On Happiness And Home

On Happiness and Home

Lady with grain stems caught in her hair, Lady with strong hands for kneading dough, Lady with strong arms for the dough-shovel, Lady with sun-darkened skin and oven-fires caught in her eyes, Lady whose finery is a worker's tunic, Lady whose perfume is sweetwort and honey, Your voice is the music of flowing beer, Your laughter the chuckle of a clay bottle. Come home from your circling dance around the fire, Passing hand to hand and lips to lips! Come home from the young lioness's roaring tavern, From the kissing of wounds, from the heat of the sun. Ninkasi who gladdens the heart, come home! You are expected, awaited, beloved. Your strong hands have browned like good bread in the sun, And they slide over the pale skin of a fine noblewoman. Her milk-pale skin like fine holy linen, Her slender arms like slim reeds full of grace. Fingers calloused from the churning dough-shovel Twine with long digits like fragile spiders, Graceful ivory combs that spin long hair into art. She is quiet where you are joyful, She is delicate where you are vivacious, Yet her skill speaks with a voice as complex as poetry, As colorful as a tavern tale And just as clever in her transformation. Press your glad mouth to her buttoned lip, Lady. Let Uttu weave your black, barley-flecked hair. Lahar and Ashnan look upon you and smile, Emesh and Enten break bread under your roof, For what has more beauty than such perfect union Of a glad heart and a beautiful wife?

May Uttu be praised, may the name of Ninkasi be honey on my lips, And for the pen of her servant may Nisaba be praised.

——— *I wrote this with a heaping spoonful of UPG. There is no historical evidence for Ninkasi being gay for Uttu. Cool? Cool. Sumerian wives did brew beer though, as far as I can tell. **Lahar, the 'sheep' god notably referenced in the debate between Sheep and Grain, is heavily important to Uttu the goddess of weaving, just as Ashnan the grain goddess is important to Ninkasi, who is the brewer and the beer. ***Emesh, the god of 'summer', and Enten, the god of 'winter', as seen in the debate between Summer and Winter, both have a great deal to do with grain and livestock. From what I can tell by making inferences from other cultures, Summer is the time for brewing and Winter is the time for weaving, and it seemed significant enough that I had to include them.

Sort of a spiritual cousin over here in Sumer. Yo, Devotee of Nisaba here.

So, I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered any other devotees of Seshat on here. Am I alone?

I’m still upset about Momo

…And it’s not about her outfit.

Okay so like.  I caught up in bnha recently, and it’s great and fun and much better than your run of the mill shonen. The characters are great and engaging, and all that, but I just want to make a comment about my gal momo:

And like, I know the subject of her outfit has been beaten to death, and that is definitely one of the things that pisses me off because it’s 100% designed to sexualize a 15-year-old, but that’s not even what has pissed me off the most.

It’s not even Mineta’s lecherous actions during the Tournament Arc, or even that stupid pointless cheerleader scene.

That’s all run of the mill genre grossness, and I hate it but it didn’t piss me off nearly as much as her internship:

For all intents and purposes, this is probably the most benign form of sexism Momo’s dealt with so far, but it struck a particular chord with me…and I honestly think it’s far more insidious than the more blatant displays.

So, basically, at the start of all this, Momo is reeling from a blow to her self esteem after the tournament arc, and signs on with a well known Pro Hero, Uwabami, for her internship. However, she and the other intern are quickly brought into Uwabami’s glamorous lifestyle, acting as PR people and background props in her commercial.

This is the first female-female mentorship that we see in an entire series about mentorship, and I was sorely, sorely disappointed.

I work in a male-dominated field, and let me tell you it is not a compliment to be told:

“Yes I know you’re smart and capable, but I don’t care. I hired you, first and foremost, for your pretty face.”

So here we have a brilliant 15-year-old girl, who is already struggling with her self-confidence, brought under the mentorship of a powerful and influential woman. And instead of creating a situation that would help foster these students, it’s instead communicated that none of their efforts really mattered. That it matters most that they look nice, and put on a show. And it’s played off as a joke, as though this is the way things are and it’s hilarious that Momo should hope for anything other than that.

The fact that it’s a female mentor figure sending these messages? It’s like a kick in the teeth.

And maybe at this point it seems like I’m hounding on a small plot point, and it’s true that I had an intense rush of empathy for Momo due to personal experience, but I think that here lies the core issue with sexism in BNHA. The concept of, “Yes you’re smart and capable, but I only hired you for your pretty face” is the recurring theme with almost every female lead.

Do any of the female characters get seriously beaten and battered in conflict, to the extent that we see happening to Deku? No.

Do any of the female characters have to face inner demons and potential darkness like Iida? No.

Do any of the female characters struggle with physical and emotional abuse like Todoroki? No.

Heck, do we even get to see any of the girls being outright bad, and portrayed with the same villainous inclinations we see in Bakugou? No.

Even in the tournament arc, the girls are more often pushed out of bounds, rather than suffer the heat of battle. And I know that Ochako has a moment to shine in her fight with Bakugou, but that is the first and only chance we really get to see her or any of the girls in that capacity. 

All of their character arcs are short and sweet, dealing with simpler issues of self confidence and image. We, as an audience, are not allowed to see them as anything less than cute, pretty, and pure–both physically and in their ideologies. They aren’t allowed to suffer from murderous rage, or be seriously injured, because that would sully that perfect image.

In other words, as interesting as they are, they’re literally only there to fill the space. They’re only there to look at. They’re fascinating characters, but underutilized to the point that it’s hardly worth praising as ‘progressive.’ 

Basically, the theme of the female characters of this series is:

“Yes I know you’re smart and capable, but I don’t care. I hired you, first and foremost, for your pretty face.” 

Sounds awesome. Is it a mixed group thing? Do you mind sharing what you'll be doing?

My celebration for the month of Šu-Numun is tomorrow.

Let this be a learning experience for my Wiccan friends. For the glory of the Dingir, and for the sake of my own sanity.

One of the most powerful moments I experienced as an ancient history student was when I was teaching cuneiform to visitors at a fair. A father and his two little children came up to the table where I was working. I recognised them from an interfaith ceremony I’d attended several months before: the father had said a prayer for his homeland, Syria, and for his hometown, Aleppo.

All three of them were soft-spoken, kind and curious. I taught the little girl how to press wedges into the clay, and I taught the little boy that his name meant “sun” and that there was an ancient Mesopotamian God with the same name. I told them they were about the same age as scribes were when they started their training. As they worked, their father said to them gently: “See, this is how your ancestors used to write.”

And I thought of how the Ancient City of Aleppo is almost entirely destroyed now, and how the Citadel was shelled and used as a military base, and how Palmyran temples were blown up and such a wealth of culture and history has been lost forever. And there I was with these children, two small pieces of the future of a broken country, and I was teaching them cuneiform. They were smiling and chatting to each other about Mesopotamia and “can you imagine, our great-great-great-grandparents used to write like this four thousand years ago!” For them and their father, it was more than a fun weekend activity. It was a way of connecting, despite everything and thousands of kilometres away from home, with their own history.

This moment showed me, in a concrete way, why ancient studies matter. They may not seem important now, not to many people at least. But history represents so much of our cultural identity: it teaches us where we come from, explains who we are, and guides us as we go forward. Lose it, and we lose a part of ourselves. As historians, our role is to preserve this knowledge as best we can and pass it on to future generations who will need it. I helped pass it on to two little Syrian children that day. They learnt that their country isn’t just blood and bombs, it’s also scribes and powerful kings and Sun-Gods and stories about immortality and tablets that make your hands sticky. And that matters.

This is the first real installment of my long quest to combat the ancient aliens on all fronts, as well as give exposure to a pretty obscure topic: Mesopotamian Polytheism. We're here, we're pagan, and I'm here to explain it.