List of cities of the ancient Near East


The earliest cities in history were in the ancient Near East, an area covering roughly that of the modern Middle East: its history began in the 4th millennium BC and ended, depending on the interpretation of the term, either with the conquest by the Achaemenid Empire in the 6th century BC or that by Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC.
The largest cities of the Bronze Age Near East housed several tens of thousands of people. Memphis in the Early Bronze Age, with some 30,000 inhabitants, was the largest city of the time by far. Ur in the Middle Bronze Age is estimated to have had some 65,000 inhabitants; Babylon in the Late Bronze Age similarly had a population of some 50,000–60,000. Niniveh had some 20,000–30,000, reaching 100,000 only in the Iron Age.
The KI determinative was the Sumerian term for a city or city state. In Akkadian and Hittite orthography, URU became a determinative sign denoting a city, or combined with KUR "land" the kingdom or territory controlled by a city, e.g. LUGAL KUR URUHa-at-ti "the king of the country of Hatti".

Mesopotamia

Lower Mesopotamia

*
*
In alphabetical order: