The Middle East

The earliest definition of Middle East included the lands around the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from Morocco to the Arabian Peninsula and Iran. Around World War 2 the definition was expanded and today is loosely used to include Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Palestine (now Israel), Jordan, Egypt, The Sudan, Libya, the various states of Arabia and the Trucial States. Two of the great cradles of civilisation were found in the Middle East - Egypt, along the banks of the Nile, and Mesopotamia, along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Strictly defined, Mesopotamia is the area between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in current day Iraq, bounded on the northeast by the Zagros Mountains and on the southwest by the edge of the Arabian Plateau and stretching from the Persian Gulf in the southeast to the spurs of the Anti-Taurus Mountains in the northwest. From her sprang the Sumerians, who began building cities around 3000 BC, the Akkadians, Amorites, Hittites, Kassites, Assyrians, Chaldeans.

For this section, we have chosen to place Egypt under the Middle East and not Africa as Northern Egypt is generally considered to be part of the Middle East.