Past Reading:

One of my long term goals is to learn more History, starting with Greece and Rome, since these are of course the predecessors of Western European Civilization, which in turn is the source of American Civilization. But in preparation for studying the history of Greece and Rome I wanted to learn more about the Near Eastern Civilizations that preceeded Greece. So over the last 6 months or year I read the following four books collected in the set Empires of the Ancient Near East published by The Folio Society:

H. W. F. Saggs.
The Babylonians: A Survey of the Ancient Civilisation of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley.
London: The Folio Society, 1999.
(Originally published as: The Greatness That Was Babylon by Sidgwick & Jackson, 1962, 1988.)

O. R. Gurney.
The Hittites.
London: The Folio Society, 1999.
(Originally published by Penguin Books, 1952, 1954, 1981, and 1990.)

Sir Alan Gardiner.
The Egyptians: An Introduction.
London: The Folio Society, 1999.
(Originally published as: Egypt of the Pharaohs: An Introduction, Oxford University Press, 1961.)

J. M. Cook.
The Persians.
London: The Folio Society, 1999.
(Originally published as: The Persian Empire, J. M. Dent & Sons, 1983.)

These are all excellent, detailed, and very scholarly books on their respective subjects. On the other hand, they are a bit daunting to the novice and rather dry - a little too much focus on the trees rather than the forest. In hindsight I should have started with a more general survey, such as:

H. W. F. Saggs.
Civilization Before Greece and Rome.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.
I have a copy of this somewhere and, when I eventually find it, plan to read it to gain a better perspective on these pre-Greek civilizations.


Another recommended survey of that period:

Sabatino Moscati.
Face of the Ancient Orient.
Mineola, N. Y.: Dover Publications, 2001.


This web site looks very useful: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook.