The story of the ancient world's most spectacular library, and the civilization that created it
'A thrilling trip back to Mesopotamia, birthplace of horoscopes and algorithms ... via the abundant records they left behind, written on clay tablets... absorbing... hums with life' - Mathew Lyons, Daily Telegraph
'Fascinating and rich in detail... provides an excellent survey of Mesopotamian literary classics.. and offers snippets of daily life' - Literary Review
When a team of Victorian archaeologists dug into a grassy hill in Iraq, they chanced upon one of the oldest and greatest stores of knowledge ever seen: the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, seventh century BCE ruler of a huge swathe of the ancient Middle East known...
Selena Wisnom is Lecturer in the Heritage of the Middle East at the University of Leicester. A specialist in the interpretation of Mesopotamian cultural sources, Selena's previous work includes Weapons of Words: Intertextual Competition in Babylonian Poetry. She has also written three plays set in ancient Assyria; the most recent, Ashurbanipal: The Last Great King of Assyria was staged at London's Crypt Gallery in 2019.
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