Oldest Stories

Today we are going to look at the reign of Adad-Apla-Iddina, the fact that he was hit by some brutal Aramean invasions and that he built a ton of stuff despite the times being pretty awful. But the star of our show today is the first great scientist in human history whose name reached great levels of fame. Esail-Kin-Apli may be forgotten now, but for a thousand years after his own time his name ca...

This week, Tiglath-Pileser is going to kill more people, just like last week. But now he is going to branch out into killing animals, too! But when he pauses to catch his breath between killing, he is also going to build up Assyria domestically and fund a bit of an intellectual renaissance. Then he will die and things will get grim again for a while. But that is the rollercoaster of ancient Mesopo...

Today we see Assur rise mightily with Tiglath-Pileser I, and we see the seeds of another century of decline sown in the climate change that drives the Aramean invasions. Meanwhile, Babylon has to deal with the same set of problems, but without the same sort of vigorous leadership.

For a Babylonian polytheist, the gods are worshipped with the explicit expectation that divine veneration will avert bad fortune and attract good fortune. Yet as long as there have been people, we have seen that sometimes bad things happen to good people, and sometimes good fortune finds bad people. Religious explorations of this are called Theodicy, and we have already see a number of Mesopotamia...

Nabu-Kudurri-Usur, the first Nebuchadnezzar, rescued the statue of Marduk from Elam after a grueling adventure beset by intense heat, low supplies, and enemies on all sides. And yet, even though this event would be celebrated in later generations, it is unclear if it was highly celebrated in his own lifetime. Today we look at the cult of Marduk, how it may have developed within the city of Babylon...

In Babylon rules Nebuchadnezzar the first. He isn't the Nebuchadnezzar that we remember today, but he was certainly the more famous king of that name for most of Babylonian history. His great accomplishment, the retrieval of the stolen statue of Marduk from the Elamites, would inspire poets and leaders until the end of Babylonian history, and even a bit beyond. That one campaign has some exciting...

Welcome to the iron age. Though the international system of the late bronze age has collapsed under the weight of countless invaders, the Babylonians and Assyrians in their much diminished empires still have eyes only for each other. For them, no era has really ended, the great struggle between the two Mesopotamian power centers has been ongoing for over a century now, and will continue for centur...

This is a summary of the bronze age in ancient Mesopotamia, covering the years about 3000 BCE to 1200 BCE. This is a review of about 119 episodes of the oldest stories podcast, covering all of season 1 before we move into season 2, which will cover iron age Mesopotamia and their near eastern neighbors. Notes for this episode online at oldeststories.net

Today we have a history of metals, mining and metalworking in the bronze age near east. The story telling style of the last few industrial episodes didn't really work out here, so it is more of a bird's eye overview. We cover mostly copper and bronze, but also look at the history and production of gold, silver, and iron. 

This is part 2 of our look at clothing and how it was manufactured in the bronze age near east. If you haven't yet listened to part 1, The Fabric of Civilization, I recommend that you check out that episode first. In this episode we will look at going from the thread to full on clothing, and what that clothing looked like. For references on weaving and visual aids to what the clothes may have look...

Clothing is foundational to civilization. In the bible, it is humanity's first invention. In Mesopotamian philosophy, it is the thing which separates humans from animals. But as we will see today, even the simplest of cloth garments were the result of an extreme amount of work and technical skill, built up over countless generations of mostly women working in already very busy households. This is...

Nowadays we tend to give Shamash, the Mesopotamian sun god, a bit less respect than he is probably due. After all, for modern folk, the category of "sun god" is the height of pagan foolishness. After all, why would anyone worship an object which has been held in common by all humans throughout all of history, whose power is so great that even with modern advanced science we still can't touch it, a...

Ishtar, the passionate goddess of love and war from ancient Mesopotamia has had a long life, historically speaking, and she continues to be a popular object of fascination for historians and of reverance for pagan revivalists. Today our focus is on Ishtar as she was worshipped in the ancient world. Less here about myth and far more about the ideas that Ishtar worshippers kept in their minds about...

Our tale of daily life continues. The harvest is over, but the work continues, as there are many steps required to transform boring, nutritious grain into delicious, nutritious beer. Online at oldeststories.net

Today we are talking all about the sort of industry that would have occupied most of the attention of most of the people of the ancient world. That is to say, beer making. But to talk about beer, you have to start with grain, and to talk about grain you have to start with a farmer. So today we will look deep into the life of a generic farmer, we will call him Ea-Rabi, and follow him step by step a...

Perhaps the defining material of ancient Mesopotamia was dirt. Buildings were made by mud brick, and those buildings were filled by clay pottery of all sorts. Today we are going to look at the people who made these things and how they made them. It will necessarily be a bit of a summary, sort of taking the whole region and period in generic form, since it is quite difficult to nail down too specif...

A long time ago I asked for listener questions, and also posted a call for questions over on tiktok, and here they are finally getting answered. This is theoretically the hundredth episode special, but depending on how you count it, we are either on episode 97 or on episode 110-ish. It is a grab bag of stuff, all related to the ancient near east. If you still have any questions, check out the cont...

Here by popular demand and my own personal interest, an overview of the first eleven chapters of the biblical book of Genesis, alongside the ancient Mesopotamian stories that existed in parallel. The interplay between the two traditions is complicated and fascinating, and all the harder to untangle because both exist in fragments and summaries, but we can still tease out important aspects of the s...

Today we conclude the Baal cycle with the epic final confrontation between Baal Hadad, rightful lord of the Canaanite heavens, and Mot, the deity whose name literally means Death. How can a god fight against death itself? What were the Canaanites smoking when they came up with these stories? What are the theological implications of death facing the prospect of its own death? None of these question...

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...