Change of Topc
Aug. 31st, 2009 03:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ann_leckieSo I've been going to the library every day, because there's some semi-construction stuff going on at home. Every day I walk past a shelf full of art history books, and say to myself sternly, "You're here to write, not read."
Today I decided I needed to read. Biology. Got off the elevator, walked past the art history books, saw the book that had been whispering to me each day as I passed it. The Art of the Hittites.
I'm only human!
I spent four hours reading about the Hittites. You know the Hittites! Ramses II fought a big battle with them, the Battle of Kadesh. He snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, and commemorated the event in a bucketload of sculpture in his Ramasseum. Except, what he really did was snatch defeat from the jaws of an utter freaking rout--you can't tell from the carvings in the Ramasseum, but the Hittites won that battle. For a long time people assumed Ramses' spin was historical fact, until they found the Hittite copy of the ensuing treaty.
I knew about that before I started reading. But I did learn all kinds of interesting new things. I am not (mostly) going to write about them just now. Instead, I'm going to mention some weird stuff about this book.
It doesn't have a copyright or publication date on it that I can find, but an old slip in the front for stamping due dates has a single date stamped on it. The year is 1969. It says it was translated, though not when, and for various reasons, I presume it was translated from German, though I could easily be wrong about that. There was a lot of really cool information, interspersed with very weird assumptions. Hittite written in heiroglyphs (it was also sometimes written in a cuneiform script) must have been popular with illiterate Hittites, because it was pictures! (It sounds slightly less boneheaded in the original, but that's the implication, no matter how you slice it.) After the battle of Kadesh, Ramases married the daughter of the Hittite king and made her his principal wife (inspired of course by her beauty and the goodness of his heart, not because he had to or anything!) and Egyptian sources talk about how beautiful she was, and so maybe she was blond! The Hittites had a lot of contacts with the East but they were really Westerners, because duh, they were Indo-Europeans, and they weren't all savage and decadent like those freaking Assyrians! (Me: Book, you don't really mean that, do you? Book: Here, let me say the same thing again in the next paragraph, in slightly different words!)
And this, which was a combination of cool and odd. Hattusili (I did not note down his number, there were several Hittite kings of that name, but wikipedia tells me he was Hattusili I) had appointed his nephew Labarna his heir, but changed his mind and made his grandson Mursili the crown prince.
Frank and unrestrained? Hello? No king worth the name ever spoke frankly and unrestrainedly to the Assembly of Nobles, most especially not while he was trying to justify himself. Most especially not while trying to justify disinheriting the heir the same Assembly had likely approved of earlier. Each bit of speech might be strictly true, the quotes might be verbatim, but frank and unrestrained? I don't think so.
And I'd lay money the quotes are verbatim, they have that ring of truth to them. Here's the text as I found it in Art of the Hittites.
Frank and unrestrained? That speech is carefully planned, even when he's accurately quoting. That serpent, his sister? She's playing the distressed mother card, oh yes, and Hattusili knows it. Which is why he doesn't just report what she says (and I bet she did say what he says she says, likely lots of other people heard it and it has, as I said, a ring of reality to it), he makes sure to mention she bellowed like an ox rather, than, say, something a trifle more flattering or sympathetic. Hattusili is playing the betrayed uncle and wringing every bit out of it he can--he and his sister are two peas in a pod, they are. "Mean to him? I've given him lots of presents! Of course, if he starts trouble I might be forced to exile him or something....I'm just a good-hearted old man! Wouldn't hurt a fly!" Uh huh.
"Frank and unrestrained" my Aunt Fanny.
Today I decided I needed to read. Biology. Got off the elevator, walked past the art history books, saw the book that had been whispering to me each day as I passed it. The Art of the Hittites.
I'm only human!
I spent four hours reading about the Hittites. You know the Hittites! Ramses II fought a big battle with them, the Battle of Kadesh. He snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, and commemorated the event in a bucketload of sculpture in his Ramasseum. Except, what he really did was snatch defeat from the jaws of an utter freaking rout--you can't tell from the carvings in the Ramasseum, but the Hittites won that battle. For a long time people assumed Ramses' spin was historical fact, until they found the Hittite copy of the ensuing treaty.
I knew about that before I started reading. But I did learn all kinds of interesting new things. I am not (mostly) going to write about them just now. Instead, I'm going to mention some weird stuff about this book.
It doesn't have a copyright or publication date on it that I can find, but an old slip in the front for stamping due dates has a single date stamped on it. The year is 1969. It says it was translated, though not when, and for various reasons, I presume it was translated from German, though I could easily be wrong about that. There was a lot of really cool information, interspersed with very weird assumptions. Hittite written in heiroglyphs (it was also sometimes written in a cuneiform script) must have been popular with illiterate Hittites, because it was pictures! (It sounds slightly less boneheaded in the original, but that's the implication, no matter how you slice it.) After the battle of Kadesh, Ramases married the daughter of the Hittite king and made her his principal wife (inspired of course by her beauty and the goodness of his heart, not because he had to or anything!) and Egyptian sources talk about how beautiful she was, and so maybe she was blond! The Hittites had a lot of contacts with the East but they were really Westerners, because duh, they were Indo-Europeans, and they weren't all savage and decadent like those freaking Assyrians! (Me: Book, you don't really mean that, do you? Book: Here, let me say the same thing again in the next paragraph, in slightly different words!)
And this, which was a combination of cool and odd. Hattusili (I did not note down his number, there were several Hittite kings of that name, but wikipedia tells me he was Hattusili I) had appointed his nephew Labarna his heir, but changed his mind and made his grandson Mursili the crown prince.
As he [Hattusili] is trying to justify himself before the Assembly of Nobles he describes the conditions in his family in great detail. From these frank and unrestrained words...
Frank and unrestrained? Hello? No king worth the name ever spoke frankly and unrestrainedly to the Assembly of Nobles, most especially not while he was trying to justify himself. Most especially not while trying to justify disinheriting the heir the same Assembly had likely approved of earlier. Each bit of speech might be strictly true, the quotes might be verbatim, but frank and unrestrained? I don't think so.
And I'd lay money the quotes are verbatim, they have that ring of truth to them. Here's the text as I found it in Art of the Hittites.
The young Labarna I had proclaimed to you, saying, "He shall sit upon the throne." I, the king, called him by son, embraced him, exalted him, and cared for him continually. But he showed himself a youth not fit to be seen; he shed no tears, he showed no pity, he was cold and heartless. I, the king, summoned him to my couch and said, "Well. No one will in future bring up the child of his sister as his foster son." The word of the king he has not laid to heart, but the word of his mother, the serpent, he has laid to heart....Enough! He is my son no more! Then his mother bellowed like an ox. "They have torn asunder the womb in my living body! They have ruined him and you will kill him!" But have I, the king, done him any evil? ... Behold, I have given my son Labarna a house! I have given him arable land in plenty, sheep in plenty I have given him. Let him now eat and drink. So long as he is good he may come up to the city but if he come forward as a troublemaker then he shall not come up but shall remain in his house.
Frank and unrestrained? That speech is carefully planned, even when he's accurately quoting. That serpent, his sister? She's playing the distressed mother card, oh yes, and Hattusili knows it. Which is why he doesn't just report what she says (and I bet she did say what he says she says, likely lots of other people heard it and it has, as I said, a ring of reality to it), he makes sure to mention she bellowed like an ox rather, than, say, something a trifle more flattering or sympathetic. Hattusili is playing the betrayed uncle and wringing every bit out of it he can--he and his sister are two peas in a pod, they are. "Mean to him? I've given him lots of presents! Of course, if he starts trouble I might be forced to exile him or something....I'm just a good-hearted old man! Wouldn't hurt a fly!" Uh huh.
"Frank and unrestrained" my Aunt Fanny.