Greco-Roman civilisation has dominated ancient history for too long

What have the Akkadians ever done for us? As it turns out, rather a lot, as Philip Matyszak reveals in this lively, handsomely produced study of peoples and tribes whose PR departments were a smidgeon less muscular than the Romans’. Their obscure names are woven into our language: we sing ‘Land me safe on Canaan’s side’; we talk of oligarchs as ‘rich as Croesus’; we quote the Assyrian coming down ‘like the wolf on the fold’; and the aesthete’s go-to insult, ‘philistine’. Their stories, however, are not, and this book attempts to fill in the gaps.

Given the scale and general lack of evidence, there’s a broad-brush approach; but this is more than made up for by a highly engaging style. The first known city was Uruk, built in 3500 BC. The capital of the Akkadian empire, it was later ruled by Sargon, whose story closely resembles that of Romulus and Remus — ‘though apparently Sargon grew up a gardener, while the founders of Rome began their careers as shepherds’.