In between the never ending football, starting soon once again, I have found time to read another interesting book about the days of long ago. Paul Kriwaczek's book on 'Babylon' is more than 'Babylon' this book stretches back to Eridu and works its way forward to Babylon and onwards...
The author himself was born in 1937 and his mother was imprisoned along with her son in 1939 for the crime of being Jewish. Somehow she escaped and ended up in London. Paul remained proud of his Yiddish heritage with his own views on their origins.
Kriwaczek spent some 25 year working for the BBC, which explains some of his outlook, mostly for the World Service and with an Asian slant. However he trained as a dentist and then travelled widely. He produced many TV programmes of an educational type and I doubt they would get a chance of broadcast today. Too intelligent for those running the Corporation now.
I liked this book but found that while he traced the route form Eridu 5000 BC up towards Babylon he appeared to have a lot of his own opinions to add. His secular humanist approach in which he has already decided that the bible, and he only quoted the Old Testament, the bible had grown out of the gods invented by man down in Sumer in days of yore and their story had become Genesis. This is not an unusual approach, some clergy run towards this, and its main fault is the lack of the supernatural. This approach is popular because it means man is in charge and God will not intervene, therefore we can do what we like, there will be no judgement, we are king! Sadly having died recently he has found out too late his mistake.
His approach explains his use of the cringing BCE and CE dates, an idea introduced by middle class white people to put down Christianity rather than the idea of considering all peoples as they claim.
This spoiled his book which offered a good deal of interesting details about Uruk, Assyria and the like as they grew, fell, grew again, and finally disappeared. While well worth a read the author is neither a historian nor an archaeologist and in my mind this reveals why too many of his own opinions fill the book.
Something that I always avoid...
I much preferred 'Mesopotamia' by Gwendolyn Leick. and she had her own opinions also but much better evidenced.
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