This is the first episode of a two-part series on the origin of jokes and humor. Listen to part two here. This episode originally aired on August 5, 2022. In the late 1800s, archeologists in Iraq ...

"The tablets are given either in copy or in transcription." "The mass of the ... collection come from Umma and Drehem." - Introd. "Revised transcription of Bedaleś 'Sumerian tablets from Umma'": p.

The Sumerian King List begins with the very origin of kingship, which is seen as a divine institution: “the kingship had descended from heaven.” The rulers in the earliest dynasties are represented as ...

There is no more interesting episode in human civilization than our origins, the level of achievements that were just so advanced, and the mystery of how they declined. Nobody has the answers, but ...

A federal court ordered the forfeiture of an ancient Sumerian tablet bearing part of the Epic of Gilgamesh in cuneiform script after it determined that the artifact was illegally imported, the Justice ...

Sometime around 1800 B.C., a Sumerian scholar inscribed a hand-sized clay tablet with a series of cryptic numbers. The unusual tablet, known as Plimpton 322 (below), has provoked years of fevered ...

Nobody at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad knows exactly how the stolen Sumerian tablets ended up in Peru. All that authorities in Lima could tell museum officials was that the three hand-size ...

Writing, laws, cities, and science—these and other innovations were devised by the enterprising peoples living in Sumer, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, some 5,000 years ago. High ...

Depths of Wikipedia’s tweet about ‘one of the earliest bar jokes’ (Twitter) This bar joke from ancient Sumer has been making rounds (Reddit) Sumerian Animal Proverbs and Fables: ‘Collection Five’ ...