Review: Current Issues in the History of the Ancient Near East

Very often we are asked to teach outside our direct fields of expertise or training. For those who are not specialists in the Ancient Near East but are asked to teach classes in it, Mark Chavalas has put together a convenient book that provides a succinct overview of the scholarship and debates within the study of the field. The primary goal of the text is to provide "an overview of the current state of scholarship, intended for other ancient scholars who have little or no knowledge of the subject" (p 1). The text includes overviews by specialized scholars covering geographic/cultural divisions of the region, primarily southern Mesopotamia (meaning Sumer and Babylonia) by Gonzalo Rubio, the Assyrians by Steven Garfinkle, the Hittites by Gary Beckman, and the Syria-Palestine region by Daniel C. Snell. Classes and traditional textbooks in the Ancient Near East often include Ancient Egypt, which is conspicuously missing. Sometimes Egypt is covered in its own separate course and textbook, other times not. When excluded from a textbook, there is usually an explanation as to why. Given its economic and political influence in the other regions and cultures mentioned, it might have been useful to either include it or provide a justification for its exclusion. A discussion on the Persian Empire might also be constructive but is likewise not included. One grievous typo was found that the press should have found. The title on the cover of the book is entitled Current Issues and the Study of the Ancient Near East while the title page inside has the title Current Issues in the History of the Ancient Near East. This may cause some confusion as it did between this reviewer and BMCR. Yet, these problems should not distract from a generally useful and approachable text.