The Mesopotamian Riddle: An Archeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman, and the Race to Discover the World’s Oldest Writing by Joshua Hammer

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The Mesopotamian Riddle: An Archeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman, and the Race to Discover the World’s Oldest Writing by Joshua Hammer

'The Mesopotamian Riddle: An Archeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman, and the Race to Discover the World’s Oldest Writing' by Joshua Hammer

Cracking hieroglyphs and opening the pharaohs tombs? Those are triumphs of 19th century archeology still remembered. But other diggers and scholars were at work elsewhere, including Mesopotamia (Iraq), the fertile land that nurtured civilizations older than Egypt. Teams and individuals from different countries raced to be first to decipher ancient Mesopotamia’s wedge-shaped writing, cuneiform. In the 1840s that contest kindled interest beyond academia as journalists covered the colorful, sometimes rancorous egos on the chase.

In The Mesopotamian Riddle, New York Times bestselling author Joshua Hammer tells that story, recapturing a spirit of adventure that was visceral as well as intellectual. The archeologists working in Mesopotamia, by then a backwater province of the Ottoman Empire, were confronted by corrupt Turkish officials, Arab insurgents, brigands and diplomatic intrigue. Their lives were at risk, as well as their discoveries. The spiritual ancestors of ISIS were amok, determined to destroy all idols to false gods.

The author sketches out the main rivals in the bid for cracking cuneiform and the implications of their work. The ancient script preserved the names of biblical kings as well as stories similar to the creation and the great flood accounts of Genesis. Unlocking the buried worlds of Sumer and Babylon unlocked minds, even as the process revealed institutionalized prejudices among the explorer-archeologists. An Arab Christian from Mosul, Hormuzd Rassam, was crucial to many discoveries but relegated to footnotes by his better-connected British colleagues. The Mesopotamian Riddle restores him and other actors to the story.

Buy The Mesopotamian Riddle on Amazon here.

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