Videos

"The Poor Man of Nippur" is a c. 3,000-year-old comic folk tale in Babylonian language. The main manuscript is a clay tablet from 701 BC found at the site of Sultantepe, in South-East Turkey. Recounted by a third-party narrator, it tells...

Prometheus is the titan god of forethought, is something of a trickster in Greek mythology, and is best known for his role in stealing fire and giving it to humanity, only to be punished severely by Zeus, the king of the gods. Despite being...

What was school like in Ancient Mesopotamia? How did scribes learn to read and write in a difficult language like Sumerian? Dr. Josh explores the education of these early bureaucrats. This series is based on the entertaining and engaging...

Professor of Hittite and Anatolian Languages Theo van den Hout tells us about who scribes in Mesopotamia and Anatolia were. This video was made for the Oriental Institute Museum special exhibit "Visible Language: Inventions of Writing...

Who were the scribes that wrote in Sumerian and Akkadian in ancient Mesopotamia? Dr. Josh gives an introduction to these ancient bureaucrats and their craft. This series is based on the entertaining and engaging book, 'Ancient Mesopotamia...

The winter solstice, falling in December in the Northern hemisphere and June in the Southern hemisphere, is the shortest day and longest night of the year. The winter solstice, also referred to as ‘midwinter’ is associated with the idea of...

Andrew George, Professor of Babylonian, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London The Epic of Gilgamesh is a 4,000-year-old Mesopotamian poem about a hero who embarks on an arduous quest to find the secret of...

Gilgamesh was king of the Sumerian city of Uruk in Southern Mesopotamia, some 5000 years ago. According to legend, he was a ruthless despot, so the gods created a friend for him, a kind of wild man called Enkidu, who was able to challenge...

Dive into the Epic of Gilgamesh, and follow the king of Uruk on a series of dangerous quests as he searches for immortality. In 1849, in the ancient city of Nineveh in Iraq, archaeologists sifted through dusty remains, hoping to find records...

Rarely does a name survive as many millennia as Gilgamesh has. World-renowned men of letters such as Carl Gustav Jung and Rainer Maria Rilke spoke nothing but the highest praise for the ancient Babylonian epic about the popular and much beloved...