Customer Reviews

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

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

 

 

Marc Van De Mieroop, Professor in the Departments of History and Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University, New York guides you through a substantial era in the ancient Near East, 3000 to ca. 323 B.C. Van De Mieroop speaks in a grandfatherly tone--authoritative, familiar, stern--and yet with a twinkle in his eye and the precision of a surgeon's scalpel which keeps you leaning forward on the edge of your seat.

Granted, the book reads as a college textbook, and indeed is the compilation of xeroxed notes used for an introductory undergraduate class on the ancient history of Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. Nonetheless, Van De Mieroop is a spectacular lecturer. He presents the reader with textual and archaelogical data, and how these contribute to our understanding of the history, but he does NOT bore the reader to death with an analyis of every single shard found at every obscure excavation site. Still, Van De Mieroop doesn't rush things--he is an authoritative expert in his field and, even if this is only an introductory textbook, he still offers the readers dazzling pearls of information.

This book's main strengths are two-fold: 1)It reads not like a history book; that is, a book of King A who was replaced by King B who was assassinated by King X, etc--but, like a novel. The suspense builds, and you have to keep yourself in check and not flip over to Chapter 13: Assyria's World Domination until you get to that part and 2)Van De Mieroop emphasizes the "big picture" before looking at the details. To Van De Mieroop, the drama in the Near East involved many actors with many different parts to play, and you can be assured that he will describe what those parts were to the best of his ability.

In summary, this is an indispensable book for the ancient Near East aficionado which I whole-heartedly recommend. With it one will gain a sturdy conceptual framework of the ancient Near Eastern period which will buttress further study if one so desires.

This is a very good introduction to mesopotamian studies. I was impressed by the very good quality of the information given and the effectiveness of short and well-articulated chapters. The book does not assume that the reader is familiar with ancient history and explains step by step the history as well as the culture and social development of the ancient near east. I did not give five stars to this very good book because I thought it did not dwell enough on the linguistic aspects of the matter. Otherwise all is very well explained, without needless lengthy digressions. Pictures are kind of limited, but still enough to follow the descriptions. The inserts are particularly interesting featuring mainly translations of ancient text, as for example passages taken from the Amarna letters. The list of kings at the end of the book is particularly interesting. I recommend this book to all who are interested in having a basic knowledge of ancient near east history and even to those who are already introduced to the subject, because this can be considered a good quick-reference book.

The author here manages to write a chronological account from the dawn of civilization in Mesopotamia to the coming of Alexander the Great without getting boring. While it is pretty detailed, it could use a bit more fleshing out in my opinion. In terms of history and political developments, the author obviously knows what he's talking about, although I do think his statement about the spread of Indo-European languages from the Eurasian steppes being an "outdated nineteenth century concept" is a bit ignorant as to the state of that field. Other than that, the book is well-written and makes ample use of primary sources.

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.

It's a great book! It gives you a good amount of information and breaks everything down in a timeline fashion...the maps of the evolving ancient world really helped. If you are writing a paper or just really interested in the Near East, this book is a keeper. Two years after reading it and I still pick it back up for referrances.

I had to buy this book as the textbook for my History of the Ancient Near East class, and it ended up being fairly good. Textbook reading is never the most exciting, but it was decently well-written and easy to understand. The timelines at the beginning of each chapter definitely helped. It's not exactly and exciting topic, but for what it is I think that this was a helpful book.

This is a good book for everyone interested in Near East History.I enjoyed the author's well reserched account which is also very easy to follow.I also liked the maps that present where every city and region are located.However,the book has several things that didnt let me give it a 5 star rating.Number one, the author spends way too much time in discussing topics that are not that interesting.For example,he uses way too many words and too much time explaining the economics of everyday life.I found myself reading faster because it was a little bit boring.Also,i belive that he doesnt treat the veracity of the Bible with respect.On several occasions he mentions that the Bible,either took its history from somebody else or its not very reliable.Some of the best historians in the world have confirmed that the Bible is a must for Near East History, so i believe the author dropped the ball on this one.The other problem that i had with this book is that it gets interesting around pages 180 and 181 where the author starts to study in detail the political situation of the area and goes into detail regarding battles and kings and their importance in history.Again its a good book with great knowledge but with some negative things too.