Andrew A.N. Deloucas
@aandeloucas.com
2.6K followers 470 following 950 posts
I am a Ph.D. candidate in Assyriology at Harvard University. I write on Bronze Age cities of Mesopotamia and their civic, economic, and legal institutions. visit me at aandeloucas.com
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Pinned
aandeloucas.com
Are you looking to read more about Ea-nāṣir, the Bronze Age, or Mesopotamia?

I archive many of my Bluesky threads here: www.aandeloucas.com/conversations
aandeloucas - Conversations
Conversations
www.aandeloucas.com
aandeloucas.com
Discourse around sexuality and purity is complex and I'm not as well versed on the topic as I'd like. I double checked against Walther Sallaberger (2011), "Körperliche Reinheit und soziale Grenzen in Mesopotamien":

archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/propylaeumdo...
archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de
aandeloucas.com
There isn't evidence that musukkatu were sex workers; the term just means impure. It's thought to be related to menstruation or a woman who has recently given birth (Chicago Assyrian Dictionary).

The gate was on the west side of the city, nearest the Euphrates river:
Drawing by Augusta McMahon of the City of Nippur with translations of notable features, such as gates, temples, and canals.
aandeloucas.com
Back to wondering whether Sumerian zid-lal3 was something like خبيص (khabeeṣa), which was served in cups to gods and mentioned with morning meals:

[ZID3] Flour, often emmer or semolina
[LAL3] Honey, syrup
A plate of khabeesa
aandeloucas.com
I'm looking at my backlog of ER seasons and feeling suddenly confident
aandeloucas.com
Oops, I saved a csv thinking it was an xlsx and lost several sheets of data!
Reposted by Andrew A.N. Deloucas
alisonfisk.bsky.social
Vibrant colour projected onto a 2,600 year-old wall panel offers a glimpse of the past lived in glorious technicolour!

From the North Palace at Nineveh (present day Iraq), where the walls were decorated with brightly painted reliefs. 🎥 by me

#ReliefWednesday
#Archaeology
aandeloucas.com
Turns out my wife is an archer!
My wife, placing 3rd in an archery tournament My wife and her archery partner for the tournament waiting for a judge to tally their points. Nearly every arrow is in the small circle closest to the bull's eye.
Reposted by Andrew A.N. Deloucas
chancebonar.bsky.social
The digital version of God, Slavery, and Early Christianity is officially out! If you're interested in ancient Mediterranean slavery's effects on Christian thought and practice, this is for you.

www.cambridge.org/core/books/g...
God, Slavery, and Early Christianity
Cambridge Core - History of Religion - God, Slavery, and Early Christianity
www.cambridge.org
Reposted by Andrew A.N. Deloucas
movieswedig.bsky.social
Grab your trowels, apply your sunscreen and get ready to get down and dirty as we chat with author Kate Myers about her smash-hit novel Excavations! Listen now at movieswedig.com!

The original book cover art used in this promo was created by Stephen Brayda.
aandeloucas.com
Like with all good jokes, it's about timing
aandeloucas.com
I'm having a lot of fun and frustration with this latest chapter, we're learning and getting better all the time
aandeloucas.com
I have no clue when I would have reread that text again, I appreciate the distraction!
aandeloucas.com
At any time, when (anyone of) the people living in this city tears down his old house and builds a new one — if the foundation of his house encroaches upon the royal road, they will hang him on a stake over his house."

Sennacherib 38, lines 13-27 (oracc.museum.upenn.edu/riao/Q003512)
BM 124800, a limestone round-topped stela. "The relief shows the king, Sennacherib, with his hand raised, almost certainly in the gesture worshipping symbols of the gods. The symbols are: (1) the fantastic, horned beast of Marduk, beside (2) the three three-horned caps of Anu, Enlil, and Ea; (3) the full and crescent moons of Sin; (4) the Winged disk of Ashur or, as some say, of Shamash; (5) the pot with flames which seems to take the place of the lamp of Nusku, a god of fire; (6) the star of Ishtar, and (7) the seven balls of Sibitti, the god of 'seven', representing both the planets and seven fixed stars." via the British Museum.
aandeloucas.com
"At that time, I enlarged the site of Nineveh, my capital city. I broadened its streets for the course of a royal road... So that in the future there would be no diminution of the royal road, I had steles made and they stood on each side, opposite one another....
aandeloucas.com
Unfortunately incorrect: this had nothing to do with parking and everything to do with a type of building creep.

When buildings were torn down and rebuilt, new builds often encroached and built over existing road infrastructure, narrowing the street's width. Sennacherib set up steles to stop that.
jmkorhonen.fi
As they say, when you invent the wheel, you invent the parking violation.

But Assyrians had a solution.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parking...
Reposted by Andrew A.N. Deloucas
bnuyaminim.bsky.social
Terms for the person who blows the shofar on #RoshHashanah: pros and cons

בעל תוקע
con:
- grammatically iffy
- hard to inflect for gender and number
pro:
- commonly used

בעל תקיעה
con:
- pedantic
pro:
- grammatically correct and straightforward
biggest pro:
- literally translates to 'blast master'
aandeloucas.com
I was just about to criticize melech as not being a particularly Mesopotamian word. I'm interested in reading more, if you have anything written up on them or other Mesopotamian-themed bands!
aandeloucas.com
The center head looks the same as the tamed lion, but the other two seem to just me photoshopped lion heads.
aandeloucas.com
Stance looks like the lion tamer relief from Khorsabad, but the heads aren't anything I am aware of: we have a Janus-faced vizier called Isimud, but no three headed lion figure.
Often labeled as Gilgamesh, the relief is a bearded individual carrying a small lion, having captured it.