#i had fun with it though!

[xejune]

little request for @bookcalanthedaily of her calanthe & ciri (+ an additional tiny comic), thank you for your patience! ✨

sketches + process shot underneath the cut!

[kareenvorbarra]

The Sidosians, the Medes, and the History of Ianna-Ir

I wrote a post a while ago where I compiled all the different demonyms and other descriptive words that the books use to describe the Medes. This post is about a different group who are not mentioned nearly as often: the Sidosians.

There are only three textual mentions of the Sidosians in the entire series (if you know of another one please tell me!)

"It’s very old," the queen said with a smile. "This was an Attolian megaron, a fortified room on a hilltop, when your emperor's present palace was an empty plot of land in the Sidosians' territory."

The Queen of Attolia (ch 14)

He taught me to write with a pen as well as with chalk, and one day he taught me numbers—not the marks I already knew, but Sidosian numerals.

The Return of the Thief (vol 1 ch 8)

Not since Nussam led his forces across the isthmus to conquer the Sidosian empire had the world seen an army that size.

The Return of the Thief (vol 2 ch 1)

From these, we know that the Sidosians controlled Ianna-Ir before the Medes did, and that they invented the number system currently used in the Little Peninsula. That's pretty much it.

However, I get the impression from the books that the area around Ianna-Ir has a history very similar to that of ancient Mesopotamia: a region inhabited for thousands of years and controlled by various culturally-related empires. The Mede Empire seems to be the most recent of these, though it is clearly very well-established and has been around for a long time. Kamet's map from Thick as Thieves gives us a hint that the aforementioned Nussam from the other side of the isthmus was also the Mede ruler who conquered the Sidosians:

On this map, there is a city called Sidusia on the river, between Ianna-Ir and Iannis. If we assume that Sidusia is related somehow to the Sidosians, they probably originated in this general area. On the other hand, there is only one region labeled "Mede," on the opposite side of the isthmus from Ianna-Ir and Sidusia. This makes me think that the Medes originally came from the other side of the isthmus, and that the area around Ianna-Ir was not originally part of the Mede homeland.

(Note that Gitta's map does label the Ianna River region "Mede," as well as the region to the west of the isthmus, but it's a later map made by someone who is probably much less familiar with Mede history and geography than Kamet. I'm guessing that the label is meant to indicate that the area has been part of the Mede Empire for a long time. Gitta's map also has a smaller regional label of "Sidosia" to the southeast of Ianna-Ir, but there is no city called either Sidosia or Sidusia. The scale and orientation Gitta's map is also different enough from Kamet's that it can be difficult to compare the two.)

Kamet has also added a parenthetical label beneath Sidusia that reads "The New Palace." There is no reference made to this palace in the book itself, or anywhere else in the series that I know of, and it's obviously not the primary palace of the Mede emperor, which we know is in Ianna-Ir. The New Palace might be an ongoing contruction project of the emperor's, or a smaller palace that was completed more recently where he sometimes stays. My silly pet theory is that the New Palace was the name of the Sidosian ruler's residence at the time of the Mede conquest, and everyone just kept calling it the New Palace even after the Medes built their own palace in their new capital city.

While the emperor's palace in Ianna-Ir may be relatively new, the city itself is much older. The region around the current Mede capital of Ianna-Ir has a cultural continuity that predates the Medes, and possibly also the Sidosians. Kamet tells us in Thick as Thieves that Immakuk was the king of Ianna-Ir, and the stories about him and Ennikar appear in a number of ancient texts:

"You said you were reciting from the first tablet," said the Attolian. "There are more than a hundred in the temple of Anet alone," I said. "No one knows how many there are altogether. Scholars argue about it. Some of the tablets are retellings of other tablets, only differing in style. Sometimes parts of the story change."

The current Mede gods are also much older than the empire: Anet, Shesmegah, Tenep, Ne Malia, Prokip and the Queen of the Night all appear or are mentioned in the Immakuk and Ennikar stories, and all of them are worshipped by the present-day Medes.

The tablets were written in Ensur, a language that is still studied but no longer seems to be spoken. Kamet says that Ensur is "from before the Mede," but doesn't specify whether or not there were other dominant languages in between. It's possible that Ensur was the language of the Sidosians, but the words sound unrelated enough that the speakers of Ensur might have belonged to a group that controlled the region before the Sidosians.

Immakuk is a fairly a clear parallel to Gilgamesh, who was king of the Sumerian city of Uruk, and the in-universe history of the Immakuk stories maps very closely onto what we know about Gilgamesh. The oldest stories about him are written in Sumerian, but the first combined version of the Epic of Gilgamesh is written in Akkadian, the language of the Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian empires that controlled Mesopotamia (including Sumer) at various times. Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, and Babylonia all had a great deal of cultural overlap with each other, including gods and writing systems. Perhaps Ianna-Ir and Sidusia were once ancient city-states like Uruk and Akkad, and it was the Sidosians who happened to be in power when the Medes arrived.

Even though the Medes are likely not the original inhabitants of the city, it seems clear to me that Ianna-Ir, its gods, and its heroes are deeply entrenched in Mede culture by the events of the series, even if the Medes had to cross the isthmus to get there. They might have had different gods when they conquered the Sidosians, and gradually adopted the religion of their new empire's heartland. It's also possible that Mede culture had long been influenced by the ancient stories of their neighbors and that they already worshipped some of the same gods. Given the history of ancient Mesopotamian religion, the second option might even be more likely.

[puppyeared]

filipina miku!! my mom helped me with her outfit ^_^

[psymachine]

the code-switching kills me

[chloesimaginationthings]

This could be a kart if FLAF wasn't fucking around..

[saradiation]

Hey it's that time of the year again :D

HAPPY 413! 🎂

[menlove]

can't do this one as a poll bc there's endless choices but if you're in college/university or went to college/university what's been the most fun/enriching class you've had?

[glacier-shrimp]

Some flowers for you ❤️

[chiptrillino-art]

(ID in ALT text)

Howl!AU zukka = me going all out with zukos outfit, and shiny silver sokka hair! you perhaps already saw the first part of it in this post here LINK and like past me predicted... the day to post what i have has finally come...

[saltedbiscuiit]

Apple Zai

[machinerot]

[wuntrum]

2025 horror pin up calendar!!

print version | digital (/print it yourself) version

a labor of love, truly <3 prepare for the new year with 12 suggestive (and silly) horror characters :) featuring characters from: american psycho, bride of re-animator, the evil dead, hannibal, jason x, frankenhooker, alien, an american werewolf in london, jennifer's body, saw, the thing, and scream! to see the full specs of the calendar, check out the pages above!

[cup-o-stars]

All Straw Hats!

(New Images: Chopper, Franky, Brook, Jinbei)

This was ultimately quite fun and made me push my colors harder than I have in a very long while! This last batch was definitely my favorite.

[chalkrub]

kajsa my latest nefarious girlie, sporting the latest fashion (wearing her family members' pelts and carrying around her enemy's head on a stick)

[wardingshout]

Zelda goes mushroom girl

[chloesimaginationthings]

Michael Afton wishes he had FNAF Movie Mike's life,,