Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture

Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture offers an historical overview of the civilizations of the ancient Near East spanning ten thousand years of history. This new edition is a comprehensive introduction to the history and culture of the Near East, from prehistory and the beginnings of farming to the fall of Achaemenid Persia. Through text, images, maps, and historical documents, readers discover the material, social, and political world of cultures from Egypt to India, allowing students to see how these intertwined cultures interacted throughout history. Now fully updated and incorporating the latest scholarship on society, religion, and the economy, this book highlights the changing fortunes of these great civilizations. A special feature of this book is its many "Debating the Evidence" sections, where the reader becomes familiar with scholarly disputes concerning the interpretation of textual and archaeological evidence on a variety of topics and case studies. The fourth edition of Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture remains a crucial textbook for undergraduates and general readers studying the ancient Near East, particularly the political and social history of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, as well as students of archaeology and biblical studies who are working on the region.

Introduction: Studying the Ancient Near East; 1. Near Eastern Prehistory; 2. The Dawn of the State in Western Asia; 3. The First Mesopotamian Empires; 4. Urbanism and Statehood in Wider Western Asia; 5. Egypt to the End of the Old Kingdom; 6. The Old Babylonian Period and Its Aftermath; 7. The Rise and Fall of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom; 8. The Era of Egypt’s Pre-eminence; 9. The End of the Bronze Age; 10. Recovery and Transformation; 11. Mesopotamian Supremacy; 12. The Achaemenid Persian Empire; 13. Ancient Israel and Judah; Afterword: The Legacy of the Ancient Near East.

William H. Stiebing, Jr. is Seraphia D. Leyda Professor of History, Emeritus, at the University of New Orleans, USA. He is the author of four books (including Out of the Desert?: Archaeology and the Exodus/Conquest Narratives) and many articles and book chapters on pseudoscience, archaeology, ancient history, and biblical studies. Susan N. Helft is an independent researcher. She has taught courses on the art and archaeology of the ancient Near East at Bryn Mawr College, Rutgers University Newark, and Fordham University and published on Anatolian art, the Bronze Age, and the Hittite Empire.