Mesopotamia was, first, a territory: the great plain irrigated between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, with their northern valleys, their southern marshes and their stone plateau. A geographical scenario, not a people or a nation. Over almost four millennia, this scenario was inhabited, transformed and disputed by radically different cultures: the Neolithic villages of Hassuna, Samarra and Halaf; the pre-urban world of Ubaud; the cities - the Sumerian state; the acadiums, which built the first empire of history; the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Kasites, the Aramaic, the Chaldeans. Seventeen different cultural periods, each with its language, its gods, its ways of organizing power and interpreting the world.

What they shared was the stage: the same soil, the same heat, the same capricious rivers, the same tension between the stone-free plain and the rich mountains around it. That geographical tension —that need for exchange, for ingenuity, for permanent negotiation with a difficult environment— is perhaps the most constant thread of all mesopotamic history.

So, when in Myrodia Khartes we talk about 'the cultures of Mesopotamia', we talk about layers. Capes that overlap, that dialogue, that sometimes absorb each other and sometimes live in tension within the same space.

This series of articles is an attempt to look at those layers through specific windows, where historical evidence and the depth of their myths allow us to light a light. We will not seek a flat and impossible chronology; instead, we will go through this territory through its great milestones and the intimacy of its rituals from the olfactory perspective.

1. Neolithic Ubaid · c. 6500-3800 BC Hassuna, Samarra, Halaf and Ubaud — the roots
2. Aromas and rituals in the Uruk culture · c. 4100-2900 BC Proto-Sumerian — the first cities and Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynamic · c. 3100-2334 BC Summeries and acadiums in coexistence.
3. Anu the god of heaven
4. Akitu: The Babylonian New Year reordering the cosmos
5. Mīs Pī: The Ritual of the Washing of the Boca of the Gods
6. Swear & Cleaning of Sin
7. The Tākultu: The Banquet of the Gods
8. Potions and Amulets: The Partum in the Old Mesopotamia
9. The Smell of Victory: Sugar, cedar and the secret liturgy of the war in Mesopotamia
10. Λšipūtu: Rituals of protection and exorcism in Mesopotamia

The progress and publication of historical stages are organized according to the chronology and documented progress of the research, with weekly updates.

The literature and additional research, explanation, teaching and study materials are provided only to Myrodia Khartes subscribers.