Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture

by William H. Stiebing Jr., Susan N. Helft

Overview

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 Through text, images, maps, and historical documents, readers discover the material, social, and political world of cultures from Egypt to India, allowing students to see how these intertwined cultures interacted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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367744250
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/03/2023
Edition description:	4th ed.
Pages:	546
Sales rank:	876,033
Product dimensions:	6.88(w) x 9.69(h) x (d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

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.

Editorial Reviews

"This book is an impressive, comprehensive, up-to-date review of the ancient Near Eastern world from its prehistoric origins to Alexander’s conquest of the Persian empire. Highly reliable as a work of scholarship, it will also have great appeal to the non-specialist reader, in its down-to-earth language and its detective-like approach in addressing many of the unsolved problems of Near Eastern scholarship. Based on extensive use of both written and archaeological sources, it presents a lively and vigorous treatment of the ancient Near East, of great value to students, and of considerable appeal to readers with a general interest in the peoples of the ancient world."

- Trevor Bryce, University of Queensland, Australia

 

"[This] text is a comprehensive introduction into the history of both the Ancient Near East and Ancient Egypt from the end of the Last Ice Age (ca. 12,500 BCE) until the conquests of Alexander the Great (333-323 BCE) ... the authors can be applauded for creating a holistic account of developments in the Ancient Near East by taking into account cultures and civilizations often neglected, or only mentioned in passing, in other textbooks ... The coverage in the book ranges from earlier cultures only known from archaeological sources, like those of the Indus and Oxus, to later kingdoms and peoples such as Urartu, the Phoenicians, Phrygians, and Lydians. In the same vein, the separate chapter on the history of ancient Israel and Judah is a welcome addition, also because it doubles as an introduction to the usefulness of the Bible for historical research. The section on prehistory is well informed and up-to-date and together with the chapters on the first millennium it belongs to the best parts of the book. Finally, each chapter has relevant and interesting 'Debating the Evidence'sections where the authors touch on controversial or highly debated issues, such as the Indus script or the Late Bronze Age collapse."

- Rients de Boer, Free University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2018

From the Publisher