Early AntiquityUniversity of Chicago Press, 27. aug 1991 - 461 pages The internationally renowned Assyriologist and linguist I. M. Diakonoff has gathered the work of Soviet historians in this survey of the earliest history of the ancient Near East, Central Asia, India, and China. Diakonoff and his colleagues, nearly all working within the general Marxist historiographic tradition, offer a comprehensive, accessible synthesis of historical knowledge from the beginnings of agriculture through the advent of the Iron Age and the Greek colonization in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea areas. Besides discussing features of Soviet historical scholarship of the ancient world, the essays treat the history of early Mesopotamia and the course of Pharaonic Egyptian civilization and developments in ancient India and China from the Bronze Age into the first millennium B.C. Additional chapters are concerned with the early history of Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine, the Hittite civilization, the Creto-Mycenaean world, Homeric Greece, and the Phoenician and Greek colonization. This volume offers a unified perspective on early antiquity, focusing on the economic and social relations of production. Of immense value to specialists, the book will also appeal to general readers. I. M. Diakonoff is a senior research scholar of ancient history at the Institute of Oriental Studies, Leningrad Academy of Sciences. Philip L. Kohl is professor of anthropology at Wellesley College. |
Contents
Introduction by the Editorial Board | 1 |
Development | 27 |
The CityStates of Sumer | 67 |
Early Despotisms in Mesopotamia | 84 |
The Old Babylonian Period of Mesopotamian History | 98 |
Sumerian Culture | 124 |
The Predynastic Period and the Early and the | 137 |
The Middle Kingdom of Egypt and the Hyksos Invasion | 158 |
Mesopotamia in the Sixteenth to Eleventh Centuries B C | 261 |
Syria Phoenicia and Palestine in the Third | 286 |
The World of Crete and Mycenae | 309 |
Greece of the Eleventh to Ninth Centuries B C in | 328 |
Phoenician and Greek Colonization | 347 |
India Central Asia and Iran in the First Half of | 366 |
The First States in China | 387 |
China in the First Half of the First Millennium B C | 420 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Achaean agriculture Akkadian Alalakh Amenhetep Amorite ancient appeared archaeological Arrapkhe Asia Minor Asshur Assyrian Babylonian basileis became began bronze central century B.C. China Chou civilization colonies community members cult culture deities Diakonoff documents Dynasty early antiquity east eastern economies Editor's note Egypt Egyptian Euphrates existed gods Greece Greek Hapiru historians Hittite Homeric Hurrian Hyksos important included Indo-Aryans inhabitants inscriptions Iranian Iranian plateau irrigation Kassite king Knossos labor Lagash land language later Lower Mesopotamia Mesopotamia Middle Kingdom military Mitanni Mitannian Mycenaean Nile nomes northern Old Kingdom original palace Palestine period persons pharaoh Phoenicians political population primitive probably production Pylos Rameses region ritual river royal rule rulers scholars second millennium B.C. Shang slaves social southern Soviet structure Sumer Sumerian Syria temple territory texts third millennium Tigris tion tombs trade tribal tribes Ugarit Upper Mesopotamia Valley wang Western