The Ancients in Their Own Words » (Special Value)

Michael Kerrigan is the author of Who Lies Where: A Guide to Famous Graves and Greece and the Mediterranean (part of the BBC Ancient Civilizations series) and is a columnist, book reviewer, and feature writer for publications including the Scotsman and the Times Literary Supplement. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Packed with inscriptions dating from third millennium Mesopotamia to the Roman era, The Ancients in their Own Words offers an exciting way of understanding the ancient world through the words of the people of the times. The lives and words of the great and good— emperors, pharaohs, kings, and philosophers— are recorded, as well as those of ordinary people, such as restaurant owners, doctors, farmers, gladiators, and soldiers.

The book includes samples of inscriptions from every major ancient civilization, from the third millennium BC Sargon Legend to Roman inscriptions dating from the fourth century AD. The book includes translations from well-known sources such as the Old Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, the Assyrian Sennacherib’s Prism, Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy V’s Rosetta Stone, and the Greek Parian Marble, as well as many less-known inscriptions such as the Semitic Ebla Tablets, the Phoenician Kilamuwa Stela, and the Etruscan Pyrgi Plaques.

Each inscription is accompanied by a translation, background context, and feature explaining a little-known aspect of the author, subject, or culture. Rendered into modern English, the quotations gives the lay reader an insight into the laws, lives, customs, and concerns of people who lived many thousands of years ago.