Dr Selena Wisnom

Congratulations !

The greatest books of 2025 Our critics review hundreds of books a year. Here are their favourites from 2025, from fiction and crime to memoir and history

Delighted to be chosen as one of the Telegraph's best books of 2025!
See the complete list here: www.telegraph.co.uk/books/author...

Emo forever !!

Coming up in the December 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine

Wrote about rituals involved in arranging a wedding in ancient Mesopotamia. Find out more in BBC History Magazine December issue!
www.historyextra.com/magazine/nex...

Archaeologists Found an Ancient Tablet Inscribed With an Ominous Royal Threat Death and taxes have always been inevitable, even in the ancient world.

Ancient HMRC/IRS sends a letter saying pay your taxes immediately or there will be consequences
www.popularmechanics.com/science/arch...

You can read more of these human connections with the ancient past in my book ‘The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of History’

amzn.eu/d/dlp6sxf

I’ve just discovered that @cwjones.bsky.social first posted this in 2019 - thanks and all credit to him!

Yes it is! The moon is the manifestation of the god Sîn

Thanks for digging that out - I didn’t know who first spotted it!

That’s right the language is Akkadian. Many people were already speaking Aramaic in Mesopotamia at the turn of the first millennium BC but Akkadian is still the language of the Assyrian court

The Library of Ancient Wisdom When a team of Victorian archaeologists dug into a grassy hill in Iraq, they chanced upon one of the oldest and greatest stores of knowledge ever seen: the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, s...

If you want to read more about ancient academics check out my book ‘The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of History’
www.penguin.co.uk/books/443027...

Amazing

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

VAMPIRES AREN’T REAL, RIGHT? …RIGHT?

To celebrate Halloween, we’re thrilled to share a special interview with historian John Blair about his riveting new book, Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World. open.substack.com/pub/histfest...

Selena Wisnom - The Library of Ancient Wisdom: Mesopotamia and the Making of History | Wells Festival of Literature

I'm heading to the Wells Festival of Literature today - excited to talk about The Library of Ancient Wisdom again!
Tickets are available here: wellsfestivalofliterature.org.uk/events/2025-...

I've just found out which Babylonian god people prayed to to get up early in the morning - Ninurta!
'To do business at the quay where traffic rushes swiftly by,
You, O unrivalled king of the world, rouse at daybreak him who else would not rise.'
From www.ebl.lmu.de/corpus/L/3/1...

PERFORMANCE | A Mesopotamian Evening The evening comprises three performances - one in Arabic, one in English and one in Arabic and English.

Tickets are availabe here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/performanc...

Exciting event alert: P21 Gallery and The Enheduanna Society are hosting a Performance Evening on 25th October in London. Badia Obaid, June Peters and Tara Jaff will perform Mesopotamian poetry and a modern retelling of the story of priestess and poet Enheduanna.

Poetry Worth Hearing: Episode 35 The 35th episode of Poetry Worth Hearing had as its prompt 'making up'. As ever, I hoped poets would interpret this as widely as they needed to and suggested a triplet of ideas as starting points: mak...

My poem 'Kabuki Costume' is featured on Poetry Worth Hearing - thank you, Kathleen McPhilemy!

You can read it online here:
poetryworthhearing.biz/post/poetry-...

You can listen to the whole episode here:

By responsibly I mean in such a way that does not outsource thinking

Has anything been said about what it means to use AI ‘responsibly’ and how tutors are meant to engage?

Yes Sophus‘ Enheduanna book is great, I also highly recommend that!

Thanks Michael - it is a wonderful world and there is so much of it! I also loved There Are Rivers in the Sky. Did you know you can read most of the classics of Babylonian poetry online here: www.ebl.lmu.de/corpus ?

A review of Library of Ancient Wisdom and Between Two Rivers by Moudhy Al-Rashid in The Times Literary Supplement - thank you @lsmwilson.bsky.social for kind words!

Overboard! 2025 🗓️25.09.25 📍Linklaters, London EC2Y 8HQ 🎟️ £20 (£15 concessions, £10 livestream) When Poseidon sends a tempest to stir up the Aegean, four titans of the ancient world find themselves stuck on a rapidl...

Thrilled to be taking part in the Overboard! @classicsforall.bsky.social reverse balloon debate discussing which arch villain from the ancient world deserves to be chucked out rather than saved
25th September, London or online - tickets:
classicsforall.org.uk/news-and-eve...

The label doth protest too much, methinks

Thank you, and yes I have! It is fantastic and so much rings so true

The Ancients A podcast for all ancient history fans! The Ancients is dedicated to discussing our distant past. Featuring interviews with historians and archaeologists, each episode covers a specific theme from ant...

Had a great time at Ancients history podcast! Thank you for inviting me, Tristan Hughes - it is always fun to talk about Ashurbanipal, his dynasty, library and more!

You can give it a listen here:
shows.acast.com/the-ancients...

Why this Assyrian king hunted exactly eighteen lions | Curator’s Corner S10 Ep5 YouTube video by The British Museum

Another amazing episode of Curator's Corner @BritishMuseum! Very informative and beautifully shot - Ashurbanipla's lion hunt scenes are presented in such incredible detail!

www.youtube.com/watch?app=de...

In the bookshop this morning:

PARENTS: “Okay, we’re leaving now.”

CHILD: *pulls another book from the shelf and sits down *

CHILD: “Then I guess this is goodbye.”