118 Fun Facts About Mesopotamia

Which two rivers frame the historical region of Mesopotamia?

Tigris and Euphrates: farmers along them grew such a surplus of grain that people could settle in cities.

What were most of the earliest Mesopotamian written records used for?

Keeping accounts: as cities grew, their institutions needed records of the goods going into and out of their stores.

Which explorer built a reed boat in Iraq in 1977 to test whether ancient Mesopotamians could have traded by sea?

Thor Heyerdahl: after about five months at sea, he burned the boat in Djibouti in protest at the wars raging around the Red Sea.

How do linguists classify Sumerian?

A language isolate: even after Akkadian replaced Sumerian in everyday speech, scribes kept writing it for religion and learning.

What is the name of the earliest known writing system, developed to write Sumerian?

It stayed in active use from the early Bronze Age until the 1st century BC and was adapted for Akkadian, Hittite, Elamite and more.

Mesopotamia's ancient script takes its modern name from a Latin word meaning what?

Wedge: scribes pressed a cut stylus into soft clay, leaving wedge-shaped marks that gave the script its Latin-based name.

Local legend in al-Qurnah, a town in southern Iraq, says it stands on the site of which biblical place?

Eden: locals show visitors an old tree there as the Tree of Knowledge.

What were Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego thrown into for refusing to worship Nebuchadnezzar's golden statue?

A fiery furnace: the king then saw a fourth figure walking with them in the flames, and all three came out unharmed.

The trilingual Behistun Inscription was commissioned by kings of which empire?

Achaemenid: Darius had it carved so high on the cliff that Henry Rawlinson needed a local boy's help to climb up and copy its Old Persian text.

What was the name of the wild man the gods created to stop Gilgamesh from oppressing his people?

Enkidu: after a fierce wrestling match, he and Gilgamesh became best friends and set off on adventures together.

Who guards the Cedar Forest that Gilgamesh and his companion journey to?

Humbaba: the gods later ruled that one of the two heroes must die, partly for killing him and felling the cedar.

What does the goddess Ishtar send to punish Gilgamesh for spurning her advances?

The Bull of Heaven: after the pair killed it, one of them tore off its hindquarter and flung it in the goddess's face.

Who is the flood survivor Gilgamesh seeks out to learn the secret of eternal life?

Utnapishtim: he challenged Gilgamesh to stay awake for six days and seven nights, and Gilgamesh fell asleep almost at once.

What creature steals the plant of rejuvenation while Gilgamesh stops to bathe?

A snake: it slipped away with the plant, shedding its skin as it went, and Gilgamesh was left with no hope of renewed youth.

Which US craft-store chain bought a Gilgamesh tablet that federal officials later seized from the Museum of the Bible?

Hobby Lobby paid $1.6 million for the Gilgamesh Dream Tablet in 2014, but prosecutors said it had been imported illegally and had it forfeited.

The oldest known written customer complaint, a clay tablet from Ur, scolds the merchant Ea-nasir for selling poor-quality what?

Copper ingots were the problem: Nanni wrote that Ea-nasir had treated his messengers with contempt and sent them back empty-handed, without his money.

Which Assyriologist read the Gilgamesh flood story to a biblical society?

George Smith, a self-taught scholar, reportedly leapt up and began undressing when he realized what the tablet described.

Which Star Trek captain retells the Epic of Gilgamesh to a dying alien who speaks in allegories?

Jean-Luc Picard tells the tale to the Tamarian captain Dathon after the two fight a beast together, and Dathon dies listening.

The stele bearing the Code of Hammurabi is carved from which stone?

Basalt carried the laws in public, and the epilogue urges any wronged man with a lawsuit to have the stele's words explained so he can learn his rights.

At which site in present-day Iran was the Hammurabi stele rediscovered?

Susa was an Elamite city, and the Elamite king Shutruk-Nakhunte is thought to have carried the stele there as war booty.

Which museum acquired the original stele of Hammurabi's law code?

The Louvre got it from the dig itself: a French archaeological mission led by Jacques de Morgan found the stele broken into large pieces.

Which god is shown with Hammurabi in the relief at the top of his stele?

Shamash, the sun god and god of justice, sits enthroned before the king, a scene meant to present the laws below as backed by the gods.

The 'eye for an eye' principle scholars identified in Hammurabi's laws is known by what Latin name?

Lex talionis applied between equals: putting out a gentleman's eye cost an eye, but putting out a commoner's eye cost only a fine.

Under Hammurabi's laws, if a badly built house collapsed and killed its owner, what happened to the builder?

Executed: and if the collapse killed the owner's son instead, the builder's own son was executed.

Which king commissioned the Great Ziggurat of Ur in the 21st century BC?

Ur-Nammu is credited with the oldest surviving law code, though some scholars credit his son, and it set silver fines for injuries where Hammurabi's later laws took an eye for an eye.

Which deity was the patron of Ur and its great ziggurat?

The moon god Nanna's wife Ningal, in the Lament for Ur, weeps and pleads for the city, yet the gods' storm destroys it anyway.

Etemenanki, the great ziggurat that Nebuchadnezzar II rebuilt, is linked by scholars to which biblical story?

Tower of Babel is the story it may have inspired, and Herodotus later described the tower, though he probably never saw it himself.

Who founded the Akkadian Empire, often called the first empire in world history?

Sargon, by a later legend, was set adrift as a baby in a basket of rushes and rose from royal cup-bearer to emperor.

The Babylonian tablet Plimpton 322 lists numbers fitting which famous rule, a thousand years before its Greek namesake?

The Pythagorean theorem's number triples fill its rows, a sign that Babylonian scribes knew the rule for right triangles long before Pythagoras lived.

Enheduanna, an Akkadian high priestess at Ur, is history's earliest known named what?

Author of hymns in which she names herself, Enheduanna still divides scholars, some of whom doubt she composed the works credited to her.

Which god was the patron deity of Babylon and hero of its creation epic?

Marduk's statue was carried off by Hittites, Assyrians and Elamites in turn, until Nebuchadnezzar I brought it home.

In the Babylonian creation epic Enūma Eliš, why are the first humans created?

To serve the gods: humans are made from the blood of Kingu, a rebel god killed for leading the war against them.

In the Enūma Eliš, which primordial being existed alongside Apsu before creation?

Tiamat, the primordial salt sea, is later slain in battle, and her split body becomes the sky and the earth.

In the Bible, the maddened King Nebuchadnezzar is driven out to live among animals and eat what?

Grass: only when he raised his eyes and praised God did his reason and his kingdom return.

Which city did Nebuchadnezzar II besiege and destroy?

Jerusalem was destroyed after Judah rebelled a second time, and much of its population was carried off in what became known as the Babylonian captivity.

The glazed bricks of Babylon's Ishtar Gate were mostly what colour?

Blue glazed bricks framed rows of dragons and bulls, each animal sacred to one of Babylon's gods.

A reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate's smaller front gate stands in which museum?

Berlin's Pergamon Museum could fit only the smaller front gate, so the larger rear section stayed in storage.

Which idiom comes from the biblical story of a Babylonian king's feast?

The writing on the wall appeared at Belshazzar's feast, and in the story it foretold his end: that very night he was killed.

According to legend, Nebuchadnezzar II built the Hanging Gardens for which homesick queen?

Amytis, a Mede, is said to have missed her green hills, yet no Babylonian record even mentions a queen of that name.

Stephanie Dalley argues the Hanging Gardens really stood in which Assyrian capital, built by Sennacherib?

Nineveh's royal gardens are well documented, and Dalley argues that over the centuries later writers confused the two cities.

Which Assyrian king's library of clay tablets is thought to have been preserved by the fires that sacked his capital?

Ashurbanipal's library held over 30,000 tablets and fragments, and when invaders burned it, the fire is believed to have baked the clay hard instead of destroying it.

Sennacherib's great residence at his capital was known by what name?

Palace without a rival crowned Sennacherib's decision to move Assyria's capital, a city he then rebuilt on a grand scale.

The ruins of the Assyrian capital lie within which modern Iraqi city?

Its two main mounds are Kuyunjiq and Nabi Yunus, the latter the site of a shrine to Jonah.

Which British archaeologist excavated the Royal Cemetery at Ur?

Leonard Woolley tied a thick flood deposit he found at Ur to the flood story in Genesis.

The two mosaic sides of the Standard of Ur have been dubbed what?

War and Peace are only modern nicknames for its two sides, and despite the name 'standard', what the box was for is still unknown.

Which deep-coloured stone, along with shell and red limestone, forms the mosaics of the Standard of Ur?

Lapis lazuli came from mines in what is now Afghanistan, so its use on the Standard shows how far Ur's trade reached.

Which Romantic poet wrote 'The Destruction of Sennacherib', about an Assyrian army struck down overnight?

Lord Byron based it on the Bible's account in which an angel strikes the Assyrian camp by night and the king goes home.

A version of the Royal Game of Ur survived to the 1950s among the Jews of which Indian city?

Kochi's Jewish community kept playing it until the 1950s, when most of its members emigrated to Israel.

At its peak, Uruk may have had about how many residents?

About 50,000 people may have lived in the city, yet Uruk was eventually abandoned and lay buried until 19th-century excavators dug it up.

William Kennett Loftus, who first excavated Uruk in the 1850s, identified it with which biblical city?

Loftus led the first digs there from 1850 to 1854.

In the Sumerian King List's best-preserved copy, the reigns of the kings before the flood add up to how many years?

241,200 years is the total for just eight kings, yet after the flood, reigns in the list shrink to centuries.

Which city does the Sumerian King List treat as the earliest in southern Mesopotamia?

Eridu was abandoned around 600 BC, probably because centuries of irrigation had worn out the surrounding land.

Who conquered Mesopotamia, ending its last independent native realm until modern times?

Cyrus the Great is praised in the Bible for letting the exiled Jews go home and rebuild their temple.

The Sumerian counting system was based on which number?

60 is still used for minutes, degrees and map coordinates, and it divides evenly by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30.

Which famous conqueror died in Babylon, in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II?

Alexander the Great died there at 32, and his rival generals, the Diadochi, then fought over his empire.

Which museum acquired the Lion Hunt of Ashurbanipal reliefs recovered by Hormuzd Rassam?

The king slaying lions was propaganda for his power and his ability to protect Assyria from danger.

The Tigris rises in the Taurus Mountains of which modern country?

Snowmelt in Turkey's mountains feeds the Tigris, and the river has flooded its valley regularly since ancient times.

Which composer's opera Nabucco tells of Nebuchadnezzar II and the Hebrews he carried into exile?

Giuseppe Verdi, by his own account, had resolved to compose no more after his wife and two children died, until La Scala's impresario talked him into Nabucco.

Which book of the Bible holds the lament of exiles weeping beside the rivers of Babylon?

Psalms: Psalm 137's opening lines were adapted into the song 'Rivers of Babylon', a UK number one for Boney M. in 1978.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, which bird does the flood survivor release last, the one that never comes back?

A raven found food and did not return, after a dove and then a swallow had both come back with nowhere to perch.

Which dictator inscribed his own name on bricks at Babylon in imitation of Nebuchadnezzar?

Saddam Hussein's restoration project rebuilt parts of Babylon directly on top of its ancient ruins.

In the Babylonian Atrahasis flood myth, which god warns the hero to build a boat?

Enki's boat instructions, on one Babylonian tablet, describe a round vessel of woven reeds rather than a long ark.

In Dante's Inferno, the legendary Assyrian queen Semiramis is punished among souls guilty of which sin?

Lust: Dante says she was so given to sensual vice that she made lust lawful by her own decree, to escape the blame.

Which empire seized Mesopotamia from the Seleucids and then fought Rome for centuries?

Parthian horse archers crushed a Roman army under Crassus at Carrhae in 53 BC.

Which modern Gulf country was the heart of Dilmun, an ancient trading partner of Mesopotamia?

Bahrain was Dilmun's trade depot, where goods from the Indus Valley were passed on to the cities of Mesopotamia.

Under Hammurabi's laws, a man facing an unproven charge could clear his name by surviving what?

A plunge into the river decided it: if the accused survived, he was cleared, and his accuser was put to death and lost his house to him.

Which 1916 silent epic built giant sets of ancient Babylon in Hollywood?

Intolerance was partly D. W. Griffith's answer to critics of his previous film, The Birth of a Nation.

Which great work of Jewish law and commentary exists in a 'Babylonian' version compiled in Mesopotamia's academies?

The Talmud's Babylonian version was first printed complete in Venice in the 1520s, and almost all later printings kept that edition's page numbering.

Pazuzu, a Mesopotamian demon worn on amulets to protect babies, found fame in which 1973 horror film?

The Exorcist made Pazuzu a household name as the demon behind a girl's possession. In Mesopotamia he had a kinder side: pregnant women wore his head as an amulet against the demoness Lamashtu.

Which crime novelist met her husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan, at the excavation of Ur in 1930?

Agatha Christie married Max Mallowan within months of meeting him at Ur and went on to join his digs. Her novel Murder in Mesopotamia is set among archaeologists at just such a site.

The Sumerian Hymn to Ninkasi, some 3,900 years old, holds the oldest surviving recipe for which drink?

Beer runs through the whole hymn, which walks through the brewing steps while praising the goddess Ninkasi. Her name means 'mistress of beer'.

Many scholars credit the Sumerians of Mesopotamia with first developing which rotating device?

Potter's wheel finds at Ur include a stone wheel dated to about 3100 BC, and fragments of wheel-thrown pottery from the same area are older still. Slow hand-turned versions were in use around 3500 BC.

The oldest identified joke, a Sumerian proverb dated to about 1900 BC, relies on which brand of comedy?

Toilet humour has ancient roots: the proverb quips that never since time began has a young wife not broken wind in her husband's lap. The joke may go back as far as 2300 BC.

Which patriarch does the Bible say came from 'Ur of the Chaldees', widely identified with Sumerian Ur?

Abraham sets out from Ur for Canaan in Genesis, and the ruined Sumerian city is the scholarly consensus for the place meant. Another tradition points to Urfa in Anatolia instead.

Which name did James Henry Breasted popularise for the region stretching from Mesopotamia to the Levant?

Fertile Crescent reached a wide audience through James Henry Breasted's 1914 textbook Outlines of European History. The region's early farming and cities also earned it the nickname 'cradle of civilization'.

Which South American country calls its humid northeast, including Misiones and Corrientes, 'Mesopotamia'?

Argentina's Mesopotamia reminded Spanish settlers of the ancient land, so they borrowed its name. The region draws visitors to the Iguazú Falls.

The Sumerians identified Inanna, their goddess of love and war, with which planet?

Venus was worshipped at Uruk as 'morning Inanna' and 'evening Inanna', matching the planet's two appearances in the sky. The Babylonians knew the same goddess as Ishtar.

Which 1984 comedy pits its heroes against Gozer, an invented god supposedly worshipped by the Sumerians?

Ghostbusters makes Gozer the Gozerian a destroyer god revered by the Sumerians and Hittites. The film stages the showdown on the roof of a New York apartment building.

Which biblical prophet boarded a ship to escape God's order to preach in the Assyrian capital?

Jonah sails for distant Tarshish instead, and it takes a storm and a great fish to turn him around. In the story the Assyrians repent and their city is spared.

Which capital's national museum, rich in Mesopotamian treasures, was looted during the 2003 invasion?

Baghdad's museum lost the Warka Vase and the Mask of Warka, Sumerian works about 5,000 years old, to the looters. Both were later recovered.

Lagash and Umma, Sumerian neighbours each with its own ruler and patron god, are examples of what?

City-states divided Sumer by the late fourth millennium BC, their lands separated by canals and boundary stones. Lagash and Umma kept up a border dispute for generations.

Which Judean exile in the Bible wins high office at Babylon by interpreting Nebuchadnezzar II's dreams?

Daniel alone can explain the king's dream of a giant statue with feet of iron and clay, smashed by a stone. The scene is the origin of the phrase 'feet of clay'.

Which cereal, the best adapted to Mesopotamia's dry and salty soil, was the region's most important crop?

Barley coped with the heat and saline soil, and its short growing cycle let it ripen even in the driest years. Sheep were the other pillar of the farm economy.

What do archaeologists call the mounds of collapsed buildings that mark buried cities across Mesopotamia?

Tells grew because mud-brick buildings crumble with time and were levelled and rebuilt on the same spot. The word comes from the Arabic for a mound or small hill.

Which substance did the Sumerians use both as mortar between bricks and to caulk their boats?

Bitumen also glued the inlaid eyes into Sumerian statues. Herodotus wrote that it was hauled to Babylon to build the city's gigantic walls.

Which language, made a lingua franca by Assyrian kings, spread across Mesopotamia and was spoken by Jesus?

Aramaic rode the Neo-Assyrian Empire's expansion across the Near East, gradually replacing older Semitic tongues. Several modern varieties are spoken in the 21st century.

Which profession did Mesopotamian pupils train for in the eduba, the 'house where tablets are passed out'?

Scribe training in the eduba meant copying a teacher's model passage again and again on the same tablet. Finds suggest most classes were small and met in private homes.

Assyrian carvings from the 9th century BC show which siege weapon attacking the walls of enemy cities?

Battering ram scenes show how sophisticated Assyrian siegecraft had already become. Iron Age rams slung the log from a wheeled frame, which was covered in hides to protect it from fire.

Hammurabi's law code, which punished unproven accusations, is among the first to establish which principle?

Presumption of innocence shows in the code's first two laws, which punish anyone who brings a charge they cannot prove. Accuser and accused alike were given the chance to provide evidence.

Which British explorer, Director of Antiquities in the 1920s, founded the main museum of Mesopotamian finds?

Gertrude Bell secured its first home in 1926, on the ground floor of a printing building, after years of lobbying. Her antiquities law let the director decide which finds stayed in the country.

Which British army officer's copy of the Behistun Inscription became a key to reading Babylonian?

Henry Rawlinson scaled the cliff with the help of a local boy to copy the text. Because it repeats one message in three languages, his copy gave scholars a way into Babylonian.

Which Assyrian city, first dug by Austen Henry Layard in the 1840s, was bulldozed by Islamic State in 2015?

Nimrud, the biblical Calah, was the Assyrian imperial capital from 879 to 706 BC. Layard's digs there in the 1840s brought its giant gateway statues back to light.

Which winged, human-headed guardian figures stood in pairs at the entrances of Assyrian palaces?

Lamassu from the earlier Assyrian palaces were carved with five legs. Seen from the front they appear to stand, and from the side they walk.

Which small object, invented around 3500 BC, served Mesopotamians as a signature on clay documents?

Cylinder seal owners rolled the carved stone across wet clay to leave a continuous picture. The impressions also branded goods and sealed doors and jars against tampering.

Babylonian diviners known as bārû read omens chiefly in which organ of a sacrificed sheep?

The liver mattered so much that Babylonians shaped models of it in clay for reference. One surviving model of a sheep's liver is more than 3,500 years old.

During Babylon's Akitu new-year festival, what did the high priest do to the king to induce humility?

The priest slapped him, and if the king wept it was taken as a good omen for the coming year. The festival was held each spring to mark the sowing season.

Kubaba, thought to be the only queen in the Sumerian King List, is described there as holding which job?

Tavern keeper is the list's own label for her, yet it credits her with a supernaturally long reign of 100 years at Kish. The earliest sources date from centuries after she supposedly lived.

To keep twelve lunar months in step with the seasons, what did Babylonian astronomers add as needed?

An extra month was at first added by decree whenever the calendar drifted. From about 499 BC it followed a fixed 19-year cycle, which the Babylonians used before the Greek Meton, its namesake.

Tapputi, a palace overseer in Assyria often called one of the first recorded chemists, made which product?

Perfume was her trade: Tapputi headed a group of professional female perfumers in the city of Assur. Her full name means 'Assistant of the Lady of the Palace'.

The best-preserved Yale culinary tablet, from Babylonia around 1730 BC, holds 25 recipes for which dish?

Stews fill the tablet: 21 are made with meat and 4 with vegetables. Typical flavourings include leek, garlic and cilantro.

When an eclipse was read as an omen of a king's death, how did the Assyrian court protect its ruler?

The court enthroned a substitute, who lived in luxury and held court so that the doom would fall on him. When the danger had passed, the stand-in was put to death.

Which Mesopotamian goddess, whose name means 'Queen of the Great Earth', ruled the land of the dead?

Ereshkigal ruled Kur, the Sumerian underworld. In a famous poem her younger sister Inanna descends there, apparently hoping to extend her own powers.

What is the literal meaning of lugal, the Sumerian title for a king that joins the words lú and gal?

Big man is the literal sense: lú is 'man' and gal is 'great' or 'big'. Rulers could also be styled en or ensi, and scholars debate exactly how the three titles differed.

The Sumerians called their land Kengir and referred to themselves by a phrase meaning what?

Black-headed ones translates sag-giga, the Sumerians' own name for themselves. 'Sumer' is only an English approximation of what their Akkadian neighbours called the land.

Alongside lions and aurochs, which mythical creatures parade across Babylon's glazed-brick Ishtar Gate?

Dragons called mušḫuššu alternate in rows with the other animals, each standing for a deity. The dragon belonged to the city's patron god and the aurochs to the storm god Adad.

Which group of Sumerian gods did Zecharia Sitchin recast as gold-mining aliens in The Twelfth Planet?

The Anunnaki, in Sitchin's 1976 book, arrive from an undiscovered planet called Nibiru. In the myths themselves they are the offspring of the sky god An who decree the fates of humanity.

Under Hammurabi's laws, what happened to a physician whose surgery killed a high-ranking patient?

His hand was cut off, while a successful operation on the same kind of patient earned ten shekels of silver. The law even names the instrument: a bronze lancet.

Which Sumerian queen was buried at Ur around 2550 BC wearing a heavy headdress of golden leaves?

Puabi went to her grave with a chariot and a profusion of gold tableware. Her name was at first misread as Shubad.

Which archaeologist, a veteran of digs in Greece and Italy, led the excavation of Babylon from 1899 to 1917?

Robert Koldewey developed a method for identifying and excavating mud-brick architecture. His digs revealed the foundations of the city's ziggurat.

Which ruler of Lagash, who led a golden age around 2130 BC, is portrayed in some 27 surviving statues?

Gudea married into Lagash's ruling family and governed with considerable independence from the Gutians. His statues show remarkably sophisticated craftsmanship for their time.

Which Sumerian monument, the earliest known war memorial, marks Eannatum of Lagash's victory over Umma?

The Stele of the Vultures is named after the birds seen in one of its battle scenes. It was carved from a single slab of limestone, of which only seven fragments survive.

Which Babylonian patron god of literacy and wisdom was symbolised by a stylus resting on a tablet?

Nabu was worshipped at Borsippa, and each New Year his statue was carried to nearby Babylon to pay respects to his divine father. Astronomers linked him with the planet Mercury.

Which month of the Hebrew calendar takes its name from Dumuzid, a Mesopotamian god of shepherds?

Tammuz comes from the Babylonian month Araḫ Dumuzu, named in the god's honour. Babylonian month names also survive in the Assyrian and Syriac calendars.

Which Sumerian sacred city never held political power, yet was thought able to confer kingship on others?

Nippur owed its standing to the Ekur, the temple of Enlil, the 'Lord Wind' held to rule the cosmos. Controlling the city let a monarch from elsewhere claim the overall kingship.

Which king of Israel on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III may be the earliest biblical figure ever depicted?

Jehu is the traditional reading of the name 'Yaua', one of five subdued rulers shown prostrating and bringing tribute. Some scholars think the figure is Jehoram, another Israelite king.

In Babylonian legend, which creature carries childless King Etana skyward to find the plant of birth?

An eagle that Etana had saved from starving repays him with the flight. The Sumerian King List names Etana as the thirteenth king of the first dynasty of Kish.

Which structure did the Assyrian king Sennacherib build at Jerwan from over two million dressed stones?

An aqueduct at Jerwan carried his canal on stone arches to water the gardens of the Assyrian capital. Finished around 690 BC, it predates Rome's first aqueduct by nearly four centuries.

Shulgi, a king of Ur glorified in his own royal hymns, boasted of his prowess in which sport?

Long-distance running was his boast: Shulgi claimed to have covered over 150 kilometres between two cities in his seventh year as king. One scholar dubbed him the first long-distance champion.