As social classes, priests and bureaucracy have always played an important role in the emergence of societies with their own cultures and perspectives on the course of life. In ancient Mesopotamia, the two classes were closely interconnected since the very first Sumerian civilizations have most likely been ruled by a priest-king. Priest-kings dominated over commoners while being regarded as the highest religious leaders and the chosen people capable of representing divine powers (Ancient Mesopotamia).
In China, the religious beliefs were well-developed and strong since the start of the Shang era, which implies that priests had a huge impact on society, but bureaucracy as a particular class gained much more power later, during the Qin Dynasty (The History of China: Dynasty/Era Summary, Timeline). Lay priests and bureaucracy classes also played a huge role in Ancient Egypt’s emergence, and the former actively protected sacred knowledge and traditions, thus supporting the latter in their order maintenance tasks. Speaking about the general trends, the discussed classes provided each other with mutual assistance in building ancient civilizations, with priests responsible for the spread of religious ideologies, thus helping to support hierarchies.
In ancient societies, the factors helping to empower specific groups included access to resources that could contribute to different types of advantage over other communities. Inequality and the disproportionate distribution of power could be driven by differences in access to natural resources, technology, weapons, and so on. Physical advantages over other people, coupled with access to weapons, could give rise to certain groups’ ability to hold power, set the rules and laws, and create the first societies based on the hierarchy of classes and the exploitation of peasants.
In the context of Mesopotamia, urbanization is primarily associated with the start of the Uruk period (Bauer 56). It is possible to speculate that the risks of Tiger and Euphrates floods motivated ancient people to unite and eventually create communities of a new type. Opportunities for urbanization were inherent in the presence of natural resources, such as rivers. The first cities of China and Egypt appeared in the river valleys of Yellow River and Nile.