The story of how the first cities rose from southern Mesopotamia has long fascinated scientists and historians. Many explanations point to fertile soil, farming, and trade networks as the engines of ...

In southern Iraq, archaeologists have excavated a remarkable collection of carved clay tablets—ancient records of Akkadia, the world’s oldest empire. Marked with the administrative details of ...

Think about walking through ruins that have witnessed empires rise and fall, where kings once ruled and civilizations ...

The Great Ziggurat of Ur dedicated to the Moon god. Ziggurats were massive structure typical for Mesopotamia. Sumerians believed that the gods lived in the temple at the top of the ziggurats. Woods ...

Long before modern hospitals, ancient civilizations were already practicing surgery, pain management, and even basic infection control. This video explores forgotten techniques used by the Sumerians — ...

On the bitter plains of modern Iraq there remain large piles of baked bricks covered with much sand. They have sat there in silent witness to a lost religion for 4,000 years. Only in the 19th century ...

Gender-ambiguous people in ancient Mesopotamia were powerful and important members of society more than four millennia ago.

But these tablets weren’t strictly business—they also contained literature that lives on today, including the The Epic of ...