Major Ancient Near Eastern Societies and How They Relate

The Near East stands at the intersection of three separate continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe (Levack et al. 2019: 17). As such, the region has a long and varied history including numerous peoples and societies, ranging from unknown hunters and gatherers to Imperial Romans to modern Sunni, Shia, and other groups. It would be rather difficult, if not impossible, to give anything similar to a complete history of the region, therefore as geographical and chronological limitations have been set in place for this study, only key societies will be discussed here.

Quick Chronological Summary

Within the limits of the ancient Near East, and including Egypt, eight major societies will be discussed in detail below, along with three major societies relating to Egypt. It is important to realize that some of these societies overlap others, and some have no bearing on others. Geographically separated for ease, these people groups include Sumerians and Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians in Mesopotamia, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Philistines, and Israelites in the Levant, and in Egypt, Egyptians, Nubians, and Libyans. 

Beyond and sometimes within these major groups, smaller or lesser societies existed. Within Mesopotamia, some of these fall into the category of the Sumerians which can be chronologically separated from the Ubaid to the Isin-Larsa Period with a brief hiatus for the Akkadian Period where Semites held power in the region. Chronologically, this begins in the Chalcolithic with the Ubaid Period, which has a standard date of ca. 5800-4200 B.C. (Stein and Özbal 2007: 331). Following the Ubaid is the Uruk Period, dating ca. 3800–3100 B.C. (Algaze 2001: 200), a rather long period that includes the advent of cuneiform writing (Levack et al. 2019: 24). Following the Uruk Period is the Jemdet Nasr Period, ca. 3200-2900 B.C. (Palmer 2012: 119) which is then succeeded by the Early Dynastic Period, ca. 2900-2350 B.C. (Adamo and Al-Ansari 2020: 19). It is here, after the rather long dynastic period, that Sargon of Akkad initiates the Akkadian Period of Semitic control, ca. 2234–2154 B.C. (Cserkits 2022: 4). Upon the end of the Akkadian Period, there is a short phase of outsider control by the Gutians, ca. 2197-2112 B.C., before Sumerian control is reinitiated during the Ur III Period, ca. 2112-2004 B.C. (Snell 1998: xvii). 

At this point in the timeline, there is a split between the Old Babylonian Empire 2004-1595 B.C. (Beaulieu 2018: 60) and the Old Assyrian Empire, dating to ca. 1972-1718 B.C. (Schlüter 2020: 23), the latter in the north and the former in the south. After the Hittites had sacked Babylon and then retreated with their loot, an unknown group came to power in the region called the Kassites, lasting from ca. 1531 B.C. to ca. 1155 B.C. (Adamo and Al-Ansari 2020: 49), though in the north, the Assyrians eventually came back to power in the form of the Middle Assyrian Kingdom, dating ca. 1350–1180 B.C. (Düring and Stek 2018: 2). 

Although outside of the Near East and therefore beyond the scope of this study, the Neo-Elamite Empire, ca. 1000-585 B.C. (Basello 2016: 7-8), made forays into the Near East and is mentioned in passing here. Around this same time, the Neo-Assyrian Period began, some dating the empire as early as ca. 1155 B.C. (Snell 1998: xvii). Of note, while the Elamites and Cimmerians were destabilizing the Neo-Assyrian Empire (Zawadski 1988: 21), Chaldean tribes around Babylon grew to power, taking the Babylonian name upon themselves and ruling for a rather short period, ca. 626 B.C. to 539 B.C. (Baker 2012: 914). This is the time of the famed Nebuchadnezzar who captured Jerusalem. 

In the Levant, the timeline seems a bit shorter, Canaan A, perhaps better known as the Hamitic Canaanites, existing as a culture up until the Chalcolithic but being replaced by Canaan B, a Semitic culture beginning around the start of the Bronze Age and interacting with the Biblical patriarchs Abraham and beyond (Singleton 2024: 9). In the north, the Phoenicians may had been the remnant of Canaan A (Liverani 1998: 6-7), but at the very least represented the remnant of Canaan B after the Israelites had driven a number of the Canaanites out of the land. Although sites such as Byblos in the Phoenician region had been in contact through trade with outside groups from very early on (Schoville 2004: 162-63), as a separate people group, the Phoenicians develop after the Bronze Age collapse. 

Around the same time that Phoenicia became a separate people group, the Sea Peoples came into the land. Perhaps the best known of these Sea Peoples are the Philistines (Novak 2015: 176), known by the Egyptians as the Peleset. These Philistines and the other Sea Peoples brought with them the iron industry (Erb-Satullo 2019: 557-58), changing the shape of warfare forever and the early history of the Israelites in Canaan is filled with military contact between the Philistines and the differing tribes of Israel. Israel, although existing as a people group from around the Middle Bronze Age, became a nation only shortly after the start of the Iron Age, the kingdom lasting from ca. 1000 B.C. to 586 B.C. (Mazar 2009: 368), with periods of vassalship and a split in the kingdom along the way.

Egypt, too, went through a long series of changes, remaining ethnically Egyptian for only some of the time. Of note, the history of Egypt is split into three major periods and three intermediate periods between, with additional periods both before and after. These are listed as the Early Dynastic Period, ca. 2900-2545 B.C., Old Kingdom, ca. 2543-2120 B.C., First Intermediate Period, ca. 2118-1980 B.C., Middle Kingdom, ca. 1980-1760 B.C., Second Intermediate Period, ca. 1759-1539 B.C., New Kingdom, ca. 15-39-1077 B.C., Third Intermediate Period, ca. 1076-723 B.C., and the Late Period, ca. 722-332 B.C. (Krauss and Warburton 2006: 490-94). 

Of note, outside invaders who managed to take control of at least parts of Egypt at times include the three main enemies of Egypt, Asiatics, Nubians, and Libyans (Hassan 2007: 372). The first, Asiatics, who were Levantines, controlled part of the Nile Delta region during the Second Intermediate Period as the Hyksos, making up the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Dynasties (David 2003: 65), extending from ca. 1650-1550 B.C. (Mieroop 2011: 163), a time in which the Israelites were enslaved. Additionally, the Third Intermediate Period included three cultural phases (Aston 2005: 65) corresponding to local and then outside rulers, namely Egyptian, Libyan, and Nubian. The Libyans, after attempting a major incursion during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties (Gilbert 2008: 52) eventually came to power, ruling over Lower Egypt (Morenz and Popko 2010: 119) as kings of the Twenty-Second, Twenty-Third, and Twenty-Fourth Dynasties (Bard 2015: 286). With the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty, Nubians had taken control of Egypt (Larson 2006: viii), superficially uniting Egypt once again (Bard 2015: 286), though the kingdom was still fragmented and the Kushite kings were contented to leave the political fragmentation as it was (Leahy 2005: 537).

Details of Key Societies

With a broad historical overview given, an understanding of the key people groups within that history is vital to understanding the literature of those peoples as cultural meanings depend upon the work’s original production, transmission, and reception (Boyes, Steele, and Astoreca 2021: 1), and authorial intention is crucial to understanding the truth-value of the narrative (Taranu and O’Connor 2022: 43). These are aspects of the sociocultural context of the work. This context affects both learning and knowledge itself, learning in that learners, or readers, exist within a social context and knowledge in that what is learned carries social and cultural meaning (Dudley-Marling 2012: 3096).

People of Mesopotamia

Although many different people groups existed within ancient Mesopotamia, including peoples who lived there, migrated in, and those who simply made incursions into the land, only four distinct people groups will be discussed here, these representing major and crucially seminal civilizations. These people groups are the Sumerians and Akkadians, discussed together, and then the Babylonians and the Assyrians. 

Sumerians and Akkadians

Finding a starting point for the Sumerians might be a bit difficult, Sumer being a region rather than a nation. The first settlers of the land moved to the deltaic region of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers from the Zagros Mountains (Riehl, Zeidi, and Conard 2013: 65) and developed into the Sumerian civilization over time. Of particular interest to this study, the Sumerians eventually developed writing and created the mythological foundations for Mesopotamia (Gunduz 2012: 1). The writing style created, called cuneiform, dates back to ca. 3200 B.C.(Levack et al. 2019: 24)

The people of Sumer were quite innovative, establishing a long series of firsts in the region and likely the world. Among these were administrative and economic innovations, creating the first state-level societies (McC. Adams and Nissen 1972: 87), which included the organization of temple-based religions (Costello 2012: 123). Along with the administrative advances came the invention of the wheel (Margueron 2013: 521), making possible the movement of goods such as timber, ores, stone, etc. from far away places (Levack et al. 2019; 18), and the development of large-scale irrigation that allowed for even more comestibles (Nieuwenhuyse 2012: 136), which led to more and more people seeking refuge in larger, administratively ran cities..

As differing groups settled into daily life throughout Mesopotamia, the land began to change. First, the climate changed. The postglacial maximum sea level, around 3000 B.C., placed the Persian Gulf about 200 km deeper into Mesopotamia, bringing the waters up to the city of Ur, and in fact flooding the city and causing devastation (Mörner 2015: 29). From about that point onward, a drying phase occurred which forced the Persian Gulf, over the course of around a thousand years, some 200 km down until it reached its present position around 2000 B.C. (Ur 2015: 75). Second, this caused changes in the way cities survived as the changing landscape meant that city resources had shifted. In fact, cities in southern Mesopotamia, from the Early Dynastic period until the Akkadian period, lost around 14.5% of their population (Ur 2012: 544), many people preferring to leave the urban life in favor of village life where life was, at least, more consistent.

While southern Mesopotamia was incurring more and more problems, including conflict likely caused by the changing environment, the cities of the north, although effected by the decline in southern culture, began to stabilize and experience their own urbanization process (Liverani and Tabatabai 2014: 115). This was partly due to the rain-fed production of agricultural goods over the wide plains (Cullen et al. 2000: 379), as opposed to irrigation-fed crops that were constantly being effected by the drying environment, which gave the northern cities an aspect of economic control. Cities in northern Mesopotamia would create monumental palaces and their own temple complexes, creating their own political landscape (Ristvet 2011: 1). 

This, then, led to the creation of the Akkadian Empire under Sargon the Great (Adamo and Al-Ansari 2020: 32) who, through conquest, took the region of Sumer as his own. Sargon respected the Sumerians, their religion, and their language; although the administrative language became Akkadian, local scribal traditions remained Sumerian (Snell 1997: 33), and Sumerian temples continued the worship of Sumerian gods. Still, the Akkadians advanced an Akkadian, which was Semitic, culture. Sargon claimed to be the rightful king of the region, his throne-name, Sharru-kin, translating as “the king is legitimate” (Gregory 2016: 448).

Unfortunately for the Semitic Akkadian empire, Sargon’s heirs could not hold the kingdom together, and not too long before the biblical patriarch Abraham was born, the Semitic kingdom in southern Mesopotamia had all but disappeared, ultimately being replaced with the Sumerian Ur III Dynasty (Liverani and Tabatabai 2014: 156). Independently, the Akkadian and Ur III governments successfully united the southern Mesopotamian regions under one rule, but neither of them was able to hold that power (Paulette 2012: 179). As a political group, the Sumerian civilization ended with the conquest of the region by Hammurabi, installing the Old Babylonian Period (Bodine 2004: 40). 

Babylonians

It is at this point that the region of Mesopotamia was divided, the Babylonians reigning in the south and the Assyrians in the north. Although there is debate as to the beginning of the Old Babylonian Period, as a broad stage in history, the Old Babylonian period is dated, here, to ca. 2004-1595 B.C. (Beaulieu 2018: 60), beginning with the Isin-Larsa power struggle. This feud between two major cities allowed for Babylon to consolidate power south of the waring cities, while Larsa eventually gained power over Isin (van de Mieroop 2015: 164) but at a loss that the Babylonian king, Hammurabi, could take advantage of, eventually capturing Larsa and gaining control of the region uniting southern Mesopotamia and much of the middle Euphrates (Leick 2007: 2). 

With the reign of Hammurabi, southern Mesopotamia became Babylonian, creating a stable, centralized government, and due to the economic system in place and the high tax rate, the kings of Babylon would invest in grand construction projects and maintain cultic precincts, purposefully investing into urban expansion and royal residences (Sommerfeld 1995: 919), furthering the position of the empire. Additionally, with divine approval of the god Šamaš (Beaulieu, 2018: 86), Hammurabi gathered a series of case laws, creating a Babylonian jurisprudence (Bahrani 2007: 158), replacing Akkadian (Beaulieu 2018: 87) and even Ur III law codes (Black and Green 1992: 73), the latter of which had continued to be copied until this time (Beaulieu 2018: 87). 

Unfortunately for Babylon, the continued changing environment caused famines under Hammurabi’s heirs, even leading to mass starvation in certain cities (van Koppen 2007: 218-19). Hammurabi brought a uniformity of culture and administration to the land, but the splendor of Babylon drew the attention of far off rulers (Leick 2007: 2). Around 1595 B.C., the Hittites of Anatolia took advantage of the decline, destroying the empire (Khalisi 2020: 2). Interestingly, although the Babylonian name would continue, this was the only true Babylonian empire.

Shortly after the Hittites sacked Babylon, they returned to their own land, taking the splendor of the city with them (Kriwaczek 2012: 191) and leaving behind a power vacuum that would be filled by a previously unknown group, the Kassites (van de Mieroop 2015: 197). Although the period is not well attested (Vermaak 2006: 521), the Kassites ruled almost four hundred years (Kriwaczek 2012: 191). 

These new rulers respected and continued royal duties toward the Babylonian temples, and some later Kassite rulers adopted Babylonian names and titles, assimilating somewhat into the Babylonian culture rather than keeping their own, thus crystallizing Babylonian civilization (Leick 2007: 2). Their rule now included the Persian Gulf and parts of Bahrain (Altaweel and Squitieri 2018: 22), and the entire period was relatively stable, generating wealth through agriculture and prestige goods (Leick 2007: 2). The Kassite leadership was popular among the people (Adamo and Al-Ansari 2020: 49), following the Babylonian tradition that the king’s duties included both secular and religious aspects and therefore that the kings cared for the people (Sommerfeld 1995: 919).

The worship of Marduk, which had begun in the late Old Babylonian period, became solidified during the Kassite period, never officially replacing Enlil, but the supremacy of Marduk that is attested in many Kassite period personal cylinder seals would eventually become official around the twelfth century (Oshima 2007: 349). As evidenced through the use of Kassite terminology, these people also both introduced horse breeding and significantly contributed to the innovation of war chariots to the region (Sommerfeld 1995: 925-26). Ultimately, the Kassites blended together what would eventually develop into the later Babylonian culture (Adamo and Al-Ansari 2020: 49).

With Assyrian and Elamite aggression (Oshima 2007: 349), the Kassite, or Middle Babylonian Period, came to an end (Sommerfeld 1995: 929). Several newer groups attempted to gain control, including the Second Sealand and the Second Isin Dynasty, and Arameans and Chaldeans settled in the land (Altaweel and Squitieri 2018: 26). Ultimately, the Assyrians dominated southern Mesopotamia (Adamo and Al-Ansari 2020: 52), leading into the Iron Age (Düring 2018: 42). 

Native Babylonians attempted to again control their own land, but the economic and political instability of Babylonia allowed for migrating tribes (Saggs 2000: 153) to gain control of the hinterland (Jursa 2014: 123) and therefore the agricultural economy. Among these were the semi-autonomous (Nielsen 2021: 109) Chaldean tribes (Bagg 2020: 58), who became more and more powerful. Unrest at the hands of these tribes brought the military might of Assyria back to the area over and over again (Saggs 2000: 153) to quell resurgent rebellions.

Assyria attempted to stabilize native Babylonian rule (Nielsen 2021: 112), as a stable south benefited the north, but with their own dominance at stake by the military might of the Medes, Scythians, Elamites, and Cimmerians (Zawadski 1988: 21), Nabopolassar of the joint Chaldean tribes was able to consolidate power in Babylon (Beaulieu 2018: 225). With his defeat of the Assyrians in 612 B.C. (Baker 2012: 914), Nabopolassar ushered in the Neo-Babylonian Empire (Beaulieu 2018: 12), pushing the region of Babylon into an era of economic and political stabilization (Da Riva 2017: 75).

This new “Babylonian” empire would only last a mere eighty-seven years from ca. 626 B.C. to 539 B.C. (Baker 2012: 914), but the Neo-Babylonian empire changed the geopolitical and cultural landscapes of the Near East (Beaulieu 2018: 219). The new empire increased its investments and paid much more attention to the empire’s periphery than before (Levavi 2020: 61), and the flow of resources from the periphery to the core of the empire brought new construction projects to Babylon and its close surroundings (Alsotla 2020: 3), surpassing the Assyrians as builders (Legrain 1944: 1). Unfortunately, Nabonidus, the last true king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, does not appear to have been well loved by his people (Adalı 2009: 183), having changed religious allegiance from the Babylonian Marduk to the deity of his mother, Sîn (Davis 2012: 756), and then leaving his empire for Arabia, his son, Bēl-šar-uṣur (Biblical Belshazzar), reigning in his stead (Beaulieu 2016: 3). By the time Cyrus of Persia marched on Babylon, the people, and Marduk himself, were said to have welcomed the invader (Adalı 2009: 269). 

Assyrians 

Around the same time that the Old Babylonian empire was forming, when individual city-states began to regain power after the collapse of the Ur III Dynasty (Veenhof and Eidem 2008: 20), a distinct culture from the rest of southern Mesopotamia developed at Aššur (Highcock 2000), a culture which would spread throughout the region. This period is characterized by the Old Assyrian dialect, Assyrian calendar, written records, and trade (Veenhof and Eidem 2008: 21) and is known as the Old Assyrian Period, which dates from ca. 1972-1718 B.C. (Schlüter 2020: 23). Interestingly, a wealth of information is available for the emergence of Aššur as a small but economically strong city-state between ca. 2100 and 1900 B.C. (Highcock 2000), some of which comes from the houses of individual traders (Veenhof 2013: 27) in the Anatolian town of Kaniš (Michel 2017: 80), about 1200 kilometers away (van de Mieroop 2015:168). 

At Kaniš, Assyrians traded tin (Schlüter 2020: 23) and woolen (Michel and Veenhof 2010: 211-12) textiles for gold and silver, which was then brought back to Aššur (Schlüter 2020: 23). The rather large amounts of wool textiles recorded suggest a government controlled sheep industry at Aššur (Lassen 2010: 176), and the amounts of tin within the Kaniš records suggests a strong palace economy in search of precious metals (Palmisano 2018: 13).

Interestingly, the governance of the city of Aššur during this Old Assyrian Period is quite different from most other Near Eastern cities, specifically the fact that Aššur himself, the deity of which the city received its name, is the only true king of the city (Michel 2017: 99). In Aššur’s place stands the overseer, or vice regent, who acts as a simple governor appointed by the god (Veenhof and Eidem 2008: 20). This vice regent, who also acted as the high priest, stood at the head of an assembly of influential citizens (Maul 2017: 341) who, together with the governor, established law and order (Highcock 2000) and tended to and expanded the land of the king, the god Aššur (Maul 2017: 341).

What is known from Aššur is that despite the common belief that ancient Mesopotamia was a strict patriarchal society in which women were subservient to men, women had a great amount of equality in Old Assyrian times; they had to pay the same fines as men, they could inherit property and participate in trade, lend money, buy and sell, and execute their own last will and testaments (Michel 2017: 84), all with an income likely generated from their own business dealings (Veenhof and Eidem 2008: 107). These regulations as identified within Old Assyrian texts were quite different from Babylonian traditions and may had originated from Anatolian influence where spouses may have had equal rights (Michel 2017: 87).

Around the same time that the Old Assyrian Empire began to diminish in strength, a power vacuum was left in Syria after Anatolians destroyed the Syrian kingdom of Yamhad and could not maintain a presence there (de Martino 2014: 61). A Mitannian Empire sprang up in that vacuum during the 1420s B.C., and they ultimately overwhelmed Assyria and incorporated the Old Assyrian empire into its own (Novák 2007: 389). When Mitanni finally began to wain in power, Aššur-uballit I seized the opportunity to free Assyria from a Mitanni vassalship (Brown 2013: 99) and subdue the remaining Mitannian kingdom (Lemche 1995: 1206), beginning the Middle Assyrian Period. 

During the Middle Assyrian Period, Assyrians became quite Babylonianized, the rulers of Aššur styling themselves as kings, rather than simple stewards of the deity-king, Aššur (Maul 2017: 341), after an outsider, an Amorite named Šamši-Adad I, usurped the throne and referred to himself as both Steward of Aššur and ‘king of the universe,’ ‘strong king,’ and ‘king of Akkad’ (Rubin 2021: 97-98), later Assyrian rulers following the practice (Maul 2017: 341). Šamši-Adad I also introduced a new religious idea, that the deity Aššur could be equated with the  Sumerian Enlil (Rubin 2021: 99), this combined deity, what can be referred to as the Assyrian Enlil, becoming the ideological core of Assyrian politics throughout the remaining Assyrian periods (Maul 2017: 343). Thus, Assyria became more and more adapted to broader Mesopotamian culture. By the end of the period, in the tenth century (Brown 2013: 97), the culture between the Middle and Neo-Assyrian Empires would be difficult to differentiate (Düring 2018: 42), but the political differences become evident when after years of patterns of weakness and revival diminished the Assyrian state, a succession of kings expanded Assyrian control once again, establishing the new Assyrian Empire (Brown 2013: 99).

The Neo-Assyrian Empire begins with Tiglath-Pileser II in 966 B.C. and extends until its fall at the hands of the Babylonians and Medes in 609 B.C. (McIntosh 2005: 336). The new empire expanded in connection to the ideological programs of leaders such as Tiglath-Pileser III, Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Aššurbanipal who gave a theological justification for their successes (Sazonov 2016: 36-37), a concept of substantiating the reasons for war based on the will of the gods that began in the region as early as 2400 B.C. (Cserkits 2022: 10). Of course, the many successes of the Neo-Assyrian kings no doubt owed largely to the full-time, professional army under their control that stood at the forefront of technological progress (McIntosh 2005: 179).

The Assyrians are quite well known for their two-way resettlement program (Bonacossi 2018: 62). This systematic resettlement or deportation of conquered peoples had a two-fold benefit for Assyrian governance, namely pertaining to resource management and the reduction of rebellion due to patriotic resentment (Radner 2017: 209). These people appear to have benefited from Assyrian dominance in the form of new technologies and industries, for example the creation of canal systems or the establishment of new crops (Radner 2017: 210), and Assyrian administrators built and maintained highways for the movement of information and goods (McIntosh 2005: 184). Ultimately, though, Assyria would fall at the hands of a Babylonian confederacy with other states  (McIntosh 2005: 336).

Periods of Dominance

People of Syrio-Palestine

While the history of Mesopotamia details several major empires, the history of the Levant touches on several smaller states and peoples, three to be discussed here only beginning in the Iron Age. Two of those three are represented by the confederation of city-states sometimes referred to by the geographical regions of Phoenicia and Philistia. The third is the well known state of Israel, of biblical infamy. The final group is actually two separate peoples, titled by this author as Canaan A and Canaan B, both residing in the region of the Levant. 

Canaanites

Key to understanding the Canaanites, especially in relation to the biblical text, is the identification of the two separate Canaanite cultures that used the same name. The first of these can be understood as Canaan A, or the Stone Age Canaanite Culture, and the second as Canaan B, or the Bronze Age Canaanite Culture (Singleton 2024: 9), a culture in which appears to have been Semitic in language and culture, related in part to Semitic groups moving into the land. This is of interest to this study because only Canaan B was a literate culture, and as such written Canaanite mythology stems from this second, Semitic cultural group rather than the first. 

During the Early Bronze Age, Canaan B grew into a series of peer-polity systems, types of proto-city-states where cities held sway over their peripheral territories; this lead to competition, and it lead to attempts to expand territorial influences (Finkelstein 1995: 48) during a time in which resources simply were not stable. The social power of Early Bronze Age cities was dependent upon the centralized government’s ability to control labor and amass resources, but with the changing climate, by the end of EB III, most of these once brilliant cities were no longer able to distribute goods to the populace (Greenberg 2013: 275), and upon their destruction, many were never rebuilt (de Miroschedji 2014: 322). 

By the Middle Bronze Age, the southern Levant went through a second urbanization process, likely strongly influenced by the Northern Levant (D’Andrea 2014: 151-52) as southern cities contained many similarities to Northern Levantine sites (Mazar 1990: 180-81), some of which had survived the southern collapse during Early Bronze IV (cf. Charaf 2013: 436). The relationship between the north and the south grew stronger during the Early Bronze IV transition, when many in the south reverted to mobile pastoralism away from urbanism (Schloen 2017: 64). It is suggested that this shift toward pastoralism in the south was at least partially influenced by the north (Greenberg 2017: 47), which had a rather strong wool economy (Höflmayer 2017: 13) and accepted trade from southern pastoralists. 

In the Late Bronze Age, the southern Levant experienced both a high point, technologically, mercantilely, and artistically (Panitz-Cohen 2013: 535), and a period of decline, in terms of the number and sizes of settlements, including the abandonment or destruction of fortifications, and the quality of some material culture (DePietro 2012: 1). The period is dually characterized by the domination of the Egyptian Empire and both economic and cultural involvement in world affairs, thus marking the Late Bronze Age a pivotal moment in the history, culture, and society of the region (Panitz-Cohen 2013: 535).

The political entities that existed in the Southern Levant during the Middle Bronze Age were basically the same political entities that existed in the Late Bronze Age (Pfälzner 2012: 770), except now the region consists of differing vassal kingdoms who were subject to foreign rule (DePietro 2012: 2), the south being controlled by Egypt. For the first time in the region, peaceful co-existence was possible as settlements negotiated territorial apportionment between themselves (Bryce 2003: 2), appealing to the king of Egypt when needed. Unfortunately for these small kingdoms, problematic people groups also entered into the land, one being the Ḫabiru or Ḫapiru, not to be confused with the Hebrews, the former simply being a derogatory name etymologically related to the Semitic root ‘br, meaning “to trespass,” being used as early as the nineteenth century B.C. at Kaniš (Lemche 1992: 7). It would appear, then, that the term Ḫabiru is not an ethnic designation but a name representing a social class of individuals (Naʾaman 1986: 271). The other people group in the land, and somewhat related to the Ḫabiru, are the Israelites. Having entered the land around 1400 B.C. (Wood 2007: 258). It can be argued that although the Ḫabiru were not equated with the Hebrews, the Hebrews were most assuredly considered Ḫabiru or trespassers, and some of the accusations noted in Late Bronze Age literature may be referring to the continuing conquest of Canaan by the Israelites.

Phoenicians

At the end of the Bronze Age, a cataclysmic collapse of major trade networks, and therefore civilizations, occurred from Italy, Greece, and other regions (Drews 1993: 3) in the west, throughout Mesopotamia in the east (Paulette 2012: 181), and from the Hittite controlled territories just south of the Black Sea in the north (Demand 2011: 195) to the border of Egypt in the south (Stern 1990: 27). With the collapsed trade network, seemingly the entire Mediterranean became a vast economic vacuum. Because the Phoenician coastal cities survived the great collapse, the city of Tyre would build ships and replace the lost trade networks, filling the economic void and even extending farther than the previous network had allowed. 

The land of Phoenicia occupied a rather strategic place in the eastern Mediterranean, linking Europe, Asia, and Africa (Kharrat et al. 2020: 12), and this link was utilized quite early, Eleventh and Tenth Century Phoenician pottery appearing in Cypriot graves at Kition, Amathus, and Paphos (Nijboer and van Der Plicht 2006: 35). Interestingly, a Phoenician settlement at Huelva, Spain, known to the Greeks as Tartessos (Canales, Serrano, and Llompart 2006: 26), dates quite early, possibly as early as the mid 900s B.C. (Nijboer and van Der Plicht 2006: 35), roughly to the time of Solomon, and Necho II of Egypt may have, according to Herodotus, requested that the Phoenicians circumnavigate Africa ca. 600 B.C. (Histories 4.42). There is evidence of the growing city of Carthage, a Phoenician colony, paying tithes to the temple of Melqart in Tyre (Markoe 2005: 121), enriching Tyre as well as themselves, Tyre becoming the key economic core of the Phoenician coast (Scott 2019: 35).

Of great importance to this present study, it was the Phoenicians who spread literacy and Near Eastern mythology throughout Europe, passing on their alphabet to the Greeks (Astoreca 2021: 5) and mixing their religion with indigenous cultures (cf. Whittaker 1974: 62). Of note, the deity Zeus, although existent in Greek mythology before contact with the Phoenicians, was culturally translated from Ba’al so that the mythologies of Ba’al and Zeus are similar (López-Ruiz 2014: 1), much as Ba’al was previously translated through the deity Hadad at Mari from the Mesopotamian Marduk (Schwemer 2007: 156). This type of missionary effort was evidenced by the very many temples to Canaanite deities across the Mediterranean, and as evidenced by the biblical Jezebel, the Phoenician princess who married Ahab and spread a more perfect Ba’alism through Israel (Miller 2007: 57).

Philistines

Similarly, the Philistines developed as a major civilization in the Levant at the dawn of the Iron Age. They appear to be directly related to the Sea Peoples (Novak 2015: 176) who appear to have brought with them the iron industry (Erb-Satullo 2019: 557-58). These Sea Peoples likely relate to the central Mediterranean as the Philistine bichrome pottery shows connections to Mycenaean IIIC1b pottery (Mazar 1990: 313), though it also borrowed from local Canaanite traditions (Mazar 1990: 314). The Philistines became the bane of Israel in Israel’s early days.

Israelities

The last group to be mentioned in the Levant is the Israelites. As is commonly understood by many, the Israelites became a nation with the emergence of kingship during the Iron Age, lasting only three separate kings before the nation split between north and south. As Israelite history is already well understood, no more shall be mentioned here. 

People of Egypt and Nearby

The third region to be studied is that of Egypt. Although technically not within the Near East (van de Mieroop 2015: 1), Egypt is studied here due to Egyptian influence in the southern Levant and their dealings with both Syria and Mesopotamia. Throughout Egyptian history, three main people groups existed, a fourth representing Levantine rule limited to the Egyptian north for only a short time referred to as the Hyksos Period. The other three major people groups include, of course, the Egyptians, but also the Nubians and the Libyans. 

Egyptians

The history of Egypt is a long series of resurgent stable rule and civil war, each following the other until the Late Period at the end of this study. For the most part, these represent native Egyptians, only periodically including foreign powers. In fact, of the thirty-one Pharaonic dynasties (Bard 2005: 2), only four are considered to be foreign powers.

The land of Egypt is somewhat secluded from the rest of the world, with deserts to the east and west, and a series of shallows in the Nile River in the south (Hoffmeier 2004: 251), making the land independent from foreign need, though trade did take place throughout the entirety of Egyptian history. 

In terms of Near Eastern contact, trade between the Levant and Egypt took place quite early on, the silver trade between Byblos and Egypt appears to have ended in the Early Dynastic period (Wilkinson 1999: 138) but other goods continued to be traded into the Old Kingdom (Schoville 2004: 162-63).

Of note, Asiatics, that is, Levantines, began entering the Delta and eastern Nile banks at the end of the Old Kingdom (Brovarski 2005: 47), making these regions their home. During the Middle Kingdom prosperity, increased relations are seen between Egypt and the southern Levant, marking the period as the dawn of internationalism (Höflmayer and Cohen 2017:  2). During these exchanges, even more mobile pastoralists from the Levant moved into Egypt, especially at Avaris (García 2014: 240). Records suggest that some of these foreign peoples may have been itinerant craftsmen (Lesko 2005: 910), but as a whole they became increasingly detached from Egyptian rule (García 2014: 240).

As the kings of the Thirteenth Dynasty could no longer maintain power, these Asiatics began to rule over their own regions in Lower Egypt. These people are known today as Hyksos (David 2003: 65), and although styled as invaders within Egyptian literature, it is now known that the Hyksos were not invaders moving into the land but rather people from the Southern Levant who had moved into Egypt previously (Bard 2015: 188), likely seeking reprieve from Levantine famines, carrying Levantine culture with them (Cohen 2016: 6).

Toward the end of the Middle Kingdom, the status of Asiatics, outsiders, had declined (Bimson 1981: 234), no doubt beginning a period of ethnic isolation, and by the end of the Thirteenth Dynasty, Asiatics in the Delta region took advantage of the waning power of the Pharaoh and established their own rulership over parts of the Delta up to Hermopolis in Middle Egypt, though some within this region were also controlled by lesser Asiatic groups, making up the Sixteenth Dynasty, and by Egyptian vassals (Murnane 1995: 702).

Ultimately, the Levantine rulers. Known as the Hyksos, were expelled from Egypt, ushering in the New Kingdom era, and the Egyptian soldiers followed their enemy into the southern Levant (Lloyd 2010: xxxvi). Between ca. 1550 and 1350 B.C., two main powers, Mitanni and Egypt, sought to hold control over the Levantine kingdoms, Egypt specifically attempting to repel Mitanni from the Levant; Thutmose III defeated a coalition of Levantine kings at the Battle of Megiddo ca. 1457 B.C, and later crossed the Euphrates, erecting a stele on the banks of the river claiming dominance over the Levant (Pfälzner 2012: 771), a sort of warning sign should Mitanni attempt to venture further. The Battle of Megiddo set the stage for a permanent Egyptian presence in the Levant (Spalinger 2005: 83). 

A second major conflict arose between Egypt and Hattusa. Around the mid-fourteenth century B.C., the Hittite king Suppiluliuma I embarked on an expansionist policy, claiming new territories in both Anatolia and the Northern Levant (Durusu-Tanrıöver 2021: 5). Beginning after his defeat of Mitanni, the Hittites moved to conquer northern Syria, overpowering cities from Ugarit and Alalakh in the north to Qatna in the south, forcing Egyptian influence southward below the kingdom of Qadesh in Mid-Western Syria (Pfälzner 2012: 771).

As the Egyptian empire developed, an abundant commodity was introduced: the slave. Slavery in Egypt, though originating earlier, is seen in the capturing of prisoners of war who were enslaved dating back to the Old Kingdom (Loprieno 2012: 5) and, slavery was well known to have occurred in the Middle Kingdom period (Aling 2002: 23), but with a growing international interest during the New Kingdom, large numbers of slaves were procured through warfare (Lesko 2005: 911), from both Nubia to the south and the southern Levant in the east (Loprieno 2012: 12). This is also the period in which according to biblical tradition, Egypt lost a large number of slaves when the Hebrews left Egypt for the Promised Land, and this may be, at least partially, why Egypt sought the procurement of new slaves. 

During the Amarna Period of the Southern Levant and Egypt, fourteenth century B.C., letters sent to the Egyptian king refer to a people who were continually causing problems in the southern Levantine cities, of which were under the control of Egypt. Within the Amarna Letters, these ‘Ḫabiru’ are seen as enemies who wish to destroy the Canaanite feudal system (Waterhouse 2001: 32), and therefore must dislike Egypt. These enemies appear to have been non-sedentary and lived in the hill country of the southern Levant (Gonen 1992: 217). It has been suggested that these Ḫabiru are in some way related to the Hebrews of the Old Testament (Akers 2012: 271), particularly as the Semitic radicals or letters are the same, H-B-R or H-P-R, and the location and time period somewhat match that of the Hebrew Conquest under Joshua. As will be seen later in this study, it would appear that the term Ḫabiru is not an ethnic designation but a name representing a social class of individuals (Naʾaman 1986: 271). While it would be imprudent to argue that all Ḫabiru are Hebrews, certainly, at least some instances of the Ḫabiru in the Amarna Letters are referring to invading Hebrews attempting to follow the pattern established by Joshua and drive out the inhabitants of the Southern Levant.

Libyans

The great majority of National Israelite contact with Egypt occurs during the Third Intermediate Period, which begins shortly after the end of the New Kingdom, ca. 1079 B.C. (Bennett 2019: xvii). From around the time of Solomon until shortly after the time of Hezekiah, Egypt was ruled by Libyans. 

During the thirteenth century and onward, Libyan migrants had been slowly infiltrating the western Delta region, and not always in a peaceful manner; no doubt, these peoples were driven to Egypt for much the same reasons as others, namely famine, drought, and a desire for more (Aston 2005: 65). The rather large number of Libyans in the Delta caused political and social changes as Libyan cultural and social influences were introduced (Bennett 2019: xiii). Libyans became such a part of the Egyptian community that some of the kings of the Twenty-First Dynasty were of Libyan descent (Bard 2015: 39), but it is the Twenty-Second and Twenty-Third Dynasties that is known as the Libyan Period (Aston 2005: 65).

Nubians

The final dynasty of the Egyptian Third Intermediate Period represented a major shift in leadership away from Libyan rulers to Kushite, perhaps better known as Nubian (Larson 2006: viii), rule, a period that would eventually bring the plurality of Intermediate Period monarchs to an end (Aston 2005: 65). Of course, this Nubian kingdom has as its roots in its own kingdom of Nubia, a region historically located between the First and Sixth Cataracts along the Nile River, a cataract being a shallow, rocky, and sometimes whitewater areas of the river (Larson 2006: vii).

During the New Kingdom, northern Nubia was occupied Egyptian territory, up to the Fourth Cataract, and again later by a Theban king during the Twenty-Third Theban Dynasty, resulting in a thoroughly Egyptianized Nubian people (Bennett 2019: 8). Nubian rule lasted from ca. 772-656 B.C. (Larson 2006: vii), and although the appearance of stability may lead one to place the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty outside of the Third Intermediate Period, this was a rather thinly veiled and superficial unity (Bennett 2019: 4).

Of note, the ideology of the acculturated Egyptian Nubians at the time was centered on Egyptian imperial beliefs about Amun (Adams 2011: 29), beliefs that appeared to have died out in Egypt with the end of the New Kingdom (Redford 2005: 64). Believing these old beliefs to be of utmost importance, within the first ten years of his reign, Piye, the first king of the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty, claimed to be the protector and king of Thebes (Bennett 2019: 8), the city of Amun (Robins 1983: 66), and therefore the ideological heir to the Egyptian throne.

Under the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty, Egypt was superficially united under Nubian rule (Bard 2015: 286), but the kingdom was still fragmented, and the Kushite kings were contented to leave the political fragmentation (Leahy 2005: 537). Of interest, an army of Nubians and Egyptians was sent to the Southern Levant at this time in support of Hezekiah, king of Judah, saving the Jewish kingdom (Bard 2015: 289). Some years later, the Assyrians would retaliate, ultimately forcing the Kushite king back into Nubia (Sabban, Abd el-Motaal, and Moustafa 2020: 82) and bringing an end to the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty.

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[This is a lecture written for the course 'ARCH 209: Literature of the Ancient Near East,' taught Spring 2025 at God's Bible School and College, a regionally accredited College in Cincinnati, Ohio. Bibliographical material will be posted under Research on this site.]