08-27-2008, 06:13 PM
Quote:But the Greeks gave them a whole new quality by their discovery of critical thought, and that revolutionary development - which today more than ever determines our world views - was genuinely Greek. I think if orientalists would acknowledge that, just as much as classicists need to value the fundamental contribution of the orient, there would be no need of disagreements.The trouble is that orientalists will immediately acknowledge that; take the article on the Pythagorean Theorem referred to above, or read the book by Pivot. The problem is, in my view, that several ideas about Greek brilliance have now been refuted, and that classicists simply refuse to read orientalist publications.
To give one very simple example - not about science, something that can easily be accepted within the paradigm of classics: the reign of Alexander. Waldemar Heckel is a serious specialist, who consistently refuses to look at the cuneiform sources (more...).
I might add another innocent detail: the date of Alexander's death, 11 June 323. The press release about that Oliver Stone Alexander movie, written by a normal journalist who unprejudicedly simply went to the library, had that correct. In the movie itself, which was based on advise by Lane Fox, they offer the wrong date. Nothing terribly shocking, nothing that might not be corrected, no loss of face involved: still, classicists don't look for oriental sources.
Final example: take the book on Hellenism from the Routledge History of the Ancient World. Not a single reference to recently discovered cuneiform sources - the author admits that he knows nothing about it, but does not think that this is a reason to invite someone else. The editorial board has been sleeping too, which is all the more shocking because they had instructed Amelie Kuhrt, who had written the two volumes on the Ancient Near East, not to go beyond Alexander, because somebody else would cover that. That did not happen.
