ABSTRACT
Writing and literacy had to be diffused from their early Near and Far Eastern centers before Europeans, for instance, could share in the history of Egypt and Mesopotamia. The first development of urban centers in the history of mankind took place in the middle of the fourth millennium B.C. in Mesopotamia. The cities and states whose organization reflected the Mesopotamian world view were after all built by enterprising men in response to earthly needs and interests. The intellectual and economic revolution that shaped Mesopotamia into a political system of separate city-states vying with each other for supremacy as the best guarantee against insecurity, shaped Egypt into a culturally centralized and politically unified state. The political foundations of the Near Eastern culture area were radically altered when the Assyrian city-state in northeastern Mesopotamia expanded into a strong national state. Campaigns in Africa established Persian supremacy over Ethiopian dynasties that ruled parts of what today constitutes the state of Sudan.
