Social networks & ancient Near East: do they match? Indeed, they do! Here we provide you with a brilliant example: Olga V. Popova’s “Smart Babylonia with Olga” is an efficient tool to disseminate knowledge of Assyriology amongst Russian readers and subscribers. Read below, to know more about it!
Please tell us about yourself!
I am an Assyriologist, my primary field of research is Babylonia of the 1st millennium BC. I defended a PhD dissertation on Neo-Babylonian Ur at the University Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne with Francis Joannès. After my PhD I returned in Moscow and now I am a researcher in the Institute of Oriental studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
Can you describe to us what is “Smart Babylonia with Olga”? Which social networks are you using, and how did you choose between the various options?
“Smart Babylonia with Olga” is my blog in Russian about the history, culture, and archeology of the Ancient Near East. It is based only on my own initiative and is not a commercial project, rather a hobby. I started it a couple of years ago on Facebook and last year, when Telegram became a more intellectual social network in Russia, I begun to duplicate the information on these two social networks. And now I have in total about 2000 subscribers. Telegram is more usable in the sense that you can choose for yourself the blog you want to read and read it when you want, like a paper or a book.
When did you have the first idea of creating this unique tool to disseminate knowledge of Assyriology?
The first idea of creating “Smart Babylonia” came to me when, while surfing Facebook, I found a note, something about Hanging Gardens of Babylon that was totally unscientific but was reposted by several of my acquaintances. I decided to write a correct version in a style accessible to the larger public. It was pleasant work and I had some interesting questions from my Facebook friends who were far removed from Assyriology. I created a page “Smart Babylonia with Olga” and from time to time I posted on it some funny facts that I came across while working. I alternated between thematic long-read texts and short posts with some curious facts from the daily life of Mesopotamia or some interesting illustrations.
How do you choose the topics that you discuss in your posts? From where do you take your inspiration?
Usually I write my posts about something I am working on, or some news about recent discoveries in the Near East, or more often something that I found when preparing courses for my students. On holidays, I specifically find something thematic: a tablet of a student scribe at the beginning of the school year, a story about the Akitu-festival on the day of the equinox, or some stories about spirits and demons on Halloween. Or something socially or politically relevant, like stories of uprisings (when demonstrations occur in Russia).
My posts may go beyond Mesopotamia and refer to Egypt, Biblical history, or just archeology if I happen to read something interesting about it. For example, as one of the projects I periodically translate into Russian archaeological comics by the Belgian artist-archaeologist Celine Piret.
Well, sometimes I announce on my blog ongoing thematic exhibitions or scientific events that could be of interest to a wider public.
What are your main expectations for “Smart Babylonia with Olga”? Is there anything in particular that you wish to achieve?
“Smart Babylonia with Olga” is more like a hobby for me, I don’t have some particular expectations from it. I am pleased when I see that people are interested in Assyriology, when they understand what kind of science it is and when references in popular culture to Mesopotamian realities become clearer to them. And in general, the more knowledge and interests people have, the more independently they think. Why not add Mesopotamia to area of their interests.
What feedback did you receive so far?
The feedback is very varied. It can be simple questions about some facts or beliefs, or sometimes very interesting questions that lead me to discover new things and notice some details that I never paid attention to before. It happens that I have requests to write a phrase in Akkadian for a cuneiform tattoo or for a board game and this can be quite funny.
Of course, sometimes there is difficult feedbacks from people who “know modern speakers of Sumerian” or who believe that “the aliens took Gilgamesh because he knew the secret of immortality”. In these cases, I try to accurately explain what is scientific and what is not.
What do you think could be improved in the way Assyriology presents itself to the wider public, outside the specificities of our discipline? How do you think Assyriologists can reach a wider audience?
In my opinion, there is quite a lot of popularization of Assyriology now: YouTube videos of Irving Finkel are great, Facebook pages of some museums are really instructive, not long ago I saw some very good Mesopotamian cartoons on TED-Ed.
It seems to me very efficient when talking about Mesopotamia to start from well-known stories such as the Flood, “an eye for an eye” law, Ishtar, or Gilgamesh to scientific facts. Or to start with fun facts, such as the Mesopotamians were more dog people then cat people, or that they loved beer, and then to explain why.