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From the Publisher
Chapter 1: Sumer and Akkad
Because hunter-gatherers were thinly spread, were supposedly untied to territory, and held few possessions, they had no need to engage in fighting. Although there is evidence to suggest that human conflict occurred well before the Sumerians founded the first city-state in the late fourth millennium BC, it does appear to have increased in intensity among prestate agriculturalists as opposed to hunter-gatherers.
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Chapter 2: International RivalryAlmost at the end of the third millennium BC, a dynasty established in the city of Ur imposed a degree of order on Mesopotamia. Two of the kings of Ur, Urnammu and his son Shulgi, were largely responsible for the return of political stability. They introduced standard weights and measures, wrote down laws, and constructed ziggurats, the monumental stepped towers upon which Sumerian deities were believed to dwell. Their copious records provide a rare glimpse of a bureaucratic kingdom whose survival depended as much on diplomatic maneuvering as on warfare. |
Chapter 3: The Great Mesopotamian PowersBetween the ninth and seventh centuries BC in the ancient Middle East, an incredible transformation took place in warfare. While in 2300 BC, Akkad, the most aggressive of the earliest states, possessed an unusually large regular army, its core only numbered 5,400 men. Even then this represented for the Akkadians a supreme effort, for at this time soldiers were only raised in any strength when circumstances demanded military action. This arrangement continued to an extent in the following millennium BC, with conscripts being called to the colors in moments of crisis, but most states maintained regular troops as well. |
Chapter 4: The Persian EmpirePerhaps even more than the Assyrians, it was the Persians who founded the first true empire in the ancient Middle East. Certainly the size of their empire was something new. For the first time in history, almost all of West Asia was united politically. Finally, and most importantly, Europe and Asia were brought into contact in ways and with an intensity never experienced before. Greeks living in western Asia Minor came under direct Persian rule for long periods. The challenge they presented soon involved Persian kings in European affairs, both militarily and diplomatically. |
Chapter 5: The Macedonian Supremacy
The league that Athens formed immediately after the Persian invasion of the Greek mainland in 480 to 479 BC cleared the Aegean and western Asia Minor of the Persians. From Persia’s point of view, the situation was not entirely unwelcome when Spartan fears of Athenian preeminence became the focus of politics in Greece. Even though the growth of Athens’s power did not affect the Spartans directly, it did affect some of their allies, and in 431 BC Sparta’s invasion of Attica started the Peloponnesian War. The struggle ended with the defeat of Athens in 404 BC once Sparta gained the upper hand at sea, long an Athenian preserve.
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Chapter 6: The Iranian RevivalThe successors of Alexander the Great placed enormous emphasis on war. They regarded conquest as their purpose, replied to opposition with the dispatch of armies, and took personal command of military campaigns that were viewed as critical. This warlike outlook was particularly true of Seleucid power, not least because it inherited local traditions of military glory and the quest for booty. Ever since the Assyrians had stamped the ideal of a belligerent state upon the politics of the ancient Middle East, rulers were judged by their effectiveness as war leaders. |
Chapter 7: The Smaller StatesHaving looked at the armed rivalry of the great powers in the ancient Middle East, it is time to examine the experience of five smaller states whose histories illuminate quite separate military events. All five—Troy, Bactria, Judea, Petra, and Palmyra—were important enough to feature in the historical record, although the siege of Troy was celebrated in epic verse rather than documentary detail. |
Chapter 8: Famous SiegesSiege craft and artillery were developed in an attempt to deal with the fortified city, the stronghold of the earliest kings. Though the first fortified settlement appeared at Jericho in the eighth millennium BC, only much later at Uruk can we be absolutely sure that the city’s walls were built for a military purpose. Gilgamesh had made the people living in Uruk construct a wall nearly ten miles in length. This tyrannical ruler was determined to protect his city from the aggressive attentions of rival Sumerian kings, and Uruk’s defenses proved extraordinarily effective. |
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Top reviews from other countries
Gabriel Stein
Should have been better
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 9, 2023