The Ancient Tradition: Audio Writ

In 1900, Depot Charlie, Chief of the Tituni-Joshua people—whose ancestral lands are situated in southern Oregon—narrated the creation story of his people to an anthropologist, who subsequently documented it in Volume 28 of the Journal of American Folklore.  The Tituni-Joshua people had significant interactions with European settlers in the late 1700s, though the extent to which these encounters shaped Chief Charlie's account r...

In the early 1900s, the creation account of the Native American Maidu people, whose ancestral lands are located in northern California in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, was documented in Volume 17 of the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. During the mid-19th century, amid the Gold Rush, the Maidu people had significant encounters with European settlers. The extent to which these interactions influenc...

The Esira Temple Text, known as Weld-Blundell 161, or "A Hymn of Eridu", is hailed by the distinguished British Assyriologist Stephen Langdon as a document of exceptional "theological, epigraphical, and philological" significance.  Discovered in the spring of 1922 by Weld Blundell of Queen's College, this cuneiform prism details the grandeur of a temple dedicated to the Sumerian god Enki, situated in Eridu,...

The Kesh Temple Hymn stands as one of humanity's oldest preserved literary treasures, originating in the city of Nippur nestled in ancient Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq. Unearthed by archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania during excavations in the 19th century, the hymn, inscribed on clay tablets, dates to the Early Dynastic IIIa period, circa 2600-2500 BCE.

The hymn's significance lies not only in its antiquit...

The Osiris myth was one of the most prominent and influential myths in ancient Egypt; it permeated virtually every aspect of ancient Egyptian life.  While a singular manuscript of the myth remains elusive, allusions to the myth are abundant in a number of ancient Egyptian sources including the Pyramid Texts, the Coffin Texts, and the Book of the Dead.  In the early 1900s, Scottish journalist and folklorist, Donald Alexander McKenzi...

In the Babylonian rendition of the Epic of Anzu, known as the Anzu Myth, drawn from tablets unearthed in the ancient Assyrian cities  Nineveh, Tabisu, and Sultantepe, dating to the 7th century BC, the tale recounts the exploits of Anzu, a fearsome creature with the body of a lion and the wings of an eagle.  Driven by a thirst for supremacy, the monster Anzu brazenly steals the Tablet of Destinies, the sacred emblem of kingship, fro...

In 1805, the British Museum acquired one of its first…and most important,
ancient Egyptian artifacts, the Shabaka Stone, an unassuming green breccia millstone. The inscription on the stone sat untranslated in the museum for nearly 100 years before American Egyptologist James Henry Breasted translated it into English in 1901. It was only then that Egyptologists realized the profound significance of what they had in their possess...

The Enuma Elish, also known as The Seven Tablets of Creation, is one of the oldest stories in the world.  Dated to between 1800 and 1600 B.C., this Babylonian creation myth gives an account of the creation of the world and the rise of the Babylonian gods.  The epic is included here for its rich symbolism, description of the pre-creative state of the universe,  its portrayal of the cosmic battle between order and disorder, and its e...

The Enuma Elish, also known as The Seven Tablets of Creation, is one of the oldest stories in the world.  Dated to between 1800 and 1600 B.C., this Babylonian creation myth gives an account of the creation of the world and the rise of the Babylonian gods.  The epic is included here for its rich symbolism, description of the pre-creative state of the universe,  its portrayal of the cosmic battle between order and disorder, and its e...

The Book of the Holy Secrets of Enoch,  a Jewish apocalyptic writing, is one of the most compelling ancient texts to survive to the present day.   Although knowledge of the book was unknown in the West until 1892, Slavonic manuscripts of the book survived in Russia for more than 1200 years.  Although not part of the Biblical canon today, R.H. Charles, editor of the first English translation (1896), noted that it was "much used...

The Book of the Holy Secrets of Enoch,  a Jewish apocalyptic writing, is one of the most compelling ancient texts to survive to the present day.   Although knowledge of the book was unknown in the West until 1892, Slavonic manuscripts of the book survived in Russia for more than 1200 years.  Although not part of the Biblical canon today, R.H. Charles, editor of the first English translation (1896), noted that it was "much used...

The Book of the Holy Secrets of Enoch,  a Jewish apocalyptic writing, is one of the most compelling ancient texts to survive to the present day.   Although knowledge of the book was unknown in the West until 1892, Slavonic manuscripts of the book survived in Russia for more than 1200 years.  Although not part of the Biblical canon today, R.H. Charles, editor of the first English translation (1896), noted that it was "much used...

The Book of the Holy Secrets of Enoch,  a Jewish apocalyptic writing, is one of the most compelling ancient texts to survive to the present day.   Although knowledge of the book was unknown in the West until 1892, Slavonic manuscripts of the book survived in Russia for more than 1200 years.  Although not part of the Biblical canon today, R.H. Charles, editor of the first English translation (1896), noted that it was "much used...

Hidden within the poetic verses of the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the world's oldest religious texts, are indispensable clues to the nature and origin of the world's earliest religious tradition- The Ancient Tradition.  Once you've given Tablet XI a listen, turn your ear to our sister podcast, The Ancient Tradition, where we reveal striking similarities in the ancient record- myths, cosmologies, theologies, and sacred...

Hidden within the poetic verses of the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the world's oldest religious texts, are indispensable clues to the nature and origin of the world's earliest religious tradition- The Ancient Tradition.  Once you've given Tablet X a listen, turn your ear to our sister podcast, The Ancient Tradition, where we reveal striking similarities in the ancient record- myths, cosmologies, theologies, and sacred ...

Hidden within the poetic verses of the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the world's oldest religious texts, are indispensable clues to the nature and origin of the world's earliest religious tradition- The Ancient Tradition.  Once you've given Tablet IX a listen, turn your ear to our sister podcast, The Ancient Tradition, where we reveal striking similarities in the ancient record- myths, cosmologies, theologies, and sacred...