Cuneiform (Radio Edit)

Summary

Episode Summary: "Cuneiform (Radio Edit)"

You're Dead to Me is a BBC Radio 4 comedy podcast hosted by Greg Jenner, where history meets humor. In the episode titled "Cuneiform," released on June 20, 2025, Jenner delves into the origins, significance, and decipherment of one of humanity's earliest writing systems—cuneiform. Joined by the esteemed assyriologist Dr. Moody Al Rashid from the University of Oxford and the hilarious comedian Phil Wang, the trio explores the rich tapestry of Mesopotamian history with both scholarly insight and comedic flair.

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1. Introduction to Cuneiform

The episode kicks off with Greg Jenner setting the stage for an exploration of cuneiform, the first-ever writing system developed around 3350 BCE in southern Iraq. Dr. Moody Al Rashid provides a foundational understanding:

“Cuneiform was a writing system developed just before 3000 BCE in what is now southern Iraq... It gets its name from the Latin cuneus, which means wedge, because they get impressed into clay, they have this characteristic wedge or triangular shape.” (04:37)

Phil Wang adds a humorous touch, initially misinterpreting cuneiform but eventually catching on:

“I picture triangles. Yeah. Sort of carved triangles. A lot of grain. Barley.” (02:32)

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2. Deciphering Cuneiform: Henry Rawlinson and the Behistun Inscription

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the decipherment of cuneiform by Henry Rawlinson, an English officer of the British East India Company. Dr. Al Rashid elaborates on Rawlinson's contributions:

“He was invited in by the Shah of Persia... What exactly was cuneiform?... He and a bunch of other philologists basically looked for patterns in these trilingual inscriptions... the Behistun inscription...” (07:03)

Phil Wang humorously engages with the topic, attempting to guess Rawlinson’s nationality and role:

“Is Behistun similar to Rosetta Stone in that it's the same script in two or three different languages?” (08:06)

Dr. Al Rashid clarifies the complexity and collaborative efforts in deciphering cuneiform:

“It's a trilingual inscription, but all using cuneiform... people knew Old Persian from other texts... Assyriology was established as a discipline.” (08:11)

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3. The Library of Nineveh: A Treasure Trove of Knowledge

The conversation shifts to the discovery of the Royal Library of Nineveh, unearthed in what is now Mosul, Iraq. Dr. Al Rashid highlights its vastness:

“An incredible royal library was unearthed from Nineveh... about 30,000 tablets...” (09:23)

Phil Wang muses on the preservation of these tablets:

“Was always clay.” (10:19)

Dr. Al Rashid emphasizes the library's significance in preserving diverse disciplines:

“You have astronomy, medicine, literature, omens... such a vast collection.” (10:16)

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4. The Invention of Cuneiform: Accounting to Literature

Greg Jenner draws parallels between ancient accounting systems and modern software:

“The invention of writing is an accounting system. It's like a software for keeping track of your receipts.” (13:02)

Dr. Al Rashid agrees, explaining the practical origins of cuneiform:

“Cuneiform is a mix of signs that were characters that stand for whole words and characters that stand for syllables...” (11:35)

Phil Wang adds humor while acknowledging the sophistication of the writing system:

“They thought, let’s just try this.” (12:52)

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5. Literacy and Scribes in Ancient Mesopotamia

The episode delves into who could read and write in ancient Mesopotamia. Dr. Al Rashid elaborates:

“Some went on to become scribes and administrators... others became medical professionals or astronomers...” (13:41)

Phil Wang jokes about the complexity of becoming literate:

“I wish I had a skill in it.” (06:25)

Dr. Al Rashid introduces Elhaduanna, the first named author in history:

“She’s the first named author in history... Elhaduanna, a princess writing 4,300 years ago.” (14:37)

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6. Cuneiform and Communication: Letters and Literature

The hosts explore the use of cuneiform in personal and administrative communication. Dr. Al Rashid shares examples of letters and administrative records:

“They wrote letters to each other and they sent them... includes women.” (15:14)

Phil Wang humorously speculates on the content of ancient letters:

“Probably like, this place sucks... It’s really hot.” (15:30)

Dr. Al Rashid provides a poignant example of a letter between a husband and wife, revealing personal and societal dynamics:

“She's writing to him, quite fiery letters. One of them reads, when you went away, you did not leave a single shekel of silver...” (18:19)

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7. Cuneiform in Religion and Divination

The episode touches on the intertwining of writing, religion, and divination in Mesopotamia. Dr. Al Rashid explains:

“There was a really close connection between the divine and the sciences... an entire textbooks filled with omens.” (20:01)

Phil Wang amusingly imagines the process of divination:

“How would you go about telling the future with sheep?... If they spell out SOS...” (22:22)

Dr. Al Rashid describes the ritualistic use of cuneiform in divination:

“They would place this tablet in front of the statue of the relevant deity... reading the liver like they would read cuneiform signs.” (23:15)

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8. The Longevity and Legacy of Cuneiform

Greg Jenner marvels at the durability of cuneiform as a writing system:

“Cuneiform is quite a stable technology. It changes a little bit over time... you can still read it through that time.” (24:04)

Dr. Al Rashid notes its extensive usage span:

“From 3350 BCE to 79 CE... the last tablet from Uruk.” (23:57)

Phil Wang reflects on the impressive longevity:

“It's a stable technology. It changes a little bit over the time in terms of the font, in terms of the how it's written...” (24:34)

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9. Human Stories Preserved in Cuneiform: The Case of Latubashini

In a moving conclusion, Dr. Al Rashid shares the story of La Tubashini, a woman who fought for her children's freedom in 560 BCE:

“La Tubashini was sold into slavery by marriage... around 560 BCE, she was emancipated... fought for the freedom of her children.” (25:28)

He emphasizes the human aspect preserved through cuneiform:

“They were not the other and neither are any of us from each other...” (27:20)

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Reflections and Closing Remarks

Greg Jenner wraps up the episode by highlighting the enduring relevance of cuneiform and the human stories it preserves. He encourages listeners to explore more Mesopotamian history through previous episodes and to engage with the podcast for a blend of education and entertainment.

“Join me next time as we decode another message from the past.” (28:01)

Phil Wang and Dr. Al Rashid bid farewell with their characteristic humor and insights, leaving listeners both informed and amused.

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Notable Quotes:

• Phil Wang: “I can speak it very fluently. No, I don't know why you have such a problem with me saying it.” (24:51)

• Dr. Moody Al Rashid: “Like a Victorian schoolboy learning Latin, so he'd go and become a lawyer.” (20:14)

• Phil Wang: “That's sick. Yeah. Really cool.” (15:12)

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Key Takeaways:

• Cuneiform's Significance: As one of the earliest writing systems, cuneiform was pivotal in administrative, literary, and religious contexts in ancient Mesopotamia.

• Decipherment Efforts: Henry Rawlinson's work, alongside the Behistun inscription, was crucial in unlocking the secrets of cuneiform, leading to the establishment of Assyriology.

• Library of Nineveh: This vast collection of tablets offers invaluable insights into Mesopotamian society, spanning disciplines from astronomy to literature.

• Human Stories: Beyond administrative records, cuneiform preserves personal letters and poignant human narratives, underscoring the universality of human experiences across millennia.

• Legacy: Cuneiform's longevity highlights its adaptability and the foundational role it played in the development of subsequent writing systems and civilizations.

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For those intrigued by the fusion of history and humor, this episode of You're Dead to Me offers a comprehensive and entertaining exploration of cuneiform, bringing ancient Clay tablets to life through engaging dialogue and insightful commentary.

Transcript

[Mel Gedroich]

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[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Oh.

[Mel Gedroich]

Oh. Hi, I'm Mel Gedroich and I'm going to be your host on.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Well, there's a winner, There's a way, There's a way.

[Mel Gedroich]

So each week I'm gonna be meeting with a different deceased celeb guest to discuss how they died, what they want for their funeral and perhaps most importantly, why I should be unlocking the pearly gates for them. You'll laugh, you probably won't cry, but bloody hell, you'll be entertained. Listen and watch wherever you get your podcasts. BBC Sounds Music Radio podcasts.

[Greg Jenner]

Hello and welcome to your Dent To Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we're bouncing back to the Bronze Age with our styluses and clay tablets to learn all about the first ever writing system or script called cuneiform. And to help us decipher the ancient story, we have two very special guests in History Corner. She's an honorary fellow at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. She's an assyriologist who researches and teaches on the history of Mesopotamia, cuneiform and the Akkadian language. She has a wonderful brand new book that I loved called Between Two Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History. I highly recommend it. And you will remember her from our episode on the Ancient Babylonians, it's Dr. Moody Al Rashid. Welcome, Moody.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

[Greg Jenner]

Delighted to have you back. And in Comedy Corner, he's a fantastic comedian, actor and author. You'll know him from Taskmaster Live at the Apollo. Havoc News for your from his two Netflix comedy specials too. Count them. But you'll definitely remember him from our previous episodes of youf're Dead to Me, Most recently on the Terracotta warriors and the History of Kung Fu, which sounds like a film title but isn't returning for a triumphant fifth appearance. It's Phil Wang. Welcome back again.

[Phil Wang]

Hello. Thanks for having me. Yes, Moody is an assyriologist, I'm a cilliologist. Comedy Corner, bring in the silly baby.

[Greg Jenner]

Phil, together we've tackled mighty military matters. We've done the Borgias, we've done Chinggis Khan, we've done the Terracotta warriors and kung fu. Today we're going quite nerdy. What does the word cuneiform mean to you spiritually, emotionally?

[Phil Wang]

I picture triangles. Yeah. Sort of carved triangles. A lot of grain. Barley. The sort of. The recording of barley.

[Greg Jenner]

That's fairly good knowledge.

[Phil Wang]

Straight off the bat, the biggest word in my word bubbles. The word cloud. The biggest word there is old. That's my. That's my header. How far am I right? Ballpark.

[Greg Jenner]

I mean, Moody, I don't want to give him too many sort of stars early on, but I feel that was quite good.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

That's pretty spot on.

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah, yeah. And how bad? The font for old is just like a really big font.

[Phil Wang]

Yeah, yeah. The O is a triangle, the L is a triangle, and the D is a triangle.

[Greg Jenner]

So what do you know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. You might remember a mention of cuneiform on our Babylonians episode we talked about before with Moody and Kay Curd. Maybe you've seen some cuneiform tablets in the British Museum or in the Ashmolean Museum in the States. I think Paris has some. More likely you've seen something resembling cuneiform. Well, probably as a prop in a video game or in a movie. But to be honest, I don't think cuneiform is something that most people are visualizing. I think people go to hieroglyphs when they think of old scripts. What exactly was cuneiform? What do all these clay tablets actually tell us? What do they say? And who first figured out how to decipher it? Let's find out. Right, Dr. Moody, can we start with some quick basic definitions? Because I'm feeling very basic. What is cuneiform? Am I pronouncing it right? What does its name mean?

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Yeah, so cuneiform or cuneiform are both completely fine. So it was a writing system developed just before 3000 BCE in what is now southern Iraq, and it was a script, not a language, found mostly on clay tablets, but also on some extremely large monumental inscriptions made out of stone and some other objects as well. And it gets its name from the Latin cuneus. I don't know any Latin, but I know cuneus in Latin, which means wedge, because they get impressed into clay, they have this characteristic wedge or triangular shape. And funnily enough, in Akkadian, the word for cuneiform is sataku or santaku, which means triangle.

[Greg Jenner]

Who used it?

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Lots and lots of different people used cuneiform to write lots of different Languages. It's the writing system that was used in the region that we call ancient Mesopotamia between the Tigris and around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and what is now Iraq and Syria and some of the neighboring countries as well. The oldest tablets come specifically from Uruk in southern Iraq, and those date to about 3350 BCE. Various empires rose and fell in this region. We had the Akk Babylonians, Assyrians before them, the Sumerians and then the neighboring Elamites, Hittites and eventually the Persians. And they all used some variation of cuneiform for their many languages. The main two languages, however, in ancient Mesopotamia were Sumerian and Akkadian.

[Greg Jenner]

Phil, we're gonna. We're gonna mix things up here. We're gonna go to modern history now. We're gonna start with only a couple hundred years ago when they deciphered cuneiform. Can you guess the nationality of the man who deciphered this ancient Near Eastern technology?

[Phil Wang]

Oh, French.

[Greg Jenner]

It's a good guess. His name was Henry Rawlinson.

[Phil Wang]

Okay.

[Greg Jenner]

And he was from England, as all the best people are.

[Phil Wang]

That's what I wanted to say. That's what I actually wanted to say, but I thought I would have something.

[Greg Jenner]

Loud to say that it's usually an Englishman or Frenchman. In fairness, in this period in history. Moody. What was an Englishman doing in Iran? Was he doing a classic bit of empire?

[Phil Wang]

Hello.

[Greg Jenner]

I've just come to do a bit of empire, basically.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Yes. Yeah. He was an officer of the British East India Company and he was originally sent to India and then he went to Iran after that to help the Shah, I think, reorganize his army or something like that. And he fell in love with ancient Persian monuments and cultures.

[Greg Jenner]

So he was invited in by the Shah of Persia, Bizarrely a rare thing. Normally it's a sort of invasion thing. So that's quite nice. They actually said, welcome. Please, Phil. The study of languages is called philology.

[Phil Wang]

Is it? Yeah.

[Greg Jenner]

I feel like therefore you have an.

[Phil Wang]

Innate skill in this, innate interest in this. Yeah, I wish I did. No, I do have an interest in it. I mean to say I wish I had a skill in it.

[Greg Jenner]

Okay. Yeah, alright.

[Phil Wang]

But I didn't know. I did not know that.

[Greg Jenner]

Okay. How would you go about decoding an ancient script? Because you're an engineer, right?

[Phil Wang]

Yeah.

[Greg Jenner]

So you think laterally.

[Phil Wang]

Yeah, sure.

[Greg Jenner]

You're Henry Rawlinson. How do you start decoding that?

[Phil Wang]

Well, ideally you have some sort of key. You find some sort of key a la Rosetta stone. Right. Without that, I'M guessing you're looking for patterns.

[Greg Jenner]

Sure.

[Phil Wang]

You're looking for structures. You're looking for sentences, and then looking for what repeats where particular symbols lie and seeing if there's a logic to them.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

This is good stuff.

[Greg Jenner]

You, Phil?

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

I think that's exactly right. I feel like I could. I should just maybe just take a cup of coffee or something.

[Phil Wang]

Thanks, Moody.

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah, we're all good here. It's just me and Phil. We're gonna. Sol.

[Phil Wang]

Well, my name is Philology Wang.

[Greg Jenner]

Exactly. Philology Wang. Moody, it sounds like Rawlinson used the Phil Wang technique.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

He actually exactly did that. Yeah. He and a bunch of other philologists basically looked for patterns in these trilingual inscriptions that were in various places in Iran, namely Persepolis, but also some big ones on Mount Alvand. And then the big kind of Rosetta stone of assyriology, which is the Behistun inscription, they first found royal names, and then from there they found the word for, of course, kind of unexciting, but very important of. Yeah, Annam.

[Greg Jenner]

Really? That's a really crucial word.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

It really is, yeah. I mean, it appears so many times, so it kind of helps you orient words in relation to each other as well. So there's a pattern there. He kind of played, in my view, a more minor role because a lot of work was already done by the time he got to the Behistun inscription by other philologists.

[Greg Jenner]

Oh, really?

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

A lot of copies were made. A lot of words were decoded.

[Greg Jenner]

Are you besmirching an Englishman's name, Moody? How dare you?

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

I'm just seeing what happened.

[Phil Wang]

Is Behistun similar to Rosetta Stone in that it's the same script in two or three different languages?

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Yeah, it's a trilingual inscription, but all using cuneiform. So it's three cuneiform inscriptions in these, like, almost like caption boxes, but they're different languages recorded. One of the languages was known Old Persian. People knew how to read Old Persian from other texts that were not written in cuneiform. So they kind of knew what it might say.

[Greg Jenner]

Okay.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

And then they kind of overlaid that.

[Greg Jenner]

And in 1857, so 20 years after Rawlinson first went out to Persia, I suppose, as it would have been called the. The Royal Asiatic Society. I don't know what they are, but they. They sort of intervened and said, right, okay, we're gonna officially declare that cuneiform has been decoded. And this invents a new discipline of which you are a practitioner.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Yes, Assyriology, Assyriology. The way I try to explain it is in the same way that Egyptology studies ancient Egypt, assyriology studies ancient Assyria and the other civilizations that existed in Mesopotamia. But they've kind of focused on Assyria because around the time of the beginning of this discipline, an incredible royal library was unco from Nineveh, which was the royal library of the last great Neo Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal. And there were about 30,000 tablets that were unearthed from that. So I think that really, you know, that was the kind of game changer for the field, and that's why it took its name from it.

[Greg Jenner]

And so Nineveh, the royal library, was discovered in what we now call mosul in Iraq. 30,000 Kinevan tablets, which is amazing. They were brought to the British Museum, the home of Iraqi history. But this wasn't just.

[Phil Wang]

Not in the bm did it even happen? That's always been my motto.

[Greg Jenner]

But this wasn't the first time the massive collection of ancient cuneiform tablets had been put in a museum. Right. Because this was already a collection of knowledge by someone saying, this stuff's old.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Yes. King Ashurbanipal wanted to create this royal library, and he sent scholars to different parts of the empire to copy the most well known and important text, including some very old ones like the Epic of Gilgamesh, and brought them under one roof, so to speak. It gets its name as a royal library because the types of disciplines attested, the types of works attested, are just so incredible. You have astronomy, medicine, literature, omens. It's just such a vast collection.

[Phil Wang]

And this library is a library of tablets. Really?

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Clay tablets.

[Phil Wang]

Wow. Was always clay.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

It was used on other objects, but the scholarly stuff was on clay.

[Greg Jenner]

That was the good stuff.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Yeah, that's my favorite stuff.

[Greg Jenner]

So the library of Nineveh was this incredible compilation of all the knowledge, two and a half thousand years worth, put into one place. And then in the year 612 BCE, it was destroyed.

[Phil Wang]

Oh, no.

[Greg Jenner]

Along came some baddies who sacked the city. And that was fantastic news for you, Moody.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Mm.

[Greg Jenner]

Do you know why? Hmm.

[Phil Wang]

Because they spread it everywhere. Ended up in different places. Because it was cool. Because it was exciting.

[Greg Jenner]

He's spiraling. He's losing.

[Phil Wang]

I don't see how it could have been good.

[Greg Jenner]

Because they set the building on fire and it baked the clay.

[Phil Wang]

Oh, wow. And sort of hardened it. Yeah. Why didn't they do that already?

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

They don't always. They did bake some tablets that were really important, but for the most part, they just let them dry.

[Phil Wang]

Wow. So baking was kind of like laminating.

[Greg Jenner]

So, yeah. So the next episode of Great British Bake Off. That's what we want to see.

[Phil Wang]

It's cuneiform week here at the tent.

[Greg Jenner]

Okay, so we know how cuneiform was deciphered, and we know how it was preserved. The library burned down. Baking the knowledge. Let's now discover how cuneiform was first invented. The system is not phonetic. Is that right?

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Not an Alphabet. Broadly, cuneiform is a mix of signs that were characters that stand for whole words and characters that stand for syllables, like ba instead of a B and an A, or, you know, bat like, you know, b a T as one sound. That tells us a lot, actually, about the history of how this script develops, because initially it was just signs that stood for words, and this was when it was in the earliest iterations. And scribes used quite innovative methods to make each sign stand for more things, more sounds that were related to its original meaning or to the original sounds that those words had. And that enabled the writing system to take on completely unrelated languages to the ones that those initial words were in.

[Greg Jenner]

We're now talking about a technology that's 5,350 years old. The obvious question is, why clay?

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Well, there was a lot of it. I mean, the silty kind of riverbed where the two rivers meet near the Arabian Gulf. It was quite a rich, fertile soil for the fertility of the soil, coupled with some agricultural tech advances, made it possible for them to have so much agricultural produce and products to keep track of, which necessitated a writing system. And since it was everywhere, they thought, let's just try. Let's just try this.

[Greg Jenner]

More people, more stuff means you need to write things down. So the invention of writing is an accounting system. It's like a software for keeping track of your receipts.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Exactly.

[Greg Jenner]

And then it turns into literature. Is that a fair.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

That's exactly right.

[Phil Wang]

Okay, so is that case to be made? You know, it's. We often sort of credit rivers, and especially in Mesopotamia's case, the two rivers, as being crucial to the success of these civilizations because of the fertility they provide in the soil. But is that case, if you said that beyond that, they also provided the clay to write things down and for the society to progress in that domain as well. So it wasn't just sort of agriculture that the rivers allowed to happen, but for record keeping as well.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Phil Wang]

So river's good.

[Greg Jenner]

River's good.

[Phil Wang]

River's good. Yeah.

[Greg Jenner]

We've got multiple societies here. It's very generic to just say Bronze Age, Mesopotamia, but like, who can read and write cuneiform? Is it a very highly skilled thing? Can you have basic functional literacy if you're an ordinary fisherman or who's got that knowledge?

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

So kind of both and depends on the answer to that. Depends on the period you're talking about and also the place. So in some periods, professionals, for example, learned a basic kind of repertoire of science to be able to carry out transactions, write letters, and that included women. Overall, it was a kind of highly skilled that you needed to go through specialized training. And there were also different tiers that you could kind of stop at in a way.

[Greg Jenner]

Right.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

So some went on to become scribes and administrators and they had to just know, like math for the sake of, you know, calculations and field calculations. And then others went beyond that to become, you know, medical professionals or astronomers doing much more highly specialized math, especially in the later period. So yes and no to you said.

[Greg Jenner]

We have women scribes. The most famous one, I suppose would be the daughter of King Sargon. He's around like 4,000 years ago. But his daughter is the first woman author in history.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Yes, that's right. She's the first named author in history. So not just the first woman author, the first author name we know.

[Greg Jenner]

Wow.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Yeah. As a woman and her name is Elhaduanna. And she penned Impressed. Whatever penned is fine. Yeah. These incredible hymns. Temple hymns, essentially.

[Greg Jenner]

Right. That's amazing. The earliest named author in history is a princess writing 4300 years ago.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Exactly.

[Phil Wang]

That's sick. Yeah. Really cool.

[Greg Jenner]

Can you send messages? Like, are there letters? Is there a postal system? Can you communicate with tablets and cuneiform? I suppose is the question.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Yes, yes, absolutely. Yes. They wrote letters to each other and they sent them and there were kind of mail networks.

[Greg Jenner]

What kind of stuff do you think is getting jotted down in the letters to each other?

[Phil Wang]

Probably like, this place sucks.

[Greg Jenner]

It's really hot.

[Phil Wang]

It's really hot. We got a river sp. Good. I guess. But what's it like over there then? And this place sucks too, actually. It's really hard to go to this stupid scribe every time I want to send a letter to someone.

[Greg Jenner]

So you think it's just like when people just complaining.

[Phil Wang]

It must have been. Yeah, yeah. The arrogance, though. I think there's a lot to complain about back then, actually. Yeah, loads.

[Greg Jenner]

The hymn to Nkazi is one of the earliest things ever written down. And that's a song to a goddess about beer. And I know that one of the earliest ever cuneiform tablets we have is about beer.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

That's right.

[Greg Jenner]

It's amazing. I feel like nothing has changed. Can you tell us about this ancient. Is it one tablet? Is it fragments? What have we got? The beer tablet.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

So there are a whole bunch of tablets that tell us stuff about beer from the earliest, earliest periods of writing. But what I think is really interesting is that one of the earliest names, at least we think it's a name, and we think we're pronouncing it correctly when we say the name is. Cushim is a beer brewer. And this, this is not like someone in their basement making like a microbrew for the neighbors on a Sunday. Yeah. This is a guy who at one point was responsible for 135,000 liters of barley over the course of 37 months for the production of beer. And then in another tablet, he's responsible for nine different cereals to produce eight different kinds of beer. So this is part of an administrative machinery.

[Greg Jenner]

So Kushim might be one of the first named people in history.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Yeah.

[Greg Jenner]

And he's a beer brewer.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

He's a beer brewer.

[Greg Jenner]

That's great.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

So cool.

[Greg Jenner]

Okay.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

I mean, you can. You can get windows onto people's working lives, but you can also get windows onto what lullabies they sang to their babies, or what did they write to their far flung husbands. What did they observe in the night sky? What sort of astronomical leaps did they make? It's just. It's just so moving.

[Phil Wang]

What I was going to ask. Are these good reads? Are they real tablet turners?

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

I think so.

[Phil Wang]

So, yeah, that's amazing.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

I think.

[Phil Wang]

So what were people writing about? I mean, these are letters, presumably, and also all of it literature and records as well.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Yeah. And, you know, they were pretty good record keepers, too, so it can be borderline sort of dry where you're reading about, like a forestry institution in the city of Ummah and what classes of laborers were working and the familial lines. And then you're just name after name after name. But you're still getting these people names from thousands of years ago, which is pretty cool. But it can also be like some of the most beautiful literature that, you know, I feel like I've ever read, like the Epic of Gilgamesh, something we.

[Greg Jenner]

Do have, which is really charming, I think, and quite interesting. We have a let. We have a series of letters between a wife and a merchant husband who are in different cities writing to each other. What do you imagine they're writing to each other, Phil?

[Phil Wang]

Things like, how are you? Good trip? You get in all right? That Person must have been somewhere. How's the journey? How's the journey?

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah, how's the journey?

[Phil Wang]

Must have been somewhere like that. Yeah. How's the journey? And then he's running back. How are the kids? How's the Bali? I mean, he must have been there for a while if there was time for them to have a clay tablet exchange. Right.

[Greg Jenner]

I feel like there's more drama in these tablets, Moody.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Oh, yes, they did write about barley too, but they also shouted at each other a little bit.

[Greg Jenner]

So who are our protagonists? Is it Inaya?

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Inaya. He's the husband and he's living in Anatolia, which is what is now Turkey, where there's a major trading hub, like an international trading hub called Kanesh. And he moved there essentially to handle trade. And then his wife, Taram Kubi, is in the heartland of Assyria, in the capital of Ashur, and she's writing to him, quite fiery letters. And one of them reads, when you went away, you did not leave a single shekel of silver. You picked the house clean and took it away. Since you left, there has been hardship and hunger in the city. What is this extravagance that you keep writing to me about? And the letter ends. Why do you keep on listening to slander? And do you keep sending me angry letters?

[Phil Wang]

God, she's making it sound like it's his fault. The entire city is falling apart. I feel like it's a little dramatic because of you.

[Greg Jenner]

The whole city is starving. Yeah.

[Phil Wang]

But it's amazing. You never think of these old forms of writing being able to convey such emotion, you know, such nuance or. Yeah, or anger even. I've always thought of them as very, very specific. Numbers, dates, names, not like feelings, not emotion.

[Greg Jenner]

What language do they speak? And what language are they writing in if they're training to be scribes?

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

So they were probably speaking Akkadian at home, but they were learning Sumerian at school because it was important to learn this ancient, authentic old language, just like Latin was.

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah. Okay, so it's like a Victorian schoolboy learning Latin, so he'd go and become a lawyer.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Exactly.

[Greg Jenner]

Okay. The scribes are sort of. They're also being used in religion. Right. So religion is also important. And we talked about. About some of this when we did our Babylonians episode with Kay. But I think we just probably reiterate for Phil's benefit. What does cuneiform teach us about sacred text and the understanding of gods and monsters, ghosts, planets and stars?

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

So I think the easiest way to explain that is that in ancient Mesopotamia. Supernatural things were real. So there was a really close connection between, in particular, the divine and the sciences. They weren't considered two separate things. And so. So the people who were trained in observing the natural world were essentially observing signs being left behind by divine beings about events to come. So, for example, a lunar eclipse was bad news because it was a sign from the gods that the king was going to die, for example.

[Greg Jenner]

Sorry, king, sorry, I got bad news.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

They did have a workaround, though. So they would get a substitute to be in the king's place for a couple of months, and then that person would live like a king and then be killed.

[Phil Wang]

Oh, really?

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Just to be absolutely sure.

[Greg Jenner]

That. Swap in a peasant body double.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Yeah.

[Phil Wang]

Holy cow.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

I know. It was brutal.

[Greg Jenner]

Would you take that? Would you? Would you? Two months living as a king. If you know you're gonna die at.

[Phil Wang]

The end, you have to think about the average quality of life at the time and how much of an upgrade that would have been, even for just for two months. I would have consider it. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Depending what age I was. If I was 40, I was already knocking on death's door, to be honest. So if I was that, you know, I'd take that. Two months in heaven and then death.

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

You can imagine why it was so important for the, you know, the observers, for the diviners and the scholars to get the signs right. Because there was a lot that rode on these things that are happening in the natural world. And there were entire textbooks that were filled with omens to tell people how to interpret an eclipse or the position of Jupiter in a particular constellation or what the color of Mars in the sky might.

[Greg Jenner]

And there's also divination. So, telling the future by using sheep. Phil, how would you go about telling the future with sheep?

[Phil Wang]

Is it sort of like a tea leaves reading kind of thing? Like the pattern they fall into tells a story.

[Greg Jenner]

So you're watching sheep flock like you're. Yeah.

[Phil Wang]

You get up on a hill and you look down and see what. Sort of.

[Greg Jenner]

See what they spell out.

[Phil Wang]

Yeah, exactly.

[Greg Jenner]

If they spell out sos, it's like, oh.

[Phil Wang]

They spell out king dead. You go, ah, not this again. All right, who wants two months in paradise?

[Greg Jenner]

Unfortunately, no, the sheep has to die here.

[Phil Wang]

Oh, entrails. Yeah.

[Greg Jenner]

It's the liver, isn't it? They're looking at the liver. But what I find really interesting is that writing is still very important in this process. Can you tell us why?

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

So you had to. Well, among. There were a couple of different ways, but One way was to write your yes or no question. It has to be a yes or no question. It couldn't just be like, what's gonna happen tomorrow? It has to be, will I recover from, you know, this journey? Or whatever.

[Phil Wang]

Yeah. They went crazy. They didn't think guts could tell everything.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

And they would place this tablet in front of the statue of the relevant deity, who would then presumably read the question and leave their answer, write the answer down in the entrails of the sheep, so particularly the liver. And then they would read the liver like they would read cuneiform signs, because cuneiform signs have multiple meanings and so do.

[Greg Jenner]

So do livers.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

So do livers. Yeah. And the liver is even sometimes called the tablet of the gods, where the gods leave their messages. Yeah. So writing was kind of of. It permeated their entire world.

[Greg Jenner]

You said that cuneiform is quite a stable technology. We have the earliest technology at 3350. The absolute latest we go to is in the Roman era. Right. The latest cuneiform is like, what, 79 CE?

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

That's exactly right. The last dateable cuneiform tablet. So dateable is from 79 or 80.

[Greg Jenner]

CE, which is the year Vesuvius erupted. So interesting coincidence. I was going to say maybe the volcano erupted and went, I feel like this is a sign, let's just put down the cadaver, move on.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

And what I love is it's also from Uruk. Yeah, yeah. So it started in Uruk. And I mean, we know. We don't know, but.

[Phil Wang]

Oh, the last one was also from Uruk.

[Greg Jenner]

So that's amazing. So it's a stable technology. It changes a little bit over the time in terms of the font, in terms of the how it's written, but you can still read it through that time.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Yeah, it's pretty. Yeah, it's pretty easy to read.

[Greg Jenner]

It's amazing. And so Akkadian then is followed by Aramaic, followed by Persian, followed by other languages, and of course we go. So there you go, Phil. 3,500 years of technology, of script, a very impressive history. You had to impress it. Yeah, really good.

[Phil Wang]

I got it.

[Greg Jenner]

Yeah. So you now know about cuneiform?

[Phil Wang]

Yeah, I can speak cuneiform.

[Greg Jenner]

No, no, you can't speak it. It's not a language.

[Phil Wang]

I feel like neo.

[Greg Jenner]

Start again.

[Phil Wang]

I'm like, neo. When he says, I know Kung fu. Yeah, I know cuneiform.

[Greg Jenner]

You know cuneiform.

[Phil Wang]

I can speak it very fluently. No, I don't know why you have such a problem with me saying it.

[Greg Jenner]

It's not the language, it's a script. Oh, never mind the nuance. This is where Phil and I sit quietly in the classroom and we carve our clay tablets for two minutes while Dr. Moody tells us something we need to know about cuneiform's history. Take it away, Dr. Moody.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

In 592 BCE, a young woman, or maybe even still a girl, named La Tubashini was sold into slavery by marriage by her adoptive mother, Khammaia. This marriage was financed by a third party, presumably to secure access to the children who would be born of the forced union and who would have had the same legal status as their mother. It's a harrowing story, but remarkably, around 560 BCE La Tobashini was emancipated from her slave status and her first official act as a freed woman was to fight for the freedom of her children. On 29 October, 560 BCE, the Babylonian courts heard her lawsuit against members of the incredibly powerful and wealthy family who had financed the arrangement in the first place. She argued before a minister and the king's judges that, like her, her children should also be free. Five clay tablets that span three decades tell her story. And even if the nature of the legal sources lack the color of a literary work, they tell us a lot about her courage. They tell us that she survived her decades long ordeal as an enslaved woman, forced into marriage at least six pregnancies and births without the benefit of anesthesia or antibiotics, and far more that is lost to time. And they tell us that she survived all this. A fighter willing to take on a powerful family and argue before the king's judges for the freedom of her children. In the end, she only succeeded in freeing one son, a boy named Ardea. Among many things, what moves me about her story is just what we can learn from cuneiform. This writing system preserves so much of life from ancient Mesopotamia. As we've talked about receipts, lullabies, literature, letters, liver omens, astronomical leaps, and also the lives of women like Latubashini and her six children. Her story is a reminder that people in the ancient past were no less human, no less loving or brave, and no more immune to pain than we are. And neither is any person today seems too different to have anything in common with. They were not the other and neither are any of us from each other.

[Greg Jenner]

Beautiful. Thank you so much. Thanks and listener. After today's episode, you want more Mesopotamia with Moody? Check out our episode on the ancient Babylonians and to hear more from Philly Philly Wang Wang. Listen to his episodes on the Borgias, Chinggis Khan, the Terracotta warriors and the history of Kung Fu. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds, where you will hear the show a month before it arrives on other platforms. So there we go. There's a bonus for you. And switch on your sounds notifications. Notifications too, so you never miss an episode. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests. In History Corner, we had the marvelous Dr. Moody Al Rashid from the University of Oxford. Thank you, Moody.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Thank you for having me.

[Greg Jenner]

It's been a pleasure. And in Comedy Corner, as ever, we have the fantastic Philology Wang. Thank you, Phil.

[Phil Wang]

Thank you for using my full name. It's been a pleasure.

[Greg Jenner]

And to you, lovely listener. Join me next time as we decode another message from the past. But for now, I'm off to go and carve an emoji inscribed Rosetta Stone to help future archaeologists. And it's going to involve an awful lot of rude emojis. Bye.

[Mel Gedroich]

I'm Nicola Coughlin and for BBC Radio 4, this is History's Youngest Heroes. Rebellion, risk and the radical power of youth.

[Greg Jenner]

She thought, right, I'll just do it. She thought about others rather than herself.

[Phil Wang]

Twelve stories of extraordinary young people from across history.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

There's a real sense of urgent urgency in them. That resistance has to be mounted. It has to be mounted now.

[Mel Gedroich]

Subscribe to History's Youngest Heroes on BBC Sounds.

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[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Oh.

[Mel Gedroich]

Oh, hi, I'm Mel Gedroich and I'm going to be your host on.

[Dr. Moody Al Rashid]

Well, there's a winner.

[Greg Jenner]

There's a waker awake.

[Mel Gedroich]

So each week I'm going to be meeting with a different deceased celeb guest to discuss how they died, what they want for their funeral, and perhaps most importantly, why I should be unlocking the pearly gates for them. You'll laugh, you probably won't cry, but bloody hell, you'll be entertained. Listen and watch. Wherever you get your podcasts.