Amazon.com description: Product Description: The fortunes of Mesopotamia were intimately tied in a variety of different relationships with her eastern neighbours: raw materials seaped into the resource-poor Tigris-Euphrates delta from the highlands of Iran, Central Asia and the Persian/Arabian Gulf. Diplomacy and warfare tied the Mesopotamian rulers to their eastern cousins, sometimes spilling over into mass pillaging which destroyed the two great 3rd millennium empires of Agade and Ur. Throughout antiquity the two regions were locked in a complex and shifting relationship, their broad economic interdependence perenially at odds with a deep political and cultural animosity. This critical assessment is essential reading for all students of Mesopotamian civilisation.