iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

In 1748 BCE, a man feels so “discredited” by a woman named Amertum that he declares before 13 witnesses: “As long as she talks, I will not bring her into my house.” It’s a flawlessly preserved legal record of a bizarre situation.

Photo of a cuneiform tablet viewed from the front, back, sides, and top. A sealing interrupts the text on the back of the tablet, which is in the bottom half of the photo. The sealing can also be seen along the top and the sides.

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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

advance copies have arrived and if it looks like i’m trying to hug it, that’s because i am 🥹

Selfie of a smiling woman holding a shiny book entitled Between Two Rivers. The bottom half of the book cover is slightly obscured by her hand. She wears a dark grey sweatshirt

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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

If it looks like there are two different fonts on this clay tablet from ancient Babylon, that’s because there are. In December of 603 BCE, a young scribe named Balāṭa made a faithful copy of a far more ancient inscription of Sîn-Kashid who had ruled Uruk over 1,000 years earlier.

Photo of a broken clay tablet fragment seen from the front, back, and sides. There is a British Museum watermark at the bottom of the image.

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Amanda Hills Podany @ahpodany.bsky.social · 31/12/2024

"When I came to Babylon, for the messengers of Zimri-Lim (king of Mari) there were unending servings of pork, fish, fowl, and nuts, while I was totally ignored!" Here's hoping your festivities are happier than those of this ancient messenger! ARM 26 384, J. M. Sasson, From the Mari Archives, 88.

A clay cuneiform text with Old Babylonian recipes inscribed on it, 18th century BCE.

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Jana Mynářová @pudukhepa.bsky.social · 28/12/2024

The second circular for the #RAI70Prague is now available at rai70.ff.cuni.cz There will be 24 open workshops plus the main track. The abstract submission will start on January 1, 2025 @IAAssyriology @FF_CUNI @Orientalniustav #cuneiform #IANESPrague #assyriology

rai70.ff.cuni.cz

RAI 70 - 2025 - Prague

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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

Although just a tiny fragment, this cuneiform tablet tells us about a child having seizures in the 7th century BCE. A medical professional reports, “Seizure keeps attacking him. I prepared the stones and prophylactery against seizure and put them upon him” cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts/33...

Fragment of a cuneiform tablet against a black background. A ruler at the bottom of the image shows that it is about 2cm wide

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Dr. Jim Getz @jimgetz.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

Interviewer: Can you explain this gap in your resume? Assyriologist: Du[ring] grad sch[ool] I [took?] a position ... [13 lines illegible] ... now.

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Morgane Pique @mpique.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

📣 [RAI70] Call for papers - Workshop Assyriologists, archaeologists and specialists working on Western Asia, please find our call for papers for our workshop at the #70RAIPrague : "Local power and urban institutions in ancient Western Asia during the 2nd millennium BCE" ⬇️ @ili-yahu.bsky.social

academia.edu

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Andrew A.N. Deloucas @aandeloucas.com · 19/12/2024

Wish you could enjoy watching the Poor Man of Nippur in its original language of Akkadian? You can! The Assyriology community at the University of Cambridge completed this project a few years back and it is a certified classic: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxYo...

youtube.com

The Poor Man of Nippur - World's first film in Babylonian

YouTube video by Cambridge Archaeology

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Liv Mariah Yarrow (pronounced "leave") @profyarrow.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

CfP from CUNY GC Classics Students! Landscape Features of the Ancient World a hybrid conference: May 2, 2025. Send abstracts to: cunyclassicsconference@gmail.com Due: January 31, 2025 #classicsGC #HumanitiesGC @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social

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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

I love the hybrid creatures from ancient Mesopotamia. They hint at what scared people, what protected them, and more. This is a “lion man” (urmahlilu), a magical creature that once flanked the entrance to King Ashurbanipal’s palace in Nineveh to protect against harm.

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Augusta McMahon @augustamcmahon.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

#Assyriology postdoc opportunity at ISAC UChicago with the #Nippur Tablet Collection. 🏺 Deadline end of January. apply.interfolio.com/160845 EOE/Vet/Disability

apply.interfolio.com

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

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Amanda Hills Podany @ahpodany.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

These two people, Shara-igizi-Abzu and her father Ushumgal, are two of the earliest people on Earth whose names are recorded on their images, c. 2900 BCE. He was a Mesopotamian priest, apparently giving land, houses, and animals to his daughter. Met 58.29. See Weavers, Scribes, and Kings, Ch. 3.

Ancient stone stele with an image of Ushumgal, a bearded male figure wearing a skirt and standing in front of a building, with a cuneiform inscription above him.

Ancient stone stele with an image of Shara-igizi-Abzu, a female figure wearing a dress and holding an object in her hand, with a cuneiform inscription in front of and above her.

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Seraina Nett @serainanett.bsky.social · 15/12/2024

Open call for PhD scholarships (fully funded) at my department, possible subject areas include Assyriology, West Asian Archaeology, Egyptology, Modern Middle Eastern Studies (one is earmarked for Turkish studies) and many more! employment.ku.dk/phd/?show=16...

employment.ku.dk

PhD scholarships at the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen

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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Last year, I wrote a brief article about how the heart “breaks” in ancient Mesopotamia. What could a broken heart have meant 3,000 years ago, and how did people express mental distress? To me, how they made emotional pain make sense is really moving anetoday.org/al-rashid-he...

anetoday.org

Heartbreak and the History of Distress in Ancient Mesopotamia - The Ancient Near East Today

The concept of “heartbreak” appears multiple times in cuneiform texts as a metaphor to describe both mental and physical conditions. How should we interpret this phrase? And is it anything like heartb...

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Dr. Kiersten Neumann @knpazuzu.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Join the fun! 🤩 urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

“The data revealed the location of the city’s water gate, possible palace gardens, and five enormous buildings, including a 127-room villa twice the size of the U.S. White House.” An episode in archaeology without (yet) digging. With thanks to @cosmicrami.com! news.agu.org/press-releas...

news.agu.org

Abandoned Assyrian capital brought to life in new magnetic survey

The first geophysical survey of an important Middle Eastern archaeological site overturns long-held assumptions about its history

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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

This list of Sumerian words, like a very ancient dictionary, dates to ~2300 BCE from the ancient city of Ebla. Remarkably, one of the words listed is sha-zu, which means “midwife” (“one who knows the inside”). A midwife in a 4,300-year-old clay tablet cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts/24...

Black and white photo of a broken clay tablet, partially preserving 13 columns of text, and a second fragment with an irregular shape that preserves 8 columns of text

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Elisa Rossberger @elisarossberger.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Vorderasiatische #Archäologie & #Archäoinformatik der FU Berlin sucht noch immer Unterstützung bei Verwaltungs- & Kommunikationsaufgaben... spread the word and/or apply (bis 16.12.)

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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

This is such a great question and I get asked this a lot, so here is a really brief thread on some accessible, excellent books on ancient Mesopotamia 😎

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Augusta McMahon @augustamcmahon.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

Parthian hedgehog from Nippur. Top 10 Mesopotamian artifact list. 🏺

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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

Star gazers in ancient Mesopotamia focused on recurring stuff like planetary motion, but sometimes they wrote about meteors. Watching from Babylon, one wrote: “Night of the 7th, last part of the night, a meteor which was very bright in the middle of the sky” oracc.museum.upenn.edu//adsd/adart1...

Two broken tablets pieced together to make up a joined-up fragment that is photographed from the front, back, and sides. One fragment is lighter beige than the other which is more of a light brown. The tablets are covered in partly damaged cuneiform script. At the bottom, a multicoloured ruler with the British Museum watermark shows it to be 5cm wide. Below the screenshot photo is the credit: “Photography by Ivor Kerslake (LMU Munich), copyright The Trustees of the British Museum”

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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

The beauty of an attempt to erase stuff in clay is that it can leave behind ancient smeared and smudged fingerprints. This tablet from Uruk, dated to the 600s BCE (or later), might be a school exercise text showing some partially erased cuneiform signs collections.peabody.yale.edu/search/Recor...

A rectangular cuneiform tablet. The front and back and sides are shown. On the front are some partially erased cuneiform signs. The watermark is for the Yale Babylonian Collection.

Obverse of a clay tablet with some partially erased cuneiform signs, next to a measurement that shows it is about 5cm long and a watermark for the British museum

Close-up of the left side of a cuneiform tablet showing smeared fingerprints and partially erased cuneiform signs

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Eduardo García-Molina @egarcmol.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Tuppi finally has a friend. Slowly but surely surrounding myself with cute research plushies.

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Amanda Hills Podany @ahpodany.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

Paw prints prove that good boys and girls have been casually walking across wet concrete (actually drying Mesopotamian mudbricks, in this case) for thousands of years. (Penn Museum B16461, Hearst Museum PAHMA 9-1765, VA Bab 04060.005, British Museum 137495)

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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

This ~2,000-year-old clay tablet has Sumerian and Akkadian words on one side, spelled out in Greek on the other. Such “Graeco-Babyloniaca” texts may tell us scribes who knew Sumerian and Akkadian (both dead languages by this point) were at least experimenting with learning Greek

Photo of a clay tablet that shows the front, back, and sides. The front is very damaged but shows some cuneiform signs along the right side. The back has a break vertically down the middle but shows some clear Greek writing. At the bottom is a photo credit that reads “Photograph by Ivor Kerslake (LMU Munich), copyright The Trustees of the British Museum”

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Robin Leroy @eggrobin.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Those from Assyriology Twitter who enjoyed Iris Kamil’s Akkadian letter threads may want to subscribe to her blog, where she has started posting these again: iriskamil.com/2024/11/24/t...

iriskamil.com

The “Princess, Do Your Homework!” Letter

The letter that started the saga is SAA 16 28, also known as the “Princess, Do Your Homework!” letter. When I first posted in on Twitter, my hope was to popularise letters other than Na…

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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

Actually “per my last email” was not unheard of in millennia-old cuneiform letters. A woman named Datâ in the 8th century BCE wrote to her brother, “Why have I not seen your messenger until this very day? Now, if you are alive, let me forgive the shortcomings of your character…”

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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

Around 1800 BCE, a businesswoman named Taram-Kubi received 20 shekels of fine gold, presumably as payment for textiles she wove. She lived in Assur, capital of the Assyrian empire, and sent her textiles to far-flung Anatolia for her husband to sell them cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/artifacts/28...

Beige-coloured cuneiform tablet with slightly rounded edges. It has rulings with cuneiform characters.

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Heather D. Baker @apkallatu.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

Happy caturday from shoulder cat

Tabby cat sitting on back of sofa with his front paws on my shoulder

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Andrew A.N. Deloucas @aandeloucas.com · 30/11/2024

Huge news!

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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

It looks like an ancient Excel spreadsheet with a doodle. But ~2,500 years ago, someone made a diagram of a 7-pointed star, and a table that seems to give instructions for how to make that diagram. The seven points of the star are labeled with the names for the strings of a Mesopotamian harp.

Beige-coloured Cuneiform tablet with drawing of a seven-sided star in the top left and a table below it across the rest of the tablet. Reverse of the tablet is damaged and shows several cracks and spots.

Close-up of the seven-sided star with cuneiform signs at its points and part of the table below on a beige-coloured cuneiform tablet

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Jana Mynářová @pudukhepa.bsky.social · 29/11/2024

2 days to deadline and 6 more proposals in our inbox. If you want to be among those who will have their workshop at the #70RAIPrague, send us your proposal for consideration. More at rai70.ff.cuni.cz @IAAssyriology @FF_CUNI @Orientalniustav #Assyriology #cuneiform #ANE

rai70.ff.cuni.cz

RAI 70 - 2025 - Prague

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Jay Crisostomo @cjcrisostomo.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

We have an opening for a Lecturer in Akkadian and/or Sumerian for next term. #Assyriology #AncientBluesky careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

careers.umich.edu

Lecturer - Sumerian and Akkadian (Winter 2025) | U-M Careers

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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Ancient Babylonians kept copious records of astronomical phenomena on clay tablets that we call Astronomical Diaries. In 164 BCE, they saw Halley’s Comet hover softly in the night sky, and recorded it in cuneiform on clay www.ebl.lmu.de/fragmentariu...

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Tate Paulette @tatepaulette.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Today is the official release date outside the US for my book, In the Land of Ninkasi: A History of Beer in Ancient Mesopotamia. If you happen to see it out in the wild at a bookstore, library, etc., I'd love to see photos. global.oup.com/academic/pro...

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Andrew A.N. Deloucas @aandeloucas.com · 26/11/2024

A fantastic Mesopotamian microhistory, this time detailing a woman named Zizizi and the world she was part of, the Old Assyrian tin and textile trade network that connected Assur with Anatolia (20th-18th centuries BCE).

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Greek Myth Comix @greekmythcomix.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

I think BlueSky is already in the proverbial choir, but this is the kind of educational content I made for my classes (and anyone else who wants it) over on GreekMythComix.com ✨What is Supplication?✨

~WHAT IS SUPPLICATION?~
OR 'WHY DO THEY PUT THEIR HANDS ON EACHOTHER WHEN THEY WANT SOMETHING? By Greek Myth Comix

SUPPLICATION IS RITUAL BEGGING - DESPERATELY REQUESTING SOMETHING
USING A FORMULA.

UNLIKE XENIA, IT IS NOT APPARENTLY PROTECTED BY ZEUS - THE RESULT DEPENDS ON THE PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE PERSON BEING BEGGED FROM.
THEY DON'T HAVE TO SAY YES UNLESS THEY WANT TO.

TO SUPPLICATE SOMEONE / BE SUPPLIANT/ BE A SUPPLICANT, YOU MUST USE:
- BESEECHING WORDS
- RITUAL GESTURES
- MAKE A PLEADING
SPEECH (BETTER THAN THIS!)
“PLEASE!”
- SOMETIMES OTHER GESTURES:

1) KNEEL BEFORE THE HOST
- DEGRADING SELF BY
BEING LOWER
2) GRAB KNEES
- SUGGESTS YOUR DESPERATION / STOPS THEM GETTING AWAY!

EXAMPLES IN
HOMER'S EPICS:
“I HAVE
KISSED THE HANDS
OF THE MAN WHO KILLED MY SONS!”
ILIAD, BK 24
MORE
PATHETIC!

MORE
DEGRADING AND DESPERATE!
"HAVING SPOKEN, ODYSSEUS SAT DOWN IN THE HEARTH'S ASHES, CLOSE TO THE FIRE.."
ODYSSEY, BK 7

MORE FORCEFUL (AND INTIMATE!)
"THETIS SANK IN FRONT OF ZEUS, CLASPED HIS KNEES WITH HER LEFT HAND, RAISED HER RIGHT HAND TO HIS CHIN, AND SO MADE HER PETITION..."
"..ZEUS MADE NO
STEL CLASPING HIS KNEES, PLEADED WITH HIM AGAIN..."
ILIAD, BK 1

LESS THREATENING!
“I AM AT YOUR KNEES!
(METAPHORICALLY!)”
ODYSSEY, BK 6

GREEK MYTH COMIX

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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

A few years ago, I wrote a piece about Gilgamesh and grief for Aeon’s Psyche magazine. I want to share it on here as a periodic reminder that we’re not alone in our darkest moments, or in the journeys we take to process whatever we might be going through psyche.co/ideas/ancien...

psyche.co

Ancient Akkadian poems and medical texts reveal grief’s universals | Psyche Ideas

The oldest story in the world, the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’, shows us that the pain of grief is a fundamental part of being human

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Luise Loges @luilog.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

Is #cuneisky a thing yet? Because it should be. Let's make it a thing, Assyriologists&friends! #cuneiform #ancientbluesky #Assyriology

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Dr Louise O'Brien @egypto-lou-gist.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

Statue of the god Anubis in classical garb, holding a caduceus, more commonly seen as the symbol of Hermes (and in Egypt, Herm-Anubis, the syncretic god). Made from Pario Marble, c. 1st - 2nd century AD, Villa Pamphili, Anzio. Vatican Museums, Inv. 22840.

White marble statue of the god Anubis - he is in a humanoid form, wearing a Greek chiton tunic and himation mantle draped over his left arm, fastened with a brooch at the right shoulder. He has the head of a jackal, with a sun disc placed between the ears. He holds in his left hand a caduceus, a staff with two snakes wrapped around the top. In his right hand he holds an unknown item, possibly a small votive vessel.

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