Andrew George | Be My Baby in Babylonia

Рет қаралды 40,698

The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures

Күн бұрын

Presented by Andrew George, Professor of Babylonian, University of London, SOAS.
Be My Baby in Babylonia: Girl Meets Boy and Vice Versa
An illustrated lecture which presents two Old Babylonian incantations in comparative perspective. The language and emotions of new love and sexual attraction are shared in compositions as diverse as Akkadian and Sumerian love incantations and popular music from nearly four thousand years later. The incantations are on tablets newly published in the speaker’s Mesopotamian Incantations and Related Texts. One is completely new, the other strangely familiar.
Note: The Roy Orbison song, "Oh Pretty Woman," which plays for several seconds during the lecture has been edited out owing to copyright laws.
Our lectures are free and available to the public thanks to the generous support of our members. To become a member, please visit: bit.ly/2AWGgF7

Пікірлер: 40

@duanebarry2817 4 жыл бұрын

Wonderful lecture. I’m reading Professor George’s translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

@davido1698 4 жыл бұрын

Who'd have thought a lecture on babylonian could be so touching? A wonderful scholar who gets that literature is about the connection.

@LittleOrla 5 жыл бұрын

I'm so grateful to have this talk available to me. Thank you. So fascinating.

@avaloncarr5429 4 жыл бұрын

More lectures from professor George please!

@amarforest 6 жыл бұрын

Just perfect! Thank you!

@emmapetrosyan5656 6 ай бұрын

Спасибо за прекрасную лекцию. Я помню ваше выступление в Ереване. Спасибо за ваш подарок мне "Эпоса о Гильгамеше" в вашем переводе.

@Philaster3000 3 жыл бұрын

Rather than the text at the end talk being corrupted to the point where even the scribes didn't understand what they were copying, it is not possible that ideas being expressed have become cultural metaphors rather like in rap or hip hop songs where single words or phrases can carry ideas of shared cultural meanings or understandings? So maybe not gibberish per se, just something beyond our understanding because we missed the cultural zeitgeist?

@Paddy_Nithuigim 2 жыл бұрын

Babylonian rap?

@johnbryant8603 5 жыл бұрын

Thank you so much 🙏🏽💙🤔

@RonJohn63 4 жыл бұрын

Thank you for trimming off the introductions.

@MylesFCorcoran 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you very much.

@im-jn4vl 7 жыл бұрын

This is really great!!

@eddemian 4 жыл бұрын

I agree. I would like to add that the Oriental institute, National Geografic, The History channel, PBS, and others like, should be on a separate category. ie. Educational. There should be Commercial categories, Entertainment, Scientific, Government, Religion. The unregulated commercial content, wastes so meny man hours, imposes on our privacy, and is a drag on productivity. A student reserching for content is wasting a huge amount of time swatting away pesky commercials, now two at a time. Who owns the damn internet? The people or the advertisers?

@Formed123 7 жыл бұрын

I could spend days reading authentic material like this from the "ancient" world. It at once seems unpolluted from some of our modern themes, yet at the same time offers up vivid communalities to our life experiences. Whats the easiest way for a pleb like me to access this stuff? Ty

@YawehthedragondogofEL 5 жыл бұрын

Uh, watch these lectures on youtube.

@silviehajkova9294 7 жыл бұрын

Velice děkuji za krásné a blízké povídání. Zdravím Chi z České republiky a doufám, že Oriental institut ještě někdy navštívím. Nezapomenutelný prosinec 2016

@tobystewart4403 5 жыл бұрын

Wonderful lecture. I can't help but wonder whether the formal arrangement of header and footer incantations on the young ladies tablet suggest a purchased item. Would a girl in the fields be able to write? Would a man in a street write to a prostitute? Or, are the roles purely symbolic, as part of a standardized, mass produced love magic product, to be chanted or deposited with offerings to Innana's temple. Or is it a personal letter, as we imagine poems from later times? I suspect the former, given the structure of the first tablet, and the weird evidence of illiteracy in the second. Like a fake rolex, we may understand a fake incantation, sold from one illiterate person to another as magic signs. It may even have been a token for use in the temple, purchased at the door.

@leec4185 2 жыл бұрын

Ooh, fun w/Sumerians! I think prof was reading too much into that poem re “Bring me this & bring me that…”. Gimme, gimme, gimme :) Have read better.

@La_La_Land_ 7 жыл бұрын

there're some interesting similarities with other languages of the region. For example, 16:10, looking at the lines 12 & 14, the word "kima" translates as "like". Interestingly enough, in Turkic languages it's "kimi" (= like). In Turkey, they say "kibi", but Azeri Turks use the old version "kimi". The last line, "amranni" means "find me", while in Turkish it'll be "ara meni" )

@withanametocome 7 жыл бұрын

I don't know Turkish, but Akkadian is a Semitic language and there are striking similarities with it and, f. ex., today's Hebrew: ana ishatim ezzetim mẽ ashpuk --> im atsei esh mai yatsoqi kĩma shẽnim --> kemo senĩm (this is a little bit of cheating because the word seh is itself a collective noun, but if it formed a plural like it did, and like the rest of normals nouns do, it would be senĩm) So, after

@Strongstrangers 3 жыл бұрын

@Sarah Asaad it cant be connect any turkic language from middle asia, it can be some similarity because modern time turkey languages later crated from a cocktails of Persian, Arabic, Dari ,Kurdish and other europan languages. Modern turkish language isnt a native language of Mesopotamia.

@Privatkonto1234 3 жыл бұрын

If you read history you can understand why. Simply because in today's turkey (before all the genocides against the original people) there lived assyrians and other christian minorities which used these words!

@La_La_Land_ 3 жыл бұрын

@@Privatkonto1234 such as? can you provide similar examples? thnx

@kevinsandow5354 2 жыл бұрын

@@La_La_Land_ I recommend the history of Byzantium podcast, he gives some interesting pre - otoman landscapes of the region (not ancient, but at least pre Turkish invasion)

@slamonega 7 жыл бұрын

thanks for the lecture, I have a question, which software did you use to create the synchronization of slides and video?

@samhouston1979 2 жыл бұрын

imagine struggling for years to decipher something just to learn it was a dirty poem

@jeffreyforeman5031 Жыл бұрын

brilliant thank you

@onceANexile 2 жыл бұрын

I've always wondered about love in Babylon.sumer.Akad... just saying...

@kendallweaver6386 2 жыл бұрын

How little the professor recognizes the evolution of human understanding!! He seems to think humans thought the same way in antiquity, that people were then the same in conciousness as we are at this present time. Actually, dawning consciousness of self came in increments far before Babylonian or Sumarian awareness of consciousness, which took aeons of time to ripen to fruition in a few who could lead others in the the way of it, and so it has progressed through subsequent aeons. We, as evolving humans, must somehow come to see ourselves in this light, which necessarily connects us to a certain cosmic memory no one can deny

@muaathe78 10 ай бұрын

Not correct as Iraqis what is real meaning

@FeOfTheElement 2 жыл бұрын

Thanks for this video. No thanks for his son.

@heidifarstadkvalheim4952 2 жыл бұрын

Interesting! Bu again why does white/ European men always knows how other humans feel? He only refers to men ( like Tolstoy) who defines how young women thought many thousand years ago and now. So why does he think that the modern romantic “love” is the same as in the sumerian time? - with a female god like Inannah who represented sexuality and war???? It’s peculiar and shows how much is just homemade interpretations.