Ancient Empires before Alexander | A Meditation on Empire (Lecture 1)

36 Lecture, 30 minutes/lecture.
Professor Robert L. Dise Jr., Ph.D.
Associate Professor of History, University of Northern Iowa

Lecture 1: The first empires in human history were created in the Near East in the late 3rd millennium B.C., and by the time the Carthaginian empire died, on the field of Zama in 201 B.C., more than a dozen Near
Eastern empires had come and gone - some in glory, some in obscurity.

The place to begin our study of these, the earliest empires, is by asking what makes a state an empire.
Is an empire a form of government, like monarchy or democracy? Or is it a form of rule that one state exercises over the peoples and places that it brings under its sway? How do empires rise? How are they ruled, and how are they defended? And finally, why do they fall?

Suggested Reading:
Dunstan, The Ancient Near East.
Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East.
Van de Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East.

Lecture 2: https://www.bitchute.com/video/8n3pIutuQuqI/