Ancient Empires before Alexander

Complete your knowledge of the ancient world with this comprehensive look at the dozen empires that flourished in the 2,000 years before the conquests of Alexander the Great. Over the course of 36 insightful lectures, you'll follow the Egyptians, the Mycenaean Greeks, the Persians, the Carthaginians, and others as they rise to glory, create administrative and military structures, clash with one another, and eventually collapse. Professor Dise immerses you in the political, administrative, and military details of these thrilling civilizations, analyzing three basic questions: How did this particular empire emerge? How was it governed and defended? How and why did it ultimately fall? These questions raise a host of profound issues on the growth, development, and failures of vast imperial systems. Grounded in a chronological approach, you'll find no better guide through the palatial halls, administrative offices, and war-torn battlefields of these empires than Professor Dise. Each lecture is packed with a range of rich sources on which our current understanding of the ancient Near East rests, including cuneiform tablets, colorful narratives, and archaeological remains. As you comb through these intriguing records, you quickly become more informed about how the past is recorded and passed down to subsequent generations. Spanning thousands of years of human history and encompassing regions both familiar and forgotten, this course is a remarkable tour through the farthest reaches of the ancient world - in all its marvelous diversity.

All Lectures:
1. A Meditation on Empire
2. Lands, Seas, and Sources
3. Sargon and the Dawn of Empire
4. The Third Dynasty of Ur
5. The Empire of Hammurabi
6. Mitanni and the Kassites
7. The Rise of Hatti
8. The Government of Hatti
9. Hatti at War
10. The Climax and Collapse of Hatti
11. The Rise of the Egyptian Empire
12. The Imperial Army and Administration
13. The End of the Egyptian Empire
14. The Minoan Thalassocracy
15. Mycenae and the Dawn of Greece
16. The Collapse of the Mycenaean World
17. The Birth of Israel
18. The Empire of David and Solomon
19. The Dawn of Assyria
20. The Rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire
21. The Government of Assyria
22. Assyria at War
23. The Climax and Collapse of Assyria
24. The Neo-Babylonian Empire
25. The Rise of the Persian Empire
26. The Outbreak of the Greek Wars
27. Xerxes and the Invasion of Greece
28. From Plataea to the Peace of Callias
29. The Persian Empire from 450 to 334
30. The Government and Army of Persia
31. Alexander and the Fall of Persia
32. The Origins of Carthage and Its Empire
33. Ruling and Defending Carthage's Empire
34. The First War with Rome
35. Hannibal and the Fall of Carthage
36. Ancient Empires before Alexander, and After