Egypt and Mesopotamia in the Late Bronze and Iron Ages

From the start of the Late Bronze Age ca. 1500 BC, political interactions between Upper Mesopotamia (Assyria) and Lower Mesopotamia (Babylonia) regularly involved Egypt. The significance of these interactions can be apprehended only on the basis of an appreciation of political and cultural factors within Mesopotamia. For the Assyrians and the Babylonians of the Bronze and Iron Ages, Egypt played a range of roles and was viewed from a variety of shifting perspectives dependent upon the specific conditions that pertained within Mesopotamia at any given time. In this chapter we survey the nature of the evidence for Mesopotamia-Egypt connections through the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, before examining particular episodes of regional interaction.