The Mesopotamian Riddle
An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman and the Race to Decipher the World's Oldest Writing
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The Mesopotamian Riddle
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Narrated by:
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Matthew Lloyd Davies
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By:
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Joshua Hammer
About this listen
A rollicking adventure starring three free-spirited Victorians on a twenty-year quest to decipher cuneiform, the oldest writing in the world—from 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.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2025 Joshua Hammer (P)2025 Simon & Schuster AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 128
On May 3, 2010, an Irish national named Jeffrey Lendrum was apprehended at Britain’s Birmingham International Airport with a suspicious parcel strapped to his stomach. Inside were 14 rare peregrine falcon eggs snatched from a remote cliffside in Wales. So begins a tale almost too bizarre to believe, following the parallel lives of a globe-trotting smuggler who spent two decades capturing endangered raptors worth millions of dollars as race champions - and Detective Andy McWilliam, who’s hell bent on protecting the world’s birds of prey.
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1 out of 5 stars
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What a crock of B.S.
- By Joe on 03-31-20
By: Joshua Hammer
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Red Scare
- Blacklists, McCarthyism and the Making of Modern America
- By: Clay Risen
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 15 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 15
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 14
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 14
An urgent, accessible, and important history, Red Scare reveals an all-too-familiar pattern of illiberal conspiracy-mongering and political and cultural backlash that speaks directly to the antagonism and divisiveness of our contemporary moment. Drawing upon newly declassified documents, journalist Clay Risen recounts how politicians like Joseph McCarthy, with the help of an extended network of other government officials and organizations, systematically ruined thousands of lives in their deluded pursuit of alleged Communist conspiracies.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Whitewashed History of Anti-progressivism
- By visionaryprism2 on 04-15-25
By: Clay Risen
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Prester John: Africa's Lost King (The Search for the Last Messiah of Christendom)
- By: Richard Denham
- Narrated by: Virtual Voice
- Length: 5 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
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Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
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Story0 out of 5 stars 0
He sits on his jewelled throne on the Horn of Africa in the maps of the sixteenth century. He can see his whole empire reflected in a mirror outside his palace. He carries three crosses into battle and each cross is guarded by one hundred thousand men. He was with St Thomas in the third century when he set up a Christian church in India. He came like a thunderbolt out of the far East eight centuries later, to rescue the crusaders clinging on to Jerusalem. And he was still there when Portuguese explorers went looking for him in the fifteenth century. He went by different names. The priest ...
By: Richard Denham
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The McKinley Years
- The Life and Times of Our 25th President
- By: Christopher Kenney
- Narrated by: Scott R. McKinley
- Length: 3 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
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Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
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Story0 out of 5 stars 0
The McKinley Years: The Life and Times of our 25th President utilizes the rich resources of the McKinley Presidential Library & Museum archives. Through photos and documents only available at the museum, Christopher Kenney paints a picture of not only William McKinley the President but William McKinley the man. This book explores McKinley's early years, service in the Civil War, family life, and his rise from lawyer to Congressman, to Governor, and finally to the highest office in the land.
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Magna Carta: The Making and Legacy of the Great Charter
- By: Dan Jones
- Narrated by: Dan Jones
- Length: 3 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 1
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1
On a summer's day in 1215 a beleaguered English monarch met a group of disgruntled barons in a meadow by the river Thames named Runnymede. Beset by foreign crisis and domestic rebellion, King John was fast running out of options. On 15 June he reluctantly agreed to fix his regal seal to a document that would change the world.
By: Dan Jones
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The Fifteen
- Murder, Retribution, and the Forgotten Story of Nazi POWs in America
- By: William Geroux
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 3
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 3
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Story4 out of 5 stars 3
The revelatory true story of the long-forgotten POW camps for German soldiers erected in hundreds of small U.S. towns during World War II, and the secret Nazi killings that ensnared fifteen brave American POWs in a high-stakes showdown.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Interesting and Largely Forgotten History
- By John on 04-08-25
By: William Geroux
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The Determined Spy
- The Turbulent Life and Times of CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner
- By: Douglas Waller
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 19 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 1
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1
An intimate and expertly researched biography of little-known early CIA leader Frank Wisner, whose behind-the-scenes influence on Cold War policy—and hundreds of highly secret anti-Soviet missions—resonates with the international crises we see today.
By: Douglas Waller
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Rot
- An Imperial History of the Irish Famine
- By: Padraic X. Scanlan
- Narrated by: Stephen Hogan
- Length: 10 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 8
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 8
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 8
In 1845, European potato fields from Spain to Scandinavia were attacked by a novel pathogen. But it was only in Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom, that the blight’s devastation reached apocalyptic levels, leaving more than a million people dead and forcing millions more to emigrate. In Rot, historian Padraic X. Scanlan offers the definitive account of the Great Famine, showing how Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom and the British Empire made it uniquely vulnerable to starvation.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Really great work of history
- By Anonymous User on 04-12-25
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Soldiers and Silver
- Mobilizing Resources in the Age of Roman Conquest
- By: Michael J. Taylor
- Narrated by: Adam Barr
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3 out of 5 stars 1
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 1
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Story3 out of 5 stars 1
By the middle of the second century BCE, after nearly one hundred years of warfare, Rome had exerted its control over the entire Mediterranean world, forcing the other great powers of the region—Carthage, Macedonia, Egypt, and the Seleucid empire—to submit militarily and financially. But how, despite its relative poverty and its frequent numerical disadvantage in decisive battles, did Rome prevail? Michael J. Taylor explains this surprising outcome by examining the role that manpower and finances played.
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Mediterranean Sweep
- The USAAF in the Italian Campaign
- By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver
- Narrated by: Christopher Ragland
- Length: 15 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 1
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 1
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Story5 out of 5 stars 1
With the defeat of the Germans and Italians on Sicily in mid-July 1943, the focus of the war in the air shifted toward the battle for the Italian mainland itself. This campaign took place in the context of the coming invasion of northwest Europe, with many of the best units from the North African and Sicilian campaigns withdrawn to prepare for the new front, while those units that remained had a lower priority for replacements of men and material.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Mediterranean Sweep
- By Ross Gordon on 03-27-25
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The Spoils of Time
- A World History from the Dawn of Civilization Through the Early Renaissance
- By: C. V. Wedgwood
- Narrated by: Charlton Griffin
- Length: 17 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
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Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
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Story0 out of 5 stars 0
The Spoils of Time is a concise history of the world in nine chapters, tracing the prehistoric beginnings of early man’s halting steps towards civilization and ending sometime around 1500. The scope is vast, with Wedgwood’s scholarship spanning all the continents. As the author states, her purpose was to create a continuous narrative of human history for her own pleasure and to find out for herself what, if any, interlacing relations might hold us together.
By: C. V. Wedgwood
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The Kalinka Affair
- A Father's Hunt for His Daughter's Killer
- By: Joshua Hammer
- Narrated by: Joshua Hammer
- Length: 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 7
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Performance3 out of 5 stars 6
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Story4 out of 5 stars 5
When André Bamberski's daughter died 30 years ago, he was helpless to save her. Suspicions of murder began to surround her stepfather, a German doctor named Dieter Krombach, but Bamberski could only hope the truth would prevail. But when the authorities gave up their pursuit, he knew he had to act. So against the odds, Bamberski embarked on an obsessive quest to capture and punish his daughter's killer. In this riveting true story by Joshua Hammer, a father travels to the limits of law in search of justice.
By: Joshua Hammer
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Lincoln's Peace
- The Struggle to End the American Civil War
- By: Michael Vorenberg
- Narrated by: Landon Woodson
- Length: 16 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 2
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 2
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 2
We set out on the James River, March 25, 1865, aboard the paddle steamboat River Queen. President Lincoln is on his way to General Grant’s headquarters at City Point, Virginia, and he’s decided he won’t return to Washington until he’s witnessed, or perhaps even orchestrated, the end of the Civil War. Now, it turns out, more than a century and a half later, historians are still searching for that end.
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Buddhism
- A Journey Through History
- By: Donald S. Lopez Jr.
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 21 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 1
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Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
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Story0 out of 5 stars 0
Over the course of twenty-five centuries, Buddhism spread from its place of origin in northern India to become a global tradition of remarkable breadth, depth, and richness. Donald S. Lopez Jr. draws on the latest scholarship to construct a detailed and innovative history of Buddhism—not just as a chronology through the centuries or as geographic movement, but as a dense matrix of interconnections.
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Conquest
- The English Kingdom of France, 1417-1450
- By: Juliet Barker
- Narrated by: Sarah Durham
- Length: 16 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall0 out of 5 stars 0
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Performance0 out of 5 stars 0
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Story0 out of 5 stars 0
Following the Battle of Agincourt, Henry V's second invasion of France in 1417 launched a campaign that would place the crown of France on an English head. By the time of Henry's premature death in 1422, nearly all of northern France lay in his hands and the Valois heir to the throne had been disinherited. Only Joan of Arc—a visionary peasant girl who claimed divine guidance—was able to halt the English advance, but not for long. Just six months after her death, Henry's young son was crowned in Paris as the first, and last, English king of France.
By: Juliet Barker
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Watch My Tracer
- By: Keith Chisnall
- Narrated by: Keith Chisnall
- Length: 11 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 9
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 8
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Story5 out of 5 stars 8
One man's untold story of Special Forces, including clandestine operations during the Rhodesian war. A third-generation Rhodesian tells the story of his upbringing on a farm and his days learning to track and survive in the bush. There are historical facts with covert and overt operations which have never been made public. It is a story of trial, battle, friendships, and extraordinary life experiences during the bloody Rhodesian war.
By: Keith Chisnall