In 2009, Mario Liverani celebrated his 70th birthday and retired from teaching at the Sapienza in Rome, although his book Antico Oriente: Storia, societa, economia remains in wide use and is still foundational for anyone studying the ancient Near East. The Dipartimento di Scienze Storiche, Archeologiche e Antropologiche dell'Antichita, where Mario Liverani was a leading specialist since the department’s inception, celebrated Liverani’s milestone birthday and retirement with a conference held in his honor, and this book publishes the papers that were read at the conference on April 20-21, 2009.

The title chosen for the conference was Not Only History/Non solo storia,
which alludes to Liverani’s multiple interests and forays into the field of the ancient Near East and Egypt. A select group of scholars and colleagues was chosen to represent Prof. Liverani’s fields of interests, because it was impossible to include all of the Italian and international colleagues who could have been invited. Even so, the list of eminent contributors in the fields of ancient Near Eastern history, art, linguistics, and archaeology is more than adequate to recommend acquisition of this fine collection: John Baines (Oxford), Dominique Charpin (College de France), Joaquin Maria Cordoba (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid), Jerrold Cooper (Johns Hopkins), Jean-Marie Durand (College de France), Peter Machinist (Harvard), David Mattingly (University of Leicester), Piotr Michalowski (University of Michigan), Nadav Na'aman (Tel Aviv University), Nicholas Postgate (Cambridge), Johannes Renger (Free University of Berlin), Marc Van de Mieroop (Columbia University), Irene Winters (Harvard), and Norman Yoffee (University of Michigan).