This module explores the empires of the Near East (Babylonian, Hittite and Assyrian) from the 15th C BC until the emergence and expansion of the Persian empire in the 6th C BC. As cultural exchange and the spread of goods and ideas around the Eastern Mediterranean became increasingly intensive, contact with Greece became regular, culminating in the 'orientalising' influences to be found from the 9th C BC onwards and the dissemination of the alphabetic script used for Phoenician and Greek.LI Western Asia + Earl Greece