PART I
Introduction 1
1 The Ancient Near East as a historical problem 3
2 The geography of the Ancient Near East 17
3 The Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods 34
PART II
The Early Bronze Age 59
4 The Urban Revolution 61
5 The rise and fall of the first urbanisation 81
6 Mesopotamia in the Early Dynastic period 93
7 The rise of Ebla 115
8 The Akkadian empire 133
9 The Third Dynasty of Ur 155
PART III
The Middle Bronze Age 171
10 The crisis of the second urbanisation 173
11 The ‘Intermediate period’ of Isin and Larsa 186
12 The Old Assyrian period 207
13 The Mari Age 221
14 Hammurabi of Babylon 240
15 Anatolia in the Old Hittite period 256
PART IV
The Late Bronze Age 269
16 The Late Bronze Age: technologies and ideologies 271
17 The rise of Mitanni 290
18 The Hittite empire 303
19 Syria and the Levant in the Late Bronze Age 325
20 The Middle Assyrian kingdom 347
21 Kassite Babylonia 364
PART V
The Early Iron Age 379
22 Crisis and reorganisation 381
23 Israel 401
24 The Phoenicians 420
25 The Arameans in Syria and Mesopotamia 434
26 The Neo-Hittite states 448
27 Assyria, Babylonia and Elam in the twelfth to ninth centuries bc 458
PART VI
Empires and Unification 473
28 The rise of the Neo-Assyrian empire 475
29 The structure of the Neo-Assyrian empire 497
30 The periphery of the Neo-Assyrian empire 518
31 The fall of the empire and the rise of the Chaldeans 537
32 The Medes and the rise of the Persians 554
33 Conclusion 571
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