Actually did this last year already but I kinda liked it, so heres another for this year's halloween (It's Ishmekarab and Lagamal going out as the Heibai Wuchang lol)

Some hk art cuz I've been spending a lot of my free time playing the game lol (Well since I finished its time to go play silksong)

yamayuandadu.tumblr.com/post/7970356... First of the three short articles I wrote to make sure nothing cut from the Cybele deep dive goes to waste is now up on my blog. Find out why a god could be referred to as a tyrant, if Pythagoras was an alien, and what happens if the moon has cooties.

yamayuandadu.tumblr.com/post/7965039... New "Megaten and mythology" article is up on my tumblr! Find out why Strange Journey is, in a way, a game about Cybele. Make sure to read the warning in the lead, though. #shinmegamitensei #smt #atlusfaithful

With multiple Neo-Assyria scholars commenting on the lack of evidence for a Neo-Assyrian law collection despite keeping copies of older ones, you'd think that someone would have questioned the collections as "law codes" based on this

Imagine working in the temple of Sin in Harran and needing to call this guy by his full name (Ashurbanipal made him a priest there)

yamayuandadu.tumblr.com/post/7932506... My new blog article, "Tribulations of a “tomboy goddess”, or why you should care about Anat" is out. It's not strictly speaking a Megaten article but I cover Megaten in it because Anat has no other notable modern adaptations for some reason.

Ngl I feel like quite a few Assyriologists operate on modern/western values to compare with Mesopotamia as well as modern stereotypes about the Middle East outside of classical Orientalism (although that is still an issue)

Waiting for the day more people realize ANE "law codes" weren't law codes in the modern sense, were not cited in actual court proceedings, contradicted by daily documents and judicial decisions numerous times, etc.

Jokes aside I do hope Der gets a shot at getting at least partially excavated in the future

Haven't played the violin for too long and now my fingers hurt

Oh hey didn't realize the Epic of Zimri-Lim is available online on oracc now (oracc.museum.upenn.edu/nere/Q009326)

Remembering that the United Nations still holds the Cyrus Cylinder as some ancient human rights declaration 💀

Expanding on the Lupus talk, personally I'm not too confident on some attempts to map Mesopotamian diagnoses onto modern ones. The listed symptoms reflect what they thought were significant and connected, so they might overlook and highlight certain symptoms, and likely no patient had all of them

Brought up House MD and suddenly had a stupid idea

How it feels to see people trying to diagnose Esarhaddon with Lupus:

Guess Ninkilim is Ninurta now lol The commentary says this syncretism is quite unexpected but maybe it has something to do with Ninurta's less attested association with wild animals?

yamayuandadu.tumblr.com/post/7889645... New article is up on my blog! I'm looking into the sources responsible for the common modern perception of Inanna and Ereshkigal as "polar opposites", into their supposed status as sisters, and into metaphorical use of kinship terms in ancient Mesopotamia.

I know Wikimedia Commons have some questionable descriptions but man the Kurangum relief description including Potts' typo is way funnier than it should be (Still one of the funniest typos I've seen yet, imo)

Random thought but the title of Gadotti's "Never Truly Hers: Ereshkigal's dowry and the rulership of the Underworld" is actually somewhat misleading since by nature of the dowry, it technically does belong to Ereshkigal lol (Rest of the argument is still sound though)

ANE legacies in pop-culture be like: "the iron people" - Hittites Married to the bible - Ugarit Aryan conspiracy theories - Mitanni People think they're biblical nazis - Assyria Representative of Mesopotamia - Babylon

Reminds me how the wikipedia page for Ashur actually linked to Asura for quite some time... Someone even tried to add it back

yamayuandadu.tumblr.com/post/7885004... A case of twice-mistaken identity: on “Asherah” in Strange Journey is up! Find out what's an "asherah", if it has anything to do with the names of any deities, and why I suspect SJ Asherah's name is misromanized. #shinmegamitensei #megaten #atlusfaithful

I think the Neo-Assyrian sun disc being Shamash instead is definitely quite possible considering the figure with sun disc and bow in Urartu is in all likelihood Siuini

back to random messy doodles

Sennacherib attempting to revive Haya probably to replace Nabu is actually kinda hilarious

Wait a sec if likawe rishaki/rishari was the Elamite rendering of sukkal-mah then Humban-numena and Hutelutush-Inshushinak calling themselves this instead of king makes more sense. I guess they were invoking memories of the Sukkalmahs?

yamayuandadu.tumblr.com/post/7870980... Pride month special 2025 is live!

yamayuandadu.tumblr.com/786275029505... The long awaited Gilgamesh article is finally up. 16k+ words, complete with sections of every major period in Gilgamesh's history, sub-sections on other characters, and more!

In an alternate universe, there may have been 3 Rusahinilis

Got lucky tonight! I'm too far south lol

Last Zimri-Lim Mari period related meme (doubt)

I have to say the Mari scholars constantly calling the sukkalmah(most likely) (tbf Mari texts aren't very knowledgeable on Elam it seems) as the EMPEROR OF ELAM is pretty funny

Back with memes (again)

Semi-crack theory: maybe the nonsensical sounding Neo-Assyrian cultic commentaries were the scribes own flavour of humor of which the jokes are now lost to us

i know the shading is still in testing but lol the cave water is killing me

Honestly still not really sure how Glassner managed to read this as giving offerings for Ebarat II (deceased) to lead Amma-tedak on the path to Napirisha (v obvious what inscription this interpretation is based on lol), idk I feel like it requires quite the logical leap

Somewhat hot take: Enuma Elish is overrated in popular culture

Zimri-Lim on his way to spam Dagan until he gets an affirmation to sign the peace treaty:

Saw Frahm's argument that Kumma from Underworld Vision of an Assyrian Prince being Urdu-Mullissi and while there’s problems with this theory (Frahm admits too) The idea of Nergal showing Sennacherib's corpse to the son that murdered him is honestly so funny

"I'm sorry Zimri-Lim, but I cannot sign this because it now appears Sin is on the tablet. No this is definitely not an excuse."

I still can't draw backgrounds lol

Still find this incident pretty funny (Also what did Atamrum do lol)

yamayuandadu.tumblr.com/post/7778480... The promised article about lesbian spells from the magical papyri and related sources is up! As a fair warning, it includes discussion of historical homophobia, as well as one nsfw image and a substantial amount of nsfw text.

I still don't know how Hinz decided that Napir was the name of the Elamite moon god and at this point I'm too afraid to ask

yamayuandadu.tumblr.com/post/7763975... An unplanned article dealing with two particularly unique cases of assigning new names to Hecate, and with a number of other phenomena related to her, including her identification as an angel, the shift from three bodies to four, and more!

Assuming Desset is right then we would have effectively switched most of the gods that appeared in the Naram-Sin treaty from a possible origin in Awan to a possible origin in Marhashi lol

Honestly so close to just saying fuck it and winging my midterms

Steinkeller's great at early period stuff but some of his takes honestly feels weird. In the same paper as below he also believes Ningirsu developed out of Bau and Inshushinak developed out of Inanna and tries to argue that An's wife Urash is Ninurta and also Dilbat Urash

It'll be kinda funny if the reason Ninkarrak appeared in the Naram-Sin treaty (with unnamed Elamite king, presumably Hita) is not because she's Mesopotamian but that she's considered "Elamite" Fwiw she's suspected of having foreign origins, although idt she pops up anywhere in Elam