Historical Historians

[dnewhous]

The digireads version of the Kings of Britain doesn't list a separate translator from Geoffrey of Monmouth.  This suggests that Geoffrey of Monmouth is the translator.  Which, if you believe in God, isn't a problem.  It's actually a little bit humourous.  It's not as flowery a translation as the Penguin Classics version.  If it weren't for the authenticity of Geoffrey of Monmouth's own translation, I'd recommend it. 

That's what funny about this and some real questions about the authenticity of historical sources come in.  What if the person sitting across from you is the source of the "manuscript?" 

Also, the dragon Mercury is also known as "Woden."  And Wednesday is named after him.

According to the wikipedia Woden = Odin.  Same with Britannica.

The jape about Lancelot getting eaten by Mercury wasn't that helpful.  I think the story and I'm sorry i haven't had time to read it is that Mercury who is Merlin eats the Green Knight.  That is offensive in that the Green Knight is like the guardian spirit of Britain.  Ever play Civilization II Gold with the fantasy realm version?  If your capital is taken a guardian spirit will appear giving you a reasonable chance of retaking it.  Mercury is welsh!

I do remember the significance of the Roger Lancelyn Green book.  "Sir Athur and his Knights of the Round Table" is considered the original title of the story because it is the original title of the story in English.  Remember Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written by JRR Tolkien first, which is pre WWII but not as early as Sir Arthur.

The trouble is that Hollywood keeps mining Le Morte d'Arthur, the earlier French titled book, for more of the story.  Especially Linet.   

Now I remember the key fact of History of the King of Britain which is extraordinary.  The first king of the Britons is named Brutus.  This can be confused with Julius Caesar.  The title king of the Britons does not appear with Brutus in Le Morte D'Arthur.

Yvain is another knight.  He is not Uther.  King Urien's son in the story of Perceval.

The original castle was at Carlisle.  That castle is south of Hadrian's Wall.

I see no real evidence Mercury ate anyone.

Edited June 4, 2021 by dnewhous

[caldrail]

Mallory's book, Le Morte d'Arthur, is considered as something of a gold standard in Arthurian mythos and much of modern story telling is derived from it, though there has been some significant diversion in tv and film in recent decades. You might be interested in this

Brutus of Troy - Wikipedia

[dnewhous]

I make a lot of errors.  Upon review, the castle that is "only a model" in Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail does not look like the landmark that is at the beginning of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1971).  If that's from the 7th century that's one heck of a build.  It looks medieval!

Winchester is mentioned in the History of the Britons.  Le Morte d'Arthur uses the term "Camelot" but I don't see where the two are connected.

Yvain mentions Carlisle Castle, it is right up against Hadrian's Wall and obviously the landmark of the movie Camelot.  Percevel calls Yvain King Urien's son.  So it looks like Arthur was mooching a Roman fort.

 

The only tourist attraction in Winchester is called the Great Hall.  There are castles in the area that might do for sight seeing.

 

Edited August 4, 2021 by dnewhous

[caldrail]

Camelot has been given in a large number of alternative spellings, but the upshot is that learned opinion says Camelot appears in the 12th century, long before Thomas Mallory standardised the place. It's origins are actually a little vague, but gradually became more defined.

[dnewhous]

The castle used in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1971) is gone.  That is a travesty.  That's the most popular king Arthur movie.  The most important part of history is preserving landmarks and its gone.

 

I forgot about the Travels of Marco Polo and I don't know if I ever knew about the Decameron, which does not appear to have been published until modern times.

Edited July 25, 2021 by dnewhous

[dnewhous]

It looks like Genghis Khan moved into the Forbidden City and took his title in Chinese.  He was the start of the Yuan dynasty.

I remember something else about history.  If you examine Greek and Egyptian history closely, 1174 BC is the year that everything changed.  Not exactly 1177 BC.  There are now more eras than ever in Egyptian history.  And I think that is the best year for making a division between the copper and the bronze age.  That would mean video games would influence historical analysis, Age of Empires, and I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with that.  When would be the iron age?  I don't know.

This is known as the Late Bronze Age Collapse or the Aegean Apocalypse.

I do remember the iron age was 4th century BC in Ohio.  That was a very advanced gifted program in elementary school.  I don't remember what the event trigger was.  I'm fairly certain it was in Athens, Greece.

The AS Klein translation of Yvain does not mention Carlisle castle!.  That would be a consistent translator with the Lancelot book.

The translated Y Goddodin poems have no mention of anyone or anything interesting, even if they are authentic.

The raw, unstranslated version of the Y Goddodin poems does mention Arthur in the preface.

Chalcolithic is the word for copper age.  There is a word on the wikipedia I haven't read in a long time.  "Mesolithic."  I swear when the instructor read that aloud in class I laughed like Butt Head everytime he said it.

Epipalaeolithic is the alternative name for mesolithic.

They've just now started researching Ubaid 0 culture, with the settlement at Tell el-'Oueili. 

Another historical enigma is the language of Abraham.  He is an Amorite.  But where is that in the literature?  That history is not impossibly old.  That isn't particularly controversial.  That he spoke Aramaic is controverial. 

Btw, fah to the naysayers.  The Passion of the Christ is spot on.

I was taught that the original king of Eridu was Alulim.  True, but that city is not the original settlement.

 

Hebrew looks like Sumerian in the Books of Enoch and Aramaic is supposed to similar to Akkadian, they are both semitic.  The oldest historical records in Sumeria appear to be written in Akkadian which is surprising. 

The only thing clear from Abraham's account in the bible is the city Zoar and oak trees.  I think I do remember being taught Abraham was an Amorite from Samara and not a jew from Uruk.  That, IIRC is the Christian version of Abraham, not the Jewish version. 

It makes the Hebrew language puzzling.  It means that Abraham spoke Aramaic if he's from further up north.

Also, I do remember Stonehenge's purpose, to end the universe peacefully!  It was built in about 8000BC and rebuilt 2500BC.  Or something like that.  It lasted so long it is hard to say.

Also, biblical Canaan is the Levant.  Not Africa south of the Numidian desert.

Also, the Sumerian\Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh does not have a deluge.  The Babylonian Enuma Elish, does.

These books are saying that the Britons are separate from the Saxons and the Angles.  Arthur, king of the Britons, would be based in Kent, not Essex.  The History of the Kings of Briton declares Athelstan the first King of the Angles.  This is not backed by The History of Britain.  There's a small list of the Kings of Kent.  The most significant figure of the Dark Ages that is not described, IIRC, is Egbert, the king of Kent.  That was the early power center before Essex became more important.

"As soon as they arrived there with all their forces, they fought with the Saxons, and made a grievous slaughter of them, to the number of six thousand; part of whom were drowned in the rivers, part fell by the hands of the Britons."

Geoffrey of Monmouth. The History of the Kings of Britain (p. 92). Neeland Media LLC. Kindle Edition.

The use of the word "slaughter" is so pervasive that it makes me wonder if it inspired heavy metal.

Arthur is descended from a Roman senator named Maximian and the daughter of Octavius Caesar, Julia.

The original line of the king of the Britons, descended from Aeneas, the nephew of Hector, was deposed by Julius Caesar.

The grandson of Aeneas is Brutus, considered first king of the Britons and the namesake of Great Britain.  Is Brutus the man from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar?

There is very little history of Silicon Valley and very few movies set there.  The Maltese Falcon and A View to a Kill.  Ah yes, Star Trek IV.  Soylent Green.  Jack the Ripper is apparently associated with the Whitechapel Murders. 

Bay Area Massacre?  Is that the Zodiac Killer?

The definitive image of Jack the Ripper is in Shanghai Knights (they travel to London), and the movie that tries to definitively peg the identity of Jack the Ripper is "From Hell."  He being he first person to answer that he is "from hell" when asked.  Also, of course, David St Hubbins and Derek Smalls want to do a concept album about Jack the Ripper called "Saucy Jack," which is what he called himself in the letters he wrote to Scotland Yard, I found that out in a documentary.

In a newer documentary Jack the Ripper is not Saucy Jack.  I remember seeing the letterheads on the History channel and they were signed alternately Jack the Ripper or Saucy Jack.  The original killing took place at the Ten Bells Pub, which is currently at 84 commercial street in London.  Time after Time comes closest to this grisly killing.

From Hell contends that Jack the Ripper was a very skilled medical practitioner, if not a surgeon.   He at least knew what surgeons used.  According to the documentary, Jack the Ripper: London's Most Notorious Killer, George Chapman is the killer.

Edited October 7, 2021 by dnewhous

[dnewhous]

A tricky thing with history is to remember that Hells Angels were WWI pilots.  The biker gang developed post WWII out of a misunderstanding.  There are movies about them.

[caldrail]

Also, I do remember Stonehenge's purpose, to end the universe peacefully!  It was built in about 8000BC and rebuilt 2500BC.  Or something like that.  It lasted so long it is hard to say.

It's wiser to look up the information about that site. It wasn't built in 8000BC, that was earliest sign of human activity in that place. The first phase of Stonehenge was approximately 3100BC.  It went out of use sometime around 1600-1900BC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge

[caldrail]

These books are saying that the Britons are separate from the Saxons and the Angles.  Arthur, king of the Britons, would be based in Kent, not Essex. 

Yes, Britons were either natives or gallic immigrants. The Germanic people started to settle during the late Roman empire and migrated in strength once the Romans had gone.

Wrong on both Kent and Essex - neither of these kingdoms will have Arthur listed. He never existed as king or a single individual. Arthur is an amalgam of iron age legends, Roman conquerors, dark age heroes, and medieval romances. 

[dnewhous]

On 1/3/2022 at 2:26 PM, caldrail said:

 

 

Yes, Britons were either natives or gallic immigrants. The Germanic people started to settle during the late Roman empire and migrated in strength once the Romans had gone.

Wrong on both Kent and Essex - neither of these kingdoms will have Arthur listed. He never existed as king or a single individual. Arthur is an amalgam of iron age legends, Roman conquerors, dark age heroes, and medieval romances. 

I mangled my post.  It looks like he was born in East Anglia and fostered in Kent.

[caldrail]

Not to us. The Welsh have been trying to present him as a national hero for a long time now, but claims by England and Scotland are not going to die away. After all, he was supposed to have been born at Tintagel, yes? That's Cornwall, southwest England (though admittedly under the native Britons at the supposed time so in a sense, Welsh). However, you can't pin the man down. As I said, he's an amalgam of heroic prototypes dating back to the Iron Age at least, so in an important sense more or less fictional.

[dnewhous]

Yes, Tintagel castle.  It looks like the current monarchy are the House of Kent, descended from the kings of Latium, having won the War of the Roses. 

I remember now in my freshman history textbook, the historical Arthur really was named Arthur and he was a bit of a dope.  The  main thing he was missing is that as king of the Britons, he didn't have to do any work keeping his country together, it was already unified.  Half the time he was fighting his own allies. 

Edited January 22, 2022 by dnewhous

[caldrail]

What historical Arthur? There were at least eight or nine of them and none were the mighty hero we love. As for being King of the Britons, that was the invention of Geoffery of Monmouth, whose rather imaginative Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain) was well and truly trampled on by critics back in the twelfth century never mind me. At the time he was supposed to have lived, Britain was in the Sub-Roman period, local tribes picking up the pieces after they had booted out the unwanted Roman administration and seceded, Saxon raiders and immigrants queuing up to claim land. And just so you know, England and Scotland were not unted until the Act of Union in 1707.

Gildas gives us a somewhat biased vision of Sub-Roman Britain, focusing on the warlords he thought of as barbaric and uncouth. No Arthur, though he hints of someone who had considerable status and reputation.

And the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle? Never mentions him. 

As for Her Majesty, her lineage is described here...

Ancestors of Queen Elizabeth II (geni.com)

[dnewhous]

There must be a primary source missing for Arthur.

In other news I just learned that the Japanese feudal rank between hatamoto and hizurami is gokenin, that's the typical feudal rank for a samurai, not to be confused with goshi, which was below hizurami.  I think that the emperor's own men were called something like kotegai (true warriors of light).  There are provinces sworn directly to the imperial palace in the Stanford Press's Meiji Restoration, designated "kamon."  If I'm not mistaken, a literal translation of hizurami is "bounty hunter."

In the samurai trilogy Miyamoto says he has learned the "Chuso" style.  First, what an odd reference to "Chosu" which it is not supposed to be.  Anyway, I think that's the kotogai fighting style.  That's not samurai.  It's been a long time since I have encountered that word.

Another Japense keyword is "kotetsu."  From my understanding a true samurai wields a kotetsu, not a katana, but I don't know the feudal rank that makes that distinction. 

Hizurami have the right of audience with the Shogun.

I'd hate to overintrepet, but I have another interpretation of the meiji restoration - the Shogun doesn't know how to set up an allied command.  Apparently, when the Shogun and the emperor clashed, the emperor won.  The Bakufu took its resources from the kanto plain, about 80,000 samurai.  But if it used its vassals, fudai and tozama, it should have learned how to win.  From what I've read, it's Aizu that opposed the emperor more than the Shogun.

Edited February 15, 2022 by dnewhous

[dnewhous]

Here's one of the most important historical points in the universe.  The emperor at Jesus birth was Octavian.  This is a scan from the contemporary english bible.

Edited February 21, 2022 by dnewhous