September 7, 2023 • 30 mins
Louise discusses Ishtar, one of the most enigmatic and fascinating deities of the ancient Middle East. What characteristics were assigned to her, and what stories were told about her? What happened when Ishtar met Gilgamesh? Louise also discusses the reception of Ishtar and Gilgamesh. What do people find interesting about them now? She explains how being based in Australia influences her research.
1:56 how many Ishtars are there?
3:20 male or female?
5:11 Ishtar in myths
7:38 Ishtar as the archetypal or impossible woman
10:52 Ishtar and the king
12:34 popular reactions to Ishtar
14:03 hot take on Gilgamesh
17:00 Australian context for research
19:08 sharing research widely
20:12 what's popular about assyriology?
23:42 sources for the popular Ishtar
26:13 what's new for you?
Louise's university page
Louise's book on Ishtar
Louise's book on Gilgamesh
Louise's book on Wind
Louise's Academia page
Louise's Instagram: @louloveshistory
Music by Ruba Hillawi
Website: http://wedgepod.org
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSM7ZlAAgOXv4fbTDRyrWgw
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jon Taylor (00:13):
Hello, and welcome to the Thin End of the Wedge.
The podcast where experts fromaround the world share new and
interesting stories about lifein the ancient Middle East. My
name is Jon. Each episode I talkto friends and colleagues and
get them to explain their workin a way we can all understand.
Ishtar is the embodiment of allsorts of contradictions and
(00:35):
complexities. Is she one goddessor a bundle of many? Is she
male, female, both, or neither?
She is the model oftransgression, but also central
to the structures of power.
Where does she appear in modernpopular culture, and what does
(00:56):
she mean to us now?
This remarkable goddess crossedpaths with the most famous
figure of all from ancientIraq--the hero Gilgamesh, who
himself was a complex character.
How did that meeting go?
Our guest as published books oneach of these figures. She
(01:18):
guides us through the manyaspects of Ishtar and Gilgamesh,
in antiquity, and in the modernworld.
So get yourself a cup of tea.
Make yourself comfortable. Andlet's meet today's guest
(01:39):
Hello, and welcome to Thin Endof the Wedge. Thank you for
joining us.
Louise Pryke (01:42):
Thank you so much for having me, Jon.
Jon Taylor (01:44):
Could you tell us please
you do?
Louise Pryke (01:49):
I am Dr. Louise Pryke and I am an assyiologist
based in Sydney, Australia.
Jon Taylor (01:56):
Okay, so today we're going to talk about a few
things. The first topic isIshtar. Now, you wrote a book
about the goddess a few yearsago. And of course there are
different issues worshipped overmany centuries in the ancient
Middle East. My first questionreally is how many Ishtars are
there?
Louise Pryke (02:15):
Right. So it's a good question, but I think it's
one that's one of thoseimpossible to answer properly
ones, because we probably don'thave enough information. But I
think that why people tend toask "How many Ishtars are
there?" is because she is such amajor figure in the Mesopotamian
pantheon. But she has differenttexts that talk about Ishtar
(02:38):
tend to focus on different partsof her. And also there's that
major syncretism between Ishtarand Inanna from Sumerian
sources. And people kind ofwonder, you know, where are the
lines blurring between them? Buteven also with Ishtar, you have
like Ishtar of Nineveh andIshtar of Arbela. And there have
(02:59):
been scholars who have suggestedthat these sort of local
surnames suggest entirelydifferent deities. And then
you've got other scholars whosort of tread the other line,
who sort of look at them as allbeing related to one another. So
it's a complicated question, butI think that it just reflects a
very complex deity.
Jon Taylor (03:20):
Okay. There are cases when Ishtar seems to have
a beard. Is there a male Ishtarand a female Ishtar? Or is there
something else happening there?
Louise Pryke (03:28):
Oh, that's another tricky one. And again, it's a
question where I think Ishtar isthe kind of deity that tends to
court controversy. And so thereare some scholars who view the
beard as suggesting a certainamount of androgyny with the
deity; that she may have a malepersona, as well. And she may at
(03:50):
times embody male and femalegenders, which is amazing, and
obviously a very richscholarship there.
But then there's other peoplewho tend to see the beard as
being like a sign of wisdom,that doesn't necessarily reflect
anything about her gender. Soit's a little bit complicated,
(04:11):
and I think we don't really haveenough evidence to know for
sure. There are times thatIshtar is described doing things
in a masculine way; sort ofleading a ball in a masculine
sense. And there's other timeswhere she speaks ... well Inanna
speaks in love poetry about thesort of more female parts of her
(04:32):
anatomy. So sort of her breastsand her vulva and so forth. So
yeah, I think that there's a lotto talk about with Ishtar and
gender. And there's a lot moreto discover.
But one thing that I think isreally interesting about
Ishtar's reception, which wemight talk about a little bit
later on, her reception moregenerally, is that she seems to
(04:55):
have been having a little bit ofa resurgence in the trans
community, who have embraced herfor the way that she can sort of
encompass and sort of bridgebetween different genders. And I
think that's a reallyinteresting new way of looking
at the goddess.
Jon Taylor (05:11):
Uh-hmm. Ishtar is actually relatively popular.
She's one of the few charactersfrom Mesopotamian mythology that
people may have heard of. Couldyou tell us about some of the
key stories about her and whatthey mean; what we learn from
these stories?
Louise Pryke (05:26):
Yeah, she is super popular in the ancient world,
largely unknown in the modernworld. {LAUGHS} But in the
ancient world there's just somany myths about Ishtar and
about Inanna. Obviously, the twomost well-known ones would be
the Epic of Gilgamesh, where sheturns up as being something of
an antagonistic character. Whereshe and Gilgamesh just, I mean,
(05:48):
it's sort of kismet on Ishtar'sside, but not so much for
Gilgamesh, who rejects her quitefamously.
And then we've got Ishtar'sDescent to the Netherworld. It's
such a great myth. And there'sbeen a lot that's been done on
it. And I think that there'sgoing to always be something new
to be said about that myth. Soshe sort of journeys to the
underworld, and tries to usurpher sister, Ereshkigal, and
(06:13):
still manages to come out on topin the end. But then there's a
few other myths that I thinkaren't perhaps as well-known,
but still a really richterritory for thinking about.
And one of my favourite mythsabout Inanna to research, and
also to talk about withstudents, is Inanna and
Shukaletuda, where the goddessis sleeping in a garden, and
(06:37):
then she's sexually assaulted bya gardener. And the text has
some really interesting thingsto say about his capacity as a
gardener, and none of it's veryflattering. And then she comes
around and realises somethingterrible has occurred. And then
she goes on this amazing huntfor vengeance, and sends these
(07:01):
plagues against the land. Andthen one of them's like a dust
storm and one's like a river ofblood. So you've got one of your
water-to-blood motifs, which wesee have quite a wide currency
in the ancient Near East. Andthen you've got her sending like
a traffic jam, which wasobviously considered to be very
unpleasant in the ancient world,as it is now. Eventually, she
hunts him down and hides awayfrom her. And then it's really
(07:24):
amazing. The text describes heras kind of, she becomes really
large, she sort of stretches outabove him like a rainbow, and he
becomes really small. Yeah. Andthen she gets her revenge, which
I just think is such aninteresting story.
Jon Taylor (07:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So perhaps that is the next
question. We tend to picturewomen in the ancient Middle East
as living quite tightlycontrolled lives. Ishtar as a
goddess seems to embody malefears about female behaviour. At
the same time, she is revered asa character who not only
embodies opposites andtransgresses boundaries, but she
(08:00):
is responsible for thosefeatures of life. In other
words, she's, she's meant totransgress boundaries. Is she a
representation of the humanfemale population? Or of what
they couldn't and shouldn't do?
How do we see her? What is themeaning of Ishtar?
Louise Pryke (08:16):
I think that it's a big question, because you're
always going to run into thatdebate of how much of a goddess
can be considered to be similarto a mortal woman. Like, should
we even consider them to be sortof god women? Obviously, they're
depicted anthropomorphically.
But then they do things thattend not to be ... you know,
most humans don't go to theunderworld; most of them can't
(08:36):
conjure rivers of blood and soforth. So there's obviously a
little bit of human and a littlebit of the divine in her
portrayal. And so then thequestion is, "How much of that
human side can we say isreflecting the lives of ancient
Mesopotamian women?" Becausewouldn't it be exciting if it
could tell us some things aboutgender dynamics in the ancient
(08:57):
Near East?
And I think that with Ishtar,you're right, she is
transgressive. And I think thatthat's one of her defining
characteristics is that she's soambitious. You know, she's
trying to steal the underworldfrom her sister. There's, I
think there's one point whereshe's trying to steal the
heavens from An. She's alwaysafter a little bit more than
(09:19):
she's meant to have.
But at the same time, I do thinkthat there is a lot you can see
about ... particularly in thelove of poetry, I think, you
really get that sense of what itmust have been like to be a
young woman about to getmarried. You know, you hear a
lot of the excitement from herperspective and her close
relationship with her mother.
And her fiance is kind of tryingto say "Don't listen to your
(09:42):
mother. We should hang outmore." So I think we do think
about women in the Middle Eastis living very restricted lives
in terms of agency, but at thesame time, there's aspects of
Ishtar's life that I think arereflected in the historical
reality. Even some of the moreout there aspects, like she has
(10:02):
a role in arranging her ownmarriage in some literature. And
apparently, according to somelegal scholars, some women have
had that capacity in the ancientNear East as well.
But I do think that it dependsvery much on which women we're
talking about. And when. And Ithink that Bahrani would have
(10:24):
said to us that it's very hardto talk about a specific woman,
when we're talking about so manydifferent periods and so many
different levels of status oversuch a long period of time,
around 2000 years. So surely,she can tell us about some
women. {LAUGHS} But again, Ithink we're always going to be
(10:47):
limited by having a deity isalways going to make us have a
little bit of a caveat about howfar we can push it.
Jon Taylor (10:55):
everyone. And she's revered, also by the kings of
Assyria, for example, she's verymuch part of the official cult.
She's embraced in that sense. Socould you maybe say something
about that? What does she meanto the king?
Louise Pryke (11:16):
Yes. Oh, she means everything to the king. And the
king means everything to her.
Her relationship with the kingis really one of the most stable
and consistent elements of herimage in all kinds of things. In
art and all different kinds ofliterary genres. Because when I
was trying to write aboutIshtar, because there's so much
complexity. I think it wasThorkild Jacobsen who was
(11:37):
saying, you know, she's allwomen in an infinite variety. I
was like, that's great. Can wetry and like make it a little
bit more coherent, just so thebook makes a bit more sense?
And one of the most usefulthings was her relationship with
the king. Because it really tiesall her different elements
together. When she is warlike,she's often warlike on behalf of
(12:00):
the king. You know, she goes tobattle in front of him. When she
is in love, there's all ofthese, you know, sacred marriage
hymns, where she's gettingmarried to the king and
expressing her love for him.
When she is using her healingcapacity, or giving life, again,
we see that being bestowed tothe king. And then her close
connection to death is somethingthat she's able to ... that bond
(12:23):
that she has with the king isable to transcend even that. So
I would say that herrelationship with the king is
right at the heart of her image.
Jon Taylor (12:34):
Okay, what has the reaction to your book been? Is
it mean, I guess you'retargeting really there a wider
reading audience. What have theymade of this peculiar character?
Louise Pryke (12:45):
Well, that's a very good question. I think that
Ishtar leaves people a littlebit bewildered. {LAUGHS} But I
think that there is a lot ofinterest in her ability to be
transgressive, and to push pastboundaries, and to also reflect
(13:06):
this ancient powerful goddess,that is perhaps a little bit
something that has beenunderstood in a way that maybe
doesn't do justice to theancient evidence. I think that
our understanding of Ishtar hasbeen very much distorted
through, say, the biblical lens.
And I think that there's been alot of focus on her sexuality at
(13:27):
the expense of I think more ofher, I wouldn't say, more
interesting. {LAUGHS} Thatwouldn't be fair. I wouldn't say
to her more interestingqualities, but I would just say
that there's more to Ishtar thansex. And I hope that that's what
people understand when they readthe book. And also they get a
(13:48):
sense of ... when I read a book,and I really, really like it,
what I like is to see all theways that I could then think of
new research topics, and that'swhat I would like people to get
out of reading my book.
Jon Taylor (14:01):
Uh-hmm. Okay, interesting. So, moving on then
to a new research topic. Youmentioned earlier, the
intersection between Ishtar andthe most famous character from
Mesopotamia--Gilgamesh. You'vealso worked on Gilgamesh. So can
I ask, what's your take onGilgamesh?
Louise Pryke (14:19):
Look, my hot take on Gilgamesh is that he is the
And then he meets Ishtar. Andobviously, if he's going to be a
king that shows you how not todo it. {LAUGHS} If you wanted
to know how not to be aMesopotamian king, then look no
further than Gilgamesh, becausehe is the king who does
good Mesopotamian king, then heneeds to love Ishtar and treat
everything wrong. But he ismeant to be the person who is
the mediator between the humansand the divine. That's the
her really well. Why? Becauseotherwise, she will curse
(14:41):
king's role in Mesopotamianreligion. It's a very important
role. It's very important forcosmic balance and all sorts of
things. But instead he is atyrant. And the humans actually
circumnavigate him and gostraight to the temple and say
"You've got to do somethingabout this guy." And so
straightaway, we're aware thatthings are not going quite
(15:04):
right. And then when he runsinto ... well, then he goes to
the cedar forest. And, you know,he cuts down the trees, which
are sacred. And he kills thesacred forest guardian.
(15:27):
everyone. {LAUGHS} And so, no,but does he do that? No, he
insults her. He calls her adrafty back door, and a shoe
that bites the foot of itsowner. {LAUGHS} And obviously,
that doesn't go well. She getsvery angry, and there's a giant
earthquake, people die. And so... {LAUGHS} You can just see
(15:48):
that I think there's a lot ofhumour to how Gilgamesh is
portrayed. But I also thinkthere's a lot of sympathy to how
he's portrayed in the text. It'sincredibly sophisticated
literature. But at the end, he'sa man that learns the
limitations of mortality, andalso how to be a better king.
And he learns that through hisrelationship with Utanapishtim.
Jon Taylor (16:09):
Would you say then, this is a kind of guide book
for, you know, young rulers? Aprince growing up in the palace,
you tell him the story ofGilgamesh, and he, you can
imagine it, you know, "When Igrow up, I'm going to do this
and I'm going to be bigger andfaster and stronger. And I'm
going to, ..." You know,everything's a bit more extreme.
And perhaps the point of thestory is to teach him the limits
of royal power and theconsequences of action. Do you
(16:31):
think that's part of the reasonfor this story?
Louise Pryke (16:33):
Yeah, absolutely.
Apparently, there's a MiddleEastern genre, I think it's
called a mirror for princes,where stories are told from, you
know, the older male to theyounger male to sort of prepare
them for leadership. And thereis some sense that I talked
about a little bit in myGilgamesh book about how the
relationship between Gilgameshand Utanapishtim tends to follow
this mirror of the princes kindof style. So yeah, I think in
(16:55):
some ways, it could definitelybe a didactic story.
Jon Taylor (17:00):
Okay, so we move on to a slightly different topic.
You're an Australian, and you'recurrently at the University of
Sydney, right? So Australia,isn't one of the traditional big
players in ancient West AsianStudies.
Louise Pryke (17:16):
That's true.
Jon Taylor (17:17):
Can I ask how that context shapes your research?
How do you choose to work onIshtar and Gilgamesh, say? How
Louise Pryke (17:24):
Look, it's had a very formative effect on my
does that work?
research. As you say, there'snot that many Australian
assyriologists. I have acolleague from South America,
and every now and then we bumpinto each other at conferences.
{LAUGHS} I can marvel at thefact that there's other people
(17:44):
that are studying assyriology aswell. We get very excited about
being at internationalconferences. But yes, I think
that what it's done is made mefocus a little bit more on the
big picture.
And I think that I kind of haveto do that, because there's so
little assyriology in Australiathat I tend to end up teaching
(18:07):
... I mean, I've sort of taughta lot of Biblical studies, I
teach a lot in the classicalworld, I've taught a lot of
ancient languages. And all ofthat, it's been really useful in
broadening my perspective. Sothat's been, I think, really
useful. And I think that thatshows, in my work, because I'm
constantly bumping intoscholars, not in Australia with
(18:28):
my colleagues, obviously, butscholarship, where in the
classical world, or Biblicalstudies, where I'm constantly
bumping into views that I thinkcould use a little bit more
engagement with our field.
{LAUGHS} A little bit moreup-to-dating in our field, I
would even hazard to say. And sothat makes me think, okay, we
(18:49):
need to establish more of thegeneral areas of assyriology,
and make them more accessiblefor other scholars. So that we
can have this wonderfultranscultural dialogue, which
was happening in the ancientworld, and we can still be
having it now, if we all read alittle bit of each other's work.
Jon Taylor (19:08):
Yeah, I mean, that is one of the bigger themes for
assyriology, if you want to callit that. You know, it's a fairly
young, small field. Verydynamic. Lots of exciting
research. But we do struggle alittle bit to share that
research with the widercommunity.
Louise Pryke (19:23):
True.
Jon Taylor (19:23):
You know, you don't get academic credit in the
university system for ... it'snot quite outreach, is it? But
the wider dissemination ofresearch. That tends not to be
how the reward system works.
What do you think about thatsituation? What are the
opportunities for us?
Louise Pryke (19:39):
I think that it has ... our field has tended to
have quite a heavy balance onthe side of very technical
works. And I can understand whythat kind of has to be. As you
say, as a new field, kind offinding its limits and
establishing itself in a reallyrigorous manner. But at the same
(20:01):
time, I do worry that we're,that we're sort of wandering off
so far in out technicaldirection that we may be leaving
everyone else behind. {LAUGHS}And so I think it's good to have
a balance of both if possible.
Jon Taylor (20:12):
Yeah. Okay. When you talk to students or members of
the public, what do you findthat they're most interested in?
What are the bits of your workor the work of assyriology that
people outside the field tend topick up on?
Louise Pryke (20:27):
Ah, well, I think that people get excited about
cuneiform writing. Because it'sso ancient, and it's just cool.
It's just really, really cool.
It looks cool. It's interestingto learn. And there's so much
literature out there once you'velearned it. So I think people
find that exciting. As well asthat, young women, when I teach
(20:49):
topics like Ishtar, tend to getvery excited about these sort of
early go-getting goddesses. AndI think that's wonderful. And
then I think the thing that mostpeople get really excited about
in terms of more generalaudiences are just the extreme
antiquity of the material thatwe deal with, and its
(21:12):
sophistication. And how much ithas to tell us about the human
condition. How much of it isstill universal, while being
distinctive? I think people findthat very exciting.
Jon Taylor (21:25):
Yeah, I wonder if we could push a little more on this
question. So you're alsointerested in reception aren't
you? And then in your Ishtarbook, you have a whole chapter
talking about Ishtar in modernfilm and TV. And a lot of that
was new to me. Could you tell usa little bit about that? Where
does she crop up? And whataspects of Ishtar does a modern
audience find interesting?
Louise Pryke (21:46):
That is an interesting question and an
interesting area of scholarship.
Ishtar turns up in a bunch ofdifferent places that you
wouldn't necessarily expect. Oneof them is she turns up in
Marvel Comics. I think she turnsup in one of the early Conan the
Barbarian comics from like,1974. What's interesting about
(22:07):
this, I've become quite a fan ofcomics since I started doing
reception. Because before that,I didn't take them that
seriously. But I really learnedthat these guys who write comic
books, they know their history.
And a lot of them are even, youknow, history teaching
(22:28):
professionals who have thenmoved into comics.
which I thought was quiteremarkable. But then you find
things that are a little bitless accurate. And there seems
to be a real association ofIshtar with Egypt, and also with
the deity Moloch, which I don'tunderstand. But I think the
(22:50):
Moloch thing might come throughthe Bible, because I think that
they are both related toapostasy in the Bible. And so I
think people sort of draw a bitof an association that, as far
as I'm aware, didn't exist, butwe can always learn. And then
the Egypt thing, I'm just notquite sure. I think it's got
something to do with Near Eastand the boundaries are blurred.
But she does turn up,interestingly, in works of ...
(23:14):
she doesn't have a strongreception, I would say as other
characters might have. I mean,you know, Aphrodite is
everywhere. But Ishtar we see alot of in works with a lot of
fantasy elements. So that can behorror, or it can be science
fiction. And I have a kind oftheory that maybe these
audiences are a little bit moremyth literate, and therefore,
(23:36):
you're able to use slightly moreobscure myths, and they will
still keep up with you. That'smy theory.
Jon Taylor (23:42):
That's quite interesting. I wonder if we loop
back to an earlier part of ourconversation about the books for
wider dissemination? So theseguys making these comic books
feature Ishtar, what sources arethey using? How did they
actually find out about thisrelatively obscure deity? Who is
it? Is it Kramer or Jacobsen?
Or?
Louise Pryke (24:03):
Wow, I should really know the answer. {LAUGHS}
I should know the answer tothis, because I actually
interviewed one of them. And hehad studied I think Kramer and
Jacobsen back in the day, whenhe was preparing for history
teaching. And so obviously, youcan get a lot out of that. And
yeah, I think that those tend tobe the sources. But at the same
(24:24):
time, I mean, they always havethe artistic license. I don't
know if you're aware ofGilgamesh as the ... he's a
Marvel Avenger. Like, I mean, Iknow he is now with the film.
But he was also in some of theCaptain American comics in the
very early period. And he andCaptain America tend to have
these like, adventures. It'salmost like Captain America
(24:48):
becomes Enkidu. And they go allthe way back to ancient
Mesopotamia. And they even divedeep down into the ocean, where
they search for the herb ofrenewed youth, the
amurdinnu-plant. It's quiteremarkable how familiar they are
with the Epic. And I just thinkthat it's shows not only the
(25:09):
quality of the people that arewriting the comics, but also the
expectations of the audience whoare informed and will write and
say "that's not right", if theyget it wrong. {LAUGHS}
Jon Taylor (25:20):
That's quite interesting. I must admit, I
haven't seen the Eternals yet. Ihaven't quite built up my
strength for that. But I guessthat you've seen it?
Louise Pryke (25:28):
I did see it. And I was the happiest nerd in the
cinema. It was soexciting.{LAUGHS} My students
sort of said, "It's not reallythat good, is it?" And okay,
maybe it's not as great as Ithought it was. But if you love
this kind of history, then justseeing things like the Ishtar
Gate on screen, it's veryexciting.
Jon Taylor (25:49):
Yeah. Okay, I'm going to schedule it. It'll come
to the top of my list. I will doit now.
Louise Pryke (25:54):
You're gonna give it a go? {LAUGHS} Amazing!
I got a new comic the other day,which was actually an Archie
comic. And I think it's from the1960s. But Archie goes back to
Babylon. And it's all aboutBabylonian history. I'm very
curious to see what hisadventures will be.{LAUGHS}
Jon Taylor (26:13):
OK, excellent. I'll loop back on this one. So
perhaps a final question. Whatare you working on now? What's
next for you after all of this?
Louise Pryke (26:23):
Well, I'm currently writing. I just had a
book come out on the culturalhistory of wind. So it's kind of
wind, even before prehistory,all the way through to popular
culture. It's like a naturalhistory of wind, but also the
deification of wind, and wind inEnuma Elish. All kinds of
(26:44):
aspects of wind, which was areally interesting project,
which I'm quite excited about.
But my next book, I'm kind of ona bit of an ecological bent at
the moment, because I am nowdoing a book on ancient
eco-thrillers. And I'm trying towrite about how people in the
ancient Near East, including inbiblical literature, wrote about
(27:05):
environmental catastrophes andwhat that can tell us about how
they understood theirenvironment.
Jon Taylor (27:15):
Oh, wonderful. When does that come out?
Louise Pryke (27:17):
Well, the manuscript is due in October
next year. {LAUGHS} So let's seehow that goes.
Jon Taylor (27:25):
Right, okay, well good luck with that. And thank
you very much indeed.
Louise Pryke (27:30):
Thanks, Jon.
Jon Taylor (27:32):
I'd also like to thank our patrons. Enrique
Jimenez, Jana Matuszak, NancyHighcock, Jay C, Rune
Rattenborg, Woodthrush, ElisaRossberger, Mark Weeden, Jordi
Mon Companys, Thomas Bolin, JoanPorter MacIver, John MacGinnis,
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Gordin, Aaron Macks, MaarjaSeire, Jaafar Jotheri, Morgan
Hite, Chikako Watanabe, MarkMcElwaine, Jonathan Blanchard
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Gross, Claire Weir, MarcVeldman, Bruno Biermann, Faimon
Roberts, Jason Moser, PavlaRosenstein, Müge
Durusu-Tanrıöver, Tate Paulette,Willis Monroe, Toby Wickenden,
Emmert Clevenstine, BarbaraPorter, as well as those who
(28:39):
prefer to remain anonymous.
I really appreciate yoursupport. It makes a big
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(28:59):
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For Turkish, thank you to PinarDurgun and Nesrin Akan. TEW is
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you’ll join us next time.
Hello, and welcome to the Thin End of the Wedge.
The podcast where experts fromaround the world share new and
interesting stories about lifein the ancient Middle East. My
name is Jon. Each episode I talkto friends and colleagues and
get them to explain their workin a way we can all understand.
Ishtar is the embodiment of allsorts of contradictions and
(00:35):
complexities. Is she one goddessor a bundle of many? Is she
male, female, both, or neither?
She is the model oftransgression, but also central
to the structures of power.
Where does she appear in modernpopular culture, and what does
(00:56):
she mean to us now?
This remarkable goddess crossedpaths with the most famous
figure of all from ancientIraq--the hero Gilgamesh, who
himself was a complex character.
How did that meeting go?
Our guest as published books oneach of these figures. She
(01:18):
guides us through the manyaspects of Ishtar and Gilgamesh,
in antiquity, and in the modernworld.
So get yourself a cup of tea.
Make yourself comfortable. Andlet's meet today's guest
(01:39):
Hello, and welcome to Thin Endof the Wedge. Thank you for
joining us.
Louise Pryke (01:42):
Thank you so much for having me, Jon.
Jon Taylor (01:44):
Could you tell us please
you do?
Louise Pryke (01:49):
I am Dr. Louise Pryke and I am an assyiologist
based in Sydney, Australia.
Jon Taylor (01:56):
Okay, so today we're going to talk about a few
things. The first topic isIshtar. Now, you wrote a book
about the goddess a few yearsago. And of course there are
different issues worshipped overmany centuries in the ancient
Middle East. My first questionreally is how many Ishtars are
there?
Louise Pryke (02:15):
Right. So it's a good question, but I think it's
one that's one of thoseimpossible to answer properly
ones, because we probably don'thave enough information. But I
think that why people tend toask "How many Ishtars are
there?" is because she is such amajor figure in the Mesopotamian
pantheon. But she has differenttexts that talk about Ishtar
(02:38):
tend to focus on different partsof her. And also there's that
major syncretism between Ishtarand Inanna from Sumerian
sources. And people kind ofwonder, you know, where are the
lines blurring between them? Buteven also with Ishtar, you have
like Ishtar of Nineveh andIshtar of Arbela. And there have
(02:59):
been scholars who have suggestedthat these sort of local
surnames suggest entirelydifferent deities. And then
you've got other scholars whosort of tread the other line,
who sort of look at them as allbeing related to one another. So
it's a complicated question, butI think that it just reflects a
very complex deity.
Jon Taylor (03:20):
Okay. There are cases when Ishtar seems to have
a beard. Is there a male Ishtarand a female Ishtar? Or is there
something else happening there?
Louise Pryke (03:28):
Oh, that's another tricky one. And again, it's a
question where I think Ishtar isthe kind of deity that tends to
court controversy. And so thereare some scholars who view the
beard as suggesting a certainamount of androgyny with the
deity; that she may have a malepersona, as well. And she may at
(03:50):
times embody male and femalegenders, which is amazing, and
obviously a very richscholarship there.
But then there's other peoplewho tend to see the beard as
being like a sign of wisdom,that doesn't necessarily reflect
anything about her gender. Soit's a little bit complicated,
(04:11):
and I think we don't really haveenough evidence to know for
sure. There are times thatIshtar is described doing things
in a masculine way; sort ofleading a ball in a masculine
sense. And there's other timeswhere she speaks ... well Inanna
speaks in love poetry about thesort of more female parts of her
(04:32):
anatomy. So sort of her breastsand her vulva and so forth. So
yeah, I think that there's a lotto talk about with Ishtar and
gender. And there's a lot moreto discover.
But one thing that I think isreally interesting about
Ishtar's reception, which wemight talk about a little bit
later on, her reception moregenerally, is that she seems to
(04:55):
have been having a little bit ofa resurgence in the trans
community, who have embraced herfor the way that she can sort of
encompass and sort of bridgebetween different genders. And I
think that's a reallyinteresting new way of looking
at the goddess.
Jon Taylor (05:11):
Uh-hmm. Ishtar is actually relatively popular.
She's one of the few charactersfrom Mesopotamian mythology that
people may have heard of. Couldyou tell us about some of the
key stories about her and whatthey mean; what we learn from
these stories?
Louise Pryke (05:26):
Yeah, she is super popular in the ancient world,
largely unknown in the modernworld. {LAUGHS} But in the
ancient world there's just somany myths about Ishtar and
about Inanna. Obviously, the twomost well-known ones would be
the Epic of Gilgamesh, where sheturns up as being something of
an antagonistic character. Whereshe and Gilgamesh just, I mean,
(05:48):
it's sort of kismet on Ishtar'sside, but not so much for
Gilgamesh, who rejects her quitefamously.
And then we've got Ishtar'sDescent to the Netherworld. It's
such a great myth. And there'sbeen a lot that's been done on
it. And I think that there'sgoing to always be something new
to be said about that myth. Soshe sort of journeys to the
underworld, and tries to usurpher sister, Ereshkigal, and
(06:13):
still manages to come out on topin the end. But then there's a
few other myths that I thinkaren't perhaps as well-known,
but still a really richterritory for thinking about.
And one of my favourite mythsabout Inanna to research, and
also to talk about withstudents, is Inanna and
Shukaletuda, where the goddessis sleeping in a garden, and
(06:37):
then she's sexually assaulted bya gardener. And the text has
some really interesting thingsto say about his capacity as a
gardener, and none of it's veryflattering. And then she comes
around and realises somethingterrible has occurred. And then
she goes on this amazing huntfor vengeance, and sends these
(07:01):
plagues against the land. Andthen one of them's like a dust
storm and one's like a river ofblood. So you've got one of your
water-to-blood motifs, which wesee have quite a wide currency
in the ancient Near East. Andthen you've got her sending like
a traffic jam, which wasobviously considered to be very
unpleasant in the ancient world,as it is now. Eventually, she
hunts him down and hides awayfrom her. And then it's really
(07:24):
amazing. The text describes heras kind of, she becomes really
large, she sort of stretches outabove him like a rainbow, and he
becomes really small. Yeah. Andthen she gets her revenge, which
I just think is such aninteresting story.
Jon Taylor (07:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So perhaps that is the next
question. We tend to picturewomen in the ancient Middle East
as living quite tightlycontrolled lives. Ishtar as a
goddess seems to embody malefears about female behaviour. At
the same time, she is revered asa character who not only
embodies opposites andtransgresses boundaries, but she
(08:00):
is responsible for thosefeatures of life. In other
words, she's, she's meant totransgress boundaries. Is she a
representation of the humanfemale population? Or of what
they couldn't and shouldn't do?
How do we see her? What is themeaning of Ishtar?
Louise Pryke (08:16):
I think that it's a big question, because you're
always going to run into thatdebate of how much of a goddess
can be considered to be similarto a mortal woman. Like, should
we even consider them to be sortof god women? Obviously, they're
depicted anthropomorphically.
But then they do things thattend not to be ... you know,
most humans don't go to theunderworld; most of them can't
(08:36):
conjure rivers of blood and soforth. So there's obviously a
little bit of human and a littlebit of the divine in her
portrayal. And so then thequestion is, "How much of that
human side can we say isreflecting the lives of ancient
Mesopotamian women?" Becausewouldn't it be exciting if it
could tell us some things aboutgender dynamics in the ancient
(08:57):
Near East?
And I think that with Ishtar,you're right, she is
transgressive. And I think thatthat's one of her defining
characteristics is that she's soambitious. You know, she's
trying to steal the underworldfrom her sister. There's, I
think there's one point whereshe's trying to steal the
heavens from An. She's alwaysafter a little bit more than
(09:19):
she's meant to have.
But at the same time, I do thinkthat there is a lot you can see
about ... particularly in thelove of poetry, I think, you
really get that sense of what itmust have been like to be a
young woman about to getmarried. You know, you hear a
lot of the excitement from herperspective and her close
relationship with her mother.
And her fiance is kind of tryingto say "Don't listen to your
(09:42):
mother. We should hang outmore." So I think we do think
about women in the Middle Eastis living very restricted lives
in terms of agency, but at thesame time, there's aspects of
Ishtar's life that I think arereflected in the historical
reality. Even some of the moreout there aspects, like she has
(10:02):
a role in arranging her ownmarriage in some literature. And
apparently, according to somelegal scholars, some women have
had that capacity in the ancientNear East as well.
But I do think that it dependsvery much on which women we're
talking about. And when. And Ithink that Bahrani would have
(10:24):
said to us that it's very hardto talk about a specific woman,
when we're talking about so manydifferent periods and so many
different levels of status oversuch a long period of time,
around 2000 years. So surely,she can tell us about some
women. {LAUGHS} But again, Ithink we're always going to be
(10:47):
limited by having a deity isalways going to make us have a
little bit of a caveat about howfar we can push it.
Jon Taylor (10:55):
everyone. And she's revered, also by the kings of
Assyria, for example, she's verymuch part of the official cult.
She's embraced in that sense. Socould you maybe say something
about that? What does she meanto the king?
Louise Pryke (11:16):
Yes. Oh, she means everything to the king. And the
king means everything to her.
Her relationship with the kingis really one of the most stable
and consistent elements of herimage in all kinds of things. In
art and all different kinds ofliterary genres. Because when I
was trying to write aboutIshtar, because there's so much
complexity. I think it wasThorkild Jacobsen who was
(11:37):
saying, you know, she's allwomen in an infinite variety. I
was like, that's great. Can wetry and like make it a little
bit more coherent, just so thebook makes a bit more sense?
And one of the most usefulthings was her relationship with
the king. Because it really tiesall her different elements
together. When she is warlike,she's often warlike on behalf of
(12:00):
the king. You know, she goes tobattle in front of him. When she
is in love, there's all ofthese, you know, sacred marriage
hymns, where she's gettingmarried to the king and
expressing her love for him.
When she is using her healingcapacity, or giving life, again,
we see that being bestowed tothe king. And then her close
connection to death is somethingthat she's able to ... that bond
(12:23):
that she has with the king isable to transcend even that. So
I would say that herrelationship with the king is
right at the heart of her image.
Jon Taylor (12:34):
Okay, what has the reaction to your book been? Is
it mean, I guess you'retargeting really there a wider
reading audience. What have theymade of this peculiar character?
Louise Pryke (12:45):
Well, that's a very good question. I think that
Ishtar leaves people a littlebit bewildered. {LAUGHS} But I
think that there is a lot ofinterest in her ability to be
transgressive, and to push pastboundaries, and to also reflect
(13:06):
this ancient powerful goddess,that is perhaps a little bit
something that has beenunderstood in a way that maybe
doesn't do justice to theancient evidence. I think that
our understanding of Ishtar hasbeen very much distorted
through, say, the biblical lens.
And I think that there's been alot of focus on her sexuality at
(13:27):
the expense of I think more ofher, I wouldn't say, more
interesting. {LAUGHS} Thatwouldn't be fair. I wouldn't say
to her more interestingqualities, but I would just say
that there's more to Ishtar thansex. And I hope that that's what
people understand when they readthe book. And also they get a
(13:48):
sense of ... when I read a book,and I really, really like it,
what I like is to see all theways that I could then think of
new research topics, and that'swhat I would like people to get
out of reading my book.
Jon Taylor (14:01):
Uh-hmm. Okay, interesting. So, moving on then
to a new research topic. Youmentioned earlier, the
intersection between Ishtar andthe most famous character from
Mesopotamia--Gilgamesh. You'vealso worked on Gilgamesh. So can
I ask, what's your take onGilgamesh?
Louise Pryke (14:19):
Look, my hot take on Gilgamesh is that he is the
And then he meets Ishtar. Andobviously, if he's going to be a
king that shows you how not todo it. {LAUGHS} If you wanted
to know how not to be aMesopotamian king, then look no
further than Gilgamesh, becausehe is the king who does
good Mesopotamian king, then heneeds to love Ishtar and treat
everything wrong. But he ismeant to be the person who is
the mediator between the humansand the divine. That's the
her really well. Why? Becauseotherwise, she will curse
(14:41):
king's role in Mesopotamianreligion. It's a very important
role. It's very important forcosmic balance and all sorts of
things. But instead he is atyrant. And the humans actually
circumnavigate him and gostraight to the temple and say
"You've got to do somethingabout this guy." And so
straightaway, we're aware thatthings are not going quite
(15:04):
right. And then when he runsinto ... well, then he goes to
the cedar forest. And, you know,he cuts down the trees, which
are sacred. And he kills thesacred forest guardian.
(15:27):
everyone. {LAUGHS} And so, no,but does he do that? No, he
insults her. He calls her adrafty back door, and a shoe
that bites the foot of itsowner. {LAUGHS} And obviously,
that doesn't go well. She getsvery angry, and there's a giant
earthquake, people die. And so... {LAUGHS} You can just see
(15:48):
that I think there's a lot ofhumour to how Gilgamesh is
portrayed. But I also thinkthere's a lot of sympathy to how
he's portrayed in the text. It'sincredibly sophisticated
literature. But at the end, he'sa man that learns the
limitations of mortality, andalso how to be a better king.
And he learns that through hisrelationship with Utanapishtim.
Jon Taylor (16:09):
Would you say then, this is a kind of guide book
for, you know, young rulers? Aprince growing up in the palace,
you tell him the story ofGilgamesh, and he, you can
imagine it, you know, "When Igrow up, I'm going to do this
and I'm going to be bigger andfaster and stronger. And I'm
going to, ..." You know,everything's a bit more extreme.
And perhaps the point of thestory is to teach him the limits
of royal power and theconsequences of action. Do you
(16:31):
think that's part of the reasonfor this story?
Louise Pryke (16:33):
Yeah, absolutely.
Apparently, there's a MiddleEastern genre, I think it's
called a mirror for princes,where stories are told from, you
know, the older male to theyounger male to sort of prepare
them for leadership. And thereis some sense that I talked
about a little bit in myGilgamesh book about how the
relationship between Gilgameshand Utanapishtim tends to follow
this mirror of the princes kindof style. So yeah, I think in
(16:55):
some ways, it could definitelybe a didactic story.
Jon Taylor (17:00):
Okay, so we move on to a slightly different topic.
You're an Australian, and you'recurrently at the University of
Sydney, right? So Australia,isn't one of the traditional big
players in ancient West AsianStudies.
Louise Pryke (17:16):
That's true.
Jon Taylor (17:17):
Can I ask how that context shapes your research?
How do you choose to work onIshtar and Gilgamesh, say? How
Louise Pryke (17:24):
Look, it's had a very formative effect on my
does that work?
research. As you say, there'snot that many Australian
assyriologists. I have acolleague from South America,
and every now and then we bumpinto each other at conferences.
{LAUGHS} I can marvel at thefact that there's other people
(17:44):
that are studying assyriology aswell. We get very excited about
being at internationalconferences. But yes, I think
that what it's done is made mefocus a little bit more on the
big picture.
And I think that I kind of haveto do that, because there's so
little assyriology in Australiathat I tend to end up teaching
(18:07):
... I mean, I've sort of taughta lot of Biblical studies, I
teach a lot in the classicalworld, I've taught a lot of
ancient languages. And all ofthat, it's been really useful in
broadening my perspective. Sothat's been, I think, really
useful. And I think that thatshows, in my work, because I'm
constantly bumping intoscholars, not in Australia with
(18:28):
my colleagues, obviously, butscholarship, where in the
classical world, or Biblicalstudies, where I'm constantly
bumping into views that I thinkcould use a little bit more
engagement with our field.
{LAUGHS} A little bit moreup-to-dating in our field, I
would even hazard to say. And sothat makes me think, okay, we
(18:49):
need to establish more of thegeneral areas of assyriology,
and make them more accessiblefor other scholars. So that we
can have this wonderfultranscultural dialogue, which
was happening in the ancientworld, and we can still be
having it now, if we all read alittle bit of each other's work.
Jon Taylor (19:08):
Yeah, I mean, that is one of the bigger themes for
assyriology, if you want to callit that. You know, it's a fairly
young, small field. Verydynamic. Lots of exciting
research. But we do struggle alittle bit to share that
research with the widercommunity.
Louise Pryke (19:23):
True.
Jon Taylor (19:23):
You know, you don't get academic credit in the
university system for ... it'snot quite outreach, is it? But
the wider dissemination ofresearch. That tends not to be
how the reward system works.
What do you think about thatsituation? What are the
opportunities for us?
Louise Pryke (19:39):
I think that it has ... our field has tended to
have quite a heavy balance onthe side of very technical
works. And I can understand whythat kind of has to be. As you
say, as a new field, kind offinding its limits and
establishing itself in a reallyrigorous manner. But at the same
(20:01):
time, I do worry that we're,that we're sort of wandering off
so far in out technicaldirection that we may be leaving
everyone else behind. {LAUGHS}And so I think it's good to have
a balance of both if possible.
Jon Taylor (20:12):
Yeah. Okay. When you talk to students or members of
the public, what do you findthat they're most interested in?
What are the bits of your workor the work of assyriology that
people outside the field tend topick up on?
Louise Pryke (20:27):
Ah, well, I think that people get excited about
cuneiform writing. Because it'sso ancient, and it's just cool.
It's just really, really cool.
It looks cool. It's interestingto learn. And there's so much
literature out there once you'velearned it. So I think people
find that exciting. As well asthat, young women, when I teach
(20:49):
topics like Ishtar, tend to getvery excited about these sort of
early go-getting goddesses. AndI think that's wonderful. And
then I think the thing that mostpeople get really excited about
in terms of more generalaudiences are just the extreme
antiquity of the material thatwe deal with, and its
(21:12):
sophistication. And how much ithas to tell us about the human
condition. How much of it isstill universal, while being
distinctive? I think people findthat very exciting.
Jon Taylor (21:25):
Yeah, I wonder if we could push a little more on this
question. So you're alsointerested in reception aren't
you? And then in your Ishtarbook, you have a whole chapter
talking about Ishtar in modernfilm and TV. And a lot of that
was new to me. Could you tell usa little bit about that? Where
does she crop up? And whataspects of Ishtar does a modern
audience find interesting?
Louise Pryke (21:46):
That is an interesting question and an
interesting area of scholarship.
Ishtar turns up in a bunch ofdifferent places that you
wouldn't necessarily expect. Oneof them is she turns up in
Marvel Comics. I think she turnsup in one of the early Conan the
Barbarian comics from like,1974. What's interesting about
(22:07):
this, I've become quite a fan ofcomics since I started doing
reception. Because before that,I didn't take them that
seriously. But I really learnedthat these guys who write comic
books, they know their history.
And a lot of them are even, youknow, history teaching
(22:28):
professionals who have thenmoved into comics.
which I thought was quiteremarkable. But then you find
things that are a little bitless accurate. And there seems
to be a real association ofIshtar with Egypt, and also with
the deity Moloch, which I don'tunderstand. But I think the
(22:50):
Moloch thing might come throughthe Bible, because I think that
they are both related toapostasy in the Bible. And so I
think people sort of draw a bitof an association that, as far
as I'm aware, didn't exist, butwe can always learn. And then
the Egypt thing, I'm just notquite sure. I think it's got
something to do with Near Eastand the boundaries are blurred.
But she does turn up,interestingly, in works of ...
(23:14):
she doesn't have a strongreception, I would say as other
characters might have. I mean,you know, Aphrodite is
everywhere. But Ishtar we see alot of in works with a lot of
fantasy elements. So that can behorror, or it can be science
fiction. And I have a kind oftheory that maybe these
audiences are a little bit moremyth literate, and therefore,
(23:36):
you're able to use slightly moreobscure myths, and they will
still keep up with you. That'smy theory.
Jon Taylor (23:42):
That's quite interesting. I wonder if we loop
back to an earlier part of ourconversation about the books for
wider dissemination? So theseguys making these comic books
feature Ishtar, what sources arethey using? How did they
actually find out about thisrelatively obscure deity? Who is
it? Is it Kramer or Jacobsen?
Or?
Louise Pryke (24:03):
Wow, I should really know the answer. {LAUGHS}
I should know the answer tothis, because I actually
interviewed one of them. And hehad studied I think Kramer and
Jacobsen back in the day, whenhe was preparing for history
teaching. And so obviously, youcan get a lot out of that. And
yeah, I think that those tend tobe the sources. But at the same
(24:24):
time, I mean, they always havethe artistic license. I don't
know if you're aware ofGilgamesh as the ... he's a
Marvel Avenger. Like, I mean, Iknow he is now with the film.
But he was also in some of theCaptain American comics in the
very early period. And he andCaptain America tend to have
these like, adventures. It'salmost like Captain America
(24:48):
becomes Enkidu. And they go allthe way back to ancient
Mesopotamia. And they even divedeep down into the ocean, where
they search for the herb ofrenewed youth, the
amurdinnu-plant. It's quiteremarkable how familiar they are
with the Epic. And I just thinkthat it's shows not only the
(25:09):
quality of the people that arewriting the comics, but also the
expectations of the audience whoare informed and will write and
say "that's not right", if theyget it wrong. {LAUGHS}
Jon Taylor (25:20):
That's quite interesting. I must admit, I
haven't seen the Eternals yet. Ihaven't quite built up my
strength for that. But I guessthat you've seen it?
Louise Pryke (25:28):
I did see it. And I was the happiest nerd in the
cinema. It was soexciting.{LAUGHS} My students
sort of said, "It's not reallythat good, is it?" And okay,
maybe it's not as great as Ithought it was. But if you love
this kind of history, then justseeing things like the Ishtar
Gate on screen, it's veryexciting.
Jon Taylor (25:49):
Yeah. Okay, I'm going to schedule it. It'll come
to the top of my list. I will doit now.
Louise Pryke (25:54):
You're gonna give it a go? {LAUGHS} Amazing!
I got a new comic the other day,which was actually an Archie
comic. And I think it's from the1960s. But Archie goes back to
Babylon. And it's all aboutBabylonian history. I'm very
curious to see what hisadventures will be.{LAUGHS}
Jon Taylor (26:13):
OK, excellent. I'll loop back on this one. So
perhaps a final question. Whatare you working on now? What's
next for you after all of this?
Louise Pryke (26:23):
Well, I'm currently writing. I just had a
book come out on the culturalhistory of wind. So it's kind of
wind, even before prehistory,all the way through to popular
culture. It's like a naturalhistory of wind, but also the
deification of wind, and wind inEnuma Elish. All kinds of
(26:44):
aspects of wind, which was areally interesting project,
which I'm quite excited about.
But my next book, I'm kind of ona bit of an ecological bent at
the moment, because I am nowdoing a book on ancient
eco-thrillers. And I'm trying towrite about how people in the
ancient Near East, including inbiblical literature, wrote about
(27:05):
environmental catastrophes andwhat that can tell us about how
they understood theirenvironment.
Jon Taylor (27:15):
Oh, wonderful. When does that come out?
Louise Pryke (27:17):
Well, the manuscript is due in October
next year. {LAUGHS} So let's seehow that goes.
Jon Taylor (27:25):
Right, okay, well good luck with that. And thank
you very much indeed.
Louise Pryke (27:30):
Thanks, Jon.
Jon Taylor (27:32):
I'd also like to thank our patrons. Enrique
Jimenez, Jana Matuszak, NancyHighcock, Jay C, Rune
Rattenborg, Woodthrush, ElisaRossberger, Mark Weeden, Jordi
Mon Companys, Thomas Bolin, JoanPorter MacIver, John MacGinnis,
(27:53):
Andrew George, Yelena Rakic,Zach Rubin, Sabina Franke, Shai
Gordin, Aaron Macks, MaarjaSeire, Jaafar Jotheri, Morgan
Hite, Chikako Watanabe, MarkMcElwaine, Jonathan Blanchard
Smith, Kliment Ohr, ChristinaTsouparopoulou, TT, Melanie
(28:17):
Gross, Claire Weir, MarcVeldman, Bruno Biermann, Faimon
Roberts, Jason Moser, PavlaRosenstein, Müge
Durusu-Tanrıöver, Tate Paulette,Willis Monroe, Toby Wickenden,
Emmert Clevenstine, BarbaraPorter, as well as those who
(28:39):
prefer to remain anonymous.
I really appreciate yoursupport. It makes a big
difference. Every penny receivedhas contributed towards
translations. Thanks of courseto the lovely people who have
worked on the translations on avoluntary basis or for well
below the market rate. ForArabic, thanks in particular to
(28:59):
Zainab Mizyidawi, as well asLina Meerchyad and May Al-Aseel.
For Turkish, thank you to PinarDurgun and Nesrin Akan. TEW is
still young, but I want to reacha sustainable level, where
translators are given propercompensation for their hard
work.
And thank you for listening toThin End of the Wedge. If you
(29:23):
enjoy what we do, and you wouldlike to help make these podcasts
available in Middle Easternlanguages, please consider
joining our Patreon family. Youcan find us at
patreon.com/wedgepod. You canalso support us in other ways:
simply subscribe to the podcast;leave us a five star review on
(29:44):
Apple Music or your favouritepodcatcher; recommend us to your
fri (29:47):
@wedge_pod. If you want the latest podcast news, you can
sign up for our newsletter. Youcan find all the links in the
show notes and on our website atwedgepod.org. Thanks, and I hope
you’ll join us next time.
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