Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia.

• Author: Wallenfels, Ronald
• Position: Book Review

Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. By STEPHEN BERTMAN. New York: FACTS ON FILE, 2003. Pp. xii + 396, illus. $50.

The subject of this review is one of five volumes in the Handbook to Life series published by Facts on File--the remaining four treat, respectively, of ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the Mayans. This series (reading level grade 9 and up) is intended for students in high school and junior college, as well as the general reader. Although the work is comprehensive in conception, in its execution, unfortunately, there is, in this reviewer's opinion, little to recommend it to any of its intended audience.

The volume is divided thematically into thirteen chapters: Geography; Archaeology and History; Government and Society; Religion and Myth; Language, Writing and Literature; Architecture and Engineering; Sculpture and Other Arts; Economy; Transportation and Trade; Military Affairs; Everyday Life; Mesopotamia and Sacred Scripture; and the Legacy of Mesopotamia. Each chapter is subdivided into from five to fourteen more specific topics, which are in turn further dissected into discussions of one to two paragraphs each in length. The volume concludes with a chronological table (virtually a recapitulation of the "Survey of History," pp. 54-58), a list of museums with major Mesopotamian collections (seven in total worldwide!), bibliography (see below), and index (woefully incomplete).

The text is complemented by three maps and 114 illustrations, the latter a mix of mid-to-late eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century engravings, including several of the fanciful architectural reconstructions typical of that period, and black-and-white photographs, many of which are of too low contrast and too dark--all obvious concessions to budgetary considerations. Three objects are reproduced twice (figs. 3.1 = 3.7, 3.3 = 5.8, 4.2 = 7.12); the Detroit Gudea (fig. 7.2), of unknown provenance, is an unnecessary addition to an excavated head (fig. 3.10) and seated statue of the same ruler (fig. 6.3). The captions are minimally informative, rarely including dimensions. Some are misleading, others simply wrong: the figure of Naram-Sin on the Sippar stele is "larger-than-life" (fig. 3.12); third-millennium B.C. heads are termed "portraits" (figs. 3.10, 3.13); the figure wearing a garment covering the left shoulder on the Ur-Nanshe plaque is the "queen" (the inscription reads dumu, "son") (fig. 3.17); the figure of the Assyrian king is misidentified on...