Topic description and stories

Dr Martin Worthington reads a Neo-Assyrian royal inscription in the British Museum

Sixth formers see the future in ancient Egypt & Mesopotamia

27 May 2016

The University’s archaeologists recently teamed up with The British Museum to inspire sixth formers to consider studying Egyptology and Assyriology...

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Prehistoric ‘book keeping’ continued long after invention of writing

14 Jul 2014

An ancient token-based recording system from before the dawn of history was rendered obsolete by the birth of writing, according to popular wisdom...

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Panel of glazed bricks from the capital city of Assur, showing the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser (1114-1076 BC)

A new chapter opens in the study of the Assyrian empire

30 Jan 2013

The first ever conference to focus on the provincial archaeology of the Assyrian empire took place at Cambridge University last month. A key theme...

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Detail from the tablet found at Ziyaret Tepe. Inscribed with Cuneiform characters, the tablet consists of a list of women's names, many of which appear to be from a previously unknown language.

Archaeologists discover lost language

10 May 2012

Evidence for a forgotten ancient language which dates back more than 2,500 years, to the time of the Assyrian Empire, has been found by...

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Kalhu from A.H. Layard 'A Second Series of the Monuments of Nineveh' (1853)

Reading the world’s oldest libraries

01 Nov 2010

Examples of the world’s oldest science and literature – 2,500-year-old clay writing tablets – hold clues as to how ancient scholars acquired and used...

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