West Asian Literature

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When the Assyrian Empire collapsed, the short-lived Babylonian Empire also used cuneiform writing, but when the Persians took over West Asia in 539 BC they used cuneiform only for official inscriptions, and for everyday letters they used Aramaic (a Semitic language, the language Jesus spoke) and the Aramaic alphabet. The Persians brought with them old Indo-European stories like the story of Sohrab and Rustem. When Alexander and the Greeks took over West Asia in 331 BC, the Greek alphabet also began to be used there. Cuneiform continued to be used for religious occasions until the time of Jesus. The last cuneiform inscription is from 75 AD. After that everybody used the alphabet, both the Romans and the Parthians. But the Romans used an alphabet descended from the Greek one, and also continued to use the Greek alphabet, while the Parthians used an alphabet descended from the Phoenician one.

Then when West Asia was conquered by the Arabs in the late 600's AD, the Arabic alphabet gradually replaced the earlier ones throughout the area. This is the alphabet still in use all over West Asia today, except in Israel, where people use Hebrew. People wrote a lot of literature during the Islamic period: you can read about it on the Islamic literature page.

To find out more about Enheduanna, check out this book from Amazon.com or from your library:

Outrageous Women of Ancient Times, by Vicki León (1997). For kids. Also includes Hatshepsut of Egypt, Deborah of Israel, and so on.

For more West Asian stories, check out these books:

The City of Rainbows: A Tale from Ancient Sumer, by Karen Foster (1999). For kids, a great story from the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Two kings fight, and Ishtar settles it.

Gilgamesh the King, The Revenge of Ishtar, and The Last Quest of Gilgamesh by Ludmilla Zeman (1998-9). This is a set of three kids' books that retell the story of the Epic of Gilgamesh in an age-appropriate way. Lovely pictures.

For information about the invention of writing and the alphabet, check these out:

Writing in Ancient Phoenicia, and Writing in Ancient Mesopotamia, by Jil Fine (2003). For kids.

The Invention of Cuneiform: Writing in Sumer, by Jean-Jacques Glassner, Marc Van De Mieroop, and Zainab Bahrani (2003).

Language Visible : Unraveling the Mystery of the Alphabet from A to Z, by David Sacks (2003). The history of the invention of our own alphabet.

Indian Literature
Greek Literature
Egyptian Literature
Chinese Literature

Main West Asian page
Main literature page