The 1850 discovery of King Ashurbanipal's vast library of cuneiform tablets at Nineveh illuminated fascinating records and ...

A new translation of cuneiform relics from the second millennium B.C. highlights the warnings that astrologers saw in eclipses. By Franz Lidz It was good to be the king in ancient Babylonia, unless, ...

A discovery in southern Iraq has given us a rare glimpse into the world of ancient bureaucracy. Researchers from the British Museum and Iraq have unearthed over 200 clay cuneiform tablets and 60 seals ...

When the Moon fully slips into Earth's shadow, a king shall die. So warns an ominous prediction from Old Babylonia, inscribed across several ancient clay tablets. For over a century now, these ...

This video explains how ancient Greeks and Romans created curse tablets known as defixiones. Archaeologists have uncovered hundreds of these thin lead sheets across the Mediterranean, often buried in ...

Imago Mundi in 2024. (British Museum) In a groundbreaking discovery, scientists have deciphered what is believed to be the world's oldest map--a 3,000-year-old Babylonian clay tablet that may reveal ...

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 ...

Editor’s note: This story is part of Meet a UChicagoan, a regular series focusing on the people who make UChicago a distinct intellectual community. Read about the others here. In the half-dark of a ...