Customer Reviews

From Egypt to Babylon: The International Age 1550-500 BC

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From Egypt To Babylon narrates the political history of the early Middle East and eastern Mediterranean from 1500 BC to 500 BC (roughly, from the Hittites to the Persians,) using the so-called Low Chronology for the earlier dates. The main focus of the book is on kingdoms and empires, major rulers, wars, alliances, and trade. Cultural matters, such as literature, art and religion, are mentioned, if at all, only in passing. The book does include captioned photographs of objects in the British Museum collection, but these are independent of the author's text.

In only 200 pages, many of them partly occupied by illustrations, it is hard for any author to do justice to a full millennium of Ancient Middle Eastern history. The result in this case is mostly a laundry list of kings and empires, but such frameworks are important; readers who would be satisfied with that, could certainly consider buying this book.

Paul Collins has written an impeccable book, and its strength lies not only in its careful analytical summations of known ancient Near Eastern history but also especially in its attention to international relations in the time period from the Late Bronze Age to Neo-Babylon. Collins has done justice to what happened in Mesopotamia at the same time as in Egypt and how these regions reacted or responded to each other, with detailed critical understanding of the ebb and flow of power dynamics between these regions (when one was strong, the other usually weaker; when equally strong, a clash was inevitable in the Levantine buffer zone). While I agree with another reviewer that selective cultural highlights would make this book even better (e.g., Gilgamesh only receives a few sentences) - although also possibly making the book too long - this is not its stated historically purposed purview. While I also agree that integration of illustration and text or discussion of illustrations therein, adding to its excellent captions, might improve the book, its many beautiful and iconic images (in keeping with British Museum Press high standards) are lavishly ample and greatly representative of the cultures therein. I will certainly use the book in my next Stanford course on the Ancient Near East, and I hope a paperback edition is forthcoming for university students, for whom it will be the current definitive text.

This book does an impressive job of pulling together the threads of the diverse histories of the ancient world into a coherent fabric that illustrates the relations of these kingdoms to one another. For many readers it will introduce peoples about whom they may know little or nothing, and show how their histories fit into the better known histories of lands such as Egypt and Greece. This book will be of interest to any who have studied any particular ancient civilization and wondered how it fits into the larger tapestry of ancient history.

I have only one small problem with this book (and it is a very small one): The author's insistence on using the term "Iraq" rather than "Mesopotamia" throughout his text. He explains it thus in his Preface: "The term Iraq (a name applied to the region of the modern country from at least the sixth century AD) is used in preference to the Greek term Mesopotamia which is becoming less meaningful for younger generations of readers." For someone like me, seeing "Iraq" used 2000 years too early in the context of Mesopotamia is both jarring and distracting. I also submit that avoiding the term "Mesopotamia" is not the best way to combat the trend of it "becoming less meaningful." However, as I said, it is a small point and does little to detract from the overall usefulness of this very useful work.