1.1 The Ancient Near East

Question 1

With the name the ‘Near East’, whose perspective is that from?

Answer 1

A European perspective

Question 2

What four regions can you divide the Near East into?

Answer 2

Asia Minor (Anatolia)

The Levant

Egypt

Mesopotamia

Question 3

Describe Asia Minor (Anatolia)

Answer 3

Roughly corresponds to the western two-thirds of modern Turkey

Question 4

Describe The Levant

Answer 4

Describes the lands on the eastern Mediterranean coast, from southern Turkey to northeastern Egypt.

Question 5

Who are the significant peoples in the Levant?

Answer 5

The Jews - people inhabiting a hill kingdom with its capital at Jerusalem

The Phoenicians - a sea-faring people based on the Mediterannean coast

Question 6

Describe Egypt

Answer 6

A region which owed its power and success to its location in the fertile Nile Valley

Question 7

Describe Mesopotamia

Answer 7

A region roughly corresponding to modern Iraq located between the Euphrates to the west and the Tigris to the east

Question 8

What are the Euphrates and the Tigris?

Answer 8

Rivers

Question 9

Which mountain range lays to the east of the Tigris river?

Answer 9

Zagros Mountains

Question 10

How long are the Zagros Mountains?

Answer 10

1,000km long

Question 11

Which kingdom is at the south-western end of the Zagros mountains?

Answer 11

Persia

Question 12

What was the Persian Empire’s capital?

Answer 12

Anshan

Question 13

When did the Persian Empire ‘grow up’?

Answer 13

Middle of the 7th Century BC

Question 14

Which empire did Persia take over in the middle of the 7th century BC?

Answer 14

Elam
Its capital was Susa

Question 15

What did the Persians ‘absorb’ from the Elam Empire?

Answer 15

Elamite culture and administrative skills
Elamite language

Question 16

When did Cyrus become king of Persia?

Answer 16

559 BC

Question 17

What had Cyrus conquered by the time of his death in 530?

Answer 17

All of the Near East apart from Egypt, as well as vast expanses of lands to the east of the Zagros Mountains

Question 18

Who were the two most important regional powers in the Near East by 600?

Answer 18

Egyptians and the Lydians

Question 19

Where was the Lydian capital?

Answer 19

Sardis

Question 20

Who had been dominant in northern Mesopotamia?

Answer 20

Assyrians

Question 21

Who were the Assyrians overthrown by in 612?

Answer 21

The Babylonians and the Medes

Question 22

Describe the Babylonian civilisation.

Answer 22

Very old and was centred on the city of Babylon in Mesopotamia

For centuries, they had been ruled over by other peoples but had established their own empire in Mesopotamia and the Levant

Question 23

Why do we sometimes call the Babylonian Empire, established by 600, as the Neo-Babylonian Empire?

Answer 23

To distinguish it from the Babylonian Empire.
W
Neo means new

Question 24

Where were the Medes based?

Answer 24

The Zagros Mountains and were pastoral mountain people

Question 25

What were the Medes famous for?

Answer 25

Their skill with horses

Question 26

What was the Medes largest city?

Answer 26

Ecbatana, on the eastern side of the Zagros Mountains

Question 27

How are the Medes and Persians related?

Answer 27

It seems they were ethnically related who had originally migrated from Central Asia

Question 28

Who wrote many of our writings on the Persian Empire?

Answer 28

The Greeks

Question 29

Who is the most famous Greek historian?

Answer 29

Herodotus

Question 30

When do we believe Histories was written and published?

Answer 30

430s and 430s

Question 31

What did Herodotus write about in Histories?

Answer 31

Wrote of the events of the wars between the Persians and Greeks which lasted between 499 and 479

Question 32

What does Herodotus trace the causes of the wars back to?

Answer 32

When Cyrus first became king of Persia in 559

Question 33

What would the Persians trace the cause of the wars back to?

Answer 33

Back to the Trojan War and other events from the mythological past

Question 34

Why do we need to be wary of Herodotus as a source?

Answer 34

He was writing more than a century after these events Most of his research was conducted by recording stories about the past that had been passed down by word of mouth Herodotus did not speak any Persian language and so the stories would have been translated.

Question 35

What other sources can we use for the rise of the Persian Empire?

Answer 35

The Nabonidus Chronicle

Question 36

What is the Nabonidus Chronicle?

Answer 36

Probably written in the late 6th or early 5th century Gives a year-by-year account of the reign of Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire