The Great Powers Club: The History of the Kingdoms that Dominated the Near East in the Late Bronze Age

Among all the periods in ancient Egyptian history, the New Kingdom (ca. 1550-1050 B.C.) is perhaps the best known among non-specialists and Egyptologists alike. The reasons for wide-ranging modern knowledge of the New Kingdom are many and include a wealth of extant written materials, several well-preserved temples, and numerous larger-than-life kings and other personalities. In terms of literature, the New Kingdom not only boasts the most extant texts that have been translated and studied by modern scholars, but also a number of texts originally produced during earlier periods of Egyptian history that were copied during the New Kingdom. The texts span several genres including religion, historiography, bureaucracy, and diplomacy, which have all helped Egyptologists reconstruct the chronology, religious practices, and daily lives of Egyptians during the New Kingdom. Many of the texts were inscribed on the walls of some of Egypt’s greatest temples such as Medinet Habu, Luxor, and most impressive of all, Karnak. The abundance of literature written and temples constructed during the New Kingdom was the direct result of Egypt’s growing influence in the Near East during the late Bronze Age. Compared to some of their contemporaries – including the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians – the Hittites were somewhat distant both culturally and geographically. The Hittites were an Indo-European speaking in an ocean of Afro-Asiatic and Semitic groups, their homeland was to the north of Mesopotamia, and it contained no major river like the Nile, Tigris, or Euphrates Rivers. The Hittite Empire was also far less enduring than its neighbors, as it only existed from about 1800-1200 B.C. (van de Mieroop 2007, 156), which was considerably shorter than most of the other major kingdoms of the Near East. With that said, the influence of the Hittites on the politics, economy, and overall situation of the ancient Near East cannot be understated; the Hittites were a force to be reckoned with while they existed. The Egyptian sources also provide excellent details on events that either the Hittites refused to mention in their own texts, have not been discovered yet, or have been lost to the ages. When scholars study the history of the ancient Near East, several wars that had extremely brutal consequences (at least by modern standards) often stand out. Forced removal of entire populations, sieges that decimated entire cities, and wanton destruction of property were all tactics used by the various peoples of the ancient Near East against each other, but the Assyrians were the first people to make war a science. When the Assyrians are mentioned, images of war and brutality are among the first that come to mind, despite the fact that their culture prospered for nearly 2,000 years. Like a number of ancient individuals and empires in that region, the negative perception of ancient Assyrian culture was passed down through Biblical accounts, and regardless of the accuracy of the Bible’s depiction of certain events, the Assyrians clearly played the role of adversary for the Israelites. Indeed, Assyria (Biblical Shinar) and the Assyrian people played an important role in many books of the Old Testament and are first mentioned in the book of Genesis. One of the successor states that bridged the gap between the Old Assyrian Empire and Middle Assyrian Empire was the Kingdom of Mitanni, which remains somewhat of an enigma to modern scholars and has therefore so far failed to gain the attention of wider, popular audiences. However, while it existed, Mitanni affected the course of history in the Near East just as much as any of the other major kingdoms, and there is little doubt that the kingdom was just as powerful and technologically advanced as its peers during its apex. View Less