Exploring life, death, and the afterlife in Mesopotamia, Alhena Gadotti and Alexandra Kleinerman examine how life and death experiences continually developed over the course of nearly three millennia of Mesopotamian history. To achieve this, the book follows the life cycle of the people of the Tigris and Euphrates River valleys from 3000 BCE to 300 BCE, from birth, through death, and beyond.This book is the first to interrogate the relationships bet...

In this volume, Alhena Gadotti and Alexandra Kleinerman investigate how Akkadian speakers learned Sumerian during the Old Babylonian period in areas outside major cities.Despite the fact that it was a dead language at the time, Sumerian was considered a crucial part of scribal training due to its cultural importance. This book provides transliterations and translations of 715 cuneiform scribal school exercise texts from the Jonathan and Jeanette Rosen Ancient Near Eastern Studies C...

**One of Library Journal's Best Books of 2025“Breathes life into the dry clay of philology.” —Dominic Green, Wall Street JournalHumanity’s earliest efforts at recording and drawing meaning from history reveal how lives millennia ago were not so different from our own.**Thousands of years ago, in a part of the world we now call ancient Mesopotamia, people began writing things down for the very first time.What they left behind, in a vast regi...

**In this gripping sequel to his bestselling 1177 B.C., Eric Cline tells the story of what happened after the Bronze Age collapsed—why some civilizations endured, why some gave way to new ones, and why some disappeared forever“A landmark book: lucid, deep, and insightful. . . . You cannot understand human civilization and self-organization without studying what happened on, before, and after 1177 B.C.”—Nassim Nicholas Taleb, bestselling author of The Black Swan**

Civilization was born eight thousand years ago, between the floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, when migrants from the surrounding mountains and deserts began to create increasingly sophisticated urban societies. In the cities that they built, half of human history took place.In Babylon, Paul Kriwaczek tells the story of Mesopotamia from the earliest settlements seven thousand years ago to the eclipse of Babylon in the sixth century BCE. Bringing the people of ...

A unique history of the ancient Near East that compellingly presents the life stories of kings, priestesses, merchants, bricklayers, and others In this sweeping history of the ancient Near East, Amanda Podany takes readers on a gripping journey from the creation of the world's first cities to the conquests of Alexander the Great. The book is built around the life stories of many ancient men and women, from kings, priestesses, and merchants to brickmakers, musicians, and we...

"This splendid work of scholarship . . . sums up with economy and power all that the written record so far deciphered has to tell about the ancient and complementary civilizations of Babylon and Assyria."—Edward B. Garside, New York Times Book ReviewAncient Mesopotamia—the area now called Iraq—has received less attention than ancient Egypt and other long-extinct and more spectacular civilizations. But numerous small clay tablets buried in the desert soil for thousands of ye...

The story of Gilgamesh, an ancient epic poem written on clay tablets in a cuneiform alphabet, is as fascinating and moving as it is crucial to our ability to fathom the time and the place in which it was written. Gardner's version restores the poetry of the text and the lyricism that is lost in the earlier, almost scientific renderings. The principal theme of the poem is a familiar one: man's persistent and hopeless quest for immortality. It tells of the heroic exploits of an ancient ruler...

Situated in an area roughly corresponding to present-day Iraq, Mesopotamia is one of the great, ancient civilizations, though it is still relatively unknown. Yet, over 7,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, the very first cities were created. This is the first book to reveal how life was lived in ten Mesopotamian cities: from Eridu, the Mesopotamian Eden, to that potent symbol of decadence, Babylon - the first true metropolis: multicultural, multi-ethnic, the last centre of a dying civilization.

The story of the ancient world’s most spectacular library, and the civilization that created it'A thrilling trip back to Mesopotamia, birthplace of horoscopes and algorithms … via the abundant records they left behind, written on clay tablets… absorbing… hums with life' - Mathew Lyons, Daily Telegraph'Fascinating and rich in detail… provides an excellent survey of Mesopotamian literary classics.. and offers snippets of daily life' - Literary Re...

The ancient Near East is known as the "cradle of civilization"--and for good reason. Mesopotamia, Syria, and Anatolia were home to an extraordinarily rich and successful culture. Indeed, it was a time and place of earth-shaking changes for humankind: the beginnings of writing and law, kingship and bureaucracy, diplomacy and state-sponsored warfare, mathematics and literature. This Very Short Introduction offers a fascinating account of this momentous time in human history. The thr...

Exam Board: Cambridge Assessment International EducationLevel & Subject: Cambridge International AS & A Level English LanguageFirst teaching: September 2019 First examination: from 2021The Student’s Book is structured to build skills and knowledge in a clear sequence, and to help students to apply their skills in different combinations. With in-depth and up-to-date coverage of the syllabus topics and a stimulating range of international texts, this book is the ideal...