Excavations on unpromising mounds in the Iraqi desert revealed Sumer’s earliest city. Surviving relics and a rebuilt temple ...

What does it take to decipher an extinct writing system? If Joshua Hammer’s new book The Mesopotamian Riddle: An archaeologist, a soldier, a clergyman, and the race to decipher the world’s ...

The bowls, which were unearthed at an early archaeological site in Iraq, are thought to have held savory meals given in exchange for labor in ancient Mesopotamia. But the site was eventually ...