ReViews

The Conquest of Assyria: Excavations in an Antique Land

Mogens Trolle Larsen (New York: Routledge, 1996) 390 pp., $35.00

Puritans in Babylon: The Ancient Near East and American Intellectual Life

Bruce Kuklick (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1996) 253 pp., $29.95

At a time when Saddam Hussein’s continuing reign of terror has placed the major sites of ancient Mesopotamian civilization beyond the reach of most western scholars and tourists, and when looted Iraqi antiquities are reportedly flooding the world’s major art markets,^a two new books describing the early history of western interest in ancient Mesopotamia have special significance. In examining why and how western scholars, diplomats, military men and adventurers became fascinated with the “Land Between the Two Rivers,” these books offer readers introductions to the archaeology of ancient Mesopotamia and to the political history of the Ottoman province that became modern Iraq.