Category Archives: History

History, Review, Writing

Three geeky review snippets

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Well, three snippets for today. Full reviews will follow on Amazon etc but I am a bit short of time today.

Cover image - The End of the Bronze Age
First up is Robert Drews’ The End of the Bronze Age which of course I have blogged about a couple of times before. I have now finished this so it’s time to draw it together. Basically my feeling is that Drews makes a good case for his principal point, which is that the collapse of almost all of the major Late Bronze civilisations around 1200BCE (which Drews simply calls The Catastrophe) was primarily the result of changes in military technology and tactics. Not everyone will agree with this, and Drews is happy to acknowledge that factors such as climate change, drought, migration, natural disasters such as earthquakes, and so on contributed to the collapse in particular locations. However, his most persuasive point is that these factors cannot have affected the whole of the eastern Mediterranean at the same time, and also that the great Late Bronze empires had faced these challenges before and overcome them.

His military explanation is built around an exploration of methods of warfare before and after 1200. Before, major powers (even minor city states) fought battles using elite bow-armed chariotry, supported by youths (called ‘runners’ in several traditions) who looked after their own and finished off the fallen enemy. Massed infantry formations did not exist as an active force, only as static defenders, and cavalry were used for scouting and pursuit rather than fighting. After the Catastrophe, infantry ruled the battlefield, having worked out how to neutralise the effect of the chariot arm. Weapons changed accordingly, with new designs of swords and javelins sweeping around the Mediterranean within a decade or two.

I am sure the debate will continue for some time to come, since solid textual and archaeological information is scarce around this era, but Drews has, in my view, put forward a compelling argument here.

Cover image - Anglo-Saxon Runes
Second up is a book which I purchased at Sutton Hoo a few week ago, Anglo-Saxon Runes, by John Kemble. This is actually a very old book, dating from 1840 but given a make-over and some editorial notes by Bill Griffiths in the 1990s with several reprints since. For me, reading this has more to do with historical interest since it is not an especially good source book for learning runes. It does, however, have some fascinating glimpses into the 19th century pursuit of language as well as a review of the major runic inscriptions available in his day.

Kemble was amply fitted for this study, having produced the first modern English version of Beowulf as well as a six-volume critical edition of various Anglo-Saxon documents and other similar stuff. His personality comes over very strongly in his writing – combative, passionate, and determined to get a wider knowledge of Anglo-Saxon runes into the general consciousness. It is clear from Griffiths’ notes that the better part of two centuries of research has altered some of Kemble’s conclusions, but a remarkable part of his work seems to have survived the passage of time. Tolkein fans will recognise some of the words that he re-energised for modern use from their Anglo-Saxon roots.

Bede Ecclesiastical History - cover image
Finally (and strictly speaking still in progress) is The Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, a purchase inspired by my recent visit to the Vikings exhibition at the British Museum. I have wanted to read Bede for a considerable time and never got around to him, so now is my chance. It is clear even from a casual encounter that Bede writes as a historian in the same way that Luke does in the biblical book of Acts – both are keen observers of events but are more interested in their moral and spiritual implications than in a simple factual retelling. Some modern readers are put off by this, but it goes with the territory. Bede wanted to record what he saw as the pivotal events in English history up to his time (around 730 CE), and he understood ‘pivotal’ to mean those things which either advanced or thwarted the spread of the Christian gospel. A secondary interest was how royal morality or its opposite affected the life of the nation.

It is clear that Bede was selective in his sources, and aware only of some aspects of the life of the nation. He was diligent in finding sources, but not exhaustive. His geographical location in Northumbria rather limited the extent to which he could find out about events in the south. Other written or material information is now available to us for comparative purposes, so that a more rounded picture can be built up, but Bede remains a hugely important commentator on national religious life of that age. Great stuff.

Historical fiction, History, The Flame Before Us, Writing

Drews and the 1200BCE Catastrophe continued

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Rather over a month ago I wrote about my first impressions of Robert Drews’ book The End of the Bronze Age, concerning the catastrophe that swept around the eastern Mediterranean civilisations around 1200BCE. Since then I have been working my way slowly through the book and have now almost finished.

Outline map of city destructions c.1200BCE
Drews set out to show that the underlying reason for the collapse of these various city states and regional empires was military, in contrast to other theories such as climate change, famine, drought mass migration etc. He recognises that any or all of these might be contributing factors, but makes the basic case that they had all been experienced beforehand without leading to this kind of large-scale collapse. What, he asks, made this episode so qualitatively different from the others?

After reviewing various theories he describes what we know of military actions in Late Bronze (roughly 1550 to 1150 or so) – and the surprising answer is “not a great deal“. It is easy for those of us who know the huge reliefs commissioned by Ramesses II of his Qadesh battle to be misled into thinking that we are overflowing with pictorial information… but this is not the case.

So Drews reconstructs the battlefield from a mixture of text, picture and archaeology, the latter including analysis of the causes of battlefield death. The picture he builds is that Late Bronze battles between established states were very much set-piece affairs, dominated by chariot action. From the Greek city-states round the eastern Mediterranean and the Fertile Crescent to northern India we find that a light, two-horse and two-man chariot was the norm, in which the second man wielded a bow. Sometimes a third man might ride along to get to the battle, but would routinely dismount once action started. Such infantry as there were served two distinct purposes – static defence of key locations such as a camp, and support ‘runners’ for the chariots to finish off fallen enemies and protect fallen comrades. Unlike later battles, the infantry were not the main event, but a sideline.

According to Drews, this changed within a few decades when groups from the northern Mediterranean (who became known as the Sea Peoples and entered the text of the Hebrew Bible as Philistines) mastered two new methods of waging war: firstly they armed themselves with javelins and long swords, and secondly they took the infantry battle to the chariots. For a few decades they were unstoppable – horse and rider were suddenly vulnerable in ways they had not been before, and battle after battle was lost outside the gates of city after city until someone worked out that the game had changed.

That someone was Ramesses III (or at least one of his generals) who took the attackers on at their own game with a determined infantry defence and managed to stall the seemingly relentless advance. He fought them to a standstill in the Levant and compromised by granting them land in a series of towns along the coastline. But the social change that had begun could not be halted. Chariotry was not just a way to wage war – for the previous few centuries it had been the domain of the elite. Maintaining a chariot arm was expensive in land, time, food, equipment, and cost, and although chariots remained in use as a prestige conveyance, the time of their military dominance was gone. So to was the position of social dominance that the charioteer used to hold.

You can be sure that these insights will find their way into my fictional writing, in particular in the work-in-progress which now has a provisional title – The Flame Before Us.

Historical fiction, History

Drews – the extent of the 1200BCE Catastrophe

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I started reading Drew’s book on the c.1200 BCE catastrophe over the weekend. So far he has been reviewing the archaeological data concerning which sites were destroyed. Basically the map shows that a whole slew of cities and palaces were sacked and for the most part throughly burned in:

  • mainland Greece
  • modern Turkey, both the coastal regions round Troy and Miletus and the Anatolian Hittite regions
  • modern Syria, both along the coast and further inland
  • Cyprus
  • modern Lebanon and parts of Israel and Jordan, in particular the coastal plain and down the Jordan valley

Outline map of city destructions c. 1200BCE
Literally dozens of settlements of varying sizes were burned and the inhabitants scattered, all within what seems to be a time span of 30 or 40 years. . In some cases the places were resettled not long after, but in others the abandonment was longer term – for example Ugarit was never resettled, and was lost to memory until recent times.

The archaeological evidence is not exact enough to say that all these destructions had the same cause, nor the sequence in which they happened, but he argues on both logical grounds and from the Egyptian texts that the movement was north-to-south.

The destruction pattern washes around but does not really touch the southern hill country of modern Israel and Palestine, and he specifically mentions Jerusalem and Gibeon as places which were untouched. This is handy for my overall storyline, as these places – under the names of Shalem and Giybon – feature strongly.

Drews’ overall question is, I think, fascinating. The destruction of cities and palaces, whilst always terrible for the occupants, often does not signal major social change or the collapse of the culture – in many cases the destruction spurs off a new flourishing of building work and other cultural activities. But all around the Levant these events were truly catastrophic. The Bronze Age social structures and connections collapsed, and were uniformly replaced by other forms. Why should this have happened?

I have not yet read far enough to see what his answer is, but since he is an advocate of the ‘new military technology’ approach, my guess is that he will suggest that the new styles of warfare swept the former military elites away. This would make the change comparable in some ways to the demise of the mounted armoured knights of the medieval period. The advent of the longbow and then gunpowder not only changed the course of battles, but also signalled much wider social transformations. When the dust of the 1200 BCE catastrophe had settled, the new kingdoms that arose all around the eastern Mediterranean were built on different principles.

Historical fiction, History, In a Milk and Honeyed Land, Religion, Scenes from a Life

Men and women in Late Bronze religion

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This post is another in my occasional series looking at aspects of second millennium BCE religion in the Levant – Canaanite religion, if you like. I am going to start with what we can infer from particular kinds of archaeological remains, and then move on to text afterwards.

University of Pennsylvania Museum figurine
Interpreting the significance of archaeological finds is not always easy. A few decades ago there was a tendency for items of obscure purpose to be simply classified as “cult objects” with an assumed religious function… after all, if you didn’t understand what it was for then it must be religion! The best-known case of this is, perhaps, the considerable number of nude female figurines that have been found throughout the area. Perhaps because of presuppositions about Canaanite religion, it was assumed that these were goddess figures used in some interesting way in worship. Since those days a whole variety of other explanations have been proposed, including fertility objects given as part of a marriage ceremony, goodwill offerings during pregnancy, and even educational devices for teaching the young. We just don’t know for sure, and simple single explanations are improbable. The picture is of an item from c.1400 BCE, now in the collection of the University of Pennsylvania Museum and originally found at Beth She’an.

If we look at the designs carved into personal authentication seals we find an interesting story. There were several common forms of these – some based loosely on Egyptian scarabs, others on oval amulet designs, and others of cylindrical form. The first two have a design typically on the flat surface, the last one around the outside curve to be rolled onto clay. This last kind, having more surface area to play with, usually has more elaborate and detailed designs worked around the circuit. They are also a common pattern from the Mediterranean across to Mesopotamia, whereas the others were more localised. At this early time, almost all are pictorial, with little or no textual content.

Now through the Late Bronze Age (so roughly from 1550 to 1200 BCE in this area) we find certain recurring patterns. Male and female figures, whether men and women, male and female priests, or gods and goddesses all appear in roughly equal numbers. The Canaanite tales that have become popularised tend to favour the interactions of gods such as El, Ba’al, Mot, Kothar etc. Goddesses such as Anat, Athirat etc appear to take a secondary role in these accounts. But the material evidence we have suggests a more even-handed balance between the sexes, and even in the tales a careful read finds women or goddesses playing key roles. Two of the longer tales (Keret and Aqhat) present women (Hurriy and Dantiy) holding a central position alongside the male figures that we name the stories after. The secondary details surrounding these stories are full of feminine figures including groups of midwives or goddesses, such as the Kotharat, a collective name for a group of “skilful goddesses’.

As we move into the Iron Age (from 1200 until the time of Alexander the Great, but here I am only really concerned with the first few centuries) then this changes. Firstly, representations of female figures diminish quite dramatically in comparison to their male counterparts. Secondly, female figures are more likely to be represented by some abstract symbol such as a star or tree, rather than a human shape. In earlier designs these symbols typically appeared beside the figure, but as time went on the symbol displaced the person. Something happened to the way women were portrayed – and quite probably the roles they played in society – over the transition from Late Bronze to Iron.

What about the text of the Hebrew Bible? There are huge and ongoing debates as to when the various parts of this were first committed to writing, and subsequently collated into a unified text. On the surface, the historical narrative from Exodus to the end of Kings and Chronicles claims to derive from a wide span of time, including both second and first millennia BCE. There are very good reasons for thinking that the text was assembled into a coherent story somewhere in the first half of the 1st millennium. However, there are also very good reasons from analysis of both prose and poetry to think that some parts go back into the second millennium. If so, can we see any trace of the earlier higher profile of women?

The short answer is ‘yes’. The opening chapters of Exodus have a much higher concentration of women actively participating in events than any other part of the Hebrew Bible – there are the midwives who covertly spare baby boys’ lives from execution. Their prominence is comparable to that of female human and divine figures associated with birth in Ugarit. Beside them, we find Miriam and other significant women in Moses’ birth family, the pharaoh’s daughter who raised him, and so on. The images associated with the departure from Egypt deliberately ascribe giving birth and breast-feeding to God, presenting a distinctively feminine aspect to a figure often perceived as male.

The book where the decline of women’s fortunes is presented most starkly is Judges. Within a few chapters (covering at minimum a couple of hundred years) their position declines from an initial ability to inherit land and lead tribes in a prophetic role, down to widespread subordination and exposure to rape, humiliation and death. In terms of historical periods, Judges spans the time from the end of the Late Bronze age through Iron I – exactly the time when images on material artefacts undergo a radical change. Does this reflect increasing situations of personal danger and social anarchy? Or substantial revisions in the framework and basic assumptions of society itself?

In terms of my own writing, In a Milk and Honeyed Land and Scenes from a Life are both set at the tail end of the Late Bronze. They present societies where women have defined and important social roles, and in Kephrath and her three sister towns, inheritance passes through the female line. Households are defined in terms of the mother of the house rather than the father. This reflects what we know of the Late Bronze Age from artefact and text. If I continue writing forwards in time then at some point this happy state has to decline… by the turn of the millennium, so far as we can tell, women in the Levant were routinely in a subservient and threatened position. But there are a lot of books between 1200 and 1000…

History, Poetry, Review

Hatshepsut, speak to me – a review

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Hatshepsut, Speak to me, by Ruth Whitman, was an unexpected gift brought to me from America. I had not heard of the book before, but am delighted to have read it now. Unlike most of what I have read recently, it is a book of modern poetry rather than prose. However, it is not all modern, as Ruth blended translations and rewrites of New Kingdom Egyptian material along with new compositions in her own voice.

Columns at Hatshepsut's temple

The result is a vivid and credible dialogue between the Ruth of today and the Hatshepsut of about 3500 years ago. The two women are seen to share a great deal in their experience of life, sexuality, loss, and managing the difficulties of being a woman in a role traditionally seen as male. Indeed, part of the poignancy of the conversation is simply that the two women could never actually meet in real life, and can only converse through the written word or glyph.

Hatshepsut’s life fades away in the textual record left to us from Egypt. This has given rise to a great deal of speculation about the transfer of power from her to Thutmose III. Ruth presents her as a perceptive nurturer of culture, not the conqueror of other lands that so many New Kingdom pharaohs sought to be. As such, despite the internal wealth of goods and knowledge she cultivated, in the end she was rejected by a martial faction within elite society. Her voice fades away into the still-surviving splendour of her memorial at Deir el-Bahri, along with the resting places and histories of those she loved. This book was also to be Ruth Whitman’s final one, so that both women leave us with the closing words of the book.

I personally thought the book was a great piece of imaginative exploration, and have no hesitation in giving it five stars. Having said that, I am aware that not everyone will enjoy it. It is poetry rather than prose, and although it spans the lives of both women it does not intend to tell a story which goes anywhere. Part of the connection between the two women is that their simple struggle to gain acceptance absorbed so much energy that their full potential could not be realised.

For those who like the human side of New Kingdom Egypt – inquisitive, sensitive and exploratory as opposed to assertive and combative – this could be a book for you.

Here is a short extract from one of my favourite pieces, but the full impact of this book is not in the parts but in the whole.

For you, death is a continuation of life:
you will eat the same bread, beer, wine, geese,
celebrate banquets and festivals,
your shawabtis will fish in the river, plow,
gather grapes in the vineyards for you.

For me, death is the end.
I’m racing to leave behind
a few words arranged in a pattern
that will touch the living.

Sentiments and ideas which also find expression in Scenes from a Life, now going through the final stages of release as soft-cover.

Approach to Hatshepsut's temple

History, Review, Writing

Review – Prophet Motive, by John Bimson

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The Prophet Motive, by John Bimson, is fundamentally about the narrow divide between understanding and misunderstanding. This swings from the minor and often hilarious slips which constantly hover in the background of English-American conversation, right through to the life- and world-threatening consequences of extremist interpretation of biblical prophecy.

The book was originally written with an expectation that the year 2000 would see an outbreak of millennial doomsdayism. As things turned out, this did not happen on a large scale, and even the excitement about the year 2012 – complete with feature film – was rather understated. However, The Prophet Motive can still be read as an echo of contemporary thought and preoccupation. Like so many former prophets, you just have to move the dates…

The book is undeniably funny, though with a very dry British sense of humour that some people may not click with. If you read it, be prepared to find serious subjects tackled in an offbeat way. The scenes towards the end, with multi-way puns on the word “seal” are something of a tour de force, and show up the military habit of thought as just as rigid and fundamentalist as the extreme religious group they confront. Conversely, if you cannot find humour and a sense of fun in tackling biblical prophecy, fringe views on the end of the world, middle eastern relationships, and archaeology, then this book is not for you. The position is summed up in the closing words, “Laughter… fosters self-critical detachment and has the power to defanaticise. I believe it is no coincidence that the Essenes of Qumran imposed penalties on members who giggled.”

Arnon Gorge, Jordan

The primary technical vehicle for the plot is the investigation of the history of Israel in the couple of centuries before and after the time of Jesus. It is handled with skill and accuracy, including the state of Dead Sea Scroll research up to the time of writing the book (the late 1990s). The wide variety of motives that different people and groups have for looking at this period is captured, together with the whole spectrum of ability levels and preconceptions.

The book is very much plot driven, and only one or two of the characters change to any real degree from start to end. I did feel that the very last episode (Project Peter, Phase 2) was rather too easily dismissed as a non-event in favour of the climax of the personal quests of the two main characters. I suspect that Phase 2 was only really brought in for two reasons. First it takes the triumphal edge off the successful struggle against Phase 1. Secondly it allows a very cool snippet of humour turning the tables on the millenarianism that dominates the book. On balance, though, a potentially much more serious threat is casually discarded in a few words.

Sadly The Prophet Motive is currently out of print owing to the demise of the small press who took the project on, and at the time of printing no thought was given to electronic publication. It is to be hoped that this might change with the revolution in publishing which has happened in the last few years. Technically the book has been well proof-read and well edited, and I think it has good mileage in it still.

I really enjoyed this book, and think it would be accessible to a general audience. Certainly it helps already to know something about the areas tackled – the interpretation of prophecy, the nature of archaeological work and evidence, and so on. However, there are enough explanations along the way that if you did not know much about (say) the Dead Sea Scrolls beforehand, you will get to know what you need.

For me this was a four star book. I don’t often read fiction set in the present day, nor stories that are quite so plot-focused. So for me personally, the book missed a few elements which I look for. However, I would certainly recommend it as an exciting and entertaining read, and am very glad to have come across it. I suspect that people who are more familiar with this genre might rate it with five stars.

Finally, a disclaimer – John was my PhD supervisor a few years ago when I was working on Triumphal Accounts in Hebrew and Egyptian. However, that was long enough ago, and on a sufficiently different area of biblical and related studies, that I don’t feel this has compromised my objectivity at all.

History, Review

Dead Romans – a review

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David Cord, author of Dead Romans, supplied me with a free pre-release kindle copy to review. Here it is…

Dead Romans, by David Cord, is set in a place and time that I did not know much about – Ephesus around 165 AD, at the end of the Parthian campaign conducted by Lucius while he was co-emperor with his father Marcus Aurelius. The immediate crisis is a particularly severe outbreak of plague, apparently brought back by the soldiers as they returned from further east.

The book gives every impression of being carefully researched, at both the wider political level and as regards the details of ordinary Ephesian lives. Even a brief search online will reveal something of the history behind the novel. This wide spectrum of background research supports, and is crucial to, the particular style of the book.

David has chosen to structure the book by showing us three very different perspectives on the same events. In this way, the same people, places and events adopt a quite different significance in each portion. A person who might be a powerful and intimidating figure to one of the three is a mere annoyance or irrelevance to another. The first protagonist is a local shepherd, the second is Lucius’ mistress, and the third, intermediate between these in social location, one of the city bakers who also has pretensions to be an author. Their lives intersect in various ways. I am very partial to the inclusion of several different voices within a book, and have not often come across this particular strategy for including them.

So this triptych effect worked very well as a structural device for me, and gave considerable depth to the presentation. The three individuals naturally had entirely different views on what was or was not important, and their varying positions in society are well described. One difficulty for some people might be that the story does not go very far beyond what you have learned after the first third. However, there is some advancement in the plot, and there are certainly new pieces of the jigsaw that are provided.

Each of the three is given a fairly plausible back-story, so that you as reader can see how their personal histories are driving their present-day actions. Reasonably enough for story purposes, each of them is somewhat unusual as a member of their class. They stand out as remarkable individuals who each try to push back the limitations of their social role.

There were some difficulties. The central section, focusing on Lucius’ mistress Panthea, relied rather too heavily for my preference on her sexual activities, which tended to be squalid rather than exciting. Her back-story provides a rationale for this, and to be sure she is a courtesan whose main attraction to Lucius was presumably her sex appeal. However, Lucius is presented as a sensitive individual who wants more than an athletic bed partner. Panthea herself is supposed to be multi-talented in languages, philosophy and the arts – which makes good sense for someone aiming to catch the eye of royalty. But her part of the story is overwhelmed by sex, and somehow loses sight of other facets of her self.

The final portion, following Aristides the baker and potential author, ends up rather blurring his life with that of his prospective literary patron. Towards the end of the book is was not very clear which of them was in central focus. However, Aristides has much more contact with the soldiers than the other two, and these encounters are handled very persuasively. He certainly emerges as a plausible figure.

On a technical level, the pre-release kindle file I was provided with had a number of quite serious flaws. However, both author and publisher have told me that these have been corrected in the release version. All being well, future readers will not be distracted by these. Taking this final piece of editing into account, I have not let these problems affect my opinion.

On balance, for me, this was a four star book. On the basis of imagination and background research, I have no hesitation in commending it to others. It is a good introduction into a rather lesser-known slice of history, and many of the people described, both major and minor characters, are convincing. However, I was not won over by the central portion dealing with Panthea. It felt to me as though her potentially fascinating contribution was rather flattened into a single, rather repetitive, series of movements. The book as a whole is definitely worth reading, especially for those, like me, who enjoy historical fiction that is not preoccupied with battle scenes. The details of daily life in Ephesus emerge well from these pages, and I am certainly glad to have read this book.

Extract, History, Scenes from a Life

The survival of Egyptian influence in Canaan

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Another portion of the author’s notes from Scenes from a Life. This one briefly explores some issues surrounding the survival of Egyptian influence in the province of Canaan, after the collapse of the New Kingdom.

At one time scholars thought that Egyptian involvement collapsed extremely quickly, within a few decades after 1200 BCE or so, leaving essentially no Egyptian presence in Canaan. More recent careful investigation has shown that the actual situation was more complex. Egyptian rule in any direct sense was certainly over, and standing garrisons of troops were recalled. However, Egyptian influence remained considerably longer in the form of buildings, styles of pottery, and writing.

The author’s main interest is in the written word, and here we find several fascinating issues. Firstly, the style of Egyptian writing we now call hieratic survived in the former province of Canaan for a long time, especially for technical information like weights and measures. In Egypt herself, writing style evolved from hieratic to demotic, but the older form remained in the province. The obvious conclusion is that the style was learned during the period of occupation, and stayed in use after that had ceased – it is like a fossil relic of this earlier time.

Now, learning hieratic is a process that needs good teachers and a scribal tradition. We do not have direct evidence for schools of this kind in the form of buildings or monuments. However, these little marks of numbers and letters, scratched into the surface of various everyday artefacts, show that scribes trained in the Egyptian manner were still carrying out their trade in the province. The novel uses phrases such as “quick scribal signs” for this writing style. This is in contrast to what Makty-Rasut calls “proper writing” – hieroglyphic – which would be used back in Egypt for official or ceremonial purposes.

Next we have the evidence of the rather later biblical psalms. Several critics have noticed that one group of these, those which are petitionary pleas for help in time of trouble, bear strong resemblance to earlier letters written by subordinates to their political superiors. A writing style originally used in the secular sphere for addressing someone of higher rank, was adopted for religious use addressing gods. This would seem quite an obvious idea for someone who has been trained in official protocol and is then asked to create spiritual songs.

British Musuem - one of the Amarna letters
However, the resemblance is stronger than that. Specific kinds of phrasing, and specific kinds of appeal for help, turn up in political letters from around 1350 BCE, and also in the earliest psalms from around 1000 BCE or so. Moreover, they do so in the same geographical location – Jerusalem (Shalem in this story). This again suggests that there was a continuity of tradition that spanned those years.

In Scenes from a Life it is suggested that this link was set in place by an Egyptian scribe who found reasons of his own to move out to the province. Scribal teams in Egypt were well coordinated, with clear specialisation of skills, and it is easy to imagine that such a person would be able to organise and motivate a group of people in Jerusalem, whether Egyptian or native-born.

History, Scenes from a Life, Writing

Ancient Egyptian dream interpretation

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Well, proof-reading Scenes from a Life is going nicely, but it could hardly be called gripping work, however necessary it is. So in parallel with that I am going through the author’s notes section at the end of the book and filling in parts of that. One of the sections is on the way that ancient Egyptians interpreted dreams – which I find particularly interesting – so I thought I would copy chunks of it into a blog article.

Basically, the matter arises because the main character Makty-Rasut is rather shaken out of his comfortable life by a series of dreams, which are interpreted in part for him by a priest called Senenptah. Here is the current version of this part of the notes… The white sandals turn up in several of Makty’s dreams.

Egyptian dream interpretation sounds entirely random if you see the texts just in translation, but in the original language it makes far more sense. It was largely based on ideas of word-play – if you dreamed of one thing then the interpreter would think about other objects or situations that sounded similar or had similar verbal roots. There was also, as with dream theory in other cultures, a strong emphasis on identifying whether the situation would turn out as favourable or unfavourable for the dreamer. I have largely ignored this second strand of interpretation in Scenes from a Life, but in reality Senenptah would routinely be trying to ascertain from Makty’s dream accounts when an action should be taken or avoided to achieve a good outcome.

Now, interestingly, similar ideas are used in some modern schools of dream interpretation, especially those having a Jungian influence. In these, the unconscious processes active in dream sleep may well use word plays or visual puns to transfer meaning and significance to the conscious mind. So, hypothetically, dreaming of falling over – taking a trip – might suggest a journey, or even a drug experience.

Back with Makty-Rasut, the connection Senenptah makes between white sandals and a journey with auspicious conclusion is based on an actual dream text we have, specifically papyrus Chester Beatty III. This dates from less than a century before Makty’s time, and was found at the royal workmen’s village at Deir el Medina, on the west bank of the Nile opposite Luxor and so very close to Makty and Senenptah’s homes. It is currently in the British Museum. It contains a large number of single line interpretations, each of the form “If a man sees himself in a dream in [some situation] then: [interpretation]“. Each interpretation has a brief summary as either GOOD or BAD, followed by a brief explanation. The words GOOD or BAD are picked out in red ink rather than the normal black.

The relevant line of this text is “If a man sees himself in a dream shod with white sandals, BAD; it means roaming the earth“. Normally in Egyptian culture, roaming the earth would be perceived as BAD as it would mean being uprooted from the social network in which the person was embedded – family, friends, work, ancestral burials and so on. A journey would especially be seen as BAD if it involved travelling out of the Beloved Land (Ta Meri in Egyptian) as it carried the risk of having to be buried outside the land’s borders. In Makty’s case, the journey turns out to have a GOOD ending, but this is because of the particular circumstances of his life rather than normal ancient Egyptian thinking.

One of the several themes of the Egyptian poem The Tale of Sinuhe concerns the anxieties felt by Sinuhe himself and others who hear of his situation, at the thought of burial in a remote and rather uncivilised place. Likewise, one of the great motifs of his reconciliation and return to Egypt was the promise that a proper burial would be possible when the time came. The Tale of Sinuhe was composed several centuries before the setting of this story, but remained popular for many years, and copies have been found near Luxor, in particular at the workmen’s village.

The other word associations Senenptah makes for Makty are invented, but credible given the nature of the scheme of interpretation. Perhaps in time archaeologists will uncover an Egyptian text which confirms them! For example, when Senenptah asks Makty if he has seen a royal sceptre, or a large dish, the words used sound like (and are spelled very similarly to) words for Asiatic and north respectively. These sorts of clues would suggest to the priest that Makty was being directed by his dreams to travel north into the Asiatic province, here called the Kinahny lands. Many of the other details that are picked out in the dreams have a similar basis; others are just regular dream imagery that readers can enjoy deciphering for themselves.

All good fun… and a nice intermission from proof-reading!

History, Review, Writing

Book review – “The Blazing World” by Margaret Cavendish

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Today’s blog is a book review, but unusually for me of a work by a long-dead author, Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1623-1673). She published The Blazing World back in 1666, the same time that John Bunyan was serving a prison sentence for his beliefs and Samuel Pepys was writing about the Great Fire of London. I came across it in a list of seminal female science fiction writers which circulated on Google+. Nowadays it is available on kindle at a very reasonable price, and no doubt elsewhere as well, a fact that might well intrigue and amuse Margaret.

As I go on to say in the review, the book is not for readers who crave a fast-paced plot with regular cliff-hangers. Its concerns are very different from those of many modern authors. But as a window into the forward-thinking perspective of an older time, and as a precursor to much modern writing, it deserves better exposure. Happily, it is taught as part of some English literature university courses here in the UK, and available electronically to an interested modern reader. Long may this situation last!

Book Cover - Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World

==============The review===========

I first heard about Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World through a friend on Google+ and was intrigued. A female science fiction writer from the time of the Plague and the Great Fire of London? Since the kindle version is so extraordinarily cheap I had to follow this through, and am very glad that I did.

First though, let me say that not all readers will enjoy this book. It is, naturally enough, written in an older form of English in which many words do not have quite the same sense as today. The most obvious example is “artificial“. Today, if we see “artificial” in contrast to “natural” we tend to think that using “artificial” suggests that the thing is lacking in some way, clunky in comparison with the natural. But in the 17th century, it was used to indicate that something has been made by art, or artifice if you like, and so reveals something of ingenuity or creativity, as opposed to a raw product. A precious stone just out of the ground would be natural; the polished and shaped gem would be artificial.

Also, Margaret had no interest in fulfilling the plot expectations of some modern critics. Many things do happen, and I found the overall imaginative sweep gripping, but you won’t find a visceral cliff-hanger every few pages. Personally I liked this and it was a refreshing change from some of the formulaic modern material one encounters.

Finally, Margaret is just as interested – perhaps more so – in the philosophical shape of her world as the material one. There are descriptions of the physical layout of the Blazing World and how it might be accessed from our own. But there are also long sections in which one of the main female characters engages in intellectual debate with some of that world’s schools and learned institutions. Some of these are sympathetically presented, others plainly satirical, though you would have to know more than I about the intellectual landscape of her time to really appreciate the satire. It’s a bit like reading parts of Dante and trying to puzzle of why a particular person is being lampooned.

All in all, some modern readers would become impatient and frustrated with the book. For those who persevere with it, the gentle charm of the book draws you in. There is an inter-planetary war, and the invention of devices like submarines and torpedoes, but the real interest is in the intimacy of human contact, and the ultimate superiority of the world of the imagination over the world of external things. Particularly striking examples are “Why should you desire to be Empress of a Material World… when as by creating a World within yourself, you may enjoy … as much pleasure and delight as a World can afford you“, and again “if any should like the World I have made.and be willing to be my Subjects, they may imagine themselves such… but if they cannot endure to be Subjects, they may create Worlds of their own“. This theme increasingly comes to drive the narrative.

I became convinced as I read that modern authors such as Arthur C. Clarke have been influenced by The Blazing World. I was particularly reminded of the passage from 2001: “So almost certainly there is enough land in the sky to give every member of the human species, back to the first ape-man, his own private, world-sized heaven–or hell” – though in that case Clarke was thinking purely concretely in terms of stars in our galaxy, rather than imaginatively.

So five stars from me, along with a sincere wish that in whatever form Margaret might yet survive, she is able to receive modern appreciation of her work. This tale is not for everyone, certainly not for those who are impatient for a high-octane or erotically-charged plot, but personally I thoroughly enjoyed meeting this work and its author.