Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture

By William H. Stiebing Jr.

Book Overview

Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture offers an historical overview of the civilizations of the ancient Near East spanning ten thousand years of history.

This new edition is a comprehensive introduction to the history and culture of the Near East, from prehistory and the beginnings of farming to the fall of Achaemenid Persia. Through text, images, maps, and historical documents, readers discover the material, social, and political world of cultures from Egypt to India, allowing students to see how these intertwined cultures interacted throughout history. Now fully updated and incorporating the latest scholarship on society, religion, and the economy, this book highlights the changing fortunes of these great civilizations. A special feature of this book is its many "Debating the Evidence" sections, where the reader becomes familiar with scholarly disputes concerning the interpretation of textual and archaeological evidence on a variety of topics and case studies.

The fourth edition of Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture remains a crucial textbook for undergraduates and general readers studying the ancient Near East, particularly the political and social history of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, as well as students of archaeology and biblical studies who are working on the region.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 036774483X
• ISBN13: 9780367744830
• Release Date: July 2023
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 546 Pages
• Weight: 9.98 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Rare comprehensive and readable history of Ancient Near East

This has been the textbook in my "History of the Ancient Near East" course and I find it to be remarkably effective in keeping a broad perspective and good continuity over time and space in the several topics it covers. Stiebings is a very good distiller of factual content and fairly presents conflicting theories. My professor pointed out a few flaws, though nothing too significant except when Stiebing's used and misconstrued his very work (primarily on the Indo-European migration and The Sea Peoples). It would have also been nice to have more diagrammed maps given the density of the text at times. There is just so much misinformation in this field of study and little effort to tie together "The Near East" into a single narrative core - a need which Stiebing's book fills marvelously. This one will stay on my bookshelf for years to come.