THIS millennium can also be called “The Millennium of Globalisation of the Ancient World” because, as we will see, it fea¬tured the annexation of the different parts of the Ancient world. It started during the Assyrian Empire, especially at the time of Ashurbanipal, who expanded his Empire to include the whole Mesopotamian area in addition to the Syrian and Palestinian part.
It also went as far as Asia Minor and Egyptian territory. Soon the Assyrian Empire was replaced by the Persian Empire, which extended, at the time of Darius I, from India at the east to Macedonia and Egypt at the west. This Empire considered the city of Babylon, which was the capital of the Babylonians, as its new capital. The Persians, under Darius III were defeated by Alexander the Great who had set his capital again in Babylon. His Empire covered all the territories that were occupied by the Persian Empire extending again from India in the east to Macedonia and Egypt in the west.
Alexander the Great tried to establish himself as a unifier of civil¬isations by declaring himself legal successor of the Achamenids, the royal family of Persia, and adopting the Persian Royal costume.
Alexander went further by marrying a Persian princess, he even arranged for multiple marriages between Macedonians and Iranian women in a ceremony at Susa. Persians and Macedonians received equal rights; Persians were accepted into the army. A unified curren¬cy was created and finally, Alexander the Great succeeded in initiat¬ing the idea of world domination.
After the death of Alexander, the Hellenistic Empire was divided into different Hellenistic monarchies, namely Macedonia under the Antigonids, Asia Minor under the Seleucids and Egypt under the Ptolemies. The Monarchy of Seleucids in Asia Minor also dominated Mesopotamia and Persia. ,
Returning to the parallelism between the Mesopotamian and the Egyptian civilisations, we find that in Mesopotamia, at the beginning of the first millennium BC, the New Assyrian Empire was estab-lished. It looks like it was one of the cruellest empires of the time; they used malicious methods of subjugation that have put the conquered into a state of terror and arranged annual campaigns in their territories using cavalry for the first time in the history of warfare.
One of their main rulers was Sargon II, who was followed later by the famous Ashurbanipal who annexed Egypt and extended his ter¬ritory to include the whole of Mesopotamia as well as Syria, Palestine and part of Asia Minor.
At the end of the reign of Ashurbanipal, Assyria was overcome by the Chaldeans, who re-established the New Babylonian Empire with Babylon as its capital; The Babylonian Empire was soon swapped by Cyrus II, king of Persia, who formed the vast Persian Empire which was extended, as we mentioned before, to cover most of the countries of the Ancient world. Finally, Alexander the Great conquered Babylonia as a reaction to dominate the different parts of the Persian Empire and formed his Hellenistic Empire.
