The ancient Near East was home to many cradles of civilization, spanning Ancient Mesopotamia, the Ancient Levant, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Elam, Ancient Anatolia or Asia Minor, the Ancient South Caucasus and Armenian highlands, and Ancient Northern Arabia. It is generally not considered to include Pre-Islamic Arabia as a whole or Ancient Nubia, though it is sometimes classified as encompassing Ancient Iran, and the Minoan, Mycenaean, and Cycladic civilizations. Given the nature and scope of their subject matter, the fields of ancient Near East studies and Near Eastern archaeology, including the subfields of Assyriology and Egyptology, are among the most prominent with regard to research in the realm of ancient history, alongside such disciplines as Classics, Classical Archaeology, Biblical Studies, Biblical Archaeology, Jewish Studies, Christian Studies, Iranology, Sinology, and Indology, some of which overlap with them. Historically, the Near East denoted an area roughly encompassing central West Asia and Egypt, having been focused on the lands between Greece in the west and Iran in the east. It therefore largely corresponds with the modern-day geopolitical concept of the Middle East.