A set of ancient clay cylinders discovered in Syria may hold the earliest known example of alphabetic writing, predating Egypt’s script by centuries.

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

A relief portraying Sphinx from the 9th century BC, found in Syria, is among the highlights in Encounter Mesopotamia: An Exhibition of Antiquities From Ancient Syria, in Beijing. WANG KAIHAO/CHINA ...

A 3,000-year-old map found at The British Museum could lead us to the real resting place of Noah’s Ark, with clues hidden in ancient Babylonian texts. A breakthrough discovery at the British Museum ...

Archaeologists working near Temple Mount in Jerusalem were exploring a pile of earth from an ancient drainage canal. They found a few artifacts, including a seemingly unimportant broken piece of ...

Proto-cuneiform, an early sign-based script, marks a pivotal moment in human history as the precursor to the world's first writing system, cuneiform. Emerging between 3350 and 3000 BC in the city of ...

Cuneiform is a system of writing that was invented by the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia. Believed to have been created sometime during the 4th millennium BC (between 3500 and 3000 BC), this script ...

In the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia, Uruk stands out as a beacon of early civilization. Dating back to around 4000 BC, Uruk was a thriving metropolis and is often considered the world’s first major ...

Cuneiform tablets from ancient Mesopotamia cover a range of topics, from exorcising ghosts to uncovering the location of Noah’s Ark. Cuneiform tablet, c. 2nd–1st century B.C.E., Mesopotamia, probably ...

Louise Pryke does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their ...

A fierce rivalry between four scholars ignited a race to crack the world’s oldest writing, unlocking the secrets of Mesopotamia after millennia of silence. Their rivalry became a race to achieve what ...

Journalist Hammer follows up The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu with another dazzling archival adventure. By the 1850s, several scholars claimed to have decoded cuneiform, an ancient Mesopotamian ...