Archaeology Book Club: Between Two Rivers by Moudhy Al-Rashid

Over 5,000 years ago, Mesopotamian record-keepers began pressing wedge-shaped marks into clay tablets, creating one of the earliest known writing systems called cuneiform.

First used for basic administration purposes, the inscriptions soon expanded to include everything from songs to stories to historic chronicles. But what exactly did the Mesopotamians choose to record? And how do their writings still connect with us thousands of years later?

In her captivating new book, Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History, Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid explores the human stories of Mesopotamia through cuneiform tablets.

From beer receipts and lullabies to ghost exorcisms and astronomical observation, Moudhy reveals how these clay tablets capture both big historic events and everyday moments - including a child's teeth marks and a dog's paw prints accidentally preserved in clay.

Historian Tom Holland says, 'I have never read a book on Mesopotamia that so beautifully brings to life the people themselves ... It melts away the sense of time.”

Join us for a discussion with Moudhy about what motivated her to write this book, the research involved in deciphering ancient tablets, and how these thousands-of-years-old stories illuminate our shared humanity.

“Ancient City of Dara” by EAPHOTOGRAPHY, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license