Birth of civilization in the middle east

It's interesting to know how tumultuous the civilization of middle east were and how they saw themselves as a people. The idea of not having a word for freedom in Eygptian is indeed appalling, specially through the eyes of someone that grew up on the notion of human dignity and freedom. Freedom for many people at least in the past was not a universal value and bowing down to someone else for the sake of peace and basic human conditions was deemed more important. So much so that other people were regarded as Gods. The story of Herodotus about the King of Medes and how he treated his Vazir for not following his orders about killing his own grandson was really surprising. He still got his grandson and yet he ordered for Vazir's son to be killed and cooked? Vazir did nothing because for him he was the slave and whatever the master decided was the deed. This story told by herodotus and how it has been passed down from the Greeks to the modern day is a wonderful example of extended cognition and how ideas of the ancient come into being through another hardware by existing outside the hardware of the originator.