Ancient Iraq: Third Edition (Penguin History)
by Georges Roux
List Price:
Our Price: $9.12
You Save: $7.88 (46%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $1.41 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Georges RouxEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1993-03-01
ISBN: 014012523x
Number of pages: 576
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of Ancient Iraq: Third Edition (Penguin History)
Book Review: Ambitious, fascinating overview of Mesopotamia from prehistoric times to the first century AD
Summary: 5 Stars
_Ancient Iraq_ by Georges Roux is a book covering the entire history and culture of Mesopotamian civilization, all three thousand years of it from its prehistory to the final demise of Mesopotamian civilization in the first century A.D.
The term "Mesopotamia" originated with the Greeks and it means "the land between the rivers" and does not include all of Iraq and all of what we have come to think of as Mesopotamia. Surprisingly the ancient inhabitants had no name covering the totality of the country in which they lived.
Though in many ways the inventors of civilization often little remains for the visitor to see of this once great civilization; "[t]he dissolving rain, the sand-bearing winds, the earth-splitting sun conspired to obliterate all remains" and these desolate ruins "offer perhaps the best lesson in modesty that we shall ever receive from history." Part of the reason for the lack of remains is the nature of the Iraqi environment, as the meandering Tigris and Euphrates rivers occasionally change course, isolating once riverside sites as "forlorn ruin-mounds in a desert of silt, several miles from modern waterways." Also these ancient towns were built of nothing but mud as stone was rare. At first made of piled-up mud (pisé) or adobe, as early as the ninth millennium B.C. clay was mixed with straw, gravel, or potsherds and made into sun-dried or kiln-baked bricks.
The very nature of the rivers had a lot to do with the origins of Mesopotamian civilization. As the combined flood periods of the two rivers do not occur when it is best for agriculture, fields must be irrigated. To create these canals and maintain them against silting-up require colossal, unending labor of many people, something that sowed both the seeds of local strife and political unity. The effort to maintain canals and to insure an equitable distribution of water reinforced the authority of the original town chiefs, the high priests, and along with the scarcity of fertile land lead to the concentration of power and wealth in a few hands in a few places, to the creation of cities where further technical and artistic achievements could be made, and the invention of writing to record transactions.
In many ways the book can be read as the rise, spread, and then the decline and fall of Mesopotamian civilization. It was amazing just how small Sumeria really was; it was a mere 30,000 square kilometers, a bit smaller than Belgium, a narrow strip of land around the Euphrates from about the latitude of Baghdad stretching to the Gulf, with the average city-state less than 3000 square kilometers and at most 35,000 people. Sargon and his Akkadian successors subdued the fractious Sumerian city-states and also conquered the entire Tigris-Euphrates basin and built the first great Mesopotamian kingdom. Though the Akkadian empire only lasted 200 years, collapsing from the pressure of mountain tribes and internal rebellion, it set an important example, as to reconstruct Mesopotamian unity, to reach what we could call its natural limits "became the dream of all subsequent monarchs, and from the middle of the third millennium until the fall of Babylon in 539 B.C. the history of ancient Iraq consists of their attempts, their successes and their failures to achieve this aim." The Akkadians greatly enlarged the geographical horizon of Sumer and Sumero-Akkadian culture, supported by cuneiform writing, was adopted by the people outside of Sumeria. In addition the Akkadians forever blended the two historical populations of Iraq (the non-Semitic Sumerians and the Semites), ringed the death knell for city-states, heralded the advent of large, centralized kingdoms, and eroded the power of the temples.
Later as a result of the migration of a very large ethno-linguist group, the "Indo-Europeans," young energetic nations emerged in and around Mesopotamia. That, plus the involvement of Egypt in Near Eastern politics from 1600 BC onwards meant that history in ancient Iraq was raised to a truly international scale, with Mesopotamian political fortunes as well as its culture and science influencing (and influenced by) foreign powers from then on.
The Assyrians played a huge role, though they don't come off well, as Roux wrote of the greed and ambition of Assyrian kings, of "their typical oriental desire to cover themselves with glory, to pose as invincible demigods in front of their subjects," that a combination of religious views and greed lead to "brigandry and occasional massacres" in their attempts to create an empire, which was an "act of gangsterism but also a crusade." Though they did preserve Sumero-Akkadian-Babylonian culture, they left the Near East as a whole impoverished as they took much, gave little, cared little for the advancement of their subjects, and as a result of their wars the rich land of Egypt was forever lost and the Phoenicians lost their rich maritime and colonial empire to the Greeks.
After a last flowering under Nebuchadrezzar II and a brilliant but short-lived "Neo-Babylonian" period Babylon fell without resistance to the Persian conqueror Cyrus. The Persians however did not destroy Babylon or other cities, and there are monuments and inscriptions dating from the Achaemenian, Hellenistic, and Parthian periods testifying to a partial survival of Mesopotamian civilization down to the 1st century AD. Why the slow decline and ultimately vanishing of this civilization? The three main reasons were the absence of any real national Mesopotamian government, the foundation by Alexander and his successors of new cities competing with and eventually superseding the older cities, and more than anything the massive linguistic, ethnic, religious, and cultural changes introduced by waves of Persian, Greek, Aramaean, and pre-Islamic Arab invaders, peoples who could neither be kept at bay nor assimilated. While previous invading peoples such as the Amorites and the Kassites found a young, vigorous culture superior to the own, one which they eventually adopted, later invaders felt that Mesopotamia offered relatively little, that it was a fossilized culture largely perpetuated by a few priests in a few temples; basically, it had died of old age.
Summary of Ancient Iraq: Third Edition (Penguin History)
Newly revised and containing information from recent excavations and discovered artifacts, Ancient Iraq covers the political, cultural, and socio-economic history from Mesopotamia days of prehistory to the Christian era.
Early Civilization Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Early Civilization Books
Civilization in the West: Since 1300: Ap Editionby Mark A. Kishlansky, Patrick Geary, Patricia O'Brien
Pearson Longman; Published: 2007-06-30; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.00
Price in other shops:
Primary Sources in Western Civilization, Volume 1 for Primary Sources in Western Civilization, Volume 1 (2nd Edition)by AW Pearson
Prentice Hall; Published: 2008-09-20; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.36
Price in other shops:
Aspects of Western Civilization: Problems and Sources in History, Volume II (5th Edition)by Perry M. Rogers
Prentice Hall; Published: 2003-06-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.00
Price in other shops:
The Heritage of World Civilizations: Since 1500by Perry M. Rogers, Albert M. Craig, William A. Graham, Donald Kagan, Steven E. Ozment, Frank M. Turner
Prentice Hall College Div; Published: 1999-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.00
Price in other shops:
The Heritage of World Civilizations: Since 1500Allyn & Bacon; Published: 1998-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $51.34
Price in other shops:
The Heritage of World Civilizations: Vol B : From 1300 Through the French Revolutionby Albert M. Craig
Macmillan Coll Div; Published: 1993-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.50
Price in other shops:
Sumer and the Sumeriansby Harriet Crawford
Cambridge University Press; Published: 2004-11-08; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $79.00
Price in other shops:
Sumer and the Sumeriansby Harriet E. W. Crawford
Cambridge University Press; Published: 1991-04-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $16.22
Price in other shops:
Work on Myth (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)by Hans Blumenberg
The MIT Press; Published: 1988-03-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $48.00
Price in other shops:
A Study of History, Vol. 1: Abridgement of Volumes I-VIby Arnold J. Toynbee
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1987-12-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $16.93
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
The Epic of Gilgamesh (Penguin Classics)by Anonymous
Penguin Classics; Published: 2003-04-29; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.77
Price in other shops:
Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilizationby A. Leo Oppenheim, Erica Reiner
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 1977-09-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $20.00
Price in other shops:
Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians (Dictionaries of Civilizations)by Enrico Ascalone
University of California Press; Published: 2007-07-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $18.95
Price in other shops:
The Persian Empireby Lindsay Allen
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 2005-12-20; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $15.73
Price in other shops:
Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionaryby Jeremy Black, Anthony Green
University of Texas Press; Published: 1992; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.70
Price in other shops:
The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and PicturesPrinceton University Press; Published: 2010-11-08; Paperback; Book
Best price: $28.63
Price in other shops:
Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (Oxford World's Classics)Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2009-02-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.97
Price in other shops:
Mesopotamiaby Gwendolyn Leick
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2003-06-24; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.95
Price in other shops:
The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character (Phoenix Books)by Samuel Noah Kramer
University Of Chicago Press; Published: 1971-02-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $18.49
Price in other shops:
A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000 - 323 BC (Blackwell History of the Ancient World)by Marc Van De Mieroop
Wiley-Blackwell; Published: 2006-10-16; Paperback; Book
Best price: $28.78
Price in other shops: