The Mesopotamian Riddle Audiobook By Joshua Hammer cover art

The Mesopotamian Riddle

An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman and the Race to Decipher the World's Oldest Writing

Pre-order: Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Mesopotamian Riddle

By: Joshua Hammer
Narrated by: Matthew Lloyd Davies
Pre-order: Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Pre-order for $20.01

Pre-order for $20.01

Confirm pre-order
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

A rollicking adventure starring three free-spirited Victorians on a twenty-year quest to decipher cuneiform, the oldest writing in the worldfrom the New York Times bestselling author of The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu.

It was one of history’s great vanishing acts.

Around 3,400 BCE—as humans were gathering in complex urban settlements—a scribe in the mud-walled city-state of Uruk picked up a reed stylus to press tiny symbols into clay. For three millennia, wedge shape cuneiform script would record the military conquests, scientific discoveries, and epic literature of the great Mesopotamian kingdoms of Sumer, Assyria, and Babylon and of Persia’s mighty Achaemenid Empire, along with precious minutiae about everyday life in the cradle of civilization. And then…the meaning of the characters was lost.

London, 1857. In an era obsessed with human progress, mysterious palaces emerging from the desert sands had captured the Victorian public’s imagination. Yet Europe’s best philologists struggled to decipher the bizarre inscriptions excavators were digging up.

Enter a swashbuckling archaeologist, a suave British military officer turned diplomat, and a cloistered Irish rector, all vying for glory in a race to decipher this script that would enable them to peek farther back into human history than ever before.

From the ruins of Persepolis to lawless outposts of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, The Mesopotamian Riddle whisks you on a wild adventure through the golden age of archaeology in an epic quest to understand our past.

©2025 Joshua Hammer (P)2025 Simon & Schuster Audio
Adventurers, Explorers & Survival Ancient Iraq Words, Language & Grammar
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What listeners say about The Mesopotamian Riddle

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.