I little while ago I finished Donald Redford's "A History of Ancient Egypt: Egyptian Civilization in Context". This is by far the best general introduction to the history of Egypt, or really any ancient civilization, I have ever read. It is very rare that an author has all the necessary background and skills to write a book like this and Redford is one of the very few who do. He is a historian but also an archaeologist who has done important field work and a master of the languages involved which allows him to bring to the narrative nuances that would otherwise be unknown to a historian relying on translations.
One of the rather unique things about this book is that, unlike nearly all introductory histories of ancient Egypt, it doesn't stop in the 11th century BCE with the end of the New Kingdom. Redford is well versed in the much more murky and complicated centuries that follow which connects the story to that of the more familiar Greek and Roman periods. There are some interesting bits about how the religion of ancient Egypt continued to evolve up to the introduction of Christianity. And how Christianity borrowed from that tradition.
Once one is familiar with the basic structure of history in the region it is well worth moving on to his older book "Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times".
mmm. Most Egyptology literature is dryer than deshret
Fiendishrabbit on
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
oh btw, "Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times" is quite relevant to the last page. Rather more central than the question of "did Moses write X book of the Tanakh" is "did Moses even exist" and "was there even the slightest bit of historical basis for the exodus myth".
10 years ago I would have fallen on the "kernel of truth behind the myth" side of things. But it is just so hard to square it up with actual history ("biblical history" and "biblical archaeology" are mostly just those subjects done very badly).
I think anything in the Tanakh that takes place prior to Jeremiah (including all of the wonderfully written stories in Samuel and Kings) are as much fantasy as Geoffrey of Monmouth writing in the 12th century CE about King Arthur ruling an empire that stretched across all of Europe.
oh btw, "Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times" is quite relevant to the last page. Rather more central than the question of "did Moses write X book of the Tanakh" is "did Moses even exist" and "was there even the slightest bit of historical basis for the exodus myth".
10 years ago I would have fallen on the "kernel of truth behind the myth" side of things. But it is just so hard to square it up with actual history ("biblical history" and "biblical archaeology" are mostly just those subjects done very badly).
I think anything in the Tanakh that takes place prior to Jeremiah (including all of the wonderfully written stories in Samuel and Kings) are as much fantasy as Geoffrey of Monmouth writing in the 12th century CE about King Arthur ruling an empire that stretched across all of Europe.
This is of course speculative, but I always wonder how many of the stories are just straight up borrowed from other people who may have lived near or intermarried with the Jews. For example, there isn't much evidence that the Jews were in Egypt, but there were certainly a bunch of other semitic peoples who were workers in Egypt and even ruled for a while. A smaller group like the Hebrews could have appropriated stories and oral history from other peoples who might have merged or married into the population, or Hebrews could have heard oral tradition from other groups and conciously or unconciously merged it in with their own. These stories were passed orally for generations before someone wrote them down.
This might sound far fetched, but again think of king Arthur. There was obviously no Anglo-Saxon king a thousand years before those stories were written that had a Europe spanning empire. But there was a welsh King that bore many similarities to Arthur that had myths about him in the same geographic arwa the Anglo Saxons moved into. And there was a king of a related group of peoples that did have a Europe spanning empire and a knightly order centered around him (Charlemagne of the Franks). These people probably all got conflated into the general Arthurian mythos.
I enjoy the Bible because of what it tells me about the priorities and morality of the people writing it.
Take for example Deuteronomy 20: 10-20:
10 When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.
16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. 18 Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.
19 When you lay siege to a city for a long time, fighting against it to capture it, do not destroy its trees by putting an ax to them, because you can eat their fruit. Do not cut them down. Are the trees people, that you should besiege them? 20 However, you may cut down trees that you know are not fruit trees and use them to build siege works until the city at war with you falls.
That's an amazing window into the insight of the mindset of the Semitic people around the 7th century BC. You get a guideline about when it's appropriate to plunder a city. Send them terms, if they accept they provide you labour and tribute. If they refuse, kill all of the men, take their stuff, enslave their women and children. And of course, note that women and chidlren are grouped with the other forms of loot. But whatever you do, don't destroy fruit trees! That shit is important, you need fruit trees for food. It's a brutal mindset by modern standards that's nevertheless very internally consistent.
Shadowhope on
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
Makes sense, too, there are plenty of instances in ancient times where an army spent months seigeing a city and were forced to withdraw after taking it and go home because there simply wasn't enough left to eat to support a long term occupation/colonization. This would usually result in whoever they took it from or some other random local power just walking in and recapturing it because their supply lines were much shorter.
Makes sense, too, there are plenty of instances in ancient times where an army spent months seigeing a city and were forced to withdraw after taking it and go home because there simply wasn't enough left to eat to support a long term occupation/colonization. This would usually result in whoever they took it from or some other random local power just walking in and recapturing it because their supply lines were much shorter.
Yep. In addition, if they conquered the city and settled there themselves, they'd be able to use those trees themselves. If they cut down the trees, the trees would take years to grow back large enough to provide a decent amount of food. This was written by a people far removed from modern ideas of morality, but they were by no means stupid.
The older I get, the more that those details are what I find fascinating in history.
10. I also forbid that anyone shall be slain or hanged for any fault, but let his eyes be put out and let him be castrated. And this command shall not be violated under pain of a fine in full to me.
You look at a law like that and wonder A) what prompted someone to write that law, how often was it enforced, C) how severe were the fines, D) when did that get removed from the books, E) seriously, what the hell? Even considering that it was between William and his magnates, that's still pretty amazing.
Shadowhope on
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
Someone castrated or blinded can still be interrogated. It is probably a measure to keep his subordinates honest.
For example noble A has an issue with a tenant, has him hanged, that is it.
Noble B has an issue with a tenant, has him castrated and blinded, William can still have the tenant summoned to court and question him if he thinks the actions of the noble are suspect.
Someone castrated or blinded can still be interrogated. It is probably a measure to keep his subordinates honest.
For example noble A has an issue with a tenant, has him hanged, that is it.
Noble B has an issue with a tenant, has him castrated and blinded, William can still have the tenant summoned to court and question him if he thinks the actions of the noble are suspect.
Yep. I get that. And that feeds back into what I was saying earlier: old laws are often jarring, but when you look at them in context it makes sense.
It's just that castration and blinding are punishments that I generally don't mentally associate with the British justice system.
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
Someone castrated or blinded can still be interrogated. It is probably a measure to keep his subordinates honest.
For example noble A has an issue with a tenant, has him hanged, that is it.
Noble B has an issue with a tenant, has him castrated and blinded, William can still have the tenant summoned to court and question him if he thinks the actions of the noble are suspect.
Yep. I get that. And that feeds back into what I was saying earlier: old laws are often jarring, but when you look at them in context it makes sense.
It's just that castration and blinding are punishments that I generally don't mentally associate with the British justice system.
Someone castrated or blinded can still be interrogated. It is probably a measure to keep his subordinates honest.
For example noble A has an issue with a tenant, has him hanged, that is it.
Noble B has an issue with a tenant, has him castrated and blinded, William can still have the tenant summoned to court and question him if he thinks the actions of the noble are suspect.
Yep. I get that. And that feeds back into what I was saying earlier: old laws are often jarring, but when you look at them in context it makes sense.
It's just that castration and blinding are punishments that I generally don't mentally associate with the British justice system.
Yeah, it's more Byzantine, to me.
IKNOWRIGHT?
All this time, playing William the Bastard Conqueror in CK2, I could be levying fines from any lord under me who executed someone rather than blinding and castrating them? FFS Paradox, show more historical accuracy!
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
Part of the reason why blinding/castration became popular in the middle ages was because it was actually considered a "progressive" punishment over "barbaric" execution. The Byzantines (being considered the most cultured at the time) used it earliest and the most, but it came in varying degrees of vogue across Europe during this time. Eventually, the viewpoint on what was more barbaric shifted back so that mutilation wasn't considered so highly moral, but that's part of what was going on in William's declaration.
Something I always wondered about - at many points in history you see these steppe nomads pop up with armored heavy cavalry, not just Jurchen but also Saka, Sarmatians, etc. How did they get the armor? I can understand the Parthians having cataphracts because they had access to settled cities and allies within their lands even before taking over Persia, but did these other nomads have mining and smithing operations on the steppe or get most of their armor via trade or what? (and who would be crazy enough to trade heavy barding to horse lords?)
Something I always wondered about - at many points in history you see these steppe nomads pop up with armored heavy cavalry, not just Jurchen but also Saka, Sarmatians, etc. How did they get the armor? I can understand the Parthians having cataphracts because they had access to settled cities and allies within their lands even before taking over Persia, but did these other nomads have mining and smithing operations on the steppe or get most of their armor via trade or what? (and who would be crazy enough to trade heavy barding to horse lords?)
Just going off of the blog post, so this could totally be wrong, but the Jins didn't field the units with heavy barding until well after they'd invaded and controlled a good chunk of China.
Before that, it seems like their cavalry was much lighter in nature, which makes sense for horse nomads.
Something I always wondered about - at many points in history you see these steppe nomads pop up with armored heavy cavalry, not just Jurchen but also Saka, Sarmatians, etc. How did they get the armor? I can understand the Parthians having cataphracts because they had access to settled cities and allies within their lands even before taking over Persia, but did these other nomads have mining and smithing operations on the steppe or get most of their armor via trade or what? (and who would be crazy enough to trade heavy barding to horse lords?)
Just going off of the blog post, so this could totally be wrong, but the Jins didn't field the units with heavy barding until well after they'd invaded and controlled a good chunk of China.
Before that, it seems like their cavalry was much lighter in nature, which makes sense for horse nomads.
Maybe, and I am sure they greatly expanded usage of heavy armor once having access to chinese industry, but the entire period from when they started to the height of their conquest was only 12 years or so, quite a short time to innovate and deploy an entirely new fighting and armament style while also actually prosecuting a war.
I would bet they had at least some experience with shock cavalry prior, and that was part of the reason they were so successful. And again they would not have been the first group of steppe nomads with cataphracts by any means.
One thing I wonder a bit about is how much armaments might have spread out from Eastern Europe and Persia during this period and how much trade there was across the steppe. If there was a widespread trade network its feasible armor could have trickled in from Persia and Eastern Europe, giving them experience on a small scale, then once they started capturing cities they started mass producing it themselves. I don't think china really used armored horses much at the time IIRC though the article mentions they were in use in Tibet so raiding there could have been an alternate source.
I enjoy the Bible because of what it tells me about the priorities and morality of the people writing it.
Take for example Deuteronomy 20: 10-20:
10 When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.
16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. 18 Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.
19 When you lay siege to a city for a long time, fighting against it to capture it, do not destroy its trees by putting an ax to them, because you can eat their fruit. Do not cut them down. Are the trees people, that you should besiege them? 20 However, you may cut down trees that you know are not fruit trees and use them to build siege works until the city at war with you falls.
That's an amazing window into the insight of the mindset of the Semitic people around the 7th century BC. You get a guideline about when it's appropriate to plunder a city. Send them terms, if they accept they provide you labour and tribute. If they refuse, kill all of the men, take their stuff, enslave their women and children. And of course, note that women and chidlren are grouped with the other forms of loot. But whatever you do, don't destroy fruit trees! That shit is important, you need fruit trees for food. It's a brutal mindset by modern standards that's nevertheless very internally consistent.
The whole point of war was (often) just to get stuff (including slaves, women etc.) cf. modern war where the spoils of war (if any even exist) certainly aren't distributed to soldiers like in a 7th century BC sack or a Carolignian warband.
A war like that is just a big pyramid scheme: you take a village and distribute the loot and the women to your men. Then you round up all the surviving men and boys from that village and offer them a simple choice: join us and be reimbursed with the loot and women from the next village we take, or die right now. It’s a very effective sales pitch. Repeat until the whole Steppe is yours.
That’s how the African armies work. Nobody gets this, they call it “atrocities” and claim not to “understand how human beings can behave” the way they do in Sierra Leone and Sudan, but they’re stupid — stupid or just pretending, I’m not sure which. What’s so difficult to undersand? It’s the oldest and most sensible style of war. Compare it to, say, WW I: which kind of war would you rather be in? Gassed or blown apart in the trenches — for what? What do you get out of it? Now compare that to war Central-Asian or African style: the village over the hill has some cute girls and some nice carpets, so you sack it, kill the men, enslave the girls, recruit the boys and move on. By the time you’re on your third village you’ve got such a big rep that the girls are in no mood to object and the boys can’t wait to be issued an AK and a license to rape and pillage the next village.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
War Nerd seems like a giant asshole from that article.
it speaks to the resources being fought over; in the biblical era the primary resource being fought for was labor itself, either in the form of slaves or additional women and children. Land and livestock are great but without the people to labor over them, what's the point?
by the time WW1 rolls around most newborns are living to adulthood and labor is an increasingly abundant commodity; thus, trench warfare
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Category 1: If war fascinates you, you're a war nerd.
Category 2: If war appeals to you, you're a moron/asshole.
The first is ok, there are legitimate reasons for war and being interested in it or conducting it (the primary one being "Defending yourself from the assholes in category 2"). The second, no.
Treating lives as commodities is grade A sociopathy. Especially in the modern world where if you put half the resources you put into guns into industry and infrastructure instead you'd gain a lot more in the long run.
P.S: Or in the words of George Miller, "Our children will not be warlords!"
Fiendishrabbit on
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
War Nerd seems like a giant asshole from that article.
He is, but he is also right in that historically war has looked a lot more like Sierra Leone and South Sudan then WWII.
Most soldiers usually fought for the chance to get loot, not for any real cause. I mean a cause was good, but switching sides if your cause was not doing so hot is a classic.
Even in WWII it wasn't unusual for American Soldiers to loot German homes for the family silver if they had the chance. Band of Brothers had a chapter on it in the book. Captain Speirs would drive up to a German home, order them to bug out in 10 and proceed to search the place top to bottom for stuff to steal.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
I enjoy the Bible because of what it tells me about the priorities and morality of the people writing it.
Take for example Deuteronomy 20: 10-20:
10 When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves. And you may use the plunder the Lord your God gives you from your enemies. 15 This is how you are to treat all the cities that are at a distance from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.
16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. 18 Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.
19 When you lay siege to a city for a long time, fighting against it to capture it, do not destroy its trees by putting an ax to them, because you can eat their fruit. Do not cut them down. Are the trees people, that you should besiege them? 20 However, you may cut down trees that you know are not fruit trees and use them to build siege works until the city at war with you falls.
That's an amazing window into the insight of the mindset of the Semitic people around the 7th century BC. You get a guideline about when it's appropriate to plunder a city. Send them terms, if they accept they provide you labour and tribute. If they refuse, kill all of the men, take their stuff, enslave their women and children. And of course, note that women and chidlren are grouped with the other forms of loot. But whatever you do, don't destroy fruit trees! That shit is important, you need fruit trees for food. It's a brutal mindset by modern standards that's nevertheless very internally consistent.
The whole point of war was (often) just to get stuff (including slaves, women etc.) cf. modern war where the spoils of war (if any even exist) certainly aren't distributed to soldiers like in a 7th century BC sack or a Carolignian warband.
A war like that is just a big pyramid scheme: you take a village and distribute the loot and the women to your men. Then you round up all the surviving men and boys from that village and offer them a simple choice: join us and be reimbursed with the loot and women from the next village we take, or die right now. It’s a very effective sales pitch. Repeat until the whole Steppe is yours.
That’s how the African armies work. Nobody gets this, they call it “atrocities” and claim not to “understand how human beings can behave” the way they do in Sierra Leone and Sudan, but they’re stupid — stupid or just pretending, I’m not sure which. What’s so difficult to undersand? It’s the oldest and most sensible style of war. Compare it to, say, WW I: which kind of war would you rather be in? Gassed or blown apart in the trenches — for what? What do you get out of it? Now compare that to war Central-Asian or African style: the village over the hill has some cute girls and some nice carpets, so you sack it, kill the men, enslave the girls, recruit the boys and move on. By the time you’re on your third village you’ve got such a big rep that the girls are in no mood to object and the boys can’t wait to be issued an AK and a license to rape and pillage the next village.
This was certainly how it worked in Rome. People signed up to the legion for loot and land, eventually even foreigners wanted in on it. The social wars came about not because the Italian allies objected to having to pay taxes or provide soldiers, it was because they thought the Romans were keeping too much loot and slaves to themselves compared to amount of fighting in the legion the allies were doing. When Rome essentially ran out of practical places to conquer and loot, they could no longer afford to pay their soldiers and the whole thing slowly fell apart. Same with the Mongols really. In both cases there was a huge expansion until the 'low hanging fruit' was picked, then there came a point where anywhere left to conquer had a bad cost/reward ratio, then all the sudden the people running the empire had a large, sprawling empire to rule with a big army that still expects the same quality of life but which has lost half its effective income because taxes and tribute are generally a lot smaller than plunder. A lot gets blamed on bad rulers in both cases, but its not surpising that things fell apart after a couple of hundred years.
It might have been in Hardcore History, but I remember either reading or hearing that universal or near-universal monogamy might have developed as a method of combating the "kill all the men and enslave the women and children" mindset. It probably was never really effective with rulers or armies at war, but if you can convince your average farmer or city resident to stop thinking that way, you've gone a long way towards a stable civilization.
I recently got around to listening to the latest Hardcore History podcast. This is my first one I've listened to shortly after it came out. And man, Dan Carlin reminds me of my favourite History teacher, Mr Dutry. Both love to tell a good story that's engaging. I found myself entranced and barely realized 6 hours went by.
His argument seems to be that something can't be an atrocity if the person doing it is personally benefiting?
Not in the least. A lot of western understanding is influenced, naturally, by the experience of the World Wars, Vietnam, Korea, the Gulf, ISIS, that warfare is an ideological conflict. So having people fall in with the 'kill, conquer, recruit, roll on to the next village and repeat' cycle is some completely incomprehensible and bizarre aberration of atrocity. Because that is nothing like the warfare so many people are familiar with from the past century. 'Their home was just invaded and destroyed, and now they're signing up for the same people? Their enemies? Utter madness.'
He's not trying to make some argument that these aren't horrible atrocities, but that's what happening is actually quite comprehensible, because it's following a very ancient pattern.
He's not trying to make some argument that these aren't horrible atrocities, but that's what happening is actually quite comprehensible, because it's following a very ancient pattern.
It's comprehensible. It's also deplorable.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
He's not trying to make some argument that these aren't horrible atrocities, but that's what happening is actually quite comprehensible, because it's following a very ancient pattern.
Part of the reason why blinding/castration became popular in the middle ages was because it was actually considered a "progressive" punishment over "barbaric" execution. The Byzantines (being considered the most cultured at the time) used it earliest and the most, but it came in varying degrees of vogue across Europe during this time. Eventually, the viewpoint on what was more barbaric shifted back so that mutilation wasn't considered so highly moral, but that's part of what was going on in William's declaration.
It seems interestingly pragmatic in that it effectively cuts them out from contributing to society or extending their lineage, meaning that as far as society is concerned they might as well have been executed. However, it still leaves them free to be with their families and enjoy what's left of their life. Nowadays we do the same sort of thing with life imprisonment, but I think I remember reading that that sort of thing is a somewhat modern innovation. It's kind of interesting to compare the two, as blindness may actually be more humane in some ways than life imprisonment. However, it does rely on the assumption of there being a heavy familial support structure, which is much rarer in modern times.
War Nerd seems like a giant asshole from that article.
He is, but he is also right in that historically war has looked a lot more like Sierra Leone and South Sudan then WWII.
You can argue it's historically common but that doesn't make it not an atrocity, which is exactly what he's also saying cause he seems like kind of a tool.
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Shortytouching the meatIntergalactic Cool CourtRegistered Userregular
War Nerd seems like a giant asshole from that article.
He is, but he is also right in that historically war has looked a lot more like Sierra Leone and South Sudan then WWII.
You can argue it's historically common but that doesn't make it not an atrocity, which is exactly what he's also saying cause he seems like kind of a tool.
the point isn't whether it is objectionable, the point is that it is explicable behavior
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
Stuff that we call an "atrocity" today (and we're not wrong) was common practice back basically any period before WW1 and even that's stretching it.
People used to show up for public executions that were frankly absolutely brutal, way worse than being hung by the neck until dead. The Colosseum was a place that existed and was used (although not only for gruesome murder-shows, not that the rest of the public events weren't any less egregious) and watching or participating in these sorts of events was what was considered fun at the times they were recorded in.
Stuff that we call an "atrocity" today (and we're not wrong) was common practice back basically any period before WW1 and even that's stretching it.
People used to show up for public executions that were frankly absolutely brutal, way worse than being hung by the neck until dead. The Colosseum was a place that existed and was used (although not only for gruesome murder-shows, not that the rest of the public events weren't any less egregious) and watching or participating in these sorts of events was what was considered fun at the times they were recorded in.
Which is why I can't help but laugh at older folks complaining about how today's music and videogames are "violent entertainment". Knowing that entertainment used to be literally watching people getting mauled by lions or burned alive or fighting to the death kinda puts that accusation into perspective...
Not in the least. A lot of western understanding is influenced, naturally, by the experience of the World Wars, Vietnam, Korea, the Gulf, ISIS, that warfare is an ideological conflict. So having people fall in with the 'kill, conquer, recruit, roll on to the next village and repeat' cycle is some completely incomprehensible and bizarre aberration of atrocity. Because that is nothing like the warfare so many people are familiar with from the past century. 'Their home was just invaded and destroyed, and now they're signing up for the same people? Their enemies? Utter madness.'
He's not trying to make some argument that these aren't horrible atrocities, but that's what happening is actually quite comprehensible, because it's following a very ancient pattern.
I thought about this for a while and I'm not sure I agree now. The warlord pattern of conquest and recruiting from conquered enemies on an ever increasing scale isn't how warfare usually occurred in the ancient world or at least it didn't happen in the wars I'm thinking of. Consider the Peloponnesian Wars or the Punic wars or the campaigns of the Hittites and Egyptians (what little we know about them). These are the actions of sophisticated states with a great deal of military organization and with a clear cut divide between people on the sides.
They don't fit the pattern that the article described because making war successfully is a complex and expensive endeavor that requires a structured society to support the effort. Keeping an significant number people armed, fed and not deserting is not an easy undertaking and you need a strong state in order to keep armies in the field far from home. There are exceptions in history of course (looking at you Mongols) but ancient warfare has quite a bit of resemblance to modern warfare when you look at actual examples rather than just making stuff up like the author of that article does.
The big glaring fault to me isn't really his characterization of warfare (although there's a lot to disagree with there), but simply his inherently privileged assumption of who "we" will be in a war.
A war like that is just a big pyramid scheme: you take a village and distribute the loot and the women to your men. Then you round up all the surviving men and boys from that village and offer them a simple choice: join us and be reimbursed with the loot and women from the next village we take, or die right now. It’s a very effective sales pitch. Repeat until the whole Steppe is yours.
That’s how the African armies work. Nobody gets this, they call it “atrocities” and claim not to “understand how human beings can behave” the way they do in Sierra Leone and Sudan, but they’re stupid — stupid or just pretending, I’m not sure which. What’s so difficult to undersand? It’s the oldest and most sensible style of war.
When he imagines these catastrophic wars of destruction, he just assumes that naturally we should be identifying with the men at the heads of the armies, or maaaybe the men having a fun ol' time raping and pillaging. So the argument about the horrors of war to him don't make any sense, because duh, this all sounds pretty sensible, right?
But of course the overwhelming odds are that you are not going to be one of those few elites. You're going to be one of the poor peasant fuckers who was just minding their own business and then a bunch of illiterate murderers roll up and hack your family to death. It destroys societies, there's nothing particularly sensible there, just mass slaughter, dehumanization, and destruction. And even if you're on the winning side, there's no great odds that you won't be hacked to death as soon as the warlord dies and the sons decide to sort things out.
In modern times it's not some lack of experience or faint-heartedness that leads to condemnation of aggressive warlordism, it is the lived, experienced horrors of imperialist war that made most of the world agree to resist such things. To mixed effect, granted, but it's not because people suddenly became a bunch of pussies.
He describes the destruction of a society flippantly, as a bit of a lark, because he hasn't actually thought things through nearly as much as he thinks he has.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
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Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
Which is why I can't help but laugh at older folks complaining about how today's music and videogames are "violent entertainment". Knowing that entertainment used to be literally watching people getting mauled by lions or burned alive or fighting to the death kinda puts that accusation into perspective...
There's also perhaps my personal favorite example of "it's impossible to judge history by today's morals"- cat burning.
Grinning medieval peasants would dump sacks of cats on holiday bonfires and howl with mirfth as the felines burned alive. To think that's funny is entirely alien to us today; it's like they live on a different planet. But everyone thought it was absolutely hilarious! It was seen as normal and wholesome entertainment back then. When cat burning was ended I'm sure there were all sorts of angry greybeards up in arms about the end of a hallowed tradition.
Which is why I can't help but laugh at older folks complaining about how today's music and videogames are "violent entertainment". Knowing that entertainment used to be literally watching people getting mauled by lions or burned alive or fighting to the death kinda puts that accusation into perspective...
There's also perhaps my personal favorite example of "it's impossible to judge history by today's morals"- cat burning.
Grinning medieval peasants would dump sacks of cats on holiday bonfires and howl with mirfth as the felines burned alive. To think that's funny is entirely alien to us today; it's like they live on a different planet. But everyone thought it was absolutely hilarious! It was seen as normal and wholesome entertainment back then. When cat burning was ended I'm sure there were all sorts of angry greybeards up in arms about the end of a hallowed tradition.
We actually do still tend to consider torturing cats funny, but only if we don't get to see it, just hear it.
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One of the rather unique things about this book is that, unlike nearly all introductory histories of ancient Egypt, it doesn't stop in the 11th century BCE with the end of the New Kingdom. Redford is well versed in the much more murky and complicated centuries that follow which connects the story to that of the more familiar Greek and Roman periods. There are some interesting bits about how the religion of ancient Egypt continued to evolve up to the introduction of Christianity. And how Christianity borrowed from that tradition.
Once one is familiar with the basic structure of history in the region it is well worth moving on to his older book "Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in Ancient Times".
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
10 years ago I would have fallen on the "kernel of truth behind the myth" side of things. But it is just so hard to square it up with actual history ("biblical history" and "biblical archaeology" are mostly just those subjects done very badly).
I think anything in the Tanakh that takes place prior to Jeremiah (including all of the wonderfully written stories in Samuel and Kings) are as much fantasy as Geoffrey of Monmouth writing in the 12th century CE about King Arthur ruling an empire that stretched across all of Europe.
With the fields underwater I work for glory everlasting
This is of course speculative, but I always wonder how many of the stories are just straight up borrowed from other people who may have lived near or intermarried with the Jews. For example, there isn't much evidence that the Jews were in Egypt, but there were certainly a bunch of other semitic peoples who were workers in Egypt and even ruled for a while. A smaller group like the Hebrews could have appropriated stories and oral history from other peoples who might have merged or married into the population, or Hebrews could have heard oral tradition from other groups and conciously or unconciously merged it in with their own. These stories were passed orally for generations before someone wrote them down.
This might sound far fetched, but again think of king Arthur. There was obviously no Anglo-Saxon king a thousand years before those stories were written that had a Europe spanning empire. But there was a welsh King that bore many similarities to Arthur that had myths about him in the same geographic arwa the Anglo Saxons moved into. And there was a king of a related group of peoples that did have a Europe spanning empire and a knightly order centered around him (Charlemagne of the Franks). These people probably all got conflated into the general Arthurian mythos.
Take for example Deuteronomy 20: 10-20:
That's an amazing window into the insight of the mindset of the Semitic people around the 7th century BC. You get a guideline about when it's appropriate to plunder a city. Send them terms, if they accept they provide you labour and tribute. If they refuse, kill all of the men, take their stuff, enslave their women and children. And of course, note that women and chidlren are grouped with the other forms of loot. But whatever you do, don't destroy fruit trees! That shit is important, you need fruit trees for food. It's a brutal mindset by modern standards that's nevertheless very internally consistent.
Yep. In addition, if they conquered the city and settled there themselves, they'd be able to use those trees themselves. If they cut down the trees, the trees would take years to grow back large enough to provide a decent amount of food. This was written by a people far removed from modern ideas of morality, but they were by no means stupid.
The older I get, the more that those details are what I find fascinating in history.
Consider this tidbit of law under William the Bastard Conqueror:
You look at a law like that and wonder A) what prompted someone to write that law,
For example noble A has an issue with a tenant, has him hanged, that is it.
Noble B has an issue with a tenant, has him castrated and blinded, William can still have the tenant summoned to court and question him if he thinks the actions of the noble are suspect.
Yep. I get that. And that feeds back into what I was saying earlier: old laws are often jarring, but when you look at them in context it makes sense.
It's just that castration and blinding are punishments that I generally don't mentally associate with the British justice system.
Yeah, it's more Byzantine, to me.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
IKNOWRIGHT?
All this time, playing William the Bastard Conqueror in CK2, I could be levying fines from any lord under me who executed someone rather than blinding and castrating them? FFS Paradox, show more historical accuracy!
Here's his most recent post, about the "Iron Pagoda Horsemen" of the Jin Dynasty.
Medieval Chinese Cataphracts 1: Iron Pagoda Horsemen . 铁浮屠
Something I always wondered about - at many points in history you see these steppe nomads pop up with armored heavy cavalry, not just Jurchen but also Saka, Sarmatians, etc. How did they get the armor? I can understand the Parthians having cataphracts because they had access to settled cities and allies within their lands even before taking over Persia, but did these other nomads have mining and smithing operations on the steppe or get most of their armor via trade or what? (and who would be crazy enough to trade heavy barding to horse lords?)
Just going off of the blog post, so this could totally be wrong, but the Jins didn't field the units with heavy barding until well after they'd invaded and controlled a good chunk of China.
Before that, it seems like their cavalry was much lighter in nature, which makes sense for horse nomads.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Maybe, and I am sure they greatly expanded usage of heavy armor once having access to chinese industry, but the entire period from when they started to the height of their conquest was only 12 years or so, quite a short time to innovate and deploy an entirely new fighting and armament style while also actually prosecuting a war.
I would bet they had at least some experience with shock cavalry prior, and that was part of the reason they were so successful. And again they would not have been the first group of steppe nomads with cataphracts by any means.
One thing I wonder a bit about is how much armaments might have spread out from Eastern Europe and Persia during this period and how much trade there was across the steppe. If there was a widespread trade network its feasible armor could have trickled in from Persia and Eastern Europe, giving them experience on a small scale, then once they started capturing cities they started mass producing it themselves. I don't think china really used armored horses much at the time IIRC though the article mentions they were in use in Tibet so raiding there could have been an alternate source.
The whole point of war was (often) just to get stuff (including slaves, women etc.) cf. modern war where the spoils of war (if any even exist) certainly aren't distributed to soldiers like in a 7th century BC sack or a Carolignian warband.
Reminds me of this bit from the war nerd:
http://exiledonline.com/war-nerd-tom-clancy-is-not-one-of-us/
by the time WW1 rolls around most newborns are living to adulthood and labor is an increasingly abundant commodity; thus, trench warfare
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Category 2: If war appeals to you, you're a moron/asshole.
The first is ok, there are legitimate reasons for war and being interested in it or conducting it (the primary one being "Defending yourself from the assholes in category 2"). The second, no.
Treating lives as commodities is grade A sociopathy. Especially in the modern world where if you put half the resources you put into guns into industry and infrastructure instead you'd gain a lot more in the long run.
P.S: Or in the words of George Miller, "Our children will not be warlords!"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
He is, but he is also right in that historically war has looked a lot more like Sierra Leone and South Sudan then WWII.
Most soldiers usually fought for the chance to get loot, not for any real cause. I mean a cause was good, but switching sides if your cause was not doing so hot is a classic.
Even in WWII it wasn't unusual for American Soldiers to loot German homes for the family silver if they had the chance. Band of Brothers had a chapter on it in the book. Captain Speirs would drive up to a German home, order them to bug out in 10 and proceed to search the place top to bottom for stuff to steal.
This was certainly how it worked in Rome. People signed up to the legion for loot and land, eventually even foreigners wanted in on it. The social wars came about not because the Italian allies objected to having to pay taxes or provide soldiers, it was because they thought the Romans were keeping too much loot and slaves to themselves compared to amount of fighting in the legion the allies were doing. When Rome essentially ran out of practical places to conquer and loot, they could no longer afford to pay their soldiers and the whole thing slowly fell apart. Same with the Mongols really. In both cases there was a huge expansion until the 'low hanging fruit' was picked, then there came a point where anywhere left to conquer had a bad cost/reward ratio, then all the sudden the people running the empire had a large, sprawling empire to rule with a big army that still expects the same quality of life but which has lost half its effective income because taxes and tribute are generally a lot smaller than plunder. A lot gets blamed on bad rulers in both cases, but its not surpising that things fell apart after a couple of hundred years.
Sounds more like treating it as some incomprehensible aberration from normal human behavior is to misdiagnose the situation.
WoW
Dear Satan.....
Not in the least. A lot of western understanding is influenced, naturally, by the experience of the World Wars, Vietnam, Korea, the Gulf, ISIS, that warfare is an ideological conflict. So having people fall in with the 'kill, conquer, recruit, roll on to the next village and repeat' cycle is some completely incomprehensible and bizarre aberration of atrocity. Because that is nothing like the warfare so many people are familiar with from the past century. 'Their home was just invaded and destroyed, and now they're signing up for the same people? Their enemies? Utter madness.'
He's not trying to make some argument that these aren't horrible atrocities, but that's what happening is actually quite comprehensible, because it's following a very ancient pattern.
It's comprehensible. It's also deplorable.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Yeah but that's not his fault is it?
It seems interestingly pragmatic in that it effectively cuts them out from contributing to society or extending their lineage, meaning that as far as society is concerned they might as well have been executed. However, it still leaves them free to be with their families and enjoy what's left of their life. Nowadays we do the same sort of thing with life imprisonment, but I think I remember reading that that sort of thing is a somewhat modern innovation. It's kind of interesting to compare the two, as blindness may actually be more humane in some ways than life imprisonment. However, it does rely on the assumption of there being a heavy familial support structure, which is much rarer in modern times.
You can argue it's historically common but that doesn't make it not an atrocity, which is exactly what he's also saying cause he seems like kind of a tool.
the point isn't whether it is objectionable, the point is that it is explicable behavior
People used to show up for public executions that were frankly absolutely brutal, way worse than being hung by the neck until dead. The Colosseum was a place that existed and was used (although not only for gruesome murder-shows, not that the rest of the public events weren't any less egregious) and watching or participating in these sorts of events was what was considered fun at the times they were recorded in.
Which is why I can't help but laugh at older folks complaining about how today's music and videogames are "violent entertainment". Knowing that entertainment used to be literally watching people getting mauled by lions or burned alive or fighting to the death kinda puts that accusation into perspective...
I thought about this for a while and I'm not sure I agree now. The warlord pattern of conquest and recruiting from conquered enemies on an ever increasing scale isn't how warfare usually occurred in the ancient world or at least it didn't happen in the wars I'm thinking of. Consider the Peloponnesian Wars or the Punic wars or the campaigns of the Hittites and Egyptians (what little we know about them). These are the actions of sophisticated states with a great deal of military organization and with a clear cut divide between people on the sides.
They don't fit the pattern that the article described because making war successfully is a complex and expensive endeavor that requires a structured society to support the effort. Keeping an significant number people armed, fed and not deserting is not an easy undertaking and you need a strong state in order to keep armies in the field far from home. There are exceptions in history of course (looking at you Mongols) but ancient warfare has quite a bit of resemblance to modern warfare when you look at actual examples rather than just making stuff up like the author of that article does.
When he imagines these catastrophic wars of destruction, he just assumes that naturally we should be identifying with the men at the heads of the armies, or maaaybe the men having a fun ol' time raping and pillaging. So the argument about the horrors of war to him don't make any sense, because duh, this all sounds pretty sensible, right?
But of course the overwhelming odds are that you are not going to be one of those few elites. You're going to be one of the poor peasant fuckers who was just minding their own business and then a bunch of illiterate murderers roll up and hack your family to death. It destroys societies, there's nothing particularly sensible there, just mass slaughter, dehumanization, and destruction. And even if you're on the winning side, there's no great odds that you won't be hacked to death as soon as the warlord dies and the sons decide to sort things out.
In modern times it's not some lack of experience or faint-heartedness that leads to condemnation of aggressive warlordism, it is the lived, experienced horrors of imperialist war that made most of the world agree to resist such things. To mixed effect, granted, but it's not because people suddenly became a bunch of pussies.
He describes the destruction of a society flippantly, as a bit of a lark, because he hasn't actually thought things through nearly as much as he thinks he has.
Grinning medieval peasants would dump sacks of cats on holiday bonfires and howl with mirfth as the felines burned alive. To think that's funny is entirely alien to us today; it's like they live on a different planet. But everyone thought it was absolutely hilarious! It was seen as normal and wholesome entertainment back then. When cat burning was ended I'm sure there were all sorts of angry greybeards up in arms about the end of a hallowed tradition.
We actually do still tend to consider torturing cats funny, but only if we don't get to see it, just hear it.