• About
  • Armour in Texts
    • English Wills and Inventories
    • French and Burgundian Military Ordinances
    • Greek and Roman Inscriptions and Papyri
    • Lydgate’s Troy Book
    • Nineteenth-Century Travellers and Researchers
    • Pedro de Aguado on Armour in New Spain
    • Records of the Armourers’ Company of London
    • Rules of the Paris Guilds
    • Rules of the Troyes Guilds
    • Rules of the Venetian Guilds
    • Statutes and Privileges of the Armourers and Scabbardmakers of the City of Angers
    • The Book of the Hirelings of the Republic of Florence
    • The Norwegian King’s Mirror
  • My Articles
  • Resources
    • Building a Website to Last
    • COVID-19
    • Fashion in the Age of Datini
      • Bocksten Cloaks
      • How Heavy Were Doublets and Pourpoints?
      • Sheaths and Sword-Belts
    • Project TUPPU
    • Reenacting the Archaic and the Long Sixth Century
      • Cooking, Eating, and Drinking
      • Edgetools
      • Firestarting
      • Recipes
      • Replica Edgetools
      • Shoes and Sandals
    • Suppliers for Historical Crafts
  • Support
  • Why no Facebook/Google+/LinkedIn/Tumblr/… buttons?
    • My Social Media Policy

Book and Sword

~ Pontifex minimus

Book and Sword

Monthly Archives: May 2020

Where Did Ancient Slaves Come From?

30 Saturday May 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Modern

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

ancient, apologists for slavery, economic history, Greece, Italy, Mesopotamia, slavery

a phoot of a cat walking determinedly across an asphalt street

This Tirolean cat has a place to get to and does not care what tries to get in its way, like me when I get a research burr in my blanket! Photo by Sean Manning, May 2020

A retired economist in another country wants to know how we know that many ancient slaves were prisoners of war, kidnap victims, or the children of slaves. Ok! Readers who don’t want to hear about slavery and child abandonment might want to skip this one.

So in the Ur III period around 2000 BCE we see massive numbers of people being rounded up and deported into labour camps near Ur. Some were starved to death so their supervisors could sell their rations, and others seem to have been blinded to stop them running away (they could still haul water and do other simple tasks). A bit later we have contracts where parents sell their children to someone willing to feed them during sieges or famines. Moving on to the 8th and 7th century BCE, the archive from Nippur (Oriental Institute Publication 114) and the Iliad describe people being captured by raiders and bandits and either ransomed or enslaved. A little later we see massive numbers of captives being dedicated to the gods in Babylonia, where they would work for the rest of their lives for the temple (although it is worth noting that these širāku had what we would call human rights other than the right to move freely and choose their employer- there were even worse statuses to be placed in). We also see that people with unfree status were tattooed or branded so they could be identified if they ran away. Later stories about Solon around 600 BCE describe how farmers in Attica fell into debt and were forced to sell themselves and their lands, possibly share-cropping for one sixth of the produce (the ἑκτημόριοι “sixth-parters”).
Continue reading →

Temple and Palace, Gods and Kings

23 Saturday May 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

ancient, kingship, Poor Man of Nippur, religion, temple and palace

Arzl has not had a king or a Caesar for a long time, but it is still Keith Hopkins’ World Full of Gods. And like unto the Esangila, this house has been covered with scaffolding for a long time due to a little dispute over who should pay the bills for restoring it.

I don’t talk enough about the gods and their cult because its not a subject I feel like I can say anything useful about. I grew up in a place where religion is a private matter (which anyone in the ancient world would think is insane) and I am a lot more comfortable talking about solid things like types of swords or what the third line of the tenth chapter of that book actually says. But religion in the ancient Near East had some peculiar qualities which can be easy for us to take for granted if we grew up in post-Christian, Christian, Moslem, or Jewish societies and don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the cult of the gods and the praising of kings.

Perhaps capitalizing on the ethical imperative of protecting the poor, petitioners— and Gimil-Ninurta and Khunanup (hero of the Egyptian folktale “The Eloquent Peasant”) may be literary examples here— tend to present themselves as being poor, describing themselves using diminutive terms and overstating their poverty in an effort to win favor. One particular petitioner, the spurned exorcist Urad-Gula may have actually drawn subtle parallels between his circumstances and the poverty of Gimil-Ninurta in an effort to win the favor of Assurbanipal, a move that underscores PMN’s popularity. Interestingly, petitions such as these followed the same pattern as prayers, reminding us of the idea that poverty was often understood as divine punishment: gods made people poor and the king could intercede on their behalf, a nuance that will be important to remember in reading PMN and EP.

Daniel Shalom Fisher, “Representations of the Poor in The Poor Man of Nippur and the Eloquent Peasant” (MA thesis, Vanderbilt University, 2008) p. 5 https://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-07012008-205634/

In Sumerian, a temple and a palace are both a Big House (E2.GAL). They are both places where powerful and distant beings sit, and demand to be placated with obedience and generous gifts, but are also places of splendour (the White House at Sippar) whose occupants can make your dreams come true (the House of All Joys at Harran). There are people who think that the oldest parts of the Hebrew Bible took shape under some of the last kings of independent Judah who wanted to center both the cult of the gods and the rule of the kingdom in Jerusalem. I think it might be helpful for some of us to think about how our pictures of gods are modelled on kings, and how our culture’s expectations of a leader are modelled on a father-god.

There is a performance of the Poor Man of Nippur (in English with cuneiform subtitles!) on YouTube

Keep my offering table piled high with a donation through Patreon or paypal.me or even liberapay

Paradoxes of Sword Design

09 Saturday May 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Modern, Not an expert

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

engineering geekery, historical European martial arts, not an expert, swords

cross-sections of six swords near the guard

Cross-sections of six swords near the hilt. From Peter Johnson’s talk “Paradoxes of Sword Design” at Arctic Fire 2012 https://youtu.be/nyAc5HbUuqw?t=2630

In February, I started to think seriously about swords after sketching the swords from Ghalekuti (which I will blog about one day). I am the “armour” sort of historical fencing person not the “swords” sort (thanks Steve Muhlberger) and I don’t have access to many originals in good condition. A group of European and American bladesmiths and engineers have been thinking about how to describe swords and how they want to move. The names I know best are Michael Tinker Pearce, Vincent le Chevalier, and Peter Johnsson; other people would mention Angus Trim and George Turner.

Swords are simple objects, but designing a specific sword requires trading off all kinds of goods against one another. The longer sword is more of a nuisance to wear and slower to draw, the stiffer sword may not be as effective in cutting, the more complex hilt limits how the weapon can be held. These seemingly simple objects hide a lot of engineering that you can slowly train your eye to see and your arm to feel.

This is a topic where not much has been formally published, but two great web resources are “Understanding Blade Properties” by Patrick Kelly and Peter Johnsson’s talk “Paradoxes of Sword Design” from Arctic Fire 2012 (warning: YouTube). Peter Johnsson is probably the most charismatic speaker discussing these ideas today and he has his own theory of how the medieval cruciform sword was designed. Because his talk is 80 minutes long and on a scary Google website I want to call out two things which I noticed.
Continue reading →

Cross-Post: Ways Forward in the Study of Ancient Greek Warfare

06 Wednesday May 2020

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

ancient, cross-post, early Greek warfare, methodology

Back in 2014, archaeologist Josho Brouwers and I both headed west to give talks in different cities on why the study of warfare in the middle of the first millennium BCE is not very scientific, and how it could be brought up to the standards expected in other areas of ancient world studies. Mine, on the study of Near Eastern warfare, is still in press in the proceedings of Melammu-Symposium 8, but Josho has dug up his paper from 2014 on warfare in the Greek world and posted it in all its uncensored glory (most academics try to give their talks in an entertaining way, then print a more moderate version):

First of all, students examining ancient Greek warfare tend to be myopic (i.e. hellenocentric), in the sense that they focus almost entirely on ancient Greece itself and ancient Greek sources, usually from a particular period, with little or no use made of comparative data. Compare this, for example, with the study of Roman warfare, where it is commonplace to compare Roman equipment, tactics, and so forth, with those of the peoples that they fought against, such as the Etruscans, Carthaginians, and various Celtic tribes.
…
Secondly, and by extension, ancient historians, classicists, and archaeologists tend to put their focus squarely on their own material. Thus, ancient historians and classicists rely almost entirely on texts, each with a different approach, while archaeologists limit themselves to producing detailed overviews of arms and armour. Whenever use is made of another discipline’s evidence, the treatment is often simplistic
…
Thirdly, there is little scientific rigour that students of Greek warfare apply to how they approach their material. Theoretical frameworks, preconceived notions, and the like, are never made explicit, and one gets the impression that proper interpretation of the sources is on the same level as connoisseurship in the study of Greek vases
…
Lastly, ancient Greek warfare seems to be one of the few areas of ancient history where rampant nineteenth-century colonialist ideology is still commonly accepted … it is still commonplace to regard the ancient Greeks as immediate ancestors of Western nations (mostly the United States and Western Europe), as inventors of democracy, philosophy, and a “Western”-style of warfare, despite literally decades’ worth of research that have proven these notions false.

– Josho Brouwers, “Phalanx and fallacies: Ways Forward in the Study of Ancient Greek Warfare,” 3 July 2014

In my view, the debate between ‘hoplite revolution’ theorists and gradualists (“orthodoxy” and “heretics”, “California school” and revisionists) lasted roughly from 1985 to 2013. Most of the former school dropped out of the debate as they found they could not answer questions from other schools of thought. Since 2013, the interesting debate has been between the majority of gradualists like Peter Krentz and Hans van Wees and some young bucks who think that they did not go nearly far enough and that a true study of Greek warfare needs to include the whole Greek world from Marseilles to Abu Simbel, and a study of hoplites needs to include Sidonians and Phrygians as well as Laconians.

Further Reading: “War and Soldiers in the Achaemenid Empire: Some Historiographical and Methodological Considerations.” In Sebastian Fink and Kerstin Droß-Krüpe (eds.) Melammu-Symposia 8 and 10 (ÖAW: Wien) pp. 495-515 {IN PRESS: I have the proofs of this and can send them to anyone interested}

Warin, Isabelle (2011) “Review: Reinstating the Hoplite by Adam Schwartz.” L’Antiquité Classique 80 pp. 456-459 https://www.jstor.org/stable/antiqclassi.80.456 (in French)

Recent Posts

  • Sir Charles Oman Almost Understood
  • Apropos of Nothing
  • 2020 Decade-Ender, or, the Isidore Option
  • Twelve Early European Fencing Manuals
  • Some Thoughts on “Fuzzy Nation”

Recent Comments

Sean Manning on Apropos of Nothing
Mart Shearer on Apropos of Nothing
2020 Decade-Ender, o… on The Key Question in the Fall o…
Sean Manning on Scythed Chariots
Jonathan Dean on My First Book is Out

Archives

  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013

Categories

  • Ancient
  • Medieval
  • Modern
  • Not an expert
  • Uncategorized

Blogroll

  • .. clericus .. making art technological sources accessible
  • A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
  • A Durham Weaver
  • A Fencer's Ramblings
  • A Hot Cup of Joe
  • Aardvarchaeology
  • Active History
  • Ad Astra per Mundum
  • Albrechts Bösser
  • Alec Nevala-Lee
  • An Elegant Weapon
  • Ancient World Magazine
  • Andrew Holt: History, Religion, and Foreign Affairs
  • ANE: Just the Facts
  • Angry Staff Officer
  • Anthropologist in the Attic ~2017
  • Archäotechnik- textile Fläche
  • Archeothoughts
  • Artistic License or Why I Trust No One
  • Aryballos: Cdn Research Grp for Ancient Sport
  • Ask the Past
  • Backreaction
  • Bad Science † 2017
  • Balkan Celts
  • Bibliographia Iranica
  • Boke of the Wardrobe
  • Bow vs. Musket
  • Bread & Circuses ~2016
  • Carolyn Willikes
  • Celsus
  • Classics at the Intersections
  • Constantinus Africanus
  • Dan Cohen
  • Dr. Caitlyn R. Green
  • Dr. Conor Whately: Byzantine (OED) "Intricate, Complicate; Inflexible, Rigid, Unyielding"
  • Dr. Ellie Bennett
  • elamit.net
  • Encyclopaedia Iranica
  • Erik D. Schmidt
  • Erik Kwakkel
  • Ex Urbe
  • Executed Today
  • Forensic Fashion
  • Found in Antiquity ~2015
  • Gates of Nineveh
  • Geocurrents † 2016
  • Great Ming Military
  • Hammered Out Bits
  • Handling the Humanities
  • History From Below
  • Hollow Lakedaimon
  • Hook and Eye
  • Ian Milligan
  • Institute for the Study of War
  • International Armizare Society
  • Janice Liedl
  • jfleck at Inkstain
  • Karen Selk Textile Artist
  • Katafalk
  • Ken Mondschein
  • Kiwi Hellenist
  • Kristina Killgrove, PhD
  • Kung Fu Tea
  • La Cotte Simple
  • Language Hat
  • Languages of the World † 2016
  • Linguistrix
  • Loose Threads: Yet Another Costuming Blog
  • Macro-Typography
  • Magistra et Mater
  • Matthew Amt's Greek Hoplite Page
  • Medieval Manuscripts Blog
  • Milesian Tales
  • Mons Graupius
  • Moonspeaker
  • Muhlberger's World History
  • Neues aus der Gothik
  • Neurodojo
  • New At LacusCurtius and Livius † 2014
  • Paleopix
  • pallia: Katrin Kania
  • Paola Fabbri
  • Papyrus Stories
  • Pen, Book, Sword
  • Persian Things
  • Professeur … Ou Pas
  • Publishing Archaeology
  • Reportret
  • Robin Writes
  • Rogue Classicism
  • Royal Oak Armoury
  • Saewulf (Tumblr)
  • Sardinian Warrior
  • School of the Renaissance Soldier
  • Scott Manning: Historian on the Warpath
  • Shtetl-Optimized
  • Silk Road Gourmet ~2018
  • Sparta Reconsidered
  • Sphinx
  • Sprang Lady
  • St. Thomas Guild
  • Tales of Times Forgotten
  • Tetsuji No Llama
  • The Melammu Project
  • The Royal Road
  • Theoretical Structural Archaeology
  • Tracy's Middle East
  • Traditions of Conflict
  • Violent Metaphors
  • Vortigern Studies
  • Website of a Historical Polymath
  • West's Meditations † 2018
  • Wide Urban World
  • Zenobia: Empress of the East ~2017

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel