Our ancestors, the Mesopotamians, invented writing and with it a new way of looking at the world. In this book, the eminent French scholar Jean Bottero attempts to go back to that moment, the very beginning of history. A collection of related essays, Mesopotamia serves as an introduction to the major questions that arise in studying the ancient Middle East during its period of high civilization, c.3000-300 B.C. Bottero underscores the living legacy of Babylonian ways of thinking, analyzing, and organizing the universe, finding the first whispers of Western philosophy in the enormous treasure of cuneiform tablets that until now were only inventoried by scholars like himself. To give a reader some sense of how Mesopotamian civilization has been mediated and interpreted in its transmission through time, Bottero begins with an account of Assyriology, the discipline devoted to this ancient culture. This transmission, compounded of countless discoveries, would not have been possible without the surprising decipherment of the cuneiform writing system, an exceptional adventure that Bottero describes. He shows how this particular form of writing, based on mnemonic characters, informed the Mesopotamians' entire system of knowledge. Bottero also focuses on divination in the ancient world, contending that certain modes of worship in Mesopotamia, in their application of causality and proof, prefigure the "scientific mind". To elucidate the Mesopotamian's conception of law, justice, and monarchial power, Bottero examines "The 'Code' of Hammurabi" as if through the eyes of its authors and readers. He shows how this conception found its way into the religious system of Mesopotamia, then traces throughthis system the notion of transcendence that culminated in the absolute monotheism of the ancient Israelites. Finally, Bottero examines the Mesopotamians' mythology of death to reveal the oldest foundations of our own traditional ideas about the "final end". What emerges from these essays is a compelling picture of the distant birth of the Western world. Characterized by Bottero's customary eloquence and penetrating insight, Mesopotamia should entertain and inform specialists and general readers alike.