The civilization of Ancient Mesopotamia flourished between 3300 BC and 2000 BC in the southern half of the lands between and to either side of the Tigris and Eurphrates. The early development of cuneiform writing, the world’s first phonetic script, means that for the first time in the history of humanity it is possible to learn something of how people thought and felt. This book opens up the public and private realms of the lives of humankind’s first civilized ancestors. It covers their cooking and eating, feasts and festivals, wine and drinking, love and sex, what women could do and what they couldn’t, magic and medicine, trial by ordeal, life in a palace above and below stairs, astrology and divination, gods and religion, and literature and myth.