Ancient Middle East

Babylon was an old city that was home to some of the world's most effective empires. It was the capital of the Babylonian Empire and was considered a center of commerce, art, and more. It's thought to have been the world's biggest early city, perhaps the first to reach a population of more than 200,000 people. The age-old city featured high embankments put up along both banks of the Euphrates River to include the river's seasonal floods.

Assyria, frequently referred to as the Assyrian Empire, was a Mesopotamian kingdom and empire in the Ancient Near East that lasted from maybe the 25th century BC (in the form of the Assur city-state till its collapse between 612 BC and 605 BC, covering the Early to Middle Bronze Age to the Late Iron Age). Assyria was a Semitic-speaking kingdom based upon the Tigris River in Upper Mesopotamia, an area that included Northern Iraq, Northeast Syria, and Southeast Turkey, and also fringe parts of Northwest Iran in modern-day terms.

Perhaps you have heard about Gilgamesh, or perhaps you know what he was but would like to know more about him. Gilgamesh was an age-old Mesopotamian hero and the lead character of the Impressive of Gilgamesh, a legendary poem written in Akkadian throughout the late 2nd millennium BC. He could have been a posthumously deified historic emperor of the Sumerian city-state of Uruk. Gilgamesh's famous deeds are stated in five Sumerian poems that have endured.

Was there an empire older and more important than mighty Egypt? There were a few, but the Akkadian Empire, born out of the cradle of civilization, is thought to be the first. And it was a game-changer. Its creation inspired conquerors and other empire-builders throughout history and spawned two world powers. Its epics, legends, and beliefs influence religions and cultures even today—and make for some darn good listening.

The city of Kandahar dates back to the middle of the first millennium BCE, originally as a Persian town on the edge of the great Registan Desert in southeastern Afghanistan, that was reestablished and repopulated by Alexander the Great in the BCE fourth century. The ancient site of Kandahar developed on a rocky ridge some three kilometers to the west of the present-day city of the same name, which was founded in the 18th century.

The biblical-era Kingdom of Moab was located primarily in modern Jordan, but we do not know precisely when it came into being. However, by the tenth century BCE, a proto-Moabite kingdom was extant. We are also not sure about the roots of the Moabite name. The etymology of the name Moab is not completely clear and according to Jewish tradition, the name stems from the Semitic word for father, "abi". Therefore, the name means "from my father".

The Babylonian influence upon its successors and even modern society knows no bounds. One of the leading civilizations of Mesopotamia, the Babylonians provided the fundamentals of mathematics, agriculture, architecture, metallurgy, and other influential and necessary fields required to develop other great civilizations such as the Greeks, Romans, and even contemporary nations like China and the US. Without them, no neoteric world could exist.

Como maestros del caballo, los escitas y los sármatas abrieron la estepa euroasiática a civilizaciones nómadas como nunca antes se había visto. Por primera vez, un grupo de tribus que comparten una cultura común llamaron a la estepa su hogar, adaptándose a su crueldad. Nacidos en este entorno, adoptaron una forma muy particular de vivir y luego se extendió a los pueblos de Asia Central: el estilo de vida nómada pastoral.

When American archaeologists discovered a collection of cuneiform tablets in Iraq in the late 19th century, they were confronted with a language and a people who were at the time only scarcely known to even the most knowledgeable scholars of ancient Mesopotamia: the Sumerians. The exploits and achievements of other Mesopotamian peoples, such as the Assyrians and Babylonians, were already known to a large segment of the population through the Old Testament.

If you want to discover the captivating history of the Sarmatians and Scythians, then pay attention.... Masters of the horse, the Scythians and Sarmatians opened the Eurasian Steppe to nomadic civilizations like it had never seen before. For the first time, a group of tribes sharing a common culture called the Steppe their home, adapting themselves to its harshness.

The annals of world history are filled with intriguing, although often outlandish stories of lost cities and kingdoms, and in addition to Atlantis, there are also Hyperborea, Shambhala, and Aztlan, to name just a few. One of these lost cities is that known as Ubar, Wabar, or Iram. Ubar and its location continued to fascinate people around the world, and it seemed as though its secrets would remain hidden beneath the Arabian sands until the 1980s, when a photojournalist named Nicholas Clapp became interested in the city.

If ranked by population percentage, the Achaemenid Empire, also known as the First Persian Empire, is the largest Empire the world has ever seen with 44 percent of the world’s population belonging to it. But despite its remarkable conquests, riches, and astonishing achievements in fields such as engineering, the Achaemenid Empire has remained shrouded in mystery. But that is about to change. In this new captivating history audiobook, you will discover the truth about this startling empire.

Among the many cities of the ancient world, Rome and Athens may come to mind first, but Babylon in the land of Mesopotamia was already an ancient, venerated city when others were still inconsequential settlements. Ancient Babylon was home to great dynasties that produced some of the world’s most influential leaders and was also the seat of culture in ancient Mesopotamia and where historians made amazing scientific advances that would not be eclipsed for several centuries. An examination of ancient Babylon demonstrates that it was truly the first great city in the ancient world.

No Sumerian myths have been recovered dealing directly and explicitly with the creation of the Universe; what little is known about the Sumerian cosmogonic ideas has been inferred and deduced from laconic statements scattered throughout the literary documents. We have several myths concerned with the organization of the Universe and its cultural processes, the creation of man, and the establishment of civilization.

Únete a nuestros intrépidos exploradores Otto y Cassandra y Missy, el ave más astuta del universo, y embárcate en una nueva aventura. En esta ocasión, viajaremos en el tiempo hasta el Antiguo Egipto, donde aprenderemos sobre una de las siete maravillas del mundo antiguo: ¡las pirámides! También visitaremos el río Nilo y nos adentraremos en magníficas tumbas llenas de misterios. ¡Mucho cuidado con las momias!

In southern Iraq, a crushing silence hangs over the dunes. For nearly 5000 years, the sands of the Iraqi desert have held the remains of the oldest known civilization: the Sumerians. When American archaeologists discovered a collection of cuneiform tablets in Iraq in the late 19th century, they were confronted with a language and a people who were at the time only scarcely known to even the most knowledgeable scholars of ancient Mesopotamia.

The Akkadian empire is one of the oldest civilizations we know of. Dating back to a few thousand years BC, it presents itself with some archaeological finds, as well as long-forgotten mysteries and unanswered questions that will probably remain that way. However, despite of the many secrets this advanced, vast empire holds, it could definitely be worth our time to explore some of the things we do know. We can learn about their language, their government, and, as far as we have sources, about their economy, art, culture, and religion.

In southern Iraq, a crushing silence hangs over the dunes. For nearly 5,000 years, the sands of the Iraqi desert have held the remains of the oldest known civilization: the Sumerians. When American archaeologists discovered a collection of cuneiform tablets in Iraq in the late 19th century, they were confronted with a language and a people who were at the time only scarcely known to even the most knowledgeable scholars of ancient Mesopotamia.

The gods of Ancient Egypt conjure up images of hieroglyphs with animal-headed people, fantastic civilizations, and a past that seems both unimaginably distant and still tenuously connected to the present day. Although the names Ra, Anubis, and Isis still linger today in modern fiction, the truth about these gods reveals the ancient Egyptians themselves. A look at the principal gods of Ancient Egypt gives insight into the culture of the world's first great civilization.

Ur was a considerable Sumerian city-state in old Mesopotamia, situated near modern-day Tell el-Muqayyar in the Dhi Qar Governorate in Southern Iraq. Ur was formerly a seaside city on the Persian Gulf, near the mouth of the Euphrates, but the shoreline has modified, and the city is now well inland, on the south bank of the Euphrates, 16 kilometers (about 9.9 miles) from Nasiriyah in modern-day Iraq.