Allen Lane

When Victorian archaeologists dug into a grassy hill, they chanced upon one of the oldest, greatest stores of knowledge ever seen: the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, seventh-century BCE ruler of the ancient Middle East. After his death, vengeful rivals burned Ashurbanipal’s library to the ground – yet the texts, carved on clay tablets, were baked and preserved by the heat. Buried for millennia, the tablets were written in cuneiform.

More than half of human history is written in cuneiform, but only a few hundred people can read it. In this book, Assyriologist Selena Wisnom takes us on an immersive tour of this library, bringing ancient Mesopotamia and its people to life. Through it, we encounter a world of astonishing richness and complexity. Mesopotamia was home to advanced mathematics, astronomy, banking, law and literature. This culture’s myths were precursors to Bible stories – a culture without which our lives today would be unrecognisable.

The Library of Ancient Wisdom unearths a civilization strange and strangely familiar: a land of capricious gods, exorcisms, jealous rivalries, profound friendships and petty grievances. Through these pages we meet humanity’s first civilization: their achievements, daily life, and struggle to understand their place in the universe.

 

About the author

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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