Between Two Rivers
Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History
Published on 12. August 2025
Book
Hardback
336 pages
978-1-324-03642-5 (ISBN)
Description
Thousands of years ago, in a part of the world we now call ancient Mesopotamia, people began writing things down for the very first time.
What they left behind, in a vast region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, preserves leaps in human ingenuity, like the earliest depiction of a wheel and the first approximation of pi. But they also capture breathtakingly intimate, raw, and relatable moments, like a dog's paw prints as it accidentally stepped into fresh clay, or the imprint of a child's teeth.
In Between Two Rivers, historian Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid reveals what these ancient people chose to record about their lives, allowing us to brush hands with them millennia later. We find a lullaby to soothe a baby, instructions for exorcising a ghost, countless receipts for beer, and the messy writing of preschoolers. We meet an enslaved person negotiating their freedom, an astronomer tracing the movement of the planets, a princess who may have created the world's first museum, and a working mother struggling with "the juggle" in 1900 BCE.
Millennia ago, Mesopotamians saw the world's first cities, the first writing system, early seeds of agriculture, and groundbreaking developments in medicine and astronomy. With breathtaking intimacy and grace, Al-Rashid brings their lives-with all their anxieties, aspirations, and intimacies-vividly close to our own.
What they left behind, in a vast region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, preserves leaps in human ingenuity, like the earliest depiction of a wheel and the first approximation of pi. But they also capture breathtakingly intimate, raw, and relatable moments, like a dog's paw prints as it accidentally stepped into fresh clay, or the imprint of a child's teeth.
In Between Two Rivers, historian Dr. Moudhy Al-Rashid reveals what these ancient people chose to record about their lives, allowing us to brush hands with them millennia later. We find a lullaby to soothe a baby, instructions for exorcising a ghost, countless receipts for beer, and the messy writing of preschoolers. We meet an enslaved person negotiating their freedom, an astronomer tracing the movement of the planets, a princess who may have created the world's first museum, and a working mother struggling with "the juggle" in 1900 BCE.
Millennia ago, Mesopotamians saw the world's first cities, the first writing system, early seeds of agriculture, and groundbreaking developments in medicine and astronomy. With breathtaking intimacy and grace, Al-Rashid brings their lives-with all their anxieties, aspirations, and intimacies-vividly close to our own.
Reviews / Votes
"A search for human traces amid the mountains of cuneiform fragments that, stamped by human hands, carry the source code of the harsh, impassive civilizations that rose and fell between the Tigris and Euphrates... breathes life into the dry clay of philology and bureaucracy." -- Dominic Green - Wall Street Journal "Al-Rashid of Oxford University takes readers on a tour of this most distant niche of human history, attempting to illuminate still further the daily lives behind the dusty relics they left behind." -- Colin Dwyer - NPR "Between Two Rivers provides remarkable insights into ancient lives. . . . Even at a distance of nearly four millennia, it is impossible not to be moved." -- Katherine Harvey, The Sunday Times "A must-read, millennia-spanning history. . . . [Moudhy Al-Rashid is] a gifted storyteller, able to spin a yarn of gold from very fragmentary sources." -- Emily Wilson, New Scientist "Moudhy Al-Rashid manages to combine insightful scholarship with a warm personal presence... The world it explores is fascinating and crucially important." -- Stephen Greenblatt, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Dark Renaissance and The Swerve "Fascinating and magnificent, beautifully written and explained: Between Two Rivers is a masterpiece." -- George Monbiot, author of Feral and The Invisible Doctrine "A tender, moving, and vivid history of ancient Mesopotamia and how it still speaks to us. . . . Spectacular!" -- Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland and Is a River Alive? "Absorbing, learned and witty. . . . An ingenious, passionate 'history of histories' [in which] we vividly witness how lives across the millennia are revealed and connected by archaeology and cuneiform." -- Rebecca Wragg Sykes, author of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art "I have never read a book on Mesopotamia that so beautifully brings to life the people themselves. . . . It melts away the sense of time. A wonderful read." -- Tom Holland, author of Pax and co-host of The Rest is History podcast "An extraordinary invitation to the magical land of Mesopotamia. . . . Stunning." -- Sarah Parcak, author of Archaeology from Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past "Moudhy al Rashid describes her job of reading ancient Mesopotamian texts as like shaking hands with strangers. She introduces them in this marvelous book, which not only brims with her humanity but offers fascinating and often funny insights into everyday life in this crucial era of world history. Fart jokes to exam stress, motherhood and tax evasion: you'll find something here that reminds you that it is not as remote as you might think." -- James Barr, author of A Line in the Sand "A highly readable introduction to an era of history that deserves to be better known." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 160 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
482 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-324-03642-5 (9781324036425)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
08/2025
W. W. Norton & Company
€29.49
Available for download
Person
Moudhy Al-Rashid is an honorary fellow at the University of Oxford's Wolfson College, where she specializes in the languages and history of ancient Mesopotamia. Originally from Saudi Arabia, where she grew up, she now lives in Oxfordshire with her family and their dogs.