{"product_id":"9781529392166","title":"Between Two Rivers : The 'wonderful', moving true story of ancient Mesopotamia loved by Tom Holland, Robert Macfarlane, Rebecca Wragg Sykes, George Monbiot and more","description":"\u003cp\u003eAN ENTHRALLING HISTORY OF ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA, TOLD THROUGH THE STORIES LEFT BEHIND IN CLAY.   'I have never read a book on Mesopotamia that so beautifully brings to life the people themselves . . . It melts away the sense of time.' - TOM HOLLANDThousands 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.  ----'Tender, moving and vivid.' - ROBERT MACFARLANE'Beautiful . . . The world it explores is fascinating and crucially important.' - STEPHEN GREENBLATT'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  'An ingenious, passionate \"history of histories\".' - REBECCA WRAGG SYKES'A marvellous book, which not only brims with humanity but offers fascinating and often funny insights into everyday life in this crucial era of world history.' - JAMES BARR\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rye Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55732432503160,"sku":"9781529392166","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0064\/1368\/0730\/files\/9781529392166.jpg?v=1794286490","url":"https:\/\/ryebooks.co.uk\/products\/9781529392166","provider":"Rye Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}