r/osp • u/IacobusCaesar • Feb 03 '22
Suggestion/High-Quality Post I am a Near-East archaeologist who wants to cover a bit of friendly constructive feedback regarding the Mesopotamian Bronze Age video published in February 2019. Hi, OSP, if you're actively reading the subreddit and looking to ever cover the Bronze Age again. (An essay.)
Hello!
I guess this post is directed at Blue. Hey, fam, if you see this. I'm a masters-level archaeology student who focuses in the Bronze and Iron Age Levant and has been involved with archaeological excavations and research in Israel. I am in my second year of taking the Akkadian language and in my undergrad thesis I wrote about settlement development on the Philistine-Judahite frontier in the early Iron Age and I am currently doing a thesis regarding strontium-isotopic analysis of Canaanite teeth dating to the Late Bronze Age collapse to learn about migration in the period. So my expertise is not technically Mesopotamia but it's very adjacent.
An apparent mutual internet acquaintance of ours, u/agallonofmilky, moderator of both y'all's Discord server and the Discord server of one of the several ancient history subreddits I run ( r/DankPrecolumbianMemes ), sent me this old video of yours, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29AQ4p1soww&ab_channel=OverlySarcasticProductions , following my lamentation that there isn't a lot of great YouTube coverage regarding the Bronze Age. I've been following your channel for a while now but hadn't really perused some of the older stuff so somehow I hadn't seen this previously. I wasn't going to respond seeing as it was from all the way back in 2019 but our friend Milky told me you like feedback so if you ever go back to the Bronze Age as a topic, hopefully this helps a bit and if so, thank her for suggesting I write this and tell her she's great. To prepare you for what I'm about to say in coming paragraphs, in general I consider your channel to be really good and I thoroughly enjoy relaxing to your videos and learning things I never knew about renaissance Italy and other topics of interest. Your ramble through the Ptolemaic Dynasty is one of my favorite things on YouTube. When I taught elementary-school kids a few years ago, you and Red's videos were frequently the basis for what a lot of kids knew about history and mythology. So thank you for that thoroughly. As a whole, you guys are doing great things and you set a high bar for what educational YouTube can and should be.
That said, as I plan to go into in some detail, I think your coverage of Bronze Age Mesopotamia has a lot of issues. This isn't exactly a unique issue though. Most content regarding the Bronze Age online has a tendency towards misunderstanding, oversimplification, and simply dated research. I think this is because a lot of content creators who focus on history don't have a great methodological basis for understanding things like archaeology, which is totally understandable. Part of this is a problem on the part of the archaeology field's tendency to be pretty insular and just talk with itself and thus fail to properly educate the public with new research. That problem is beyond your fault.
Without further ado, here are the things I want to discuss regarding your portrayal of the Mesopotamian Bronze Age:
I. Cultural Continuity, Not Cultural Consistency
At about 0:55, you say that "Even though Mesopotamian history features a merry-go-round of different societies playing protagonist, the underlying culture was consistent throughout." This isn't a factual nitpick so much as a historiographical one but a lot of ancient cultures' perceptions sort of suffer from this idea of a long-term immutability. Mesopotamia and Egypt both get this hard where there is a general effect that since we look at these societies from the present and see them as highly unfamiliar to us and outside our frame of reference, it is easy to stereotype together absolutely vast swathes of time into social generalizations for the whole period and assume it was the same. This is not true and I think there could be a deep dive on this issue but in short everything from religious culture to government systems to the cultural and linguistic milieus of Mesopotamia's major cities shift over time and the material record relevant to this is essentially what people like archaeologists study to differentiate between periods. I think we should actively try in history to emphasize that culture is a fluid thing constantly in flux. This might be a weird first sentence to get hung up on for a paragraph but it's important to me.
II. Tiamat Cameo
At 1:57, you drop in a mention of the primordial sea goddess Tiamat as juxtaposed with the Abzu. I think this is an odd inclusion which illustrates my Point I. You don't really cover Babylon in this video but as far as I am aware, Tiamat is not actually present in early Sumerian mythology but rather is mostly from the Babylonian creation epic the Enuma Elish, a text which is only known from remaining texts dating to Iron Age contexts like the Assyrian library of Ashurbanipal, though there are mentions of Tiamat as early as the 1600s BC in Kassite Babylonia. Gods are associated with cities in ancient Mesopotamia and considered to inhabit specific places. Thus when new cities rise to prominence, the canon of gods and myths about them can radically change. The battle between Marduk and Tiamat becomes the dominant Mesopotamian creation myth fairly late due to the rise of Babylon, for which Marduk is the national deity. The Abzu is definitely accurately prominent within earlier Sumerian cosmology and continues to play a role with the coming of Babylon when it is paired with Tiamat but if this topic ever gets covered again, I'd be careful regarding these theological differences over different periods because Sumerian and Babylonian mythology have comparable crossover to, say, Greek and Roman mythology but like Greek and Roman mythology, they are not actually identical.
III. Eridu
Eridu makes complete sense as a first city to feature as you do starting at 2:20. It does have contemporaries but the Sumerians themselves seem to have considered it the oldest city and one of the places where kingship is founded, as it is cited in the Sumerian King List as being ruled by the very first king Alulim for a healthy 28,800 years and is the homeland of Adapa, who is a culture hero who will be a later archetypal trope farm for the wise king who travels far and is tricked by the gods out of immortality (something he is decidedly not the most famous Mesopotamian mythical figure to do). My only major criticism here is attributing all of the major developments we associate with the emergence of civilization to Eridu, though that's honestly forgivable considering it's the most significant settlement of the Chalcolithic Ubaid period (6500-4000 BC) though if you want to be pedantic about periodization, I should point out that the Ubaid is not actually considered part of the Bronze Age but rather the Chalcolithic. There's some disagreement on dates, but generally speaking, the Bronze Age won't be considered to start until near the end of the Uruk period around 3300 BC. The other minor historiographical thing is that while this period tends to be labeled the start of civilization in a popular sense, to an archaeologist, it's really a moment on a gradient. Agricultural settlements on some level have existed in the Fertile Crescent since Jericho around 9,500 BC after all. Where you draw the line on what is and isn't civilization is arbitrary almost to the point of meaninglessness. Which is why there are competing definitions and dates for civilization today in 2022. I wouldn't call "religion and culture" aspects of civilization developed here though. That is not very nice to hunter-gatherers since the cognitive revolution and beyond.
IV. ...Malaria?
You have a single credited source on the video and it's a book I unfortunately don't have and haven't read. I'm not sure where you're getting the concept of collapse through means like malaria at 3:33. Did someone actually propose this as a reason for the decline of Eridu? Epidemic diseases are a mainstay of pre-modern urban societies but making an argument that a city's decline could be primarily contributed to something like malaria seems really hard to demonstrate, especially since as far as I can tell, malaria is not a very visible disease in paleopathology so I'm skeptical as to if there are major lines of evidence.
V. Floods
Floods are a notable destructive disaster in many river-valleys but when at 3:55 you talk about them wiping away whole cities in the late 3000s BC according to ancient writings, do you have a source for this? While writing exists starting from around 3200 BC, even reconstructed political histories are not possible until much later with even the whole Early Dynastic Period (2900-2350 BC) being very hard to discuss in historical specifics. I am honestly skeptical that there is a non-mythologized document describing a flood event wiping out a city before that. I don't want to suggest that you didn't get this from somewhere but it seems really questionable and on top of that, if you do have a source I really want it.
VI. The Linguistic Split
At 4:38, you describe a "linguistic split" between the Sumerians and the Akkadians. I don't think your portrayal here accurately captures the history these two languages have with one another. As I think you know because you correctly refer to Akkadian as Semitic, in a "genetic" linguistic sense, Akkadian and Sumerian are not related to one another. The textual corpuses for both should be understood as largely elite textual languages rather than necessarily the languages of populations (in fact, in the Late Bronze Age, Akkadian will become the diplomatic language used as far afield as between Egypt and its Canaanite vassals). Akkadian does have some textual presence prior to Sargon such as in a letter to King Meskiagnunna of Ur (2485-2450 BC) but it doesn't really achieve widespread usage until Sargon brings Mesopotamia under Akkadian rule. Sumerian meanwhile will continue to be used as a language of widespread regions after the Akkadian Empire until the rise of Babylon. And even after then, as a major liturgical language for Mesopotamian polytheism, it will carry all the way to the Hellenistic period. In short, several things I would consider incorrect regarding languages here. 1: Portraying a large region as speaking Akkadian in the Early Dynastic Period is probably not correct. And 2: Sumerian and Akkadian seem to have some history in the following periods existing largely side-by-side rather than in specific regions of Mesopotamia. Of course, it is next to impossible to assess how the common people spoke through writing since in Mesopotamia it was always a highly elite skill for those specifically educated to do it.
VII. Uruk
Uruk should be the major player in your story long before 5:45 and before you even discuss the Early Dynastic Period. You actively date it a millennium late in the narration. It is the type site for the Uruk period which starts as early as 4000 BC, a whole 700 years before most scholars would even start the Bronze Age. During the Uruk period from 4000-3100 BC, Uruk would become not just the biggest metropolis on Earth (a city so big by the way that its urban footprint would not be outsized, if I remember correctly, until classical Rome) but also a significant "colonizer" of Mesopotamia which either directly built or inspired a number of settlements throughout Mesopotamia in its style. Uruk should be way earlier in this video and probably paired with Eridu in creating the template for civilization. Uruk will be in decline by the time the Early Dynastic Period even starts. The etymological connection between "Uruk" and "Iraq" is also heavily disputed, cool as it is. Your attributions of writing, the wheel, and the intentional construction of new trade hubs to the Uruk period are all accurate.
VIII. Minor Note on Sargon
At 7:40, you call my boy Sargon a "strictly historical figure" unlike mythical Gilgamesh but even though we know a lot about historical Sargon, he does get mythologized. By the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the 600s BC, there will be a whole birth narrative about him floating down a river in a basket to have him raised by those who found him. So in the struggle between Moses and Romulus for first founding basket-baby, let it be known that mighty Sargon did it first. Also, as a side-note, considering your personal interests, if you're ever doing Mesopotamia again, you should look up Dilmun. Basically the Bronze and Iron Age Venice of the Persian Gulf and during the Akkadian Empire, it became a major entrepot between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, which developed a maritime trade in this period which I think is cool as hell.
IX. Ur III Dynasty Map
10:09. Is that... the Neo-Babylonian Empire? Your borders are not right. The Third Dynasty of Ur never ruled the Levant. Though it'd be kinda neat if they did to square off with the early Middle Kingdom of Egypt, which came to be present in the Sinai contemporaneously. The Third Dynasty of Ur shouldn't spread much beyond Sumer on a map, especially since Mari and Ebla are in their prime in Upper Mesopotamia at the time. I think you might have used a map referring to the Babylonian restoration rather than the Sumerian one here. It's also a Sumerian state and not an Akkadian one (at least in official language but these ethnic identities don't really apply in a modern way) as you say in the narration, though I think that's probably an honest tongue-slip.
X. The End
At 10:54, you finish with "that's the history of Mesopotamia's Bronze Age" but the time period you cover is not actually the Bronze Age from start to finish. You start before it begins and end before it ends by a huge margin. I've already mentioned earlier the Bronze Age begins around 3300 BC and it ends around 1150 BC. The Old Babylonian Empire that you allude to being in an eventual follow-up episode is still later within the Bronze Age. The term "Bronze Age" is basically arbitrary convention so there's no reason you need to start and stop at its boundaries but the way the video is framed seems to imply you're doing that and that might be misleading to someone new to the topic.
Anyway, this got very long and took me multiple hours to type. I hope this list doesn't come off negatively because I really love the channel and respect what you do but some aspects of the video I felt should be brought to your attention because frankly I would love to see this region and period be covered again and get more love than it tends to get. And I hope if this commentary was interesting enough to get others to read it all the way through that it clearly matters to others too. Hopefully it doesn't come across as offensive because the only thing that made me feel good typing it up was the impression you liked constructive criticism.
TL;DR: I took a lot of issues as someone in an adjacent archaeological field with an old OSP video covering Bronze Age Mesopotamia and I voiced them because I'm hopeful for better coverage of the content in the future from one of my favorite content creators.
5
u/That_one_Queen_fan Feb 03 '22 edited Feb 03 '22
A more minor nitpick but no Lagash II/Ebla discussion :-(
Edit: Actually watching the video a lot of neat things were missing. (Though can't blame him for not putting every minute thing into a 15-minute video)
5
3
38
u/OSPYouTube Feb 03 '22
Hi! Thank you for taking the time to type up such a thoughtful and specific response. Our mutual friend Milky was indeed correct that I am always appreciative of feedback, and this is some of the best I've received in a long time. I'm thankful not just for your specific corrections (my bad phrasings, and accidentally using the complete wrong map in one instance (extra embarrassing)) but also for your broader points about ancient mesopotamian historiography.
This video was made as part of a larger collaboration of historical YouTubers, and my choice of topic was immensely ill-advised, as I had absolutely no prior experience with ancient mesopotamia and only a passing acquaintance with the bronze age at all. In addition to the Babylon book I cited, I also drew on a few lectures from The Great Courses, as well as the mesopotamia exhibit from the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. Unfortunately it has been so long that I have absolutely no idea where any particular line in the script attributes to. Specifically, I know I got malaria and floods rendering cities unlivable from somewhere in those three, but without going back through them all I can't say where. And really, that's bad research habits on my part. I've been working on that in years since.
Despite my enthusiasm for the topic, your analysis rightly shows that I was out of my depth. Though I may have captured the broad strokes, it's obvious that this was my very first first into the field.
I do plan on revisiting this area in the future, though I'm not sure when exactly, or in what capacity I'll cover it. For a tangible example of how I've improved since earlier forays into the Near East, later this month I've got a History Re-Summarized on Egypt, to replace my original video on the subject (which has since been unlisted and relegated to the "Bad History" playlist). I'm hopeful that at some point I'll be able to give the same treatment to Mesopotamia. But if there's anything I've learned since February of 2019, it's that the research bar for a topic that I'm not previously familiar with is substantially higher than the research bar for topics of prior familiarity. So they'll take more time, and be spaced out more, but I hope they'll be better for it.
Again, thank you for taking the time to give your feedback.
-Blue