Give me that old-time religion

I'm almost ready to start plotting in earnest. Just have one major area to clear up before I go. One more research task, one that has sent me out with a brand-new JSTOR membership (or, rather, a reduced-access monthly pass) to do research.

And that is religion.



As an aside, I have some new aphorisms I've been working on when trying to understand history, or writing historical fiction:

"The past has a past." Bronze age empires of the near east had their own antiquarians. There were New Kingdom scholars who were working on restoration projects. The pyramids, after all, were older to Cleopatra than she is to us.

"It was never the past in the past." No person of any time thought of themselves of living in a quaint previous time. They all lived in the modern world, one that was highly advanced -- if not dangerously modern.

"People are complicated." No society was ever doing things simply, using simple language, thinking in simple ways. Anatomically modern humans go back way further than history, almost as far as archaeological artifacts, and they are always pushing the boundaries of what is possible. We may have massive computer-controlled looms these days, but send a modern back to pre spinning-wheel, pre treadle loom, and they are still going to find it a lifetime prospect to get really good at weaving.

Fortunately as a fiction writer I feel less constrained to find "the" way some historical element should have been. Instead I'm picking what works best dramatically. The problem I'm facing right now is not a lack of freedom, but too much of it. I need to be guided a little more about what is historically plausible in order to narrow down on all the directions I could be taking things in the narrative.

So we know only a little about Mycenaean religion, and half of that is assuming continuity into the later Greeks. We know even less about the Minoans. The fun thing about religion, from a writer's point of view, is that archaeology preserves outward forms but not inward meanings. We know there were places where people gathered and while they were there ate and drank from pottery that occurs no-where else. But we don't know if this was an offering to the gods or a tailgate party. Even when we have a shrine and what appears to be offerings, we don't know how they thought of the ritual, what they meant by it, what they gained from it.

There is one thing, though, one thing which is intriguing me although it also makes my plotting problems more difficult. The Greeks don't have a creator figure. The familiar Greek gods, Zeus on down, didn't create the world or humanity. They are merely another inhabitant. When you get closer to the original documents, the term "immortals" seems to come closer. They are a people like humans but better in every way; stronger, longer lived, better artists...heck, they are a bit like some depictions of the Fair Folk. They aren't our guardians or shepherds. At best, they are amused by us, as we are by the frolicking of wild animals, and vain enough so they can sometimes be cajoled into doing us favors (and also petty enough so when annoyed by us, they can wreak terrible vengeance.)

Everyone has creation myths. But looking around for a Creator, the Abrahamic religions start to look like the odd man out. It's probably an effect of packing all the roles and obligations into a single entity. And probably why Christianity in many of its flavors ends up with so many saints -- they're a lot easier to pray to.

The Egyptians come across similarly, as the creator figures in their pantheon are terrible and distant even to the other gods. Or the Norse gods, who similarly more-or-less inherited the world and in any case were more interested in their own affairs than those of mortals. I have to say I have a certain fondness for the Egyptian gods, who come across to me like working stiffs. They all have duties, often onerous and even dangerous jobs they have to do to keep the cosmos running. One almost feels bad tugging on their sleeve to get them to take some time away from their busy day to deal with your own petty little problems. Didn't seem to bother the ancient Egyptians, though, who were actively pestering them for favors.

In any case. Much as we don't know about the Minoan religion, there have been (basically unsupported and often fanciful) theories. Prime among them being a Mother Goddess cult. Which suggests to me a much more active role, both in creating the world and in caring about some of that creation. Apollo might help out if you bribed him enough (one suspects bribes, no matter how they are rationalized by the people making them, are the one truly cross-cultural constant of worship). A Mother would, you think, help because she wanted to.

On that note I'm not sure which religions have figures that have a duty towards humanity. The mesoamerican entities seemed to have a reciprocal working relationship; you keep us fed with blood, we'll be able to keep the world from collapsing. I feel like some of the First Nations had entities with more of a parental feel to them, though. I am hardly an authority on world mythologies!

Back to the Mycenae. Through into at least Roman times there were multiple local deities and private worship practices, most famously (!!) the Mystery Cults. There's some evidence of cultic practices in Mycenae and Minoan times; places of worship that seem to be local and private. And there is tons of evidence (well, within the context of how much we have overall) of specific gods -- or at least similarly-named ones -- getting carried through from one culture to another.

So it isn't the least bit contentious to say that on 12th-century BC Crete there would be a continuation of Minoan worship practices -- at least in remote areas, but possibly quite openly and alongside of whatever passes for mainstream religion (possibly state-sponsored...there are more often than not links between power and worship, with rulers being priests or at least having religious duties).

And, yeah, from the first moment I heard of them I wanted Kes to have originally come from one of the Peak Sanctuaries. More and more, I don't think she was an actual priestess, but it still leaves open the question of how much she learned, whether this was a carry-over Minoan practice, whether such carry-over practices are known and understood more widely, and what form they might have.

This could as I said go in a dozen directions. One of the things I'm playing with is about the past of the past. The evidence of the Etocretan language, some inscriptions, some names and of course a semi-continuity of artistic traditions (that blends into the later Mycenaean) is that a "Minoan" identity could still be filtered out of the mainstream culture. One of my conceits for the novel is that the people who chose for various reasons of identity (largely, class) to recognize themselves as distinct are having to reconstruct from scattered sources -- and they get it about as right as Sir Arthur Evans did.

Lately I've thought I want more than one reconstruction going on, and I think the Peak Sanctuaries (and other Mystery Cults) may play into this; that there are self-identified Etocretans who imagine themselves descendants of a powerful thallasocracy -- myth-making that verges on Atlantean here, with powerful fleets, rich kings, weapons of a finer metal than anything available today. And then there are others who disagree; these are a direct and obvious call-out to The Chalice and the Blade, being a peaceful mother-goddess harmony-of-nature bunch who were all but wiped out by those warlike Mycenaeans.

Which is why I'm deep into reading papers at JSTOR.

Call me Deacon Blues

That's how back-burner thinking works. You let the problem simmer, dropping new ingredients in randomly as you come across them and not really paying attention to what's really starting to look like stone soup. Cold stone soup.

And then one day it boils over, and you can hardly write fast enough to take down all the insights as everything starts to fall together. And there went that metaphor...just couldn't keep it all in the pot.

Was re-reading the discussion in Eric Cline's 1177 about the archaeological (and paleobotanical) evidence for drought and subsequent famine around the time of the LBA Collapse in the Aegean. I'd been thinking of the story of Hathor's wrath as described in the first part of the Book of the Heavenly Cow, and inspired by the Red Weed that appears in later parts of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, I'd been thinking of something symbolic, some kind of invasive species or something, that could be thematically linked to the wave of destruction and chaos.

And there's one available. A literal crimson tide; a harmful algal bloom. It's dinoflagellates, occurs in a variety of colors including red, may be climate-linked, and contains a variety of neurotoxins.

And it just keeps getting better. It's red, linking to the Hathor myth and echoing many Biblical and Homeric descriptions of rivers running red with blood and blood staining the seas. And specifically one of the Plagues of the Bible. It contains neurotoxin that can cause memory loss, seizures, and death as well as behavioral changes; off the California Coast there was the famous "Chaotic Seabirds" incident -- tentatively linked to domoic acid -- that inspired Hitchcock's The Birds. And oh yes; it is particularly concentrated in shellfish, making a weak link to certain dietary laws.

As soon as I'd set that down I read that the palatial economies may have been peculiarly susceptible to disruptions of trade. Which for the palaces is largely luxury goods. Conveniently, my Kes, as a skilled weaver, is employed by or for the palace and thus is part of the creation of those goods. Which are traded with, among other places, Egypt. Meaning a possible official reason for Setna to be visiting, who (since Egypt is largely self-sufficient) has an outsider's perspective to the impact and vulnerability of this luxury trade.

Which leads to the particular impact piracy had on Mycenae, who as a warrior culture (who might even have some of the drawbacks of the later Spartan system, oppressed underclass and all) really suffer from Peak Tin. (Amusingly enough, there are multiple scenes in The Illiad where a bronze weapon breaks and no spare is readily available, leading the heroes to attack with rocks and fists).

So is the Trojan War then an attempt to secure trade routes, particularly to that essential tin? Could this be similar to or part of the documented trade embargo imposed on "Ahiyawa" by the Hittite Empire? So either attacking the Hittites in the Troad or trying to open up better routes around them by going after Wilusa? And could the pressure of the old embargo become suddenly critical because pirates have started blocking other trade routes? Or maybe they pulled a dirty trick at Byblos and the loose-knit "Phoenician" peoples imposed their own embargo?

And these pirates. Perhaps the peasant revolt on Crete succeeded, perhaps it failed, but either way there is the start of movement of people and some of them are taking to ships. And even though they may be speaking a different Greek dialect and have their own peculiar variations in material culture this only echoes the "Dorian Invasion" -- which if it took place at all, took place hundreds of years later. But it is still a way of looking at the changes, of migration and of revolution, that are spreading across the Peloponnese and up into the Greek Mainland.

And for some reason this brings me back to gods. I'm reversing myself sort of. No gods will appear in person in the narrative. The characters will act as if their existence and their acts are obvious. However! There will be things that do not have a strictly rational explanation, and they will fall outside that which can be explained away.

Kes is going to keep her ability to see texts from the future, although I've been modifying how that works and how she interacts with it as my understanding of my nerdy, upbeat little goat-girl is ongoing. The Red Tide gives a thin excuse for some weird behavior, including specifically some convenient cultists who show up with literally uncanny prescience to harry the protagonists. And lastly I'm really thinking of having a certain god talk anyhow; but through a shaman. But again, not a deniable magic; the shaman will distinctly say things that she has no good reason to know.





All in all a very productive morning. I've got a doctor's appointment later today and I'm really hopeful I'm going to be able to clear up my breathing problems and that's going to really improve my work on the trumpet. No plans to learn to play the saxophone, though. Not yet. (Not saying I'm not really tempted by Yamaha's Venova....)

A Tale of One City

Well, that went well. The six months I gave myself for an outline are already over and I haven't even determined the basic shape of the novel.

I could totally do the entire thing on Crete. Mostly in Knossos, even. The weaver as the central protagonist. Much of the story of the late bronze age can be encapsulated in one city, but Knossos has the extra cachet of having been previously the Minoan palatial center.

We've got excellent records, spectacular ruins. We have mute evidence of the coastal raiders in the retreats dug into the stony fastnesses of the inland mountain ranges. And we have those connections of trade; from the earliest moments of the bronze age through the coming of the Iron Age -- right through the Greek Dark Ages -- Crete is still in trade contact with the rest of the Ancient world so the story of Crete really can be a story of a big chunk of the bronze age.

And, yeah, keeping to one setting makes the research a little more plausible.

The opposing plan is still some version of the five man band cast; of several characters -- heroes, really -- each with their own skills as well as their own quirks and backgrounds. And hitting at least some of the fun tour stops, at least one of Mycenae, Cypress, Pi Ramses, Ugarit, Hattusha, Wilusa.

I wasn't entirely truthful above. I do have an outline for this, one that is good enough to start breaking out specific research questions (some of them very specific -- such as, at what point did the Laconians become laconic?) I can even say I'd have more fun with Setna running around the Peloponnese hooking the sword-arms of pirates with his khopesh...it's just that, at the moment, I'm so fascinated by whats happening in the palatial centers...and the potentials of a story at a smaller scale.

Oh, but there's a totally different story that is starting to creep into my head right now. It came to me today while listening to the excellent Trojan War podcast. Start with the Luwian Hypothesis, roll it all the way out, but splice in large parts of the Trojan War. So the Luwian Empire is threatening the entire Mediterranean Basin, and a Mycenaean coalition forms to oppose them -- forms with all the realpolitik, all the use of Helen as a casus belli, Odysseus playing mad to get out of the war, the sacrifice of Iphigenia, etc. All the good and the bad, that is. Of both sides, if possible.

And then take it one more step because the Luwian's are Plato's Atlantis, and oh yes the gods are real and Achilles is nigh invulnerable and all that. And no point in stopping there. Go back and trace the history of myths and stories and there are a hundred versions (and details accrete over time.) Since we're only resembling the standard Trojan War story, elements of Theseus and Jason and Medea and all sort of other interesting things can sneak in there too.

And the best part of it? The serial numbers are still under there but everything has been remelted and jumbled together so much "research" ceases to be an element at all. I mean, if you have to squint to recognize Hector, there's not a Myrmidon who can complain that the galleys have the wrong number of oars.