This is the best gift I could have imagined this morning. Who am I kidding, no way could I have imagined it

Ancient written language scholarship on even more ancient text - leading to a linguistic coincidence that everyone should know 🤠

So, the next time someone tells you off for saying ‘shit’, just tell them you’re speaking Akkadian Also, follow this account - a BlueSky gem

Today, I've been reading a very old medical commentary from ancient Uruk, written in the Akkadian language. It's a tiny cuneiform tablet that explains words and phrases excerpted from another text - a diagnostic manual, known in antiquity as Sa-gig.

What if, instead, foreign tourists from the countries whose heritage the British Museum stole were paid upon entry?

“Alluding to the often fragmentary nature by which we engage with, & absorb information about, history…” Postcards of wall reliefs from the palaces of Ashurnasirpal Il and Ashurbanipal, balanced atop colored pencils on a chessboard floor. (Reminded me of @moudhy.bsky.social’s “Between Two Rivers”)

Where does the 60 minute hour, or 60 second minute come from? Turns out some aspects go way back... this was a fun conversation with Jocelyn Timperley from the BBC: www.bbc.com/future/artic... Glad to see @iastranger.bsky.social quoted as well!

#New on #OCIANA: Is this the oldest #Arabic inscription yet discovered? The famous #Bāyir inscription is now online. An ancient Arab calls upon the Canaanite gods: Malkom, Kemosh, and Qaws to protect the wells of Bāyir (ancient: ʾabāʾir). Find more: ociana.osu.edu/inscriptions...

Press release for our new paper! “…people across the world created inclusive political systems, even under difficult conditions…An understanding of the hallmarks of autocracy and democracy can help identify threats and pump the brakes on burgeoning totalitarian regimes.” phys.org/news/2026-03...

It’s Mother’s Day in Lebanon today. Israeli strikes have killed over 100 children so far

كل عام و انتو بخير و عيدكم مبارك ✨

Hell yeah.

Such a fascinating thread. The little linguistic insight and the fact that, yet again, there's nothing new under the sun. 🙂

see? here's the thing. A lot of people are like, the earth is fucked, it's beyond salvation, it's hit the tipping point, but time and time again we see that if we just fucking fixed the problem, it rebounds so incredibly fast. Imagine what could be done if people actually cared

All this. Yes.

My love of ancient West Asia is like 15% awe at the origins of hugely important human technologies and 85% squeeeee so much cute 🥰

Latest casualty figures from #Lebanon’s Health Ministry. The dead include 111 children #Beirut

A cute little clay sheep from a suburb (known today as Diqdiqqah) of ancient Ur

“I’m done hiding Now I’m shining Like a butterbean.” - Golden, KPop Demon Hunters

WE LAUNCH OUR UK TOUR NEXT WEEK!!!!!!!!!!! 😁🤪🥰🥹🫡🎭🤡👌 Cannot wait to get on stage at the London Adelphi Theatre and do our first ever live tour show of ‘YOU’RE DEAD TO ME’ with brilliant comedian Desiree Burch and top historian Dr Steve Kershaw Grab your ticket now! youredeadtomelive.com

I love when art reaches across time and connects on a human level thousands of years apart. The moment itself is just profoundly beautiful. I find comfort knowing that despite it all, humans have always been making art, and were writing stories that could still reach the hearts of us millennia later

Whenever I'm in despair about the universe, I know the Mesopotamians got my back 🙏🏻 And this is also precisely why Epic of Gilgamesh will always be near and dear to my heart; it being the oldest epic means it shares the same concepts of the human condition that has never changed throughout milennia.

Toxic Pollution From Iran War Will Spread and Last for Decades — Bloomberg

dog in sunshine

Hello, international listeners! Our episode of You’re Dead To Me about the Bronze Age Epic of Gilgamesh is now available globally on all podcast apps — I’m joined by comedian and storyteller @marjoleinrobertson.bsky.social and expert Assyriologist @moudhy.bsky.social for a VERY funny chat!

maybe not killing 20 people a day could be the first step

I'm sorry I'm a few thousand years too late to commiserate with you, my Babylonian friend, but I hope so too. "Perhaps, at daybreak, good things will come to me A new moon will appear, my sun will shine."

Ms Rachel has shifted from advocating for children killed by bombs that our taxes pay for, to advocating for children that our government is imprisoning without cause, which our taxes also pay for. This isn’t what a kid’s entertainer should feel the need to do, but since we’re here, more ppl should.

ICYMI, today Israel dropped two sets of leaflets on Lebanon, one which refers to the "outstanding success in Gaza," carrying an implicit threat for the country and another which calls on people to effectively report on each other and share intel with IDF Unit 504. Dystopian.

Our home is full of wonders that are billions of years in the making

"The legal frameworks governing base use are complex, and the terms of these agreements are not publicly known. For Iran, keeping that ambiguity alive serves a strategic purpose that long predates the current conflict..." writes @elhamfakhro.bsky.social

Murdering random Jews in response to Israeli state violence is violent antisemitism. It shouldn't be necessary to state that. And yet

Reminded of Stephennie Mulder’s contrib here, ‘No, People in the Middle East Haven’t Been Fighting Since the Beginning of Time’ fordhampress.com/whose-middle...

tušāma ina urri iššira damiqtī arḫu innammaru inammira šamšī "Perhaps, at daybreak, good things will come to me A new moon will appear, my sun will shine." A couplet from Babylonian poem, Ludlul bēl nēmeqi, whose protagonist hopes for better days. A lengthy, beautiful, bizarre work of literature.

Yeah, it's definitely a "Middle East" problem, and not colonial intervention and violence, genocide, ecocide, exploitation of resources, dispensational premillennialism, absurd Sykes-Picot land borders, the fossil fuel lobby, or anything else. It's just us. We're the problem.

"Eight were killed on Thursday when two bombs from an Israeli drone had fallen in quick succession on the beachfront corniche where displaced people had been sleeping for the past week." Telling people to evacuate, and then bombing areas they've evacuated to www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...

No-one says ‘Fast food isn’t going away, so let’s work out how to incorporate it into your diet’, yet we are often treated to the same non sequitur when it comes to AI

This is both lovely and heartbreaking. Be good to people, y'all.

i, for one, am delighted that we finally have a definition of “woke”

It’s even more sinister than this if you take into account extremist evangelical views about the need for conflict in the region before the return of Christ. They require war in SWANA/MENA. Everyone is someone else’s pawn in a colonial, theological, or legal face-off.

Israel has carried out 6 aerial bombardments of the area in less than 20 minutes.

This is the beautiful thing about history. We are never alone, because whatever horrors or sadnesses or joys we feel are shared with countless other people across time.

Between Two Rivers Will make you want to learn Cuneiform, to be a Brewer-Queen! Fabulous read in paperback now.

Headlines are systematically dehumanizing the Lebanese people who are being killed, injured, and displaced. But these are the types of people that Israel is killing with its escalation in Lebanon-- a priest serving his parishioners to his dying breath on the land he calls home.

Reminds me of the quote: Tell me, brave captain, why are the wicked so strong? / How do the angels get to sleep when the devil leaves the porch light on?" From Tom Waits’ 1980 song "Mr. Siegal". Cribbed from the movie, "Abandon Ship", aka "Seven Waves From Today."

this gives me all kindsa feelings. 🥲

"– Why are you so gloomy about many things? – Why is not one, at his god, speaking justice; being a supporter of truth; but is settled just like a wicked person?" Extremely apt post. If you feel like the second person in that dialogue, you're not alone, and haven't been for millennia

Human hearts