Imagining Babylon: The Modern Story of an Ancient City (Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records Saner)

Ever Since The Archaeological Rediscovery Of The Ancient Near East, Generations Of Scholars Have Attempted To Reconstruct The 'real Babylon,' Known To Us Before From The Evocative Biblical Account Of The Tower Of Babel. After Two Centuries Of Excavations And Scholarship, Mario Liverani Provides An Insightful Overview Of Modern, Western Approaches, Theories, And Accounts Of The Ancient Near Eastern City--provided By Publisher. Preface To The Italian Edition -- Rediscovery And Perplexity -- Acceptance And Modification -- The Season Of Theoretical Models -- The New Models In Practice -- Modernity : New Approaches And New Settings -- Post-modernity : Computerization And Deconstruction. Mario Liverani ; Translated From The Italian By Ailsa Campbell. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 389-467) And Index. Stereotypes of the oriental city before and after their rediscovery. Oriental versus Western city. The improvements in digging techniques and in graphic visualization. From evolutionism to neo-evolutionism. From colonialism to decolonization. Neo-marxist and neo-capitalist theories. City, village, and countryside. Temple-cities, palatine cities, and the communal sector. The totalitarian models and their crisis. The advent of new geography and new archaeology, the reconstruction of paleo-environment. The advent of system theory, and the explanation for collapse. Post-modernist de-structuration of the ancient oriental city. The end of a cycle: political instability in the Near East, declining resources in the West, recourse to computer graphics and remote sensing, in order to get a "virtual" reconstruction of ancient cities La 4e de couverture indique : "Ever since the archaeological rediscovery of the ancient Near East, generations of scholars have attempted to reconstruct the "real Babylon", known to us before from the evocative biblical account of the Tower of Babel. After two centuries of excavations and scholarship, Mario Liverani provides an insightful overview of modern, Western approaches, theories, and accounts of the ancient Near Eastern city."

Ever since the archaeological rediscovery of the Ancient Near East, generations of scholars have attempted to reconstruct the "real Babylon,” known to us before from the evocative biblical account of the Tower of Babel. After two centuries of excavations and scholarship, Mario Liverani provides an insightful overview of modern, Western approaches, theories, and accounts of the ancient Near Eastern city.