ABSTRACT
To compress a history of the Middle East into so small a space is a daunting challenge. Arguably, civilised human history began in the area now known as the Middle East, and the region has been pivotal to the evolution of international relations ever since. More great empires have fl ourished and disintegrated in this region than in any other on the face of the globe. Although settlements in the area can be dated back as far as 10,000 BC, the earliest organised civilisations emerged from about 4,000 BC onwards. Centred in, or around the “land between two rivers” (the Tigris and the Euphrates) in what is now known as Iraq, a succession of highly sophisticated civilisations emerged to change the course of human history. The Sumerians were among the fi rst civilisations to practise year-round intensive agriculture, based on highly developed systems of irrigation. By the late fourth millennium the Sumerians had also created a network of clearly demarcated city states and had developed what is considered by many to be the world’s oldest written language. The Sumerians were superseded by a series of empires, the Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian, each of which left its own indelible imprint on the history of the region. The Akkadians, for example, developed a road network and postal service, while the Babylonians pioneered astrology and mathematics (including algebra and geometry) thousands of years before the ancient Greeks. Under King Hamurabi, the Babylonians also produced the world’s fi rst written code of law (Hamurabi’s Codes) that established set punishments for specifi ed crimes.
