Ancient Near East History (from Bronze Age to Iron Age)

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Bronze Age

Ancient Elam lay to the east of Sumer and Akkad, in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of Khuzestan and Ilam Province. In the Old Elamite period, c. 3200 BC, it consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered on Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered on Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Elam was absorbed into the Assyrian Empire in the 9th to 7th centuries BC; however, the civilization endured up until 539 BC when it was finally overrun by the Iranian Persians. The Proto-Elamite civilization existed from c. 3200 BC to 2700 BC, when Susa, the later capital of the Elamites, began to receive influence from the cultures of the Iranian plateau. In archaeological terms, this corresponds to the late Banesh period. This civilization is recognized as the oldest in Iran and was largely contemporary with its neighbor, Sumer. The Proto-Elamite script is an early Bronze Age writing system briefly in use for the ancient Elamite language (which was a language isolate) before the introduction of Elamite cuneiform.

The Amorites were a nomadic Semitic people who occupied the country west of the Euphrates from the second half of the 3rd millennium BC. In the earliest Sumerian sources, beginning about 2400 BC, the land of the Amorites (“the Mar.tu land”) is associated with the West, including Syria and Canaan, although their ultimate origin may have been Arabia. They ultimately settled in Mesopotamia, ruling Isin, Larsa, and later Babylon.

• Assyria, after enduring a short period of Mitanni domination, emerged as a great power from the accession of Ashur-ballet I in 1365 BC to the death of Tiglath-Pileser I in 1076 BC. Assyria rivaled Egypt during this period and dominated much of the Near East.
• Babylonia, founded as a state by Amorite tribes, found itself under the rule of Kassites for 435 years. The nation stagnated during the Kassite period, and Babylonia often found itself under Assyrian or Elamite domination.
• Canaan: Ugarit, Kadesh, Megiddo
• The Hittite Empire was founded sometime after 2000 BC, and existed as a major power, dominating Asia Minor and the Levant until 1200 BC, when it was first overrun by the Phrygians, and then appropriated by Assyria.

The Hurrians lived in northern Mesopotamia and areas to the immediate east and west, beginning approximately 2500 BC. They probably originated in the Caucasus and entered from the north, but this is not certain. Their known homeland was centered on Subartu, the Khabur River valley, and later they established themselves as rulers of small kingdoms throughout northern Mesopotamia and Syria. The largest and most influential Hurrian nation was the kingdom of Mitanni. The Hurrians played a substantial part in the history of the Hittites.

Ishuwa was an ancient kingdom in Anatolia. The name is first attested in the second millennium BC, and is also spelled Išuwa. In the classical period, the land was a part of Armenia. Ishuwa was one of the places where agriculture developed very early on in the Neolithic. Urban centers emerged in the upper Euphrates River valley around 3500 BC. The first states followed in the third millennium BC. The name Ishuwa is not known until the literate period of the second millennium BC. Few literate sources from within Ishuwa have been discovered and the primary source material comes from Hittite texts. To the west of Ishuwa lay the kingdom of the Hittites, and this nation was an untrustworthy neighbor. The Hittite king Hattusili I (c. 1600 BC) is reported to have marched his army across the Euphrates River and destroyed the cities there. This corresponds well with burnt destruction layers discovered by archaeologists at town sites in Ishuwa of roughly the same date. After the end of the Hittite empire in the early 12th century BC a new state emerged in Ishuwa. The city of Malatya became the center of one of the so-called Neo-Hittite kingdoms. The movement of nomadic people may have weakened the kingdom of Malatya before the final Assyrian invasion. The decline of the settlements and culture in Ishuwa from the 7th century BC until the Roman period was probably caused by this movement of people. The Armenians later settled in the area since they were natives of the Armenian plateau and related to the earlier inhabitants of Ishuwa.

Kizzuwatna was a kingdom of the second millennium BC, situated in the highlands of southeastern Anatolia, near the Gulf of İskenderun in modern-day Turkey, encircling the Taurus Mountains and the Ceyhan River. The center of the kingdom was the city of Kummanni, situated in the highlands. In a later era, the same region was known as Cilicia.

Luwian is an extinct language of the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European language family. Luwian speakers gradually spread through Anatolia and became a contributing factor to the downfall, after c. 1180 BC, of the Hittite Empire, where it was already widely spoken. Luwian was also the language spoken in the Neo-Hittite states of Syria, such as Melid and Carchemish, as well as in the central Anatolian kingdom of Tabal which flourished around 900 BC. Luwian has been preserved in two forms, named after the writing systems used to represent them: Cuneiform Luwian and Hieroglyphic Luwian.

Mari was an ancient Sumerian and Amorite city, located 11 kilometers north-west of the modern town of Abu Kamal on the western bank of the Euphrates River, some 120 km southeast of Deir ez-Zor, Syria. It is thought to have been inhabited since the 5th millennium BC, although it flourished from 2900 BC until 1759 BC when it was sacked by Hammurabi.

Mitanni was a Hurrian kingdom in northern Mesopotamia from c. 1600 BC, at the height of its power, during the 14th century BC, encompassing what is today southeastern Turkey, northern Syria, and northern Iraq (roughly corresponding to Kurdistan), centered on the capital Washukanni whose precise location has not yet been determined by archaeologists. The Mitanni language showed Indo-Aryan influences, especially in the names of gods. The spread to Syria of a distinct pottery type associated with the Kura-Araxes culture has been connected with this movement, although its date is somewhat too early.^[11] Yamhad was an ancient Amorite kingdom. A substantial Hurrian population also settled in the kingdom, and the Hurrian culture influenced the area. The kingdom was powerful during the Middle Bronze Age, c. 1800–1600 BC. Its biggest rival was Qatna further south. Yamhad was finally destroyed by the Hittites in the 16th century BC.

The Aramaeans were a Semitic (West Semitic language group), semi-nomadic, and pastoralist people who had lived in upper Mesopotamia and Syria. Aramaeans had never had a unified empire; they were divided into independent kingdoms all across the Near East. Yet these Aramaeans befell the privilege of imposing their language and culture upon the entire Near East and beyond, fostered in part by the mass relocations enacted by successive empires, including the Assyrians and Babylonians. Scholars even have used the term ‘Aramaization’ for the Assyro-Babylonian peoples’ languages and cultures, that have become Aramaic-speaking.

The Sea Peoples is the term used for a confederacy of seafaring raiders of the second millennium BC who sailed into the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, caused political unrest, and attempted to enter or control Egyptian territory during the late 19th dynasty, especially during Year 8 of Ramesses III of the 20th Dynasty. The Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah explicitly refers to them by the term “the foreign countries (or ‘peoples’) of the sea” in his Great Karnak Inscription. Although some scholars believe that they “invaded” Cyprus, Hatti, and the Levant, this hypothesis is disputed.

The Bronze Age collapse is the name given by those historians who see the transition from the late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age as violent, sudden, and culturally disruptive, expressed by the collapse of palace economies of the Aegean and Anatolia, which were replaced after a hiatus by the isolated village cultures of the Dark Age period in the history of the ancient Middle East. Some have gone so far as to call the catalyst that ended the Bronze Age a “catastrophe”. The Bronze Age collapse may be seen in the context of a technological history that saw the slow, comparatively continuous spread of iron-working technology in the region, beginning with precocious iron-working in what is now Romania in the 13th and 12th centuries.^[20] The cultural collapse of the Mycenaean kingdoms, the Hittite Empire in Anatolia and Syria, and the Egyptian Empire in Syria and Palestine, the scission of long-distance trade contacts, and the sudden eclipse of literacy occurred between 1206 and 1150 BC. In the first phase of this period, almost every city between Troy and Gaza was violently destroyed and often left unoccupied thereafter (for example, Hattusas, Mycenae, Ugarit). The gradual end of the Dark Age that ensued saw the rise of settled Neo-Hittite and Aramaean kingdoms of the mid-10th century BC, and the rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

Iron Age

During the Early Iron Age, from 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire arose, vying with Babylonia and other lesser powers for dominance of the region, though not until the reforms of Tiglath-Pileser III in the 8th century BC, did it become a powerful and vast empire. In the Middle Assyrian period of the Late Bronze Age, Ancient Assyria had been a kingdom of northern Mesopotamia (modern-day northern Iraq), competing for dominance with its southern Mesopotamian rival Babylonia. From 1365 to 1076, it had been a major imperial power, rivaling Egypt and the Hittite Empire. Beginning with the campaign of Adad-nirari II, it became a vast empire, overthrowing the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt and conquering Egypt, the Middle East, and large swaths of Asia Minor, ancient Iran, the Caucasus, and the east Mediterranean. The Neo-Assyrian Empire succeeded the Middle Assyrian period (14th to 10th century BC). Some scholars, such as Richard Nelson Frye, regard the Neo-Assyrian Empire to be the first real empire in human history. During this period, Aramaic was also made an official language of the empire, alongside the Akkadian language.

The states of the Neo-Hittite kingdoms were Luwian, Aramaic, and Phoenician-speaking political entities of Iron Age northern Syria and southern Anatolia that arose following the collapse of the Hittite Empire around 1180 BC and lasted until roughly 700 BC. The term “Neo-Hittite” is sometimes reserved specifically for the Luwian-speaking principalities like Melid (Malatya) and Karkamish (Carchemish), although in a wider sense the broader cultural term “Syro-Hittite” is now applied to all the entities that arose in south-central Anatolia following the Hittite collapse – such as Tabal and Quwê – as well as those of northern and coastal Syria.

Urartu was an ancient kingdom of Armenia and North Mesopotamia that existed from c. 860 BC, emerging from the Late Bronze Age until 585 BC. The Kingdom of Urartu was located in the mountainous plateau between Asia Minor, the Iranian plateau, Mesopotamia, and the Caucasus Mountains, later known as the Armenian Highland, and it centered on Lake Van (present-day eastern Turkey). The name corresponds to the Biblical Ararat.

Two related Israelite kingdoms known as Israel and Judah emerged in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. The northern Kingdom of Israel, with its most prominent capital at Samaria, was the more prosperous of the two kingdoms and soon developed into a regional power; during the days of the Omride dynasty, it controlled Samaria, Galilee, the upper Jordan Valley, the Sharon and large parts of the Transjordan. It was destroyed around 720 BC when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The southern Kingdom of Judah, with its capital at Jerusalem, survived longer. In the 7th century BC, the kingdom’s population increased greatly, prospering under Assyrian vassalage. After the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 605 BC, the ensuing competition between the Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt and the Neo-Babylonian Empire for control of the Levant resulted in the rapid decline of the kingdom. In the early 6th century BC, Judah was weakened by a series of Babylonian invasions, and in 587–586 BC, Jerusalem was besieged and destroyed by the second Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar II, who subsequently exiled the Judeans to Babylon.

The term Neo-Babylonian Empire refers to Babylonia under the rule of the 11th (“Chaldean”) dynasty, from the revolt of Nabopolassar in 623 BC until the invasion of Cyrus the Great in 539 BC (Although the last ruler of Babylonia (Nabonidus) was in fact from the Assyrian city of Harran and not Chaldean), notably including the reign of Nebuchadrezzar II. Through the centuries of Assyrian domination, Babylonia enjoyed a prominent status and revolted at the slightest indication that it did not. However, the Assyrians always managed to restore Babylonian loyalty, whether through the granting of increased privileges, or military. That finally changed in 627 BC with the death of the last strong Assyrian ruler, Ashurbanipal, and Babylonia rebelled under Nabopolassar the Chaldean a few years later. In alliance with the Medes and Scythians, Nineveh was sacked in 612 and Harran in 608 BC, and the seat of the empire was again transferred to Babylonia. Subsequently, the Medes controlled much of the ancient Near East from their base in Ecbatana (modern-day Hamadan, Iran), most notably most of what is now Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and the South Caucasus.

Following the fall of the Medes, the Achaemenid Empire was the first of the Persian Empires to rule over most of the Near East and far beyond, and the second great Iranian empire (after the Median Empire). At the height of its power, encompassing approximately 7,500,000 km² (2,900,000 sq mi), the Achaemenid Empire was territorially the largest empire of classical antiquity, and the first world empire. It spanned three continents (Europe, Asia, and Africa), including apart from its core in modern-day Iran, the territories of modern Iraq, the Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Abkhazia), Asia Minor (Turkey), Thrace (parts of Eastern Bulgaria), Macedonia (roughly corresponding to present-day Macedonia in Northern Greece), many of the Black Sea coastal regions, northern Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, Central Asia, parts of Pakistan, and all significant population centers of ancient Egypt as far west as Libya. It is noted in Western history as the foe of the Greek city-states in the Greco-Persian Wars, for freeing the Israelites from their Babylonian captivity, and for instituting Aramaic as the empire’s official language.

In 116–117 AD, most of the Ancient Near East (except several more marginal regions) was briefly re-united under the rule of the Roman Empire under Trajan.

References

• Liverani, Mario (2014). The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy. Routledge.
• Van De Mieroop, Marc (2004). A History of the Ancient Near East, ca. 3000–323 BC. Blackwell Publishing.
• Bryce, Trevor (2005). The Kingdom of the Hittites. Oxford University Press.
• Postgate, J. Nicholas (1992). Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History. Routledge.
• Kuhrt, Amélie (1995). The Ancient Near East: c. 3000–330 BC. Routledge.