The personification of the proud power that raised the daring builders of the Tower of Babel, who challenged God, the country of beautiful "hanging gardens," one of the ancient wonders of the world - such is Mesopotamia in the traditions known in Ancient Russia. The Bible tells about the cruel "Babylonian captivity" of the Jews, about formidable prophecies that foreshadowed the death of a powerful power on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers... What was this half-forgotten culture like in real life? Her unfired brick palaces crumbled to dust, the desert sands hid the remains of her former luxury. But whole archives of clay tablets with cuneiform signs have been preserved; they are deciphered, and now it is possible to reliably judge how they lived, prayed, fought, how they loved and how the Assyrians and Babylonians, Elamites and mysterious, unlike the Sumerians, died.