A team of archaeologists in Iraq, led by Sebastian Rey, the British Museum’s curator of ancient Mesopotamia, has uncovered compelling evidence of the empire’s formidable bureaucracy.

Marked with the administrative details of government, the tablets have illuminated the complicated bureaucracy of an ancient Mesopotamian civilization. The tablets were discovered in the Sumerian ...

It is one of the oldest and greatest stores of knowledge: a vast library of texts amassed by Assyrian King Ashurbanipal, who ruled ancient Mesopotamia about 2700 years ago. But after his death ...