A visit to Nabonidus at Sela, Jordan

A few weeks ago I spent some time with my colleagues from the CoE in Ancient Near Eastern Empires (University of Helsinki) in Jordan, where we updated each other about our ongoing research during our annual meeting. We also took the time to see some of the ancient sites in the region, including Umm Qays …

Journaling for beginners: the Astronomical Diaries

During the course of the first millennium BCE, a new genre of cuneiform texts developed in the city of Babylon. They are the so-called Astronomical Diaries: records of celestial, climate-related, ecological, economic, and historical events. Their level of detail makes them into incomparable sources for Babylonian history, although they should still be approached with a …

How to make a Mesopotamian god

Although Mesopotamian gods appeared in many forms, they primarily took on an anthropomorphic shape: when the ancient Mesopotamians envisioned the gods, these mostly acted and looked like they did. Gods did not only live in people’s minds, however – they were physically present in their temples in the form of the cult statue. Gods as …

Me and the Man in the Moon

Saturday the world celebrated the 50th anniversary of humankinds's first walk on the Moon. I wonder if the ancient Mesopotamians ever dreamt of going there one day. What stands to reason is the fact that they entertained a great fascination for the lunar body. It appears already in the earliest astrological texts of the second …

A tasty tablet

Reading Babylonian administrative documents can be a rather boring task, because of the formulaic and factual language in which these texts are written. Yet, once in a while, Assyriologists are lucky enough to catch a glimpse of real life situations in them. A particularly comical story can be found in a text recording court proceedings …

About time

"What time is it?" is a question that probably no ancient Mesopotamian ever asked. In fact, there was not even a word for time, at least for the abstract notion of time, and a philosophical discourse about the matter is also lacking. Yet, that does not mean that they did not express time. What comes …

Let it all wash away: The concept of (im)purity

While we barely have any information about the Mesopotamian customs that have to do with hygiene and personal care, we do know that purity was a concept of primordial importance in how the ancients perceived the world and their relation to it. Being impure could have many consequences and would have to have been avoided …

A Concise History of Mesopotamia (12): the Late Babylonian period (484 BC – 80 CE)

The Persian conquest of Babylonia in 539 BC did not constitute a substantial break in Babylonian society. It is true that the Persians exercised high fiscal pressure on the local economic players, but the thriving socio-economic system of the Neo-Babylonian period remained largely intact. That changed, however, in the year 484 BC. The End of …

A Concise History of Mesopotamia (11): the Long Sixth Century (626-484 BC)

After centuries of political turmoil in Babylonia, the Assyrians seized control of the weakened territory in the first centuries of the first millennium BC. However, resistance remained, especially in the south, where Chaldean tribes were in power. It is from there that a strong new dynasty arose, which put an end to Babylonia's inferior position …

A Concise History of Mesopotamia (10): the Neo-Assyrian period (911-609 BC)

At the beginning of the first millennium BC, Assyria was dominated by Aramean tribes, who invaded the region en masse and weakened the once great empire. For more than a century, no ruler was strong enough to push them back and famine and poverty raged in the land. It was only at the beginning of …