Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization

Babylon by Paul Kriwaczek is certainly not modest in its choice of subject: Mesopotamian history from 3000 to 500 B.C. But it is somewhat like histories of Western civilization that begin with Athens and go on to describe post Cold War America and Europe. So many distinct cultures, so many technological innovations, so many dramatis personae that all one gets is a briefly drawn sketch of each era. For the non-specialist this may be sufficient. But for one who wants to take in the wafts from the Hanging Gardens it comes up somewhat short.Kriwaczek likes to focus on the cultural gifts of the Babylonians. Thus not only cuneiform and the first multinational empire are Babylonian but also the modern notion of freedom, the wheel, monotheism, etc. It’s almost as if Kriwaczek was a cultural salesman trying to convince the reader that everything important in Western civilization is Babylonian in origin.Questions like the Babylonian influence on Judaica are, however, barely touched upon. Similarly the cultural links between pre-Homeric Greece and Babylon are dismissed with a mere few sentences.What one gets is an elegant plea for respecting the civilizations between the Tigris and Euphrates. What one does not get is a serious introduction to Babylonian civilization and its cultural descendants. For this reader this was somewhat disappointing but others may like this more cursory perspective. Those who want a deeper dive must still turn to more academic treatments.

Almost went to four stars because the illustrations in the paperback edition were not as easy to read as they might have been. But, not the author's fault, and honestly, this guy is pretty amazing. He gives you a sweeping overview of something I know little about, though I had plenty of Latin and Greek in college. In fact, that is part of his point: the history of Mesopotamia was erased, partly because of the shift from cuneiform to the alphabet. That fact alone is worth the price of the book. If you like history at all, you'd have to like this book. Kriwaczek seems to know everything (where did he learn so much about so much?). And yet, he keeps it interesting. I get that it's a lot of history to get into one book, but it's hard to imagine telling such a long and complicated story any better than he does it.

The author (too boldly) weaves his narrative around to make some apparently connected points, and some of his ideas are intriguing, even a bit inspiring, but the reader is left with a lot of gaps in the actual history and I could have done without most of these asides entirely. I also feel that the author seldom expressed himself as simply as he could have, adding to the chore of reading. If some of this meandering had been trimmed there would have been room to better introduce the periods covered. Someone who has read a little more exhaustively on the subject might find some new food for thought in it but for anyone seeking an adequate foundation for the study of ancient Sumeria to build on I can't unfortunately recommend it.

The author uses a 'popular documentary' style, switching between current events/recent history, myths and stories, and the real meat of the book -- the history of ancient Sumeria and the Babylonians who followed them. I'd been searching for just such a book for quite a while. He makes a special effort to recreate a vivid sense of what life was like and discusses theories of how their first brilliant inventions were conceived and developed. The civilization is pretty much in full swing when he begins -- he does not spend much time in the development of agriculture, but still gives a brief overview of development from hunter-gathering, pastoralism, and early village life to full-blown urban civilization. I highly recommend the book.

I have a long time interest in this period of history. This book is well written and easy to read. It reminds one of the old proverb "The more things change the more things remain unchanged". I found it especially intriguing for example how the story of Moses being placed in a basket by his mother shortly after birth was written in the exact same manner 1000 years earlier! These people from some 3-5 thousand years ago were just like us in the present time with the same strengths and foibles as we. If you could take a child born back then, the child would grow no different from us in todays time.

This book shows how the distant past has much to teach us, and one thing that caught me by surprise was that the financial system was every bit as complex as ours (futures and all), and it's impressive because they did it without computers. A scribe was a combination lawyer/ banker drawing up contracts, and all they had was their memory, a stick and slabs of clay. Their free-wheeling economic system crashed and burned too, usually resulting in people having to sell themselves or other family members into slavery to cover their debts. Fortunately we have now have bankruptcy as an option and have done away with the slavery, but you can see that either way there is no happy ending. It's too bad this isn't widely known or maybe someone might have spotted the parallels with our own situation in time to avert trouble.The book is packed with fascinating facts and you learn a lot about why the Middle East is the way it is. Some thinking that seems backward to us makes perfect sense when you find out the context and back-story; we still may not agree with it but at least we will understand it better. This should be a text book used in grade school when studying about the earliest civilizations instead of the boring stuff they're using now. I love history and reading but was put off this subject in school years ago due to the horrible text books, and only started reading about the period again after taking an art history course- the images drew me in. These people are interesting, and Mr. Kriwaczek makes it clear that there were some real characters. After all, history is the never-ending story of what actual people did, and it should be a crime to squeeze the life out of it. That's not a problem with this book and I enjoyed learning from it.

Many books about ancient (and even dark age) history get bogged down in describing clay jars and broken shields found in archaelogical digs in the 1920s, with very little human interest history to be found in them. Whilst this book does refer to archaelogical findings, it keeps the narrative going so that it is both entertaining and informative. It also links the past to the present, showing how the customs and ideaology of a civilisation 5000+ years old still have all sorts of repercussions today.Covers history from the start of civilisation in Mesopotamia right up to the advent of the upstart Persians.Recommended.

Kriwaczek starts his book with a quote form Quentin Skinner to that history that does not inform the present day is little more than self-indulgent antiquarianism. He completely misunderstands this as licence to make repeated and absurd analogies (that the Babylonians and others had a financial system very much like our own, that various state-centred societies were similar to the Soviet Union, or China, or that leaders were like Mao, that that a state was proto-liberal and out "outsourced" its functions). Generally, Mesopotamians of 5000-2000 BCE are treated as people who think much like us (it is rather like the history book version of the Flintstones). As bad, things that really need to be commented upon (the emergence of money and trade, and form of property ownership) are naturalised - they are things that exist now and the assumption here is that they have always existed. As Prof. Skinner would agree, the first job of history is to understand something from the sources and in its own turn, not to slather on a layer of inappropriate and false comparison.

Full of completely inappropriate editorialising and forced analogies with current politics. A very weird 'history' book, I would certainly not recommend this to students wanting an introduction to the subject. I am still searching for a good overall treatment of this fascinating subject.

Some parts are good but there are a lot of inaccuracies as described in other comments.The constant analogies to modern times were just not making it for me. I found them overstretched and dubious.It also does not flow and several times, the reader finds himself lost and without directions.Some bits are good though and I learned a few things but in the end a tedious read.

Rather than focussing on Babylon, the author narrates the story of ancient Mesopotamia from when it saw its earliest known settlements (around 5400 BC) to the 6th century BC Persian Babylon. It’s a proper chronological account of how cites rose and fell, along with their ruling classes and dynasties. Cultural, societal and technical advancements are being discussed as well. Keep in mind that many straightforward aspects of human society in general were probably first seen here; a centralised state, written laws, mathematics, organised religion, division of labour, education. But also more tangible aspects like the use of bricks, the wheel, civil engineering project leading to monumental building.Babylon had its most prominent era under Amorite king Hammurabi, who unified Babylonia between 1800 and 1750 BC. Though afterward it always kept a religious and political function until it fell in 539 BC to Cyrus the Great of Persia in 539 BC. The book gives a good impression about the Babylonian power during these centuries. However only about 80 pages of the 280 pages are dedicated to Babylon itself, which is not so strange given that Babylon was only a part of the Mesopotamia cutler and world and not much of it is left. The book tells more about the earlier Sumerian and Assyrian Empires, and the biblical Neo Babylonian Empire rather than Babylon as a city in its heyday.Secondly, to me it was an enjoyable read but at the same time not more than update of Gwendolyn Leick’s excellent and Trip Advisor-esque work on Mesopotamia from about 15 years ago.Lastly, as this is a so called popular-history book I would have appreciated illustrations and art. The centrefold photos are a helpful visual aid, and the cuneiform explanation is very helpful. But it was disappointing that they weren't in colour and it remains pretty minimal. Books like these would massively benefit from timeline graphs, dress examples and schematics of cities, buildings and art - just to bring the imagination to life even more. After all pictures and graphs often say more than a 1000 words. Yet, this appears to remain a taboo in academic circles, even in this digital age where digital books defy costly and complex printing restrictions.Nevertheless I found this a very interesting book and the author’s smooth style of writing was very engaging. This popular history book is an easy read but it didn’t expand my existing knowledge about Mesopotamia or Babylon that much. Even so, this is a great book for anyone who is looking for an introduction about the Mesopotamian world and the emergence of the early civilisation. This will give you a good perspective on how Babylon was part of that. I quite liked the author’s vivid and plausible depictions of imagined events when these ancient cities were at the summit of their development. This will assist readers that are new to the material to understand the ancient backdrop and atmosphere.