Unlike the Greek heroes, many Mesopotamian mythical figures have slipped into obscurity. An exception to this is their representation in comics, such as Gilgamesh, who served alongside Captain America as an Avenger.
Articles on Mesopotamia
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Sex was central to life in ancient Mesopotamia. And the authors of Sumerian love poetry, depicting the exploits of divine couples, showed a wealth of practical knowledge about the stages of female sexual arousal.
Technology which located Mayan cities has been used to rediscover a southern African city from the 15th century.
Cuneiform was used for over 3,000 years in the Ancient Near East, but was only decoded in the 19th century. The writing form is still revealing amazing stories, from literature to mathematics.
More than 2,000 years ago, the Babylonians understood the cycle of eclipses. They also regarded them as signs that could foretell the death of a king.
Love, it is said, is a battlefield, and it was no more so than for the first goddess of love and war, Ishtar. Her legend has influenced cultural archetypes from Aphrodite to Wonder Woman.
From environmentalism to the meaning of life, the themes of the world’s most ancient epic are still remarkably relevant to modern readers.
It was in Mesopotamia that the world’s first cities emerged, along with the invention of writing and the codification of laws.
Top contributors
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Honorary Research Associate, Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Sydney
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Curator for Ancient Near East, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
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Associate professor in Physical Geography, Northumbria University, Newcastle
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Professor Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand
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Associate Professor of Global Environmental Change, Xi'an Jiaotong University
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Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of Dayton
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Honorary Professor of Classics and Ancient History, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of Queensland
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Professor, Classics and Archaeology; Philosophy, Queen's University, Ontario
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Postdoctoral Researcher in Analytical Chemistry, Dublin City University
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Professor of Earth and Climate Sciences, California State University, Dominguez Hills
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Visiting Fellow in Geoarchaeology, University of Southampton
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Associate Professor, Management Discipline, Faculty of Business, Arts and Law, Southern Cross University
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Associate Professor in Ancient History, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Macquarie University
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Chair of Ancient Near Eastern Literatures, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
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Assistant Professor of History, North Carolina State University