Oppenheim's foundational work Ancient Mesopotamia, Portrait of a Dead Civilization, is a detailed account of the civilizations that grew out of Sumeria and set a pattern for all the civilizations that followed in the near east, but that does not mean it is easy to read or that the contents are not out of date. And that is the problem. I have seldom encountered a book that was so hard to read. It is dry beyond all description. It was, no doubt, intended as a scholarly work and not as a popular history, and it no doubt is a scholarly work, but it is so difficult to follow that it is amazing. Here is the first sentence of the first chapter "Early in the fourth millennium BC there occurred in the southwest Asia a phenomenon of lasting importance for the history of man: the appearance in quick secession of a group of culture foci." Ok, so we all know what it says, but the wording isn't something that just jumps to mind.
The book is also badly out of date. It was written in 1964 and a revised edition was published in 1977 from notes completed before the author's death by Erica Reiner. Still, even 1977 was a long time ago (it is now 2011) so 30 plus years is bound to bring new facts to the fore and new ideas about the ancient past into the discussion.
The best thing about the book is the fact that Oppenheim stresses the lack of information we actually have about the ancient past. This lack of information leads to a lot of guesswork, and he is up front about this problem. Few others are. In fact many authors guess about the meaning of the past off of known facts. They go far into the realm of speculation in talking about the past. I have read books discussing the cave paintings of 30,000 years ago and the authors told us that the paintings were religious paintings with tribal significance; however, they can't know that. Oppenheim avoids this type of error and openly discusses how little we actually know about the past, even when we have written text to work off of.
Unfortunately the book could not hold my attention. It is just too hard to read.
AD2
ISBN-13: 978-0226631875
ISBN-10: 0226631877
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Paul J. Collier
a great study
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 20, 2014
