Epidemic: family affair in Mesopotamia

Audio 03:29

The Temple of the capital of the Assyrian kingdom Nineveh in Mesopotamia (Iraq). Engraving by Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, 1725. Gettyimages

By: Caroline Lachowsky

In this new episode of Little and Great Epidemic History, the assyriologist Cécile Michel goes back in time in the ancient Near East, present-day Iraq to Anatolia, 4,000 years ago. It takes us into the intimacy of the families of Assyrian merchants and it is in the correspondence exchanged that the author discovered the repercussions that epidemics could have in the private sphere: family affair in Mesopotamia.

  • Iraq
  • Health and Medicine

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