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PODCAST

Oldest Stories

History and myth of the Cradle of Civilization, bronze age Mesopotamia, beginning with the dawn of writing. The show will cover the full history of Mesopotamia, from Gilgamesh to Nabonidas, a span of some 2500 years, with myths of heroes and gods, and tales of daily life peppered throughout. Sumer, Akkad, Old Babylon, Hittites, and Israel have all been covered in depth, current episodes get deep into the Assyrian Empire. New episodes every other Wednesday. Online at oldeststories.net.

history

All Episodes

00:31:50

OS 66 - Enter the Arena

Oldest Stories ·

2021/01/20

The world of the Late Bronze Age is expanding, and today we introduce the two final players to the near east battleground. Egypt is probably familiar to many, though worth a bit of an introduction to see what exactly the Nile valley is doing to bring it into our story. Mitanni, however, and its people, the Hurrians, is quite a bit more obscure. Note that next week there will be no normal episode, instead I am doing some reworkings of the very first episodes, so remember to scroll down to check out

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00:39:47

OS 65 - Disorder in the Court

Oldest Stories ·

2021/01/13

The Hittites are not going to exceed the heights of king Mursili for a long, long time, if indeed they ever do. Today we are going to look at a dark century of decline, as the Kaskans and Hurrians press on the ever shrinking borders, and kings begin to off each other right and left in the capitol. We will look most extensively at Hantili and Telipinu, since they have the most surviving details for us to get at, but all in all it is a pretty poorly documented period. Still, there are some fun tales

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00:39:12

OS 64 - Village Economics

Oldest Stories ·

2021/01/06

Part two of daily life in Anatolia under the Hittites continues where we left off last time. And also doesn't get as far as I had planned this time either, but it turns out that we just have a lot of great detail about how people lived in late bronze age anatolia. We discuss the law code, agriculture, the different types of slavery, and death in Hittite society. Online at oldeststories.net --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/oldeststories/message

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00:33:00

OS 63 - Village People

Oldest Stories ·

2020/12/30

Daily life for the average anatolian living under the Hittites was not all that terrible, and though much of it is poorly documented, there are still quite a bit we can say about how it may have looked to be an inhabitant of one of the many villages that dotted the valleys of Anatolia. These villages were often quite well organized, even if the houses themselves were of questionable construction, and a fair life could have been lived here, at least as far as we can tell. This is part one of daily

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00:33:51

OS 62 - The Man Who Changed The World, Mursili I

Oldest Stories ·

2020/12/23

Mursili I destroyed two empires, plundering Aleppo and Babylon, and ruled for thirty of the best years in Hittite history. His conquests would pave the way for the great battles of the late bronze age. And yet he is almost completely obscure, despite being the singular catalyst for everything that was to come. Today I want to focus in on a man who has failed to receive the immortality he deserved, and to look at the military machine that helped him achieve these things. --- Send in a voice

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00:35:19

OS 61 - The Conqueror's Triumph and Death

Oldest Stories ·

2020/12/16

Hattusili I has already shown himself to be a cut above the Anatolian kings that have come before him, but like all the most ambitious of men he has set his sights far higher than just Greatest Anatolian King. Today he marches eastward to challenge the Syrian kingdom of Yamhad, where he will campaign for the rest of his life in an effort to outdo the great Sargon of Akkad. Then he will die after a pretty good showing, but the drama doesn't end there. On his deathbed, the family squabble over

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00:37:22

OS 60 - Telipinu, the Vanishing God

Oldest Stories ·

2020/12/09

A god is furious, and in his fury he has abandoned the people and the kingdom to suffer one catastrophe after another. Today we look at the myth, the ritual, and the theological understanding of why bad things happened and what to do about them, according to ancient Anatolian traditions that pre-date the Hittites themselves. Through looking at this story, we get a window into the mindset and lifestyle of the people over whom the Hittites rules, a mindset that was almost certainly shared at least in

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00:32:06

OS 59 - The Conquering Lion, Hattusili I

Oldest Stories ·

2020/12/02

The first king of the Hittites, Hattusili I, thought of himself as a conquering lion. Given his military record, this isn't a completely inappropriate boast. His accomplishments in establishing the Old Hittite Kingdom are far beyond the merely military, but this episode we are going to focus primarily on the parts of his career he was most proud of, his early conquests. Starting from nothing, he builds up a kingdom to rival his grandfather Labarna and his great ancestor Anitta, then goes beyond what

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00:33:43

OS 58 - Rise of the Hittites

Oldest Stories ·

2020/11/25

This is a good place for new listeners to start, particularly those interested in the late bronze age, the Hittites, and the Kassites. The legendary, and partly mythological, rise of the Hittite kingdom out of the mess of the warring kingdoms of Anatolia is our subject today. Quite a few intertwined stories lead up to our first properly Hittite King, Hattusili I, and we will hear about famous figures such as the Queen of Kanesh, Anitta, and Labarna and the will stars align to allow one kingdom to

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00:32:02

OS 57 - Ancient Anatolia

Oldest Stories ·

2020/11/18

We begin our series on the Hittites by looking at what came before the Hittites. This episode is a survey of the geography, cultures, and history of Eastern Asia Minor prior to the arrival of the newest player on our stage, the Hittites. The Anatolians have been on the fringes of our story from the conquests of Sargon of Akkad to the trading colonies of Assyria, but until now we have been pretty vague about the conditions and people in the northwest extreme of the Mestopotamian world. Also, we will

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00:29:51

OS 56 - Obscure Struggles in Assyria

Oldest Stories ·

2020/11/11

Assyria is deep in a dark age following the fall of Babylon. Struggling to hold on and fighting over its identity, the Assyrians didn't appear to have a whole lot of time for writing stuff down. And so we are going to zoom through from 1740 to the mid 1400's BCE, some three hundred years or so, through some of the vaguest and poorly documented periods that we have encountered so far. It is an important time for defining Assyria's later culture, which makes it all the more tragic that we have so

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00:43:03

Bonus 3 - Lament for Ur

Oldest Stories ·

2020/11/04

An interlude in our story. Today, a poem of passionate despair. With the collapse of Sumerian civilization in 2000 BCE, five great laments were written that would continue to be performed and recorded until the end of Mesopotamian civilization some fifteen hundred years later, and may well have survived for a time after that. This episode will be the Lament for Ur, in its entirety, in translation, with as much of the ancient passion that would have infused it as I can manage. I do warn you that the

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00:39:11

Bonus 2 - Fanciful Notions of Antiquity

Oldest Stories ·

2020/10/27

An interlude in our story. We pause today to read a story by HP Lovecraft, the Nameless City, which brings us back to how absolutely incredible it was when modern archaeologists re-discovered the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia. This is a work of fiction of course, meant to shock, amaze and horrify, but it is a fun little story as well as a nice reminder that until very, very recently, almost nothing at all was known about things which occurred prior to the Biblical histories. This was a

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00:35:13

OS 55 - Days of Quiet Prosperity

Oldest Stories ·

2020/10/21

In a sense, not much happens in this episode. Covering a bit over a century, the borders of Babylon are going to remain more or less stable for most of this episode, and the people are going to enjoy a century of generalized quiet prosperity. Covering the later successors of Hammurabi, Abi-Eshuh, Ammi-Ditana, Ammi-Saduqa, and Samsu-Ditana, we will see scientific and legal advances, good government, and also the quite sudden and total destruction of Babylon, both city and empire. Online at

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00:39:06

OS 54 - Soldier of Babylon, Ubarum

Oldest Stories ·

2020/10/14

Ubarum was just a man living in a small village in north Babylonia, one among possibly a few million. He was a soldier by trade, but also managed a little bit of side business and by the end of his life became comfortably middle class. Today we will not be telling the story of gods or kings, but the life of this simple man as best as can be understood from a collection of business receipts and legal documents found together in what archaeologists call the Ubarum Archive. It is only one part of his

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00:38:14

OS 53 - Poem of the Righteous Sufferer

Oldest Stories ·

2020/10/07

The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer, or Ludlul-Bel-Nimeqi, is one of the oldest works of theodicy in history, and part of a long running philosophical tradition in Mesopotamian society. Marduk, clad in splendor and robed in dread brings first suffering and then relief on a man for seemingly no reason, and in this tale we will see both the events that occurred to him and his attempts to make sense of it all. Online at oldeststories.net --- Send in a voice message:

en

00:30:00

OS 52 - Theogony of Dunnu and The Education of Scribes

Oldest Stories ·

2020/09/30

Incest and Patricide are the highlights of today's tale, sometimes also called the Dynasty of Dunnum or the Harab Myth. The ancient Mesopotamian religious tradition was far from unified, and from an obscure town survives a creation story that has powerful resonances all the way to ancient Greece. And while we are on the topic, this is a good chance to look at the men who wrote all these strange and wonderful stories and histories that the show has been depending on. How did they come to be educated,

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00:30:54

OS 51 - The New Order

Oldest Stories ·

2020/09/23

Finally, we have finished with Hammurabi, and it is time for his successor Samsu-Iluna to take over. At first, things are much the same as they were under his father, but the appearance of a strange new enemy with superior weaponry and tactics throws the empire into chaos. Samsu-Iluna is faced with the largest rebellion in three hundred years, and will do quite respectably for himself. The geopolitical order in general, however, will be shattered utterly. Kassites, Sealand, a weakened Yamhad, and

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02:08:12

OS 50 - Hammurabi's Code of Laws

Oldest Stories ·

2020/09/16

The entire code of Hammurabi, start to finish. This is the show's fiftieth episode, and will run quite long as something of a special edition. I am going to go through the entire law code of Hammurabi, start to finish, with commentary and extensive quotes. Not kidding, this is going to be seriously long, fair warning here. I did say I wasn't going to do this because it would be long and boring, but here I am doing it anyway. It is definitely long, but hopefully I have kept the boredom to a minimum

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00:29:52

OS 49 - Hammurabi's Death and Legacy

Oldest Stories ·

2020/09/09

The final decade of Hammurabi's life would be peaceful and prosperous, and was in many ways the foundation of the rest of the Old Babylonian Empire. We have actual letters from Hammurabi himself as he micromanages his administrators, establishes the Ilkum system, and handles the complaints of common citizens, that are quite revealing of his character and ambitions. This will also be the episode where we lay Hammurabi to rest, but once he is in the ground we follow the path of his legacy throughout

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