4.1 From Old Babylon to the Medes

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Describe the geography of the Ancient Near East
• Discuss the political norms, technological innovations, and unique social attributes of the major city-states of the Ancient Near East
• Explain how city-states of the Ancient Near East interacted with their neighbors

When Sargon of Akkad built Mesopotamia’s first empire in approximately 2300 BCE, he inaugurated a new era in the Near East. Though it lasted only about a century and a half, his model of imperial expansion and administration was followed by a number of successive regional powers in the region. The Third Dynasty of Ur and Hammurabi’s Babylonian kingdom were in many ways imitators of Sargon’s earlier example. Later powers like the Hittites, Neo-Assyrians, and Neo-Babylonians continued to borrow from earlier empires and added unique traits as well. Within these different empires existed a diverse assortment of peoples, social classes, religions, and daily practices. From the archaeological record and surviving documents, historians have cataloged these groups and learned a little about how they lived.