Ancient Near East
It was within the ancient Near East that humans first practiced intensive year-round agriculture, which led to the rise of the earliest dense urban settlements and the development of many now-familiar institutions of civilization, such as social stratification, centralized government and empires, and organized religion (see: ancient Near Eastern religions) and organized warfare.
It also saw the creation of the first writing system, the first alphabet (i.e., abjad), the first currency, and the first legal codes, all of which were monumental advances that laid the foundations of astronomy and mathematics, and the invention of the wheel.
During this period, the region's previously stateless societies largely transitioned to building states, many of which gradually came to annex the territories of their neighbouring civilizations.
This process continued until the entire ancient Near East was enveloped by militaristic empires that had emerged from their own lands to conquer and absorb a variety of cultures under the rule of a top-level government.
The last major exclusive partition of the east between these two terms was current in diplomacy in the late 19th century, with the Hamidian massacres of the Armenians and Assyrians by the Ottoman Empire in 1894–1896 and the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895.
Shortly after, they were to share the stage with ''Middle East'', a term that came to prevail in the 20th century and continues in modern times.
The 19th-century archaeologists added Iran to their definition, which was never under the Ottomans, but they excluded all of Europe and, generally, Egypt, which had parts in the empire.
[4] The late Uruk period (3400 to 3200 BC) saw the gradual emergence of cuneiform script and corresponds to the early Bronze Age.
[5][additional citation(s) needed] Sumer hosted many early advances in human history, such as schools (c. 3000 BC),[6] making the area a cradle of civilization.
The oldest excavated archaeological site in Sumer, Tell el-'Oueili, dates to the 7th millennium BC, although it is likely that the area was occupied even earlier.
Ancient Elam lay to the east of Sumer and Akkad, in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of Khuzestan and Ilam Province.
Their known homeland was centred on Subartu, the Khabur River valley, and later they established themselves as rulers of small kingdoms throughout northern Mesopotamia and Syria.
Kizzuwatna was a kingdom of the second millennium BC, situated in the highlands of southeastern Anatolia, near the Gulf of İskenderun in modern-day Turkey, encircling the Taurus Mountains and the Ceyhan river.
Luwian speakers gradually spread through Anatolia and became a contributing factor to the downfall, after c. 1180 BC, of the Hittite Empire, where it was already widely spoken.
Luwian was also the language spoken in the Neo-Hittite states of Syria, such as Melid and Carchemish, as well as in the central Anatolian kingdom of Tabal that flourished around 900 BC.
Mari was an ancient Sumerian and Amorite city, located 11 kilometres north-west of the modern town of Abu Kamal on the western bank of Euphrates river, some 120 km southeast of Deir ez-Zor, Syria.
Yet to these Aramaeans befell the privilege of imposing their language and culture upon the entire Near East and beyond, fostered in part by the mass relocations enacted by successive empires, including the Assyrians and Babylonians.
In the first phase of this period, almost every city between Troy and Gaza was violently destroyed, and often left unoccupied thereafter (for example, Hattusas, Mycenae, Ugarit).
The term "Neo-Hittite" is sometimes reserved specifically for the Luwian-speaking principalities like Melid (Malatya) and Karkamish (Carchemish), although in a wider sense the broader cultural term "Syro-Hittite" is now applied to all the entities that arose in south-central Anatolia following the Hittite collapse – such as Tabal and Quwê – as well as those of northern and coastal Syria.
The term Neo-Babylonian Empire refers to Babylonia under the rule of the 11th ("Chaldean") dynasty, from the revolt of Nabopolassar in 623 BC until the invasion of Cyrus the Great in 539 BC (Although the last ruler of Babylonia (Nabonidus) was in fact from the Assyrian city of Harran and not Chaldean), notably including the reign of Nebuchadrezzar II.
That finally changed in 627 BC with the death of the last strong Assyrian ruler, Ashurbanipal, and Babylonia rebelled under Nabopolassar the Chaldean a few years later.
It spanned three continents (Europe, Asia, and Africa), including apart from its core in modern-day Iran, the territories of modern Iraq, the Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Abkhazia), Asia Minor (Turkey), Thrace (parts of Eastern Bulgaria), Macedonia (roughly corresponding to present-day Macedonia in Northern Greece), many of the Black Sea coastal regions, northern Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, Central Asia, parts of Pakistan, and all significant population centers of ancient Egypt as far west as Libya.
[citation needed] It is noted in western history as the foe of the Greek city states in the Greco-Persian Wars, for freeing the Israelites from their Babylonian captivity, and for instituting Aramaic as the empire's official language.
In 116–117 AD, most of the Ancient Near East (excepting several more marginal regions) was briefly re-united under the rule of the Roman Empire under Trajan.
