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Ancient Near East

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The ancient Near East was home to many cradles of civilization, spanning Mesopotamia, Egypt, western Iran (or Persia), Anatolia and the Armenian highlands, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula.

Quotes

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  • The roots of modern civilization are planted deeply in the highly elaborate life of those nations which rose into power over six thousand years ago, in the basin of the eastern Mediterranean, and the adjacent regions on the east of it.
  • [T]he eastern Mediterranean region...lies in the midst of the vast desert plateau, which, beginning at the Atlantic, extends eastward across the entire northern end of Africa, and continuing beyond the depression of the Red Sea, passes northeastward, with some interruptions, far into the heart of Asia. Approaching it, the one from the south and the other from the north, two great river valleys traverse this desert; in Asia, the Tigro-Euphrates valley; in Africa that of the Nile. It is in these two valleys that the career of man may be traced from the rise of European civilization back to a remoter age than anywhere else on earth; and it is from these two cradles of the human race that the influences which emanated from their highly developed but differing cultures, can now be more and more clearly traced as we discern them converging upon the early civilization of Asia Minor and southern Europe.
    • J. H. Breasted, A History of Egypt (1905) ch. 1
  • [T]he past was supreme; the priest who cherished it lived in a realm of shadows, and for the contemporary world he had no vital meaning. Likewise in Babylon the same retrospective spirit was now the dominant characteristic of the reviving empire of Nebuchadrezzar. The world was already growing old, and everywhere men were fondly dwelling on her faraway youth.
    • J. H. Breasted, A History of Egypt (1905) ch. 27 — the 7th century BC
  • It lies like an army facing south, with one wing stretching along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean and the other reaching out to the Persian Gulf, while the center has its back against the northern mountains. The end of the western wing is Palestine; Assyria makes up a large part of the center; while the end of the eastern wing is Babylonia. [...] This great semicircle, for lack of a name, may be called the Fertile Crescent.
    • J. H. Breasted, Outlines of European History, Pt. I (1914) ch. 3
  • Since progress is the rare exception, and not the rule, among the communities of mankind, it is less important to speculate about the reasons for its cessation among the ancient Egyptians than to observe how the technological advances made in the Near East became by degrees more widely diffused until they penetrated Europe. Neither Mesopotamia nor Egypt had the resources which would have enabled it to develop its civilization on a basis of autarky. They had never been self-contained as regards timber or metals or even ivory: in the second millenium B.C. the development of larger ships and better organized land transport encouraged greater efforts to satisfy their needs by importations. In exchanging the products of their superior technology for raw materials they stimulated imitation. Moreover, in ancient as in modern times the needs of trade often stimulated the desire for conquest, which likewise left its mark upon the life of neighboring peoples long after the tide of conquest had receded. Aggression then provoked counter-aggression: some barbarian intruders were eventually absorbed into the life of the two empires, others clashed with them, and kept their independence.
    • T. K. Derry and Trevor I. Williams, A Short History of Technology: From the Earliest Times to A.D. 1900 (1960) ch. 1
  • The origins of diplomacy date back at least to the Bronze Age in the Near East. Caches of documents from the Euphrates kingdom in the mid–eighteenth century BC and from Akhenaten’s Egypt four centuries later reveal a regular exchange of envoys with neighboring states, prompted by the need for trade and the danger of war. This was hardly a fully fledged diplomatic “system.” Envoys were not resident ambassadors and they were not protected by agreed rules of immunity—but it was a recognizable form of diplomacy. Summitry, as we would understand it, was rare, being mostly confined to visits by minor rulers to pay homage at the courts of their overlords. This is hardly surprising because of the travel time required—six weeks for even a fast courier from Egypt to Babylon—and because of the hazards and insecurities en route. For a ruler to undertake such a journey was therefore a sign of his inferior status. Rulers of great powers, though they might address each other in letters as “dear brother,” would never meet unless one of them had become the booty of battle, which was not summitry but submission.
    • David Reynolds, Summits: Six Meetings that Changed the Twentieth Century (2007), p. 11
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