Description
In ancient times, the vast area that stretches across what is now modern-day Iraq and Syria saw the rise and fall of epic civilizations who built the foundations of our world today. It was in this region, which we call Mesopotamia, that history was written down for the very first time.
With startling modernity, the people of Mesopotamia left behind hundreds of thousands of fragments of their everyday lives. Immortalised in clay and stone are intimate details from 4000 years ago. We find accounts of an enslaved person negotiating their freedom, a dog's paw prints as it accidentally stepped into fresh clay, a parent desperately trying to soothe a baby with a lullaby, the imprint of a child's teeth as it sank them into their clay homework, and countless receipts for beer.
In Between Two Rivers, historian Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid examines what these people chose to preserve in their own words about their lives, creating the first historical records and allowing us to brush hands with them thousands of years later. Bringing us closer than ever before to the lives of ancient people,?
Between Two Rivers tells not just the history of Mesopotamia, but the story of how history was made.
Promotion info
Intelligence Squared Podcast Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History
Reviews
Fascinating and magnificent, beautifully written and explained: this book is a masterpiece. -- GEORGE MONBIOT, author of Feral and The Invisible Doctrine
I have never read a book on Mesopotamia that so beautifully brings to life the people themselves. There are beautiful descriptions of what it is to be pregnant, to give birth, to have small children, to love a dog. I love the way in which she's not just writing about priests or kings, but is giving us a clay tablet on which a little child has bitten, so you have the imprint of his teeth. It melts away the sense of time. A wonderful read. -- TOM HOLLAND
A tender, moving and vivid history of ancient Mesopotamia and how it still speaks to us. This is so my jam. -- ROBERT MACFARLANE
Ancient Mesopotamia comes alive in Moudhy Al-Rashid's must-read, millennia-spanning history, cleverly wrought from tablets written in the world's oldest script ... spellbinding ... a fresh and very human portrait of the region... Through her clever sifting of the texts, we see how cuneiform ... helped to bind these civilisations together across millennia... We also discover, in Al-Rashid's vivid rendering of the texts, very moving details from the lives of real people in Mesopotamia over the ages ... Al-Rashid's academic background gives her a wonderful confidence as she roves around the literary and archaeological evidence. She is also a gifted storyteller, able to spin a yarn of gold from the very fragmentary sources ... This is a delightful book, and a must-read for anyone interested in these civilisations. I hope it serves to shine a larger spotlight on this extraordinary period in humanity's past. -- Emily Wilson * New Scientist *
A marvellous book, which not only brims with humanity but offers fascinating and often funny insights into everyday life in this crucial era of world history. Fart jokes to exam stress, motherhood and tax evasion: you'll find something here that reminds you that this ancient history is not as remote as you might think. Al Rashid describes her job of reading ancient Mesopotamian texts as like shaking hands with strangers. -- JAMES BARR, author of A Line in the Sand
Absorbing, learned and witty, Between Two Rivers is far more than an account of ancient Mesopotamia. Al-Rashid offers an ingenious, passionate 'history of histories', spinning outwards from relics collected by a royal priestess more than 2,500 years ago. In discovering familiar human joys and sorrows - surviving in times of peace and war, dealing with royal and divine demands, the desperate love for our children - we vividly witness how lives across the millennia are revealed and connected by archaeology and cuneiform. -- REBECCA WRAGG SYKES author of Kindred
This book is an extraordinary invitation to the magical land of Mesopotamia, written like your best friend is sitting with you next to a cozy fire with a warm drink, spinning mesmerizing tales of the fascinating land which birthed our modern world. It is a stunning debut effort, written by both a wonderful scholar and talented social media communicator. -- PROFESSOR SARAH PARCAK
Wonderfully vivid. * Literary Review *
Her infectious enthusiasm imbues Between Two Rivers, a lively and beguiling history of ancient Mesopotamia ... I found myself completely enthralled by an ancient period and civilisation I previously knew very little about. -- CAROLINE SANDERSON * What to Read Now *
A lively portrait of this ancient civilisation ... Al-Rashid is an engaging and knowledgeable guide ... Many of her characters - bored schoolboys, tired parents and squabbling siblings - are extremely relatable ... Between Two Rivers provides remarkable insights into ancient lives ... even at a distance of nearly four millennia, it is impossible not be moved * Sunday Times *
Author Biography: Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Oxford's Wolfson College, where she specialises in the languages and history of ancient Mesopotamia. She completed her BA from Columbia University in Philosophy, and after a single day of learning about cuneiform texts at a summer school, decided to pursue the subject with a Master's degree and eventually a Doctoral degree at the University of Oxford.
She has written for academic and popular journals, including History Today, on topics as diverse as mental illness in ancient Mesopotamia to Late Assyrian scholarly networks. In addition to her writing, she has also appeared on several podcasts, including the BBC podcasts Making History and You're Dead to Me. Through her social media accounts, she hopes to give ancient Mesopotamia as wide an audience as possible and to humanise its long history. She is from Saudi Arabia, where she also grew up, and now lives in Oxfordshire with her family.
