Dawn and Sunset: New Developments

There are two pieces of news concerning my history book, Dawn and Sunset, that I'd like to share with you.

My book entered the contest, Eric Hoffer Book Award, for independent books. The results will be published in May, 2017. It's a great honor. The book was nominated by my publishing house, Authorhouse UK.

Pacific Book Review published a review of my book and I could not expect anything better. Here is the text. 

Author: Michael Baizerman

Publisher: AuthorHouseUK

ISBN: 9781504936118

Pages: 289

Genre: Education

Reviewed by: S. Marie Vernon

Rating: 4 Star Review

Pacific Book Review

Dawn and Sunset is a compelling Tale of the Oldest Cities of the Near East written by

amateur historian and Israeli high school English teacher, Michael Baizerman. It’s

clear, Baizerman has spent countless hours researching and documenting this work.

He has compiled minute details of everyday life of the inhabitants of the old world

known as Mesopotamia and the cradle of civilization. The oldest cities encompassed

the Persian Gulf area and were referred to as Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and

Assyrian regions. The Mesopotamia area today is known as Eastern Turkey, IRAQ,

Kuwait, Baghdad, Iran and Northern Syria. The Greek meaning of Mesopotamia is,

“land between two rivers.” The twin rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates nourished

Mesopotamia and made it possible for nomadic tribes to begin to cultivate the land for

agriculture and eventually settle into communal villages where life as we know it began.

Then much changed over the course of time. A lot of historical ground is covered in the

many millenniums referenced with some emphasis on the third and fourth millennia

BCE.

This work may be more than A Tale, perhaps it’s a social study of our earliest

ancestors? Perhaps it’s closer to a documentary of facts, yet facts that are sometimes

verified through myths, legends and the poetry of that millennium? Baizerman blazes

on undaunted by the scarcity of information for some periods and events. He gathers

his content from different angles to expose discrepancies and biases for what they

were. If there is no documentation to support the claim he will pursue other avenues;

he will find a hieroglyphic, a poem or an architectural marker of that time period so his

points are well documented. The author himself says it best, “Only artists and scholars

are entitled to examine our history through a magnifying glass with inexhaustible vigor,”

which he does very well in creating this educational volume called Dawn and Sunset.

The Gods drove every decision in the ancient world. Temples attested to their glory and

power. In the beginning, the Temples controlled the economic life of a community.

They were central to all the regions and the many Gods were worshipped and honored

constantly. Life was a battle, a consistent struggle with the hostile land and various

populations of people. Irrigation and farming allowed for communal villages to give way

to more complex societies with district states. Then pristine cities became early

empires and these gave way to dynasties with corruption and exploitation that would

bring in the Dark Ages and the eventual collapse of this early civilization that had been

“Two thousand turbulent years in the making.” The temples fell to government rule and

general’s built extravagant palaces to display power and demand respect whether they

deserved it or not. Many great leaders and warriors would rise and fall. Some were

virtuous and some were not. War was inevitable and peace was all but nonexistent.

Through it all, writing, language and technological advancement prevailed; metals,

ceramics and new building materials enhanced and changed their way of life forever.

New transportation routes and foreign trade changed the landscape, social classes, and

the expectations of the people. Division of labor and other inequities emerged that

would lead to more wars and the eventual demise of a once glorious nation known as

Mesopotamia. From pre-civilization to civilization to its very downfall, this book delivers

a lot as each chapter is organized and packed with great detail about the grueling and

difficult historical times between the Dawn and Sunset of Mesopotamia– A Tale of the

Oldest Cities of the Near East. Ironically, through this writing we can see many parallels

of modern day society as it faces some of the same indignities and dilemmas of this

historical period.

After Dawn and Sunset author Michael Baizerman emerges with a new book and is

already writing it. It’s about the attitude of the Latin West to the East on the eve of the

Age of Discovery. Both books should appeal to history lovers and educators who like a

dedicated spirit of inquiry and documented exposure of facts that may not be so factual.

Of course, any differences in opinion, by this author is well researched, well

documented and well written. These volumes are sure to be a handy resource for any

educator who would like that little extra detail when it comes to the history of ancient

civilizations.

The Summer is Over (2)

I have completed the third leg of the course "The Archeology of Portus". We discussed the events of the end of the 2nd century CE when Portus was enlarged by building spacious warehouses. We spoke about the discovery of a stunning sculptured head, probably that of a fisherman which belonged to a statue located in a gardern setting. We made acquantaince with new scientific methods of geophysics and geological coring. 

I have reviewed the beginning of the ChinaX-5 course. We made a comparison between the nomadic and cedentary lifestyles, noticed the transformation of Mongols from a marginal tribe into a warring nation, and paid attention that the Mongol rule in China was slightly different than in other parts of the world empire. Since this is my first course in a new format, I skipped several tasks and now want to restore them. 

The number of my Facebook friends has exceeded 200 and my Scriggler readership keeps growing though I rarely publish new items. 

The Summer is Over (1) 

Next week I am returning to my teaching which leaves much less time to creative work.

Anaway, I started collecting materials for the next chapter of The Witness in the Den. My next witness is William of Rubruck who composed a fascinating report about his journey to the Mongols. Writing a new item includes four major stages: after collecting enough material, I look through my dosier and attempt to do some creative writing. It might be a sentence or a paragraph, bits and pieces. Then I estimate these pieces and either drop them or combine together. Later, I try to assesss what is missing to link the extracts into a unified text. Sometimes I research a particular item to make it eloquent. I also begin to check the citations and think about accompanying images.

Sumerian Literature

This is a review of an article by D. Mandal, The World's Oldest Known Pieces of Literature Pertain to Two Ancient Sumerian Works, published in Realm of History, July 21, 2016.

According to the conventional opinion, Sumerian scribes were the group who left us the remnants of their literature. What we can lay hand is not the first attempts but part of the long written tradition. The author mentions the Kesh Temple Hymns; this is in the present state a collection of 8 hymns comprising 134 lines. Also, the hymns heap their praises to Nisaba, the goddess responsible for writing, which only emphasizes the age of recording. During the same Early Dynastic period we see a tradition of donating statuettes of believers to temples. Some of these statuettes carry short texts written on behalf of the members of the elite or even the middle class. The schools, where these literary texts were recorded, served the earliest libraries.

Another literary piece, the Instructions of Shuruppak, where the speaker is the person, not the city of the same name, is an example of wisdom literature which gives us a glimpse on the Sumerian daily life. The author is familiar with the consequences of excessive drinking. One of his pieces of advice: "Do not pass judgment when you drink beer." So we can see genres, determination, talent in service of a lengthy kiterary tradition though we cannot say how long we should hark back to its origin.

The article is not free of exaggerrations. The wheel could not be invented in Sumer as I showed in my history book "Dawn and Sunset: A Tale of the Oldest Cities in the Near East", p. 131. Due to the lack of hard wood, Sumer was an unlikely place as a testing ground for an array of experiments that should have preceeded this revolutionary invention. The glyph for a wheel appears among the earliest writing signs but the wheel may have been imported in its completed form. In Sumer it was attached to a cart dragged by oxen in religious context.

When the Summer is Nearly Over

Last week was full of little "events" which gave me great relief and comfort.

I finished the draft of the first chapter of my last unit with the working title, The Witness in the Den.

My maiden witness is John of Plano Carpini. 

The full list, which I composed before doing research, enlists 14 names. However, I'm going to curtail it significantly: it should be an actual travel, which excludes fantastic travelogs. It should be penned by the witness himself, which excludes the Travels of Marco Polo. My next item is William of Rubruck. 

I completed the second leg of the FutureLearn course in Roman history, The Archeology of Portus, led by a team from Southampton University. We focused on the reign of Emperor Trajan who enlarged Portus by digging a hexagonal harbor basin fringed by new warehouses and baths. We also reviewed the absolute dating using brick stamps and spoke about the entire port network which included canals, the Tiber, and riverine ports at Ostia and Emporium, Rome. 

I took up a new course, ChinaX, introduced by a team from the Harvard University, which concentrates on medieval China, especially the Mongol and Ming periods. The topic is partially connected to my own research and will allow me to "check the pulse" of modern science.  

The Last of the Vikings

Image: Harald in his last battle according to Matthew Paris, the English chronicler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harald_Hardrada        

        The well-written article harks back to the twilight of the Viking Age zooming on the life of a hopeless adventurer and eventually the king of Norway. 

        An ultimate pretender to the throne, Harald Hardrada began his career as a commander of a contingent of rebel forces assisting to no avail to his half-brother to recover the throne in his maiden Battle of Stiklestad when the young warrior was still in his teens.

        The humiliating defeat sent him into exile to the Kievan Rus. Harald found favor at the court of Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise who appointed him one of his captains. However, the young man's attempt to court the ruler's daughter ended in fiasco and he made his way to Constantinople where the Roman Emperor reserved for him a place in his elite troops dubbed the Varangian Guard.

        Gaining a well-earned military reputation, Harald was unscrupulous in politics which nearly cost him life. He managed to escape seizing a ship which took him to the Kievan Rus again. All these years the Grand Prince Yaroslav was the keeper of the adventurer's plundered fortune and now the renowned warrior received the princes as his top prize.

        The expatriate decided to return home and became a pretender to the throne occupied by his nephew. Long years of civil war would rattle the kingdom and led to the division of the Viking Empire. Harald succeeded in keeping Norway under his sway.

        Having realized that at the home front he could do no better, the fifty-year-old veteran hatched a scheme to invade Britain. After initial success, his army was routed in the Battle of Stamford Bridge. Harald declined to recognize his defeat and conducted a suicidal attack against advancing English troops. His winner, king Harold of England, agreed to deliver proverbial seven feet of English soil to bury the Viking giant. 

Source: "The Incredible Life of Harald Hardrada" http://www.realmofhistory.com/2016/08/12/harald-hardrada-last-great-viking/ 

John of Plano Carpini (2) 

I made a template for a chapter about this envoy based on reading his travel account.

John's fact-finding mission included gleaning info about the military potential of the Mongols. The clerical "spy" was sure that the Tartars were going to attack Europe again. He suggests nothing less than a new Crusade against the steppe invaders. 

My angle of research is the data about the Mongols collected by this witness. I am hopeful to finish the draft of the chapter until next weekend. It might be useful to compare the same features as John mentions in the accounts of other travelers. I still don't know how many chapters this unit will contain. Marco Polo, in my view, is a work of fiction. I have no doubts that he made a journey to China; however, it is not a genuine account but the one doctored by the literary talent of Rusticelli.