The Drumbeat Forever After

(Re-recorded as of November 28, 2022)

Guest: Kelten

First, the warrior-prince of an orderly Sumerian heaven hears of a challenge to his authority and sets out to meet it with his obsequious talking mace.

Then, we begin our look at the agricultural revolution with a look at the domestication process that turned wild large-seeded grasses on the fringes of Epipaleolithic forests into domestic staple crops of large, complex societies. ...

(Re-recorded as of November 28, 2022)

Guest: Jojo

First, we sing the wrath of Telipinu, which brought down countless ills upon the mortal world and ruined dinner in Hittite heaven.

Then, we continue our tour of the northern Fertile Crescent (alias Upper Mesopotamia, alias southeastern Anatolia, alias western Kurdistan), stopping in three villages: Hallan Çemi (to look at early pig management), Aşıklı Höyük (early sheep & goat herdi...

(Re-recorded as of November 29, 2022)

Guest: Kelten

First, we look at the Hebrew Bible's narrative about the destruction of Jericho: the Israelites cross the Jordan, an angel alludes to Moses's first theophany, and Joshua orders his soldiers to kill every man, woman, & child in the city (except Rahab & her family) and destroy all their property (except their precious metals).

Then, we move southwest to Pre-Pottery Neolithic Palesti...

(Re-recorded as of November 29, 2022)

Guests: Annika, Kelten

First, some Sumerian proverbs about animals, including written language's first merciful lion and Mr. Monkey's plaintive cry to his mother Lusalusa. Pigs, foxes, donkeys, mongeese, elephants— they're just like us!

Then, we learn how foragers' attempts to manage wild herds gradually transformed into a lifestyle centered around domestic livestock, and how Neolithic hunters ...

(Re-recorded as of December 18, 2022)

Guests: Kirra, Victoria

First: Inanna, patron goddess of Unug, visits Enki in his hometown of Eridu and they start drinking. Will he make any ill-advised decisions vis-a-vis all the abstract concepts he's god of? Will he, having sobered up, send a cavalcade of mythical monsters after Inanna before she can get back home with all his stuff?

Then, an introduction to the Pottery Neolithic (or the C...

(Re-recorded as of December 18, 2022)

Guests: Kirra, Victoria

First, we continue the story of Inanna's descent to the underworld, from last episode. She's dead and hanging from a hook on a wall in hell, so her vizier Ninshubur takes charge of the rescue effort!

Then, we visit Sabi Abyad in northern Syria. What can this site cluster tell us about the state of Late Neolithic gender relations and political development?

Then, a look at...

(Re-recorded as of December 18, 2022)

Guests: Kirra, Victoria

First: Dumuzi, doomed by his wife Inanna to spend the rest of his life in the underworld, has a prophetic dream, and his sister Geshtinanna helps him interpret it. Can she save him from the galla-demons?

Then, we take a look at the entire Near East throughout the Pottery Neolithic, with a focus on the Halaf period (6250-5300 BCE), the period directly following the peak o...

(Re-recorded as of December 19, 2022)

Guests: Kirra, Sheila

First: Sumerian proverbs, encompassing both practical advice and obscure references to shepherds' staves. To stand and to sit, to spur on the donkeys, to support the prince: who has the breath for that?

Then, some Samarran towns in central Mesopotamia develop irrigation techniques to grow crops like flax outside the dry-farming belt. Before the end of the Neolithic, these ...

Guest: Annika

First, we visit the chronological beginning of Sumerian cosmology again. As soon as Enki transforms the Tigris-Euphrates alluvial plain into marshland, our two combatants make themselves at home and immediately start insulting each other.

Then, an introduction to the Ubaid period in southern Mesopotamia (ca 6500-4200 BCE), specifically its climate and wetland ecosystem.

Then, we visit Tell el-Awayli (or Oueili, or Uwa...

Guests: Kelsey, Michaela

First, Enki, patron god of Eridu, creates the world, invents agriculture, blesses foreign lands, and produces the Tigris and the Euphrates as part of an extremely convoluted and mildly unsettling metaphor.

Then, a look at the Ubaid material culture, including pottery and figurines. Also, just for fun, head-shaping!

Then, we return to Eridu, the first city in Sumerian legendary history, and possibly the olde...

Guest: Annika

First, we start with the Sumerian flood story (which later inspired the flood stories in the Bible and the Epic of Gilgamesh), pieced together from fragmentary tablets. What does this have to do with the Arabian Neolithic?

Then, we meet the shepherds & fishers of the Arabian Neolithic during the Holocene Humid Period, living amidst forests, grasslands, rivers, and inland lakes large enough to support herds of hipp...

Guest: Kelsey

First, we meet the moon god Nanna-Suen (alias Sin, alias Ashimbabbar), as he prepares to journey from Ur upriver to the city of his father Enlil.

Then, a brief look at the Halaf culture (early-mid 5000s BCE) in late Neolithic upper Mesopotamia, which managed to avoid social hierarchy and wealth inequality millennia after developing agriculture and herding. How did they do it?

Then, the southern Ubaid culture reaches t...

Guest: Kelten

First, one of the common soldiers at Troy tells Agamemnon what everyone else is thinking and Odysseus threatens to smack him upside the head for it.

Then, in our last episode of Season One, we visit one of the other most famous cities in Mesopotamia. Unug, alias Uruk, alias Erech, alias Warka, home to Gilgamesh and Inanna and the biblical Nimrod, will be the world's largest city throughout the late 4th millennium BCE,...

Guest: Matt

I actually have recorded a myth for this one, but I haven’t edited it yet. Stay tuned for “Enki & Ninhursanga”, with listener Matt!

This episode kicks off Season Two with an all-new (as of Nov 2024) look at the Early Uruk period (ca 4200-3800 BCE). We start in Eridu, where we have the monumental stump of what must have been a very impressive temple, forcing us to look at a smaller and less important building that fi...

Guest: Kelsey

First, Inanna sets her mind to capturing the House of Heaven (that is, the E-anna) from her father, the sky-god An, after including it on her wedding registry proved too subtle of a request.

Then, we visit Susiana, the alluvial plain just east of the Ubaid homeland, just in time to see the foundation of Susa (modern Shush— it's had the same name for five millennia) and its first heyday (ca 4200-4000 BCE). They built a...

Guest: Annika

First, Antigone gets caught burying her brother, a foolish judge arraigns her folly, and we wonder whether the good might actually desire a like portion with the evil.

Then, we visit Tell Brak in northeastern Syria (most famous for its "eye idols"), as it becomes southwest Asia's first city and the world's largest settlement (130 hectares, maybe as many as 24,000 people) in the early 4th millennium BCE. What did clima...

Guest: Kelten

First: Our hero Enmerkar, grandson of the sun-god Utu, demands tribute (in the form of labor and precious minerals) from the anonymous lord of faraway Aratta, with the blessing of his lover (and Utu's sister), the goddess Inanna.

Then, we kick off our mini-series on the Uruk expansion, a process of intensive economic and cultural interaction between the Sumerian plain and its neighbors to the north and east. We can’t ...

Guest: Kelten

First: the lord of Aratta devises a series of challenges to demonstrate his superiority over our hero Enmerkar, the august king of Unug, who casually invents written language two-thirds of the way through the story. Can he outsmart his nemesis in the mountains? Or, at the very least, ignore his specifications and send him something else entirely?

Then, we continue our mini-series on the Uruk expansion, focusing on the...