Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City

The dawn of civilization has long been a dark mystery to everyone except a handful of scholars in dusty libraries and museum collection rooms. While endless material has been written and published about Egypt, Rome, and Greece, almost nothing has been available for the layman with an abiding interest in the very dawn of civilization: Sumer and Akkad. Gwendolyn Leick's book "Mesopotamia" has changed everything. This is far more complete, far more readable, and far more detailed than anything currently available on the market. If you are looking for one book with a complete, impartial view of how civilization began, then this is the book you're looking for!

This book has the merit of paying careful attention to sites not often included in the usual accounts, and evaluating their significance for developments such as writing.

Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City by Gwendolyn Leick is a book only a history major could fall in love with. But even non-history majors can enjoy it. The book is ten chapters, each chapter a detailed history of one city, using archaeological information in the form of textiles, writings and ruins. From the first city of Eridu, to the last city of Babylon, we follow the lives of the people, as they go from city-state, to Kingdoms to large Empires, from waiting for the rain to come feed their gardens to redirecting rivers to feed their fields. Artists, soldiers, priests and Kings, we learn how the region developed and follow the history of one of the first civilizations by how the cities developed. Because the history of each city overlaps, weaving a complex history of warfare, trade, worship and power. The only problem some readers might have it how detailed it truly becomes in the last few chapters. Also some of the text accompanying the photos were placed on the wrong part of the page. Or the photos were placed on the wrong part of the page. Either way some photos don't match the text that go with them. The chapters come with a simple timeline, a useful map, a helpful index and a not so helpful glossary (as some words I wanted to look up were not in it). Overall it is still a great find and worth getting for any library on history, urban development or the Middle East.

I enjoyed this book a lot. It's a book that manages to be both scholarly and readable as it introduces the archaeology and history of various cities around Mesopotamia. Archaeology is the main focus, but Leick draws on written texts, notably literary texts, to illuminate the physical evidence. This book also shows how much more investigative work there is to be done in that region of the world.A good read.

I'm reading Leick's book right now, and enjoying it. She surveys ancient Mesopotamia through the examination of 10 ancient city sites, from Eridu to Babylon. Naturally this narrative device is a springboard for digressions into the culture as best we can know (or guess) at it. Leick does stints as a tour guide, if I recall the author bio correctly, & it shows in her writing, which is accessible if a bit repetitive when she wants to make a point. She also attends to the different archaelogists who've dug up Mesopotamia and their biases, hypotheses, etc.; she takes a similar approach with contemporary scholarly debates, "teaching the conflicts" as it were. This & Roux's "Ancient Iraq" seem to be the two best books for us lay readers in the past 40 years or so.