The Kingdom of Akkad in Contact with the World

This chapter is dedicated to the external relationships of the Sargonic (Old Akkadian) polity, often described as the world’s first empire, and focuses primarily on military and diplomatic matters. The kings of this dynasty reigned over all of southern and northern Babylonia as well as patchworks of outposts, trade routes, and territory in neighboring Iran and Syria for approximately two and a half centuries, although their reach varied over time. The martial exploits of its rulers were remembered by later generations of Mesopotamian scribes and poets, who fictionalized them for their own purposes. This chapter eschews such information, focusing exclusively on the critical evaluation of contemporary sources. The Akkad polity was the first successful state of such a large size in Western Asia, with armies and organizational structures that were developed for maintaining strong, centralized control over its peripheries and the unruly central provinces, which were prone to revolt. Its armies were engaged in constant warfare, putting down native rebellions and venturing far and wide in search of booty and access to metals and stone, but often also engaged in defensive actions in Iran, contending with the expansive activities of the powerful state of Marhaši to the east.

The Kingdom of Akkad

This chapter discusses the foundations and inner structure of the kingdom of Akkad. Based mainly on royal inscriptions and archival records, it argues that this state constitutes a decisive phase in Mesopotamian history and discusses a series of political, ideological, socioeconomic, and administrative transformations that it brought about: the implementation of the concept of the territorial state, borne by an autocratic and conquering kingship with absolute claim to power; an administrative centralization directed toward the capital; the introduction of Akkadian as an official language of administration; and the spread of private landownership, concentrated in the hands of the king and administered through large agricultural estates established throughout the state through purchase and confiscation. These transformations were implemented by means of the standing army, whose upkeep was supported by the agricultural land in the hands of the king. Allocations of royally owned land to other parties established a far-flung network of patronage, which included not only members of the royal family, court, administration, and army but also members of the local elites, thus strengthening the king’s power base. The chapter also discusses how the transformations brought about by the kingdom of Akkad were ambiguously reflected in later tradition, which also made this state a model to be emulated by later rulers.

The Early Dynastic Near East

The Middle East in the Early Dynastic period (ca. 2900–2300 BC) was characterized by the competition of local city states for hegemony. Combined with long-range military and diplomatic relationships, this led to the creation of the first, if short-lived, larger polities in Mesopotamia and Syria, which paved the way for the emergence of the Akkad state. Cuneiform archives of temples and palaces document a gradual concentration of land, power, and wealth in the hands of an elite that included the royal family and the members of the palace and temple administration, resulting in increasing social stratification and deepening inequality in the context of surplus economy, unprecedented urbanization, and endemic war.

Prehistoric Western Asia

This chapter deals with prehistoric Western Asia, ca. 9500–4000 BC, when this region was the focus of a series of far-reaching socioeconomic developments that were to change the world. Early in this period a gradual shift occurred from a mobile hunter-gatherer way of life to sustained settlement in villages that were increasingly dependent upon farming. Later on, social ranking, economic intensification, and craft specialization emerged at sites throughout the Middle East (Anatolia, Iran, Mesopotamia, and the Levant), laying the foundations for the earliest urban societies in the region. The chapter argues that these changes, far from being unilateral or monolithic, reflect significant multicultural developments and long-lasting trajectories of regional differentiation, requiring the agency of innumerable individuals and generations over millennia.

Introducing the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East

With the emphasis of the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East firmly placed on the political, social, and cultural histories of the states and communities shaping Egypt and Western Asia (including the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Iran), this introduction to the five-volume series seeks to place the region in its environmental context. It discusses the lay of the land between the North African coast and the Hindu Kush, including the role of tectonics and geomorphology. It also considers some key issues regarding climatic conditions, focusing in particular on the significance of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone and the potential impact of megadroughts and pandemics.

Egypt’s Old Kingdom

This chapter outlines the diachronic development of and exchanges between central and local milieus in third millennium BC Egypt. The community at court witnessed a gradual rapprochement between kings and high-ranking officials during the Old Kingdom, beginning in the Fifth Dynasty. Increasing explication of kingship in visual discourse hints at conflicting views on the position of the king. Burial arrangements differed widely across provincial Egypt and at court, revealing a high degree of social diversity. Funerary culture revolved around the establishment of social relationships and social memory, whereas ideas about life in the netherworld were rarely expressed. The majority of preserved settlements in the Old Kingdom were planned by the state. Urbanism was weakly developed compared to other early complex states. The spiritual center of provincial towns was community shrines. Their material culture exhibits a mixture of central and local features, typical of “little traditions.” The shrines served as power bases for courtiers, sent out in the late Old Kingdom by the government to establish royal power permanently in the hinterland. The history of shrines and local elites differed across the country. In the long run, local temples emerged as the economic and ideological interface between provincial communities and the crown. Temples and towns coevolved toward the New Kingdom, at which time Egyptian society had a more urban outlook.

Egypt’s Old Kingdom in Contact with the World

Throughout the Old Kingdom period, the Egyptian state maintained close relations with all the regions surrounding the Nile valley. At the time when the pharaonic state launched monumental construction projects—notably the building of the gigantic pyramids of the Fourth Dynasty—the exploitation of mineral resources in the desert margins and in more distant areas was sharply accentuated. The establishment of harbors on the Red Sea shore served to reach the south of the Sinai peninsula for the exploitation of copper and turquoise, as well as to bring back aromatics and exotic products from the land of Punt in the Bab el-Mandab area. The need for labor to realize building projects and develop the Egyptian infrastructure, for example as required to control major trade routes, led to repeated military raids against Libya, Nubia, and the Levant. Drawing on archaeology and written sources, including the tomb autobiographies of state officials of the Sixth Dynasty, this chapter offers perspectives on the complex military and diplomatic activities that linked the Old Kingdom to the surrounding regions.

Prehistoric Egypt

Located in northeastern Africa, the Egyptian Nile valley was part of a very wide geographic network between the Sahara Desert, the Mediterranean and Red Seas, the Levant, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia. This chapter investigates the many different ecological, environmental, social, and economic factors that contributed to a gradual shift of the Nile valley’s populations from prehistoric hunting-gathering and pastoralist subsistence to a fully sedentary lifestyle and the emergence of agricultural village communities. While this process occurred comparatively later in the Egyptian Nile valley than in the Levant and Anatolia and may in part have been influenced by the latter regions, the valley’s populations quickly developed strategies to continuously manage the annual ecological cycles and benefit from the natural resources available. Over time these communities developed specialized craft industries and commercial centers along the Nile, which contributed in many different ways to the development of territorial polities and eventually the emergence of the world’s first territorial state, around 3000 BC.

Early Dynastic Egypt

The Early Dynastic period of Egypt was a time of transition during which the complex territorial state that knit together the Nile delta and the Nile valley north of the First Cataract achieved its first stable form. Consisting of the First and Second Dynasties, roughly the thirty-second to twenty-seventh centuries BC, the period is markedly one of change and innovation. During this period many of the central elements of pharaonic kingship were either introduced or codified, including the relationship of the king to the god Horus, extensive use of the hieroglyphic script, urbanism, royal festivals, some administrative practices, and many visual symbols of kingship that would persist for millennia. This chapter provides an overview of the current state of understanding of the Early Dynastic period. It presents a chronological history anchored on royal documents and monuments for the period but also considers thematic elements, such as regional variation, foreign interaction, and the nature of extant sources, that highlight ways in which a traditional historical narrative obscures the complexity of the establishment of the Egyptian state.

The Uruk Phenomenon

The city of Uruk in southern Iraq was the main force for urbanization and state formation in Mesopotamia during the Uruk period (ca. 3800–3300 BC), which takes its name from this “first city.” This chapter discusses this formative period for the social, political, and cultural history of Mesopotamia and beyond, as well as the ensuing transitional period (Uruk III/Jemdet Nasr period; ca. 3300–3000 BC). The focus lies on the key elements of Uruk culture and its spread across Western Asia, including Syria, Anatolia, and Iran; the invention of cuneiform writing; and aspects of social, religious, and political organization of this emergent state. Contextualized in climatic, demographic, and geographic observations, the chapter evaluates key cultural features, stressing the role of population growth intertwined with technological, agricultural, and administrative improvements. These cultural features’ dissemination along trade routes to the Levant, Anatolia, and Iran is linked to the establishment of strongholds that secured the exchange of goods, with the south of Mesopotamia serving as the commercial hub. While the available sources—both textual and iconographic—provide no unequivocal evidence for the alleged monocratic governance of Uruk-period society, the identifiable political structures were strongly intertwined with religious functions, indicating great societal complexity. The alleged collapse of the Uruk culture was predominantly the breakdown of the Uruk (trade) network. Culturally, however, many features of the Uruk phenomenon provided the founding charter for Mesopotamian social structures in subsequent periods.