Anti-witchcraft spells and office gossip on clay tablets

HostWe usually think of the ancient world as a place of grand kings and huge wars, but lately, people looking at old clay tablets are finding something much more relatable. It seems that thousands of years ago, folks were just as worried about weird hexes and annoying coworkers as we are. Why is all this petty, everyday stuff showing up on these ancient records?

GuestIt's mostly because clay is a lot tougher than we give it credit for. When we look at these tablets from places like ancient Iraq, we're seeing the literal trash and mail of a working city. For a long time, experts mostly looked for the big things like the history of kings or lost myths. But now, we're digging into the smaller piles. We're finding that a huge chunk of what they wrote down was basically just people venting. They wrote about feeling sick because a neighbor looked at them funny, or they sent notes to the boss complaining that the guy at the next desk was stealing all the good reeds.

HostWait, people actually used clay tablets to snitch on their coworkers? That feels like a lot of work just to complain.

GuestWell, you have to think about how their world worked. Writing was the only way to keep a record that stuck. If you were an official or a scribe, your life was your paperwork. We have these letters from the Neo-Assyrian period, which is about twenty-seven hundred years ago. In one, a guy is basically writing to the king to say that his rival is a total fraud who doesn't know how to do his job. It's not just a passing comment, either. He goes into detail about how this other guy is lazy and making everyone else look bad. It's the ancient version of a long, angry email to the manager.

HostI guess I always pictured them writing about stars or gods, not just bad vibes in the office. But you also mentioned the spells. Was witchcraft a real, everyday fear for them?

GuestIt was everywhere. To them, what we call witchcraft wasn't some spooky movie thing. It was more like a social sickness. If your crops failed or your head hurt or your luck just ran out, you didn't think it was a germ or bad luck. You thought someone had used a spell against you. So, you went to a specialist to get a counter-spell. These tablets we're decoding now are full of these rituals. They tell you to make a little doll of the person you think is hurting you, say some words, and then burn the doll or bury it. It was their way of taking control when things felt like they were falling apart.

HostBut that sounds like they were just paranoid. Is there a chance we're just reading these wrong and they were actually more like doctors?

GuestIn a way, they were. The line between a doctor and a priest was very thin back then. If you had a stomach ache, the expert might give you a herb to eat, but they would also have you say a spell to drive out the ghost they thought was causing it. The new tablets show just how organized this was. It wasn't just some guy in a cave. This was a whole system. They had massive libraries of these spells. It shows us that they were deeply anxious people. They lived in a world where a sudden storm or a small infection could kill you, and they used these tablets to try and build a shield around themselves.

HostIt's interesting that we have so many of these. If they were just everyday notes and spells, how did they survive for thousands of years? Usually, old paper just rots away.

GuestThat's the best part. They didn't use paper. They used wet clay. Normally, if a city just lived its life, those tablets might eventually crumble or get tossed out. But many of these cities were burned down in wars. When the libraries and offices caught fire, it actually baked the clay. It turned them into hard ceramic, basically like a coffee mug. The very thing that destroyed the city is what saved the mail. So now, we can read a letter from a guy complaining about his pay from three thousand years ago because his office burned down and turned his complaint into a rock.

HostSo we're basically reading their saved drafts because of a fire. But does this really change how we see them? It feels like we're just finding out they were as petty as we are.

GuestIt changes everything because it makes them human. When you only read the stories of kings, they feel like statues. But when you read a tablet where a wife is yelling at her husband for not sending enough cloth home, or a scribe is worried that a curse is making his eyes itch, they become real. We start to see that their whole society was held together by these small strings. The spells were how they dealt with fear, and the gossip was how they dealt with each other. It shows that even though their world was full of gods and ghosts, their day-to-day life was driven by the same small worries we have today.

GuestThe most lasting thing we have is the proof that people have always needed to vent and feel safe.

HostThose baked clay tablets remind us that while the tools change, the person holding the stylus is still just trying to get through the work week.