Moudhy Al-Rashid Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History

Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid is an academic, and researcher at the University of Oxford (Wolfson College), where she now researches cuneiform medical texts. She teaches Akkadian text classes and modules in the history of science in Mesopotamia at the Oriental Institute.
Research interests include the history of science, medicine, and technology; science and medicine in the ancient Middle East; Iraq; cuneiform; Akkadian language; ancient North Arabian languages and scripts; archaeology; Assyriology; and historiography of Assyriology.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. Two Millenia 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, 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.
Praise for Between Two Rivers:
'Tender, moving and vivid.' ROBERT MACFARLANE
'Fascinating, magnificent, beautifully written: this book is a masterpiece.' GEORGE MONBIOT
'Ancient Mesopotamia comes alive in Moudhy Al-Rashid's must-read, millennia-spanning history: NEW SCIENTIST