An important study of the early history of Mesopotamia based on an in-depth knowledge of recent archaeological finds. Roger Matthews traces the development of this area from the earliest evidence for hominids, through the early Holocene, from hunters to farmers and to the onset of more developed, increasingly complex societies. The geography, climate and ecology of the area sets the scene for this discussion which makes constant reference to up-to-date archaeological evidence.

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This is a concise introduction to the history of the ancient Near East during the first millennium BC. It covers Phoenicia, Palestine, the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires, the Persian Achaemenid empire, the empire of Alexander, and the vast Persian Seleucid empire founded by Seleucus around 300 BC and defeated by Pompey for Rome in 64 BC.

The book focuses on political history, the sources and shifts of power and the individuals who wielded it. It also introduces the student to the principal aspects of the religious, social and economic history of the region.

The succinct narrative is backed up by summary tables and maps, and enlivened by informative quotations from contemporary documents. The latter are frequently used to illustrate specific case studies. There is also a chronology and glossary for further reading on the subject.

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR’d book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

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The three essays presented in this volume reveal the symbolic complexity and poetic visions of ancient Near Eastern mythology. The author explores the interrelated themes of erotic desire, divine conflict, and death’s realm in selected ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian mythological narratives using contemporary methods of literary analysis. Topics include the construction of desire in the Gilgamesh epic, a psychoanalytic approach to ‘The Contendings of Horus and Seth’, and gender and the exercise of power in the stormy romance of Nergal and Ereshkigal. Walls’ fresh treatment of these three important myths brings them to life for the specialist and mythology buff alike.

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Describes the enormous accomplishments of the Sumerians and Babylonians of ancient Mesopotamia in every scientific area, a heritage which affects our own everyday lives.

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This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1876 edition by Scribner, Armstrong & Co., New York.

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Transcending ethnic, linguistic, and religious boundaries, early empires shaped thousands of years of world history. Yet despite the global prominence of empire, individual cases are often studied in isolation. This series seeks to change the terms of the debate by promoting cross-cultural, comparative, and transdisciplinary perspectives on imperial state formation prior to the European colonial expansion.

The world’s first known empires took shape in Mesopotamia between the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf, beginning around 2350 BCE. The next 2,500 years witnessed sustained imperial growth, bringing a growing share of humanity under the control of ever-fewer states. Two thousand years ago, just four major powers–the Roman, Parthian, Kushan, and Han empires–ruled perhaps two-thirds of the earth’s entire population. Yet despite empires’ prominence in the early history of civilization, there have been surprisingly few attempts to study the dynamics of ancient empires in the western Old World comparatively. Such grand comparisons were popular in the eighteenth century, but scholars then had only Greek and Latin literature and the Hebrew Bible as evidence, and necessarily framed the problem in different, more limited, terms. Near Eastern texts, and knowledge of their languages, only appeared in large amounts in the later nineteenth century. Neither Karl Marx nor Max Weber could make much use of this material, and not until the 1920s were there enough archaeological data to make syntheses of early European and west Asian history possible. But one consequence of the increase in empirical knowledge was that twentieth-century scholars generally defined the disciplinary and geographical boundaries of their specialties more narrowly than their Enlightenment predecessors had done, shying away from large questions and cross-cultural comparisons. As a result, Greek and Roman empires have largely been studied in isolation from those of the Near East. This volume is designed to address these deficits and encourage dialogue across disciplinary boundaries by examining the fundamental features of the successive and partly overlapping imperial states that dominated much of the Near East and the Mediterranean in the first millennia BCE and CE.

A substantial introductory discussion of recent thought on the mechanisms of imperial state formation prefaces the five newly commissioned case studies of the Neo-Assyrian, Achaemenid Persian, Athenian, Roman, and Byzantine empires. A final chapter draws on the findings of evolutionary psychology to improve our understanding of ultimate causation in imperial predation and exploitation in a wide range of historical systems from all over the globe. Contributors include John Haldon, Jack Goldstone, Peter Bedford, Josef Wiesehofer, Ian Morris, Walter Scheidel, and Keith Hopkins, whose essay on Roman political economy was completed just before his death in 2004.

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Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

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Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

List Price: $ 34.45

Price: $ 31.92

Find More Products