The ancient Near East was home to many cradles of civilization, spanning Ancient Mesopotamia, the ancient Levant, ancient Egypt, ancient Elam, ancient Anatolia or Asia Minor, the ancient South Caucasus and Armenian highlands, and ancient Northern Arabia (including Dilmun). It is generally not considered to include Pre-Islamic Arabia as a whole, the ancient Berbers, or ancient Nubia, though it is sometimes classified as encompassing ancient Iran, ancient Cyprus, Ancient Carthage, and the Aegean civilization. Due to their subject matter and scope, ancient Near East studies and Near Eastern archaeology, including the subfields of Assyriology, Egyptology and Hittitology, are among the most prominent research fields in ancient history. Other fields include Classics, Classical archaeology, biblical studies, biblical archaeology, Jewish studies, Christian studies, Iranology, Sinology, and Indology, some of which overlap with them. Historically, the Near East denoted an area roughly encompassing central West Asia and Egypt, having been focused on the lands between Greece in the west, Iran in the east, the Caucasus in the north, and Arabia in the south. It therefore largely corresponds with the central core area of the modern-day geopolitical concept of the Middle East. It was strongly influential on Christianity, the later Islamic world and civilization, which conquered and absorbed its remannts with the exception of indigenous non Arabized Jews, Assyrians, Mandaeans, Syriac Arameans and Armenians, all of who directly descend from it, and moderately so on the later Western world and civilization via the Aegean civilization, the Orientalizing period, the Greco-Persian wars, the Hellenistic period, the Roman and Eastern Roman empires, and Christianity, while being distinct from yet to some degree culturally related and ancestral to them.
The history of the ancient Near East opens with Sumer's rise in the 4th millennium BC and spans the Bronze Age and Iron Age; its terminus is debated, variously set at the Achaemenid Empire's founding in the 6th century BC, the Macedonian Empire's founding in the 4th century BC, or the early Muslim conquests' onset in the 7th century AD.
It was within the ancient Near East that humans first practiced intensive year-round agriculture, which led to the rise of the earliest dense urban settlements and the development of many now-familiar institutions of civilization, such as social stratification, centralized government and empires, and organized religion (see: ancient Near Eastern religions) and organized warfare. It also produced the first writing system, the first alphabet (i.e., abjad), the first currency, the first legal codes, and the invention of the wheel, advances that founded astronomy and mathematics.
During this period, the region's previously stateless societies largely transitioned to building states, many of which gradually came to annex the territories of their neighbouring civilizations. This process continued until the entire ancient Near East was enveloped by militaristic empires that had emerged from their own lands to conquer and absorb a variety of cultures under the rule of a top-level government.
Contents
The concept of the Near East
The phrase "ancient Near East" denotes the 19th-century distinction between the Near and Far East as global regions of interest to the British Empire. The distinction began during the Crimean War. The last major exclusive partition of the east between these two terms was current in diplomacy in the late 19th century, with the Hamidian massacres of the Armenians and Assyrians by the Ottoman Empire in 1894–1896 and the First 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.
As Near 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 from Vienna (to the north) to the tip of the Arabian Peninsula (to the south), from Egypt (in the west) to the borders of Iraq (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.
Periodization
Ancient Near East periodization 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.
Background: prehistory
Paleolithic
Epipalaeolithic Near East
Kebaran culture
Natufian culture
Neolithic in the Near East
Pre-pottery Neolithic A
Pre-pottery Neolithic B
Pre-pottery Neolithic C
Pottery Neolithic
Chalcolithic
The Uruk period (c. 4000 to 3100 BC) existed from the protohistoric Chalcolithic to the early Bronze Age period in the history of Mesopotamia, following the Ubaid period. Named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this period saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia. It was followed by the Sumerian civilization in southern Mesopotamia. The late Uruk period (3400 to 3200 BC) saw the gradual emergence of cuneiform script and corresponds to the early Bronze Age.
History
Bronze Age
Sumer hosted many early advances in human history, such as schools (c. 3000 BC), making the area a cradle 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. The oldest layers at 'Oueili mark the beginning of the Ubaid period, which was followed by the Uruk period (4th millennium BC) and the Early Dynastic periods (3rd millennium BC). The Akkadian Empire, founded by Sargon 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.
Ancient Elam lay to the east of Sumer and Akkad, in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of Khuzestan and Ilam Province. In the Old Elamite period, c. 3200 BC, it consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered on Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered on Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Elam was absorbed into the Assyrian Empire in the 9th to 7th centuries BC; however, the civilization endured up until 539 BC when it was finally overrun by the Iranian Persians. The Proto-Elamite civilization existed from c. 3200 BC to 2700 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 late Banesh 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 the ancient Elamite language (which was a language isolate) before the introduction of Elamite cuneiform.
The Amorites were a nomadic Semitic people who occupied the country west of the Euphrates from the second half of the 3rd millennium BC. In the earliest Sumerian sources, beginning about 2400 BC, the land of the Amorites ("the Mar.tu land") is associated with the West, including Syria and Canaan, although their ultimate origin may have been Arabia. They ultimately settled in Mesopotamia, ruling Isin, Larsa, and later Babylon.
Assyria, after enduring a short period of Mitanni domination, emerged as a great power from the accession of Ashur-uballit I in 1365 BC to the death of Tiglath-Pileser I in 1076 BC. Assyria rivaled Egypt during this period, and dominated much of the near east.
Iron Age
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 of Tiglath-Pileser III in the 8th century BC, did it become a powerful and vast empire. In the Middle Assyrian period of the Late Bronze Age, ancient Assyria had been a kingdom of northern 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 of Adad-nirari II, it became a vast empire, overthrowing the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt and conquering Egypt, the Middle East, and large swaths of Asia Minor, ancient Iran, the Caucasus and east Mediterranean. The Neo-Assyrian Empire succeeded the Middle Assyrian period (14th to 10th century BC). Some scholars, such as Richard Nelson Frye, regard the Neo-Assyrian Empire to be the first real empire in human history. During this period, Aramaic was also made an official language of the empire, alongside the Akkadian language.
The states of the Neo-Hittite kingdoms were Luwian, Aramaic and Phoenician-speaking political entities of Iron 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 label "Neo-Hittite" is sometimes restricted to Luwian-speaking principalities like Melid (Malatya) and Karkamish (Carchemish), while the cultural term "Syro-Hittite" extends more broadly to all entities that appeared in south-central Anatolia after the Hittite collapse, such as Tabal and Quwê, and to those in northern and coastal Syria.
Urartu was an ancient kingdom of Armenia and North Mesopotamia which existed from c. 860 BC, emerging from the Late Bronze Age until 585 BC. The Kingdom of Urartu was located in the mountainous plateau between Asia Minor, the Iranian plateau, Mesopotamia, and the Caucasus Mountains, later known as the Armenian Highland, and it centered on Lake Van (present-day eastern Turkey). The name corresponds to the Biblical Ararat.
Two related Israelite kingdoms known as Israel and Judah emerged in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. The northern Kingdom of Israel, with its most prominent capital at Samaria, was the more prosperous of the two kingdoms and soon developed into a regional power; during the days of the Omride dynasty, it controlled Samaria, Galilee, the upper Jordan Valley, the Sharon and large parts of the Transjordan. It was destroyed around 720 BC, when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The southern Kingdom of Judah, with its capital at Jerusalem, survived longer. In the 7th century BC, the kingdom's population increased greatly, prospering under Assyrian vassalage. After the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 605 BC, the ensuing competition between the Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt and the Neo-Babylonian Empire for control of the Levant resulted with the rapid decline of the kingdom. In the early-6th century BC, Judah was weakened by a series of Babylonian invasions, and in 587–586 BC, Jerusalem was besieged and destroyed by the second Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar II, who subsequently exiled the Judeans to Babylon.