The role of climate (including abrupt changes and extreme weather) in modern-era violence and conflict has received considerable attention in the past two decades from scholars in multiple fields, yet the mechanisms underlying (and even the reality of) such a role remains contested. Concern over projected climatic changes as a trigger for intensified violence, including mass killing and genocide, nonetheless continues to propel research. Data limitations are frequently cited as a challenge, yet comparatively few studies have turned to the millennia of human history documenting a broad range of violence against diverse social and environmental backgrounds. This chapter reviews evidence for ‘pathways’ by which climate may have contributed to violence and conflict in the Ancient Near East and Egypt. It emphasized religious, ideological, and ethnic dimensions that may have been catalysed by the psychological and material impacts of extreme weather to promote violence and conflict. In particular, we study state-enacted violence by the Neo-Assyrian Empire (909-611 BCE) and internal revolt in Ptolemaic Egypt (305-30 BCE). Newly available ice-core-based dates of explosive volcanism allow the examination of societal responses to the ensuing hydroclimatic shocks (also potentially ‘ominous’ volcanic dust-veils). These can be shown to closely precede documented increases in violence and conflict, including external warfare and internal revolt.

A prominent theme in the mirror literature is the exceptionalism of the king’s position, a point often presented as the result of divine selection or favour. Many mirror-writers evoke, in various articulations, the notion of the divine mandate – the proposition that the king ruled by virtue of divine choice and with divine support. But the authors bring very different perspectives to this idea; even when they invoke a common repertoire of formulae and metaphors, they employ them to create different meanings. Several authors insist that the singular bounties that the king enjoys are counterbalanced by unparalleled, and burdensome, responsibilities. The texts in this chapter are drawn from Pseudo-Māwardī, Naṣīḥat al-mulūk; al-Thaʿālibī, Ādāb al-mulūk; al-Māwardī, Tashīl al-naẓar wa-taʿjīl al-ẓafar; Ghazālī, Naṣīḥat al-mulūk; and al-Ṭurṭūshī, Sirāj al-mulūk.