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.

Part 2 of volume I deals with the history of the Near East from about 3000 to 1750 B.C. In Egypt, a long period of political unification and stability enabled the kings of the Old Kingdom to develop and exploit natural resources, to mobilize both the manpower and the technical skill to build the pyramids, and to encourage sculptors in the production of works of superlative quality. After a period of anarchy and civil war at the end of the Sixth Dynasty the local rulers of Thebes established the so-called Middle Kingdom, restoring an age of political calm in which the arts could again flourish. In Western Asia, Babylonia was the main centre and source of civilisation, and her moral, though not always her military, hegemony was recognized and accepted by the surrounding countries of Anatolia, Syria, Palestine, Assyria and Elam. The history of the region is traced from the late Uruk and Jamdat Nasr periods up to the rise of Hammurabi, the most significant developments being the invention of writing in the Uruk period, the emergence of the Semites as a political factor under Sargon, and the success of the centralized bureaucracy under the Third Dynasty of Ur.

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.

The present volume begins with an account of what is known about the remotest geological ages and comprises chapters on the different kinds of evidence concerning man and his physical environment up to the end of the Predynastic Period in Egypt and the parallel stages of development in Mesopotamia, Persia, Anatolia, Palestine, Cyprus, Greece and the Islands. To trace the history of these very early times it is necessary to rely chiefly on material remains, since writing had not then been invented. The text offers a setting against which the cultural progress of the historical epoch can be viewed. Archaeological investigation may be expected to bring to light more evidence to fill some of the present gaps in our knowledge, but already it is clear that the gulf between historical and prehistorical times in much of the ancient world is narrower than was once supposed.

A new Plates Volume to accompany the four new Parts of The Cambridge Ancient History, Volumes I and II. The editors have selected many new as well as familiar subjects for illustration, and contributors to the text Volumes have made frequent references to these illustrations. The Plates Volume can also, however, stand on its own as a visual guide to the formative period of civilization in Egypt, the Middle East and the Aegean region from earliest times to about 1000 B.C.