The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood

Early on in The Ark Before Noah, the author describes a conversation with a colleague who thinks he has enough for a paper, but not for a book. Alas, the book feels like a paper surrounded by a bunch of other topics. The opening discuses the general field of cuneiform archeology. There were some early great discoveries. There were also some key multilingual stones that helped with translation. The tablets that were found include a number of different writings, from bureaucratic loggings to literature.
Then there is a discussion of the flood story. There are different stories from different cultures. It changes from story to story. In one, the world was destroyed because people were too loud. The Gilgemesh version is the most popular pre-biblical one. However, there were other ones. The Bible and Koran both mention a flood. There have been some attempts to discover the "flood" in Mesopotamia. However, it was a region that was subject to regular flooding, so it is hard to tell if the "floods" that were found were related to "the flood".
Ancient history is fascinating field that is still open to many new discoveries and interpretations.

Between the Rivers: History of Ancient Mesopotamia Part 3

Between the Rivers covers some of the more "modern" periods in Mesopotamian history. We start around the time "famous" Babylonians (the guys who appear in the Bible) and we continue all the way up until the 2003 US capture of Baghdad. Its nearly 3000 years in 6 hours. However, the be fare, the last 1500 years are given a rather cursory coverage. At that time, Mesopotamia was not all that important. However, prior to them, we ha the Assyrians and Babylonians duking it out for supremacy. We had leaders that were clinging towards using the "hard-to-write" cuneiform, even though their scribes wanted to adopt an easier to use Aramaic. (The fact that the leader couldn't read or write didn't seem to make a difference.) Leaders would explore different methods of subjugating the conquered people. They may choose to install their own leader, use the existing leaders, or just exile everybody. If the vanquished crossed the victors, they could see their "nice" subjugation turn bad fast (see Jerusalem, fall of).

Babylon had some magnificently strong walls. Urbanization seemed to be going strong in the land between the rivers for millennia before they caught on in places like northern Europe. (What would have happened if the Vikings were transported back in time to Assyria or Babylonia?
Alexander the Great made his middle east appearance. He promptly got in trouble by seeing too Mesopotamian to the Greeks (and likely too Greek to the Mesopotamian) That was perhaps the beginning of the end of the unique culture. The later Muslim invasion pretty much finished it off. Now it became just a small part of the Ottoman empire until World War I. Then Iraq was formed, and archaeological history was stored in the national museum for a century. Then the US army came in and protected the oil ministry while the museum was looted.