Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download audio file (ishtar.mp3)

at grabthar

Syrian Guy: There. What happened there? You know?
Mark: You were talking about Ishtar. The old Assyrian goddess.
Syrian Guy: Ishtarte. Ishtarte.
Mark: Ishtarte. Yeah.
Syrian Guy: She was the goddess of the sun. The sun-goddess.
Mark: Right. This is in ancient Assyria.
Syrian Guy: Ancient Syria and there was Baal.
Mark: Yeah.
Syrian Guy: Baal too. There were like a few gods. You know?
Mark: Yeah.
Syrian Guy: There were even older gods. One of them was (phew!) I forgot but they were really old (huh!) like the Babylonians and old stuff.
Axel: I heard that the Carthaginians worshiped a god called Baal.
Mark: Ishtar Astarte.
Syrian Guy: Where?
Axel: The Carthaginians.
Mark: That was a colony of Phoenicia.
Syrian Guy: They were Phoenicians too.
Mark: Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
Syrian Guy: So they had to worship the same gods.
Mark: They had Baal, Ishtar, Astarte.
Syrian Guy: Hani-Baal! Hannibal. You know Hannibal?
Mark: Hannibal. Yeah. yeah.
Syrian Guy: He is from there.
Mark: Ah right. Ok. The name is connected.
Syrian Guy: Yeah. And he went to…anyway…You have seen the movie? You have seen the movie about him?
Axel: Ah, N..
Mark: Hannibal?
Syrian Guy: Yeah, Hannibal. The real Hannibal, not Hannibal the…
Mark: The historical Hannibal.
Axel: Oh yeah. Yeah.
Syrian Guy: Not that movie, the horror movie: Hannibal.
Mark: Hannibal and the elephants.
Syrian Guy: So yeah? Where were we?

Tags: assyria, baal, carthage, comprehension-questions, conversational-style, daoud, hannibal, history, interjecting, interrupting, intonation-questions, movies, past-simple-tense, phoenicians, pre-islamic-religion, present-passive, present-perfect-tense, present-simple-tense, Real Conversations, relative-clause, religion, syria, which-one