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Intro: I dug up my own clay tablets and that was so magical. I think just being there in the desert and experiencing that, being there where I really found myself almost, because you're just in this desert where everything else is on pause. There's no internet. If I wanted to talk to anybody on a phone, I had to stand on the roof of the excavation house. We didn't have any contact with the outer world. It was just us and that was so magical. So for me that was really the moment where I thought this is what I need to do.

Leon Stebe: Irene Sibbing-Plantholt is looking back and forward at the same time. She studies how people experience time in ancient Mesopotamia. And we will talk about her magical moment and about a lifetime - 3, 4, 5000 years ago. Her focus is how life was perceived especially when confronted with illness and death. So here we are in the midst of a pandemic. What was it like back then and what could we learn from this today? Irene Sibbing-Plantholt is an associate at the Einstein Center Chronoi, a center that researches time and time awareness in the ancient world. So welcome, Irene, and thank you for being my guest today.

Irene Sibbing-Plantholt: Thank you for having me.

Stebe: What do you know? How was time experienced during epidemics back then in ancient Mesopotamia?

Sibbing-Plantholt: So they were much more experienced in handling pandemics or epidemics in a way.

Stebe: Than we are?

Sibbing-Plantholt: Yeah. Because they were much more used to being confronted with them. For us, this is really something new that a lot of people have not experienced ever. And just like we have now, they would wanna keep track of it. They're afraid of it, and they are waiting for it to be over. And they didn't have the means that we have nowadays to fight infectious diseases, but they could, for instance, keep distance. In their case, the epidemic wasn't caused by little microorganisms but by deities and what they could do is try and appease these deities that inflicted these.

Stebe: So it was a time of rituals a lot of praying to these deities.

Sibbing-Plantholt: Yeah. But there's also practical things so for instance keeping distance, saying people shouldn't go in each other's houses. Some rough things like people that are living in infectious area shouldn't go out and people shouldn't go in and wait for the last person to die.

Stebe: So this is social distancing in the ancient world?

Sibbing-Plantholt: Yes, but in that way, not to prevent disease, but when it's there not to spread that's the difference.

Stebe: How did the people deal with this situation? You said that there was a high level of uncertainty as well as we have, but today we have apps, we have science, we have Netflix and stuff like that, but nothing close existed at that time.

Sibbing-Plantholt: The sources that we have nowadays on of what happened during epidemics are mostly letters and there's some other slivers of literature - so predictions of what will happen. Let's say, a baby is born and has three feet. This will have these and these consequences, and these consequences can have bearings on the entire countries. For instance, an epidemic. And then it says there will be an epidemic - people should not go into each other's houses. So there we give these little tiny pieces of information. But letters are the most interesting because they report on current affairs. So it will be, hey, in this town there was an illness going on. This is the current state and that will be written on clay tablets and that then will be sent with a messenger to, for instance, the king. They will report, hey, in your kingdom and this and this area, there are diseases and it's spreading rapidly. Yeah. In one day it went from 1 to 10 people. People are dying. This is the current situation.

Stebe: And these letters are your sources to know what happened back then?

Sibbing-Plantholt: Yes. Of me and my colleagues.

Stebe: Wow. So what do you do with this with this sources?

Sibbing-Plantholt: Yeah. So maybe it's good to tell you, like, what my sources look like. So this is, of course, not written on paper. We're very lucky because of that because they're preserved. They're written on clay, on clay tablets. And, yeah, we have clay tablets that are 5000 years old and that record how people lived back then. And these letters are part of that. And so these can be very, like, little I said a little peeks into life life back then, 2000, 4000, 5000 years ago. And I'm actually specialized in letters and have done a lot on medical letters also under the writing how doctors are treating their patients.

Stebe: How do you feel? How do you explore or feel how the time was perceived back then?

Sibbing-Plantholt: That's a hard question because just the way, like, we do, there's different ways to perceive time. And my focus is - I'm interested in illness. I'm interested in how people perceive their lifetime and how they wanna extend it and keep it healthy. And so, therefore, my research project within the Einstein Centre, is on the perception and concepts of lifetime. So that is something I focus on. How did they think about their lifetime? Where does it start? Where does it end? Is it measured? How is it measured? Are there parts of life that are more important or less important? Is it better to be young or is it better to be old? Do you lose your humanity when you're at a certain stage? For instance, when you're old and you first start to forget things. Does it make you less human? These are the things I find interesting and it's hard because we have we have hundreds of thousands of clay tablets that are stored in museums all over the world, some in private collections. And where do you start if you have a question like that? This is also what we do at the Center. It's people like me that are studying the ancient world. We have so much data that we don't always have to write questions. And at Chronoi, we have a platform where people from natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities come together and then we come up with questions. So questions could be how is time perceived and how do they think about, lifetime? Did they measure it? Did they find it valuable? And then I go to my sources and I dig through them and I see if I can find something. It's not that I have 20 sources of people saying this is how I feel, but I have some and I draw these together and then try to weave an answer.

Stebe: That's fascinating. What could we learn from Mesopotamians? What do you learn from them?

Sibbing-Plantholt: What I learned from them - what I learned from them is that it's very important to understand the other. We, a lot of times, have an idea about people that, we cannot identify with. Mesopotamians are removed from us geographically and in time. So what do we have in common with these people? People like to often think about them as exotic or obscure. What happened back then doesn't have any bearings on us, but it actually does. There's lots that we have in common. For instance, time. And we all have a short lifetime. Doesn't matter if you live now or if you live then. We're all confronted with only being able to live for a certain amount of time, and it makes us very vulnerable. Seeing the humanity in others, also people that lived 5000 years ago that I have no connection with. Seeing that we have something in common - that we're all humans, and it helps to have empathy for others and understand other people. And that's what they teach me: that we have a lot in common. We are all different, but we have a lot of things in common. So that's basically the bigger picture of why I do this, why I'm interested in ancient Mesopotamia. And when it comes to concretely learning something from them - what they do is, I guess, living more in a moment. That is interesting, I think. That, because they couldn't do anything against it. They also longed. They also looked forward to things or looked back at things or wished that they would have made it to a certain point in life, and they couldn't. But they also have to live more in a moment. Because for instance, with pandemics where we have something to look forward to, have a vaccine or there's an end coming, they didn't have that. So what can they do? They cannot be living towards Summer 2021 when the pandemic will be over, where I am with my head since March. And for them, this was what it was. And they had to just deal with the situation in that very moment.

Stebe: And we get a new perspective.

Sibbing-Plantholt: Yeah. I have an example if you like. There's an example from a prayer from a man to his god, and so this is the copy. So we read clay tablets, and we have these three-dimensional objects. And to read them, we copy them. We make a copy, and then we translate it. So this example says: it's a prayer from a man to his god and he's lamenting that he's gonna die. He feels like he's gonna die. Things are not going well for him. And then he says: I have reached wealth, precautiously achieved my goal, but old age has confined me to my bed before my time, and I weep because I did not experience the beauty of my life. Like, that is something that my father could say. This really brings you close to somebody like that.

Stebe: So it seems that you you think differently about time now.

Sibbing-Plantholt: Yeah.

Stebe: With your research.

Sibbing-Plantholt: Yes. And also when you research lifetime, you research death. That's a big topic for me too. I've written a lot about, emotions about lifetime and the end of it. And there I've learned a lot too - in the way they think of death. So for them, death is something they personify so that they get a better grip on it; in a way we do that too. And we do it in art and we do it in speech and we talk about death coming near. They do that too and they're afraid of it, but they also accept it in a way. There's also this beautiful acceptance that it's gonna happen and there's one letter that I have, where somebody reports on the death of somebody's son, it's about a man who's supposed to show up for work, but he can't because, unfortunately, Death - the Lord of Mankind - has taken his son away. And so the Lord of Mankind! We cannot do anything to death. He in a way, he controls us. And most of the time, he's not there, but he can show up whenever he wants. And this is a a reality that we have to accept, that none of us is invincible, and death can come anytime. And death has really grounded me, when I think about life and death.

Stebe: You need to ask different.

Sibbing-Plantholt: Yeah!

Stebe: You need to ask different. What is different in your research?

Sibbing-Plantholt: Well, what's different in my research in Assyriology in general, Assyriology being the studies of the Ancient near-East, is that we're mostly focused to think about long term development and, developments of state and development of writing and scholarship and science, these longue duree things. And I think I like to really focus on people.

Stebe: So personal stories?

Sibbing-Plantholt: I really like personal stories. Yes. That is what I focus on. So this started already when I was researching illness. I'm looking at medical reports and how doctors report on their patients, and through these reports, try to see the patient behind it. I really like personal accounts, like little micro history. Things that bring me closer to these people. And not everybody does that. Not everybody can do that. And in the sense of research questions, others have ones that force them to draw on bigger processes, but this is something that I really like to focus on - social history. Social history.

Stebe: I guess I'm not the first person who's asking you why you're doing that. First, you wanted to be a teacher. Right? And now you're an Assyriologist.

Sibbing-Plantholt: Yeah. Yes.

Stebe: How come?

Sibbing-Plantholt: That's a good question. So from very young on, I was interested in the ancient world. And I remember this book in the bookshelves and it's called "Back to the Olympus", and it has all these stories about Greek and Roman heroes and I loved that. So my dad really exposed me to these things, and I studied, of course, classical history then in high school. But there was always also this idea that I really wanted to teach. So what I then did after high school is I took a year off. I worked in an office job, and I was thinking, what do I really wanna do? And I immediately started missing research. So I started to just, sort of read up myself, and immediately knew that by the end of that year, I really needed to go back to university. And back then or there still is a study called "Oudheidkunde" in Amsterdam, Ancient Cultures, and I wanted to do that. And I was gonna study Greek and Latin. That was what I wanted to do. And teaching was at that point, something that I thought maybe I can do at another time. And also, knowing now, it's also a part of your job as an academic, but I didn't know anything about that back then. And there was this intro class, they presented this curious writing in these new languages that I had never heard of, and I was immediately passionate about this. Like, I need to do this! Like, this is something completely crazy! This is a new script. This is a new language. So I started to take these classes instead instead of Latin, and I loved it. And I was good at it. And my teacher, after 3 months, said: Guys, I'm gonna be gone for a month. My teacher, Frans Wiggermann, who still is a very dear mentor of mine, he went to Syria. He said: "I'm not there for the whole month. I'm in Syria." I was like, what? This is in 2003. "I'm in Syria." I asked: "What? You go to Syria to look at these clay tablets?" And then he said: "Yes. I do that every October, and then I'm part of an excavation." And I said: "I need to do that." So I signed up, and that August - the following August, I was allowed to come on the excavation. And for 3 months, I was in Syria. I was there where these things happened. I saw the things that they used to see. And the next year, I came along again and I dug up my own clay tablets and that was so magical. I think this being there in the desert and or the steppe, experiencing that, being there, really convinced me. So as soon as I got back from that excavation, I switched to full Assyriology, in Leiden.

Stebe: And this was your "WOW" moment?

Sibbing-Plantholt: That was my "WOW" moment. Being there in Syria - it was also a weird thing about time, there was also a weird sense of timelessness there. Where I really found myself almost because you're just in this you're in this desert where everything else is on pause. There's no Internet. If I wanted to talk to anybody on the phone, I had to stand on the roof of the excavation house and sort of hold my hand up to get any service. So we didn't have any contact with the outer world. It was just us and the people that we study, and that was so magical. So for me, that was really, the moment where I thought - this is what I need to do.

Stebe: Do you ever feel moments of doubts or setbacks?

Sibbing-Plantholt: No. Yeah. I think academia is really... is a really hard career path. I've been doing this for for 17 years, and I've been very lucky. I've always had a job. I was able to do my PhD at the University of Pennsylvania. I studied here in Berlin, my Masters, then I went to Philadelphia where I worked for a year and then I got here. Most of my friends and colleagues, they're wonderful, they're fantastic, they're brilliant, but we can't get jobs. They are just simply not there. So it is a mix between passion and perseverance to get where you are - and a lot of sacrifices. And there are moments where you're wondering, like, do I still wanna make these sacrifices? And, I, again, I'm very lucky. And so far, I don't have anything to worry about, but you always need an exit strategy and that is also very tiring. So that is hard. So the reality of being an Assyriologist is not always pretty, but what we do is just so much fun, because it's really hard to step away from it or say, like, I prefer a constant permanent job somewhere, when on the other side I can be reading these tablets!

Stebe: Live the moment, yourself.

Sibbing-Plantholt: Yes. Very much. That's a very good advice. Like, you never know what's gonna happen. I never thought I would be sitting here. When I finished my PhD, I never thought I would be sitting in the Einstein Center Chronoi 3 years later doing a podcast with you.

Stebe: So with the Einstein Center Chronoi, in what kind of circumstances you are working here?

Sibbing-Plantholt: At the Einstein Center Chronoi, we have a basic team. So we have 3 directors and 3 assistant of these directors, and I am one of those. So we work together and work very closely with my 2 colleagues. And then we have fellows in the house. So every year we invite, a fellow colleague or group of fellows that come and work here at the Chronoi house and work on their own research on time within their discipline. And then we have research projects and we come together during workshops. We have regular Chronoi Talks as we call it, sort of a lecture series and then workshops that we organize. We exchange and talk about our questions about time, and we learn what kind of questions they ask, which we then can use for our own research. I had, organized a workshop, "Rethinking a Lifetime". And there, I had fellows - psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists, Egyptologists, all these people from different fields coming together talking about how they would study a lifetime. That gives great ideas, very innovative and unusual ideas that otherwise would not be there, or questions that I otherwise never would have asked.

Stebe: What do you do when, for example, you're not knowing what really happend? You are not able to connect the dots or the pieces.

Sibbing-Plantholt: That's frustrating. That happens a lot. Just with my sources, I have to connect a lot. Because a lot of these clay tablets are broken. So you have to fill in the blanks there already. And that's where it starts. And then you ask a question. And and as I said, I have tons of sources, but the answer is not always there, I don't even know if I'm gonna find anything. For instance, I?ve written something on death and emotions, the way grief and sadness were expressed. And I was wondering if most of the time, grief and sadness are expressed with sound. Are they ever quiet when they're grieving? That is something I was interested in. And then I look through all these texts to find something. And, of course, I go in first to do words for for "silence" or "quiet" - then I go through all these texts and see if there's ever a connection to death or sadness. And I can spend a week on that and find nothing. Yeah. That happens.

Stebe: And did you find something?

Sibbing-Plantholt: In this case, I didn't. No. Sadly. Well, there is a sense that silence means death. But I didn't find anybody stating that they were silent because somebody died. So they can have a passive gesture, like laying on the ground or sitting down, but I haven't heard anybody basically not speaking anymore. So maybe. I'm not done looking for it yet, but at this point, I haven't found anything yet. You don't even know if you're gonna find the needle in the haystack. So it's sometimes really frustrating. Also, really fun because you always find other things when you're doing that.

Stebe: You need to learn, that's what I'm learning now, more about our ancestors. Because of this, we are able to understand better our life today. Is that what what is your approach as well?

Sibbing-Plantholt: Yes. Yes. And our fellow humans, you know, in a time of a pandemic and other sad things like the death of George Floyd, where we all have to think about how to live with other people and how we're all vulnerable. And what I really learned is, that no life that is less important. People are dying of Corona. We cannot say this person deserves less of a treatment than another person. That is, of course, a very current issue. Right now, we have things under control, but when it spikes, then who is getting the treatment for who is the IC bed? But there is no life less valuable. I feel really called because of this difficult time, where a lot of us are confronted with illness and death, called to empathy. And as I said, I kind of learned through seeing the human in the clay tablet.

Stebe: And what is your top number one wish for your study, for your research, for your scientific work? Is there a special task or a special goal you have?

Sibbing-Plantholt: Oh, right now, I'm in the middle of finishing, preparing my, dissertation for publication. So it's about to be ready and it's about to be sent to the publisher. That is right now my first goal, getting this book that I've worked on for 10 years. This book on healing deities and healers in Mesopotamia. To get that out, that would be such a relief and an accomplishment to finally have my book on the shelf and be done with that. I'm just thinking in the present. This is in the present what I, really, really need and want to finish.

Stebe: So you will try to learn more from our ancestors?

Irene Sibbing-Plantholt: Yes.

Stebe: So that's your passion.

Sibbing-Plantholt: Yes.

Stebe: That is certainly obsession.

Sibbing-Plantholt: My almost an obsession. My my family members will certainly agree with calling this an obsession. You do get really sucked into it, and - it's hard to let go. So you just continue it. And for me, what keeps me directed, what I really wanna do is just contribute to our understanding of this fascinating society. And that is what my goal is for the future, just to make it also more accessible to others, hopefully. So we are not always the most accessible discipline. As we talked about, you need to know a lot of languages to be able to access these sources, and that makes it complicated. But just bringing it out into the public is really important to me. And there comes the teaching again too. I really love to teach. I've worked in the States. I've worked with multiple schools where I would go in and teach modules on Mesopotamia, and I'm doing another one again this fall online. So that really gets me excited.

Stebe: And it's about a connection between the past and the present.

Sibbing-Plantholt: Yes.

Leon Stebe: That's what you are doing.

Sibbing-Plantholt: Yes. Yeah.

Stebe: And between humans in general! And that's what I learned from this conversation. Thank you very much.

Sibbing-Plantholt: You're welcome. Thank you for having me.

Stebe: My guest today, Irene Sibbing Planthold. She's a research associate at the Einstein Center Chronoi. And my name is Leon Stebe. Thank you for listening to this episode of AskDifferent, the podcast from the Einstein Foundation. I hope you will tune in next time. Until then, good bye.