Abstract
Through an enumeration of six theses this article argues that there was indeed a system of thought in ancient Babylonia that we can call philosophy, despite what the famous mid-twentieth century ad book Before Philosophy. The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man maintained. We can discover the principles of systematic thought in the numerous lists that Babylonians and other writers of cuneiform in the ancient Near East used. The key to philosophical understanding lay in the idea that writing produced a truth of its own, distinct from what was observable in physical reality.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Seth Richardson for his critical reading of the manuscript in an earlier stage, and Gösta Gabriel for organizing this volume as well as the workshop that inspired it. All the participants of that workshop made useful comments that helped me to fine tune the ideas expressed here.
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