I’ve had the happy experience of being on the Scilly Isles for the last couple of weeks, surrounded by ancient historical monuments as well as natural beauty, and it set me wondering about how people in the past thought about the older monuments they saw around them.

A couple of examples. On St Mary’s there is an Iron Age village, Halangy (from the early AD period). It now overlooks the stretch of water across towards Tresco, but when the island was first settled, a person standing here would be looking across a wide expanse of cultivated land towards some low hills. But up the hill from the houses, with a space carefully left between, is a much older entrance grave, Bant’s Carn, from either the Neolithic or Early Bronze Age – possibly 2 or 3000 years older. The grave overlooks both the village and the drystone walls marking out ancient field divisions.

How did the Halangy villagers regard that tomb? Was it a place of solace or spiritual protection, either in the ordinary difficulties of life or more specifically from the slow but relentless impact of rising sea levels? Or perhaps a nuisance that called for regular observances but apparently contributed nothing and took up valuable land? Or was its function lost to history by the Iron Age, and it simply stood there as an enigmatic reminder of an older time? Many such old human relics are given names suggesting they were built by giants – apparently their monumental scale made it seem impossible that they could have been built by human ancestors. But at least there would be a sense that whoever built it was living in the same place, sharing something of the same experience of life.

Another example comes from The Ridgeway. The modern national trail follows the middle portion of a very ancient trackway linking the Wash in East Anglia with the Channel coast and River Severn. It was used actively for thousands of years, and scattered along it are all kinds of monuments of the human past. The particular one I want to focus on is Waylands Smithy, a very long Neolithic burial mound beside the track which itself incorporated an older, smaller tomb within it.

Now picture yourself as a person walking the Ridgeway in the Late Bronze Age (c. 1200BC say for definiteness) – perhaps you are carrying trade goods, or going to a festival to celebrate. You camp one night close to Waylands Smithy, and wander over to look at it in the moonlight. What do you make of it? Something like 2000 years separates you from its builders, and presumably the symbolism which was clear when first constructed is obscure to you. Do you even recognise it as a burial place? And if you do, does that recognition bring comfort or anxiety? Unlike the case of Halangy village, you have no possible personal connection with the culture who erected it, and no sense that those people could be your own ancestors.

All this made me think a lot about my own writing, set in the Late Bronze Age in the Levant. Uphill from the town of Kephrath are caves used as family tombs over a number of generations. There is a very direct link between the current occupants of the town and those tombs, and so there is no mystery about them, other than the basic mystery of death. But elsewhere in the land nearby, there are older constructions, to which Kephrath and its occupants have no connection. What would they make of them?

No answers here, but a lot of provocative questions about the past!

Part of the background of all of my Kephrath books is Egypt. I call this the land of the Mitsriy – the name reflects both the biblical and modern Arabic names for that nation, whereas Egypt comes to us via a roundabout route through Greek.

Ancient Egypt was not as a rule interested in conquest per se, in the way that the later Assyrians, Babylonians, or Romans were. They were usually satisfied with securing a buffer area of tribes and cities to both north and south. These vassals rendered tribute of various kinds – goods, valuables, or people for the most part – in return for their local rulers being left in place by the Pharaoh. Loyalty was rewarded by support against enemies, rebellion (real or imagined) by punitive action.

Egypt appointed regional governors – one was at Gaza (Gedjet in the stories) – but control was light. The area was not regularly policed: military action was normally a direct response to some provocation, though now and then flag-waving marches took place. Indeed, rivalry and internal fighting between cities seems to have been positively encouraged, perhaps to prevent wider alliances being formed. A few militaristic pharaohs certainly did campaign through Canaan northwards, even reaching the Euphrates River on occasion. But the purpose here was to establish zones of control with reference to the other Great Kings of the age – Mitanni and the Hittites for the most part – and there was no attempt to set up permanent garrisons in these areas.

This system started to break down around the end of the 19th dynasty (soon after 1200BC). Threats arose from other quarters, including north Africa and across the Mediterranean sea, and weaker pharaohs reduced the level of activity in the provinces. The major trade and defence route along the coast – The Sea Road – was defended all the more heavily, but elsewhere the Egyptian presence thinned out. The last great pharaoh in military terms of this era was Rameses III, who successfully defended Egypt against several attacks by The Sea Peoples and from Libya. Even he, however, decided that the only successful way to defend Canaan was to make terms with the invaders and grant them land. This event is recounted at the end of The Flame Before Us.

It used to be thought that Egyptians disappeared almost overnight from Canaan, at the end of the Bronze Age. This simple picture has been replaced by the understanding that Egyptian decline was a long and complex process. There was a continued – if reduced – presence in Canaan for a few hundred years. To be sure, there was no longer a serious military presence, and Egyptian words and wishes no longer commanded the same respect and obedience that used to be the case. But Egyptian cultural influence – building styles, pottery, systems of government, and habits of language and writing – persisted, and were influential in shaping the future of the kingdoms which emerged from this time, including the Israelites.

It’s always tempting with history to imagine “what-if” scenarios. What if the Egyptians under Rameses II had been more successful at the Battle of Qadesh against the Hittites, and gained control of the whole region up to Turkey? What if a more vigorous foreign policy had held the Sea Peoples back further north, avoiding the necessity to give territory away in the Gaza area? What if the Egyptians had poured more energy into linking up with the civilisations of Mesopotamia, instead of falling behind technologically and (in the end) being overrun? But these are for another day…

Back to ancient history today, with part 2 about boats and shipping. Last time I talked about transport at sea; this time it’s the turn of rivers. I knew very little about this until recently, but in fact the widespread navigability of rivers across non-Mediterranean Europe was a crucial factor in driving the settlement patterns across Europe, from Brittany to the Urals.

The Mediterranean countries have no great network of rivers, so it was natural that communities and nations turned to the great inland sea for long distance transport of heavy goods. But north of the Alps the situation was entirely different. Going up one river as far as possible, then arranging for a short portage to the next river, traders could span great distances with comparative ease.

I had read before of the Viking overland routes down to the Black Sea and Byzantium, but this was only one example among many. There were corresponding journeys all through modern France, Germany, Poland and so on. When the Romans tried to defeat the Germanic tribes by crossing the Rhine into the Teutoberg Forest, they perceived it as a trackless and impenetrable maze. In contrast, the tribes living there saw the rivers as a network of easy transport and communication.

France was readily crossed from north to south as well, enabling the tin trade from the British Isles to flourish. According to a Greek writer, this journey took about 30 days for a group fully loaded with goods. This direct route to Marseilles was much more economical than the sea route around Spain – which is going to be a key plot theme in my next historical fiction book.

Rivers across northern and central Europe drove not only settlement patterns, but also boat technology. Specialised river vessels were developed, quite different in design to the ocean-going ones. They were usually between 10 and 15 metres long, had flat hulls with no keel, and were easily propelled by oar, pole, or dragging from a towpath. They could carry 25-30 people, or about 5 or 6 tons of freight or livestock with a small handling crew. Some might even be called the original ancestors of modern roll-on-roll-off ferries, since the bow section flattened out when beached, so that barrels could be easily shifted on board or off.

This river transport network survived in places up to the Middle Ages. By then, the increasing demand for energy in the form of water mills outstripped the need for navigation, and rivers were divided into sections so that easy transport was blocked. The brief ascendance of canals in the late 18th and 19th century might be seen as the last vestige of this ancient impulse to travel on inland water. But from the Middle Ages, roads, followed by railways, had essentially taken over the task of the rivers to move heavy freight.

Back around 1200BC however, the existence of these river boats was a key factor in human occupation and travel outside Mediterranean Europe, and will surface in some form in my next book…