Excerpt from Between Two Rivers by Moudhy Al-Rashid, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Finally, in Chapter 9 we turn to the princess herself, a woman called Ennigaldi-Nanna for whom the palace containing these objects was built. The princess was the daughter of King Nabonidus and she was the last in a long line of high priestesses whose role was to serve the Babylonian moon god, Sîn. Ennigaldi-Nanna would have wielded considerable secular and religious power in Ur. In this chapter we will discover what Ennigaldi-Nanna can tell us about the lives of working women in ancient Mesopotamia, and in turn what other women can tell us about her. Is it feasible that as well as a princess and priestess, Ennigaldi-Nanna may have acted as a sort of curator of this museum of ancient objects? What can we learn from her about the nature of history itself, how and why we do history, and how she and her forebears might have put it to use?

There is something special about beholding, and even holding, an original object from long ago. When I first held a cuneiform tablet, it felt like I was holding hands with the ancient scribe who cradled the once wet clay to impress so many cuneiform wedges – otherwise left undisturbed for millennia before being dug up, dusted off, and studied. As people today may value that connection with a person long dead and their distant era, so too did the people of ancient Mesopotamia. Whoever brought together those diverse artefacts from disparate eras had a sense of and respect for the great age of those objects, and for the objects themselves. What better way to connect with the past and its people than to try to understand how they connected with their own past? Throughout this book, we will explore not just the history, but the history of history in ancient Mesopotamia.

Excerpted from Between Two Rivers by Moudhy Al-Rashid. Copyright © 2025 by Moudhy Al-Rashid. Excerpted by permission of W.W. Norton & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.