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‘What did the Greeks owe the Orient?’ The question we can't stop asking (even though we can't answer it)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2010

Suzanne Marchand
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Abstract

Reviewing five recent books in German classical and oriental studies, this essay argues that the question of archaic Greece's debts to the Orient remains a particularly lively one in German-speaking Europe. Like their predecessors in previous generations, iconoclastic classicists like Walter Burkert, oriental archaeologists like Ernst Herzfeld (1879–1948) and maverick outsiders like Raoul Schrott have attacked the enraptured view of ‘the Greek miracle’ familiar to those educated in classical Gymnasien. And yet the question of Greek cultural autonomy is still alive, in part because there are too many uncertainties for it to be answered definitively, and in part because it continues to play a role in attempts to define modern European identity.

Keywords

archaic GreeceorientalismSonderwegEuropean identityGerman archaeology in the Near Easthistory of classical scholarship
Type
Review Article
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , June 2010 , pp. 117 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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