A Mythic Babylon Bibliography

Many people have commented on the quality of research in Mythic Babylon, but lamented the fact that we didn't include a bibliography in the book. The reason we didn't was purely for space, and a bibliography is the kind of thing that can easily be published on a forum or a blog just like this one! So, for those who were asking - here's the Mythic Babylon Bibliography. I've broken this down by subject matter, and the books are listed title-first rather than author-first. The list is annotated with my commentary. If a book is listed without comment, it's because it didn't move me enough to remember what I like about it!

ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN VOICES

When writing Mythic Babylon, we distilled the historical and societal information into what we think is a neat package. We didn't have room to include very much in the way of the Babylonians own voices, though, and so the very first I think of when people say they like to further their reading - to the  writings of the ancients themselves. The corpus of literature is rich. Really rich! Rabbit-hole Warning Rich!

But that's where I think you should go first. Here are some fine books that will take you back to the very distant past.

The Ancient Near East: Historical Sources in Translation
Edited by Mark W. Chavalas, 2006 Blackwell. 445pp.

This very fine volume introduces you to the voices of many eras. There are letters, decrees, hymns, and much more. This is real slice of life type stuff, and each piece is richly annotated and introduced.

The Literature of Ancient Sumer
Black, Cunningham, Robson, and Zolyomi, 2004 Oxford University Press. 372pp.

This book includes translations of key texts – a scribal curriculum, really – written in Sumerian. It probably the gold standard for Sumerian texts in English. The book deals with 'literature', which is spends some efforts to define. Letters and other more worldly correspondence are not included here.

Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature
Benjamin R. Foster, Third Edition 2005 CDL Press. 1044 pp.

This cinder block of a volume does for the Akkadian language what the above does for Sumerian, but it's divided up by period so you can see changes over time. Again, a gold standard.

From an Antique Land: An introduction to Ancient Near Eastern Literature
Edited by Carl S. Ehrlich, 2009 Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 506 pp.

An entertaining volume with some fun commentary from the author. This book covers a spectrum of writings by different people in different languages, with sections on Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, Ugaritic, Canaanite, Aramaean, Hebrew, and Egyptian. It's not quite complete (no Hurrian or Elamite, for example) but a rewarding read all the same.


Mesopotamian Chronicles
Jean-Jacques Glassner, 2004, SBL, 365pp

Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East
Martti Nissinen, 2003 SBL, 296pp

These two books from the Society of Biblical Literature explore particular writings in some depth. The first explores the chronicles of Mesopotamian kings and reveals something about how they viewed their own history. The second explores records of actual incidents of ecstatic prophecy in various time periods and tells us a little about prophets in general. Both recommended if you'd like a deep dive into something specific, but maybe not for the casual reader. Both are reviewed in more depth elsewhere on this blog.


MYTHS

Also in the category of primary voices, we weren't able to include Mesopotamian myths in all their glory – there just wasn't room. And we figured that curious readers could easily look these up online or in books. Here's a collection of publications that feature translations of myths. Some are general, others specific to a particular cycle.

Myths from Mesopotamia
Stephanie Dalley, revised edition 2000, Oxford University Press. 342pp.

Sumerian Mythology
Samuel Noah Kramer, 1972, University of Pennsylvania Press, 130pp

Jealous Gods & Chosen People: The Mythology of the Middle East
David Leeming, 2004, Oxford University Press, 150pp

The above are general studies. The first is a good overall collection for the general reader. The second is an older work by a very important and influential author, now somewhat out of date. The third didn't make a huge impression on me.


A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology
Gwendolyn Leick, 1991 Routledge. 226pp.

Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia
Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, 1992 The British Museum Press. 192Pp

Both of the above are dictionary type books with various entries in alphabetical order. They don't always agree with one another. Each has entries that the other lacks, so I suppose you'll want them both.


Epics of the Sumerian Kings: The Matter of Aratta
Herman Vanstiphout, 2003 Society of Biblical Literature. 176pp.

The City of Rainbows: A Tale from Ancient Sumer
Karen Foster, 1999, University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 28pp

The first of the above is a brilliant deep dive into the collection of myths that feature the distant, and perhaps imaginary, city of Aratta. The author provides translations and discussion. The second is a small picture book that tells one of these myths in story-time fashion. It's cute and a labour of love, but there isn't much there to excite the researcher.


The Epic of Gilgamesh

Andrew George, 1999, Penguin Books, 228pp

Gilgamesh: A New English Version

Stephen Mitchell, 2004, Free Press, 290pp

There are many translations of Gilgamesh on the market. The translation by Andrew George is very highly regarded. The retelling by Mitchell is well written and accessible, but not as scholarly.


Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth
Diana Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer, 1983, Harper & Row Publishers, 227pp

This collection by the esteemed Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer and foklorist Diana Wolkstein deals with the cycle of Inanna myths. It's somewhat dated, but still very enjoyable and worth a read.



RELIGION

Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide
Sarah Iles Johnson, general editor, 2004, The Bellknap Press, 697pp

This is a huge tome of comparative religion, dealing with a wide variety of specific topics and comparing the Sumerians, Akkadians, Hittites, Canaanites, and many more.


Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia
by Jean Bottero, 2001 The University of Chicago Press. 246pp.

A very good overview of the subject.


Ancient Goddesses
Lucy Goodison and Christine Morris eds., 1998, The University of Wisconsin Press, 224pp

More specific to goddesses, with some nice juicy bits for the historical detective.


The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion

Thorkild Jacobsen, 1976, Yale University Press, 273pp

A very interesting and influential work, though perhaps a bid dated now. This offers a more theoretical framework for the religion, rather than a look at the practice. The author has some interesting and compelling ideas.


Gods in the Desert: Religion of the Ancient Near East
Glenn S. Holland, 2009, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., 309pp

Religions of the Ancient Near East
Daniel C. Snell, 2011, University of Cambridge Press, 179pp

Penguin Handbook of Ancient Religions
Edited by John R. Hinnells, 2007, Penguin Books, 610pp

Three more generalist books to round out the list, all of which have something to offer.




DAILY LIFE

Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia
Karen Rhea Nemet-Nejat, 1998 Hendrickson Publishers. 346pp.

This is my favourite 'daily life' book for the Old Babylonian period, and the one I usually recommend.


Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia

Stephen Bertman, 2003 Oxford University Press. 396pp


Everyday Life in Ancient Mesopotamia

Jean Bottero, 2001 Johns Hopkins University Press. 276Pp

Both of the above are good. The first is broken out by topic, which makes browsing it easier. Unfortunately, it doesn't separate the time periods, so one gets the idea that life never changed over the 4000 year history of the culture. This makes it less useful for research. The second book is a more conventional read and is fine, but not as good as the Nemet-Nejat book.


Ancient Egyptian, Mesopotamian & Persian Costume
by Mary G. Houston, 2002 Dover Books, 190pp.
(essentially a reprint of the original second edition from 1954)

Somewhat dated now, but still has some use for this very specific topic.


Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor
Martha T. Roth, 1997, SBL, 283pp

Probably the gold standard book on Ancient Near Eastern laws in English. It covers the known Mesopotamian collections, as well as that of the Hittites. The excerpts of Hammurabi's code in Mythic Babylon do not come from this book, though. For those we turned to The Oldest Code of Laws in the World by C.H.W. Johns, 1903, available on Project Gutenberg.


The Marsh Arabs

Wilfred Thesiger, 1967 Penguin. 233pp.

This is a wonderful travelogue about Thesiger's time living in the southern marshes of the Sealand. It's all to easy to imagine that not much changed between the times of Lugalzagesi and Thesiger.



HISTORIES

King Hammurabi of Babylon
Marc van de Mieroop, 2005 Blackwell Publishing. 171pp.

One of two biographies of Hammurabi that I'm aware of, and the only one I've so far been able to lay my hands on. The other is by Domenic Charpin, and affordable copies have finally come to the market – I anxiously await mine.

 

A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000-323 BC, Third Edition
Marc Van de Mieroop, 2015 Wiley Blackwell Publishing. 432 pp.

An excellent survey of Mesopotamian History from 3000 to 323 BC, now in it's third edition..


Mari and Karana: Two Old Babylonian Cities
Stephanie Dalley, 1984 Longman Group Ltd. 218pp.

This book looks at the relationship between the kings of these two cities who were joined by marriage. It's a bit old and possibly hard to find, but I thought it was an excellent little book for revealing some of the politics and events of Subartu.


Letters From the King of Mari
Wolfgane Heimpel, 2003, Esenbrauns, 657pp

This huge book provides a detailed look at the last 12 or so years of King Zimri-Lim's life. It tries to piece together a very complex sequence of events from (usually undated) letters from the Mari archive. It covers some of the same ground as Mari and Karana, but unlike that book, this one is not for casual readers.


The Age of Agade: Inventing Empire in Ancient Mesopotamia
Benjamin R. Foster, 2016 Routledge. 428pp.

This book deals specifically with the Akkadian period of history and with the legacy of that city. If you'd like to use Mythic Babylon but shift the action to the Akkadian period, then I definitely recommend this book.



WEAPONS AND WARFARE

Of the books below, the only two I really recommend are the ones by Hamblin and Howard. The Hamblin book is really comprehensive and covers our period, but stops at the end of the middle bronze age. The book by Howard looks a weapons in detail, from the eye of a re-enactor and re-creator. It's rather dry and has some odd bugaboos, but has information you won't find elsewhere. Both of the Osprey books tend to skirt our period, and the Wise book is now somewhat out of date.

Warfare in the Ancient Near East to 1600 BC
William J. Hamblin, 2006 Routledge 517pp.

Bronze Age Military Equipment
Dan Howard, 2011 Pen & Sword Books. 169pp.

Bronze Age Warfare
Richard Osgood, Sarah Monks, and Judith Toms, 2000 Sutton Publishing Ltd., 165pp

Bronze Age War Chariots
Nic Fields, 2006 Osprey Publishing, 48pp

Ancient Armies of the Middle East
Terence Wise, 1981, Osprey Publishing, 40pp



BOOKS ABOUT CITIES

Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City
Gwendolyn Leick, 2001, Penguin Books, 384pp

The Ancient Mesopotamian City
Marc Van de Mieroop, 2004, Oxford University Press, 269pp

The two books above are generally about Mesopotamian cities and look at them very differently. The book by Leick is one of my favourite history books ever – it gives a detailed look at 7 cities that were prominent at different times in the history of the culture and explains what as unique about them. This gives the effect of one of those 'history of the world in 100 objects' books, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Quite a remarkable piece of writing, really. I'd love to see a sequel with 7 more cities!

The Van de Mieroop book is more a tradition survey of city life, organized by topic.

All of the books below are about specific cities. They vary in scope and some are pretty cursory (Erbil) while others more detailed (Ebla), but they all have something to contribute. Three have been reviewed elsewhere on this blog

Ur: The City of the Moon God
Harriet Crawford, 2015, Bloomsbury, 146pp

A City from the Dawn of History: Erbil in the Cuneiform Sources
John MacGinnis, 2014, Oxbow Books, 128pp

Ebla: An Empire Rediscovered
Paolo Matthiae, 1981, Doubleday & Company Inc., 237pp

Ugarit: Ras Shamra
Adrian Curtis, 1985, Lutterworth Press, 125pp




SPECIAL TOPICS

Philosophy Before the Greeks: The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia
Marc Van de Mieroop, 2016, Princeton University Press, 312pp

A book about Babylonian systems of learning which I've reviewed elsewhere on this blog.


The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture
Francesca Rochberg, 2004 Cambridge University Press, 331pp

This is mainly about astrology, and mainly about times after the OB period. I don't thin it's for the general reader.


Women in the Ancient Near East
Edited by Mark W. Chavalas, 2014, Routledge, 319pp

This one was a bit disappointing for a rather pedestrian treatment of a subject matter that deserved more.


The Horse, The Wheel, and Language
David W. Anthony, 2007, Princeton University Press, 553pp

A lengthy and detailed look at the cultures of the Pontic steppe and the origins of chariotry.



ATLASES AND GAZETEERS

The Routledge Handbook of The Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia
Trevor Bryce, 2009, Routledge, 887pp

This massive tome lists hundreds of Ancient Near Eastern cities with encyclopedic entries, telling where they were, when they were inhabited, and often offering some anecdotes and other information. The book is alphabetical, and there is no chronological index, so if you just want Kassite cities, you have to scan all the entries to find them. It was a hugely useful book for me, and yet despite it's scope, still missed a few rather obvious cities.

Several atlases are listed below. The two best are Roaf and Hunt, probably in that order. Both are large, picture-book type affairs that will have broad appeal. The atlas by Bryce is meant to be a companion to the Handbook mentioned above, but it makes some errors and I found the treatment to be too cursory. The Haywood atlas is a broad survey and lighter than the Roaf and Hunt books.

Atlas of the Ancient Near East from Prehistorical Times to the Roman Imperial Period
Trevor Bryce and Jessie Birkett-Rees, 2016 Routledge. 318pp.

The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Civilizations
John Haywood, 2005, Penguin Books, 144pp

Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East
Michael Roaf, 1990, Andromeda Books, 238pp

Historical Atlas of Ancient Mesopotamia
Norman Bancroft Hunt, 2004, Thalamus Publishing, 190pp


SURVEYS AND COMPENDIA

The Babylonian World

Edited by Gwendolyn Leick, 2007, Routledge, 590pp

A Companion to the Ancient Near East

Edited by Daniel C. Snell, 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 538pp

The Sumerian World

Harriet Crawford, 2013, Routledge, 659pp

This category is for broad spectrum histories where the author covers the whole shebang in a single book. The three listed above are compendia, collecting a variety of articles on specific subjects and by different authors, then organizing them in a cohesive fashion. These types of books are better for filling in the corners than as a starting point because the big picture often isn't complete, but each article can give a deep dive into something specific. The effect is rather like what you get when you try to use a pellet gun to cut out the shape of a red star at a carnival midway.

The books below generally make better introductions. I think the first three are the best. The Kriwaczek book surprised me for its quality as it's written by a journalist instead of a historian. These books are listed more or less in order of their utility to a general reader. The ones closer to the bottom cover more specific topics. The Ascalone book is largely a picture book, which some people might find useful.

 

Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization
Paul Kriwaczek, 2010, Thomas Dunne Books. 310 pp.

The Rise and Fall of Babylon: Gateway of the Gods
Anton Gill, 2008 Metro Books. 192pp.

Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History
J.N. Postgate 1992, Routledge, 367pp

Civilizations of Ancient Iraq
Benjamin R. And Karen Polinger Foster, 2009, Princeton University Press, 297pp

Babylon, John Oates, 1979
Thames & Hudson Ltd., 215pp

The Babylonians: an introduction
Gwendolyn Leick, 2003, Routledge, 182pp

Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians
Enrico Ascalone, University of California Press, 2007, 368pp

Ancient Mesopotamia
Susan Pollock, 1999, Cambridge University Press, 259pp

Sumer and the Sumerians, Second Ed.
Harriet Crawford, 2004, Cambridge University Press, 252pp

Civliization Before Greece and Rome

H.W.F. Saggs, 1989, Yale University Press, 322pp

This was the first book I read on the subject - the one that started it all. A chance find pulled from my father's large shelf of much more modern history.  

The Ancient Orient: An Introduction to the Study of the Ancient Near East

Wolfram von Soden, 1994, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 263pp

Early Urbanism on the Syrian Euphrates

Lisa Cooper, 2006, Routledge, 313

Ancient Mesopotamia at the Dawn of Civilization: The Evolution of an Urban Landscape

Guillermo Algaze, 2008, The University of Chicago Press, 230pp

Dictionary of the Ancient Near East

Edited by Piotr Bienkowski and Allan Millard, 2000, British Museum Press, 342pp



FURTHER AFIELD

These books cover places outside of our core area and really just scratch the surface.

Dilmun and its Neighbours

Harriet Crawford, 1998, Cambridge University Press, 170pp

The Hittites and their contemporaries in Asia Minor

J.G. Macqueen, 1986, Thames and Hudson Ltd., 176pp

Arabia and the Arabs From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam

Robert G. Hoyland, 2001, Routledge, 324pp

Ancient Canaan & Israel: An Introducton

Jonathan M. Golden, 2004, Oxford University Press, 413pp

The Hyksos Period in Ancient Egypt

Charlotte Booth, 2005, Shire Publications Ltd., 56pp

The Lost World of Elam: Re-creation of a Vanished Civilization
Walther Hinz, 1972, Sidgwick & Jackson, 192pp

Ancient Cyprus

Veronica Tatton-Brown, 1997, British Museum Press, 96pp


PAPERS

Rounding out our research, we consulted a number of papers, most of which can be found at Academia.Net or JSTOR. Others were brought to my attention by the Ancient World On Line blog (AWOL) or Ancient Near East Today (ANET). These are presented in no particular order.

Old Babylonian Personal Names, Marten Stol, 1991

Hurrians and Hurrian Names in the Mari Texts, Jack M. Sasson, 1974

Thy name is slave?: The slave onomasticon of Old Babylonian Sippar, Lieselot Vandorpe 2010

Urbanisn and Society in the Third Millenium Upper Khabur Basin, Jason Alik Ur, 2004 Dissertation

The Architectural Defense: Fortified Settlements of the Levant During the Middle Bronze Age, Aaron Alexander Burke, 2004 Dissertation

The Other and the Enemy in the Mesopotamian Conception of the World, Beate Pongratz-Leisten, 2001

Growing in a Foreign World: For a History of the “Meluhha Villages” in Mesopotamia in the 3rd Millenium BC, Massimo Vidale, 2004

Back to the Cedar Forest: The Beginning and End of Tablet V of the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, F.N.H. Al-Rawi and A. R. George, 2014 ASOR

Lists of Personal Names From The Temple School of Nippur, Edward Chiera 1916

Trade, Merchants, and the Lost Cities of the Bronze Age, Barjamovic, Chaney, Cosar, & Hotascsu 2017

Rebuilding Eden in the Land of Eridu, Marco Ramazzotti, 2017 ANEToday Vol 5 No9

Masculinities and Third Gender: Gendered Otherness in the Ancient Near East, Ilan Peled, 2017, ANEToday Vol 5 No2

The Mesopotamian Pandemonium: A Provisional Census, Frans A.M. Wiggerman, 2011

Lists of Personal Names from the Temple School of Nippur, Edward Chiera, 1916

The Ilkum Institution in the Provincial Administration of Larsa During the Reign of Hammurapi (1792-1750 B.C.), Miki Yokoyama Ishikida, 1999

Nuzi Personal Names, Ignace J. Gelb, Pierre M. Purves, and Allan A. MacRae, 1943, University of Chicago Press

Hurrians and Subarians, Ignace J. Gelb, 1944 University of Chicago Press

Storm Gods of the Ancient Near East, Parts I and II, Daniel Schwemer 2008

Transtigridian Snake Gods, F.A.M. Wiggerman, 1997



WEBSITES

In addition to the websites listed in the book, these also proved useful:

Iconography of Deities and Demons in the Ancient Near East, various electronic pre-publication entries.

http://www.religionswissenschaft.uzh.ch/idd/prepublication.php

The Ancient Near East Today offers a website and journal, quite good.

https://www.asor.org/anetoday

If you don't already know about Mythic Babylon and would like to learn more, check out the Design Mechanism Forums. It can be found for purchase at these locations:

Design Mechanism Store / Lulu / DriveThru RPG / Aeon Games (UK)

Reading City of Djinns, by William Dalrymple

City of Djinns by William Dalrymple, 1993, 350pp

I first read this many years ago and decided to re-read it again after I finished Rudyard Kipling's Kim with my book club. 

The subtitle, A Year in Delhi tells you pretty much exactly what you get - an account of Dalrymple and his wife's time in Delhi. Like most travelogues, this book features a few of the  trials and tribulations associated with travel and living in a new place, but it offers much more than that. During his stay, Dalrymple delved into the history of the city, and the reader is treated to a book that weaves back and forth in time, telling us what the city as like way back when, an then revealing it again in 1993. 

He covers a wide variety of topics, from historic people and places to the state of modern eunuchry, partridge fighting, and sufism. And the book has some great characters, like partridge aficionado Punjab Singh (whose name is surely an Indian version of Indiana Jones) and the archaeologist B.B. Lal. For a GM like me who likes to infuse their made up worlds with the verisimilitude of the real world, these characters are inspiration gold. It's these characters and some of the situations they find themselves in that I'd like to share with you here today.

One of the more interesting characters in the book is Pir Syed Mohammed Sarmadi, a very successful fraudulent dervish. Dalrymple describes him as -

"A hugely fat sufi with a mountainous turban, and elephantine girth, and a great ruff of double chins, he operates one of the most profitable faith healing businesses in India. One of Sarmadi's forebears was beheaded by the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb after he wandered into the imperial presence stark naked, shrieking out sufi poetry."

"Everyday, Sarmadi sits cross-legged in his surgery between ten and five, with a short break for a kebab at lunch. It is a small room, and Sarmadi fills a great deal of it. Its walls are lined with powders and sacred texts, framed monograms of Arabic calligraphy and pictures of the Ka'ba at Mecca. There is a continuous queue of folk waiting to see him, and Sarmadi keeps the queue moving. Each petitioner gets about two minutes of his time. Sarmadi will listen, breaking his concentration only to clean his fingernails or to gob into his golden spittoon. When finished, Sarmadi will wave his peacock fan and blow over the petitioner, recite a bit of the Quran, write out a charm or a sacred number, and place it in an amulet. He will then dismiss the supplicant, having first received his fee of fifty rupees, a week's wage for an Indian labourer."

Sarmadi seems to come from a long line of such Sufis, so with a little research, one could round fill out a full faction of them: https://reflectionsofindia.com/2014/07/22/sufisarmad/

Dalrymple also relates some of the stories of past visitors, like Dargah Quli Khan, who visited the city between 1737 and 1741 and reports on the local orgies:

"Hand in hand, the lovers roam the streets, while [outside] the drunken and debauched revel in all kinds of perversities. Groups of winsome lads violate the faith of the believers with acts which are sufficient to shake the very roots of piety. There are beautiful faces as far as the eye can see. All around prevails a world of impiety and immorality. Both nobles and plebeians quench the thirst of their lust here."

Dalrymple later reflects on the modern city: 

"Modern Delhi is thought of either as a city of grey bureaucracy, or as the metropolis of hard-working nouveau riche Punjabis. It is rarely spoken of as a lively city, and never as a promiscuous one. Yet, as I discovered that in December, the bawdiness of Safdar Jung's Delhi does survive, kept alive by one particular group of Delhi-wallahs. You can still find them in the dark gullies of the old city, if you know where to look."

Through Dalrymple, we are  exposed to the 17th Century writings of Niccolau Manucci, son of a Venetian trader who ran away from home at 14 to become a con artist, trickster, and artilleryman in 1660's India. It is partly through his eyes that we learn of Shah Jahan and his in-fighting children Dara, Aurangzeb, Jaharana, and Roshanara.

Of Aurangzeb, he says:

" Although Aurangzeb was held to be bold and valiant, he was capable of great dissimulation and hypocrisy. Pretending to be an ascetic, he slept while in the field on a mat of straw that he had himself woven . . . He ate food that cost little and let it be known that he underwent severe penances and fasting. All the same, under cover of these pretenses he led a secret and jolly life of it. His intercourse was with certain holy men addicted to sorcery, who instructed him how to bring over to his side as many friends as he could with witchcraft and soft speeches. He was so subtle as to deceive even the quickest witted people."

 And Dalrymple tells us of Ibn Battutah, who resided for 8 years in Delhi in the 1330's and 40's with Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluk as a patron. Now, the sultan was a complete bastard (in a pique of anger at the citizens of Delhi, he once gave the entire citizenry 3 days to completely remove themselves to another city 40-days walk away, and when a blind man and a cripple were found still in the city, he had one ejected by catapult, and the other dragged to the new city behind a horse (only his leg arrived). But the sultan liked Battutah (mostly) and at one point decided to send him on a diplomatic mission to China.

Battutah found himself at the head of an entourage of 1000 mounted bodyguards and a long train of camels carrying gifts, such as 100 concubines, 100 Hindu dancing girls, gold candelabras, brocades, swords, and gloves embroidered with pearls. Behind the camels came the most valuable gift of all - a thousand thoroughbred horses from Turkestan.

But only 100 miles into his journey, his train was attacked by Hindu rebels (the country was full of rebels) and Battutah was separated from his group and captured. He managed to escape and re-join his party. At Calicut on the Malabar coast, he loaded everything onto four dhows to sail to China, but lingered on shore for Friday prayers. A sudden storm blew up, grounding and breaking up the boats. The slaves, troops, and horses all drowned. Not daring to return to Delhi, he hightailed it to China on his own.

I'll return to Ibn Battutah in a future post, and maybe we'll also look at another travel writer - Tim Mackintosh Smith - who not only wrote an annotated translation of The Travels of Ibn Battutah, but also Travels With a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah.

As for Dalrymple,  he's an evocative writer and I found this book a pleasure to read. It won two awards, has been adapted into a play, and (I'm quite sure, though it doesn't say so on Wikipedia) was turned into a television series in the UK. Here's the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Djinns

The Oxus Civilization

The Oxus Civilization

This is a tale of two books. I'll get to the second book later - for now, let's consider this one:

Origins on the Bronze Age Oasis Civilization in Central Asia 

by Fredrik Talmage Hiebert, 1994, 240pp

This book contains an archaeological survey of the oasis civilizations Margiana (and by extension, of Bactria, which is closely related). Together, these are known as the BMAC (Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex) cultures, of which little is written in English.

The author spent a fair amount of time excavating at Gonur Depe, one of the more impressive archaeological sites in the Mugrab delta in Turkmenistan, and it's quite clear he's a expert on the subject. The constructed remains of this ancient civilization are impressive. The finds of artifacts are a little less so, but they reveal interesting ties to both the Indus civilization, and to Sumer/Akkad/Early Babylonia. The oasis civilizations were rich in agriculture, and consequently in food, human resources, and textiles - much like Sumer and Akkad. But also like Sumer and Akkad, they were poor in minerals and metals, necessitating trade with the nearby mountainous communities (which are not covered in this book, and which were likely the source of both lapis-lazuli and tin for both of these civilizations).

To understand this importance of this culture a little more, check out this image of the site of Gonur Depe in Turkmenistan - the one at which Talmadge excavated:

Gonur Depe is a large site of 55 Hectares occupied in different stages between c.2500 BC and c.1500 BC. The larger built-up portion in the centre of the image is known as Gonur North, and was occupied up to about 1900 BC. The southern section with the thick-walled fortress in the centre was occupied from 1900 onward. Fans of the Glorantha game setting might well wonder if Middle Bronze-Age Gonur South was the original Pavis, and Gonur North the Big Rubble.

Gonur is the largest ruin in the Murghab Delta region, but over 150 other settlements have also been found so far. 

The remains are as impressive as any to be found c.2000 BC. It's really too bad more isn't written about them in English. An updated survey, geared to the lay-person, is sorely needed.

This particular book offers such a survey, but it's now more than 20 years out of date, and spends far too much time describing the ceramic complex of the sites to be of interest to the general reader. Apart from that, the book is well written offers a sufficient survey of the archaeological remains of these sites, but doesn't offer much synthesis - it doesn't spend much time trying to put all the pieces together to create a picture of the civilization.

A more contemporary take - one that builds upon both early and late excavations, and takes into account our understanding of other cultures both near and far, would be a far more interesting read. Such a book hasn't been available in English, as far as I can tell. 

At least not until now. Luckily for us ancient history junkies, Routledge has released a monster entry in their 'World Of' series, called The World of the Oxus Civilization. The hardback version available now sells for a mere $200 U.S. dollars and is nearly 1000 pages. But there's a more affordable Kindle version on the market, and a paperback is scheduled to be released next March. 

These books contain collections of articles, each in its own chapter and each by a different author. Each chapter deals with a special topic, such as a specific period in history, writing, the law, social organization, kingship, queenship, and what have you. My copy of The Elamite World, for example, has 41 chapters and is split into 8 parts. These parts are: 

1. Imagining Elam (Research & Sources), 

2. Land and Peoples, 

3. Elam Through History, 

4. Close Encounters on Eastern and Western Fronts, 

5. Language and Writing, 

6. The Material Culture of Elam

7. Elamite Society, and

8. The Legacy of Elam

So I'm expecting something similar from this book, and I'm very much looking forward to it.

https://www.routledge.com/The-World-of-the-Oxus-Civilization/Lyonnet-Dubova/p/book/9781138722873

What Ancient Babylon can teach us about World-Building

 

Philosophy Before the Greeks: The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia
By Marc Van de Mieroop, 2016, 301pp

In this essay expanded into book form, Marc van de Mieroop (author of several well regarded books on ancient Babylonia, including A History of the Ancient Near East and King Hammurabi of Babylon: A Biography) describes his hunt for evidence of philosophy (and more specifically epistemology) in Babylonian culture. He presents his case that ancient Babylonian scribes adhered to a system of knowledge that has so far eluded historians and contemporary observers, and in having such a system of knowledge, they therefore were early students of philosophy.

After describing his intent (and discussing a little of Greek philosophy by comparison) He presents three examples to illustrate why he thinks the Babylonians had a theory of knowledge. These examples are:

1. Lexical lists (lists of words that Babylonians compiled, organized in ways we can't understand but that make sense in a Babylonian context),

2. Omen lists (lists of omens that could be used in prophecy)

3. Law Codes (effectively, lists of judgments in legal cases, though these also fixed some prices).

After examining each of these types if lists (two chapters are devoted to each) the author concludes that the secret to understanding systematized Babylonian thought is couched in their writing, and in particular in the writing of lists. 

According to van de Mieroop, Babylonians believed that true knowledge was encoded in writing because writing was a gift from the gods and that the writing of the gods existed everywhere in the natural world (in the stars, the liver of a lamb, and so on). The natural conclusion was that, because writing was the purview of the gods - if you could write about it, it was true. If you could encode it in writing so it could be read multiple ways to have meanings that could support one another (for example, if the Sumerian translation and the Akkadian translation were complimentary), then the truth was that much stronger. 

Van de Mieroop ends the book by stating that "it is there, [in writing], that we have to look for the Babylonian conceptual autonomy and the key to their philosophy." In saying this, he seems to acknowledge that he's got no smoking gun, but the book presents an idea that points to something bigger..

I found his analysis of Babylonian thought to be quite interesting, even eye-opening. I have to say I wasn't always convinced by the examples, but it seems fairly clear to me that Babylonians had some kind of shared system of knowledge - even if there aren't any period texts that explicitly reveal it. Could that system be hiding in the writing? Possibly. Was there a pan-cultural study of the nature of knowledge? I'm not convinced, but scribal conventions lasted a long time and spread over a wide area, so perhaps there was. We've only scratched the surface of what the Babylonians can tell us – we've translated only a fraction of the total number of tablets so far excavated, and perhaps hundreds of thousands still lie under the mud, waiting to be found. So who knows what more they have to reveal to us?

The book treads heavily on the idea of determination language, but stops shy of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and instead steers us to looking at show script can influence culture, and culture script.

As I read the book, I wondered if there was a lesson in here for game design – or at least for the design of fictional worlds? The thing that stuck with me the most was the idea that a scribe could write something into existence. Gamers and game-writers do this all the time! Do we do it with lists? Hell yes - we love lists! Below are a number of examples from various RPGs published over the years. Before we get to those, though, I'd like you to keep in mind the world-building potential of lists.

Philosophy Before The Greeks offers one particularly stirring example of how lists can reveal how different cultures look at the world;  In the book, van de Mieroop drops a quote from Jorge Luis Borges, who is in turn quoting from a 'Chinese encyclopedia'. This is how that encyclopedia classifies animals:

“In its remote pages, animals are divided into:

a. belonging to an emperor
b. embalmed
c. tame
d. sucking pigs
e. sirens
f. fabulous
g. stray dogs
h. included in the present classification
j. frenzied
k. drawn with a very fine camel hair brush
l. etcetera
m. having just broken the water pitcher, and
n. that from a long way off look like flies.”

This reads very much like the table of contents of a fantastic bestiary, doesn't it. As a thought exercise, try to imagine the world that this list evokes - do you see the kernel of a setting? 

Compare this to an example from an actual RPG setting - the Creatures Chapter from the Mythic Babylon setting for Mythras, from which I share an extract. We can immediately see we're not in Kansas anymore, and the the logic is askew from what we might expect:

MYTHIC BABYLONIAN CREATURES

BEASTS: Bear, Bovines, Canines (including lions), Elephants, Equids, Felines, Griffin, Insects, Lion-Fish, Primates, Suhurmašu, etc.

HYBRIDS: Scorpion Men, Hari People. Mer-People, Kurgarra, Bull Men, Hairy Hero Men, etc.

DEMONS AND SPIRITS: Animal Demons, Bad News Demons, Demons of Desolation, Underworld Demons, Wind Spirits, Zaqiqu, etc.

MONSTERS AND FALLEN GODS: Asag, Anzud, Forest Guardians, Lamaštu, Pazuzu, Three Horned Serpents, etc.

Considering the various kinds of Babylonian lists, do we have similar lists in Role Playing Games? Do gamers also have a shared means of communication embedded in the making of lists? Turns out we do! Let's compare these to the types of lists van de Mieroop cites in his book.

LEXICAL LISTS (to help us understand the world)

Simple lexical lists are valuable resources for understanding game worlds, too. Here, for example, are two lists that reveal the kind of person one can play in the game of Outremer by Flying Mice Games. These lists are not only tools for describing who you can be in the setting, but they hint very strongly at the nature of play. You may ask – Is it a mystical setting? How much combat is there? In what cognitive era does the game take place? With just these two lists, you'll have a pretty good idea of what the game world is like.

OUTREMER - TABLE OF PROFESSIONS

Actor                Apothecary               Archivist                    Artisan
Artist                Barber-Surgeon       Bounty Hunter           Caravan Guard
Courtier           Courier                     Courtesan                 Cutpurse
Dancer            Doctor                      Engineer                    Fencer
Footpad           Friar/Preacher         Gentleman Farmer    Guardsman
Herbalist          Herdsman                Highwayman             Hunstman
Knight/Faris     Lord                         Mercenary                 Merchant
Musketeer       Musician                  Naval Officer              Playwright
Pirate              Poet                         Priest/Rabbi/Mullah    Professor
Sargeant         Smith                       Smuggler                   Soldier
Spy                 Street Performer      Teamster                    Thief
Tinker             Turcopole                 Yeoman

OUTREMER – TABLE OF PATHS
Esotericist          Magus                   Minstrel              Crusader/Ghazi
Kabbalist            Sorceror                Mechanist          Oracle
Dervish              Snake Charmer     Fortune Teller     Healer

Mystic                Faqih

Lexical lists in games can also tell us how we can interact with the world. Some games have lists of the things you can buy and sell, or of the kinds of things you'll find in treasure troves. Others tell you exactly how you can engage the world through the game mechanics. Here's a partial list of the talents, skills, and knowledges a character may have in Ars Magica Second Edition. Here you can see what a character can know, learn, and do in the world:

ARS MAGICA – TALENTS, SKILLS, KNOWLEDGES

Exceptional Talents:                  Arcane Skills:                   Arcane Knowledges:
Alchemy                                       Certamen                          Hermes History
Animal Ken                                  Parma Magica                   Hermes Lore
Contortions                                                                            Magic Theory
Direction Sense                           Forester Skills:
Empathy                                      Animal Handling               Casual Knowledges:
Enchanting Music                       Survival                             (Area) Lore
Entrancement                             Track                                 Church Lore
Healer                                                                                   Faerie Lore
Hex                                             Performance Skills:         Fantastic Beast Lore
Magic Sensitivity                         Acting                                Legend Lore
Mimicry                                       Storytelling                        Occult Lore
Perfect Balance                          Jongleur                            Speak (Specific Language)
Premonitions                              Sing
Read Lips                                   Play (specific instrument)  Formal Knowledges:
Second Sight                                                                        Church Knowledge
Sense Holiness & Unholiness    Mental Skills:                   Humanities
Visions                                       Concentration                    Medicine

Weather Sense                          Meditation                          Scribe (Specific Alphabet)

In games with life-path style generators, we can learn not just what we do and how we do it, but more about how we are by examining our past. For example, this list from the Denizens of the North, supplement for the Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok game reveals how two party members got to know one another and how they feel about each other now:

DENIZENS OF THE NORTH – DWELLER RELATIONSHIPS LIST

Circumstance:                                                               State:

• Drinking Buddies                                                             Mistrust
• Were robbed by the same criminal                                  Bound in Purpose
• Met at a funeral                                                               Rivalry
• Made a bet; will travel together until someone wins       Greed 

OMEN LISTS (to predict the future of our world)

Yes, we have lists in gaming for this, too. Another list from Denizens of the North reveals something of the character's past, and like a Babylonian oracle, points to something in their future, and this brings of to the Omen Lists of gaming:

DENIZENS OF THE NORTH – LIST OF BRUSHES WITH POWER

• You met an important merchant that returned from Miklagard. You may purchase a rare item.
• While in Ath Cliath you gained audience with King Sitric. He had heard of your great exploits tasked you with hunting his enemy – the Hibernian clans.
• Odin the Wanderer has marked you as a promising hero. Since that day your encounters have become increasingly challenging and deadly.

The Artesia: Adventures in the Known World RPG has copious lifepath tables for figuring out who your character was in their past, from birth to maturity. They'll not only tell you about your birth sign, your lineage, and some of the events from your childhood, but they specifically tie these events to your stats so you can see how the world can shape your character:

ARTESIA: ADVENTURES IN THE KNOWN WORLD – LIFEPATH TRICKY OMEN TABLE

• An owl watches your birth. You will be blessed with insights no one else will have

                     +1 WIS, +1 PER, -1 MEM

• The Evening Star is seen in the night sky. You will lead a life filled with beauty and sensual pleasure.

                       +1 APP, +1 PRE, -1 WILL

• A satyr is seen nearby. Your life will be filled with trickery

                    +1 IMAG, +1 PRE, -1 WILL

• The Conqueror Star is seen in the night sky. You will become a leader of men.

                 +1 PRE, +1 WILL, -1 EMP

Just as Babylonian omen lists describe the future, so can the lists found in games. These take the form of random events lists, encounter lists, and adventure generators. Here's an excerpt from list of events from Ars Magica. The list is given numbers in the book so that a random event can be generated. Rolling the die puts the future in the hands of the gods:

ARS MAGICA – EXTRAORDINARY RESULTS FROM ARCANE EXPERIMENTATION (DISASTERS)

1. Explosion

2. Overwhelmed

3. Deterioration

4. Lab Ruined

5. Something Valuable Destroyed

6. Mentally Enfeebled

7. Threat to the Covenant

8. Creation Turns on You

In the Skyrealms of Jorune RPG 3^rd Ed., published by Chessex in 1992, we find a series of randomizable lists which work together to generate encounters. Using these, the Gamemaster (or Oracle, if you will) can quickly determine the species, profession, demeanor, and intent of an encounter – and also the contextual backdrop against which it occurs. Here are a few of the possible results:

SKYREALMS OF JORUNE – ENCOUNTER GENERATOR

• A human Durlig puller is encountered in the city while a protest is going on. This well-groomed person wants someone to settle a dispute.
• A thivin klade mother is encountered in town during the annual Cletch (taxation), and seems to have an unexplained interest in the party.
• A woffen archer is met during the Drenn ceremonies. He chews his gerrig and reveals that he's chasing someone.

Returning again to Outremer for another example, we find similar lists that allow for the generation of missions including rumors to be investigated, adventure locations, the agents behind the rumor, and even some suggestions of 'sweeteners' to convince the player characters to partake. Here are just a few of the possible results:

OUTREMER - PLOT SEEDS RESULTING FROM THE ADVENTURE GENERATOR

• Peasants have been disappearing in the Duchy of Acre; Devils are said to be behind the rumor. One reward for the adventure will be a knighthood for a deserving member.

• Prodigies were sighted in the Principality of Galilee; The Pope is said to be behind the rumor. The services of a local spy ring will be provided.

• A Djinn ruler has asked for our aid in the city of Tripoli; A sorcerer is said to be behind the rumor. Transport will be provided to those who heed the call.

LAW LISTS (to help us understand how the world works

We've seen how lists can describe the game world to us (lexical lists), and how they can even help determine the course of future events (omen lists), but what about the legal lists? Yes, of course, gaming lists also describe the rules of engagement with the world and what kind of judgments a player can expect. Here, from Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies by Chad Underkoffler, is a 'quick list of the steps of a Turn of the Duel':

SWASHBUCKLERS OF THE 7 SKIES - LIST OF STEPS OF A TURN OF THE DUEL

1. Engage Foes (initiative)
2. Divvy Duel Dice (plan attack vs defence)
3. The Charge (declare dice)
4. The Clash of Steel (attacker and defender roll dice)
5. The Touch (apply damage if necessary)
6. Volte-face (repeat steps 3-5, reversing attacker and defender rolls), and
7. After all combatants have had their attack and defense, go to Next Turn.

        (That is, unless someone calls for an impasse.)

IF YOU CAN WRITE IT, IT'S TRUE (World-Building via Lists)

In his book, Philosophy Before the Greeks: The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia , Marc van de Mieroop explains how the ancient scribes came to believe in the divine power of writing – in the creative potential encoded in the recording of lists. “If you could write about it, it was true.” Scribes began to pad lexical lists with imaginary, but completely logical, entries. If they could invent it and the gods had given them the signs to encode these things in clay, then surely they could exist. Does this not describe the very act of creating imaginary worlds?

Here's an example of one list that does just that from the blog of my friend John Bell. It's a list of setting elements that can be tossed together to create scenarios. He describes this list as being made from 'regular fantasy stuff', and it'll probably seem like anything but that. But John has a fertile mind and makes both wonderful settings and creative scenarios and campaigns – for him, this is 'regular fantasy stuff'. See if this list doesn't remind you of the list of animals from the Chinese Encyclopedia shared above. If it does, we've come full circle. Lists are the bones of world-building.

LIST OF ADVENTURE ELEMENTS FROM THE RETIRED ADVENTURER:

Ooze-knights on motorbikes
A Cuban communist air-pirate + her air ship
Somebody's specific memory-juice in a reusable thermostat
A twelve-armed demon who is chief marketing officer of an "Uber for dental hygiene" start-up
Cyber-trolls that all started off as one troll
A dog with strong opinions
A cool magic tank that shoots lasers but not from its gun
The prophetic intestines of a guy named "Joseph Blankenwell"
A boiling cloud of acid with a New York accent and a heart of gold
A skeleton rights activist who is also a cleric of the Big Fire
A giant wolf-spider thing who works for an insurance company
A Jacobin golem with wheels
Thousands of obols
Cyberbullying
Schistosomiasis
A nuclear reactor on tank treads with a giant glowing crack
A 33-gallon fishtank with no top that's full of expired fireworks
Six ghost paladins on a holy quest that's kinda sketchy and low-key racist
An EDM dance party club

The colour "red"

The Retired Adventurer: Planning Campaign as Series of Decisions

Ancient History Book Review

The Ark Before Noah: Decoding The Story of the Flood by Irving Finkel, 2014, 352pp

The Ark Before Noah is a rather charming history book looks at the pre-biblical Mesopotamian flood myth in all its glory. For those who don't know, the author Irving Finkel is the Assistant Keeper of Ancient Mesopotamian script, languages, and cultures in the Department of the Middle East in the British Museum, and is essentially the museum's curator of cuneiform tablets. It's a position he's held for a very long time, and has a wealth of experience, both as a researcher and as a public speaker in the museum.

This experience contributes significantly to the book. Aside from the core subject matter of the flood story, Finkel give us stories of life in the museum and anecdotes from his own early career as a student and educator. Among these is the story of the first decipherment of the Mesopotamian flood text by George Smith (who was so moved by the discovery he screamed and removed his clothes – just like a Babylonian prophet!). There are also stories of later discoveries volunteer translators and Finkel himself, as well as anecdotes from his own earlier career. These personal touches are a welcome (and vanishingly rare in history books) addition to the story Finkel weaves about the evolution of the flood story.

 

In the audio version, all of this is delivered by Finkel himself in a friendly and conversational manner – he's clearly used to conveying history to a wide audience, and has written several children's books as well as a novel. For gamers – particularly a British gamers – there's an added bonus: Finkel sounds a lot like veteran GM Nigel Clarke, who is himself no stranger to ancient history! So if you ever wondered what it would be like to play in a session GMed by Finkel, play first with Nigel and then give this book a whirl. I haven't played with Nigel myself, but it he breaks role occasionally to tell you stories about his 'cinematically eccentric' colleagues or his flowering from youth to scholar, then the picture will be complete.

“...It was this archaeological fluke that got me the cuneiform job. After signing the official secrets act, I was handed my heavy, pass-port-to-the-nations-treasure key, which is soberly inscribed 'if lost, 20 shillings reward'. The tablet collections in the British Museum defied, and still defy, belief.”

As for the core content, Finkel covers all the basics, giving us the stories of the discovery of the various tablets that reference the flood, their provenance, and their contents, and their relative dates of origin. Of these, two come from the Old Babylonian period, two from the Middle Babylonian Kassite period, two from the Assyrian period, and finally the reference found in the Gilgamesh epic of the Neo Babylonian period. Two tablets are written in Sumerian, the rest are Akkadian.

Finkel also gives us context, describing the relevant bits of Babylonian society, including the idiosyncrasies of writing cuneiform, the role and life of scribes in society, and how writing changed over time. Then he goes through the tablets, spending time on the various episodes to give context to the things described in them. He will ask, for example, what did the ark look like? What kind of boat was it? Then relate what the tablets tell us to what we actually know of ancient Mesopotamian boats. Similarly, he looks at who the flood hero (Atrahasis, Utnapishtim, or Ziusudra, depending on the tablet) might have been, how the god, Enki, conveyed his instructions, and where the boat might have landed afterward.

I started to count off the aspects of Babylonian culture he listed and I compared them to what we included in the Mythic Babylon supplement for Mythras, and soon came to the conclusion that this book offers a nice primer to Babylonian culture. Much of what he talks about is covered in Mythic Babylon, including:

• The writing and delivery of personal correspondence,
• Who the Great Gods were
• The nature of literature and scribal culture,
• The nature of omens (including the reading of birth defects),
• Types of divination such as extispicy and leucanomancy,
• The use of mumbo-jumbo language in spells,
• The Asu and Ashipu as medical specialists,
• Gudu priests and other clergy,
• Dream incubation,
• Reed houses in the southern marsh,
• The shape and use of quppu boats, among others, and
• The source of bitumen for waterproofing.

All of this and more is found in Mythic Babylon.

The Ark was a Quppu boat!

 
Finkel also covers a number of things we didn't include in our text, such as the various places people thought the ark had come to rest (A mountain in Urartu, or Mount Nizir, or even Mt Gudi). He discusses the evolution of the flood myth, and the possibility for a trade in 'ark artifacts' not unlike what happened with the bones of saints and pieces of the 'true cross' in the Middle Ages. He spends quite a bit of time developing his theory that the roots of monotheism are to be found in 7th & 6th Century Babylon. He even included a few little gems to surprise me – such as how people can only write cuneiform right-handed, or that truly good scribes were said to 'follow the mouth', or that Hammurabi's Code was written in a deliberately old fashioned style so it could lean on the weight of tradition. And did you know that the word 'disaster' has its roots in the words 'dire' and 'star'? The Dire Star will be the name of my next Fiasco spaceship!

Obviously, I quite enjoyed the book – both as a history buff and as a gamer. Anytime I read a book and learn something that excites me AND I get something I can use in gaming, I consider that a book well read. If the story is also accessible, well-told, and convincing, then that's a five out of five stars book from my perspective, and one I can recommend to my friends.

Reflections on Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace, 1880, 620 pages
Audio version read by Todd McLaren, 23.25 hrs.

I'm not entirely sure what possessed me to purchase this book, except perhaps that I love the 1959 movie starring Charlton Heston, and I like reading books set in the Middle East, especially during the ancient era.

You've no doubt all seen that film (if not, please do - it has aged very well). It adheres fairly closely to the novel, but cuts out a couple of large swaths of the more sedentary portions - as it would have to do, given the length of the book.

Synopsis

(Light spoilers below)

The story follows the fortunes of Judah Ben Hur, son of a wealthy Hebrew merchant. Ben Hur has plans to join the Roman Army, but everything changes when a freak accident nearly kills the Roman governor of the district, and Judah is accused of being an assassin. He is sent to the galleys, while his mother and sister are imprisoned and their property forfeit - all without trial.

After some years as a Roman galley slave in the Mediterranean, Ben Hur's fortunes change when he is adopted by a Roman officer, and he inherits considerable wealth. When in Antioch, he meets with his father's old slave, Simonides, who is himself is now a wealthy man having secured Ben Hur's father's trading company from the Romans who had confiscated it. He also meets his old friend Messala, who was responsible for grassing him up to the Romans right after the accident.

After meeting Messala, Ben Hur's thoughts turn to vengeance, and this is one of the main themes of the book. Ben Hur (with the help of Simonides, who has remained loyal to the family through all this) concocts a scheme wherein Hur challenges Messala to a chariot race. They goad Messala into betting more than he owns on the outcome of the race, and during the race Hur drives his chariot into Massena's, causing it to crash and cripple him. Messala loses both the use of is legs, and his fortune. Hur's revenge is complete. This is one of those places where the book differs from the movie, for in the film, Messala is the one who is ruthless on the race track, not Hur. In the book, I found myself questioning Hur's charity.

Hur eventually goes back to Jerusalem where he ends up leading and training a resistance movement, and becomes a follower of The Christ. The book ends differently from the film - not with redemption and healing upon the Resurrection, but perhaps more bittersweetly. I won't spoil it.

Reflections

One difference between the book and the film is that the film is more subtle in evoking the Christian themes, relying on soulful looks and music as much as anything. The book is rather more open about it, especially in the first scene when the three wise men meet in the desert before we ever meet Ben Hur. This felt heavy handed to me when I was first getting into the book, but now that I've finished it I don't think it is. There's some speculation that Wallace himself was not particularly religious before starting the book, but in imagining the place and time grew in admiration for early Christians and tried to bring that out in his writing.

I really loved the historical detail in this book. Wallace pauses fairly often in his tale to address the reader so that he can set the scene. "Imagine, dear reader, if you will..." and then he launches into a description of the cave where Jesus is born, or of a caravanserai, or the gates of Jerusalem and who might be hanging about, or tells us about the nature of chariot horses. I found it to be a great resource for my own setting of these kinds of scenes in gaming, and the next time I run a game inspired by the middle east, this will be one of the tools I'll use. Here's a sample:

"To understand thoroughly what happened to the Nazarene at the khan, the reader must be reminded that Eastern inns were different from the inns of the Western world. They were called khans, from the Persian, and, in simplest form, were fenced enclosures, without house or shed, often without a gate or entrance. Their sites were chosen with reference to shade, defence, or water. Such were the inns that sheltered Jacob when he went to seek a wife in Padan-Aram. Their like may been seen at this day in the stopping-places of the desert. On the other hand, some of them, especially those on the roads between great cities, like Jerusalem and Alexandria, were princely establishments, monuments to the piety of the kings who built them. In ordinary, however, they were no more than the house or possession of a sheik, in which, as in headquarters, he swayed his tribe. Lodging the traveller was the least of their uses; they were markets, factories, forts; places of assemblage and residence for merchants and artisans quite as much as places of shelter for belated and wandering wayfarers. Within their walls, all the year round, occurred the multiplied daily transactions of a town."

"The singular management of these hostelries was the feature likely to strike a Western mind with most force. There was no host or hostess; no clerk, cook, or kitchen; a steward at the gate was all the assertion of government or proprietorship anywhere visible. Strangers arriving stayed at will without rendering account. A consequence of the system was that whoever came had to bring his food and culinary outfit with him, or buy them of dealers in the khan. The same rule held good as to his bed and bedding, and forage for his beasts. Water, rest, shelter, and protection were all he looked for from the proprietor, and they were gratuities. The peace of synagogues was sometimes broken by brawling disputants, but that of the khans never. The houses and all their appurtenances were sacred: a well was not more so."

There, in just two paragraphs, we have the entire scenario setting described for us, with sights, sounds, possible encounters, major NPCs and their motives all suggested. I really lean on descriptions like this when running a game. They help me set the scene and, even more important, tell me which characters are hanging about, and give me an idea of what they'll think and say.

I recommend Ben Hur if you like a good historical tale, and especially if you liked the film. Although the events are similar to the film, there are enough differences that you'll get fresh perspectives, and Wallace can really set a scene, if scenery is what you're after.