The volume brings together the contributions of a meeting of the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context", held at the University of Heidelberg. The focus is on the antithesis between East and West between the 6th and 2nd centuries BC. Various aspects of culture, religion, science, worldview, economics, architecture and lifestyle are made with a view of this opposition to each other. Archaeologists, historians and philologists in the fields of Ancient Near East and Ancient Greece consider parallel each one of these sectors to make similarities and differences between them recognizable. Through this balanced and flexible dialogue to the dominance of the Western perspective and the monolithic character of the derived concept 'Orient' are versus 'Western world' broken and overcome without the active historical power of these concepts would be negated.