Ancient Mesopotamia : Portrait of a Dead Civilization

Iraq's civilization is interesting for two reasons. From a purely archaeological/anthropological point of view, ancient Mesopotamia is by far the oldest civilization on this planet - even older than Egypt. The reasons why there's much less attention to it than to Egypt are the fact that there are so few monumental structures remaining there and the fact that Egypt is closer to the Graeoco-Roman civilization.

The other reason why Iraq's civilization is interesting is its potential importance IN THE FUTURE. With the war's outcome almost certain (truly it's like an Iron Age army crushing a Stone Age one), Iraq's long term prospects are quite good. Sitting on the second largest proven crude oil reserves in the world, Iraq has the potential to wield much influence, like Saudi Arabia.

Useful (but rather short) bibilography and glossary.

Oppenheim regrets not being able to make this book "twice the size of the present one." (p.334) I only regret that this book ISN'T three times as long. If this book isn't flying off the shelves, it should be. Get it before it's too late.

(Warning: This book does not include the Sumerian civilization, as the author makes explicit. For this subject you must turn to Sam N. Kramer.)

While Samuel Noah Kramer's works feed us with the Sumerian part of Mesopotamian culture, Oppenheim focuses the main axis on Babylonia and Assyria. The book is not a plain history textbook in a chronological order. Oppenheim presents the "portrait" under well-designed chapters with essential concepts: The first chapter of the book is an overview on Mesopotamia. Then in the second chapter, Oppenheim leads us to the depths of urbanism, social texture and economical facts of the region in ancient times. Chapter 3 deals with the difference of "historical sources" and "literature" in Mesopotamia, and presents two essays on Assyrian and Babylonian history. The next chapter is, about ancient Mesopotamians' relations with their "gods": Oppenheim discusses why a "Mesopotamian Religion" should not be written. (According to my opinion, this is one of the most important parts of the book which underlines the "revolutionary" nature of the work.) The last two chapters deal with "the writing" and "science" in Mesopotamia, respectively. J. A. Brinkman's "Mesopotamian Chronology of the Historical Period" is presented as an appendix at the end of the book.

Leo Oppenheim's "Ancient Mesopotamia" is definitely one of the most important sources for intellectuals interested with the subject. Note that it is not just a "reference work" but a "book with a soul".

The civilizational achievements of the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians of Mesopotamia only started to become known over the course of the last century or so. For our new understanding of the past we have to thank archaeology, in particular for its discovery of many tens of thousands of baked clay tablets which have miraculously preserved the complex cuneiform writing system, languages, and literatures of the ancient Mesopotamians, and for the patient decipherment of these tablets and other cuneiform-bearing artefacts by a small and dedicated group of international scholars.

The literature on this subject today is vast, and much of it is accessible only to specialists. Of the studies that are generally available - such as those of A. Leo Oppenheim, Samuel Noah Kramer, and Thorkild Jacobsen - most tend to be aimed at a more scholarly type of audience, the kind of people who like detailed footnotes, precise references to sources, bibliographies, etc.,

Oppenheim's valuable study, which weighs in at a hefty 433 pages, contains all of these plus fifteen plates, three maps, a Chronology, a Glossary of Names and Terms, and an Index. As a distinguished scholar and linguist who spent more than thirty years studying the cuneiform tablets, he offers us a personal picture of the Mesopotamians of three thousand years ago which sums up all that the tablets have to tell us about the ancient civilizations of Babylon and Assyria.

His book is organized as follows - Chapter I : The Background; The Setting; The Actors; The World Around; II : The Social Texture; Economic Facts; "The Great Organizations"; The City; Urbanism; III - Historical Sources or Literature?; An Essay on Babylonian History; An Essay on Assyrian History; IV - Why a "Mesopotamian Religion" Should Not Be Written; The Care and Feeding of the Gods; Mesopotamian "Psychology"; The Arts of the Diviner; V - The Meaning of Writing; The Scribes; The Creative Effort; Patterns in Non-Literary Texts; Part VI - Medicine and Physicians; Mathematics and Astronomy; Craftsmen and Artists.

Of particular interest are Oppenheim's views on "religion" as set forth in Chapter IV. He tells us, for example, that : "The Immense ruins of the temple towers [i.e., ziggurats] of the large cities ... made Babylonia famous .... Yet even today we do not know the purpose of these edifices.... We do not know what they were for" (page 172).

This is a startling admission, since it calls into question pretty well everything that has been written about ancient Mesopotamia. If the "temples" shouldn't really be called "temples" since we don't know what purpose they served, what about the "gods" and the "myths" of the Mesopotamians? Do these also represent a distortion or misreading of the facts? Were the gods really gods? Were the myths merely fabrications? Was their literature literature, or was it history?

So far as I know, Oppenheim is one of the very few scholars who have had the courage to suggest that the conventional view of Mesopotamian history may be fundamentally in error. Another is Zechariah Sitchin. My advice would be to read both.