Ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian Civilization Essay Example for Free

Ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian Civilization Essay Many ancient civilizations developed as a result of the Neolithic Revolution, or the turning point in which the utilization of systematic agriculture created societies. Two civilizations, Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, both transformed into civilizations by changing from nomadic hunter-gatherers to agriculture and trade civilizations. Both civilizations were created as a result of the same revolution, but they still differ in numerous ways. Egypt and Mesopotamia had similarities and differences in religion, social and political structure, and geography. These variations shaped the two civilizations into completely contrasting societies. The religion of Egypt greatly differs from that of Mesopotamia, yet it is also similar. First of all, the ancient Egyptians believed in an afterlife and resurrection for all people, whereas the Mesopotamians believed in only a world of darkness after death. Both Mesopotamia and Egypt were polytheistic civilizations, meaning that they both believed in multiple gods or deities. Ancient Mesopotamian religion is associated with biblical mythology. Egypt and Mesopotamia had drawings and artwork to represent and worship their gods. They each believed in prayer as a form of interaction with their gods. Since Egyptians did believe in an afterlife, they performed a process known as mummification to preserve the bodies of the people who passed. The priests would remove organs, preserve the body, and bury them in tombs along with the items one would need in the afterlife. Not all Egyptians were mummified. Only the wealthy or important people were mummified in hopes that they had the afterlife they deserved. The religions of these civilizations developed differently. Social and political structure of a civilization can vary depending on religion, economy, and the technology available to the people. Egyptian social structure resembles Mesopotamian social and political structure because they are both able to be thought of as a pyramid; the least important, poorer subjects are at the base of the pyramid, the commoners and average people are in the middle, and the kings, priests, or pharaoh belong at the top, except there was no middle class for Egypt. There was a Pharaoh and its subjects. Egyptians had pharaohs, while Mesopotamia had Kings and priests. Egypt had priests, but they were not higher than the pharaoh. Priests were able to speak to the gods, teach, and go through with the process of mummification. Pharaohs were said to be very god-like and after their death, become a god. In Mesopotamia, the priests were the highest in means of communication with the gods. Kings were trusted to protect and better the kingdom or empire. Mesopotamia would raid hill peoples for potential slaves and Egypt would keep prisoners of war as slaves. Slaves did not have rights, but in Mesopotamia they were still treated as a whole being, like the commoners and were the lowest possible class of the two civilizations. The Egyptians had a centralized government with a Pharaoh as the ruler, and its subjects serving them. The Pharaohs has one main servant that is in power to make small decisions in the case of the Pharaohs request. They are called vizers and somewhat resemble having the privileges that a prime minister would. In Mesopotamia, they have a king and either a city-state government or an aristocracy, meaning the wealthy individuals and families are more powerful that the commoners. Peasants are able to own land in Mesopotamia, but they must provide a portion of their harvest of wheat or barley to pay a tax for their land. Egypt and Mesopotamia had similar form of empowerment, and their governments were also somewhat similar. The geography of Egypt and the geography of Mesopotamia directly affects the development of the two civilizations. Egypt is located in northern Africa and one river, the Nile, runs through it. The Nile river was a geographically asset to the Egyptians, with fertile silt and soil lining its banks. They called this black land, which they used for farming. The Nile occasionally flooded, but it was predictable and the Egyptians learned to control the flooding to use it to their advantage. They created irrigation systems that utilized the floods. Egypts early civilizations did not expand very far from the Nile river because of what they called red soil. Red soil is the barren desert, which provided a natural blockade from other invasive armies. The desert did not have arable land and was of no real use to the Egyptians. They were relatively isolated due to the surrounding desert, but the desert did provide glass and precious metals for trade. Mesopotamia was amongst two rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris. Mesopotamia has a Greek making of between the rivers. The rivers were unpredictable when it came to flooding and were thought of as signs from god. When the Mesopotamians experienced a flood, they believed it was due to upsetting the gods. The rivers run through present-day Iraq and the Euphrates runs through a portion of Syria. The southern region of Mesopotamia was marshy wetland due to the flooding of the rivers, and the northern region of Mesopotamia was hills and plains. Contact and communications without outside civilizations near Mesopotamia as important to them. The resources and geographic location of these areas allowed for their development and growth into civilizations. Mesopotamia and Egypt are civilizations that grew on completely different continents under diverse conditions. The Neolithic Revolution allowed for the change in lifestyles of Egypt and Mesopotamia. These conditions affected their beliefs and growth. The two are similar and different in their ideas and religion, structure, and geographic location.

Hellfire and Damnation Essay -- essays papers

Hellfire and Damnation Looking back on my childhood, I have many memories shrouded in fear and self-loathing. I was raised in the Baptist church. My mother and grandmother made sure that I attended church every Sunday morning. My grandmother was from the mid-west. She carried her strict Bible belt background with her as she traveled west with my grandfather. The many lessons I learned from my grandmother and the minister at our church played a big part in how I began to see the world and my place in it. It would seem, looking back now, that the whole basis for my teachings during those early years was fear. I had the most intense fear of going to Hell. The only thing one had to know about Hell was that it was the place where one’s worst nightmares became real. The really horrible part was that Hell was for eternity. This one life that I had to live could determine whether or not eternity would be heaven or hell. From my experience as a five-year-old, I knew that most things usually turned out wrong on the first try, so the thought of having to get it right in just one try damn near paralyzed me. With Hell as the ultimate punishment, I began going about the business of learning how to avoid it. It seems that there was a list a mile long of things that one should or shouldn’t do that would put one in the good graces of the Lord. Do not hang out with the pagans down the street (there was a Mormon Church about two blocks down). Do not engage in pre-marital sex. Never masturbate. This is just to name a few; the list seems to go on and on. As if the list of things to avoid was not long enough, the minister of our small congregation was always preaching about how unworthy of God’s love we were. It seemed his favorite... ...to find those truths for myself. In so doing, I was to create my own belief system. I wanted a belief system that would give me a firm foundation and the strength to face life. I did not want a belief system that was going to paralyze me with fear. I still, to this day, do battle with the imaginary demons that were placed in my head as a child. My feelings of being unworthy sometimes surface, but more often than not I feel confident and free following my heart. I feel that God would much rather have me happy and spreading happiness than miserable and spreading misery. Christianity to me these days is just another institution set up by those few who want to take advantage and control the weak and tired majority. I can no longer live in fear, so I must stand up and refuse to listen to anyone claiming to know what’s best for me. My heart is my only true guide.

Boundaryless organisation Essay

1. Theoretical Background A boundaryless organization is a modern approach in organization design. It is an organization that is not defined by, or limited to, the horizontal, vertical, or external boundaries imposed by a predefined or traditional structure. This term was coined by former General Electric chairman Jack Welch because he wanted to eliminate vertical and horizontal boundaries within the company and break down external barriers between the company and its customers and suppliers. Traditional companies with boundaries, rules, and extensive plans are at a supreme disadvantage in today’s globalized world, where technology changes daily and the value chain commands changes of its own. In a traditional company where people are categorized into neatly defined positions with their job descriptions filed in three copies in the human resources department, the way a company plans its business can cause it to sink or swim. Bad planning can mean lost opportunities, being overtaken by the competition, loss of revenues, or watching its position slip away because of a new technology, an alteration in the global marketplace, or simply a failure to market its product effectively. When  changes occur, they happen too quickly for its organizational processes to meet them. As a result, opportunities are quickly lost, problem situations take over rapidly, and before the company can respond appropriately, it has lost customers, opportunities, and market share. Although that company likely has more than enough talent within its walls to offset all of those disasters, the talent is never put to use, because employees are constrained to operate within the confines of their job descriptions, where only the prescribed talents can be put to good use. The answer to this dilemma lies in boundaryless organizations. The boundaryless organization does not operate according to volumes of planning documents, job descriptions, or tradition, instead it regroups and innovates. The boundaryless organization has developed primarily due to the widespread distribution of information and the presence of information technology. But if you have great innovative companies such as Newskool Grooves that is always ready and ahead of the game, with a little guidance, the company ca n make it through. The company has to always be alert of impacts of every decision made. Boundaryless organizations communicate mainly through email, phone and other virtual methods rather than more traditional face-to-face communication. The freedom to telecommute with international employees removes geographical barriers to productivity and allows for schedule flexibility. By organizing expert employees in groups and giving them decision-making authority, these companies can change quickly to meet needs and function efficiently in an ill-defined hierarchy. 2. Facts of case Employees no longer work in isolation but work as part of a team on broad, company-wide projects, quality management, just-in-time methods, lean production, and supply-chain management. The advantages of a boundaryless organization are that it is highly flexible and responsive and draws on talent wherever it is found. The disadvantages are that there is a lack of control and it presents communication difficulties. As in the case study, we can find that Newskool Groove has a decentralized culture and a company which reinvents itself 2 to 3 years; the bigger fight is a constant war against stagnation and rigidity. In boundaryless organization developers had a major communication breakdown about their hardware DJ controller, which required many hours of discussion to resolve. The boundaries of an  organization can be divided into following four types: Vertical – Boundaries between layers within an organization Classic Example: Military organization Problem: Someone in a lower layer has a useful idea; â€Å"Chain of command† mentality Horizontal – Boundaries which exist between organization functional units. Each unit has a singular function. Problem: Each unit maximize their own goals but not the overall goal of the organization External – Barriers between the organization and the outside world (customers, suppliers, other government entities, special interest groups, communities). Customers are the most capable of identifying major problems in the organization and are interested in solutions. Problem: Lose sight of the customer needs and supplier requirements Geographic – Barriers among organization units located in different countries Problem: Isolation of innovative practices and ideas 3. Analysis Many companies are crossing lines that have set boundaries linking them to communication. All over the world healthcare facilities are requiring employees the opportunities to connect through a wide variety of networking resources. Contact methods that expand knowledge, ideas, sharing, and finding solutions are all trigger points. Environments that provide healthcare are responding with other organizations through networks that promote social media. Companies are responding to other organizations by relaxing barriers that keep them from communicating with others. Organizations in healthcare are providing boundaryless organizations encouraging and managing a blur of boundaries to provide a better knowledge and understanding of a situation characterized by uncertainty. Organizations are promoting a resourceful outflow of information through the exchange of authority. Barriers that divide groups and isolate individuals from communicating are allowing leaders the cooperation to become mo re involved. A boundary organization allows businesses the opportunity to express their concerns. Boundary organizations are formed to manage meetings in distinct areas and encourage the production of knowledge. These organizations are eliminating the older ways of communication done through the traditional one-way flow. They are effectively changing the hypothesis that supports the  existence of boundaries. The exchange of transferred knowledge has been a great challenge for many organizations. Boundaryless organizations communicate mainly through email, phone and other virtual methods rather than more traditional face-to-face communication. The freedom to telecommute with international employees removes geographical barriers to productivity and allows for schedule flexibility. By organizing expert employees in groups and giving them decision-making authority, these companies can change quickly to meet needs and function efficiently in an ill-defined hierarchy. The four main types of boundaryless organizations are modular organization, strategic alliance, network organization, and virtual organization. Modular and virtual organizations outsource all non-essential functions. When two compa nies collaborate to form a partnership that is beneficial to all parties, they are a strategic alliance. A network organization is one in which companies outsource their major business functions in order to focus more on what they are in business to do. 4. Conclusion The boundaryless organization is a paradigm shift that recognizes the limitations inherent in separating people, tasks, processes, and places, and emphasizes the benefits of moving ideas, information, decisions, talent, and actions where they are most needed (Ashkenas, Ulrich, Jick, & Kerr, 1995). Companies often use a boundaryless organizational structure when they (1) collaborate with customers or suppliers to provide better-quality products or services, (2) are entering foreign markets that have entry barriers to foreign competitors, or (3) need to manage the risk of developing an expensive new technology. The boundaryless organization is appropriate in these situations because it is open to change, it facilitates the formation of joint ventures with foreign companies, and it reduces the financial risk to any one organization. References 1. URL: http://mysite.verizon.net/lpang10473/web/ldc_flat.htm 2. URL:http://www.slideshare.net/AnujSharma4/presentation-on-boundaryless-organization 3. URL: smallbusiness.chron.com †º †¦ †º Organization Structure‎

The Importance Of An Actor s Utility As An Ethical Values...

This strengthens the significance of an actor s utility as an ethical values and that representing self-enthusiasm for a community oriented scene can accomplish systemic moral soundness. At the point when endeavours in Dadaab neglect to be discerning of the host actors, they encourage otherization and methodological individualism. The host nation feels objectified and forced upon, the political actors feel rejected and managed to, and the international actors as an exploitable sources of resources (xxxx, xxx). Neglected on an International Level Expanding resource could have incentivised a levels of leadership amongst UNHCR and the district commissioner (xxx). locally built up a us-versus-them mindset. This was particularly the case in lieu of expanding rejection by the international group. This saw the arranging of a local meeting of the antagonized in the meantime as a major international closed-door meeting. We were brought closer by my assurance of the police, while different actors like the ladies groups, Al-Shabaab suspect and clan elders hoping to free clansmen rushed to censure them. I made media statements on behalf of the police which helped their eagerness to cooperate. Game theory cleared up incentive structures and the distribution of resources that drove actors to be aggressive in a situation where tremendous measures of cash were seen to exchange hands however everybody s financial plan kept obscure. It was obvious that NGOs and foreign aid employees hadShow MoreRelatedRetail Management30153 Words   |  121 Pageschain. Manufacturing marketers see the process of retailing as a necessary part of their overall distribution strategy. The term retailer is also applied where a service provider services the needs of a large number of individuals, such as a public utility, like electric power. 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