William H. Stiebing, Jr. is Seraphia D. Leyda Professor of History, Emeritus, at the University of New Orleans, USA. He is the author of four books (including Out of the Desert?: Archaeology and the Exodus/Conquest Narratives) and many articles and book chapters on pseudoscience, archaeology, ancient history, and biblical studies.

Susan N. Helft is an independent researcher. She has taught courses on the art and archaeology of the ancient Near East at Bryn Mawr College, Rutgers University Newark, and Fordham University and published on Anatolian art, the Bronze Age, and the Hittite Empire.

Introduction: Studying the Ancient Near East; 1. Near Eastern Prehistory; 2. The Dawn of the State in Western Asia; 3. The First Mesopotamian Empires; 4. Urbanism and Statehood in Wider Western Asia; 5. Egypt to the End of the Old Kingdom; 6. The Old Babylonian Period and Its Aftermath; 7. The Rise and Fall of the Egyptian Middle Kingdom; 8. The Era of Egypt's Pre-eminence; 9. The End of the Bronze Age; 10. Recovery and Transformation; 11. Mesopotamian Supremacy; 12. The Achaemenid Persian Empire; 13. Ancient Israel and Judah; Afterword: The Legacy of the Ancient Near East.