Millennia ago, in the Fertile Crescent, the land nestled between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is now present-day Iran, the ancient Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer arose. Sumerians ...

A ziggurat (also spelled ziqqurat) was a raised platform with four sloping sides that looked like a tiered pyramid. Ziggurats were common in ancient Mesopotamia (roughly modern Iraq) from around 4,000 ...

The origins of writing in ancient Mesopotamia and beyond may rest on a group of cylindrical seals. A team of archeologists from the University of Bologna in Italy has identified a series of ...

In their paper, “Exploring Geomagnetic Variations in Ancient Mesopotamia,” researchers Matthew D. Howland, Lisa Tauxu, Shai Gordin, and Erez Ben-Yosef studied 32 bricks currently held in the Slemani ...

Ziggurats were mudbrick temples designed to bridge heaven and earth, anchoring religion, power, and architecture in the ancient Near East for thousands of years.

Over 5,000 years ago, in the scorching heart of ancient Mesopotamia, the city of Uruk rose to become the largest and most advanced settlement in the world. Home to nearly 80,000 people, it boasted ...

New discoveries by a UCF researcher and her team at the ancient Mesopotamian site of Kurd Qaburstan, including clay tablets with ancient cuneiform writing, a game board and large structural remains, ...

About 3,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, brickmakers imprinted the names of their kings into clay bricks. Now, an analysis of the metal grains in those bricks has confirmed a mysterious anomaly ...

Assyrian cylinder seal from the late ninth to seventh centuries B.C.E., made of chalcedony and inscribed with a cultic scene. The image on the right shows the impression the seal would make. Gift of ...

Couples in Mesopotamia could have been the first ones smooching as we know it. New research analyzing written records from the area reveals that people in the Cradle of Civilization could have ...