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The Mesopotamian Riddle: An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman, and the Race to Decipher the World's Oldest Writing
A rollicking adventure starring three free-spirited Victorians on a twenty-year quest to decipher cuneiform, the oldest writing in the world�from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu.
It was one of history’s great vanishing acts.
Around 3,400 BCE—as humans were gathering in complex urban settlements—a scribe in the mud-walled city-state of Uruk picked up a reed stylus to press tiny symbols into clay. For three millennia, wedge shape cuneiform script would record the military conquests, scientific discoveries, and epic literature of the great Mesopotamian kingdoms of Sumer, Assyria, and Babylon and of Persia’s mighty Achaemenid Empire, along with precious minutiae about everyday life in the cradle of civilization. And then…the meaning of the characters was lost.
London, 1857. In an era obsessed with human progress, mysterious palaces emerging from the desert sands had captured the Victorian public’s imagination. Yet Europe’s best philologists struggled to decipher the bizarre inscriptions excavators were digging up.
Enter a swashbuckling archaeologist, a suave British military officer turned diplomat, and a cloistered Irish rector, all vying for glory in a race to decipher this script that would enable them to peek farther back into human history than ever before.
From the ruins of Persepolis to lawless outposts of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, The Mesopotamian Riddle whisks you on a wild adventure through the golden age of archaeology in an epic quest to understand our past.
It was one of history’s great vanishing acts.
Around 3,400 BCE—as humans were gathering in complex urban settlements—a scribe in the mud-walled city-state of Uruk picked up a reed stylus to press tiny symbols into clay. For three millennia, wedge shape cuneiform script would record the military conquests, scientific discoveries, and epic literature of the great Mesopotamian kingdoms of Sumer, Assyria, and Babylon and of Persia’s mighty Achaemenid Empire, along with precious minutiae about everyday life in the cradle of civilization. And then…the meaning of the characters was lost.
London, 1857. In an era obsessed with human progress, mysterious palaces emerging from the desert sands had captured the Victorian public’s imagination. Yet Europe’s best philologists struggled to decipher the bizarre inscriptions excavators were digging up.
Enter a swashbuckling archaeologist, a suave British military officer turned diplomat, and a cloistered Irish rector, all vying for glory in a race to decipher this script that would enable them to peek farther back into human history than ever before.
From the ruins of Persepolis to lawless outposts of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, The Mesopotamian Riddle whisks you on a wild adventure through the golden age of archaeology in an epic quest to understand our past.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published March 18, 2025
45 people are currently reading
4,359 people want to read
About the author
Joshua Hammer
25Ìýbooks124ÌýfollowersJoshua Hammer was born in New York and educated at Horace Mann and Princeton University, graduating with a BA in English literature. In 1988 he joined Newsweek Magazine as a business and media writer, transitioning to the magazine's foreign correspondent corps in 1992. Hammer served, successively, as bureau chief in Nairobi, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, Berlin, Jerusalem, and Cape Town, and also was the magazine's Correspondent at Large in 2005 and 2006. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in the 2004-2005 academic year.
Since leaving Newsweek in 2006 Hammer has been an independent foreign correspondent, a contributing editor at Smithsonian Magazine and Outside, and a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, GQ, the New York Times Magazine, and other US publications. He was a finalist for the National Magazine Award in reporting in 2003, and won the award, for his writing about the Ebola crisis in West Africa, in 2016. He is the author of 5 non-fiction books, including the New York Times bestseller, "The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu," which was published by Simon & Schuster in April 2016. Hammer is currently based in Berlin.
Since leaving Newsweek in 2006 Hammer has been an independent foreign correspondent, a contributing editor at Smithsonian Magazine and Outside, and a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, GQ, the New York Times Magazine, and other US publications. He was a finalist for the National Magazine Award in reporting in 2003, and won the award, for his writing about the Ebola crisis in West Africa, in 2016. He is the author of 5 non-fiction books, including the New York Times bestseller, "The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu," which was published by Simon & Schuster in April 2016. Hammer is currently based in Berlin.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 7, 2024
The information at the top of this Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ page (as well as the promotional blurb (neither probably, I know, not written by the author) at the front of the free electronic review copy of this book that I received) describes the book’s plot, in part, as follows:
I felt, rightly or wrongly, the setup indicated that there was going to be some sort of suspenseful early-Victorian-era competition between multiple parties of colorful 19th-century eccentrics to decode an ancient language. There was a competition (in 1857), it’s true, but it wasn’t really very suspenseful and in any case most of the book isn’t really about the competition, which is mentioned at the beginning of this book and then returned to in the last chapter. The competition was held to determine if the various competing parties, working independently, would come up with more or less the same translation of “eight hundred lines of tiny cuneiform characters� believed to date from 1100 BCE. If so, the writing of the language which eventually was known as “Akkadian� would be considered to be completely deciphered. If the participants came up with wildly different translations, one or more parties in the contest might experience public humiliation. (Spoiler: )
The book is largely about the long (about 30 years) period of excavation, state-sponsored looting, colonial hijinks, and squabbling academic rivalry that led up to the 1857 competition.
Sometimes the “Acknowledgements� section at the end of a book is not worth spending a lot of time on. They are often just a list of names of people who helped. In this case, it was more interesting, as the author tells of the rather snobbish rebuff that he received from a curator at the British Museum whom he asked for guidance. This was interesting as, in the course of the main narrative in the book, there were many examples of the same type of class arrogance which, for example, sometimes advantaged the swashbuckling (aristo) archaeologist mentioned above vs. the (provincial, relatively unconnected) Irish rector. However, given that, today, the British Museum is in greater need of favorable publicity, you might think that the staff would be more conscious of helping the uninformed. (In this case, the author has written several relatively successful books; he’s not like some random person off the street is asking questions that could be answered on Wikipedia.) Considering the ever-rising clamor of former colonies asking for their looted patrimony returned, as well as a genuinely of a staff member who apparently, for years, stole British Museum property undetected and sold it to private collectors, you’d think that the British Museum would be more interested in cultivating a positive impression.
There were two words in this book that I didn't know and were not, I felt, completely understandable from context. They occurred close to each other near Kindle location 3652. They were: and .
I received a free electronic copy of this book from via .
Enter a swashbuckling archeologist, a suave British military officer turned diplomat, and a cloistered Irish rector, all vying for glory in a race to decipher this script that would enable them to peek farther back into human history than even before.This, I think, gives the wrong impression. This is not a deal-breaker for me, but it tended to create a little confusion as I read.
I felt, rightly or wrongly, the setup indicated that there was going to be some sort of suspenseful early-Victorian-era competition between multiple parties of colorful 19th-century eccentrics to decode an ancient language. There was a competition (in 1857), it’s true, but it wasn’t really very suspenseful and in any case most of the book isn’t really about the competition, which is mentioned at the beginning of this book and then returned to in the last chapter. The competition was held to determine if the various competing parties, working independently, would come up with more or less the same translation of “eight hundred lines of tiny cuneiform characters� believed to date from 1100 BCE. If so, the writing of the language which eventually was known as “Akkadian� would be considered to be completely deciphered. If the participants came up with wildly different translations, one or more parties in the contest might experience public humiliation. (Spoiler: )
The book is largely about the long (about 30 years) period of excavation, state-sponsored looting, colonial hijinks, and squabbling academic rivalry that led up to the 1857 competition.
Sometimes the “Acknowledgements� section at the end of a book is not worth spending a lot of time on. They are often just a list of names of people who helped. In this case, it was more interesting, as the author tells of the rather snobbish rebuff that he received from a curator at the British Museum whom he asked for guidance. This was interesting as, in the course of the main narrative in the book, there were many examples of the same type of class arrogance which, for example, sometimes advantaged the swashbuckling (aristo) archaeologist mentioned above vs. the (provincial, relatively unconnected) Irish rector. However, given that, today, the British Museum is in greater need of favorable publicity, you might think that the staff would be more conscious of helping the uninformed. (In this case, the author has written several relatively successful books; he’s not like some random person off the street is asking questions that could be answered on Wikipedia.) Considering the ever-rising clamor of former colonies asking for their looted patrimony returned, as well as a genuinely of a staff member who apparently, for years, stole British Museum property undetected and sold it to private collectors, you’d think that the British Museum would be more interested in cultivating a positive impression.
There were two words in this book that I didn't know and were not, I felt, completely understandable from context. They occurred close to each other near Kindle location 3652. They were: and .
I received a free electronic copy of this book from via .
February 1, 2025
I am horrible with languages. Two years of Russian and 4 years of Spanish resulted in my ability to say about 10 words (total) in each language. I can't fathom trying to figure out a language that no one else speaks anymore. And yet, that is the plot of Joshua Hammer's The Mesopotamian Riddle.
Now, there are a lot of different stories contained in the book. I'd argue a bit too much even while the entire narrative is interesting. In short, the book follows multiple people around the 1850s as they attempt to decipher some cuneiform. The main characters are Henry Rawlinson and Edward Hincks with other people in their orbit. The two men could not have been more different with the singular exception that they both were driven to decipher some archaeological findings.
This is not, however, a book on pure intellectual discussions. Hammer ranges far and wide to fill in historical gaps about ancient leaders, international politics, and personal conflicts. At times, I think Hammer jams a bit too much into the narrative. His digressions are always well written and engaging, but I found myself a few times wishing we could return to the main story of Rawlinson and Hincks. Ultimately, the book is a very good read if a little overstuffed.
(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Simon & Schuster.)
Now, there are a lot of different stories contained in the book. I'd argue a bit too much even while the entire narrative is interesting. In short, the book follows multiple people around the 1850s as they attempt to decipher some cuneiform. The main characters are Henry Rawlinson and Edward Hincks with other people in their orbit. The two men could not have been more different with the singular exception that they both were driven to decipher some archaeological findings.
This is not, however, a book on pure intellectual discussions. Hammer ranges far and wide to fill in historical gaps about ancient leaders, international politics, and personal conflicts. At times, I think Hammer jams a bit too much into the narrative. His digressions are always well written and engaging, but I found myself a few times wishing we could return to the main story of Rawlinson and Hincks. Ultimately, the book is a very good read if a little overstuffed.
(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Simon & Schuster.)
February 19, 2025
This was so interesting. I read the print book in less than 2 days - which is very rare for me! It was a lovely combo of ancient history, Victorian colonization, and linguistics. Full review coming for Shelf Awareness.
November 21, 2024
More than 5000 years ago, scribes from the Mesopotamian kingdoms of Assyria, Babylon, and Sumer began inscribing information on clay using tiny symbols known as cuneiform. In the mid-19th century, during the height of the Victorian era in Europe, three distinct individuals vied to be the first to translate ancient Assyrian into English. Contrary to the notion that scholars always collaborate harmoniously, Hammer's latest historical work reveals startling conflicts, political maneuvering, class tensions, and deceitful tactics among these three ersatz translators. The narrative is quite revealing, with an archaeologist, a British military officer turned diplomat, and an Irish Rector as passionate, fascinating, and rather obsessive scientists of their era.
Unfortunately, "The Mesopotamian Riddle" is so densely packed with information that it's easy to become overwhelmed by trivial details or seemingly tangential historical digressions. As a result, the central narrative often gets rather lost. While the book is engaging, a more concise edition might be easier to follow. I would recommend this book primarily for avid history buffs; it may prove overly complex for the casual reader.
Disclosure: I received a copy of the book through NetGalley in return for this candid review.
Unfortunately, "The Mesopotamian Riddle" is so densely packed with information that it's easy to become overwhelmed by trivial details or seemingly tangential historical digressions. As a result, the central narrative often gets rather lost. While the book is engaging, a more concise edition might be easier to follow. I would recommend this book primarily for avid history buffs; it may prove overly complex for the casual reader.
Disclosure: I received a copy of the book through NetGalley in return for this candid review.
March 20, 2025
How do we know what we know? And how do we recover lost knowledge? Joshua Hammer's The Mesopotamian Riddle focuses on the rediscovery and recovery of cuneiform literacy. Focused on the 19th century, Hammer alternates between the work of scholars at home as well as archeologists, diplomats, soldiers and adventurers at the frontiers of empire.
Hammer biographies three of the key figures, alluded to in the subtitle. Austen H Layard a law clerk adventurer, later a celebrated archeologist; joined by Henry Creswicke Rawlinson on a shared first journey. Rawlinson was a military officer in the employment of the East India Language, who also had a lifelong interest in languages and worked on learning and deciphering them in his limited free time. The third figure, is Edward Hickes an overworked and financial struggling Irish county parson with a talent for languages, who was able to translate many ancient texts.
Hammer links the overall attitudes of the populace and imperial ambitions with the small scale, day to day struggles of the featured three. There is also their very different personalities and the sometimes petty world of academia or mindsets of racial superiority.
As much of the work is focused on deciphering a forgotten language, Hammer reconstructs the intuitive process the translators used, reproducing many of the cuneiform characters and what was learned from their efforts.
Touching on the amateur to expert process and political tensions between a weakening Ottoman empire, it's peoples and European Powers.
Recommended to readers or researchers of linguistics, triumphs of empire or the roles of privilege in scholarship.
I received a free digital version of this book via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.
Hammer biographies three of the key figures, alluded to in the subtitle. Austen H Layard a law clerk adventurer, later a celebrated archeologist; joined by Henry Creswicke Rawlinson on a shared first journey. Rawlinson was a military officer in the employment of the East India Language, who also had a lifelong interest in languages and worked on learning and deciphering them in his limited free time. The third figure, is Edward Hickes an overworked and financial struggling Irish county parson with a talent for languages, who was able to translate many ancient texts.
Hammer links the overall attitudes of the populace and imperial ambitions with the small scale, day to day struggles of the featured three. There is also their very different personalities and the sometimes petty world of academia or mindsets of racial superiority.
As much of the work is focused on deciphering a forgotten language, Hammer reconstructs the intuitive process the translators used, reproducing many of the cuneiform characters and what was learned from their efforts.
Touching on the amateur to expert process and political tensions between a weakening Ottoman empire, it's peoples and European Powers.
Recommended to readers or researchers of linguistics, triumphs of empire or the roles of privilege in scholarship.
I received a free digital version of this book via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.
January 4, 2025
I must admit that I had a preexisting interest in this subject matter, but even if I had not, I think this book would have served as a very very interesting introduction to the beginning of modern Assyriology, and the history of the decipherment of dead languages as a whole. I loved the way that Hammer brought the "big three" figures of the field, "Rawlinson, Layard, and Hincks" to life with the narratives he put together from his research. Descriptions of Rawlinson sweating over Cuneiform in Baghdad, or Layard wandering through the borderlands of the ottoman empire getting robbed by bandits, these are the things that one often finds missing in the usual account of the early days of cuneiform study. Hammer is able to make these people feel real as well! Full of aspiration and excitement, as well as resentment and dissapointment. In the final few chapters of the book, I found I couldn't really put it down, I was rooting for Hincks so much! I also appreciated how Hammer sort of book-ended in each chapter the story of the decipherment of cuneiform with some history of the actual civilizations that used it. I love learning about the achaemenids, and the assyrians, and I think reading this book is going to lead to me reading more books about these topics in the future! I really do think that Hammer has succeeded here in accomplishing what I think the best historical non fiction accomplishes, bringing humanity and immediacy to events and people in the past, and allowing learning about history to become a side-effect of following an engaging narrative with interesting characters in a really good book!
December 19, 2024
In "The Mesopotamian Riddle's" epilogue, Hammer, a longtime journalist, recalls a visit to the British Museum when he was contemplating writing the book and looking for guidance. A scornful curator suggested he come back when he'd earned his PhD in Assyriology, and threatened to pan the eventual work in the London Review of Books. I'm no expert (if I was Henry Rawlinson pondering cuneiform, I'd have gone to my grave without figuring out which direction the lines go in), but I've read plenty of ancient-history-related popularizations, and this is one of the best. I'll defer to the actual LRB review (the book's due out in March) on whether it gets the details of the decipherment right, but Hammer inspires confidence.
Edward Dolnick, a nonacademic who wrote "The Writing of the Gods," about the race to decode Egyptian hieroglyphics, has supplied a long, enthusiastic blurb. If anything, Hammer has done an even better job than Dolnick did, avoiding Dolnick's occasionally gee-whizzy style and making the problems involved in translating cuneiform -- next to which reading hieroglyphics almost seems like a warmup exercise -- probably as clear as they can be to a general audience.
Simon & Schuster calls the book "rollicking," a word that invariably means a work does not, in fact, rollick at all. In this case, it hardly needs to. Hammer clearly did a vast amount of research and has come up with fascinating portraits of the main players, particularly soldier/diplomat/scholar Rawlinson and his protégé Henry Layard, who excavated Nineveh. Watching their relationship go from mutual admiration and warm friendship to near estrangement, largely because Rawlinson refused to acknowledge others' breakthroughs, is genuinely sad.
The book also vividly brings home the hazards of mid-19th-century Middle Eastern archaeology, from malaria and cholera to insurrections to moving immensely heavy friezes and statuary from what's now northern Iraq to London. And while the British Museum certainly deserves its reputation as a repository of stolen goods, it's interesting to read about the panic and anger with which the people of Mosul and a local qadi, or judge, greeted Layard's unearthing of what they took to be dangerous demonic figures in the mound at Nimrod.
I don't know if I'm up for the amount of Victorian prose that would be involved in reading the first-person accounts by the main players, but it's a great story.
(ARC via NetGalley.)
Edward Dolnick, a nonacademic who wrote "The Writing of the Gods," about the race to decode Egyptian hieroglyphics, has supplied a long, enthusiastic blurb. If anything, Hammer has done an even better job than Dolnick did, avoiding Dolnick's occasionally gee-whizzy style and making the problems involved in translating cuneiform -- next to which reading hieroglyphics almost seems like a warmup exercise -- probably as clear as they can be to a general audience.
Simon & Schuster calls the book "rollicking," a word that invariably means a work does not, in fact, rollick at all. In this case, it hardly needs to. Hammer clearly did a vast amount of research and has come up with fascinating portraits of the main players, particularly soldier/diplomat/scholar Rawlinson and his protégé Henry Layard, who excavated Nineveh. Watching their relationship go from mutual admiration and warm friendship to near estrangement, largely because Rawlinson refused to acknowledge others' breakthroughs, is genuinely sad.
The book also vividly brings home the hazards of mid-19th-century Middle Eastern archaeology, from malaria and cholera to insurrections to moving immensely heavy friezes and statuary from what's now northern Iraq to London. And while the British Museum certainly deserves its reputation as a repository of stolen goods, it's interesting to read about the panic and anger with which the people of Mosul and a local qadi, or judge, greeted Layard's unearthing of what they took to be dangerous demonic figures in the mound at Nimrod.
I don't know if I'm up for the amount of Victorian prose that would be involved in reading the first-person accounts by the main players, but it's a great story.
(ARC via NetGalley.)
October 30, 2024
The title puts a bit of a spin on the facts but the idea is true.
This one took a bit more time for me to understand how the scholars of the 19th century started with an untranslated visual language and figured out the direction of the letters and developed an understanding of the meaning of the communication form on various stele created in a number of BCE kingdoms. they found evidence that scribes used three basic cuneiform based languages.
There are a few photos that will be much better represented in a print copy. I did enjoy diving into it and have already preordered an audio.
I went bats over his earlier book The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts in 2016. Even if I prefer the term Archivists. I also learned a lot about the history, superstitions, and illegalities of a kettle of falcons in his book The Falcon Thief: A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird in 2020.
I requested and received a temporary advance uncorrected reader's proof compliments of publisher Simon and Schuster via NetGalley. Thank you! I geek history!
Pub Date Mar 18, 2025 #TheMesopotamianRiddle by Joshua Hammer @Joshuaiveshamme @simonschuster #Nonfiction #LinguisticHistory
This one took a bit more time for me to understand how the scholars of the 19th century started with an untranslated visual language and figured out the direction of the letters and developed an understanding of the meaning of the communication form on various stele created in a number of BCE kingdoms. they found evidence that scribes used three basic cuneiform based languages.
There are a few photos that will be much better represented in a print copy. I did enjoy diving into it and have already preordered an audio.
I went bats over his earlier book The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts in 2016. Even if I prefer the term Archivists. I also learned a lot about the history, superstitions, and illegalities of a kettle of falcons in his book The Falcon Thief: A True Tale of Adventure, Treachery, and the Hunt for the Perfect Bird in 2020.
I requested and received a temporary advance uncorrected reader's proof compliments of publisher Simon and Schuster via NetGalley. Thank you! I geek history!
Pub Date Mar 18, 2025 #TheMesopotamianRiddle by Joshua Hammer @Joshuaiveshamme @simonschuster #Nonfiction #LinguisticHistory
February 7, 2025
The writer describes how cuneiform came to be the very first script and most pervasive script in ancient history, and why this paradigm-shifting innovation was so damn confounding to decipher after it evaporated into utter meaninglessness. It elucidates a rare moment in history, when the answers to fundamental questions (are the stories in the Bible a myth or a historical fact?) emerge in high relief. It does not address whether humans descended from aliens, but it does have many entertaining and memorable anecdotes. I thought that for historical nonfiction, it oscillates with super contemporary relevance at many points. It outlines the absolute earliest origins of violent conflict in the Middle East, how one of the first functions of writing (the media) was to support the brutal hegemony of rulers, and the lack of ethics underpinning modern museum collections. But this is mostly the story behind mysterious relics, the race to collect and display them to the public two and a half thousand years later, and especially the coterie of adventurers and scholars who risked their lives, and burned-up millions of gigabytes of pure brainpower, to find out what they mean.
March 18, 2025
Presented a cuneiform tablet, how would you find what it said?
Hammer presents a very thorough account of how that was done. There are the personalities involved. There is the story of how the different cuneiform languages were deciphered and also the history of the Abyssinian kings memorialized in the writings. As to the men involved, they were Victorian Britains who had the upbringing, education and egos to think success natural. As a group they pieced together a puzzle a bit at a time. There were leaders and squabbles and hard feelings. The public interest was high due to the arrival of artifacts that were exotic and begged understanding.
The book is really well written, and I’m thankful for the detail he provides, especially what the inscriptions say about the Abyssinian civilization, which had never been more than a name to me. And that information is the gift of the subjects of this book worked to give us.
I received a digital advance copy compliments of Simon & Schuster and NetGalley.
Hammer presents a very thorough account of how that was done. There are the personalities involved. There is the story of how the different cuneiform languages were deciphered and also the history of the Abyssinian kings memorialized in the writings. As to the men involved, they were Victorian Britains who had the upbringing, education and egos to think success natural. As a group they pieced together a puzzle a bit at a time. There were leaders and squabbles and hard feelings. The public interest was high due to the arrival of artifacts that were exotic and begged understanding.
The book is really well written, and I’m thankful for the detail he provides, especially what the inscriptions say about the Abyssinian civilization, which had never been more than a name to me. And that information is the gift of the subjects of this book worked to give us.
I received a digital advance copy compliments of Simon & Schuster and NetGalley.
January 11, 2025
An interesting and well written book about a little known chapter of archaeology. While I enjoyed the eponymous riddle, I have to admit that I preferred the previous book by this author, , for a very simple reason - it focused on a Malian character and delved deep into the local history and culture. This new book follows mainly white Victorians and I am a bit tired of stories told from a western perspective.
Thanks to the publisher, Simon & Schuster, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
Thanks to the publisher, Simon & Schuster, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
January 12, 2025
The book has several strong points. The storytelling is excellent as is the biographical information. It also opened my eyes to a lot of Mesopotamian history; history I had only come across in very broad terms. I liked the parts where accounts from Mesopotamia were compared to biblical accounts. On the other hand, I thought that the book had some weaknesses; early on there were too many places and names that I had trouble keeping clear in my mind. I also would have been happier with fewer and less graphic accounts of cruelty. Fortunately, this was not a lot and I skipped over it. A little less about the actual cuneiform symbols would also have been appreciated. Nonetheless, I enjoyed this book (I miss the characters too) and it was well worth reading. Thank you to Edelweiss and Simon & Schuster for the advance review copy.
March 30, 2025
I wish we could get back to being a society where we value the pursuit of knowledge as a grand adventure.
This is peak Gentleman Adventurer/Explorer stuff, and I love that as with Champollion and the Rosetta Stone, this book narrates the deciphering of an ancient language as an adventure story.
Of course loads of scholarship has been published on this topic, but in terms of commercial nonfiction there has been very little good work done on the subject. Which means this is sort of a follow-up to/expansion on the section in Gods, Graves, and Scholars that discusses the topic.
Given that, this isn’t exactly “new� information, but it will be new to many readers, and full of previously undiscovered detail for those who were aware of the facts in general.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
This is peak Gentleman Adventurer/Explorer stuff, and I love that as with Champollion and the Rosetta Stone, this book narrates the deciphering of an ancient language as an adventure story.
Of course loads of scholarship has been published on this topic, but in terms of commercial nonfiction there has been very little good work done on the subject. Which means this is sort of a follow-up to/expansion on the section in Gods, Graves, and Scholars that discusses the topic.
Given that, this isn’t exactly “new� information, but it will be new to many readers, and full of previously undiscovered detail for those who were aware of the facts in general.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
March 29, 2025
A deep dove into both culture of the Assyrians as well as the quest to unravel their language. The book was bogged down in some parts by a narrative that moved forward and then back so it could be difficult to keep the timeline of events straight at times. I did love how the author included cuneiform in the text as I was able to follow along with Rawlston and Hickes and their deciphering of this lost language. Overall it was an exciting read and I appreciated learning about this culture that gets much less print than the Egyptians.
I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley for my honest review.
I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley for my honest review.
April 2, 2025
This is my jam! The story of the work to decipher the cuneiform scripts of ancient Mesopotamia! So exciting!
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