Jean Bottero – författare

With "Ancestor of the West", three distinguished French historians reveal the story of the birth of writing and reason, demonstrating how the logical and religious structures of Near Eastern and Mesopotamian cultures served as precursors to those of the West.

One of the world's foremost experts on Assyriology, Jean Bottéro has studied the religion of ancient Mesopotamia for more than fifty years. Building on these many years of research, Bottéro here presents the definitive account of one of the world's oldest known religions. He shows how ancient Mesopotamian religion was practiced both in the public and private spheres, how it developed over the three millennia of its active existence, and how it profoundly influenced Western civilization, including the Hebrew Bible.

The Mesopotamians invented writing and with it a new way of looking at the world. In this collection of essays, the French scholar Jean Bottero attempts to go back to the moment which marks the very beginning of history. To give the 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 the ancient culture. Bottero focuses on divination in the ancient world, contending that certain modes of worship in Mesopotamia, in their application of casuality and proof, prefigure the "scientific mind."

In this intriguing blend of the commonplace and the ancient, Jean Bottero presents the first extensive look at the delectable secrets of Mesopotamia. Bottero's broad perspective takes us inside the religious rites, everyday rituals, attitudes and taboos, and even the detailed preparation techniques involving food and drink in Mesopotamian high culture during the second and third millenniums BCE, as the Mesopotamians recorded them. Offering everything from translated recipes for pigeon and gazelle stews to the contents of medicinal teas and broths and the origins of ingredients native to the region, this book reveals the cuisine of one of history's most fascinating societies. Links to the modern world, along with incredible re-creations of a rich, ancient culture through its cuisine, make Bottero's guide an entertaining and mesmerizing read.

In this intriguing blend of the commonplace and the ancient, Jean Bottero presents the first extensive look at the delectable secrets of Mesopotamia. Bottero's broad perspective takes us inside the religious rites, everyday rituals, attitudes and taboos, and even the detailed preparation techniques involving food and drink in Mesopotamian high culture during the second and third millenniums BCE, as the Mesopotamians recorded them. Offering everything from translated recipes for pigeon and gazelle stews to the contents of medicinal teas and broths and the origins of ingredients native to the region, this book reveals the cuisine of one of history's most fascinating societies. Links to the modern world, along with incredible re-creations of a rich, ancient culture through its cuisine, make Bottero's guide an entertaining and mesmerizing read.

For many people today, the Hebrew Bible is the one supreme channel through which the Word of God was transmitted to humanity. In The Birth of God, Jean Bottéro, one of the world’s leading figures in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, approaches the Bible from a different perspective. He sees in it an astounding variety of documents that reveal much of their time of origin, historical events, and climates of thought. Therefore, we owe to the Bible at least the same respect we give to Homer, Shakespeare, and other classics of world literature. The Birth of God addresses questions that "educated people" usually avoid when the topic of the Bible comes up: What is the Bible if we consider it a historical document? Bottéro is fully aware of the special place the Bible has in the circles of many faithful Jews and Christians, but he focuses on the need for an understanding of Israel as a major root of our entire Western tradition. With grace and insight, he brings out the extraordinary originality of Israel’s questions and ideas, many of which have shaped our thinking ever since. In Bottéro’s hands, Moses, Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other familiar figures take on real life and present to us thoughts we might never have associated with the Bible. He also treats such topics as the origins of the world according to the Bible and original sin. In one remarkable chapter, Bottéro offers a new translation of Ecclesiastes, which casts this biblical book in an entirely new light. Bottéro is a scholar of rare abilities. Internationally respected for his work as a philologist, literary critic, and historian, he is also adept at writing for a popular audience. The Birth of God has been widely read in France, where it was first published in 1986. With this expert translation, English-speaking readers can now enjoy the book for the first time. Upon reading it, many a reader is likely to reflect: "Whenever I have said ‘God,’ in whatever tone of voice, could I ever have meant anyone else than the God of the Bible?"

The civilization of Ancient Mesopotamia flourished between 3300 BC and 2000 BC in the southern half of the lands between and to either side of the Tigris and Euphrates, where a vast grain harvest (about equal to Canada’s today) supported a large and well-ordered population. The early development of cuneiform writing, the world’s first phonetic script, means that for the first time in the history of humanity it is possible to learn something of how people thought and felt. This book aims to do just that and, as the reader soon finds out, succeeds triumphantly.Jean Bottéro and his colleagues take the reader on a voyage of discovery into the public and private realms of the lives of our first civilized ancestors – their cooking and eating, feasts and festivals, wine and drinking, love and sex, what women could do and what they couldn’t, magic and medicine, trial by ordeal, life in a palace above and below stairs, astrology and divination, gods and religion, and literature and myth.

Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia, based on articles originally published in L'Histoire by Jean Bottero, Andre Finet, Bertrand Lafont, and Georges Roux, presents new discoveries about this amazing Mesopotamian culture made during the past ten years. Features of everyday Meopotamian life highlight the new sections of this book. Both gourmet cuisine and popular cookery used fish, meats, fruits, vegetables, and grains, available fresh or preserved (through methods still used today), and served with beer and wine. While feelings toward love and sex are rarely found in personal writings or correspondence, myths, prayers, and accounts of an acceptance of a wide range of behaviors (despite monogamy, prostitution flourished) argue that both were considered natural and necessary for a happy existence. Under law woman existed as a man's property, yet stories show that wives frequently used beauty and wits to keep husbands in hand, and a wife's financial holdings remained her property, reverting to her family at her death.Women were allowed to participate in activities that could increase this wealth and some, pledged to the gods and shut away in group homes, were nonetheless able to participate in lucrative business ventures. Also included are accounts of the exceptional life of the queen and the women of Mari, the story of the great Queen Semiramis, and chapters on magic, medicine, and astrology. The concluding section offers a fascinating in-depth comparison of ancient Sumerian myths and stories similar to those found in the Hebrew bible. The new information found in Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia makes a significant contribution, one that deepens our knowledge and understanding of this great, ancient civilization.