Description: Tracing the evolution of the state from its beginnings to the early Middle Ages, this comprehensive handbook focuses on key institutions and dynamics while providing accessible accounts of states and empires in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean.
Review Quotes: "Oxford's distinguished series of handbooks on the ancient world continues to expand. This recent addition surveys the principal states in the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean from the fourth millennium BCE to the eighth century.... Each article provides an up-to-date overview of a state's political history and institutional structure and a select bibliography of current scholarship.... An excellent work. Essential."--S. M. Burstein, CHOICE