Cuneiform, the oldest identified writing system, defied deciphering – until 1857. What happened then makes a terrific read, ...

Writing and trade are deeply intertwined, and some of the oldest surviving cuneiform writing was used in ancient Mesopotamia to keep records of the buying and selling of goods. In ancient ...

Almost 4,000 years ago, a Mesopotamian man named Nanni was so disappointed with the copper he bought from a trader named ...

Experts told Live Science it was probably the proto-Sinaitic script, which was invented about 4,000 years ago by Canaanite ...

Animals and humans have always coexisted. Before cities, nomadic hunter-gatherers depended on animals for food, transport, ...

Sumerian civilization appears to have evolved in Southern Mesopotamia around 4000 BC, while some historians place it as far ...

When a vast library of texts amassed by Mesopotamian King Ashurbanipal was burned to the ground about 2700 years ago, the ...

Oxford historian, Dr Moudhy Al Rashid, on her book Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History ...

An Honorary Fellow at Oxford University's Wolfson College, Moudhy has spent much of her career translating the stories of the ...

The oldest reference in the first known writing — cuneiform — was not about gods or kings, but about beer. Lots of it. It was ...

The translation of ancient Assyrian writing into modern languages was a challenge that had long vexed historians. Three ...