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80 free Mesopotamia trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Mesopotamia is where writing, cities, empires and written law all show up first, so a good Mesopotamia quiz is really a quiz on the beginnings of everything. This one moves from the Greek roots of the name and the two rivers that define the land through Sumer and its language isolate, the wedge-shaped script and the half-million tablets it left behind, and on to the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Code of Hammurabi and the ziggurats. You will meet Sargon of Akkad and his god-king grandson, Enheduanna the first named author, Nebuchadnezzar II's blue Ishtar Gate and the disputed Hanging Gardens, Ashurbanipal's library and lion hunts, the sack of Nineveh, the Standard and Royal Game of Ur, the Sumerian King List's 241,200-year reigns and Cyrus's conquest of Babylon in 539 BC. Easy questions suit anyone who remembers a school unit on the Fertile Crescent; the expert tier asks for scribes' names and excavation dates. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the region, its cities, texts and artefacts, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you enjoy this, try our quizzes on ancient Egypt and ancient Greece.
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Q 01The name Mesopotamia comes from Greek roots meaning what?
Between rivers
Mesos means 'middle' and potamos means 'river'; Arabic and Syriac names for the region carry the same sense, and most of it lies within one modern country.
Q 02Which two rivers frame the historical region of Mesopotamia?
Tigris and Euphrates
The region sits in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent, mostly within modern Iraq.
Q 03Mesopotamia corresponds roughly to the territory of which modern country?
Iraq
Southwestern Iran lies just beyond it, where the land rises into the Persian plateau.
Q 04What is the name of the earliest known civilization, which arose in southern Mesopotamia?
Sumer
Its farmers along the two great rivers grew grain surpluses that made the first cities possible.
Q 05The Sumerians called their own land by what name, meaning 'Country of the noble lords'?
Kengir
The familiar modern name comes from the Akkadians who later conquered the Sumerian city-states; Emegir was the Sumerians' word for their language.
Q 06How do linguists classify Sumerian?
A language isolate
It is agglutinative and related to no known language, which is one reason its early speakers' origins are still debated.
Q 07What is the name of the earliest known writing system, developed to write Sumerian?
Cuneiform
It stayed in active use from the early Bronze Age until the 1st century BC and was adapted for Akkadian, Hittite, Elamite and more.
Q 08The script's modern name comes from the Latin cuneus, meaning what?
Wedge
The name describes the wedge-shaped impressions a stylus left in wet clay.
Q 09The latest known Mesopotamian clay tablet, an astronomical almanac, is dated to roughly which year?
AD 79/80
By then the script had been in use for more than three thousand years.
Q 10Approximately how many clay tablets are in the world's largest collection, held by a museum in London?
130,000
An estimated half a million tablets sit in museums worldwide, but comparatively few have ever been published.
Q 11The trilingual Behistun Inscription was commissioned by kings of which empire?
Achaemenid
Henry Rawlinson and Edward Hincks completed the decipherment in the 19th century.
Q 12What was the name of the wild man the gods created to stop Gilgamesh from oppressing his people?
Enkidu
He lost a test of strength to Gilgamesh in Uruk, and the two became inseparable friends.
Q 13Who guards the Cedar Forest that Gilgamesh and his companion travel six days to reach?
Humbaba
They kill the guardian and cut down the sacred cedar, one of the acts that turns the gods against them.
Q 21The stele bearing the Code of Hammurabi is carved from which stone?
Basalt
It stands 2.25 metres tall and carries about 4,130 lines of text.
Q 22At which site, in present-day Iran, was the Hammurabi stele rediscovered in 1901?
Susa
It had been carried there as plunder some 600 years after it was made.
Q 23Which museum acquired the original Hammurabi stele after its 1901 rediscovery?
The Louvre
Replicas stand in many institutions, including the United Nations headquarters, and the US Capitol carries a relief portrait of Hammurabi.
Q 14What does the goddess Ishtar send to punish Gilgamesh for spurning her advances?
The Bull of Heaven
The heroes kill it and insult Ishtar in the process, which seals Enkidu's death sentence.
Q 15Who is the flood survivor Gilgamesh seeks out to learn the secret of eternal life?
Utnapishtim
He and his wife were the only humans to survive the flood the gods unleashed, a story that closely parallels the biblical Noah.
Q 16What creature steals the plant of rejuvenation while Gilgamesh stops to bathe?
A snake
It sheds its skin as it slithers away, an ancient explanation for why snakes seem to renew themselves.
Q 17How many tablets make up the Standard Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh?
12
About two-thirds of this version has been recovered, some of the best copies from the ruins of a 7th-century BC royal library.
Q 18Which scribe compiled the Standard Babylonian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh?
Sîn-lēqi-unninni
His version opens with the words 'He who saw the deep', while the older version began 'Surpassing all other kings'.
Q 19Which Assyriologist read the Gilgamesh flood story to a biblical society in 1872?
George Smith
His fuller translation appeared in 1876 as The Chaldaean Account of Genesis.
Q 20According to the epic, what fraction of Gilgamesh was divine?
Two thirds
The Sumerian King List places his reign at Uruk in the 27th century BC, so a real king may lie behind the legend.
Q 24Which god is shown with Hammurabi in the relief at the top of his stele?
Shamash
As sun god and god of justice he was the fitting patron for a king who claimed to rule 'to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak'.
Q 25The 'eye for an eye' principle scholars identified in Hammurabi's laws is known by what Latin name?
Lex talionis
The laws are casuistic, framed as 'if ... then' sentences covering crime, family, property and commerce.
Q 26Hammurabi was which king of the First Dynasty of Babylon?
Sixth
His code, composed around 1753 BC, was copied and studied by scribes for more than a thousand years.
Q 27Which king built the Great Ziggurat of Ur in the 21st century BC?
Ur-Nammu
He dedicated it during the Third Dynasty of Ur; the last king of Babylon rebuilt it 1,500 years later.
Q 28The ziggurat at Ur, like the city itself, was dedicated to which deity?
The moon god Nanna
The city's very name is derived from a sign meaning 'the abode of Nanna'.
Q 29Etemenanki, the great ziggurat of Babylon, is associated by scholars with which biblical story?
Tower of Babel
A stele records its restoration by Nebuchadnezzar II; the structure no longer survives.
Q 30Who founded the Akkadian Empire, often called the first empire in world history?
Sargon
He defeated the Sumerian king Lugal-zage-si and ruled from a capital, Akkad, that archaeologists have still not located.