Category Archives: History

Guest post, Historical fiction, History, Interview

Author interview – Antoine Vanner

Leave a comment

Today I am delighted to welcome Antoine Vanner to the blog, who has kindly answered a number of interview questions. This is a follow-on to my review of Britannia’s Shark a few days ago.

Antoine is the author of (to date) three novels on the life and exploits of a Royal Navy captain of the late 19th century, Nicholas Dawlish.

Cover image - Britannia's Wolf Cover image - Britannia's Reach Cover image - Britannia's Shark

I have reviewed each of these at
Britannia’s Wolf
Britannia’s Reach
Britannia’s Shark

Q. You write about an unusual period in naval fiction – the late 19th century. What first sparked your interest in this era?

A. There are two parts to the answer, the first related to the period and the second to the naval aspects.

Antoine Vanner picture 1I’m fascinated by the political, social and economic progress made by the Western World in the second half of the 19th century and I’m equally intrigued by the gigantic steps taken by science and technology at the same time. Like most Baby Boomers I had grandparents who had been born and had come to maturity in the last decades of that century and from them I learned enough to regard it as “history you can touch”. The scientific progress – achieved by titanic figures like James Clerk Maxwell, Pasteur, Mendeleev, Darwin, Röntgen, Koch, Ronald Ross, Lord Kelvin and a myriad others – transformed understanding of the world and heroic engineers – such as Edison, Tesla, Marconi, Parsons, Bell, Bessemer, Roebling, Greathead, Bazalgette and many more – established technologies that have flourished and spun off further developments ever since.

A parallel revolution occurred in naval technology and it was to have profound political and historic implications not fully recognised at the time. In the 1850s, for example, senior commanders had served in sailing warships in the Napoleonic Wars. Yet officers who entered the service in that decade – such as the later Admiral Lord Fisher – were to create the navy that fought World War 1. They had the vision during their careers to harness developments in metallurgy, hydrodynamics, propulsion, breech-loading artillery, radio, torpedoes and even aircraft. New navies were to arise to challenge British supremacy – those of Germany, Japan and the United States – and in the process contribute to a slide towards the two World Wars in the 20th Century.

Q. The first Dawlish book, Britannia’s Wolf, was set mainly in and around the Black Sea. Britannia’s Reach was largely in South America. The latest, Britannia’s Shark, spans from the Adriatic to the Americas. Is his globe-trotting career typical of officers of his time? How did their experience of other lands and other cultures feed back into English society?

A. It’s remarkable just how much Victorians got about, and not just explorers like Burton, Livingstone, Kingsley and Stanley, but even people we think of as somewhat staid figures. One of my favourite authors, Anthony Trollope, who is always associated with stories of contemporary British society, travelled to Australia, to United States (in wartime and later, crossing the Rockies) the Middle East and South Africa (in Natal just before the Zulu War). Britons and American who could afford it spent holidays in Egypt, and the Holy Land seems to have been thronged with tourists. Some of the most amazing travellers were women – my favourite is Isabella Bird. She was undaunted by rough travel in America, India, Kurdistan, the Persian Gulf, Iran, Tibet, Malaysia, Korea, Japan and China – the list is endless. Her books are massively entertaining and her photographs are superb. And of course military and naval officers got to just about everywhere, either in the line of duty or on private expeditions during leaves of absence.

The result of much of the travel was creation of academic and other institutions in Britain dedicated to the study of foreign culture and languages, and to medical, zoological, botanical and geological research based on insights gained. Those institutions are with us today and in many cases established entire new disciplines.

Q. So, Dawlish is very well travelled, and I know that you are as well. Do you try to personally visit the sites of the stories or rely on more general research? Are the stories sparked by your own travels?

A. The novels published so far, and those in the pipeline, are all based on a combination of a greater or lesser knowledge of the locales and on interest in the historic events in those places in that period. Some of this reflects broad experience of my work and residence, but on occasion it’s necessary to go for much targeted research, either at specific locations, to get the geography right, or to visit museums to see various artefacts. I’ve been to over 50 countries, for residence, work or personal travel, and in every case I’ve made myself familiar with the broad – and sometimes detailed – history. And history spins off stories!

Q. You have often mentioned how the Royal Navy of Dawlish’s era was, of necessity, skilled at working on land as well. Do you see this as a common theme of navies in history? Is there something about a life at sea which promotes a flexible and creative approach to problems?

A. The ad-hoc “naval brigades” who the Royal Navy landed so often, and which ranged in size from a few dozen to several hundred men, were the Rapid Response units of their time. Since radio had not arrived, commanders in remote locations had to be ready to take quick decisions without more senior approval and this bred very self-reliant characters. I suspect that the phenomenon was common in most large navies prior to the invention of wireless. And as regards life at sea then yes, self-reliance is almost a sine qua non. Even today a ship is an isolated, self-sustaining island once it has left port and such self-reliance is needed not only in personal terms, but as regards structure, organisation and discipline. Whether on a Greek trireme or a modern ballistic submarine, each crew member needs to know his or her job perfectly. The price of anything less can be disaster.

Q. Continuing this theme, I have a sense from your writing that you see great continuity between seamen of Dawlish’s age and our own. Looking the other way, do you think this is true of older generations? Would, say, a Napoleonic captain identify with Dawlish? A Viking? A Roman or Phoenician?

A. Externalities – especially technologies – change but human capacities do such much more slowly, if at all. When one reads of the past one is struck by just how professional naval personnel were at all times in the past, seen by the standards of their own time. When one visits a sailing warship like HMS Victory or USS Constitution one is struck by the labyrinthine complexity of their standing and running rigging, by the skill needed to manoeuvre in adverse winds, waves and currents, by the organisation needed to bring the guns into action, sometimes for hours on end. By the standards of the time officers of such vessels needed to be as competent as those on an aircraft carrier today. The same applies to seamen of earlier ages. Given a time machine, and appropriate training opportunities, I suspect that many from the past would come very quickly up to speed on modern warships.

Q. I know that military servicemen have found your writing about war very faithful to their own experience. Have you been caught up in conflict yourself?

Antoine Vanner picture 3A. There is significant military experience in the family, both direct and via in-laws, and some of this very obviously rubs off. I myself have worked in a number of trouble spots and indeed once managed a company in an area torn by a vicious terrorist campaign, in which our operations, and I myself, were targets. One gets used to living with, and planning for, some very nasty risks. And just when I thought it was safe, when I retired about ten years ago, I found myself caught on a personal basis in a murderous attack in Africa in which eight were killed. A 200 yard sprint under AK-47 fire proved Churchill’s alleged statement that “There’s nothing as exhilarating as being shot at – and missed!”

Q. I find your blog http://dawlishchronicles.blogspot.co.uk/ a fascinating compendium of naval history. Could you tell us a little about your research for this and the sources behind it?

A. I thought initially as the blog being somewhere where I could post the odd article, based either on personal experience, or on some aspect of my general historical knowledge, or on information arising from my book-focussed research which I might not use directly in the actual writing. I found it a pity to let the latter go to waste. The response to the blog turned out to be amazing – people really like it and the readership numbers continue to grow. My articles aren’t detailed academic ones, but rather more like the sort of informal story-telling one might indulge in when relaxing with friends. I don’t think I’ve blogged about anything I didn’t know something about before – though sometimes very superficially. Remember that in over 60 years of reading, and with a reasonable memory, one accumulates a lot of information – but the items still often need a fair amount of library and internet research. The occasional very personal pieces – like those I wrote about having toured Syria just before the war there, or visiting the Alzhir Women’s Gulag in Kazakhstan – can be quite emotionally draining to write.

Q. Tell us a little about your writing process – research, drafting, polishing etc.

A. I’m now writing my seventh novel, though only three have been published so far. One of them is a non-Dawlish novel dealing with contemporary African issues. It’s quite a sombre book and reflects personal experience. I’m uncertain as to when and how to publish it. As regards the Dawlish Chronicles I like to have one book at least, and indeed two at present, “on the back burner”. By this I mean that I finish a first draft, correct and rewrite as necessary, then lay it aside while I’m writing the next one. I find that though I don’t read the back-burner novel for the nine months or so that it takes me to write the next one, my subconscious keeps challenging it as regards plot, action and sequence. I jot down any conscious insights also. When I come back to do my next revision after some nine or ten months I find myself reading very critically to start and Imay make very significant changes indeed. The dictum that “writing is rewriting” is always valid and in extreme cases one must be prepared to delete even entire chapters, write new ones, and restructure. The fourth Dawlish Chronicles novel will be getting the full revision treatment in mid-2015, aimed at publication in the fourth quarter.

Q. I suspect that you are well on with the next Dawlish novel, but can’t imagine you want to tell us too much about it yet! Can you whet our appetite by outlining some of the wider political scene that faced the Royal Navy at this time?

A. Given the ramparts of confidentiality that the shadowy Admiral Topcliffe erected around the events in questiob, and despite the cooperation of official archivists and the benefits of the Freedom of Information Act, I would hesitate to answer that one just yet! Some embarrassing incidents are involved for which a once-hostile, now-friendly nation was responsible and I’ll have to tread very carefully. But with luck, I hope all difficulties can be overcome and the full story can finally be told in about ten months’ time!

Antoine Vanner in libraryAnd finally – Thanks Richard for taking the time to interview me! It’s been as much a pleasure to answer your questions as it is to know you and your work!

The pleasure is mine, Antoine! Check out online information about Antoine by following the links below:

History, Writing

The Act of Writing – part 1 – Cuneiform tablets

Leave a comment

I thought that in this new year, I would spend some time writing occasional articles exploring a few of the varied ways in which writing was captured in the ancient near east. Of course, there were comparatively few men – and even fewer women – who could actually read what had been set down, but often the writing itself was displayed publicly. Whether on a temple or a tomb, in many cases the written word was often meant to be seen. At other times, it was a private message, smaller in scale and less demonstrative in production.

Cuneiform tablet with observations of Venus, Neo-Assyrian, 7th century BCToday I want to look at one specific kind of writing – cuneiform tablets. These are usually surprisingly small, and incredibly densely packed with information. One wonders how, in dim light, it was possible to read the contents at any speed. One’s expectation is that the surface will be rough like a brick, but (unless the tablet has been physically damaged over the years) the surface is typically surprisingly smooth.

Physically producing the tablet from clay was itself a challenge – the raw material had to be damp enough to take the impression of the wedge-shaped stylus, but firm enough to retain the shape. The two sides are visibly different – the side originally against the table is almost flat, while the one uppermost has a distinct curved pillow shape. We still use the terms recto and verso for the two sides of a piece of paper – nowadays the only difference is of physical relationship, but once upon a time the “right” side and the “turned” side really were quite different.

Turning to actual writing, the scribe had to work swiftly in order to get the message impressed into the surface as it was drying. Sometimes we see that the last few lines have been squashed together with smaller signs, or else continued round the edge onto the vertical sides of the tablet – better that, than have to stray onto a second piece for just a few signs!

The great virtue of clay tablets is that, if everything goes horribly wrong, they can be softened and reused, so long as you are prepared starting from scratch. But this commits the scribe to a lot of effort, so one suspects that the decision was not made lightly. Cuneiform tablets often contain minor slips and typos – it is possible that a poorly trained scribe did not notice, but it is also possible that somebody chose to let the mistakes slip through the net rather than go through the pain of rework.

Cuneiform tablet with schoolwork, Old Babylonian, about 1900-1700 BCThe most common cuneiform tablet is written using the Akkadian script – a character set where a symbol represents a syllable rather than a single letter. Akkadian was used as an international written form for well over 2 millennia, and on a smaller scale for nearly 3. It was used by different scribes to capture several different spoken languages – exactly like modern English letters are used today – so today’s reader of the tablet has to not only decipher the syllabic signs, but then identify the specific language being used. Another form of cuneiform, using the same technology to produce tablets, is found in Ugarit, on the Syrian coast. Ugaritic employs a smaller sign-list representing a true alphabet, closely related to modern Arabic but of course visually quite different.

Finally, it would not be right to finish this without mentioning a recipe for cuneiform tablet cookies, courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania museum blog – a fine way to practice your writing and then eat your words. Audible books have been making the rounds for some little while, and perhaps now it is the time for edible books…

Credits: I discovered the cookie recipe through Judith Starkston’s excellent blog, and the pictures are served from the British Museum web site.

Historical fiction, History, In a Milk and Honeyed Land, Scenes from a Life, The Flame Before Us, Timeline

Timelines and maps

1 Comment

I spent part of the holiday season exploring a few online tools for visualising the time and/or space of books. There are plenty of these that allow you to hook up a web page to some sort of data source – Google spreadsheets or direct data entry are the favourites – behind the scenes this gets turned into something called JSON which works beautifully with web page displays, but is not very readable… as a user you don’t really care about that though.

For the more technically minded of us, there are freely available code libraries that you can incorporate into your own website (but not into most blogs because of the restrictions that most apply regarding scripts). I will probably look into these sometime as – perhaps inevitably – none of the already-prepared ones quite does what I want. To remind myself, if nobody else, one such library is https://code.google.com/p/timemap/. But more of that another time.

There were two variations I looked at – simple timelines, and timelines which also display related map data for a combined time + space representation. I only considered ones which allowed BC dates since otherwise they would have been entirely useless to me.

Timeline only
Kephrath events - timeline onlyAfter looking at several I ended up with http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/389701/Kephrath-Events/.

Yes I know it is a silly domain name, but that’s what you sometimes get online!

Positive things:

  1. The colour scheme is highly configurable
  2. You can set up different “categories” and use these to colour code the entries – in my case the colour coding is mainly by book, but also with separate colours for historical and biographical notes
  3. There are options to change the way the events are displayed – separate stripes per category, different numbers of vertical bands, etc – even a sort of pseudo 3d display
  4. It is free – at least for a single timeline, though you have to pay if you want to set up multiple timelines

Negative things:

  1. They don’t let you embed the result in your own web page (unless you pay)
  2. The display always opens at the first event, which in my case is well before the events that I want people to start with
  3. There are still things you cannot configure (like text colour)
  4. Data entry gets progressively more frustrating the more entries you set up (since it is all typed directly into text boxes and the like), and I’m not sure there is an easy way to set up a real data source
  5. There’s no map

Timeline plus map
Kehrath events - timeline and mapThere are not so many of these, and I chose http://timemapper.okfnlabs.org/milkhoneyedland/kephrath-events.

This gets closer to what I wanted, but is still not perfect.

Positive things:

  1. The map resizes itself automatically to fit your geographic needs
  2. The integration between timeline and map is pretty good, and you can load the screen at any event you choose
  3. Data entry scales well since it is based on a Google spreadsheet rather than manual entry
  4. It is free
  5. There is an easy way to embed the result into your own web page

Negative things:

  1. There are very few configurable colour options, and in particular all map pointers are the same colour so you cannot discriminate easily between threads
  2. The map itself cannot be configured to show less information, so in particular you cannot hide modern placenames

The problem of modern names, boundaries, etc was one which I faced some years ago with a mobile app to explore early alphabetic developments, and found at the time that ESRI maps, unlike Google, can be configured to show only geographic features rather than human infrastructure. This is where the Google timemap library would come in handy… among other things it allows you to switch between different map providers. And I am sure that you can configure the look just however you want. This can be a project for when The Flame Before Us is finished!

Now those of my friends who write historical fiction could quite easily do something similar here – any date range from remote past into the future can be accessed, and the geography of the planet has – for the most part – not changed so very much over the range most of us write about.

And writers of science fiction or fantasy could fairly easily make use of the timeline aspects of this, though I do not yet know if timeline dates can be configured to say something like “Star Date 12345”. However, the map aspect might be a problem. Some books make use of non-standard geography, like erratically appearing islands (such as Borschland) which, as yet, Google and the other map providers have overlooked.

Other books are set on different planets altogether. I guess a truly dedicated writer with the necessary technical skills could write their own map tile server which would define the necessary worlds (rather like Google have done with their Moon and Mars variants of Google Earth).

So where am I going to take this? Well, I think it is a good way to present something about the book. I will be adding in new bits and pieces as they become available and time permits. And later this year I intend putting in the work to customise the map, colours and so on.

But I also think it needs a bit more than just the raw data. Some photos of relevant places would be nice, or maybe links to book extracts or character studies. The timeline, even when enhanced by the map, is only a first step into a visual exploration of the books.

Blog Hop, History, The Flame Before Us, Writing

The Hunt – Feasting at Ugarit

27 Comments

Helen Hollick Blog Hop LogoIt’s my pleasure today to be taking part in Helen Hollick’s Christmas Party blog hop. Although this was originally focused on Christmas celebrations, several participants, including me, write about places and times where Christmas is unknown. Scroll to the end of the post for the complete list of participants and blog links.

So after casting about for a few culturally-appropriate festivals, I decided to go with an Ugaritic festival, The Hunt. This is suited to the work-in-progress The Flame Before Us, due to be released early next year.

Of course hunting of itself was a regular part of life in the Levant, and much of the time had no particular religious angle. But it seems, from occasional textual mentions and a certain amount of interpretation of archaeology, that from time to time this ordinary secular pursuit was elevated into a sacred ceremony. The perhaps tenuous connection with Christmas is that here in the UK, there has been for many years a custom for landowners to ride out fox hunting over the Christmas holiday. This is typically regarded as senseless and brutal by city dwellers, but is still popular in many rural areas, where it is seen as an essential part of community life and wildlife husbandry. By law nowadays it has been watered down to a less violent version where foxes do not in fact get killed, and a lure rather than a wild animal is pursued. Such measures would be unthinkable in ancient Ugarit.

One of the Ugaritic texts alluding to this idea of The Hunt is The Birth of the Gracious Gods. In one part of this, the goddesses Athirat and Rahmay go out from the presence of the chief god El in order to hunt. The goddess Anat has a hunting bow which features strongly in some other stories. Gods got involved as well as goddesses – usually what one might call “second tier” rather than centrally important deities. Similar ideas are found in texts from other Bronze Age locations in the Levant and Mesopotamia – and indeed across in ancient Greece a little later.

To appreciate the role of The Hunt, a basic threefold division of terrain must be understood. There are populated settlements – cities, towns, and the daughter villages linked to these. A high proportion of the religious literature which has survived focuses on urban life and urban worship. Around these places was the sown land – not just planted fields, but also pastures for flocks. These were regarded as part of a town’s territory and (by and large) were clear of dangerous predators and wild game. Outside that again was the wilderness. This was the province of the wild things.

Our textual record of religious actions to do with the sown land and the wilderness is scant. We are told of sacred processions which go out from the town into these peripheral areas, lay symbolic claim to them, and then return. And the offerings which are recorded are often typical of the zones concerned – dairy produce or domesticated animals on the one hand, and wild animal sacrifices on the other.

The sacred dimension of The Hunt has to be understood from this perspective. Men went out from their homes into the unknown wild places, and, if skill and divine favour coincided, came back again with bounty. Archaeology loosely supports the idea that The Hunt could have a sacred dimension – we find places where considerable numbers of wild animal bones – deer, gazelle, mountain goat, and so on – are found in clusters around altar sites. In terms of the overall diet, such wild food forms a relatively small component, so these finds suggest that from time to time these animals formed part of religious ceremonies.

It may be important that the law code in the biblical book of Deuteronomy specifically allows slaughter of undomesticated animals outside the system controlled by the priesthood – perhaps recognising not only the food value but also a long-standing custom of informal sacred observance. If so, then the practice seems to have attracted the criticism of later – and generally stricter – generations of priests, and the practice is scarcely mentioned favourably in later books. Perhaps the patriarchal story of Jacob and Esau remembers something of this; Jacob is at home in the domesticated world of the sown land, while his brother Esau delights in the wilderness – The Hunt.

Back at Ugarit, we do not know how often, or by whom, The Hunt was celebrated. In The Flame Before Us, I have taken the narrative liberty of assuming that it was not just for the elite, but a male pursuit shared across a broad social range. This would make it loosely analogous to watching sport today, which cuts right across other measures of status and rank. So here following are a selection of extracts from one strand of The Flame Before Us, scattered through the book.

LampTadugari is a high-ranking Ugaritic official, currently a refugee with his wife Anilat and the rest of their family following the sack of their city. Khuratsanitu is a personal guard.

Tadugari turned back again to look downhill. Little eddies of onshore breeze stirred the cloud bank, allowed glimpses of the sea beyond the city. At this distance it looked calm, placid. He wore a confused, haggard expression.

“It was to be the hunt tomorrow. One of the king’s own sons wanted me to ride beside him on the chase, and sit beside him at the feast. I won’t be able to do that now. How will I earn his favour again now that I ran away?”

Anilat stared at him in disbelief, and her voice sharpened in anger.

“How can you be thinking of the hunt? My city is ruined. My mother died, and her body was treated vilely before my eyes. My brother and sister are gone, and I have to believe them dead. Out of all this I have my own three children, and my brother’s two. And all you can talk about is missing the hunt?”

He hunched down under the torrent of words and said nothing. She looked around in exasperation. The hillsides around the hut were empty and desolate, and the west was shrouded and gloomy. It was a bitter place.

…

…

Ahead of them Anilat could hear the two men talking. Tadugari was once again lamenting the hunt that he would not be able to join. Her thoughts filled briefly with a burning rage: was there nothing else to talk about?

To her surprise, though, it seemed that Khuratsanitu had also been a regular participant. The common soldiers apparently had their own part in it alongside the nobility, and all shared alike in the drinking afterwards, regardless of rank. The anxiety that had been building within her for several days suddenly burst out.

…

…

[“Should we not stay in Shalem rather than go on further?”]

“The Mitsriy land is good. But the journey to reach it can be desolate and harsh, depending which way we choose. I hope it does not come to that; better by far to find that Shalem is the safe harbour that we have been looking for all this time.”

“Sir, look, they still have the hunt in the Kinahny lands. You have often spoken of how you missed it: you could enjoy it again here. I do not think the Mitsriy have it, though. I hear they snare fish and birds, rather than hunt wild beasts.”

“Their great kings boast of the hunt. But I have not heard that others in their land go out like that. But see, you and I could enjoy it together again: it would not be me alone.”

“Then, sir, would it be so bad to stay among the Kinahny? Their ways are more like ours than those of the Mitsriy. You would find a place among the nobility here; I could serve with their guardsmen. Should we stop here rather than continue south? Surely it is a long way yet if we kept going.”

Other participants are listed below… please follow the links and check them out! Please note also that some items may not be accessible until Saturday 20th December so be patient.. there is some great holiday reading here.

Thank you for joining our party now follow on to the next enjoyable entertainment…

1. Helen Hollick : “You are Cordially Invited to a Ball” (plus a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/nsodv78
2. Alison Morton : “Saturnalia surprise – a winter party tale” (plus a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/op8fz57
3. Andrea Zuvich : No Christmas For You! The Holiday Under Cromwell – http://tinyurl.com/pb9fh3m
4. Ann Swinfen : Christmas 1586 – Burbage’s Company of Players Celebrates – http://annswinfen.com/2014/12/christmas-party/
5. Anna Belfrage : All I want for Christmas – http://tinyurl.com/okycz3o
6. Carol Cooper : How To Be A Party Animal – http://wp.me/p3uiuG-Mn
7. Clare Flynn : A German American Christmas – http://tinyurl.com/mmbxh3r
8. Debbie Young : Good Christmas Housekeeping (plus a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/mbnlmy2
9. Derek Birks : The Lord of Misrule – A Medieval Christmas Recipe for Trouble – http://wp.me/p3hedh-3f
10. Edward James : An Accidental Virgin and An Uninvited Guest – http://tinyurl.com/o3vowum and – http://tinyurl.com/lwvrxnx
11. Fenella J. Miller : Christmas on the Home front (plus a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/leqddlq
12. J. L. Oakley : Christmas Time in the Mountains 1907 (plus a giveaway prize) – http://bit.ly/1v3uRYy
13. Jude Knight : Christmas at Avery Hall in the Year of Our Lord 1804 – http://wp.me/p58yDd-az
14. Julian Stockwin: Join the Party – http://tinyurl.com/n8xk946
15. Juliet Greenwood : Christmas 1914 on the Home Front (plus a giveaway) – http://tinyurl.com/q6e9vnp
16. Lauren Johnson : “Farewell Advent, Christmas is come” – Early Tudor Festive Feasts – http://wp.me/p1aZWT-ei
17. Lucienne Boyce : A Victory Celebration – http://tinyurl.com/ovl4sus
18. Nancy Bilyeau : Christmas After the Priory (plus a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/p52q7gl
19. Nicola Moxey : The Feast of the Epiphany, 1182 – http://tinyurl.com/qbkj6b9
20. Peter St John: Dummy’s Birthday – http://tinyurl.com/nsqedvv
21. Regina Jeffers : Celebrating a Regency Christmas (plus a giveaway prize) – http://tinyurl.com/pt2yvzs
22. Richard Abbott : The Hunt – Feasting at Ugarit – http://bit.ly/1wSK2b5
23. Saralee Etter : Christmas Pudding — Part of the Christmas Feast – http://tinyurl.com/lyd4d7b
24. Stephen Oram : Living in your dystopia: you need a festival of enhancement… (plus a giveaway prize) – http://wp.me/p4lRC7-aG
25. Suzanne Adair :The British Legion Parties Down for Yule 1780 (plus a giveaway prize) – http://bit.ly/1r9qnUZ
26. Lindsay Downs : O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree – ​http://lindsaydowns-romanceauthor.weebly.com/

Thank you for joining us – please read, enjoy, and leave comments to encourage all the participants!

History, In a Milk and Honeyed Land, The Flame Before Us

So when was Jerusalem attacked by the Israelites?

Leave a comment

One of the more obscure pieces of historical reconstruction of the Israelite settlement of the Canaanite hill country concerns the capture of Jerusalem. Part of the difficulty is that the traces of early accounts have been reworked and integrated into larger narratives by later scribes, for whom the city was profoundly important. They were keen, therefore, to present a national story in which Jerusalem was a major target right from the start. However, the archaeological record of population growth indicates that the central hill country around Shechem was the starting point, with expansion north, west and south from that core. Jerusalem was not central to the early settlers.

Kephrath - banner imageThe raw textual material in the Hebrew Bible bearing on Jerusalem is as follows. Judges chapter 1 has two references. In verse 8 we read

Then the people of Judah fought against Jerusalem and took it. They put it to the sword and set the city on fire.

Thus sounds quite straightforward. But then in verse 21 we find

But the Benjaminites did not drive out the Jebusites who lived in Jerusalem; so the Jebusites have lived in Jerusalem among the Benjaminites to this day.

So a different tribe, and a report of failure rather than success. Joshua 15, while listing the territorial boundaries of the various tribes, has the following in verse 62

But the people of Judah could not drive out the Jebusites, the inhabitants of Jerusalem; so the Jebusites live with the people of Judah in Jerusalem to this day.

So it’s failure again, this time linked specifically to Judah. The uncertainty about these two tribes is logical, since the city was on the border between the lands claimed by them.

Back in Joshua 10 we find a battle record in which the king of Jerusalem was one of several who were defeated in the open field. This chapter – seen predominantly from the perspective of the town of Kephrath, originally on the Canaanite side – forms the background to part of the novel In a Milk and Honeyed Land. The book, however, scales the battle down to a size more typical of Late Bronze encounters than Iron Age ones, and we have representatives of the kings present rather than the kings themselves.

In Joshua 12 we are reminded that the king of Jerusalem was one of many who had been defeated. It is worth remembering as we read this list that the typical city-state ruler of this time would command at most tens of troops, and Egyptian garrisons could effectively control the region with a handful of men. The real issue was not numbers, but military technology and the circumstances of the battle.

After these texts, all from the early days after the Israelite arrival, there is almost nothing until David captures it considerably later, in the book of Samuel. In between we have scant mention of the city, and that purely as a geographical reference point.

What are we to make of this? It seems clear that there was no successful early capture of Jerusalem, despite the upbeat message of Judges 1:8. If there were real attempts to capture the city this early on, they were failures. But should they even be seen as real attempts? Archaeologically, the early Israelite settlement was in small villages scattered in the central hill country. It is not at all clear that the settlers had any interest in cities, except as landmarks to describe regions of control. Only later did the relative strengths of Israelite villager and Canaanite city dweller change sufficiently to make an assault possible. Encounters in the open field, especially when circumstances favoured an ambush or other ruse, were one thing: direct attacks on cities were another.

Archaeological exploration of Jerusalem has been very limited over the years. Clearly it would be highly desirable to know more, but this is almost impossible because of the continuous occupation of the city, and the huge complications arising from the sensibilities of three major religions. So reconstruction relies heavily on textual information, including the rather earlier letters written by Abdi-Heba, king of Jerusalem, to the Egyptian pharaoh.

We have no independent witness to the accounts in the Hebrew Bible that might help reconcile this, so are forced back onto weighing probabilities. My own suspicion is that there was neither the intention nor the ability on the Israelite part to capture Jerusalem early on. The fringes of the city – or perhaps the outlying daughter villages – might well have been raided. Perhaps some houses or storage areas were set alight in anger or frustration, but a serious assault was out of the question. Not only was Jerusalem too powerful for this to be realistically considered, but the Israelites, with small scattered settlements close to the city on almost every side, could not afford to begin hostilities they could not end. Jerusalem would remain solidly Canaanite for a long time. Later scribes, with a different agenda, retold these early skirmishes as though they were larger and more significant, but were clearly unwilling to gloss them completely into overwhelming victories.

The Flame Before Us is set in this period of uncertainty. The cities are, by and large, too strong for the Israelites to face head on. A serious external threat, or the muscle-flexing of one of the regions many city rulers, is altogether too much to be confronted. It is better to avoid conflict rather than face it, unless a way can be found to turn some feature of the ground or the circumstances into advantage.

Extract, Historical fiction, History, The Flame Before Us, Writing

The end of the Bronze Age in the middle east

Leave a comment

This post was prompted by a recent Facebook link concerning battle reenactment societies and the long sword. Quite an exciting thing in its own right, but my thoughts inevitably strayed earlier in time. The long sword is often linked with Viking or medieval times, but there is good evidence that its introduction was a major contributory cause to the collapse of Bronze Age culture in the middle east.

This cultural collapse has had several proposed causes over the years, including mass tribal migration, climate change and natural disasters. The main provocative question is why such factors caused collapse of a social hierarchy this time, when similar issues had been faced and survived before.

Part of the battle between Rameses III and the Sea Peoples
Around 1200BC, all around the eastern Mediterranean, well established cultures fell and cities were sacked. The incoming wave of new people was – just – halted at the borders of Egypt. When society recovered, the former chariot-based elite groups had fallen from power. Chariots ceased to be the dominant battlefield weapon, and became a mere transport vehicle used to convey heroes to the front line or ride in triumph afterwards.

Militarily, two weapons emerged as the new superior choice. One was the javelin, and the other the long sword. The new swords were considerably longer than the previous patterns, and were weighted so as to slash rather than thrust. Together, skirmishing bands and armies were able to defeat the bow-armed chariot riders who had ruled before, and in the process overturned the social order which had elevated charioteers into the nobility. From the Mediterranean shores across to North India, the day of the elite charioteer was over. It was a social change as profound as the slaughter of mounted Medieval knights by peasants armed with the longbow.

Turning to fiction, The Flame Before Us explores this social revolution from both sides. Here’s a brief extract. Yasib, son of a noble family from the fallen city of Ikaret (modern Ugarit) is talking with Nikleos, an older man whose clan is part of the wave of newcomers. Their cross-cultural friendship is in its early stages.

Cover image idea - The Flame Before Us

“In Ikaret, do you train your boys like this?”

“Not really with throwing weapons. Some learn the bow. Some learn to direct the chariot horses, and the best ones train to shoot arrows while riding at speed. Boys from the common families learn to use a spear or the stabbing sword. When the city fell it was at night. They say that traitors opened the gates and set fires near the docks. If we had been able to meet the attackers with chariots the city would stand yet. But they were away from the city, serving the great King of the North along his borderlands.”

Nikleos pulled a face. “That day has gone. I have seen battlefields littered with broken chariots and dead horses, where living men armed with javelins and the long sword mastered them. Against that, a chariot is no better than an ox cart, and is fit only to carry men to the place where they will fight hand to hand.”

Yasib thought for a while, then turned away from the up and down curves of the missiles.

“I was in training to be a runner; a man who keeps close to the chariots in order to protect the fallen on our side and harass those of the enemy. I do not really have the speed for it, but my father wanted me to learn the runner’s discipline before ever I took up the reins. Still less be the bowman on board. But perhaps now I will never be a rider.”

“Why would you want to be?”

Yasib looked at him. “Why not? The rider has a place of honour among men of rank.”

“Look at these boys, Yasib. They are learning the javelin. When they are older they will learn the longsword, but already these boys could defeat a chariot.”

Yasib shook his head in disbelief. “They have no skill with the bow.”

“They do not need it. There are ten boys here. Think of them spread out so that your bowshots would not easily strike them. They throw ten javelins, and even at their age one or two might hit a horse at the walk. Another few years, and most will hit a horse at the trot or the canter.”

“You fight against horses?” He sounded shocked. “What harm have the horses ever done to you?”

Nikleos shrugged. “We fight to win battles. No horse: no chariot. No chariot: no kingdom. Better for you that you never become a rider, perhaps.”

Look out for The Flame Before Us early next year!

Historical fiction, History

All around Africa

2 Comments

A slightly unusual historical post from me today, being about an event over half a millennium later than my normal era. Today I am writing about an expedition commissioned by Pharaoh Necho II, a 26th dynasty Egyptian who reigned around 600 BCE. He is famous for a couple of things, not least being the fact that he was the first pharaoh to cross the Euphrates River since Thutmose III – over 800 years earlier. Sadly the military world had passed the Egyptians by, and by the end of Necho’s reign he had been driven back again, and almost all of their former territories had been captured by the Babylonians.

Replica ship - photo served from http://www.phoenicia.org.uk/
But Necho was more than just an over-ambitious general – he enthusiastically sponsored major building works and exploratory journeys. Perhaps the most impressive of these, and the one which ought to be remembered as one of the world’s great expeditions, was to commission Phoenician sailors to go around Africa. They set off from the Red Sea, and after some three years reappeared through the Straights of Gibraltar to dock at Alexandria. Not all of the journey was at sea – they moored for long enough in a few places to grow crops. The account comes down to us via the Greek historian Herodotus, and confirmed to the ancient world that Africa could in fact be circumnavigated. It took European sailors until 1488 to replicate the rounding of Africa.

Route map - recent reconstruction journey 2008-2010 - image served from http://www.phoenicia.org.uk/
There is general agreement that the Phoenicians were great sailors and explorers. Their homeland was in what is now Lebanon and Syria, but Phoenician colonies were located in many parts of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic coasts of north Africa, Spain and Portugal. The city of Carthage was originally a Phoenician colony which attained considerable influence and power in her own right, until being crushed by Rome. Phoenician and Carthaginian ships certainly reached the British Isles, and there are regular speculations just how far their crews travelled. Did they reach the groups of islands out in the Atlantic? Possibly the Americas? There is no certain evidence of this, but their ships were certainly seaworthy enough for it to be a real possibility.

In fairness one should point out that not all Egyptologists feel that the story is credible. Opinion was similarly divided in the ancient world: Pliny believed it, but Ptolemy did not. Herodotus records his personal disbelief, but does faithfully record evidence that the ships were at very least south of the equator, with the sun at noon to the north rather than the south. Given the knowledge we now have about journeys that the Phoenicians did undertake, and the general robustness of their ship construction, we can certainly say that they could have done it.

Why am I writing about this? Well, I have been reading up about Phoenician shipping as very early research for another idea… the next book after The Flame Before Us is complete!

(Picture and map source – http://www.phoenicia.org.uk/)

Historical fiction, History, In a Milk and Honeyed Land, The Flame Before Us, Writing

So who was Shamgar son of Anath?

4 Comments

“Shamgar son of Anath, who struck down six hundred Philistines with an ox-goad” – Judges 3:31

This particular snippet from early in the biblical book of Judges seems at first sight not much more than a propaganda note about the superiority of the Israelite defenders against the bad-guy Philistine arrivals. But actually there is a lot more here than meets the eye.

Inscribed arrow or javelin head
A lot of the regular discussion circles around whether 600 was intended to really be a literal body count, or is simply an absurdly inflated number chosen to intimidate. And what exactly does ox-goad mean in this text? Was it literally an agricultural implement repurposed for war – something which has often happened through history – or was it a nickname for some other weapon?

There is a lot more to glean from these few words. Shamgar is not an Israelite name, nor even one drawn from the broader Semitic language family. It seems to be Hurrian in origin. If so, the original form was probably Shimigar, where Shimi was a Hurrian sun god. The Hurrians were a prominent elite group through most of the second millennium BC in the middle east, appearing as minor kings, nobility, or warrior leaders. They spread down from the north of Mesopotamia, roughly where the Kurdish lands are today, and flourished for some time before being integrated into the general population at the start of the first millennium and disappearing as a recognisable group.

So was the historical Shamgar behind our text actually an accomplished military leader, named after another nation’s god, with the 600 being killed not personally by him but rather by men under his command?

Anath (sometimes Anat) is the name of a particularly passionate and warlike Canaanite goddess, and in any event is grammatically female rather than male. Biblical commentators have noticed the oddity here – the Hebrews of this era routinely identified a person through their father, not their mother. To resolve this some have proposed that Anath was also used as a common male name, meaning something like “answered“.

There are, perhaps, easier solutions. One is to suggest that in this early stage, some groups who affiliated with the Hebrews really did identify through the mother’s line. Readers of In a Milk and Honeyed Land will know that the four towns I write about there do just this.

Another possibility arose from archaeological discoveries of Bronze Age arrowheads and javelin heads from various parts of the Levant. Many of these have names scratched into them, and “son of Anath” appears several times. (The image above of one of these arrowheads has been supplied by the Biblical Archaeology Society website). For example, we know of one “Abdi-Labit son of Anath“. The title also turns up in Ugarit and even in Egypt as well as Canaan. Now it could be, of course, that Anath was a rather common name after all, and that many ethnic groups really did count lineage through the mother.

But it seems more likely that what we see here is actually the identifying mark of a warrior class. When you had proved yourself in some way you were entitled to call yourself a son of Anath. Human nature being what it is, I am sure that if there was an original band who coined the name and were successful, others would copy it for themselves.

In The Flame Before Us I follow this line. You will meet there a certain Shimmigar, who is a member of a small band of skilled warriors responsible for protecting the northern borders of Ibriym (Hebrew) territory. Find out more in a few months’ time!

History, Poetry, Writing Form

Historical writing and translation

Leave a comment

A couple of posts ago I wrote about the problems of historical dialogue and translation. Today I want to have a brief look at the particular problems of poetry in historical works, and how these are translated. Some of the same issues about translation arise here – for example the question of whether you go for a modern equivalent to an ancient word, or stick with a less familiar but more accurate concept.

Speaking area, Santorini (Thira), Greece
First, an example from Egyptian poetry. Ezra Pound prepared translations quite a few years of some of the New Kingdom Egyptian love poems. These have been generally regarded as lively and engaging, but have had a less favourable response from Egyptologists. In one poem he uses the word “bathing suit“:

My bathing suit of the best material,
The finest sheer,
Now that it’s wet,
Notice the transparency,
How it clings

Now, the word that Pound renders “bathing suit” in its original sense means something more like a robe – in some contexts a soldier’s protective garment, even, though that would probably not be a good choice here! An Egyptologist’s translation of these lines reads:

in a robe of finest royal linen,
permeated with camphor oil.
[… this line unreadable…]

Although the introduction to Pound’s book claims that the text is “based on literal renderings of the hieroglyphic texts into Italian“, very few students of ancient Egyptian would agree that the final result is a literal rendering! Pound is quite obviously presenting a modern re-presentation of an ancient text. The illustrations chosen to go alongside the words blend men and women in modern dress (well, modern for the late 1950s) together with drawings much more like Egyptian wall paintings. Should Pound have done this? Was he right to use a word here that suggests beach relaxation and sensuous bodily enjoyment, or was he wrong to bring in to the poem a word quite alien to its original culture?

Moving on to the Hebrew Bible, here is a single verse from David’s Lament, found in 2 Samuel 1. First, here is a fairly literal translation of verse 20:

Neither declare it in Gath
nor bear news to the market-places of Ashkelon
lest they rejoice – the daughters of the Philistines
lest they exult – the daughters of the uncircumcised.

It is clear that the verse consists of two pairs of parallel lines. The first pair names two Philistine cities, with each line starting with a command not to publish the news of the Israelite defeat there. The second pair uses two parallel expressions for the Philistine women, with each line starting with a warning about the delight they would feel concerning the news.

By way of contrast, here are four recent translations:

New International Version
Tell it not in Gath,
proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon,
lest the daughters of the Philistines be glad,
lest the daughters of the uncircumcised rejoice.

Good News Version
Do not announce it in Gath
or in the streets of Ashkelon.
Do not make the women of Philistia glad;
do not let the daughters of pagans rejoice.

The Message
Don’t announce it in the city of Gath,
don’t post the news in the streets of Ashkelon.
Don’t give those coarse Philistine girls
one more excuse for a drunken party!

New Living Translation
Don’t announce the news in Gath,
or the Philistines will rejoice.
Don’t proclaim it in the streets of Ashkelon,
or the pagans will laugh in triumph.

Clearly the New International and Good News versions stick quite closely to the word order and meaning of the original, with only minor changes. The Good News version chooses simpler vocabulary and sentence structure, in keeping with the translators’ goals, but keeps the pattern given by the Hebrew text. Both versions preserve the parallelism within each pair of lines, between the two town names on the one hand, and the two descriptions of rejoicing women on the other. “Pagan” in the Good News version perhaps suggests a value judgement about Philistine religion which the descriptive term “uncircumcised” avoids (though to be fair this word increasingly came to have a pejorative value in Hebrew thought).

Moving on, The Message keeps the town names parallel, but completely disrupts any sense that the second pair of lines had parallel descriptions at all. It also speculates on the nature of the celebrations – that they involve drunkenness – considerably beyond anything the text has to say. The effect is to paint for the reader a rather blacker picture of the Philistines than the original author chose to write – indeed one with slightly racist overtones.

The New Living Translation makes a fascinating choice. The two pairs of parallel lines are kept, but have been rearranged. The new organisation was presumably reckoned to be simpler for a reader to grasp, as the instructions “don’t tell…” are directly linked to the consequences “or else…”. Moreover, the celebrations are no longer the province of women but will apparently be carried out by the whole population of these towns. From a historical point of view, victory celebrations in this era typically were in fact led by women – a gender difference which, perhaps, the translators did not wish to highlight. In the interest of presenting a simple, clear verbal image, both the specific words of the text and the results of historical investigation are set to one side.

What do we make of this? Bible readers in many churches are often encouraged by speakers to compare several translations in order to get an overall sense of the meaning of a passage, even if a single version is routinely used within services. Generally speaking this is good advice, but the example from David’s Lament shows that actually doing this in the case of poems can be confusing. Faced with this diversity of presenting material, what is the non-specialist reader to do?

For my own part, I would rather grapple with something closer to the original. If an original author has taken the trouble to use a particular word, pattern, or overall form, I want to engage with that rather than be offered someone else’s opinion of what the author might have said if they were living today. But other readers might disagree, and feel that a modern “upgrade” helps them get the point. At very least, as readers we need to be aware how much modern filtering is going on between us today and the original design of the author.

History, Writing

Sex and virginity in the ancient near East

Leave a comment

I read quite a lot of historical fiction, skewed towards the ancient near East (ANE) since that is also the era that I write about. Along with that, I read quite a lot of fantasy or science fiction as well. Both genres seem to attract a lot of writing where both male and female characters are squeamish and culturally embarrassed at the thought of sex.

Now, for the ANE at least, and most likely for a much wider spectrum of places and times, this is a retrospective projection of relatively modern attitudes, rather than an accurate portrayal. After all, most people throughout history have lived in small houses where parents and children share a single room. Their survival depended on a good knowledge of animal husbandry and an awareness of natural cycles. Sex was not a mystery, except in the very human sense that intimacy with another person is always a mystery.

But as well as that, ancient texts spell out the same picture. For example, biblical Hebrew does not have a word meaning “virgin“. Now, it does have a word which later translators chose – and often still choose today – to render as “virgin” – namely, bethulah. But the best analysis of its original sense was “a woman of an age where she could be married but is not” rather than “a woman who has never had sex“. The very fact that a handful of biblical passages go to great lengths to expand the description with extra phrases – for example Rebekah is described in Genesis as “very beautiful, a bethulah; no man had ever lain with her” – should alert the careful reader to the fact that bethulah of itself does not necessarily suggest innocence.

I have read suggestions that a translation which would convey better meaning to a typical modern reader would be “teenager“, although that carries an idea of a specific age band which is foreign to the original. In former days, perhaps “nubile” would have worked, but today that seems to carry the idea of wilful cheerleader-style flaunting of sexuality.

Basically, we do not have an English word which works quite right, and translation choices seem mostly to be based on later Jewish, Christian, or general social views on how women around and after puberty ought to behave. We are faced with a translation based on a sense of morality rather than linguistics.

Egyptian scene – adoration of Anat (British Museum)
Egyptian scene - adoration of Anat (British Museum)

Considerably north of Israel, on what is now the coast of Syria, was the city of Ugarit. This was sacked and abandoned soon after 1200BC, and is a rich source of textual and archaeological material. One of the goddesses celebrated there, Anat, is clearly adult in her actions, and in her authoritative status within the pantheon. A title used frequently for her is betulat (a variant of the Hebrew word). Anat has no husband, betrothed partner, or regular consort. The texts are a little ambiguous as to whether she engaged in sex, but are commonly read to indicate this. Now, whatever your personal feelings about gods and goddesses in the ancient world, they certainly mirror something normative in and representative of their society. So here we have a word-picture of an adult woman, probably sexually active, who is nevertheless referred to as betulat.

Down in Egypt, a considerable number of love poems have been found, mostly from the New Kingdom (roughly 1550-1100 or so BC). The basic presumption of the poems is that young men and women were able to interact with one another and explore one another’s sexuality. There was a significant gap between puberty and settled relationships or marriage. Family and social context provides an obstacle to their interaction, but not an insuperable one. Was all this just wishful thinking on the part of frustrated scribes? That is possible, of course, but it seems more likely that it reflects actual practice for some parts of society.

The voice of the swallow twitters away –
this is his cry:
      “The land is dawning! Get up on your way!”

But don’t, small bird speak thus:
      I found my brother in his bed,
      my soul with sweetness overflowed.

So all in all, the available evidence from the ANE in the second millennium BC is that virginity was not a status to be guarded or prized in a young woman in the rather possessive way done later on, and that sex was not a source of embarrassment. That certainly came along at a later date, at least for some social groups, but is not a universal feature of societies through history. Pregnancy would be a constant background risk, but does not feature as a serious social threat for either men or women: greater social stigma was associated with childlessness. But that is a topic for another day!