Assyriology BlogWar and Peace in Ancient Mesopotamia

29 July 2024

Photo: RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre, AO 22934) / Franck Raux

Foundation nail, Girsu, 2420 BCE © 2011 RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre, AO 22934) / Franck Raux (https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010120697)

In her ‘Mesopotamian Bulletins’, the Assyriologist Cécile Michel blogs about a rich and manifold past culture that still has a lot to tell us today. We regularly translate selected entries of this blog into English. Five new episodes are now available.

Wars are as old as mankind itself. But how old are peace treaties? In a new episode of her blog ‘Mesopotamian Bulletins’, Cécile Michel shows us the oldest surviving written artefacts in which kings and states from the ancient civilisation affirm their intention to live together in peace. They date back to the 3rd millennium BCE and are fascinating precursors to today’s international agreements.

Looking back at the first half of 2024, one milestone that Michel achieved this spring together with Christian Schroer, Stephan Olbrich and other colleagues is not to be missed: ENCI, the mobile CT scanner with which sealed cuneiform tablets can be read and faithfully reproduced for the first time, was successfully used in the field for the first time. Its use at the Louvre in Paris is the subject of another of the articles now available in English.

Two further articles deal with document types that are familiar to us, but which hardly anyone would associate with clay tablets: architectural plans and maps. The former give us a unique insight into the materials and techniques used to construct buildings in ancient Mesopotamia, how the rooms were arranged, and even how many bricks were used. At the same time, the oldest known maps with their precise mathematical notations and elaborate illustrations reveal in how much detail the ancient Mesopotamians knew the land they inhabited.

The last of the newly published articles is about a bilingual cuneiform tablet. One of these two languages, Hurrian, is not related to any known linguistic family. It was only in the late 20th century that it was deciphered, giving us access to important documents containing religious literature.

An overview of all episodes published in English to date is available here.