Books read this week: Ancient Iraq 8/10 (Georges Roux), Fairy Folklore 7/10 (Anna Franklin and Paul Mason), Changeless 5/10 (Gail Carriger)
Time is a strange thing; it's been a very long time since there's been a Sargon in Akkad - in fact, it's been a long time since there's been an Akkad full stop - and yet somehow Roux's Ancient Iraq manages to make the Babylonians, Sumerians and Assyrians seem very contemporary. Which is a stunning achievement considering the gigantic scope of the book; it covers over 5000 years of history, most of it urban, all of it very complex. I found it a brilliant introduction to a little studied period.
It is strange that I find it far easier to relate to ancient and classical figures than to medieval ones; I can imagine holding a conversation with Octavian or Socrates, and I can understand how Hammurabi or Odysseus thought, in a way I really can't with someone like Martin Luther, or Bernard of Clairvaux. I think partly this is a product of the shape of society. The Romans, the Greeks, and especially the Sumerians lived in what was fundamentally an urban society, and moreover, an urban society with a highly developed system of government; pretty much no one in the middle ages (apart, perhaps, from the Venetians - who I do understand) di.
In Mesopotamia (and Egypt), this was totally unavoidable - as a peasant, if your neighbour doesn't clear out his irrigation ditches properly, your fields salt up and you starve: some form of government is essential. That said, I found the degree of central planning used by the Sumerians quite surprising: a phenomenal degree of organisation must have been required. Of course, one of the great benefits the student of Mesopotamian history has is the amount of material that has been preserved - as everything was written on clay tablets, and clay tablets, when baked, last essentially forever, there is a huge wealth of material on the every day life of ordinary people available, in a way there really isn't for the middle ages, the Romans or even the Greeks. So we can read personal letters, see markbooks from schools and even look at doctor's textbooks (although this last is a little repetitive "If the patient turns yellow, the patient has jaundice and will die. If you see a black cat, the patient will die. If you see a white cat, the patient will die. If you see a red cat, the patient may recover - but will probably die in great pain." They were apparently very good at determining what was wrong with you - less good at fixing it). This also lets us see the personal side of historical figures, again something that we tend to lack, except in the last century or two - so we have, for example, a king sending letters berating his ne'er-do-well son for spending his time with fast chariots and loose women when his brother has been out conquering Babylon, and the Hittite king being told that the omens are not favourable - and then insisting that the priests take the omens again, and again, and again, until they come out right (a very pragmatic approach to augury).
Fairy Folklore does exactly what it says on the tin: a collection of popular beliefs about the Fair Folk, some harmless ("jam must be stirred with a rowan twig, else the Fairies will steal it"), some less so: in particular, the section on changelings is quite hair-raising. If you believed that your child might be at risk from Fairies, you were advised to suspend a pair of scissors over the unfortunate child's cradle, and feed it digitalis. In the (unlikely) event the baby survived these ministrations, it would presumably be safe from abduction. The treatment suggested when the child has actually been replaced with a changeling is even more unpleasant - and the child was even less likely to survive. If the stories are actually true (and there's always a risk that country folk have made them up to screw with the folklorists), it's quite disturbing. I was struck however by the similarities between the symptoms of autism and those associated with a changeling child: a previously normal child (apparently) undergoes a dramatic change in personality, and becomes withdrawn, appearing to lose their language skills. I almost wonder if the changeling myth was a socially acceptable explanation for the infanticide of children with developmental disorders.
Changeless is the next book in the Parasol Protectorate series. It's OK, but not as funny or as interesting as the first book.
No comments:
Post a Comment