Controversy. The earliest-known literate civilizations in the ancient Near East arose in southern Mesopotamia and in the Nile valley. It has long been a matter of dispute as to whether these two centers of advanced culture were aware of each other and to what extent they may have been in contact.

Early Theories of "Eastern Invaders." At the end of the nineteenth century C.E., Egyptologists discovered the first remains of Egyptian "Predynastic" culture, that which immediately preceded the rise of a unified, literate, Pharaonic state in Egypt. At first, the early archaeologists who discovered this stage were more impressed by the differences between Predynastic and Dynastic civilizations than by their similarities and did not see how the latter culture could have developed out of the earlier one. This conclusion convinced them that the Dynastic culture must have been suddenly imposed on...