Jane Waldron Grutz

To the south of ancient Egypt, there was another civilization, at times a rival, at times a vassal, and always a source for coveted gold: Nubia, which rose to its peak of conquest 2,700 years ago when its king, Piye, sailed an army down the Nile.

The world’s first palm-sized tablets were made of clay, and they had enough surface for only a few wedge-shaped impressions of a reed stylus. That was how students in Sumer—all boys—learned to write cuneiform. Those who did well could upgrade to bigger clay and go into accounting, law or literature.

Hormuzd Rassam was 19 years old to help with excavations. Soon he began to uncover long-forgotten palaces–temples at Nimrud and later at Nineveh, splendors of first-millennium-BCE Assyrian kings.