Front cover image for Ancestor of the West : writing, reasoning, and religion in Mesopotamia, Elam, and Greece

Ancestor of the West : writing, reasoning, and religion in Mesopotamia, Elam, and Greece

"In this introduction to the ancient world, three leading French historians explore the emergence of rationality and writing: how it developed and how it is remarkably similar to our own tradition. We learn that the supposed twin pillars of Western civilization, Greece and the Bible, were hardly freestanding: they elaborated logical and religious structures that had developed much earlier in Mesopotamia. At the same time Ancestor of the West reminds us that these cultures were precursors of our own precisely because they possessed an intelligence that we still recognize. The ancients, even in their earliest writings, thought like us."--Jacket
Print Book, English, ©2000
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, ©2000
History
xiii, 192 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
9780226067155, 9780226067162, 0226067157, 0226067165
41049566
Translation of: L'Orient ancien et nous
Translation of: L'Orient ancien et nous