Reddit reviews Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization

Since we've been waiting for nearly a day for answers in this thread (which is about some of my favorite topics to study), I'm going to list some factors I've read about. I know the mods are strict here, but I'll cite sources for every one of these factors, which I hope will count for something.

• Mesopotamia was much more geographically diverse. When we talk about "ancient Egypt," in terms of geography, we're really just talking about that narrow strip of arable land on the banks of the Nile. The vast majority of Egypt's population seem to have made their living by farming and fishing along that narrow strip, from prehistoric times all the way to the Roman period (and, to some extent, even into the present day). All along that strip of land, yearly floods and other seasonal factors exhibited similar patterns, making it relatively easy to plan harvests, centralize stockpiles and organize distributions of food and other resources all along the Nile. In fact, even nearby cultures - like the Kerma Culture and the Kingdom of Kush - which were genetically, linguistically and (to some extent) religiously distinct from Egypt, also made their livings from the Nile, which may be one reason why Egypt was able to conquer and control these kingdoms at various points in its history. Mesopotamia, on the other hand, was a forested plain bordered by swamps in the south, mountains to the north and east, and deserts to the west. From prehistoric times onward, this geographic diversity seems to have brought people with widely divergent cultures, beliefs and ways of life into conflict over the same pieces of land, where much of the agriculture was achieved by damming and building aqueducts from certain points on the Tigris and Euphrates. While one city reaped a bountiful harvest, a city just up the river might be starving - because when one city enjoyed a plentiful water supply, it was probably at the expense of a city downriver. In fact, the first recorded war in history was fought between the city-states of Lagash and Umma, over just such a water supply.
  
  
• Egypt was unified much earlier. While there's some evidence that Egyptian cities each worshiped their own gods during the prehistoric and proto-historic periods, many processes of linguistic and cultural unification seem to have taken place much earlier than in Mesopotamia - probably sometime between 6,000 and 3,000 BCE. In other words, Egypt most likely did go through an extensive period of immigration, city-state rules, warfare and unification - we just know very little about this process because most of it occurred before the invention of writing. All the large-scale cross-cultural migrations and wars were most likely wrapped up by the time of the pharaoh Menes (possibly the same person as Narmer) around 3,000 BCE. Mesopotamia, on the other hand, was still receiving massive immigrations of foreign peoples as late as the 500s BCE, and even later. This region was arguably truly unified for the first time under the Neo-Assyrian Empire throughout the 800s BCE, and was brought under more scrupulous (and less harsh) administrative control by the Achaemenid Persian Empire from the 500s to 300s BCE. So in that sense, Mesopotamia and Egypt didn't "start at similar times" - Egypt's processes of immigration and unification began much earlier, and were largely completed by the time Mesopotamian city-states really started waging war - and the new invention of writing was able to document those processes.
  
  
  
• Mesopotamia was more culturally and politically diverse. Because of these ongoing waves of immigration, there was a lot of trade, warfare, and cultural mingling going on from very early periods in Mesopotamia - and each group seems to have held onto certain cultural elements (languages, clothing and grooming styles) well into the historical period. Although groups like the Sumerians and Akkadians lived in the same cities and intermarried, they were each proud of their distinct languages and styles of dress. Meanwhile, other groups like the Elamites (based in what's now Iran, though not an Indo-Iranian people), the Kassites, the Hittites, the Assyrians, and many others, swept in from the geographical fringes at various times, sometimes ruling for a few hundred years; sometimes conquering, falling, and reconquering across thousands of years. Even the famous Babylonian king Hammurabi was the descendant of a foreign Amorite conqueror. While Egypt certainly fought with the peoples on its borders - most notably the Libyans (Libu), the Kushites, the Hittites and the Sea Peoples - and these peoples sometimes conquered and ruled Egypt (the 25th dynasty of Nubian Kushite pharaohs; the 23rd dynasty of Libyan Meshwesh pharaohs, and of course the Macedonian Greek Ptolemaic dynasty), Egyptian culture seems to have conquered these peoples as much as they conquered Egypt: the invaders seem to have adopted Egyptian fashions and religion, and followed the basic protocols of pharaonic rule. Many of them even seem to have adopted the Egyptian language - except for the Ptolemaic rulers, who (with the exception of Cleopatra) insisted on speaking only Greek at court.
  
  As with many distinctions in history, these aren't cut-and-dried. Egypt actually did exhibit quite a lot of cultural, political and religious variation throughout the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms; large swathes of Mesopotamia were unified under single rulers (Sargon of Akkad, Ur-Nammu and Hammurabi, for example) for a century or two, here and there; and remarkably diverse groups of people (Sumerians, Akkadians, Amorites and many others) seem to have lived in relative peace in many Mesopotamian cities.
  
  But the short answer to your question, based on sources I've read, is that the factors above are some of the most commonly cited reasons why Mesopotamia is perceived as more politically unstable than Egypt.
  
  Sources:
  
  
• Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East by Michael Roaf
  
• Ancient Mesopotamia: The Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians by Virginia Schomp
  
• The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character by Samuel Noah Kramer
  
• Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization by Paul Kriwaczek
  
• The Archaeology of Mesopotamia: From the Old Stone Age to the Persian Conquest by Seton Lloyd
  
• Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt by Barbara Mertz

Babylon, by Paul Kriwaczek
Covers earliest Mesopotamia up to the Babylonian age. Not necessarily a resource book, but an enjoyable read that really gives a feel for the time/place.

>What's your background, if I may - I'm familiar with some of the historical eras but this stuff is new to me!

I don't have one, just a personal interest in history, especially the classical and earlier eras.

I can suggest this book if you're interested in pre-classical mesopotamia. It's both highly informative and written in a way that's very readable with lots of entertaining anecdotes.

It's been a while but I think the palace economy stuff I read was in another book here I have about the invasion of the sea peoples and the collapse of the bronze age global order (muh globalism!). I can't recommend that book as its really dry and comes to no real conclusion, but you can probably find good books on that era if you go searching for stuff related to sea people.