One of the problems I’ve had to face when writing the Khamtir books is the issue of pharaonic names.
Egyptologists usually refer to a king by his birth name plus an ordinal number to differentiate him from similarly named kings (e.g. Ramesses II). This convention is also used in a lot of historical fiction set in ancient Egypt, but I’ve been reluctant to follow suit. For starters, it would cause confusion since the three kings who play a role in my novels would all be called ‘Ramesses.’ Also, there is an increasing amount of evidence that suggests that their reigns overlapped to some degree. In my books, I use the chronology proposed by Ad Thijs. He believes that the reigns of Ramesses IX and Ramesses XI may have overlapped, and when Ramesses IX died, Ramesses X replaced him on the throne and ruled alongside Ramesses XI for a brief period of time. Once Ramesses X was dead, Ramesses XI was finally in control of the entire country. Trying to use ordinals in these circumstances would be rather nonsensical.
The birth name (left) and throne name (right) of Tutankhamun. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Confusion aside, the ‘birth name plus ordinal’ system is also anachronistic. Although Egyptian kings had five names, their prenomen (also known as their ‘throne name’) and their nomen (also known as their ‘birth name’) were used the most. So the main pharaoh in my books, Ramesses XI, would have been known to his contemporaries as ‘Menmaatre – Setepenptah’ (which can be translated as ‘The Justice of Re Endures – Chosen of Ptah’) and ‘Ramesses – Khaemwaset – Meryamun – Netjerheqaiunu’ (which translates as ‘Re has fashioned him – He Appears in Waset – Beloved of Amun – Divine Ruler of Iunu’). It has been theorized that a king’s names served as a sort of ‘vision statement’ for his reign. Some kings even changed them as their reign wore on, perhaps to reflect changing circumstances.
When I need to refer to Ramesses XI in dialogue or narration, I use the first part of his throne name: ‘Menmaatre’ (though I may opt to use the abbreviated form ‘Menmare’ instead). It’s not difficult to pronounce, so it shouldn’t be a stumbling block to anyone. If I need to be very formal, I’ll add the second part (known as the epithet), but I decided to translate it in order to avoid overloading the reader with strange words. 🙂 I know of at least one author who actually translates the entire royal name, but in that case, the king was only mentioned in passing in a short story. Referring to ‘King The Justice of Re Endures’ throughout an entire novel would get old quickly!
Yes, you read that correctly. Apparently, a group of hackers forced the owners of Egyptological, an online publication dedicated to Egyptology, to take the site down after it came under sustained attack. Although no details have been confirmed, it’s been speculated that the hackers view Egyptology-related sites as “a form of political threat.”
This is one of those times where I feel like I’ve stumbled into Bizarro World. How on earth is an Egyptological journal a political threat? It discussed people and events that have been dead and done for millennia, for crying out loud! It’s hardly a hotbed of sedition.
What makes this doubly sad is that Egyptological was a neat project. It offered both a journal of original academic research and a magazine aimed at the general public. The best part is that both were available to everyone, free of charge. It was a great example of how the web can help spread academic knowledge beyond the confines of the ivory tower.
Fortunately, the people behind Egyptologicalhaven’t thrown in the towel. They’ve rebuilt the site with a new web host, and most of their back issues are available once more. Even better, they’re planning to come out with a new issue in the coming weeks. Let’s hope their troubles are finally at an end.
Ramesses III made headlines recently when a team of scientists revealed that a CT scan of his mummy indicated that his throat had been slashed.
The head of Ramesses’ mummy. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
Egyptologists have long suspected that his reign might have ended in some form of skullduggery. Thanks to a remarkable set of papyri, we know that one of his junior queens, Tiye, tried to instigate a coup in order to place her son Pentawere on the throne. The conspiracy seems to have been quite wide-ranging, and it included a number of palace officials as well as a military officer from Nubia. Ultimately, they were tried by a special commission of judges, and most of the conspirators were either forced to commit suicide or executed.
Unfortunately, the trial records don’t say whether the plot against the king was successful. Until now, many Egyptologists believed that the king survived for at least a little while since the trial records imply that he was the one who ordered the judges to investigate the matter. But the forensic evidence makes it clear that he would have died almost instantly.
The scientists may also have identified the body of the luckless Prince Pentawere. Genetic testing revealed that the mummy known as Unknown Man E is probably a son of Ramesses III. Unknown Man E has long been a puzzle ever since he was discovered among the cache of royal mummies at Deir el-Bahri in the late 19th century. Found in an unmarked coffin, his body had been wrapped in sheepskin, which the Egyptian considered ritually impure. His body hadn’t been properly mummified, and his tortured expression suggested that he died in incredible agony. Recent examination of his mummy has found marks on his neck that could be evidence of strangulation (although we know Pentawere was condemned by the court, we don’t know how he actually met his end).
While none of this provides conclusive proof of Pentawere’s identity, the circumstantial evidence is certainly compelling. Though I do think it is curious that they bothered to save his body at all. Not only that, but they also took the time to move it to a safe place when the royal necropolis was dismantled in the 21st dynasty. I would have thought that regicide would be so awful that they would have wanted to destroy his body so that he couldn’t have any kind of afterlife. Then again, since he didn’t receive a proper burial and there was nothing to perpetuate his name, his posthumous existence would have been a bleak one!
During a wiki walk this morning, I stumbled upon Albrecht Dürer’s Three Mighty Ladies of Livonia:
Lady Gaga would have felt right at home in medieval Livonia!
Now I’m on a mission to learn more about these costumes. Why hasn’t the woman on the right covered her face? What does that tell us about her social standing vis–à–vis the other two ladies? Sadly, I have a feeling that learning more about medieval Livonian costumes will be something of a challenge…
If you’re looking for a good book about ancient Egyptian religion, you should pick up Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods by Dimitri Meeks and Christine Favard-Meeks. It’s not new, but I hadn’t gotten around to reading it until now. And I’m sure glad I did: it’s probably one of the best general reference books I’ve ever read.
Originally published in French, the book treats the Egyptian gods as if they were an ethnic group being studied by anthropologists. At first, I thought that sounded like a gimmick, but it’s a surprisingly effective approach. But where the book really shines is its use of primary sources. The authors draw upon some very obscure texts, which allows them to provide a level of detail that you rarely see in general reference works. Unfortunately, many of these texts are only available as hard-to-find French translations, so accessing them can be almost impossible unless you can consult a dedicated Egyptological collection and are reasonably proficient at reading French. But thanks to this book, the general English-speaking public can at least get a glimpse of them.
While browsing the stacks of Memorial Library the other day, I came across a copy of Toby Wilkinson’s The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. To be honest, I’d been avoiding it for some time. When it was published, Wilkinson made it very clear that he wrote the book with an agenda in mind. He believes that scholars and the general public tend to view pharaonic culture with “misty-eyed reverence,” and his book is an attempt to shatter their rose-tinted spectacles. Despite my misgivings, I had a sense of morbid curiosity about the book. So when I saw it on the shelves, I decided to take a gander at it and see if my fears were grounded in reality.
I decided to start out by seeing what he had to say about the end of the 20th dynasty, which is the period I write about in my fiction. Not surprisingly, his account focuses on the travails of Amenhotep and Panhesy (which form the backdrop of The World Inverted) since that’s the best-documented episode from an otherwise shadowy era. And when I say that it’s the “best-documented episode,” I mean we have a handful of random documents that refer to it in varying levels of detail. But we still know next to nothing about it, and scholars still debate the basic sequence of events.
You would never guess that from Wilkinson’s book, however. He presents a clear narrative that begins when a group of “hungry, desperate, and frustrated” Thebans remove Amenhotep from the high priesthood of Amun because of his “intransigence.” Amenhotep reluctantly appeals to Ramesses XI for help (“[g]roveling to the pharaoh was an unwelcome prospect for Amenhotep, but he knew it was the only path back to power”), and the king dispatches Panhesy, the Viceroy of Kush, to restore the ousted prelate.
But when Panhesy arrives, he brings “the roughness of military justice” with him, complete with summary executions. He also takes control of the royal granaries, which leads Ramesses to grow concerned since he can “sense Thebes and the south slipping away.” He dispatches General Piankh to dislodge Panhesy, but Piankh ends up ravaging Thebes in the requisite “orgy of destruction.”
Piankh’s rule in Thebes is characterized as a “military junta” that rules “with a rod of iron,” and of course Wilkinson quotes Piankh’s famous letter to his wife where he asks her to kill two policemen and throw their bodies into the river. When Piankh dies, his ‘junta’ chooses Herihor (“a mature and capable leader in [Piankh’s] mold”), and Piankh’s widow swiftly marries him in a “brilliantly calculated move” that allows her to retain power.
It’s all very gripping, but Wilkinson has fleshed out the bare facts with a healthy amount of conjecture. We have no idea why Amenhotep was removed from office. We also don’t know Panhesy’s exact role in the affair. Far from being Amenhotep’s savior, he was probably the one to drive him from office (a statement made a few years later records that a certain event occurred “when Panhesy came and suppressed my superior (Amenhotep) though there was no fault in him.”). There’s also no evidence that Panhesy appropriated royal granaries. As Aidan Dodson points out in Afterglow of Empire, the evidence suggests that Panhesy eventually returned to favor, so there’s no reason to assume that his association with the royal granaries indicates anything untoward.
Similarly, we know very little about Piankh. Characterizing him as “an army man through and through, brusque, determined, and ruthlessly efficient” is a bit of a stretch given the lack of any firsthand accounts of his character. While there is some evidence that there may have been some sort of skulduggery going on (including the Nodjmet letter mentioned above), it’s almost impossible for us to draw firm conclusion. We have no idea why he wanted the policemen dead—there’s certainly no evidence that they were “mutter[ing] against the junta!”
All this would be fine if Wilkinson were writing historical fiction. But he isn’t; he’s writing something that purports to be history. I realize that he’s writing for a popular audience and therefore comes under more pressure to liven things up, but I think he should have made it clear where the facts end and his conjecture begins. In the endnotes that accompanied the bit I read, he simply mentions that the end of the 20th dynasty is a “hotly debated topic” and alludes to the disagreements over whether Herihor succeeded Piankh or vice versa.
Thankfully, there’s an alternative if you’re interested in the darker side of pharaonic civilization. Pascal Vernus’s Affairs and Scandals in Ancient Egyptis more limited in scope (he focuses on the end of the New Kingdom), but it does a nice job of examining societal turbulence without resorting to sensationalism.
It looks like Nick Clegg’s proposals to reform the House of Lords are about to be consigned to the scrapheap. Although the government won the vote on second reading by 462 to 124, they had to withdraw the program motion that would have set the timetable for the rest of the bill’s journey through the Commons. Labour had promised to vote against it, and with around 100 Tory MPs threatening to rebel, it didn’t stand a chance of passing.
Labour claims that they opposed the program motion because it didn’t allow enough time for debate, but I suspect they’re more interested in exacerbating tensions between the Tories and the Lib Dems. It sure seems to be working.
Now the government is in a terrible pickle. Theoretically, they could just take the bill through the rest of its parliamentary stages without any preset time limits, but their rebel backbenchers would almost certainly end up filibustering it. The government will be all too aware that an earlier attempt at Lords reform, the Parliament (No. 2) Bill of 1968, died because MPs on both sides were able to slow proceedings to a crawl until ministers finally gave up.
If the Lords Reform Bill is going to make any progress, there has to be a program motion. David Cameron has hinted that he won’t negotiate with Labour, which means he’ll have to appease his own backbenchers. The Daily Telegraph has reported that Cameron is offering extra days in committee, or a reduction in the number of elected peers. But since they want the entire bill scrapped, it seems doubtful that those concessions will win him many votes. Interestingly, the Telegraph is also reporting that Cameron has indicated that, if he can’t win over his backbenchers by the end of the summer, he will abandon the entire bill. That would place a huge strain on the coalition, and I suspect a messy divorce would soon follow.
Still, I hope Cameron does come to his senses and jettison this atrocious bill. It really is a dog’s breakfast. Nick Clegg and friends have repeatedly said that they want the second chamber to be more accountable, yet they’ve proposed a body whose members would serve a 15-year term without the possibility of re-election.If you never have to face the voters again, you don’t have to worry about what they think.
The bill also seeks to ensure that the reformed Lords remains subordinate to the Commons. But that convention only really makes sense when the Commons has an electoral mandate and the Lords doesn’t. Requiring an elected chamber to kowtow to another elected chamber is an exercise in constitutional fundamentalism.
The way the government has tried to secure the primacy of the Commons seems poorly thought out. Clause 2 says that the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 will continue to apply to the reformed House of Lords. Those acts are what allow the House of Commons to pass legislation over the Lords’ veto. But they still allow the Lords to delay non-financial legislation for about a year. Until now, the Lords has usually given way in the end, which is why the Parliament Acts have only been used a handful of times. Would an elected chamber be equally self-denying? I doubt it.
Then there is the Salisbury-Addison convention which states that the Lords won’t reject government bills that arise from manifesto commitments. That convention was negotiated back when the House of Lords was filled with hereditary peers, most of whom supported the Conservatives. Why should it apply to an elected chamber whose political complexion reflects the will of the people?
On the plus side, the wrangle over Lords reform has helped convince me that Britain probably needs a written constitution. The idea of effecting constitutional change of this magnitude through a mere Act of Parliament is troubling, to say the least.
In the article, Erin Gloria Ryan claims that the Queen’s “salary” went from $44.8 million to $56 million. There’s one problem with that assertion: the Queen doesn’t get a salary. The $56 million figure refers to the Sovereign Support Grant, which is intended to defray the costs of being head of state. Calling that the Queen’s salary is a bit like calling the White House administrative budget President Obama’s salary.
It’s also worth noting that the Sovereign Support Grant is not paid for through taxation. As the Jezebel article correctly points out, it’s a portion of the profits from the Crown Estate, which is a multi-billion pound property portfolio. Despite the name, the vast majority of its profits go into the public purse. The Queen only receives 15% of the estate’s net revenue from the financial year two years prior.
If Ms. Ryan had done her homework instead of relying on a single article from NBC, she might have adopted a less sensational tone (and there’s really no excuse for not doing the research, considering HM Treasury provides a very informative page about the Sovereign Support Grant). Then again, the prosaic truth doesn’t generate as many page hits.
Today marked the end of the Diamond Jubilee festivities in Britain. Over the past four days, millions of Britons took to the streets to celebrate the sixty-year reign of Her Majesty the Queen. On some level, the idea of millions of people turning out to fete an 86-year-old grandmother is rather strange. Then again, the whole institution of the British monarchy is built on paradox. On paper, the Queen has vast powers. Describing Queen Victoria’s powers in the 19th century, the constitutional scholar Walter Bagehot said:
[s]he could dismiss all the officers, from the General Commanding-in-Chief downwards; she could dismiss all the sailors too; she could sell off all our ships of war and all our naval stores; she could make a peace by the sacrifice of Cornwall, and begin a war for the conquest of Brittany. She could make every citizen in the United Kingdom, male or female, a peer; she could make every parish in the United Kingdom a “university”; she could dismiss most of the civil servants; she could pardon all offenders. In a word, the Queen could by prerogative upset all the action of civil government within the Government, could disgrace the nation by a bad war or peace, and could, by disbanding our forces, whether land or sea, leave us defenceless against foreign nations.[note]The English Constitution, Introduction to the Second Edition, pg. 32[/note]
The current Queen may share many of those powers, but she can only exercise them on the advice of ministers accountable to Parliament. There are a few instances where the Queen retains personal discretion, but they are few and far between. She does, however, retain the right to be consulted, to encourage, and to warn her government. Because communications between monarch and minister are confidential, it is difficult for us to understand the extent to which the Queen has influenced her governments. That won’t become clear until the relevant documents are declassified after her death. Judging from the odd tidbits that have entered the public domain, it’s clear that she is an astute observer of the political scene.
But that’s not why millions of Britons have come out to cheer her. I’d wager that most of them couldn’t care less about her role as head of state; they’re cheering for her as head of the nation. They’re cheering for her because she stepped up to the plate after her father’s untimely death and immediately set about discharging a difficult job with dignity and grace. They’re cheering for her because she has walked the fine line between clinging to the past and embracing the future. They’re cheering for her because she has worked to recognize the many unsung heroes of British society–the dinner ladies, the crossing guards, and the jumble sale volunteers. They’re cheering for her because, at 86, she still carries out over 400 official engagements per year.
Over the past six decades, the Queen has shown herself to be one of the greatest Britons. I may not be one of her subjects, but I have no problem joining with them as they cry “Vivat Regina!”
Monday saw one of the coolest events in the British parliamentary calendar: prorogation. What is prorogation, you ask? Simply put, it’s the end of a parliamentary session. But unlike here in the US where the legislature expires quietly, Parliament goes out with a ceremony that’s 100% pure awesomeness.
The power to prorogue Parliament is part of the royal prerogative, though nowadays it is only exercised on the advice of the government. In the past, monarchs prorogued Parliament in person, but since the 19th century it has been customary for the sovereign to appoint a commission of peers to perform the ceremony on their behalf. Nowadays, it is also customary for the prorogation ceremony to include the signification of royal assent to any outstanding bills, but the two things are technically separate.[note]Monarchs stopped signifying Assent in person around the same time as they stopped proroguing Parliament. Until 1967, Assent was always signified by the Lords Commissioners. But that eventually proved to be too inconvenient, so Parliament passed the Royal Assent Act, which allowed the Queen to signify her Assent by signing Letters Patent. The older, more formal, is only used at prorogation.[/note]
Illustration of a peerage robe courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The ‘Lords Commissioners’ are always chosen from among the ranks of the Privy Counsellors, and usually include the Lord Speaker, the leaders of the main political parties in the Lords, and the Convenor of the Crossbench Peers.[end]The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chancellor are also named in the Queen’s Commission, but they no longer take part in the ceremony.[/end] At the appointed hour, they put on their parliamentary robes (complete with ermine) and process into the House of Lords, where they take their seats on a bench between the Throne and the Woolsack. The male Commissioners were black bicorn hats, while their female counterparts wear something that looks like a squashed tricorn hat with a gold brooch on the side.[end]The ladies’ headgear seems to be a modern innovation. Traditionally, women wore the same bicorn hats as their male colleagues, and I’m not sure why a change was made. I think it’s fairly recent though.[/end]. The commission is presided over by a Minister of Cabinet rank, usually the Leader of the House.[end] and he’s the only one who gets a speaking role. The rest of the Commission just sits there in silence.
The Leader of the House commands the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod (who also doubles as the Serjeant-at-Arms of the House of Lords) to summon the House of Commons. When the Commons arrive, they can’t actually enter the Lords Chamber. Instead, they have to stand at the threshold. As they crowd in, they bow three times to the Lords Commissioners, and the Lords Commissioners in turn acknowledge each bow by doffing their hats (though female Commissioners don’t doff their hats for some reason).
Once the Commons are in their place, it is time for the best part of the entire ceremony: the reading of the Queen’s Commission. This is probably one of the most awesomely arcane documents in the British constitutional repertoire. It’s addressed to “Our right trusty and right well beloved the Lords Spiritual and Temporal” and “Our trusty and well beloved the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses of the House of Commons in this present Parliament assembled,” and contains references to the “fidelity, prudence, and circumspection” of her Commissioners, as well as the “divers (sic) difficult and pressing affairs concerning Us, the State and Defense of Our United Kingdom, and the Church” that caused her to summon Parliament in the first place. At the end of the document, the clerk informs everyone that it’s “signed by the Queen herself, with her own hand.”[note]Those with a hankering for grand legalese can find a sample of the Commission here.[/note]
The commission read, it’s time for the Royal Assent. As the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery reads the short title of each bill, the Clerk of the Parliaments turns to the Commons and pronounces the appropriate Norman French formula (in most cases, it’s La Reyne le veult, which means “the Queen wills it”). That’s right: in Britain, a bill formally becomes an act when a bewigged man shouts at legislators in a dead dialect.
Assent given, it’s time for the Leader of the House to read the Queen’s prorogation speech “in Her Majesty’s own words.” Of course that’s not exactly true: like the Speech from the Throne, this speech is written for her by the government, and it’s basically a boring laundry-list of all the great things the government has done over the past session. When the speech is over, the Leader of the House formally prorogues Parliament to a certain day, and the Commons withdraw. Much more hat-doffing ensues.
Now there are some people who would love to do away with the robes, hats, and Norman French in the name of ‘modernization.’ After all, the prorogation ceremony isn’t necessary. It could be streamlined, or even eliminated. But at the same time, there’s also no real compelling argument for doing so. Whether it’s fireworks on the Fourth of July or bewigged men shouting in Norman French, there’s nothing wrong with a little spectacle. 🙂
Codex Lochianus 