Would you recommend it? What sort of time span and what cultures does it cover?

The newly inspired Roman fan in me wants to say ‘no you filthy Carthaginian scum!’ but the guy who just read about Dido in a Greek mythology book says he needs to learn more about it because it seems really interesting

Hahahaha that’s hilarious. I’ll never unsee it!

Have you been reading books or reading through Wikipedia? The wiki pages are very thorough but I like having an author organize everything for me. I read “Mesopotamia: invention of the city” by Gwendolyn Leick and listened to the majority of the audiobook for “Weavers, Scribes, and Kings.” I was looking at a book by Echart Frohm when I started getting enamored with Rome and I kinda got sidetracked haha

Wasn’t Shamshi-Adad the first one to claim the title "king of the universe

I think it was actually Sargon of Akkad! If you haven’t looked into the Akkadian stuff I highly suggest it. It’s woefully lacking in detail since it was the 3rd century BCE. A lot of it was written after Sargon passed, but it’s all very foundational for the Babylonian and Assyrian stuff that came after.

Assyrian boasting always cracks me up. Sennacherib describes this battle against Babylon:

Case in point, a lot of the bragging and boasting started during the Akkadian dynasty. Sargon jumpstarted it by bragging about how he captured Lugalzagessi and paraded him around the city before taking him to the gate of Enlil in Nippur. One of his sons (Rimush or Manishtusu) or perhaps his grandson, Naram-sin, was the first to try and estimate (and brag about) casualties by his army’s hand!

They also bragged a lot about how they put down rebellions…it was a tradition in their line haha 😂

That being said, like their rule, the Assyrians were far more boastful about their straight up brutality. But one thing they had in common that I found interesting and super respectable…they wanted to be remembered more for their creation and restoration than their destruction. Sennacherib and his successors did some really amazing city planning and tried to take care of their people.

I hadn’t seen that entire description from Sennacherib before thanks! I will say, he was fucking pissed and it shows!

I just wrapped up a deep dive into Mesopotamia myself and man it was fucking fascinating. Hadn’t heard this one before, so thanks

Another fun one from Mari was how Shamshi-adad berated his son via correspondence by saying he was too busy womanizing and partying to be a good leader and should be more like his older brother 😂.

There are so many cool stories. I have moved on for now to study some Greek and Egyptian history because I want to have a nice background for when I get to Roman history but one day I wanna grab a book specifically on Assyrian history.

Anyway I am around if you ever want to talk Mesopotamian history haha