Harriet E. W. Crawford

This is scientific synthesis at its best: an overview of just about everything we know about the “Sumerian world”, solid, up-to-date, well illustrated, covering all themes, while also balanced, nuanced and indicating the magnitude of the uncertainties and even gaps in our knowledge of this earliest human civilization. I didn't have time to read all the contributions, I went through many diagonally, but they all seem of the highest scientific level, albeit a bit too detailed at times. If you really want to know everything about the Sumerian world, this is an absolute must. Of course, keep in mind that new discoveries are constantly being made in this field and the insights regularly shift, as the contributors to this book also indicate. At the same time, there is a warning: the title gives the impression that the Sumerian world was a homogeneous whole (one people, one language, one culture), and in many other works this impression is sometimes reinforced but nothing could be further from the truth. Fortunately, this book also sets this right. More on this in my History-account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5004590028.… (altro)

Smoothly written study that has a rather schoollike feel, contains limited illustration material and makes far too little reference to maps or plans. In essence, Crawford restricts herself to an overview of the excavations made by British archaeologist Leonard Woolley in the 1920s-1930s. Through the endless enumerations of the architectural elements that have been uncovered, Crawford fails at all to give us an insight into life in and around Ur, in the 3rd millennium BCE. It is illustrative that the subtitle of this book does refer to the cult of the moon god, but that the study itself provides little information about it. More on Ur, in the review in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4740514827… (altro)