Between Two Rivers

'A WONDERFUL READ' -- TOM HOLLAND

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Between Two Rivers

By: Moudhy Al-Rashid

Narrated by: Moudhy Al-Rashid

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About this listen

'I have never read a book on Mesopotamia that so beautifully brings to life the people themselves ... It melts away the sense of time. A wonderful read.'
TOM HOLLAND

'A tender, moving and vivid history of ancient Mesopotamia and how it still speaks to us.'
ROBERT MACFARLANE

'Fascinating and magnificent, beautifully written and explained: this book is a masterpiece.'
GEORGE MONBIOT

'Ancient Mesopotamia comes alive in Moudhy Al-Rashid's must-read, millennia-spanning history ... spellbinding.'
NEW SCIENTIST

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Thousands of years ago, in a part of the world we now call ancient Mesopotamia, people began writing things down for the very first time.

What they left behind, in a vast region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, preserves leaps in human ingenuity, like the earliest depiction of a wheel and the first approximation of pi. But they also capture breathtakingly intimate, raw and relatable moments, like a dog's paw prints as it accidentally stepped into fresh clay, or the imprint of a child's teeth.

In Between Two Rivers, historian Dr Moudhy Al-Rashid reveals what these ancient people chose to record about their lives, allowing us to brush hands with them millennia later. We find a lullaby to soothe a baby, instructions for exorcising a ghost, countless receipts for beer, and the adorable, messy writing of preschoolers. We meet an enslaved person negotiating their freedom, an astronomer tracing the movement of the planets, a princess who may have created the world's first museum, and a working mother struggling with 'the juggle' in 1900 BCE.

Together, these fragments illuminate not just the history of Mesopotamia, but the story of how history was made.

©2025 Moudhy Al-Rashid (P)2025 Hodder & Stoughton Limited©2025 Moudhy Al-Rashid

Moudhy Al-RashidMoudhy Al-RashidHodder Press

Ancient

Archaeology

Middle East

Thought-Provoking

Ancient History

Ancient Archaeology Middle East Thought-Provoking Ancient History

Critic reviews

Fascinating and magnificent, beautifully written and explained: this book is a masterpiece. (GEORGE MONBIOT, author of Feral and The Invisible Doctrine)

I have never read a book on Mesopotamia that so beautifully brings to life the people themselves. There are beautiful descriptions of what it is to be pregnant, to give birth, to have small children, to love a dog. I love the way in which she's not just writing about priests or kings, but is giving us a clay tablet on which a little child has bitten, so you have the imprint of his teeth. It melts away the sense of time. A wonderful read. (TOM HOLLAND)

A tender, moving and vivid history of ancient Mesopotamia and how it still speaks to us. (ROBERT MACFARLANE)

Ancient Mesopotamia comes alive in Moudhy Al-Rashid's must-read, millennia-spanning history, cleverly wrought from tablets written in the world's oldest script ... spellbinding ... a fresh and very human portrait of the region... Through her clever sifting of the texts, we see how cuneiform ... helped to bind these civilisations together across millennia... We also discover, in Al-Rashid's vivid rendering of the texts, very moving details from the lives of real people in Mesopotamia over the ages ... Al-Rashid's academic background gives her a wonderful confidence as she roves around the literary and archaeological evidence. She is also a gifted storyteller, able to spin a yarn of gold from the very fragmentary sources ... This is a delightful book, and a must-read for anyone interested in these civilisations. I hope it serves to shine a larger spotlight on this extraordinary period in humanity's past. (Emily Wilson)

Beautiful ... Moudhy Al-Rashid manages to combine insightful scholarship with a warm personal presence. The world it explores is fascinating and crucially important. (STEPHEN GREENBLATT)

Absorbing, learned and witty, Between Two Rivers is far more than an account of ancient Mesopotamia. Al-Rashid offers an ingenious, passionate 'history of histories', spinning outwards from relics collected by a royal priestess more than 2,500 years ago. In discovering familiar human joys and sorrows - surviving in times of peace and war, dealing with royal and divine demands, the desperate love for our children - we vividly witness how lives across the millennia are revealed and connected by archaeology and cuneiform. (REBECCA WRAGG SYKES author of Kindred)

This book is an extraordinary invitation to the magical land of Mesopotamia, written like your best friend is sitting with you next to a cozy fire with a warm drink, spinning mesmerizing tales of the fascinating land which birthed our modern world. It is a stunning debut effort, written by both a wonderful scholar and talented social media communicator. (PROFESSOR SARAH PARCAK)

Wonderfully vivid.

Most relevant

I so enjoyed this thoroughly researched and beautifully presented book. The author reads her work with such personality and warmth, it felt as though she was in the room sharing her broad and insightful knowledge of the subject. I think history is best viewed through individuals and their items and this was an excellent look into the time period.