The Coexistence of Different States

Abstract

A rigidly centralist conception can be adopted only in isolation or conditions of marked cultural imbalance, and only so long as it does not come up against similar conceptions centred elsewhere. Geographical setting and historical events favoured the permanence of centralist views in Egypt, while multicentred perspectives soon developed in Western Asia as a result of the political, military and economic equilibrium which existed between its powers and the particularly intensive interaction which they experienced during the Second Millennium. In the Old Babylonian period (the formative period for symmetrical political views) a multicentred approach is already fully operative, as is apparent in the extensive diplomatic documentation of the time.¹