The Adventure of the Human Intellect: Self, Society, and the Divine in Ancient World Cultures [Hardcover]

• Borrows themes from The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (1946), updating an old topic with a new approach and up-to-date theoretical underpinning, evidence, and scholarship
• Provides a broad scope of studies, including discussion of highly developed ancient or early civilizations in China, India, West Asia, the Mediterranean, and the Americas
• Examines the world view of ten ancient or early societies, reconstructed from their own texts, concerning the place of human beings in society and state, in nature and cosmos, in space and time, in life and death, and in relation to those in power and the world of the divine
• Considers a diversity of sources representing a wide array of particular responses to differing environments, circumstances, and intellectual challenges
• Reflects a more inclusive and nuanced historiographical attitude with respect to non-elites, gender, and local variations
• Brings together leading specialists in the field, and is edited by an internationally renowned scholar

Notes on Contributors vii

Series Editors Preface xi

Preface and Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction 1

Francesca Rochberg and Kurt A. Raaflaub

1 A Critique of the Cognitivehistorical Thesis of The Intellectual Adventure 16
Francesca Rochberg

2 The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: Revisiting a Classic 29
Peter Machinist

3 The World of Ancient Egyptial“ž