Long before Egypt’s pyramids or Greece’s philosophers, the cradle of civilization thrived between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Known as Mesopotamia, it birthed the Sumerians, Akkadians, and Babylonians—the first city-builders, lawmakers, and astronomers. They invented writing, mapped the stars, brewed beer, and even defined time itself. From sacred temples and flood myths to beer-brewing goddesses and bizarre royal rituals, their legacy still shapes our world today. Here are 50 mind-blowing facts that bring the brilliance—and strangeness—of ancient Mesopotamia to life.
1 The 80 Aurochs of Mesopotamia
Around 10,500 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia-near the fertile plains that would later cradle Babylon-early herders achieved one of humanity’s first monumental feats of domestication. Genetic evidence shows that nearly all modern cattle descend from just about 80 wild aurochs tamed in this region.
2. Around 7,000 BCE in Mesopotamia, elites rested their heads on carved stone bolsters, not soft cushions. These cradled forms weren’t meant for comfort; they simply raised the head to keep insects away from the eyes, nose, and mouth.
3. Around 5400 BCE, the Sumerians founded their first city, Eridu, near the mouth of a river, close to what was then the Persian Gulf. Over millennia, silt and sediment buildup pushed the coastline outward, leaving Eridu far from the water it once hugged.
4. Around 5000 BCE, the Sumerians and Egyptians invented the first drinking straws, not for luxury, but for practicality. Early beer was unfiltered and filled with grain sediment, so drinkers used long reeds and hollow tubes to sip the liquid from large communal jars. These ancient straws, made from natural materials and sometimes even gold, turned messy brewing into a cleaner, more social ritual.
5. By 3400 BCE, farmers in lower Mesopotamia were already cultivating the opium poppy, making it the earliest known reference to opium use. The Sumerians called it Hul Gil, or the “joy plant,” linking it to pleasure and ritual.
6 Babylon’s Base-60 Legacy
The Babylonians inherited a sexagesimal (base-60) number system from the Sumerians, who used it as early as 3500 BCE, and it became central to their astronomy and mathematics. Because 60 has many divisors, they broke hours into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds, a system that proved remarkably practical. Today, scientists, navigators, and everyday people still use that same base-60 division for time, angles, and coordinates, from a legacy that stretches back millennia.
7. Around 3000 BCE, in southern Iraq’s Sumer, scribes developed what’s widely considered the world’s first writing system. Temple administrators used it to log allocations, track goods, and manage resources-turning everyday bureaucracy into an inked record. The earliest versions were pictographic symbols representing objects themselves, long before letters and alphabets emerged.
8. Over 5,000 years ago in ancient Sumer, an accountant named Kushim left behind humanity’s earliest known signature. On a clay tablet unearthed from Uruk, he recorded a transaction that read, “A total of 29,086 measures of barley were received over the course of 37 months. Signed, Kushim.” This mundane bookkeeping entry marks the first written record to include a human name, turning a simple grain tally into a milestone in the history of civilization.
9. Around 2180 BCE, engineers in ancient Babylon supposedly built a tunnel beneath the Euphrates River, an audacious feat millennia ahead of its time. The passage, nearly a kilometer long and large enough for chariots, was said to link the royal palace to a temple across the river. Although its existence is still under debate, if confirmed, it would have preceded London’s renowned Thames Tunnel by more than 4,000 years.
10. During the Old Babylonian period, artisans mass-produced erotic terracotta plaques (from 2000-1500 BCE) showing couples engaged in sexual acts, sometimes even drinking beer mid-romance. These small clay scenes were pressed from molds, making them cheap and easy to reproduce, and have been found in homes, temples, and shrines alike.
11 Babylon’s 4,000-Year-Old Lullaby
Dating back to around 2000 BCE, one of the world’s oldest known lullabies was discovered on a Babylonian clay tablet, but it’s far from soothing. Instead of gentle comfort, the song threatens the crying baby with punishment for disturbing the family god’s rest. This eerie bedtime verse reveals that even 4,000 years ago, Babylonian parents mixed divine fear with parental fatigue.
12. Sometime before 2000 BCE in ancient Mesopotamia, storytellers inscribed the Epic of Gilgamesh on twelve stone tablets, making it one of history’s earliest known works of literature. In the narrative, Gilgamesh quests for immortality and encounters Utnapishtim (the “Preserver of Life”), who survived a Great Flood by constructing a massive ship. That myth-etched in the cradle of civilization-likely predates and inspires later deluge legends across cultures.
13. The world’s first New Year celebration began about 4,000 years ago in ancient Babylon, where people marked the spring equinox with a twelve-day festival called Akitu. The rituals renewed the king’s divine mandate and symbolized the rebirth of nature. Centuries later, Julius Caesar shifted the date to January 1, dedicating it to Janus, the Roman god of beginnings.
14. On a clay record known as the Sumerian King List, kingship supposedly began over 260,000 years ago, with individual rulers reigning not for mere decades, but for tens of thousands of years. The list names distant monarchs ruling for ridiculously long spans before the Great Flood, then transitions to more plausible reigns in historical times. Scholars see it as mythic propaganda, blending real dynasties with legendary reigns to glorify Sumer’s divine heritage.
15. Founded between the 25th and 20th centuries BCE by Sumerian merchants from Ur, the city of Harran grew into a key religious and commercial hub in Upper Mesopotamia. From early on, it became a cult center for the moon deity Sin (also called Nanna), featured the great temple Eḫulḫul, and had royal patronage across the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian periods. Even after becoming the capital of Islamic dynasties, Harran’s moon cult endured into the 11th century AD, until its pagan institutions were dismantled under Islamic rule. The Mongol conquest of 1260-1271 AD devastated the city, leaving it largely abandoned until a modest revival in the 19th and 20th centuries.
16 Sumer’s Oldest Chicken Pie
Before 2000 BCE, in ancient Sumer, cooks etched the earliest known pie recipe into clay: a formula for baking chicken pie. The tablet lists ingredients and procedures, proving that even four millennia ago, people wanted flaky crusts and savory fillings.
17. Around 1900 BCE, the Sumerians of southern Iraq etched humanity’s oldest known joke onto a clay tablet, and it was a fart joke. The line read: “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.” Crude but timeless, it shows that even 4,000 years ago, people found bodily humor irresistible.
18. The Babylonians believed that solar eclipses were divine warnings, signs that the gods planned to kill their king. To fool fate, the real monarch would appoint a “substitute king and queen” just before the eclipse, shower them with royal titles, and then have them executed afterward to satisfy the prophecy. But during one such ritual, King Erra-imitti accidentally died while eating hot porridge, leaving his stand-in, Enlil-bani, a humble gardener, as the new ruler. Instead of being killed, the “temporary king” kept the throne and ruled for 24 years.
19. Around 1815 BCE, Sumerian scribes endured a full year of training before they could master multiplication. These students didn’t just practice; they signed and dated their work on clay tablets like any disciplined pupil. That ancient homework habit reveals that formal education and accountability go back at least 4,000 years.
20. Around 1800 BCE, a Babylonian student named Iddin-Sin wrote a clay letter to his mother, Zinu, griping that she’d sent him shabby clothes while all the other boys were dressed better. He compared his outfit to one of his classmates, who was the adopted son of one of his father’s servants, yet he still had newer garments. The tablet reveals not just ancient parent-child drama but also that even in Hammurabi’s time, appearances mattered.
15 Most Controversial & Costly Blunders in History
21 Babylon’s Tablet of Root 2
Around 1800 BCE, Babylonian mathematicians inscribed on a clay tablet (YBC 7289) a 6-digit approximation of the square root of 2: 1 + 24/60 + 51/60² + 10/60³. That value is accurate to six decimal places (roughly 1/2,000,000), which is extraordinary precision for the time.
22. In Babylon, the cult statue of Marduk symbolized the god’s presence, and conquering kings often looted it to claim the city’s power. Every foreign ruler known to have carried off the statue, like the Hittite Mursili I, Assyrian Tukulti-Ninurta I, Elamite Shutruk-Nakhunte, Sennacherib, and possibly Xerxes, later met violent ends at the hands of relatives. The Babylonians saw those deaths not as coincidences, but as divine vengeance for daring to seize their god.
23. Long before Pythagoras ever drew a triangle, Babylonian mathematicians had already discovered his famous theorem. A clay tablet known as IM 67118, dated to around 1770 BCE, shows scribes using the Pythagorean relationship to calculate the diagonal of a rectangle.
24. Around 1750 BCE in ancient Babylon, a merchant named Ea-nasir sold a shipment of low-quality copper ingots to a customer named Nanni and added insult by mistreating Nanni’s servant. Furious, Nanni carved his outrage into a clay tablet, demanding better goods and respect for his messenger. Archaeologists later uncovered this letter, along with several others aimed at the same shady dealer, making it the oldest written customer complaint in history.
25. Around 1750 BCE, King Hammurabi of Babylon set down one of humanity’s earliest law codes, and it didn’t spare careless builders. His decree stated that if a house collapsed due to shoddy construction and killed its owner, the builder would be executed. This harsh law, carved into stone, made Babylon the birthplace of building accountability centuries before modern safety codes were ever imagined.
RE: Fact #38 (Ennigaldi’s Museum of Ur) – That’s so cool! It’s wild to me that in Ancient Rome, they actually called a part of Rome “Ancient Rome.” It really makes you think about how much older humanity is than most people realize. I’ve always thought it would be cool to add an extra zero to the year to better show how long civilization has been around, especially since farming started about 10,000 years ago.
RE: Fact #19 (Sumerian Students and Their Homework) – Arabic numbers really make things a lot simpler.
RE: Fact #15 (Harran and the Moon-God Cult) – I’m curious about how many Wikipedia articles have a section that just says, “…and then the Mongols came.”
RE: Fact #37 (Cyrus Cylinder: The First Charter) – Makes sense to enjoy some freedom after going through a tough time.
There’s some evidence that Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, attempted a religious reform where he tried to replace the cult of the main god Marduk with the Moon god Sin. So, it’s possible that many people actually saw Cyrus’ conquest and the religious freedom that came with it as a positive change.
RE: Fact #11 (Babylon’s 4,000-Year-Old Lullaby) – Found the lyrics:
Little baby in the dark house
You have seen the sun rise
Why are you crying?
Why are you screaming?
You have disturbed the house god
“Who has disturbed me?” says the house god
It is the baby who has disturbed you
“Who scared me?” says the house god
The baby has disturbed you
The baby has scared you
Making noises like a drunkard
Who cannot sit still on his stool
He has disturbed your sleep
“Call the baby now,” says the house god
RE: Fact #2 (Stone Pillows of Mesopotamia) – So, I’m thinking we should only keep the really old, hard parts of those “pillows.” Makes sense, right, considering how long they’ve been around? Any softer stuff they might have used, like leaves or whatever, would probably be long gone by now.
RE: Fact #9 (The Lost Tunnel Beneath Euphrates) – Has anyone found any solid proof it’s real?
The old writers’ methods would totally work. But, the writer mentioned the tunnel wasn’t used for like 500 years before they wrote about it. They used asphalt for waterproofing foundations and boats – the Babylonians were big fans, and it would’ve kept that tunnel dry. After the Persians took over, Babylon wasn’t as important, and by the time the Greeks showed up, it was falling apart.
RE: Fact #12 (Gilgamesh and the Great Flood) – Yeah, there’s a ton of overlap in myths from that time and place. You can see a lot of reframed Babylonian and Zoroastrian myths in the Old Testament.
RE: Fact #28 (Ninkasi and the Beer Laws) – So, Ninkasi was actually the goddess of beer and brewing! The hymn to her apparently talks about bappir, which is a type of beer bread, and the filtering vat that makes a nice sound. When they poured the filtered beer from that vat, it was apparently compared to the powerful Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
RE: Fact #20 (Iddin-Sin’s Letter to Mom) – Seems like kids are pretty much the same after 3800 years.
RE: Fact #20 (Iddin-Sin’s Letter to Mom) – Zinu, Iddin-Sin is sending you this message: Shamash, Marduk, and Ilabrat bless you with good health for my sake. Every year, the young men’s clothes here get nicer, but you’ve let mine get worse and worse, making them poorer and skimpier. We’re using up wool here like bread, and you’ve made me ragged clothes. The son of Adad-iddinam, whose father is just an assistant to mine, has two new outfits. Meanwhile, you make a fuss even over one set of clothes for me. Even though you gave birth to me and his mother only adopted him, his mother loves him, but you don’t love me!
RE: Fact #23 (Babylon’s Triangle Before Pythagoras) – If the Babylonians wanted credit for something, they should’ve made it way easier to read, ’cause I can’t make heads or tails of it.
RE: Fact #20 (Iddin-Sin’s Letter to Mom) – It’s funny how, the more you learn about history, the more you see that things really don’t change. I was just looking at a letter where a kid was writing to their parents about not getting enough nice stuff, and I’ve also seen another letter from Rome where a dad was griping about his son being lazy and how the younger generation has a really bad work ethic.
There’s this old Sumerian letter where a dad is giving his son advice about becoming a scribe. Besides other stuff, he tells his son to steer clear of the kids hanging out in the city square because they’re a bad influence.
I’m curious if there’s a book that collects a bunch of these letters.
RE: Fact #10 (Babylon’s Mass-Produced Erotic Art) – It’s kinda funny how people always link these things to religion. Honestly, it’s just porn. Can you imagine folks in the future trying to explain away all the weird kinks we’re into now as being tied to religion?
Back around the year 2000, some media reports talked about a mating ritual they jokingly called “delivering pizza.” Turns out, they weren’t talking about actual pizza, but something else entirely.
So, the idea is that how much, what kind, and how fancy the pizza ingredients were might have been a way to show off how many resources and how much free time someone had, basically to show they’d be a good mate. It’s thought this could be a leftover from when females were pickier because of survival stuff, but back then, it seems like the mating was always successful, even if the pizza wasn’t up to par or if another partner showed up during the whole process.
RE: Fact #30 (Dabitum’s Plea from Babylon) – Who did she write that letter to, her baby daddy or her slave owner?
The letter really makes it sound like she’s super invested. It says she was his “slave” but it also seems like she wants to see him in person, whether it’s to help her through the miscarriage or just in case she dies from it too.
The way this is written makes it sound like she was raped by her slave master.
RE: Fact #26 (The Progressive Code of Hammurabi) – Just a thought on lex talionis – it’s actually a pretty limiting law. Basically, it means punishment has to match the crime exactly. Before these kinds of laws, people could punish crimes however they felt was right.
So, back then, they also used this to settle family vendettas, which were a big deal. Instead of families feuding for ages, if one person took out another, that person would get taken out too. That way, the feud was over.
RE: Fact #38 (Ennigaldi’s Museum of Ur) – Ennigaldi’s dad, Nabonidus, was really into old stuff and fixing antiques. He’s basically considered the first real archeologist. He showed her how to appreciate ancient artifacts, which inspired her to set up her own museum for them. The artifacts were mostly from southern Mesopotamia. Nabonidus himself had dug up a lot of them, some dating back to the 20th century BCE. Nebuchadnezzar had also gathered some of them before.
I’m just going to stare in awe at the idea of an “ancient Mesopotamian archeologist.”
RE: Fact #44 (Babylon’s Seven Celestial Days) – Yeah, we totally use those Norse gods for some English day names, but a lot of languages still call Wednesday after Mercury.
You can totally see the planetary connections in the days of the week between English and French. For example, in French, “Lundi” is linked to “Lune,” which is Moon in English. “Mardi” connects to Mars, and so on, all the way to “Vendredi” and Venus. And in English, Saturday comes from Saturn, and Sunday is all about the Sun.
RE: Fact #12 (Gilgamesh and the Great Flood) – It’s really interesting how many themes seem to be borrowed across different stories. Like, the Epic of Gilgamesh has details that sound super familiar, such as a flood lasting “forty days and forty nights” and a dove sent out with a branch. Those specific elements popping up in the Bible feels like more than just coincidence.
And there’s also a story in there about a woman eating a fruit, which is pretty similar to the Eve story. Plus, some people point out that the God of the Bible was originally part of a larger group of gods before Abraham started focusing solely on Yahweh.
Honestly, the history behind these old myths is fascinating! It would be even cooler if more people treated them as interesting stories from the past instead of things to live by and base big decisions like US policy on.
It’s wild when you dive into the deep lore of the Zoroastrian / Achaemenid Persian empire and realize a lot of Jewish and Christian beliefs are pretty much taken from them, especially from when they conquered the Levant.
RE: Fact #27 (Women Brewers of Babylon) – That’s a cool piece of history about the Code of Hammurabi! It’s wild to think it’s from around 1750 BC, which is like 3700 years ago. It really gives you a look into Babylonian society back then.
RE: Fact #8 (Kushim: The First Named Human) – Around five thousand years ago, there was a guy who worked as an accountant. We don’t know if he was tall or short, or if people liked him or thought he was a total outcast.
But here we are, thousands of years after he was alive, and people still know his name.
It makes you wonder what he would have thought about that.
He might have been a passionate poet and would probably hate being known as an accountant.
RE: Fact #15 (Harran and the Moon-God Cult) – Walking through there must feel like going back in time. The place has been lived in constantly for longer than pretty much anywhere else on Earth. Those cool beehive-shaped houses were built using old-school methods – they’re naturally good at keeping a consistent temperature, and some families were still living in them not too long ago.
It’s wild to think that Harran is even mentioned in the Bible as where Abraham lived before he headed to Canaan. While Christianity and Islam were taking over everywhere else, this city kept worshipping Sinfor for over 1,500 years after most people had forgotten about those gods. The people who lived there were called Sabians and had this amazing mix of ancient star worship blended with later philosophical ideas. It’s kind of like finding a town today that still seriously worships Zeus.
The Sabeans were also instrumental in helping the Abbasids translate Greek texts into Arabic. Baghdad used to be a major hub for science, but it unfortunately declined over time. The Crusader Kings 3 RICE mod does a great job of showcasing this with the character Thābit ibn Qurra.
It’s a wild feeling to visit places where religious figures have been.
RE: Fact #50 (Saddam’s Attempt to Rebuild Babylon) – And he had a Quran written in his own blood. I guess if he’s holy and the direct ancestor of prophet Muhammad, then this Quran must be magical, following that logic. But I figure this is probably the one Quran muslims wouldn’t mind you burning.
Burning the Quran is an acceptable way to get rid of it.
Another approach is to just let them break down on their own. I remember reading about a cave where they’d put old Qurans to let the humidity naturally decay them over time.
RE: Fact #13 (Akitu: Babylon’s First New Year) – So, it turns out January 1st became New Year’s Day because the ancient Romans were eager to get new Consuls in place to fight some rebels in Spain. They apparently couldn’t wait until March anymore!
RE: Fact #25 (Hammurabi’s Deadly Building Code) – You could get seriously hurt for a lot of things back then.
Yeah, I think you could get seriously hurt or even killed if you were caught with someone else’s spouse.
I’m pretty sure that still goes on in some groups nowadays.
RE: Fact #37 (Cyrus Cylinder: The First Charter) – There are streets named after him in Israel. He’s seen as a well-regarded historical figure.
It’s funny how the Greeks and Hebrews saw the Persians completely differently; they were like night and day in their views of that empire.
Cyrus actually got some pretty positive reviews from the Greeks. It was Darius and Xerxes who kind of got the backhanded compliments.
RE: Fact #6 (Babylon’s Base-60 Legacy) – The Sumerians apparently counted in groups of 12 using their thumbs and finger segments, sort of like an abacus. That’s pretty neat!
Yeah, they’d use the fingers on their other hand to keep track of groups of 12 as they counted. That’s how you get 12 times 5 equals 60. Way faster than just counting to 10!
RE: Fact #25 (Hammurabi’s Deadly Building Code) – After the big fires in London back in 1666, cities got built more closely packed. Because of the risks that come with buildings being so close together and taller, rules were put in place. These rules covered things like building shared walls between houses and banning risky stuff, like chimneys made of wood.
Seriously, wooden chimneys. Some folks thought it was a good idea to make the pipe for your fire out of something that catches fire pretty easily.
Learned a ton from you all about wood, chimneys, and old building methods. Thanks for pointing me toward that rabbit hole, I totally fell right into it.
So, when you think “wooden chimney,” it’s not actually a chimney *made* of wood. It’s more like a wooden mold that gets coated with clay on both sides, and then it’s baked by the fire. It still sounds pretty risky, especially back when people had their wood stoves going all day and night for heat and cooking. I built an outdoor earthen oven myself using wood forms, and it gets super hot, almost hot enough for forging. These are building techniques that have been around for ages.
People have been dying in house fires for thousands of years.
That’s a pretty smart idea, even if it sounds a bit wild! Wood is good because it’s long, straight, and easy to shape, it doesn’t burn well when it’s green, it’s super cheap, and way lighter than other options. Plus, there are ways to make wood fire-resistant by burning it, and you could even soak it in something fireproof from back then. All that said? Still a really bad idea!
RE: Fact #49 (Herodotus and the Temple of Love) – Yeah, that’s what we call Spring Break now.
RE: Fact #30 (Dabitum’s Plea from Babylon) – I’m really not having a good time lately, just thinking about how much human misery seems to keep happening over and over.
RE: Fact #1 (The 80 Aurochs of Mesopotamia) – Okay, so just to be super precise here: the original population of aurochs that humans started breeding to create today’s cattle would have actually been quite a bit larger than 80. It wasn’t like people just grabbed 80 aurochs and thought, “Yep, that’s enough for this whole process.”
The study factrepublic cites actually estimates around 80 common female ancestors from a domestication event that “may have lasted for millennia.” This number doesn’t even include male aurochs, or females who didn’t end up having any descendants alive today. Plus, those 80 are spread out over many, many generations.
Think about it like this: imagine Grog from ancient Mesopotamia captures a herd of 30 aurochs. But within that herd, there are only three main family lines. One is descended from Anne, the great-great-grandmother. Another is from Bessie, the great-grandmother. And there’s a small group from Clarabelle, who joined the herd recently. So, really, only three female lines are being domesticated. And Anne and Bessie were long gone before Grog even got hungry for beef.
Then, a terrible drought hits, and half the herd dies. Sadly, all of Anne’s descendants perish, so that line is wiped out. To fix things, Grog captures another herd of 30 aurochs, this time with two new female lines. He adds them to the second generation, along with all the cattle descended from Bessie and Clarabelle. But Clarabelle’s line also took a huge hit from the drought, and none of them make it into the third generation.
By this point, Grog has captured 60 aurochs in total. However, the surviving herd only traces back to three unique female ancestors: Bessie, Dorothy, and Emma. And like we said, Bessie died ages ago; Grog just ended up with a bunch of her great-grandkids.
Now, imagine this whole scenario playing out over the thousands of years it actually took to domesticate cattle – the article mentions up to 2,000 years. That’s way more than just 80 aurochs.
Don’t get me wrong, though – having only 80 unique female ancestors is still incredibly small. It really does suggest that cattle domestication was a pretty isolated event in history, which is fascinating! But it’s not just 80 aurochs involved.
RE: Fact #14 (Sumerian King List of Eternity) – It’s not really that surprising. The Bible also talks about people who supposedly lived for hundreds of years.
It’s interesting how the Bible shares similar stories with ancient Sumerian religion, and really, a lot of religions do. It seems like they’re all variations of those original Sumerian tales.
My relative in Texas takes the Bible super literally. They said people used to live for hundreds of years, but now we don’t because of ozone layer damage from humans. It’s a weird position for someone who’s usually socially conservative, because if that were true, you’d think they’d be really motivated to protect the environment.
RE: Fact #26 (The Progressive Code of Hammurabi) – I learned about the “eye for an eye” concept from Hammurabi’s code when I was in school.
RE: Fact #14 (Sumerian King List of Eternity) – There’s another poem found on a clay tablet from a school in Ur around 2000 BC is pretty wild. It describes a student getting caned for all sorts of things: not having something on their tablet, speaking without permission, getting up without permission, leaving without permission, taking beer without permission, speaking Akkadian, and even having a “no good” hand. Talk about a rough school day!
RE: Fact #50 (Saddam’s Attempt to Rebuild Babylon) – Calling it “restored” is a bit of a stretch. It was a poorly made and rushed replica that ended up damaging and disrespecting real archaeological sites. When I was stationed near Baghdad, I got to see some of these places during my downtime. From a distance, a lot of it looked pretty decent, but up close, you could see all the mistakes and flaws. I recall visiting one of his palaces and seeing that the chandeliers in the hallway weren’t hung straight, and all the fancy tile work was just crudely put together, uneven, and messy.
RE: Fact #49 (Herodotus and the Temple of Love) – You’d think it would turn into a total sausage fest with all those horny guys waiting for the next arrival…
It feels like being in an old-school internet chat room. “Anyone here a girl?! Hello?!”
This is starting to feel like a Monty Python sketch! Picture it: hundreds of guys just hanging out. Then someone yells, “WHO HERE’S A GIRL?!” And crickets.
I like guys, and I’ve got some pretty big moobs. Does that get me in? “Yeah, come on then.”
You know, it might have actually worked the other way around. Women had to stay at the temple until they were chosen. The younger and more attractive ones were picked up pretty quickly, but the rest had to wait there and hope someone would take them.
Ishtar and Inanna were goddesses of love, fertility, sex, and war. It seems like it was important to show that a woman wasn’t infertile. Since these goddesses were women, it was like they were celebrating womanhood, which is a pretty sweet idea when you consider it.
RE: Fact #17 (Sumer’s 4,000-Year-Old Fart Joke) – That’s super funny! But you know, the funniest Sumerian joke ever is still:
“A dog walked into a tavern and said, ‘I can’t see a thing. I’ll just open this.'”
Classic!
Is the joke just that it makes no sense?
It’s usually thought to be a joke about vaginas, but I think it’s more of a general crude joke.
The Sumerians, who lived in ancient Mesopotamia, used to drink wine and beer from giant vases or pots. Everyone would gather in a circle and drink through these massive straws. There are even old drawings showing this. They had invented a type of candle and some oil lamps, so rooms were usually dimly lit, not totally dark.
We can guess that the sound of people drinking through those ancient straws might have sounded wet and odd. Just imagine it!
Also, they built their cities with mud bricks and most places didn’t have many rooms. So, taverns were usually shown as just one big room.
So here’s the joke: A dog walks into a tavern. The oil lamps are covered because the prostitutes are working in the dark. The dog hears what he thinks is the sound of drinking. But since the dog doesn’t know any better, he says, “I can’t see. I’ll open this.” The funny part is the dog opens the lantern cover, letting light into the room, and then everyone can see each other doing embarrassing, funny sex stuff in the dark.
I’m looking forward to the paperback release of “1001 Sumerian Jokes.”
RE: Fact #37 (Cyrus Cylinder: The First Charter) – He’s a really interesting guy and definitely one of the leaders from the BCE that people in the West don’t talk about enough. Everyone back then respected him a lot, and that continued for centuries, even among Persia’s rivals. There’s an episode called “King of Kings” from Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast that I think really nails how big of an impact he had.
RE: Fact #26 (The Progressive Code of Hammurabi) – I saw this thing in person at the Louvre! The “writing” on it is super tiny and packed in, and since it’s made of stone, it’s one of the few Babylonian artifacts that’s lasted this long. Really cool to check out.
I really wanted to see that thing at the Louvre the most. It’s just incredible to see it in person. The huge history behind that artifact is pretty awe-inspiring. And then you have hundreds of people packed in, shoving and fighting for space in a crowd of sweaty tourists with sticky elbows, all pushing you to get a quick peek at the Mona Lisa, which is just in the next room.
The Mona Lisa was the most disappointing thing I saw at the Louvre.
RE: Fact #42 (Enki and the Rivers of Life) – My backyard ants have similar myths.
RE: Fact #30 (Dabitum’s Plea from Babylon) – We know some pretty random stuff about the Bronze Age.
RE: Fact #16 (Sumer’s Oldest Chicken Pie) – I think I initially just wanted the recipe, but then it turned into a quest to check if Wikipedia was right about it. Wikipedia’s sources can be a bit iffy sometimes, but this one seems pretty solid.
RE: Fact #32 (Tapputi: The First Chemist) – I don’t have a link for this, but I recall reading somewhere that she was the first person to intentionally perform distillation.
That tablet mentioned in the wiki article was the first time someone wrote down distilling, but she definitely wasn’t the first one to actually do it.
RE: Fact #29 (Nippur Map) – This is super interesting. I recall hearing somewhere that top-down maps weren’t that common in ancient history because people just didn’t think that way. Like, a map was more likely to be a list of directions or descriptions rather than something we’d recognize, like this example. I’m not sure how accurate that is, though – it’s just a vague memory I have that I have no idea about the validity of. Obviously, it wasn’t a strict rule if that’s true, considering we’re looking at a map of an ancient city.
Yeah, generally speaking, people didn’t use maps like we do now. But this specific map probably wasn’t for getting around. It seems more like a tool for planning. Big, complicated public projects were being built back then, so having a pretty accurate layout of the land would have been super useful for figuring out where to build next. The ancient Greeks and Romans even took it further, planning out whole cities before they started building. So, your average traveler or merchant wouldn’t have needed a map like this, but they would have used ones more like what you were talking about.
Beyond just architectural plans and maps, like that cool one of Gudea with a temple on his lap, we’ve also got landscape and geological maps. For instance, there’s one from Nuzinow at Harvard showing mountains, a river, and towns, and another from Deir el-Medina that’s basically a mining map, now in Turin. Like you said, people didn’t usually use maps to get around back then – at least, we don’t have much evidence for it. They mostly relied on verbal directions, especially in cities. The Babylonian story about the physician from Isin gives a good example of this.
“Since you’ve healed me so well, may Enlil, the God of Nippur, bless you. If you ever visit my city of Nippur, I’ll give you a nice outfit, feed you delicious food, and offer you two jugs of strong beer.”
“But where in Nippur should I go?”
“When you reach Nippur, enter through the Great Gate. Keep Broad Street, Tillazida Street, and the streets of Nusku and Ninimma to your left. You’ll see a woman named Ninlugalabzu, daughter of Kianga-Enbilulu and daughter-in-law of Nišu-ana-Ea-takla. She’s the gardener for the Henun-Enlil orchard and will be selling produce on Tillazida Street. Just ask her, and she’ll guide you.”
RE: Fact #17 (Sumer’s 4,000-Year-Old Fart Joke) – It totally makes sense that the oldest recorded joke is a fart joke.
RE: Fact #42 (Enki and the Rivers of Life) – Wow, it’s pretty surprising how much ancient mythology actually talks about masturbation.
In Māori mythology, it’s said to be the source of earwax. The story goes that Tāne Mahuta, the god of the forest, entered Hineahuone, the maiden formed from earth, through various openings, leaving sticky divine residue in each until he reached her vagina.
Someone had to figure it out! Big thanks to ol TM for figuring out which hole to use.
RE: Fact #3 (Eridu: Sumer’s First City) – It’s kind of tricky to connect the idea of the Fertile Crescent with the dry, barren landscapes we often see in media from Iraq. I’m curious if climate change has played a big part in this, along with soil salinization from past agricultural practices that weren’t well-irrigated.
It seems like media sometimes focuses on certain aspects, which can really shape how we see things. For example, there’s still a lot of farming happening in the fertile crescent, especially in Iraq. You can actually see it pretty well on Google Earth. But if most of what you see about Iraq in the news is about tough, dusty streets with people carrying AKs, it’s easy for your idea of the place to get a little warped.
RE: Fact #5 (Hul Gil: The Sumerian Joy Plant) – We still do stuff like using opium, drinking beer, and writing angry complaints. Not a whole lot has changed since Sumerian times, really.
RE: Fact #6 (Babylon’s Base-60 Legacy) – Also, 60 x 60 is pretty close to the number of days in a year, and 360 is a super handy number that divides evenly by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 18, and 20.
RE: Fact #31 (Babylon’s 3,500-Year-Old ‘Your Mom’ Joke) – Your mom is such a ho, people will still be talking about her sex life in 3,500 years.
RE: Fact #21 (Babylon’s Tablet of Root 2) – This is so cool! I’m actually taking a Numerical Analysis class right now and we’re doing similar stuff. It’s wild to think people were doing the same kind of math, like, 4000 years ago, especially since they weren’t even using our number system.
RE: Fact #16 (Sumer’s Oldest Chicken Pie) – Makes me think, maybe Nanni whipped up a batch of this for himself to feel better after Ea-nāṣir messed up his copper order.
RE: Fact #18 (Enlil-Bani: The Gardener King) – The substitute king ritual in Mesopotamia is pretty wild. It wasn’t just during an eclipse; the stand-in king could be on the throne for up to 100 days until the bad omen was considered gone. Which eclipses actually triggered this depended on the eclipse’s path and which part of the moon was covered, as it could signify death for a ruler from one of four different regions.
The whole ritual was super involved. The real king would chill in a house outside the city, praying and cleansing himself to ward off the omen. During this time, letters to the king wouldn’t have their usual “To the king, my lord…” greeting. Instead, they’d address him as “the farmer,” and there are plenty of letters that actually call him that. The king was still in charge and ruling, but they made a big effort to trick the gods into thinking he wasn’t actually king then.
The substitute king was usually a slave or prisoner, dressed in the real king’s stuff and forced to say prayers. The king’s scholars would also do rituals for the substitute, probably reciting the specific bad omens from the eclipse. There’s a letter from the Neo-Assyrian period where a scholar mentions, “The substitute king of the land of Akkad took the signs on himself.” The ritual ended with the execution of the substitute king.
It’s important to remember that in Mesopotamia, fate wasn’t set in stone. Omens were seen as the gods showing their annoyance with the king, but it didn’t mean the omen was guaranteed to happen. The god’s displeasure would only continue if the king didn’t change his ways. All omens could be canceled by a specific ritual, and through other divinations, scholars could figure out what the king did wrong that brought on the omen, so they could make sure it wouldn’t happen again.
Seriously though, what did they believe about their gods’ power and effectiveness if they could be fooled so easily? It’s like they were thinking, “Sure, we can pay our dues, but the gods haven’t realized that old Mesh-ki-ang-gasher is just chilling with goats while a potter is actually in charge.” Okay, maybe that’s not the best example. My random pick did disappear at sea, but you get the idea.
The Assyrians and Babylonians probably didn’t see these rituals as tricking the gods, even if it looks that way to us. They likely genuinely believed the rituals on the substitute king moved the bad omens onto him. My guess is they used the name “farmer” just to make sure the gods knew exactly who the bad luck was being transferred to. Plenty of Mesopotamian rituals involved moving bad stuff from one person to another. For example, the “Burning” series, Maqlu, was used to fight witchcraft. They’d make little figures and say rituals to transfer the evil magic to the figure, and in turn, send it back to the witch.
Plus, Mesopotamian gods are often shown as pretty human and flawed. There’s a Sumerian story where the goddess Inanna gets Enki drunk and steals all the “me”s, which were basically the gods’ powers. In one flood story, Atrahasis, the god Enlil gets sick of humans making noise and decides to wipe them out. But the god Ea keeps messing up his plans, so Enlil finally sends a flood. What happens after is pretty telling. When the floodwaters recede, Atrahasis leaves food offerings for the gods. The text says the gods swarmed the food like flies, realizing they had no one to feed them regularly without humans. The other gods then scold Enlil for being so dumb and making the flood, and promise not to do it again.
I think that part of Atrahasis highlights a big aspect of Mesopotamian religion. Their gods were seen as physical, present beings. Through a ritual called “mis pi,” or “opening of the mouth,” they believed they could transfer a god’s spirit into a statue kept in the temple. It seems to me that most ancient people felt their relationship with their gods was a two-way street. They’d feed, clothe, bathe, and generally look after the gods, and in return, the gods would protect them and keep society running smoothly.
RE: Fact #45 (The Myth of the Hanging Gardens) – If something truly didn’t exist, it would be a perfect symbol for human imagination being one of the 7 Wonders of the World. Our ability to create imaginary stories and places is truly one of the most amazing things on Earth.