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by Professor Jean Bottéro

Professor Jean Bottéro Ancient Civilizations English
Download Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia ePub
  • ISBN 0801868629
  • ISBN13 978-0801868627
  • Language English
  • Author Professor Jean Bottéro
  • Publisher The Johns Hopkins University Press (September 5, 2001)
  • Pages 288
  • Formats lrf lit mobi mbr
  • Category History
  • Subcategory Ancient Civilizations
  • Size ePub 1983 kb
  • Size Fb2 1734 kb
  • Rating: 4.3
  • Votes: 326
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Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia, based on articles originally published in L'Histoire by Jean Bottéro, André Finet, Bertrand Lafont, and Georges Roux, presents new discoveries about this amazing Mesopotamian culture made during the past ten years. Features of everyday Meopotamian life highlight the new sections of this book. Both gourmet cuisine and popular cookery used fish, meats, fruits, vegetables, and grains, available fresh or preserved (through methods still used today), and served with beer and wine. While feelings toward love and sex are rarely found in personal writings or correspondence, myths, prayers, and accounts of an acceptance of a wide range of behaviors (despite monogamy, prostitution flourished) argue that both were considered natural and necessary for a happy existence.

Under law woman existed as a man's property, yet stories show that wives frequently used beauty and wits to keep husbands in hand, and a wife's financial holdings remained her property, reverting to her family at her death. Women were allowed to participate in activities that could increase this wealth and some, pledged to the gods and shut away in group homes, were nonetheless able to participate in lucrative business ventures. Also included are accounts of the exceptional life of the queen and the women of Mari, the story of the great Queen Semiramis, and chapters on magic, medicine, and astrology.

The concluding section offers a fascinating in-depth comparison of ancient Sumerian myths and stories similar to those found in the Hebrew bible. The new information found in Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia makes a significant contribution, one that deepens our knowledge and understanding of this great, ancient civilization.

As Bottero stated in his foreword, he wanted the reader to become acquainted with the Mesopotamian culture through vivid impressions, much as a tourist would gain when visiting a foreign country for the first time. All exaggerations aside, Bottero really manages to do a very good job of igniting the reader's interest in this part of the ancient world.

Jean Bottéro (30 August 1914 – 15 December 2007) was a French historian born in Vallauris. He was a major Assyriologist and a renowned expert on the Ancient Near East. He died in Gif-sur-Yvette. with Marie-Joseph Stève, Il était une fois la Mésopotamie, collection Découvertes Gallimard (nº 191), série Archéologie. Paris: Gallimard, 1993, reprint 2009. Babylone : À l'aube de notre culture, collection Découvertes Gallimard (nº 230), série Histoire. Paris: Gallimard, 1994.

Book Description: Jean Bottéro and his colleagues take the reader on a voyage of discovery into the public and private realms of the lives of our first civilized ancestors, looking at everyday life in Ancient Mesopotamia. eISBN: 978-0-7486-7930-0. Approaching a cultural system as complex and far removed from our own day as ancient Mesopotamia – the crowning glory of the ancient Near East – is somewhat difficult. Everyone agrees about that

Features of everyday Meopotamian life highlight the new sections of this book.

Features of everyday Meopotamian life highlight the new sections of this book. Both gourmet cuisine and popular cookery Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia, based on articles originally published in L'Histoire by Jean Bottéro, André Finet, Bertrand Lafont, and Georges Roux, presents new discoveries about this amazing Mesopotamian culture made during the past ten years. Features of everyday Meopotamian life highlight the new sections of this book.

Bottéro, Jean; Finet, André. The new information found in Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia makes a significant contribution, one that deepens our knowledge and understanding of this great, ancient civilization. Jean Bottéro is director of studies and chair of the Department of Assyriology at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris.

Jean Bottéro with contributions from André Finet, Bertrand Lafont . Features of everyday Meopotamian life highlight the new sections of this book

Jean Bottéro with contributions from André Finet, Bertrand Lafont, and Georges Roux, translated by Antonia Nevill. Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia, based on articles originally published in L'Histoire by Jean Bottéro, André Finet, Bertrand Lafont, and Georges Roux, presents new discoveries about this amazing Mesopotamian culture made during the past ten years. Format Paperback 288 pages.

Talk about Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia


Hidden Winter
The book covers many interesting topics written by various scholars others, and, as such, should have been listed as "edited by" J. Bottéro. Though the "author" includes many chapters on Mesopotamian cuisine, a book for which he deservedly received the Légion d'Honneur, those chapters are basically "blocked, cut and pasted' from that book, Textes Culinaires Mesopotamiens. His book on cooking was truly a major contribution both in his recognizing that the text was an ancient cookbook and deciphering some very difficult terms. Nonetheless, I expected new material and not chapters taken from another book.
GAMER
Some of the information was genuinely interesting but far too much space was spent on a few recipes and wine for my taste
Leyl
good and interesting book for research. Easy to read for a research book
Sharpbringer
Some interesting updates to what I learned in college about the subject. Very readable.
Shalinrad
Good info.
Frosha
"Everyday Life in Ancient Messopotamia" offers an interesting option to the general reader who is interested in Ancient Mesopotamia but is put off by most of the dry and academic texts that are currently available on this topic. As Bottero stated in his foreword, he wanted the reader to become acquainted with the Mesopotamian culture through vivid impressions, much as a tourist would gain when visiting a foreign country for the first time. All exaggerations aside, Bottero really manages to do a very good job of igniting the reader's interest in this part of the ancient world.

Although I felt that the chapters on food and wine were a bit overextended, the rest of the book provides a solid and entertaining discussion of Mesopotamia. The chapters dealing with women in Mesopotamian society were quite interesting, where Bottero suggests that women may have had more leverage power in dealing with men than would be suggested by the textual evidence. Additionally, Georges Roux's discussion of the origins of the Semiramis legend are equally appealing. One of the things that impressed me about this book was the ability of the various contributors to throw a new light on old ideas, thus allowing the reader to gain new insights. For example, one theory that made me think was Bottero's idea that the use of writing to communicate decrees made by the king may have prepared the Mesopotamians to accept the possibility that the gods might issue their decrees through the movements of the celestial bodies. And just as there were experts to read the texts, there originated the need to obtain experts in astrology who could interpret the heavenly bodies. I do not know if this is a widely supported idea in the Assyriological community, but nevertheless, the ability of the various contributors to communicate to the general reader is a definite strong point of this book.

I highly recommend this book as a good starting point to Mesopotamia, since it will leave the reader (like myself) wanting to learn more.
Jeyn
This book is a compilation - in translation - of essays written by Jean Bottero, along with those written by various authors whose qualifications are described on the back cover. It was not surprising to learn that Bottero is a distinguished chef, for I found the chapters on food and cooking to be especially fascinating. Fortunately for those of us interested in the ancient world of Mesopotamia, the Sumerians and others recorded ample, detailed narratives of their lives for us to translate and study.

The chapter on women's rights was particularly interesting, full of surprises about what privileges women were entitled to - or not. I also liked the chapters covering accounts of The Flood and the Legends of Gilgamesh. There is much to ponder in these discussions of how the Mesopotamians viewed the gods or of how we might view the origins of our own religions.

I would have appreciated more maps, charts or time lines, although there is a useful chronology at the end of the book.

Altogether I found this book extremely informative. It whets the appetite for reading more about those ancient peoples who carefully and fully recorded so much for us to contemplate.
Some of the essays are better than others but overall a fascinating gathering of detailed well researched interesting for ways into the deep past!
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