05 Wednesday May 2021
I have crossed the streams of my interests in the ancient world and in mid-20th-century science-fiction to give a Zoom talk on how ancient astronauts built the science fiction of Egypt. It is on 8 May at 19.45 Toronto time (EDT) (so early morning of 9 May European time). I will try to record my part!
26 Friday Feb 2021
Posted in Medieval
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Jean Cabaret d’Orville, The Chronicle of the Good Duke Louis II Bourbon. Translated and introduced by Steve Muhlberger (Freelance Academy Press, 2021) ISBN: 978-1-937439-54-5 USD 49.95 Publisher’s website
My esteemed colleague Professor Emeritus Steve Muhlberger in Ontario has finally finished a major project, a translation of the Chronicle of the Good Duke from 15th century France. This is a book of war stories about aristocratic heroes as told by their friends and admirers, but it has never been translated from the original Middle French into a modern language. I read several of his books back in the Before Times when I was hanging out with the fencers, and they are fun to read but scholarly (when I put on my teacher’s hat I have a rant about his translation of Charny’s Questions, but that is something for an informal chat not my website). You can get a sense of his writing style from his free online textbook from 1999.
Freelance is a small publisher, and I can’t in good conscience suggest that anyone outside of the United States order anything from that country while the post is so jammed up and international trade and travel are restricted. The cost of sending is high and packages are being delayed or lost. But if you are in the United States, or can wait six months for the US Postal Service, FedEx, etc. to clear up, and you are interested in warfare or the 15th century CE, this might be the book for you.
(scheduled 25 February 2021)
27 Wednesday Jan 2021
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The past year has been what it has been, but I have managed to publish a number of magazine articles on ancient warfare and medieval armour. They have siege engines! Military colonists! Tomb-robbing consuls! Late Babylonia! The ones on battering rams and equipping the king’s men have come out since October.
“The Achaemenid Empire’s Jewish soldiers: Serving the Great King,” Ancient Warfare XIII.5 (2020) pp. 34-37 (for sale from Karwansaray BV)
“The Amathus Bowl, ca. 700 BC: World of mercenaries,” Ancient Warfare XIII.5 (2020) pp. 24-25 (for sale from Karwansaray BV)
“Turning Your Back: The Late Reinvention of Backplates.” Medieval Warfare X.4 (2020) pp. 38-41 (for sale from Karwansaray BV) {backplates which span the whole back reappear in Europe in the 1410s after a thousand years of absence, and were not universal for a century more … why does this important area remain lightly protected?}
“Assyrian Battering Rams: A City-Breaching Buddy System,” Ancient Warfare XIV.3 (2021) pp. 14-19
“Equipping the King’s Men: Documents, Art, and Stories,” Ancient Warfare XIV.4 (2021) pp. 34-39 https://www.karwansaraypublishers.com/ancient-warfare-xiv-4.html {if we combine all types of sources, a distinctive new picture of the armies of Darius and Xerxes emerges}
Posted in Ancient
Armed Force in the Teispid-Achaemenid Empire: Past Approaches, Future Prospects. Oriens et Occidens Band 32 (Franz Steiner Verlag: Stuttgart, 2021) 437 pp., 8 b/w ill., 4 b/w tables. ISBN 978-3-515-12775-2 EUR 74,– (softcover) (publisher’s website)
My first book is coming out from Franz Steiner Verlag this month. Its the first book on Achaemenid armies since 1992, and the first written by someone who can read any ancient Near Eastern language. I show that most of what we think we know about Achaemenid armies and warfare goes back to classical writers and to 19th and 20th century stereotypes about the east. So many books sound the same because they are repeating the ideas of early authorities in new language. By focusing on indigenous, contemporary sources and placing the Achaemenids in their Near Eastern context- the standard methods in Roman Army Studies and Achaemenid Studies since the 1980s- we can tell a different story.
Continue reading15 Thursday Oct 2020
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So far this calendar year, I have published three articles for money:
In another year I would have posted the bibliographies or some bonus content, but I don’t have the words in me and I should probably be doing something better with my time.
14 Wednesday Oct 2020
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Freelance Academy Press, dealer in choice codices and excellent ebooks on history, arms and armour, and martial arts, has some books on sale.
They publish books like Steve Muhlberger’s and Will McLean’s Murder, Rape and Treason: Judicial Combats in the Late Middle Ages (2019), a modern moral criticism of warfare in 14th century France wrapped around a discourse on Geoffrey Charney’s questions about the joust, tournament, and war, and Ellis Amdur’s Dueling with O Sensei: Grappling with the Myth of the Warrior Sage (2016). They also carry Dr. Manouchehr Moshtagh Khorasani’s books on arms and armour in Iran in the Islamic period, and La Belle Compagnie’s beautiful 1381: The Peel Affinity.
I have not had a chance to flip through their publications since 2014 except for the one on Charny, but their books are always well edited and laid out.
Edit: FYI- they are US based, international shipping may be pricey at the moment.
26 Wednesday Aug 2020
One of my articles which has been in press for some time finally appeared:
“War and Soldiers in the Achaemenid Empire: Some Historiographical and Methodological Considerations.” In Kai Ruffing, Kerstin Droß-Krüpe, Sebastian Fink, and Robert Rollinger (eds.), Societies at War: Proceedings of the 10th Symposium of the Melammu Project held in Kassel September 26-28 2016 and Proceedings of the 8th Symposium of the Melammu Project held in Kiel November 11-15 2014 (Verlag der österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: Vienna, 2020) pp. 495-515
It talks about how The Western Way of War and the radical wing of the Achaemenid History Workshops gave research into early Greek warfare and into the Achaemenid empire the peculiar shape they had in the 1990s and the 2000s. I argue that the ancient historians in the 1990s and 2000s who thought they were rejecting older research actually accepted that research’s narrow vision of what they ought to study and what types of sources counted. It has research history, a ‘snappier’ version of the argument in chapter 1 of my PHD thesis, and the obligatory W.S. Gilbert quote.
If you did not get a copy in your inbox and are interested in reading, please let me know and I can email you one.
Further Reading: Some Thoughts on John Lynn’s ‘Battle’
22 Saturday Aug 2020
Posted in Medieval
A cat at the tomb of the poet Hafiz in Shiraz.
I am not writing new posts for this blog right now due to some personal emergencies, a summer I want to enjoy, and the death of my father. I have a post scheduled every two weeks until the end of September. But I seem to be getting some new visitors from Bret Devereaux’s blog.
So if you like big ideas about warfare before gunpowder, this week I would like to recommend a book by Eduard Alofs published as four articles in volumes 21 and 22 of the journal War in History in 2014 and 2015 (parts i, part ii, part iii and part iiii). Alofs did something which not many historians do which was write a general model of warfare from the Syr Darya to the Nile in the period 550 to 1350 CE. He sees two main military traditions in this region: the Iranian (the kind which the Strategikon of emperor Maurice describes, armies centred around armoured horsemen with bows and lances which come to the battlefield on foot, mule, or camel) and the Turanian (the kind which Frankish writers complain about Turks practicing, based on unarmoured horsemen with a string of spare horses and a few better-armed men with their own spare horses). To put this together, he read primary sources in Arabic, Greek, Persian, and Latin. Here is what he has to say about shields:
12 Saturday Oct 2019
Descendants of mighty Rhaetian war-horses? West side of the Brenner near Patsch, Tirol.
In mid-September I got lost on my return from the Goldbichl and found myself between Patsch and the Brennerautobahn. If you spend time hiking in Tirol that happens frequently, even though the mountain peaks provide good points of references and there are networks of paved or gravelled paths dotted with nice yellow signs, some of which even point within 90 degrees of the actual direction. And if you think about why that happens, you will understand the topic of my latest article for Ancient Warfare, namely why armies in eastern Anatolia (modern Turkey) follow the same few routes for thousands of years.
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08 Saturday Jun 2019
Posted in Medieval
Want to know whether helmets of scales like Mr. Red wears were just artists’ fantasies? Check out Medieval Warfare VIII.1. British Library, MS. Royal 20 C VII (painted in Paris between 1380 and 1400)
Last spring I published a two-page article in Medieval Warfare VIII.1 talking about the kinds of concealed armour which were for sale in the Avignon of the Babylonian Captivity. As far as I know nobody else has talked about these sources in any language except Italian, so I hope translating them was helpful! Now, I am interested in the real things and how they were made … if I ever have money I might commission a few reproductions. But what if your interest is in gaming? How might you represent this armour, say in GURPS?
