The Ancient Near East is the area with Mesopotamia, the Levant, Anatolia and Elam where the first of the multiple civilizations originated. Sometimes Ancient Egypt and Arabia are also included in this. We will not follow this idea. The Ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations. Not only the geographically boundaries are vague, this is also the case chronologically. The period prior to the Ancient Near East was the Neolithic Near East. 

The origin of writing marks the transition from prehistory to antiquity, although that is an arbitrary boundary and this period is sometimes also associated with the Ancient Near East. This period begins in the 4th millenium BC with the rise of Sumer. The term covers the Bronze Age and the Iron Age in this region, until the conquest by the Achaemenid Empire (6th century BC), the conquest by the Macedonian Empire (4th century BC) or the Muslim conquest (7th century AD). An arbitrary limit applies to the end of this period. Sometimes is 539 BC chosen, the end of the Neo-Babylonian dynasty, the last Babylonian dynasty of local descent. Also the conquest of the Persian Empire in 331 BC. Alexander the Great does choose the end point. This period was followed by the Hellenistic period.

The Ancient Near East is considered one of the cradles of civilization. A year-round agriculture was here first practiced. This led to the rise of the first dense urban settlements and development of many civilizations. It also saw the creeation of the first writing system, the first alphabet, the first currency and law codes. It also led to early advances for foundations of astonomy, mathematics and the invention of the wheel.

During this period, became states increasingly large, until the region was controlled by militaristic empires thad had conquered a number of different cultures. There can be made a distiction between periods of first city-states, from the late Bronze Age territorial states and from the beginning of the first millennium BC empires. 

In the early civilizations, a single city-state could dominate, but the subjugated cities often kept their own customs and institutions. This changed with territorial states, whereby centralization sharply increased and the customs and instituions of the ruler were introduced everywhere. With the coming of empires, multiple states were brought into a system an was ruled by a single dynasty. However, this was not a unliliniaer evolution. Periods of greater fragmentation followed periods of centralization. In addition, the existence of a large empire doen not prelude the existence of city-states and territorial states.

Mesopotamia is the area around the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. Iraq (in 2020) is the core area and part of Syria (in 2020). It is an important place for our history. In that area arose the first cities, people practiced the first agriculture, and the first writing system (cuneiform) was created. From 10.000 years BC, humans started to do more farming than hunting. Around 3000 BC, men already built palaces and temples for kings and priests in cities like Ur and Uruk. In 2334 BC, Sargon of Arkad, from the city Kish, conquered the nearby city-states and formed the Akkadian Empire. Many more empires followed. One of those kingdoms left behind a language, Arameans, that is spoken in some regions to this day (2020). The lineage of another people, the Hittites, is rather mysterious because little is known about it.

Canaan was an area corresponding to the Levant, a busy transit area for human tribes and peoples of various origins from all corners of the world since prehistoric times. That is why several cultures came into conflict there.

The area lies on the overlap zone of four ancient cultures: Mesopotamia to the east, Anatolia to the north, Minoans to the west and Ancient Egypt to the south. The influences of those cultures have put a lot of pressure on each other. Even though the soil is not fertile, until ± 5000 BC; it rained a lot in the region. That is why there was agriculture on the flanks of the mountains.

Canaan consisted of prosperous cities with agricultural areas, under the authority of a priestess in the temple. Canaan is the old name of Israel. It was part of the land promised by God to Abraham and his posterity.

Besides Mesopotamia, in present-day (2020) Iran, Luristan, now Lorestan, was a mountainous province in Iran. In ancient times Luristan also experienced a great heyday due to a high level of bronze art. Clothing pins, deities, weapons, etc. were cast in bronze. The ethnicity of the people who created them remains unclear. They may have been Persian. All recovered objects are the art of a nomadic people. All belongings had to be light and portable. Necessary items such as weapons, equipment, pins, cups were decorated over their small area. Especially the display of animals was common.

Bactria was the name of a region in Ancient Near East. It was mainly located in the northeast of Afghanistan (2020), around the main city of Bactra, the city of Bamyan. The region lies between the river Amu Daria, then Oxus, and the mountains of the Hindu Kush. The language belongs to the Eastern Iranian language group. The English name Bactria is derived from the Ancient Greek ‘Baktriani’, a Hellenized version ‘Bakhlo’.

The region is mentioned in the holy book of the Zoroastrians, the Avesta. The prophet Zarathustra, founder of Zoroastrianism, proclaimed his teachings in Bactria. He is said to have been murdered in Balch. 

The landscape of Bactria, which has now largely dried up, was famous in ancient times for its fertility. The river was so important that it was worshiped as God in a temple dedicated to the river, the Oxus Temple at Takht-e-Sangin. The fertility of the Amu Darya and its central location in relation to the Silk Road are important factors explaining the success and wealth of Bactria.

Babylonia or the Babylonian Empire was a state in ancient Mesopotamia from about 1800 BC until 539 BC, whose ruins are located in present day (2021) Iraq. It was founded as a small port town on the Euphrates River. And it grew into one of the largest cities of the ancient world under the rule of Hammurabi.

Several centuries later, a new line of kings established a Neo-Babylonian Empire that spanned from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. During this period, Babylon became a city of beautiful and lavish buildings. Biblical and archeological evidence point toward the forced exile of thousands of Jews to Babylon around this time. The term is also used geographically to indicate the southern Mesopotamia, sometimes as Sumer and later as Chaldea. The Northern part is often referred as Assyria.

The capital and cultural center was Babylon. From 800 BC to 609 BC, the submissive to the Assyrian Empire. Among the Babylonians, some of mankind’s oldest writings have survived. Babylonia was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state. A small Amorite-ruled state emerged from 1894 BC. It already existed during the Akkadian Empire (2335 BC to 2154 BC), but expanded during the reign of Hammurabi to become a major capital city. Babylonia was called ‘country of Akkad’ in reference to the previous glory of the Akkadian Empire. After the death of Hammurabi, Babylon fell apart and reverted to a small kingdom.

Like Assyria, Babylonia retained the written Akkadian language for official use. For religious use, they retained the Sumerian language. By the time Babylon founded, Sumerian was already no longer a spoken language. Earlier Akkadian and Sumerian traditions played a major role in Babylonian and Assyrian culture.

Under Assyrian rule, Nabopolassar seized control in 620 BC with the support of most of the inhabitants. He was not able to utterly secure Babylonia an forced to content with an occupying Assyrian army encamped in Babylonia trying to unseat him. After the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 612 BC, the Neo-Babylonian Empire could truly rule with the Chaldean dynasty. It was short-lived, being conquered in 539 BC by the Persian Achaemenid Empire.