A History of the Ancient Near East.

• Position: Book review

A History of the Ancient Near East. By MARC VAN DE MIEROOP. 2nd edition. Oxford: BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, 2007. Pp. xxi + 341, illus. $31.95 (paper).

For many years, teachers of survey courses on the ancient Near East were faced with a dilemma: which book to use as a textbook? Georges Roux's Ancient Iraq was engaging, but increasingly out of date. The same was true of many classic works. In 2004 Marc Van De Mieroop solved this problem by publishing A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000-323 BC. The volume sold so well that just three years later a second edition was produced, with more maps, a longer and more useful section devoted to "Further Reading," and some minor changes to the narrative.

The book is successful in many different ways. It provides a chronological overview of the major ancient civilizations of the Near East (omitting Egypt) that is clear, concise, and nuanced. Major new discoveries and recent scholarly work are included, with a welcome emphasis on the sources on which findings have been based. The author does not assume that his reader has any prior knowledge about the field; the book works effectively as a first introduction, and is designed to inspire readers to want to learn more.

Van De Mieroop has divided the book into fifteen chapters, making it well suited to a semester-long undergraduate survey course. The introduction, in chapter one, defines the ancient Near East, then addresses sources, geography, and prehistory. Subsequent chapters are grouped into three parts: "Part I, City-States" (covering the period from 3500-1500 B.C.E.); "Part II, Territorial States" (1500-800 B.C.E.): and "Part III, Empires" (880-323 B.C.E.).

Part I begins by moving chronologically through the Uruk Period (chapter two), the Early Dynastic Period (chapter three), and the Akkadian and Ur III Periods (chapter four). The author then breaks with a strictly chronological approach in chapters five and six on the Early Second Millennium. Chapter five is divided geographically into sections on Babylonia (Isin, Larsa. and Babylon, through the reign of Ammi-saduqa), Assyria and the East (the Old Assyrian colonies, Eshnunna, and Elam, Babylon through the reign of Hammurabi), Mari and the West (through Hammurabi), and the Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia (in the reign of Shamshi-Adad). The first half of chapter six includes some of the same material mentioned in chapter five, but with an emphasis on the kings Shamshi-Adad and Hammurabi and the states...