Middle East - Anthony Ham [18]
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Elsewhere across the region, in around 3100 BC, the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt were unified under Menes, ushering in 3000 years of Pharaonic rule in the Nile Valley. The Levant (present-day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Israel and the Palestinian Territories) was well settled by this time, and local powers included the Amorites and the Canaanites.
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BIRTH OF EMPIRE
With small settlements having grown into city-states, and with these city-states drawing outlying settlements into their orbit, civilisations were no longer content to mind their own business. The moment in history when civilisations evolved into empires is unclear, but by the 3rd century BC, the kings of what we now know as the Middle East had listened to the fragmented news brought by traders of fabulous riches just beyond the horizon.
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The Cyrus Cylinder, which is housed at the British Museum with a replica at the UN, is a clay tablet with cuneiform inscriptions, and is widely considered to be the world’s first charter of human rights.
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The Sumerians, who were no doubt rather pleased with having tamed agriculture and inventing writing, never saw the Akkadians coming. One of many city-states that fell within the Sumerian realm, Akkad, on the banks of the Euphrates southwest of modern Baghdad, had grown in power, and, in the late 24th and early 23rd centuries BC, Sargon of Akkad conquered Mesopotamia and then extended his rule over much of the Levant. The era of empire, which would convulse the region almost until the present day, had begun.
Although the Akkadian Empire would last no more than a century, his idea caught on. The at-once sophisticated and war-like Assyrians, whose empire would, from their capital at Nineveh (Iraq), later encompass the entire Middle East, were the most enduring power. Along with their perennial Mesopotamian rivals, the Babylonians, the Assyrians would dominate the human history of the region for almost 1000 years.
The 7th century BC saw both the conquest of Egypt by Assyria and, far to the east, the rise of the Medes, the first of many great Persian empires. In 550 BC, the Medes were conquered by Cyrus the Great, usually regarded as the first Persian shah (king).
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In 333 BC, Persian Emperor Darius, facing defeat by Alexander, abandoned his wife, children and mother on the battlefield. His mother was so disgusted she disowned him and adopted Alexander as her son.
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Over the next 60 years, Cyrus and his successors Cambyses (r 525–522 BC) and Darius I (r 521–486 BC) swept west and north to conquer first Babylon and then Egypt, Asia Minor and parts of Greece. After the Greeks stemmed the Persian tide at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, Darius and Xerxes (r 486–466 BC) turned their attention to consolidating their empire.
Egypt won independence from the Persians in 401 BC, only to be reconquered 60 years later. The second Persian occupation of Egypt was brief: little more than a decade after they arrived, the Persians were again driven out of Egypt, this time by the Greeks. Europe had arrived on the scene and would hold sway in some form for almost 1000 years until the birth of Islam.
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The Epic of Gilgamesh, written in 2700 BC and one of the first works of world literature, tells the story of a Sumerian king from the ancient city of Uruk (which gave Iraq its name).
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HERE COME THE GREEKS
The definition of which territories constitute ‘the Middle East’ has always been a fluid concept. No-one, least of all the Turks, can decide whether theirs is a European or Middle Eastern country. And some cultural geographers claim that the Middle East includes all countries of the Arab world as far west as Morocco. But most historians agree that the Middle East’s eastern boundaries were determined by the Greeks in the 4th century BC.
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THE PHOENICIANS
The ancient Phoenician Empire (1500–300 BC), which thrived