Book Review
BENJAMIN R. FOSTER & KAREN POLINGER FOSTER. Civilizations of ancient Iraq. xii+298 pages, 25 illustrations. 2009. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press; 978-0-691-13722-3 hardback £18.95 & $26.95.
Review by Joan Oates
McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, UK
(Email: jlo29@cam.ac.uk)
This is a delightful book, which provides an elegantly written introduction to Mesopotamia's past not only throughout the conventional phases of Mesopotamian ancient history but also in more recent times including the Hellenistic, Parthian, Sasanian and Byzantine periods often ignored in such books. The fact that one author is an Assyriologist, the other a classical scholar is clearly a great advantage, well employed. The overall format involves generalised history brought to life by a clever use of excerpts from ancient texts neatly woven into a volume that is genuinely a pleasure to read.
The first chapter provides a useful if rather conventional geographical and prehistoric background. The second focuses on Uruk, unquestionably the greatest early city yet excavated, whose great size and importance survive not only in the Epic of Gilgamesh (p. 17), one of many surviving cuneiform texts, but also in the excavations themselves. It could perhaps have been noted that access to early occupation levels in the great Mesopotamian cities is not always archaeologically possible, at least without the destruction of important overlying structures. We are fortunate to have such extensive evidence from Warka, but we cannot be certain that there are no other comparable early cities, especially since Uruk fails to continue in this role.
The subsequent chapters focus on the city-states of the early third millennium, followed by the Akkadian Empire and continuing through the Assyrians, Neo-Babylonians, Achaemenids, Seleucids, Parthians, Romans, Sasanians, concluding with Byzantium and the arrival of Islam. The inclusion of well-informed chapters describing the Hellenistic and later phases of Mesopotamian history is especially welcome, and it is here that the combination of a Mesopotamian and a Classical scholar is particularly valuable. Not only is the book extremely well-written, it covers a genuinely broad sweep of the history of ancient Mesopotamia. Certainly it is the most well-informed and readable volume now available.
The final chapter reviews more recent events from early travellers to the British Mandate, Gertrude Bell, and the tragic events of recent years. Criticism of such an excellent book seems churlish, but there is one error that must be noted (below) and the credits in the illustration captions are strange, though this would seem to be the fault of Yale Photographic Services (p. xii). For example, a photograph actually taken by me at a site where I was much involved in the excavations (fig. 13, the well-known glass beaker from Tell al Rimah) is credited to Michael Roaf, while the Nimrud ivories and other objects from British and German expeditions are attributed to Paolo Matthiae, credits simply representing the books from which the publisher obtained the photographs. Certainly it should have been clear that the beaker copyright, for example, continues to belong to 'David and Joan Oates' (Roaf 1990, Cultural atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East: 229).
The one correction involves the date that the formal 'division' of excavated antiquities came to an end, which was not 1967 (p. 204) but 1974 (Sumer 30 1974, 8, article 49). This is not a trivial error since it is relevant to legally obtained material from divisions of antiquities after 1967 and now in Western as well as Iraqi museums. Moreover, friendly contact with Iraqi archaeologists did not cease after the 1967 war. With the permission of the Residence Police my husband and I continued to live in Baghdad and, together with visiting Russian archaeologists, excavated at Choga Mami in the autumn and winter of 1967/68. We also worked at Tell al Rimah in 1968 and 1969. From these excavations we legally exported both sherds and objects, now in a number of museums in England and America. During this time we received nothing but friendly help and advice from the Directorate-General of Antiquities. Furthermore, although there were occasional problems, archaeological work by foreign expeditions continued in the 1970s and 1980s, and not only confined to rescue projects (see the Iraqi journal Sumer). In the 1990s sanctions caused great suffering to the population in general, but our contact with Iraqi friends was not hindered. Indeed the 'Babylon Festivals' which were renewed at that time provided a continuing and friendly contact with Iraqi colleagues, despite the small rations and other sanctions difficulties.
These two criticisms should in no way affect the genuine value of this book, however. It provides not only an extremely readable but also an unusually well-informed account, written by two distinguished scholars and much to be recommended to students, teachers and the wider public.
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