Ancient Syria

A Three Thousand Year History
Erscheinungsjahr 2014
ISBN: 978-0-19-964667-8
Verlag: Oxford University Press(UK)

Buch, Englisch, 394 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 754 g

Syria has long been one of the most trouble-prone and politically volatile regions of the Near and Middle Eastern world. This book looks back beyond the troubles of the present to tell the 3000-year story of what came before: the peoples, cities, and kingdoms that arose, flourished, declined, and disappeared in the lands that now constitute Syria, from the time of the region's earliest written records in the third millennium BC, right through to the reign of the Roman emperor Diocletian in the early 4th century AD.

Across the centuries, from the Bronze Age to Imperial Rome, we encounter a vast array of characters and civilizations, enlivening, enriching, and besmirching the annals of Syrian history: Hittite and Assyrian Great Kings; Egyptian pharaohs; Amorite robber-barons; the biblically notorious Nebuchadnezzar; Persia's Cyrus the Great and Macedon's Alexander the Great; the rulers of the Seleucid empire; and an assortment of Rome's most distinguished and most infamous emperors. All swept across the plains of Syria at some point in her long history. All contributed, in one way or another, to Syria's special, distinctive character, as they imposed themselves upon it, fought one another within it, or pillaged their way through it.

But this is not just a history of invasion and oppression. Syria had great rulers of her own, native-born Syrian luminaries, sometimes appearing as local champions who sought to liberate their lands from foreign despots, sometimes as cunning, self-seeking manipulators of squabbles between their overlords. They culminate with Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, whose life provides a fitting grand finale to the first three millennia of this ancient civilization. And yet the long story of Syria does not end with the mysterious fate of Queen Zenobia. The conclusion looks forward to the Muslim conquest in the 7th century AD: in many ways the opening chapter in the equally complex and often troubled history of modern Syria.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bryce, Trevor

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Naher & Mittlerer Osten

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- The Tale to be Told

- Part I: The Bronze Ages

- 1: The First Kingdoms

- 2: The International Intruders

- 3: The Amorite Warrior-Chiefs

- 4: The Empires Collide

- 5: The End of an Era

- Part II: From the Iron Age to the Macedonian Conquest

- 6: The Age of Iron

- 7: The Wolf upon the Fold: the Neo-Assyrian Invasions

- 8: From Nebuchadnezzar to Alexander

- Part III: Syria under Seleucid Rule

- 9: The Rise of the Seleucid Empire

- 10: The Seleucid Empire in its Prime

- 11: The Jewish Question: the Maccabean Reellion

- 12: The Decline and Fall of the Seleucids

- Part IV: Syria under Roman Rule

- 13: The Coming of the Romans

- 14: Nabataean Excursus

- 15: The Syrian Emperors

- 16: The Crisis Years

- Part V: The Rise and Fall of Palmyra

- 17: From Desert Oasis to Royal Capital: the Story of Palmyra

- 18: Syria's 'King of Kings': the Life and Death of Odenathus

- 19: The Queen of the East: Zenobia

- The Last Farewell

- Appendix 1: King-Lists

- Appendix 2: Literary Sources

- Notes

- Bibliography

- Index

Über Autor(innen)

Trevor Bryce is an Honourary Research Consultant in the University of Queensland, and an Emeritus Professor of the University of New England, Australia, where he was Professor of Classics and Ancient History. He is also a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and has been awarded an Australian Centenary medal for services to History.
Although trained as a Classicist, primarily in Latin language and literature, most of his research has been conducted in the field of Near Eastern history and civilization, with some emphasis also on the links between the Classical and Near Eastern worlds. He is the author of numerous books and articles on Near Eastern history, including most recently The World of the Neo-Hittite Kingdoms (2012, also published by Oxford University Press).