The Oxford Handbook Of The State In The Ancient Near East And Mediterranean

Tracing the evolution of the state from its beginnings to the early Middle Ages, this comprehensive handbook focuses on key institutions and dynamics while providing accessible accounts of states and empires in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean.

The cultures of Nubia built the earliest cities, states, and empires of inner Africa, but they remain relatively poorly known outside their modern descendants and the community of archaeologists, historians, and art historians researching them. The earliest archaeological work in Nubia was motivated by the region's role as neighbor, trade partner, and enemy of ancient Egypt. Increasingly, however, ancient Nile-based Nubian cultures are recognized in their own right as the earliest complex societies in inner Africa. As agro-pastoral cultures, Nubian settlement, economy, political organization, and religious ideologies were often organized differently from those of the urban, bureaucratic, and predominantly agricultural states of Egypt and the ancient Near East. Nubian societies are thus of great interest in comparative study, and are also recognized for their broader impact on the histories of the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Nubia brings together chapters by an international group of scholars on a wide variety of topics that relate to the history and archaeology of the region. After important introductory chapters on the history of research in Nubia and on its climate and physical environment, the largest part of the volume focuses on the sequence of cultures that lead almost to the present day. Several cross-cutting themes are woven through these chapters, including essays on desert cultures and on Nubians in Egypt. Eleven final chapters synthesize subjects across all historical phases, including gender and the body, economy and trade, landscape archaeology, iron working, and stone quarrying.

An authoritative guide to the Ancient Middle East as seen through the lens of cuneiform writing, the writing system of ancient Mesopotamia. Written by a team of international scholars, with chapter bibliographies and numerous illustrations, the Handbook is a state-of-the-art guide to the discipline as well as offering pathways for future research.

This Handbook offers an overview of the archaeology of the Levant. Written by leading scholars in the field, it integrates the treatment of the archaeology of the region within its larger cultural and social context and focuses chronologically on the Neolithic through to the Persian periods.

Volume 1. From the beginnings to Old Kingdom Egypt and the dynasty of Akkad.

This atlas provides students and scholars with a broad range of information on the development of the Ancient Near East from prehistoric times through the beginning of written records in the Near East (c. 3000 BC) to the late Roman Empire and the rise of Islam. The geographical coverage of the Atlas extends from the Aegean coast of Anatolia in the west through Iran and Afghanistan to the east, and from the Black and Caspian Seas in the north to Arabia and the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean in the south. The Atlas of the Ancient Near East includes a wide-ranging overview of the civilizations and kingdoms discussed, written in a lively and engaging style, which considers not only political and military issues but also introduces the reader to social and cultural topics such as trade, religion, how people were educated and entertained, and much more. With a comprehensive series of detailed maps, supported by the authors’ commentary and illustrations of major sites and key artifacts, this title is an invaluable resource for students who wish to understand the fascinating cultures of the Ancient Near East.

This is the first world history of empire, reaching from the third millennium BCE to the present. By combining synthetic surveys, thematic comparative essays, and numerous chapters on specific empires, its two volumes provide unparalleled coverage of imperialism throughout history and across continents, from Asia to Europe and from Africa to the Americas. Only a few decades ago empire was believed to be a thing of the past; now it is clear that it has been and remains one of the most enduring forms of political organization and power. We cannot understand the dynamics and resilience of empire without moving decisively beyond the study of individual cases or particular periods, such as the relatively short age of European colonialism. The history of empire, as these volumes amply demonstrate, needs to be drawn on the much broader canvas of global history. Volume Two: The History of Empires tracks the protean history of political domination from the very beginnings of state formation in the Bronze Age up to the present. Case studies deal with the full range of the historical experience of empire, from the realms of the Achaemenids and Asoka to the empires of Mali and Songhay, and from ancient Rome and China to the Mughals, American settler colonialism, and the Soviet Union. Forty-five chapters detailing the history of individual empires are tied together by a set of global synthesizing surveys that structure the world history of empire into eight chronological phases.

This groundbreaking, five-volume series offers a comprehensive, fully illustrated history of Egypt and Western Asia (the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Iran), from the emergence of complex states to the conquest of Alexander the Great. Written by a highly diverse, international team of leading scholars, whose expertise brings to life the people, places, and times of the remote past, the volumes in this series focus firmly on the political and social histories of the states and communities of the ancient Near East. Individual chapters present the key textual and material sources underpinning the historical reconstruction, paying particular attention to the most recent archaeological finds and their impact on our historical understanding of the periods surveyed. Commencing with the domestication of plants and animals, and the foundation of the first permanent settlements in the region, Volume I contains ten chapters that provide a masterful survey of the earliest dynasties and territorial states in the ancient Near East, concluding with the rise of the Old Kingdom in Egypt and the Dynasty of Akkad in Mesopotamia. Politics, ideology, religion, art, crafts, economy, military developments, and the built environment are all examined. Uniquely, emphasis is placed upon elucidating both the internal dynamics of these states and communities, as well as their external relationships with their neighbors in the wider region. The result is a thoughtful, critical, and robust survey of the populations that laid the foundation for all future developments in the ancient Near East.