The Mesopotamian Soul of Western Culture

The worn-out phrase, “Already the ancient Greeks...,” involves attitudes and views that make an Assyriologist stir uneasily. Its basic message is that Western culture was born in ancient Greece. The little word “already” betrays, on the one hand, admiration of the achievements of the Greeks, and on the other hand disparagement of previous cultures, as if nothing worth mentioning had been accomplished before the Greeks. Such attitudes are rooted in remote antiquity and derive from Greek antagonism towards “the barbarians” after the Persian Wars, as well as from notions of Greek superiority over “the barbarians” after the conquests of Alexander.