This first lullaby is a loose translation, in order to fit a modern musical meter. It can be sung to “Nettleton” (Come Thou Fount) or Joyful, Joyful (Ode to Joy) — I recommend singing lines 1-8, then repeating 1-6 and finishing with 9-10. A closer translation of the same text is at the end, followed by a different, longer incantation to help a crying baby sleep.
Little one, who dwelled in darkness, now you’ve come and seen the sun. Why the crying? Why the worries? What has made your peace undone?
You have roused the household spirits; you have scared the guardian-gods. “Who has roused me? Who has scared me?” “Little baby woke you up!”
May you settle into slumber, sweet as plum-wine, deep as love.
Per a request (and by the way, I love getting requests!), here is the Akkadian transliteration of the first lullaby, taken from Walter Farber’s “Magic at the Cradle: Babylonian and Assyrian Lullabies” (1990, Anthropos).
my fave greek history story to tell is that of agnodice. like she noticed that women were dying a lot during childbirth so she went to egypt to study medicine in alexandria and was really fucking good but b/c it was illegal for women to be doctors in athens she had to pretend to be a man. and then the other doctors noticed that she was 10x better than them and accused her of seducing and sleeping with the women patients. like they brought her to court for this. and she just looked at them and these charges and stripped in front of everyone like “yeah. im not fucking your wives” and then they got so mad that a woman was better at their jobs then them that they tried to execute her but all her patients came to court and were like “are you fucking serious? she is the reason you have living children and a wife.” so they were shamed into changing the law and that is how women were given the right to practice medicine in athens
rip tumblr 