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The story of ancient Mesopotamia and the dawn of the modern world

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

By Emily Wilson

12 February 2025

2X417AE ziggurat of ur in iraq

The Great Ziggurat of Ur, in present‑day Iraq

Mohammed Al ali/Alamy

Between Two Rivers
Moudhy Al-Rashid (Hachette (UK, 20 February); W. W. Norton (US, 12 August))

A new and spellbinding book tells the history of the very ancient past of Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. Between Two Rivers by Moudhy Al-Rashid, a researcher at the University of Oxford, weaves together the many strands of the story of the region, which covers much of what is now Iraq.

Ancient Mesopotamia has languished in obscurity, at least compared with the better-known Greek, Roman and Egyptian civilisations. So…

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