The people of ancient Mesopotamia, who settled in the 'fertile crescent' between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers before the fourth millennium BC, laid the foundations of Western civilization. Some of the earliest experiments in agriculture and irrigation, the invention of writing, the birth of mathematics and the development of urban life began there. Many fundamental developments in human society - from hunter-gatherer to farmer, from village to city-state - first occurred in this area.

Biblical associations also are numerous, from Nineveh to the Tower of Babel and the Flood. Professor H. W. F. Saggs describes the ebb and flow in the successive fortunes of the Sumerians, Akkadians, Amorites and Babylonians. Using evidence from pottery, cuneiform tablets, cylinder seals, early architecture and metallurgy, he illuminates the myths, religion, languages, trade, politics and warfare, as well as the legacy, of the Babylonians and their predecessors.