What Should I Read to Get Inside the "Headspace" of Major Ancient Near Eastern Cultures?

by s-ro_mojosa

I have a running fascination with the Ancient Near East, especially Babylon and Persia. I have a decent familiarity with the contents of the Hebrew Bible and the Code of Hammurabi, etc. But I still don't really understand how each major society viewed itself in contrast to its neighbors or how the bureaucracies worked below the level of satrap.

What can I read to get a sense of daily life and major social frictions? What were the taboos and prejudices? Who were the great thinkers, akin to Israel's prophets or Greece's philosophers, who tugged at the heart-strings of the societies? How did the legal system actually function, etc. You get the idea.

I listened to the Great Courses material on Ancient Persia. Like a lot of their stuff, it was like bits of a Masters level course dumbed down to about an 8th grade level. It was nice for what it was, but I'd like to understand more.

Bentresh

Great question. I recommend beginning with Oppenheim's classic Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization (free PDF), who tackles this topic fairly successfully. Oppenheim was a brilliant scholar and one of the editors of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD); he read more cuneiform tablets in his lifetime than arguably anyone before or since. The edited volume The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East is also well worth a read.

Also take a look at all of the books by Dominique Charpin, especially Writing, Law, and Kingship in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia and Gods, Kings, and Merchants in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia, and those by Jean Bottero, particularly Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia and Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning, and the Gods.

For everyday life in Mesopotamia, see Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia by Karen Nemet-Nejat. Yale's new publication Ancient Mesopotamia Speaks: Highlights of the Yale Babylonian Collection is also well worth a read, though it's admittedly a bit pricy.

Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia and especially The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion are excellent introductions to religious thought in ancient Mesopotamia.