April 1, 2021 • 35 mins
Thousands of years before the current day, ancient civilizations accurately predicted both lunar and solar eclipses. They often believed these events were spiritual omens. When an eclipse came at an inauspicious time, multiple priestly classes scrambled to find a substitute king. In the interest of preserving society, these substitute kings would reign during an eclipse, only to be swiftly murdered afterward. Ben defends early humans, asking what we sacrifice today.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. This is a weird story
that takes us to UH, Mesopotamia. What's what's that we
always say here in the here in English? It's good
to be king Suzuki to you, Ben Sazuggy. Yes, that's
(00:47):
the word of the day, Noel, that's something uh. We
checked in beforehand to make sure that we were both
pronouncing correctly, because, of course Sazuggi is one of our
super producer kay See Pegram's favorite words, and our guest
producer Andrew Howard would never forgive us if we were
(01:07):
too far off in our pronunciation. They're both really into
ancient Mesopotamia. Who knew? Who knew? There's a couple of
good words. Here's another one, sharp pookik at that one later.
But first of all, we need to talk a little
bit about celestial bodies, the mechanics of eclipses, the idea
that humans have been looking to the stars without fully
(01:30):
understanding how planets align and create the various lunar cycles
that we see UH and instead attributing them to like
vengeful deities or some sort of like cosmic super monsters. Yeah, exactly.
We're fortunate in these our modern times to be able
to accurately predict these things and enjoy them for the
(01:54):
beautiful natural phenomena they are. But back in the day,
we didn't have both of those things at once. Our
species was able to predict some movements of the heavens,
but put our own meanings upon why these things were occurring.
(02:14):
We know that natural phenomena has led to a lot
of myth making in human history, but the relationship between
these natural events and the myths we tell about them
isn't always super clear. As Atlas Obscura puts it, we
don't know to what extents a lot of ancient cultures
(02:34):
made up stories to explain eclipses, or you know, to
what degree they saw their existing myths reflected in the
movements of things like the sun and the moon and
other other heavenly bodies. But today's story is a true
story about a kind of cosmic bait and switch that
occurred in ancient Mesopotamia. This is the story of the
(02:59):
substitut tout royals, the substitute Queen, and the substitute king
of Mesopotamia. It's it's described by the Met Museum as
quote a tragedy driven by fear all of the gods
and the uniquely important status of the you know, the
actual real king. So in ancient Mesopotamia, which today would
(03:20):
be what we think of as Iraq, Uh, there were
priests that would use divination to read the tea leaves
in the sky, the giant celestial tea leaves that are
the stars and the planets, and they were able to
kind of use the positions of these bodies to come
(03:42):
up with kind of theories about, you know, how things
are going to happen, whether it was the weather or
you know how the crops would you know, flourish or
not flourish, etcetera. But over time, you know, what started
off as ritual and this idea of so sort of
mystical divination did kind of form almost a system, you know,
(04:03):
with these observations over thousands of years, uh. And then
as kind of scholarly knowledge sort of caught up with uh,
the priestly kind of divinations, it became a pretty decent
tool for predicting things. Right. So over thousands of years,
these priests would kind of develop these elaborate rituals to
(04:25):
help kind of cancel out some of the bad omens
that they would see, you know, spelled out in the heavens.
And one of the most dire, absolutely disastrous omens that
they could see was a solar eclipse. You know, thankfully
those don't happen too too often, but when they do,
it indicated some sort of grave danger, uh that might
(04:48):
befall the ruler of the the the land right and
h and Mesopotamian astronomers were able to accurately predict the
solar eclipses themselves, though you know, their interpretation of what
they meant was probably still a little bit based in
you know, this mysticism, right. Um, so once they knew
that an eclipse was coming, they had to come up
(05:12):
with a plan to make sure that the rulers were
guarded from this disastrous omen Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of
like I was thinking of a good comparison for this, so, Uh,
dog owners or people live with dogs, you you may
identify with this. Like let's say your pooch knows that
(05:33):
the mail carrier shows up at three pm every day,
but they don't know why the mail carrier shows up.
They don't really have the concept of mail, so they
kind of invent in their own doggy heads what the
mail carrier means. And unfortunately for some people in the
usps uh, some dogs have decided that they are a
(05:54):
threat and at three PM they must be driven away
by barking to prevent the collapse of the aggy world
as the doggie knows it. There's something kind of similar here.
They could predict eclipses, but as you said, they were
drawing some strange assumptions from these. So they thought that
if an eclipse was projected to take place over Assyria,
(06:15):
then the Assyrian king would be in mortal danger, and
for the king to be in danger would put everything
at risk. Civilization might collapse. So their solution was not
to not have a king, but to create a substitute king,
(06:35):
something called a sharper key in Akkadian. This was the
language of the Assyrian court and its official paperwork. So
imagine that, gig, you know what I mean. Well, maybe
at the end we can talk about whether or not
we ourselves listeners and Nolan Casey and I would want
to be the substitute king. But to do that, let's
(06:59):
maybe let's look what modern science, says, let's do some
spoilers about modern science and eclipses. This is where sissy
g comes in. Scissors g is when three celestial bodies
find themselves in a straight line within their elliptic orbits,
kind of imagine billiard balls lining up. The word comes
(07:19):
from the Greek sisodios, which means paired or yokes. And
then if you're like us sitting here on planet Earth,
you see two kinds of eclipses, right, solar eclipses and
lunar eclipses. No, what can we talk a little bit
about these eclipses? We absolutely can. I'm very disappointed that
the word isn't pronounced szugy like I said at the
(07:40):
beginning of the show, but I'm still going to use
that as a greeting, says Zoogi to you. Ben Um. No,
sissy gy is correct. It's a very science fancy sounding
word that means when the celestial bodies are aligned. So
in a solar eclipse, you have the Moon that passes
between the Sun and the Earth, which causes the shadow
of the Moon to block out the Sun, which you
(08:01):
know when you say things like block out the sun.
Even today, that sounds pretty scary. Luckily, this is only temporary. Uh.
You're definitely not supposed to stare straight into it, super
bad fear eyeballs. But that's how that happens. In a
lunar eclipse, you got the Moon that crosses through the
shadow of the Earth. Uh. And a solar eclipse can
in fact completely block out the Sun. But like I said,
(08:24):
it's only temporary. Um, and in certain parts of the
Earth's surface you can still you know, see parts of it,
and it can be not too many miles in between
these different views. So what might be seen as a
total eclipse in one city just a few hundred miles away,
it might just look like partial eclipse. So a lunar
(08:44):
eclipse can be seen throughout the entire hemisphere of the Earth, uh,
the half of the planet that happens to be on
the nighttime side. Yeah, which can explain why prediction of
solar eclipses becomes so important in this ancient civilization, because
you can pinpoint where it will be a full solar eclipse.
(09:04):
That's what they mean when they say solar eclipse over Assyria.
If you go back through human civilization, you can see
that numerous cultures throughout the ages had very strong opinions
about solar and lunar eclipses. Often, eclipses were seen as
(09:25):
ill omens, symbols of obliteration, the subversion of the natural
order of the world, and according to the Exploratarium in
San Francisco, the word eclipse comes from a Greek word
meaning abandonment, so in very literal terms, ancient people's would
(09:45):
sometimes see in eclipse as the Sun abandoning the earth,
you know what I mean, like walking out, I'm off
the clock. Now you are left to your own in
the darkness. And even in those days, they knew how
important the sun was to sustenance, to growing things, to
just absolutely sustaining life on Earth. Yeah, and spoiler, we're
gonna have another episode in a few weeks. That's a
(10:08):
little It's about how people in an age a little
closer to ours would also freak out if the sun
appeared to behave unusually And you know what, I'll be
honest with you, fellow ridiculous historians. If I walked outside
today and all of a sudden, the sun appeared to
have uh lit out for the territories, I would also
(10:28):
freak out, you know what I mean, Even if I
knew it was coming. It's a weird thing to watch. Yeah,
and this was something that we've seen written about as
far back as Homer's epic poem The Odyssey. When Odysseus
comes back, you know, from his journey to see his
wife Penelope, he is greeted with this vision that has
(10:50):
been foretold by a seer of an eclipse. The sun
has been obliterated from the sky and an unlucky darkness
invades the world. And that seems to according to an
article from The Guardian about how solar eclipses and vernal
equinoxes have cast shadows quote unquote on literature because these
are powerful symbols, right, I mean they really are. They're
(11:13):
they're very good devices in literature. But also they were
taken quite seriously. But yeah, it seems to foretell the
slaying of the suitors who have remembered the whole deal
with the disseist, like he basically had these interlopers that
were trying to woo his wife while he was away sliding,
was sliding in the d m s and then he
(11:34):
comes back and he's like, oh and uh, yeah, the
ass is about to hit the for for sure. With
Odysseus not a happy guy. And it's fascinating because I
would go a step further and say that in some cases,
the odyssey being one and eclipse symbolizes a kind of consumption.
And this is paralleled in other cultures that explained eclipses
(11:58):
as a moment when demons or evil spirits or heavenly
animals would eat, would consume the sun or the moon.
Often that animal was something really cool. It was a dragon.
The Chinese word for eclipse ship or shure uh not
sure about the tones there means to eat literally, and
(12:18):
in Vietnam, people traditionally believe that a solar eclipse was
caused by a giant frog consuming the sun. And in
Norse cultures, wolves were the sun eating culprits. So everybody
had these solutions to combat this consumption of the great
life giver that the dying star next to us, the sun. Uh.
(12:39):
A lot of people would you know, bang stuff pots
and pants. They would make noises or play on drums
to to distract it, to get the frog or the wolf,
for the dragon or what have you, to stop trying
to eat the moon or the sun and to go away.
And because eclipses are not permanent events. You can see
(13:00):
how people thought this would work, you know what I mean,
You can kind of confuse correlation and causation and say
that I didn't happen to be drumming during an eclipse.
It's because I brought out the drums that the sun
came back. Okay, so we've got a little bit of
(13:21):
this history of various cultures interacting with the sun and
the clear fear and anxiety behind losing it. Uh So,
let's go back to the Bronze Age and ancient Mesopotamia,
where you know these um what we do you call them?
Then mystics like are you know, priests were essentially kind
of straddling the barrier between science and religion, and actually,
(13:46):
you know, they were certainly looking to these events as
you know, kind of ominous omens, but also over time
really getting pretty good at predicting them and looking at
various conditions that would you know, be kind of clue
is that that these things were on the way or
tracking the phases of the moon and all of that
good stuff. Um. So, you know, Mesopotamia, known often as
(14:08):
the cradle of civilization to be modern day Iraq, had
several very very important and highly sophisticated civilizations that were
settled there. You had the Acadians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians,
and the Sumarians. All of these incredibly advanced empires rose
and fell between thirty one BC and five thirty nine BC,
(14:32):
and astronomy was important to all of them. Of course,
it was important to things like navigating, but it was
also important to things like predicting the weather and the
cycles of planting and reaping and all of that. Uh.
And these priests and these astronomers would kind of work
together to look to the skies uh and get advice essentially,
you know, omens that they would apply to things like politics, government, economics,
(14:58):
all of these things. All of these astral signs were
interpreted and acted upon, and there, you know, they would
know based on what was happening in the heavens, you know,
when good or bad times were coming. Essentially. Yeah, and
before before any of the more skeptical folks in the
(15:18):
crowd today decided to poopo on this system of using
astronomical signs as a predictive tool. Let's not forget that
people have used things like this. What I would argue
is basically astrology in the modern days, Ronald Reagan had
an astrologer, the former US president. The government of Myanmar,
(15:40):
the military junta that ruled it back in the day,
relocated the capital on the advice of an astrologer. So
these these things continue past ancient civilizations. In these societies.
The Babylonians in particular, incredibly incredibly impressive. They were able to,
(16:00):
more than two thousand years ago, calculate thirty eight possible
eclipses or scissorges within a period of about two hundred
and twenty three months or eighteen years. This two three
month cycle was called a Sorrows cycle by modern astronomers,
and the sequence of eclipses generated during that cycle or
(16:24):
by that cycle uh constitute what's called a Sorrows series.
Scientists know now that the number of lunar and solar
eclipses in one of these series is not always the same,
but still there's no denying it. This is incredibly impressive.
I mean, these Babylonian scholars were top notch. They were
(16:47):
smart cookies if they could understand this phenomenon. This understanding
of this cycle, this two three month period eventually allowed
them to predict eclipses with As we said earlier, some
astonishing precision, and it can't be separated from the astrological
(17:10):
tradition at the time. So their science was getting better
and they were bringing their astrological beliefs along with them,
like two sides of the same coin. So the curator
at the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, her studies led
(17:31):
her to believe that solar eclipses were considered the most
significant of these astronomical events, uh, and were seen as
being omens of great evil and misfortunate, which you already
mentioned a little bit, but specifically the idea that the
solar eclipse indicated that the gods were very, very angry,
(17:52):
specifically at the king, and that some awful, awful and
was in store for him. They looked at it very seriously,
almost like an assassination threat, you know, from sort of
some sort of outside you know, organization warring faction for example,
or you know, a terrorist group. But instead this is
(18:12):
literally the gods are are angry, uh, and they are
they mean to do harm to the ruler um. So
this type of threat was considered a threat on the
entire structure of power in Mesopotamian society and needed something very,
very very serious to be done about it. Yeah, you
could not hold off on this. Babylonian scholars had isolated
(18:36):
specific eclipses that would foretell the death of the king.
The conditions for an omen to be considered this we're
we're pretty exacting, and we know about these from a
famous astronomical work. That is, the title is usually Numa
a nil, which translates it's just the first words of
(18:58):
the document. It means when the odds Anu and nil
do something something, if Jupiter is visible during the eclipse
when it occurs, if they know Jupiter is also going
to be in the mix, no worries, no stress, the
king is safe. Lunar eclipses seem to have been especially
concerning when it came to the well being and survival
(19:19):
of the king. So to keep the eclipse from killing
the monarch, they made this mechanism up. It's the substitute
King ritual or sarpui. This ritual has mentioned multiple times
and various letters from Assyria dating all the way back
to the first millennium BC, and there are earlier rituals
(19:44):
that are referenced in text. In hit height Uh and
that's the language for which we have the earliest written
records dating back to second millennium in what would be
modern Turkey today. So this is an established thing, this
really ha and the fact that you found it in
this other second millennium writing leads experts to assume that
(20:09):
this ritual already existed in Mesopotamia during the first half
of that second millennium. So what happens in this ritual? No, totally, Yeah,
it's a good question. It's almost like the psychic equivalent
of a food tester, you know, someone that would taste
the food before a king, and in the event that
it was poisoned, would you know, die instead of the king,
(20:31):
the kind of mystical canary in the coal mine, if
you will. But in this situation, a lower class citizen
would be chosen to replace the king during this period
of threat from the gods. He would be dressed up
like the king, sat down in the throne of the king,
and all of this would happen in a ritualistic fashion,
while these priests would recite or you know, do some
(20:55):
sort of ritualized chant of the negative omen that was
triggered by this eclipse, and it didn't even matter if
the substitute king looked like the real king. It was
just like a you know, like a body double or
like a stand in a cosmic body double. But it
did have to be a man. And this person was
(21:18):
dressed in the king's you know, finest robes and all that,
and actually declared to be king and would participate in
various other rituals that would you know, make it seem
legit to the gods. It's almost like this, uh, this
idea of fooling the gods into thinking that this was
the king, you know, and and the fact that they
(21:39):
didn't have to go too far to make them look
the same indicates that they thought the gods were you know,
only concerned with like the ritual and the kind of
pomp and circumstance of it all. Uh. He was in
fact given a young woman as a queen also stand in,
and then the actual king would basically like hold up
in some sort of Mesopotamian equivalent of like a bunker
(22:02):
until the season had passed or the the eclipse had passed,
and the substitute king and queen were essentially you know,
cannon fodder for the gods. They were put out there
offered up as sacrifices for this whatever this evil fate
might be. Um and they were you know, taking it on. Uh,
you know, and I'm sure in some sense would consider
(22:24):
it an honor. But Ben, I mean, like we know
that there's no cosmic evil associated with these eclipses. I mean,
what would happen whatever, anything bad ever happened to them. Yeah, Well,
what I want to do is put this in modern
terms to make sure everybody gets how official this is.
Let's think of a modern US president. This is considered
(22:46):
a credible assassination threat basically right, but from the gods
instead of a rival state. So what if the U
S policy was to say, when we think the president
might be assassinated, we're just gonna pick some god, some
guy who needs a job. He doesn't have to look
like Joe Biden or whatever. He We're just gonna pick him.
We're gonna have him say the oath of office. We're
(23:08):
going to keep him there, you know, in the week
leading up to in the week after this eclipse happens,
and then we'll bring you know, the president out of
the bunker and will decommission this other guy. That's what's
literally happening. The idea of it being an honor I
think is accurate. I think people wanted to do this
(23:28):
because it was still an opportunity of sorts. We know
for sure that not all of the substitute kings and
queens you know, died during the eclipse. So how did
the priest class rationalize that. They probably just said, well,
close call, you know what I mean? Close call, yeah, exactly,
But unfortunately for them, they were gonna die either way,
(23:52):
right right right. The eclipse was not the cause. Well,
the eclipse was sort of the cause of their death,
but it wasn't the god that killed them. For a
brief time, the just the way the moon and the
sun were visible in the same place during an eclipse,
the substitute king and the true king existed. But once
(24:13):
that dangerous time had passed, Yes, the substitute kings were
killed by people, Okay, not by the gods. They were killed.
They had served their purpose. Uh, the true king came
out of his highi hole and the ritual was considered complete.
Everything proceeded as planned until astronomer's predicted or priests predicted
(24:37):
the next dangerous eclipse. This happened all the time. This was.
You know, this was real human sacrifice, and and there's
a political reason too. It's not it's like part of
the ritual to kill the substitute king and queen. But
the political reason is, you know, the king might be
(24:57):
willing to let somebody else take this heavenly bullet for him,
but he definitely doesn't want them around afterwards. The thing
about kings is you really only want one if you're
the current king, right, yeah, I mean, like even if,
even though it was all kind of just like for
show in theory, this person could make a claim that
(25:18):
they were the rightful king. And that's just too messy,
isn't it. So we'll make a different kind of mess,
you know, a slaughtery kind of mess. Yeah, you're get
into red wedding territory other big time, big time. But then,
like you said, Ben, the ritual is complete. Rinse and repeat,
rinse and repeat. We have two cases of the substitute
(25:39):
ritual in action. One might be just heads up a
little bit more legendary than factual. There's a surprising turn
of events where one of these substitutes managed to outlive
the king he was supposed to replace, and shout out
to Vintage News for this great story, as well as
the Conversation dot com. There's a there's a first millennium
(26:02):
composition that is known today as the Chronicle of Early Kings.
It's about a king of the city state of Estan,
which is uh in modern day. It's it's about a
d twenty five miles southeast of Baghdad, and the king
era emity was replaced by a gardener who was named
(26:22):
an ill Bonny, and this was part of a substitute
king ritual. But get this, Luckily for an ill Bonny
the gardener, the real king died after eating hot soup.
His official cause of death is sipping broth that was
too hot, And so the population of this city state said, well,
(26:45):
it's your lucky day, an ill body. Then the gardener
remained on the throne. He became the actual king. He
ruled for twenty four years. That guy had to be
very pro soup. But I ask you, whenever you read
stuff like this, don't you think it's poison, because it
has to assume it's poison. Yeah, it has to be.
I don't know that I've ever sipped a broth that
(27:08):
was so hot that I was afraid for my life.
But you know, maybe this person had a baby mouth,
you know, very very sensitive heat sensitive, you know, Palette. Yeah,
I mean, I'm not one to brag or toot my
own horn, but I've eaten my fair share of hot soup,
you know what I mean. And I'm not Maybe I'm
not dead because I'm not king of this. Maybe it's
(27:31):
true you're not. You can't argue with that. Then we
have another case of a young man named dom Qui
who was killed along with his queen Um during the
tenure of the ruler as har had On. I hope
I'm getting that somewhat right, who ruled from six to
six sixty nine in order to protect the Assyrian crown prince,
(27:54):
who has an amazing named Schuma Schumukin, who was at
the time the ruler of babel On our Babylonian territories
rather Um, which were part of the Assyrian Empire. Dom
Qui was a member of the Babylonian elite. He was
the son of a chief administrator of the temples, so
(28:14):
I guess this is like the building manager of these
holy temples in babylon Um and he had some powerful friends.
So it's just it just goes to show that even
people in higher classes or that were more well connected,
could be forced into this role of substitute king and
down qui Uh may have been selected in order to
(28:35):
make an example and strike fear into the hearts of
the Babylonian people who were not playing nice with the
Assyrian rulers. So this was a bit more of a
flex or like a you know, a political ploy to
kind of get people to bend the knee. Right. You know,
I've been thinking about it. You did agree a little
too readily that I was definitely not the king of
(28:58):
the city state of his and so I'm I elect
myself king of hot soup as another prize you should be.
So can I be the king of cartoons? Please? Please,
by all the kings all hail, And of course the
king of podcasts would be our own Casey Pagraham. Obviously,
(29:20):
it's interesting we see this mix of politics, religion, and astronomy.
It's a it's a very interesting csigy of its own right,
the way these three concepts line up. So we have
to ask ourselves why did the ritual die out? Let's
(29:41):
go back to Atlas Obscurrea. We have to look at
the mythology. So there's this pantheon of these moon thieves
in these giants, you know, love crafty and cosmic horror
monsters that want to eat the moon. The plague God
era brings doomed ancient Mesopotamia the Sibbett to march in
(30:03):
his wake. There are seven warrior demons that spread sickness
and death, and occasionally they all get together at a
party in the sky and blot out the moon. And
historians like John z we which is an awesome name,
speculates that these mythological creatures like the Sibitu may have
(30:24):
functioned as a way of absolving a moon associated king
of guilt. So why would you continue staging this elaborate
sacrifice ritual when you can just kind of tweak the
religious view to cast yourself as the victim of these
intermittent demons. It's a good question, Ben, Yeah, it's a
(30:46):
very good question. But it's interesting. I mean, eventually, remember
how we were saying how the Babylonians weren't really playing
nice with their Assyrian rulers. Well, eventually uh and the Assyrians, uh,
you know again, did this symbolic, you know, ritualistic murder
of one of the Babylonians higher class citizens sons. But
it turns out that there were lots of other folks
(31:08):
that had problems with the way the Assyrians went about
uh their ruling, and so the Babylonians lead up with
them and eventually exacted their revenge by joining forces and
destroying the empire in six twelve BC, when their combined
armies sacked the Assyrian palaces and essentially attempted to blot
(31:31):
out a lot of their history by smashing a lot
of the sculptures of these royals that were depicted on
the palace walls. They erased portraits that were done in
relief in some of these buildings as well, uh in NINEVAH.
Now you can see the results of this in the
museum's collection. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has an
(31:53):
incredible historical art collection, is one of my favorite places
in the world. I love museums. One of the only
things I miss about life for the pandemic, I used
to go to a museum. One of my three rules
to every place I travel is to visit any museum
they have their Never let a museum go unvisited if
you can help it. There's some amazing ones out grade. Ben,
(32:16):
did I tell you that I've got a trip planned? Uh?
Post COVID Right, You're going to Chicago, I think going
to Seattle in fact, uh and going to see the
Minecraft exhibit at the Museum of Pop Culture with my daughter,
and then we're gonna do some other you know, Seattle
the tourist things. But I'm really excited to get back
out on the road again. It's been too long. I
(32:38):
think we both feel that way. Yeah, I've actually I
don't want to disclose on air yet, but I've got
some weird ones coming up. I've got some weird ones
coming up, probably in summer. But safe travels there, Nolan.
I hope you enjoy the Minecraft exhibit. Uh. I hope
also that no one in the audience today has to
(32:59):
end up being substitute royalty. And although we still have
a lot to learn about the world and the space
in which the world moves, it's amazing to look back
on the progress our species has made and to know
that nowadays we can go enjoy an eclipse like at
our at our office over in Atlanta, there was a
(33:22):
solar eclipse and we were all able to take a
few hours off and go to the roof of this
ginormous office building and safely watch it with our special
eclipse glasses and everything with no fear that some sort
of monster beyond the stars was going to eat our sun.
So thank you science, and thank you Ancient Mesopotamia. And
(33:45):
thank you super producer Casey Pegram and Alex Williams, who
composed our theme Christopher has the otis here in spirit.
And thank you, of course to our guest producer Andrew Howard.
Thank you to our own King of re search, Gabe Louesier,
and thanks of course to our own mythological sun eating demon,
(34:07):
Jonathan Strickland, a k. The Quister. Do you think he's
more a sun eater or a moon eater? I don't know.
I thought you don't think he picks and shoes. I
think he eats all. He is the eater of worlds.
That guy. We'll have to have him on this show
again soon and it's not up to us, but it's
not at us. It's just happened us. So, folks, we
(34:29):
hope you enjoyed today's show. Again, we do have another
episode about a particular dark day coming up in the future.
Doue Tu into that and no, we also have some
surprise guests on the way in a bit we should do.
We'll keep that under our hats for now, but until then, UM,
may the sun forever be at your back. The wind.
(34:52):
I don't know which one it is, the sunshine. That's
the one, the sunshine. Let's see you next time. Books.
(35:20):
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. This is a weird story
that takes us to UH, Mesopotamia. What's what's that we
always say here in the here in English? It's good
to be king Suzuki to you, Ben Sazuggy. Yes, that's
(00:47):
the word of the day, Noel, that's something uh. We
checked in beforehand to make sure that we were both
pronouncing correctly, because, of course Sazuggi is one of our
super producer kay See Pegram's favorite words, and our guest
producer Andrew Howard would never forgive us if we were
(01:07):
too far off in our pronunciation. They're both really into
ancient Mesopotamia. Who knew? Who knew? There's a couple of
good words. Here's another one, sharp pookik at that one later.
But first of all, we need to talk a little
bit about celestial bodies, the mechanics of eclipses, the idea
that humans have been looking to the stars without fully
(01:30):
understanding how planets align and create the various lunar cycles
that we see UH and instead attributing them to like
vengeful deities or some sort of like cosmic super monsters. Yeah, exactly.
We're fortunate in these our modern times to be able
to accurately predict these things and enjoy them for the
(01:54):
beautiful natural phenomena they are. But back in the day,
we didn't have both of those things at once. Our
species was able to predict some movements of the heavens,
but put our own meanings upon why these things were occurring.
(02:14):
We know that natural phenomena has led to a lot
of myth making in human history, but the relationship between
these natural events and the myths we tell about them
isn't always super clear. As Atlas Obscura puts it, we
don't know to what extents a lot of ancient cultures
(02:34):
made up stories to explain eclipses, or you know, to
what degree they saw their existing myths reflected in the
movements of things like the sun and the moon and
other other heavenly bodies. But today's story is a true
story about a kind of cosmic bait and switch that
occurred in ancient Mesopotamia. This is the story of the
(02:59):
substitut tout royals, the substitute Queen, and the substitute king
of Mesopotamia. It's it's described by the Met Museum as
quote a tragedy driven by fear all of the gods
and the uniquely important status of the you know, the
actual real king. So in ancient Mesopotamia, which today would
(03:20):
be what we think of as Iraq, Uh, there were
priests that would use divination to read the tea leaves
in the sky, the giant celestial tea leaves that are
the stars and the planets, and they were able to
kind of use the positions of these bodies to come
(03:42):
up with kind of theories about, you know, how things
are going to happen, whether it was the weather or
you know how the crops would you know, flourish or
not flourish, etcetera. But over time, you know, what started
off as ritual and this idea of so sort of
mystical divination did kind of form almost a system, you know,
(04:03):
with these observations over thousands of years, uh. And then
as kind of scholarly knowledge sort of caught up with uh,
the priestly kind of divinations, it became a pretty decent
tool for predicting things. Right. So over thousands of years,
these priests would kind of develop these elaborate rituals to
(04:25):
help kind of cancel out some of the bad omens
that they would see, you know, spelled out in the heavens.
And one of the most dire, absolutely disastrous omens that
they could see was a solar eclipse. You know, thankfully
those don't happen too too often, but when they do,
it indicated some sort of grave danger, uh that might
(04:48):
befall the ruler of the the the land right and
h and Mesopotamian astronomers were able to accurately predict the
solar eclipses themselves, though you know, their interpretation of what
they meant was probably still a little bit based in
you know, this mysticism, right. Um, so once they knew
that an eclipse was coming, they had to come up
(05:12):
with a plan to make sure that the rulers were
guarded from this disastrous omen Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of
like I was thinking of a good comparison for this, so, Uh,
dog owners or people live with dogs, you you may
identify with this. Like let's say your pooch knows that
(05:33):
the mail carrier shows up at three pm every day,
but they don't know why the mail carrier shows up.
They don't really have the concept of mail, so they
kind of invent in their own doggy heads what the
mail carrier means. And unfortunately for some people in the
usps uh, some dogs have decided that they are a
(05:54):
threat and at three PM they must be driven away
by barking to prevent the collapse of the aggy world
as the doggie knows it. There's something kind of similar here.
They could predict eclipses, but as you said, they were
drawing some strange assumptions from these. So they thought that
if an eclipse was projected to take place over Assyria,
(06:15):
then the Assyrian king would be in mortal danger, and
for the king to be in danger would put everything
at risk. Civilization might collapse. So their solution was not
to not have a king, but to create a substitute king,
(06:35):
something called a sharper key in Akkadian. This was the
language of the Assyrian court and its official paperwork. So
imagine that, gig, you know what I mean. Well, maybe
at the end we can talk about whether or not
we ourselves listeners and Nolan Casey and I would want
to be the substitute king. But to do that, let's
(06:59):
maybe let's look what modern science, says, let's do some
spoilers about modern science and eclipses. This is where sissy
g comes in. Scissors g is when three celestial bodies
find themselves in a straight line within their elliptic orbits,
kind of imagine billiard balls lining up. The word comes
(07:19):
from the Greek sisodios, which means paired or yokes. And
then if you're like us sitting here on planet Earth,
you see two kinds of eclipses, right, solar eclipses and
lunar eclipses. No, what can we talk a little bit
about these eclipses? We absolutely can. I'm very disappointed that
the word isn't pronounced szugy like I said at the
(07:40):
beginning of the show, but I'm still going to use
that as a greeting, says Zoogi to you. Ben Um. No,
sissy gy is correct. It's a very science fancy sounding
word that means when the celestial bodies are aligned. So
in a solar eclipse, you have the Moon that passes
between the Sun and the Earth, which causes the shadow
of the Moon to block out the Sun, which you
(08:01):
know when you say things like block out the sun.
Even today, that sounds pretty scary. Luckily, this is only temporary. Uh.
You're definitely not supposed to stare straight into it, super
bad fear eyeballs. But that's how that happens. In a
lunar eclipse, you got the Moon that crosses through the
shadow of the Earth. Uh. And a solar eclipse can
in fact completely block out the Sun. But like I said,
(08:24):
it's only temporary. Um, and in certain parts of the
Earth's surface you can still you know, see parts of it,
and it can be not too many miles in between
these different views. So what might be seen as a
total eclipse in one city just a few hundred miles away,
it might just look like partial eclipse. So a lunar
(08:44):
eclipse can be seen throughout the entire hemisphere of the Earth, uh,
the half of the planet that happens to be on
the nighttime side. Yeah, which can explain why prediction of
solar eclipses becomes so important in this ancient civilization, because
you can pinpoint where it will be a full solar eclipse.
(09:04):
That's what they mean when they say solar eclipse over Assyria.
If you go back through human civilization, you can see
that numerous cultures throughout the ages had very strong opinions
about solar and lunar eclipses. Often, eclipses were seen as
(09:25):
ill omens, symbols of obliteration, the subversion of the natural
order of the world, and according to the Exploratarium in
San Francisco, the word eclipse comes from a Greek word
meaning abandonment, so in very literal terms, ancient people's would
(09:45):
sometimes see in eclipse as the Sun abandoning the earth,
you know what I mean, like walking out, I'm off
the clock. Now you are left to your own in
the darkness. And even in those days, they knew how
important the sun was to sustenance, to growing things, to
just absolutely sustaining life on Earth. Yeah, and spoiler, we're
gonna have another episode in a few weeks. That's a
(10:08):
little It's about how people in an age a little
closer to ours would also freak out if the sun
appeared to behave unusually And you know what, I'll be
honest with you, fellow ridiculous historians. If I walked outside
today and all of a sudden, the sun appeared to
have uh lit out for the territories, I would also
(10:28):
freak out, you know what I mean, Even if I
knew it was coming. It's a weird thing to watch. Yeah,
and this was something that we've seen written about as
far back as Homer's epic poem The Odyssey. When Odysseus
comes back, you know, from his journey to see his
wife Penelope, he is greeted with this vision that has
(10:50):
been foretold by a seer of an eclipse. The sun
has been obliterated from the sky and an unlucky darkness
invades the world. And that seems to according to an
article from The Guardian about how solar eclipses and vernal
equinoxes have cast shadows quote unquote on literature because these
are powerful symbols, right, I mean they really are. They're
(11:13):
they're very good devices in literature. But also they were
taken quite seriously. But yeah, it seems to foretell the
slaying of the suitors who have remembered the whole deal
with the disseist, like he basically had these interlopers that
were trying to woo his wife while he was away sliding,
was sliding in the d m s and then he
(11:34):
comes back and he's like, oh and uh, yeah, the
ass is about to hit the for for sure. With
Odysseus not a happy guy. And it's fascinating because I
would go a step further and say that in some cases,
the odyssey being one and eclipse symbolizes a kind of consumption.
And this is paralleled in other cultures that explained eclipses
(11:58):
as a moment when demons or evil spirits or heavenly
animals would eat, would consume the sun or the moon.
Often that animal was something really cool. It was a dragon.
The Chinese word for eclipse ship or shure uh not
sure about the tones there means to eat literally, and
(12:18):
in Vietnam, people traditionally believe that a solar eclipse was
caused by a giant frog consuming the sun. And in
Norse cultures, wolves were the sun eating culprits. So everybody
had these solutions to combat this consumption of the great
life giver that the dying star next to us, the sun. Uh.
(12:39):
A lot of people would you know, bang stuff pots
and pants. They would make noises or play on drums
to to distract it, to get the frog or the wolf,
for the dragon or what have you, to stop trying
to eat the moon or the sun and to go away.
And because eclipses are not permanent events. You can see
(13:00):
how people thought this would work, you know what I mean,
You can kind of confuse correlation and causation and say
that I didn't happen to be drumming during an eclipse.
It's because I brought out the drums that the sun
came back. Okay, so we've got a little bit of
(13:21):
this history of various cultures interacting with the sun and
the clear fear and anxiety behind losing it. Uh So,
let's go back to the Bronze Age and ancient Mesopotamia,
where you know these um what we do you call them?
Then mystics like are you know, priests were essentially kind
of straddling the barrier between science and religion, and actually,
(13:46):
you know, they were certainly looking to these events as
you know, kind of ominous omens, but also over time
really getting pretty good at predicting them and looking at
various conditions that would you know, be kind of clue
is that that these things were on the way or
tracking the phases of the moon and all of that
good stuff. Um. So, you know, Mesopotamia, known often as
(14:08):
the cradle of civilization to be modern day Iraq, had
several very very important and highly sophisticated civilizations that were
settled there. You had the Acadians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians,
and the Sumarians. All of these incredibly advanced empires rose
and fell between thirty one BC and five thirty nine BC,
(14:32):
and astronomy was important to all of them. Of course,
it was important to things like navigating, but it was
also important to things like predicting the weather and the
cycles of planting and reaping and all of that. Uh.
And these priests and these astronomers would kind of work
together to look to the skies uh and get advice essentially,
you know, omens that they would apply to things like politics, government, economics,
(14:58):
all of these things. All of these astral signs were
interpreted and acted upon, and there, you know, they would
know based on what was happening in the heavens, you know,
when good or bad times were coming. Essentially. Yeah, and
before before any of the more skeptical folks in the
(15:18):
crowd today decided to poopo on this system of using
astronomical signs as a predictive tool. Let's not forget that
people have used things like this. What I would argue
is basically astrology in the modern days, Ronald Reagan had
an astrologer, the former US president. The government of Myanmar,
(15:40):
the military junta that ruled it back in the day,
relocated the capital on the advice of an astrologer. So
these these things continue past ancient civilizations. In these societies.
The Babylonians in particular, incredibly incredibly impressive. They were able to,
(16:00):
more than two thousand years ago, calculate thirty eight possible
eclipses or scissorges within a period of about two hundred
and twenty three months or eighteen years. This two three
month cycle was called a Sorrows cycle by modern astronomers,
and the sequence of eclipses generated during that cycle or
(16:24):
by that cycle uh constitute what's called a Sorrows series.
Scientists know now that the number of lunar and solar
eclipses in one of these series is not always the same,
but still there's no denying it. This is incredibly impressive.
I mean, these Babylonian scholars were top notch. They were
(16:47):
smart cookies if they could understand this phenomenon. This understanding
of this cycle, this two three month period eventually allowed
them to predict eclipses with As we said earlier, some
astonishing precision, and it can't be separated from the astrological
(17:10):
tradition at the time. So their science was getting better
and they were bringing their astrological beliefs along with them,
like two sides of the same coin. So the curator
at the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, her studies led
(17:31):
her to believe that solar eclipses were considered the most
significant of these astronomical events, uh, and were seen as
being omens of great evil and misfortunate, which you already
mentioned a little bit, but specifically the idea that the
solar eclipse indicated that the gods were very, very angry,
(17:52):
specifically at the king, and that some awful, awful and
was in store for him. They looked at it very seriously,
almost like an assassination threat, you know, from sort of
some sort of outside you know, organization warring faction for example,
or you know, a terrorist group. But instead this is
(18:12):
literally the gods are are angry, uh, and they are
they mean to do harm to the ruler um. So
this type of threat was considered a threat on the
entire structure of power in Mesopotamian society and needed something very,
very very serious to be done about it. Yeah, you
could not hold off on this. Babylonian scholars had isolated
(18:36):
specific eclipses that would foretell the death of the king.
The conditions for an omen to be considered this we're
we're pretty exacting, and we know about these from a
famous astronomical work. That is, the title is usually Numa
a nil, which translates it's just the first words of
(18:58):
the document. It means when the odds Anu and nil
do something something, if Jupiter is visible during the eclipse
when it occurs, if they know Jupiter is also going
to be in the mix, no worries, no stress, the
king is safe. Lunar eclipses seem to have been especially
concerning when it came to the well being and survival
(19:19):
of the king. So to keep the eclipse from killing
the monarch, they made this mechanism up. It's the substitute
King ritual or sarpui. This ritual has mentioned multiple times
and various letters from Assyria dating all the way back
to the first millennium BC, and there are earlier rituals
(19:44):
that are referenced in text. In hit height Uh and
that's the language for which we have the earliest written
records dating back to second millennium in what would be
modern Turkey today. So this is an established thing, this
really ha and the fact that you found it in
this other second millennium writing leads experts to assume that
(20:09):
this ritual already existed in Mesopotamia during the first half
of that second millennium. So what happens in this ritual? No, totally, Yeah,
it's a good question. It's almost like the psychic equivalent
of a food tester, you know, someone that would taste
the food before a king, and in the event that
it was poisoned, would you know, die instead of the king,
(20:31):
the kind of mystical canary in the coal mine, if
you will. But in this situation, a lower class citizen
would be chosen to replace the king during this period
of threat from the gods. He would be dressed up
like the king, sat down in the throne of the king,
and all of this would happen in a ritualistic fashion,
while these priests would recite or you know, do some
(20:55):
sort of ritualized chant of the negative omen that was
triggered by this eclipse, and it didn't even matter if
the substitute king looked like the real king. It was
just like a you know, like a body double or
like a stand in a cosmic body double. But it
did have to be a man. And this person was
(21:18):
dressed in the king's you know, finest robes and all that,
and actually declared to be king and would participate in
various other rituals that would you know, make it seem
legit to the gods. It's almost like this, uh, this
idea of fooling the gods into thinking that this was
the king, you know, and and the fact that they
(21:39):
didn't have to go too far to make them look
the same indicates that they thought the gods were you know,
only concerned with like the ritual and the kind of
pomp and circumstance of it all. Uh. He was in
fact given a young woman as a queen also stand in,
and then the actual king would basically like hold up
in some sort of Mesopotamian equivalent of like a bunker
(22:02):
until the season had passed or the the eclipse had passed,
and the substitute king and queen were essentially you know,
cannon fodder for the gods. They were put out there
offered up as sacrifices for this whatever this evil fate
might be. Um and they were you know, taking it on. Uh,
you know, and I'm sure in some sense would consider
(22:24):
it an honor. But Ben, I mean, like we know
that there's no cosmic evil associated with these eclipses. I mean,
what would happen whatever, anything bad ever happened to them. Yeah, Well,
what I want to do is put this in modern
terms to make sure everybody gets how official this is.
Let's think of a modern US president. This is considered
(22:46):
a credible assassination threat basically right, but from the gods
instead of a rival state. So what if the U
S policy was to say, when we think the president
might be assassinated, we're just gonna pick some god, some
guy who needs a job. He doesn't have to look
like Joe Biden or whatever. He We're just gonna pick him.
We're gonna have him say the oath of office. We're
(23:08):
going to keep him there, you know, in the week
leading up to in the week after this eclipse happens,
and then we'll bring you know, the president out of
the bunker and will decommission this other guy. That's what's
literally happening. The idea of it being an honor I
think is accurate. I think people wanted to do this
(23:28):
because it was still an opportunity of sorts. We know
for sure that not all of the substitute kings and
queens you know, died during the eclipse. So how did
the priest class rationalize that. They probably just said, well,
close call, you know what I mean? Close call, yeah, exactly,
But unfortunately for them, they were gonna die either way,
(23:52):
right right right. The eclipse was not the cause. Well,
the eclipse was sort of the cause of their death,
but it wasn't the god that killed them. For a
brief time, the just the way the moon and the
sun were visible in the same place during an eclipse,
the substitute king and the true king existed. But once
(24:13):
that dangerous time had passed, Yes, the substitute kings were
killed by people, Okay, not by the gods. They were killed.
They had served their purpose. Uh, the true king came
out of his highi hole and the ritual was considered complete.
Everything proceeded as planned until astronomer's predicted or priests predicted
(24:37):
the next dangerous eclipse. This happened all the time. This was.
You know, this was real human sacrifice, and and there's
a political reason too. It's not it's like part of
the ritual to kill the substitute king and queen. But
the political reason is, you know, the king might be
(24:57):
willing to let somebody else take this heavenly bullet for him,
but he definitely doesn't want them around afterwards. The thing
about kings is you really only want one if you're
the current king, right, yeah, I mean, like even if,
even though it was all kind of just like for
show in theory, this person could make a claim that
(25:18):
they were the rightful king. And that's just too messy,
isn't it. So we'll make a different kind of mess,
you know, a slaughtery kind of mess. Yeah, you're get
into red wedding territory other big time, big time. But then,
like you said, Ben, the ritual is complete. Rinse and repeat,
rinse and repeat. We have two cases of the substitute
(25:39):
ritual in action. One might be just heads up a
little bit more legendary than factual. There's a surprising turn
of events where one of these substitutes managed to outlive
the king he was supposed to replace, and shout out
to Vintage News for this great story, as well as
the Conversation dot com. There's a there's a first millennium
(26:02):
composition that is known today as the Chronicle of Early Kings.
It's about a king of the city state of Estan,
which is uh in modern day. It's it's about a
d twenty five miles southeast of Baghdad, and the king
era emity was replaced by a gardener who was named
(26:22):
an ill Bonny, and this was part of a substitute
king ritual. But get this, Luckily for an ill Bonny
the gardener, the real king died after eating hot soup.
His official cause of death is sipping broth that was
too hot, And so the population of this city state said, well,
(26:45):
it's your lucky day, an ill body. Then the gardener
remained on the throne. He became the actual king. He
ruled for twenty four years. That guy had to be
very pro soup. But I ask you, whenever you read
stuff like this, don't you think it's poison, because it
has to assume it's poison. Yeah, it has to be.
I don't know that I've ever sipped a broth that
(27:08):
was so hot that I was afraid for my life.
But you know, maybe this person had a baby mouth,
you know, very very sensitive heat sensitive, you know, Palette. Yeah,
I mean, I'm not one to brag or toot my
own horn, but I've eaten my fair share of hot soup,
you know what I mean. And I'm not Maybe I'm
not dead because I'm not king of this. Maybe it's
(27:31):
true you're not. You can't argue with that. Then we
have another case of a young man named dom Qui
who was killed along with his queen Um during the
tenure of the ruler as har had On. I hope
I'm getting that somewhat right, who ruled from six to
six sixty nine in order to protect the Assyrian crown prince,
(27:54):
who has an amazing named Schuma Schumukin, who was at
the time the ruler of babel On our Babylonian territories
rather Um, which were part of the Assyrian Empire. Dom
Qui was a member of the Babylonian elite. He was
the son of a chief administrator of the temples, so
(28:14):
I guess this is like the building manager of these
holy temples in babylon Um and he had some powerful friends.
So it's just it just goes to show that even
people in higher classes or that were more well connected,
could be forced into this role of substitute king and
down qui Uh may have been selected in order to
(28:35):
make an example and strike fear into the hearts of
the Babylonian people who were not playing nice with the
Assyrian rulers. So this was a bit more of a
flex or like a you know, a political ploy to
kind of get people to bend the knee. Right. You know,
I've been thinking about it. You did agree a little
too readily that I was definitely not the king of
(28:58):
the city state of his and so I'm I elect
myself king of hot soup as another prize you should be.
So can I be the king of cartoons? Please? Please,
by all the kings all hail, And of course the
king of podcasts would be our own Casey Pagraham. Obviously,
(29:20):
it's interesting we see this mix of politics, religion, and astronomy.
It's a it's a very interesting csigy of its own right,
the way these three concepts line up. So we have
to ask ourselves why did the ritual die out? Let's
(29:41):
go back to Atlas Obscurrea. We have to look at
the mythology. So there's this pantheon of these moon thieves
in these giants, you know, love crafty and cosmic horror
monsters that want to eat the moon. The plague God
era brings doomed ancient Mesopotamia the Sibbett to march in
(30:03):
his wake. There are seven warrior demons that spread sickness
and death, and occasionally they all get together at a
party in the sky and blot out the moon. And
historians like John z we which is an awesome name,
speculates that these mythological creatures like the Sibitu may have
(30:24):
functioned as a way of absolving a moon associated king
of guilt. So why would you continue staging this elaborate
sacrifice ritual when you can just kind of tweak the
religious view to cast yourself as the victim of these
intermittent demons. It's a good question, Ben, Yeah, it's a
(30:46):
very good question. But it's interesting. I mean, eventually, remember
how we were saying how the Babylonians weren't really playing
nice with their Assyrian rulers. Well, eventually uh and the Assyrians, uh,
you know again, did this symbolic, you know, ritualistic murder
of one of the Babylonians higher class citizens sons. But
it turns out that there were lots of other folks
(31:08):
that had problems with the way the Assyrians went about
uh their ruling, and so the Babylonians lead up with
them and eventually exacted their revenge by joining forces and
destroying the empire in six twelve BC, when their combined
armies sacked the Assyrian palaces and essentially attempted to blot
(31:31):
out a lot of their history by smashing a lot
of the sculptures of these royals that were depicted on
the palace walls. They erased portraits that were done in
relief in some of these buildings as well, uh in NINEVAH.
Now you can see the results of this in the
museum's collection. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has an
(31:53):
incredible historical art collection, is one of my favorite places
in the world. I love museums. One of the only
things I miss about life for the pandemic, I used
to go to a museum. One of my three rules
to every place I travel is to visit any museum
they have their Never let a museum go unvisited if
you can help it. There's some amazing ones out grade. Ben,
(32:16):
did I tell you that I've got a trip planned? Uh?
Post COVID Right, You're going to Chicago, I think going
to Seattle in fact, uh and going to see the
Minecraft exhibit at the Museum of Pop Culture with my daughter,
and then we're gonna do some other you know, Seattle
the tourist things. But I'm really excited to get back
out on the road again. It's been too long. I
(32:38):
think we both feel that way. Yeah, I've actually I
don't want to disclose on air yet, but I've got
some weird ones coming up. I've got some weird ones
coming up, probably in summer. But safe travels there, Nolan.
I hope you enjoy the Minecraft exhibit. Uh. I hope
also that no one in the audience today has to
(32:59):
end up being substitute royalty. And although we still have
a lot to learn about the world and the space
in which the world moves, it's amazing to look back
on the progress our species has made and to know
that nowadays we can go enjoy an eclipse like at
our at our office over in Atlanta, there was a
(33:22):
solar eclipse and we were all able to take a
few hours off and go to the roof of this
ginormous office building and safely watch it with our special
eclipse glasses and everything with no fear that some sort
of monster beyond the stars was going to eat our sun.
So thank you science, and thank you Ancient Mesopotamia. And
(33:45):
thank you super producer Casey Pegram and Alex Williams, who
composed our theme Christopher has the otis here in spirit.
And thank you, of course to our guest producer Andrew Howard.
Thank you to our own King of re search, Gabe Louesier,
and thanks of course to our own mythological sun eating demon,
(34:07):
Jonathan Strickland, a k. The Quister. Do you think he's
more a sun eater or a moon eater? I don't know.
I thought you don't think he picks and shoes. I
think he eats all. He is the eater of worlds.
That guy. We'll have to have him on this show
again soon and it's not up to us, but it's
not at us. It's just happened us. So, folks, we
(34:29):
hope you enjoyed today's show. Again, we do have another
episode about a particular dark day coming up in the future.
Doue Tu into that and no, we also have some
surprise guests on the way in a bit we should do.
We'll keep that under our hats for now, but until then, UM,
may the sun forever be at your back. The wind.
(34:52):
I don't know which one it is, the sunshine. That's
the one, the sunshine. Let's see you next time. Books.
(35:20):
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
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