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The ancient Near East is not only where the world's earliest writing system, Babylonian cuneiform, was invented some 5,000 years ago, but also where nearly 2,000 years later numerous other scripts developed each to write a specific language. As a framework for the rich intellectual history of this region's ancient past, this book investigates how this "confusion of tongues" came about, how writings in the multiple languages and scripts interacted with each other, and what the consequences were.
List of contents
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction
- Part I: The Babylonian Cosmopolis
- The cuneiform sign
- Chapter 1: Reading Gilgamesh in the Zagros Mountains: the eighteenth century BC
- Chapter 2: In the spell of Babylonian writing
- Chapter 3: Mystery Guardians of an ancient tradition
- Chapter 4: The height of cosmopolitanism: Reading Gilgamesh in Hattusas
- Coda
- Part II: The Vernacular Millennium
- The Tower of Babel
- Chapter 5: Scrupulous continuity
- Chapter 6: Luwian: The Ephemeral Success of a Non-Cosmopolitan Tradition
- Chapter 7: Vernaculars that changed the world: Phoenician and Aramaic
- Chapter 8: From minority languages to world literatures: the Hebrew case
- Chapter 9: From minority languages to world literatures: the Greek case
- Chapter 10: The vernacular and its consequences
- Epilogue: Clash of cosmopoleis?
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Marc Van De Mieroop is Professor of History at Columbia University. His previous books include The Ancient Mesopotamian City, Philosophy before the Greeks, and, as coauthor, World in the Making: A Global History.
Summary
The ancient Near East is not only where the world's earliest writing system, Babylonian cuneiform, was invented some 5,000 years ago, but also where nearly 2,000 years later numerous other scripts developed each to write a specific language. As a framework for the rich intellectual history of this region's ancient past, this book investigates how this
Additional text
With his latest book, Before and After Babel, Van De Mieroop homes in on the history of writing, and the result is arguably his most impressive book to date...Van De Mieroop's prose is crisp and easy to follow; his argument is clearly stated and always grounded in concrete case studies. Whether as an intervention in the history of writing-both cuneiform and alphabetic-or as a mine of fascinating case studies, Before and After Babel is sure to reach a wide audience.
