The Orientalizing Revolution in Early Archaic Greece: An Imaginative Concept and its Representations

The term “orientalizing revolution”, first put forward by John Boardman in 1990, gained a wide audience after the publication of Walter Burkert’s book The Orientalizing Revolution. This article explores the studies on the so-called “orientalizing revolution” as a point of entry into a wider discussion of orientalizing phenomena in early archaic Greece and the conceptualisation of the term “orientalizing revolution”, analysing in what degree the use of this term is reasonable and in what context it has been abused. It must be recognised that orientalizing was indeed a historical phenomenon that occurred in early archaic Greece. Perhaps in artistic terms the word “revolution” is justified. However, reconstructing the context of cultural exchange or even historical development based on the flow of artificial products requires more analyses of society as a whole. In Greek society as a whole of 750–650 B.C., there were indeed a great number of changes, several of which were influenced by the Near East. Nevertheless, the foundation and core of the social structure was polis, which has little to do with the Near East, nor rise and develop suddenly in that century. To summarise, when describing and discussing the orientalizing phenomena in early archaic Greece, we should be very cautious when it comes to the term “revolution”.