The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of the Modern World

A tour of an ancient library transports readers to Mesopotamia, introducing us to its people, their ideas, and their humanity.

The library of Ashurbanipal, Assyria’s last great king, held more than thirty thousand documents, an astonishing collection at the forefront of knowledge in its day, from ancient traditions in religion and literature to the latest developments in magic and medicine. When the Assyrian empire fell, the library burned to the ground, and its contents, cuneiform tablets impressed in clay, lay buried for thousands of years until a team of Victorian archaeologists discovered the remnants in modern-day Iraq. The clay had baked and hardened; the very fire that consumed the library had helped its texts to survive for millennia.

In The Library of Ancient Wisdom, scholar Selena Wisnom, one of only a few hundred experts able to read cuneiform script today, guides us inside this important collection and, through its contents, brings ancient Mesopotamia and its people to life. Introducing us to Ashurbanipal and his family, scribes, astrologers, physicians, and more, Wisnom explores the library’s tablets and the details they divulge about how these ancient people thought about the world. Like us, they had concerns about job security, jealous rivalries, and profound friendships, and questions about the meaning of life. Wisnom ushers us into a world where magic was commonplace, where the gods spoke to you in dreams, and where the secrets of the universe were revealed through puns—a tour that takes us to the heart of what it means to be human.

Offering a close look at a major historical landmark as well as a readable account of the world’s earliest civilizations, The Library of Ancient Wisdom lays bare the ideas, hopes, fears, and desires that survive on humble clay.