L’intitulé de l’ouvrage fait inévitablement référence à un livre plus ancien, écrit à plusieurs mains : H. A. Frankfort, J. A. Wilson, Th. Jacobsen, et W. A. Irwin, The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man : an essay on speculative thought in the ancient Near East, University Press, Chicago, 1946. On pense également à R. Watson et W. Horowitz, Writing Science Before the Greeks : a naturalistic analysis of the Babylonian astronomical treatise MUL.APIN, Brill, Leyde, 2011. Dans le premier, il...

Mesopotamian works are usually anonymous; at best the names of some copyists are known. Some significant exceptions, such as Saggil-kênam-ubbib, the author of Théodicée babylonienne, Kabti-ilî-Marduk, author of the ‘myth of Erra’, and Shamash-muballit, the son of Warad-Sîn, who may have been the author of a hymn to the goddess Inanna, do not make up for this lacuna.