Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization

This splendid work of scholarship . . . sums up with economy and power all that the written record so far deciphered has to tell about the ancient and complementary civilizations of Babylon and Assyria.Edward B. Garside, New York Times Book ReviewAncient Mesopotamiathe area now called Iraqhas received less attention than ancient Egypt and other longextinct and more spectacular civilizations. But numerous small clay tablets buried in the desert soil for thousands of years make it possible for us to know more about the people of ancient Mesopotamia than any other land in the early Near East.Professor Oppenheim, who studied these tablets for more than thirty years, used his intimate knowledge of longdead languages to put together a distinctively personal picture of the Mesopotamians of some three thousand years ago. Following Oppenheims death, Erica Reiner used the authors outline to complete the revisions he had begun.To any serious student of Mesopotamian civilization, this is one of the most valuable books ever written.Leonard Cottrell, Book WeekLeo Oppenheim has made a bold, brave, pioneering attempt to present a synthesis of the vast mass of philological and archaeological data that have accumulated over the past hundred years in the field of Assyriological research.Samuel Noah Kramer, ArchaeologyA. Leo Oppenheim, one of the most distinguished Assyriologists of our time, was editor in charge of the Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute and John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Chicago.