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. 

Mongol Retreat from Europe in spring 1242

Image 1: A True Gift for a Warrior by Benny Johnson 

After staging a spectacular onslaught against the West, the Mongol army crushed the resistance and occupied Central Europe. Suddenly the Tartars, as they were commonly dubbed, folded their arms and retreated. There was no other advance on such scale and with such success. 

I am fascinated by this issue. One of the units in my new manuscript focuses on the relations between the West and the Mongol authorities. 

Historians still argue about the reasons of the Tartar withdrawal. Stephanie Papas' article "Mystery of Mongol Retreat from Hungary Solved" published in Live Science> History on May 27,2016 is the latest contribution. 

The contributor develops the "ecological theory" claiming that the steady rainfall reduced the extent of the pasture for Mongol steeds. She cites a recent research conducted by Nicola Di Cosmo from Princeton University and Ulf Buntgen from Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL. 

        The authors of a scrupulous analysis of medieval climate extrapolated from oak tree rings may be proud of its accuracy. They forecast unprecedented rainfall in spring 1242 which flooded the grassy plains of Hungary hampering the progress of mounted archers. According to this scenario, Prince Batu's contingents got bogged down.

        Determining the single factor responsible for a dramatic event poses a problem of trust. A train of evidence has to be artificially arranged to suit the purpose, often reducing the whole picture to a stroke, whatever significant and eloquent it can be. 

        The Mongol horsemen acted on various theaters winning their wars in the countries with diverse climates: China, Korea, Central Asia, Persia, India, Russia, to mention only a few. Their commanders, as a rule, used excellent strategies. Their troopers endured dangers and obstructions as well as an occasional lack of food. Neither a steady rainfall nor squishy ground would intimidate them. 

Back at home, local steeds are capable of digging layers of snow in search of frozen grass. They look bony during the winter but recover in spring. 

        I'm not sure if a unanimous explanation can agree on all the details but it should include multiple factors. Untangling climate issues is only one of them.