Although not about the ancient Indus valley, this groundbreaking examination of ten ancient Mesopotamian cities is rich food for thought about how ancient Indus cities may have developed. The book's central thesis concerns what Leick describes as "the most remarkable innovation in Mesopotamian civilization" – urbanism itself. She argues that "the idea of the city as a heterogeneous, complex, messy, constantly changing but ultimately viable concept for human society was a Mesopotamian invention," (p. xvii). By the end of the third millennium BCE, she notes that 90 percent of southern Mesopotamia's population lived in cities, representing a fundamental shift in human organization that would eventually spread worldwide.

While it seems as if cities first developed in Mesopotamia, we don't know enough about how and when cities developed to ancient South Asia to know who is "first," if that is even important in a world where people probably developed these kinds of things independently and together, as the development of multiple cities in ancient Mesopotamia so near to each other suggests. Dr. Leick's eminently readable anthropological and archaeological journey traces the development of cities from Eridu, arguably the world's oldest city established over 7,000 years ago, to Babylon, the first true metropolis that embodied cosmopolitanism and cultural diversity.

The book's smart structure—organizing Mesopotamian history through the lens of its urban centers rather than political empires—offers readers a fresh perspective on one of history's most influential yet often overlooked civilizations. She dedicates each chapter to one city, examining its archaeological evidence, historical significance, and cultural contributions. This city-by-city approach allows readers to understand each urban center on its own terms while appreciating the broader evolution of Mesopotamian civilization. Throughout the urban centers of Mesopotamia, Leick explores the evolving relationship between religious institutions and political power, providing fascinating insights into Mesopotamian religious beliefs, which are less widely known than later Greek and Roman pantheons.

This city-by-city approach makes it much easier to understand a wealth of information. It also makes one think about how differently ancient Indus cities may have developed with respect to each other – not least because they are so much farther away from each other than early Mesopotamian cities. Leick challenges simplistic notions of Mesopotamian uniformity, revealing instead that the cities had their own separate cultures and should not be shepherded together so much as "Mesopotamian," particularly when the time span covered is thousands of years. For us today, because we know so little, Indus cities may seem much more similar than they were. It is not unreasonable to suppose that they too had their own deities and belief systems and development trajectories. Furthermore, one sees through this book how a lot of distinct forces – around trade, river flows, beliefs, pesky neighbors, raw materials and technology – had to come together for a city to develop and flourish before inevitably giving way to other urban centers. Cities seem to hatch other cities, if only by example, or by being bait for conquest, which led to destruction and the rise of a new city on the old in many cases.

Particularly interesting are the discussions of roles women held within these religious structures, such as Queen Pu-Abi and the naditu priestesses of Sippar, who might be considered among history's earliest nuns. Female deities were often part of the origin of cities. During the Early Dynastic Period (2900–2334 BCE), women in Uruk enjoyed relatively greater freedoms. Increased food production led to diversification in labor roles, with women working as artisans, brewers, weavers, and textile producers—activities central to the city's economy. Babylonian women had notable rights, including owning property, conducting business, initiating divorces, and living independently. However, elite women such as Queen Pu-Abi held significant influence through their positions in religious or courtly life; the first poetess with recorded writing was a woman. Women’s roles in these early Mesopotamian cities were closely tied to religious institutions and priestesses like the naditu had unique privileges compared to other women but were still bound by strict societal expectations. Other women played vital roles in industries such as textile production, brewing, and trade—activities that contributed significantly to urban economies.

What about Indus cities? The abundance of female figurines suggests women were important players there as well. Could women have played greater roles in the development of specific Indus cities? Why not! There could have been different gods and goddesses and traditions around certain individuals who left their stamp on the formation of place in each Indus city, sometimes male, sometimes female, if Mesopotamian cities are anything to go by.

Two other big takeaways from the book are how important a priestly class, oand certainly religious temples and institutions, often co-mingled with trade or vast tracts of farmland outside the city that generated a surplus, were to the development of Mesopotamian cities. Religious temples were the center of life and often the first thing constructed; they were what the city was often built around. A city was or had a sacred space, and a god or goddess who could be carted away by a conqueror, greatly weakening a city. Sometimes different gods even merged. Stories were told about them, and these stories were part of what made cities change and draw and trumpet their people and wares.

Secondly, what becomes clear in all these cases is that there is no way to manage a city without records, especially for long periods of time. Oral traditions for religious and poetic tales are fine, but people needed some way to memorialize briefer exchanges, debts, identities. There are no cities without writing. While there is no evidence of the so-called granaries being used as a repositories for tablets or documents in Harappa or Mohenjo-daro, after reading this book one might ask wonder if this is what they were used for. Or whether there were other unique ways of recording and storing the information and transactions that made managing a large city like Mohenjo-daro possible?

Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City is a valuable contribution to our understanding of both ancient Mesopotamia and the broader phenomenon of urbanization in human history. Hopefully we will one day know enough about ancient Indus urbanization and language(s) to bring out a similar study, but in the mean time this work is great enabler of thinking about Indus cities and their development in both a broader and more individual way.