Ancient Syria: A Three Thousand Year History.

• Author: Chavalas, Mark W.
• Position: Book review

Ancient Syria: A Three Thousand Year History. By TREVOR BRYCE. Oxford: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2014. Pp. xiv + 379, illus. S50.

Trevor Bryce has long been one of the most prolific writers on ancient Near Eastern antiquity, primarily Anatolia. He has been equally adept in writing for specialists in academic journals and for writing standard reference sources for more general audiences (e.g., The Kingdom of the Hittites, Life and Society in the Hittite World, and The World of the Neo-Hittite Kingdoms).

The work under review on ancient Syria follows the same pattern as the aforementioned works. In it, he attempts to provide a much-needed historical synthesis of ancient Syria from the period of the Ebla tablets to the fall of Zenobia of Palmyra in the third century A.D. Approximately half of the book is concerned with Syria before the age of Alexander the Great; however, Bryce is equally comfortable discussing Syria in Graeco-Roman times.

Bryce argues from the outset that this is a work treating human characters that are on the stage of political and military history, and thus deemphasizes the archaeological record and the context it provides for written sources. Indeed, by not incorporating the archaeological record, Bryce writes a history that is in part skewed; obviously much of pre-Classical Syrian history is dependent upon the results of excavations. Furthermore, Bryce does not often critically interact with the written sources, accepting their historicity without exhaustive study.

Still more serious is Bryce's failure to incorporate many of the most recent developments in Syrian archaeology, which has brought forth numerous archives that have transformed our understanding of Syria during the cuneiform periods. In the past thirty years, remains of dozens of major archives have been uncovered, translated, and even partially synthesized into the historical record.

Though Bryce understandably begins with documents and narrative history, much had gone on in Syria before the flourishing of Ebla, where he starts his narrative. At the very least, Bryce could have had a dialogue about the Uruk period in Syria (e.g., tablets from Jebel Aruda, Uruk remains from Tell Habuba Kabira, and Tell Qannas), which attests to the fact that Syria was heavily acculturated by the late fourth millennium. Moreover, sites such as Tell Hariri (Mari), Tell Brak, and Tell Ashara (Terqa) attest to large urban centers in Syria at the outset of the Early Bronze Age, half...