From an Antique Land: An Introduction to Ancient Near Eastern Literature

by Carl S. Ehrlich (Editor), Gary M. Beckman (Contributor), Benjamin R. Foster (Contributor)

Many of the world's first written records have been found in the area of the Ancient Near East, in what is today known as the Middle East. While many people are familiar with the ancient Israelite literature recorded in the Hebrew Bible, most Near Eastern literature remains a mystery. From an Antique Land lifts the veil from these fascinating writings, explaining the ancient stories in the context of their cultures. From the invention of writing through the conquest of Alexander the Great, expert scholars examine literature originally written in Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, Ugaritic, Canaanite, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Each chapter includes an overview of the culture, a discussion of literary genres, and descriptions and short analyses of the major literary works. Photos of archaeological remains further illustrate these people and their writings.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

522 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Apocryphal Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book offers a survey of ancient near eastern literature from the earliest writings in the third millennium BC to 323 BC, the end of the rule of Alexander the Great.

It's broken into 8 chapters; an introduction and seven chapters each dealing with Sumerian, Egyptian, Akkadian, Hittite, Canaanite, Hebrew, and Aramaean literature. Each chapter varies slightly in terms of content, but they all cover the history of the period in brief (some much more than others), offer some instruction on how the language in question works, and then offer a summary of the representative works. Where there are few such works (i.e. Canaanite, Aramaic) actual translations from primary sources are offered, but where there are many (Sumerian, Akkadian, Hebrew) the reader must satisfy herself with a summary.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book and read through it much faster than expected. Those sections where I have more familiarity with the culture (Sumer/Akkad, Hittite, Canaan, and Israel) went much quicker, while those with which I am less familiar (Egyptian and Aramaian) were much slower, I have to conclude that readers will enjoy this book much more if they already have some foundation in Ancient Near Eastern History. The sections on the Akkadians, Hittites, Canaanites, and Israelites will probably be the most accessible. The others bog down somewhat in trying to describe the structure of the language, especially the Aramaean section which contains sections that say things like "...some features make the script very hard to interpret. As a result, because the Demotic scribe could not distinguish between the different dental or velar stops... and the fricative dentals... there is also no distinction made between these important Aramaic phonemes."

But the sections I liked, I really liked. The discussion on the structure of the Sumerian language describes it better than any I've so far read. The chapter on Akkadian writings discusses several pieces that aren't covered elsewhere. The chapter on Canaanite literature contains many excellent translations. The survey of Egyptian literature has a very nice summary of all the different kinds of scripts that the Egyptian language was written it. And all sections point to further reading - the best anthologies of ancient writing on the market - so I feel like I learned a lot from this volume.

If there's anything missing from this volume, it's some discussion of the remaining writings of the ancient near east: Luwian, Hurrian (though several Hurrian texts are covered in the Canaanite and Hittite chapters), Elamite, Eblaite, and Urartian. These may all offer too small a body of work to provive a literary survey, but I still would have liked to have seem some discussion of them - at least to acknowledge them.

In the final analysis, his book delivers on it's promises, though it isn't as comprehensive as it might be. Readers of Ancient Near Eastern History will find something new and interesting in here. Newcomers to the field are advised to start elsewhere, though.

[Jerome · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every chapter was great except Ehrlich's, whose obvious liberal bias does not compare to the good scholarship exhibited throughout the rest of the book.