Two weeks ago we talked about ʾIlîmilku, a linguistic innovator from the ancient Levantine city of Ugarit. And afterwards, a curious reader send me a question which I will paraphrase here: if there was only this one writer who used certain loanwords from other languages in his work, how could his readers understand them? One explanation is immediately obvious, they could deduct their meaning from the context – though this will not always have been possible. It is furthermore important to keep in mind that we only have a vanishingly small percentage of all the texts that were written in ancient West-Asia at our disposal. So maybe such loanwords only appear rare to us today because of our relative lack of sources. The last solution to our conundrum is also the most frightening to any aficionado of bygone societies: the loanwords in question could have been very common in everyday conversation. This brings us to a black hole in our understanding of the deep past in general and antiquity in particular: that what was spoken back then but did not reach us in written form is often lost to history. And it is that black hole which I want to discuss with you today.
The Dark Academia of ‘Katabasis’ by R.F. Kuang
Many phenomena we appreciate and depend on today were developed over a very long time period and if they would be invented in our current era, we would probably go very differently about it. And this may even include the current institutes of higher learning. The work conducted here has for literal centuries bettered the human condition, but there are still enhancements implemented worldwide and even more of those are proposed regularly.1 It is inspiring how the ideals of science and scholarship still motivate so many people to further polish the practice of academic research and knowledge transfer!2 And this makes me appreciate the dark academia novel Katabasis – written by Rebecca Kuang, who goes by the pen name R.F. Kuang – not only for its story but also for addressing, albeit in a tragicomical manner, some of the blind spots that academic institutions have overcome and even a few that are arguably not yet satisfactorily addressed.3 So, let me share my enthusiasm for this book with you, as well as for the fascinating esthetic of Dark Academia!
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ʾIlîmilku and the Prestige of Ancient Egyptian Loanwords
There is perhaps no social currency as fascinating as the use of rare phrases in one’s daily conduct. From the Latin words employed by many practitioners and scholars of law, to casually dropping a swaggering slang term that was used in the latest pop song – an extensive vocabulary can not only provide you with authority or popularity, but also with the subject of a blog during a continent-wide heat wave!1 And in this blog, I want to introduce you to a captivating pendant from antiquity, one ʾIlîmilku who lived in the ancient Levantine city of Ugarit, and how he used loanwords from the ancient Egyptian language to illustrate his breadth of knowledge. During this introduction of ʾIlîmilku, we also get a sense of how prestigious and influential ancient Egyptian culture already was in the ancient world. And by rights, it should become a hallmark of both learning and coolness – the proverbial kind, that is – once again to use ancient Egyptian in conversation and writing.
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Forgotten Gods #4: The Disputed Goddess Nanāya
Perhaps the most famous goddess from Mesopotamia – and one of the most well–known ancient goddesses tout court – is the deity that was known in Sumerian as Inanna and in Akkadian as Ištar. This goddess of love and war was widely popular in daily religious life, material culture, and mythology. And she appeared to have influenced belief systems around ancient west-Asia and the Aegean.1 As such, many aspects of this goddess were worshiped separately and other gods were thought to be related to her or were identified with her. It is therefore not being overly skeptical that some scholars wonder whether another Mesopotamian love goddess, Nanāya, is merely an aspect of her more famous counterpart. Specifically, because Nanāya was sometimes presented as being her daughter! So, let us today find out whether Nanāya was actually an independent deity with her own cult or merely a representation of a more famous goddess that many today would still recognize.2
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The Wonderful Chaos of the Oldest Sumerian Cities
It is a shame that some of the most interesting chapters of the human story are also the most obscure to us today. Especially our surviving sources on the origins and first occurrences of phenomena which we now take for granted, like the earliest cities throughout the world, are regularly scant, scarce and scattershot.1 But luckily for us, this does not deter determined scholars and scientists. Even when it comes to perhaps the most venerable of proper cities, those of the Sumerians in the southern part of what is now the modern state of Iraq, there is surprisingly much scholarly literature to peruse. And when I read about the wonderful chaos in those very first (more or less) large-scale settlements of ancient Sumer, I could not help but to want to paint you a picture that could rival the humorously chaotic domestic paintings of the famous 17th century Dutch artist Jan Steen.2
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Ebooks and Audiobooks as Research Tools
Ebooks and audiobooks are a staple of many people’s current reading habits. Even though their precursors go back way further than you’d probably think, they really went mainstream in the last two decades.1 And is this any surprise? The convenience of having a plethora of books available wherever you go and often on devices you are bringing with you anyhow, is undeniable. As those of you who are subscribed to the Bildungblocks-newsletter might know, since last summer I am rapidly losing the rest of my already abysmal remaining level of sight. And this complicates researching these blogs, as you can imagine! As such, I have started using an e-reader since a considerate family member gifted me one a couple of weeks ago. Because with such a device I can enlarge the letters to my heart’s content and create a high contrast reading environment. And I am painfully aware that all too soon my reading activities will be mostly confined to audiobooks. These matters inspired the question we will look at today: how do ebooks and audiobooks fare as research tools in comparison to their printed counterparts, especially when we consider their accessibility?
The Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyph Netjer
There is one abiding interest everybody – from children which have just recently acquired theory of mind to the most practically minded adults with the most boring jobs imaginable – shares when it comes to antiquity and that is ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.1 This writing system is, without any sarcasm, always a hit at party’s and other festive events. And today, as kind of an appetizer to at least temporarily satisfy this universal curiosity, I want to introduce one specific hieroglyph: a sign that the ancient Egyptians used to write about the supernatural and the divine. More specifically the hieroglyph that chiefly denoted their word for god – Netjer.2
Disaster Stories and Navigating Difficult Ecological Choices in Antiquity
What do you do at the end of the world as you know it? When the usual rules that until then governed life’s basic necessities – like how crops, livestock, and other foodstuffs should be tended – no longer seem to apply? This is a situation where the people of ancient societies found themselves in with alarming regularity. Not only were there weather fluctuations and adjacent setbacks to deal with, like famines, but they also had to content with climate changes over timescales that were not immediately apparent to those living through them.1 Such dire situations regularly imposed tough and far-reaching decisions, which can appear horrifyingly familiar – even from our distant vantage point in the twenty-first century.2 As such, studying what people back then did and did not do when confronted with ecological calamities, can in turn fuel our own considerations and imaginations.
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How Hefty Were Roman Books?
Here in the Netherlands it is the perfect weather to cozy up in a chair by the fire and lose yourself in a book – unless you are a big fan of cold, rain, and ill-timed gusts of wind, that is! And the more pages such a book encompasses, at least in my experience, the better it can help you to forget the outside world for a while. Which nicely ties in to a question that I got from one of the readers of the Bildungblocks-newsletter and which I want to discuss with you today: How hefty were Roman books?1
Forgotten Gods #3: Telipinu’s Disappearing Act
Today, the ancient Anatolian deity called Telipinu is, for most intents and purposes, a forgotten god. Though, there are admirable attempts to keep the tales that tell us about him and his divine colleagues alive for the modern day. Like the English renditions of a few Hittite poems for the fall 2025 issue of the literary magazine The Paris Review, translated by PhD-student Naomi Harris.1 One of these poems relates the disappearance of Telipinu, something the deity had a penchant for.2 What is interesting, however, is that much of the mythology concerning Telipinu emphasizes that he should not, under any circumstance, be forgotten – even if he was indeed lost and both heaven and earth had to be moved to find him again. Because, when Telipinu could not be found, ecological disaster was sure to follow. Today we are therefore going to talk about a god that emphatically should not be neglected by mortal creatures, from bees to human beings, but ultimately was.
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