The present volume begins with an account of what is known about the remotest geological ages and comprises chapters on the different kinds of evidence concerning man and his physical environment up to the end of the Predynastic Period in Egypt and the parallel stages of development in Mesopotamia, Persia, Anatolia, Palestine, Cyprus, Greece and the Islands. To trace the history of these very early times it is necessary to rely chiefly on material remains, since writing had not then been invented. The text offers a setting against which the cultural progress of the historical epoch can be...

Part II of volume I deals with the history of the Near East from about 3000 to 1750 B.C. In Egypt, a long period of political unification and stability enabled the kings of the Old Kingdom to develop and exploit natural resources, to mobilize both the manpower and the technical skill to build the pyramids, and to encourage sculptors in the production of works of superlative quality. After a period of anarchy and civil war at the end of the Sixth Dynasty the local rulers of Thebes established the so-called Middle Kingdom, restoring an age of political calm in which the arts could again...

Volume II, Part I, deals with the history of the region from about 1800 to 1380 BC.

Volume II, Part II deals with the history of the region from about 1380 to 1000 B.C., and includes accounts of Akhenaten and the Amarna 'revolution' in Egypt, the expansion and final decline of the Mycenaean civilization in Greece, the exodus and wanderings of the Israelites, and the Asstrian and Hittite empires.

In selecting the illustrations for this volume the main considerations have been to exemplify the material on which the arguments in the text are based and to show pieces of particular artistic or technical merit.

Volume III of The Cambridge Ancient History was first published in 1925 in one volume. The new edition has expanded to such an extent, owing to the immense amount of new information now available, that it has had to be divided into three parts. Volume III Part 1 opens with a survey of the Balkans north of Greece in the Prehistoric period. This is the first time such a survey has been published of this area which besides its intrinsic interest is important for its influence on the cultures of the Aegean and Anatolia. The rest of the book is devoted to the tenth to the eighth centuries B. C. In...

During this period the dominant powers in the East were Assyria and then Babylonia. Each established an extensive empire that was based on Mesopotamia, and each in turn fell largely through internal strife.