SOUTH MESOPOTAMIAN HISTORY TIMELINE
	
   5500 BCE     -- First village settlements in the South
	
3500 - 2800 BCE -- Sumerian city-state period, first pictographic texts

  ~3100 BCE     -- first cuneiform writing                 

2800 - 2320 BCE -- Early Dynastic Period, Old Sumerian literature     

2320 - 2180 BCE -- Akkadian (Sumerian) empire, first real centralized government under Sargon

  ~2000 BCE     -- collapse of remnant of Sumerian empire
 
2000 - 1600 BCE -- Ammorite kingdom "Old Babylonian Period"     Hammurabi Code, mathematics texts, 
                                                                including Plimpton 322, editing of 
                                                                Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh 
1600 - 1200 BCE -- Kassite empire

 1200 - 700 BCE -- fragmented, city states

 ~720 - 652 BCE -- part of Assyrian empire
  
  612 - 539 BCE -- New Babylonian period (Nebuchadnezzar II)   height of Babylonian astronomy

  539 - 330 BCE -- part of Persian empire

  after 330 BCE -- Seleucid Greek empire


EGYPTIAN HISTORY TIMELINE

3200 - 2700 BCE -- predynastic period (hieroglyphic writing about 3100 BCE)

2650 - 2134 BCE -- Old Kingdom (pyramid-building period)

2134 - 2040 BCE -- First intermediate period

2040 - 1640 BCE -- Middle Kingdom   Moscow mathematical papyrus

1640 - 1550 BCE -- Second intermediate period (Hyksos)  Rhind (Ahmes) mathematical papyrus
                                                        (possibly copying an older work from
                                                        Middle Kingdom)

1550 - 1070 BCE -- New Kingdom (Akhenaten, Tutankhamen, Ramses II) 

 after 1070 BCE -- Third intermediate period, then Egypt ruled by 
                   Nubians, Assyrians, Persians, Ptolemaic Greek dynasty, Romans