Review The Greatness That Was Babylon

Saggs, H.W.F., The Greatness That Was Babylon, New York and Scarborough: A Mentor Book, 1962

 

The Greatness That Was Babylon by H.W.F. Saggs is a dense volume that reads like a college textbook for all the good and bad that implies. It has chapters on all different aspects of ancient Mesopotamia to the Babylonian period from history to culture to religion to literature to even mathematics. It goes into great depth into each, but all may not be of interest.

 

The start of the book immediately lets the reader know what they are in for. It starts with the settlement of Paleolithic Man in modern day Iraq. The birth of agriculture around 8^th Century B.C. in Mesopotamia and then all the people and civilizations that were based upon it. There’s the start of city states and then empires. Wave after wave of people from the Semites to the Medes to the Persians all arrived over the centuries. The list of cities, kings and invaders is seemingly endless. You need a score sheet to keep track of who is who and where the author is talking about. Saggs is obviously a master of the subject. The problem is The Greatness That Was Babylon is so packed with information it is very easy to get lost in the text.

 

There is also such a diversity of subjects covered in the tome not all seem necessary for the average reader. For example, Saggs goes through a math problem to show how far mathematics had advanced during the Old Babylonian period. I’m not sure someone reading the book for history will be excited by an entire chapter on that subject.

 

One of the better sections is on how ancient Mesopotamia has influenced Western civilization. Elements of astronomy and math came from that period such as the idea of looking at your daily horoscope and the Pythagorean Theorem was known by at least the Old Babylonian period. The great flood in the Bible had its origins in stories from Mesopotamia. The Garden of Eden might have been in Iraq as well. There are also words in modern English that are derivative from these older civilizations. Mesopotamia is known as the cradle of civilization and it’s important to know that it still reaches all the way to the present.

 

The Greatness That Was Babylon is not for the novice. It can easily overwhelm the reader and interest may ebb and flow from chapter to chapter. It was also published in 1962 so a lot more research and discovers have been made since then. On the other hand, it does cover a huge amount of material and can be a good reference guide or the start of further research.

 

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