An interview with Joshua Hammer, author of “The Mesopotamian Riddle: An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman, and the Race to Decipher the World’s Oldest Writing”

Joshua Hammer is a nonfiction author and former foreign correspondent. His previous books include The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu (2017) and The Falcon Thief (2020). He has also written for Outside Magazine and National Geographic. His most recent book is The Mesopotamian Riddle (Simon & Schuster, 2025).

First question, The Mesopotamian Riddle: It's about deciphering cuneiform. It's entertaining. It's informative. What are you most hoping readers get from it?

Well, I wanted it to be a page turner, so I wanted them to be enthralled enough by the event—by the two adventures going on, the intellectual adventure and the physical adventure of the archaeological missions in a very dangerous part of the world. The sort of joy of discovery there and then the other part, of course, is the intellectual adventure story, the part of the decipherment story.

So, I wanted readers to come away captivated equally by both, and kind of appreciate, just sort of the incredible discovery of a lost world. It doesn't happen much anymore, because pretty much, well, I mean geographically, pretty much everything's been discovered. But it wasn't like that in the 1840s, there was still a sense of possibility and unknown territories.

And you've chosen to kind of mix together biography and narrative in the book. How much do you think biography does to enhance narrative?

Oh, I absolutely think you need to know your characters, absolutely. They're inextricably bound up together. If you don't have any sense of the characters that you're reading about, you're not going to get interested in their adventures or their fates. So, I always in the course of this book, tried to break away as gracefully as I could to giving you a feeling of who these people were and their environment, the environments that produced them. And you know, in a hope that, like with Edward Hincks, I mean, it wasn't that easy to find biographical details about him. I had to consult a lot of different sources, and he's still, you know, it's hard to make him really emerge as a real, living, breathing character. But I felt that it was essential to try. And so that sent me on a real chase to kind of just grab any biographical details I could about him. And I think, to a certain extent, having that knowledge about him does bind you up a bit in in his quest, you know. So you can't separate them.

I think that's true. And then you mentioned, I think the whole thing started, I guess you found out about Layard a little bit, and then you picked up his memoir, and kind of got swept up in the story.

 Yeah.

How often do you come across just really interesting historical figures like that? When you're looking at one thing and you just kind of find out about this other really fascinating person?

As far as finding a character worthy of writing a whole book about, this might have been the first time. And he was in my consciousness. I can't remember what came first, I think maybe it was because everything sort of came together. I was reviewing a book about hieroglyphs, a story about the Rosetta Stone that I didn't know anything about, really. And then pretty much at the same time, beginning to read Layard's memoirs, and realizing that these two stories are the makings of another book. But I can't remember another case, as far as my book writing goes, where that has happened.

But he's pretty exceptional.

Pretty exceptional! I was surprised that a lot of Brits didn't even know who he was. I sort of went into this, kind of with the expectation that he was a universally-known hero in England. No. I've done some podcasts and interviews where people said, “never heard of him.”

I'm curious about--I think both Rawlinson and Layard--they're almost like a certain type of guy who used to exist. I think you use the term “archaeologist adventurer,” and you also use the phrase, “soldiers and men of letters.” I’ve kind of noticed this, like with the Arctic explorers, right, they both do these really risky physical adventures, but they're also really into science. But they can also quote poetry.

They also happen to be both really good artists. I mean, Layard filled his memoirs with wonderful sketches. Some of them might have been done by the illustrators that were sent by the British Museum to join him, but I'm pretty sure he also drew, Layard. And Rawlinson, as well. A great sense of depth of field. So these guys were multi-talented. I mean, there is the idea of the Renaissance man…What's the term that I use in the book? … Well, anyway, you know people capable of excellence in a lot of different unrelated fields seems to have come out of the Victorian era quite a bit.

Yeah. And I'm curious, do you have thoughts about why? Why they had seemingly quite a few of those people, whereas I don't think that we have quite as many today. I can't imagine someone being an administrator, 9 to 5, and then spending their weekends on any kind of ancient script. I just have a hard time imagining finance bros, you know…

I was just reading about the death of Tom Lehrer. There's a Renaissance man for you, the guy who was a brilliant Harvard academic mathematician, and then, in his spare time, he was a great pianist, and did these satirical songs that captivated America in the fifties and sixties. So, I mean two completely different talents combined in one genius.

I don't know if I'd call Rawlinson—or well, I mean to a certain extent Rawlinson was a genius, I guess, in terms of being able to decipher. It’s just odd that you had these two geniuses, I mean, I'm not sure Layard qualifies. I don't know what the definition of genius is exactly, but. certainly you just had this… Rawlinson and Layard were kind of like Lennon and McCartney, you know. I mean they were together in the same place in Baghdad, in Iraq, doing amazing things. So yeah, that's a pretty extraordinary confluence of great talent.

The larger picture about these Renaissance men may have something to do with the education that they got in the English public schools. I don't know. I don't know, actually Layard and Rawlinson came out of very different backgrounds. So yeah, not sure.

Now your book, I think it kind of sets the story straight in terms of Hincks and kind of bringing him back to the fore. How much did your sense of justice, or desire to balance the scales kind of shape your approach to writing it?

Quite a bit, because I had two very influential scholars that I consulted on this, and they were very, very adamant that Hincks had not gotten his due. They really, kind of point by point, explained what he had done and why he had been sort of shortchanged in all this and how the scales had to be rebalanced. They should be rebalanced. And I listened very carefully to what they were saying. I mean, I can't claim the same sort of understanding of the decipherment process that these PhD-holding Assyriologists have. But what I did gather made it pretty clear that he had outpaced Rawlinson and made discoveries pretty much at every turn before Rawlinson did, and that Rawlinson had undercut him at every at every opportunity.

You know, sometimes with these scholarly stories it's hard to find the drama. It can get pretty dry. But I think I was fortunate to have this rivalry and this underlying dynamic of the unsung hero finally getting his due. So, it was an important part of the process.

Now it seems to me, and I think you mentioned this in the book, too, that in the West we've kind of remained fixated on Egypt, and we're less interested in Mesopotamia and its cultures. How do you think that's shaped our understanding of the past? What would be different if little kids were as into Assyria as they are into Egypt?

 I'm not sure what would be different just except for a larger, generally a larger sense of the world as a big jigsaw puzzle and how everything fits together. Assyria has always been really ignored. Most people I've talked to had no clue about Assyria. Frankly, I didn't much either, before going into this book. I mean, I knew a few of these kings’ names, that's about it. I had no idea of the power and influence and cruelty of this empire. I don't know. I just feel like having gotten into this and learned all about the Persian Empire, as well as the Achaemenid Empire of Darius, and the Assyrians… I feel like sort of this big blank in my understanding has been filled in. I value that. I'm glad I have that. One of the real joys I had in doing this book was learning about the ancient world.

Again, I don't know what would be changed. Really, it's easy to understand why the Assyrians have less appeal. You know, there is something, as I write in the book, a bit unsettling about the Assyrians’ brutality.

I had a world history class a long time ago, and the professor was like, these are like the meanest guys…

 Yeah. But you know, as another historian in the book points out, the Romans were nailing people to crosses on highways and stuff. They weren't so wonderful. I mean, it was just… Yeah, there's a lot of cruelty in that era, as there is today. But the barbarity and brutality of some of these Assyrian kings, at least from the way they boasted about it is pretty unparalleled.

I mean very effective, though, for your enemies, because, you know.

Totally effective. They were all terrified. Everybody was terrified.

So what's your method for writing a book like this? What does that look like?

A lot of time sitting in the British Library, which is an incredible resource. Almost one-stop shopping. I wouldn't say all of it was there, but what would happen was I'd make these trips to London and just spend a month at a time, just gathering as much as I could. You know, using my iphone to take pictures, doing a lot of transcribing actually of my notes into my computer, because I often find that that helps me process all the information. Then I’d come home and for a month I’d hit the internet and gather as much stuff off the internet that I could, and then back to the library for more things that I didn't quite get.

There's a lot of stuff in the British Library that you can't find online and just being immersed in that atmosphere is really, and being in London—so much of the story unfolded in London and cycling every morning past the British Museum…You're in the footsteps of these guys. So that went on for like a year and a half.

My other books have been a lot more going out and venturing out into the field. There wasn't much of that in this. The only thing I really did outside the libraries was, go see Fox Talbot's place, a hundred miles outside London, his estate, to soak up a little atmosphere there. And then I'd been to Iraq, you know, many times, but not for this book. But I was able to draw on that knowledge, as well.

So, around a year and a half of that kind of research, and then just outlining, organizing, sending in a draft, having it completely torn apart, going back to the library to get more, much more information, trying again, and kind of getting it this time. The first version, I have to say, the first version did not really get it. I was so caught up in the contest between these guys that I didn't really give much background about the Assyrians or the Persians or Sumerians. So my editor said, we can't really appreciate what's at stake here unless you really go deeply into the civilizations. I didn't see the forest for the trees, you know. So, then I had to go back to the library and really dig, dig into the histories, and that changed the book, I think. But it wasn't easy. This is the hardest book, the writing process was the hardest of anything I've done. It didn't come together naturally.

I know you've written a few other books that kind of combine history and adventure, and you mentioned that for a lot of your other writing you kind of go into the field more. I know you've written for National Geographic and Outside. How did you break into that world? I think there are not that many writers who get to do that kind of writing. How were you able to find a market for that and get your pieces out there?

Oh, I started at, I mean, my real break came when I became a foreign correspondent for Newsweek. It took a lot of effort, a lot of lobbying, a lot of maneuvering, to get that first post in Africa. And that kind of set me on my way. I realized I really love being out in the field and having adventures. I basically spent 15 years as a foreign correspondent at Newsweek, going everywhere, every continent. And then when I left Newsweek and started thinking more about writing long form and writing books, I was kind of very well-positioned. I have a whole map of the geography of the world in my head. I feel I can work pretty comfortably in a lot of places. Hit the ground running, you know. So, it all goes back to Newsweek.

Do you have a next project that you've already started working on?

No, I don't. I'm struggling right now. I've been doing a lot of magazine pieces. I've been working on a couple of pieces up here on the Vineyard. I often, in between projects, I'll take on magazine stuff, partly to keep me busy, but also in the hope that something will click and lead to a book. And I was in Cambodia thinking that I had something, and it turns out that another writer's been on it for three years. So that was kind of a disappointment. But I've always come up with something. It sometimes takes a while.

One last question we always ask, are there any books that you regularly recommend to other people? So, it could be any kind. Do you have any books that you're always like, “Oh, you should read this.”

 I always recommend stuff by my favorite nonfiction. I read mostly nonfiction, although I'm reviewing a novel now for the Times. But I always recommend my, like the big three for me, are Hampton Sides, Erik Larson, and David Graham. Obviously, I'm not original in my thinking. But I just really appreciate the way those three guys write. And I'm leaving out a few. There are maybe a dozen really wonderful nonfiction writers whose stuff I will read anything they do. But those three come to mind for me as the best. Oh, Candice Millard, the historical writer. I'm sure you know her stuff. She's also great.

Interview conducted by Elizabeth Stice