The Great Powers Club: The History of the Kingdoms that Dominated the Near East in the Late Bronze Age

By the time of Egypt’s Nineteenth Dynasty, the Egyptians had created a vast empire that stretched from what would be the modern region of northern Sudan in the south to southern Syria in the north (Kuhrt 2010, 1:185). With control of such a vast empire, the Egyptians were able to export valuable minerals such as gold and silver, which were much rarer in the other Near Eastern kingdoms, and imported horses, timber, and chariots that they used to build their impressive military. A chronological examination of ancient Egypt during the New Kingdom reveals the process in which Egypt transitioned from a regional kingdom to an international empire. The examination will demonstrate that the New Kingdom was a fairly complex system that brought about several changes in pharaonic culture before ultimately collapsing.

Compared to some of their contemporaries – including the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians – the Hittites were somewhat distant both culturally and geographically. The Hittites were an Indo-European speaking in an ocean of Afro-Asiatic and Semitic groups, their homeland was to the north of Mesopotamia, and it contained no major river like the Nile, Tigris, or Euphrates Rivers. The Hittite empire was also far less enduring than its neighbors, as it only existed from about 1800-1200 BCE (van de Mieroop 2007, 156), which was considerably shorter than most of the other major kingdoms of the Near East.

Like a number of ancient individuals and empires in that region, the negative perception of ancient Assyrian culture was passed down through Biblical accounts, and regardless of the accuracy of the Bible’s depiction of certain events, the Assyrians clearly played the role of adversary for the Israelites. Indeed, Assyria (Biblical Shinar) and the Assyrian people played an important role in many books of the Old Testament and are first mentioned in the book of Genesis.

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