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| List of Illustrations | |
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| List of Charts | |
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| List of Maps | |
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| List of Boxes | |
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| List of Documents | |
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| Acknowledgements | |
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| Author #8217;s Notes | |
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| Preface | |
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| Introductory Concerns:What is the Ancient Near East? | |
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| The Sources | |
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| Geography | |
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| Prehistoric Developments | |
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| City-States | |
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| Origins: The Uruk Phenomenon | |
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| The Origins of Cities | |
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| The Development of Writing and Administration | |
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| The #8216;Uruk Expansion #8217; | |
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| Uruk #8217;s Aftermath | |
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| Competing City-States: the Early Dynastic Period | |
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| The Written Sources and Their Historical Uses | |
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| Political Developments in South Mesopotamia | |
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| The Wider Near East | |
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| Early Dynastic Society | |
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| Scribal Culture | |
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| Political Centralization in the Late Third Millennium | |
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| The kings of Akkad | |
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| The Third Dynasty of Ur | |
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| The Near East in the Early Second Millennium | |
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| Nomads and Sedentary People | |
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| Babylonia | |
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| Assyria and the East | |
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| Mari and the West | |
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| The Growth of Territorial States in the Early Second Millennium | |
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| Shamshi-Adad and the Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia | |
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| Hammurabi #8217;s Babylon | |
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| The Old Hittite Kingdom | |
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| The 'Dark Ages #8217; | |
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| Territorial States | |
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| The Club of the Great Powers | |
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| The Political System | |
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| Political Interactions: Diplomacy and Trade | |
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| Regional Competition: Warfare | |
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| Shared Ideologies and Social Organizations | |
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| The Western States of the Late Second Millennium | |
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| Mittani | |
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| The Hittite New Kingdom | |
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| Syria-Palestine | |
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| Kassites, Assyrians, and Elamites | |
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| Babylonia | |
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| Assyria | |
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| The Middle Elamite Kingdom | |
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| The Collapse of the Regional System and its Aftermath | |
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| The Events | |
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| Interpretation | |
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| The Aftermath | |
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| Empires | |
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| The Near East at the Start of the First Millennium | |
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| The Eastern States | |
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| The West | |
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| The Rise of Assyria | |
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| Patterns of Assyrian Imperialism | |
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| The Historical Record | |
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| Ninth Century Expansion | |
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| Internal Assyrian Decline | |
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| Assyria #8217;s World Domination | |
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| The Creation of an Imperial Structure | |
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| The Defeat of the Great Rivals | |
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| The Administration and Ideology of the Empire | |
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| Assyrian Culture | |
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| Assyria #8217;s Fall | |
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| The Medes and the Babylonians | |
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| The Medes and the Anatolian States | |
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| The Neo-Babylonian Dynasty | |
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| The Persian Empire | |
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| The Rise of Persia and its Expansion | |
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| Political Developments | |
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| Organization of the Empire | |
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| Alexander of Macedon | |
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| King Lists | |
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| Guide to Further Reading | |
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| Index | |