This course traces the political development and cultural history of Mesopotamia, from the territorial states of the Late Bronze Age to the world’s first empires in the 1st millennium BC, those of Assyria, Babylonia, and Achaemenid Persia. It also traces the subsequent history of Mesopotamia through the Seleucid and early Parthian eras, down to the end of cuneiform writing around the end of the 1st millennium BC. The course emphasizes the critical analysis of primary written sources (in translation) for reconstructing the history of the peoples of Mesopotamia. It also examines their achievements in literature, science and scholarship, and art and architecture.