Ep 147 Assyria 9 From the River to the Sea

Couldn’t help myself with the title. Assurnasirpal finally finishes his long, long reign with his great western march. It seems that he was helped as much as anything by surprise, as he will never again attempt anything quite so bold and his son will face a good deal more resistance to his western policies.

Anyone have thoughts about Assurnasirpal, now that he is finished? I have been pondering a lot the balance of cruelty and maintaining order. I have the same instinctive revulsion to cruelty that we all have, but the ancients, for whom the pain of disorder and chaos was far more salient, seem to have been quite gung-ho for many different forms of cruelty. I work from the assumption that the ancients were basically like us, but working from a different set of information, but do you think that is right? I have no idea, might put a thing out on the sister channel meditating on it, but life is way too crazy right now and I am barely keeping up with the main show.

Favorite AI image of the episode is either this Assyrian themed meditation on the fall of carthage :

Or the nonsense that I ended up using for the thumbnail:

The AI was really struggling this time around lol.