Sargon

The Battle of Marathon was a battle that took place in 490 BC in Attica, Greece, between the independent city-state of Athens and the vast Persian Empire.

The Persian force of approximately 30,000 infantry, arches and cavalry landed at the Bay of Marathon to encounter an Athenian hoplite force of approximately 10,000 heavy infantry in a defensive position.

Instead of holding back, the Athenians charged the Persians, routed the Persian wings and turned on the centre, putting the whole Persian army to flight and forcing those left alive to escape via their ships.

The battle was chronicled by Herodotus in his work The Histories (Enquiries).

Source: http://www.sjsu.edu/people/james.lindahl/courses/Hum1A/s3/Marathonsm.pdf

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Short video to demonstrate how beautiful a replica of an ancient bronze-age Irish shortsword can be once given a polish with brasso.

This sword was made on a course by http://bronzeagefoundry.com/.

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"Rite of Passage" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

The Communist Manifesto is a political pamphlet written by German philsophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. First published in 1848 in London, the manifesto helped fuel the Spring of Nations revolutions of the same year.

The manifesto is an examination of historical and (then) contemporary class struggles, framing all of history as a series of class struggles between the haves and the have-nots. It also details how communism could be implemented in Western, economically-liberal societies by means of transitioning through socialism.

For good or for ill, the Communist Manifesto is one of the most important political documents of all time.

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Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf

Being the first beer-brewers in history, beer had religious significance to the Sumerians, and was often brewed in temples by priestesses.

Ninkasi was the tutelary goddess of beer in ancient Sumer. The Hymn to Ninkasi is effectively a Sumerian recipe for brewing beer.

Further reading: http://www.beeradvocate.com/articles/721/

Source: https://www.utexas.edu/courses/classicalarch/readings/beer.html

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Sennacherib's Annals are recorded on three prisms of cuneiform in 701 BC.

The annals are most remarkable for detailing an alternative to the Biblical account of Sennacherib's Siege of Jerusalem, against king Hezekiah, but also details Sennacherib's conquest of Syria and Lebanon.

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Source: http://web.archive.org/web/19970707095227/http://staff.feldberg.brandeis.edu/~jacka/ANET/sennacherib_inscription.html

A new discovery has led to an expanded translation of Tablet V of the Epic of Giglamesh.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu go to the Cedar Forest to slay the demon Humbaba. The new translation gives greater richness to the story and explains more of our heroes' motivations, and confirms Enkidu's childhood spent with the demon.

Listen to the Epic of Gilgamesh here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPYf8AwNvKg

Sources:

http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/18512/1/jcunestud.66.0069_w-footer.pdf

http://etc.ancient.eu/2015/09/24/giglamesh-enkidu-humbaba-cedar-forest-newest-discovered-tablet-v-epic/

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The Enchiridion of Epictetus is a handbook of Stoic ethics, compiled in 135AD by Epictetus's student, Arrian.

The values espoused in the Enchiridion are the essence of Stoicism, written as a list of 52 short maxims.

These maxims outline the virtues by which Stoic philosophers should live by, and can be summed up as thus:

"What upsets people is not things themselves but their judgments about the things."

In the Enchiridion, Epictetus advises that one takes full responsibility of one's actions and disregards anything one does not have full control over.

In this way, the philosopher can never be subject to a will that is not their own.

Source: http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/epicench.html

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How to craft a replica of an Irish bronze-age shortsword.

This was a course run by http://bronzeagefoundry.com/.

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The Exaltation of Inanna is an Akkadian hymn to Ishtar (Sumerian: Inanna) and is the world's oldest attributed writing.

The hymn was written by the Enheduana, the daughter of Sargon of Akkad, during her time as the high priestess of the moon god Sin (Sumerian: Nanna), and is one of a body of work attributed to her.

The purpose of the hymn is to both praise and placate Inanna, so that she will not destroy Akkad but turn her anger to the "foreign lands" and destroy them instead.

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Source: http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section4/tr4072.htm

Thumbnail art: http://hedrick-cs.deviantart.com/art/Commission-Enheduanna-528091593

Some thoughts and context for The Code of Ur-Nammu.

Recitation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mESYkLD0kIQ

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