The Conceptual Autonomy of the Babylonian World [1926]

The famous programmatic article by Benno Landsberger, "Die Eigenbe grifflichkeit der Babylonischen Welt," was a manifesto which "insisted on the necessity of studying Mesopotamian culture for its own sake, in its own terms, and within its own system of values": as Jacobsen notes it was "under the banner of Eigenbegrifflichkeit thatLandsberger... may be said to have made Assyriology for the first time an autonomous discipline." The article is here made available in a masterly translation by Jacobsen, based on two initial drafts by Foster and Von Siebenthal: it provides an accurate and sensitive reading by another intellectual giant in the field, who was himself a long time personal friend of the author. The introduction, published originally as an obituary, gives a brief and penetrating assessment of Landsberger's life work.