Knapp A. Bernard. The History and Culture of Ancient Western Asia and Egypt

Chicago, Illinois: The Dorsey Press, 1988. — 324 p. — ISBN: 0-256-05698-6.From the obscure historical record of hieroglyphs, gravesites, and pot shards, Bernard Knapp fashions a deft narrative history of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Syria-Palestine. Weaving the findings of archaeology, anthropology, sociology, and geography, Dr. Knapp draws the contours of the social, psychological, and economic life of the inhabitants of early cultures.
This narrative begins in the ninth millennium B.C. and ends with the death of Alexander the Great, tracing the developments of agriculture, urbanization, and literacy that forever changed communication within and between cultures. Tensions between individual and community life, those who ruled and those who served, the conquering Greek civilization and the invaded cultures, are depicted as part of a historical process in which previously distinct societies were altered by heightened mobility, imposing world religion, and improved communication. Dr. Knapp's separate treatments of the interlocking histories of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Syria-Palestine offer illuminating comparisons of their political and social structures.The Study of the Past.
A Note On Chronology.
The Rise to Civilization: 9000-3000 B.C.
Permanent Settlement and Domestication.
Urbanization: The Emergence of City Life.
From Pebble to Wedge: The Evolution of Writing.
The Third Millennium B.C.: Diversity of Dominion.
Mesopotamia: City-State, Nation-State, Empire.
Egypt: Unity under Divinity.
Syria and Palestine: Town and Country.
The Second Millennium B.C.: the Era of Internationalism.
Babylonia and Assyria: New Nation-States.
Egypt: Reunification, Subjugation, and Imperialism.
Internationalism in Syria-Palestine, Anatolia, and the Aegean (1500-1200 B.C.).
The First Millennium B.C.: the Passage to Empire.
Mesopotamia: Assyria's Might and Babylonia's Plight.
Egypt: Victim of Imperialism.
Syria-Palestine: Merchants and Monotheists.
Persia: The March of Imperialism.
Epilogue: Vestiges of Ancient Western Asia and Egypt.
Writing and Literature.
Science, Pseudo-Science, and Math.
Music and Art.
Medicine and Technology.
The Intellectual Adventure.