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 publi...
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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 ...
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, th...
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 fiasc...
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 ...