Palestine, Levant- A Semitic speaking people originating on the Arabian Peninsula. The Phoenician people had settled in the region of Palestine, on the Mediterranean coast, since early times. The Phoenician city of Byblos was a major trading center for the middle east in the early first millennia BCE, in particular …

Mesopotamia- Combined Indo-European and native people in Asia Minor formed the Hittite kingdom, 1750 BCE. The capital of the Hittite kingdom was Hattusha, now called Bogazk"oy in modern Turkey. The Hittites began to spread outward by 1600 BCE, and began to establish an empire. After years of conflict, the …

1364- 1347 BCE - The son of Amenhotep the III. Amenhotep IV was preoccupied with the worship of Aton, god of the sun disk. Amenhotep changed his name to Akhenaton, which means "It is well with Aton" and closed temples of other gods, including Atum-Re. Atum-Re was popular in Thebes, so …

1567- 1085 -- The pharaoh Ahmose I defeated and expelled the Hyksos from Egypt, reuniting the kingdom to end the age of chaos. This established the eighteenth dynasty and a period of Egyptian civilization historians refer to as "The New Kingdom." This period of Egyptian civilization was marked by improvements in …

Upper Egypt and Arabian Desert- The Hyksos migrated into the delta region of the upper Nile, 1652 - 1557 BCE. This migration initiated a second age of chaos in Egypt, since the Hyksos perpetrated frequent attacks and raids upon Egyptian cities. The Hyksos spoke Semitic languages and originated on the Arabian …

Greek: literally 'sacred writings.' A system of pictographic writing used by the ancient Egyptians to depict objects and to convey a sense of sacred value. Hieroglyphs did not serve as a phonetic alphabet and conveyed strictly pictographic representations. Many hieroglyphs were carved in stone, but the Egyptians also notably used …