al-Sharq al-Adna al-Qadim fi Misr wal-Iraq

al-Sharq al-Adna al-Qadim fi Misr wal-Iraq (The Ancient Near East in Egypt and Iraq) is an Arabic scholarly work on ancient history by the Egyptian Egyptologist and historian Abd al-Aziz Salih, examining the political, religious, cultural, and literary trajectories of ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations al-Sharq al-Adna al-Qadim…+1.

Background and Composition

The plan for the project began in 1967 with the intention of producing a single, comprehensive survey covering the interconnected ancient civilizations of the Near East—including Egypt, Iraq, the Levant, the Arabian Peninsula, and parts of North and East Africa and northern Sudan al-Sharq al-Adna al-Qadim…. However, during the initial drafting, the author found the material required for Egypt and Mesopotamia too extensive to combine with the remaining regions in a single volume, prompting him to dedicate this initial volume specifically to Egypt and Iraq, while leaving other regions for subsequent volumes al-Sharq al-Adna al-Qadim…. The author dated successive iterations and preface revisions of the work to September 1967, August 1973, and December 1980 al-Sharq al-Adna al-Qadim….

Contents and Structure

The volume opens with introductory chapters examining the broader Near Eastern environment, highlighting geographical diversity, the emergence of early agriculture and writing, and prehistoric Stone Age developments al-Sharq al-Adna al-Qadim…+1. The main text is organized into two primary divisions:

• Book One: Egypt from the Dawn of History until the End of the Pharaonic Eras (Misr mundhu Fajr al-Tarikh hatta Nihayat al-Usur al-Fir'awniyya): Details Egyptian prehistory, the Archaic period, the Old Kingdom and the Pyramid Age (Third through Sixth Dynasties), the First Intermediate Period, the Middle Kingdom, the Second Intermediate Period and the Hyksos occupation, and the New Kingdom (covering the Eighteenth Dynasty, the Ramessides, and the Twenty-First Dynasty) al-Sharq al-Adna al-Qadim…+3. It continues through the Late Period, the Kushite Twenty-Fifth Dynasty, the Saite Renaissance, the Persian conquests, and concludes with the invasion of Alexander the Great al-Sharq al-Adna al-Qadim…. This division also devotes specialized chapters to Egyptian religious thought—such as divine kingship, monotheistic tendencies, and mortuary texts (including the Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, and the Book of the Dead)—as well as ancient Egyptian literature, covering myths, wisdom teachings (such as Ptahhotep, Ani, and Amenemope), and narrative tales like Sinuhe and The Eloquent Peasant al-Sharq al-Adna al-Qadim…+1.
• Book Two: Iraq (Mesopotamia from the Dawn of History to the End of the Chaldean Era) (al-Iraq: Bilad al-Nahrayn mundhu Fajr al-Tarikh hatta Nihayat al-Asr al-Kaldani): Covers prehistoric and proto-historic cultural horizons (Jarmo, Hassuna, Halaf, Ubaid, and Uruk), followed by the Sumerian Early Dynastic period, cuneiform writing, religious architecture, the Akkadian Empire, and the Sumerian Renaissance under the Third Dynasty of Ur al-Sharq al-Adna al-Qadim…+1. It proceeds through the Isin-Larsa period, the Laws of Eshnunna, the First Dynasty of Babylon and the Code of Hammurabi, Babylonian literary traditions (such as creation myths and the Epic of Gilgamesh), and the Kassite period and its foreign relations al-Sharq al-Adna al-Qadim….

Publication

The work was published in Cairo by Maktabat al-Anglo al-Misriyya (The Anglo-Egyptian Bookshop), with an edition appearing in 1973, and has served as a standard reference in Arab academic studies of ancient Near Eastern history and religion Tarikh al-Fikr al-Dini al…+1.