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Title: The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age (Revealing Antiquity, 5) by Walter Burkert, Margaret E. Pinder ISBN: 0-674-64364-X Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: August, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Ancient Greeks In Context
Comment: First, let's make clear what Burkert does NOT say. This book does not argue that the Greeks are an offshoot of some middle eastern civilization, or that Greek genius was merely a late and relocated flowering of Egyptian or some other oriental genius. Burkert in no way detracts from the greatness and the uniqueness of the Greeks.
What he does is remove them from their isolation. He does this by showing a number of points where the Greeks, in the early Archaic Age, borrowed from the cultures around them or at least shared common beliefs or practices.
The book is divided into three chapters, each organized around a class of people through whom East-West contacts occurred: craftsmen, seers / healers (workers in the sacred), and poets / singers. Burkert in each chapter reviews archaeological, literary and philological evidence for cultural contacts or "continuum". And the evidence is not overwhelming, but it is considerable.
The achievement of _The Orientalizing Revolution_ is not to knock the Greeks off their pedestal. It is to help us better understand the Greeks, by seeing some aspects of their culture in a broader light and by teaching us to apply insights from other lands and peoples to the Greeks. This makes Burkert a worthy heir to Jane Ellen Harrison, for instance, and well worth reading.
Rating: 5
Summary: Bringing an end to the Eurocentric version of history
Comment: This is a great book. Due to a number of trends in scholarshipon ancient history over the last two or three hundred years, thehistory of ancient Greece has been grossly distorted. The Near Eastern origin of much of the culture of ancient Greece was a recognized reality in ancient times. Until modern times, the foreign origin of ancient Greece according to ancient sources continued to be acknowledged, but that trend changed with the advent of the European nationalistic tendencies of the eighteenth century, which began increasingly to highlight Greece as the "cradle of civilization."
However, over the last sixty years, these prejudices have undergone a barrage of new findings. It appears that the ancient sources were correct. Walter Burkert, one of the foremost scholars of this century on the culture and religion of ancient Greece, examines the process by which Greece came to be imparted, in fact inundated, with Near Eastern cultural elements. Burkert's is now one of several books which should transform of conception of Greek civilization. I would also recommend the more detailed "The East Face of Helicon" by M. L. West, and "Alien Wisdom" by Arnoldo Momigliano...
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Title: Greek Religion by Walter Burkert, John Raffan ISBN: 0674362810 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1987 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth by Walter Burkert, Peter Bing ISBN: 0520058755 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: February, 1987 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions by Walter Burkert ISBN: 0674175700 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1998 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: The East Face of Helicon: West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth by M. L. West ISBN: 0198152213 Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr on Demand Pub. Date: April, 1999 List Price(USD): $75.00 |
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Title: Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual by Walter Burkert ISBN: 0520047702 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: November, 1982 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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