Amanda H. Podany - Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East

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Oxford University Press 2022

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Podany, Amanda H, author.

Title: Weavers, scribes, and kings : a new history of the ancient Near East /

by Amanda H. Podany.

Other titles: New history of the ancient Near East

Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2022] |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022010837 (print) | LCCN 2022010838 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780190059040 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190059064 (epub) |

Subjects: LCSH: Middle EastCivilizationTo 622. |

Middle EastSocial life and customs.

Classification: LCC DS57 .P63 2022 (print) | LCC DS57 (ebook) |

DDC 939/.4dc23/eng/20220524

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022010837

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022010838

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190059040.001.0001

For my mother

Margaret Graham Hills

with love and thanks

The remarkable thing about this frustrating case of incompetence is that both of the men involved have been dead for many thousands of years. Ea-nasir lived almost 3,800 years ago. Just think how long ago that is; its hard to wrap your mind around. He lived 2,400 years before the time of Mohammad and the beginning of Islam, 1,300 years, even, before the foundingof the Roman Republic. And yet, as the article showed, we recognize Ea-nasirhes the vendor who fails to reply to our emails and phone calls, and any of us might have written Nannis letter. We just wouldnt write it in cuneiform script on a clay tablet.

The article clearly resonated with readers and it enjoyed a flurry of interest on social media. Any number of my friends and students sent it to me. Other posts about Ea-nasir appeared, and the long-dead merchant suddenly rose to the top of the news cycle and became (if briefly) a household name. Suddenly something in my obscure field of expertise made sense to people who had been mystified about what I actually study, about what is written on the clay tablets I write and teach about.

Ea-nasir was well known in the field of Assyriology, but he had escaped public notice, so he seemed to be a revelation. Who would have guessed that someone living so very long ago could have been so incompetent in such an ordinary way?

Heres another surprise, though: he was not alone. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of Ea-nasirs. I dont mean that everyone in the ancient Near East was incompetentEa-nasir was a standout in that respectjust that they were very human and, cumulatively, they left behind hundreds of thousands of documents to prove it. If you could have listened in at any doorway in Ur, or any door in any ancient city in the Near East during ancient times for that matter, you would have heard stories that strike a familiar note. People would have been talking about promising business deals, complicated wedding plans, long-planned trips, unfair bosses, and crazy uncles; youd have heard arguments over dinner and lullabies at bedtime.

In this book I will take you behind many of those doors to listen in on men and women from the very ancient past. Some of them were famous in their time and wanted to be remembered; they would no doubt be delighted to know that their names have lived on so long after their deaths. Others had no way to make a mark on history; they were illiterate and powerless, subject to the whims of their employers and leaders or the vagaries of the climate and agricultural pests.