Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians.

• Author: Garfinkle, Steven
• Position: Dictionaries of Civilization, vol. 1 - Book review

Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians. By ENRICO ASCALONE. Translated by Rosanna M. Giammanco Frongia. Dictionaries of Civilization, vol. 1. Berkeley and Los Angeles: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, 2007. Pp. 368, illus. $24.95 (paper).

In the movie To Be or Not to Be, a Polish acting troupe stages a performance called "Highlights from Hamlet." The volume under review is in a series entitled the Dictionaries of Civilization, but it would be more appropriate to call this book "Highlights from Mesopotamia." This is a handsome and lavishly illustrated pocket guide to the wonders of ancient Iraq. It owes more in inspiration to illustrated travel guides than it does to the kind of exhaustive reference work implied by the series title. (1) The introduction explains the goals of the book and its somewhat unorthodox structure. The primary goal is clearly expressed and should be a model for similar efforts. The author seeks "to restore cultural dignity to a fundamental period of human history" especially in light of "the strong conditioning of traditional Biblical scholarship, of Enlightenment historiography, and of the European experiences of the mid-twentieth century" that "have distorted and subordinated all manifestations of pre-classical Mesopotamian thought" (p. 6). The way in which the author hopes to accomplish this is to present primarily the archaeological and artistic evidence in its "historical and ideological" context (p. 7). Thus the objects are not asked to speak for themselves but they are considered against the background of Mesopotamian achievement and not from the Western perspective as simply precursors to European achievement.

To achieve this goal, the author abandons the usual format of a dictionary as well as the chronological approach of an atlas or textbook. I have no objection to innovative approaches, but the reality is that though the book departs from a traditional historical presentation, it is still confined by a fairly narrow and traditional understanding of Mesopotamia history. This is a book about highlights in every sense. In particular, the focus is on elite society in Mesopotamia. For example, the section of the book on Daily Life (pp. 185-259) is an examination of daily life primarily for the king and his court (with features on banqueting and hairdressing) or of production for the king and his court (with features on jewelry and music and dance). (2) Certainly, our most attractive and photogenic...