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A Gift from King Shulgi: A Pair of Gold Earrings
Gold is a treasure, and he who possesses it does all he wishes to in this world, and succeeds in helping souls into paradise. Christopher Columbus. On June 22, 2005, the Sulaymaniyah Museum of Iraqi Kurdistan purchased a pair...
Article
Herodotus on Babylon
The description of Babylon and Babylonian customs in Histories by the Greek historian Herodotus (l. c. 484-425/413 BCE) has long been challenged for accuracy and been found wanting, leading some scholars to dismiss the work entirely as more...
Article
The Iraq Museum: A Brightness in the Darkness
For whom have I labored? For whom have I journeyed? For whom have I suffered? I have gained absolutely nothing for myself, I have only profited the snake, the ground lion! The Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI This is how...
Article
Ancient Mesopotamian Beliefs in the Afterlife
Unlike the rich corpus of ancient Egyptian funerary texts, no such “guidebooks” from Mesopotamia detail the afterlife and the soul's fate after death. Instead, ancient Mesopotamian views of the afterlife must be pieced together...
Article
Visiting the Ancient City of Babylon
We had a 4-day national holiday. Meaning what? No clinic and no hospital! I said to myself, “It's been a long time since I have visited Babylonia.” I drove my car for about 11 hours, continuously. Finally, I was there. I went...
Article
Third Gender Figures in the Ancient Near East
In the ancient Near East, there was a social standard by which men were ideally expected to behave. In the 21st century CE, expectations still exist, albeit in different forms. Normative masculinity through ancient Mesopotamia typically concerned...
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Ancient Mesopotamia from Cities to Empires
A visual timeline illustrating the development of what most consider the “cradle of civilization” - Mesopotamia (meaning “the land between two rivers,” the Tigris and Euphrates) from the emergence of small tribal settlements in the Stone...
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Pets in the Ancient Mediterranean
The history of mankind is interwoven with the domestication of animals. Dogs may have been domesticated in prehistoric Europe perhaps as long as 36,000 years ago. The first cats are thought to have been domesticated in Egypt, while the invention...
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Schools in Ancient Mesopotamia - Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization, E23
What was school like in Ancient Mesopotamia? How did scribes learn to read and write in a difficult language like Sumerian? Dr. Josh explores the education of these early bureaucrats. This series is based on the entertaining and engaging...
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Agriculture in the Fertile Crescent and Mesopotamia - Timeline
A visual timeline illustrating the evolution of agriculture in parallel with invention and social development in the region of the Fertile Crescent (a term first used in 1916 by Egyptologist J.H. Breasted), enabling the establishment of cities...