Greeks have had contacts with the near east in the first millennium, we have as proof their alpha bet...(as well I have posted the similarities between the two in uta's post), we know this from the defeat of the persians by Alexander the macedonian in 331bc, greek records contain info on these persians as well and their lands which is very similar to today’s iran...maybe you can pull up a map so you can see the land as it is being laid out...

judging by the names of their kings-Cyrus, darius, Xerxes, the conclusion that should be drawn is that the greeks were apart of an "Aryan" nation somewhere near the Caspian Sea...towards the end of the second millennium...they spread westward to asia, eastward to india, and southward to what the Old Testament calls the "lands of the medes and parsees"

the old testament(tanach) speaks of them as part of biblical events...Cyrus for eg. was considered anointed of YHWH, and unusual name for a non-israelite...in the book of ezra cyrus acknowledges that his mission was to rebuild the temple of jerusalem...and stated that he was acting on the behalf of YHWH God of Heaven...Cyrus and other kings of the Dynasty called themselves Achaemenids, after the title adopted by the founder of the Dynasty Hacham Anish, which is a hebrew word meaning wise man...however few have investigated the possibility that YHWH and Achaemenids are the same god...we know that they were both depicted as having eagle wings by both the tanach and royal greek seals, on which achaemenid is depicted as hovering in the skies on a winged globe...

it is documented that Old Persia goes back to the earlier empires of babylon and Assyria whose extent and fall is recorded in the tanach...

the symbols that appear on achaemenid monuments were first thought to be decorative signs, but were renamed cuneiform...

now I can go into achaemenids, but we know that the cuneiform type writing was also found on mesopotamian texts...scholars while studying in northern mesopotamia found near present day mosul, cuneiform inscriptions tat named the place Dur Sharru Kin...the semetic inscriptions were a sister language of hebrew and it meant walled city of the righteous king...we know this king to be King Sargon II....

Following along, the king lived in a royal city whose walls were lined with sculptured bas-reliefs...in the midst of the city is found a Ziggurat, called the Stairway to Heaven By the gods...some ten miles down the tigris river from khorsabad, there was a city called Kuyunjik...this turns out to be the Assyrian capital Nineveh...

this is also told to us by the bible...and has been substantiated by scholars, that indeed the ninveh of the bible is the assyrian city...Nineveh had three great rulers also told to us by the bible...Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal...
"Now in the fourth year of king Heqekiah, did Sennacherib(senna for short) king of Assyria come up against all the walled cities of Judah" Kings II 18:13...

and when the Angel of the lord smote his army...the verse continues...Sennacherib departed and went back to dwell in Nineveh...

the mounds where Nineveh was buily by Senna and Ashurbanipal revealed paaces, temples and works of art that surpassed those of Sargon…the area where the remains of Esarhaddon’s palaces are believed to lie cannot be excavated for it is now the site of a Moslem Mosque…erected over the spoken about burial place of the prophet Jonah who was said to be swallowed up by a whale…

Ancient greek records show that an officer in Alexander’s army saw a “place of pyramids and remains of an ancient city” a city that was already buried on Alexander’s time…the city turned out to be nimrud, Assyria’s military center…it is there that Slamaneser II set up an obelisk to records his military expedition and etc…

Now on exhibit in The British Museum a list of kings who were made to pay tribute, it lists “Jehu, son of Omri, King of Yisrael.”

Again mesopotamian texts and biblical texts have supported each other, based on this Assyriologists turned to the tenthy chapter of genesis where it states:
“And the beginning of his kingdom, Babel and Erech and Akkad, all in the Land of Shin’ar Out od that land there emanated Ashur where Nineveh was built, a city of wide streets and Khalah and Ressen- the great city which is between Nineveh and khalah…”

when teams dug up the site of the ruins of Ashur, the Assyrian religious center and its earliest capital, of all the assyrian cities mentioned, only ressen has not been found…the name means “horse’s bridle” maybe it was the Royal stable…

at about the same time excavations of Ashur was taking place, diggers were also completing their excavation of Babylon…the biblical Babel…artifacts found told the story of the two competing cities of mesopotamia…Babel and Assyria…one centered in the south and the other in the north…

the two held a high civilization that lasted some 1500 years, both rising circa 1900bc, Ashur and Nineveh were finally captured and destroyed by the Babylonians in 614 and 612 BC respectively…

As told by the biblical prophets, Babylon itself came to its end when Cyrus conquered it in 539BC…

Many museums count the jewelry, statues, utensils,pottery and such other things as the valuable artifacts that were taken from babylon and Assyria, but what is priceless is their texts…their written records include: thousands of cuneiform inscriptions, including cosmologic tales, epic poems, histories of kings, temple records, commercial contracts. Marraiage and divorce records, astronmical tables, astrological forecasts, mathematical formulas, geographiclists, grammar and vocabulary school texts and texts dealing with families, genealogy, epithets, deeds, powers and duties of the gods…

The common language between assyria and babylonia is akkadian…the first know semitic language…close to but predating hebrew, aramaic, pheonician and canaanite…but neither the babylonian texts nor the assyrian claim to have invented the language, many of their tablets actually show the post script that they had been copied from earlier originals…

The question leaves us : who tehn invented cuneifrom and developed the language, it precise grammar and vocabulary? And why did the assyrians/babylonians call the language akkad…

Going back to the book of genesis…“And the beginning of his kingdom, Babel and Erech and Akkad…”
could there really have been such a royal capital, preceding babel and Nineveh???

More to come...I am trying to type it coherently so I am cutting and pasting from a word app...