The fertile lands of Mesopotamia, the coastal Levant, and Egypt were surrounded and partly separated by arid semi-desert or dry steppe regions. These included the Syrian Desert and the northern portion of the Arabian Peninsula. Over thousands of years these marginal lands were always the first to be affected by cyclical periods of wet or…
The New Egyptian Kingdom began with the ejection from Egypt of the Hyksos or Amorite conquerors of the 2nd Intermediate period and was establised by Ahmose I in c.1570 BCE. However the greatest warrior Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty was, without a doubt, Thutmoses III, who expanded the Egyptian New Kingdom into Canaan, Syria and…
This range can be used for the Early Hebrew armies during the invasion of Canaan, firstly under Moses and then Joshua and Gideon against the Canaanite city-states and the Nomadic tribes before the establishment of the Israelite state under Saul. The Book of Joshua recounts how the Hebrews fought two famous battles against the Canaanites…
This range covers Elamite armies of the Late Bronze Age, known as the Middle Elamite Period, (c.1500 – c.1000 BCE). The Elamites fought wars with the Kassite Babylonians in this period and in c.1320 they temporarily occupied Elam. In the 13th and 12th centuries BCE a number of wars with Kassite Babylonia left Elam victorious…
Canaan and Syria in the Late Bronze Age consisted of numerous small city-states such as Megiddo, Kadesh and Ugarit, who were vassals or allies of the surrounding greater powers such as Mitanni, Middle Kingdom Assyria, New Kingdom Egypt or the Hittite Empire.The cities also either fought against each other for dominance in the region or…
This army covers the Middle Assyrian period of the Late Bronze Age only. It should not be confused with the Early Neo-Assyrian Army which is often twinned with Middle Assyrian in many wargames lists. The Middle period Assyrian army of the Late Bronze Age is thought to have been the same in dress and character to…
The Kassites were originally Highlanders from the Zagros Mountains who overran Babylonia after the Hittite destruction of Babylon at the end of the Middle Bronze Age in 1595 BCE. They set up a Dynasty which lasted for more than five hundred years: the longest rule by any dynasty in Babylonian history. They went on to…
These are the armies of the Late Bronze Age Hurrian speaking State of Mitanni, (also known as Hanigalbat by the Assyrians and Nahrin by the Egyptians), which came to prominence after the Hittites destroyed the Amorite Babylonian Kingdom at the end of the Middle Bronze Age. Mitanni came to dominate northern Mesopotamia (between the Tigris…
The legendary first Pharaoh of Egypt was Menes or Narmer who unified Upper and Lower Egypt and founded the 1st Dynasty in the early 3rd millennium BCE. The Old Kingdom of Egypt is also often referred to as the “Age of the Pyramids”, being the period when a large number of the pyramids were built,…
The Amorite or Martu nomadic tribes from Syria and Arabian desert had been raiding and infiltrating the Kingdoms of Mesopotamia since the end of the Early Bronze Age. The Code of Hammurabi – which can be seen in the Louvre Paris By the last days of the Neo-Sumerian Empire, immigrating Amorites had become such…
Graham Davey
Sarah