ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the main empires that were dominant in the Levant and its environs in the late second millennium BCE. The presentation starts with Egypt. While it is the New Kingdom empire that dominated the southern Levant in the Late Bronze Age, a look at early state development in Egypt and the vicissitudes of the Egyptian empire in Nubia helps provide a comparator that reveals that the Egyptian empire engaged in both franchise and settler types of colonialism before its demise in the late second millennium BCE. An examination of the Mittani empire follows. Even though Mittani was gone fairly early in comparison to the other empires considered in the area, seeing how the Mittani empire exhibits characteristics of both a state and an empire “proper” is instructive, together with identifying certain patterns of migration that emerge. The characteristics of the Hittite empire are then analysed, highlighting how the empire ruled over a diverse group of peoples. The expansion of the empire eastwards and southwards into the northern Levant and the resulting legacy of the neo-Hittite kingdoms is also looked at. After this, patterns of the Middle Assyrian empire in the Jazira area in northern Mesopotamia are examined. This is followed by a discussion of Mycenae even when it is not entirely clear whether Mycenae was a loose collection of individual city states or whether it was a unified kingdom, and the question of empire in regard to Mycenae is also asked. Select comments on the overall role of empires in the area conclude the chapter.
