List of cities of the ancient Near East

Mesopotamia Egypt Iran Anatolia The Levant Arabia Cosmology The earliest cities in history were in the ancient Near East, an area covering roughly that of the modern Middle East: its history began in the 4th millennium BC and ended, depending on the interpretation of the term, either with the conquest by the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century BC or with that by Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC.

The largest cities of the Bronze Age Near East housed several tens of thousands of people.

Memphis in the Early Bronze Age, with some 30,000 inhabitants, was the largest city of the time by far.

Ebla is estimated to have had a population of 40,000 inhabitants in the Intermediate Bronze age.

The KI ð’†  determinative is used following place names (toponyms) in both Sumerian and Akkadian.

Map of Mesopotamian cities in modern-day Iraq , Syria and Iran .
Map of Mesopotamia .
Map of Syria in the second millennium BC
Settlements of Bronze Age Anatolia, based on Hittite records.
The Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa , separated by just a few miles of the Red Sea , have a history of related settlements, especially near the coast