Em Babilônia, Paul Kriwaczek conta a história da antiga Mesopotâmia, desde as primeiras povoações, em torno de 5400 a.C., até a chegada dos persas no século VI a.C. O autor faz a crônica da ascensão e queda do reino babilônico durante esse período e analisa suas numerosas inovações materiais, sociais e culturais. O povo da Mesopotâmia lançou as bases do que hoje conhecemos como civilização – com o nascimento da escrita, do estado centralizado, da divisão do trabalho, da religião organizada, da matemática e da lei, entre muitas outras coisas fundamentais que nos servem até hoje. Nas cidades que construíram se desenrolou metade da história humana. No cerne da magistral narrativa de Kriwaczek está a glória da Babilônia ― “o portal dos deuses” ―, que teve seu apogeu no reinado do soberano amorita Hamurábi, que unificou a cidade entre 1800 e 1750 a.C. Embora o poder babilônico viesse a crescer e depois declinar nos séculos seguintes, a Babilônia preservou sua importância como centro cultural, religioso e político por mais de 4 mil anos.

I have to admit that at first I was skeptical about this book. Kriwaczek is regularly cited in other studies for his original views, but with his profile as a television producer I feared the worst. I previously had bad experiences with his colleagues R. Miles (Ancient World) and Michael Wood (In search of First Civilizations). Indeed, occasionally this book contains passages that needlessly turn history into a dramatic narrative. The author also follows the organic model of civilization, going from birth, to rise and bloom, ending with fall, which is strange so many years after Spengler and Toynbee. But at the same time, this book certainly is thoroughly researched, and it contains a number of views that are indeed stimulating. So, in the end a bit of a mixed feelings about this book. Rating 2.5 stars. A more detailed review in my History Account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3716358183 ( )

By some quirk, many Westerners habitually think of the Nile Valley in Egypt as the birthplace of civilization. I may be projecting a little, but until not too long ago, I operated from that point of view. With only slightly more exposure to archeology, we learn that that honor belongs to Mesopotamia. In a highly readable, persuasive text, Paul Kriwaczek recounts the beginning of what’s called the Urban Revolution, through the multiple cultures and empires that arose between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, to a final absorption by Cyrus the Great of Persia in about 323 BCE.

Near the shore of the Southern Sea, what we now call the Persian Gulf, many miles north of its current location, at some point prior to 4000 BCE, some people thought about the earth in a new way. Rather than try to adjust to seasonal and annual lotteries of rainfall, flood, and drought, they decided they would become the earth’s master, and improve it to further their own ends. So at a place called Eridu, they built a permanent edifice, visible above the sandy and windswept expanse of the surrounding steppe, a shrine to kingship which had descended from heaven. It was the first permanent signal of a modern human culture still alive in various ways and manifestations today.

Called the Urban Revolution, the making of cities was actually the least of this sea change in human affairs. As Kriwaczek says,

With the city came the centralized state, the hierarchy of social classes, the division of labour, organized religion, monumental building, civil engineering, writing, literature, sculpture, art, music, education, mathematics and law, not to mention a vast array of new inventions and discoveries, from items as basic as wheeled vehicles and sailing boats to the potter’s kiln, metallurgy, and the creation of synthetic materials. And on top of all that was the huge collection of notions and ideas so fundamental to our way of looking at the world, like the concept of numbers, or weight, quite independent of actual items counted or weighed, that we have long forgotten that they had to be discovered or invented. Southern Mesopotamia was the place where all that was first achieved.

Kriwaczek provides his stamp on his history, asking us to update our understanding of ancient civilized humans—what they believed, what they aspired to, how they reacted to stresses. Much of his narrative is given over to successive empire builders, the Sumerians, the Akkadians, and the Assyrians, among others, and to who was skilled and who bungled archeological digs, and how Assyrian and Babylonian geopolitics is reflected in the various books of the Old Testament.

If you are interested in Mesopotamia, the Cradle of Civilization, this is an excellent entry point. Written by a lay person for lay people, it is a very useful and concise recap of the fateful moment when people decided to socialize in permanent settlements, and the broad sweep of human history which followed. There are probably other, more detailed speculations about Babylon’s precincts, architecture, and plan, but they will be just that, speculations. As Kriwaczek laments, the truly glorious city was wiped away in a flood, and its foundations are lost to history. ( )

I've wanted to read something about ancient Mesopotamia for quite some time and after looking through reviews I decided on this book due to its "accessibility". Retrospectively perhaps I should have looked for something a bit more "academic". The author, irritatingly in my opinion, constantly kept trying to throw in analogies to more current times -- you could hardly get through two pages without a comment on how a particular phenomenon was similar to the USSR or England during the Industrialization, ect. I am content with my knowledge of those times - just tell me about the Mesopotamians already! Research on the author shows he was a well know documentary writer, I feel that this lead to a lot of his stylistic approach. I suppose your opinion of this book more or less boils down to how you like history presented to you -- I just prefer something more along the traditional academic history framework. ( )

3.5. ( )