Q&A with Joshua Hammer

 

Photo by Cordula Krämer

 

 

Joshua Hammer is the author of the new book The Mesopotamian Riddle: An Archaeologist, a Soldier, a Clergyman, and the Race to Decipher the World's Oldest Writing. His other books include The Falcon Thief. He lives in Berlin.

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Mesopotamian Riddle?

 

A: It all began in 2017, when I traveled to Iraq to profile, for Smithsonian Magazine, a young, female archaeologist from Mosul who was surveying the damage done to ancient sites by marauding Islamic State militants.

 

She led me through a tunnel that the radicals had burrowed beneath a palace in Nineveh, the old Assyrian capital, and showed me cuneiform writing from around 700 BC inscribed on the walls. It was a paean to the Assyrian King Esarhaddon -- and I was captivated by it.

 

A few months later, while doing  research for my true-crime book The Falcon Thief, I came across references to Austen Henry Layard, the English archaeologist who had excavated Nineveh and its sister city, Nimrud, in the 1840s. I read his memoirs and was swept up by his stories of adventure in the wilds of Mesopotamia.

 

Shortly after that I reviewed for The New York Times The Writing of the Gods, a captivating book by Edward Dolnick about the competition in the 1810s and 1820s to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphs.

 

All this inspired me in 2021 to propose a book to my editors at Simon & Schuster about two quests: the  search to rediscover the lost civilization of Assyria and the race to decipher the writing on the palace walls.

 

Q: The writer Julian Sancton said of the book, “As in the best detective novels, the story of those who uncover the mystery is as intriguing as the mystery itself.” What do you think of that description, and how would you describe the dynamic between the various figures you write about?

 

A: Julian got it right. I didn't know much about the characters going into the project, but I quickly realized that their complex relationships would be one of the most propulsive aspects of the narrative.

 

In the mid-1840s, Austen Layard formed a tight bond with Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, the British Resident, or ambassador, in Baghdad. Already famous in England for deciphering Old Persian, Rawlinson had ambitions to decipher the older and more complicated Assyro-Babylonian script.

 

Layard shipped bas-reliefs and other artifacts from Nineveh down the Tigris to Rawlinson, who copied down the inscriptions and started decoding them.

 

Everything was fine and dandy, but then along came Edward Hincks, an Irish parson and linguistic genius. Working from lithographs at his parsonage in remote, rural Ulster, Hincks proved to be far more adept than Rawlinson at understanding the ancient texts. So bit by bit, Layard moved away from Rawlinson and embraced Hincks.

 

This relationship drove Rawlinson crazy with jealousy and rage. He began sabotaging Hincks at every opportunity, as the two competed for the glory that came with being considered the man who cracked the code of Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform.

 

Q: How did you research the book, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?

 

A: I spent many months in the Rare Book Room at the British Library, examining letters, memoirs, diaries, 19th-century newspaper and magazine accounts, and many other texts. I also did research at the Royal Geographic Society and the Royal Asiatic Society, the latter of which had boxes and boxes of material written by and about Rawlinson.

 

I formed a close relationship with Kevin Cathcart, a professor emeritus of ancient languages in Ireland who was an expert both in Assyrian cuneiform and in the life of Edward Hincks.

 

Many things surprised me in the course of the research. I was startled by the danger and chaos in Mesopotamia-- modern-day Iraq-- during the mid-19th century.

 

Not only was it rife with cholera, malaria, and other fatal illnesses -- several  peripheral figures in my book died young from diseases contracted there-- but the Bedouin tribes made it perilous to move around the territory.

 

If you were ambushed by them, you would likely not be killed-- but you would certainly be stripped down to your underwear and forced to march barefoot through the bush for days until you reached a safe haven. It happened to Layard--twice. The archaeologist picked himself up and kept going. But many of these poor souls ended up psychologically scarred for life. 

 

I was also astonished at the quality of the artwork that my main characters, Rawlinson and Layard, made while working in Mesopotamia. Not only were they great adventurers and scholars, but they were also superior draughtsmen who left behind a vivid visual record of what they observed.

 

It was almost as if the absence of photography compelled these men to develop their drawing skills-- a talent that seems largely lost today

 

Q: Some of the reviews of the book mention Indiana Jones--what do you think of that comparison?

 

A: I find it a bit clichéd but if it that comparison helps to convey the romance and adventure of the work that Layard and Rawlinson did in the wilds of Mesopotamia, under often brutal conditions, I'll take it!

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I've been chilling out all winter at my home in Berlin, swimming a mile or more a day at my health-club pool and enjoying staying put for a while. But now that the book is out, I've got to start focusing on finding a new project, and possibly doing some travel and some magazine writing as well.

 

I've discovered that I love conducting research in libraries, bringing the past to life,  so I have a feeling that my next book will also be an archival adventure.

 

History.com recently included me in a survey among "historians" of little known events that had a surprising impact. "Historian" is not something I would have described myself as before writing Mesopotamian Riddle, but I'll gladly take on the mantle.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Joshua Hammer.