Eva M. von Dassow

Eva von M. Dassow

National Endowment for the Humanities Post-Doctoral Rome Prize
January 18–July 18, 2016
Profession
Associate Professor, Department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies, University of Minnesota
Project title
Freedom, Rights, and Governance in the Ancient Near East
Project description

On the conventional view, the history of civilizations is structured by a conceptual opposition setting liberty, identified with modernity and the West, against subordination to authoritarian rule, identified with the Orient and the past. The invention of freedom is attributed to the Greeks who defied Persia, which stands as synecdoche at once for Asia and for autocracy. My research develops a new paradigm. The societies of the ancient Near East knew liberty, rights, and participatory governance long before Athenians invented democracy. That they not only possessed freedom but conceptualized it is evident from many sources, notably the “Song of Release,” an epic poem treating liberation from subjection in a polity where citizens determined policy. What ancient Near Eastern literati did not do, which classical Greek and Roman thinkers did, was to carry out in writing a reflective discourse explicating the principles and practices at issue. The book I shall write will do it for them.