Ancient Inscribed Brick: King of the Universe?

[@gdude2775]

I found you from the interview you did with Milo and im so glad I did. Your work is amazing. Thank you.

[@tracymetherell8744]

Milo sent me here as well!

[@m_lies]

Always nice to see more stuff from excavations

[@8draco8]

I love the idea that we have all that amazing information basically thanks to some Assyrian Bart Simpson

[@dennislovinfosse6293]

Milo sent me. A great video and a great channel. I think I'm hooked. Thank you!

[@williamharris8367]

I have a general question about the various inscriptions, monuments, stele, and so forth found at archeological sites. It always was my understanding that pre-modern literacy levels were very low. So, who was the intended audience for all of these inscriptions, etc.?

[@tombender4380]

Literacy rates and Mesopotamia were higher than many people suspect. Remember, they made records and receipts for all sorts of things in daily life.

[@artifactuallyspeaking]

It's an excellent question that is difficult to answer. Perhaps literacy rates were higher than we think, but even so, they wouldn't be likely to be extremely high. So I think that the stelae are often made monumental and with figural decoration in order to be impressive even if you couldn't read the inscriptions on them. As for the inscriptions on bricks, Most of those couldn't be read anyway, as they were imbedded in walls and the inscription was not exposed. These were there for posterity, or for the gods, so they didn't have to be read by normal people. Finally, we think that people could hire scribes to write letters and that these would be read out on delivery, as letters on clay often start with 'Say to so-and-so that...'

[@jfjoubertquebec]

​@@artifactuallyspeaking Just thought I'd way in on literacy rates. In French protestant communities around 1600, literacy, after 4 or 5 generations of home-schooling and zeal towards universal education, it was about 30% for urban men, about 10% for urban women. For Catholics, who were not encouraged to be literate at that time, it is about 10% for urban men. This is based on signatures. (saying these statistics from memory as I procrastinate on this Sunday)

[@bethnoyb8044]

I rather like the idea of scribe school students writing sentences--either as punishment or just part of training

[@MrSnowmandeath]

I didn't thank you for previously answering my question regarding writing, so real quick: Thanks! I've been on an Assyrian/ Cuniform kick since talking and this video is perfect! :)

[@tombender4380]

Ina lis̆anini I nihdu

[@Livingvapour]

That is a cool find thanks for sharing

[@dennisrydgren]

More!

[@richardsweeney197]

Thank you. Your videos are always informative and interesting.

[@DakiniDream]

Very interesting, thanks very much !

[@sheygra5721]

Great video!

[@ElectricalInsanity]

Thanks for answering the question about the meaning of the word "universe" before we could even ask!

[@hoominwifquats]

What is done with the pieces? Are all the similar chunks conserved and stored for future studies or is a couple tons of building rubble not worth a museum's storage space? Or are they separated into worthwhile bits for saving and not-so-useful-now ones that get documented but reburied when you close the excavation?

[@artifactuallyspeaking]

The pieces are studied and recorded, but the majority are reburied on site. Only the best examples might go to the Iraq Museum. As you say, storing all of the pieces is not really viable, but we retain information on them for study.

[@Deinareia]

Do we have some of these brick stamps preserved as well?

[@artifactuallyspeaking]

Yes, there are some brick stamps from the south. We have one in the Penn Museum of the Akkadian king, Shar-kali-sharri. I don't know of any from the north (though that doesn't mean they don't exist), and the inscribed bricks we see at Nimrud don't use a brick stamp.

[@andriidubinin955]

It would be nice to hear how that old language sounded along with the translation... Thanks for this interresting story!

[@thelordandsaviorgigachadrr888]

Has there been anything substantial excavated dating to the Middle Assyrian Empire?

[@artifactuallyspeaking]

Assyrians in the Late Bronze Age (Middle Assyrian Period) tried to claim level status with 'great kings' when they wrote to Egypt but many of the other 'great kings' didn't accept them as such. So we have evidence of an expanding Middle Assyrian kingdom from written records, but not a huge amount from material remains. There are Middle Assyrian remains at Assur, but not much from the period has been exposed there, as far as I know. There might be some at Nimrud in the lower town especially and I hope to find some eventually.

[@Bildgesmythe]

Love the thought of an ancient Bart Simpson.

[@andrwblood9162]

Wasn't Assur the head of the Assyrian pantheon and imply that Ishtar was made a wife, consort, or daughter of him?

[@artifactuallyspeaking]

Assur was the head of the Assyrian deities, but each city had its own principal deity as well (Assur was the principal deity at the city of Assur itself, like the god Enlil was the head of Sumer's pantheon and principal deity at Nippur). Nimrud's principal was Ninurta. Ishtar was popular throughout Assyria and was often a kind of second, though I'm not sure if she was seen as direct consort to a particular deity.

[@suzannegrudem9850]

What kind of stylus would be used for these hand-done wedges? I wonder how a flimsy (?) reed could make such a big, deep impression in those coarse clay/straw bricks. Would they have instead used a carved stick? or perhaps something like what was used for stone-carved cuneiform? IF so, perhaps an untrained scribe-wannabe could more easily make appropriate marks, like writing with big fat pencils in 1st grade.

[@artifactuallyspeaking]

A reed may have been used on smoothed clay tablets, but for a brick, I would imagine it was something stouter, probably wood. Some of what we think are probably styluses have been found made of ebony wood. For stone I would think you would need something more akin to a chisel of bronze or iron.

[@suzannegrudem9850]

Ah yes. Thanks for the response. The behind-the-scenes details of the manufacture of UN-humble bricks are intriguing. It seems like there might be a way that all the inscriptions could be mass produced: legions of amateurs could use a fat, more forgiving tool. I find it weird that the overseers of the building project WOULDN'T issue a stamp for such work, since it was apparently the best-practice from their predecessors. (or maybe they didn't know this???)

[@jfjoubertquebec]

About inscribing each brick... Perhaps there was a lot of brick theft?

[@artifactuallyspeaking]

We sometimes find bricks reused, i.e., inscribed bricks from a temple or palace in a domestic building. This could be seen as theft, but might also be left-overs. Many of the reused bricks date earlier than the houses they are used in, which implies reuse from an old building that has collapsed or been rebuilt. Inscribing does mark the brick as property of the king, but it also identifies the process of building to the gods. So inscribing probably plays multiple roles.

[@HAYDER930]

I wonder how many of these tablets and bricks were stolen and transfered to Europe

[@eldgeth3799]

Gascinating

[@equesdeventusoccasus]

As far as the bricks all being scribed by hand, allow me to propose that you do not need to know how to read to copy a short message over and over again. An illiterate worker could easily use the scribe's tools to reproduce what an actual scribe had written down, a single time.

[@williamharris8367]

This would presumably lead to errors as the worker would have no idea what he was "writing", and a mistake would not be obvious. I once had a project where I had to enter long Latin names of marine microorganisms into a database. I certainly made errors as I was just rote copying from one source to another. I did not know how to spell any of those names (or even what they represented).

[@equesdeventusoccasus]

@@williamharris8367 the difference here would be they would only be producing a single message over and over. They would compare it to their sample written by a scribe to verify there were no mistakes. Correct any mistakes found. As it would be nothing more than wet clay at the time this would be simple to do.

[@tombender4380]

Lis̆an s.almat qaqqadi alammadma I actually agree. Base level literacy in Mesopotamia was higher than most people expect and these inscriptions are really formulaic. It wouldn't surprise me if most people could be taught to transcribe the inscription pretty quickly and easily.

[@artifactuallyspeaking]

Yes, an illiterate person could copy the inscription and this might have happened. We do find errors from time to time and this could be from that process. It could also be from a scribe trying to write too quickly.

[@husambotros3958]

Its Kalhu not Nimrod so when pretending to read old inscriptions try and get it right next time because it would be more convincing😂😂😂