The Mesopotamian Riddle
An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman and the Race to Decipher the World's Oldest Writing
Table of Contents
About The Book
It was one of history’s great vanishing acts.
Around 3,400 BCE—as humans were gathering in complex urban settlements—a scribe in the mud-walled city-state of Uruk picked up a reed stylus to press tiny symbols into clay. For three millennia, wedge shape cuneiform script would record the military conquests, scientific discoveries, and epic literature of the great Mesopotamian kingdoms of Sumer, Assyria, and Babylon and of Persia’s mighty Achaemenid Empire, along with precious minutiae about everyday life in the cradle of civilization. And then…the meaning of the characters was lost.
London, 1857. In an era obsessed with human progress, mysterious palaces emerging from the desert sands had captured the Victorian public’s imagination. Yet Europe’s best philologists struggled to decipher the bizarre inscriptions excavators were digging up.
Enter a swashbuckling archaeologist, a suave British military officer turned diplomat, and a cloistered Irish rector, all vying for glory in a race to decipher this script that would enable them to peek farther back into human history than ever before.
From the ruins of Persepolis to lawless outposts of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, The Mesopotamian Riddle whisks you on a wild adventure through the golden age of archaeology in an epic quest to understand our past.
About The Author
Joshua Hammer is the New York Times bestselling author of six books, including The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu and The Mesopotamian Riddle. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and Outside. He lives in Berlin.
About The Reader
Product Details
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio (March 18, 2025)
- Runtime: 10 hours and 43 minutes
- ISBN13: 9781797190907
Raves and Reviews
"Listening to this history of the 1850s competition to decipher ancient Mesopotamian inscriptions is like listening to a Jules Verne or Conan Doyle adventure yarn. Narrator Matthew Lloyd Davies is a familiar voice in mystery and suspense fiction, and he clearly relishes what is not a musty story of scholarly reflection, but a cliff-hanger full of surprises and unexpected twists. Davies is a wonderful narrator for this kind of work, droll and cosmopolitan and silken to the ear. The process of decipherment will especially appeal to fans of espionage and decoding. But against the backdrop of Europe’s historical relations with the Middle East, this is a story with many layers—and many buried treasures."
—AudioFile Magazine
“An adventure tale for puzzle lovers and Indiana Jones fans alike.”
—Washington Post
“Written with brilliant characterization and edge-of-your-armchair suspense. As in the best detective novels, the story of those who uncover the mystery is as intriguing as the mystery itself.”
—Julian Sancton, New York Times bestselling author of Madhouse at the End of the Earth
“[An] epic intellectual adventure... Mr. Hammer’s ability to skip from philology to Great Game intrigue, from biblical sources to the ‘Assyria fever’ that swept London, is extraordinary.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Joshua Hammer tells a splendid tale.”
—Barry Strauss, author of The War That Made the Roman Empire
“This tale of dusty scholars could have been as dry as the desert. But by exploring the relationship between [an] ‘often combustible’ threesome, Mr. Hammer makes dead languages speak again.”
—The Economist
“Joshua Hammer is a marvelous storyteller, and he has grabbed hold of one of history’s great yarns. His rollicking tale, combining intellectual heft and fast-paced vigor, places readers ringside as rivals struggle with a deciphering mystery that had stymied the world for two thousand years.”
—Edward Dolnick, New York Times bestselling author of The Writing of the Gods
“Stirring.... [An] elegantly written, fascinating account.”
—Pittsburgh Post Gazette
"The Mesopotamian Riddle is equal parts enthralling and erudite, a story of linguists who battled marauding bandits, diseases and disasters . . . with nothing less than the veracity of the Hebrew scriptures and the roots of western civilization at stake."
—Barbara Demick, author of Eat the Buddha
Resources and Downloads
High Resolution Images
- Book Cover Image (jpg): The Mesopotamian Riddle Unabridged Audio Download 9781797190907
- Author Photo (jpg): Joshua Hammer Cordula Krämer(0.1 MB)
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