The Uppity Queen Arsinoë II (Part II) [Updated]

(Part I, click here)

To Reign or Rule?

Some scholars pooh-pooh the idea of Queen Arsinoë II having had any share in real power.  They can't deny that some later Ptolemaic queens did rule in their own right, if often briefly (Cleopatra Berenice, Cleopatra Tryphena, another Berenice, and -- most exceptionally -- the glorious Cleopatra VII); but there seems to be an unspoken assumption that female rule was only possible because later male Ptolemies were degenerate -- and it serves them right for all that  incest!   

But when Arsinoë II was queen, the dynasty hadn't had nearly enough time to degenerate and, anyway, neither she nor Ptolemy II were children of incest.  So, they argue instead that the queen's power was more apparent than real: 

Philadelphos trusted her, possibly confided in her, and gave her a social role in the affairs of his kingdom". (emphasis mine)

The upshot is that she had no part in the formation of public policy.

 Arsinoë II Rules OK

Feminist historians look at it differently.  To their eyes,  Arsinoë's political sway was far above what was customary for royal consorts.  Some even suggest that Ptolemy II was a weakling and Arsinoë II the real power in the land.  Certainly, unlike his father, the king was not a military man; he started lots of wars but won few.  In fact, when Arsinoë married Ptolemy, Egypt was in the midst of losing a war against Seleucid Syria:

The new queen set her hand to rectifying the situation.  She reorganized the army; she accompanied it on its campaigns; she won the Syrian war.  Her grateful husband acknowledged his debt to her policies with a public inscription in 266 B.C.

Naturally, after she died, Ptolemy went on to lose a Second Syrian War because she was not there to help him.

Mimimize or Maximize? 

So which story is closer to the truth? 

Arguing the pro's and con's from our surviving sources can be devilishly difficult (below, I give some on-line sources for those who like the nitty-gritty). But, however deeply you go into it, the fact remains that there is no proof either way.  Whether you come down on one side or the other depends, in the end, more on hunches than the solid weight of evidence.  

Two new points might help: one, admittedly, a matter of opinion; the second,  a pictorial matter of fact.

Holy Incest

Brother-sister royal incest from the queen's point of view is a win-win bet.  That doesn't mean that it wasn't awfully daring for Arsinoë II to take this leap into the unknown (and, since she's seen as stronger and smarter than Ptolemy, historians generally assume that it was her idea and not the king's), but there's little doubt that the pairing was of great benefit to queenship: almost inevitably, it conferred greater power on the queen.   

Sibling incest for the Ptolemies, as also for earlier Pharaohs, established an equality between king and queen as co-rulers. Accordingly, Arsinoë shared every title of honour with her brother and was deified together with him. Brother-sister marriage did not of itself grant the queen political power and control, but it put her in a position to take power if and when the opportunity arose.  And this remained true for future queens of the dynasty: their power and prestige was related to the continuing prevalence of sibling marriage. 

After all, you are the daughters of gods

That's really part of the self-aggrandizing message of the Theoi Adelphoi coins (scroll down [or click] to see the images in Part I).  The title of 'gods' appears above the heads of their deceased parents on one side, while Ptolemy and Arsinoë, pictured on the reverse, are simply labelled 'siblings'.  However, anyone handling the coin would mentally link the titles and read it as a coin of the 'sibling gods'.  

The Ghost of Alexander the Great 

After Alexander had conquered Egypt, he wasted no time in crossing the western desert where he was said to have been led by two snakes to the Oracle of Amun at Siwa Oasis (winter/spring, 332/331 BCE).  This oracle of the ram-headed god Amun (left) was famous throughout the Greek world.  Almost certainly, Alexander went there to seek the god's approval for his plan to found a city on the shore of the sea

A city like the joyous spring.
In populousness and spaciousness like Paradise; 
For it was both a market-place and a sowing-place.
They [would give] to it even the name of Alexandria.

But Amun granted him even more than the future metropolis.

Just as Alexander approached the oracle, he was greeted by the priests as "son of Amun", their usual form of address to new pharaohs.  From this time on, like several Egyptian pharaohs, Alexander was pictured on  monuments (below) with the ram-horn of Amun to publicise his position as son of the god and legitimate king.

Naturally, all the Ptolemies desired to associate themselves with the glory of Alexander.  So much so, that the first Ptolemy hijacked Alexander's funeral cortege as it travelled, with astonishing pomp, from Babylon on its way home to Macedonia. When the cortege had reached the Mediterranean sea at Alexandria-ad-Issum (a city in Syria, founded by Alexander to celebrate his victory over the Persians), Ptolemy arrived with an army and forced the gold-and-jewel-covered cart with the coffin to take the road south to Egypt.

The gold-encased body of the hero was eventually transported to Alexandria and placed in what would become the royal cemetery of Ptolemy's line.  Over the next three centuries, as each of Ptolemy's descendants died, he was buried in an opulent mausoleum in the royal cemetery, near the central tomb of Alexander.  The dynasty's cult was celebrated there and Alexander's tomb, especially, was treated as a shrine.  Ptolemy I thus not only exalted his hero but, by doing so, elevated his own status as the guardian of the body of the greatest king, who was also a god.

Despite this close association, no Ptolemy ever adopted the divine ram's horns.  No male Ptolemy, that is, for the remarkable exception was Queen Arsinoë II.

On her coins (below), and on hers alone, the ram's horn appear below the ear  -- and you can just see the outline of the horn beneath her veil.  

The ram's horn is common on her posthumous coins but hardly ever appears on cult statues. I know of just one case: that's the head of a small basalt statue (below), carved in the Greek style with some slight Egyptian influence.*

Just as we  imagine it on the coins, here the horn emerges in 3-D from the hair to curl backwards and downwards behind the ear.  It seems to grow naturally from the wavy locks, yet its outline and striations clearly define it as a ram's horn. 

Why would a queen wear the ram-horn of Amun?

An inscription left by her brother-husband after her death, in a temple of Mendes (another god worshipped in the form of a ram) tells us a little of what happened: 

Princess great of favour, sweet of love, beautiful queen, who has received the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt, whose loveliness fills the palace, beloved of the Ram, priestess of the Ram, sister of the king, wife of the king, his beloved, mistress of the Two Lands, Arsinoë.... His Majesty commanded that her ram-image be erected in all temples... at the side of the living rams.

So, Ptolemy II initiated the practice -- which makes sense since the great gold octadrachms which usually clearly show the tip of the horn are part of her posthumous honours. The horn is a sign of godhead, certainly, but Ptolemy II and his successors -- though living gods and given divine honours -- were never pictured with it.  So it is, at the very least, an exceptional mark of Arsinoë's divine status.  

But did the king also intend to associate his queen with Alexander?

One Coin Is Worth 1000 Words

I cannot see how any contemporary of theirs would fail to make that connection.  Just as the Theoi Alelphoi coins, described above, implied the 'sibling gods' (but didn't directly state it), the ram's horn would inevitably link Arsinoë II to the revered Alexander -- for they are only two rulers in the Ptolemaic world who shared this divine attribute.**   

It is entirely possible that Arsinoë herself chose this honour before she died.  She would have been acutely aware of its symbolism and the potency of the image: for the first coins showing Alexander wearing the ram's horn were struck by none other than her first husband, King Lysimachos, in Thrace, when she was still married to him.  So, yes, I do think it likely to be an intentional link, meant (in the royal minds at least) to raise the queen to the level of the one-and-only Alexander.  

If that isn't a statement of real power, what is?



 
* Published by D. Burr Thompson, "A Portrait of Arsinoe Philadelphos", American Journal of Archaeology 59 (1955) 199-206.

** Even if, on a higher plane, Alexander wore the symbol of Amun and Arsinoë that of the god Mendes, they were visually the same; it is doubtful if any but the priests of Egypt would have made a distinction.

For the minimalist position, see R.A. Hazzard, Imagination of a Monarchy: studies in Ptolemaic Propaganda, University of Toronto (2000) Ch. 2 & 5 (partly available on Google Books). For a maximalist argument, Julia K.W. Wong, Cleopatra I: the first female Ptolemaic regent, M.A. thesis,. Univ. of British Columbia, 1998, Ch. 3.1.  Other important sources included D. Burr Thompson's article (reference in the footnote above); C.G. Johnson, 'The Divinization of the Ptolemies and the Gold Octadrachms Honoring Ptolemy III', Phoenix 53 (1999) 50-56;  E. Teeter, 'Egyptian Art', Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 20 (1994), 27-29; and see references listed in Part I.

Illustrations

Upper left: Arsinoe II as Isis-Selene (Louvre Ma4891).  Photographer: Jastrow 2008, via Wikimedia Commons. 

Upper middle left: black granite statue of Arsinoe II as Isis-Aphrodite.  Franck Goddio/Hilti Foundation - Photos: Christophe Gerigk.  You can read about this extraordinary underwater find on my blog post, Will The Real Cleopatra Please Stand Up.

Lower middle left: gilded and painted limestone statue of Arsinoe II as goddess. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1920.

Below left: ram-headed Amun, Abu Simbel, via Africa Timeline Index.

Centre, upper (left): Thracian silver coin issued by Lysimachos, struck circa 280 BC. Diademed head of Alexander to right, ram’s horn over his ear. Photograph from CoinArchives.  (right): Silver coin issued by Lysimachos (thought to be a copy of a portrait of Alexander by Lysippus), reproduced by permission of trustees of the British Museum.


Centre, lower (left): Gold octadrachm of Arsinoë II, Year 6, struck at Ake-Ptolemais mint. Photograph by Wildwinds.  (right): Gold octadrachm of Arsinoë II, struck under Ptolemy II.  Photograph from CoinArchives .  Both sites have many other illustrations of her coins.


Updated 9 November 2010

As we said, many scholars argue that Arsinoë's royal titles were given to her posthumously as a part of a program instituted by Ptolemy II. If that is true, they need reflect little or nothing of her power during her lifetime.  But now, a new doctoral dissertation (Maria Nilsson, THE CROWN OF ARSINOË II, THE CREATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF AN IMAGERY OF AUTHORITY) identifies two, possibly three honorary scenes that date to Arsinoë's lifetime.  These scenes depict the queen's unique crown (made up of the red crown, ram horns, double feather plume, cow horns and a solar disc). 

Nilsson argues that Arsinoë's royal titles were embedded in the complex symbolic structure of her crown, and directly connect to her socio-political as well as religious role; all relate to the cult of Amun in one way or another.  These are the titles, she believes belonged to the living queen/female king:

1. Arsinoë's epithet “Banebdjedet” (the ram god) can be identified with the oldest conventional royal title, the Horus name. As a local form of Amun, Banebdjedet is depicted with horns identical to those of Arsinoë.  The ram horns symbolize her socio-political position as a (living) co-regent of Egypt (King of Lower Egypt), and her general associations with the ram god.

2. The second royal title, the Nebty name, signifies the Two Ladies, the vulture and cobra, Nekhbet and Wadjet, and their divine protection of the pharaoh.

3. The Golden Horus name in Arsinoë's title “Beautiful of appearance”, has its pictorial counterpart in the solar disc.

4.  Her throne name is identified with the designation “She who is in the heart of Shu/King, Beloved of all the Gods”. The symbolic correlation with the crown of Arsinoë is provided in her coronation prefix “King of Lower Egypt".  This is symbolized by the red crown, a fundamental element in Arsinoë's crown.
 
5. Arsinoë‟s birth name prefix “Daughter of Amun” is expressed by the complete structure of the crown, describing her cultural position as the King of Egypt – the legitimate daughter of Amun.
 
Nilsson concludes that the crown of Arsinoë was created for the living queen and reflected three main cultural positions: her royal position as King of Lower Egypt, her cultic role as high priestess, and her religious aspect as thea Philadelphos. It indicates that she was proclaimed female pharaoh during her lifetime, and that she was regarded the female founder of the Ptolemaic Dynasty (pp. 497-501).

The full dissertation, The crown of Arsinoë II. The creation and development of an imagery of authority is available on-line at http://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/23417

The Uppity Queen Arsinoë II

Who's the Woman Behind this Giant Coin?

The news that a rare Ptolemaic gold coin was found in Israel -- weighing just under one ounce (27.71 grams) of almost pure gold -- seems to have overshadowed the woman whose portrait is literally heads-up on it.*  The coin  -- more a medallion, really, than money meant to be spent -- is  worth a cool $1,184 at today's price just for its gold (never mind a premium of $$$$ for antiquity and rarity).  It commemorates Queen Arsinoë II -- one of the feistiest Hellenistic queens ever.

And, believe me, the competition for 'feistiest Hellenistic queen' was stiff.

In many ways, Arsinoë II was their role model. 

The Early Ptolemies

Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332-331 BCE.   When he died at Babylon in 323, his eight senior generals agreed to divide the empire among them, each to govern his respective territory as a vassal for the kings of Macedonia.  Ptolemy son of Lagus, was appointed to govern Egypt.  He declared himself king in his own right in 304, founding the Ptolemaic dynasty that would rule Egypt for almost 300 years. The dynasty lasted until the death of the great Cleopatra VII and the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BCE, easily the best-known event of ancient history.

Ptolemy I - Berenice I 'Of the gods'

Arsinoë was born in 316 BCE, the only daughter of Ptolemy I and his fourth wife, Berenice I.   The king became known as Ptolemy Soter, that is 'Saviour'.  He and Berenice were later deified, given a cult and priesthood, and described as 'gods' (ΘΕΩΝ on the coin above).   

At the age of 15 or 16, Arsinoë was sent to the Balkans and married to Lysimachus, king of Thrace and Macedon.  Lysimachus was another of Alexander's top generals: he had been married at least twice before and was old enough to be her father (about 55 when they married).  She was said to have been aroused rather by one of his sons, Agathocles, who virtuously rejected the young queen's advances.  Miffed at the insult, Arsinoë may have poisoned him or at least persuaded Lysimachus to do so.  The prince's death conveniently opened the way to Macedonian kingship for the sons of her own marriage.  Her husband finally died in battle in Feb 281 (fighting against yet another of Alexander's  generals), at the age of 74. Now, alone with her three young sons, Arsinoë commanded the garrison at Cassandreia, one of the most important Macedonian cities.

The Plot Thickens

Early in 280, her half-brother, Ptolemy Keraunos seized the Macedonian throne, thereby depriving Arsinoë's sons of the succession.  Now, in a move so characteristic of the future of this dynasty, Ptolemy Keraunos tricked his half-sister into a half-incestuous marriage,** took the city of Cassandreia for himself, and murdered her two younger sons -- though not for want of trying to kill the eldest too.  The marriage thus abruptly terminated, Arsinoë and her surviving son fled into exile on Samothrace.  Soon after, Ptolemy Keraunos was driven from his throne, and the immortal gods inflicting vengeance on him for so many perjuries, and such cruel murders, he was taken prisoner by marauding Gauls who killed him and carried his head about as a mascot on their further campaigns.

Arsinoë spent some time on Samothrace trying to regain the throne of Macedon  for her remaining son (yet another Ptolemy, perhaps Ptolemy Nios) but that prize eluded her.

The Tigress Queen

Arsinoë and son then sailed to Egypt where her younger brother, Ptolemy II had succeeded to the throne.  Ptolemy II was married to Arsinoë I (I know this is confusing, but I can't help it), a daughter of Lysimachus -- presumably by a wife or two before he had married Arsinoë II.  It didn't take long for Arsinoë II to get the better of Arsinoë I and boot her out: though the mother of his three children, Ptolemy II found her guilty of plotting against his majesty and exiled her to Coptos in Upper Egypt, where she vanishes from history.

Egyptian Bombshell

Now, the way to the throne was clear.  In winter 276/5, Arsinoë II took part in the first (but far from the last) full-sibling marriage of the dynasty, marrying her brother Ptolemy II.  There is no record of what their Egyptian subjects thought of this incestuous pairing but Graeco-Macedonian opinion was shocked.  To counter this, the royal couple commissioned the court poet, Theocritos, to explain why brother-sister incest was a great idea.  Theocritos (Idylls 17) obligingly likened the marriage to that of Zeus and Hera, brother and sister, king and queen of the gods.  It is toe-curling stuff:

From Zeus let us begin ..., for of immortals he is best; but of men let Ptolemy be named first, last and in the midst, for of men is he most excellent..., he and his noble wife, than whom none better clasps in her arms a husband in his halls, loving with all her heart a brother and a spouse.  After this fashion was accomplished the sacred bridal also of the immortals.

Common gossip saw it differently.  As a singularly imprudent poet named Sotades put it, "You are thrusting your prick into an unholy hole."  The royals were not amused: one of Ptolemy's generals arrested Sotades and, thrusting him into a leaden jar, carried him out to sea and sank him beneath the waves.

Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II 'Siblings'

On the reverse of coins dedicated to their parents as gods, they put their conjoined portraits with the added word 'siblings' (Adelphoi) -- just in case you missed the point. In fact, both king and queen took the title Philadelphos, 'Sibling-lover' -- used thereafter on documents and coins -- which deliberately highlights their incestuous union.  

Arsinoë added a touch of her own.  Instead of the typically Ptolemaic cornucopia (horn of plenty) -- a symbol of wealth, abundance, and the good things of life -- she depicted a new double cornucopia on  her coins (left) --  surely an allusion to the doubling of the royal blood.  That is the emblem on the reverse of the gold octadrachm (at the top of the post); she is named as Arsinoë Philadelphos. 


Why stress incest?

Full sibling marriage was, as Theocritus implies, the prerogative of the gods; and to behave like the gods is to assimilate oneself to them.  Not only Greek Zeus and Hera, but also Egyptian Isis and Osiris were mated sibling gods who provided the divine precedent (followed, too, by some earlier Egyptian Pharaohs). The king also bestowed on her the pharaonic title of 'royal wife and sister'.  In Egyptian, she was nsw-b'itj = "Queen of Upper and Lower Egypt", an exceptional title which had been given only very rarely to pharaonic queens.  In 272/1 BCE, the royal pair added the cult of the 'Sibling gods' to their dynastic priesthood, established shrines and publicly celebrated their own divine rites.  

Sister-goddess-queen

Arsinoë became the most honoured Graeco-Macedonian woman during her lifetime with her deification as a goddess.  She received an abundance of cults, statues, priestesses, and dedications from her subjects and her husband, not just in Egypt but throughout the Greek world.  The Ptolemaic admiral of the fleet, to give just one example, dedicated a temple to her as the goddess Aphrodite:

While on the sea and when on land, keep in your prayers this shrine of Arsinoe-Aphrodite Philadelphos, whom admiral Kallikrates first consecrated here to rule over the headland of Zephyrium. She’ll grant good sailing or make the sea, for those who call upon her in the storm, smooth as oil. (Poseidippos, in Athenaios 7.318d)

In 267, her son, Ptolemy Nios, who was thwarted of the Macedonian throne, finally made it to the top, when he was named by her husband as co-regent.

Life must have seemed perfect.

Alas, despite being the daughter of divine parents and herself deified, Arsinoë was not immortal.  After about five years in power, the queen suddenly died.  The country was filled with lamentations; everyone was dressed in black.  Towns and streets were given her name so that she would be remembered and the great province of the Fayoum was renamed 'Arsinoë'.  Ostentatious  memorials were built.  The poet Callimachus wrote a dirge, The Deification of Arsinoë, still partly preserved:

O bride, already up under the stars of the Wain
snatched away ... you were speeding past the full moon...
Queen Arsinoë has gone... our star was quenched,
and overflowing grief taught the great husband 
to light fires as an offering for his wife...

It was all very sad.  Arsinoë's status as a cult figure after her death is not in doubt.  Not least, gold octadrachms continued to be produced in her name for well over a century.  The coin/medallion just found in Israel, which kicked off this post, was actually minted in 191 BCE by Ptolemy V -- whose wife, by the way (Cleopatra I), was the first queen-regent of the dynasty; she ruled on behalf of Ptolemy VI, who went on, in his turn, to issue octadrachms in Arsinoë's honour.  Her posthumous importance is undisputed.  

Much more contentious is the question of the nature of her power during her five years on the throne. Did she wield real political power or was she just a pretty cult face on the gold coins?

We will tackle that burning question next week in Part II, when I'll present the main arguments, pro and con -- and add what I think is something new to the mix.


* The coin was found at Tell Kedesh in Israel near its Lebanese border. It is technically an octadrachm (also called mnaieion, meaning a one-mina coin), equivalent to 100 silver drachms, or a mina of silver.  

** In Athens (and perhaps elsewhere in Greece and the Balkans),  marriage was allowed between half-sister and half-brother if they shared the same father -- as was the case here -- but not if they shared the same mother.

Trying to sort out the genealogy and chronology of the Ptolemies is like stepping into a morass: just when you think you are on firm ground, you slip into a hole instead.  Undoubtedly, the best guide is the website of Chris Bennett; but this is not for the faint-hearted (myself often included).  The question of Ptolemaic incest and its meaning is brilliantly examined by Sheila L. Ager, "The Power of Excess: Royal Incest and the Ptolemaic Dynasty" in Anthropologica 48 (2006), 165-186; and, aimed more at classicists, "Familiarity Breeds: Incest and the Ptolemaic Dynasty" Journal of Hellenic Studies, 125 (2005) 1-34.

Illustrations

Upper left & middle left: the Tell Kedesh octadrachm (both sides) photography by Sue Webb via the Israel Antiquities Authority.

Middle (above):  Gold octadrachm with Ptolemy I/Berenice I as gods on obverse; (below): Ptolemy II/Arsinoë II as siblings on reverse.  Photograph: Ancient & World Coins

Building An Invisible City

The Invisible City of Zenobia
 
Italo Calvino’s invisible city of Zenobia was one of the most suggestive surreal images of the late 1900's.  Now, the invisible has became 'the possible'.  It is a real-life project , even (perhaps) a practical proposal.  If ever built, Zenobia (below) will be a 'decipherment', and a city like no other.

Now I shall tell of the city of Zenobia, which is wonderful in this fashion: though set on dry terrain it stands in high pilings, and the houses are of bamboo and zinc, with many platforms and balconies placed on stilts at various heights, crossing one another, linked by ladders and hanging sidewalks, surmounted by cone-roofed belvederes, barrels storing water, weather vanes, jutting pulleys, and fish poles, and cranes.

No one remembers what need or command or desire drove Zenobia’s founders to give their city this form, and so there is no telling whether it was satisfied by the city as we see it today, which has perhaps grown through successive superimpositions from the first, now undecipherable plan. But what is certain is that if you ask an inhabitant of Zenobia to describe his vision of a happy life, it is always a city like Zenobia that he imagines, with its pilings and its suspended stairways, a Zenobia perhaps quite different, a-flutter with banners and ribbons, but always derived by combining elements of that first model.

This said, it is pointless trying to decide whether Zenobia is to be classified among happy cities or among the unhappy. It makes no sense to divide cities into these two species, but rather into another two: those that through the years and the changes continue to give their form to desires, and those in which desires either erase the city or are erased by it.

(From Le Città Invisibili by Italo Calvino; translation William Weaver)

Designed by Italian architects Alessandro Tonni and Manuela Spera,  the city Calvino inspired is meant to create a meeting point between architecture and literature.  Calvino, I think, would have relished it.

Invisible Cities

In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo -- Tartar emperor and Venetian traveller. The mood is sunset. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his empire, of his cities, of himself. 

Marco Polo diverts the emperor with tales of cities that he has seen within the empire and Kublai Khan listens, searches for a pattern in Marco Polo's cities.  Here are all the cities ever dreamed of, strange magical invisible cities that nobody else ever saw. All are named after women (as they must be, since cities are feminine in Italian) -- Raissa, Irene, Phyillis, Olinda, Armilla, Chloe, Valdrada...

The ancients built Valdrada on the shores of a lake, with houses all verandas one above the other, and high streets whose railed parapets look out over the water. Thus the traveler, arriving, sees two cities: one erect above the lake, and the other reflected, upside down. Nothing exists or happens in the one Valdrada that the other Valdrada does not repeat, because the city was so constructed that its every point would be reflected in its mirror, and the Valdrada down in the water contains not only all the flutings and juttings of the facades that rise above the lake, but also the rooms' interiors with ceilings and floors, the perspective of the halls, the mirrors of the wardrobes.

And Zobeide...

From there, after six days and seven nights, you arrive at Zobeide, the white city, well exposed to the moon, with streets wound about themselves as in a skein. They tell this tale of its foundation: men of various nations had an identical dream. They saw a woman running at night through an unknown city; she was seen from behind, with long hair, and she was naked. They dreamed of pursuing her. As they twisted and turned, each of them lost her. After the dream they set out in search of that city; they never found it, but they found one another; they decided to build a city like the one in the dream. In laying out the streets, each followed the course of his pursuit; at the spot where they had lost the fugitive's trail, they arranged spaces and walls differently from the dream, so she would be unable to escape again.

The emperor soon determines that each of these fantastic places is really the same place.

Marco Polo agrees: "Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased...."

But the traveller still cannot stop.

- he must go on to another city, where another of his pasts awaits him, or something perhaps that had been a possible future of his and is now someone else's present. Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.

"Journeys to relive your past?" was Kublai Khan's question at this point, a question which could also have been formulated: "Journeys to recover your future?"

And Marco's answer was: "Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveller recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have."

The dialogue continues (Cities & Memory, Cities & Desire, Cities & Signs) yet, as Calvino tells us, "most of the time they remained silent and immobile."

Finally, Kublai Khan recognizes that all cities are tending toward the concentric circles of Dante's hell.

He said: "It is all useless, if the last landing place can only be the infernal city, and it is there that, in ever-narrowing circles, the current is drawing us."

And Polo said: "The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension; seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."

Of course Zenobia will never be built. 

Which would suit Calvino perfectly.  As he said of himself, "The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner."



I've made much use of the brilliant review of Calvino's Novels by Gore Vidal (New York Review of Books)

Major Calvino websites at: Emory University,  Swarthmore College and Outside the Town of Malbork

Illustrations from 'Reinterpreting Italo Calvino's Zenobia' at Evolo us News 31 July 2010.  The architects may be found at Architizer.

A WOMAN WILL BE KING

I haven't talked about Sassanian women for ages (actually not since Sassy Sassanians in January 2008) and then it was really the story of the goddess Anahita, not any mortal women. So, it's more than time for Zenobia to come down to earth -- if only at an appropriately elevated, imperial height.

Right on cue, Prof. Haleh Emrani (University of California) published "Like Father, Like Daughter: Late Sasanian Imperial Ideology and the Rise of Bōrān to Power."*

That's Bōrān, as in Queen Bōrān (left), who became the King of Kings.

HOW THE QUEEN BECAME A KING

A little historical background.

Bōrān's father was Khusrau II (590-628 CE), also called 'the Victorious'. In a series of campaigns, he led his armies against the Byzantines, and, for a short time, expanded the limits of the Sassanian Empire to the greatest extent it had ever reached.

He managed, in effect, to destroy the might of Byzantium, first breaking its military power in a long war of attrition and then taking over all its rich Middle Eastern provinces. The king conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt and Libya.

The conquest of Jerusalem in 614 had more serious consequences than just the destruction of the city (once again!): this time, the relic of the True Cross fell into Persian hands. They carried it off to their capital, Cteisiphon (near modern Baghdad), where it became a further casus bellum.

Khusrau's armies went on to invade Anatolia and in 615 (or possibly 626), their advance guards halted only a mile from the walls of Constantinople. The city was put under siege. The King of Kings had reached the zenith of his power, and it seemed as though the Persians would finally conquer their ancient foes.

Pride Goeth Before a Fall

Khusrau became puffed up with vainglory because of the vast amount of wealth and all kinds of jewels, utensils, equipment, and horses he had accumulated. He had conquered so many of the lands of his enemies. However, he was filled with conceit and boastfulness, and was horribly avaricious....

[He] had in his palace 3,000 women with whom he had sexual relations and thousands of slave girls employed as servants, for making music and singing, and such. He also had 3,000 male servants, 8,500 riding beasts on which he could travel, 760 elephants, and 12,000 mules for conveying his baggage.

The Persians had found little opposition in their conquests because of internal conflicts within the Byzantine empire. Now, however, a new emperor, Heraclius, struck back. He sailed with an army into the Black Sea while the Persian army was still on the shores of the Bosphorus. Landing in the Caucasus, he marched into Armenia and Azerbaijan striking into the heart of the Sassanian empire. Capturing Ganzak, the most important Zoroastrian fire-temple in Azerbaijan, he defeated the Persian army sent against him.

In 628, Heraclius was near Cteisiphon where he captured Khusrau's royal residence. This was a palace worthy of a King of Kings. Heraclius looted the astonishing riches that Khusrau had accumulated over the years, to the tune of 600,000,000 silver coins plus 'purses' of treasure worth another 68,571,42, as well as, as al-Tabari helpfully explains, "various kinds of jewels, garments, and the like, whose grand total God alone could enumerate." [1042]

Despite this turning of the tables, Khusrau still refused to make peace. The landed and military aristocracy, though, had had enough of his ruinous taxes and bloody wars. Persian generals revolted and, led by Khusrau's son, Kavad II, the aging King of Kings was seized, tortured, and slain.

To secure his throne, Kavad killed all male descendants of the royal house, including 16 (or 18) of his brothers. A wise precaution but it turned out to be of little use: after a mere eight months, Kavad died, either of the plague which was spreading during his short reign, or by poison: So a man may reign for seven months, and in the eighth he finds that his crown is made of the camphor with which the dead are anointed [Shahnameh].

His son, Ardashir III, seven years old, succeeded to the throne to be a short-lived puppet of the nobility. Within a few months, the young king was murdered by an army commander, Shahrbaraz, who was not of royal blood. The regicide thus committed the additional enormity of usurping the throne when he was not from the Sassanid house. He reigned for 40 days before being killed in turn by disgruntled nobles. His body was tied to chains and dragged through the streets of the capital.

9 June 629 CE Queen Bōrān, eldest daughter of Khusrau II, was crowned 'Great King'

In the long history of the Sassanian empire, no woman had ever been sole ruler of Persia (though queens had acted as regents).

The Persian conception of royalty was strictly masculine. The king was the chief of the priests and of the Zoroastrian church, which did not have any female clergy. His physical perfection was necessary for his high function (and that must have included his sexual organs): any mutilation was sufficient reason for excluding a prince from the succession. The king's religious, military and political authority was based on the god-given 'Divine Glory' (khvarrah) which, it goes without saying, descended in the male line from the mythical first king, Sāsān. The polygamous family of the king and his rights over the harem and his relatives do not seem to support any independent source of power for queens or princesses. In fact, like any other women, they were presumably always under the authority of a guardian -- whether father, husband, son, or other male relative.

So what happened in on 9 June 629 CE to change four hundred years of royal tradition and raise a woman to the throne?

The nobles and priests, who were the pillars of the Sassanian monarchy, would not accept as king anyone who was not a member of the royal family. So, in the name of defending the house of Sāsān, they killed Persia's best general and put a princess on the throne. In short, a woman from the royal house was considered a more legitimate king than a general who, although of noble birth, was not descended from the blood of Sāsān.

Al-Tabari writes that the nobles were compelled to accept Bōrān as king because of the lack of legitimate male candidates. Certainly, Kavad II had tried to exterminate all possible competitors. But, with his father having had 3,000 sex objects in his harem, there's only so many descendants you can murder in eight months. Just as they later found, hidden here and there, some minor male relatives who had escaped the slaughter and raised them, briefly, to the throne, the lack of males could not be the whole reason for their unexpected choice. Rather, we may imagine that the coronation of Bōrān was a political decision made by the council of nobles. It's certainly not beyond possibility that she herself was involved in the plot against the usurping general.

In any case, her first challenge was to prove she was the rightful holder of the khvarrah. And so she invoked her father's legacy by imitating his crown (left) and coins. Remember, every Sassanian ruler had his own individual crown (that's how we can tell them apart even when their names are not given). Khusrau II had worn the symbol of Wahrām, the god of war and victory, spreading his wings. Bōrān's adoption of this deity can be seen as a symbolic tie to her father -- who was, and in memory remained -- a great warrior-king.

Besides her crown, her coins displayed (upper left, near her chin) the sun, moon, and stars, as well as the crescent moon and stars in the margin of her coins (middle left; below left). The reverses were exactly like those on her father's coins, with a Zoroastrian fire altar attended by two standing figures, surrounded by astral signs in the margins (right). The presence of these signs on her crown and coins backs up her claim to rule with divine sanction. In case of any lingering doubt, a gold coin reads, "Bōrān, restorer of the race of the gods".

Her appearance, too, conformed to kingly standards. In a now-lost book depicting Sassanian kings, Bōrān was shown seated on a throne wearing male royal dress, including a green tunic over sky-blue trousers -- strikingly different from the very long dresses that covered the legs and feet of royal women. Accessories included a sky-blue crown and a battle-axe held in her hands.

So Bōrān was no longer seen as a princess but as a monarch in her own right, dressed in proper kingly attire, and confirmed by the legends on her coins and her crown. These symbols rendered her gender irrelevant. She was, in fact, the king!

xwadāy zan-ēw bawēd "A woman will be king"


The main tasks of a legitimate king was to protect the people of Persia and maintain its religious laws. How did Bōrān handle the duties that justified her khvarrah?

First, she concluded a treaty of peace with the Byzantines. A preliminary agreement had already been reached between Heraclius and General Shahrbaraz or perhaps even earlier with Kavad II. Persia had lost the long war and they knew it. Except for the important city of Nisibis (modern Nusaybin, near the Turkish-Syrian border), all of her father's conquests were returned to Byzantium. Bōrān swallowed the bitter pill and signed.

A prominent part of the peace negotiations was about the True Cross. Although al-Tabari [1064] tells us that Bōrān restored it to Heraclius, it was probably part of an earlier deal: the Cross was back in Jerusalem by spring 630 or, at the latest, Easter 631: in any event, Heraclius and his second wife Martina secured its triumphant return to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

Bōrān's reign is said to have been marked by benevolence. She behaved kindly and justly to her subjects. She remitted for the people the arrears of land tax due. Nor did she lack energy: she ordered the rebuilding of stone bridges and bridges made of boats in order to improve the catastrophic economic situation in the empire. She fulfilled her religious duties and established at least one new fire-temple near the capital city.

The extraordinary thing is that all our sources seem to emphasize the positive qualities of this female king. None object to her because of her sex, nor do they reflect any controversies in her rise to the throne.

Too Good To Last

Her coins, of which she minted many, give us this progress

• Year 1 (top left) began just after the Sassanian New Year on 17 June 629 - 16 June 630.
• Year 2 (middle left) ran from 17 June 630 - 16 June 631.
• Year 3 (lower left) would have started on 17 June 631 ... and then she died.
  

Perhaps it was a natural death. Perhaps she was strangled by a dissident general, as Christian sources tell us. We just don't know.

THAT'S NOT THE END OF THE STORY

Bōrān may (or may not) have been followed on the throne by a man called Jushnas Dih, who (if he existed at all) lasted less than a month; then got the chop.

The next certain ruler was Bōrān's own younger sister, Azarmidokht (meaning 'daughter of the honoured one').

Yes, another woman.

Nobles and priests apparently thought the experiment with a female monarch was worth repeating. When she assumed the royal power, she proclaimed in a tougher tone than ever used by her sister:

Our way of conduct will be that of our father, Khusrau, the victorious one, and if anyone rebels against us, we will shed his blood.

On the left is one of her rare coins.

Do not adjust your computer: Azarmidokht is not a bearded lady; at least I don't think she is** -- though minted with her name, the coin depicts a bearded man, presumably her father (compare his crown with Khusrau's crown above).

Her reign is portrayed favourably, shedding light on all because of her remarkable beauty and intelligence. She was 'vigorous' and, in the little time granted her, built a fire-temple.

The only other story told about her is decidedly peculiar. One of the great men of Persia asked for her hand in marriage:

She wrote back, "Marriage to a queen is not permissible. I realize full well that your intention in what you are proposing is to satisfy your own [sexual] needs and lust with me. So come to me on such-and-such a night." Azarmidokht ordered the commander of her guard to lie in wait for him on the night they had agreed to meet together and then kill him. The commander of her guard carried out her orders...; and at her command, the corpse was dragged out by the feet and thrown down by the open space before the palace.

The trap arranged by Azarmidokht suggests a rather strong refusal to submit to any man. She would have no husband and no guardian, certainly not one who was not of royal blood. She clearly planned to rule alone. The concept of the royal and divine khvarrah, restricted to the descendants of Sāsān, was enough to block any attempt at usurpation of power. The fate of her would-be 'lover' was thus a political act.

A clever plan. But perhaps unwise.

The great man's son, Rustam, came with a mighty army to avenge his father. After just six months on the throne, Azarmidokht was raped, blinded, and then killed.

Five years later, in 636 CE, this Rustam was the Persian general who lost the battle of Qādisiyyah to the newly united Muslim Arabs. Trying to flee the battlefield, he was caught and beheaded by an Arab soldier.

Who says there is no justice?

The collapse of the Sassanian Empire followed hot on his heels.



* H. Emrani, "Like Father, Like Daughter...." at e-Sasanika 9 (2009). I have also made much use of A. Panaino, "Woman and Kingship..." in J.Wiesehöfer, P.Huyse (eds.) Eran ud Aneran (2006) 221-239.

** Prof. Emrani, however, does think that the beard is meant to emphasize that Azamidokht was not a woman but a king (p. 9); that would be rather, I imagine, in the mode of bearded Hatshepsut.

Illustrations:

All coins from Coins of the Sasanian Empire

Drawing comparing crowns of Khusrau II and Bōrān, from Emrani, at e-Sasanika 9 (2009), p. 11.

FOUR STONE HEARTH # 97

It's Anthropology Carnival Time!

This isn't really my kind of thing.

Anthropology stretches itself to cover everything and everyone from pre-pre-history right up to yesterday's news. I'm not used to writing about people who are alive ... and even kicking.

Being an archaeologist, I prefer my subjects long dead. And, if possible, buried by volcanic ash.

Fortunately, the beginning of summer brought news ghoulish enough to satisfy any archaeologist, however fussy. So, first, the blood and guts.

DEATH IN POMPEII

Greg Laden's Blog brought out the lethal thermal impact of pyroclastic surges on the people of Pompeii. He asks, How did the victims of the Plinean Eruption of Vesuvius die? The temperature was 250 to 300 degrees C, and the time of exposure was about 30 seconds or so:

Even at the most extreme edges of the flow of stuff out of the volcano, Pompeii, at the far edge of the mud and ash that came from the volcano's explosion, the heat was sufficient to instantly kill everyone, even those inside their homes.... They did not suffocate. They did not get blown apart by force. They did not die of gas poisoning. They simply cooked. Instantly.

More reality analysis than you may possibly want at Culture as Science - Science as Culture.

Of course, not every newsworthy death is buried in ash. Some are covered up by wicked conspiracies.

Who Stole King Tut's Crown Jewels? The Case of the Disappearing Royal Member.

Tutankhamen's mummy has been plagued by claims that his penis was stolen in order to cover up its small size.

Some scholars, we were told, believed that Tut had a hormonal disorder that causes underdeveloped genitalia. Thus, when his penis was found detached from the rest of him, it spread about the internet that the "penis was swapped sometime after his body was embalmed, suggesting a conspiracy to save him from embarrassment."

Sadly for conspiracy theorists (and headline writers), Jo Marchant of Decoding the Heavens, who had inadvertently launched the story, came out swinging: not only was the penis well-developed, she explains, but it indeed belongs to Tut ...

as it was attached to the body when the mummy was first unwrapped. It must have broken off in modern times, probably during an early autopsy.

Read her report of how the pseudo-story of That Tut conspiracy went viral.

Not yet done tutting about Tut?

There's still no rest for the worn and torn mummy.

King Tut's DNA is Western European

No sooner was his manhood restored than headlines screamed that Tut was of European descent: it seems his haplogroup is R1b, one of the most common Y-chromosome haplogroups in Europe, especially the United Kingdom.

So, was Tutankhamun Scottish (right)?

"On balance personally," says Kate Phizackerley of News from the Valley of the Kings, "I think the genetic evidence points against it."

Even if Tutankhamun's haplogroup is R1b that doesn't mean his paternal ancestors were R1b as well. They might have been a different haplogroup but have diverged from it by genetic mutation. At the least, the analysis would need to show that Tutankhamun couldn't be any other haplogroup, or at least that it would be statistically unlikely. Showing that R1b is possible is not the same as showing that other haplogroups are not possible.

AND SO...

Even if you believe that Tutankhamun and his ancestors had a haplogroup of R1b, would that make him European? In short, not necessarily and, I believe, once other factors are taken into account, almost certainly not.

Her own proposal is much more elegant ... and historically anchored.

Read the whole post at Was Tutankhamun European? (Considerations of Haplogroup)

Just as we can't get enough of Tut, it seems that not a week passes without a Neanderthal scoop either.

Steroid-fuelled Neanderthals

Rosemary Joyce at Ancient Bodies, Ancient Lives, neatly skewers the newspapers (and Discovery News) for sexing up reports which deal with the upper body musculature and asymmetry between the left and right arms of male Neanderthals:

Prehistoric man apparently boasted a rock-hard body, including an overdeveloped right arm that would make Popeye jealous.

... Simply put, the Neanderthal body was brimming with natural steroids.

Rather, the story itself appears to be "brimming with steroids".

But not anywhere near as much as the original article in Discovery News, that starts:

Remains of an early Neanderthal with a super strong arm suggest that Neanderthal fellows were heavily pumped up on male hormones, possessing a hormonal status unlike anything that exists in humans today

"All of which begs the question: how do we know about that rock-hard flesh, and those steroids fuelling it?

No surprise here: we don’t."

The vision of Neanderthal as a muscular Popeye on the steppes is based on study of a single arm bone that Discovery News specifies is a humerus. The method of sex determination is not cited in either article. In fact, female Neanderthals were strong, too, and more evenly muscular in both arms.

So much for gendering a humerus. Imagine what they could have done with a hip!

Hips Don't Lie!

Hop over to Anthropologist in the Attic for a report on a new technique to determine the sex of skeletal remains. A three-dimensional imaging technology now effectively quantifies the characteristics of the os coxa that differentiate males from females with far better results than any visual identification. This means that the sex of a body can be ascertained even if only a small fragment of the pelvis can be found. Clearly, this technique is not only useful for studying ancient remains but may have significant impacts in the wake of disasters and in the criminal justice system.


TAKE TWO TABLETS AND GO TO THE BRONZE AGE


First off, the sensational news of the first cuneiform tablet ever found in Jerusalem, the well-dubbed Jerusalem 1.

Several blogs have been closely following the story (Abnormal Interests [here, here, and here], RollstonEpigraphy.com, ServingTheWord).

The fragment of a Late Bronze Age cuneiform tablet (left) discovered on the Ophel, close to what may have been the acropolis of LBA Jerusalem, has just been published in the Israel Exploration Journal (E. Mazar et.al.).

The readable text consists of the left hand portions of three lines on the obverse and three lines of the reverse. No line has more than five readable or partially readable signs.

Obverse: 1. [ ]; 2. “You were…[ ]; 3. “a foundation/after for. […]; 4. “to do. […]; 5. [ ].
Reverse: 1. [ ]; 2. [ ]; 3. “they [ ]; 4. [ ];

Not much to be going on with, you would think. But, as the authors rightly say, “The main significance of this new find does not lie in what we can learn by reading the tablet, but in the historical and archaeological context of the tablet itself.”

Of course, within the Amarna corpus of tablets from Egypt, dating from the 14th century BCE, several cuneiform letters addressed to the pharoah were sent by a certain Abdi-Heba of Urusalimu (EA 285-290). So we already knew that there were trained scribes in Jerusalem during the Amarna Period (i.e., the reigns of the Egyptian Pharoahs Amenophis III and Akhenaten). The Jerusalem 1 tablet is special, however, because it was found in Jerusalem and appears, on mineralogical ground, to have been written there rather than sent in from elsewhere. So, it corroborates an LBA scribal apparatus in Jerusalem, arguably under royal aegis.

According to Dr. Mazar, the discovery provides “solid evidence of the importance of Jerusalem during the Late Bronze Age” and “lends weight to the importance that accrued to the city in later times, leading up to its conquest by King David in the 10th century B.C.E.”

[T]here is good reason to believe that the letter fragment does, in fact, come from a letter of a king of Jerusalem, mostly likely an archive copy of a letter from Jerusalem to Pharaoh.

Let the fireworks begin.

1. Is it a letter?

Not necessarily. It could be, for example, an epistolary text, a legal text, an administrative text, or a literary text. There are just too many unknowns and uncertainties.

2. Was Abdi-Heba a king?

Not really. Abdi-Heba describes himself as a 'soldier' rather than a 'king' and not even a 'mayor' of Jerusalem.

Behold, I am not a mayor; I am a soldier of the king, my lord. Behold, I am a friend (?) of the king and a tribute-bearer of the king. It was neither my father nor my mother, but the strong arm of the king that placed me in the house of my father. (EA 288:9-15)

Abdi-Heba repeatedly begs for a single unit of archers to defend Jerusalem, which will otherwise be lost to bandits and the treachery of other local rulers. It's interesting that the only known ruler of Jerusalem in the 14th century BCE was perhaps of Hurrian descent (his name means 'servant of Heba', a Hurrian goddess). He seems to have been a local mercenary leader or from a local family with a claim to power who considered himself a military commander, on par with mayors and village headmen.

Given that we have no idea of the extent of the settlement at the time (physical remains are scanty, to put it mildly), the claim that this letter (if a letter) comes from a 'king' and that Jerusalem was a 'major center' in this period is premature.

Claims and counter-claims will run and run and run .

Sounds from Silence

Much easier to swallow is a tablet recording a 'Hymn of Supplication', hummed on TheDigGirl blog as a classic example of contemporary artists being inspired by archaeological objects or ancient history:

Syrian musical scholar Ziad Ajjan composed eight poetry and musical pieces from the musical archaeological cuneiform tablet known as "Hymn of Supplication" H6 discovered in Ugarit in the early 20th century. Ajjan composed three musical pieces based on the musical notes in the tablet which dates back to 1400 BC, naming the pieces "Sunrise," "Sunset" and "Holiday in Ugarit." This marks the recording of the oldest music notation in the history of the world.

If you want to hear the actual hymns and not contemporary interpretations, you'll have to go back in time 30 years to a recording entitled Sounds from Silence -- songs produced from lyres modelled on examples excavated in southern Mesopotamia. The producer Bit Enki ('house of Enki,' the god of the sweet waters) is still selling copies of the original vinyl and CD on their website at Bella Roma Music.

My, is it already 30 years ago? A mere archaeological moment: I still have the original record in my music collection.


ENOUGH OF THE DUSTY PAST. WE HAVE MORE PRESSING MATTERS TO CONSIDER

Do Animals Keep Pets?

What is a pet and how would you define one? A recent study defines a pet as a member of another species that is being kept for an extended period of time for enjoyment. Although cross-genus animal-animal 'pets' are documented -- some gorillas and orangutans are known to have kept cats -- these are not judged to be true pet relationships since it only seems to occur in captive or semi-captive settings.

While it is impossible to define what a pet is from an animal standpoint, The Prancing Papio blog wonders if the adoption of an infant marmoset by wild capuchin monkeys nonetheless fits the bill.

Left: a young marmoset taking food (cracked palm nut) from its adoptive mother’s (capuchin) hand.

The marmoset was first observed clinging to an adult female capuchin and then watched for over a year. To all intents and purposes, it was socially integrated into the wild monkey group, travelling and feeding with the others.

True, these capuchins live in a site where food is provided daily. So, you could still argue that the capuchins are not real pet owners under the strictest definition.

Or, I suppose, you could wonder if humans only started making pets of animals once their own food supply was relatively secure....

Liberian Lady Rules the Roost

Well, it's little use observing wild animals while we're pushing them to extinction; is there?

Finally, some good news for our primate cousins. DNApes spreads the word that Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf has banned the exportation of wild animals and bush meat from Liberia.

A Foreign Ministry press statement issued here Monday says the ban shall remain in force pending the passage of a proposed legislation to be submitted to the national legislature for enactment. The statement said President Sirleaf is accordingly warning all those involved in the illegal exportation of bush meat and wild animals to desist with immediate effect or face the consequences.

DNApes now asks us all to send a nice note to her (info@emansion.gov.lr) on behalf of all Liberia’s monkeys and chimpanzees, who, like other primates throughout Africa, are threatened with extinction from unregulated trade and other human hazards.

Zenobia has just done so. Now, readers, it's your turn. Stop reading. Quick, send an email now!


Behavioural Economics Behaving Badly

Behavioural Economics is fashionable. Surely, it makes sense to understand how and why people behave irrationally, using elements from psychology to examine deviations from rational choice. On the Neuroanthropology.net, however, dlende writes about its limits -- and frets that it is being used is being used as an avoidance mechanism when traditional economic solutions would be better, though politically more difficult.

Does BE help in addressing the epidemic of obesity, for example? Surely, better information should lead to better consumer behaviour. If you can influence consumers through things like calorie labelling, the self-evident answer is to require restaurant chains to post the number of calories in their dishes. Done that! And it feels good; doesn't it? Unfortunately, studies show it doesn't work:

Obesity isn’t a result of a lack of information; instead, economists argue that rising levels of obesity can be traced to falling food prices, especially for unhealthy processed foods.

The real answer then may be to change the relative price of healthful and unhealthful food.

Read the whole post for lots more about why the pay-off from behavioural economic solutions is not that great.

Would You Repeat That? I Don't Understand

Mark Liberman on Language Log discusses an intriguing study showing that "Many English speakers cannot understand basic grammar":

The findings — which undermine the assumption that all speakers have a core ability to use grammatical cues — could have significant implications for education, communication and linguistic theory.

The experimental subjects were of two types: "High Academic Attainment" (basically graduate students) and "Low Academic Attainment" (at most 11 years of formal education: shelf-stackers, packers, assemblers, or clerical workers). The HAA subjects never made a mistake. You may or may not be surprised to learn that the LAA subject often got things wrong, and that their error rate varied systematically with the type of sentence.

Is this credible ... or could it indicate a dreaded "paper airplane effect"?

[A result], noted in a population of high-school-student subjects, was replicable; but observing one group of subjects more closely, we observed that a similar fraction spent the experiment surreptitiously launching paper airplanes and spitballs at one another.

Read the details to find out, and the follow-up, More on Basic Sentence Interpretation, which considers why passive sentences might be harder to understand than the active ones and whether the passive examples were basic (or natural) enough to test ‘core ability’.

We agree it’s WEIRD, but is it WEIRD enough?

When you divide experimental subjects into "High Academic Attainment" and "Low Academic Attainment", at least you're covering a potentially large part of humankind. Imagine, instead, restricting your data exclusively to the HAA's.

What kind of crazy, culturally bounded results would you expect?

Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic = ‘WEIRD’.

And that's what GregDowney on Neuroanthropology.net finds when he examines a remarkable review article that appeared in the latest issue of Behavioral and Brain Sciences:

‘The Weirdest People in the World?’ establishes that most behavioural science theory is built on research that examines only a very narrow sample of human variation (disproportionately US university undergraduates; more specifically, those in psychology classes) -- who are, in a word, WEIRD.

Equally distorting, research published in the top journals in six sub-disciplines of psychology relied on 68% of subjects from the US and fully 96% from ‘Western’ industrialized nations (European, North American, Australian or Israeli). Unsurprisingly, this skews our understanding of the empirical foundation for claims being made, either explicitly or implicitly, about human nature.

And we say that these patterns hold true around the world. They don't.

WEIRD subjects tend to be outliers on a range of measurable traits that do vary, including visual perception, sense of fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, and a host of other basic psychological traits.

"If you have one blockhead colleague who simply does not get that surveying his or her students in ‘Introduction to Psychology’ fails to provide instant access to ‘human nature,’ this is the article to pass along."

Read the whole thought-provoking post at Neuroanthropology.net.


THE WORLD'S ONLY REAL UNIVERSAL: HOMO LUDENS

Anti-Dutch Predictopus

I have a bone to pick with Paul, the octopus.

Holland is my adopted country so you will understand my dismay when Paul picked Spain to beat The Netherlands in the 2010 World Cup football final.

Paul's prescient picks -- 100% correct match predictions -- have propelled him to international fame in an aquarium in the German city of Oberhausen.

TV stations in Germany, Great Britain, Taiwan and elsewhere broadcast live pictures, complete with breathless commentary, of his final decision for the tournament. Millions watched as the world-famous octopus descended upon on a tank marked with a Spanish flag, sitting for only a few minutes before grabbing a mussel and devouring it, while completely ignoring the Dutch tank -- indicating a Spanish victory in the finals.

And it turned out to be right. The Spanish team won the World Cup.

"So, the mollusc wins again," writes Heresy Corner. "The cephalopod's reputation for oracular infallibility is maintained. Scientific rationalism wobbles. Richard Dawkins must be quaking in his smug atheistic boots. I know I am."

The wobbly Heresiarch wonders, "Is there - can there be - a scientific explanation?"

Chance may explain it, of course - though with every correct prediction it becomes more likely that something other than chance is involved. So what, other than the existence of a genuine oracular octopus, might that be?

In a word, voodoo.

If not voodoo, the simplest explanation is found in his Update #1 -- and I'm preening myself that I reached the same conclusion the moment the spineless octopus chose Spain over Holland.

Then I went to the BBC to look for tasty octopus recipes:

Octopus can be tough if not tenderised before cooking. The traditional way to tenderise the meat is to hurl it against rocks; an easier method is to simmer it for an hour.

I rather think Paul merits the traditional method; don't you?

On the subject of Dutch football, if you watched the World Cup final (or semi-final or quarter-final or any match played by the Dutch team for that matter), you would have noticed that the once-stolid Dutch had been transmuted into a riot of day-glo orange glitter.

The Orange Carnival

Dutch football fans don't just wear orange, they embrace it. They jazz up their orange jerseys with blinding orange pants and orange socks and orange face paint and orange wigs and funny orange hats.

You can't miss the Dutch fans. They do want to be seen. If you are Dutch you are loyal, you are stout, and you are unwavering. You wear orange.

Why orange?

It's a nod, of course, to the monarchy, the House of Orange. There has always been orange bunting displayed on Queen's Day (April 30th). But the orange carnival associated with sports is a much more recent phenomenon. As Martijn tells us on CLOSER (Anthropology of Muslims in Europe):

The orange carnival appeared to have emerged in the 1970s, in particular after the Dutch lost the World Cup final in 1974 from the Germans, which still serves as a national trauma. In 1988 ... it reached next level when everything that can be made orange was turned into orange and in the last years a new hype of making the street where you live or even whole areas orange.

He points to an interesting correlation between Orange Fever and the introduction of colour television to the Dutch market in 1974. Without that vivid spur, would the colour orange have made it as a national colour?

Read what Martijn has to say on Orange Fever: Notes on the World Cup, football, nationalism and Deep Play in the Netherlands.

You just wear something orange and you're part of the community.

Does orange truly transcend ethnic minority identities?

Right: Turkish flag in Orange by Turkish Dutchmen (Theocornelissen.sp.nl)

Bodies Out of Place

After winning the women's 800 meters at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics, sprinter Caster Semenya (on the left) returned to a hero's welcome in her native South Africa -- while critics charged that she should be disqualified for not being a woman at all: 'You could tell she was a man just by looking at her.'

Accordingly, the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF) ordered gender testing to determine whether Semnya was eligible to compete as a woman. In November 2009, they announced that she would be allowed to keep her gold medal, but did not say whether she could compete in future events, and refused to discuss gender testing.

Finally, just this month, the IAAF cleared Semenya to return to competition immediately, but again avoided details of the gender verification procedure.

This girl has been castigated from day one, based on what?

As the Linguistic Anthropology Roundup # 9, notes:

Sports officials are now able to examine athlete’s chromosomes, hormones, androgen receptors and the like, but they have not decided what any of that information means in a realm where athletes are classified as men or women.

It seems that [they], like many people in the world, are unprepared to deal with the problematic nature of normative gender binaries. Bodies that cannot be easily classified result in crisis.

How very true. Early this year, the International Olympics Committee recommended that gender ambiguity be treated as a medical issue, and that athletes with 'sexual disorder,' presumably including any body that cannot be easily classified, receive treatment.

I can hardly wait to see the results!


That's all for 4 Stone Hearth # 97. The next edition appears at The Prancing Papio on 4 August.



Illustrations:

Top left: plaster of paris cast of Pompeiian victim from Awesomestories.com

Official photo of the mummy of Tutankhamun taken at its discovery, via The Ancient Egypt site created by Jacques Kinnaer

King Tut Scottish? Credit Sandro Vannini at Heritage-Key.com

Paul, the octopus. Credit: Reuters

Dutch fans celebrate in Cape Town. Credit: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images

Caster Semenya at the IAAF World Championships in Athletics, August 2009, in Berlin. (Creative Commons photograph by José Sena Goulão/LUSA.)

All other photographs from or via the blogs cited.