I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away."

This book is an incredible achievement, and might actually be a cure for depression. I consider myself well-read in both breadth and depth, and this book forced me to confront very honestly with how little I know about the past. That is to say, the bulk of my knowledge is since the 15th century, and a bit more since the classical period. However, the content of Podany’s book begins in approximately 3500 BCE and ends with Alexander the Great’s Conquest of Babylonia.

One thing that makes this book so powerful is that familiar names do not even begin to crop up until the second half. Of course, there is Ur, Uruk, Sumer–places that we all learn in world history courses–but they’re given a day and any coverage tends to be at a bird’s-eye view. So often, there’s a map and a few paragraphs about Sargon, Gilgamesh, and cuneiform script, but little more than that. More significantly, the content only begins to hit the point of familiarity in the last section (Part 7!).

The reason this book is therapeutic is because it shows us how small our little issues are. This is not to say that there aren’t serious issues: genocides are taking place in Palestine, Myanmar, and Sudan; violent, extractive wars are a constant; and it seems a lot like history has returned, with a classic, great power war taking place in Ukraine, desire for imperial conquest in the United States, and sabre-rattling in India and Pakistan; and potentially exterminatory climate change. And yet, these problems too will fade with sands of time. The Earth will persist without us.

Podany limits her discussion to places and times that use cuneiform, or proto-cuneiform. As a result, the text is geographically bounded, but isn’t bounded by saying “I’m only studying places within X or Y boundaries.” There’s little discussion of the southern Levant, for instance, because those places opted for papyrus and alphabets (or abjads) for their writing. Egypt is only discussed in terms of international relations, as the Egyptian pharaohs relied on Akkadian cuneiform to correspond with states to their north, but not within their own administration. Archaeological events here is included to supplement textual history. If archaeological evidence was privileged, this book likely would have been much more expansive, but also more speculative.

One aspect of Podany’s book that works very much to her benefit is that she eschews the standard bird’s-eye view of history. She tries to give us an understanding of the Ancient Near East through the eyes of the people who lived it. Mirroring this, there are not very maps included–indeed, ancient Near Eastern peoples did not have them at all. In the process, we learn about scribes, weavers, brewers, priestesses, and even agricultural workers. It seems that most preserved written material was produced for religious or political purposes, so there is more attention given to religious practice, dynastic issues, and international relations here than if it were a social history of the 20th century, but this is a problem of the source base, not the author.

One of the most interesting part of this book was Podany’s coverage of diplomatic relations. This is her area of expertise, and she has written more extensively on the subject in Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East. To be honest, I was surprised by how fascinating the subject was. I have a prejudice against diplomatic history: I find it stuffy and so formulaic. And here, somehow, it wasn’t. Podany gives life to court life, and discusses the role of scribes and messengers extensively, and I just wanted to read more about them.

I didn’t realize how large the source base is for the Ancient Near East. I expected it to be heavily speculative based on archaeological findings, but it seems like there are tens or even hundreds of thousands of cuneiform texts just lying around. Perhaps the reason it seemed to me like such sketchy evidence was because there simply aren’t scholars with expertise in the languages at hand. Moreover, it’s hard to popularize given the larger unfamiliarity of the content, with the exception of those interesting in Biblical studies (and the work that Biblical scholars do is quite late compared to the other material covered in this book).

More than anything else, I’m interested to read more about the Babylonian and Assyrian empires. I also wonder about the syncretism that took place between Hellenic and Ancient Near Eastern traditions during the Hellenistic era. I think there’s a fairly literature on Egypto-Hellenic syncretism, especially in religious affairs and the “sciences,” but what about with Babylon, Assyria, and Persia? I’d love to know more about this.

I’ve digressed a bit too much here, but this is a must-read for those curious about the ancient past.