Lebanon
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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- Country in the Middle East known as Persia until 1935. Official name: Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Ancient Near East refers to early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and Syria), Persis, Elam and Media (all three in Western Iran), Armenia, Anatolia (modern Turkey), the Levant (modern Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Jordan), and Ancient Egypt, from the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BCE until the region's conquest by Alexander the Great in the 4th century BCE, or covering both the Bronze Age and the Iron Age in the region. As such, it is a term widely employed in the fields of Near Eastern archaeology, ancient history and Egyptology. Some would exclude Egypt from the ancient Near East as a geographically and culturally distinct area. However, because of Egypt's intimate involvement with the region, especially from the 2nd millennium BCE, this exclusion is rare.