The civilization of Ancient Mesopotamia flourished between 3300 BC and 2000 BC in the southern half of the lands between and to either side of the Tigris and Euphrates, where a vast grain harvest (about equal to Canada's today) supported a large and well-ordered population. The early development of cuneiform writing, the world's first phonetic script, means that for the first time in the history of humanity it is possible to learn something of how people thought and felt. This book aims to do just that and, as the reader soon finds out, succeeds triumphantly. Jean Bottero and his colleagues take the reader on a voyage of discovery into the public and private realms of the lives of our first civilized ancestors -- their cooking and eating, feasts and festivals, wine and drinking, love and sex, what women could do and what they couldn't, magic and medicine, trial by ordeal, life in a palace above and below stairs, astrology and divination, gods and religion, and literature and myth.

About the Author
Jean Bottero is Director of Studies and Professor of Assyriology at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. His books include La Religion babylonnienne (1952), and Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning and the Gods (University of Chicago Press, 1992). Apart from being France's leading Assyriologist, he is also a distinguished chef.

Reviews
Written for the most part by acknowledged masters of Assyriology and underpinned by decades of scholarly engagement with that enormous and intractable mass of cuneiform texts ! that permit an intimate insight into all aspects of human activity that is unrivalled in the study of ancient civilizations ! What this book offers is a series of well-written chapters on a selection of the most absorbing, intriguing or otherwise appealing topics in ancient Mesopotamian history ! the volume is lively and interesting and will be read with profit and enjoyment by undergraduate and general reader alike. Written for the most part by acknowledged masters of Assyriology and underpinned by decades of scholarly engagement with that enormous and intractable mass of cuneiform texts ! that permit an intimate insight into all aspects of human activity that is unrivalled in the study of ancient civilizations ! What this book offers is a series of well-written chapters on a selection of the most absorbing, intriguing or otherwise appealing topics in ancient Mesopotamian history ! the volume is lively and interesting and will be read with profit and enjoyment by undergraduate and general reader alike.



Book Information
ISBN 9780748613885
Author Jean Bottero
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint Edinburgh University Press
Publisher Edinburgh University Press
Weight(grams) 446g
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm * 23mm