Experts in Assyriology -- who specialize in the archaeological, historical, cultural and linguistic study of Assyria and the rest of ancient Mesopotamia (Iraq) --spend many years painstakingly trying ...

While humans have been making their mark on the surfaces of this Earth for at least tens of thousands of years, it's difficult to pinpoint the exact moment our impulse to record what we saw tipped ...

In his new book “Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Empire” (Basic Books), Yale professor Eckart Frahm offers a comprehensive history of the ancient civilization (circa 2025 BCE to 609 ...

Cuneiform tablets from ancient Mesopotamia cover a range of topics, from exorcising ghosts to uncovering the location of Noah’s Ark. Cuneiform tablet, c. 2nd–1st century B.C.E., Mesopotamia, probably ...

In Lord Byron’s 1821 play “Sardanapalus,” the king of the title laments that the glory of his empire will someday fade into oblivion. “Time shall quench full many a people’s records, and a hero’s acts ...

In some respects, the life of a Mesopotamian scholar in the seventh century B.C. was not so very different from that of a modern academic. While the former might be responsible for reporting on ...