Ancestor of the West: Writing, Reasoning, and Religion in Mesopotamia, Elam, and Greece

Abstract

Translation of: L'Orient ancien et nous. Foreword / Francois Zabbal -- Religion and reasoning in Mesopotamia. The birth of civilization ; The first writing ; The intelligence of the world ; The gods : a reasonable religion / Jean Bottero -- Writing between visible and invisible worlds in Iran, Israel, and Greece. Elamite civilization and writing ; Consonant alphabets, the Greek alphabet, and Old Persian cuneiform ; Old Persian cuneiform : writing as cosmological ritual and text ; Writing--and some thoughts on Hebrew and Greek / Clarisse Herrenschmidt -- Writing and civil religion in Greece. Myths and reasonings -- The polis : shared power / Jean-Pierre Vernant.