My dissertation deals with the conceptual emergence of continents, i.e. how the world as a whole came to be first perceived and divided into major parts. Such a completed developoment can first be observed in and substantiated for Pindar’s writings (ca. 470 BC). Explanations for these processes have been put forward over the last centuries but the modern opinio communis is still based on Ernst Hugo Berger’s research. According to his views (Geschichte der wissenschaftlichen Erdkunde der Griechen, 21903 [originally 1887], 77–100) scholars from the Milesian school in Ionia were the first to conceive the world as a whole before categorising it into a northern European and a Southern Asian half on the basis of natural scientific factors (hot-cold-contrasts, astronomic observations of the different risings and settings of the sun, geometric/cartographic compartmentalisation of the world). Challenging this narrative, I intend to try to interpret the division of the world into 3 major parts as a reaction of peoples (Greeks, Phoenicians?) who dwelled in the Western borderlands of the ancient near eastern empires (Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians). They responded to an Eastern claim of world dominion, being aware of its limits in the Mediterranean Basin. The worldview of a tripartite world in the Eastern Mediterranean is therefore a response to the claim to universal rulership in light of their knowledge of the connected coastlines and hinterlands of the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. I try to prove this thesis along various ways of argumentation. First, I intend to deconstruct the consolidated modern opinion by offering a transparent exposition and analysis of the research history of this topic as well as the arguments put forward since the late 17th century. Secondly, I will present the conceptual history of terms and concepts tightly connected to the emergence of the continents ("Europe", "Asia", "Libya", "ἤπειρος", Okeanos/marratu, Phasis, Nile, Pillars of Hercules, Mediterranean and Black sea as inland seas, ...). Thirdly, I will take a look at ancient near eastern geographical texts and royal inscriptions to trace the geographical organisation and mental mapping processes of these empires that consolidate themselves as the perfectly structured continent "Asia" in the eyes of the later Greeks. Lastly, I will explore the Motivgeschichte of borders and the crossings of borders in ancient near eastern and greek texts from the 9th to the 4th century BC to interpret the division into continents via river and sea borders as a geopolitical reaction to the expansion of both, the imperial borders as well as their imperial territorial claims.