The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (Revealing Antiquity) [Paperback]

Walter Burkert (Author), Margaret Pinder (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 067464364X | ISBN-13: 978-0674643642 | Publication Date: August 11, 1998

The culture of the ancient Greeks has often been described as emerging like a miracle from a genius of its own, owing practically nothing to its neighbours. Walter Burkert offers a decisive argument against that view, pointing toward a more balanced picture of the archaic period "in which, under the influence of the Semitic East - from writers, craftsmen, merchants, healers - Greek culture began its unique flowering, soon to assume cultural hegemony in the Mediterranean".

Editorial Reviews

Review

Brilliant...[Burkert] is consistently thorough and challenging...Without denying the role of innate talent, he shows that much of the Greek miracle grew from an openness to influences from other cultures...[His] careful scholarship...has constructed the bridge that he set out to build.
--Carol G. Thomas (American Historical Review 19970101)

An elegant and academically influential work...The Orientalizing Revolution can be enthusiastically recommended.
--Simon Hornblower (Times Literary Supplement )

Burkert's The Orientalizing Revolution remains an outstanding, or rather the outstanding, contribution to the question of `Near Eastern influence on Greek culture in the Early Archaic Age. (Greece and Rome )

This thought provoking work is an updated translation of Burkert's Die orientlisierende Epoche in der griechischen Religion und Literature, 1984...It is refreshing to see a classical scholar follow in the footsteps of eminent Near Eastern scholars such as Cyrus Gordon and Michael Astour who have long argued for interconnections in the ancient Mediterranean world.
--Mark W. Chavalas (Near East Archaeological Society Bulletin )

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 238 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (August 11, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067464364X
• ISBN-13: 978-0674643642
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #651,402 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Ancient Greeks In Context, November 15, 2002

By 

Big Dave (Boise, Idaho) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (Revealing Antiquity) (Hardcover)

First, let's make clear what Burkert does NOT say. This book does not argue that the Greeks are an offshoot of some middle eastern civilization, or that Greek genius was merely a late and relocated flowering of Egyptian or some other oriental genius. Burkert in no way detracts from the greatness and the uniqueness of the Greeks.

What he does is remove them from their isolation. He does this by showing a number of points where the Greeks, in the early Archaic Age, borrowed from the cultures around them or at least shared common beliefs or practices.

The book is divided into three chapters, each organized around a class of people through whom East-West contacts occurred: craftsmen, seers / healers (workers in the sacred), and poets / singers. Burkert in each chapter reviews archaeological, literary and philological evidence for cultural contacts or "continuum". And the evidence is not overwhelming, but it is considerable.

The achievement of _The Orientalizing Revolution_ is not to knock the Greeks off their pedestal. It is to help us better understand the Greeks, by seeing some aspects of their culture in a broader light and by teaching us to apply insights from other lands and peoples to the Greeks. This makes Burkert a worthy heir to Jane Ellen Harrison, for instance, and well worth reading.

28 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bringing an end to the Eurocentric version of history, May 15, 2000

By 

David Livingstone (Montreal Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (Revealing Antiquity) (Paperback)

This is a great book. Due to a number of trends in scholarshipon ancient history over the last two or three hundred years, thehistory of ancient Greece has been grossly distorted. The Near Eastern origin of much of the culture of ancient Greece was a recognized reality in ancient times. Until modern times, the foreign origin of ancient Greece according to ancient sources continued to be acknowledged, but that trend changed with the advent of the European nationalistic tendencies of the eighteenth century, which began increasingly to highlight Greece as the "cradle of civilization."

However, over the last sixty years, these prejudices have undergone a barrage of new findings. It appears that the ancient sources were correct. Walter Burkert, one of the foremost scholars of this century on the culture and religion of ancient Greece, examines the process by which Greece came to be imparted, in fact inundated, with Near Eastern cultural elements. Burkert's is now one of several books which should transform of conception of Greek civilization. I would also recommend the more detailed "The East Face of Helicon" by M. L. West, and "Alien Wisdom" by Arnoldo Momigliano...

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Southwest Asian influence on early Greece, February 10, 2010

By 

Brandon Scott Pilcher (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (Revealing Antiquity) (Paperback)

People like to call Greece the "cradle of Western civilization", but as this book shows, the Greeks themselves were substantially influenced by the civilizations of Southwest Asia (the "Middle East") in the areas of language, art, literature, and other aspects of their culture. This book doesn't make as radical an argument for Afro-Asiatic influence on Greece as did Martin Bernal's "Black Athena" (which claimed, among other things, that 25% of ancient Greek words were of Semitic origin), but it is nonetheless a useful resource in challenging Eurocentrism.

I can only name two flaws with the book, neither of them serious. First, its tone is rather academic and dry. Secondly, it concentrates on Greece's archaic period. I would have like to see some discussion on how much influence, if any, Southwest Asia had on Greece in later periods (e.g. Classical or Hellenistic).

Those minor caveats aside, I highly recommend this book for those interested in non-Eurocentric history.