Throughout history, human beings have developed in the context of group life. In the ancient world, one of the ways to make this process easier was large-scale urban development. Around 10,000 BC, cities began to rise and have never stopped since. Many of the great cities of the ancient world came from the fertile crescent-shaped regions of what is now the Middle East, but also from outside the region. Let's take a look at seven of the largest and most important cities in the ancient world.
Jericho is perhaps the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, with ruins of the area dating back to around 9000 BC. Today, it is located in the Palestinian West Bank and has a population of only about 14,000 people.
From 9000 BC to 2000 BC, the town's development ebbed and flowed, with the population peaking at around 2,000 to 3,000 in ancient times. While this may sound small, the town is quite advanced compared to the human development around Jericho. It holds not only archaeological evidence of early agriculture, but also some of the earliest permanent settlements during the transition to a nomadic and settled lifestyle.
The most famous inhabitants of Jericho come from the Canaanites of the Old Testament of the Bible. The Canaanites were immigrants to the region and developed culture and civilization within the reconstructed walls of Jericho.
The discovery of Canaanite houses and furniture has allowed archaeologists to understand the culture that the Israelites infiltrated and adopted after besieging and destroying the city. Following the assault on Jericho in the book of Joshua, the Bible again mentions the city as being constantly destroyed and rebuilt in the Book of 1 Kings, which mentions that Bethel sent Hill to settle in the city in the 9th century BC.
Later, the city of Jericho became the winter residence of King Herod, which was famous in the Bible and continued to be inhabited by many other people in the region for thousands of years to come. Although it is not an urban center by modern standards, it is one of the largest early towns to emerge in the region and a sign of the development of the city by archaeologists.
Uruk, located in the bed of the Euphrates River in present-day Iraq, was the cornerstone of the Sumerian civilization in ancient Mesopotamia. By 3100 BC, the city probably had about 40,000 inhabitants and about 80,000 in its surrounding area, making it the largest urban area in the world at the time.
In ancient mythology, the city of Uruk is known as the capital of the legendary king Gilgamesh, who is said to have built a stone wall six miles in diameter around the city. The city is also said to be the biblical city of Eric, and according to the Book of Genesis, it was the second city founded by King Nimrod, Noah's great-grandson.
Since the city is located on the banks of the Euphrates River, the success of agriculture has led to the growth of both its population and culture. This control over agricultural development was largely due to the domestication of food in the cities. In the Eanna region, archaeologists have discovered what may be the oldest cuneiform form in the world.
Until the 2000s BC, Uruk remained an important urban center in the ancient world. It was first annexed by the Akkadian Empire, and then went through the reign of several successive empires.
It has experienced a sharp decline, as well as a significant increase in population. In the 200s BC, under the Greek Seleucid Empire, the population of the city of Uruk recovered to its original population of about 40,000 people. However, with the decline of the Greeks and Parthians, Uruk was gradually abandoned and completely abandoned in 700 AD.
Mali was an ancient Semitic city-state located in what is now Syria and flourished as a **center between 2900 and 1759 BC. The city was built to best fit the middle of several **routes of the Euphrates). At its peak, the city had a population of about 50,000 people.
As the center of the ancient Semitic language, the city was built and rebuilt several times, becoming the capital of the hegemony of the Eastern Semitic civilization until 2500 BC. Mali was a Semitic city with a clear kinship to Sumerian culture until it was besieged and destroyed by the Akkadian Empire.
The Akkadian Empire then rebuilt the city again under the leadership of the military governor. Since then, the city has gained and lost its independence several times, and was eventually abandoned during the Hellenistic period.
Although Mali was the relatively ephemeral regional capital of Mesopotamia, its impact on our modern understanding of the region is integral in the geopolitical realm. When French archaeologists discovered Mali in 1933, they discovered about 25,000 slates that detailed the administrative and diplomatic relations between countries in the 20th century BC and provided new insights into the breadth of the **network that had been developed at that time.
While the city was a fine example of an ancient urban **center, its power did not last beyond the 1700s BC, but passed through the control of different empires in turn, eventually being abandoned sometime during the Hellenistic period.
A city located in modern-day Iraq that has been the gateway to Mesopotamia for at least 1,500 years, your is a wealthy city built on the import of ** and luxury goods. Between 2030 and 1980 BC, your was probably the largest city in the world, with a population of around 65,000 people.
Your is also a major port in the Persian Gulf, and its coastline extended further inland in ancient times. Your was the center of ** and luxury, as evidenced by the presence of royal tombs in the city. These graves are filled with imported goods, including gemstones such as *** and **, lapis lazuli, etc. The tombs themselves are also an example of your economic importance to Mesopotamia.
According to tens of thousands of cuneiform tablets found in the remains of the city, there was social stratification in the society of your, with priests at the top and slaves (captured foreigners) at the bottom. Due to your dominance in terms of **, these tablets also determined the relationship between the civilizations of the time.
Many also believe that your is the biblical reference to Urcastine, the birthplace of Abraham, the father of Israel. It is mentioned three times in Genesis and once in Nehemiah, but scholars are uncertain whether the text refers to the city of your or other locations in the region.
Whether or not the city of your was Abraham's birthplace, archaeology from the 1850s suggests that the ancient ziggurat tower of your was an important place for the city and served as a burial ground for hundreds of years. Its sacredness may have something to do with its connection to the Babylonian Empire.
Regardless, archaeology shows that your was one of the most important cities in ancient Mesopotamia, as it was the main port. However, the receding coastline of the Persian Gulf meant that the city's importance was declining year by year, and by 500 BC, it was abandoned.
Memphis has been the capital of Ancient Egypt for eight successive dynasties since its establishment during the Old Kingdom. Memphis was the royal capital from the First Dynasty onwards, with a population of about 45,000 people, and was one of the largest urban settlements in the 2000s BC.
Memphis rose to fame during the Fourth Dynasty as the first capital of unified Egypt and the home of the first pharaohs to wear the twin crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. It was the center of worship of the Egyptian god Ptah, cementing its importance and prestige among other cities in Egypt for hundreds of years to come.
After the Eighteenth Dynasty, the political capital of Egypt moved to Thebes, but Memphis was still known as a metropolis because of its network of multiple cemeteries that greatly contributed to its urban expansion.
Memphis remains the cultural and artistic capital of Egypt, and during the New Kingdom, it was a place of education for the royal princes. Memphis is also said to have built several important temples, some of which have yet to be discovered.
Before the end of the second year of his reign, Tutankhamun moved the royal family back to Memphis, once again restoring the city's status as the capital of Egypt. Throughout the Late Ancient Egypt, the city was successively of varying degrees of importance. In 525 BC, it became the political capital of Egypt for the last time before being invaded by the Greeks.
In 332 BC, Alexander the Great was crowned king of Egypt at the temple of Ptah in Memphis. It wasn't until after the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 that the city once again had a native ruler. After the capital moved to Alexandria and the Ptolemaic period arose, Memphis was abandoned, and the ruins of the city were located in the village of Mit Rahina.
The rise of the ancient Babylonian Empire in the 18th century BC gave way to the development of Babylon in southern Mesopotamia along the Euphrates River. Babylon was once a small religious city under the Akkadian Empire, but under the Babylonian Empire, it became the capital of Mesopotamia.
Hammurabi was the first king of Babylon, and he built Babylon into an important urban center. From 1770 BC to 1670 BC, Babylon was the largest city in the world and perhaps the first city with a population of more than 200,000.
After the death of Hammurabi, the old Babylonian Empire was shaken, and Babylon again became a small city-state and alternated between various empires until 609 BC, when the New Babylonian Empire came to power and restored Babylon as its capital. Imperial.
The most famous Neo-Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar II, created one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar was also responsible for placing Judea** in the Babylonian capital (recorded in the Hebrew Bible) and for the alleged king's destruction of Solomon's temple.
The Persian Empire then conquered the city and maintained its importance as a political and cultural capital until the invasion of Alexander the Great in 331 BC. Babylon was an important city until the Muslim conquest in the 700s AD. By the 10th century AD, Babylon was called the "hamlet of Babylon" by Ibn Hawqal.
The decline of this great city may have occurred during the decline of the Persian Empire, but the renewed interest of modern people has kept its legacy alive. In 2019, UNESCO listed Babylon as a World Heritage Site.
Founded by the Phoenicians in the 9th century BC, Carthage became a city-state and later an empire encompassing the western and central regions of the Mediterranean. Located in modern-day Tunisia, Carthage was one of the largest metropolises in the world at its peak in the third and fourth centuries BC, with a free male population of about 200,000 alone.
By 300 BC, Carthage had become the largest city in the world, with a population of around 500,000. The Carthaginian Empire was known for its strong maritime ** and agricultural expertise. The culture is largely based on these two trades, and people are known for their Semitic languages, known as Punic languages.
Punic cultures were distinguished from other Phoenician cultures by their military prowess and republican**. Carthage was the modern city center of its time, but little is known about it beyond the accounts of Roman and Greek scholars, who date back to after the Punic Wars.
The Carthaginian Empire was dominant, but it was not well known except for the wars with the Roman Empire. After the Third Punic War, Rome took control of Carthage and maintained it as one of the richest colonies of the empire. Although formally under Roman control, several of the colony's satraps were of Punic or Berber descent, and the Punic language was still widespread.
In addition to preserving the language, Carthage brought some of the Punic's influences into the Roman mainstream, such as agriculture and mosaic techniques. While for hundreds of years, Roman scholars portrayed Carthage as a foil to Rome, modern scholars apparently believe that Carthage was the capital of a delicate and complex society that influenced Western history after the Punic Wars.