ABSTRACT
Ancient Mesopotamia is not only the object of scientific endeavor, but also an arena for the identity contests of scholars. Caught in the ambivalence of a “mixed feeling of both kinship and alienness” (Larsen 1992), Western archaeologists have traditionally conceived ancient Mesopotamia as the origin of European culture on the one hand, but on the other hand a historic constituent of today’s “Muslim world,” often seen as the antithesis of the world the archaeologist inhabits. Somehow, Mesopotamia gave rise to “us” as well as “the other.”
