Part Two

Echoing the traditionally accepted view of the Mesopotamian region after the fall of the last Akkadian dynasty, the Assyriologist Jean Bottéro says that with the conquests of Cyrus and of Alexander and his followers the Seleucids (sixth and fourth centuries bc, respectively), the region ‘began to lose its atavistic independence and its energy,’ only to be ‘ultimately finished off by the Parthians,’ in the third century bc. As a result, he concludes, ‘Mesopotamia could do nothing other than die off and slowly fade from the memory at the beginning of the new era’ (The Oldest Cuisine).