Fascinating and rich in detail… provides an excellent survey of Mesopotamian literary classics, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, and the ways in which they influenced later cultures and texts, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey… she also offers snippets of daily life, including an account of Ashurbanipal's father, Esarhaddon, getting into a panic because a mongoose had run under his chariot (was it a fatal omen?) and the actual agenda of a meeting -  Bijan Omrani - Literary Review

 

Wisnom's strength lies in taking a walk along the shelves of the library and discovering what the books tell us about the ideas circulating in the court of Nineveh - Richard Ovenden-The FT

The Library of Ancient Wisdom pieces together a vivid portrait of Mesopotamian life from the shattered remnants of the 30,000 or so tablets in Ashurbanipal's library... which not only bring kings and queens to life, but also priests, traders and professional lamenters 

Alison George - New Scientist

A fascinating book about the contents of the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal... An excellent bibliographical essay, useful timelines, maps, and illustrations, and a helpful list of the historical figures who people this story enhance Wisnom’s tour of an astounding collection -       Ellen Gilbert - Library Journal

A fascinating account of the daily lives lived by people thousands of years ago -- Terry Freedman ― Teach Secondary Magazine

Selena Wisnom shows how an ancient library was the motor of the world's most advanced civilisation. Her book is a great work of revelatory history, but I was also unexpectedly moved by its measured optimism about the future - for the preservation of the heritage of Mesopotamia, for the ways history rhymes across millennia, and for the library as the heart of any culture worth remembering- Emma Smith, author of Portable Magic: A History of Books and their Reader

 In this remarkable book, Wisnom takes her readers on a spell-binding tour through one of antiquity’s great monuments to knowledge: the Library at Nineveh. As she surveys the clay tablets that were buried in a blaze millennia ago, a lost world of learning and literature comes back to life - Sophus Helle, author of Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic

Wisnom makes the past come alive with descriptions of powerful personalities, daily life, and the hopes, fears, and rivalries of Assyrian elites. Her humanising account takes us on an exciting journey, with stops at the invention of writing, the Mesopotamian school curriculum, the gods and their complicated relationships and powers, the practice and purpose of magic, the causes and treatments of diseases, and the interpretations of omens. We learn about the grand concepts of evil, suffering and justice, as well as precise details about marks on sheep livers and their implications for the outcome of battles - Augusta McMahon, author of Once There Was a Place: Settlement Archaeology at Chagar Bazar 1999–2002

The Library of Ancient Wisdom is both immensely readable and informative. Focusing on the so-called Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, the book ranges from how to write on clay tablets using the cuneiform script to the practice of celestial divination and from magic and witchcraft to great literature, including the flood story. Wisnom has presented a fascinating glimpse into ancient Mesopotamia and the world’s earliest empire - Grant Frame, coeditor of The Correspondence of Assurbanipal, Part II: Letters from Southern Babylonia

This thought-provoking and well-written book reveals how Ashurbanipal’s library was used in its heyday by ancient scholars with expertise in religion, magic, witchcraft, astrology, literature, and medicine. Wisnom shows how these Assyrian thinkers perceived their world and made decisions. We are reminded that they shared similar concerns to our own and that their views were not unsophisticated or cynical. Their conclusions and explanations, though different from ours, were well thought out - Amanda H. Podany, author of Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East