"The Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad is a reconstruction in book form of one of the world's largest and most important museums, which will never be the same again. Focusing on the objects housed at the museum and collected over decades of painstaking archaeological research and study, the book traces the rich tapestry of the history of ancient Mesopotamia from its earliest prehistory to the advent of Islam. Iraq is a country of firsts: the earliest villages, cities, writing, poetry, epic literature, temples, codified religion, armies, warfare, world economy, and empire. The archaeological artifacts that were looted represent our collective history and help us understand how civilization first began and how it evolved."--BOOK JACKET