Chapter 5: Dawn of the Empires: 2300 B.C.E. - 300 B.C.E. Objectives

This chapter is the first of four to discuss the development of the empires which emerged in many of the areas of primary urbanization in the ancient world. Regardless of location or pre-existing culture, empires shared common traits: strong military, central administration, systems of taxation, control of commerce, and significant uniformity of language, weights and money. They also faced the threat of being overthrown if and when they reached for too much territory or failed to suppress revolts from subject peoples no longer grateful for the economic and security benefits provided by empire. Students should be able to explain how each empire fits the criteria of empire and carried out the tasks which all empires faced.

The empires in this chapter come from three different regions: Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece. Each area produced a distinctive pattern. In Mesopotamia most of the empires were short lived and often resorted to domination to maintain their hold over subject peoples. Egypt saw a series of longer, more stable governments which incorporated a variety of different people into a single identity. It is not fair to call Egypt an empire until its leaders sought domination outside of their traditional Nile River centers. Finally, the Greeks began as individual city-states which were taken over by Alexander of Macedonia (a non-Greek borderland which nonetheless experienced strong cultural influences from Greece) who spread his domination briefly as far east as the Indus River, as far south as Egypt and included Mesopotamia and much of the Mediterranean coast. His empire created a vast area which blended Greek values with a variety of local cultures in a combination known as the Hellenistic world.

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