Ashurbanipal

Ashurbanipal was the ruler of the Assyrian empire in the 7th century BCE. His 38-year reign was marked by both scholarship and a terrifying brutality.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 2:44Holly Frey?

  Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 2:55Tracy V. Wilson?

  Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

• 2:58Holly Frey?

  And I'm Holly Frey.

• 2:59Tracy V. Wilson?

  We have another episode inspired by the trip I took to England this past May, although the subject matter, for the most part, is not about England. When I was in school, what we learned about Mesopotamia was in pretty broad strokes. We talked about things like cuneiform script and the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and their cycles of flooding, and the whole idea of the cradle of civilization. There were some names that came up, like "in the Bible," "in church," and I read the Epic of Gilgamesh while studying literature. But beyond that, when it came to actual history classes, I don't think I learned about any

• 3:39Tracy V. Wilson?

  specific Mesopotamian leaders, aside from maybe Hammurabi, who was ruler of Babylon. And that was mostly in the context of Hammurabi's code. That was one of the first codes of law. So when I was at the British Museum this past May, I was really fascinated by the Library of Ashurbanipal, which was a name that I mostly recognized from lyrics to a "they might be giants" song, not anything I remember ever learning in school. Something else that struck me in that trip to the British Museum was that I was reading all about Ashurbanipal's library, and Patrick was somewhere else in the same room, reading

• 4:22Tracy V. Wilson?

  other stuff about Ashurbanipal as king of Assyria. And when the two of us came back together, we had radically different impressions of this man, because I was sort of thinking, wow, this guy's library sounds so amazing. And Patrick, having read other signs, was like, wow, that guy seems really ruthless.

• 4:45Holly Frey?

  So to get some groundwork in, Mesopotamia actually means between rivers, and that's an apt name because it is describing exactly that, that area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. These rivers start in what is now Turkey, and they pass through a corner of Syria before traveling through Iraq in a diagonal manner, and then they eventually come together to form the Shah Al Arab River and discharge into the Persian Gulf. But the kingdoms and empires that are usually framed as ancient Mesopotamia go beyond this geographical area, stretching all the way from the Zagros Mountains in the east to the Arabian Peninsula in the west, and in some cases, conquering territory that was even farther away.

• 5:30Tracy V. Wilson?

  When I was in school, history classes in the United States often described Mesopotamia as the birthplace of civilization. But today, the term "cradle of civilization" is used to describe multiple regions on Earth. They're all near rivers or other sources of water, and they are places where people established settlements, which grew into cities, with those cities and societies that they were home to becoming more and more complex. Other cradles of civilization include the Indus Valley on the Indian subcontinent, the western coast of South America, including Lake Titicaca and the Indian Plateau, and the Yangtze and Yellow River systems in China, as well as Mesoamerica.

• 6:14Holly Frey?

  Starting with the establishment of its first cities, ancient Mesopotamia spans more than 3,000 years of history. Civilizations, kingdoms, and empires overlapped and influenced each other, so trying to put together a linear timeline, or even a more relative one, is actually quite challenging. On top of that, we're still getting new information about Mesopotamia and its ancient roots, both through archaeological work that started in the mid-19th century and through reconstruction and translation of texts that were and still are being unearthed. That includes Ashurbanipal's library, only a fraction of which has been reconstructed and translated.

• 6:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, what I wanted to put in this part of the episode was a basic timeline to situate when we are talking about, and I found that task to be impossible. Assyria was, though, one of the later empires to be established in Mesopotamia. Modern historians and archaeologists typically divide Assyrian history into multiple phases. There's early Assyrian, starting around 2,600 BCE, Old Assyrian, starting around 2,025 BCE, Middle Assyrian, starting around 1363 BCE, and Neo-Assyrian, which spanned from 911 to 609 BCE.

• 7:38Tracy V. Wilson?

  That's then followed by a post-imperial period, when Assyria no longer existed as an organized state, but the region that it had been home to had not been fully conquered by other kingdoms or empires yet. The Assyrian ethnic group still exists today, with an estimated 3 million to 5 million people in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, considering themselves Assyrian.

• 8:02Holly Frey?

  The Neo-Assyrian period is seen as the height of the Assyrian Empire, and Ashurbanipal was one of that period's last kings. At that point, Assyria was the largest empire in the world, encompassing what's now Iraq, part of Iran, the Levant, including the island of Cyprus and northern Egypt. Its capital was Nineveh in what's now Iraq, near the modern city of Mosul.

• 8:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  Ashurbanipal's father was Esarhaddan, and it doesn't appear that Ashurbanipal was originally intended to be his successor. Esarhaddan had an older son named Sinidnapli, who is believed to have died sometime before 672 BCE. But oracles and prophecies were a huge part of the way Assyrian culture related to and understood the world. And it's also possible that there was some kind of divination or omen involved in Sinidnapli not being named as his father's successor.

• 9:03Holly Frey?

  It also seems like there may have been some kind of omen or prophecy related to Ashurbanipal, or to another of Esarhaddan's sons, Shama Shumukin. Shama Shumukin was older than Ashurbanipal, and ordinarily, he would have been next in line to succeed their father. But almost everyone, including Esarhaddan, seems to have preferred Ashurbanipal. So in 672 BCE, Esarhaddan decided to divide his son's responsibilities, giving Shama Shumukin control of Babylon, while Ashurbanipal was named crown prince of the Assyrian Empire.

• 9:41Tracy V. Wilson?

  This was sort of a throwback to some earlier family and dynastic history and the greater history of Mesopotamia. Centuries before this, Babylon had been established as the capital of the Kingdom of Babylonia, which covered much of southern Mesopotamia. But Babylon faced a series of raids and invasions, starting with the Hittites in the 16th century BCE. By the 11th century BCE, the Assyrians were continually fighting with their neighbors, including the Chaldeans and the Aramaeans, over control of Babylon, with Babylonia also trying to maintain itself and its own independence. Babylon sometimes allied with Assyria's enemies to do this.

• 10:25Tracy V. Wilson?

  Then in 689 BCE, Esarhaddon's own father, Sennacherib, became convinced that there was no way that Assyria would ever retain peaceful control of Babylon, so he destroyed it and then diverted a canal to drown the ruins.

• 10:43Holly Frey?

  Sennacherib also passed over an older son to name Esarhaddon as his heir. There's a bit of murkiness after this, but afterward, one or more of Esarhaddon's brothers murdered their father, something that is understandably interpreted as having been done because they were angry about the line of succession. This sparked a civil war in which Esarhaddon defeated his brother's forces and took the throne. One of Esarhaddon's projects was to rebuild Babylon.

• 11:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  Like a lot of life in ancient Mesopotamia, this had a religious underpinning. Babylon's chief god was Marduk, and Marduk was also a deity in Assyria. Even Sennacherib's supporters feared that his actions in Babylon had angered and offended Marduk. Sennacherib's assassination by his son or sons was seen as a divine retribution for his having done this to Babylon. And Esarhaddon's rebuilding of Babylon happened alongside a reframing of its destruction as another divine punishment. Esarhaddon framed himself as Babylon's governor rather than its king, and he worked to gain the support of other cities in Babylonia.

• 11:58Holly Frey?

  Esarhaddon's decision to name Ashurbanipal as heir to the throne of Assyria and Shemash Shumukin as crown prince of Babylon seems to have been done in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the civil war that had been part of his own ascension. We're going to come back to that idea later. But Ashurbanipal's education was already underway when he was named crown prince of Assyria, so he had started studying subjects that weren't really typical of Assyrian kings. He had learned horsemanship, charioteering, archery, military tactics, and courtly decorum, which were all things that would be expected of a royal. But he also studied literature and history, and he knew multiple Sumerian and Akkadian

• 12:42Holly Frey?

  languages, including how to read and write them in cuneiform script. It was not typical for kings of this era to get a really scholarly education, or really even to be literate. That was the work of scholars and scribes. It's probably something Ashurbanipal was only able to do because in the earliest part of his life, he hadn't been totally focused on preparing to become king.

• 13:07Tracy V. Wilson?

  We will talk about Ashurbanipal as king of Assyria after a sponsor break.

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• 15:23Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 16:22Speaker 06

  This new chicken nugget, reinvented based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.

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• 18:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  When Ashurbanipal was named Crown Prince of Assyria, its capital was in Nineveh, near modern day Mosul, Iraq. Ashurbanipal's grandfather, Sinakirib, had moved the capital to Nineveh and built a magnificent palace there, known as the Palace Without Rival. This palace had extensive gardens irrigated by a network of canals and aqueducts, which Ashurbanipal expanded. There is some speculation that these were the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon, rather than a site somewhere in Babylon. One of the people to propose this is Assyriologist Stephanie Dally of the University of Oxford.

• 19:39Holly Frey?

  While his father was still living, Ashurbanipal took on a lot of responsibility. Esarhaddan undertook a series of military campaigns to put down uprisings in outlying parts of Assyrian territory and to try to conquer new territory. This included a campaign to take control of more of what is now Egypt. While Esarhaddan was away, Ashurbanipal was effectively in charge. Ashurbanipal also acted as his father's spymaster.

• 20:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  Esarhaddan died in 669 BCE while he was on the way to Egypt to put down a revolt against Assyrian rule. Ashurbanipal's ascension went smoothly. There were already treaties in place that required Assyria's vassal states to be loyal to Esarhaddan's successor. And Ashurbanipal's grandmother, Nakia Zakutu, required counselors and nobles to sign oaths of loyalty to him. And for more than a decade, his relationship with his brother and their divided responsibilities over Assyria and Babylon, that all seems to have gone okay.

• 20:46Holly Frey?

  Ashurbanipal, whose name is translated as "The God Asher Has Made a Son", was religiously devout or even zealous. He learned methods of divination, including reading the entrails of sacrificed animals and reading patterns in oil. During his reign, he also built a lot of temples and added new adornment to existing ones.

• 21:09Tracy V. Wilson?

  He was also a patron of the arts. He similarly built and adorned palaces, and he commissioned extensive reliefs to decorate those palaces. A lot of these reliefs featured depictions of him fighting his enemies, hunting lions, and just living everyday life in the wealth and splendor of his kingdom. Some of the reliefs depicting royal life also referred back to those military conquests, since there are severed heads of some of his enemies on display. In a lot of depictions of Ashurbanipal, he's shown with a riding stylus in his belt, including in some when he's doing things like killing a lion with a sword.

• 21:48Holly Frey?

  He might want to journal after, you know?

• 21:50Tracy V. Wilson?

  He might.

• 21:51Holly Frey?

  Uh, the reliefs that were created during Ashurbanipal's reign are seen as the pinnacle of Assyrian art. In the words of the 1925 edition of Cambridge Ancient History, quote, "For modern students, the age of Ashurbanipal marks a definite stage in the history of culture, and the modern term, as rightly links that king's name with his time, as it connects to the glories of Imperial Rome with the name of Augustus."

• 22:17Tracy V. Wilson?

  The depictions of his lion hunt provide an example of how Assyrian art of this era was different from what came before. To quote from that same volume, quote, "The masons no longer cut figure after figure, whether human or animal, in the same attitude, with the same expression and monotonous succession. The attempt to differentiate, to give each figure an individual interest, renders the frieze of the lion hunt most interesting of all the Assyrian sculptures. And a careful examination of the battle scenes will show a more sustained effort of the same kind in a crowded field. Above all, there is a fertility of invention and an exquisite delicacy of carving,

• 23:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  both illustrated in the scene, which shows Ashurbanipal and his queen feasting, a rare combination of qualities which had previously been lacking in work of this type." Reliefs of Ashurbanipal's lion hunts are now in the British Museum.

• 23:17Holly Frey?

  This era is also known for its extremely intricate cylinder seals, which produce a complex pattern or image when rolled across clay. And there was also, of course, Ashurbanipal's library, which we are going to get into eventually.

• 23:32Tracy V. Wilson?

  While Ashurbanipal is associated with all of these achievements in Assyrian art and culture, none of this came out of thin air, of course. He had inherited an empire that had existed for thousands of years. And the flourishing that is framed as the Neo-Assyrian period had started more than 200 years before he came to power. So he was really building on all of those foundations. He was also regarded as a popular king and a capable administrator, and Assyria really prospered when he was in control.

• 24:03Holly Frey?

  At the same time, though, he was ruthless and even cruel when it came to his enemies. Some of this, like displaying their severed heads, was typical of leaders in ancient Mesopotamia. But in depictions he commissioned and in surviving accounts produced by other people, Ashurbanipal is seen as taking it to an extreme, like salting the earth after putting down an uprising against him, forcing people to grind up the bones of their ancestors to make bricks for his palaces, forcing defeated Elamite kings to pull his chariot during a triumphal parade that he threw for himself, and forcing one of his rivals to live in a dog kennel. Some accounts describe that particular rival

• 24:48Holly Frey?

  as being forced to wear a dog collar, but others describe it as having a chain punched through his jaw, neither of which sounds great.

• 24:57Tracy V. Wilson?

  No, it's one of those things that I think is depicted in some of the reliefs, and it's hard to tell from the relief exactly which way it should be interpreted. Ashurbanipal and other Assyrian kings also dealt with conquered peoples by deporting their citizens to other parts of the empire. Often, they would install local princes as vassal rulers to try to retain a region's loyalty. But a lot of the people that had been living in those regions would be sent elsewhere to serve in the Assyrian army or to work on farms or to work on the emperor's building projects, just whatever work the empire thought was most necessary in that moment. This also included sending scribes to work for the royal court

• 25:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  or taking the more educated sons of local leaders hostage to serve as scribes and scholars in the capital.

• 25:50Holly Frey?

  Ashurbanipal's military campaigns began with finishing what his father had tried to start in Egypt, putting down the uprising that Esarhaddan had been on his way to deal with when he died. There, Ashurbanipal's forces fought against the Kushites and the Nubians, ultimately capturing Memphis and taking control of what is now Egypt. Assyria's control of Egypt was relatively brief, but that was when the empire was at its largest.

• 26:18Tracy V. Wilson?

  Other campaigns included besieging the Phoenician city of Tyre, which had supported uprisings in Egypt and in Lydia, and ongoing disputes with the kingdoms of Ilam in what's now southwestern Iran and Erartu in what's now northwestern Iran, Armenia, and Turkey.

• 26:36Holly Frey?

  And then there was Babylon and Ashurbanipal's relationship with his brother, Shama Shumukin, a little family drama in play. This has been characterized in a couple of different ways, in part because documentation about it is still being reconstructed and translated. So one is that Esarhaddan's intention was always for Ashurbanipal to be ruler of the whole empire, with Shama Shumukin's governorship of Babylon more like that of a vassal state. The other is that Esarhaddan was dividing the empire, with his two sons having different responsibilities and different territory. Either way, when their father died, Ashurbanipal was fond of his brother,

• 27:20Holly Frey?

  but over time, that relationship deteriorated. Ashurbanipal started describing his brother as being ungrateful and traitorous. He wouldn't even mention Shama Shumukin's name without some kind of epithet. And Shama Shumukin increasingly chafed at Ashurbanipal's attempts to control Babylon and to tell him what to do.

• 27:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  Eventually, Ashurbanipal was encouraging the citizens of Babylon to rebel against Shama Shumukin. And Shama Shumukin was working directly with Lydia, Ilam, and other territories to revolt against Ashurbanipal. Ashurbanipal started attacking and besieging the cities that were involved, including taking on a two-year siege of Babylon, during which conditions in that city became truly horrific. Shama Shumukin is believed to have taken his own life during the siege in 648 BCE by throwing himself into the flames while his palace was burning.

• 28:21Holly Frey?

  Ashurbanipal ruled the Assyrian Empire from 668 BCE to 627 BCE. But there's not as much information about the last four or five years of that, at least not yet. In yet another attempt to deal with the line of succession, Ashurbanipal gave two of his sons, Asher Edel Ilani and Sinchar Ishkun, co-regency with different territories and different powers. But especially considering the communication and transportation methods that existed in the 7th century BCE, the Assyrian Empire was enormous. There were ongoing divisions within and pressure from neighboring kingdoms and empires after Ashurbanipal's death.

• 29:06Holly Frey?

  His successors were not able to keep the empire together in the face of all of that, and progressively, they lost territory.

• 29:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  A coalition of kingdoms, including the Babylonians and the Medeans, conquered the Assyrian capital of Nineveh in 612 BCE. Assyria was absorbed into the Babylonian Empire, and then that fell to the Persians in 539 BCE. The Persians drew a lot of influence from Neo-Assyrian culture, and the roads and other infrastructure that were built by the Assyrians were critical to the building and the expansion of the Persian Empire.

• 29:45Holly Frey?

  We are finally going to get to that library after we pause for a sponsor break.

• 29:53Tracy V. Wilson?

  YouTube Premium takes something you already love, which is YouTube, and makes it even better. The content, the creators, the feeling of finding exactly what you're into for every mood and moment of your day. Premium transforms that experience into a more supercharged, enhanced way to enjoy YouTube. A YouTube Premium subscription gives you access to exclusive YouTube features and benefits, including, but not limited to, ad-free, uninterrupted videos, background play, which lets you keep listening even when your screen is locked. I know when I have a YouTube video playing and I'm walking around the kitchen and I instinctively turn the screen off, having the video stop is annoying. And downloading your videos so you can watch them anywhere, even without a Wi-Fi connection.

• 30:37Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 31:06Speaker 07

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• 31:48Speaker 07

  This new chicken nugget, reinvented, based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.

• 32:02Tracy V. Wilson?

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• 32:44Tracy V. Wilson?

  to help solve hiring challenges and find people who can help drive results, spend less time searching, and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Get your $75 sponsored job credit today at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

• 33:12Holly Frey?

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  I'm Shaquille O'Neal, and this shouldn't be anybody's experience. Ask your doctor about Zepbound Trisepotide, the first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains Trisepotide, and should not be used with other Trisepotide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't chew needles or pens, or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family

• 34:01Speaker 06

  had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia, if you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulphonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor.

• 34:36Holly Frey?

  Call 1-800-545-5979, or visit zepbound.lily.com.

• 34:43Tracy V. Wilson?

  We've all done it. Tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends. Not to cancel them, not to hype them more,

• 35:28Tracy V. Wilson?

  but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 35:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  Now we have finally gotten to Asher Banapal's library. This was a massive library that he assembled in the capital of Nineveh. Tablets from the library have been found around the remains of multiple buildings in that city, the Southwest Palace, the North Palace, and then the areas around the temples of Ishtar and Nabu. It is not fully clear whether this is where the library collections were before the city was destroyed, or if that's more where tablets wound up over the course of the city's destruction and the centuries that have followed.

• 36:27Holly Frey?

  Obviously, plenty of monarchs and temples and wealthy people had collections of documents and texts long before this. But this is one of the oldest-known, systematically-acquired and organized libraries in the world. It was intentionally collected and curated as a repository of knowledge. It's also the largest collection of Assyrian texts in the world. Excavations there have unearthed more than 20,000 clay tablets and fragments, and many have standardized calliphons that suggest a systematic method for labeling and cataloging the texts. That number includes a lot of pieces, and the total number of complete tablets is actually unknown.

• 37:10Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, it's obviously less than 20,000, but it's hard to pinpoint how many texts there were when the library existed as a functioning entity. Asher Banapal ordered the creation of this library. He ordered temples and palaces all across his empire to send their texts to Nineveh. Often, these texts were copied, and Asher Banapal would be sent either the copies or the originals. There is some surviving documentation that suggests that what he really wanted was those originals, and that maybe people creatively misunderstood his instructions so that they could keep the originals in their temple or their collection. Surviving correspondence also suggests

• 37:51Tracy V. Wilson?

  that he was really knowledgeable about where to find the texts that he wanted for his library, and also who was likely to have works that would be good additions to the library, but that he didn't specifically know about already.

• 38:07Holly Frey?

  I love that he has, like, a scholarly network of acquisitions librarians to talk to. Some of the texts in the library are ones that he wrote himself, and many are inscribed with calliphons that he wrote. There is also a 10-sided cylinder covered in cuneiform, containing the annals of Asher Banapal, including an account of his ascension to the throne and his expeditions and conquests against Egypt, Tyre, Elam, Arabia, and his brother in Babylon, among others. Assyriologist Hormuzd Rasam, who was born in Mosul, unearthed this cylinder from the site of the North Palace, and it is called the Rasam Cylinder today.

• 38:48Tracy V. Wilson?

  Asher Banapal described this library as containing all knowledge. There are texts on medicine, mathematics, and history. There's also literature, including epics and myths and dictionaries and other reference works. A lot of the Assyrian literature that still exists today has survived because Asher Banapal included it in the library. That includes the Epic of Gilgamesh and its famous tablet relating a flood that has some distinct similarities to the biblical book of Genesis. And there are extensive legal texts and documents relating to the functioning of the Assyrian Empire.

• 39:25Holly Frey?

  There is also a lot of material that relates to divination in some way. As we said earlier, omens and divination were a key part of the Assyrian worldview. Asher Banapal wanted his library to contain every bit of information that could possibly be used to interpret signs and omens, believing this knowledge would benefit and strengthen the empire. That includes books on astrology and omen texts. Based on what has been translated so far, it is likely that roughly half of the library's works relate to divination. And there are also texts there that are related to magic.

• 40:04Tracy V. Wilson?

  The sacking of Nineveh in 612 BCE both preserved and destroyed Asher Banapal's library. As the city burned, the clay tablets hardened in the heat, and then they were protected by the fallen rubble of the city around them. But writing boards, which would have been made of wood or ivory that was covered with wax, those were largely destroyed. The tablets were also broken and scattered during the destruction of the city. And as they have been unearthed, it hasn't always been clear where in the capital they were originally housed.

• 40:39Holly Frey?

  That scattering of fragments was compounded by the excavation of the library after its rediscovery in the 19th century. English archaeologist Austin Henry Laird was working with Hormuz Razam, who had been Laird's assistant before training at Oxford and becoming an Assyriologist in his own right. The two started excavating Nineveh in 1849 and found numerous clay tablets and fragments. Razam continued excavations after Laird moved on and found another huge collection of tablets that began in 1852.

• 41:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  At the time, this area was under Ottoman control, and the excavation site was known as Koyunyek. I'm sorry for my bad pronunciation of that. Much of the material that Laird and other archaeologists excavated at Koyunyek was sent to the British Museum. There were also French archaeology projects in the area, so some of these materials are also now in the Louvre.

• 41:38Holly Frey?

  Although the fire had hardened and preserved the tablets, many of them were broken. And during excavations, archaeologists and workers didn't fully document exactly where each piece was found. It's obvious that tablets found in different places were all part of the same overall collection, because many are marked Palace of Asher Banapal, King of the World, King of Assyria. But without knowing exactly where in Nineveh any individual piece was found, it is extremely difficult to figure out which other pieces that piece might go with.

• 42:13Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah, the focus was much more on sending these archaeological treasures to England than on thoroughly documenting the context where each piece was found.

• 42:24Holly Frey?

  Yeah, get them out as quickly as you can and get them on their way.

• 42:27Tracy V. Wilson?

  Yeah. So reconstructing these tablets is just an incredibly laborious process. Only a fraction of the tablets have been reassembled, and a lot of those still do have missing pieces. An average of 35 texts have been reconstructed and transcribed every year since the mid 19th century, and that means there is still a whole lot left to go.

• 42:51Holly Frey?

  Even so, the library has been a massive source of information about ancient Mesopotamia and the Assyrian Empire. Researchers first deciphered cuneiform in 1857, just a few years after the first tablets from the library were found. A key part of this was the Bixitun inscription. That's an inscription on a rock face in the Zagros Mountains in what is now Iran, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site today. Much like the Rosetta Stone, the Bixitun inscription contains an inscription in three languages. It's an account of Akhmanid King Darius I, written in Babylonian, Old Persian, and Elamite.

• 43:33Holly Frey?

  Henry Rollinson published his work on the Old Persian section of it in 1849, and that enabled the translation of the other languages. Asher Banapal's library was part of the process of deciphering cuneiform, as it provided an array of additional samples of cuneiform script to work from.

• 43:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  Once people were able to read the cuneiform script that they were written in, the tablets in Asher Banapal's library became the source of just a wealth of new historical information. Prior to this, the vast majority of information about ancient Mesopotamia and the Assyrian Empire had been in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament derived from it, and from Greek and Roman writers. The biblical texts were really primarily focused on things that related to the Levant and Egypt, and then the Greek and Roman accounts were often ones that were written centuries later. Neither of them was like a complete nuanced history of the Assyrian Empire.

• 44:36Holly Frey?

  Something that historians and other scholars were able to start correcting after the discovery of Asher Banapal's library was the existing knowledge about Asher Banapal himself. Greek sources had turned him into a semi-mythical figure called Sardanapalus, conflating elements of Asher Banapal with his brother Shemashumukin. The Greek version of Sardanapalus was the last king of Assyria and burned himself to death in his palace alongside all of his riches and concubines. Sardanapalus was depicted in European literature and art, particularly during the Romantic Era, including in George Gordon Lord Byron's verse drama Sardanapalus and Eugene Delacroix's painting Death of Sardanapalus.

• 45:21Tracy V. Wilson?

  Reconstructing and deciphering the works in the library is ongoing. The British Museum established the Asher Banapal Library Project in 2002 in cooperation with the University of Mosul. This project has gone through multiple phases of funding and has involved cataloging, the creation of high-resolution 3D imagery of the tablets and fragments, and multiple projects to reconstruct and translate the texts. So today, these images and other information is available for scholars to use, try to work on furthering the deciphering process of all of these pieces.

• 45:59Holly Frey?

  And great news, you can see a lot of this online today. The Asher Banapal Library Project's online home is at ORAC or the Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus at orac, O-R-A-C-C dot museum dot U-P-N dot E-D-U. And the British Museum can be visited virtually on Google Maps, including Room 55, which is where the Asher Banapal Library exhibit is located.

• 46:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  And that is yet another installment of what I did on my summer vacation.

• 46:32Holly Frey?

  Do you have a cuneiform listener mail?

• 46:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  I have listener form, listener form? That's not what it means, but sure, we'll call it that. It's listener form from now on.

• 46:41Holly Frey?

  There you go.

• 46:42Tracy V. Wilson?

  It's not, I'll forget by the next time we do it. So this is from Gwendolyn, and Gwendolyn wrote and said, Hello, Holly and Tracy. I'm a longtime listener who has earned a PhD in your history offerings, though like to purposely get a little behind in order to have multiple episodes saved up for when I need them. My latest listening spree included your week of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, which I knew would be exciting for me, as I am a chemist and have also done X-ray crystalography. I think you were a few minutes into the second part when you mentioned Dorothy went to the doctor for pain in her hands. I looked at my dog, Tongston, more on him in a moment, and said, uh-oh, I think Dorothy might have rheumatoid arthritis.

• 47:26Tracy V. Wilson?

  Sure enough, within a few minutes, you confirmed this had been the case, though for her, it took several years to get that answer. This was funny to me, because I also have rheumatoid arthritis, and I have somehow correctly diagnosed several people, myself included, well before the official diagnosis was reached. It's a little sad that most people, and especially women, still go years between, hey, my hands hurt, and receiving the final answer. And on another note, I too have been given paradoxical information of just rest and move your hands more, because as Holly mentioned, this disease is different for everyone it impacts. And despite many advances in treatment, we're still kind of shrugging our shoulders about how to really fix it for people with stubborn cases.

• 48:08Tracy V. Wilson?

  As an autoimmune girlie, I'm always so grateful when you discuss the facts about illnesses and disabilities. It's so important, especially given today's climate, not believing scientists and healthcare professionals, as well as the ever-increasing disregard for people with disabilities. Thank you so much for not shying away from the tough topics and handling them with care. You're wonderful hosts, basically longtime friends at this point. And I always look forward to hearing your voices and insights. When I have the time to catch up on episodes, I will also add here that Holly and I seem to have some kind of spooky connection, where we both think of an Eddie Izzard reference for the same thing, and I always get a big laugh whenever that happens. After that very long email, you deserve some pet tax.

• 48:52Tracy V. Wilson?

  I've included a couple of pictures of the aforementioned Tongston, a truly American melting pot mix, my constant companion, and a long little doggy. In one of the photos, he is patiently waiting while my 97.5-year-old grandmother looks absolutely shocked that dog treats can be shaped like ice cream cones. The third picture is of an embroidery project I completed recently for a friend's grandson. I was terrified, as it was the most complicated project I had done in a while, but he turned out all right. Here's to many more years of great episodes, Gwendolyn. Gwendolyn has a postscript with a, an episode topic suggestion. I will leave that secret in case it becomes a topic in the future.

• 49:35Tracy V. Wilson?

  So then, yes, we do have very cute dog pictures. What a cute boy. And then a really cool project, this looks like a moth.

• 49:45Holly Frey?

  It does.

• 49:46Tracy V. Wilson?

  A really intricate moth. I cannot imagine how challenging that must have been to do.

• 49:52Holly Frey?

  I'm wondering, because it looks a lot like a kit I bought to do a very similar bat.

• 49:58Tracy V. Wilson?

  Oh, yeah?

• 49:58Holly Frey?

  Maybe we are experiencing spooky action at a distance, because we are apparently embroidering the same kinds of things as well.

• 50:06Tracy V. Wilson?

  Maybe so. I had not thoroughly read the whole rest of the email when I just scrolled through it today and did not, like, I had not seen the context for the photo of the grandmother and the dog. I was like, what is happening? What is she holding? And now I know, it is a dog treat shaped like a little ice cream cone.

• 50:29Holly Frey?

  Precious.

• 50:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  So thank you so, so much, Gwendolyn, for this email. It was very kind and gracious. I always feel a little awkward reading the very kind, gracious parts out loud on the show, but thank you so much. I also just realized, because it was hidden under the part of the screen where Holly is, so I can see you when I'm talking to you, that the title of the email was Rheumatoid Arthritis Worthy... dot, dot, dot, When?

• 51:00Tracy V. Wilson?

  Which is also great. If you would like to send us a note, we are at [email protected]. You can also find the show notes for all of our episodes, including all of the sources that we've used for our research. That's at our website, which is at missedinhistory.com. And you can subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app, but anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts.

• 51:29Tracy V. Wilson?

  Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 51:43Holly Frey?

  A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 52:14Tracy V. Wilson?

  You ever show up late to the game and your friends already saved your seat, your drink, even a plate? That's looking out. That's having your back. And that's exactly what AT&T does with the AT&T Guarantee. They know staying connected matters, so they actually guarantee a network that comes through when it counts. AT&T has connectivity you can depend on, or they'll proactively make it right, just like that friend who takes care of things before you even ask. AT&T. Connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com/guarantee for details. Snoring, gasping for air during sleep, daytime sleepiness? I'm Shaquille O'Neal, and this shouldn't be anybody's experience. Ask your doctor about Zepbound Trisepotide,

• 52:57Speaker 06

  the first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea in adults with obesity. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15-milligram injection. Zepbound contains trisepotide and should not be used with other trisepotide-containing products or any GLP-1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepbound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pens, or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it, or if you or someone in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome

• 53:41Speaker 06

  type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop Zepbound and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing, pregnant, plant-to-be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zepbound with a sulfonylurea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-5979, or visit zepbound.lilly.com.

• 54:18Speaker 00

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• 55:26Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed humor.