A history of the ancient Near East, ca. 3000-323 B.C. Marc Van de Mieroop.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [318]-327) and index.

1. Introductory concerns -- 1.1. What is the Ancient Near East? -- 1.2. The sources -- 1.3. Geography -- 1.4. Prehistoric developments.

pt. I. City-states -- 2. Origins : the Uruk phenomenon -- 2.1. The origins of cities -- 2.2. The development of writing and administration -- 2.3. The "Uruk expansion" -- 2.4. Uruk's aftermath -- 3. Competing city-states : the Early Dynastic period -- 3.1. The written sources and their historical uses -- 3.2. Political developments in Southern Mesopotamia -- 3.3. The wider Near East -- 3.4. Early Dynastic society -- 3.5. Scribal culture -- 4. Political centralization in the late third millennium -- 4.1. The kings of Akkad -- 4.2. The third dynasty of Ur -- 5. The Near East in the early second millennium -- 5.1. Nomads and sedentary people -- 5.2. Babylonia -- 5.3. Assyria and the East -- 5.4. Mari and the West -- 6. The growth of territorial states in the early second millennium -- 6.1. Shamshi-Adad and the kingdom of upper Mesopotamia -- 6.2. Hammurabi's Babylon -- 6.3. The Old Hittite kingdom -- 6.4. The "Dark Age."

pt. II. Territorial states -- 7. The club of the great powers -- 7.1. The political system -- 7.2. Political interactions : diplomacy and trade -- 7.3. Regional competition : warfare -- 7.4. Shared ideologies and social organizations -- 8. The Western states of the late second millennium -- 8.1. Mittani -- 8.2. The Hittite new kingdom -- 8.3. Syria-Palestine -- 9. Kassites, Assyrians, and Elamites -- 9.1. Babylonia -- 9.2. Assyria -- 9.3. The middle Elamite kingdom -- 10. The collapse of the regional system and its aftermath -- 10.1. The events -- 10.2. Interpretation -- 10.3. The aftermath.

pt. III. Empires -- 11. The Near East at the start of the first millennium -- 11.1. The Eastern states -- 11.2. The West -- 12. The rise of Assyria -- 12.1. Patterns of Assyrian imperialism -- 12.2. The historical record -- 12.3. Ninth-century expansion -- 12.4. Internal Assyrian decline -- 13. Assyria's world domination -- 13.1. The creation of an imperial structure -- 13.2. The defeat of the great rivals -- 13.3. The administration and ideology of the empire -- 13.4. Assyrian culture -- 13.5. Assyria's fall -- 14. The Medes and Babylonians -- 14.1. The Medes and the Anatolian states -- 14.2. The Neo-Babylonian dynasty -- 15. The Persian empire -- 15.1. The rise of Persia and its expansion -- 15.2. Political developments -- 15.3. Organization of the empire -- 15.4. Alexander of Macedon.

Contains a comprehensive history of the multicultural civilizations of the Ancient Near East and the growth of the Mesopotamian, Babylonian, Hittite, Assyrian, and Persian empires through the conquests of Alexander the Great.