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Ancient Mesopotamian Societies Sacrificed Substitute Kings to Eclipses · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
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Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. This is a weird story
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Speaker 1: that takes us to UH, Mesopotamia. What's what's that we
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Speaker 1: always say here in the here in English? It's good
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Speaker 1: to be king Suzuki to you, Ben Sazuggy. Yes, that's
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Speaker 1: the word of the day, Noel, that's something uh. We
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Speaker 1: checked in beforehand to make sure that we were both
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Speaker 1: pronouncing correctly, because, of course Sazuggi is one of our
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Speaker 1: super producer kay See Pegram's favorite words, and our guest
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Speaker 1: producer Andrew Howard would never forgive us if we were
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Speaker 1: too far off in our pronunciation. They're both really into
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Speaker 1: ancient Mesopotamia. Who knew? Who knew? There's a couple of
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Speaker 1: good words. Here's another one, sharp pookik at that one later.
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Speaker 1: But first of all, we need to talk a little
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Speaker 1: bit about celestial bodies, the mechanics of eclipses, the idea
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Speaker 1: that humans have been looking to the stars without fully
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Speaker 1: understanding how planets align and create the various lunar cycles
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Speaker 1: that we see UH and instead attributing them to like
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Speaker 1: vengeful deities or some sort of like cosmic super monsters. Yeah, exactly.
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Speaker 1: We're fortunate in these our modern times to be able
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Speaker 1: to accurately predict these things and enjoy them for the
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Speaker 1: beautiful natural phenomena they are. But back in the day,
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Speaker 1: we didn't have both of those things at once. Our
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Speaker 1: species was able to predict some movements of the heavens,
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Speaker 1: but put our own meanings upon why these things were occurring.
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Speaker 1: We know that natural phenomena has led to a lot
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Speaker 1: of myth making in human history, but the relationship between
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Speaker 1: these natural events and the myths we tell about them
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Speaker 1: isn't always super clear. As Atlas Obscura puts it, we
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Speaker 1: don't know to what extents a lot of ancient cultures
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Speaker 1: made up stories to explain eclipses, or you know, to
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Speaker 1: what degree they saw their existing myths reflected in the
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Speaker 1: movements of things like the sun and the moon and
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Speaker 1: other other heavenly bodies. But today's story is a true
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Speaker 1: story about a kind of cosmic bait and switch that
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Speaker 1: occurred in ancient Mesopotamia. This is the story of the
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Speaker 1: substitut tout royals, the substitute Queen, and the substitute king
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Speaker 1: of Mesopotamia. It's it's described by the Met Museum as
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Speaker 1: quote a tragedy driven by fear all of the gods
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Speaker 1: and the uniquely important status of the you know, the
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Speaker 1: actual real king. So in ancient Mesopotamia, which today would
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Speaker 1: be what we think of as Iraq, Uh, there were
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Speaker 1: priests that would use divination to read the tea leaves
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Speaker 1: in the sky, the giant celestial tea leaves that are
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Speaker 1: the stars and the planets, and they were able to
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Speaker 1: kind of use the positions of these bodies to come
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Speaker 1: up with kind of theories about, you know, how things
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Speaker 1: are going to happen, whether it was the weather or
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Speaker 1: you know how the crops would you know, flourish or
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Speaker 1: not flourish, etcetera. But over time, you know, what started
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Speaker 1: off as ritual and this idea of so sort of
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Speaker 1: mystical divination did kind of form almost a system, you know,
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Speaker 1: with these observations over thousands of years, uh. And then
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Speaker 1: as kind of scholarly knowledge sort of caught up with uh,
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Speaker 1: the priestly kind of divinations, it became a pretty decent
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Speaker 1: tool for predicting things. Right. So over thousands of years,
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Speaker 1: these priests would kind of develop these elaborate rituals to
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Speaker 1: help kind of cancel out some of the bad omens
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Speaker 1: that they would see, you know, spelled out in the heavens.
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Speaker 1: And one of the most dire, absolutely disastrous omens that
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Speaker 1: they could see was a solar eclipse. You know, thankfully
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Speaker 1: those don't happen too too often, but when they do,
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Speaker 1: it indicated some sort of grave danger, uh that might
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Speaker 1: befall the ruler of the the the land right and
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Speaker 1: h and Mesopotamian astronomers were able to accurately predict the
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Speaker 1: solar eclipses themselves, though you know, their interpretation of what
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Speaker 1: they meant was probably still a little bit based in
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Speaker 1: you know, this mysticism, right. Um, so once they knew
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Speaker 1: that an eclipse was coming, they had to come up
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Speaker 1: with a plan to make sure that the rulers were
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Speaker 1: guarded from this disastrous omen Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of
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Speaker 1: like I was thinking of a good comparison for this, so, Uh,
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Speaker 1: dog owners or people live with dogs, you you may
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Speaker 1: identify with this. Like let's say your pooch knows that
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Speaker 1: the mail carrier shows up at three pm every day,
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Speaker 1: but they don't know why the mail carrier shows up.
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Speaker 1: They don't really have the concept of mail, so they
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Speaker 1: kind of invent in their own doggy heads what the
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Speaker 1: mail carrier means. And unfortunately for some people in the
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Speaker 1: usps uh, some dogs have decided that they are a
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Speaker 1: threat and at three PM they must be driven away
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Speaker 1: by barking to prevent the collapse of the aggy world
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Speaker 1: as the doggie knows it. There's something kind of similar here.
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Speaker 1: They could predict eclipses, but as you said, they were
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Speaker 1: drawing some strange assumptions from these. So they thought that
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Speaker 1: if an eclipse was projected to take place over Assyria,
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Speaker 1: then the Assyrian king would be in mortal danger, and
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Speaker 1: for the king to be in danger would put everything
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Speaker 1: at risk. Civilization might collapse. So their solution was not
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Speaker 1: to not have a king, but to create a substitute king,
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Speaker 1: something called a sharper key in Akkadian. This was the
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Speaker 1: language of the Assyrian court and its official paperwork. So
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Speaker 1: imagine that, gig, you know what I mean. Well, maybe
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Speaker 1: at the end we can talk about whether or not
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Speaker 1: we ourselves listeners and Nolan Casey and I would want
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Speaker 1: to be the substitute king. But to do that, let's
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Speaker 1: maybe let's look what modern science, says, let's do some
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Speaker 1: spoilers about modern science and eclipses. This is where sissy
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Speaker 1: g comes in. Scissors g is when three celestial bodies
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Speaker 1: find themselves in a straight line within their elliptic orbits,
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Speaker 1: kind of imagine billiard balls lining up. The word comes
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Speaker 1: from the Greek sisodios, which means paired or yokes. And
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Speaker 1: then if you're like us sitting here on planet Earth,
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Speaker 1: you see two kinds of eclipses, right, solar eclipses and
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Speaker 1: lunar eclipses. No, what can we talk a little bit
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Speaker 1: about these eclipses? We absolutely can. I'm very disappointed that
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Speaker 1: the word isn't pronounced szugy like I said at the
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Speaker 1: beginning of the show, but I'm still going to use
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Speaker 1: that as a greeting, says Zoogi to you. Ben Um. No,
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Speaker 1: sissy gy is correct. It's a very science fancy sounding
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Speaker 1: word that means when the celestial bodies are aligned. So
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Speaker 1: in a solar eclipse, you have the Moon that passes
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Speaker 1: between the Sun and the Earth, which causes the shadow
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Speaker 1: of the Moon to block out the Sun, which you
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Speaker 1: know when you say things like block out the sun.
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Speaker 1: Even today, that sounds pretty scary. Luckily, this is only temporary. Uh.
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Speaker 1: You're definitely not supposed to stare straight into it, super
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Speaker 1: bad fear eyeballs. But that's how that happens. In a
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Speaker 1: lunar eclipse, you got the Moon that crosses through the
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Speaker 1: shadow of the Earth. Uh. And a solar eclipse can
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Speaker 1: in fact completely block out the Sun. But like I said,
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Speaker 1: it's only temporary. Um, and in certain parts of the
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Speaker 1: Earth's surface you can still you know, see parts of it,
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Speaker 1: and it can be not too many miles in between
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Speaker 1: these different views. So what might be seen as a
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Speaker 1: total eclipse in one city just a few hundred miles away,
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Speaker 1: it might just look like partial eclipse. So a lunar
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Speaker 1: eclipse can be seen throughout the entire hemisphere of the Earth, uh,
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Speaker 1: the half of the planet that happens to be on
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Speaker 1: the nighttime side. Yeah, which can explain why prediction of
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Speaker 1: solar eclipses becomes so important in this ancient civilization, because
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Speaker 1: you can pinpoint where it will be a full solar eclipse.
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Speaker 1: That's what they mean when they say solar eclipse over Assyria.
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Speaker 1: If you go back through human civilization, you can see
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Speaker 1: that numerous cultures throughout the ages had very strong opinions
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Speaker 1: about solar and lunar eclipses. Often, eclipses were seen as
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Speaker 1: ill omens, symbols of obliteration, the subversion of the natural
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Speaker 1: order of the world, and according to the Exploratarium in
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Speaker 1: San Francisco, the word eclipse comes from a Greek word
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Speaker 1: meaning abandonment, so in very literal terms, ancient people's would
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Speaker 1: sometimes see in eclipse as the Sun abandoning the earth,
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Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like walking out, I'm off
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Speaker 1: the clock. Now you are left to your own in
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Speaker 1: the darkness. And even in those days, they knew how
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Speaker 1: important the sun was to sustenance, to growing things, to
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Speaker 1: just absolutely sustaining life on Earth. Yeah, and spoiler, we're
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Speaker 1: gonna have another episode in a few weeks. That's a
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Speaker 1: little It's about how people in an age a little
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Speaker 1: closer to ours would also freak out if the sun
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Speaker 1: appeared to behave unusually And you know what, I'll be
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Speaker 1: honest with you, fellow ridiculous historians. If I walked outside
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Speaker 1: today and all of a sudden, the sun appeared to
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Speaker 1: have uh lit out for the territories, I would also
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Speaker 1: freak out, you know what I mean, Even if I
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Speaker 1: knew it was coming. It's a weird thing to watch. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and this was something that we've seen written about as
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Speaker 1: far back as Homer's epic poem The Odyssey. When Odysseus
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Speaker 1: comes back, you know, from his journey to see his
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Speaker 1: wife Penelope, he is greeted with this vision that has
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Speaker 1: been foretold by a seer of an eclipse. The sun
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Speaker 1: has been obliterated from the sky and an unlucky darkness
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Speaker 1: invades the world. And that seems to according to an
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Speaker 1: article from The Guardian about how solar eclipses and vernal
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Speaker 1: equinoxes have cast shadows quote unquote on literature because these
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Speaker 1: are powerful symbols, right, I mean they really are. They're
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Speaker 1: they're very good devices in literature. But also they were
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Speaker 1: taken quite seriously. But yeah, it seems to foretell the
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Speaker 1: slaying of the suitors who have remembered the whole deal
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Speaker 1: with the disseist, like he basically had these interlopers that
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Speaker 1: were trying to woo his wife while he was away sliding,
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Speaker 1: was sliding in the d m s and then he
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Speaker 1: comes back and he's like, oh and uh, yeah, the
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Speaker 1: ass is about to hit the for for sure. With
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Speaker 1: Odysseus not a happy guy. And it's fascinating because I
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Speaker 1: would go a step further and say that in some cases,
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Speaker 1: the odyssey being one and eclipse symbolizes a kind of consumption.
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Speaker 1: And this is paralleled in other cultures that explained eclipses
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Speaker 1: as a moment when demons or evil spirits or heavenly
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Speaker 1: animals would eat, would consume the sun or the moon.
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Speaker 1: Often that animal was something really cool. It was a dragon.
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Speaker 1: The Chinese word for eclipse ship or shure uh not
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Speaker 1: sure about the tones there means to eat literally, and
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Speaker 1: in Vietnam, people traditionally believe that a solar eclipse was
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Speaker 1: caused by a giant frog consuming the sun. And in
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Speaker 1: Norse cultures, wolves were the sun eating culprits. So everybody
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Speaker 1: had these solutions to combat this consumption of the great
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Speaker 1: life giver that the dying star next to us, the sun. Uh.
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Speaker 1: A lot of people would you know, bang stuff pots
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Speaker 1: and pants. They would make noises or play on drums
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Speaker 1: to to distract it, to get the frog or the wolf,
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Speaker 1: for the dragon or what have you, to stop trying
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Speaker 1: to eat the moon or the sun and to go away.
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Speaker 1: And because eclipses are not permanent events. You can see
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Speaker 1: how people thought this would work, you know what I mean,
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Speaker 1: You can kind of confuse correlation and causation and say
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Speaker 1: that I didn't happen to be drumming during an eclipse.
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Speaker 1: It's because I brought out the drums that the sun
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Speaker 1: came back. Okay, so we've got a little bit of
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Speaker 1: this history of various cultures interacting with the sun and
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Speaker 1: the clear fear and anxiety behind losing it. Uh So,
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Speaker 1: let's go back to the Bronze Age and ancient Mesopotamia,
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Speaker 1: where you know these um what we do you call them?
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Speaker 1: Then mystics like are you know, priests were essentially kind
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Speaker 1: of straddling the barrier between science and religion, and actually,
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Speaker 1: you know, they were certainly looking to these events as
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Speaker 1: you know, kind of ominous omens, but also over time
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Speaker 1: really getting pretty good at predicting them and looking at
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Speaker 1: various conditions that would you know, be kind of clue
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Speaker 1: is that that these things were on the way or
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Speaker 1: tracking the phases of the moon and all of that
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Speaker 1: good stuff. Um. So, you know, Mesopotamia, known often as
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Speaker 1: the cradle of civilization to be modern day Iraq, had
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Speaker 1: several very very important and highly sophisticated civilizations that were
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Speaker 1: settled there. You had the Acadians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians,
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Speaker 1: and the Sumarians. All of these incredibly advanced empires rose
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Speaker 1: and fell between thirty one BC and five thirty nine BC,
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Speaker 1: and astronomy was important to all of them. Of course,
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Speaker 1: it was important to things like navigating, but it was
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Speaker 1: also important to things like predicting the weather and the
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Speaker 1: cycles of planting and reaping and all of that. Uh.
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Speaker 1: And these priests and these astronomers would kind of work
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Speaker 1: together to look to the skies uh and get advice essentially,
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Speaker 1: you know, omens that they would apply to things like politics, government, economics,
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Speaker 1: all of these things. All of these astral signs were
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Speaker 1: interpreted and acted upon, and there, you know, they would
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Speaker 1: know based on what was happening in the heavens, you know,
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Speaker 1: when good or bad times were coming. Essentially. Yeah, and
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Speaker 1: before before any of the more skeptical folks in the
15:18
Speaker 1: crowd today decided to poopo on this system of using
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Speaker 1: astronomical signs as a predictive tool. Let's not forget that
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Speaker 1: people have used things like this. What I would argue
15:31
Speaker 1: is basically astrology in the modern days, Ronald Reagan had
15:35
Speaker 1: an astrologer, the former US president. The government of Myanmar,
15:40
Speaker 1: the military junta that ruled it back in the day,
15:43
Speaker 1: relocated the capital on the advice of an astrologer. So
15:47
Speaker 1: these these things continue past ancient civilizations. In these societies.
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Speaker 1: The Babylonians in particular, incredibly incredibly impressive. They were able to,
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Speaker 1: more than two thousand years ago, calculate thirty eight possible
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Speaker 1: eclipses or scissorges within a period of about two hundred
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Speaker 1: and twenty three months or eighteen years. This two three
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Speaker 1: month cycle was called a Sorrows cycle by modern astronomers,
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Speaker 1: and the sequence of eclipses generated during that cycle or
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Speaker 1: by that cycle uh constitute what's called a Sorrows series.
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Speaker 1: Scientists know now that the number of lunar and solar
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Speaker 1: eclipses in one of these series is not always the same,
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Speaker 1: but still there's no denying it. This is incredibly impressive.
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Speaker 1: I mean, these Babylonian scholars were top notch. They were
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Speaker 1: smart cookies if they could understand this phenomenon. This understanding
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Speaker 1: of this cycle, this two three month period eventually allowed
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Speaker 1: them to predict eclipses with As we said earlier, some
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Speaker 1: astonishing precision, and it can't be separated from the astrological
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Speaker 1: tradition at the time. So their science was getting better
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Speaker 1: and they were bringing their astrological beliefs along with them,
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Speaker 1: like two sides of the same coin. So the curator
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Speaker 1: at the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the
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Speaker 1: Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, her studies led
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Speaker 1: her to believe that solar eclipses were considered the most
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Speaker 1: significant of these astronomical events, uh, and were seen as
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Speaker 1: being omens of great evil and misfortunate, which you already
17:45
Speaker 1: mentioned a little bit, but specifically the idea that the
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Speaker 1: solar eclipse indicated that the gods were very, very angry,
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Speaker 1: specifically at the king, and that some awful, awful and
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Speaker 1: was in store for him. They looked at it very seriously,
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Speaker 1: almost like an assassination threat, you know, from sort of
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Speaker 1: some sort of outside you know, organization warring faction for example,
18:09
Speaker 1: or you know, a terrorist group. But instead this is
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Speaker 1: literally the gods are are angry, uh, and they are
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Speaker 1: they mean to do harm to the ruler um. So
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Speaker 1: this type of threat was considered a threat on the
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Speaker 1: entire structure of power in Mesopotamian society and needed something very,
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Speaker 1: very very serious to be done about it. Yeah, you
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Speaker 1: could not hold off on this. Babylonian scholars had isolated
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Speaker 1: specific eclipses that would foretell the death of the king.
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Speaker 1: The conditions for an omen to be considered this we're
18:44
Speaker 1: we're pretty exacting, and we know about these from a
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Speaker 1: famous astronomical work. That is, the title is usually Numa
18:54
Speaker 1: a nil, which translates it's just the first words of
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Speaker 1: the document. It means when the odds Anu and nil
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Speaker 1: do something something, if Jupiter is visible during the eclipse
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Speaker 1: when it occurs, if they know Jupiter is also going
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Speaker 1: to be in the mix, no worries, no stress, the
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Speaker 1: king is safe. Lunar eclipses seem to have been especially
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Speaker 1: concerning when it came to the well being and survival
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Speaker 1: of the king. So to keep the eclipse from killing
19:25
Speaker 1: the monarch, they made this mechanism up. It's the substitute
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Speaker 1: King ritual or sarpui. This ritual has mentioned multiple times
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Speaker 1: and various letters from Assyria dating all the way back
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Speaker 1: to the first millennium BC, and there are earlier rituals
19:44
Speaker 1: that are referenced in text. In hit height Uh and
19:48
Speaker 1: that's the language for which we have the earliest written
19:51
Speaker 1: records dating back to second millennium in what would be
19:55
Speaker 1: modern Turkey today. So this is an established thing, this
19:59
Speaker 1: really ha and the fact that you found it in
20:02
Speaker 1: this other second millennium writing leads experts to assume that
20:09
Speaker 1: this ritual already existed in Mesopotamia during the first half
20:13
Speaker 1: of that second millennium. So what happens in this ritual? No, totally, Yeah,
20:18
Speaker 1: it's a good question. It's almost like the psychic equivalent
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Speaker 1: of a food tester, you know, someone that would taste
20:25
Speaker 1: the food before a king, and in the event that
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Speaker 1: it was poisoned, would you know, die instead of the king,
20:31
Speaker 1: the kind of mystical canary in the coal mine, if
20:34
Speaker 1: you will. But in this situation, a lower class citizen
20:38
Speaker 1: would be chosen to replace the king during this period
20:42
Speaker 1: of threat from the gods. He would be dressed up
20:44
Speaker 1: like the king, sat down in the throne of the king,
20:47
Speaker 1: and all of this would happen in a ritualistic fashion,
20:50
Speaker 1: while these priests would recite or you know, do some
20:55
Speaker 1: sort of ritualized chant of the negative omen that was
20:59
Speaker 1: triggered by this eclipse, and it didn't even matter if
21:05
Speaker 1: the substitute king looked like the real king. It was
21:08
Speaker 1: just like a you know, like a body double or
21:10
Speaker 1: like a stand in a cosmic body double. But it
21:14
Speaker 1: did have to be a man. And this person was
21:18
Speaker 1: dressed in the king's you know, finest robes and all that,
21:22
Speaker 1: and actually declared to be king and would participate in
21:25
Speaker 1: various other rituals that would you know, make it seem
21:28
Speaker 1: legit to the gods. It's almost like this, uh, this
21:32
Speaker 1: idea of fooling the gods into thinking that this was
21:36
Speaker 1: the king, you know, and and the fact that they
21:39
Speaker 1: didn't have to go too far to make them look
21:41
Speaker 1: the same indicates that they thought the gods were you know,
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Speaker 1: only concerned with like the ritual and the kind of
21:47
Speaker 1: pomp and circumstance of it all. Uh. He was in
21:50
Speaker 1: fact given a young woman as a queen also stand in,
21:54
Speaker 1: and then the actual king would basically like hold up
21:58
Speaker 1: in some sort of Mesopotamian equivalent of like a bunker
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Speaker 1: until the season had passed or the the eclipse had passed,
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Speaker 1: and the substitute king and queen were essentially you know,
22:11
Speaker 1: cannon fodder for the gods. They were put out there
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Speaker 1: offered up as sacrifices for this whatever this evil fate
22:18
Speaker 1: might be. Um and they were you know, taking it on. Uh,
22:22
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm sure in some sense would consider
22:24
Speaker 1: it an honor. But Ben, I mean, like we know
22:26
Speaker 1: that there's no cosmic evil associated with these eclipses. I mean,
22:31
Speaker 1: what would happen whatever, anything bad ever happened to them. Yeah, Well,
22:35
Speaker 1: what I want to do is put this in modern
22:38
Speaker 1: terms to make sure everybody gets how official this is.
22:43
Speaker 1: Let's think of a modern US president. This is considered
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Speaker 1: a credible assassination threat basically right, but from the gods
22:51
Speaker 1: instead of a rival state. So what if the U
22:53
Speaker 1: S policy was to say, when we think the president
22:57
Speaker 1: might be assassinated, we're just gonna pick some god, some
23:00
Speaker 1: guy who needs a job. He doesn't have to look
23:02
Speaker 1: like Joe Biden or whatever. He We're just gonna pick him.
23:06
Speaker 1: We're gonna have him say the oath of office. We're
23:08
Speaker 1: going to keep him there, you know, in the week
23:10
Speaker 1: leading up to in the week after this eclipse happens,
23:14
Speaker 1: and then we'll bring you know, the president out of
23:17
Speaker 1: the bunker and will decommission this other guy. That's what's
23:19
Speaker 1: literally happening. The idea of it being an honor I
23:25
Speaker 1: think is accurate. I think people wanted to do this
23:28
Speaker 1: because it was still an opportunity of sorts. We know
23:33
Speaker 1: for sure that not all of the substitute kings and
23:37
Speaker 1: queens you know, died during the eclipse. So how did
23:41
Speaker 1: the priest class rationalize that. They probably just said, well,
23:44
Speaker 1: close call, you know what I mean? Close call, yeah, exactly,
23:48
Speaker 1: But unfortunately for them, they were gonna die either way,
23:52
Speaker 1: right right right. The eclipse was not the cause. Well,
23:56
Speaker 1: the eclipse was sort of the cause of their death,
23:58
Speaker 1: but it wasn't the god that killed them. For a
24:01
Speaker 1: brief time, the just the way the moon and the
24:05
Speaker 1: sun were visible in the same place during an eclipse,
24:08
Speaker 1: the substitute king and the true king existed. But once
24:13
Speaker 1: that dangerous time had passed, Yes, the substitute kings were
24:18
Speaker 1: killed by people, Okay, not by the gods. They were killed.
24:23
Speaker 1: They had served their purpose. Uh, the true king came
24:27
Speaker 1: out of his highi hole and the ritual was considered complete.
24:31
Speaker 1: Everything proceeded as planned until astronomer's predicted or priests predicted
24:37
Speaker 1: the next dangerous eclipse. This happened all the time. This was.
24:42
Speaker 1: You know, this was real human sacrifice, and and there's
24:47
Speaker 1: a political reason too. It's not it's like part of
24:50
Speaker 1: the ritual to kill the substitute king and queen. But
24:54
Speaker 1: the political reason is, you know, the king might be
24:57
Speaker 1: willing to let somebody else take this heavenly bullet for him,
25:02
Speaker 1: but he definitely doesn't want them around afterwards. The thing
25:05
Speaker 1: about kings is you really only want one if you're
25:08
Speaker 1: the current king, right, yeah, I mean, like even if,
25:11
Speaker 1: even though it was all kind of just like for
25:13
Speaker 1: show in theory, this person could make a claim that
25:18
Speaker 1: they were the rightful king. And that's just too messy,
25:21
Speaker 1: isn't it. So we'll make a different kind of mess,
25:23
Speaker 1: you know, a slaughtery kind of mess. Yeah, you're get
25:27
Speaker 1: into red wedding territory other big time, big time. But then,
25:30
Speaker 1: like you said, Ben, the ritual is complete. Rinse and repeat,
25:34
Speaker 1: rinse and repeat. We have two cases of the substitute
25:39
Speaker 1: ritual in action. One might be just heads up a
25:42
Speaker 1: little bit more legendary than factual. There's a surprising turn
25:47
Speaker 1: of events where one of these substitutes managed to outlive
25:51
Speaker 1: the king he was supposed to replace, and shout out
25:55
Speaker 1: to Vintage News for this great story, as well as
25:57
Speaker 1: the Conversation dot com. There's a there's a first millennium
26:02
Speaker 1: composition that is known today as the Chronicle of Early Kings.
26:07
Speaker 1: It's about a king of the city state of Estan,
26:11
Speaker 1: which is uh in modern day. It's it's about a
26:14
Speaker 1: d twenty five miles southeast of Baghdad, and the king
26:17
Speaker 1: era emity was replaced by a gardener who was named
26:22
Speaker 1: an ill Bonny, and this was part of a substitute
26:25
Speaker 1: king ritual. But get this, Luckily for an ill Bonny
26:30
Speaker 1: the gardener, the real king died after eating hot soup.
26:36
Speaker 1: His official cause of death is sipping broth that was
26:39
Speaker 1: too hot, And so the population of this city state said, well,
26:45
Speaker 1: it's your lucky day, an ill body. Then the gardener
26:48
Speaker 1: remained on the throne. He became the actual king. He
26:52
Speaker 1: ruled for twenty four years. That guy had to be
26:55
Speaker 1: very pro soup. But I ask you, whenever you read
26:59
Speaker 1: stuff like this, don't you think it's poison, because it
27:02
Speaker 1: has to assume it's poison. Yeah, it has to be.
27:04
Speaker 1: I don't know that I've ever sipped a broth that
27:08
Speaker 1: was so hot that I was afraid for my life.
27:11
Speaker 1: But you know, maybe this person had a baby mouth,
27:13
Speaker 1: you know, very very sensitive heat sensitive, you know, Palette. Yeah,
27:18
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not one to brag or toot my
27:21
Speaker 1: own horn, but I've eaten my fair share of hot soup,
27:25
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And I'm not Maybe I'm
27:27
Speaker 1: not dead because I'm not king of this. Maybe it's
27:31
Speaker 1: true you're not. You can't argue with that. Then we
27:34
Speaker 1: have another case of a young man named dom Qui
27:37
Speaker 1: who was killed along with his queen Um during the
27:41
Speaker 1: tenure of the ruler as har had On. I hope
27:45
Speaker 1: I'm getting that somewhat right, who ruled from six to
27:48
Speaker 1: six sixty nine in order to protect the Assyrian crown prince,
27:54
Speaker 1: who has an amazing named Schuma Schumukin, who was at
27:58
Speaker 1: the time the ruler of babel On our Babylonian territories
28:01
Speaker 1: rather Um, which were part of the Assyrian Empire. Dom
28:05
Speaker 1: Qui was a member of the Babylonian elite. He was
28:10
Speaker 1: the son of a chief administrator of the temples, so
28:14
Speaker 1: I guess this is like the building manager of these
28:17
Speaker 1: holy temples in babylon Um and he had some powerful friends.
28:23
Speaker 1: So it's just it just goes to show that even
28:25
Speaker 1: people in higher classes or that were more well connected,
28:28
Speaker 1: could be forced into this role of substitute king and
28:32
Speaker 1: down qui Uh may have been selected in order to
28:35
Speaker 1: make an example and strike fear into the hearts of
28:39
Speaker 1: the Babylonian people who were not playing nice with the
28:43
Speaker 1: Assyrian rulers. So this was a bit more of a
28:46
Speaker 1: flex or like a you know, a political ploy to
28:49
Speaker 1: kind of get people to bend the knee. Right. You know,
28:52
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about it. You did agree a little
28:55
Speaker 1: too readily that I was definitely not the king of
28:58
Speaker 1: the city state of his and so I'm I elect
29:00
Speaker 1: myself king of hot soup as another prize you should be.
29:05
Speaker 1: So can I be the king of cartoons? Please? Please,
29:08
Speaker 1: by all the kings all hail, And of course the
29:11
Speaker 1: king of podcasts would be our own Casey Pagraham. Obviously,
29:20
Speaker 1: it's interesting we see this mix of politics, religion, and astronomy.
29:28
Speaker 1: It's a it's a very interesting csigy of its own right,
29:31
Speaker 1: the way these three concepts line up. So we have
29:37
Speaker 1: to ask ourselves why did the ritual die out? Let's
29:41
Speaker 1: go back to Atlas Obscurrea. We have to look at
29:45
Speaker 1: the mythology. So there's this pantheon of these moon thieves
29:51
Speaker 1: in these giants, you know, love crafty and cosmic horror
29:55
Speaker 1: monsters that want to eat the moon. The plague God
29:58
Speaker 1: era brings doomed ancient Mesopotamia the Sibbett to march in
30:03
Speaker 1: his wake. There are seven warrior demons that spread sickness
30:08
Speaker 1: and death, and occasionally they all get together at a
30:10
Speaker 1: party in the sky and blot out the moon. And
30:13
Speaker 1: historians like John z we which is an awesome name,
30:18
Speaker 1: speculates that these mythological creatures like the Sibitu may have
30:24
Speaker 1: functioned as a way of absolving a moon associated king
30:29
Speaker 1: of guilt. So why would you continue staging this elaborate
30:35
Speaker 1: sacrifice ritual when you can just kind of tweak the
30:39
Speaker 1: religious view to cast yourself as the victim of these
30:42
Speaker 1: intermittent demons. It's a good question, Ben, Yeah, it's a
30:46
Speaker 1: very good question. But it's interesting. I mean, eventually, remember
30:49
Speaker 1: how we were saying how the Babylonians weren't really playing
30:52
Speaker 1: nice with their Assyrian rulers. Well, eventually uh and the Assyrians, uh,
30:57
Speaker 1: you know again, did this symbolic, you know, ritualistic murder
31:02
Speaker 1: of one of the Babylonians higher class citizens sons. But
31:06
Speaker 1: it turns out that there were lots of other folks
31:08
Speaker 1: that had problems with the way the Assyrians went about
31:11
Speaker 1: uh their ruling, and so the Babylonians lead up with
31:15
Speaker 1: them and eventually exacted their revenge by joining forces and
31:19
Speaker 1: destroying the empire in six twelve BC, when their combined
31:24
Speaker 1: armies sacked the Assyrian palaces and essentially attempted to blot
31:31
Speaker 1: out a lot of their history by smashing a lot
31:34
Speaker 1: of the sculptures of these royals that were depicted on
31:37
Speaker 1: the palace walls. They erased portraits that were done in
31:42
Speaker 1: relief in some of these buildings as well, uh in NINEVAH.
31:46
Speaker 1: Now you can see the results of this in the
31:50
Speaker 1: museum's collection. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has an
31:53
Speaker 1: incredible historical art collection, is one of my favorite places
31:56
Speaker 1: in the world. I love museums. One of the only
32:00
Speaker 1: things I miss about life for the pandemic, I used
32:03
Speaker 1: to go to a museum. One of my three rules
32:06
Speaker 1: to every place I travel is to visit any museum
32:09
Speaker 1: they have their Never let a museum go unvisited if
32:12
Speaker 1: you can help it. There's some amazing ones out grade. Ben,
32:16
Speaker 1: did I tell you that I've got a trip planned? Uh?
32:20
Speaker 1: Post COVID Right, You're going to Chicago, I think going
32:23
Speaker 1: to Seattle in fact, uh and going to see the
32:27
Speaker 1: Minecraft exhibit at the Museum of Pop Culture with my daughter,
32:31
Speaker 1: and then we're gonna do some other you know, Seattle
32:33
Speaker 1: the tourist things. But I'm really excited to get back
32:36
Speaker 1: out on the road again. It's been too long. I
32:38
Speaker 1: think we both feel that way. Yeah, I've actually I
32:42
Speaker 1: don't want to disclose on air yet, but I've got
32:44
Speaker 1: some weird ones coming up. I've got some weird ones
32:48
Speaker 1: coming up, probably in summer. But safe travels there, Nolan.
32:51
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy the Minecraft exhibit. Uh. I hope
32:55
Speaker 1: also that no one in the audience today has to
32:59
Speaker 1: end up being substitute royalty. And although we still have
33:03
Speaker 1: a lot to learn about the world and the space
33:08
Speaker 1: in which the world moves, it's amazing to look back
33:12
Speaker 1: on the progress our species has made and to know
33:15
Speaker 1: that nowadays we can go enjoy an eclipse like at
33:18
Speaker 1: our at our office over in Atlanta, there was a
33:22
Speaker 1: solar eclipse and we were all able to take a
33:26
Speaker 1: few hours off and go to the roof of this
33:28
Speaker 1: ginormous office building and safely watch it with our special
33:32
Speaker 1: eclipse glasses and everything with no fear that some sort
33:37
Speaker 1: of monster beyond the stars was going to eat our sun.
33:41
Speaker 1: So thank you science, and thank you Ancient Mesopotamia. And
33:45
Speaker 1: thank you super producer Casey Pegram and Alex Williams, who
33:49
Speaker 1: composed our theme Christopher has the otis here in spirit.
33:52
Speaker 1: And thank you, of course to our guest producer Andrew Howard.
33:57
Speaker 1: Thank you to our own King of re search, Gabe Louesier,
34:02
Speaker 1: and thanks of course to our own mythological sun eating demon,
34:07
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, a k. The Quister. Do you think he's
34:10
Speaker 1: more a sun eater or a moon eater? I don't know.
34:13
Speaker 1: I thought you don't think he picks and shoes. I
34:15
Speaker 1: think he eats all. He is the eater of worlds.
34:17
Speaker 1: That guy. We'll have to have him on this show
34:22
Speaker 1: again soon and it's not up to us, but it's
34:25
Speaker 1: not at us. It's just happened us. So, folks, we
34:29
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed today's show. Again, we do have another
34:32
Speaker 1: episode about a particular dark day coming up in the future.
34:36
Speaker 1: Doue Tu into that and no, we also have some
34:40
Speaker 1: surprise guests on the way in a bit we should do.
34:44
Speaker 1: We'll keep that under our hats for now, but until then, UM,
34:48
Speaker 1: may the sun forever be at your back. The wind.
34:52
Speaker 1: I don't know which one it is, the sunshine. That's
34:56
Speaker 1: the one, the sunshine. Let's see you next time. Books.
35:20
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
35:22
Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
35:25
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.