How would you be living in the Assyrian Empire at this stage in your life? Well, I'd be dead. If I had lead the same life that I have been leading, I'd be dead because of appendicitis, childbirth, you have it. At my age, I would probably be dead, either through natural causes or having been killed in a far off campaign, or perhaps even in a coup against the king himself. I think there's a fairly decent chance that I would have died in childbirth, or of some other disease because while there are many magical tablets that survive, I'm not convinced that the medical advice that they gave would have been incredibly life saving. At this point in my life, well at this point in my life I'd be dead. The life expectancy in the ancient world wasn't all that long. Generally maybe into their 40s or so. I mean yes, if I'm a astrologer at the royal court, my diet is going to be better and things like that, I might reach into my 50s or so. And yes there are some who live much longer but life expectancy--much, much shorter than today. So yeah. I'd probably be dead at that point, at this point. Well I think by this time I would be considered, if I were still alive, I would be considered a very very old man. Because I'm in my 60s and life expectancy in all pre-modern societies was much lower than it is today. Which is not to say that archaeologists don't sometimes excavate burials of very elderly people but that is the exception rather than the rule. How would I live? I am 43 years old so perhaps I would be a very old man, so I would suffer a lot from illnesses and maladies. And but I would enjoy it, perhaps being a scholar, I am a scholar at university in our period, so perhaps I would be a scholar or ritual expert in the Assyrian world. It would be very, interesting but I would feel my old age. I would need a chariot, a number of servants, male and female. And… the problem of polygamy has never been solved - at least one wife and a nice house in the capital and the possibility to go up and down, follow the king in his ceremonies. The king had a very active ceremonial year and religious year. He had to go inaugurate the temples and palaces. I would like to be in the retinue of the king and and be praised and be in his attention all the time. Well, I’ve already said that if I were to live in Assyria, I would probably live there as a scholar. And well I don't know of course, but at my point in life, considering the information we have about the living conditions of these people, I might have a somewhat mixed kind of life? Clearly these scholars had a lot of prestige They had access to the court if they were good, and that would make my life as a scholar potentially exciting. They are often, it seems were not particularly well-off. We have a number of letters that compared, for example, the house of the chief scholar in Nineveh to a pigsty and saying that even, that even a donkey wouldn't want to enter it. It doesn't sound so great. So at this point in my life I would probably be in my mid-career. I would have finished my studies some ten years ago and I will be devoting all my energy to, on the one side counselling the king and on the other side, plotting against him. I'd like to be a teacher, to educate and support particularly girls and women. Though we know very little about the education of women. Well the answer to that depends on what role I was born in to in Assyria. If I was a member of the ruling elite, I'd be approaching the end of my career and looking forward to retiring in that villa in Tushhan. But If I was in the lowest strata, the evidence is that life was very difficult and short, and I probably wouldn't be here to talk about this at this time. So I'm sure that if I were still alive, I would be probably living on a kind of- well I imagine I would be living on some sort of rural estate. If I had been in the court and I had, achieved a certain level of distinction, of wealth, I could be retired in a nice country estate in Zagros mountains, maybe raising some Median horses. Well I'd probably a bit of an old man in the ancient Neo-Assyrian Empire, So perhaps at this point in my life I'd want to go retire to the Phoenician coast somewhere, Have my little summer holidays home or something like that. Or maybe go to the mountains of Anatolia - have my winery and my villa and retire there for a while and be a landowner who propagates crops for the Assyrian overlords somewhere. Perhaps that would be my role at this point in my life in the ancient Assyrian Empire. But let's just assume I'm not dead. Then I'd still be a middle-aged woman or in ancient Assyria, a very elderly woman. I would probably live in my son's household. My son would hopefully have married a nice woman who would put up with her mother-in-law, who would be required basically to spend the rest of her life in the household of her son. My husband would presumably be dead by now. And I would hopefully enjoy living with my son and his family. If not, I'd be… tough, I'd say, tough. Had I survived, to the age of twenty three. I like to think that, I would, at this point, probably be a prophetess. Maybe claiming that Esarhaddon is not the rightful king, in Arbela, yes speaking as the godess Ištar. This is hard to say. Perhaps I would live in Assur and would pursue another occupation because there were no archaeologists. Definitely, I would be glad if I encounter old findings or objects. This could happen frequently, for many Assyrians lived in settlements, which had already been inhabited for thousands of years.