Ancient Mesopotamia
by Susan Pollock
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Book Summary Information
Author: Susan PollockEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1999-05-01
ISBN: 0521575680
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Book Reviews of Ancient Mesopotamia
Book Review: A cold and biased view of Mesopotamia
Summary: 2 Stars
Dr. Pollock presents a cold, distant and very biased view of a fascinating subject. She is, for instance, very worried about the role of women in Sumerian societies from the very first pages, continues to complain about "male domination" throughout the book, and finishes by proposing that future studies focus on this subject (women role in Mesopotamia). I wonder why she did not develop any such study herself. Unfortunately, since she was not able to present a feminist history of early Mesopotamia, she has apparently chosen to present us a history without men as well.
Dr. Pollock description of the "household" economy is unconvincing, obscure, and it is not rare that she begins some paragraph with several "maybes" and "ifs" only to end it with some sweeping statement. It would be ok to present a somewhat speculative view of early Mesopotamian economy if it was not so blatantly ideologic. She actually concludes her book by stating that any other approach would be "to participate" (her words) on the side of oppressors against the oppressed.
Her disdain for the written record is amazing! According to Dr. Pollock, it reflects the life of the elite and is riddled with maleness, and therefore she ignores it until about page 142. But even after recognizing that written records do exist, nothing of it is used in her interpretations of the archeological data.
The entire Mesopotamian religion(s) is presented as a domination tool of the elite against the poor. At the same time she (following Oppenheim) claims that the Mesopotamian religion we know was not that of the common people, but an elite business. She perhaps forgets that in order to be a domination tool, a religion must be believed by the dominated.
I read the book throughout and did not learn anything about possible distinct peoples inhabiting the area, their languages, their beliefs, the tension between city-states and the evolution of regional countries. No mention (except for Sargon and his son and even so in the briefest manner) is made of rulers. In fact one may finish reading the book and believe that rulers had no impact at all on the daily lives and the economy of the region.
Unfortunately Dr. Pollock's ideological battle against objectivity irritates and detracts from some useful information she compiles. If some older views of Mesopotamian history were excessively romantic, Dr. Pollock's view is one that conveys the impression that the author dislikes her study subject.
Summary of Ancient Mesopotamia
This is an in-depth treatment of the antecedents and first flourescence of early state and urban societies in lowland Mesopotamia over nearly three millennia, from approximately 5000 to 2100 BC. The approach is explicitly anthropological, drawing on contemporary theoretical perspectives to enrich our understanding of the ancient Mesopotamian past. It explores the ways people of different genders and classes contributed and responded to political, economic, and ideological changes. The interpretations are based on studies of regional settlement patterns, faunal remains, artifact distributions and activity patterning, iconography, texts and burials.Early Civilization Books
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