This fascinating volume provides a complete history of the Middle East with specific attention paid to the civilizations of Assyria, Babylon, Greece and others. The book begins around 1000 B.C. and traces the developments in the region until around the time of the birth of Christ.

The title of this book needs a word of explanation, since each of its terms can legitimately be used to denote more than one conception both of time and place. "The East" is understood widely and vaguely nowadays to include all the continent and islands of Asia, some part of Africa--the northern part where society and conditions of life are most like the Asiatic--and some regions also of South-Eastern and Eastern.