Status Updates From Assyria: The Rise and Fall ...

The idea that the Arabs were once ruled matriarchally, by queens, is absolutely fascinating given how patriarchal they currently are!

I had no idea Assyria began as a somewhat democratic state and developed into a militaristic dictatorship!

How people in the Assyrian Empire cursed and swore can be gauged from a small tablet from Nineveh inscribed with invectives against a certain Bel-etir. "Bel-etir, you fucked hostage, doubly so, with runny eyes, doubly so, with bulging eyes, doubly so, son of Ibâ, that missed period, that shit bucket of a fart factory, of a vile family, lackey of a dead god, of a house whose star has vanished from the heavens,...

The eldest daughter of King Esarhaddon and sister of his successor Ashurbanipal, Sherua-etirat never suffered from a lack of self-confidence. Druing the period when Ashurbanipal was still crown prince, she wrote a bullying letter to Ashurbanipal's wife Libbali-sharrat, making it quite clear that, as a blood relation of the Assyrian royal family, she - Sherua-etirat - held a far higher rank than her sister-in-law.

The history of religious thought is full of strange turns, but few new ideas in this sphere have been as serendipitous as the emergence of the devil from a dubious interpretation of a cosmological metaphor used in the Hebrew Bible to characterize an unlucky Near Eastern king killed on the battlefield - a king who, in all likelihood, was none other than Sargon II.