Books like Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia — picked by fans

When this book first came out, I was just beginning work on my Ph.D. dissertation and it had a big influence on me. Stephanie Dalley writes in a wonderfully accessible style for general readers about the people of the 18th century BCE cities of Mari and Tell al Rimah, and throughout the book she quotes from the personal letters found there. She overcomes a common perception that the ancient world can seem removed and remote, by letting the ancient people speak directly to the reader. All the while, she also makes fascinating observations about what the documents reveal, and also includes discussions of archaeological evidence (such as culinary molds that were used to make fish-shaped bread, in the section on food preparation!).

Women were integral to everything in Mesopotamia—politics, religion, economy, society, you name it—for the entire multi-millennium lifetime of the culture. I find this book, which is the catalogue of an exhibit for the Yale Babylonian Collection, to be a particularly interesting study, and it has gorgeous illustrations. The six chapters include two that focus on prominent women, the priestess Enheduanna and Queen Sammu-ramat (Semiramis), as well as discussions of many women who were not well known. The objects that were displayed in the exhibit are illustrated in the second half of the book, each described with a paragraph or two. These really give you a sense of how archaeologists and historians draw their conclusions from ancient evidence, and how individual lives can be reconstructed from objects and texts.

Mesopotamian mathematics is a fascinating subject; their numerical system was based on 60, and the ancient thinkers were adept at many types of calculations and word problems. Hundreds of clay tablets reflect their advanced understanding of mathematical principles. Eleanor Robson explains clearly in this book how historians and mathematicians have interpreted the evidence, and she discusses not just specific mathematical texts, how they are understood, and the way ideas were expressed, but she also introduces the scribes who developed and learned it all, and even the buildings in which they worked. The book is a “social history,” as the subtitle notes, and also an intellectual adventure.

Now I realize that this isn’t a narrative history, but I think you will find it fascinating. It’s a big compendium of excerpts from more than 750 letters that were found in the archives of the ancient palace of Mari, organized by topics such as “Dynastic Marriages,” “Crime,” “Caring for the Gods,” “Death and Burial,” and many, many more. It’s a book to dip into rather than to read from beginning to end, and it’ll help you get a sense of the vast amount of detail about real people that is to be found on Mesopotamian clay tablets (especially ancient letters). Jack Sasson’s enthusiasm and deep knowledge of the subject is palpable in his many explanatory paragraphs and long footnotes.

This book, like the others, is an essential reference for anyone researching the subject.

It covers in detail geography, rivers and irrigation, archaeology and building, government and society, religion and myth, language and writing, architecture, and the arts, economy and trade, food and agriculture, arms and warfare, everyday life, customs and society in general.

Getting down to finer details is the strength of this book. A great asset it has to be for the finer points in developing a novel.

The atlas introduces the reader to Near Eastern geography, history, and culture, and it complements the other books included here. Roaf maps (literally and figuratively) the various cultures of the Near East during ancient times. His commentary is interesting and the maps beautifully produced, easy to interpret, and accurate. They cover a wide range of data including climate and environment, natural resources, linguistic and cultural information, trade routes, and the territories of different polities. Take some time to explore the atlas; you will not regret it.

This most revealing book explains how, over 7,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, an area corresponding roughly with that of modern Iraq, urban living began.

The region where this remarkable phenomenon first occurred is known as Sumer. Where its people originated remains something of a mystery and the still imperfectly understood Sumerian language appears unrelated to any other known tongue, ancient or modern.  

Again set in the Middle East, this novel about Ahmad and Carwyn, Arab and Welsh, who are both drawn into the war on its Eastern Front, is an absorbing story from a part of the world that has been neglected in World War I fiction. The two men are both betrayed by the English in different ways, and Izzidien’s Iraqi-Welsh heritage allows her to draw a compassionate picture of both protagonists. It also shows how the rapacious European colonialist mentality that underpinned the entire war created the conditions for terrorism and strife in the region today.

In To Start a War, Robert Draper investigates how it was that the US came to invade Iraq in 2003. A gifted writer, he reveals the paranoia and fear that led to the collecting of ‘intelligence’ that confirmed the biases of senior US officials – but which was often fabricated and false. 

My fifth book is not a novel but a true story about modern politics and warfare. 

This book is about Doctor David Kelly, a biologist like me. Kelly led the search for biological weapons in Iraq before the Iraq war. Unfortunately, he didn’t find enough evidence to suit the government of the day, but they still went ahead by issuing a now famous ‘dodgy’ and ‘sexed-up’ dossier that was the excuse to invade Iraq. Shortly afterward, on a July afternoon in a quiet part of Oxfordshire, England, Kelly went for a walk and never returned. He was found dead, slumped against a tree. 

Kelly’s death and the unanswered questions it left behind still bother me, but if you want to understand a quiet, sensitive man and the machinations of a government desperate to find a reason to declare war, then this book is a good start.