The Ancient Near East Quotes

“Her house, or temple (the word for both was the same in ancient Mesopotamia)”
― Amanda H. Podany, The Ancient Near East: A Very Short Introduction

“With Cyrus’s victory, the era of Mesopotamian independence was over. Local culture changed only slowly after the Persian conquest, but in time cuneiform writing and the Akkadian language fell out of use, and the temples to the great Mesopotamian gods were abandoned. Someone must have melted down the gold statues of the gods, no longer fearing their wrath. The evidence for the splendid ancient Near Eastern culture eroded gradually away, the rivers changed their courses, and dirt and sand blew over the ancient cities. Thousands of years passed before modern excavations began and the world once more became aware of its first civilization.”
― Amanda H. Podany, The Ancient Near East: A Very Short Introduction

“Sumerian was not the only language spoken in southern Mesopotamia (the region known as Sumer). Akkadian, the Semitic language of central Mesopotamia, showed up in subtle ways as well.”
― Amanda H. Podany, The Ancient Near East: A Very Short Introduction

“The kings had, however, begun to realize its potential for extending communication, in an almost magical way, beyond what could be accomplished with the spoken word. Writing could perpetually and eternally address an audience on a king’s behalf; the words were always there, even when the king was not thinking about them. Given that the population was almost entirely illiterate, such an audience was mostly made up of gods. The statuette of the king’s personal god (or sometimes of the king himself), inscribed with the same text as the tablet, could therefore pray continuously in a way that a real person could not.”
― Amanda H. Podany, The Ancient Near East: A Very Short Introduction