The Ancient Crucible

Abstract

The region of the world that the ancient Greeks called Mesopotamia (land ‘between the rivers’) and that we know today as Iraq was a fount of civilisation — a veritable crucible, cockpit, cradle, womb of cultural progress (the metaphors run through the books). Here it was that restless tribes and peoples jostled for land and power, contending with their neighbours, being shaped by defeats, successful conquests, and the collisions of different cultures. Here it was that the first cities were born, writing began, and the first codified legal systems were established. Here it was — through such ancient lands as Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia and Assyria — that the vital cultural brew was stirred, the quite remarkable concoction from which Western civilisation would emerge. We often tend to begin the chronicle of Western culture with the achievements of the classical world but it is worth remembering that the Greco-Roman states owe much to the ancient worlds of Egypt and Mesopotamia, as far removed in time from them as Greece and Rome are from the nation states of the modern era. We may reflect also that a modern Iraqi is entitled to contemplate with awe and pride the fructifying richness of the cultures that first emerged in his land more than five thousand years ago.