3. HATTI EMPIRE AT ITS GREATEST EXTENT. EARLY 13TH CENTURY B.C.

4. ASSYRIAN EMPIRE AT ITS GREATEST EXTENT. EARLY YEARS OF ASHURBANIPAL

5. PERSIAN EMPIRE (WEST) AT ITS GREATEST EXTENT. TEMP. DARIUS HYSTASPIS

6. HELLENISM IN ASIA. ABOUT 150 B.C.





THE ANCIENT EAST


INTRODUCTORY


The title of this book needs a word of explanation, since each of its
terms can legitimately be used to denote more than one conception both
of time and place. "The East" is understood widely and vaguely nowadays
to include all the continent and islands of Asia, some part of
Africa--the northern part where society and conditions of life are most
like the Asiatic--and some regions also of South-Eastern and Eastern
Europe. Therefore it may appear arbitrary to restrict it in the present
book to Western Asia. But the qualifying term in my title must be
invoked in justification. It is the East not of to-day but of antiquity
with which I have to deal, and, therefore, I plead that it is not
unreasonable to understand by "The East" what in antiquity European
historians understood by that term. To Herodotus and his contemporary