Epimetheus
Published 30 Nov 2018Who were the Hittites? (The Hittite Empire explained in 10 minutes) Animated history
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June 2, 2020
Who were the Hittites? The history of the Hittite Empire explained in 10 minutes
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April 8, 2020
QotD: Iliad, Odyssey, and Anabasis
I read the trio in the order listed above and the reading got better with each title.
The Iliad is epically epic, rendered in a stiff dactylic hexameter with many, many, many repeating phrases. Between “rosy-fingered dawn” and “the wine-dark sea,” Homer’s epithets lull the reader into a trance, which I suppose was the point in oral storytelling. As a result, the myriad battles and names start blending together.
But, man, those battles are brutal. The semi-divine soldiers are walking Cuisinarts, leading to lovely vignettes like this:
Next Erymas was doom’d his fate to feel,
His open’d mouth received the Cretan steel:
Beneath the brain the point a passage tore,
Crash’d the thin bones, and drown’d the teeth in gore:
His mouth, his eyes, his nostrils, pour a flood;
He sobs his soul out in the gush of blood.Spoiler alert: Erymas didn’t make it. As you can see, I read the older translations of these works; the above is Alexander Pope’s translation. I wanted the feel of the original, so I didn’t hunt down the modern versions. All three books are decidedly un-“woke.”
For The Odyssey, I chose the Harvard Classics version translated by Samuel Butler. This epic was far more interesting (and fun!) than the grim, brain-splattered Iliad. Ulysses slides into a Mediterranean port, feasts on great food, charms exotic women, grabs a pile of loot, and is off to the next isle.
Granted, the fellow gets in a few scrapes along the way, even being forced into love slavery by an eternally gorgeous nymph (poor guy), but returns home after 20 years to wreak vengeance on the cads trying to bed his wife. (Monogamy was pretty much a one-way street in ancient Hellas.)
After reading both of Homer’s works, I think The Iliad is geared toward young men, especially those of a military mindset. It’s all heroism, glory, and honor. I really should have tackled this in my Navy days.
The Odyssey is an even better adventure, but its themes of home, wisdom, fatherhood, and marriage are aimed squarely at those of us with more mileage on the drivetrain. The heroes still kill their share of monsters and men, but Ulysses always chooses brains before brawn.
The real revelation for me was Anabasis by Xenophon. How Hollywood hasn’t released a trilogy of this epic is beyond me. (No, The Warriors doesn’t count.) Here are the Cliffs Notes for this real-life tale:
Cyrus the Younger wants to topple his brother Artaxerxes II from the Persian throne, so he recruits 10,000 Greek mercenaries (including Xenophon) to help. They march 1,500 miles from the east coast of modern-day Turkey to the middle of modern-day Iraq and, in the first big battle, Cyrus is killed.
Uh oh.
Now, the entire Persian army opposes the Greeks. The pro-Cyrus Persians say, “No actually, we were for Artaxerxes the whole time!” and turn against the Greeks. The Hellenic generals ask the King for safe passage … and he murders them.
Xenophon is more a philosopher than soldier, but he gives an inspiring speech, the troops elect him leader, and they all hightail it due north while anyone, everyone, and everything tries to kill them.
They cross deserts and rivers and mountains through searing heat, waist-deep snow, and constant attacks from ahead and behind by an ever-hostile collection of bronze-age barbarians. Upon hitting Turkey’s north shore, they finally enter a Greek colony. Happy ending, right? Well, that’s when the soldiers start turning on each other.
Granted, Anabasis is an amazing war story, but it also serves as a history, an ancient travel guide, and a primer in leadership, group dynamics, and human nature.
If you haven’t read any of these three books, you should make up that deficit.
Jon Gabriel, “My Month in Ancient Greece”, Ricochet, 2018-01-23.
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March 29, 2020
Armchair Classics: The Epic Of Gilgamesh
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 17 Aug 2015CONTENT DISCLAIMER: This video no longer meets my standards of quality for historical research and presentation. I made this one in the days long past, when the question of “How do I make an entertaining and historically interesting video” was answered by “IDK, memes I guess?”. Take the video above with a grain of salt and enjoy the jokes for now. We have a replacement planned, so stay tuned.
Hailing from Mesopotamia, it’s the Epic Of Gilgamesh!
Gregory brings you yet another dose of knowledge from the comfort of his comfy chair.
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March 22, 2020
Sargon of Akkad: History’s First Emperor?
History Time
Published 31 Oct 2017A brief look at Sargon of Akkad, an Akkadian whose conquests of the Sumerian plain have led many scholars to cite him as one of the earliest, if not the earliest emperors in history. Agree? Disagree? Comment below!
Music:-
“Assyrian Fortress” by Derek & Brandon FiechterIf you liked this video and have as little as a dollar to spare then please consider supporting me on Patreon for more and better content in the future: http://www.patreon.com/historytimeUK
Are you a budding artist, illustrator, cartographer, or music producer? Send me a message! No matter how professional you are or even if you’re just starting out, I can always use new music and images in my videos. Get in touch! I’d love to hear from you.
I’ve also compiled a reading list of my favourite history books via the Amazon influencer program. If you do choose to purchase any of these incredible sources of information, many of which form the basis of my videos, then Amazon will send me a tiny fraction of the earnings (as long as you do it through the link) (this means more and better content in the future) I’ll keep adding to and updating the list as time goes on:-
https://www.amazon.com/shop/historytimeI try to use copyright free images at all times. However if I have used any of your artwork or maps then please don’t hesitate to contact me and I’ll be more than happy to give the appropriate credit.
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February 11, 2020
QotD: Agriculture and the rise of the state
The key to the nexus between grains and states lies, I believe, in the fact that only the cereal grains can serve as a basis for taxation: visible, divisible, assessable, storable, transportable, and “rationable.” Other crops — legumes, tubers, and starch plants — have some of these desirable state-adapted qualities, but none has all of these advantages. To appreciate the unique advantages of the cereal grains, it helps to place yourself in the sandals of an ancient tax-collection official interested, above all, in the ease and efficiency of appropriation.
The fact that cereal grains grow above ground and ripen at roughly the same time makes the job of any would-be taxman that much easier. If the army or the tax officials arrive at the right time, they can cut, thresh, and confiscate the entire harvest in one operation. For a hostile army, cereal grains make a scorched-earth policy that much simpler; they can burn the harvest-ready grain fields and reduce the cultivators to flight or starvation. Better yet, a tax collector or enemy can simply wait until the crop has been threshed and stored and confiscate the entire contents of the granary.
Compare this situation with, say, that of farmers whose staple crops are tubers such as potatoes or cassava/manioc. Such crops ripen in a year but may be safely left in the ground for an additional year or two. They can be dug up as needed and the reaminder stored where they grew, underground. If an army or tax collectors want your tubers, they will have to dig them up tuber by tuber, as the farmer does, and then they will have a cartload of potatoes which is far less valuable (either calorically or at the market) than a cartload of wheat, and is also more likely to spoil quickly. Frederick the Great of Prussia, when he ordered his subjects to plant potatoes, understood that, as planters of tubers, they could not be so easily dispersed by invading armies.
The “aboveground” simultaneous ripening of cereal grains has the inestimable advantage of being legible and assessable by the state tax collectors. These characteristics are what make wheat, barley, rice, millet, and maize the premier political crops. A tax assessor typically classifies fields in terms of soil quality and, knowing the average yield of a particular grain from such soil, is able to estimate a tax. If a year-to-year adjustment is required, fields can be surveyed and crop cuttings taken from a representative patch just before harvest to arrive at an estimated yield for that particular crop year. As we shall see, state officials tried to raise crop yields and taxes in kind by mandating techniques of cultivation; in Mesopotamia this included insisting on repeated ploughing to break up the large clods of earth and repeated harrowing for better rooting and nutrient delivery. The point is that with cereal grains and soil preparation, the planting, the condition of the crop, and the ultimate yield were more visible and assessable.
James Scott, Against The Grain: A deep history of the earliest states, 2017.
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January 13, 2020
QotD: Early civilizations and the barbarians
Scott Alexander, “Book Review: Against The Grain“, Slate Star Codex, 2019-10-15.
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October 30, 2019
Homer, the Trojan War & the Late Bronze Age Collapse
History Time
Published 20 Mar 2018This is the first in a new series I will be producing on the Late Bronze Age Collapse.
If you enjoyed this video and would like to see more then please consider supporting me on Patreon:-
https://www.patreon.com/historytimeUK (every dollar helps)Are you a budding artist, illustrator, cartographer, or music producer? Send me a message at petekellywriter@gmail.com No matter how professional you are or even if you’re just starting out, I can always use new music and images in my videos. Get in touch! I’d love to hear from you.
I’ve compiled a reading list of my favourite history books via the Amazon influencer program. If you do choose to purchase any of these incredible sources of information then Amazon will send me a tiny fraction of the earnings (as long as you do it through the link) (this means more and better content in the future) I’ll keep adding to and updating the list as time goes on:-
https://www.amazon.com/shop/historytimeI try to use copyright free images at all times. However if I have used any of your artwork or maps then please don’t hesitate to contact me and I’ll be more than happy to give the appropriate credit.
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October 9, 2019
The Villa Council Presents: 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed
Getty Museum
14 Jun 2016Noted historian and archaeologist Eric Cline discusses the themes of his Pulitzer Prize-nominated book 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed and takes a closer look at why Mediterranean societies of the Late Bronze Age — with their complex cosmopolitan and globalized world-systems — came to a dramatic halt. He considers the similarities and parallels of our contemporary civilization, making the chain of interconnected events more than simply a study of ancient history.
Photo: Blink Films
May 22, 2016
The Getty Villa, Malibu, CaliforniaFind out what’s on now at the Getty:
http://www.getty.edu/360/
#gettytalks
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August 11, 2019
QotD: Deconstructing “Minoan Crete”
Perhaps the most prominent high priestess of the Great Goddess was Lithuanian archaeologist Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994). During the 1950s and 60s Gimbutas developed her so-called “Kurgan Thesis;” basically the idea that the archaeological marker of the arrival in Europe of Indo-European-speakers was to be found in the Bronze Age Kurgan mound burials of the Pontic Steppe, a vast region incorporating most of present-day Ukraine, southern Russia and northern Kazakhstan. Controversially, Gimbutas further claimed that these nomadic Indo-Europeans brought with them a warrior-culture dominated by male sky-gods, which supplanted earlier matriarchal and goddess-worshipping cultures. In this, she echoed ideas already expressed at great length by Robert Graves in his 1948 book The White Goddess. Over the next three decades Gimbutas developed her ideas further in a series of books, articles and lectures delivered at campuses throughout America and Europe, where she was immensely influential amongst the burgeoning women’s movement. Three major works, The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe (1974), The Language of the Goddess (1989), and The Civilization of the Goddess (1991), presented an overview of her conclusions regarding what she saw as Europe’s primeval matriarchy.
The importance of Gimbutas in the development of the matriarchal myth, and also by extension in the development of modern radical feminism, cannot be overstated. Her archaeological experience and expertise, together with her wide knowledge of linguistics and anthropology, seemed to give academic credibility to the romantic and poetic ramblings of Arthur Evans and Robert Graves. Yet in retrospect it is hard to imagine why anyone with even a modicum of common sense could have been taken in.
There were warning signals everywhere. Right from the beginning, for example, many historians were critical of Evans’ interpretation of Minoan Crete, and a devastating blow was delivered in 1974 when German author Hans Georg Wunderlich published his Wohin der Stier Europa trug? (Where did the Bull carry Europa? published in English in 1975 as The Secret of Crete). Here Wunderlich, a trained geologist, examined the structure of the “palace” of Knossos in Crete in detail and came to the conclusion that the building could never have been a palace for the living. It was, instead, a charnel house, a massive necropolis which doubled as an arena for human sacrifice. For the happy-go-lucky “bull vaulting game”, said Wunderlich, was nothing of the sort: it was a ferocious form of human sacrifice which involved young men and women being gored and trampled to death by a sacred bull. This, said Wunderlich, was the origin of the legend of the Minotaur. Since Wunderlich’s time human sacrifice has been confirmed as an integral part of Cretan religious practice, whilst the supposed “pacifism” which Evans and others had imagined, was exposed as nonsensical.
Emmet Scott, “The Myth of the Primeval Matriarchy”, The Gates of Vienna, 2016-07-13.
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May 16, 2019
Bronze Age collapse
archeo atlas
Published on 3 Jan 2014The Influence of Climatic Change on the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Dark Ages
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May 12, 2019
History-Makers: Homer
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published on 10 May 2019Visit PhilosophicalPhridays.com to learn more about Blue’s BOOK!
“History-Makers” is a new series from Blue, digging into the backstories of history’s most influential writers and their great works. We begin at the beginning, with the Greek poet Homer, trying to figure out how exactly he wound up with the Iliad and Odyssey!
Let me know which History-Maker you’d like me to cover in the comments below!
PATREON: https://www.Patreon.com/OSP
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April 4, 2019
Mythology Matters – Gilgamesh Meaning – Extra Mythology – #3
Extra Credits
Published on 3 Apr 2019Join the Patreon community! http://bit.ly/EMPatreon
The myth of Gilgamesh is a metaphor for building a civilization — yes, really? Let’s go behind-the-scenes on our Bronze Age myth!
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March 27, 2019
Gilgamesh vs. Humbaba – Bronze Age Myths – Extra Mythology – #2
Extra Credits
Published on 25 Mar 2019Join the Patreon community! http://bit.ly/EMPatreon
Gilgamesh and Enkidu set out to slay Humbaba. With the help of the goddess queen Ninsun in obtaining a blessing from the gods, these two men became brothers, who went on to have, like, totally epic dreams, bro, in the “House of the Dream God” which empowered them to take on the monstrous foe.
Someone had way too much fun doing the voices for this episode. Just sayin’
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March 12, 2019
Bronze Age Myths – Gilgamesh and Enkidu, BFFs – Extra Mythology – #1
Extra Credits
Published on 11 Mar 2019Join the Patreon community! http://bit.ly/EMPatreon
Gilgamesh was a powerful yet cruel dictator in the Bronze Age civilization of Uruk (Babylon). In response to the people’s cries, the gods created a man from nature, Enkidu, who was born in the wild but eventually learned the ways of humanity. He set out to stop the cruelty of Gilgamesh, not knowing that the power of friendship was here to save the day.
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January 1, 2019
The Greatest Ancient Empire you have never heard of … The Mitanni
Epimetheus
Published on 4 Oct 2018The Greatest Ancient Empire you have never heard of … The Mitanni
The Mitanni capital city of Washukanni has never been identified although there are a few locations “mounds” where the city is most likely located. It will be one of the most exciting and illuminating discoveries when this ancient capital is unearthed — (I hope it happens in my lifetime) — if there are tablets there (maybe even a library!) that could very much rewrite the history of the middle east and civilization. I have been fascinated by the Mitanni for quite some time and I am very happy to share this video with you all 😊 I hope you enjoy, and it stirs your curiosity!
Support new videos from Epimetheus on Patreon! 😀
https://www.patreon.com/Epimetheus1776Mitanni, Hurrians, Mitanni empire, Egyptian empire, Hittite empire, Babylon, bronze age, bronze age collapse, bronze age empires, bronze age great kings, Mesopotamia, ancient middle east, ancient Mesopotamia, Mesopotamia documentary, Mitanni documentary, greatest ancient empire, most powerful ancient empire, Babylonian empire, bronze age diplomacy, Nefertiti, tushratta, Akhenaten, Suppiluliuma, Assyria, Assyrian empire, Washukanni, Kurtiwaza, Shattiwaza, Shaushtatar, chariots, chariot warfare, the Mitanni, Babylonian empire, ancient near east, Hurrian migration, documentary Mitanni, lost empires, ancient egypt, bronze age chariots, ancient civilization, lost civilization, lost empire, discovered civilization, most powerful ancient empire
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