The Great Ziggurat of Ur dedicated to the Moon god. Ziggurats were massive structure typical for Mesopotamia. Sumerians believed that the gods lived in the temple at the top of the ziggurats. Woods ...

A recent study is changing the understanding of how urbanization developed in ancient Mesopotamia. According to the analysis, the emergence of the Sumerian civilization was not only the result of ...

The Sumerians are often credited with building the world’s first civilization—but where did they come from, and how did their ...

In southern Iraq, archaeologists have excavated a remarkable collection of carved clay tablets—ancient records of Akkadia, the world’s oldest empire. Marked with the administrative details of ...

On the bitter plains of modern Iraq there remain large piles of baked bricks covered with much sand. They have sat there in silent witness to a lost religion for 4,000 years. Only in the 19th century ...

A new interdisciplinary study shows that the rise of the first urban civilization was not solely a product of human ingenuity, but a complex response to coastal dynamics and the predictable rhythms of ...

Picking one period or dynasty to represent the entirety of this era was far too difficult. So I’ve decided that I will be dedicating two blog posts to Near Eastern art. Today’s blog post will be ...