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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 | |