Böcker av Marc Van De Mieroop

The ancient Near East is not only where the world's earliest writing system, Babylonian cuneiform, was invented some 5,000 years ago, but also where nearly 2,000 years later numerous other scripts developed each to write a specific language. As a framework for the rich intellectual history of this region's ancient past, this book investigates how this "confusion of tongues" came about, how writings in the multiple languages and scripts interacted with each other, and what the consequences were.

Discusses how the abundant Mesopotamian cuneiform text sources can be used for the study of various aspects of history: political, social, economic and gender.

A History of Ancient Egypt provides a chronological survey of Ancient Egypt from the beginning of the Egyptian state around 3000 B.C. until the time when the Roman Empire banned the writing of hieroglyphs in the late fourth century AD.

The Eastern Mediterranean in the Age of Ramesses II offers a transnational perspective on the age of King Ramesses II of Egypt during the centuries of 1500 to 1200 BC. Providing a compelling narrative, synthesis of current research, and rich illustrations, this book offers a wide perspective on the age of Ramesses II.

* The first biography in English of the famous Babylonian lawgiver, King Hammurabi (fl. 1792 to 1750 BC). * Presents a well--rounded view of Hammurabi's accomplishments. * Describes how Hammurabi dealt with powerful rivals and extended his kingdom.

There is a growing recognition that philosophy isn't unique to the West, that it didn't begin only with the classical Greeks, and that Greek philosophy was influenced by Near Eastern traditions. Yet even today there is a widespread assumption that what came before the Greeks was "e;before philosophy."e; In Philosophy before the Greeks, Marc Van De Mieroop, an acclaimed historian of the ancient Near East, presents a groundbreaking argument that, for three millennia before the Greeks, one Near Eastern people had a rich and sophisticated tradition of philosophy fully worthy of the name.In the first century BC, the Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily praised the Babylonians for their devotion to philosophy. Showing the justice of Diodorus's comment, this is the first book to argue that there were Babylonian philosophers and that they studied knowledge systematically using a coherent system of logic rooted in the practices of cuneiform script. Van De Mieroop uncovers Babylonian approaches to knowledge in three areas: the study of language, which in its analysis of the written word formed the basis of all logic; the art of divination, which interpreted communications between gods and humans; and the rules of law, which confirmed that royal justice was founded on truth.The result is an innovative intellectual history of the ancient Near Eastern world during the many centuries in which Babylonian philosophers inspired scholars throughout the region-until the first millennium BC, when the breakdown of this cosmopolitan system enabled others, including the Greeks, to develop alternative methods of philosophical reasoning.