Historiansplaining: A historian tells you why everything you know is wrong
Samuel Biagetti
188 episodes
4 days ago
We follow the rise of civilization and of powerful empires in West Africa before the slave tade, based upon iron-working and the traffic in gold and salt across the Sahara, followed by the spread of wealth and power southward, towards the gold fields and the tropical forests, and finally the reverberating impacts of the arrival of Portuguese traders on the coast, which paved the way for the rise of the Atlantic slave trade.
Suggested further reading: Rodney, “History of the Upper Guinea Coast”; Ajayi, ed., “History of West Africa,” vol. 1
Image: Sculptural head from Ife, bronze & brass, ca. 1300s
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We follow the rise of civilization and of powerful empires in West Africa before the slave tade, based upon iron-working and the traffic in gold and salt across the Sahara, followed by the spread of wealth and power southward, towards the gold fields and the tropical forests, and finally the reverberating impacts of the arrival of Portuguese traders on the coast, which paved the way for the rise of the Atlantic slave trade.
Suggested further reading: Rodney, “History of the Upper Guinea Coast”; Ajayi, ed., “History of West Africa,” vol. 1
Image: Sculptural head from Ife, bronze & brass, ca. 1300s
Please sign on as a patron to hear patron-only lectures, including upcoming installment on Central AFrica: https://www.patreon.com/c/u5530632
UNLOCKED: Myth of the Month 24: The Epic of Gilgamesh -- pt. 2: Analysis
Historiansplaining: A historian tells you why everything you know is wrong
2 hours 55 minutes 46 seconds
1 month ago
UNLOCKED: Myth of the Month 24: The Epic of Gilgamesh -- pt. 2: Analysis
Unlocked after 1 year for patrons only --
We examine the Epic of Gilgamesh as a piece of literature, for its strange dream-like style and form, its points of similarity to Biblical and ancient Greek and European mythology, and finally, its deep levels of psychological and political allegory, ultimately revealing the love between Enkidu and Gilgamesh as a parable of the fraught relationship between civilization and the wild.
Image: Gilgamesh grappling with Enkidu; illustration by Wael Tarabieh.
Our previous lecture on the discovery of the Library of Ashurbanipal, where the Epic of Gilgamesh was rediscovered: Historiansplaining – Unlocked-the-great-archaeological-discoveries-pt-3-the-library-of-ashurbanipal
The SOAS's recordings of scholars reading Akkadian texts: https://www.soas.ac.uk/baplar/recordings
Suggested further reading: George, "The Epic of Gilgamesh"; N.K. Sandars, "The Epic of Gilgamesh"; Heidel, "The Epic of Gilgamesh and Old Testament Parallels"; Stephen Mitchell, "Gilgamesh"; Michael Schmidt, "Gilgamesh: The Life of a Poem"; Rivkah Scharf Kluger, "The Archetypal Significance of Gilgamesh."
Historiansplaining: A historian tells you why everything you know is wrong
We follow the rise of civilization and of powerful empires in West Africa before the slave tade, based upon iron-working and the traffic in gold and salt across the Sahara, followed by the spread of wealth and power southward, towards the gold fields and the tropical forests, and finally the reverberating impacts of the arrival of Portuguese traders on the coast, which paved the way for the rise of the Atlantic slave trade.
Suggested further reading: Rodney, “History of the Upper Guinea Coast”; Ajayi, ed., “History of West Africa,” vol. 1
Image: Sculptural head from Ife, bronze & brass, ca. 1300s
Please sign on as a patron to hear patron-only lectures, including upcoming installment on Central AFrica: https://www.patreon.com/c/u5530632
