The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man

Abstract

Approaching 70 years after its publication in 1946, The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East remains a dominant point of access to the civilizations of the ancient Near East, a perennial favorite in courses that deal with ancient history, world history, and Western thought. This chapter discusses the contributions of The Intellectual Adventure in three dimensions: the genesis of the book, that is the circumstances in which it originated and the people responsible for it; the book overall, that is its content and structure, its governing ideas and aims and their intellectual background; and, finally, in light of the reception of the book, the question of whether it is still useful, or can at least provide a point of departure, for understanding the ancient Near East.

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