Thehistory of the ancient Near East begins with the rise ofSumer in the 4th millennium BC, though the date that it ends is a subject of debate among scholars; the term covers the region's developments in theBronze Age and theIron Age, and is variously considered to end with either the establishment of theAchaemenid Empire in the 6th century BC, the establishment of theMacedonian Empire in the 4th century BC, or the beginning of theearly Muslim conquests in the 7th century AD.
The phrase "ancient Near East" denotes the 19th-century distinction between the Near andFar East as global regions of interest to theBritish Empire. The distinction began during theCrimean War. The last major exclusive partition of the east between these two terms was current in diplomacy in the late 19th century, with theHamidian massacres of theArmenians andAssyrians by theOttoman Empire in 1894–1896 and theFirst Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895. The two theatres were described by the statesmen and advisors of the British Empire as "the Near East" and "the Far East". Shortly after, they were to share the stage with ''Middle East'', a term that came to prevail in the 20th century and continues in modern times.
AsNear East had meant the lands of the Ottoman Empire at roughly its maximum extent, on the fall of that empire, the use of Near East in diplomacy was reduced significantly in favor of the Middle East. Meanwhile, the ancient Near East had become distinct. The Ottoman rule over the Near East ranged fromVienna (to the north) to the tip of theArabian Peninsula (to the south), fromEgypt (in the west) to the borders ofIraq (in the east). The 19th-century archaeologists added Iran to their definition, which was never under the Ottomans, but they excluded all of Europe and, generally, Egypt, which had parts in the empire.
Ancient Near Eastperiodization is the attempt to categorize or divide time into discrete named blocks, or eras, of the Near East. The result is a descriptive abstraction that provides a useful handle on Near East periods of time with relatively stable characteristics.
Sumer hosted many early advances inhuman history, such asschools (c. 3000 BC),[6] making the area acradle of civilization. The oldest excavated archaeological site in Sumer,Tell el-'Oueili, dates to the 7th millennium BC, although it is likely that the area was occupied even earlier.[7][8] The oldest layers at 'Oueili mark the beginning of theUbaid period, which was followed by theUruk period (4th millennium BC) and theEarly Dynastic periods (3rd millennium BC). TheAkkadian Empire, founded bySargon the Great, lasted from the 24th to the 21st century BC, and was regarded by many as the world's first empire. The Akkadians eventually fragmented into Assyria and Babylonia.
AncientElam lay to the east of Sumer andAkkad, in the far west and southwest of modern-dayIran, stretching from the lowlands ofKhuzestan andIlam Province. In the Old Elamite period,c. 3200 BC, it consisted of kingdoms on theIranian plateau, centered onAnshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered onSusa in theKhuzestan lowlands. Elam was absorbed into theAssyrian Empire in the 9th to 7th centuries BC; however, the civilization endured up until 539 BC when it was finally overrun by theIranianPersians. TheProto-Elamite civilization existed fromc.3200 BC to2700 BC, when Susa, the later capital of the Elamites, began to receive influence from the cultures of the Iranian plateau. In archaeological terms, this corresponds to the lateBanesh period. This civilization is recognized as the oldest in Iran and was largely contemporary with its neighbour, Sumer. The Proto-Elamite script is an early Bronze Age writing system briefly in use for theancientElamite language (which was alanguage isolate) before the introduction ofElamite cuneiform.
TheAmorites were a nomadicSemitic people who occupied the country west of theEuphrates from the second half of the 3rd millennium BC. In the earliest Sumerian sources, beginning about 2400 BC, the land of the Amorites ("theMar.tu land") is associated with the West, includingSyria andCanaan, although their ultimate origin may have beenArabia.[9] They ultimately settled in Mesopotamia, rulingIsin,Larsa, and later Babylon.
Assyria, after enduring a short period ofMitanni domination, emerged as a great power from the accession ofAshur-uballit I in 1365 BC to the death ofTiglath-Pileser I in 1076 BC. Assyria rivaled Egypt during this period, and dominated much of the near east.
Babylonia, founded as a state by Amorite tribes, found itself under the rule ofKassites for 435 years. The nation stagnated during the Kassite period, and Babylonia often found itself under Assyrian or Elamite domination.
TheHittite Empire was founded some time after 2000 BC, and existed as a major power, dominatingAsia Minor and theLevant until 1200 BC, when it was first overrun by thePhrygians, and then appropriated by Assyria.
TheHurrians lived in northern Mesopotamia and areas to the immediate east and west, beginning approximately 2500 BC. They probably originated in theCaucasus and entered from the north, but this is not certain. Their known homeland was centred onSubartu, theKhabur River valley, and later they established themselves as rulers of small kingdoms throughout northern Mesopotamia and Syria. The largest and most influential Hurrian nation was the kingdom ofMitanni. The Hurrians played a substantial part in thehistory of the Hittites.
Kizzuwatna was a kingdom of the second millennium BC, situated in the highlands of southeastern Anatolia, near theGulf of İskenderun in modern-dayTurkey, encircling theTaurus Mountains and theCeyhan river. The centre of the kingdom was the city ofKummanni, situated in the highlands. In a later era, the same region was known asCilicia.
Empires in the ancient Near East around the end of the2nd millennium BC
Mari was an ancient Sumerian and Amorite city, located 11 kilometres north-west of the modern town ofAbu Kamal on the western bank of Euphrates river, some 120 km southeast ofDeir ez-Zor, Syria. It is thought to have been inhabited since the 5th millennium BC, although it flourished from 2900 BC until 1759 BC, when it was sacked byHammurabi.
TheAramaeans were a Semitic (West Semitic language group), semi-nomadic and pastoralist people who had lived in upper Mesopotamia andSyria. Aramaeans have never had a unified empire; they were divided into independent kingdoms all across the Near East. Yet to these Aramaeans befell the privilege of imposing their language and culture upon the entire Near East and beyond, fostered in part by the mass relocations enacted by successive empires, including the Assyrians andBabylonians. Scholars even have used the term 'Aramaization' for the Assyro-Babylonian peoples' languages and cultures, that have become Aramaic-speaking.[12]
TheSea peoples is the term used for a confederacy of seafaring raiders of the second millennium BC who sailed into the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, caused political unrest, and attempted to enter or controlEgyptian territory during the late19th dynasty, and especially during Year 8 ofRamesses III of the20th Dynasty.[13] The Egyptian pharaohMerneptah explicitly refers to them by the term "the foreign-countries (or 'peoples')[14] of the sea"[15][16] in hisGreat Karnak Inscription.[17] Although some scholars believe that they "invaded"Cyprus,Hatti and the Levant, this hypothesis is disputed.[18]
TheBronze Age collapse is the name given by those historians who see the transition from the late Bronze Age to theEarly Iron Age as violent, sudden and culturally disruptive, expressed by the collapse ofpalace economies of theAegean and Anatolia, which were replaced after a hiatus by the isolated village cultures of theDark Age period in history of the ancient Middle East. Some have gone so far as to call the catalyst that ended the Bronze Age a "catastrophe".[19] The Bronze Age collapse may be seen in the context of a technological history that saw the slow, comparatively continuous spread of iron-working technology in the region, beginning with precocious iron-working in what is nowRomania in the 13th and 12th centuries.[20] The cultural collapse of theMycenaean kingdoms, the Hittite Empire in Anatolia and Syria, and theEgyptian Empire in Syria andPalestine, the scission of long-distancetrade contacts and sudden eclipse of literacy occurred between 1206 and 1150 BC. In the first phase of this period, almost every city betweenTroy andGaza was violently destroyed, and often left unoccupied thereafter (for example,Hattusas,Mycenae,Ugarit). The gradual end of theDark Age that ensued saw the rise of settled Neo-Hittite andAramaean kingdoms of the mid-10th century BC, and the rise of theNeo-Assyrian Empire.
During the Early Iron Age, from 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire arose, vying with Babylonia and other lesser powers for dominance of the region, though not until the reforms ofTiglath-Pileser III in the 8th century BC,[21][22] did it become a powerful and vast empire. In the Middle Assyrian period of the Late Bronze Age,ancient Assyria had been a kingdom ofnorthern Mesopotamia (modern-day northern Iraq), competing for dominance with its southern Mesopotamian rival Babylonia. From 1365 to 1076, it had been a major imperial power, rivaling Egypt and the Hittite Empire. Beginning with the campaign ofAdad-nirari II, it became a vast empire, overthrowing theTwenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt and conquering Egypt, the Middle East, and large swaths ofAsia Minor,ancient Iran, the Caucasus andeast Mediterranean. The Neo-Assyrian Empire succeeded theMiddle Assyrian period (14th to 10th century BC). Some scholars, such asRichard Nelson Frye, regard the Neo-Assyrian Empire to be the first real empire in human history.[23] During this period,Aramaic was also made an official language of the empire, alongside theAkkadian language.[23]
The states of theNeo-Hittite kingdoms wereLuwian, Aramaic andPhoenician-speaking political entities ofIron Age northern Syria and southern Anatolia that arose following the collapse of the Hittite Empire around 1180 BC and lasted until roughly 700 BC. The term "Neo-Hittite" is sometimes reserved specifically for the Luwian-speaking principalities like Melid (Malatya) and Karkamish (Carchemish), although in a wider sense the broader cultural term "Syro-Hittite" is now applied to all the entities that arose in south-central Anatolia following the Hittite collapse – such asTabal andQuwê – as well as those of northern and coastal Syria.[24][25]
The term Neo-Babylonian Empire refers to Babylonia under the rule of the 11th ("Chaldean") dynasty, from the revolt ofNabopolassar in 623 BC until the invasion ofCyrus the Great in 539 BC (Although the last ruler of Babylonia (Nabonidus) was in fact from the Assyrian city of Harran and not Chaldean), notably including the reign of Nebuchadrezzar II. Through the centuries of Assyrian domination, Babylonia enjoyed a prominent status, and revolted at the slightest indication that it did not. However, the Assyrians always managed to restore Babylonian loyalty, whether through the granting of increased privileges, or militarily. That finally changed in 627 BC with the death of the last strong Assyrian ruler,Ashurbanipal, and Babylonia rebelled under Nabopolassar the Chaldean a few years later. In alliance with theMedes andScythians,Nineveh was sacked in 612 andHarran in 608 BC, and the seat of empire was again transferred to Babylonia. Subsequently, the Medes controlled much of the ancient Near East from their base inEcbatana (modern-dayHamadan, Iran), most notably most of what is now Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and theSouth Caucasus.
Following the fall of the Medes, theAchaemenid Empire was the first of thePersian Empires to rule over most of the Near East and far beyond, and the second great Iranian empire (after the Median Empire). At the height of its power, encompassing approximately 7,500,000 km2 (2,900,000 sq mi), the Achaemenid Empire was territorially the largest empire of classical antiquity, and the first world empire. It spanned three continents (Europe, Asia, and Africa), including apart from its core in modern-day Iran, the territories of modern Iraq, the Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan,Dagestan, Abkhazia), Asia Minor (Turkey),Thrace (parts of easternBulgaria),Macedonia (roughly corresponding to present-dayMacedonia in northern Greece), many of theBlack Sea coastal regions, northernSaudi Arabia,Jordan,Israel,Lebanon, Syria,Afghanistan,Central Asia, parts ofPakistan, and all significant population centers of ancient Egypt as far west asLibya.[citation needed] It is noted in western history as the foe of theGreek city states in theGreco-Persian Wars, for freeing the Israelites from theirBabylonian captivity, and for instituting Aramaic as the empire's official language.
In 116–117 AD, most of the ancient Near East (excepting several more marginal regions) was briefly re-united under the rule of theRoman Empire underTrajan.
^von Dassow, Eva, (2014). "Levantine Polities under Mittanian Hegemony". In: Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum, Nicole Brisch and Jesper Eidem (eds.).Constituent, Confederate, and Conquered Space: The Emergence of the Mittani State. pp. 11–32.
^A convenient table of sea peoples in hieroglyphics, transliteration and English is given in the dissertation of Woodhuizen, 2006, who developed it from works of Kitchen cited there.
^As noted by Gardiner V.1 p. 196, other texts have
ḫȝty.w "foreign-peoples"; both terms can refer to the concept of "foreigners" as well. Zangger in the external link below expresses a commonly held view that "sea peoples" does not translate this and other expressions but is an academic innovation. The Woudhuizen dissertation and the Morris paper identifyGaston Maspero as the first to use the term "peuples de la mer" in 1881.
^Gardiner, Alan H. (1947).Ancient Egyptian Onomastica. Vol. 1. London: Oxford University Press. p. 196.
^Colleen, Manassa (2003).The Great Karnak Inscription of Merneptah: Grand Strategy in the Thirteenth Century BC. New Haven: Yale Egyptological Seminar, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Yale University. p. 55.ISBN978-0-9740025-0-7.
^Line 52. The inscription is shown in Manassa p. 55 plate 12.
^Drews, Robert (1995).The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe Ca 1200 B.C. United States: Princeton University Press. p. 264.ISBN978-0-691-02591-9.
^See A. Stoia and the other essays inM.L. Stig Sørensen and R. Thomas, eds.,The Bronze Age – Iron Age Transition in Europe (Oxford) 1989, andT.A. Wertime and J.D. Muhly,The Coming of the Age of Iron (New Haven) 1980.
^Tadmor, H. (1994).The Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III, King of Assyria. p. 29
^abFrye, Richard N. (1992)."Assyria and Syria: Synonyms".PhD., Harvard University.Journal of Near Eastern Studies.And the ancient Assyrian empire, was the first real, empire in history. What do I mean, it had many different peoples included in the empire, all speaking Aramaic, and becoming what may be called, "Assyrian citizens." That was the first time in history, that we have this. For example, Elamite musicians, were brought to Nineveh, and they were 'made Assyrians' which means, that Assyria, was more than a small country, it was the empire, the whole Fertile Crescent.[dead YouTube link]
^Hawkins, John David; 1982a. "Neo-Hittite States in Syria and Anatolia" inCambridge Ancient History (2nd ed.) 3.1: 372–441.
^Hawkins, John David; 1995. "The Political Geography of North Syria and South-East Anatolia in the Neo-Assyrian Period" inNeo-Assyrian Geography,Mario Liverani (ed.),Università di Roma "La Sapienza", Dipartimento di Scienze storiche, archeologiche e anthropologiche dell'Antichità, Quaderni di Geografia Storica 5: Roma: Sargon srl, 87–101.
Fletcher, Banister & Dan Cruickshank.Sir Banister Fletcher's a History of Architecture. 20th ed. Architectural Press, 1996.ISBN0-7506-2267-9. Cf. Part One, Chapter 4.
Hallo, William W. & William Kelly Simpson.The Ancient Near East: A History. 2nd ed. Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1997.ISBN0-15-503819-2.
The History of the Ancient Near East – A database of the prehistoric Near East as well as its ancient history up to approximately the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans ...
Vicino Oriente – Vicino Oriente is the journal of the Section Near East of the Department of Historical, Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences of Antiquity of Rome 'La Sapienza' University. The Journal, which is published yearly, deals with Near Eastern History, Archaeology, Epigraphy, extending its view also on the whole Mediterranean with the study of Phoenician and Punic documents. It is accompanied by 'Quaderni di Vicino Oriente', a monograph series.
Ancient Near East.net – an information and content portal for the archaeology, ancient history, and culture of the ancient Near East and Egypt
Archaeowiki.org – a wiki for the research and documentation of the ancient Near East and Egypt
ETANA – website hosted by a consortium of universities in the interests of providing digitized resources and relevant web links
Ancient Near East Photographs – this collection, created by Professor Scott Noegel, documents artifacts and archaeological sites of the ancient Near East; from the University of Washington Libraries Digital Image Collection
Near East Images A directory of archaeological images of the ancient Near East
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