The borderlands of history

by Ben Soton

 
The Far Edges of the Known World – A New History of the Ancient Past: Owen Rees: Bloomsbury Publishing London 2025; 384 pp; hbk: £25

The ancient world is often seen as a history of empires and the cataclysmic clashes between them. These empires include that of Egypt, Persia, the short-lived Macedonian Empire of Alexander the Great and, of course, Rome.  Owen Rees’s new book covers the many places on the edges of those empires as well as those gaps in-between.
The book is part of a recent tradition in historical literature, which focuses on trade and cultural exchange rather than simply that of kings, queens and battles, and it is divided into four sections; Pre-history, Egypt, Greece, Rome and Beyond the Classical World.   
The author makes extensive use of Greek and Roman historians such as Herodotus, Ovid and Tacitus as well as philosophers such as Socrates and Plato, who apparently went to Egypt to sell oil  – well a man cannot live by words alone. 
The most influential culture in the classical world was probably that of the Greece.  Ironically there was never a Greek empire as such; the Macedonian empire of Alexander the Great only lasted a few years and its successor states, Ptolemaic Egypt and the Syrian-based Seleucid empire did not actually include Greece. What we refer to as the Greek world was a collection of city states, centred in the Aegean, covering much of the Mediterranean and beyond.  
Meanwhile classical Greece is viewed by those on the right as the blueprint for the superiority of the West. Although Athens was, indeed, the first place to promote a limited form of democracy it was a hierarchical society based on slavery, the subjugation of women and a chauvinistic attitude to those outside its parameters.  
Those outside the Greek and later Roman world were referred to as “barbarians”; one such group being the Scythians, a nomadic people who inhabited much of what is now Russia and Ukraine. The author devotes a chapter to the Ukrainian city of Olbia; a place where Greeks and Scythians interacted. Rees points to shared cultural similarities; for example Scythians following the Greek cult of Dionysus as well numerous examples of inter-marriage.  As a result there were no clear boundaries between the two groups.  Meanwhile cultural definitions are often a result of elite manipulation; whilst the interactions between groups of people often take place on geographic peripheries and amongst the lower orders of society.  In other words the most important boundary between people is that of class and not culture. 
Today we live in a world still dominated by empires but there are large swathes of the world no longer under their domination.  People’s China, Democratic Korea, Cuba and parts of South America, to name but a few.  We are told by our masters that these people are inherently different from us, comparable to modern day barbarians. Is this really the case?
I am told basketball is a very popular sport in Democratic Korea. Baseball is a popular sport in Cuba; both sports originated in the USA.  Likewise football is a popular sport in China, having begun in Britain.  It would seem ordinary people have more in common with each other than the elites who seek to divide us.  Maybe this has always been the case?  

The first civilisation

 by Ben Soton

Between Two Rivers a History of Mesopotamia and the birth of History by Moudhy Al-Rashid. Hardback 336 pp, Hachette, London 2025 Hbk £25, Pbk £12.99

When we look at history, we tend to view things in terms of BC or AD; or before or after the birth of Christ.  Sometimes we need reminding that there is more recorded history covering the years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth than since.  To put this in perspective we are closer chronologically to the Roman conquest of Britain than Julius Caesar was to the earliest historical records. What we refer to as the “historical era” originated in Mesopotamia, the land between and around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers somewhere around the fourth millennia BC.  
It is to this period in ancient Mesopotamia that Moudhy Al-Rashid devotes her debut book Between Two Rivers a History of Mesopotamia and the birth of History.  The basis of her study is a discovery of a range of primary artefacts in 1920 which include; a clay drum, a mace head, a statue, school tablets, a brick and a cone. The author uses her in-depth knowledge combined with the study of the items to construct a period of what was probably the world’s first civilisation.
Much of the work is based on a study of cuneiform, probably the world’s first form of writing.  Cuneiform was used by the Sumerian. Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian empires.  Al-Rashid points out that writing was not invented by poets, authors, playwrights or even journalists. It was simply a means of recording grain transactions, inventories and rations.  In other words, without the need for bureaucrats to keep records there would be no Dickens, Shakespeare or for the that matter the New Worker. It is from these essentially mundane records that “history” emanates.   
What makes Mesopotamia special is that it was the world’s first region to develop agriculture. From agriculture came cities, trade, warfare and most important of all class society.  In early class society payment for work was given out in the form of rations rather than cash and a considerable amount of work was done by slaves. 
Although probably not a Marxist herself, Al-Rashid’s book confirms this view.  She goes on to point out that much of history is told from the point of view of those at the top of society with the rest of us often ignored.  
In her own words the author views the artefacts as a handshake with a long dead person from the past. Her knowledge of the very ancient world and its languages comes through in the book. Her work is well worth reading for anyone interested in the period that even the Romans would have considered as ancient history.          
          

Princes of Persia

by Ben Soton

Persians: The Age of The Great Kings by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones. Hardback:

Wildfire: London, 2022; 448pp; rrp £25.99.

From Classical Antiquity to the early Modern Period imperial dynasties have ruled over vast tracts of land that Westerners called the Persian Empire. The most famous was the Achaemenid Empire; which is the subject of the recent book by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Professor of Ancient History at Cardiff University. It lasted from the time of its founder Cyrus the Great in the sixth century BC to its eventual destruction at the hands the avenging Greek army of Alexander the Great in 330BC.
    Geographically it covered an area from Libya in the west to Pakistan in the East encompassing almost the entire Middle East, northern Greece and parts of central Asia. In its time it was the largest land empire the world had seem
    The book’s unique selling point is its use of Persian sources whereas previous studies were reliant on Greek texts in particular Herodotus and his work The Histories. For instance, Tom Holland’s book Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West almost exactly mirrors Herodotus; as well as being written from a largely Greek perspective. However, Llewellyn-Jones points out that the Greeks cannot be ignored as they were the first to record information in book form rather than in the form of poems and fables.
    When looking at ancient history there is always the danger of overlooking the elephant in the room – slavery. A whole chapter is devoted to the Kurtash; workers who were moved around the empire to carry out functions ranging from construction to childcare for the elite. Slavery is often overlooked in studies of the ancient world; although there is so far little evidence of slave revolts in the Achaemenid Empire. There were however numerous rebellions against Persian rule throughout the Empire’s existence; although these revolts should not be confused with modern national liberation movements
    According to the author, unlike other more recent Empires the Achaemenids did not impose Persian culture on those they ruled over. He makes comparisons with the Roman Empire and the British Empire in the nineteenth century. Interestingly he makes no mention of an even more modern empire that imposes its culture in the form of tenth-rate fast food restaurants across whole swathes of the planet.
    A significant part of the book is devoted to the Persian Court; whether powerful concubines, overbearing Queen Mothers or influential eunuchs. The fundamental weakness of the Achaemenid Empire was its lack of an orderly line of succession as was the case in European monarchies from the Medieval period. Instead, a successor would emerge from the reigning monarch’s children born from the royal harem; a system that continued in the much later Turkish Ottoman Empire. This inevitably led to instability with a power struggle taking place after the death of almost every monarch; an example being the struggle between the brothers Artaxerxes and Cyrus the Younger following the death of Darius II.
    If you have ever read poetry or eaten a kebab on the way home from a pub, or used sulphuric acid or eaten a Meze in a Greek or Turkish restaurant; these things along with the postal service and even the notion of Human Rights (with reference to the Cyrus cylinder) can be said to have originated in Persia. For these reasons the Achaemenid Empire is worth studying making this book worth reading.