Book Review: Between Two Rivers
There is an exception to every rule and, if you were to judge a book by its cover, just once, you should make it Between Two Rivers, Moudhy Al-Rashid’s new history of ancient Mesopotamia, the land named for its position between the river Euphrates and the river Tigris.
The cover is stunning: both sweeping and intricate, sparkling with beautiful details that reward further inspection, and with the type of materiality that makes your hand instinctively stretch out to touch – even on a screen. Exactly the same description could be applied to the contents between the covers. Dr Al-Rashid somehow conveys the scope of more than 3,000 years of the most ancient history without ever losing sight of the humans who lived that history, in a book filled with gorgeously written sentences that I read over and over to fully absorb, and in a way that brings dry, crumbling clay tablets to life as though you yourself hold them in your hand, freshly imprinted.
We begin in the 1920s, as archaeologists puzzle over an extraordinary find: what appears to be a museum of the ancient past from an already ancient past, a collection of objects dating from around 1300 BCE back to perhaps 2600 BCE, in a room that itself dated to circa 600 BCE. With this one snapshot, Al-Rashid sets up both the core themes of the book and the subject itself. The societies we learn about are extraordinarily ancient but their efforts, individually and collectively, to record their place in the world reveal the many similarities between them and us, no matter the distance of time or space.
Moreover, these similarities are revealed precisely because our author and guide understands the value of perspective: she begins with the original archaeologist’s perspective on Princess Ennigaldi-Nanna’s collection to demonstrate how it might help or hinder interpretation, before generously sharing her own perspectives on the material throughout, detailing the professional and personal experiences that have shaped her understanding in order to aide ours. The result is a book of deep research that the reader can connect with effortlessly, where the chasm of time and expertise between them and us is bridged through personal stories and intimate, human details.
These stories are told through the objects found in this most ancient of archaeological collections. The museum itself is explored to offer some necessary history of these societies, contextualising this world while further setting up the themes and reminding us that humans have always been fascinated by the past. The small clay cylinder that describes the collection introduces us to writing and the beginning of written history; the brick inscription it was originally based on opens up a discussion of Mesopotamian architecture and cities. The ideals of rulership and possible reality for the ruled are considered based on the statue of a king; while the clay tablets used to prepare the scribes that recorded those ideals offer a glimpse into the daily lives and complaints of students.
Then we arrive at my favourite chapters. In Chapter Six, we encounter science and religion, the ways that ancient Mesopotamian societies tried to make sense of their world, navigated challenges, and built knowledge. Their methods may seem alien but their goals were no different than ours and this is beautifully conveyed. In Chapter Seven, we get to grips the economy through the lives of the people trying to make a living for themselves, and the lives of those who were exploited for profit. In particular, we see how essential weaving and women were to economic life (too often overlooked or sidelined), and we see an enslaved woman fight for her own freedom and that of her children. A chapter on warfare follows, confronting the impact of state violence on the people caught up in it as well as the grandiose boasts of kings who, it is revealed, sometimes shied away from the battles they bragged about. Finally, we return to Princess Ennigaldi-Nanna and, through her, we explore the lives of Mesopotamiam women, and their role in curating history. Every chapter gives us an insight into the wider societies while also showing us the lives of the individual people who made up that society. The book is filled with charming details: letters to peers and partners, pawprints and tooth marks, expressions of affection and frustration that remain thousands of years later.
Anyone who has tried to communicate research to a popular audience – and, for that matter, any reader of popular history – knows how difficult it can be to balance nuance and complexity with accessibility, how to do justice to both the stories and the research, how to offer just enough context without accidentally producing an introductory handbook instead. Added to that problem is the fact that Mesopotamia is ancient in a way that is hard to grapple with, a source of seemingly endless ‘firsts’: the first known cities, the first known system of writing, the first known administrative records, the first known author, and possibly the first known museum and archaeologists (it can also claim, as we learn, possibly the first known gender pay gap). The time-frame of this book scans around 3,500 years, almost all BCE. There are literally layers and layers of history here, ancient societies built on more ancient societies, with a shared script and method of recording. On its own, that would make it a dizzying topic, even for a scholar with as much as expertise as the author. On top of all this, the discovered clay tablets that allow us to attempt a study of the topic number in the hundreds of thousands (only a tiny proportion of those that were produced). Most would accept defeat in the face of such a challenge; Moudhy Al-Rashid has made light of it and the result is a wonderful example of popular history.
Between Two Rivers by Moudhy Al-Rashid is published by Hodder & Stoughton and available now.
About the Author
Rhiannon Garth Jones is an author and historian who works with material culture and textual sources to think about how people used the past to define their identities and project power. Her own popular history, All Roads Lead to Rome, is published by Aurum and is available from May 22nd 2025.