Ancestor of the West

Foreword by François Zabbal
Translator's Note
PART ONE: RELIGION AND REASONING IN MESOPOTAMIA
Jean Bottéro
1. The Birth of Civilization
2. First Writing
3. The Intelligence of the World
4. The Gods: A Reasonable Religion
PART TWO: WRITING BETWEEN VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE WORLDS IN IRAN, ISRAEL, AND GREECE
Clarisse Herrenschmidt
5. Elamite Civilization and Writing
6. Consonant Alphabets, the Greek Alphabet, and Old Persian Cuneiform
7. Old Persian Cuneiform: Writing as Cosmological Ritual and Text
Writing—and Some Thoughts on Hebrew and Greek
PART THREE: WRITING AND CIVIL RELIGION IN GREECE
Jean-Pierre Vernant
9. Myths and Reasonings
10. The Polis: Shared Power
Notes
Bibliography
Index