A History of the Ancient Near East

Abstract

In the year 334 BC, a young king from Macedon and his well-trained army crossed from Europe into Asia, confronted the vast empire of Persia, and conquered it in the course of a decade. Alexander's troops marched through an antique world that contained the remains of thousands of years of earlier history. Their previous encounter with Greece could not have prepared them for what they saw in the Near East and Egypt. They entered cities like Uruk that had existed for three millennia, and visited pyramids and temples that had stood for almost as many years. This was a world steeped in history, not a world in decline, waiting for fresh inspiration. The city-dwellers knew their traditions were so ancient that they claimed they dated from the beginning of time itself. People wrote in scripts that had been used for almost thirty centuries, they read and copied texts that were hundreds of years old. These were not idle claims, as for a long time their lands had indeed been home to the most advanced cultures in the world, well before Greece had developed its great classical civilization. It is in the Near East and northeast Africa that many of the elements we associate with advanced civilization first originated, including agriculture, cities, states, writing, laws, and many more. Because this region lies at the juncture of three continents, practices and concepts from numerous and diverse people came together there, inspired and complemented one another, and were used by the inhabitants to manipulate their surroundings. They created their environment rather than reacting to it.