Empire ancient city-states of the Levant. Circa 1500 BC in China rose the Shang Empire which was succeeded by the Zhou Empire circa 1100 BC. Both surpassed in territory their contemporary Near Eastern empires. The Zhou Empire dissolved in 770 BC into feudal multi-state system which lasted for five and a half centuries until the universal conquest of Qin in 221 BC. The first empire comparable to Rome in organization was the Neo-Assyrian Empire (916–612 BC). The Median Empire was the first empire within the territory of Persia. By the 6th century BC, after having allied with the Babylonians to defeat
The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire c.500-1492 is a history of the Byzantine Empire published by Cambridge University Press in 2009. It was edited by Jonathan Shepard of the University of Cambridge. The history is made up of 24 chapters in chronological order comprising new and reprinted material, 15 of them having previously appeared in other Cambridge books such as "The Cambridge Ancient History" and "The New Cambridge Medieval History". The history was criticised in review for a lack of coherence in time periods and coverage arising from the stitching together of