EGYPT part three: THE RED PYRAMID (spoilers)

(con't)

I see I've let some time lapse since last posting, due to an exigent deadline. Rather than a longer lag, let me wrap up the Egypt thread for now with a brief note about another book I just read, Rich Riordan's THE RED PYRAMID.

As the first book in the KANE CHRONICLES, this starts off a new series for Riordan that essentially allows him to do for Egyptian mythology what his Percy Jackson series (THE LIGHTNING THIEF et al) did for Greek myth: presenting the discovery by apparently ordinary modern-day kids that because of their bloodlines they have strange powers that get them wrapped up in power struggles involving vast entities (gods and monsters). It differs from his main series in two interesting ways:

first, while he keeps to the first person point-of-view that's such a mark of his Percy Jackson books, here he has a pair of narrators who trade off, chapter by chapter, giving two distinct 'voices' and versions of events.

second, while part of a series this is essentially a stand-alone novel. It's clear that this more closely resembles Terry Pratchett's DISCWORLD, where he can write as many novels as he wants that share the same setting, rather than the Harry-Potterish model of his earlier series, which focuses on the continuing adventures of a specific hero and his friends.

All in all, I'd have to say it worked for me. Riordan has a strange ability to get the reader to underestimate him. You think you see where things are going, major plot-points signaled a mile off, and then when you get there he turns out to be more subtle and tricky than you'd expected. I think this may be a carry-over from his having been a mystery writer before he shifted focus to the world of young-adult novels. I also thought it telling that, at my recent visit to Marquette, when checking back into the library after lunch, I noticed the student at the entry checkpoint was reading THE RED PYRAMID, which she praised as a good book when I asked about it. After which I learned that both Richard and Jim had read and enjoyed it, as had Jim's teenaged son. So Riordan is definitely doing something right to be able to appear to a diverse audience of young adults, college-age students, and middling-aged longtime fans of fantasy.

So, I'm glad to see Riordan trying a variation on his formula before his books get too, well, formulaic. I think this one succeeds. There's one really funny spot in particular where a mentor of the main characters looks over at Manhattan and says they (the people in the book connected with the gods of Egypt) never go over there; that island has gods of its own. One more thing I thought well done is that the details of the book's cover are actually quite significant, in a way I can't reveal without spoilers.

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Riordan does do one thing interesting here: his protagonists, the brother-sister team of Carter (age 14) and Sadie (age 12) Kane, are African-American (or, rather, African-English/American).

Carter takes after his father, who is black, and Sadie after her mother, who was white. The cover art does a good job of presenting a dramatic scene showing the heroes while having them face away in such a pose as hides their ethnicity. Interesting. The book itself also contains a few passing references to how, now that Carter is growing up, he has to be careful to dress in non-threatening ways to avoid trouble -- something that becomes a significant complication to the plot at one point. Riordan doesn't make a big deal about this but he does include it as a simple, unfair, fact of life. Again, interesting, and I think really well done. Kudos.

--JDR

current reading: THE PAPYRUS OF ANI, A CAT'S LIFE

current audiobook: HITCH 22.

Miriam Lichtheim (EGYPT, part two)

EGYPT, con't

(2)

One of the things reading PHARAOH'S FLOWERS did was reminded me of Miriam Lichtheim's* three-volume set of scrupulous translations ANCIENT EGYPTIAN LITERATURE. I've had this set for quite a while, and enjoyed reading it v. much; I'm looking forward to re-reading it at some point after I've done some more background reading, the better to appreciate it (e.g., reading the whole of THE BOOK OF GOING FORTH BY DAY). In the meantime, I enjoy dipping into them now and again.

Of these, Vol. I I inherited from Taum; Vol II I bought about five years later at the long-vanished Blake's Books in Milw, and Vol III I thought I'd picked up at the museum store at the Field Museum next to their impressive Egypt room, but I've written in it that it was one of my earliest purchases on amazon.com--so either my memory is faulty or I must have seen it in the museum store on my first visit there, passed on it, later regretted having not picked it up when I had the chance, and then not been able to find it again on my second visit.

In any case, Lichtheim's series covers everything from Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts (which fall into what we think of today as 'THE BOOK OF THE DEAD') to brief autobiographies, hymns, cosmogonical myths, wonder stories, wisdom literature (think Proverbs), even love poems. One of my favorite bits was an inscription of a pharaoh who, on a long trip across the desert, got thirsty. He ordered that a well be dug so others crossing that desert after him shdn't have to suffer like that, and put up a marker with the inscription to explain why the way-station was there. Now that's my kind of pharaoh.

What particularly struck me this time I looked into the books were the love poems included in her second volume (THE MIDDLE KINGDOM). One of these is so short and simple as to be essentially timeless: a mere six lines from Papyrus Harris 500:

My heart thought of my love of you

When half of my hair was braided;

I came at a run to find you

And neglected my hairdo.

Now if you let me braid my hair

I shall be ready in a moment.

(Lichtheim, Vol. II, p. 191)

That sounds to me v. like one of Ezra Pound's translations from the Chinese. Another, also from the same papyrus, is quite different:

I shall lie down at home

And pretend to be ill;

Then enter the neighbors to see me,

Then comes my beloved** with them.

She will make the physicians unneeded

She understands my illness!

--I found this one striking for its similarity to courtly romance motifs C. S. Lewis claimed (in THE ALLEGORY OF LOVE) to have been the invention of the 12th century. I suspect the attitudes described were already old when those lines were written down, some three thousand years ago. People don't change much.

Speaking of which, another piece included in the same volume is the wonder tale The Two Brothers, which Tolkien famously evoked in ON FAIRY-STORIES (see Anderson/Flieger p. 37 et al). This comes from Papyrus D'Orbiney, and it's rather a nice touch that we actually know who wrote this papyrus -- that is, the name of the scribe, Ennana, who carefully copied it down near the end of what we know as the Nineteenth Dynasty.

--JDR

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*the late Miriam Lichtheim, I shd say, since a quick check shows that she died a few years back at the age of ninety. Apparently she was a Turkish-Israeli Egyptologist: an interesting combination, and highly respected in the field.

**Lichtehim's original reads "sister" here, and she explains that "brother" or "sister" were terms of endearment between lovers in Egyptian custom. That strikes a somewhat creepy tone to the modern ear, however, so I made the substitution.

PHARAOH'S FLOWERS (EGYPT, part one)

So, while I seem to be in an Egyptological mood, I might as well take advantage of it to make three quick related posts.

(1) One of the books I took with me to read on my recent trip (#II.2874) was PHARAOH'S FLOWERS: THE BOTANICAL TREASURES OF TUTANKHAMUN by F. Nigel Hepper [2nd ed, 2009], a beautifully illustrated little book. I'd seen this in one of the book catalogues I've been getting ever since I started going to Kalamazoo, clipped it out, and then amazingly enough not lost the reference in the intervening months before I finally got around to ordering it.

It turns out to be very much the sort of book you'll really like if you like books like this, and I most definitely do. Basically Hepper, a researcher at the Kew Botanical Gardens, takes every kind of plant found within Tutankhamun's tomb (wood, spice, food, fiber) and explains whether it was native to Egypt (papyrus, willow, linen/flax), not native but capable of being grown there in carefully tended gardens or fields or orchards (cornflowers, wheat, olive trees, barley), or exotic imports (birch-bark, cedar of Lebannon, myrrh, frankincense). It was disappointing to learn that stories of seeds taken from the tomb being planted and sprouting are spurious. Like Hepper, I find myself curious about what persea fruit might taste like. And I enjoyed his story about the amazing discovery, a few years ago, of tiny grains of tobacco in some New Kingdom tombs. How cd this be, when tobacco is a New World plant? Turns out that (a) 19th century archeologists loved them their snuff and (b) our modern equipment for detecting and analyzing plant residue has become fantastically sophisticated. It was also interesting to learn that Egyptian beekeepers wore no sort of protective garments -- Hepper assumes they just had to suck up getting stung as part of the job; I suspect they simply used slow, gentle movements to avoid alarming their bees.

Of all the things found in the tomb, though, the one that surprised me the most was the discovery that King Tut liked watermelons. I had no idea they had watermelons (recognizably like the roundish ones still popular today) in ancient Egypt, but they found a batch of watermelon seeds in the tomb -- apparently the Egyptians liked to eat them like sunflower seeds.

The most moving thing of all, and the one biggest take-away from the book (aside from my ever-increasing admiration for ancient people's ingenuity in discovering food resources) are the flowers that were found in the innermost coffin, laid directly on the young king's body. It drove home, as nothing else does, that this is not 'an archeological sight' but a burial: it's not hard to picture the young widow placing them there just before the lid was put on for the last time, just as people still do today.

In short, a fascinating little book, lavishly illustrated (in both black & white and color). I might have to follow it up by searching down one of the books mentioned in its bibliography, Zohary & Hopf's THE DOMESTICATION OF PLANTS IN THE OLD WORLD [1993], assuming it's non-specialist enough to not be too opaque to a general reader.

--JDR

(con't)

Hitchens re. Lewis & Tolkien

So, today when listening to my current audiobook -- Christopher Hitchens' new autobiography HITCH-22, I came across a passing mention of Tolkien and Lewis. Checking a print copy at my friendly neighborhood bookstore, I transcribed the passage, which turns out to be a footnote on page 78. Since I think relatively few people who enjoy reading Tolkien will be reading Hitchens' book, thought I'd share it -- particularly since there's no mention of it in the book's index.

However, it's pretty dismissive, so if such things annoy you, best to stop reading now. I'll insert a little spoiler space to help:

In a footnote to a passage describing his passion for a fellow student, Hitchens writes:

"It was Guy, now dead for some time but in his later years an amazingly successful seducer of girls, who first insisted that I read the Greek-classical novels of Mary Renault. If this was all he had done for me, I would still be hoarsely grateful to him. While other boys plowed their way across the puerile yet toilsome pages of Narnia, or sank themselves into the costive innards of Middle Earth, I was following the thread of Ariadne and the tracks of Alexander. The King Must Die; The Bull from the Sea: Athens has seldom trumped Jerusalem with greater style or panache."

I'm a bit suspicious of this passage, since it's describing Hitchens (b. 1949) when he was the equivalent of a high school student, apparently roughly 15 or so (circa 1964), which seems about right for folks to read LotR but a bit old to be discovering Narnia for the first time.

The irony, of course, is that Hitchens apparently doesn't know that both Tolkien and Lewis were admirers of Renault's work, particularly the two novels he cites. So while he drags them in to score some points, they wd actually have been in agreement with him about Renault's merits.

--JDR

current audiobook: HITCH-22

current novel: THE RED PYRAMID

Ravenstone Castle

So, we stayed in a lot of places on our recent trip -- at Harbor House in Wheaton for me (in two different rooms) for the first (solo) stage of the trip; then together for the second phase in a hotel in Rockford, at my brother-in-law's, at Lake Lawn Lodge in Delavan (where I had a great walk into the nearby woods and even saw hitherto unsuspected beehives), and finally in Ravenstone Castle, a new(ish) B&B just outside Harvard, Illinois.

We hadn't even known there was a B&B in Harvard, so when Janice discovered about Ravenstone Castle when preparing for this trip, it seemed something we'd really regret passing up. Basically, it's a castle in the middle of an old cornfield on the outskirts of town. Here's what it looks like outside:

http://www.ravenstonecastle.com/about.html

The decor inside is all tapestries, medieval-themed paintings, &c. We stayed in the King Arthur room, but the last day we were there got the tour of the other rooms: the Queen Elizabeth room, the Egyptian room (the odd-man-out so far as the medieval/renaissance theme went, but by far the most impressive of the lot), and a fourth room they've just completed, the v. neat Unicorn room (which has a set of six Unicorn-&-the-Maiden tapestries). To get an idea of what the first three of these look like, check out the following link:

http://www.ravenstonecastle.com/rooms.html

We also enjoyed walking around the back and seeing the frog pond (at one point sadly depleted, we were told, by serving as the temporary haven of a little rescued turtle, who apparently enjoyed his time there more than the tadpoles did). And of course, it being us, we were particularly glad to make the acquaintance of three of their six cats: Sir Peter (whom, in deference to Dorothy Sayers, I dubbed 'Lord Peter'),** a fluffy white cat w. black patches I dubbed Lady Harriet, and a sleek black cat with white whiskers and an amazing voice whom I called Orbison.***

All in all, someplace I'd gladly stay again -- though next time we might need to go for a shorter stay so as to pull out all the stops and stay in the Egyptian Room -- having just read a fascinating little book on all the plants found in King Tut's tomb, and just started today on Rick Riordan's latest, THE RED PYRAMID, I'm primed on the subject right now.

--JDR

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*I particularly liked The Accolade by Edmund Blair Leighton, which looked v. preRaphaelite.

**For a picture of Lord Peter, click here: http://www.ravenstonecastle.com/rules.html

***since I already know a black cat with a Siamese voice named Elvis (of Tindalos House), it seemed appropriate to extend the Sun Records theme to another black cat. His voice was too mournful to make me think of Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash seemed inappropriate, and there's no need to insult a cat by comparing him to Jerry Lee Lewis.

ADDENDUM:

I'd forgotten that they mentioned the castle had been the subject of a local news segment, which Janice has just tracked down for me. If you'd like to see a little video about the castle, here's the link:

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=6421328

A Day at Marquette (part two)

(con't)

Of course I'd hoped to get through more than I did, and the two other projects I'd thought of spending a little time on after I finished with my main task (a look at Taum's papers and some more time with Boorman's LotR script) will, like my hoped-for time at the Wade to work some more on THE DARK TOWER and the Major's diaries, have to wait for Another Time.

I did have one nice bit of serendipity, when Richard asked me if I'd seen the new Wm Gray book. I had not, but he pointed out that I was listed in its index. So after he'd had a look at it, he let me borrow it for a minute. In full its title is FANTASY, MYTH AND THE MEASURE OF TRUTH: TALES OF PULLMAN, LEWIS, TOLKIEN, MACDONALD, AND HOFFMAN (Palgrave Macmillan [2009]). So many books have been coming out about Tolkien these last few years that I've slacked off buying the ones focused on multiple authors which only have a chapter or so devoted to JRRT,*** but I see from the Gray that I'll have to mend my ways.

Of its entires relating to me, two were to MR. BAGGINS, which of course I was happy enough to see. But to my surprise and delight the rest were to my essay from the 2004 Blackwelder conference: "And All the Days of Her Life Are Forgotten: LotR as Mythic Prehistory". I had put a lot of effort into this piece and been pleased with how it turned out, feeling I was on to something, an aspect of Tolkien's work that hadn't gotten the attention it deserved. So I confess I'd been disappointed when my contribution met with the dismissive review by Brian Rosebury (himself the author of an excellent bk on Tolkien's style), in which he summed up what he thought was my thesis and then asked "Why should this matter . . . ?" (TS.IV.284-285). My 1981 Haggard piece, the 1985 Wms & Tolkien piece, and my 1992/1996 Tolkien & Lewis piece had all been quoted from or referred to a fair number of times, so I was a bit disappointed that this piece, aside from David Bratman's scrupulously neutral summary in The Year's Work (TS.VI.330), had apparently sunk without a trace.

Gray, by contrast, devotes most of a brief section of his book ("More Trouble with Human History"--specifically, pages 80-87) to a summary and critique of my argument. In the process he makes exactly the kind of point I wd make if I were revising the essay today: that CSL describes something v. like what I think Tolkien was doing on one level with the term "supposals" -- something I only noticed about two years ago when re-reading the CSL collection ON STORIES when researching another project. I'm only sorry I didn't have a chance to look at Gray's book in more detail; now I'll have to order a copy. Unfortunately, being from Palgrave Macmillan,**** it will not be cheap (indeed, checking just now I see it's fifty pounds).

So, a good visit. As always, too brief, but it did feel good to be back in the Archives again.

--John R.

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***e.g. Dickerson's HOMER TO HARRY POTTER, which I only picked up the night of his Wade lecture. I've only had a chance to skim this so far, and can report that he v. much does not like Phillip Pullman.

****also the publisher of Dimitra Fimi's book, winner of this year's Mythopoeic Award.

A Day at Marquette (part one)

So, today (Wend. Oct. 20th) we drove up from the Harvard Castle* and I got to spend the day at Marquette while Janice had fun lunching with friends from her days in the Milwaukee office (Judy, Monica, and Nancy), seeing the Mitchell domes, and revisiting the old neighborhood (seems like the Beans & Barley is still there, though the sushi shop of doom is long gone, and the earth opened up and swallowed part of the nearby street). The theme of places where I used to know being torn down continues, and seems to be accelerating. From the freeway we saw that Tory Hill -- a v. pleasant green space on Marquette's SE corner few students paid any attention to -- is now buried beneath a new Law Building.** Coming down Wisconsin Avenue from 27th street to the Marquette area, we passed building after building where businesses that'd already been there when I arrived in 1981 we now gone, at least one (the florist shop) with a 'Lost Our Lease' sign in the window. But the biggest surprise was my discovery that my apartment on 17th street--where I lived when I took my doctoral exams, struggled over my dissertation topic, and helped plan two Tolkien conferences--is now gone, its building, and the building behind it, and the parking lot on the corner all now vanished beneath what will be the new Engineering Bldg once it's completed.

I'd planned to meet three friends for lunch, and had decided for old time's sake to meet up at Angelo's, the local Italian place at the corner of 16th and Wells where I went many a time with Taum back in my Marquette days. When I heard that morning that Angelo's too was soon to close, I was glad I picked it and looked forward to eating their lasagna one last time. Unfortunately, when Richard (West) and I arrived to meet up with Jim (Pietrusz) and Jim (Lowder), we found it was already too late: Angelo's was closed, with fond farewell and we'll miss you -type messages scribbled on the door and wall in chalk. Gah! Meanwhile, I found out later from Janice that her apartment on Kenilworth, where we lived after we first got married (and indeed where we had the marriage ceremony itself), is now not just gone but replaced by some ugly condos. So far as I know that just leaves the Abbotsford, the place in Hales' Corner, and possibly the house on 25th street remaining of all the places I lived in the Milwaukee area, and I wdn't bet on the 25th street house's having survived, given that it was in a 'transitional' neighborhood. Too bad; I'm the kind of person who likes physical corolaries to my memories.

Thankfully the new Archives is still there, and I enjoyed seeing Matt (the Archivist) and Susan (the Archives Secretary) and having a chat with Mark (who's in charge of the Indian Missions records), who I hadn't seen the last time or two I'd been there. Richard came over from Madison (via the faltering service of the Badger Bus, once a stalwart method of getting back and forth between the two cities) to join me, and I'm glad I took the time out at lunch for the get-together with Jim and Jim, both of whom I don't get to see nearly as often as I'd like. We caught up on each other's current projects and recent horror/war stories and just generally enjoyed the chance to get together. Then it was back to the Archives for Richard and myself. I had a busy day but did just get through everything I needed for the main project I was working on (the Kilby piece I'd just done a lot on at the Wade the week earlier), thanks to Matt Blessing's generosity with his time and providing access to the materials I needed to see. It was fascinating to read about events I'd participated in from a different perspective, and to see bits of my life preserved in a fashion in the official record.

(con't)

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*Ravenstone Castle, just outside of Harvard, Illinois. Since it's worthy of a post in itself, I'll hold off on further description here.

**the v. one in which Feingold and his challenger had their debate a few days later