Category Archives: The Flame Before Us

Extract, Historical fiction, The Flame Before Us

The Flame Before Us – another piece of the cover

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Today it is time for another portion of the cover design for The Flame Before Us, together with another portion of the book itself. In terms of actual progress towards publication, the Author’s Notes section is now complete, and proof-reading the whole is well under way.

Partial cover - stepsFirst, the picture. These are in fact Late Bronze Age steps, though not from the specific place described in the story. These are from Megiddo, somewhat to the north of Ramoth Hurriy where the story places them. Where do the steps go in The Flame Before Us? That’s a portion which I have not yet shared in any extracts…

Now for today’s section. It follows one of the newcomers into the land, Nikleos, a member of the Sherden clan led by Antos. It is in a rural setting in what is now the borderland between Israel and Lebanon.

Nikleos’ clan camped for the night in a valley bowl far enough beyond the crest of a ridge that their progress was clear. It had been a long drag upwards through the afternoon. The character of the land had changed again as they had worked their way south, and their pace had slowed considerably. Although the land was flatter, it was clothed with stands of low trees and scrub land. It was not like the great forests that stood further north and nearer the coast, but it was dense enough to seriously impede progress.

The sun was still quite high in the early spring sky when Antos blew his leader’s horn to call a halt, but a considerable time passed before they made camp. Finally the wagons were arranged in their circle, the beasts were inside, and fires had been set. The boys who had been tasked with the day’s hunting had all come back, prey in hand, and the smell of cooking drifted across the encampment.

He shook his head. With the young men constantly away with the raiding parties, the group was never properly mixed. Boys, older men, and women of all ages filled the camp and shared out the tasks that would normally fall to the lads. Perhaps in a few months they would settle again and life would return to its usual pattern.

Nikleos watched as the women of his family prepared the food. It crossed his mind that Kastiandra was too thin, but that would not change until they found a place to settle. All of them would stay too thin while the journey continued. When he thought back to their life on the other side of the sea, she had had a much more attractive roundness to her form which had been peeled away from her on the journey.

There, in their farmstead just outside the village where Antos had been arkon, there had been lamb and mutton whenever they wanted, plentiful butter and cheese, and honey always available from the bees who inhabited a nearby stand of trees. They had left that all behind when they set sail for Wilios. The men, himself included, had always boarded the quick ships to raid isolated towns or islands, but this was something new.

Families and clans from many different valleys and coastal bays had united that time, stirred up by Akamunas to seize the great prize of Wilios. It had been a fine sight, all those ships together crossing the water. The siege had been long and hard, and it had exposed violent disagreements among the clans themselves, but in the end they had done it. The enterprise had become too big, too prideful, to halt.

The final capture and plunder of the city had soon been turned into song, but it had left his people with a hard choice. Antos had led his people onwards, instead of returning over the sea. Many other village arkons had done the same, eager to find other cities with easy wealth to gather, quite sure that any of them would be easier than Wilios. And so now here they were, heading south through this land of which they knew nothing, unsure where or when to settle.

Don’t miss the next of the cover components being revealed!

Extract, The Flame Before Us

The Flame Before Us – complete draft

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Some very exciting news for this week – I now have a complete end to end draft of The Flame Before Us and am now heading into a full proofreading cycle, together with adding in things like Author’s Notes at the end. All being well I am on track for a release around Easter as planned.

To celebrate this event, here are two things – firstly one element in the cover design, which as usual has had creative and technical input from Ian Grainger (www.iangrainger.co.uk). Other cover elements will be shown in due course leading up – eventually – to the full reveal…

Tablet image - The Flame Before Us cover portion

The Ugaritic cuneiform text reads as follows:

If the strong attack your strongholds –
    warriors your walls –

The text is adapted from part of an Ugaritic ritual, complete with ceremonies and prayers for protection over the city and its gates. Sadly, one day around 1180BC, the ritual proved ineffective as invading soldiers stormed the walls and overpowered the defenders.

So to go with this, the second item is a short extract seeing this moment through the eyes of Anilat, a woman of the city, together with Damatiria, the wet-nurse to her children, known to the family as “Auntie”.

Damatiria stiffened suddenly, and her fingers seized hold of Anilat’s shoulder. A sudden flame had come up from the docks. As Anilat watched, a second building caught light as the flames leapt from one roof to the next. Auntie was already moving across the room, pulling at a pile of clothes.

“You must dress yourself, lady. And not in fine stuff. In something more common, like we talked about in the evening.”

Anilat stayed at the window, not understanding what was happening. The flames at the harbour were still spreading. Off to one side, in the direction of the lesser gate, another fire appeared. In the distance she started to hear noise from the fires. She shrank back a little as running footsteps sounded at the end of the alleyway. Auntie was pulling her away into the room.

“Put these clothes on, mistress, put them on now, there’s no time to lose just standing looking at all this.”

Anilat looked blankly at her.

“It’s just a fire down at the docks, Auntie. Why do you want us to get dressed?”

Auntie handed her the bundle of her clothes and she started dressing without thinking. Then she stopped again, her outer smock loose in her hand. Auntie was shaking the children awake.

“Don’t wake them, they’ve only just gone off properly.” She stopped as Auntie turned on her, an unexpectedly fierce look on her features. There was more noise from outside, distant shouting. She went suddenly cold.

“It is just a fire, surely?”

Her daughter was already awake, and the twins were stirring, grumpy and uncomprehending. Auntie was rapidly, efficiently pulling clothes onto them.

“They’re in the city, mistress, that’s what it is.”

She saw the question starting to form on Anilat’s face. “It doesn’t matter how they did it, lady. We need to get ourselves along out of here. Mistress, please help me get the children ready now. You must think of the little ones here.”

Finally stirred into action, Anilat pulled the smock over her head and began to help.

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

Timelines and maps

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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.

ABNA 2014, Reading Challenge, Scenes from a Life, The Flame Before Us

January 1st 2015

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It seems to be sort-of customary for blog writers to set out a kind of manifesto at the start of the year – not quite a set of resolutions, since most people seem to be off resolutions this year, but more of a declaration of intent.

My own musings on this were partly triggered by getting my Goodreads stats sent through to me – seems that as regards GR I have reviewed 42 books (11495 pages). Now, I know there are a few HNS reviews still waiting to go through their system before I can post elsewhere, but it’s a fair reflection. I was also quite pleased to see that although most were published in the last few years, I have a scattering of 19th and early 20th century ones, and a couple going way back – The Elder Edda and the Kumarasambhava to be precise.

I took part in two “Reading Challenges” this year – for The Historical Tapestry I just failed to meet the target (25 books… I was one off), after family illness stopped progress for a while. But for The Mad Reviewer I was well in excess of my planned 26 books as the non-historical fiction titles boosted the total nicely. I’m still thinking about whether I want to participate in a similar challenge this year, or whether my activities with HNS and other review groups will be quite sufficient!

Next year on the blog I am planning to do a monthly interview, mostly with historical fiction authors but no doubt a few others thrown in as well. I’m also planning to up the frequency of the historical posts picking out some feature of the background to my own writing – or else just something that caught my eye historically. This probably means I will combine several reviews together in abbreviated form rather individually in full form, since after all there isn’t room or time for everything!

Cover - Scenes from a LifeAs regards my own writing, the CreateSpace version of Scenes from a Life went live a little while into 2014 (the kindle version being available in December 2013), and said book got through to the quarter finals of Amazon’s ABNA award.

Flame draft coverThis year the big event should be the release of The Flame Before Us – hopefully by March or so, all being well. There will be no shortage of news about that… Right now I am working on the last major incomplete section, then comes a few rounds of editorial work and such like before release.

So lots to look forward to in the coming year… not least the excitement of encountering new people and new books through the various routes we all use. Last year’s HNS conference here in London gave a good opportunity to actually meet with some of the many people I enjoy “meeting” online – but there are a great many other people who as yet I have not encountered in the non-virtual world. It would be a nice resolution to aim to meet a few of these, but time will tell if it is a realistic one!

Meanwhile, all the best for 2015 to readers of this blog.

Blog Hop, History, The Flame Before Us, Writing

The Hunt – Feasting at Ugarit

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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!

Blog Hop, The Flame Before Us

Blog hop next week!

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Next weekend I shall – along with a considerable number of other authors – be participating in a Christmas Party Blog Hop organised by Helen Hollick. Helen, for those who don’t know, is not only an author herself but also carries out a considerable amount of work for the Historical Novel Society, including coordinating the indie review section.

Helen Hollick Blog Hop Logo

Now of course my own writing is about a period which considerably predates the celebration of Christmas – I am not the only contributor facing similar problems – and Helen has extended the parameters to include other kinds of festivities. I have chosen to talk about an Ugaritic festival called The Hunt, alluded to a few times in The Flame Before Us. Check back on December 20th to read all about it, and also to enjoy the many and varied contributions from others.

In wider news, I have just finished another thorough edit of The Flame Before Us and am working on the sole remaining section. All being well the book should be released a couple of months into 2015.

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

So when was Jerusalem attacked by the Israelites?

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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, The Flame Before Us

Another extract from The Flame Before Us

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Flame imageThis extract first appeared in the “Excerpts” section of the Facebook Review Group and so I thought I should post it here as well! It is the opening portion of the fourth strand of Flame, introducing us to Labayu. He is currently living at Ramath-Galil, considerably to the north of his home town of Kephrath, in a small village near the Sea of Kinreth – known today as the Sea of Galilee.

Labayu stepped out of his door into the early light. Now that the villagers of this clan had cleared the belt of trees just below the crest of the ridge, he could see all the way south across the valley to the wooded ridge opposite. It was a magnificent view. Behind him and to his left, the houses swept in a arc either side of the track that led down towards the Sea of Kinreth. One day soon they would finish the circle and have a settlement that was more defensible.

The mist was hanging in thick swathes in the creases of the land, and the late winter sun was slow to warm it away. Normally at this time, he would be listening to the familiar sound of Ashtartiy starting the grindstone on its daily revolutions. Around homes and doors, work was starting in Ramath-Galil, and he lifted his hand in acknowledgment as Shemiram went by the house to check his overnight snares for game. But Ashtartiy was no longer here.

He turned to go back in, when he was stopped by the sight of a youth running up the track. He was wearing the kef of the town of Merom, but tied around his arm just now so as not to restrict his movement.

He reached the open ground in the middle of the houses and stopped, catching his breath in great gulps of air. He looked round at the doors and windows, waiting for a response. There was a short pause, and then Pedayah, the village headman, walked over towards him, carrying the cup of welcome.

As Labayu joined the growing circle of curious people, the youth finished the cup and handed it back to Pedayah. He was breathing steadily now, and the flush of exertion was fading. He tied his kef properly and looked around the ring of faces, waiting for permission to speak. Pedayah nodded.

“A bright morning to you, lad.”

“And a morning of light to you, sir, and to your people.”

They exchanged formal greetings between Pedayah and the youth’s own headman for a short time. Finally that was done.

“Look now, what brings you to us today, and in haste?”

The lad looked down at the cold ground briefly, the better to remember the words he had been told.

“Sir, I have been sent around with a word from the clan head Shillem. The word says that the king of Hatsor is sending men and chariots both. Large numbers of them, far more numerous than your whole village. He is demanding more tribute, and he will also take some more of your young men with him as runners. He will be here on the third day from now, or perhaps the day after. The clan head Shillem says that each settlement is to make its own choice how to act.”

There was a ripple of discontent around the circle, but until the headman replied, nobody would speak aloud. Labayu waited along with the others. The news was not unexpected, and Pedayah had already sat with the elders to discuss their response. For a short time, only the breeze from the west stirred the hilltop village.

“I say that we will leave Ramath-Galil for the time being. We will move south for a time to be closer to the rest of our people.”

A collective sigh came from the group. Pedayah rounded on them.

“You all knew this would happen. These houses that we have built: we will come back to them before the year is out. This is nothing new for us. I remember wandering as a child, and to wander was the life of our fathers. It is nothing new.”

He looked at Labayu.

“Is there any news from your scouts that would lead me to make a different choice?”

All on track for a release early in the New Year 2015, I think…

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

The end of the Bronze Age in the middle east

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

So who was Shamgar son of Anath?

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“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!