Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi–Walt Disney’s 1943 Film Shows How Fascists Are Made

in Film, History | April 22nd, 2025

Dur­ing World War II, Walt Dis­ney entered into a con­tract with the US gov­ern­ment to devel­op 32 ani­mat­ed shorts. Near­ly bank­rupt­ed by Fan­ta­sia (1940), Dis­ney need­ed to refill its cof­fers, and mak­ing Amer­i­can pro­pa­gan­da films did­n’t seem like a bad way to do it. On numer­ous occa­sions, Don­ald Duck was called upon to deliv­er moral mes­sages to domes­tic audi­ences (see The Spir­it of ’43 and Der Fuehrer’s Face). But that was­n’t the case with Edu­ca­tion for Death: The Mak­ing of the Nazi, a film shown in U.S. movie the­aters in 1943.

Based on a book writ­ten by Gre­gor Ziemer, this ani­mat­ed short used a dif­fer­ent line­up of char­ac­ters to show how the Nazi par­ty turned inno­cent youth into Hitler’s cor­rupt­ed chil­dren. Unlike oth­er top­ics addressed in Dis­ney war films (e.g. tax­es and the draft), this theme—the cul­ti­va­tion of young minds—hit awful­ly close to home. And it’s per­haps why it’s one of Dis­ney’s bet­ter wartime films.

Spiegel Online has more on Dis­ney’s WW II pro­pa­gan­da films here, and you can find some of these films in the Relat­eds below. Also find links to oth­er WWII pro­pa­gan­da films by Dr. Seuss, Mel Blanc, Alfred Hitch­cock, Frank Capra and more.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pri­vate Sna­fu: The World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Cre­at­ed by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

Dr. Seuss’ World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Films: Your Job in Ger­many (1945) and Our Job in Japan (1946)

When Sal­vador Dalí Cre­at­ed a Chill­ing Anti-Vene­re­al Dis­ease Poster Dur­ing World War II

Don­ald Duck Wants You to Pay Your Tax­es (1943)

Neu­ro­science and Pro­pa­gan­da Come Togeth­er in Disney’s World War II Film, Rea­son and Emo­tion

“Evil Mick­ey Mouse” Invades Japan in a 1934 Japan­ese Ani­me Pro­pa­gan­da Film

Mem­o­ry of the Camps (1985): The Holo­caust Doc­u­men­tary that Trau­ma­tized Alfred Hitch­cock, and Remained Unseen for 40 Years

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How to Evade Taxes in Ancient Rome: A 1,900-Year-Old Papyrus Reveals an Ancient Tax Evasion Scheme

in History, Law | April 17th, 2025

It was sure­ly not a coin­ci­dence that the New York Times pub­lished its sto­ry on the tri­al of a cer­tain Gadalias and Sau­los this past Mon­day, April 14th. The defen­dants, as their names sug­gest, did not live in moder­ni­ty: the papyrus doc­u­ment­ing their legal trou­bles dates to the reign of Hadri­an, around 130 AD.  These men were charged, writes the Times’ Franz Lidz, with “the fal­si­fi­ca­tion of doc­u­ments and the illic­it sale and man­u­mis­sion, or free­ing, of slaves — all to avoid pay­ing duties in the far-flung Roman provinces of Judea and Ara­bia, a region rough­ly cor­re­spond­ing to present-day Israel and Jor­dan.”

In oth­er words, Gadalias and Sau­los were accused of tax eva­sion, a sub­ject always on the mind of Amer­i­cans under the shad­ow of their tax-return due date, April 15th. While the prospect of an IRS audit keeps more than a few of them awake at night, ancient Roman law went, pre­dictably, quite a bit harsh­er.

“Penal­ties ranged from heavy fines and per­ma­nent exile to hard labor in the salt mines and, in the worst case, damna­tio ad bes­tias, a pub­lic exe­cu­tion in which the con­demned were devoured by wild ani­mals,” writes Lidz. Such a fate pre­sum­ably would­n’t have been out of the ques­tion for those con­vict­ed of a crime of these pro­por­tions.

The long-mis­clas­si­fied doc­u­ment of this case was only prop­er­ly deci­phered, and even under­stood to have been writ­ten in ancient Greek, after its redis­cov­ery in 2014. “A team of schol­ars was assem­bled to con­duct a detailed phys­i­cal exam­i­na­tion and cross-ref­er­ence names and loca­tions with oth­er his­tor­i­cal sources,” which result­ed in this paper pub­lished this past Jan­u­ary. For any schol­ar of Roman law, such an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get into the minds of both that civ­i­liza­tion’s judges and its crim­i­nals could hard­ly be passed up. Even out on the edge of the empire, pros­e­cu­tors turn out to have employed “deft rhetor­i­cal strate­gies wor­thy of Cicero and Quin­til­ian and dis­played an excel­lent com­mand of Roman legal terms and con­cepts in Greek.” This will no doubt get today’s law stu­dents spec­u­lat­ing: specif­i­cal­ly, about the exis­tence of an ancient Chat­G­PT.

via NYTimes

Relat­ed con­tent:

To Save Civ­i­liza­tion, the Rich Need to Pay Their Tax­es: His­to­ri­an Rut­ger Breg­man Speaks Truth to Pow­er at Davos and to Fox’s Tuck­er Carl­son

Read David Fos­ter Wallace’s Notes From a Tax Account­ing Class, Tak­en to Help Him Write The Pale King

Don­ald Duck Wants You to Pay Your Tax­es (1943)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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A Forgotten 16th-Century Manuscript Reveals the First Designs for Modern Rockets

in History, Science, Technology | April 16th, 2025

The Aus­tri­an mil­i­tary engi­neer Con­rad Haas was a man ahead of his time — indeed, about 400 years ahead, con­sid­er­ing that he was work­ing on rock­ets aimed for out­er space back in the mid-six­teenth cen­tu­ry. Need­less to say, he nev­er actu­al­ly man­aged to launch any­thing into the upper atmos­phere. But you have to give him cred­it for get­ting as far as he did with the idea, a con­sid­er­able progress doc­u­ment­ed in his trea­tise “How You Must Make Quite a Nice Rock­et That Can Trav­el Itself into the Heights,” which no doubt sounds bet­ter in the orig­i­nal Ger­man. As Kaushik Pato­wary notes at Amus­ing Plan­et, its 450 pages are “filled with draw­ings and tech­ni­cal data on artillery, bal­lis­tics and detailed descrip­tions of mul­ti­stage rock­ets.”

“Born in 1509 in Dorn­bach, now part of Vien­na, to a Ger­man fam­i­ly from Bavaria,” Haas moved to Tran­syl­va­nia, then part of the Aus­tri­an Empire, ear­ly in his adult­hood. “In 1551, Haas was invit­ed by Stephen Bátho­ry, the grand prince of Tran­syl­va­nia, to Her­mannstadt (now Sibiu, Roma­nia), where he became the com­man­der of the artillery bar­racks and a weapons engi­neer.”

It was in this pro­fes­sion­al capac­i­ty that he began his research into rock­etry, which led him to dis­cov­er the con­cept of “a cylin­dri­cal thrust cham­ber filled with a pow­der pro­pel­lant, with a con­i­cal hole to pro­gres­sive­ly increase the com­bus­tion area and con­se­quent­ly the thrust,” a clear intel­lec­tu­al ances­tor of the mul­ti-stage design “still used in mod­ern rock­ets.”

Haas’ is the ear­li­est sci­en­tif­ic work on rock­ets known to have been under­tak­en in Europe. And until fair­ly recent­ly, it had been for­got­ten: only in 1961 was his man­u­script found in Sibi­u’s pub­lic archives, which moti­vat­ed Roma­nia to claim Haas as the first rock­et sci­en­tist. Though anachro­nis­tic, that des­ig­na­tion does under­score the far-sight­ed­ness of Haas’ world­view. So do the per­son­al words he includ­ed in his chap­ter about the mil­i­tary use of rock­ets. “My advice is for more peace and no war, leav­ing the rifles calm­ly in stor­age, so the bul­let is not fired, the gun­pow­der is not burned or wet, so the prince keeps his mon­ey, the arse­nal mas­ter his life,” he wrote. But giv­en what he must have learned while liv­ing in polit­i­cal­ly unsta­ble Euro­pean bor­der­lands, he sure­ly under­stood, on some lev­el, that it would be eas­i­er to get to the moon.

via Messy­Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

A 16th-Cen­tu­ry Astron­o­my Book Fea­tured “Ana­log Com­put­ers” to Cal­cu­late the Shape of the Moon, the Posi­tion of the Sun, and More

Leonar­do da Vin­ci Draws Designs of Future War Machines: Tanks, Machine Guns & More

The Great­est Shot in Tele­vi­sion: Sci­ence His­to­ri­an James Burke Had One Chance to Nail This Scene … and Nailed It

Meet the Mys­te­ri­ous Genius Who Patent­ed the UFO

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Ark Before Noah: Discover the Ancient Flood Myths That Came Before the Bible

in History, Religion | April 15th, 2025

The Lord said to Noah, there’s going to be a floody, floody; then to get those chil­dren out of the mud­dy, mud­dy; then to build him an arky, arky. This much we heard while toast­ing marsh­mal­lows around the camp­fire, at least if we grew up in a cer­tain mod­ern Protes­tant tra­di­tion. As adults, we may or may not believe that there ever lived a man called Noah who built an ark to save all the world’s inno­cent ani­mal species from a sin-cleans­ing flood. But unless we’ve tak­en a deep dive into ancient his­to­ry, we prob­a­bly don’t know that this espe­cial­ly famous Bible sto­ry was­n’t the first of its par­tic­u­lar sub­genre. As explained in the Hochela­ga video above, there are even old­er glob­al-del­uge tales to be reck­oned with.

In fact, one such myth appears in the old­est known work of lit­er­a­ture in human his­to­ry, the Epic of Gil­gamesh. “In it, the god Ea learns of this divine flood, and secret­ly warns the humans about this com­ing dis­as­ter,” says Hochela­ga cre­ator Tom­mie Trelawny. Thus informed, the king Utnapish­tim builds a giant cor­a­cle, a kind of cir­cu­lar boat “used to nav­i­gate the rivers of Mesopotamia for cen­turies.”

Like Noah, Utnapish­tim brings his fam­i­ly and a host of ani­mals aboard, and after rid­ing out the worst of the storm, finds that his craft has come to rest on a moun­tain­top. Also like Noah, he then sends birds out to find dry land. But ulti­mate­ly, “the sto­ry takes a strange turn: instead of being pleased, the gods are angry,” though Ea does step in to take respon­si­bil­i­ty and make sure that Utnapish­tim is reward­ed.

There are oth­er ver­sions with oth­er gods, floods, and ark-builders as well. In the Reli­gion for Break­fast video just above, reli­gious stud­ies schol­ar Andrew Mark Hen­ry com­pares the Bib­li­cal sto­ry of Noah and the Utnapish­tim episode of the Epic of Gil­gamesh with the “Sumer­ian flood sto­ry” from the sec­ond mil­len­ni­um BC and the two-cen­turies-old­er “Atra­ha­sis epic.” All of these ver­sions have a good deal in com­mon, not least the exec­u­tive deci­sion by an exas­per­at­ed high­er being (or beings) to wipe out almost entire­ly the human­i­ty they them­selves cre­at­ed. Iron­i­cal­ly, we mod­erns are like­ly to have first encoun­tered this tale of god­ly wrath and sub­se­quent mass destruc­tion in light­heart­ed, even cheer­ful pre­sen­ta­tions. Whether ancient Sume­ri­ans also sang about it in youth groups, no clay tablet has yet revealed.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Thomas Jefferson’s Cut-and-Paste Ver­sion of the Bible, and Read the Curi­ous Edi­tion Online

Lit­er­ary Crit­ic Northrop Frye Teach­es “The Bible and Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture”: All 25 Lec­tures Free Online

A Map of All the Coun­tries Men­tioned in the Bible: What The Coun­tries Were Called Then, and Now

Isaac Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: A Wit­ty, Eru­dite Atheist’s Guide to the World’s Most Famous Book

Did the Tow­er of Babel Actu­al­ly Exist?: A Look at the Archae­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence

The Epic of Gil­gamesh, the Old­est-Known Work of Lit­er­a­ture in World His­to­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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What Was Smoot-Hawley, and Why Are We Doing It Again? Anyone? Anyone?

in Economics, History | April 14th, 2025

When most Amer­i­cans think of the Smoot-Haw­ley Tar­iffs, they think of eco­nom­ic dis­as­ter. But if you ask why, most Amer­i­cans may need a short refresh­er course. Below, you will find just that. Appear­ing on Derek Thomp­son’s Plain His­to­ry pod­cast, Dou­glas Irwin (an econ­o­mist and his­to­ri­an at Dart­mouth) revis­its the 1930 Smoot-Haw­ley Tar­iff Act, which raised tar­iffs on over 20,000 prod­ucts import­ed into the Unit­ed States. The law was passed despite warn­ings from exec­u­tives like Hen­ry Ford (who called the tar­iff act “an eco­nom­ic stu­pid­i­ty”) and a peti­tion signed by 1,028 Amer­i­can econ­o­mists, who argued that the tar­iffs would raise prices and spark a trade war, leav­ing the Unit­ed States iso­lat­ed. Their con­cerns were ulti­mate­ly well-found­ed. The Smoot-Haw­ley Tar­iffs, sup­port­ed by a Repub­li­can pres­i­dent and Con­gress, had the unin­tend­ed con­se­quence of deep­en­ing, not end­ing, the Great Depres­sion.

Mark Twain alleged­ly said that “His­to­ry doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” But some­times his­to­ry may well repeat itself or come very close, and that’s where we seem to be head­ed right now. As in 1930, we have Repub­li­cans imple­ment­ing new tar­iffs, but this time with the hope of re-engi­neer­ing the world econ­o­my and bring­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing back to Amer­i­ca. Mean­while, econ­o­mists (even con­ser­v­a­tive ones) warn that these poli­cies risk repeat­ing the mis­takes of Smoot-Haw­ley.

Below you can hear the assess­ment of the eco­nom­ic his­to­ri­an Niall Fer­gu­son, who, in speak­ing with Bari Weiss, explains why Don­ald Trump’s tar­iffs will fail to re-indus­tri­al­ize Amer­i­ca. The gold­en age of man­u­fac­tur­ing in Amer­i­ca is long gone, and it’s not com­ing back, part­ly thanks to automa­tion. (Mor­gan Housel has more to say on that.) But even worse, the chaot­ic imple­men­ta­tion of these poli­cies risks trig­ger­ing a trade war, “a major finan­cial cri­sis com­pa­ra­ble in scale to 2008,” or even a mil­i­tary cri­sis that an iso­lat­ed Amer­i­ca would be ill-equipped to han­dle. Speak­ing on Meet the Press this week­end, investor Ray Dalio omi­nous­ly voiced very sim­i­lar con­cerns, say­ing “some­thing worse than reces­sion” may be on the hori­zon.

For anoth­er take, you can hear Preet Bharara’s con­ver­sa­tion with Justin Wolfers, where the Aus­tralian econ­o­mist warns that Trump’s tar­iffs may have few ben­e­fits and most­ly costs, some quite pro­found. By launch­ing a trade war, Amer­i­ca will trade less and find its glob­al influ­ence dimin­ished, leav­ing a void that Chi­na can fill. Echo­ing Niall Fer­gu­son, Wolfers also cau­tions that you can’t turn back the eco­nom­ic clock. He notes:

A hun­dred years ago, we had actu­al­ly the same debate, but it was because we were mov­ing from the land, from a pre­dom­i­nant­ly agri­cul­tur­al econ­o­my, to a man­u­fac­tur­ing-based econ­o­my. And we moved from an enor­mous share of the pop­u­la­tion work­ing in agri­cul­ture to work­ing in man­u­fac­tur­ing, and that raised the Amer­i­can mid­dle class.

There was a lot of nos­tal­gia. Why aren’t we back on the land? And the sub­se­quent stage of eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment is we move out of the fac­to­ries, and we move and become engi­neers and com­put­er sci­en­tists and soft­ware design­ers. And we’re in a much more cog­ni­tive econ­o­my.
And we are not inhal­ing black soot in our mines or in our fac­to­ries dur­ing the day. And that’s the future of the Amer­i­can econ­o­my. And it’s one that speaks well to the skills that Amer­i­cans have.

We’re the most edu­cat­ed work­force in the world. And so pre­sum­ably the jobs of the future are those, the jobs we want are those that cater to the extreme pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and edu­ca­tion of Amer­i­can work­ers.

How have we reached the point where we’re run­ning the same failed exper­i­ments again, all to reclaim an illu­so­ry bygone eco­nom­ic age? It’s a hard ques­tion to con­tem­plate, but I ask that ques­tion again. Any­one? Any­one? Any­one?

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Steps a Pres­i­dent Would Take to Destroy His Nation, Accord­ing to Elon Musk’s AI Chat­bot, Grok

Free Online Eco­nom­ics & Finance Cours­es

Strik­ing Poster Col­lec­tion from the Great Depres­sion Shows That the US Gov­ern­ment Once Sup­port­ed the Arts in Amer­i­ca

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How Chinese Characters Work: The Evolution of a Three-Millennia-Old Writing System

in History, Language, Writing | April 11th, 2025

Con­trary to some­what pop­u­lar belief, Chi­nese char­ac­ters aren’t just lit­tle pic­tures. In fact, most of them aren’t pic­tures at all. The very old­est, whose evo­lu­tion can be traced back to the “ora­cle bone” script of thir­teenth cen­tu­ry BC etched direct­ly onto the remains of tur­tles and oxen, do bear traces of their pic­to­graph ances­tors. But most Chi­nese char­ac­ters, or hanzi, are logo­graph­ic, which means that each one rep­re­sents a dif­fer­ent mor­pheme, or dis­tinct unit of lan­guage: a word, or a sin­gle part of a word that has no inde­pen­dent mean­ing. Nobody knows for sure how many hanzi exist, but near­ly 100,000 have been doc­u­ment­ed so far.

Not that you need to learn all of them to attain lit­er­a­cy: for that, a mere 3,000 to 5,000 will do. While it’s tech­ni­cal­ly pos­si­ble to mem­o­rize that many char­ac­ters by rote, you’d do bet­ter to begin by famil­iar­iz­ing your­self with their basic nature and struc­ture — and in so doing, you’ll nat­u­ral­ly learn more than a lit­tle about their long his­to­ry.

The TED-Ed les­son at the top of the post pro­vides a brief but illu­mi­nat­ing overview of “how Chi­nese char­ac­ters work,” using ani­ma­tion to show how ancient sym­bols for con­crete things like a per­son, a tree, the sun, and water became ver­sa­tile enough to be com­bined into rep­re­sen­ta­tions of every­thing else — includ­ing abstract con­cepts.

In the Man­darin Blue­print video just above, host Luke Neale goes deep­er into the struc­ture of the hanzi in use today. Whether they be sim­pli­fied ver­sions of main­land Chi­na or the tra­di­tion­al ones of Tai­wan, Hong Kong, and else­where, they’re for the most part con­struct­ed not out of whole cloth, he stress­es, but from a set of exist­ing com­po­nents. That may make a prospec­tive learn­er feel slight­ly less daunt­ed, as may the fact that rough­ly 80 per­cent of Chi­nese char­ac­ters are “seman­tic-pho­net­ic com­pounds”: one com­po­nent of the char­ac­ter pro­vides a clue to its mean­ing, and anoth­er a clue to its pro­nun­ci­a­tion. (Not that it nec­es­sar­i­ly makes deci­pher­ing them an effort­less task.)

In the dis­tant past, hanzi were also the only means of record­ing oth­er Asian lan­guages, like Viet­namese and Kore­an. Still today, they remain cen­tral to the Japan­ese writ­ing sys­tem, but like any oth­er cul­tur­al form trans­plant­ed to Japan, they’ve hard­ly gone unal­tered there: the NativLang video just above explains the trans­for­ma­tion they’ve under­gone over mil­len­nia of inter­ac­tion with the Japan­ese lan­guage. It was­n’t so very long ago that, even in their home­land, hanzi were threat­ened with the prospect of being scrapped in the dubi­ous name of mod­ern effi­cien­cy. Now, with those afore­men­tioned almost-100,000 char­ac­ters incor­po­rat­ed into Uni­code, mak­ing them usable through­out our 21st-cen­tu­ry dig­i­tal uni­verse, it seems they’ll stick around — even longer, per­haps, than the Latin alpha­bet you’re read­ing right now.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Free Chi­nese Lessons

What Ancient Chi­nese Sound­ed Like — and How We Know It: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Dis­cov­er Nüshu, a 19th-Cen­tu­ry Chi­nese Writ­ing Sys­tem That Only Women Knew How to Write

The Improb­a­ble Inven­tion of Chi­nese Type­writ­ers & Com­put­er Key­boards: Three Videos Tell the Tech­no-Cul­tur­al Sto­ry

The Writ­ing Sys­tems of the World Explained, from the Latin Alpha­bet to the Abugi­das of India

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Hear the World’s Oldest Known Song, “Hurrian Hymn No. 6” Written 3,400 Years Ago

in History, Music | April 11th, 2025

Do you like old timey music?

Splen­did.

You can’t get more old timey than Hur­ri­an Hymn No. 6, which was dis­cov­ered on a clay tablet in the ancient Syr­i­an port city of Ugar­it in the 1950s, and is over 3400 years old.

Actu­al­ly, you can — a sim­i­lar tablet, which ref­er­ences a hymn glo­ri­fy­ing Lip­it-Ishtar, the 5th king of the First Dynasty of Isin (in what is now Iraq), is old­er by some 600 years. But as CMUSE reports, it “con­tains lit­tle more than tun­ing instruc­tions for the lyre.”

Hur­ri­an Hymn No. 6 offers meati­er con­tent, and unlike five oth­er tablets dis­cov­ered in the same loca­tion, is suf­fi­cient­ly well pre­served to allow archae­ol­o­gists, and oth­ers, to take a crack at recon­struct­ing its song, though it was by no means easy.

Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor of Assyri­ol­o­gy, Anne Kilmer spent 15 years research­ing the tablet, before tran­scrib­ing it into mod­ern musi­cal nota­tion in 1972.

Hers is one of sev­er­al inter­pre­ta­tions YouTu­ber Hochela­ga sam­ples in the above video.

While the orig­i­nal tablet gives spe­cif­ic details on how the musi­cian should place their fin­gers on the lyre, oth­er ele­ments, like tun­ing or how long notes should be held, are absent, giv­ing mod­ern arrangers some room for cre­ativ­i­ty.

Below archaeo­mu­si­col­o­gist Richard Dum­b­rill explains his inter­pre­ta­tion from 1998, in which vocal­ist Lara Jokhad­er assumes the part of a young woman pri­vate­ly appeal­ing to the god­dess Nikkal to make her fer­tile:

Here’s a par­tic­u­lar­ly love­ly clas­si­cal gui­tar spin, cour­tesy of Syr­i­an musi­col­o­gist Raoul Vitale and com­pos­er Feras Rada…

And a haunt­ing piano ver­sion, by Syr­i­an-Amer­i­can com­pos­er Malek Jan­dali, founder of Pianos for Peace:

And who can resist a chance to hear Hur­ri­an Hymn No. 6 on a repli­ca of an ancient lyre by “new ances­tral” com­pos­er Michael Levy, who con­sid­ers it his musi­cal mis­sion to “open a por­tal to a time that has been all but for­got­ten:”

I dream to rekin­dle the very spir­it of our ancient ances­tors. To cap­ture, for just a few moments, a time when peo­ple imag­ined the fab­ric of the uni­verse was woven from har­monies and notes. To lux­u­ri­ate in a gen­tler time when the fragili­ty of life was tru­ly appre­ci­at­ed and its every action was per­formed in the almighty sense of awe felt for the ancient gods.

Samu­rai Gui­tarist Steve Onotera chan­nels the mys­tery of antiq­ui­ty too, by com­bin­ing Dr. Dumbrill’s melody with Dr. Kilmer’s, try­ing and dis­card­ing a num­ber of approach­es — syn­th­wave, lo-fi hip hop, reg­gae dub (“an absolute dis­as­ter”) — before decid­ing it was best ren­dered as a solo for his Fend­er elec­tric.

Ama­ranth Pub­lish­ing has sev­er­al MIDI files of Hur­ri­an Hymn No. 6, includ­ing Dr. Kilmer’s, that you can down­load for free here.

Open them in the music nota­tion soft­ware pro­gram of your choice, and should it please the god­dess, per­haps yours will be the next inter­pre­ta­tion of Hur­ri­an Hymn No. 6 to be fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture…

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2022.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

The Evo­lu­tion of Music: 40,000 Years of Music His­to­ry Cov­ered in 8 Min­utes

Watch an Archae­ol­o­gist Play the “Litho­phone,” a Pre­his­toric Instru­ment That Let Ancient Musi­cians Play Real Clas­sic Rock

A Mod­ern Drum­mer Plays a Rock Gong, a Per­cus­sion Instru­ment from Pre­his­toric Times

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Medieval Manuscript That Features “Yoda”, Killer Snails, Savage Rabbits & More: Discover The Smithfield Decretals

in Art, Books, History | April 9th, 2025

As much as you may enjoy a night in with a book, you might not look so eager­ly for­ward to it if that book com­prised 314 folios of 1,971 papal let­ters and oth­er doc­u­ments relat­ing to eccle­si­as­ti­cal law, all from the thir­teenth cen­tu­ry. Indeed, even many spe­cial­ists in the field would hes­i­tate to take on the chal­lenge of such a man­u­script in full. But what if we told you it comes with illus­tra­tions of demons run­ning amok, knights bat­tling snails, killer rab­bits and oth­er ani­mals tak­ing their revenge on human­i­ty, a dead ringer for Yoda, and the pen­i­tent har­lot Thäis?

These are just a few of the char­ac­ters that grace the pages of the Smith­field Dec­re­tals, the most visu­al­ly notable of all extant copies of the Dec­re­tales of Pope Gre­go­ry IX. When it was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished as an already-illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script in the 1230s, writes Spencer McDaniel at Tales of Times For­got­ten, “the mar­gins of the text were delib­er­ate­ly left blank by the orig­i­nal French scribes so that future own­ers of the text could add their own notes and anno­ta­tions.” Thus “the man­u­script would have orig­i­nal­ly had a lot of blank space in it, espe­cial­ly in the mar­gins.”

“At some point before around 1340, how­ev­er, the Smith­field Dec­re­tals fell into the pos­ses­sion of some­one in east­ern Eng­land, prob­a­bly in Lon­don, who paid a group of illus­tra­tors to add even more exten­sive illus­tra­tions to the text.”

They “drew elab­o­rate bor­ders and illus­tra­tions on every page of the man­u­script, near­ly com­plete­ly fill­ing up all the mar­gins,” adher­ing to the con­tem­po­rary “trend among man­u­script illus­tra­tors in east­ern Eng­land for draw­ing ‘drol­leries,’ which are bizarre, absurd, and humor­ous mar­gin­al illus­tra­tions.”

Bear­ing no direct rela­tion to the text of the Dec­re­tals, some of these elab­o­rate works of four­teenth-cen­tu­ry mar­gin­a­lia appear to tell sto­ries of their own. “These tales have ana­logues in a dizzy­ing vari­ety of tex­tu­al and visu­al sources, includ­ing the bible, hagiog­ra­phy, romance, preach­ers’ exem­pla, and fabli­au” (a humor­ous and risqué form of ear­ly French poet­ry), writes Alixe Bovey at the British Library’s medieval man­u­scripts blog. “Some of the nar­ra­tives have no sur­viv­ing lit­er­ary ana­logues; oth­ers con­sti­tute iso­lat­ed visu­al ren­di­tions of once-pop­u­lar tales.”

If you view the Smith­field Dec­re­tals’ illus­tra­tions here or in the British Library’s dig­i­ti­za­tion at the Inter­net Archive, you’ll also see the medieval satir­i­cal impulse at work. Take the afore­men­tioned, by now much-cir­cu­lat­ed “Yoda,” who, as McDaniel writes, “is prob­a­bly sup­posed to be a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Dev­il as a pro­fes­sor of canon law.” It seems that “legal schol­ars in Mid­dle Ages had a sim­i­lar rep­u­ta­tion to lawyers today; they were seen as slimy, dis­hon­est, and more inter­est­ed in per­son­al gain than in jus­tice.” They might have been good for a cryp­tic turn of phrase, but those in need of benev­o­lent­ly dis­pensed wis­dom would have done bet­ter to ask else­where.

Relat­ed con­tent:

8th Cen­tu­ry Eng­lish­woman Scrib­bled Her Name & Drew Fun­ny Pic­tures in a Medieval Man­u­script, Accord­ing to New Cut­ting-Edge Tech­nol­o­gy

Why Knights Fought Snails in Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts

Killer Rab­bits in Medieval Man­u­scripts: Why So Many Draw­ings in the Mar­gins Depict Bun­nies Going Bad

Medieval Doo­dler Draws a “Rock­star Lady” in a Man­u­script of Boethius’ The Con­so­la­tion of Phi­los­o­phy (Cir­ca 1500)

Why Butt Trum­pets & Oth­er Bizarre Images Appeared in Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts

Make Your Own Medieval Memes with a New Tool from the Dutch Nation­al Library

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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