History Memes

Human history is nuts because humans were around for so long before we ever figured out how to write things down. We had agriculture before language!

Ennigaldi-Nanna lived in the mid 6th c. BCE, she was the daughter of Nabonidus, last king of the Neo-Babylonian empire just before Cyrus steamrolled through the whole place. She was the high priestess of Ur - and the first museum curator in History. Her dad, like many other kings between Sumer and Babylon, went around rebuilding temples that were up to 1500 years old in his time, but he picked up more stuff to bring back home.

Ennigaldi-Nanna built herself a special room with shelves where she lined up objects that were dated between 1400 and 2000 BCE, having them cleaned and restored, and she placed clay tablets next to them to explain what they were, where they came from, who made them. In three languages. In a room open to the public.

It's believed that she was present on sites when those objects were picked up. Some of those were from Ur, the city of her temple - her position as high priestess in that temple had been abandonned for a few hundred years before her temple was restored (because her dad was a big fan of the Moon god Nanna and this was his main temple for over a thousand years), so she may have just needed to look around and pick a shovel and a good brush. Nabonidus is also considered "the first serious archaeologist", antiquarian and antique restorer.

Some of the artifacts from Sumer and Babylon that are most famous today, oldest and best preserved, come from that museum. We found a 2500 year old museum, and we put it in a museum.

I think its interesting that we are also very biased towards long lasting societies, because they leave more stuff for us to study, and literate ones, because they can tell us with their own words what events there were. We still dont have a complete picture of the battle of Cannae, one of the consequential in all of history, whose effects we are still living with. Writing was only invented 4500ish years ago, and humans are as a species are way way older.

Its fucked up to think about Catal Hayuk, or Utsie.

And then we have the Epic of Gilgamesh, a 6,000 year old story that reminisces about times long past.

Also crazy is that the thing that brought down the Old Kingdom around 2180 BCE, after nearly a millennia in power, was a megadrought thanks to a climatic change. It took them about 140 years to reboot things into the Middle Kingdom.

Not an Egyptologist, but I was actually just talking with a friend (when discussing the loss of information in societies) about ~1500 BCE Pharaohs having to run archeological expeditions to figure out whose tomb was whose to pay the proper respects.

I remember a Hardcore History episode where he talks about how in the time of the Assyrian empire, it was known even then that the world was ancient, filled with individual civilisations that saw themselves as the centre of the world and would marvel at the ignorance of being lumped in together with equally self-possessed civilisations by the historians who write of them only in passing with incomplete sources.

I might have a bit of that wrong, I just woke up and it's been almost a decade since I listened to it. But the part that stuck with me was the idea that even to people we see as deeply ancient, they too had an apprehension that human history is no spring chicken.

And yet, compared with the span of time claimed by the ages of the dinosaurs, humanity has barely existed long enough to clear its throat and introduce itself. And in that time we have been imperiled very often.

I was intrigued to hear that the Toba catastrophe hypothesis may be discredited. I enjoy the idea that 200,000 years ago we may have had as few as 10,000 individuals. It must have been a peaceful time...

I've read that their governance was geared towards stability, not growth or disruption. It helps with keeping things going for a long time.

The oldest recorded song in history starts with "in those ancient times". Tale of Gilgamesh IIRC

Want yet another fun fact? All the most famous egyptian pyramids were built in a span of 100 years or so.

Being in the same place doesn't make it the same civilisation. Cleopatra was more similar to the ancient Greeks than the ancient Egyptians

Yes. Ramses II's son "found in Thebes" (Khaemweset) was known and recorded for his passion in archeological study and restoration, and has been called the "first Egyptologist."

Confirm what, exactly?

Sumeria Jones.

This is true for all ancient civilisations though. Maya, Sumer, India, China. All had ancient and ancient ancient.

And time, goes by so slowly. And time can do so much.