We are accustomed to hearing the phrase ‘The West’ upheld as a form of civilisation superior and more morally advanced than those of other benighted parts of the globe. Usually associated with freedom and democracy, it includes Western Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand. It is an evaluative term as much as descriptive. Its opponents are tyrannies and dictatorships. Its foundations are in the finest achievements of Greek and Roman civilization. How, though, was the idea constructed?
Josephine Quinn (Professor of Ancient History at Worcester College, Oxford, Professor Josephine Crawley Quinn | Faculty of Classics) shows, in this book, how the culture and civilization of The West did not spring out of the void. Its roots in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean are many and complex, she argues. Indeed, they predate the Classical world. Quinn traverses a territory of 4000 years to make her case.
One example brought forward by Quinn is that Homeric tales preserve echoes of earlier epics in the larger world of song in other languages than Greek. The author shows that the Mycenaeans and Minoans were not regarded as separate civilisations until less than a century ago. She notes – “They were initially just rival names for the same bronze age Aegean culture seen from different perspectives.” Lots of small populations competed and exchanged ideas.
The deeper we look into the Classical world the more we can trace the interactions of Greece and Rome with Egypt, the Near East, India and China. The modern West, in turn, owes much to the law codes of Babylon, Assyrian irrigation, the Phoenician art of sail, Indian literature, Arabic scholarship, and the metalworking riders of the Steppes.
This astounding work of scholarship also draws on the material culture of the times in art and artifacts, as well as findings from the latest scientific advances in carbon dating and human genetics. We can bury the myth of the modern West as an ex nihilo construction of recent times.
Check if this much praised work of scholarship for the general reader is available at your local library here Home | South Lanarkshire Libraries (sllclibrary.co.uk)
576 pages in Bloomsbury
First published 2024
ISBN-13 : 978-1526605184
