Weavers, Scribes, and Kings in the Ancient Near East: Interview with Professor Amanda Podany

Tides of History

Wondery / Patrick Wyman

Documentary, Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2022

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The sheer amount of time separating the establishment of the first cities in the ancient Near East, and the invention of cuneiform writing, from the end of the period that they define is mind-boggling: almost 3,000 years, far longer than the span that separates us today from the end of that period. Professor Amanda Podany has written a fantastic book on this whole age, entitled Weavers, Scribes, and Kings, that looks at both kings and everyday people in a fascinating time and place.

Patrick's book is now available! Get The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World in hardcopy, ebook, or audiobook (read by Patrick) here: https://bit.ly/PWverge

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to Tides of History, add free on Amazon Music.
0:04.2	Download the app today.
0:18.2	Hi everybody, from Wandery, welcome to another episode of Tides of History, and not just
0:22.3	any episode, but our first interview of the new season.
0:25.2	It's great to have you all here.
0:27.6	The Ancient Near East is simultaneously familiar and alien.
0:31.1	It's familiar in the sense that it is studded with names and places that resonate even with
0:34.9	laypeople, Gilgamesh, Sargon, Hammarabi, Babylon, Nineveh.
0:39.3	We can picture the ziggorats of Ur in the winged bulls of Assyria.
0:43.3	Even if it's been decades since we've taken a course on the history or archeology of the
0:46.9	ancient world, somewhere rattling around our brains is still a vague sense that some of
0:50.9	the most important developments of the human past took place in the Ancient Near East.
0:55.0	Yet, the really striking thing about the Ancient Near East, in my opinion, is that it is
0:59.0	also shockingly under-explored and under-discussed relative to the amount of material we actually
1:04.0	have from it.
1:05.7	Thousands upon thousands of clay tablets inscribed with Quneiform writing and hundreds
1:09.7	of excavated archaeological sites give us unparalleled insights into a series of ancient
1:14.4	societies.
1:15.4	But far too often, we're left with maybe some list of kings, bloody conquests, a law
1:19.5	code, or a tomb.
1:20.5	And that's just barely scratching the surface.
1:24.0	This guest is going to help us dig deeper into the Ancient Near East.
	...

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