Modern western culture owes much to ancient Near Eastern precedent. "Origins" documents that debt in specific terms, covering a variety of topics from the alphabet and its order to the system of dating by eras, and including many of the institutions most essential to contemporary life - and most often taken for granted.

William W. Hallo, Ph.D. (1955) in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago, is the William M. Laffan Professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature at Yale University, where he has taught since 1962.