West Asia in the ancient world (3500 BC – 800 BC). The first cities, the first writing, the first kings who called themselves gods. These articles cover Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus and the Bronze Age world that connected them.
Germany's archaeological institute calls Uruk one of the world's earliest metropolises: 200 hectares, perhaps 40,000 people, writing from about 3300 BC.
· 3300 BCIn 1975 Sapienza excavators found Ebla's palace archive at Tell Mardikh, Syria. Scarpa counts over 15,000 pieces in one room, ASOR over 18,000 tablets.
· 2300 BCSargon's daughter Enheduanna, priestess at Ur, names herself in the Exaltation of Inana. Most copies are 500 years later, so her authorship is debated.
· 2300 BCSargon's inscriptions say he captured Lugalzagesi of Uruk and took lands from the sea to Mari and Ebla. Three later tales disagree on where he came from.
· 2279 BCA copper statue from Bassetki says Naram-Sin won nine battles in a year, and the people of Agade asked eight gods to make him their city's god.
· 2250 BCSeveral editions of the Gilgamesh epic existed by about 2000 BC. A king of Uruk loses his friend Enkidu, seeks eternal life and loses the plant of youth.
· 2000 BCEgypt's text of the peace between Ramesses II and the Hittite king Hattusili III is dated year 21. The UN gives 1269 BC, Livius.org about 1259 BC.
· 1259 BCIn May 1929 Claude Schaeffer found alphabetic cuneiform tablets at Ras Shamra, Syria. In 1930 Hans Bauer read about 20 of their 26 or 27 signs.
· 1190 BCMerneptah's Karnak inscription and Ramesses III's year 8 text at Medinet Habu name the Sea Peoples. Breasted, Cline and Roberts added the rest.
· 1177 BCCalvert began digging Hisarlık in 1863; its nine layers span 3,000 years. Hittite texts name Wilusa, and in 2001 Korfmann and Kolb fought over its size.
· 1871On December 3, 1872, George Smith, self-taught in cuneiform, told a society what a Nineveh tablet said: a flood, a ship, a dove, a swallow, a raven.
· 1872
