Serendipitous appearance of Pazuzu in its assumed form of Labubu in Levi Hildebrand (@levihildebrandyt)'s video on consumer trends in 2025:

To celebrate the construction of his palace, the Assyrian king, Ashurnasirpal II, held a 10 day fest for nearly 70,000 people serving 10k jars of beer like this pomegranate beer, Alappanu. youtu.be/MO0lKDNKxmE?...

Sociology established 50+yrs ago that generalists outperform specialists in fast-changing economies. That goes for ppl as well as firms. Rapid change means you have no way to know which skills will be most useful a few years hence: best to acquire a generalist skillset, as the liberal arts offers.

Finally got these chapters written, only one left to go 🍻🍾🎂🎊💥💥💥

20. Cuneiform Cuneiform really describes the script's appearance, with signs composed of wedges - the topic of this post by Colton Siegmund. Mesopotamian cuneiform was logosyllabic but there have been alphabetic and alphasyllabic cuneiform scripts too. viewsproject.wordpress.com/2024/05/28/s...

It'd probably look a lot like this, from Enmerkar and the lord of Aratta, lines 536-541: "After the messenger spoke as such, the lord of Aratta received his kiln-fired tablet from him. The lord of Aratta looked at the tablet. The transmitted message was just nails, and his brow expressed anger."

After the major technical difficulties last time, me and Gabriel Reynolds decided to do another Live Q&A. So, of course, the first thing that happened was that my WiFi died, and then we got audio issues. After some editing it is now put back online! www.youtube.com/live/vkiji1e...

Lots of great pieces focused around the economic history of labor and the role of temples as social, economic and religious institutions:

Our newest post is a deep historical dive into the Mughals! I especially enjoyed going through all the manuscript paintings to find ones I thought would match the narrative the closest. Thank you to @civilization.2k.com for supporting this video youtu.be/Kofm2qcTg54

We “are calling for resistance to the AI industry’s ongoing capture of higher education.” Thanks for this, @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social and Christopher Nygren.

Text translation is one of the most resource intensive demands on the field: traveling to collections, staying for extended periods to look at tablets in varying degrees of conditions after years of dedicated study. It's an immense privilege of time and money that few have. We need more help.

The field of Assyriology has been moving toward automatic translation of Akkadian for over a decade because, when it does happen, it will be a game changer. Historians are now putting money on the line to test current capabilities of machine learning. Can automatic translation finally be possible?

“Why is it my lord is silent while I wag my tail and run about like a dog?” I’ve been left on read too many times. A man named Ashur-resiwa is begging a superior to answer his previous 3 letters, and we can maybe all relate to both sides of this particular coin.

Gave myself a little break from dissertation writing to answer a question on @askhistorians.bsky.social: "Did Ashurnasirpal II's Party actually take place?" www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...

unironically the median American voter position

The only thing that can improve this chapter at this point is more Dwarf Fortress

#AdorableAntiquity Now I'm all in my feels about tiny Babylonian babies slobbering all over their clay rattles.

Great tweets are still being written

This was such a fun conversation, and we covered so much. Buying onions in 2000 BCE, the earliest named author, the courage of an enslaved mother, the legendary Gilgamesh. Hope you enjoy it if you get a chance to listen! 🙏🏽

My favorite writer is at it again! Read and enjoy while creative writing still exists, folks:

Breaking news for you Proto-Elamite fans: our team just had a new article come out in the journal Near Eastern Archaeology (88.4) on our recent progress towards deciphering "one of the few remaining undeciphered scripts from the ancient world". www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

This is not a birth certificate and that footprint does not belong to the child discussed on the tablet. They're not even from the same city; the footprint is from Nippur, the text is from Ur. So why did the Penn Museum bring these objects together like this since 2016?

We see similar discourse in Atra-hasis, a literary work from the 2nd millennium BCE that opens with a narrative of dissent between the ruling and the ruled. Humans have spent a long time thinking, writing, and conveying the difficulty of balancing political power and social liberties.

A bit speechless, beyond grateful, and incredibly honoured to have been included on this list with some truly amazing science writers. Thank you, Andrew Robinson, whom I cannot find on BlueSky 🙏🏽 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I had fun doing this podcast episode for The Ancients about Old Babylonian letters! We discussed messengers, scribes, and even a certain copper trader of dubious repute! #eanasir #cuneiform #Mesopotamia podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

Call for applications! Digital Applications in Assyriology Summer School in Helsinki, 1–5 June 2026. Open to students worldwide in Assyriology/related fields. Topics: data collection/cleaning, programming, SNA, GIS. Apply by 14 Dec 2025. Info & application: www.helsinki.fi/en/researchg...

I guess I now have to do a thread on shoes in ancient Mesopotamia in response to this (which happens to be from one of my favourite accounts). I’m not an archaeologist, nor do I really know anything about shoes, but let’s go on this journey together.

I won't stand for Mesopotamia catching strays like this

Today at 2:20 pm; stay for the whole day from 8:00-4:00 pm and see some fantastic state of the subject presentations on the ancient economy of the Bronze Age ancient Near East!

Let me know if you're at ASOR today! I'll be around today and tomorrow

My favourite part of this ancient Assyrian letter to an ancient Assyrian goldsmith, is the last bit where the writer basically declares that the “house where they purify silver” absolutely does not pass the vibe check. “They are drunk and silver is stolen”

A new way to kick off this year's ASOR conference: an unplanned gallbladder removal for a weary loved one (who is, all things considered, healthy and a-ok!) 🤕

This is fascinating! Semiyarka has been found to be an ancient city in Kazakhstan, specializing in production of tin-bronze, and contemporary with the Late Bronze Age kingdoms (Kassite Babylonia, Mittani, Hatti, New Kingdom Egypt, Mycenaean Greece, etc) in the Middle East and Mediterranean.

Mesopotamian astronomers probably observed or were aware of aurorae, or ‘red glows’. The word ‘akukūtu’ meaning “blaze” or “firebrand” is attested in a few tablets in which it refers to a rare meteorological phenomenon, described as ‘išātu ša ina šamê innappaḫ’, a “fire that flares up in the sky”.

Folks, does anybody know of a map showing where #cuneiform collections are in museums across the world, similar to @sarabmohr.bsky.social 's map for US colleges and unis, but for museums worldwide? #assyriology

Call for Papers for GSANES 8 (NYC, March 26-7, 2026): Come present your work at ISAW this upcoming spring semester, the topic being ‘As Below, So Above: Mapping Social Experience and the World Beyond'. Submissions are due December 15.

MA/ New England ancient historians: an international boarding school in Braintree is seeking a long term substitute teacher for high school world history, starting ASAP until mid March. Emphasis on ancient and medieval history. DM me if interested! (Sharing this on behalf of a friend)

Assyriologists make incredible faculty members:

In class today my students created a social network of (meme-famous) Ea-naṣir based on the letters in his dossier. It coincided with the most recent episode of the Thin Edge of the Wedge. An excellent roundup by great colleagues on everything we know about Ea-naṣir and his historical context...

For the Ea-nasir fans, Assyriology podcast 'Thin End of the Wedge' just released a special episode about everyone's favorite copper merchant, featuring @gvkonsta.bsky.social, @gabemoshenska.bsky.social, and Steven Garfinkle, and yours truly. Listen here: www.buzzsprout.com/1338718/epis...

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

Ugly cried at the season 6 finale of ER, 25 years later

She's gorgeous @rheth.bsky.social!

In the Presidential address at the 176th meeting of the American Oriental Society, I.J. Gelb (1966) spoke on the approaches one could take to study ancient society. He likened a spectrum of studies in Assyriology as the "struggle between Tammuz and onions." He regarded himself a proud onionologist.

A 3,300 year-old Egyptian-Akkadian vocabulary from Amarna, with Egyptian words written in cuneiform ši-na-aḫ=šnꜥ (unit of weight) ši-na-aḫ-wu₄=šnꜥwj (dual of šnꜥ) ḫa-am-tu₄ šu-nu-uḫ=ḫmtw šnꜥw (three šnꜥ) … na-ab-na-su=nꜣ bnšw (the doorposts) DU-as-bu=tꜣ jsbt (the chair) pa-ḫa-tu₄=pꜣ ḥꜥtj (the bed)

Today I published a new section of my website with resources for those who wish to learn, study, and/or teach ancient languages using braille. It rests on work we did over the past year to expand screen reader access to these languages through the LibLouis library. Check it out and share around!