Burkert Walter. The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Early Archaic Age

Harvard University Press, 1995. — 226 p.The splendid culture of the ancient Greeks has often been described as emerging like a miracle from a genius of its own, owing practically nothing to its neighbors. Walter Burkert offers a decisive argument against that distorted view, pointing toward a balanced picture of the archaic period "in which, under the influence of the Semitic East-from writers, craftsmen, merchants, healers-Greek culture began its unique flowering, soon to assume cultural hegemony in the Mediterranean.