Ancient Empires: From Mesopotamia to the Rise of Islam

by Eric H. Cline, Mark W. Graham

Ancient Empires is a relatively brief yet comprehensive and even-handed overview of the ancient Near East, the Mediterranean, and Europe, including the Greco-Roman world, Late Antiquity, and the early Muslim period. Taking a focused and thematic approach, it aims to provoke a discussion of an explicit set of themes supplemented by the reading of ancient sources. By focusing on empires and imperialism as well as modes of response and resistance, it is relevant to current discussions about order, justice, and freedom. The book concludes that some of the ancient world's most enduring ideas, value systems, and institutions were formulated by peoples who were resisting the great empires. It analyzes the central, if problematic, connection between political and ideological power in both empire formation and resistance. The intricate interrelations among ideological, economic, military, and political power are explored for every empire and resisting group.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

386 pages, Paperback

First published May 31, 2011

About the author

DR. ERIC H. CLINE is the former Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and current Director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at The George Washington University. A National Geographic Explorer, NEH Public Scholar, and Fulbright scholar with degrees from Dartmouth, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania, he is an active field archaeologist with 30 seasons of excavation and survey experience in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus, Greece, Crete, and the United States, including ten seasons at the site of Megiddo (biblical Armageddon) in Israel from 1994-2014, and seven seasons at Tel Kabri, where he currently serves as Co-Director. A three-time winner of the Biblical Archaeology Society's "Best Popular Book on Archaeology" Award (2001, 2009, and 2011) and two-time winner of the American School of Archaeology's "Nancy Lapp Award for Best Popular Archaeology Book" (2014 and 2018), he is a popular lecturer who has appeared frequently on television documentaries and has also won national and local awards for both his research and his teaching. He is the author or editor of 20 books, almost 100 articles, and three recorded 14-lecture courses. His previous books written specifically for the general public include "The Battles of Armageddon: Megiddo and the Jezreel Valley from the Bronze Age to the Nuclear Age" (2000), "Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel" (2004), "From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible" (2007), "Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction" (2009), "The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction" (2013), "1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed" (2014), “Three Stones Make a Wall: The Story of Archaeology" (2017), and “Digging Up Armageddon” (2020). He has also co-authored a children's book on Troy, entitled "Digging for Troy" (2011). For a video of his "Last Lecture" talk, go to http://vimeo.com/7091059.

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Ancient Empires' is intended as a college text and, as that, serves the purpose well on two fronts. First, it presents a survey history of the period from 3000 B.C.E. to 900 C.E., focusing on Southwest Asian and Mediterranean empires from 900 B.C.E. Second, it serves as an introduction to historiography by means of case studies.
The primary cases examined are the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, Persian, Athenian, Hellenistic, Roman (most thoroughly covered), Byzantine, Sasanid Persian and Islamic. Alongside are shorter treatments of the Urartians, Aramaeans, Carthaginians, Hebrews, Macedonians and others. These, greater and lesser, illustrate a central thesis, it being that empires tend to generate resistance, imitation and, often, eventual integration at their peripheries—a thesis later (pp. 297, 311) expanded to include monotheistic religious ideologies.
Another historiographical point is as regards levels of analysis. The authors distinguish three. At the deepest level are environmental factors, something which likely accounted for the three-century dark age of imperial collapse beginning in the 12th century B.C.E., the end of the Bronze Age. The surface level of analysis, the subject of traditional histories, is the study of the records of literate elites. Intermediate to these is sociological analysis.
Throughout the authors utilize Michael Mann's overarching sociological model of power to explicate the formation and operation of empire, the “four overlapping sources of social power” (p. 5) being ideological, economic, military and political, the effective synergy of which lead to strength and viability.
Although these historiographical considerations run throughout, they are never obtrusive. Similarly, although many modern—and often damning--imperial parallels suggest themselves, these comparisons are quite subtle, the kinds of connections readers will make themselves or which may readily arise in classroom discussions.
Finally, the very fact that so many histories are woven together between the pages of one, relatively short, book is itself refreshingly educational, connections, explicit and implicit, being made between broadly diverse subject areas rarely treated so synoptically and effectively.

[ceren · Rating 5 out of 5]

çok taraflı bir notlandırma ama ben çarşamba sabahı kantin filtre kahvesi eşliğinde g400de esinle analiz yapmayı özledim 😭

[Omer · Rating 4 out of 5]

İEAS

[Dogan Gurer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cline'ın dilinden, tunç çağından orta çağa kadar yakındoğu ve akdenizde hüküm sürmüş imparatorlukların hikayesi.

[Nicholas Kalaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Concise treatment of a difficult topic. Well done in my opinion. The IEMP model used by the authors isn't a final or even a genius way of looking at history and its events, but it does provide an interesting and indeed worthwhile lens by which to view historical events. History books lack this "lens" by which to read them in and thus suffer from merely spitting out dates or events without giving them significance. If they give significance, they lack the ability to tie it all together and weave a story of human history during that time period; something this book does well. Recommend for new and intermediate readers of ancient history.

[Uğur Ersöz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Arkeolog Eric H. Cline'in Türkçeye çevrilmiş diğer iki kitabı gibi bu kitap da şahaneydi. Cline bu kitabinda, bildigimiz tarih anlatiminin yaninda her bolume o dönem ve uygarliklarla ilgili cesitli sorular sorarak basliyor ve bolum boyunca da bu sorulara alternatif cevaplar veriyor. Sıkı bir tarih ve arkeoloji okuru olarak bu kitap da bu saydigim alanlarda okuduğum en iyi kitaplardan biri diyebilirim. Umarım toplam 16 kitabı olan Cline'in diğer kitapları da bir an önce Türkçeye çevrilir ve okuyabilirim.

[Derya Yıldıran · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yakındoğu, Akdeniz ve Avrupa tarihini içeren, nispeten kısa ama kapsamlı bir inceleme. İmparatorluklar ve emperyalizmin yanı sıra karşı cephede oluşan direniş ve tepkiler üzerinde de durması, günümüzdeki düzen, adalet ve bağımsızlık kavramlarına ışık tutuyor.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid book but not written in an engaging manner. Some missed opportunities and some adherence to outdated ideas (e.g. Romanization).

[Cengiz Aytun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kitap bir noktadan sonra büyük ölçüde Roma imparatorluğunun anlatımına dönüşmüş ne yazık ki.

[Rudi Opperman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative overview of the empires that existed in Ancient times in the Near East and in Europe. The book sets out how these empires came into being and what factors made them persist.

[Stephen Morrison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an exceptional overview of ancient history. I should know, I spent a year editing it for Dr. Graham. I also created the index using some nifty software from Cambridge University Press. Basically, it rocks.

[Giuliano Filippini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uma inserção nos impérios antigos. Para quem gosta de história e se interessa pelo assunto é uma boa pedida. Meu principal interesse estava no império romano. Mas esse livro abrange muito mais do que isso, trazendo também noção da fundação do império, desde a raiz até sua queda.

[Yasin Çetin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Giriş ile beraber 15 bölümden oluşan eser, Mezopotamya'da imparatorluk fikrini oluşturabilecek dinamiklerinden, Emevi Devleti'nin yıkılışına kadar konu edinir. Asur İmparatorluğu, Babil İmparatorluğu, Pers(Ahameniş) imparatorluğu anlatıldıktan sonra İyonya ve Yunan kültür dinamikleri anlatılır. Yunan kültürü etkisi içinde olan Makedonya, Perslere son vererek; Doğu ve Batı arasında etkileşimi hızlandırır. Yahudilik konusu da kitap boyunca satır aralarında anlatılmakla beraber, Makkabiler'e küçük bir bölüm ayrılmıştır. Ahameniş İmparatorluğu'nu yıkan İskender'in İmparatorluğu uzun ömürlü olmaz ve komutanları arasında bölüşülür(savaşla). Hindistan'da bu dönemde tüm Hindistan'a hakim olan bir imparatorluk kurulur. Kitap Roma'nın yükselişini ve Krallık'dan cumhuriyet'e geçişini konu edindikten sonra, imparatorluğa dönüşmesi ve Akdeniz'e hakim olmasını anlatır. Roma'nın bir başka değişimi ise Hıristiyanlığı kabul etmesidir. Evrensel Roma(Doğu) ile evrensel Sasani İmparatorluğunun savaşımları anlatılır. Bu sırada Arabistan'da yeni bir güç oluşmaktadır: İslam. İslam, Bizans ve Zerdüşt Sasani ile mücadele eder, büyük kazanımlar elde eder ve hatta Sasani devletine son verir. Emevilerin son bulması ise aynı zamanda Antikçağ'ın bitimi olarak algılanır.

İEAS dedikleri "İdeolojik, Ekonomik, Askeri ve Siyasi" dinamikler üzerinden İmparatorlukların gelişimi ve yıkılışları açıklanmaya çalışılır. Kitap boyu dinsel(ideolojik) kavramlara ağırlık verilmiş, ekonomik ve askeri meseleler daha az yer kaplamıştır.