated as less important than the needs that work is spent to cover, then the family has the right to continue its economic activity without paid work. “Once this balance is reached, subsequent labor expenditures become more difficult for the farmer or craftsman” (8).

The issue of production in the family unit is therefore limited to reaching this point of balance where it becomes possible to cover the family’s needs, and where the amount of toil and effort is not evaluated as an effort that exceeds the limits compared to the success in achieving and meeting those needs. Once this point is reached, subsequent production becomes, according to Shayanov, without a goal.

The family exploits natural conditions (in the form of its own composition, that is, the ever-changing ratio of producers to consumers over successive generations), exchange, and so on to achieve balance, which means that the tendency to increase revenues, through the accumulation of capital and the exploitation of new agricultural lands, remains limited to the composition of the labor force in the family, and the amount of toil and effort expended in work in relation to the needs of consumers. If it becomes possible to reach a point of self-equilibrium through the exploitation of the family’s labor power, then there is simply no reason or need to increase The amount of toil and effort involved in cultivating new lands, or working to improve productivity by using the available income to buy more effective tools. However, if a balance cannot be achieved, for example when a married couple works to support their young, unproductive children, then the aforementioned steps can be followed for a temporary period to be abandoned again once the balance is reached. Therefore, using part of the income to buy new tools or to cultivate additional lands becomes acceptable for the family unit only if it is possible to achieve a new balance in a short period and with less labor and effort expenditures. It brings greater satisfaction to the family's consumption, and once that point is reached, these steps can be dispensed with.

If our hypothesis regarding the prevalence of this form of economic organization in the societies of the Ancient East is correct, then it may be said that the labor process that prevailed in those societies was characterized by a permanent tendency to reproduce the conditions necessary for the consumption requirements of the family, and this therefore constitutes the subject of production. But a question arises here regarding non-agricultural activities in this type of division of labor. The small industrial crafts that exist depend on the needs of this production or on the direct requirements of the villager. The work of the craftsman in the mode of production in ancient Eastern societies appears to be limited to periods when not all of the working time is used in the agricultural production process. In this craft activity, as in agricultural production, the village community is organized in a way that ensures the production of use values ​​for direct consumption. With the development of the ancient Eastern method of production, this organization remains in place, but it is supplemented by the increased production of goods for exchange (exchange value) either with other companies and the state, or through the state with other social structures. Thus, it seems that with the development of the ancient Eastern production method, the process of transcending the agricultural “absoluteness” and the original craftsmanship of rural communities begins. This is what can be observed, for example, in Hammurabi’s Babylon, where, under the state’s monopoly, the process of producing agricultural crops, organizing them, and exchanging them with neighboring countries takes place, and within the framework of internal exchange between rural communities. This process of supporting the production of exchange values ​​to produce consumer values ​​was generally followed in the ancient East by the transition to a monetary economy, the state importing goods through its own institutions and regulating the means of production or for its own ideological needs. It is this particular transformation that was incorrectly interpreted by Max Weber as a shift towards a state capitalism system in ancient Eastern societies (9).

The important point that must be addressed here is that although the process of producing exchange values constitutes a general tendency within the framework of the ancient Eastern method of production, it remains a limited tendency within the frameworks set by the state itself. Our hypothesis requires us to analyze the issue of the intervention of the ancient Eastern state in the production process. As was the case in all methods of production that preceded the emergence of the capitalist system, the state in the ancient East appropriated the surplus labor of rural communities, usually in the form of rent in kind, which necessarily required the use of labor to a higher and greater degree than what was required to cover the needs of local consumption and exchange. In any case, what distinguishes the method of production in the ancient East from other production methods is that the state in the ancient east has always played an important role in reproducing the preconditions for production itself. In this way, as we will explain, the role that the state plays in the production process contributes to reproducing the ancient eastern method of production itself.

The role of the state in Asian-style societies

In the method of production that prevailed in social structures of the Asian style, the state performs a very important economic function due to its intervention in the rural economy, whether through organizing surplus labor time for village collective work directed to the construction of various irrigation facilities necessary for the agricultural production process of the villages, or through the seasonal distribution of the lands of those villages to meet the changing demographic requirements of the different villages, or through organizing ways to store the product to cover needs in lean years, or through organizing the agricultural cycle of crops, or through the production and distribution of raw materials for agricultural production. (Mines and mining), and therefore the state plays a clear and important role in the production process, and as such it contributes directly and effectively to the production process itself, and as a result, the reproduction of rural production and consumption takes place through the direct participation of the state through its regulatory function.

In Asian-style social structures, the state extracts surplus labor from rural communities in the form of collective labor accomplished as a means of production. In addition, it also extracts a surplus in the form of a tax paid to it. The production relationship that governs the extraction of surplus labor in Asian-style social structures is the relationship that exists between the village and the state. This production relationship, as we will explain, is what constitutes the effective labor processes in the division of labor in the villages. The state's expropriation of surplus labor, and its functional regulatory role in the production process, is expressed through an ideologically defined "ownership" of the area in which production takes place, and through subsequent control over it. In each case, the state owns and controls the land, and it is the state that is ideologically identified as the sole owner of all land (10). Therefore, the state has the right to restrict any development of individual ownership of land, and as a result it has the right to prohibit the investment of capital accumulations extracted either from trade or from the use of property. Thus, we have highlighted a number of aspects that distinguished the Asian style of production, and we now move on to examine the organization of the state in the social structures of the Asian style.

In general, three main branches of ISIS in the Asian mode of production can be noted:

1- A military organization consisting of a huge army recruited from villages to defend the state against competing states.

2- An administrative organization that governs the regions and oversees the responsibility of recruitment, employment, training of employees, collecting taxes and state finances, celebrations, and achieving justice.

3- Regulating public works, managing state industry, and regulating internal and external trade.

Let the second point begin our discussion of the state organization: Who has authority within the framework of the administrative organization? If we take the data available to us about Pharaonic Egypt, Kush, the Euphrates, South Arabia, Persia, India, or China, we find that the authority of the state is transmitted according to kinship systems, and therefore depends on a strong individual king whose rule is legitimate through birth, lineage, and traditions. The actual apparatus of the state, regardless of the form of central or decentralized administration, can be divided into departments subject to the control of an entire corps of employees who perform ritual, administrative, religious, intellectual, and other functions, but at the top of this The device contains the king, his family members, and his relatives. The ideologies through which the political authority of the king is expressed, the general concept of the relationship between the king and the state on the one hand, and the village contributions on the other hand to the distinctive social structures of Africa and the ancient East, contain elements that recur frequently. Here we will try to give a brief summary of the results of the huge amount of research that has been written on the subject by focusing on the Sumerian model.

The legend of Etana is an example of the ideology of the deification of the king

For the “Deified King” Foundation, the Sumerian myth of Etana and the eagle embodies a case that helps explore the ideological factor underlying the concept of kingship in the ancient East. The oldest text of this myth came to us from the ancient Babylonian era (2000-1600 BC) and was found on the site of the city of Susa, the Elamite capital. We also received another text from the Middle Assyrian era 1600-1000 BC, and a third text from the library of Ashur ibn Baal of Nineveh dating back to the seventh century BC, and it is the most complete and clear text among those texts.

The events of the story take place in the early times when the gods were carrying out the task of creating the four directions and developing a plan to build the first city for humans, the city of Kish. After they finished the work of creation and organization, they established the position of kingship, and began searching for a suitable person to appoint as king of the city, to be a good ruler for the people, so their choice finally fell on Etana:

The great gods who judge destinies,

They sat and consulted about the affairs of the country

While they were creating the four sides of the world and shaping its shape

They had not established a king over all people

The crown and headband were not tied together at that time (11)

No one had yet been crowned with the king's scepter

The throne platform had not been raised either

After that, the monarchy fell from the sky

Ishtar was looking for a shepherd at that time

She was searching here and there for a king

Enlil searches for a throne platform for Etana

The young man whom Ishtar had been searching for.

Thus, Etana was chosen by the gods to be the first king established to rule the people. But what about the mechanism of inheriting property after it fell from the sky?

The text of the legend consists of two stories. After Etana ascended to the throne of Kish, a giant tree grew with lush shadows. She came to it alive, making a nest for herself and her young at its base. Then an eagle landed on its top and made a nest for it and its young. The two pledged to live in peace and to share food among themselves. They documented their covenant with an oath before the god Shamash, the god of truth and justice, to respect the agreement and not to break the covenant. However, the eagle, after its chicks grew, harbored evil in its heart and began to look for opportunities to eat the young snake. Despite his chick's advice, the eagle took advantage of the snake's absence and swooped down, ate its young, and fled.

The serpent pleaded before the god Shamash to avenge it from the eagle. Shamash responded and made a plan for the serpent to ensnare the eagle. Shamash would give her a bull tied up in the desert, and she would have to uproot and hide in its entrails. And when the eagle came with the rest of the birds to eat from the carcass, she would have to pounce on it, remove its claws and pluck the feathers of its wings, then throw it into a deep pit to die there of hunger and thirst. After the serpent successfully implemented the plan, the eagle began to pray to Shamash every day to save him from his predicament. Shamash said to him:

You are a harmful and evil creature, and you have saddened my heart

You have committed an act that is abhorrent to the gods and cannot be forgiven

You are dying, but I will not come near you

I will send you a man and ask him for help.

The second story begins, which takes us back to Etana the Righteous. Vaitana is barren and is approaching old age without having a son to succeed him on the throne. Etana learns of a Napata planted in the sky that cures infertility, so he prays to the god Shamash to make the Napata within his reach. Shamash shows him the location of the eagle trapped at the bottom of a pit, so Etana frees him and heals him in exchange for flying him to the highest heavens to bring Napata, the fertilization that Ishtar undertakes to care for and water. Etana and the eagle arrive in the sky of Anu. This is how the “seed of kingship” came from heaven. We know from the document “The Book of the Kings of Sumer” that King Etana was the first king of Kish after the flood, and that he was the one who founded the first dynasty of Kish, and that his heir to the throne was his son called Al-H.

We have reasons to date this legend to the beginning of the dynastic era in Sumer (about 2600 BC). Although its oldest text, which is the ancient Babylonian text as we indicated, dates back to the beginning of the second millennium BC, the discovery of a number of cylinder seals dating back to the era of Sargon (about 2300 BC), on which we see a scene representing the ascension of a human being to the sky on the back of an eagle, confirms to us that the legend of Etana was known during the middle of the third millennium BC, and that its roots go back even further in the era of the first dynasties, and to a time close to the rise of the Kish dynasty. The first.

The question is what is the meaning of this myth?  What message does it carry for us?

Although the legend contains two heterogeneous stories, its message is clear. The main concern is to establish the origin of the institution of monarchy that “came down from heaven.” Thus, as Firas Al-Sawah rightly points out, it is “a myth of origins, and it belongs to that group of myths of origins that aim to justify existing social institutions and root them in the first mythological beginnings, in order to bestow a stamp of holiness on them.” As for the meaning of the story of the serpent and the eagle, Firas Al-Sawah interpreted it in a way that I find useful, as he ruled out the interpretation that sees the story of the serpent and the eagle as merely a story of a suspenseful nature that was integrated into the general context of the main story for purely literary purposes. In his opinion, the long correspondence between the two stories in all the texts that have reached us from the myth, over more than a thousand years, leads us to rule out this interpretation. Firas believes that the experience with the snake includes two events that lead to a third event, which is the center of the entire story. He sees the first two events as two stages in a ritual of crossing and transgression. In the first stage, the eagle eats the young snake, and in the second stage, the eagle is thrown into the bottom of a deep hole in the ground. As for eating young snakes, it is a ritual procedure that gives the eagle powers related to fertilization, because the snake is a symbol of fertility in the cultures of the ancient East and a symbol of healing as well. As for descending to the dark bottom of the pit, it is another ritual procedure similar in purpose. The eagle had to die symbolically in the interior of the mother-earth in order to be resurrected healthy and equipped with powers also related to fertilization that Nakhrsag, the earth, provided him with. As for the tree that was the scene of the conflict between the eagle and the serpent, it represents the principle of life, which is based on two poles: positive and negative. The masculine principle and the feminine principle. Here the male principle is embodied in the eagle that resides at the top of the tree and flies in the sky, and the serpent embodies the feminine principle attached to the earth. The conflict between the eagle and the serpent is nothing but a representation of the contradiction between the two principles. The eagle first descended from the summit to the ground, where the serpent's burrow was, then it descended deeper than that into the depths of the well, where it was the womb of the earth. It then set out in search of Napata, which was cared for by Ishtar, the goddess of universal fertility. This mystical significance of the eagle’s relationship with the serpent explains for us the lack of seriousness of the punishment to which the eagle was subjected, and the haste of the god Shamash to pardon him and entrust him with the task for which he was now fit, after he had been transformed, through the ritual he had gone through, from an ordinary eagle into an eagle capable of completing tasks that no one else could.

The Deified King Foundation is an ideological component of Asian-style societies

Thus it becomes clear that the concept of royal rule in Asian-style societies is generally summed up in the existence of an alleged unity between the universe and the god (or gods), and the deified or semi-deified king, and then between the two previous elements and the political, economic and legal functions that the king carries out in relation to the rural communities, and the state whose functions are determined universally, and the process of production and soil fertility. The task of the king (directed by the god or gods) is limited to ensuring the economic prosperity of the village communities. The king carries out this task by organizing artificial irrigation methods and methods, and public works, based on his knowledge of the seasonal cycles that govern the process of agricultural production, and based on his organization of methods for storing crops, exchanging goods, and so on. Through these activities, the king ensures agricultural fertility, and as an alternative to all of the services provided by the king, his followers pay royalties to him in the form of services, taxes, etc. The king always follows the instructions of the god (or gods), and therefore his duties are always expressed through religious symbols and rituals, which requires the use of the acquired surplus in the process of constructing temples and other symbolic structures, in addition to supporting an entire institution of religious officials whose duty is to ensure the king’s endeavors. As a result, the practice of The king and the rural commons are transformed into a kind of fetishism. The actual relations that exist between the king and the rural commons, and necessarily between the state and the commons, appear in an inverted form in the ideology of the monarchy. Therefore, what appears ideological as distinct divine attributes of the king (organizing public works and redistributing land) are merely results of his function that he performs in appropriating, distributing, and using surplus labor. The king, who ideologically embodies the quality of the “patron” of fertility, can be so only and only in the case of the prevalence of exploitative relations between the state and the rural communities. Likewise, the rituals that guarantee the “correct” exercise of the king can exist as an effect resulting from the distribution of the tribute achieved, and so on. This fetishism can be seen reaching its peak when there is a crop failure or a decline in exchange revenues, and this is attributed to the king’s unfitness or his failure to properly adhere to rituals, and then the tradition of ritually assassinating the king appears among some peoples of the ancient East (12).

In addition to those distinctive features of the method of production that prevailed in Asian-style social structures, represented by the forms of surplus extraction, the necessary intervention by the state in labor processes, the state’s regulatory role arising from its absolute control over the distribution of the achieved surplus, the special form of royal authority and the prevailing ideology, we see the need to address another very important feature related to the dynamism of such a method, which is the characteristic of immutability that Hegel referred to. As I pointed out, villages in the ancient East were essentially units that could live under the rule of different forms of state authority. Regardless of the concentration of power in the hands of any of the kinship groups, the family, or the king, the rural communities continue to live and receive assistance from the state, which performs the economic functions I mentioned above towards the communities. Therefore, it seems that the social structure in the ancient East continued to maintain its overall structure despite the instability of political authority (one ruling family or dynasty replacing another in the state apparatus). New political systems are always formed by relying on the economic base of the villages, but this has no effect. Even if the effect exists, it does not go beyond merely a limited effect on the process of reproducing the same style. Accordingly, the history of social structures such as ancient Egypt, Persia, and others is characterized by superficial political fluctuations, while their overall structure remains essentially unchanged during the long centuries of the life of those social structures.

This, then, is the subsequent characteristic of the method of production that prevailed in Africa and the ancient East, its volatile but unchanging history, a phenomenon that results from the change of successive political rulers who occupy the position of power through the chain of lineage and traditions, which is expressed, as we have indicated, through religious and philosophical ideologies embodied in the rituals and practices of the state’s political authority. At a time when the king needs the state apparatus to implement his decisions, his authority and rights over the production system have a legal and ideological basis, unlike the feudal system (which some researchers claim exists in ancient African and Eastern societies) (13), in which the right of the feudal lord to acquire the surplus in the form of land rent is possible through the intervention of political practice. In the method of production that prevailed in the ancient East, surplus labor is extracted by the king, who He possesses an “ideological right” over that surplus, a right that is accepted by rural communities and finds expression in religion, art, literature, and so on. This, of course, leads to the same fetishism in ideological practice in ancient African and Eastern social structures and the prevailing mode of production in them.

Despite this, the role of the state does not end with the acquisition of surplus labor and its distribution. As we have indicated, the state acts as a regulator of the means of production, through its control over the use of collective labor in the production process. Therefore, the sovereignty of the state, through its seizure of surplus labor, becomes stronger through its organizational functional role in the labor process. This does not only mean the impossibility of reproducing the prevailing method of production in Asian-style societies without producing the decisive special production relationship that is expressed through the inverted ideological form, but it also means Production takes place with the help of intervention imposed by the state in the process of organizing the means of production. Therefore, the reproduction of production itself in this sense depends on the regulatory role played by the state through its functions related to the distribution of land, agriculture, etc., and this role strengthens the fetishism of the state and the ideology through which it exercises political power.

Therefore, we conclude by saying that the structure of the ancient Eastern structures in which this method of production prevailed necessitated a specific, detailed structure in which the decisive role was played by ideological practice in order for the process of extracting surplus labor from the direct producers to take place, and so that state authority could intervene in the production process. The production relations existing between the state and the rural communities are what ensured the state’s control over the production of surplus labor, and the precondition for this exploitative relationship is an ideological condition, even if necessity necessitates exercising the same relationship through the apparatus of power. Therefore, within the framework of the method that prevailed in social structures of the Asian style, the reproduction of the decisive production relationship is guaranteed through the inevitability of ideological practice and not in any way through the inevitability of economic practice, as many researchers assumed, so that they saw in the method prevailing in ancient East African societies a form of relations of slavery, feudalism, or even capitalism (Max Weber). The dynamism of this style that prevailed in the ancient East results directly from the inevitability of ideological and subsequent state power. Unlike other methods of production, feudal and capitalist for example, the dynamism of the method of production in societies in which the Asian mode of production prevails does not establish an actual possibility of creating a base for transitioning to another method.

When Hegel spoke about the fact that Eastern history apparently appears unchanged, this does not indicate his ignorance of the social history of the East. The matter is quite the opposite, as long as it relates to the dynamism of the method of production that prevailed in Eastern societies, which resulted precisely in a form of non-development that affected the entire structure of the social structure in the Ancient East, as long as the inevitability of ideological practice embodied in the activities of the state placed limits on the processes of capital accumulation and private ownership of land or capital, and of course limits and restrictions consequently on any separation of the direct producer from his means of production. Through its complete control over those processes, the state in the Ancient East hindered the reproduction of such The possibilities, any of which could form a basis for the development of the process of transition to a new mode of production, whether slavery or feudal, and as a result, the state, as the owner of capital and land, in terms of its position in the process of reproducing the prevailing method, sought to impede the development of transitional tendencies.

The development of private ownership of land, and the permanent use of direct labor for purposes other than rural production, all of this constituted a danger threatening the entire general system of rural production and economic relations between villages, as well as threatening the economic functions of state authority. These elements alone, without mentioning the ideological barriers, constituted a strong motive to prevent their realization. Therefore, within the framework of the method that prevailed in the social structures in the ancient East, as long as the ideological practice maintained its dominance and sovereignty, and as long as the process of reproducing the decisive productive relationship between the state and rural communities remained in force, the development of transitional tendencies remained suppressed, and the development of the productive forces themselves also remained limited.

This limitation and definition of transitional tendencies is maintained throughout the history of ancient Eastern societies, regardless of the “dramatic” transformations - as Hegel put it - that characterized the political history of those societies.

(1) Louis Althusser, A Reading of Capital

(2) For example, we find that Emmanuel Terry is trying, through an analysis of what he called the kinship method of production, to put forward the opinion that in order to succeed in the theoretical synthesis of the effective method or methods of production in a given social structure, it is necessary to give a definition of the existing forms of work that are then classified based on the fact that they constitute a gathering of a number of elements: the worker, the means of production, and the subject of the work. On this basis, Terry sees the possibility of giving a definition of the prevailing production and distribution relations and the extent to which those relations are reflected in political and ideological forms.

(3)  Sherif Al-Dashuni, “A Point of View on the Asian Production Pattern,” New Culture, Seventh Year, Fourth Issue, Aden, April 1978, p. 12.

(4) Jean Chenault, “The Asian Production Pattern: Some Perspectives for Research,” in the book The Asian Production Pattern, translated by Georges Tarabishi, Dar Al-Tali’ah, Beirut, 1972, p. 37.

(5) Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, Part Two, The Eastern World, translated by Imam Abdel Fattah Imam, Dar Al-Tanweer for Printing and Publishing, Beirut 1984, p. 118- 119.

(6)  Shayanov, On the Theory of the Peasant Economy (in Russian), Moscow 1966, p. 54.

(7) Ibid., p. 60.

(8) Ibid., same page.

(9) Of course, Max Weber’s hypothesis of “state capitalism” in the countries of the Ancient East can only be understood by understanding its overall methodological framework, because he believes that general concepts in historical research are indispensable as long as they constitute a means of understanding and evaluating historical facts. However, in his opinion, such concepts only constitute ideal patterns, a kind of dimension of logical utopia that loses any tangible historical content. To such “ideal types,” Max Weber refers to categories such as: the state, feudalism, capitalism, democracy, etc. Max Weber, with the help of the theory of ideal types, tried to exclude the idea of ​​the legality of historical development from the methodology of the social sciences. See his book:

Max Weber, The Agrerian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations,London:NLB,1976. 

(10) For more details of this ideological definition, one can refer to the valuable research written by Ion Banu, “The Asian Social Structure in the Perspective of Ancient Eastern Philosophy,” see: Book - Six Studies in the Asian Style, edited and translated by Ahmed Sadiq Saad, Dar Al-Tali’ah, Beirut 1979, p. 111- 140.

(11) The crown at that time consisted of a hat with a convex top and a band that wrapped around it at the forehead.

(12) The celebration in ancient Egypt of the holiday called “Heb Sed,” which was held according to specific ideological rituals. The goal was to restore strength and youth to the pharaoh, who had reached extreme old age. We believe that this celebration was a natural alternative that replaced the ancient custom of ritually assassinating the king in the early periods. What is noteworthy is that, in the later stages, the “Hab Sid” celebration began to be repeated once every three years, which indicates that the Pharaoh’s authority and power became in dire need of renewal and revival as a logical result of the deterioration of royal authority resulting from the weakness that struck the body of the Egyptian Empire. As for Kush (Sudan), the custom of ritually physically assassinating the king was practiced until it was abolished by King Arkamani in the late third century BC, but it resurfaced again in the era of the Islamic Funj state in Sudan (1504-1821 AD). It was practiced by the Shilluk people in southern Sudan until the late 1930s of the last century. [For more information about the topic, see: Osama Abdul Rahman Al-Nur, “Arkamani and the Ritual of King Assassination.” In Kush, Khartoum, No. 4, 1974.]

(13) Taha Baqir, Introduction to the History of Ancient Civilizations, (two parts), Baghdad 1973.

Meroe's chronology: difficulties and future prospects