The manner in which government practices and personnel survive the violent disruption of regime change is an issue of current relevance, yet is a subject which has largely been ignored by modern scholarship. These essays, covering more than four thousand years of history, discuss the continuity of administration and royal iconography in successful changes of regime in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Iran.Recurring patterns are identified in ten case studies, ranging from late third millennium Mesopotamia to early Islamic Egypt. A summary of the recent history of Iraq suggests that these regularities have lessons for the modern geopolitics of today.