Ancient Near East

The ancient Near East was home to many cradles of civilization, spanning Ancient Mesopotamia, the ancient Levant, ancient Egypt, ancient Elam, ancient Anatolia or Asia Minor, the ancient South Caucasus and Armenian highlands, and ancient Northern Arabia (including Dilmun). It is generally not considered to include Pre-Islamic Arabia as a whole, the ancient Berbers, or ancient Nubia, though it is sometimes classified as encompassing ancient Iran, ancient Cyprus, Ancient Carthage, and the Aegean civilization. Given the nature and scope of their subject matter, the fields of ancient Near East studies and Near Eastern archaeology, including the subfields of Assyriology and Egyptology, are among the most prominent with regard to research in the realm of ancient history, alongside such disciplines as Classics, Classical archaeology, biblical studies, biblical archaeology, Jewish studies, Christian studies, Iranology, Sinology, and Indology, some of which overlap with them. Historically, the Near East denoted an area roughly encompassing central West Asia and Egypt, having been focused on the lands between Greece in the west, Iran in the east, the Caucasus in the north, and Arabia in the south. It therefore largely corresponds with the central core area of the modern-day geopolitical concept of the Middle East. It was strongly influential on the later Islamic world and civilization, which conquered and absorbed its remannts, on the later Jewish people, who directly descend from it, and moderately so on the later Western world and civilization via the Aegean civilization, the Orientalizing period, the Greco-Persian wars, the Hellenistic period, the Roman and Eastern Roman empires, and Christianity, while being distinct from yet to some degree culturally related and ancestral to them.

The history of the ancient Near East begins with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC, though the date that it ends is a subject of debate among scholars; the term covers the region's developments in the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, and is variously considered to end with either the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century BC, the establishment of the Macedonian Empire in the 4th century BC, or the beginning of the early Muslim conquests in the 7th century AD.

It was within the ancient Near East that humans first practiced intensive year-round agriculture, which led to the rise of the earliest dense urban settlements and the development of many now-familiar institutions of civilization, such as social stratification, centralized government and empires, and organized religion (see: ancient Near Eastern religions) and organized warfare. It also produced the first writing system, the first alphabet (i.e., abjad), the first currency, the first legal codes, and the invention of the wheel, advances that founded astronomy and mathematics.

During this period, the region's previously stateless societies largely transitioned to building states, many of which gradually came to annex the territories of their neighbouring civilizations. This process continued until the entire ancient Near East was enveloped by militaristic empires that had emerged from their own lands to conquer and absorb a variety of cultures under the rule of a top-level government.