The Ancient Near East and Bronze Age World, Eras
Standing
Concerns Description
Currently States The Ancient Near East and Bronze Age world covers the roughly two thousand years, from about 3200 to 1200 BCE, in which the first cities, states, writing systems and empires arose in Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Levant, Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean. It takes its name from bronze, an alloy of copper and tin that was the era's dominant material for tools and weapons, and whose trade networks linked civilizations from Britain to Afghanistan. Sumerian city states, Egypt under the pharaohs, the Hittite empire in Anatolia, Babylon under Hammurabi, and Mycenaean Greece all flourished within this period, developing law codes, monumental architecture, organized religion and long distance diplomacy conducted partly in cuneiform, a shared diplomatic script. The era ends with the Bronze Age Collapse, a still debated wave of destructions, migrations and state failures around 1200 to 1150 BCE that brought down or badly weakened almost every major power of the eastern Mediterranean within a few decades.