December 8, 2022 • 10 mins
Things we take for granted often have unusual origin stories, which clear make them great additions to our Cabinet of Curiosities.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcomed Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
(00:27):
of Curiosities. When the world makes one weary, it's not
uncommon for that person to imagine something better world where
there is no war or famine or homelessness, where people
take care of one another and live in harmony. It's
(00:48):
a lovely sentiment, but while it may work in theory,
it almost always falls apart in practice. Communes and organizations
led by one person, often a man, end up the
same way. They turn into cults. That wasn't the goal
for religious philosopher and preacher John Humphrey Nous, but even
his idealistic troop wound up with that notorious label. However,
(01:09):
unlike other cults, his didn't end with mass death or suicide.
It ended with spooning. John was born in eighteen eleven
in Brattleboro, Vermont. His father had been a teacher, a minister,
and had even served with the U. S House of Representatives,
while his mother happened to be the aunt of the
nineteenth U S President Rutherford B. Hayes. John was religious
(01:30):
like his father, but even more so. After witnessing a
revival in eighteen thirty one, he went through a conversion
and abandoned his law degree at Dartmouth in favor of
the seminary. Instead, he studied the Bible well religiously and
learned how to preach before diving into the world of
antislavery activism. However, the more he studied, the more obsessive
(01:51):
he grew. His beliefs shifted. For example, while enrolled at
the Yale Theological Seminary, John had tried to pin down
the date of Christ's second coming, which, too many was
meant to be a date set far into the future,
but not to John, he believed that it had already
happened in seventy a d. And that humans were on
a downward spiral towards sin and degradation. He preached perfectionism,
(02:14):
that those who had converted could be free of all sin.
He also believed in keeping multiple wives, known as complex marriage.
His views got him expelled from Yale, with his professors
labeling him as a heretic, but that didn't deter him
from exploring them further. He believed that his faith had
given him carte blanche to ignore the traditional moral values
(02:35):
of the time, and that he could do as he pleased.
His family encouraged him to return home and find a
new path, but John refused. He instead traveled around preaching
to anyone who would listen and picking up strays in
a way. One of those strays happened to be a
woman named Abigail Merwin, who was already married when she
started following John's teachings. John, however, developed feelings for his
(02:57):
students and wouldn't let a trivial thing such as marriage
getting his way. In eighteen thirty seven, he created the
idea of a spiritual spouse, which flew in the face
of traditional monogamy. To John, relationships were meant to be shared,
and the more wives a man had, the marrier. In fact,
the term free love, which picked up steam during the
late nineteen sixties, was originally coined by John. As he
(03:20):
continued to preach, he gained more followers, leading to the
creation of the Society of Inquiry around eighteen forty five,
with almost thirty six members under its wing. The society
became the start of John's grand utopian vision. Unfortunately, John's
unorthodox beliefs, especially those concerning his nine wives, were not
shared by the Vermont legislature. The spiritual leader was arrested
(03:44):
and charged with adultery. However, he was released before the
start of his trial in April and used that time
to organize his followers and leave Vermont entirely. So they
moved to New York, where they settled in a small
city in the middle of the state. John happened to
know some of the fellow perfect Actionists there, who were
able to share a portion of their land and help
his people get established. He even renamed the group after
(04:06):
their new home. What had started as a modest commune
eventually grew into a palatial state that they called the
Mansion House, completed in eighteen sixty two. And how did
they get the money to build such a house. Well,
they sold all manner of goods, such as canned fruits
and vegetables, thread leather bags, and hats. But it was
the production and sale of something even more desirable that
(04:29):
put their commune on the map, and even after their
community fell apart in the early eighties, that business continued
to thrive. Look in most kitchens today and you're likely
to find something from the company, some product of the
lucrative business they began almost two hundred years ago. Forks, knives,
and spoons, all made and sold by a utopian community
(04:51):
at the New York town of Oneida. Read any book,
watch any movie or TV show, or see any play,
(05:12):
and you probably don't realize that they all have one
thing in common William Shakespeare. Even though the play right
behind Othello, Hamlets and King Lear may not have written
the works being produced today, his tropes and his words
are all over them. Stories about deceitful family members, star
crossed lovers, and enemies who become lovers can all chart
(05:32):
their origins back to Shakespeare. So can words like lonely,
swagger and zany. Shakespeare was responsible for more than seventeen
hundred words in the English language that we still used today,
but he was far from the only writer of his time.
Many had come before him and had also contributed significantly
to the written word. However, one stands above them all.
(05:55):
Before Romeo and Juliet, before Plato and Aristotle, there was
an ad Wuanna and Aduana was the daughter of Sargon
of a Cad, founder of the Achadian Empire in ancient Mesopotamia.
She lived during the twenty third century BC, but almost
nothing was known about her until nineteen seven. That year,
a British archaeologist named Sir Leonard Woolley found several ancient
(06:17):
relics in his travels that carried her name. One was
a disc made of alabaster that had broken apart into
several pieces. The artifact was eventually reconstructed, which allowed scholars
to read its contents. The back of the disc mentioned
Sargon of a cod and Aduana and her husband Nana Suan.
Sargon had been a ruthless conqueror who had laid waste
(06:38):
to dozens of cities and city states across the region
with his massive army. One of those city states was
a place called Er located in present day Iraq, R
had been home to a Sumerian cult built around Nena Suan.
Sargon knew the importance of bridging the gaps between the
Acadian and Sumerian empires, and Nana Suan was at the
center of each, so he appointed and Aduana to the
(07:00):
role of High priestess handled the job, but Nana Suan
wasn't a human like an Aduana or even Sargon. He
was a god, specifically the moon God, and an Aduana
worshiped him. As high priestess. She came to embody Nana
Suan's actual wife, the goddess Ningle, hence her being listed
on the disc as the moon God's spouse. The other
(07:22):
side of the disc bore a relief of an Aduana
standing before a nude figure pouring some kind of drink.
It was possible that the figure was Nana Suan. Soon after,
other objects were excavated and reassembled, shedding more light on
the identity of the elusive daughter of Sargon the Great
and Aduana's Sumerian name translated to ornament of Heaven, and
(07:44):
she had a great political sway among her people. Her
parentage and her high ranking status made her a leader,
and with the help of her writings, she was able
to unify Mesopotamia. Poems, religious hymns, and other works that
have been lost for thousands of years. Now being dug
up and analyzed, they gave deeper insight into a woman
who didn't know her true place in history, and a
(08:07):
Duana was the world's first named author. She composed odes
to the Sumerian goddess Nana and the Akkadian goddess Ishtar,
odes that exalted the deities of both cultures and brought
them together. Her work was instrumental in building one central
belief system for the people of Mesopotamia. She did this
through her poems, which she wrote for forty two southern temples,
(08:30):
expounding on the individual qualities that she admired in each
of them, all of which had been chiseled into clay tablets.
Many of the tablets recovered by Wooly and other archaeologists
were only fragments, with large chunks of her writing broken
off and missing, But what was there was still enlightening.
In a hymn titled the Exaltation of Nana, and Aduana
(08:53):
wrote of the goddess's pensiont for violence, The author prayed
to her for help with a Sumerian rebel named google Anna,
who had knocked her from her purchase high priestess. She
begged for revenge against the rebel and to have her
title restored. In the end, her prayers were answered, and
an Aduana was once again made high priestess to her people.
(09:13):
Another hymn, which was told from the goddess and Nana's perspective,
spoke of revenge against the mountains of Eba because they
would not bow down to her. After being turned down
for help from the other gods, she destroyed the mountains herself.
According to some experts, this hymn was an Aduanna's way
of telling a fictional story about a very real ecological
disaster that had occurred. Anna Duanna was a person unlike
(09:37):
any other. She didn't just pray to her gods. She
wrote poetic narratives about them. They became like characters to her,
with lives and wills of their own. Not many people
know who Anadu Wanna is today, and that's a shame,
because there is still so much she can teach us.
She wasn't just the first named author. She was among
(09:57):
the very best whoever lived. I hope you've enjoyed today's
guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
(10:19):
Make Another Award winning show called Lore which is a podcast,
book series, and television show and you can learn all
about it over at the world of Lore dot com.
And until next time, stay curious.
Welcomed Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
(00:27):
of Curiosities. When the world makes one weary, it's not
uncommon for that person to imagine something better world where
there is no war or famine or homelessness, where people
take care of one another and live in harmony. It's
(00:48):
a lovely sentiment, but while it may work in theory,
it almost always falls apart in practice. Communes and organizations
led by one person, often a man, end up the
same way. They turn into cults. That wasn't the goal
for religious philosopher and preacher John Humphrey Nous, but even
his idealistic troop wound up with that notorious label. However,
(01:09):
unlike other cults, his didn't end with mass death or suicide.
It ended with spooning. John was born in eighteen eleven
in Brattleboro, Vermont. His father had been a teacher, a minister,
and had even served with the U. S House of Representatives,
while his mother happened to be the aunt of the
nineteenth U S President Rutherford B. Hayes. John was religious
(01:30):
like his father, but even more so. After witnessing a
revival in eighteen thirty one, he went through a conversion
and abandoned his law degree at Dartmouth in favor of
the seminary. Instead, he studied the Bible well religiously and
learned how to preach before diving into the world of
antislavery activism. However, the more he studied, the more obsessive
(01:51):
he grew. His beliefs shifted. For example, while enrolled at
the Yale Theological Seminary, John had tried to pin down
the date of Christ's second coming, which, too many was
meant to be a date set far into the future,
but not to John, he believed that it had already
happened in seventy a d. And that humans were on
a downward spiral towards sin and degradation. He preached perfectionism,
(02:14):
that those who had converted could be free of all sin.
He also believed in keeping multiple wives, known as complex marriage.
His views got him expelled from Yale, with his professors
labeling him as a heretic, but that didn't deter him
from exploring them further. He believed that his faith had
given him carte blanche to ignore the traditional moral values
(02:35):
of the time, and that he could do as he pleased.
His family encouraged him to return home and find a
new path, but John refused. He instead traveled around preaching
to anyone who would listen and picking up strays in
a way. One of those strays happened to be a
woman named Abigail Merwin, who was already married when she
started following John's teachings. John, however, developed feelings for his
(02:57):
students and wouldn't let a trivial thing such as marriage
getting his way. In eighteen thirty seven, he created the
idea of a spiritual spouse, which flew in the face
of traditional monogamy. To John, relationships were meant to be shared,
and the more wives a man had, the marrier. In fact,
the term free love, which picked up steam during the
late nineteen sixties, was originally coined by John. As he
(03:20):
continued to preach, he gained more followers, leading to the
creation of the Society of Inquiry around eighteen forty five,
with almost thirty six members under its wing. The society
became the start of John's grand utopian vision. Unfortunately, John's
unorthodox beliefs, especially those concerning his nine wives, were not
shared by the Vermont legislature. The spiritual leader was arrested
(03:44):
and charged with adultery. However, he was released before the
start of his trial in April and used that time
to organize his followers and leave Vermont entirely. So they
moved to New York, where they settled in a small
city in the middle of the state. John happened to
know some of the fellow perfect Actionists there, who were
able to share a portion of their land and help
his people get established. He even renamed the group after
(04:06):
their new home. What had started as a modest commune
eventually grew into a palatial state that they called the
Mansion House, completed in eighteen sixty two. And how did
they get the money to build such a house. Well,
they sold all manner of goods, such as canned fruits
and vegetables, thread leather bags, and hats. But it was
the production and sale of something even more desirable that
(04:29):
put their commune on the map, and even after their
community fell apart in the early eighties, that business continued
to thrive. Look in most kitchens today and you're likely
to find something from the company, some product of the
lucrative business they began almost two hundred years ago. Forks, knives,
and spoons, all made and sold by a utopian community
(04:51):
at the New York town of Oneida. Read any book,
watch any movie or TV show, or see any play,
(05:12):
and you probably don't realize that they all have one
thing in common William Shakespeare. Even though the play right
behind Othello, Hamlets and King Lear may not have written
the works being produced today, his tropes and his words
are all over them. Stories about deceitful family members, star
crossed lovers, and enemies who become lovers can all chart
(05:32):
their origins back to Shakespeare. So can words like lonely,
swagger and zany. Shakespeare was responsible for more than seventeen
hundred words in the English language that we still used today,
but he was far from the only writer of his time.
Many had come before him and had also contributed significantly
to the written word. However, one stands above them all.
(05:55):
Before Romeo and Juliet, before Plato and Aristotle, there was
an ad Wuanna and Aduana was the daughter of Sargon
of a Cad, founder of the Achadian Empire in ancient Mesopotamia.
She lived during the twenty third century BC, but almost
nothing was known about her until nineteen seven. That year,
a British archaeologist named Sir Leonard Woolley found several ancient
(06:17):
relics in his travels that carried her name. One was
a disc made of alabaster that had broken apart into
several pieces. The artifact was eventually reconstructed, which allowed scholars
to read its contents. The back of the disc mentioned
Sargon of a cod and Aduana and her husband Nana Suan.
Sargon had been a ruthless conqueror who had laid waste
(06:38):
to dozens of cities and city states across the region
with his massive army. One of those city states was
a place called Er located in present day Iraq, R
had been home to a Sumerian cult built around Nena Suan.
Sargon knew the importance of bridging the gaps between the
Acadian and Sumerian empires, and Nana Suan was at the
center of each, so he appointed and Aduana to the
(07:00):
role of High priestess handled the job, but Nana Suan
wasn't a human like an Aduana or even Sargon. He
was a god, specifically the moon God, and an Aduana
worshiped him. As high priestess. She came to embody Nana
Suan's actual wife, the goddess Ningle, hence her being listed
on the disc as the moon God's spouse. The other
(07:22):
side of the disc bore a relief of an Aduana
standing before a nude figure pouring some kind of drink.
It was possible that the figure was Nana Suan. Soon after,
other objects were excavated and reassembled, shedding more light on
the identity of the elusive daughter of Sargon the Great
and Aduana's Sumerian name translated to ornament of Heaven, and
(07:44):
she had a great political sway among her people. Her
parentage and her high ranking status made her a leader,
and with the help of her writings, she was able
to unify Mesopotamia. Poems, religious hymns, and other works that
have been lost for thousands of years. Now being dug
up and analyzed, they gave deeper insight into a woman
who didn't know her true place in history, and a
(08:07):
Duana was the world's first named author. She composed odes
to the Sumerian goddess Nana and the Akkadian goddess Ishtar,
odes that exalted the deities of both cultures and brought
them together. Her work was instrumental in building one central
belief system for the people of Mesopotamia. She did this
through her poems, which she wrote for forty two southern temples,
(08:30):
expounding on the individual qualities that she admired in each
of them, all of which had been chiseled into clay tablets.
Many of the tablets recovered by Wooly and other archaeologists
were only fragments, with large chunks of her writing broken
off and missing, But what was there was still enlightening.
In a hymn titled the Exaltation of Nana, and Aduana
(08:53):
wrote of the goddess's pensiont for violence, The author prayed
to her for help with a Sumerian rebel named google Anna,
who had knocked her from her purchase high priestess. She
begged for revenge against the rebel and to have her
title restored. In the end, her prayers were answered, and
an Aduana was once again made high priestess to her people.
(09:13):
Another hymn, which was told from the goddess and Nana's perspective,
spoke of revenge against the mountains of Eba because they
would not bow down to her. After being turned down
for help from the other gods, she destroyed the mountains herself.
According to some experts, this hymn was an Aduanna's way
of telling a fictional story about a very real ecological
disaster that had occurred. Anna Duanna was a person unlike
(09:37):
any other. She didn't just pray to her gods. She
wrote poetic narratives about them. They became like characters to her,
with lives and wills of their own. Not many people
know who Anadu Wanna is today, and that's a shame,
because there is still so much she can teach us.
She wasn't just the first named author. She was among
(09:57):
the very best whoever lived. I hope you've enjoyed today's
guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free
on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by
visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by
me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I
(10:19):
Make Another Award winning show called Lore which is a podcast,
book series, and television show and you can learn all
about it over at the world of Lore dot com.
And until next time, stay curious.
Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities News
Host
Aaron Mahnke
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