Good points, della, and I shouldn't have begun in the middle of Chapter 8! Also, instead of literacy...the alphabet, I should have said, alphabet literacy. Going back to Chapter 6, "Cuneiform/Marduk," it is recounted how two centers of civilization developed about 3000 BC in Mesopotamia and Egypt. The rest of this chapter discusses the development of cuneiform in Mesopotamia, leading to the code of Hammerabi, and its implications.
Chapter 7, Hieroglyphs/Isis, talks about the development of Egyptian pictographic writing and how it dovetailed with Egyptian culture. If you study the pantheon of Egyptian gods and goddesses, their rulers, and their patterns of daily life, you will see that the Egyptians had what could be considered a matriarchial culture, honoring the goddess Isis and her son Horus above all, though the god Atum or Amon gradually grew in importance over the centuries.
Between 1700 and 1550 BC the balance of power changed and infiltrators called Hyskos gradually came to rule over the Egyptians. After these interlopers were driven out, the New Kingdom of the pharoahs began with sweeping changes. This was the period when the great monuments were built and the pharoahs, such as Ramses II, dictated great military conquests. The system of writing was also revolutionized, representing phonetic sounds rather than aesthetic pictures. The god Amon was elevated to the highest status and took on human form rather than being animalistic.
Stay tuned for more about the mysterious Hyskos people.