Tuesday, November 19, 2013

The Way the Mind Works

Our thoughts are with the people of Sardinia, who are suffering the after-effects of a cyclone and heavy rainfall, leading to flooding. Hope the death-toll doesn't get any higher.

Also with those in the US Midwest, recovering from the devastation caused by unseasonal tornadoes.

And still with the Philippines, where aid is starting to get through to some areas, and where the destruction of homes, loss of life, is almost beyond comprehension. (At least our government finally did the right thing and trebled the amount of aid).

And now - ramble..

The mind (or at least my mind) is a wondrously active thing. A bit like a grasshopper on speed.

I was reading a fanfic last Thursday and it had the phrase "he nodded his head". That promptly threw me out of the story as my mind went on a grammar rant.

"His head" is redundant.

"Unless you're referring to an ancient (probably mythical) biblical kingdom the only thing 'nod' applies to IS your head. You can't 'nod' anything else," I grumbled to myself.

Having thought that, my mind immediately jumped to thoughts of that kingdom. I remember reading something – might have been a book, might have be a scholarly article, can't remember exactly – which explored an Africa-centred view of the bible. It offered the theory that "The Kingdom of Nod" was actually the kingdom of Nok in what is now north-eastern Nigeria. It also speculated that the place that Noah might have lived would have been the area near Lake Chad. There were devastating floods in the Saharan region close to Lake Chad in early biblical times.

I thought about that and, fanfic now completely abandoned, whiffled off to see how far Lake Chad was from Israel – and more importantly how likely it was to have been within the Egyptian sphere of influence in Rameses time. I couldn't find a decent map online (there probably is one but google search can be a very blunt instrument at times). So I turned to my (now old, much used, and slightly shabby) copy of The Times Atlas of World History.

Well. It would be pushing it a bit, the distance is great, and while Egyptian influence (and colonisation) extended far beyond the limits of the unified kingdoms, I doubted it would have extended that far. To the edge of what is now the country of Chad, yes, but to the lake.. ?? There's always the chance, of course, that Sudanese traders went as far as Lake Chad. And they were well within the Egyptian orbit. Stories of a great flood could have been passed along, gradually growing in the telling, as these things do, to a world-embracing disaster.

But then I started thinking about the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is widely considered to be the source of the story of Noah, as it pre-dates that by some considerable time. Could a report from Lake Chad have wound up in Mesopotamia before the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt?? How much influence would the Egypt of that period have?? Does the Chad flood pre-date the Epic??

The bible is a little short on dates (and facts) concerning the Israelites in Egypt but archaeologists usually agree it was probably sometime between 1800BCE and 1400BCE. Research told me that the earliest versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh date at around 2150BCE. The Saharan floods took place sometime between 2420 and 2485BCE. Time enough for the tale to have been told and retold by traders and travellers, and stage-by-stage to have reached Mesopotamia. And then I hit links to the Horites – who were Kushites – who did indeed span the territory from Africa to Mesopotamia. Well, that helped with the possibilities. But then... wouldn't the Israelites have gained their knowledge of the story from the Egyptians rather than the Epic??

I started to compare the stories, to see which contained the most similarities, and whether it was likely that the tales of the Saharan floods could have been adapted and formed the basis of both the Epic and the Noah (there is no doubt that the Noah borrows extensively from the Epic). And I hit a major snag – there was no written language in Lake Chad, so no contemporary records exist. All written stories of it date to European colonial times. Any similarities between the stories will likely be because bible-traditional Christian colonists were transcribing oral accounts.

Frustrating.

Torn from my academic haze by this frustration I realised that, a) my back was aching from having been hunched over the keyboard, an atlas, six archaeology/ancient history books, and one bible concordance, for God knows how long, and b) time had run away from me and I had to be up for work in just over three-and-a-half hours.

Boy, was I a grumpy git at work on Friday.

I never went back to that fanfic, having completely lost interest. And I doubt I'll be inclined to check out any of the writer's other work. I may, however, return to the story of Lake Chad. I still need to check the Qu'ran for any references there might be.

The moral (if there is one) of this tale – fanfic writers, get your facts right, get your grammar right, get your spelling right. Because if you don't it's likely to be costing you readers. And if you don't have readers then what's the point of publishing your stuff online??


Ze

Posted by at

1 comment:

D said...

i'd be interested to find out more to this story! i would have left the fan fic too.

4:11 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)