Philosophy before the Greeks : the pursuit of truth in ancient Babylonia

307 Pages·2015·4.885 MB·English

by  Van De Mieroop, Marc

Philosophy before the Greeks
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The Pursuit of Truth in
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Philosophy before the Greeks
•••
Frontispiece. Typical example of a scholarly list from the first millennium.
This manuscript contains, in two columns, the text of the first tablet of a syl-
labary list called Ea. Each entry consists of these elements: a vertical wedge to
indicate a new entry; a syllabic rendering of the sign; the Sumerian word sign;
the sign name; and an Akkadian translation. Oftentimes the scribe just re-
corded ditto ( ) when a piece of information was repeated in successive lines.
21.3 cm high. YBC 2176, Yale Babylonian Collection.
Philosophy before the Greeks
•••
The Pursuit of Truth in
Ancient Babylonia
Marc Van De Mieroop
Princeton University Press
Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2016 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW
press.princeton.edu
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Van De Mieroop, Marc.
Philosophy before the Greeks : the pursuit of truth in ancient
Babylonia / Marc Van De Mieroop.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-15718-4 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Philosophy, Babylonian. 2. Knowledge, Theory
of—Iraq—Babylonia. I. Title.
B146.V36 2015
181′.6—dc23    2015017273
British Library Cataloging-i n- Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Charis SIL
Printed on acid- free paper.∞
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
•Co•nte•nts
Preface vii
PART I
AN ESSAY IN BABYLONIAN EPISTEMOLOGY
Chapter 1: At the Time of Creation 3
PART II
THE ORDER OF THINGS (LES MOTS ET LES CHOSES)
Chapter 2: Word Lists: A Very Short History 35
Chapter 3: Constructing Reality 59
PART III
WRITINGS OF THE GODS
Chapter 4: Omen Lists in Babylonian Culture 87
Chapter 5: The Structure of Knowledge of the Universe 113
PART IV
THE WORD OF THE LAW
Chapter 6: Of Ancient Codes 143
Chapter 7: The Philosopher- King 156
PART V
A BABYLONIAN EPISTEMOLOGY
Chapter 8: Babylonian Epistemology in History 185
Chapter 9: The Conceptual Autonomy of
Babylonian Epistemology 216
Notes 225
Bibliography 257
Index 291

•P•refa•ce
“For you will have the wisdom not to think you know that which you
do not know.” Socrates spoke these words at the end of Plato’s Theaete-
tus, the dialogue that is often proclaimed to be the first major treatment
of the problem of knowledge in history. Certainly Socrates was not the
first human to wonder how we can determine what is true and what is
not—he spent most of the dialogue disproving what earlier Greeks had
suggested. Long before the Classical Greeks, however, other people too
must have asked the question what true knowledge was. To assume
that they merely observed the obvious and accepted it as inexplicable
fact is culturally prejudiced. This book will investigate how the ancient
Babylonians approached the issue, at least those who were literate.
They left behind a monumental textual record that stretches in time
from before 3000 bc to the first century ad. It contains no systematic
explanations of the Socratic type, but shows the rules of critical analy-
sis in practice in thousands of manuscripts that contain anything from
a couple of lines of text to hundreds of them. The documentation is
massive and can be hard to appreciate, because we have to recreate the
methods of inquiry the writers employed through practice rather than
theory. But its analysis shows that strict logical rules governed its pro-
cedures. To make this clear, I will look at three corpora of texts, two of
them large in size, the third much more restricted. Encompassing three
areas of scholarly inquiry—the study of language, of divinatory signs,
and of the law—they display the same basic ground rules.
The system of reasoning the Babylonians followed was very unlike
the Greek one, and thus that of western philosophy built upon the
Greek achievements. It was rooted in the cuneiform writing system,
which was not an alphabet and was much richer in its use of signs than
that kind of script. Few people today understand Babylonian writing,
and I will need to explain some of its basic principles, which may put
off the uninitiated at the same time that it may sound banal to those
who know it. I hope that it will become clear, however, that as a writ-
viii · preface
ing system it was as capable to render ideas as the alphabet is, and that
for thousands of years people throughout the ancient Near East ex-
pressed complex thoughts using it. This study will show a remarkable
consistency of Babylonian practices over three millennia, maintained
by numerous scholars who elaborated their research within a shared
tradition—one that had a lifespan comparable in length to the Greek-
based western philosophy still in use today. We cannot dismiss the
Babylonian approach to knowledge as a mere curiosity of long-g one
days. For many centuries it determined how intellectuals reasoned; in
fact, it is the only well- documented system of philosophy before the
Greeks known to us. And while it was the dominant paradigm in the
literate part of the world for a large part of its early history, I will try
to show that the Babylonian approach has resonances today and that
its study is not purely a matter of antiquarianism.
Writing a book is always a long process and requires the support of
others. A number of organizations gave me the time and intellectual
space to work on it, especially the Internationales Forschungszentrum
Kulturwissenschaften (IFK) in Vienna, Austria, and the Guggenheim
Foundation in the United States. I tested out some of the ideas ex-
pressed here in lectures at SOAS in London, Wolfson College Oxford,
Università Ca’ Foscari Venice, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New
York, the Centre for Canon and Identity Formation at the University of
Copenhagen, IFK in Vienna, the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean
at Columbia University, at Johns Hopkins University, and at the Uni-
versity of Ghent. I thank those who invited me to speak and those who
made comments. I benefited from conversations with many colleagues
and friends, who knowingly or not gave me useful information and
forced me to clarify matters in my own mind. I refrain from attempting
to make a list, so as not to omit some inadvertently—all deserve my
sincerest thanks.
•PA•R•T I
An Essay in
Babylonian Epistemology