Customer Reviews

A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000 - 323 BC (Blackwell History of the Ancient World)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Unlike many other books, this volume covers the history of the entire Near East, from Iran to Anatolia, and not just Mesopotamia or the Hittites. This gives it an unusual breadth, as parts of the entire region influence each other. And in ranging from the dawn of historic cultures around the year 3000 BC up to Alexander the Great, it includes all of the independent ancient civilizations that subsequently disappeared.

This book is very much like a textbook. It is more difficult than popular history, but certainly not an academic treatise. Importantly, there are many maps, and extensive lists of kings of the various states.

Egypt only comes into the story when involved with the peoples of the Near East. Interestingly, the periods of Egyptian history known as the Intermediate periods, when the central power fell apart and conditions seemed more chaotic, correspond very closely to what are described as Dark Ages in the Near East. This book does not pursue those parallels, but they are interesting.

This volume is a good introduction to the history of the Ancient Near East. The author surveys the history of Sumeria, Babylonia, Assyria, Persia and the Hittite Empire in a highly readable style. Quotes from numerous important texts are included in each chapter and the author does a good job of not only telling us what happened, but also why it happened.

The book is well illustrated with black and white photos and numerous, highly useful, maps. At the end of the book is an excellent bibliography that will point the interested reader to other good articles and books on the topic.

This book was published in 2004 and incorporates the latest scholarship in the field. The author has done a great job of making ancient history come alive!

This work is certainly a very solid, readable and up-to-date textbook, as mentioned in the editorial reviews above. The author is a leading specialist on the field and provides us with a history of the Near East that includes very recent discoveries and approaches - an obvious must when it comes to a textbook (I haven't seen the first edition for a comparison, though).

The maps are numerous and clear, there are many illustrations and boxes with precious information on particulars (such as, for instance, "the use of pottery in archaeological research", "the eponym dating system", and a critical assessment on the use of the Bible and Herodotus as sources), and also many useful and interesting primary sources. There is a king list at the end, presented in a clear layout, and a helpful guide on further reading, mostly in English (well, it's a textbook - though many works in French and German are mandatory for the subject).

I rated this book with four stars because, although being a superb textbook, it almost completely lacks discussion on previous theories and approaches on Near Eastern Studies. In my opinion, no book for university level, even a textbook for first-year students, should miss some treatment of previous interpretations and views, which in some ways are still influential, and to which current approaches are inevitably a response - e.g., "Oriental Studies" as a XIXth-century construction, see Saïd; or even a criticism on Wittfogel's "hydraulic hypothesis", still present in some popular works.

This is a very solid presentation of almost 3,000 years of history in 360 pages. Don't expect anything authoritative-- the author says that early on. So much of the information historians have to work with is archaeological, which means our field of knowledge and understanding of this period is subject to change. Furthermore, the incredible length of time covered means somethings have to be left out in order to make a coherent and readable book. Very nice maps and graphics. Clearly written for the most part. The sheer number of names, of people or groups, can be hard to keep straight at times, but again that's more a reflection of the history the author deals with than the writing itself. You can tell the author's frustration with some of the archaeological work that's been done-- too much focus on palaces and forts and not enough on the vast majority of the people. It would be nice to have a history that showcased these varied societies and their economic structures and social organization. For all we know, our history of the period over-emphasizes the role of militarism and kings and under-emphasizes the role of peasants in maintaining the cultural patterns that changed only very gradually over the 3,000 year time frame.
I definitely recommend this book. It seems to be the latest scholarship, well written, and thoughtfully educates the reader on the issues facing the study of the period. It is important, afterall, to know how we know things. A great companion back good would be Wolfram Von Soden's The Ancient Orient: An Introduction to the Study of the Ancient Near East, which has a thematic rather than chronological lay-out.

This text is a brief summary of the history of the Mesopotamia from 3000 BCE to 300 BCE. It is clear and concise. Van De Mieroop offers a very engaging introduction to this topic. It is an excellent text for those who want to survey the period. He also includes bibliographies for those who would like to go deeper.

This clear, concise, informative and interesting book was a true pleasure to read.I highly recommend it to anyone that wants a fairly detailed overview of the history of this fascinatig cradle of civilization. I'm reading it again!

This was the first book that I have read on the subject of the ancient near east. I later read Georges Roux's "Ancient Iraq" and Foster & Foster's "Civilizations of Ancient Iraq." These books all cover the same subject, but in different style, depth, and breadth.

Van De Mieroop's work is more scholarly and impersonal in its tone than the other two books, like what one would expect from a textbook. While this book is perhaps less descriptive than Roux's, it is a more coherant work (while Roux's was based on a series of articles he had written). Also, it is vastly more complete in the time period covered than Foster & Foster's. (One should note that the back cover of Foster and Foster's book contains praise and recommendation from Marc Van De Mieroop.) However, Van De Mieroop's book ends with the Invasion of Alexander the Great, where the Fosters continue on through Rome's presence in Iraq. "History of the Ancient Near East" includes in-text maps and illustrations, as opposed to "Ancient Iraq," where maps are inserted at the back of the book, and illustrations are sparse, mostly limited to picture plates at the center of the book. For somebody not used to the textbook style of history, this work's fairly deep and well rounded discussion of the material may seem dry and uninteresting at first.

I would never suggest to a person to read only one book on any subject. I would recommend they read all the above mentioned books, as well. I would recommend (to a fellow layman) that the books be read in the following order; Foster & Foster, Van De Mieroop, Roux. But no matter what books you decide to read on the subject of the Ancient Near East, or in what order you chose to read them, Van De Mieroop's "History of the Ancient Near East" should be one of them.

This is a very solid history of the ancient Near East. The author works from 3000 to Alexander, covering all of the various powers and dynasties that arise in an around the region. More than Mesopotamia is considered; indeed, everyone from the Hittites to the Persians has a place in this work. Lesser known kingdoms like the Elamites and the Ammorites are considered alongside the big players (Assyrians, Babylonians, etc.). The text is supplemented with primary sources, maps and images, many credit to other scholars, which I found very humble on the author's part. The writing itself is easily to follow, and the author carefully discusses historical sources. Overall, a well-paced, well-written work of history. One criticism: organization is not always clear; the chapters overlaps chronologically, and the author only sometimes explains his reasoning for the order of each narrative. Further, this ought to be supplemented with a text on Near Eastern culture; this is mostly a study of government, trade and empire (with occasional cultural information).

Length:: 6:58 Mins

This is a review of History of the Ancient Near East provided by Prof. Brandon L James Bowden currently of Southern Bible Institute. This is his review after reading through the text as part of a course review.

This is a freshman-college level survey of a seminal period of history: with Bronze Age technologies and refined agriculture, the first empires arose to establish patterns of urban civilization and king-centered governance that would last more or less to the industrial revolution. It is absolutely essential stuff and very fun to know.

In the beginning, there were innumerable competing city states in Mesopotamia, who jockeyed for advantage and tiny slices of territory. Each city state had an urban elite with the beginnings of written records (in syllabic cuneiform) to cover both administrative arrangements and early narrative literature and poetry. Much was recorded on Steles, in the form of propaganda regarding some leader's exploits. In time, the organization extended to larger regions that thrived on trade and a specialized work force, enabling elaborate religions with temples to arise as well as monumental architecture, particularly with ziggurats in Babylon. The king was often also the head priest, as in Egypt, but the functions were increasingly separated. Finally, empires (e.g. Assyrian and Persian) arose over huge territories that involved vast displacements of entire populations for purposes of slave labor and mercenary uses. This order ended only with the conquest by Alexander and his heirs, who divided his empire and were more or less absorbed into the local cultures. These peoples were predominantly semitic, at the time when Jews, Arabs, and others were forming into distinctive cultures. But there were also Indo-Europeans in the Hittites and then the Persians, both of whom established formidable empires.

There were several crucial turning points that are covered in outline. These include the emergence of exploitive international elites who had more in common with eachother than with their subjugated peoples, corresponding in highly developed rhetorical forms that required extremely refined classes of scribes to write in the somewhat awkward cuneiform syllabic script (it was only with the Phoenicians that alphabetic script developed, which was far easier to master). This order faced an unexplained catastrophic breakdown around 1200 BCE, at the time when bronze was replaced by iron. This wiped out the extensive trade networks and cultural exchanges that are portrayed as a kind of golden age. The author's treament of this mystery demonstrates the limits of this kind of survey: he mentions various interpretations but refrains for getting into more engaging detail and there is very little narrative flair to any of it.

The powers that arose from the ashes of the 1200 BCE catastrophe included 1) the Assyrians, who built a kind of totalitarian state that forced entire populations into slavery by forcible removal; 2) the Persians, who pioneered an empire based on cooperation between extraordinarily varied ethic and language groups, all while respecting and indeed fitting into the local cultures and religions, which leaders regarded as useful tools to manipulate rather than as threats to stamp out or crush into submission. This was a fundamental development that required administrative genius.

I am very glad I read this and learned an immense amount. Unfortunately, the style is textbook spare and rather dry, in essence not very fun to read. Moreover, the most serious deficiency in the book is that it does not attempt to cover archaeological evidence beyond an occasional mention; I think that 100 pages of info could have been added to fill this gap. Nonetheless, the author has many wonderful text boxes of literary translations that add flavor, there are excellent maps, and a sprinkling of images that whet the appetite for more. Recommended as the most basic of introductions. It is clearly written, broadly comprehensible, if somewhat unexciting.