The Drumbeat Forever After

Guest: Kirra

First, we sing the praises of Inanna, patron goddess of the city of Unug, whose home temple complex was the epicenter of the Uruk-period world system. Which god compares with her?

Then, we finally visit the namesake of the Uruk period, the city of Unug (or Uruk) itself. We continue our look at urbanization in Sumer with the Late Uruk period, as local networks of small villages arrayed around medium-sized towns give way to many tiny villages and one enormous city, that being Unug itself.

Then, we walk through the archaeology of Unug between the 3400s and 3200s (or so) BCE, including the largest and most impressive buildings yet built in Sumer, all within walking distance of each other at the center of the new metropolis.

Finally, we read some of the milder hymns celebrating the marriage of Inanna and her boytoy Dumuzi. He is well-watered lettuce!

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Guests: Kirra, Jojo

First, Ensuhkeshdanna, the haughty lord of faraway Aratta, demands the submission of our hero Enmerkar, the wise king of noble Unug. When Enmerkar refuses to so debase himself, the lord of Aratta plots a campaign of economic sabotage by means of dark sorcery.

We finish up our tour of the Uruk world in Susiana, in southwestern Iran, picking up right after the end of the Susa 1 period (in episode 18). A population explosion accompanies the introduction of Uruk-style material culture (that is, similar to the culture of southern Mesopotamia). We tour the eternal city of Susa, the small rural village of Shafarabad, and the revitalized town of Chogha Mish. What can we know about Susiana's relationship to the Mesopotamian alluvium during this period?

Finally: wizard fights are the continuation of diplomacy by other means!

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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 Late Uruk (3400s-3200s BCE). In addition to Tell Brak, we tour the Habuba Kabira metro area on the middle Euphrates, an entire urban area built from scratch in the image of a Sumerian town. 

Then: the Uruk colonial network collapses! Was it climate change? Environmental degradation? The declining rate of profit? Foreign invasion? Internal political instability? All of the above? Let's find out!

Finally, we finish up the story of Enmerkar and the lord of Aratta. Inanna blesses the two kingdoms and, as you should've guessed by now, the gods invent new types of manual labor for humans to perform for them.

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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 know for sure if cities like Unug formally colonized these highland settlements, but it’s hard to explain the latter’s rigid adherence to Sumerian (rather than local) cultural norms without some kind of relationship with the new cities on the southern plain. This episode focuses on the Middle Uruk, roughly corresponding to the early 3000s BCE.

We start with two small sites in Iraqi Kurdistan, Logardan and Girdi Qala, to see the earliest known appearance of Uruk materials in northern Mesopotamia (around 4000 BCE) and what may be the first Uruk outpost (during the early 3000s). Then, we visit Tell Brak (again), Tell Hamoukar, and Hacınebi, all in the far northwest, to see how they were affected by Uruk contact.

Finally, we meet the eponymous lord in his highland fastness of Aratta, who bets the entire proverbial farm on his contest with Enmerkar. As the proverb goes: he who acknowledges a contest can be the outright winner, like the bull which acknowledges the bull at its side!

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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 climate have to do with its sudden rise and gradual decline? 

More relevantly, what did climate and the city's gradual decline have to do with the dozens of disarticulated corpses and skulls defleshed with tools made from human bone in several mass graves around town?

Then: Gilgamesh grieves for Enkidu, and we talk about one very specific lion-based metaphor common to both the Iliad and the Epic of Gilgamesh (although, in the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that these elements are spread out across two different scenes in the Iliad).

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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 monumental platform eighty meters square and ten meters tall, probably the largest artificial structure in the world at the time. 

Then, we talk about Susa's social organization, and one possibility for an intermediate stage between egalitarian Neolithic villages and theocratic Bronze Age monarchies. 

Then, they burn their towering achievement twice, obliterating any evidence of a temple that may have stood on top. Was it intentional? Is it relevant that Chogha Mish, the center Susa was built to replace, was also destroyed by a fire?

Finally, the thrilling conclusion of Inanna's quest to capture the E-anna from An. Bad day to be a scorpion!

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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 filled up with sand in a unique way.

After a brief visit to Jemdat Zabi, one of the few sites with well-excavated Early Uruk levels, we get our first look at the process of urbanization which transformed the alluvial plain during the Early and Middle Uruk periods. As we’ll see, this process was inextricable from the Uruk expansion, which overlapped with both periods and likely provided many of the raw materials and much of the labor that built these cities.

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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, during which time humanity will invent bronze, the state, and the written word.

Then, we talk about increasing social & economic complexity in the late 4000s & early 3000s BCE. What makes cereals more conducive to state formation than other Neolithic crops (like lentils)?

Then, we look at the administrative centers in Ubaid towns like Eridu, both as socio-political institutions and as architectural monuments. At this point, they're in the process of transforming from the domestic houses of prominent families to the sprawling temple bureaucracies which dominate the early history of Mesopotamia.

Then, we take one last look at Ubaid society. How does the concept of chiefdom apply to the Ubaid alluvium?

Finally, Odysseus & Thersites resolve their dispute like civilized men!

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This is a quick review of everything so far, to prepare for a discussion about social complexity during the Ubaid period in episode 16. Perfect for anyone who wants to skip straight to all the interesting stuff starting in the late 4000s BCE.

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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 the north. In just a few centuries (ca 5300-4500 BCE), the southerners managed to export not just their material culture (tools, pottery, building styles, etc) but also an economy centered on the large households of wealthy and well-connected families, which coordinated not only grain storage and redistribution but also manual labor projects, long-distance trade, and religious activity. How did they do it?

Then, a visit to our new friends at Tepe Gawra, a town in northern Iraq occupied more or less continuously from the Halaf period well into the Bronze Age. We'll be back! (Correction: Level 19 is Gawra's oldest Ubaid level. Level 20, dating to the Halaf, is the earliest occupation at Gawra). How did northerners navigate different markers of identity in the face of cultural transformation? What can stamp seals tell us about the growing power of one particular household and/or the breed of dogs at Gawra?

Finally, Enlil's little fellow who eats sweet cakes arrives at his father's dinner table to exchange porcupines, long-tailed bush rats, turtles, and various birds and fishes for bread, beer, sweet cake, syrup, crescent cake, and clear water. May Lord Ashimbabbar make you be born for seven days!

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