This innovative book tackles the fascinating subject of how and by whom culture was invented, and discusses this phenomenon by looking at the ancient, Greco-Roman, pre-Islamic Arabian, and Muslim worlds. Examining various texts that have rarely been analyzed in the same place, the book will appeal to a diversity of readers and fields."--Robert Hoyland, University of Oxford"McCants explores culture myths over a long period--from Sumerian literature of the third millennium BCE to Arabic works of the ninth century CE--and over a wide but interconnected geographical area spanning the Mediterranean basin to the Near East as far as Persia. The breadth of this undertaking and the materials gathered together, especially from the Arabic side, are quite original."--Ian S. Moyer, University of Michigan