What books can you suggest to learn about the lives of ancient Sumerians, Akkadians Assyrians and Babylonians? I roughly know history begins somewhere in the middle of this with Gilgamesh and Hammurabi's accounts but are there any books that in addition to the interaction of these later empires, attempt to explain how the very first settlers in the Fertile Crescent eventually grew into the organized city-states with possibly (some) archaeological evidence to support those theories?
Feel free to suggest more than one book! Also, I love pictures and citations, and I am not altogether opposed to hearing well-thought out theories used to connect dots in the enormous timeline.
Thank you for your time :)
Ancient Iraq by Georges Roux gives a great overview of the history, beginning with the Ubaid period.
Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City by Gwendolyn Leick is a little more accessible. Each chapter looks at Mesopotamian history through the lens of a different city, so it's thematic as well as chronological.
The Ancient Near East section of the AskHistorians reading list lists quite a few of the most accessible books on Sumer, Babylonia, and Assyia.