This volume presents the original texts and annotated translations of a collection of Mesopotamian wisdom compositions and related texts of the Late Bronze Age (ca. 1500–1200 B.C.E.) found at the ancient Near Eastern sites of Hattuša, Emar, and Ugarit. These wisdom compositions constitute the missing link between the great Sumerian wisdom corpus and early Akkadian wisdom literature of the Old Babylonian period, on the one hand, and the wisdom compositions of the first millennium B.C.E., on the other. Included here are works such as the Ballad of Early Rulers, Hear the Advice, and The Date-Palm and the Tamarisk, as well as proverb collections from Ugarit and Hattuša. A detailed introduction provides an assessment of the place of wisdom literature in the ancient curriculum and library collections.

In Babylonian studies 'Wisdom' is used to cover a group of texts similar in scope to the Biblical Wisdom books: discussions on the problem of suffering, teaching on the good life, fables or contest literature, and proverbs.

The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once said that all of Western philosophy was "but a series of footnotes to Plato." By the same token, one could argue that all of Western civilization is but an extension of the ancient Greek cultural legacy. The Greeks invented tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, history, philosophy, and democracy. They also made remarkable advances in science, medicine, and mathematics. In the author’s view, what ties this wide-ranging intellectual ferment together is a restless search for wisdom. The author looks at ten outstanding examples of Greek wisdom, offering fresh and engaging portraits of the epic poets (Homer, Hesiod); dramatists (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes); historians (Herodotus, Thucydides); and philosophers (Plato, Aristotle) against the background of Greek history. In each case he asks what the author has to tell us— regardless of genre—about our place in the world and how we should live our lives. By surveying some of the highest peaks of ancient civilization, the author argues that we gain perspective on the historical terrain that lies below. This book presents an eloquent and convincing case that a study of the Greek classics, as Gustave Flaubert explained, makes us "greater, wiser, purer."

"Wonderful…a thoughtful discussion of what made [the Greeks] so important, in their own time and in ours." —Natalie Haynes, Independent The ancient Greeks invented democracy, theater, rational science, and philosophy. They built the Parthenon and the Library of Alexandria. Yet this accomplished people never formed a single unified social or political identity. In Introducing the Ancient Greeks, acclaimed classics scholar Edith Hall offers a bold synthesis of the full 2,000 years of Hellenic history to show how the ancient Greeks were the right people, at the right time, to take up the baton of human progress. Hall portrays a uniquely rebellious, inquisitive, individualistic people whose ideas and creations continue to enthrall thinkers centuries after the Greek world was conquered by Rome. These are the Greeks as you’ve never seen them before.

An up-to-date, systematic depiction of Bronze Age societies of the Levant, their evolution, and their interactions and entanglements with neighboring regions.

In early Greek and Near Eastern myth and religion, the gods govern the cosmos. In narrative poetry, they are frequently portrayed through scenes of divine assembly. Did Homer and early Greek poets inherit this feature from their more ancient neighbours? And what can comparison tell us besides? This book is the first to chart divine assembly scenes in ancient Babylonian and early Greek epic. It asks why similarities between the two corpora exist, and exploits those similarities to enhance understanding of Mesopotamian and early Greek literature and religion. The book discusses Sumerian narrative poems, the Akkadian works Atra-ḫasīs, Anzû, Enūma eliš, Erra and Išum and the Epic of Gilgameš; Homer's Iliad, the Odyssey, Hesiod's Theogony and some Homeric Hymns. It studies poetic technique and probes further comparisons with Sanskrit, Old Norse, Polynesian, and Aztec mythology. It argues that Greek speakers are unlikely to have inherited the divine assembly from the Near East. Still, one can posit a long-term process of oral contact and communication fostered by common poetic structures and religious affinities. In a second part pursuing a mythological and religious comparison, the book concentrates on ideas about the cosmos and humankind, and on power dynamics within the pantheon as well as between gods and mortals. A focus on the head of the pantheon and on concepts of divine prerogatives illuminates culture-specific differences which can be related to historical socio-political discourses. The book develops a systematic approach to questions of cross-cultural literary comparison in the ancient world.