Table of Contents

Contents: Publisher's Acknowledgment A Note on Pronunciation Foreword Map of Ancient Mesopotamia PART I - Origins 1 Did the Sumerians Emerge from the Sea 2 The Great Enigma of the Cemetery at Ur PART II - Everyday Life 3 The Oldest Cuisine in the World 4 The Oldest Feast 5 An Ancient Vintage 6 Love and Sex in Babylon 7 Women's Rights 8 The Women of the Palace at Mari 9 Semiramis: The Builder of Babylon 10 Magic and Medicine 11 The Birth of Astrology 12 The Ordeal PART III - Myth and Legend 13 The First Account of the Flood 14 The Epic of Gilgamesh 15 How Sin Was Born Chronology Further Reading Index

Promotional Information

In Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia, Jean Bottero displays his immense learning, total command of the field, as well as a profound awareness of approaches used by scholars in other historical periods... This book is a well-rounded and appealing introduction to Mesopotamian civilization. -- Amelhie Kuhrt, University College, London

About the Author

Jean Bottero is director of studies and chair of the Department of Assyriology at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris. Andre Finet is a professor of Assyriology at the Free University of Brussels. Bertrand Lafont is director of research on Assyrian history at the Centre National de Reserches Scientifiques. Georges Roux is the author of Ancient Iraq.

Reviews

A popular work for understanding Mesopotamian social life... Written in a vigorous and interesting style with much useful information. -- Mark W. Chavalas Religious Studies Review The book covers many interesting topics not typically addressed in general texts such as cuisine, love and sex, women's rights, and the idea of sin. The book is written for the novice in the field, but it does not simply skim the surface or summarize the authors' longer works; rather, it makes accessible much interesting primary source material that is normally only found in scholarly book sand journals. -- Linda Bergstein Scherr Religious Studies Review