Oldest Stories

If anyone is on Tiktok, there is a new oldeststories channel over there where I am posting facts each day. If you are on tiktok go check it out. Today we continue the greatest epic of Canaan, the Baal Cycle, with the Feast of Baal. It is easy to think of this perplexing series of feasting and random, pointless dialogue as an interlude between the two exciting parts of the epic, but the Feast in al...

Valentine's Day Special. This is a bunch of love poetry from the Mesopotamian bronze age, as well as some magical love spells. Translation by Benjamin R Foster in his book "Before the Muses". Some of the original text is damaged, and I have gone in and filled the missing bits with what seems appropriate to make it flow better in audio format. This is mostly reading with very little commentary.

Today we begin perhaps the most significant of the surviving myths from Canaan, the Baal cycle. In the Baal cycle, we look at Ba'al Hadad, the mighty storm god, as he battles various foes in a great contest over the kingship of heaven. It is a subject we have seen before, but of course the Canaanites do things a bit differently than their neighbors. In this, the first of three major sections, Baal...

Daniel, sometimes called Danel, depending on your translation, is a figure of great wisdom who even gets name dropped in the bible. In this, the main story we have from him, we will see very little of that wisdom on display, as a series of events will occur with very little narrative motivation that will witness a lady grow jealous for no clear reason, every bird in the world ripped apart for no c...

The Legend of Kirta, called Keret in some translations, can be a bit hard to understand, especially for a modern audience used to things like the three act structure and protagonists who fit neatly into any sort of moral categories at all. This is the first of our stories from Ugarit, and we are starting with one that we don't even know if it is meant as tragedy or farce. What all these stories ho...

The final century of the Canaanite city of Ugarit is by far the most well documented, and sheds light not only on how things were going in the city, but also on what other Canaanite cities likely looked like. We also get a novel and interesting perspective on how the great powers of the late bronze age looked to their many tiny vassals as the bronze age collapsed around them. Online at oldeststori...

The Canaan history series continues as we finally look at the city of Ugarit, its rise and significance both in Northern Canaan and in archeology. Ugarit is really fascinating, sitting at the edge of multiple great empires, from the obscure Eblaite empire to the Egyptian, Mitannit and Hittite empires. It is a great window on the Canaanite region and the history of the levant in general.

Our mini series on Canaan continues, as we transition into the period we know most about, the late bronze age. Here, our sources multiply, and we get to dig into the remarkable and extensive Amarna archives, which contain hundreds of letters from the rulers of Canaanite cities to the Pharaoh on a variety of topics. We will look at the history of the late bronze age, and read some of the Amarna let...

The Oldest Stories Hiatus continues, but I a still inspired to push out some episodes when I get a chance. This is the beginning of a mini series on another culture group that got largely missed in Season 1, the lands of Canaan, or Phoenicia, or the Levant, or any of the other names that are attached to the land. Ultimately, I want to make sure that we don't miss the exciting and informative tales...

Play is older than humanity, but among the ancient Mesopotamians, a handful of games are attested throughout the ancient period, from all the way to the beginning with the Royal Game of Ur, to various gambling games and pastimes. Today we will look mostly at the board game called the Royal Game of Ur and see how it may have been played. Things are a bit up and down with the show right now, but I w...

This week we take a look at who the Elamites were at home, or at least how they were up in heavens. The Elamites gods are a tough subject to get deep into, but today we take a look at who the Elamites worshipped, the gods both native and foreign that shaped the moral and cultural life of Elam. This is a guest episode of the Oldest Stories hiatus, brought to you by the fantastic Trevor Culley of th...

Elam did not occupy Sumer after conquering Ur and imprisoning King Ibbi-Sin. Instead, the Kings of Shimashki consolidated power in Elamite territory and carried on relationships with the independent cities of Mesopotamia. This began to change when King Ebarti II appointed his son, Shilhahah, to a new high office in command of Susa: The Sukkalmah. Shilhaha’s descendents went on to take over Elam co...

In the last years of the Akkadian Empire, Elam managed to seize its independence. The first fully independent King of Elam was Puzur-Inshushinak, who went on to rule Elam’s first real empire. He ruled from the Dasht-e Lut and the Persian Gulf to the Zagros Mountains and the Euphrates, taking advantage of the chaotic politics of Gutian Mesopotamia. Near the end of his life, Puzur-Inshushinak met hi...

The Sumerians did not develop writing and urbanization in a vacuum. To their east, the land of Elam developed both at almost the exact same time. From the start of written history, the great cities and kingdoms of Elam were power players in Near Eastern politics. The premier Elamite cities of Anshan and Susa appear in the earliest Mesopotamian myths, and before Sumerian history fully bridged the g...

In 1200 BCE, the Hittite Empire fell, its capitol of Hattusa was abandoned and its final king, Suppuliliuma II, was probably dead. The circumstances leading up to that fall, and the reign of Tudhaliya IV, the final significant Hittite king, are as much a roller coaster of ups, downs, and gaps in the historical record as the whole of Hittite history has been, but the empire had to end at some point...

Western Anatolia is the biggest player in the fall of the Hittite Empire, and those movements begin now, with the later years of Hattusili III. Additionally, the chronic instability that used to afflict the Hittite monarchy on a regular basis returns with a vengeance, as memories of Hattusili's violent rise to the throne resurface as the Great King gets closer and closer to facing his own mortalit...

This week the Hittite empire hits its high point, as we look at Hattusili III and Ramesses II's so-called Eternal Treaty, the peace treaty which would help define the climate of the bronze age collapse. Additionally, we look at the various other peace deals that Hattusili is able to secure with his vassals, the Babylonians, and the Assyrians. Finally, the revolutionary queen Puduhepa is going to t...

The Battle of Kadesh may be over, but the drama of the Hittite Empire's final century is only just beginning. Muwatalli's final few years give way to the rise of his son, Urhi-Tessub, also called Mursili III, but the young man's unstable regime will face a hefty challenge when his uncle, the man that Muwatalli had granted so much power in the north, sees his own power begin to diminish as the youn...

Today we have pop culture references! We are going to look briefly at Tiamat, who shows up in some Dungeons and Dragons stuff, and then we are going to look at the god Nergal, who is a popular god in the Warhammer franchise under the name Nurgle, briefly comparing the Mesopotamian god with his fictional counterpart. Then, the meat of the episode will be one of the world's oldest romantic comedies,...

Tukulti-Ninurta may have brought the Middle Assyrian empire to its territorial height, but the interal political issues he creates along the way will pull down his rule. After that, Assyria will be mired in a chain of kingly assassinations while the world seems to collapse around them in the Bronze Age Collapse. Meanwhile, Babylon will shake off the chains of Assyrian vassalship, but won't really...

In Babylon, King Kashtiliash IV has a problem. His kingdom is in decline. And so he takes bold actions to shake up the Mesopotamian order, but ends up shaking far harder than he could have ever imagined. Meanwhile, Tukulti-Ninurta takes power in Assyria and spends his early years asserting dominance against the Hittites and Babylonians, but he will come to find that winning a war can sometimes be...

Today we watch the decline of Kassite Babylon, from which distressingly little survives. We look at the prosperity they have achieved, and the ultimate hollowness of its economic foundations, before the long standing rivalry between Assur and Babylon re-ignites with disastrous consequences for the ancient city of Marduk.

Today we will take a journey through the cultural achievements of Kassite Babylon, which are beginning to reach their famous heights at the cultural intersection of what we would today call science and magic, though of course for the ancients these were one and the same. This will include a look at the remarkably well documented life of Raba-sa-Marduk, a Babylonian physician of international renow...

Finally, the city of Assur wakes up and shakes off the dust of its centuries long obscurity, rising from minor Mitanni vassal to major world player in a single generation, thanks to the personal skill of king Assur-Uballit I. This is an episode of glorious conquest, and also one where we get to take a look at the bitter personal costs of those conquests. All this conquest is augmented expertly by...

Huge apologies for the whistling. That is my internal cue to edit that part. and something seems to have happened where the edits reverted or didn't save right. I have fixed that here and on youtube, and if you notice any more editing issues, please please please let me know which episode you hear it on, so I can fix it. Thank you so much to the listener who pointed it out. Here it is, the greates...