Ancient mesopotamia, Oppenheim, A.leo

Ancient Mesopotamia-the area now called Iraq-has received less attention than ancient Egypt and other long-extinct 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 long-dead 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 Week

Leo 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, Archaeology