Category: Geeky stuff

Some thoughts about Brexit

As many of you know, I blog about the British constitution over at A Venerable Puzzle, so the United Kingdom is a subject that’s close to my heart. I was surprised by the result of yesterday’s vote. Despite the shifts in the polls, I assumed that the uncertainty surrounding Brexit would ultimately encourage people to vote to remain within the European Union. But as I watch the reaction to Britain’s decision, I find myself growing frustrated by the superficiality of it all. According to the Twitterverse, anyone who voted to leave is a xenophobic relic. Donald Trump has been thrown into the mix, too, and there has been lots of hand-wringing about what this means for the presidential election in November.

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned as a historian, it’s that the decisions we make are rarely straightforward, and events are shaped by a multitude of factors. Therefore, the narrative that the vote to leave was simply motivated by distaste for foreigners strikes me as too simplistic. It glosses over the fact that there are other reasons to leave the EU, including legitimate concerns over national sovereignty and a lack of European accountability. But instead of recognizing the fact that people might have genuine issues with the EU, it’s easier to dismiss their views as the product of ignorance and hate.

A lot of the American commentariat also seems unaware of the fact that yesterday’s vote was hardly a bolt from the blue. Britain has been ambivalent toward the EU for a long time, and successive Governments have rejected key aspects of the European project, including the Euro, the Schengen Area, and the commitment to ever-closer union. In other words, Britain’s estrangement from the EU predates the rise of Trump and the migrant crisis.

As is so often the case, people seem to assume that there was a Right Answer and a Wrong Answer in the Brexit vote. I see it as a choice between two paths. Both have hazards, but both have opportunities as well. Britain is neither doomed nor saved by yesterday’s vote, and it will be some time before we can accurately gauge its impact. Nevertheless, I hope that the chaos of the present will soon give way to better things.

Thoughts on the Queen Mary 2’s refit

I’m a huge fan of the Queen Mary 2. My Dad and I did a transatlantic crossing on her not too long after she entered service, and it remains one of my all-time favorite vacations. The QM2 is a splendid ship. Her interiors are beautiful, the food is first-rate, and the atmosphere on board is pleasantly relaxed. She also retains a sense of intimacy despite the fact that she’s the largest ocean liner ever built. But after twelve years of service, Cunard has decided that it’s time for a change. Next month, she’ll travel to the famous German shipyard Blohm + Voss for a month-long refit.

Carinthi-Cam01_37V PICTURE 1_zps0lygzqz8
A rendering of the Carinthia Lounge courtesy of Cunard.

One of the biggest changes is that the Winter Garden will be replaced with the  Carinthia Lounge. For me, it’s a sad development. The Winter Garden was one of my favorite public rooms on the QM2, though I realize that’s a minority opinion. Critics and passengers alike tended to view it as the weakest of the ship’s public rooms. Many saw it as kitschy, and they had a point. Originally, the Winter Garden featured a mural of tropical birds sitting amidst a backdrop of generic jungle foliage and an equally leafy carpet, and they both looked like something from Blanche Devereaux’s bedroom on The Golden Girls (sadly, the mural seems to have been replaced with a frosted-glass version of the same motif, as seen here). There was also wicker. Lots and lots of wicker.

Winter-Garden
The classic incarnation of the Winter Garden, complete with birds. Photo courtesy of Cunard.

Nevertheless, the Winter Garden has a place in my heart. It was usually fairly empty, and it was a great place to have a drink since there was a bar right there in the room. I also liked the fact that the Winter Garden had a sense of history behind it. Winter gardens, verandah cafes, and the like were fixtures on transatlantic liners throughout the golden age of ocean travel. The following photos come from a 1920s Cunard brochure in my collection:

mauretania
Mauretania
lancastria
Lancastria
andania
Andania

 

Their decorative DNA lived on in the QM2’s Winter Garden, but the Carinthia Lounge lacks any connection with the past beyond its name (the Cunard fleet had four separate Carinthias over the years). Although the space is named after the Carinthia that entered service in 1925, the decor doesn’t do much to evoke the feel of the 20s. On the contrary, it seems more reminiscent of the 50s. That’s not to say that it’s an ugly room; far from it. It just feels rather generic. Say what you will about the bird mural, but at least it was memorable.

However, most of the changes to the QM2 are to be welcomed. I’m particularly pleased that Cunard has decided to downsize the casino in order to add single-occupancy cabins. This is a wonderful development. For me, one of the biggest impediments to cruising is that the fares are based on double occupancy. My usual travel companions aren’t terribly interested in cruising, which means I’d have to either pay the exorbitant single occupancy surcharge (which can be 150-200% of the advertised fare) or allow the cruise line to match me with a cabinmate for the voyage. Neither option is particularly appealing, so I never considered cruising a viable vacation choice. Until now.

I’m also glad that King’s Court will be overhauled. It always seemed like a problematic space. When I was on board, it felt like a glamorous cafeteria, which seems a bit incongruous given the QM2’s reputation for luxury. To some extent, there’s not much Cunard can do about that. Any place where you collect your food from serving stations and carry it to a seating area to eat is going to feel like a cafeteria. I do think that the proposed changes are a step in the right direction, though. It won’t change the way people interact with the space, but it will make it more appealing.

One thing that surprised me is that G32, the ship’s nightclub, won’t be axed. It’s a bizarre place. Tucked away at the stern, you can only get to it by walking through the ballroom. It’s also tiny, and there’s not much room for dancing. When I poked my head in, I saw a bored DJ playing songs for an empty room while the bar staff huddled around the bar, chatting. Of course, with the average QM2 passenger being in their mid-60s, it’s hardly surprising that nobody’s interested in hitting the club, which makes one wonder why they’re keeping it at all.

All in all, I’m happy with the changes Cunard is making to the QM2. I think they’ll hold her in good stead as she sails through her second decade.

 

Can we really call Locusta a ‘badass chemist’?

Esther Inglis-Arkell recently wrote a short piece for Gizmodo about Locusta, the infamous poisoner who allegedly helped the great and good of first-century Rome dispose of difficult individuals. Unfortunately, Inglis-Arkell’s narrative is problematic in many respects.

The biggest problem is that the article makes a number of questionable assertions. For example, she claims that Locusta helped Agrippina the Younger dispose of two husbands. Inglis-Arkell never identifies the first victim, but she probably meant Agrippina’s second husband, Gaius Sallustius Crispus Passienus. The second victim was Agrippina’s third husband, Emperor Claudius.

Inglis-Arkell makes it seem as if Locusta’s role in both deaths is a known fact, but that’s not true. On the contrary, there’s no evidence linking Locusta to Crispus’s death at all. It’s not even clear that he was poisoned. We don’t actually know much about Crispus, and what little we do know comes from the scholiast on Juvenal, who records that he was “slain by the treachery of Agrippina.” There’s no mention of poison or Locusta. Inglis-Arkell doesn’t explain why she links Locusta with Crispus’s death, but she may have been led astray by a toxicology textbook that she cites later in the article. Toxicology by Thomas J. Haley and William O. Berndt does indeed claim that Locusta helped Agrippina get rid of Crispus, but it doesn’t cite any sources. At any rate, a toxicology textbook isn’t necessarily a good source for Roman history.

As for Claudius, it’s true that many Roman historians alleged that he was poisoned at Agrippina’s behest. But Locusta’s role in his death is far from clear. Suetonius doesn’t mention her at all in his account of Claudius’s murder, but Tacitus and Cassius Dio do. Tacitus gives the fullest account, claiming that Agrippina hired Locusta to poison a dish of mushrooms. However, he says that the physician Xenophon ultimately ended up killing Claudius when Locusta’s poisoned mushrooms don’t work (Tacitus, Annals, 12.67). Cassius Dio also mentions Locusta, but he claims that the poisoned mushrooms did the trick (Cassius Dio, Roman History, 61.34).

Even though Tacitus and Dio seem to provide clear evidence of Locusta’s role, we have to take their claims with a grain of salt. They weren’t writing history in the modern sense of the term. For starters, they didn’t cite sources. When Tacitus writes that Agrippina used Locusta to poison Claudius, we have no way of knowing where he got this information. Did he actually see documentary evidence linking the two women, or was he simply reporting rumor as fact? One of the most frustrating things about studying Roman history is the fact that some of our most detailed sources of information aren’t as objective as we would like. Locusta may well have been involved in Claudius’s death, but that is far from certain.

Inglis-Arkell’s claim that Locusta was a ‘badass chemist’ who taught her art to others is also suspect. Although a number of secondary sources claim that Locusta operated a school for poisoners, the primary-source evidence for this seems to be scanty. The only references I can find are Suetonius and Juvenal. Suetonius claims that, as a reward for helping him get rid of Britannicus (Claudius’s son), Nero gave Locusta an estate in the country and sent her pupils (Suetonius, Life of Nero, 33.3). The reference in Juvenal is a brief claim in his Satires that Locusta “teaches her artless neighbours to brave the talk of the town and carry forth to burial the blackened corpses of their husbands” (Juvenal, Satires, 1.71-2).

Claiming that Locusta was a ‘badass chemist’ on these basis of such slim evidence seems unwise. Suetonius is the more credible of the two, but even then we can’t be sure whether he’s telling the truth. Without corroborating evidence from other sources, the idea of Nero sending pupils to Locusta could easily be a bit of slander intended to make him seem even more monstrous. As for Juvenal, it seems unwise to place too much reliance on a few lines from a poem. He wasn’t writing history, after all. We have no idea whether or not his reference to Locusta should be taken literally or if it’s simply a product of his imagination.

I can’t claim to be an expert on Locusta, and it’s possible that Inglis-Arkell drew on sources that I’m not familiar with. However, I suspect she relied too heavily on secondary sources and failed to question their claims. The result is an article that, while entertaining, is ultimately misleading.

Questions about the quaestiones

Work on a new family of stories has sent me on a hunt for information about Roman criminal courts in the first century of the Principate. More specifically, I’ve been investigating the relationship between the old standing jury courts (quaestiones perpetuae) and newer tribunals such as the court of the Prefect of the City (praefectus urbi).

The standing jury courts were established during the Republic to try specific crimes (e.g., treason, bribery). They could be quite large–in the later Republic, a jury court might have over 50 jurors, including senators, equestrians, and Tribunes of the Treasury.[note]Andrew Lintott, The Constitution of the Roman Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 160.[/note] The jury courts survived the transition to the Principate, though from Augustus’ reign onward most jurors came from outside the senatorial order.[note]John Crook, Law and Life of Rome, 90 B.C. — A.D. 212 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), 71.[/note] As time went on, the jury courts had to compete with other tribunals. The Senate itself heard cases of treason and extortion by provincial magistrates,[note]For a good overview of the Senate’s judicial work, see Richard J. A. Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 460-487.[/note] and the Prefect of the City adjudicated criminal cases from Rome. It’s not clear when the City Prefect first acquired judicial duties, though Richard A. Bauman argues it might have been the reign of Nero.[note]Richard A. Bauman, Crime and Punishment in Ancient Rome (London & New York: Routledge, 1996), 77.[/note]

For a time, the jury courts co-existed alongside the court of the City Prefect. It seems there was a certain tension in this arrangement, as this passage from Tacitus shows:

Valerius Pontius suffered the same degradation [sc., exile] for having indicted the defendants before the praetor [i.e., bringing the case before a jury court] to save them from being prosecuted in the court of the City Prefect, purposing meanwhile to defeat justice on some legal pretext and subsequently by collusion.[note]Tacitus Annals 14.41.[/note]

It’s a shame Tacitus doesn’t offer a more detailed explanation for why Pontius was so keen to maneuver cases into the jury courts, but he may have hoped their chronic congestion would allow the defendants to evade justice.[note]Bauman, 77.[/note] Also, John Crook argues in passing that the jury courts were open to ‘gerrymandering,’ but he doesn’t provide any evidence in support of this contention.[note]Crook, 72.[/note] Presumably, he means that an unscrupulous litigant (or someone acting on their behalf) could have manipulated the selection of jurors to ensure a desirable verdict, but it would be interesting to see what evidence we actually have of this practice.

My new protagonist will likely come into contact with the Roman courts from time to time, so I need to nail down the relationship between the traditional jury courts and the court of the City Prefect. If you know of any books or articles that might help me in my quest, please let me know!

Brill’s typographical disaster

I recently started reading an electronic copy of László Török’s Between Two Worlds: The Frontier Region between Ancient Nubia and Egypt, 3700 BC – 500 AD, and I was shocked at how shoddy it was. Letters and punctuation were missing on almost every page, and the letter f was frequently replaced with an ß! See, for example, this excerpt from page 179:

A signi cant process of change seems to have started in the second half of the Nineteenth Dynasty period. Merenptah s (1213 1203) rst viceroy, Mesui, was probably buried at Aniba (see above), discontinuing (at least for one generation) the traditional Theban burial of the viceroys.

 

The book wasn’t published by CreateSpace or Publish America. It was the work of Brill, a 300-year-old Dutch publisher that specializes in academic texts. I’m usually rather fond of Brill. A lot of their titles are available in digital form through Brill E-Books, and since UW-Madison subscribes to this service, I can access them for free.

I’m hopeful that the problems with Between Two Worlds are an aberration since I’ve downloaded other Brill e-books, and they’ve been fine. Still, a cockup of this magnitude is a huge embarrassment for such a prestigious publisher, and I hope they’ll fix it at some point.

Archaeology Magazine Gets Confused

I felt a little rush of joy this evening when the following headline appeared in my Twitter feed: “A book of ancient Egyptian spells has been translated.” Naturally, I clicked through, but I was swiftly disappointed. A glance at the article revealed that the book in question has nothing to do with ancient Egypt. It’s actually about a Coptic spellbook from 700 or 800 AD!

Calling a Coptic manuscript ‘ancient Egyptian’ is like calling Dante’s Divine Comedy a work of ancient Roman literature. It’s a lazy attempt at shorthand that ultimately obfuscates rather than enlightens since Coptic civilization had little in common with its pharaonic predecessor.

OMG! Women Love Shoes!!!!!

“4000 Year-Old Tablets Reveal Women Have Always Loved Shoes!” proclaimed a headline on the webpage of Cornell University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies. The article in question was about the Garšana Tablets, a group of 1,600 cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia that were once part of the personal archive of a Sumerian princess named Simat-Ištaran. The tablets cover the years between 2031 and 2024 BC, and they reveal that Simat-Ištaran ran the estate after the death of her husband, a general named Šu-Kabta. They provide scholars with fascinating new evidence about the place of women in Sumerian society. For example, the tablets show that women worked as laborers and even supervisors, and they received the same wages as their male colleagues.

In light of all the fascinating things revealed by the Garšana Tablets, it seems strange to emphasize Simat-Ištaran’s shoe collection. While the article itself provides a more holistic overview of the material, the headline’s appeal to a gender stereotype is still annoying. I suspect that the author was trying to come up with a hook that would draw in members of the general public, but surely something like “4000 Year-Old Tablets Reveal Surprising General Equality” would have been equally eye-catching.

‘Gods of Egypt’ Doesn’t Seem to Have Done Its Homework

I’ve discovered that Hollywood is planning to make an epic fantasy movie set in ancient Egypt. Entitled Gods of Egypt, it will star some big names, including Nikolaj Coster-Wald, Gerard Butler, and Geoffrey Rush. At first, I was cautiously excited; naturally, the idea of an epic fantasy movie set in Egypt should be right up my alley. But when I read the synopsis on IMDB, my heart sank: “Set, the merciless god of darkness, has taken over the throne of Egypt and plunged the once peaceful and prosperous empire into chaos and conflict.”

 

"SethAndHorusAdoringRamsses" by en:User:Chipdawes - en:Image:SethAndHorusAdoringRamsses.JPG. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SethAndHorusAdoringRamsses.JPG#mediaviewer/File:SethAndHorusAdoringRamsses.JPG.
“SethAndHorusAdoringRamsses” by Chipdawes –  public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

From an Egyptological perspective, characterizing Set as an evil god is highly problematic. Although he’s often referred to as a ‘god of chaos,’ that’s a modern gloss on his character. It’s true that he was demonized in the Late Period, but in earlier times he was a much more ambivalent figure. For much of Egyptian history, his cult flourished in the Delta region and at Ombos. Several pharaohs were named after him, such as Seti I, whose name literally means ‘man of Set’ (ordinary people also incorporated Set’s name into their own as well). There are also a number of depictions of Set crowning the king alongside Horus (the one on the right is taken from Ramesses II’s small temple at Abu Simbel). Set also had a reputation for martial prowess, which is why he is often shown at the forefront of Re’s solar barque, spearing the evil snake-creature Apep.

However, he definitely had a darker side. As early as the Pyramid Texts, he was described as the murderer of his brother Osiris, and there are references to him fighting Horus (who can be either his brother or his nephew, depending on the text!) for the throne of Egypt. An extended narrative of Set’s struggle with Horus for the throne of Egypt can be found in the Contendings of Horus and Set, which was written in the New Kingdom. There, Set is portrayed as a violent buffoon who is easily tricked by Horus into building a boat out of stone. When the gods finally decide to award the throne to Horus, Set is compensated by being given dominion over the desert. He still retained Re’s favor, as well.

Set defending Re from Apep by An unknown workman - Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Set_speared_Apep.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Set_speared_Apep.jpg.
Set defending Re from Apep by An unknown workman – Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Set didn’t become a totally evil figure until the Late Period, at which point he replaced Apep as the embodiment of evil. It’s not entirely clear why he fell from grace, but Herman te Velde has suggested that his demonization was due to Egypt’s conquest by outsiders such as the Assyrians and the Persians. Set was historically seen as the patron of foreigners, and their subjugation of Egypt might have made Set’s cult less attractive.[note]H. te Velde, Seth: God of Confusion (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1967), 138-140.[/note]

Unfortunately, it’s the negative characterization of Set that seems to prevail in popular culture today. Writers often cast him as the Egyptian version of the Christian Devil, despite the anachronistic nature of such an approach. Rick Riordan is one of the few authors who has demonstrated an awareness of Set’s nuanced nature.

The fact that the team behind Gods of Egypt has chosen such a hackneyed and inaccurate approach makes me doubt the quality of the rest of their research. I fear their depiction of Egypt will be little more than a bunch of people with tea towels on their heads running around a set that’s festooned with a random assemblage of Egyptianesque artifacts. Oh, and apparently most of them will be white for some unfathomable reason (perhaps the casting directors are disciples of Sir Flinders Petrie!).

 

 

New project!

As many of you know, I’m something of a Westminster nerd, and I spend a lot of time blah-blah-blahing about the British constitution. Until now, I’ve been content to post that stuff here along with my thoughts on Egyptology, video games, writing, etc., but from now on, it will appear on a separate blog entitled A Venerable Puzzle.

Now you may be asking yourselves, “why the hell is Jason creating a separate blog when he can barely be bothered to update this one in a timely fashion?” The answer is that I want to make this place less of a gallimaufry, and of all the things I like to pontificate about, the British constitution seemed the best candidate for a spin-off.

Anyway, if you like it when I natter on about Britain, check out my new site. There’s a fabulous post on the House of Lords Reform Act 2014 waiting for you there. 🙂

John Baines

I just learned that John Baines retired at the end of last year. Baines was Professor of Egyptology at The Queen’s College, Oxford, and he’s something of a living legend in the Egyptological community. A professor by 30, he went on to have a distinguished scholarly career, as his list of publications vividly demonstrates.

Baines’ work has been invaluable to me over the years. He co-authored The Cultural Atlas of Ancient Egypt, which was one of the first scholarly books about Egypt that I ever owned. Although it’s outdated in places, it still provides a solid overview of Egyptian civilization, and it’s a must have for any Egyptophile (though, sadly, it seems to be out of print). Baines has also made a major contribution to the study of literacy in ancient Egypt, and his 1983 article on the subject is still widely cited. His most recent book is about elite culture, and I plan to read it in the near future.

Baines is also a really nice guy. Many years ago, I emailed him with some questions about Egypt. I was so young that I didn’t have my own email address, and I had to send it using my mom’s account (and I think I’ve just dated myself!). I can only vaguely remember the questions; I believe I asked him something about priestly celibacy and Egypt in the Greco-Roman period. But he wrote back with detailed, helpful answers, and I’ve always appreciated his willingness to answer questions from a random American kid.

The Egyptians would have called Baines “a good scribe and an exceedingly wise man,” and his successor will have some big shoes to fill. I hope he has a long and happy retirement, and with any luck, we’ll be reading his work for many years to come.