c. 3500 BCE to 539 BCE · between the two rivers

Map: ancient cities, modern places

The cities of Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylon were real places. Today they are mounds, ruins and museums in Iraq, often right next to towns where people live now.

The short version

Mesopotamia means "the land between the rivers". The two rivers are the Tigris (on the right of the map) and the Euphrates (on the left). They flow down from the mountains of Turkey, through Iraq, and join near Basra before reaching the sea.

Sumer was in the flat, hot south, near the marshes. Its cities, like Uruk and Ur, dug canals to bring river water to their fields.

Akkad was in the middle, somewhere near today's Baghdad. Its capital city has never been found!

Assyria was in the hilly north, along the Tigris, where there was more rain. Its great city of Nineveh is now part of Mosul.

Babylon was in the middle too, on the Euphrates, near the modern town of Hillah, about 85 km south of Baghdad.

Tap or click a city on the map to find out where it is today.

Explore the map

Map of Mesopotamia, today mostly Iraq, showing the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and ancient cities. Each city is a button: press it to read about it.
  • Sumer city
  • Akkad (dashed: location unknown)
  • Assyrian city
  • Babylonian city
  • Modern city, for reference
  • Dashed grey line: modern Iraq's border (approximate)

Early dates are estimates; scholars disagree by up to about 60 years. Empire shapes are approximate: ancient borders were rarely fixed lines.

Reading the land

Rivers that wander

Ur and Uruk were once river towns. Over thousands of years the Euphrates shifted its course, and today their ruins stand in dry desert, kilometres from the water.

South: canals and marshes

Southern Iraq gets very little rain. Sumerian farmers dug canals to water barley and date palms. The reed marshes there are still home to the Marsh Arabs (Ma'dan) today.

North: rain and hills

Assyria's heartland, around Mosul, gets enough rain to grow wheat without canals. Stone from the hills let Assyrian kings carve huge palace reliefs and winged bulls.

Dig deeper

How this map was made

City positions use published latitude and longitude for each excavated site, placed on a simple grid (an "equirectangular" projection, stretched a little north to south so it is not squashed). The rivers follow their modern courses, which are not exactly where they ran in ancient times. Borders are simplified.

Where was the coast?

Older books show the Persian Gulf reaching far inland, almost to Ur, around 3000 BCE. Newer studies of river mud and old shorelines suggest a more complicated picture: the coast moved back and forth, and the rivers kept building new land. Scholars still debate how far north the sea came, so we show the modern coast.

The search for Akkad

Akkad (Agade) is mentioned in many texts, but nobody has found it. Clues point to somewhere along the Tigris or Euphrates near Baghdad, Sippar or Kish. It may lie under a later city, under thick river mud, or in a mound that has not yet been dug. Finding it would be one of the great discoveries in archaeology.

Empire shapes

Ancient empires were often a core of directly ruled land plus allies and states paying tribute. The shaded areas are rough guides based on historical atlases, not exact borders. At its peak around 650 BCE, the Neo-Assyrian Empire also ruled the Levant and, for a short time, Egypt, which lie off this map to the west. Size estimates for that empire range from about 1.0 to 1.4 million km² (Taagepera; contested).

Sources