Volume II Part 2 deals with the history of the region from about 1380 to 1000 B.C., and includes accounts of Akhenaten and the Amarna ‘revolution’ in Egypt, the expansion and final decline of the Mycenaean civilization in Greece, the exodus and wanderings of the Israelites, and the Asstrian and Hittite empires.

Volumes I and II of The Cambridge Ancient History have had to be entirely rewritten as a result of the very considerable additions to knowledge which have accrued in the past forty-five years. For the same reason it has also been necessary to increase the size of the volumes and to divide each of them into two separately published parts. The individual chapters have already appeared as fascicles, but without maps, indexes and chronological tables which, for practical reasons, have been reserved for these volumes. Some additions and corrections have also been made in order to bring the text, as far as possible, up to date. Together the new volumes provide a history of Egypt and the Ancient Orient (including Greece and the Aegean region) down to 1000 BC in a form suitable for both specialist and student. Volume II, Part I, deals with the history of the region from about 1800 to 1380 BC. This was the era of Hammurabi in Western Asia, the Hyksos and warrior-kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty in Egypt, and the Minoan and early Mycenaean civilizations in Crete and mainland Greece.