In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Moudhy Al-Rashid about ancient Mesopotamia. They discuss the uniqueness of Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent, importance of cuneiform, Sumerian to Akkadian writing, importance of clay for writing, ancient astronomy, and many more topics.

Moudhy Al-Rashid is an Assyriologist and Honorary Fellow at Wolfson College at the University of Oxford. She has a Bachelors in Philosophy from Columbia University’s Columbia College, an MPhil in Cuneiform Studies, and a DPhil in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford (Wolfson College), where she now researches the use of metaphor in descriptions of mental distress in cuneiform medical texts. She teaches Akkadian text classes and modules in the history of science in Mesopotamia at the Oriental Institute.

Research interests include the history of science, medicine, and technology; science and medicine in the ancient Middle East; Iraq; cuneiform; Akkadian language; ancient North Arabian languages and scripts; archaeology; Assyriology; and historiography of Assyriology.

She is the author of the latest book, Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History.

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