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Sumer and the Sumerians 2nd Edition

by Harriet Crawford (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 40 ratings
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Mesopotamia produced one of the best-known ancient civilizations, with a literate, urban culture and highly-developed political institutions. Harriet Crawford reviews the extraordinary social and technological developments in the region over a period of two millennia (from 3800 to 2000 BC) in this fully revised and expanded edition of her classic text. Drawing on the most up-to-date historical and archaeological sources, she describes the physical environment and covers architecture, trade and industry, the development of writing, and changes in social and political structures. First Edition Hb (1991): 0-521-38175-4 First Edition Pb (1991): 0-521-38850-3
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  1. ISBN-10
    0521533384
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0521533386
  3. Edition
    2nd
  4. Publisher
    Cambridge University Press
  5. Publication date
    October 25, 2004
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    7.44 x 0.6 x 9.69 inches
  8. Print length
    264 pages
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

'the real achievement of this slim book is that Crawford does not over-generalise, but leaves the reader with an understanding of both the broad patterns as well as the differences between regions in Mesopotamia and through time.' Bibliotheca Orientalis

Book Description

This work reviews the social and technological developments in Mesopotamia from 3800 to 2000 BC.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Cambridge University Press; 2nd edition (October 25, 2004)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 264 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0521533384
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0521533386
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.26 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.44 x 0.6 x 9.69 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 40 ratings

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Harriet Crawford

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
40 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Richard
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Text
Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2020
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The scholarly nature of this book is excellent and intellectually honest. When inferences about happenings or interpretations arose, the author was quick to withhold attribution of accuracy. The breadth and depth of this work is amazing, and its readability good. He places Sumeria in the context of Mesopotamian history, which renders things easier to understand. His focus includes, among other things, archaeology, history, funerary rites, settlement and family structure, governing patterns, social status, agriculture, overall geographical issues and borders, and literary accommplishments. Excellent text and/or review of this important period of civilization.
5 people found this helpful
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Bob Read
5.0 out of 5 stars Good book.
Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2019
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Another good reference book to add to my library.
One person found this helpful
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Brian
4.0 out of 5 stars Pretty Good Book
Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 2022
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I enjoyed this book as an intro to a more detailed look at the Sumerians through archeology. It is not really a general or historical overview. Some quality of life improvements this book could use are more/better maps, some sort of timeline, and a king list.
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Gerald King
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2016
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Great!!!
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David Blackmon
2.0 out of 5 stars Two Stars
Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2017
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The book is great, but it took forever to get here.
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Andrew Hardy
3.0 out of 5 stars So last millennium!
Reviewed in the United States on November 15, 2009
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As other reviewers have mentioned this book is for university student archeologists. If you a regular Joe who wants to learn about ancient Sumer and it's literature, look elsewhere.

Books are totally obsolete as a tool for learning. Computers and HTML (hypertext markup language) have been around for decades and provide a vastly superior method for knowledge transference.

The only reason we still have books for learning is because Authors and Publishers are still trying to cling to an old profit-making paradigm in which distribution can be controlled and every copy will only be obtained for a fee.

I frequently find myself wishing for the quick reference capability of hypertext to remind myself of where a particular region, city, geographic feature etc. is located on a map or to link to a definition of a word or other locations where the word is used in the book. So many wonderful features of hypertext!!!

The maps included in the book often seem to use a randomly selected mixture of different city names from modern to ancient across multiple time frames with little regard to whether they match the nearby associated text. Hypertext would allow you to click on a name and instantly see it on a pop-up map!!! Sweet mother of immaculate saint Rosary cross the mercy blah blah, that's freakin' awesome! How are we still using books for crap's sake? OK, fiction novels, I'll let you have that.

The other problem with books is that every person's mind works differently. An author will compose a book in a way that jibes with their own unique brain function--the way in which they would prefer the content to be presented if THEY were the reader. For that reason, as a method of knowledge transference, a book will vary greatly in it's effectiveness from one reader to another.

I would much prefer that the book be divided into time periods and that each time period be dealt with one by one in order from oldest to youngest and then each time period section be divided into the various topics of (social organization, architecture, town-planning etc.) That how my brain likes things. I just don't have enough extra brain-power to re-organize an entire book of scatter-shot information in my head.
4 people found this helpful
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Flash Sheridan
2.0 out of 5 stars Muddled
Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2013
I agree with some of the other reviewers that it's not clear who, if anyone, this book is intended for. I've only gotten through the first two chapters, but the poor organization means that the book is only fully comprehensible by those who don't need it. A crucial point in expository writing is to define your terms when you first use them, especially in a book for "students beginning to study the archeology and history of the ancient Near East." The author introduces the discussion of the crucial Uruk archeological period at the beginning of chapter 2 by saying that it "was a long one...," without either saying what its evidentiary meaning is, or (until much later) what its likely timeframe was. Admittedly there are very large error bars on the chronology; presenting those along with the various plausible dates is precisely the duty of the author of a book for beginning students. Even the relative chronology of the various archeological periods is poorly presented; even a simple introductory sentence along the lines of "The chief archeological periods, in approximate order, are..." would have been better than presenting them piecemeal.

The author's evidence-based presentation isn't even a consistent privileging of epistemology over comprehensibility. When we come to politics ("It is clear that the priesthood too could exercise considerable control..." on page 31), it seems clear that this has to be based on written evidence, but there has been no preceding mention of this, much less a discussion of the evidence and its limitations. (For a book on a people most notable for the invention of writing and a civilization relying on it, this seems an astonishing choice.)

Another key duty of an author, though I admit that this one is less often honored, is to ensure that a map being discussed actually labels all the place names mentioned. This is particularly painful for map 2, where most of the discussion is of places not labelled, e.g., the Taurus and Zagros mountains, Jezirah ("the former" is too ambiguous to be helpful), and Samarra, among many others.
11 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Silhan
5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 21, 2020
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I finished university and I’m still interested to read it. Worth the money.
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fabrizio manieri
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 3, 2016
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Great book, you must read it absolutely
One person found this helpful
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CFive
4.0 out of 5 stars A Viewpoint
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 23, 2007
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A good read, covers lots of ground in an informative manner. Lots of line drawings which help visualise plans or statues for example.

If the book has a negative, for me it's around the fact that it's written for students (which I wasn't aware of when I ordered it) which means that there's quite a bit of fence sitting - I'd much rather an author just came out and said where they stand on an issue, I'm a big boy now, I can take it!
18 people found this helpful
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Francesco Cisternino
2.0 out of 5 stars but the book overall is really boring because the perspective is limited
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 27, 2016
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The academic content is undeniably proficient, but the book overall is really boring because the perspective is limited. I understand that without archaeological data there's no understanding at all, but as a non-specialist reader I'd have enjoyed a much broader discourse.
After reading this book, I can enumerate a number of excavations and what has been found but if one asks me what I have actually understood of Sumerians, I'd say very little.
Unless you are an archaeologist, I suggest that you search for other sources as introductions to Sumerian culture.
9 people found this helpful
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D. Mackay
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 21, 2017
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Used for university course reading and reference.
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