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by James Bleckley
History and myth of the Cradle of Civilization, bronze age Mesopotamia, beginning with the dawn of writing. The show will cover the full history of Mesopotamia, from Gilgamesh to Nabonidas, a span of some 2500 years, with myths of heroes and gods, and tales of daily life peppered throughout. Sumer, Akkad, Old Babylon, Hittites, and Israel have all been covered in depth, current episodes get deep into the Assyrian Empire.
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- 5 days ago48 min
Esarhaddon Purges the Court
The Assyrian Empire was at the height of its power, but King Esarhaddon was losing control of his own court. Prophets were declaring new kings, powerful officials were plotting rebellion, and the gods themselves seemed determined to destroy the king they had once chosen.In the final years of Esarhaddon's reign, Assyria conquered Egypt, crushed the kingdom of Shubria, and reached new heights of imperial power. Yet Esarhaddon himself was increasingly consumed by questions of legitimacy, divine omens, and threats to his life. Repeatedly retreating into substitute king rituals to escape the fate foretold by the heavens, he eventually emerged to carry out one of the bloodiest political purges in Assyrian history.In this episode of Oldest Stories, we follow the Shubrian campaign, the extraordinary succession arrangement between Ashurbanipal and Shamash-shumu-ukin, the Assyrian conquest of Egypt, the conspiracy of Sasi, and the mass executions that devastated the imperial court. Finally, we witness Esarhaddon's death in 669 BCE and the remarkable intervention of his mother, Naqi'a (Zakutu), to secure the succession.The Assyrian Empire had never been more powerful. But beneath its imperial triumphs, its political foundations were beginning to fracture.Music from the show: oldeststories.net/music (or search "Oldest Stories Music")Support the show:Books: https://a.co/d/7Wn4jhSDonate: oldeststories.netPatreon / YouTube members get bonus episodes: patreon.com/JamesBleckleyNo-AI readings of ancient texts: youtube.com/@osnightreading
- 2 weeks ago28 min
Taharqa the Peaceful and Esarhaddon the Holy
In 673 BC, the mighty Assyrian Empire marched against Egypt, determined to achieve a conquest greater than any Assyrian king had accomplished before. Instead, its army suffered a humiliating defeat.My voice is a bit different because I am recovering from a bad cold. Editing is probably more choppy than usual. Such is life. But why did King Esarhaddon invade Egypt in the first place? And how had Egypt, after centuries of political fragmentation, become powerful enough to resist the greatest empire in the ancient Near East?In this episode of Oldest Stories, we explore the remarkable reign of Pharaoh Taharqa, the Kushite ruler of Egypt's Twenty-Fifth Dynasty. Under Taharqa, Egypt experienced a revival of wealth, monumental construction, religious life, and royal authority. Meanwhile, the small kingdoms of the Levant increasingly found themselves caught between the growing influence of Egypt and the crushing demands of Assyrian imperial rule.We examine the uncertain extent of Egyptian involvement in Levantine rebellions, the strategic ambitions of the Assyrian kings, and the political calculations of the minor rulers who struggled to preserve their independence. Finally, we follow Esarhaddon's ill-fated expedition across the Sinai and into Egypt, where the Assyrian army met a defeat that its own royal records preferred to forget.For an emperor who had promised extraordinary greatness under the favor of the gods, this was a serious problem.
- Oct 7, 202641 min
The Pedubastis Cycle
The Pedubastis Cycle is a group of ancient Egyptian heroic tales centered on Pharaoh Pedubastis, Inaros, Petechonsis, Pemaus, and the powerful local rulers of Egypt during the centuries surrounding the Assyrian invasions. Preserved mainly in fragmentary Demotic Egyptian manuscripts from later periods, these stories transform an obscure era of Egyptian political fragmentation into a legendary age of heroes, feuds, enchanted objects, battles, divine intervention, and dynastic rivalry.This episode examines several surviving stories from the Pedubastis Cycle, beginning with the fragmentary Story of Bes and the legendary hero Inaros. It then follows Petechonsis into the mythical Land of Women before turning to the much better preserved story of the Armor of Inaros, in which Pemaus and Werti-amon-nut plunge Egypt into civil war over possession of the dead hero’s famous armor.Behind the legendary material lies a memory of real political conditions during Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period. Pharaoh Pedubastis appears as a weak central ruler surrounded by powerful local lords capable of raising armies, fighting private wars, and resisting foreign enemies independently. The tale even preserves a literary memory of warfare against Assyria, making the Pedubastis Cycle especially valuable for understanding how later Egyptians remembered the era immediately before the conquests of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal.The episode explores the relationship between Egyptian heroic literature and historical memory, the legendary traditions surrounding Inaros and his descendants, the political fragmentation of Late Period Egypt, and the cultural background to the coming conflict between the Kushite pharaoh Taharqa and the Assyrian Empire.
- Sep 23, 202651 min
Assyrian Omen Science
How did ancient Assyria use divination, astrology, and animal livers to make decisions of war, government, and royal policy? Under King Esarhaddon, the Neo-Assyrian Empire developed one of the ancient world’s most sophisticated systems of omen interpretation, combining centuries of recorded observations with extispicy, celestial omens, ritual expertise, and consultation with the gods.This episode examines the intellectual world of Assyrian divination and the system of experts who advised the royal court. Mesopotamian scholars collected and analyzed omens over generations, searching for correlations between unusual events, astronomical phenomena, medical symptoms, animal behavior, and subsequent historical outcomes. Their methods could involve careful empirical observation, elaborate textual traditions, linguistic interpretation, and an underlying theological assumption that the gods were ultimately responsible for events in the natural and political world.At the center of the episode is Esarhaddon, king of Assyria from 681–669 BCE, whose surviving correspondence preserves an extraordinary record of royal consultation with scholars and diviners. We examine letters from court intellectuals, the formulation of oracle questions, the use of sacrificial sheep in extispicy, and the interpretation of the liver and other internal organs as signs of divine intention.The episode also explores the specialized scholarly professions surrounding the Assyrian court: the ṭupšarru or learned scribe and celestial observer, the bārû or diviner and haruspex, the āšipu or ritual and magical specialist, the kalû or lamentation priest and chanter, and the asû or physician. Together these experts formed a complex advisory system through which observations were gathered, questions formulated, divine answers interpreted, and practical, ritual, or religious responses carried out.More broadly, the episode asks how closely Mesopotamian omen scholarship resembles science. Assyrian and Babylonian scholars relied heavily on accumulated observation, classification, written records, specialized training, and the testing of inherited traditions against experience. At the same time, their investigations remained embedded within a theological model in which the gods were the direct causes of events and deliberately made their intentions visible through signs.Topics include Neo-Assyrian religion, Mesopotamian divination, extispicy and hepatoscopy, Assyrian astrology, the State Archives of Assyria, Esarhaddon, ancient science, omen literature, cuneiform scholarship, the Tablet of Destinies, Enūma Anu Enlil, Šumma Ālu, Šumma Izbu, royal prophecy, ritual magic, and the intellectual culture of the ancient Near East.Music from the show: oldeststories.net/music (or search "Oldest Stories Music")Support the show:Books: https://a.co/d/7Wn4jhSDonate: oldeststories.netPatreon / YouTube members get bonus episodes: patreon.com/JamesBleckleyNo-AI readings of ancient texts: youtube.com/@osnightreading
- Sep 9, 202636 min
The Cimmerian Horse Lords
The Cimmerians were among the first great horse nomad powers to crash into the civilizations of the ancient Near East. Emerging from the Scytho-Siberian world north of the Caucasus, they struck Urartu, devastated Phrygia and Lydia, raided deep into the Near East, and became legendary in Greek memory as one of the great barbarian terrors of antiquity.But how dangerous were they really?In this episode, we look beyond the later legends to reconstruct the Cimmerians and their Scythian cousins as actual people: their pastoral economy, horses, clothing, settlements, weapons, trade, and political organization. We examine what made mounted nomads so difficult for settled kingdoms to fight, why mobility mattered more than any supposedly unstoppable horse-archer tactic, and why the mighty Assyrian army was surprisingly well suited to defeating them.We also confront one of the strangest mysteries of Cimmerian warfare: if lightly equipped horse nomads struggled against an Assyrian battle line, how did they repeatedly overcome some of the greatest fortified cities of Anatolia?From Conan the Barbarian to Herodotus, from the Caucasus to Sardis, this is the story of the Cimmerians, the early Scythians, and the arrival of the horse nomad as a major force in Near Eastern history.Music from the show: oldeststories.net/music (or search "Oldest Stories Music")Support the show:Books: https://a.co/d/7Wn4jhSDonate: oldeststories.netPatreon / YouTube members get bonus episodes: patreon.com/JamesBleckleyNo-AI readings of ancient texts: youtube.com/@osnightreading
- Aug 26, 202643 min
Esarhaddon and the Empire That Ran Itself
Esarhaddon inherited the Neo-Assyrian Empire at the height of its power—but his kingship looked very different from that of the warrior-kings who came before him. Plagued by questions of legitimacy, surrounded by prophets and diviners, and often absent from his own military campaigns, Esarhaddon nevertheless presided over an extraordinarily aggressive and successful Assyrian state.This episode follows the first half of Esarhaddon’s reign: the rebuilding of Babylon, the rise of prophecy as a political force, wars against Chaldeans and Arabs, the arrival of the Cimmerians, the destruction of Sidon, the treaty with Baal of Tyre, and the strange expedition to Bazu. Along the way, we look at how Assyrian kingship was changing, how religion and factional politics shaped the court, and how an empire built for conquest could continue functioning even when its king was no longer personally leading every army.Music from the show: oldeststories.net/music (or search "Oldest Stories Music")Support the show:Books: https://a.co/d/7Wn4jhSDonate: oldeststories.netPatreon / YouTube members get bonus episodes: patreon.com/JamesBleckleyNo-AI readings of ancient texts: youtube.com/@osnightreading
- Jul 29, 202644 min
The Lessons of Ahiqar
The ancient story of Ahiqar follows a legendary wise man and royal adviser at the court of the Assyrian king Sennacherib. After adopting his nephew Nadan and teaching him a long collection of proverbs, Ahiqar is betrayed, falsely accused of treason, condemned to death, and forced to hide beneath his own house. His eventual return leads to a strange contest of riddles with the Pharaoh of Egypt and a final confrontation with the student who rejected his wisdom.Preserved in an ancient Aramaic papyrus from Elephantine and in later Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, Greek, Slavonic, and Ethiopic versions, the Tale of Ahiqar may be the oldest Mesopotamian story to survive beyond the disappearance of cuneiform culture. This episode explores the story’s Assyrian background, its relationship to ancient Near Eastern wisdom literature, its memorable proverbs and insults, and the way traditional stories were used to form memory, judgment, and moral character.Topics include Ahiqar, Nadan, Sennacherib, ancient Assyria, Nineveh, Elephantine, Aramaic literature, Syriac literature, Mesopotamian wisdom, ancient proverbs, the Tale of Ahiqar, the Thousand and One Nights, ancient Egypt, Pharaoh, Assyrian court culture, and ancient Near Eastern storytelling.Music from the show: oldeststories.net/music (or search "Oldest Stories Music")Support the show:Books: https://a.co/d/7Wn4jhSDonate: oldeststories.netPatreon / YouTube members get bonus episodes: patreon.com/JamesBleckleyNo-AI readings of ancient texts: youtube.com/@osnightreading
- Jul 15, 202638 min
Sennacherib’s Last Omen
In the final years of Sennacherib’s reign, the Neo-Assyrian Empire entered a strange period of peace. After decades of war, conquest, rebellion, and the destruction of Babylon, the greatest military power of the ancient Near East suddenly stopped expanding.Was Sennacherib simply more interested in building Nineveh than campaigning abroad? Had Assyria reached the natural limits of profitable conquest? Or were omens and divination beginning to restrain the king’s decisions?The question became far more dangerous when Sennacherib unexpectedly removed his established crown prince and elevated a younger son: Assur-ahu-iddina, better known as Esarhaddon. Sickly, deeply religious, and apparently favored by prophets and diviners, Esarhaddon was proclaimed the heir during a period of intense religious activity surrounding the restoration of the Akitu festival.His older brothers did not accept the decision.This episode follows the final years of Sennacherib, the religious and political logic behind Esarhaddon’s elevation, the rivalry among the Assyrian princes, the assassination of Sennacherib by his own sons, and the brief civil war that brought Esarhaddon to the throne.Along the way, we examine how omens actually influenced Assyrian policy, why sacred oaths may have mattered more than modern historians assume, and how royal propaganda transformed a violent succession crisis into proof that the gods themselves had chosen the new king.Topics include Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, Urdu-Mullissu, Naqia, the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Assyrian divination, the Akitu festival, the destruction of Babylon, Assyrian succession, ancient prophecy, royal assassination, and the religion of ancient Mesopotamia.
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About Oldest Stories
History and myth of the Cradle of Civilization, bronze age Mesopotamia, beginning with the dawn of writing. The show will cover the full history of Mesopotamia, from Gilgamesh to Nabonidas, a span of some 2500 years, with myths of heroes and gods, and tales of daily life peppered throughout. Sumer, Akkad, Old Babylon, Hittites, and Israel have all been covered in depth, current episodes get deep into the Assyrian Empire.
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