3.3.3 Again, A Middle Age: Detecting Sumer…

We come once again to the same ambiguity with respect to the pre-Axial that we had with the definition of the modern age. The Axial period, like the rise of the modern, is a sudden upsurge in the flow of world history. The Old Testament gives testimony to existence of an immense age of prior civilization, and in fact stages its drama against the backdrop of the greater antiquity of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Buried in the Akkadian texts, like Latinate vestiges in modern languages, is the mysterious, and forgotten, Sumerian. Let us keep moving, using our long-range spotting tactics. We are at square one, with a sense of déjà vu after theories of the rise of the modern, a large discontinuity, and the search for causal explanation in the era just prior to that. What lies at the source of the Assyrians and Egyptians, so faithfully given a snapshot of their last phase by the upstart Israelites?