History - HSTR 365: History of the Ancient Near East: Find Books

The civilisation of Ancient Egypt flourished along the fertile banks of the River Nile. It was a civilisation that extended in virtually unbroken continuity from the fourth millennium B.C. to the conquest of Alexander the Great. During this long era of constancy the architectural and artistic styles characteristic of this civilisation changed and developed from period to period and dynasty to dynasty, as this book so vividly shows.

The Luxor Museum houses a fine collection of Egyptian antiquities that is beautifully exhibited. This illustrated volume highlights some of the masterpieces found in ancient Thebes.

In this dramatic and meticulously reasoned book, Schoch, like anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl in his classic Kon-Tiki, argues that ancient cultures traveled great distances by sea. Indeed, he believes that primeval sailors traveled from the Eastern continent, primarily Southeast Asia, and spread the idea of pyramids across the Earth, involving the human species in a far greater degree of contact and exchange than experts have previously thought possible.

Worlds At War begins in the ancient world, where Greece saw its fight against the Persian Empire as one between freedom and slavery, between monarchy and democracy, between individuality and the worship of men as gods. Here, richly rendered, are the crucial battle of Marathon, considered the turning point of Greek and European history; the heroic attempt by the Greeks to turn the Persians back at Thermopylae; and Salamis, one of the greatest naval battles of all time, which put an end to the Persian threat forever.

In Dr. David's study, the builders of the pyramids are revealed as simple people with ordinary preoccupations: who worried about their families, grumbled about working conditions - and even planned a strike to improve them.

Oftentimes, the best scholarship uses the investigation of one thing (such as a historical episode or a scientific anomaly) to speak to wider human and cultural truths. Fletcher's study of the life of the legendary queen Nefertiti is scholarship in just this sense. A learned and intensely personal book, it spans Fletcher's near-lifelong involvement with the study of Egyptian culture, from her first trip to Egypt as a teenager in 1981 to her most recent excavation in February 2003.

This much updated and expanded edition provides an introductory overview of the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. It was conceived primarily for students who have little or no knowledge of ancient history or archaeology. The book begins with the role of history and archaeology in understanding the past, and continues with the origins of agriculture and the formation of the Sumerian city-states in Mesopotamia.