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Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. By KAREN RHEA NEMET-NEJAT. Peabody, Mass.: HENDRICKSON PUBLISHERS, 2002. Pp. xxii + 346. $24.95 (paper).
Few people outside the field of Assyriology realize the enormous depth of resources available for the study of society in Mesopotamia. Ancient cultures tend to get lumped together with the same assumptions made about all of them: if we know little about Greek family life, for instance, surely we must known even less about Mesopotamian life? But, in choosing clay as their writing material, the Mesopotamians left more durable texts than those of any other ancient culture, so thousands of documents are preserved that were never intended for posterity. These cuneiform texts provide a nuanced inside view on how the society operated. From these texts, in all their variety, Karen Rhea Nemet-Nejat has created a masterly overview of Mesopotamien society in her book Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia, which has recently been made available in a paperback edition by Hendrickson Publishers.
The core of the book, which is designed for nonspecialist readers, is found in chapters 4-11. Here, Nemet-Nejat has drawn together an extraordinary wealth of evidence on Mesopotamian intellectual innovations (chapters 4 and 5), society...