Between Two Rivers
'A WONDERFUL READ' -- TOM HOLLAND
Published on 20. February 2025
Book
Hardback
336 pages
978-1-5293-9212-8 (ISBN)
Description
'I have never read a book on Mesopotamia that so beautifully brings to life the people themselves ... It melts away the sense of time.'
TOM HOLLAND
'Tender, moving and vivid.'
ROBERT MACFARLANE
'Beautiful'
STEPHEN GREENBLATT
'Fascinating and magnificent, beautifully written and explained: this book is a masterpiece.'
GEORGE MONBIOT
'Ancient Mesopotamia comes alive in Moudhy Al-Rashid's must-read, millennia-spanning history ... spellbinding'
NEW SCIENTIST
----------
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 adorable, 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.
Together, these fragments illuminate not just the history of Mesopotamia, but the story of how history was made.
TOM HOLLAND
'Tender, moving and vivid.'
ROBERT MACFARLANE
'Beautiful'
STEPHEN GREENBLATT
'Fascinating and magnificent, beautifully written and explained: this book is a masterpiece.'
GEORGE MONBIOT
'Ancient Mesopotamia comes alive in Moudhy Al-Rashid's must-read, millennia-spanning history ... spellbinding'
NEW SCIENTIST
----------
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 adorable, 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.
Together, these fragments illuminate not just the history of Mesopotamia, but the story of how history was made.
Reviews / Votes
Fascinating and magnificent, beautifully written and explained: this book is a masterpiece. -- GEORGE MONBIOT, author of Feral and The Invisible Doctrine I have never read a book on Mesopotamia that so beautifully brings to life the people themselves. There are beautiful descriptions of what it is to be pregnant, to give birth, to have small children, to love a dog. I love the way in which she's not just writing about priests or kings, but is giving us a clay tablet on which a little child has bitten, so you have the imprint of his teeth. It melts away the sense of time. A wonderful read. -- TOM HOLLAND A tender, moving and vivid history of ancient Mesopotamia and how it still speaks to us. -- ROBERT MACFARLANE Ancient Mesopotamia comes alive in Moudhy Al-Rashid's must-read, millennia-spanning history, cleverly wrought from tablets written in the world's oldest script ... spellbinding ... a fresh and very human portrait of the region... Through her clever sifting of the texts, we see how cuneiform ... helped to bind these civilisations together across millennia... We also discover, in Al-Rashid's vivid rendering of the texts, very moving details from the lives of real people in Mesopotamia over the ages ... Al-Rashid's academic background gives her a wonderful confidence as she roves around the literary and archaeological evidence. She is also a gifted storyteller, able to spin a yarn of gold from the very fragmentary sources ... This is a delightful book, and a must-read for anyone interested in these civilisations. I hope it serves to shine a larger spotlight on this extraordinary period in humanity's past. -- Emily Wilson * New Scientist * Beautiful ... Moudhy Al-Rashid manages to combine insightful scholarship with a warm personal presence. The world it explores is fascinating and crucially important. -- STEPHEN GREENBLATT A marvellous book, which not only brims with 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 this ancient history is not as remote as you might think. Al Rashid describes her job of reading ancient Mesopotamian texts as like shaking hands with strangers. -- JAMES BARR, author of A Line in the Sand Absorbing, learned and witty, Between Two Rivers is far more than an account of ancient Mesopotamia. Al-Rashid offers an ingenious, passionate 'history of histories', spinning outwards from relics collected by a royal priestess more than 2,500 years ago. In discovering familiar human joys and sorrows - surviving in times of peace and war, dealing with royal and divine demands, the desperate love for our children - we vividly witness how lives across the millennia are revealed and connected by archaeology and cuneiform. -- REBECCA WRAGG SYKES author of Kindred This book is an extraordinary invitation to the magical land of Mesopotamia, written like your best friend is sitting with you next to a cozy fire with a warm drink, spinning mesmerizing tales of the fascinating land which birthed our modern world. It is a stunning debut effort, written by both a wonderful scholar and talented social media communicator. -- PROFESSOR SARAH PARCAK Wonderfully vivid. * Literary Review * Her infectious enthusiasm imbues Between Two Rivers, a lively and beguiling history of ancient Mesopotamia ... I found myself completely enthralled by an ancient period and civilisation I previously knew very little about. -- CAROLINE SANDERSON * What to Read Now * A lively portrait of this ancient civilisation ... Al-Rashid is an engaging and knowledgeable guide ... Many of her characters - bored schoolboys, tired parents and squabbling siblings - are extremely relatable ... Between Two Rivers provides remarkable insights into ancient lives ... even at a distance of nearly four millennia, it is impossible not be moved * Sunday Times * A highly readable introduction to an era of history that deserves to be better known. -- Starred Review * Kirkus * An ode to the power of history. It builds a persuasive case for history writing as a particularly human impulse, and for how lives of people living thousands of years ago can reflect and shape our modern lives in unexpected ways ... Al-Rashid punctuates her prose with personal recollections and humour, as well as touching reflections on her experience of motherhood. She is our companion, tour guide and teacher ... a plethora of fun historical facts ... To write a book like this one, the author needs to have both mastery over the subject material and an engaging style of communication. Al-Rashid excels in both areas. For general audiences, Between Two Rivers is a fascinating, balanced introduction to this complex - and at times elusive - ancient world. * The Conversation * Between Two Rivers is 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 ... Al-Rashid breathes life into the dry clay. * Wall Street Journal *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Product notice
Trade binding
Illustrations
N/A
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 164 mm
Thickness: 32 mm
Weight
532 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5293-9212-8 (9781529392128)
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
Person
Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Oxford's Wolfson College, where she specialises in the languages and history of ancient Mesopotamia. She completed her BA from Columbia University in Philosophy, and after a single day of learning about cuneiform texts at a summer school, decided to pursue the subject with a Master's degree and eventually a Doctoral degree at the University of Oxford. She is from Saudi Arabia, where she also grew up, and now lives in Oxfordshire with her family.