Movements

Enmerkar, whom the Sumerian king list describes as the builder of Uruk in Sumer, is also known from a few other Sumerian legends, most notably Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, where a previous confusion of the languages of mankind is mentioned.

In this account, it is Enmerkar himself who is called 'the son of Utu' (the Sumerian sun god).

Aside from founding Uruk, Enmerkar is said here to have had a temple built at Eridu, and is even credited with the invention of writing on clay tablets, for the purpose of threatening Aratta into submission.

Enmerkar furthermore seeks to restore the disrupted linguistic unity of the inhabited regions around Uruk, listed as Shubur, Hamazi, Sumer, Uri-ki (the region around Akkad), and the land of the Martu ("tent dwellers"—considered to be Amorites).

Three other texts in the same series describe Enmerkar's reign.

In Enmerkar and En-suhgir-ana, while describing Enmerkar's continued diplomatic rivalries with Aratta, there is an allusion to Hamazi having been vanquished.

In Lugalbanda and the Mountain Cave, Enmerkar is seen leading a campaign against Aratta.

The fourth and last tablet, Lugalbanda and the Anzud bird, describes Enmerkar's year-long siege of Aratta.

It also mentions that fifty years into Enmerkar's reign, the Martu people had arisen in all of Sumer and Akkad, necessitating the building of a wall in the desert to protect Uruk.

In these last two tablets, the character of Lugalbanda is introduced as one of Enmerkar's war chiefs.

According to the Sumerian king list, it was this Lugalbanda "the shepherd" who eventually succeeded Enmerkar to the throne of Uruk.

Lugalbanda is also named as the father of Gilgamesh, a later king of Uruk, in both Sumerian and Akkadian versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

A descendant of Inyotef defeats the Heracleopolitan Pharaohs around 2055 BCE reunites the Two Lands, and rules as Mentuhotep II, thereby ending the First Intermediate Period.

In the fourteenth year of his reign there is attested an uprising in This.

This was perhaps connected with Mentuhotep’s war against the rival Tenth dynasty at Herakleopolis Magna.

Little is known of the events.

He is also known for commanding military campaigns south into Nubia, which had gained its independence during the First Intermediate Period.

There is also evidence for military actions against Palestine.

The king reorganizes the country, places a vizier at the head of the administration, and builds temples and chapels at several places in Upper Egypt.

He is buried in a tomb he had erected at Deir el-Bahri.

Mentuhotep III continues the building program of his father Mentuhotep II, erecting temples to among others, Amun and Montu, local gods who had grown in prominence during the First Intermediate Period.

Mentuhotep IV, the last king of the Eleventh Dynasty, seems to fit into a seven-year period in the Turin Canon for which there is no recorded king, and is known from a few inscriptions in Wadi Hammamat that record expeditions to the Red Sea coast and to quarry stone for the royal monuments.

Despite being obscure (he is absent from the official king lists in Abydos), the inscriptions show the organization and makeup of a large expedition.

The leader of the expedition is his vizier Amenemhat, who is widely assumed to have either usurped the throne or to have assumed power after Mentuhotep IV dies childless.

There is currently no convincing evidence to prove that he was overthrown by his vizier, who succeeds him as the first king of the Twelfth Dynasty, Amenemhat I.

The first known ruler of Ebla in this period is Megum, an Ensi (governor) for Ur III during the reign of Amar-Sin of Ur, who reigned in around 1981 BCE to 1973 BCE (short chronology).

Ibbit-Lim, an Amorite prince of Ebla, is the first attested king, though sources are divided as to whether he was a king in Ebla or of Mari.

A reasonable suggestion is that he ruled in Ebla as king of Mari at a time of Amorite domination of Ebla, thus placing the city under Mari's control.

The Eleventh (all of Egypt), Twelfth, Thirteenth and Fourteenth dynasties of Egypt are often combined under the group title, Middle Kingdom, of which Egyptologists consider the Twelfth dynasty to be the apex and during which building, art and international commerce flourish.

Its founding pharaoh, Amenemhat I, who may have been vizier to the last pharaoh of the Eleventh Dynasty, Mentuhotep IV, had built a new capital for Egypt, known as Itjtawy.

The location of this capital is unknown, but is presumably the present-day al-Lisht, the site of Middle Kingdom royal and elite burials, including two pyramids built by Amenemhat I and Senusret I. Amenemhat, whose armies had campaigned south as far as the Second Cataract of the Nile and into the Near East, had reestablished diplomatic relations with Byblos and the rulers in the Aegean Sea.

His son Senusret, or Sesostris, (1971 BCE – 1926 BCE), had continued the policy of his father to recapture Nubia and other territories lost during the First Intermediate Period, following his father's triumphs with an expedition south to the Third Cataract and subduing the Libyans.

Under his forty-five year reign, Egypt's prosperity and borders had been secured, leaving his successors to live in peace and enjoy the trade and tribute brought to them.

Senusret's successor Amenemhat II, of whose reign not much is known, had made the position of the nomarchs hereditary again (thus weakening the centralized government) and established trade connections with Nubia, with whom a war seems to have been fought from 1913 to 1903 BCE.

A war seems to have been conducted in the Levant also.

The most important monument of his reign are the fragments of an annal stone found at Memphis, reused in the New Kingdom.

It reports events of the first years of his reign.

Donations to various temples are mentioned as well as a campaign to Southern Palestine and the destruction of two cities.

The court of the king is not well known; Senusret and Ameny were the viziers at the beginning of the reign.

Three treasurers are known: Rehuerdjersen, Merykau and Zaaset.

The overseer of the gateway, Khentykhetywer, is attested on a stelae, where he reports an expedition to Punt.

The conquest of the Khabur River valley region by the Amorite king Shamshi-Adad I, who lived from about 1765 BC to 1700 BCE, had revived the abandoned site of Shekhna, present Tell Leilan.

Shamshi-Adad, seeing the great potential in the rich agricultural production of the region, had made it the capital city of his northern Mesopotamian kingdom and renamed it from Shekhna to Shubat-Enlil, meaning "the residence of the god Enlil" in the Akkadian language.

A royal palace has been built and a temple acropolis to which a straight paved street leads from the city gate.

There is also a planned residential area and the entire city is enclosed by a wall.

Shubat-Enlil, covering about ninety hectares, or more than two hundred and twenty-two acres, may have a population of twenty thousand people at its peak.

Shamshi-Adad’s eventual conquest of the fortress of Ekallatum on the left bank of the Tigris had made it possible for him to control the city-state of Assur, a flourishing city that trades heavily with Anatolia.

His rise to glory had earned him the envy of neighboring kings and tribes, and throughout his reign, he and his sons had faced several threats to their control.

While Ishme-Dagan, whom his father had placed on the throne of Ekallatum, probably was a competent ruler, his brother Yasmah-Adad, charged with the rule of Mari, appears to have been a man of weak character.

Shamshi-Adad had continued to strengthen his kingdom throughout his life, but upon his death it soon began to crumble.

The empire lacks cohesion and is in a vulnerable geographical position.

When the news of Shamshi-Adad's death spread, his old rivals at once set out to topple his sons from the throne.

Yasmah-Adad had been expelled from Mari in 1779 by Zimrilim, the son and heir of the previous ruler, and the rest of the empire would soon be lost to Hammurabi of Babylon.

Jie, the last ruler of China’s quasi-legendary Xi dynasty, was said to be a corrupt king, and is blamed for its fall.

He reputedly mistreated his people and became a tyrant.

Records from the later Qin dynasty say that during the last year of Jie's reign, ice formed during the summer mornings and frosts occurred through July.

Heavy rainfall toppled buildings, hot and cold weather arrived in disorder, and crops failed.

Some scientists correlate a volcanic winter from the eruption of Thera with Chinese records documenting the collapse of the Xia dynasty in China.

According to the Bamboo Annals, the collapse of the dynasty and the rise of the Shang dynasty, approximately dated to 1618 BCE, were accompanied by "'yellow fog, a dim sun, then three suns, frost in July, famine, and the withering of all five cereals".

Shang is overthrown by Tang, the rebellious leader of Shang.

Information about the Shang Dynasty comes from historical records of the later Zhou Dynasty, the Han Dynasty Shiji by Sima Qian and from Shang inscriptions on bronze artifacts and oracle bones—turtle shells, cattle scapula or other bones on which were written the first significant corpus of recorded Chinese characters.

The so-called Old Hittite Kingdom maintains internal strength and military security for the first century and a half of its existence, achieving the enduring political unification of Anatolia.

Whereas the earlier Hittite kings had based their court at Neša, Labarna II is the first king of the Hittites to reign from Hattusa, the modern Bogazkale, where he builds a hilltop citadel and takes the throne name of Hattusilis.

Under his rule, the Hittites have penetrated south to the plains of northern Syria near Antioch and southwest in Anatolia through Cilicia, incurring the enmity of the Syrians of Aleppo and the Hurrians also: his “Annals” tell of the king’s penetrations into that region and eastward across the Euphates River to Mesopotamia Cilicia, having come under Hurrian control about 1660, had, with help from Aleppo, been reacquired about 1556 in a battle that proves fatal to Hattusilis.

His military capital, Hattusa, remains the principal Hittite administrative center.

His adopted son and heir ascends the Hittite throne as Mursilis I, and soon launching a series of forays down the Euphrates Valley.

Some of the earliest Egyptian records of Damascus are from the Amarna letters of around 1350 BCE, when Damascus (called Dimasqu) is ruled by king Biryawaza, who was ordered by his Egyptian overlords to take armed action against the sons of Labaya (EA 250), a Habiru, possibly Canaanite, warlord.

The name Biryawaza is Indo-European in origin.

Biryawaza may have been of an Indo-European maryannu caste similar to that which rules Mitanni and the Hittite kingdom.

Tushratta, king of Mitanni at the end of the reign of Amenhotep III and throughout the reign of Akhenaten, is the son of Shuttarna II.

His daughter Tadukhipa had been married to the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III and then Akhenaten who had taken over his father's royal harem.

According to a treaty later made between the Hittite king Suppiluliuma I and Tushratta's brother Shattiwaza, after a third devastating Hittite raid led to the fall of Carchemish, Tushratta had been assassinated by a group led by one of his sons.

In the political turmoil following the death of his predecessor, the usurper Shuttarna III had attempted to murder Shattiwaza, who instead had escaped and sought refuge with Suppiluliuma, whose daughter he has married.

Shuttarna seeks support from the Assyrians, but is defeated when a Hittite army marches towards the capital and installs Shattiwaza on the throne.

The Hittite king Suppiluliuma I defeats king Tushratta of Mitanni in the mid-fourteenth century and assumes control of northern Syria, including Alalakh, which he incorporates into the Hittite Empire.

A tablet records his grant of much of Mukish's land (that is, Alalakh's) to Ugarit after the king of Ugarit alerted the Hittite king to a revolt by the kingdoms of Mukish, Nuhassa, and Niye.