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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

00:29:33

OS 48 - Hammurabi's Women and Slaves

Oldest Stories ·

2020/09/02

Thus far this show has largely ignored over half of the population, though in my defense, the ancient scribes on whom we rely upon for so much of our information also tended to neglect them as well. But today we will do what we can to rectify the situation and give you as complete a view of Babylonian society as I know how. This means that we will look in depth at the conditions and societal practices of Babylonian slavery and Babylonian women, how they lived and what sort of restrictions kept them

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00:42:01

Bonus 1 - The Slaying of Illuyanka

Oldest Stories ·

2020/08/30

Bonus episode! Dragon slaying myths are about as old as myth itself, but one of the oldest is the tale of the Hittite Storm God's battle against Illuyanka the Serpent. Today's special episode is produced as part of a collaboration with the Mythology Multiverse discord channel's stable of creative and talented youtubers and podcasters. All of them are great, check them out below: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgjv_CvjvzP8D_uElKefVN22MCMSj__Av&jct=UNR7MtZAuMVwhQv2ahGOvHWMEOPaIQ ---

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00:35:35

OS 47 - Hammurabi's Rebels and Oracles

Oldest Stories ·

2020/08/26

Hammurabi's final conquests are almost perfunctory, but his responses to the subsequent rebellions is anything but. Much of the episode however is concerned with the practice of religion in old Babylon and how it intertwined with everything from the daily lives of commoners to matters of state policy. Where did the superstitions of divination come from, what did they look like, and how did the average Babylonian understand his own religion? Online at oldeststories.net. --- Send in a voice

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00:35:19

OS 46 - Hammurabi's Northern Conquests and...

Oldest Stories ·

2020/08/19

Hammurabi's power rises as the cities of the north begin to grow suspicious of his ambitions, and then have those suspicions proven correct when he goes to war with them. But amid all the devastation of war, we have a chance to look at the beating heart of the Mesopotamian economy, agriculture, and what it tells us about why Babylon was able to become so dominant. Online at oldeststories.net --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/oldeststories/message

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00:32:08

OS 45 - Hammurabi's Medicine and Justice

Oldest Stories ·

2020/08/12

Hammurabi conquers Larsa in another lightning campaign displaying his strategic and diplomatic cunning. But once it is conquered, he needs to bring this massive new territory into his growing empire. This will give us an occasion to look at what exactly justice looked like in an Amorite city. We will also have an opportunity to discuss Middle Bronze Age medicine and what kind of surgical practices were known in Babylon. Online at oldeststories.net --- Send in a voice message:

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00:28:52

OS 44 - Hammurabi's Military and Elamite War

Oldest Stories ·

2020/08/05

Today we follow the course of the Great Elamite War, the turning point in Babylon's history when it will beat the odds and establish itself as the region's great power for the next thousand years. The story itself is full of action and twists, but we will take some time also to look at how warfare has evolved and systematized as we emerge fully out of the previous transitional period fully into the Amorite age of warfare. Online at oldeststories.net --- Send in a voice message:

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00:37:24

OS 43 - Hammurabi's Siegecraft and Diplomacy

Oldest Stories ·

2020/07/29

We have actual letters from Hammurabi that show off the diplomacy and statecraft for which the king was celebrated, and in the chaotic years leading up to the Great Elamite War, he will have many opportunities to employ all his many skills to manage the balance of power without violence. But when violence comes, it means cities will be put to siege, so the second half of the episode examines what we know about middle bronze age siegecraft. In both war and peace we will see the calculating

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00:29:52

OS 42 - Hammurabi's Kingdom and Character

Oldest Stories ·

2020/07/22

What was Hammurabi like, and what did the kingdom of Babylon look like in the earliest days? Today, we are going to look at the man himself, Hammurabi, and what he did when he inherited the kingdom from his father. There will be some legal drama, including a trial by water, as well as diplomatic jockeying and a bit of low level warfare. If you are new to the show, this is a great place to start, since this is something of a turning point in Mesopotamian history, and Hammurabi's Babylon is one of the

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00:29:21

OS 41 - Shamshi-Adad and the Upper Mesopotamian Empire

Oldest Stories ·

2020/07/15

From a refugee in Babylon to the king of the largest empire Mesopotamia has seen since the fall of Ur, and the first Assyrian empire at that, Shamshi-Adad's life is a roller coaster of ups and downs. This week we watch as he builds up his northern empire and begins to develop and handle it in a distinctively empire-like way. The fact that it wouldn't survive his death is almost beside the point. A map is available today at oldeststories.net. --- Send in a voice message:

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00:35:33

OS 40 - Barbarian Kingdoms and Biblical Patriarchs

Oldest Stories ·

2020/07/08

The Amorites swept through Syria and held the region in a dark age longer than any other part of Mesopotamia. But when the dust finally does settle, we will see a number of nations ruled by barbarians, but behaving in quite civilized fashions. Today we will look at the establishment of Yamhad, Qatna, and Mari as well as the early kings of Assyria, getting a feel for the new players that will be with us for the next few hundred years. In the second half of the show, we enter briefly into the Age of

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00:36:46

OS 39 - The Merchants and Families of Assyria

Oldest Stories ·

2020/07/01

We know very little about the kings of early Assyria, so our introduction to the north will be bottom up by necessity. We know about merchants and farmers and pastoralists and slaves, men and women who worked the land and built the nation. It is a welcome break from the endless listing of "King did this" that makes up so much of the rest of history. In this period, old Assyria is primarily a commercial power, not a military one. Instead of conquests, we will see colonies, and instead of soldiers, we

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00:37:16

OS 38 - Rim-Sin the Pretty Good

Oldest Stories ·

2020/06/24

Today we see the near collapse of Larsa, and its sudden and unexpected rescue by an Amorite from Elam. After the failure of Nur-Adad's line, Kudur-Mabuk sweeps in from the desert to revitalize the city, and gives birth to the first great conqueror in 250 years, Rim-Sin, who despite his ultimate failure still deserves the title of Rim-Sin the Pretty Good. Online at oldeststories.net --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/oldeststories/message

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00:32:56

OS 37 - Petty Kings

Oldest Stories ·

2020/06/17

The multi-polar Isin-Larsa period continues this week, covering the period from the 1860s to the 1830s BCE. This week is a bit easier that the mess of last week, because we are slowly consolidating to only three major players, Isin, Larsa, and Babylon, and the first two see the coming of benevolent, peaceful kings that actually seem to care at least a little bit about the common citizens of their cities. This state of affairs won't last forever, but it is nice while it lasts. Online at

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00:25:51

OS 36 - The Founding of Babylon

Oldest Stories ·

2020/06/10

This week we continue to watch as Isin and Larsa fight each other and the many other rising dynasties over the chaotic period from 1905 to 1865 BCE. Only slightly notable at the time, though soon to be much, much more important, is the occupation of the tiny fishing village of Babylon by an Amorite coalition who will over these forty years give it its first king Sumu-la-el, first walls, and protector god Marduk. This forty years is an absolute mess of conquest, re-conquest, and confused

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00:35:35

OS 35 - Middle Bronze Age Warfare

Oldest Stories ·

2020/06/03

The main narrative of the Isin Larsa period is full of battles both stated and implied, but what do those battles actually look like? What sort of equipment and organization was common in this part of the middle bronze age? Honestly, quite a lot is similar from when we last looked deeply at military organization under Sargon the Great, but a number of things have changed as well, with the introduction of many Amorite battlefield innovations, so this episode will take a break from linear narrative

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00:32:08

OS 34 - Age of Chaos

Oldest Stories ·

2020/05/27

It is time to shake things up as the line of peaceful merchant kings of Isin comes to an end thanks to two strong men, firstly Gungunum of Larsa and then Ur-Ninurta of Nippur and his revival of Sumerian Kingship. A lot of other players will start popping their head up as well, beginning properly our age of chaos. Online at oldeststories.net --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/oldeststories/message

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00:36:42

OS 33 - A Time of Ritual and Law

Oldest Stories ·

2020/05/20

This week we look at the somewhat obscure 1900's BCE in Isin, where details will be thin on the ground, but that will just give us more time to focus on the Law code of Lipit-Ishtar and the annual ritual of the sacred marriage between Ishtar and the king. Ishtar, or Inanna's sacred marriage to the kings of Mesopotamia was a major religious rite, and Lipit-Ishtar's law code, especially in comparison with the contemporaneous law code of Eshnnuna, tell us a great deal about the daily life and values of

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00:32:18

OS 32 - Lay of the Land

Oldest Stories ·

2020/05/13

This is a good place for new listeners to start, particularly those interested in Hammurabi and the middle bronze age. Today we resume our history with the massive political upheaval which accompanied the collapse of the Ur III dynasty. We are entering a terribly complex period of history, and this episode we are going to do a quick survey of all the major powers of the region circa 2000 BCE. We will be looking at the Amorite kingdoms of Isin, Larsa, Mari, Ebla, and Qatna, the free Akkadian kingdom

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00:36:05

OS 31 - First Men

Oldest Stories ·

2020/05/06

The legends of Adapa, Enmeduranki, and Etana are the tales of three very early kings, though tales that don't seem to come around until the middle bronze age, and they are in a sense creation myths but most importantly they are moral stories in the broader genre of wisdom literature. They show us how the earth and heaven is ordered in the Mesopotamian world view, and they show us what is good and evil in a person's behavior, though it also seems to show us that sometimes evil doesn't really get

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00:34:40

OS 30 - The Tablet of Destinies

Oldest Stories ·

2020/04/29

Ninurta the action hero god returns, this time in an adventure to recover the stolen Tablet of Destinies. In doing this, we will wrestle with Semitic concepts of godhood and destiny, as well as peek under the hood and see some of the things that would come to inspire the invention of the Jewish god. Online at oldeststories.net --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/oldeststories/message

en

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