Southwest Asia and Africa - SAT Subject Test in World History

Prior to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, the written language of ancient Egypt had proven indecipherable. With the Rosetta Stone, people were able to understand the ancient Egyptian written language for the first time in the 1820s.

The ancient Egyptians wrote on paper that they made from reeds. This paper is called "papyrus."

Menes is an Ancient Egyptian Pharoah who is usually credited with founding the first Egyptian dynasty and uniting Lower and Upper Egypt.

The Pyramids were built during the Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egyptian history to house the bodies of Pharoahs after they had died.

Hammurabi's Code of Laws is the earliest known written-down legal system. Hammurabi was a Babylonian king circa 1800 BCE. The Babylonian civilization existed in various forms for roughly 1500 years from 2000 BCE to 500 BCE.

The Babylon Captivity is a period of Jewish history when many Jewish citizens of the Kingdom of Judah were captured and forced into exile in ancient Babylon by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar.

The "Babylonian Captivity" of the sixth century BCE involved the forced imprisonment of much of the population of the Kingdom of Judah within the city of Babylon. It ended when Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon in 539 BCE and founded the Achaemenid Dynasty of Persia. Cyrus freed the Jewish people and they mostly returned to Judaea.

The Ancient civilization of Babylon existed in the modern-day state of Iraq. Although you might not have known this immediately, you should know that Babylon was a Mesopotamian kingdom and that Iraq is the only modern country on this list which falls in the region of Mesopotamia.

The Sack of Babylon occurred in approximately 1530 BCE, when the Hittite ruler, Mursili I, marched his army into the heart of Mesopotamia and lay waste to Babylon. It brought about the demise of the Amorite Dynasty of Hammurabi and ushered in a new era of civilizations in the Mesopotamian region.

"Akkadian" is the name of a language group, cultural group, and civilization that predates the Babylonian Empire. The Babylonian Empire arose in the Fertile Crescent of land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Its main rival to the North was another Akkadian civilization known as the Assyrian Empire. The two fought for centuries for control over the Fertile Crescent and each reigned as hegemonic powers for a period of time.

Cyrus the Great was the founded of the Achaemenid Empire, the progenitor of the Persian Empire. Justinian I is the most famous ruler of the Byzantine Empire. Hammurabi was the most influential ruler of the old Babylonian Empire that reached it's apex almost four thousand years ago. Nebopolassar was an early ruler of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. But, it was during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II (605-561 B.C.E.) that the Neo-Babylonian Empire reached the height of it's powers. It is useful at this juncture to draw a distinction between the old Babylonian Empire of Hammurabi (circa eighteenth century B.C.E.) and the Neo-Babylonian Empire of Nebuchadnezzar II (more than a millennium later).

Saul was the first king of the Hebrews and is best remembered for facing off against the Philistines. David followed Saul and is remembered as the conqueror of Jerusalem.

Nineveh was the capital of the bellicose Assyrian Empire. It is most famous for its Royal Library, built under the reign of the most famous Assyrian ruler, Ashurbanipal. It was in the Royal Library that the famous work The Epic of Gilgamesh was kept and preserved. The Epic of Gilgamesh is considered the oldest known work of literature in human history.

The Nubian civilization is one of the earliest known civilizations in African history. It arose in modern-day Southern Egypt and Sudan in approximately 2000 BCE.

The Akkadian Empire is sometimes called the earliest empire in human history, although of course this is somewhat subjective as it is dependent on how exactly you define an empire. It was founded and dramatically expanded by Sargon the Great from 2234 B.C.E. until his death sixty years later. The Akkadian Empire was relatively short-lived and over time split into the Northern Assyrian Kingdom and the Southern Babylonian Kingdom.

Although Bantu society valued oral traditions-as seen in the importance of griots, or those who told the oral history of the Bantu-these traditions did not directly influence Christianity.

Cyrus the Great is the founder of the great Achaemenid Empire of the ancient and classical Near East (later called the Persian Empire). Cyrus originated from Persis (the modern-day Iranian province of Fars) and as such has played an instrumental role in the development of contemporary Iranian national identity.

The ancient Persian Empire was vast, and administering the wide territory and diverse population required a unique administrative system. The Persian Emperors created satraps, or governors, to rule a political district on behalf of the emperor.

The Persian Empire was founded by Cyrus the Great when he conquered the rival Medes and established the Achaemenid Dynasty. Darius I dramatically expanded Persian territory and invaded mainland Europe. Xerxes was repelled by Greek forces at the Battle of Salamis.