Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization

Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization
by A. Leo Oppenheim, Erica Reiner

Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization
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Book Summary Information

Author: A. Leo Oppenheim, Erica Reiner
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1977-09-15
ISBN: 0226631877
Number of pages: 445
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press

Book Reviews of Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization

Book Review: A paradigm shift for Assyriology?
Summary: 5 Stars

"Ancient Mesopotamia" struck me as being a wake-up call to Assyriologists to get their act together regarding the study of Mesopotamia. In his preface and introduction, Oppenheim bewails the Western bias of Assyriology and its imminent fossilization if things didn't change. It seemed to me that the crux of Oppenheim's argument was that the field's emphasis on the humanities put undue focus on the surviving literary texts, which as he pointed out, make up only a tiny fraction of the cuneiform tablets that the ancients deemed worthy of collecting in their libraries. As a result, in our attempts to understand Mesopotamian culture, too much importance may have been placed on texts that were not even part of the "mainstream of tradition". Even if we ignore this difficulty, Oppenheim argued that using literary techniques to study these texts ignores the possibility that the tablets had an altogether different meaning for the ancient Mesopotamians than just "great literature".

Rather, Oppenheim suggested that Assyriologists should decipher tablets that would shed light on various cultural aspects such as the economy, trade, technology, and medicine. Doing this would lead to a more accurate impression of Mesopotamia in a way that the ancients themselves may have seen it. And this would also avoid the danger of Assyriology becoming a self-justifying field with only limited relevance to its namesake culture.

Although my review has focused on the author's views of his own field, most of the book itself deals with a broad survey of the culture and history of the Semitic-speaking peoples of Mesopotamia. After giving us his ideas at the beginning of the book on what the paradigm of Assyriology should be, Oppenheim proceeded to do a remarkable job of putting these ideas into practice in the rest of the book. Limited use is made of direct quotations from texts, since as the author put it, "Translated texts tend to speak more of the translator than their original message". Additionally, some of the author's thoughts on the Mesopotamians are different from others in the field. For example, in describing the Code of Hammurabi and other publicly displayed law codes, Oppenheim speculated that they were meant to serve as the king's acknowledgement of social injustice and his vision of how things should be. In other words, the law codes were meant to be statements of the king, not necessarily a collection of laws to be enforced.

I felt that "Ancient Mesopotamia" provides an excellent narrative of the history, culture, and religion of this civilization, and would be well-regarded by those who have an interest in this time and place. I am not an Assyriologist and I have only limited knowledge of the impact that Oppenheim may have had on the field, but I would also suggest that this book does a good job of marking the evolutionary development of Assyriology as it occurred up to the 1960's.


Summary of Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization

"This splendid work of scholarship . . . sums up with economy and power all that the written record so far deciphered has to tell about the ancient and complementary civilizations of Babylon and Assyria."-Edward B. Garside, New York Times Book Review

Ancient Mesopotamia-the area now called Iraq-has received less attention than ancient Egypt and other long-extinct and more spectacular civilizations. But numerous small clay tablets buried in the desert soil for thousands of years make it possible for us to know more about the people of ancient Mesopotamia than any other land in the early Near East.

Professor Oppenheim, who studied these tablets for more than thirty years, used his intimate knowledge of long-dead languages to put together a distinctively personal picture of the Mesopotamians of some three thousand years ago. Following Oppenheim's death, Erica Reiner used the author's outline to complete the revisions he had begun.

"To any serious student of Mesopotamian civilization, this is one of the most valuable books ever written."-Leonard Cottrell, Book Week

"Leo Oppenheim has made a bold, brave, pioneering attempt to present a synthesis of the vast mass of philological and archaeological data that have accumulated over the past hundred years in the field of Assyriological research."-Samuel Noah Kramer, Archaeology

A. Leo Oppenheim, one of the most distinguished Assyriologists of our time, was editor in charge of the Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute and John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Chicago.

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