Customer Reviews

Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia

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I just spent about 10 minutes with this book in a store. I know the genre of "Travel Books to Ancient Lands", however, and I'd say that this book is worth its weight in gold! It's chock full of interesting tidbits on how the Sumerians lived in a very readable format. Academics should take notes -books like this will fly off the shelves!

It's very anthropological: It covers a very broad range of topics in Sumerian life. There was food, worship, travel, language, and other things.

Aside from their language and its writing system, this is the kind of information that I WANT in a book about a culture, a civilization. King Lists and Mythologies are fine (excellent in the original language) but give me the culmination of 150 years of digging and writing -I want to know what the run-of-the-mill man's work-a-day life was like, too.

This book is jam-packed with facts. If you can spare the money and you want to know how Sumerians lived their life, this is it.

This is THE book for those who want to know more about this topic. You can turn to it with much appreciation. It is well-written, presented in a easy way , gives a time-line of history in the back, divides sections into logical areas ( like history, archetecture etc). Just a complete book. Goes well with Roux's book "Ancient Iraq".5 stars.