How were the Aegean and Anatolian worlds influenced by Egypt and Mesopotamia?

The Mesopotamian and Egyptian areas developed agriculture and urbanization much earlier than areas of the Aegean and Anatolia and thus influenced their development in many ways. Writing, for example, developed earliest in Mesopotamia, very slightly later in Egypt, and gradually spread as a technology north and east from those two centers. One major writing material, papyrus, was grown in Egypt and continued to be exported to the Aegean and Anatolia for several millennia.
Various agricultural techniques spread from their initial points of discovery and use to neighboring regions. Although this spread meant development of complex civilizations, it also led to deforestation, soil erosion, and loss of biodiversity many years later. The effects of this spread of agriculture included not only urbanization and labor specialization, but the growth of increasingly complex systems of governance. Anatolia was part of the Hittite Empire and its successors.
Greek cities traded with Egypt and Mesopotamia (with Anatolia often serving as a point of contact), and scholars increasingly are studying how these contacts influenced Greek epic, art, religion, and culture, including archaic sculpture, the development of writing, and early Greek philosophy.