The case for non-partisan presiding officers

The other night I watched the procedural wrangling in the Texas Senate as Democrats tried to stop the GOP from ending Wendy Davis’ filibuster of Senate Bill 5, which would have forced most of the abortion clinics in the state to close.

The special session of the legislature was going to end at midnight, so the Republicans were desperate to stop Davis. Over the course of the proceedings, GOP senators lodged three points of order in a bid to break the filibuster. Two of the points of order dealt with germaneness, while the other objected to the fact that Davis had a colleague help her put a back brace on. All these points of order were ultimately sustained by the President of the Senate, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.

The problem is that Dewhurst is a Republican, and so he had a vested interest in breaking the filibuster. Indeed, there was a strong aura of partisanship in the way he and his deputy conducted themselves in the chair. The three points of order against Sen. Davis were arguably trivial, and he may have ignored Sen. Leticia Van De Putte when she tried to move the adjournment. He also declared that the bill had passed, even though the votes weren’t tallied until after the midnight deadline (though he changed his tune a few hours later, stating that the bill had failed because he hadn’t signed it “in the presence of the Senate” before midnight).

Unfortunately, this sort of partisan behavior from a presiding officer is hardly unprecedented in American politics. From Washington DC to the state capitals, presiding officers are usually active members of the majority party and are expected to deliver its agenda. Regardless of which side of the aisle they hail from, it seems that the temptation to bend the rules in favor of their party colleagues is often too strong to resist.

This approach stands in marked contrast to that found in Britain. When a new Speaker of the House of Commons is elected, they immediately sever all partisan ties. This political neutrality persists even after they step down: if they choose to take the customary peerage, they sit in the House of Lords as Crossbenchers. Freed from the bonds of party loyalty, the Commons’ speaker is expected to be an impartial umpire who serves the whole house. They must be particularly diligent about protecting the rights of the Opposition as well as those of backbenchers from all parties. When exercising their rare casting vote in the event of a tie, convention dictates that the speaker must always vote to give the Commons another chance to consider the matter before a final decision is taken.

Sadly, I don’t see us adopting a British-style speaker any time soon since both the GOP and the Democrats are eager to have as many advantages as possible when they’re in power. šŸ˜¦

What’s in a name?

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).Ā 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.
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 asĀ  ‘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. šŸ™‚ 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!

Hackers attack Egyptology site

Yes, you read that correctly. Apparently, a group of hackers forced the owners ofĀ 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 thatĀ 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 behindĀ Egyptological haven’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.

Grief Sucks

January 15 was one of the worst days of my entire life. The night before, I started to feel sick, and after several hours of hardcore vomiting, I ended up going to the emergency room. I spent several hours there while they filled me with fluids and anti-nausea medicines, but by 6 AM I was cleared to go home. When I returned, I fell into bed, totally exhausted.

When I woke up several hours later, there was an anguished voicemail from my mother waiting for me. “If you want to say goodbye to Grandma, you need to come home now.ā€

I immediately tried to call Mom back, but her phone wasn’t on. For the next few hours, I was left in an agony of uncertainty. It all seemed so unreal. Even though Grandma has been fighting cancer for the past several months, the idea that she might die seemed utterly absurd. Sheā€™d beat it once before, and we had every reason to think that sheā€™d beat it again. Even though she’d just had surgery due to complications from her radiation therapy, she was expected to make a full recovery. For her to suddenly be on the brink of death seemed unthinkable.

Even worse, I was in no condition to travel. Although the anti-nausea medicine had stabilized me, I felt wretched and I was still running a fever. And there was no way I could risk giving my bug to my Mom. But the knowledge that I wouldnā€™t be able to make it home before Grandma passed was like a knife to the gut. She was one of my favorite people in the entire world, and I would have given anything to say farewell in person. In the end, I had to settle for saying goodbye over the phone. They were some of the hardest words Iā€™ve ever had to speak.

And then there was the wait. There are few things more excruciating than waiting for someone you love to die. I kept thinking about how when I was little, I hated having to say goodbye when Grandma would come to visit. I would cry and carry on and beg her to stay just a little bit longer. Twenty-some years later, the sentiment was still the same. Thankfully, the Physicist was with me when I finally got the news. That was a small mercy, at least.

The stomach virus cleared up in time for me to head back to Michigan later in the week. Grandma thought that traditional funerals were rather morbid, so she wanted us to go to her favorite restaurant and have a party instead. There was a lot of laughter and a lot of storytelling, and I think she would have liked how it turned out. But after the party, we were confronted by the innumerable practicalities of death, like how to divide up her possessions. Her house had a bizarre atmosphere of normalcy: it was as if Grandma had just gone out to the store and would be back at any minute.

I had some wonderful times in that house. When Mom and I first moved to Michigan, we lived with Grandma and Grandpa for a bit. It was one of the darkest times of my life, and I owe them a huge debt of gratitude for making a turbulent time of transition much smoother. That first Christmas together was particularly magical, and it set the stage for many more happy occasions together.

Now that Grandma is gone, I don’t have any grandparents left. Itā€™s the end of an era, and a sobering reminder that nothing in this world lasts forever. Everyone we hold dear will eventually turn to dust.Ā Sic transit gloria mundi, and all that.

When someone you love dies, itā€™s as if someone has suddenly dug a great pit in the middle of your garden. At first, you canā€™t bear to look at it because itā€™s ugly and raw and reminds you of what youā€™ve lost. But with the passage of time, the jagged edges soften and it gradually becomes part of the landscape.

The more you look at it, the faster you come to realize that itā€™s not truly empty. Floating around in the blackness are memories of your loved one, each one a preserved snippet of the time you spent with them. Encountering them will be painful at first, but eventually the sting goes away, and they become celebrations of what you had rather than reminders of what you lost.

New light on the Harem Conspiracy and Unknown Man E

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 thatĀ regicideĀ 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!

Indie publishing as a gateway to traditional publishing

Amazon recently published their 2012 best-seller lists and it revealed something interesting: four of the authors on the adult top-ten list originally went the indie route (i.e. self-publishing or publishing through a small press). However, each of them ultimately had their work picked up by a traditional publisher.

So what might this tell us about the future of publishing? For one thing, I think it suggests that traditional publishers aren’t quite as moribund as many people might think. Given their strategic advantages, they will probably dominate the best-seller lists for the foreseeable future.

But at the same time, traditional publishers will likely become more and more receptive to the idea of acquiring successful indie works. Indeed, there may come a day when indie publishing becomes a semi-official alternative to the industry’s traditional gatekeepers.

After all, relying on literary agents and the slush pile can be a risky proposition, which is why so many books never earn out their advance. But with indie publishing, a lot of that risk is borne by the author. That means that traditional publishers can sit on the sidelines and see who’s winning before they have to pony up any of their money.

Still, I don’t think indie publishing is going to completely supplant literary agents and slush piles. As I’ve mentioned before, the indie route is a difficult one, and you need to sell aĀ lot of copies if you want to catch the eye of a traditional publisher. But if all you’ve done is taken your unedited NaNoWriMo manuscript and uploaded it to the Kindle store, you’re not going to find your inbox flooded with offers from traditional publishers.

Lady Gaga’s Medieval Antecedents

During a wiki walk this morning, I stumbled upon Albrecht DĆ¼rer’sĀ Three Mighty Ladies of Livonia:

Seriously Stylin'

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 standingĀ visā€“Ć ā€“visĀ the other two ladies? Sadly, I have a feeling that learning more about medieval Livonian costumes will be something of a challenge…

Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods

If you’re looking for a good book about ancient Egyptian religion, you should pick upĀ 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.

A historical hatchet job

While browsing the stacks of Memorial Library the other day, I came across a copy of Toby Wilkinson’sĀ The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt. To be honest, Iā€™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 ā€œmisty-eyed reverence,ā€ 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 20thĀ 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 ofĀ The World Inverted) since that’s the best-documented episode from an otherwise shadowy era. And when I say that it’s the ā€œbest-documented episode,ā€ 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 ā€œhungry, desperate, and frustratedā€ Thebans remove Amenhotep from the high priesthood of Amun because of his ā€œintransigence.ā€ Amenhotep reluctantly appeals to Ramesses XI for help (ā€œ[g]roveling to the pharaoh was an unwelcome prospect for Amenhotep, but he knew it was the only path back to powerā€), and the king dispatches Panhesy, the Viceroy of Kush, to restore the ousted prelate.

But when Panhesy arrives, he brings ā€œthe roughness of military justiceā€ with him, complete with summary executions. He also takes control of the royal granaries, which leads Ramesses to grow concerned since he can ā€œsense Thebes and the south slipping away.ā€ He dispatches General Piankh to dislodge Panhesy, but Piankh ends up ravaging Thebes in the requisite ā€œorgy of destruction.ā€

Piankh’s rule in Thebes is characterized as a ā€œmilitary juntaā€ that rules ā€œwith a rod of iron,ā€ 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.Ā  When Piankh dies, his ‘junta’ chooses Herihor (ā€œa mature and capable leader in [Piankh’s] moldā€), and Piankh’s widow swiftly marries him in a ā€œbrilliantly calculated moveā€ 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 inĀ 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 ā€œan army man through and through, brusque, determined, and ruthlessly efficientā€ 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 ofĀ skulduggeryĀ 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 deadā€”there’s certainly no evidence that they were ā€œmutter[ing] against the junta!ā€

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 ā€œhotly debated topicā€ 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’sĀ Affairs and Scandals in Ancient EgyptĀ is 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.

Reflections on Avatar: The Legend of Korra Book One

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

Book One of Avatar: The Legend of Korra came to an end last month. I started watching the show with high expectations, but they swiftly took a nosedive as it progressed. Sadly, the season finale did nothing to shake me from my apathy.

I approached the show as a huge Avatar fan. I loved it so much that I purchased the boxed sets of all three seasons, which is something I rarely do since Iā€™m such a cheapskate. I re-watch them regularly, and I can honestly say that I enjoy almost every episode (with the exception of ā€œThe Great Divide,ā€ of course).

When I heard that they were going to make Korra, I was thrilled. I was a bit disappointed that we wouldnā€™t be seeing more of the original characters, but the steakmpunkesque setting looked intriguing. But after the first few episodes, my enthusiasm for the show all but vanished, and I continued watching out of a sense of duty rather than enjoyment.

Korra was originally intended as 12-episode miniseries, but that was eventually increased to 52 episodes divided into four ā€˜books,ā€™ with each book having a different plot arc. The original series, on the other hand, had 61 episodes spread over three books. Because Korra has shorter books, the plot is forced to move along at a much faster pace, without any filler episodes. That could have been an asset, but instead it turned out to be a problem.

The showā€™s pacing struck me as woefully uneven. The first part of the book is dominated by the pro-bending storyline, which gets jettisoned midway through so the Amon storyline can take center stage. After a fairly sedate beginning, viewers are subjected to plot whiplash as the remaining episodes zoom from battle to battle.

I wish the pro-bending storyline had been pruned a bit because it really wasnā€™t all that interesting. The institutionalized nature of the combat managed to make bending boring. At their core, all the pro-bending scenes were the same. Two teams would meet in an arena and lob elements at each other. They were a poor substitute for the varied combat shown in the original series.

The Amon storyline is less repetitious, but things move so quickly that everything seems curiously devoid of impact. The finale contains some genuine drama when Amon manages to strip Korra of most of her bending skills. For a few moments, I thought that the second part of the season would focus on her struggle to regain her mastery of the other elements, and I was genuinely excited.

Alas, Avatar Aang comes along in the last few minutes of the episode and restores her bending while dispensing some pap about how her recent suffering has made her a true Avatar. Apparently, Korra can now tap into her spiritual side, but itā€™s kind of hard to see this as a momentous achievement when her lack of spirituality hasnā€™t been mentioned since the first episode.

Of course plot problems can be overlooked if the characters are sufficiently engaging. Sadly, Korraā€™s werenā€™t. I think the lack of filler episodes really hurt the characterization. The original series handled filler episodes very well because they often ended up being more character-driven. ā€œZuko Alone,ā€ ā€œThe Tales of Ba Sing Se,ā€ and ā€œThe Beach,ā€ are all great examples of how the original series managed to flesh out the characters.

But there wasnā€™t room for anything like that in Korra, and so everyone remained pretty one-dimensional. Compared to Aang, Korraā€™s personality seemed pretty flat. She felt like a generic Strong Female Character, and I think itā€™s because we werenā€™t allowed to get to know her gradually. She also didnā€™t seem to face many interior struggles. True, she had problems with the spiritual side of being the Avatar, but that itā€™s not really a ā€˜struggleā€™ when itā€™s mentioned once at the beginning and then forgotten about until the finale.

Her relationship with Mako felt similarly flat. There was never really any chemistry or tension between them. True, Mako had the hots for Asami for a while, but she might as well have worn a nametag reading ā€œHi, my nameā€™s Asami, and Iā€™m a plot complication.ā€ There was no reason to think of her as a credible rival to Korra.

And then thereā€™s Amon, the main villain of the book. Although he gets points for having a plot thatā€™s more sophisticated than the usual KILL, KILL, KILL!!!, heā€™s still rather bland until the finale fleshes out his backstory a bit more. He canā€™t really hold a candle to either Zuko or Azula from the first series.

I havenā€™t totally given up on Korra, and Iā€™m willing to watch a bit of Book Two to see if things get better. But I certainly wonā€™t be rushing out to buy Book One anytime soon.