In southern Iraq, archaeologists have excavated a remarkable collection of carved clay tablets—ancient records of Akkadia, ...

Red tape may feel like a modern-day frustration, but according to archaeologists, it's been a part of governance for millennia. Evidence from ancient Mesopotamia reveals that bureaucratic systems were ...

Archaeologists have unearthed an ancient tablet with an early form of writing that preserves a furniture shopping list from around 3,500 years ago. The tablet was uncovered during excavations at the ...

A recent study by Dr. Jana Matuszak, published in the academic journal Iraq, examines the mythical narrative contained in a tablet (Ni 12501) dating to the Early Dynastic IIIb period (ca. 2540–2350 ...

Nobody at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad knows exactly how the stolen Sumerian tablets ended up in Peru. All that authorities in Lima could tell museum officials was that the three hand-size ...

Worn away by weather and beaten down by the steady passing of time, an important ancient temple lived on through written records. The sanctuary’s location eluded archaeologists who obsessively ...

Writing, laws, cities, and science—these and other innovations were devised by the enterprising peoples living in Sumer, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, some 5,000 years ago. High ...

Inscriptions on a set of four clay tablets from the ancient Near Eastern civilization of Babylonia have finally been completely deciphered, thousands of years after they were produced, a study reports ...

This is the first episode of a two-part series on the origin of jokes and humor. The story appears in podcast feeds under the title, "Jokes, Part I: Sumer Funny, Sumer Not." Listen to part two here.

In southern Iraq, archaeologists have excavated a remarkable collection of carved clay tablets—ancient records of Akkadia, the world’s oldest empire. Marked with the administrative details of ...