Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia.

We develop a cultural evolutionary theory of the origins of prosocial religions and apply it to resolve two puzzles in human psychology and cultural history: (1) the rise of large-scale cooperation among strangers and, simultaneously, (2) the spread of prosocial religions in the last 10-12 millennia. We argue that these two developments were importantly linked and mutually energizing. We explain how a package of culturally evolved religious beliefs and practices characterized by increasingly potent, moralizing, supernatural agents, credible displays of faith, and other psychologically active elements conducive to social solidarity promoted high fertility rates and large-scale cooperation with co-religionists, often contributing to success in intergroup competition and conflict. In turn, prosocial religious beliefs and practices spread and aggregated as these successful groups expanded, or were copied by less successful groups. This synthesis is grounded in the idea that although religious beliefs and practices originally arose as nonadaptive by-products of innate cognitive functions, particular cultural variants were then selected for their prosocial effects in a long-term, cultural evolutionary process. This framework (1) reconciles key aspects of the adaptationist and by-product approaches to the origins of religion, (2) explains a variety of empirical observations that have not received adequate attention, and (3) generates novel predictions. Converging lines of evidence drawn from diverse disciplines provide empirical support while at the same time encouraging new research directions and opening up new questions for exploration and debate.

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The cultural evolution of prosocial religions.

\"This splendid work of scholarship . . . sums up with economy and power all that the written record so far deciphered has to tell about the ancient and complementary civilizations of Babylon and Assyria.\" Edward B. Garside, \"New York Times Book Review\" Ancient Mesopotamia the area now called Iraq has received less attention than ancient Egypt and other long-extinct and more spectacular civilizations. But numerous small clay tablets buried in the desert soil for thousands of years make it possible for us to know more about the people of ancient Mesopotamia than any other land in the early Near East. Professor Oppenheim, who studied these tablets for more than thirty years, used his intimate knowledge of long-dead languages to put together a distinctively personal picture of the Mesopotamians of some three thousand years ago. Following Oppenheim's death, Erica Reiner used the author's outline to complete the revisions he had begun. \"To any serious student of Mesopotamian civilization, this is one of the most valuable books ever written.\" Leonard Cottrell, \"Book Week\" \"Leo Oppenheim has made a bold, brave, pioneering attempt to present a synthesis of the vast mass of philological and archaeological data that have accumulated over the past hundred years in the field of Assyriological research.\" Samuel Noah Kramer, \"Archaeology\" A. Leo Oppenheim, one of the most distinguished Assyriologists of our time, was editor in charge of the \"Assyrian Dictionary\" of the Oriental Institute and John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Chicago.\

Ancient Mesopotamia, Portrait of a Dead Civilization

With broad lines and dark shading, the cartographic depictions of ancient states and empires convey the impression of comprehensive political entities having firm boundaries and uniform territorial control. These depictions oversimplify the complexities of early state growth, as well as overstating the capacity of central governments to control large territories. Archaeological and textual evidence suggests that ancient states are better understood through network models rather than bounded-territory models. Network approaches enable us to depict competition within and among polities as they grow, the efficient use of nodal points as a focus for political leaders, and the realities of nonoverlapping ritual, social, and economic activities that have an impact on political cohesion. Network maps and bounded-territory representations are compared for the Inka, Mauryan, and Sassanian polities.

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Networks, Territories, and the Cartography of Ancient States

1. The historiography of Mesopotamian science 2. Celestial divination in context 3. Mesopotamian genethlialogy: the Babylonian horoscopes 4. Sources for horoscopes in Babylonian astronomical texts 5. Sources for horoscopes in the early astrological tradition 6. The scribes and scholars of Mesopotamian celestial science 7. The classification of Mesopotamian celestial inquiry as science.

https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/aestimatio/article/download/25728/18874

The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture

This essay traces the history of the several major versions (Old Babylonian, eleven-tablet, and twelve-tablet) of the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh and examines the development of meaning from one version to the next. The focus is on the underlying conflict or conflicts that define and impart power to the work, that is, the conflict between the extraordinary and the normal. We will notice that in the Epic there is a constant conflict between the heroic values that the warrior-hero Gilgamesh represents and those other existential values that defined Mesopotamian culture and that appear in the Epic in the form of Gilgamesh's several non-heroic identities: in the Old Babylonian version, the conflict is that of hero versus man; in the eleven-tablet version that of hero versus king; and in the twelve-tablet version that of hero versus god.

https://faculty.uml.edu/Ethan_Spanier/Teaching/documents/AbuschMeaningofGilgamesh.pdf

The Development and Meaning of the Epic of Gilgamesh: An Interpretive Essay

Lingering over Words: Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Literature in Honor of William L. Moran

The fragment A 7876 (Oriental Institute, Chicago) occupies a special position among the cuneiform sources of the ritual Maqlu. The six-column tablet, inscribed in the Neo-Assyrian script of the 8th and 7th centuries BC, originally contained the complete text of the series with its nine canonical tablets. Taking into account the relevant duplicate manuscripts the article offers an annotated edition of this fragment and compares its style and format to other “large tablets” (dubgallu) of Babylonian literary texts.

/pdf/the-chicago-maqlu-fragment-a-7876-247fp3qkxi.pdf

The Chicago Maqlû fragment (A 7876)

The Witchcraft Series Maqlû

The Akkadian series Maqlu is the most important magical text against witchcraft from Mesopotamia. This new edition of the standard text contains a synoptic edition of all manuscripts, a composite text in transliteration, an annotated transcription and translation.

Tzvi Abusch

Papers

The Development and Meaning of the Epic of Gilgamesh: An Interpretive Essay

Lingering over Words: Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Literature in Honor of William L. Moran

The Chicago Maqlû fragment (A 7876)

The Witchcraft Series Maqlû

The Magical Ceremony Maqlû: A Critical Edition