Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History

Assyriologist Al-Rashid debuts with an eclectic history of Mesopotamia framed around an ancient collection of artifacts widely considered to be the first museum. Located in a room in a palace in Ur that was excavated in the 1920s, the artifacts were collected by princess Ennigaldi-Nanna in the sixth century BCE; among them were objects dating back to the 21st century BCE. Al-Rashid uses items from the collection as springboards to discuss Mesopotamian history: a statue of King Shulgi leads to an examination of the rise of kings; a cone dedicating a temple to the moon god parlays into an analysis of how astronomy led to the birth of science. The author movingly uses the collection’s written tablets to explore the constancy of human emotions and concerns—a woman begs to be allowed to die following a miscarriage, students doodle in the margins of their practice tablets, a Kassite king implores the Egyptian pharaoh to send a beautiful woman for a diplomatic marriage. Ruminating on how the study of history was made possible by the advent of writing, Al-Rashid also pinpoints ways in which the written word perhaps muddles the past more than documents it (examples include the scant archaeological evidence for the many brutal wars depicted in ancient Mesopotamian annals). The result is a nuanced meditation on how history gets made. (Aug.)