Modern-day archaeological discoveries in the Near East continue to illuminate man's understanding of the ancient world. This illustrated handbook describes the culture, history, and people of Mesopotamia, as well as their struggle for survival and happiness.

Explores the lifestyles of the ancient Egyptians including, economy and industry, foreign trade and transportation, architecture, and more.

Innovative study of the early state and urban societies in Mesopotamia, c. 5000 to 2100 BC.

Describes the people, places, and events of Ancient Rome, describing travel, trade, language, religion, economy, industry and more, from the days of the Republic through the High Empire period and beyond.

"This splendid work of scholarship . . . sums up with economy and power all that the written record so far deciphered has to tell about the ancient and complementary civilizations of Babylon and Assyria."—Edward B. Garside, New York Times Book Review Ancient Mesopotamia—the area now called Iraq—has received less attention than ancient Egypt and other long-extinct and more spectacular civilizations. But numerous small clay tablets buried in the desert soil for thousands of years make it possible for us to know more about the people of ancient Mesopotamia than any other land in the early Near East. Professor Oppenheim, who studied these tablets for more than thirty years, used his intimate knowledge of long-dead languages to put together a distinctively personal picture of the Mesopotamians of some three thousand years ago. Following Oppenheim's death, Erica Reiner used the author's outline to complete the revisions he had begun. "To any serious student of Mesopotamian civilization, this is one of the most valuable books ever written."—Leonard Cottrell, Book Week "Leo Oppenheim has made a bold, brave, pioneering attempt to present a synthesis of the vast mass of philological and archaeological data that have accumulated over the past hundred years in the field of Assyriological research."—Samuel Noah Kramer, Archaeology A. Leo Oppenheim, one of the most distinguished Assyriologists of our time, was editor in charge of the Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute and John A. Wilson Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Chicago.

Ancient Mesopotamia, the fertile crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now western Iraq and eastern Syria, is considered to be the cradle of civilization—home of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, as well as the great Code of Hammurabi. The Code was only part of a rich juridical culture from 2200–1600 BCE that saw the invention of writing and the development of its relationship to law, among other remarkable firsts. Though ancient history offers inexhaustible riches, Dominique Charpin focuses here on the legal systems of Old Babylonian Mesopotamia and offers considerable insight into how writing and the law evolved together to forge the principles of authority, precedent, and documentation that dominate us to this day. As legal codes throughout the region evolved through advances in cuneiform writing, kings and governments were able to stabilize their control over distant realms and impose a common language—which gave rise to complex social systems overseen by magistrates, judges, and scribes that eventually became the vast empires of history books. Sure to attract any reader with an interest in the ancient Near East, as well as rhetoric, legal history, and classical studies, this book is an innovative account of the intertwined histories of law and language.

What we know of prehistoric Europe stems from archeological finds, ranging from cave paintings to the frozen body of a hunter exposed by a retreating glacier. This means that our knowledge is largely of the ordinary individual - the hunter-gatherer, farmer, or Metallurgist - rather than ofkings. In this intriguing book, Jane McIntosh gathers the results of recent archaeological discoveries and scholarly research, covering all aspects of life in prehistoric Europe: the geography of the continent, economy, settlement, trade, transport, industry and crafts, religion, death and burial,warfare, language, the arts, and more. Throughout, McIntosh stresses the lives lived by the majority, rather than the privileged elite (as is so often the case in recorded history). Not that evidence of the latter is lacking: exquisite jewelry, elaborately woven cloth, and finely wrought weaponstell us a great deal about the rulers of this lost world. Including more than 75 illustrations and maps, the Handbook to Life in Prehistoric Europe provides an accessible introduction to the 7000-year period that immediately preceded the Roman Empire.