The Epic of Anzû: One of Ancient Mesopotamia’s Coolest Action Scenes

Ancient Mesopotamia, Antiquity

It is probably safe to say that every human being – perhaps even any and all hominid! – appreciates a good story.1 We all like to be entertained, to be moved, to shudder with fear, and, when the mood is right, to take away points of view that are presented in the narrative which we can ponder with regard to our own life and the lives of those around us. And sometimes we see, read, or otherwise experience a story that is so good, that one cannot be anything else than in awe of the narrative excellence on display. The clever resolution to an intriguing battle of weapons, magic, and wits between one of the Mesopotamian gods and the fearsome Anzû bird, makes the ancient tale now known as the Epic of Anzû undoubtedly one such story.2

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Firewatch: We Always Take Ourselves With Us

Environmental Humanities, Video Games

Over the course of a human life, most of us will have experienced moments when we yearned to just flee our current problems and predicaments. Such a desire for escape often coincides with an inclination towards seclusion in a more natural environment. To leave our city, town, or hamlet for the open country and find the peace and quiet we are missing in nature, so to say.1 Both the attraction of such a flight and its ultimate futility have perhaps never been portrayed more authentically and bittersweet than in the narrative video game Firewatch.

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A.I. and Assyriology

Ancient Mesopotamia, Antiquity, Methodology, Translation Studies

To study Assyriology is both an intellectual joy and an exercise in sadness. The latter may come as a surprise to those who have read my breezy blogs about the fascinating world of the ancient Near East. Because, while it is true that we possess many useful sources from which we have learned a lot over the decades, we still lack a lot of essential information.1 For example, to use the story-based methodologies that can be found within the environmental humanities, with which we aim to establish how the people back then used to think about and deal with nature, we do need some stories.2 When these specific sources have been lost to time, such as with respect to ancient Elam – roughly the southwest and east of modern Iran – applying such methodologies is quite impossible.3 But we should not abandon all hope! Not only are there probably still clay tablets and other documents preserved in undiscovered archeological find spots across the Near East, but there are also thousands of unread fragments of clay tablets, papyri, and the other media just waiting to be studied, which sometimes haven’t been read since they were taken out of the ground. Extensively celebrating the latter reassurance would be premature, though. Because, there are at the moment simply not enough experts to study all these documents – even if they can be read.4 Luckily, we came into some good news recently: A.I., an abbreviation of the term ‘artificial intelligence,’ can be of service! Or can it?

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Byblos: At the Crossroads of the Ancient World

Ancient Levant, Antiquity

Say you were a time traveler with a time machine that was very expensive to operate – as most of them are, in my experience – and therefore your goal was to experience as much aspects of the ancient world as is possible in one go. Then Byblos would definitely be one of the places to be! Because this city in the eastern Mediterranean was a veritable metropolis of antiquity, where the gates and docks welcomed a varied and marvelous array of political, cultural, and artistic influences. Here you could observe hieroglyphs next to cuneiform writing, read the names of Pharaohs which adorned votive vessels, and find precious ingredients that would eventually end up in mummies.1

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Prehistoric Stories

Archeology

Did humans tell stories in the time before writing was invented? Of course they did! But the proof that still exists for such prehistoric narratives is, as you can imagine, rather indirect.1 As such, if we want to know what kind of stories were told back then, we are faced with a difficult undertaking. But this undertaking is worth the effort, because tales – as we saw with our foray into the environmental humanities – have much to teach us about the human condition in any day and age.

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The Minutiae of Scientific Integrity

Methodology

Scientific integrity might seem obvious and uncomplicated at the surface. You should not commit fraud, plagiarize, or mishandle those involved in your research, be it animals, human beings, or ancient clay tablets.1 Right? But when I was an aspiring young researcher myself, eagerly awaiting whether that new-fangled light bulb-fad would go anywhere, I found myself rather intrigued by some of the aspects of this necessary building block of any academic endeavor. During a course on the subject, I was struck by the heartbreaking and curious stories that were told, as well as by the fascinating questions that could still be asked and would probably not soon get an answer that might satisfy any and all moral intuitions. And today we are going to explore some of these stories and discuss a number of those questions!

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Music for the Rut of Everyday Life

Music

Music with a grown-up subject matter is nothing new, of course. The protest songs addressing the various wars of the latter half of the previous century, as well as the many struggles for legal emancipation and social acceptance at the time – which are still carried on today – spoke to the experiences of those living through these events or who found themselves inhabiting the polities involved.1 And the great ladies of country music have always sung about the less than ideal parts of adult relationships – including the affairs, substance troubles, and other setbacks with their significant others.2 But what I mean with the genre – or perhaps subgenre – ‘music for grown-ups’ are songs that speak to the responsibilities that growing up entails and the more mundane happenings that come with it – the less dramatic, so to speak. These songs can be found in any genre. But the last few years I have heard a bunch of relevant tracks and albums that can be said to occupy their own niche and therefore deserve their own label and a blog on Bildungblocks!

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The Death of Plato

Ancient Greece, Antiquity, Philosophy, Plato

Some famous people are perhaps as much known for the manner and time of their deaths as for the things that made them a household name in the first place. The infamous moniker ‘the club of 27’, which denotes legendary musicians like Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse who died tragically at a mere 27 years old, comes to mind.1 But also philosophers can acquire such moribund recognition.2 Socrates’ death, for example, has been portrayed throughout nearly all artforms.3 And the story of this ancient Greek philosopher’s forced suicide, on account of not saving his skin by changing a way of life which he deemed too important, still resonates today.4 But if you are a morbid mortal like myself, you have probably sometimes wondered about the demise of those towering figures of history whose end has not (yet) become part of popular culture. Like Socrates’ most famous student, that other widely acclaimed ancient Greek philosopher – and Dutch cd-store – Plato.

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‘Succession’ in the Bronze Age

Ancient Mesopotamia, Antiquity

It is easy to see why HBO’s darkly sardonic ‘Succession’ was one of the most popular tv-series of the last decade.1 We got to experience trappings of wealth that are otherwise unattainable to us – or at least to me – while being invested in a web of intrigue, betrayals, and parental issues that would even impress William Shakespeare. The heart of the show – so to speak, that is – is the relationship between Logan Roy, founder and CEO of a veritable business empire, and three of his four children. Through profanity laden rants and other varieties of abuse, Logan tries to prepare one of his children for the top role, though none of them ever lives up to his expectations.2 But what if I told you that there are not only recent historical parallels to this entwinement of fierce power struggles and dysfunctional family dynamics?3 Indeed, the Roys might feel right at home in the Bronze Age. As the relationships within the royal family in the Bronze Age kingdom of Upper-Mesopotamia were perhaps as volatile as those between the Roys, be it less profanity laden – but only marginally so.

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The Homeric Extended Universe

Ancient Greece, Antiquity, Homer

Since the Marvel Cinematic Extended Universe entered the movie scene roughly a decade-and-a-half ago, a lot of people were – and many still are – enthralled by the expansive storytelling that was employed. Throughout the cascade of interconnected narratives and characters from different adventures unexpectedly teaming up on other occasions, people never knew what to expect next. They did know, though, that they couldn’t wait!1 Even our old friend Gilgamesh pops up in both Marvel comics and movies.2 But such an extended narrative universe is nothing new. Gilgamesh himself, for example, already figured in a number of tangentially related Sumerian narratives which predate the famous epic that nowadays bears his name.3 Today, though I want to introduce another batch of loosely connected ancient stories: Welcome into the Homeric Extended Universe!

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