The Countess of Castiglione and How France gained a World Empire

In 1810, Napoleon Bonaparte had managed to create a sort of West European Empire that would have generated a much different Europe, today, if it had lasted. 

History is supposed to be driven by gigantic and impersonal forces that govern the economy and the movements of nations. What happens, it is often said, happened because it had to. And yet, sometimes, we see that history is on the balance. We can imagine that just a little push on one or another direction could have changed the destiny of whole nations and empires. Of course, thinking of these tipping points is just an exercise in fiction; but it is a fascinating one. So, here is a pseudo-history of Europe that could have taken place if the Countess of Castiglione had not seduced the emperor of France, Napoleon III,  If you want to read what happened in reality, you can do that in the blog "Cassandra's Legacy"  in a post titled "Coal, Wars, and Beautiful Women." Here is, instead, the fiction. (don't take it for anything political, it is just that: fiction) (revised and modified in August 2020)


In 1858, some momentous events take place in Paris. It is said that Emperor Napoleon III is so influenced by his mistress, the Italian Countess of Castiglione, that he has promised to her to help the King of Piedmont, Vittorio Emanuele II, to carve out for himself a much larger reign than the North-Western corner of Italy where he reigns: the whole Italian peninsula. 

But a curious twist brings doom to the beautiful Countess. As she walks in Paris, she is hit by a falling tile blown by the wind. Taken to the Hôpital Général, she is pronounced dead on arrival. It is said that Napoleon III is devastated, not the same appears to be the case for Empress Eugénia, his wife.

The death of the Countess has momentous consequences. When Count Cavour attempts to have Napoleon III sign the treaty that they had agreed upon, he finds that he has changed his mind. More negotiations follow, but Napoleon III doesn't budge. In 1859, Cavour attempts to force the game: the Piedmontese army attacks Austria even without the French support. 

It is a disaster that repeats the outcome of previous attempts by Piedmont to push Austria out of the Northern Italian plains. But this time, it is way worse. Not only the Austrians hold their ground against the smaller Piedmontese forces, but an enraged Napoleon III declares war on Piedmont and annexes the regions of Nice and Savoy, North and West of the Alps. 

Defeated on both sides, the King of Piedmont, Vittorio Emanuele, abdicates, but it is too late. The Austrians don't stop their advance and the French cross the Alps to stop them to annex Piedmont completely. In the end, Vittorio Emanuele finds refuge in Sardinia. Piedmont is partitioned between Austria and France. The French flag is raised in Turin. 

in 1861, A desperate Vittorio Emanuele tries a last resort attempt to turn the tables. With the help of Great Britain, a military expedition led by an Italian adventurer, Giuseppe Garibaldi is launched against the Kingdom of Southern Italy. It is another big gamble that fails.

With the protection of the British navy, Garibaldi lands unopposed in Sicily. Then, he manages to soundly defeat the Neapolitan army and his men march North, nearly unopposed. But Napoleon III is outraged and reacts by sending a corps of 10,000 elite troops, the chasseurs, to Italy. The joint French and Neapolitan armies stop Garibaldi advance in the Southern tip of Italya. Garibaldi himself is wounded and captured. Transferred to the fortress of Gaeta, off the coast of Naples, he will end his life there, old and forgotten. With the disappearance of their leader, Garibaldi's troops melt away and the King of Naples, Francesco II, regains control of Sicily, mopping away the last resistance pockets. 

In the years that follow, the political situation in Italy remains unchanged. Austria and France agree to keep Britain away from the peninsula and to maintain its fragmentation in statelets, convenient for both. The North-Eastern region of Italy is increasingly Germanized, the rest of the peninsula is gradually becoming more and more French. Already in Piedmont the language most commonly spoken is French, and it gradually spreads south, where the Kingdom of Naples remains occupied by French troops. 

In the rest of Europe, the rising star is Prussia: a young state that commands the richest coal mines of Europe, in the Ruhr region, and that developed an efficient army with advanced artillery technologies. The plan of the Prussian government is to annex the statelets of German-speaking central Europe and create a strong German state, able to dominate Europe. 

In 1864, Prussia and Denmark clash in a territorial dispute known as the 2nd Schleswig war. It is a quick victory for Prussia at the Battle of Dybbøl. France tries to intervene to help Denmark, but it is too late and Napoleon III is caught unprepared. It is a lesson that he won't forget, though.

In 1866, Prussia turns on Austria-Hungary for a decisive war that will decide the fate of Central Europe. Austria's forces are easily beaten by the Prussians, but this time Napoleon III is not letting Prussia do what they want. As the Prussian troops are engaged on the Austrian front, the French occupy the Ruhr and its rich coal mines. The Prussians are enraged, but it is the Fait-Accompli.

In 1870, the two largest powers of Central Europe, Prussia and France, face each other in a series of battles that will decide the destiny of the continent. The French are badly defeated by the Prussians at Sedan, but a strong contingent from Piedmont and from the friendly Kingdom of Naples arrives in time to stop the Prussians from annihilating the French army. Napoleon III himself narrowly escapes capture, but he is saved by the Piedmontese cavalry. Eventually, the combined French armies manage to stop the Prussians. A treaty is signed and Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck agrees to cede the Ruhr to France. The French-Prussian agreement is the last political act of Napoleon III, who dies in 1873, handling the crown to his son, Napoleon IV.

Under the leadership of the new Emperor, France continues to encroach the Western Mediterranean region. The French had already taken Algeria in 1830, they occupy Tunisia in 1881 and Morocco in 1904. In 1911, France occupies unopposed the region called Libya. The Kingdom of Naples feebly protests about that, but it remains occupied by French troops and cannot mount an effective opposition. The Mediterranean is becoming more and more of a French lake. The British cannot stop the French expansion, and decide not to try. It is the start of the decline of the once powerful British empire, gradually overcome by the expanding French Empire.

In 1914, the Archduke of Austria Franz Ferdinand is assassinated in Serbia. That leads Austria to invade Serbia in an action that inflames the whole Balkan region. The French Empire intervenes with all its military might, rapidly defeating Austria and forcing all the parties involved to start negotiations. In the end, Austria is awarded most of the Balkans in exchange with the Austrians ceding the Northern Italian regions to France. By now, Italy is a French Peninsula. Only the peasant still speak Italian, all the elites speak French.

There follow some years of peace, but dark events are brewing. In 1922, Benito Mussolini leader of the Padanian Fascist Party, marches to the Milano, with his black shirts and seizes power proclaiming that the Northern Italian regions are now the "Republic of Padania". France is slow to react and Mussolini consolidates his power. In 1933, a young Austrian hothead, Adolf Hitler, leader of the Austrian Nazi party, is elected Chancellor of Austria. Later on, he will seize power exploiting the fire of the Reichstag of Vienna, whom he attributes to the Communists. The King of Austria is exiled and Hitler becomes the sole ruler of Austria.

In 1939; the Nazi Austrian regime allies with the fascist regime of Padania, forming a European "Axis." With the support of Prussia, still trying to dominate Europe, the Axis attacks the French-European empire. The attack is successful: Paris is occupied by the Prussian-Austrian troops, while Padania advances in France from the South. At the same time, the Padanian Armies invade Southern Italy,  occupying the whole Italy. They recall the  King of Sardinia, Vittorio Emanuele III, who was still claiming to be the King of Piedmont, who takes the crown of what's called now "Kingdom of Italy".

At this point, Hitler makes the wrong decision of attacking Russia and the Austro-Prussian-Italian troops are soundly defeated after a harsh Winter campaign. While the Austro-Prussian army retreats in disorder from the Russian front, the outremer French troops disembark in Normandy and force the Nazi armies back to Vienna in a pincer movement together with the Russian troops. French troops also disembark in Sicily and push Northward the Padanian troops that retreat in disarray. In 1945, the Russians enter in Vienna and Adolf Hitler commits suicide in his bunker, while Benito Mussolini is hanged in Milano while trying to escape away from Padania. Britain had remained neutral during these events, but at this point, the British crown is forced to find an agreement with France. Britain becomes a French protectorate and the French empire is re-established in Paris with Napoleon VI crowned Emperor of Europe in 1948.

In the 1950s, the Euro-Mediterranean Union (EMU) is formed, under the auspices of the Emperor of France, blending together all the nations of North Africa and Europe in an alliance for peace and prosperity. Today, everyone in Western Europe and Northern Africa speaks French. In Europe, only some barbarous islanders in the North-West keep speaking a barbarous language that's referred to as "Ingliss"

So beautiful it almost hurts..... what is in a human face?

How beautiful can a human face be? So much that it almost hurts - like this painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (La Ghirlandaia, 1874). Really, I set it up as the wallpaper of my PC and everytime I turn it on it almost makes me fall from my chair.

And yet, what is in a human face? What is that can make it so beautiful, and so strange. Think of it as if you were seeing a human being for the first time, as if you had landed on this planet after a travel of a hundred thousand light years, from the other side of the galaxy.

What are you seeing? What creature is this? Those eyes.... so strange, look at the way the iris is circled by a black border; look at the white around. No other creature on this planet has that. Why? Why does this creature want everyone to know in which direction she is looking?

And those two protuberances on the face So prominent; one we call "nose", the other we call "chin". What other creature on this planet has them? Can you find one? No, and yet this creature, this "human" has them. Why? What is their purpose?

The mouth, look at the mouth: so strange with those prominent lips. Again, which creature on this planet has anything like that? And it is so small... such a small mouth; so out of proportion with the size of this creature? What does she eat? Maybe blood? Is she a vampire? Or what is she?

Yes: human beings. What are they?

A Cli-Fi Story: Winter Solstice in Antarctica

Antarctica deglaciated and uplifted, as it could appear ten thousand years after the Great Warming of the 21st century (from global warming art). 


The text below is part of my cli-fi novel "Queen of Antarctica" that one of these days I might be able to publish, somewhere. The novel takes place in a remote future and it is based on the idea that, after the runaway climate change of the 21st century, the survivors managed to colonize the extreme North and the extreme South of the planet, including Antarctica. And here is how their remote descendants living in Antarctica would tell the story. Note that the story assumes a relatively warm Antarctica, but it reflects the peculiar conditions of a civilization living near the South Pole that would experience six months of light followed by six months of darkness.In this world, people would spend the dark winter in a sort of hibernation. For them, seeing the stars in the dark sky would be something special, worth celebrating. 

Children, come. Come here, because this is a special night. It is the night when the Moon is highest in the sky, and the night when the Moon starts to go down and, slowly, to let the sun come back, and give us light again after the long winter night. And we call this night the night of the winter solstice.

So, children, you have been sleeping through the long winter night, but now you are awake, and it is good that you are awake because this is a very special night. It is the night when we all wear heavy clothing and we go out to look at the stars! Yes, children, the sky is dark during the solstice night, and this night is darker than all the other nights of the year. So, we go out and we look at the stars, and at the moon, and at the planets above us. It is beautiful, and many of you have already seen it, and some of the youngest among you see the dark sky for the first time because they were too young to go out the last solstice.

But before we go outside to see the stars, children, it is the time for me to tell you a story. I'll tell you the story of the land where we live, that we call Antarctica; and of the city where we live, that we call just the city. And it is for me to tell you this story, children, because I am the oldest woman of the city and some say that for this reason I am a wise woman; and some call me witch because I know many things. And this may be true, though all that I know I learned from other wise women who came before me, just like you, children, are learning this story from me. And maybe, one day, when you'll be old as I am now, you'll be telling this story to the children who will be here because this is what has happened in our city for a long, long, time, since it was founded long, long ago.

So, children, listen to me. You know that the world was created when the Goddess separated the waters from the land, and then She created the Sun and the Moon, and she made the Sun so that it would shine light on the land during half of the year, and She made the Moon so that it would stay in the sky for the other half of the year. And it is the light of the Sun that makes grain grow and makes us live. And then, it is the time for the Moon to be alone in the sky, then the land rests, and the people of the city rest, all the creatures of Antarctica rest, ready for the new cycle to start, when the sun comes back, the snow melts, and grain grows again for us.

But, children, you must know that Antarctica has not been the same forever. And this is a story that I have to tell you, children, because it is an ancient story that comes from the time of the founders and that the wise women of the city have kept by telling it to one another for a long, long time. And the story says that long, long ago, Antarctica was not the same as it is today; no, it was colder. Much colder than it is today. And the land was covered in ice, by mountains of ice! So big and so tall were those mountains that you can't even imagine how big and how tall. But they say that the tip of these mountains of ice was as tall as the mountains you see today. So tall that and so big that nothing of what you see today was visible. The land where now our city stands was covered in ice and the grain fields around the city were covered in ice. Everything was covered in ice.

Long, long ago, when Antarctica was covered in ice, no one lived here. People lived far, far away, on the other side of the sea. And the lands in which they lived were not so hot as they are today, and people lived there. And people had built cities there, great cities with tall buildings. But those cities don't exist anymore and the people living there have died. It was because of something terrible that happened in those ancient times and that was what the founders called the Great Warming. Some say that it was the will of the Goddess that caused the world heat up so much that so many people died and they say that it was because people had become too proud and they were not paying to the Goddess the respect she deserved.

But the founders say otherwise and they say that it was a fault of the ancient who had done something that had caused the Great Warming without knowing what they were doing. The founders said that the ancient had found something underground, a dark stuff that they could burn as if it were wood, but that was not wood. They dug it out and they burned it to warm themselves, to cook, and to smelt metals. And this dark stuff was easy to find and easy to burn, so they burned a lot of it. And they burned so much of it that it poisoned the air and made it warmer. It was like when you warm yourself in a sealskin and it may be too warm for you if you do that during the summer. And this blanket made the world much hotter than it used to be, and it covered the whole world. And it covered Antarctica, too.

The founders say that the wise among the ancient understood what was happening and warned the others, but that the less wise among the ancient did not believe what the wise people were telling them and so they didn't want to stop burning that dark stuff, and that was perhaps how they offended the Goddess, as some people say. So they kept burning that dark stuff and the world became hotter. And then, the founders they say that something came out of the depth of the earth, something that made the air even hotter and did it faster, so fast and that could not be stopped, no matter what the ancient tried to do. And that was the Great Warming that some say was a punishment sent by the Goddess.

When the great blanket of ice that covered Antarctica felt the heat of the Great Warming, it started melting. And all this ice that melted went into the oceans as water, and the oceans rose. And the cities that had been on the coasts of the continents in the North were submerged, and the people who lived in those cities had to move inland, and they didn't have enough food to eat because the Great Warming had dried up much of the land, and many places were too hot for people to live. So, many of them died, many, many of them. And those who survived migrated to the Northern Lands, where they say that their descendants still live today, although it is so far away from us that nobody has been there for a long, long time.

Here, in Antarctica, when the ice melted, much of it crashed into the sea very fast, because the great ice sheets slid over the water under them, and they moved very rapidly and, soon, there were great stretches of land in Antarctica that were free of ice. But there was nobody living in there because nobody had ever lived in Antarctica up to then. It was at that time that the founders came. They came from the North, they were some of those who had survived. They came by boat, and it was a difficult trip for them because the currents that circle around Antarctica were strong and dangerous at that time and they are still strong and dangerous today. But they crossed the Antarctic Ocean and they landed in the land that we call the Peninsula, even though it is an island, because at that time it was connected to the mainland of Antarctica.

The founders came, and they came to Antarctica to settle. They were wise and learned, they brought tools and machines that today we don't know anymore how to make, but so many years have passed and perhaps we don't need to make those tools and those machines anymore. And they brought animals with them that we don't have anymore because they died and so still today Antarctica has no other animals than the birds who flew here by themselves; and the creatures who swam here by themselves, seals and iguanas, and others. It was a difficult time for the founders because the land was bare, there were no plants and no animals, and the sea was growing in height as the ice kept melting. But the founders were resourceful and they had brought seeds with them, and they sowed grain, and they planted trees on the land left free by the ice.

In time, there was no more ice on the land of Antarctica and much of the land was submerged and under the sea. But they also say that, slowly, the land rose, little by little the waters receded. It took many centuries, millennia, and the land is still rising, but much more slowly by now, so that Antarctica is now the way we know it; without ice, and with its coasts that fall rapidly into the sea.

And while the ice was receding, the founders moved inland and they built cities. And they built the city in which we live today. We live in this city and we remember the old times, and we remember of the founders, and we remember the things that happened so long ago. And some say that, one day, the ice will return; and some say that in the mountains, something is now happening that never happened before; and it is that when summer is at its height, there still remains a little snow on top of the mountains. And some say that the snow will grow and it will become ice. And that, one day, Antarctica will be covered with ice again. But that will take a long, long time, longer that we can say, longer than we can ever imagine. If that happens, then the people of the cities of Antarctica will have to move to somewhere else, because things always change and as the founders came here, so long ago, we can go back to where they came from, if that will be necessary.

But now, children, it is time to go. It is the solstice night, and you'll come with me and we'll go outside; to see the stars. The stars that you never see during the summer, the stars that come out when we are all sleeping during the winter, the stars that we see together on the night of the solstice. And you'll see the moon shining bright, and bright stars that the ancient told us are not stars but are called planets. And you'll see how beautiful is the dark sky, how beautiful is the moon, and how beautiful are the planets! Then, children, you'll go back inside, and you'll be warm and comfortable in the city until the next cycle starts and the sun comes up again, and this is the cycle that keeps us alive, and it has been going on like that for a long, long time, and it will keep going like that for a long long time. And you'll grow in this city, children, you'll become adults, and then you'll become old, and then you'll go dreaming underground. And then you'll become grain, and then you'll become people again. And that's the great cycle that was created by the Goddess, as it has been, as it is, and as it will be for a long, long time to come. May the Goddess bless you, children! And now come with me, to see the stars!

Money and Prostitution in the ancient world: the Biblical story of Tamar and Judah

Horace Vermet's interpretation of the biblical story of Tamar seducing her father in law, Judah. Practically all modern painters have shown the seduction scene as taking place somewhere in the desert or in the middle of nowhere. But they were missing the point of a story rich of hidden meanings and that may tell us much about the role of money in the life of the past, and in our times. 

Have you ever thought about how a world without money could be? Today, it looks impossible, but there have been times, in the ancient past, when money just didn't exist - it had not been invented yet. Surely, life must have been very different in those times and an interesting story that seems to come from that age is the one that we can read in the Bible about how Tamar seduced her father in law, Judah, to force him to obey the Levirate law. The story says that Tamar met Judah as he was traveling in the city of Enaim. She was wearing a veil, so that he didn't recognize her, and she convinced him to send her a goat in exchange for her sleeping with him. As pledge, he left with her his "staff, seal, and cord." When, later on, Judah sent the goat to Enaim, she was nowhere to be found. Months later, Tamar was found to be pregnant and Judah ordered to put her to death on the sin of harlotry. But Tamar could produce Judah's pledge, the staff, seal, and cord, showing that he was the father of the child (actually, twins). According to the Levirate law, these children were legitimate, since Judah had refused to give to Tamar as husband his third son, after that the first two had died. So, one of Tamar's sons was the ancestor of King David and, later on, of Jesus of Nazareth.

Independently of whether you are a believer or not, you can't avoid feeling the fascination of this story that has generated a large number of comments; often centered on how it could be that the ancestry of Jesus can be found in a woman whose behavior was at least questionable. Other interpretations have been centered on understanding the historical roots of the story, generating dozens of learned papers in the scientific literature. Here, however, I'll focus on the "monetary" elements of the story.

At first sight, it seems that we have to understand the story as implying that money - intended as currency - didn't exist at that time. Otherwise, how could it be that Judah accepted to engage in a transaction that involved that kind of personal pledge? The way things are, today, the customer of a prostitute pays in cash, the transaction leaves no traces, and that's the quintessential kind of cash transaction. So, how could prostitutes - whose job is said to be "the oldest profession" - exist before money had been invented?

However, if we examine the question in more detail, it is clear that the monetary elements of the story are not so simple as they appear. First of all, what do we know about prostitution in those times? The story is supposed to take place around mid-first millennium BCE and there is a vast literature on prostitution at that time (see e.g Astour 1966 and Morris, 2008). It is clear that there existed prostitutes in the Middle Eastern region at that time, people whom we would describe today as "sex workers," providing sexual services in exchange for a compensation. In many cases, however, it seems that these sex workers were associated to temples, and if female they were referred to as "hierodules." There are no "cultic" implications in this term; in the sense that temple prostitutes would perform religious rites or services. It meant simply that they performed their job as one of the many services provided by temples. Why was  that? Mainly because of the kind of currency used at that time.

About money, at the time of Judah and Tamar several metal-based media of exchange had been available already for a long time (Powell 1996). The main currency was based on silver in chunks of variable size, while standardized coins were available, although probably not common. Now, if currency is in the form of silver chunks of variable weight, then every transaction requires weighing the silver. As a guarantee of honest weighing, an intermediary would have been normally needed, and that was surely a service that the temples could provide. Temples, indeed, were not just religious institutions but acted as corporations, warehouses, and commercial centers (Sterba 1976). So, it is not surprising that they provided also sexual services to their customers; quite possibly, they would pay the temple rather than the prostitute herself. The Church of England did something similar in Medieval times (Karras 1996). In later times, the diffusion of cash made these services unnecessary and, therefore, the temples as service providers disappeared.

We even have some idea of the prices of prostitution at the times of Tamar and Judah, from an Old Babylonian text reported by Morris (2006).

"When I am standing by the wall, it is one lamb.
When I am bowing down, it is one and a half shekels"

In terms of silver, "one and a half shekel" correspond to 12.5 grams, considering that one shekel makes 8.33 g (Powell, 1996). This is about the weight of a single modern silver coin; for instance the U.S. silver half dollar. At the current silver prices (ca. 1.5 $/g) a shekel and a half correspond to $19. However, silver was much less common in ancient times and Powell (1996) remarks about a shekel that "even this small amount of silver constituted about a month's pay for labor throughout a large part of ancient Mesopotamian history."  One shekel of silver seemed also to correspond to the price of approximately one lamb or one goat according with some data we have about ancient Egypt (reshafim.org). It is clear that, if these were the prices, peasants and workers could hardly afford the services of a prostitute. But that wasn't the case of Judah, likely a wealthy landowner, and he could afford to pay the equivalent of a goat for the deal; finding it nothing unusual. After all, no one in the story seems to find strange that Judah was sending one of his friends with a goat as payment for a prostitute.

So, we are back to the first question: why didn't the transaction between Judah and Tamar involve currency? Is it possible that Judah wouldn't have carried even at least a little silver with him in his travel? If not for a prostitute, he would have needed it for food and lodging. Of course, there may have been reasons we can't easily understand today. But I would like to propose an explanation based on the fact that Judah understood very well that the woman he met in Enaim was not a prostitute. And that, even if he had silver with him, he didn't consider appropriate to use it for that occasion.

The key element of the story, here, is Tamar's veil. The question is, why should a prostitute veil herself? In ancient times, just as in modern ones, the veil is almost always a sign that a woman is married, or anyway unavailable for marriage. And not just that; according to Michael Astur (1966), a Babylonian hierodule was strictly forbidden from wearing a veil and harshly punished if she did. So, how could Judah mistake a veiled woman for a prostitute? Astour, here, goes through a truly acrobatic leap of logic, noting first that a woman could abandon her hierodule status and marry and, in this case, she was allowed to wear a veil. Then, assuming that Tamar had been a hierodule before marrying, her wearing a veil could be "a privilege evidently extended into widowhood." Even if we were to agree on this perilous chain of assumptions, the explanation still makes no sense. How could Judah know that the veiled woman he had met was a former prostitute when her aspect, instead, was that of a married woman?

So, we can imagine that Judah understood perfectly well that the woman he met in Enaim was not a prostitute; but that the circumstances made it possible to have a sexual encounter with her; something akin to what we call today an "affair" or, maybe, a "one night stand". We know that the meeting of Judah and Tamar took place in correspondence with a festival related to the shearing of sheep. We don't know what were the uses of festivals in the town of Enaim at that time but, still, sheep are normally sheared at the beginning of spring, and that is also the time of some typical fertility festivities that in our times we call "carnival". In these festivities, masks could be worn, and may be worn even today, allowing wearers a certain degree of anonymity, and hence of sexual license. In the case of Tamar and Judah, it may well be that the veiled woman would have found offensive to be paid in silver currency, like a prostitute. But she would maybe have accepted a gift in the form of a goat. Surely, she asked Judah a certain degree of commitment in the affair; not just a monetary payment. Hence the requirement of  his staff, seal, and cord, something that a normal prostitute would never require from a customer.

Then, why does the Bible insist that Tamar was a prostitute? Well, in ancient times, for a man to engage in an affair with a married woman was not only morally condemned, but also legally sanctioned. And Judah had done exactly that while, at the same time, leaving to the woman the means to identify him if she wanted. So, it is understandable that Judah was worried about the possible consequences of what he had done and that he wanted back his seal, staff, and cord, as soon as possible. At that time, frequenting a prostitute doesn't seem to have been under the same kind of moral blame that is typical of our times. Hence, Judah may have invented the story of the "prostitute" to justify sending a goat to Enaim. That explains the surprise of the people of Enaim when asked about a "temple prostitute" that - they said - had never been there. It was true, she was not a prostitute.

This story tells us a lot about how the availability of a certain kind of currency affected people's habits. There is no doubt that the invention of coinage - or "cash" - around the 7th century BCE, generated the possibility of commercial exchanges that would lave no traces; hence making possible many activities that would be considered illegal, then as today, including that of a certain kind of prostitution. In our times, most Western countries seem to be engaged in a war against cash - trying to replace it with electronic means of payment. The idea is to avoid exactly the anonymity that makes cash so useful for illegal transactions. So, in a world without cash, most scams, thefts, and the like have moved to the internet. But how about the world's "oldest profession?" Will we return to temple prostitutes, as they were common at the time of Tamar and Judah? Hard to say, but never underestimate people's creativity when it is a question of engaging in something illegal.



References

Astour, Michael, Journal of Biblical Literature, 85,2 (1966) 185-196.

Karras, Ruth Mazo. Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996

Lipiński, Edward, Biblical Archeological Society, 2014. http://members.bib-arch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=40&Issue=1&ArticleID=10

Morris, Silver, Temple/Sacred Prostitution in Ancient Mesopotamia Revisited: Religion in the Economy." Ugarit Forschungen, 38, 2006 (published 2008), 631-63.

Powell, Marvin A, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
Vol. 39, No. 3, Money in the Orient (1996), pp. 224-242

Sterba, Richard L. A.  The Organization and Management of the Temple Corporations in Ancient Mesopotamia, The Academy of Management Review, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Jul., 1976), pp. 16-26

Inanna and Ebih: a report of an ancient ecological catastrophe?

Ugo Bardi

Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra – Università di Firenze

Polo Scientifico di Sesto Fiorentino,

Sesto Fiorentino (Fi) via della Lastruccia 3, 50019, Italy

ugo.bardi@unifi.it

Abstract

“Inanna and Ebih” is the modern title of a text written by the Sumerian poet Enheduanna around the second half of the third millennium BCE. It describes the conflict between the Goddess Inanna and the mountain called Ebih, which ends with the destruction of the latter. I suggest that the poem may be interpreted as the result of the way the ancient perceived what we call today an “ecological catastrophe,” that is the result of overgrazing and deforestation of a fragile mountain environment.

1. Introduction

The “Inanna and Ebih” poem was composed around 2300 BCE by the Sumerian poetess Enheduanna and it was rediscovered in the 20^th Century (1)⁠. The story told in the poem can be summarized in a few lines. We read first that the Goddess Inanna is preparing to do battle against the mountain "Ebih," because the mountain “showed her no respect”. Before attacking, Inanna goes to see the God An, whom she calls “father,” apparently to ask for his help. An, however, is perplexed and Inanna decides to fight alone; eventually managing to triumph over the mountain. 

This story must have been well known in Sumerian times; so much that several copies of it have arrived to us, written in cuneiform on clay tablets. So, its meaning must have been clear for the people of ancient times who read it - or were told it. They must have found the story interesting enough that scribes kept copying it many times, apparently also as a standard exercise for young scribes (2)⁠. 

However, in our times, "Inanna and Ebih" is hard to classify as a poem. Its message, the characters, their conflict, and the very fact of a God battling a mountain appear totally alien to our modern feelings. As a story, it is far away from all the modern canons of what we define as “literature” or “poetry.”

The present paper adds some considerations to the understanding of the story of Inanna and Ebih. It is based on the concept that the ancient faced the same physical problems as we do, for instance soil erosion, deforestation, and the like. However, their way to see and describe these problems was much different than the modern ones. So, it may be that the story we are considering describes an ancient ecological catastrophe, the destruction of a forest ecosystem, told in a form that is not easy for us to recognize but that appears clear, once understood. The story also may be an echo of a conflict still existing in modern times: the need to preserve natural environments against the attempt of overexploiting them.

The author does not claim to be able to read Sumerian and the present discussion is based on the versions of the story available in modern languages; that is on the one by Betty De Shong Meador (3)⁠, the one available in the electronic corpus of Sumerian Literature (4)⁠, the version in French by Attinger (5)⁠, and the Italian one by Pettinato (6)⁠. These translations were found to differ in some details, but the overall content was the same.

2. Inanna and Ebih: interpreting the myth

There are several ways to interpret ancient myths. Perhaps the best known one is the “comparative” method, pioneered, among others, by Claude Levi-Strauss (7)⁠. It consists in finding common elements among different myths; as they can be found in different cultures and different ages. These common elements evidence the basic structure of the myth and help understand its general meaning, framing it in its specific context.

In the case of "Inanna and Ebih", we could first look for stories involving Gods engaged in fighting mountains, but such a plot appears to be very rare. A similar plot is the Sumerian text referred to as “Lugal-e,” from the first term it begins with (8)⁠. It goes back to times close to those of Enheduanna, but it is probably later. In Lugal-e, we are told of the divine hero, Ninurta, fighting a demon called “Asag” that turns out to be a “pile of stones”, perhaps to be identified as a mountain with that name. Karahashi has discussed this myth explicitly in comparison with that of Inanna and Ebih, finding several points in common, especially in the terminology used. (8)⁠

Another myth showing some structural similarities is the Greek myth of the Chimera. In this case, the hero is Bellerophon, semi-divine as the son of the God Poseidon and, as a monster, the Chimera has some Chthonic elements, especially in its fiery breath that may lead to identify it with a mountain. Both Pliny the Elder in his “Natural History” and Maurus Servius Honoratus in his commentary to Virgil's Aeneid state that the Chimera has to be intended as a representation of a volcano. We also find a similar interpretation in Plutarch's “Moralia” (3.16.9) where we are told of how Bellerophon cut away a section of a mountain called “Chimera” which was producing a nasty reflection on the plain; which, in turn, dried up the crops. In an earlier work (9)⁠, the author of the present paper proposed that the sources of the myth of the Chimera is to be found in ancient East Asian mythology. It is not impossible that one of these early sources could have been the story of Inanna and Ebih.

Apart from these ancient myths, mountainous monsters are rare in the world's lore. Some mountains were certainly important in religious terms, such as Mount Olympus for the ancient Greek and Mount Fuji in Japan, up to relatively recent times. Neither, however, were deified or given the role given to Ebih in the story we are discussing here. We can find occasional stone monsters in modern fiction; for instance in The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien (1937), we can read the description of stone monsters hurling gigantic boulders against each other. Other fantasy chthonic monsters appear in environments such as modern role playing games. On the whole, however, we can say that a plot describable as “God/hero fights mountain” is very rare both in ancient and in modern lore. Hence, it is nearly impossible to use it as a basis for the comparative method of interpretation of the myth of Inanna and Ebih.

At this point, we could attempt to classify the myth of Inanna and Ebih as an example of the generic theme of a shining hero fighting an ugly monster. There are plenty of ancient and modern myths based on this idea; however, such an interpretation misses some of the elements that make the slaying of Ebih so puzzling. Why is the monster a mountain? Why does it enrage Inanna so much? What are the reasons of Inanna's quarrel with the other Gods? Clearly, there is something more in this story than in the traditional hero/monster conflict.

A different line of interpretations of the myth is reported by Delnero (2)⁠. It is based on the idea that the story is, actually, a representation of the conflict existing at the time of the author, Enheduanna, between the Akkadic and the Sumerian elements of the Mesopotamian civilization. It is known that such a conflict existed and other poems by Enheduanna may refer to it. For instance, in “nin-me-sarra” (Lady of bright powers) Enheduanna describes an insurrection that leads to her being chased away from her temple. The interpretation reported by Meador (p. 181) is that the insurgents were led by a man named Lugalanne, or Lugalanna, possibly of Sumerian ethnical origin, against the Akkadian ruler of the time, Naram-Sin, Enheduanna's nephew (3)⁠. 

There is clearly something in these interpretations and the violence that pervades Enheduanna's texts may well be a reflection of the violence that characterized her times. However, there remains the problem that “Inanna and Ebih” is so abstract in the characterization of its protagonists that, if it really describes a local conflict of Enheduanna's times, it is not clear which side should be identified with which element of the myth. Maybe this interpretation was clear to the ancient Sumerians, but that may be reasonably doubted.

Meador (3) provides a deeper interpretation of the story, seeing the poem as an early version of the Biblical myth of the Garden of Eden; with Inanna as the Sumerian equivalent of Eve/Lilith. Whereas, in the Bible, Eve is punished for her action, in the Sumerian myth Inanna takes the initiative and refuses to submit to the father-God; destroying Eden in the process. Meador also sees the story as a reflection of an ancient conflict between a female dominated pantheon, with Inanna in the role of the Mother Goddess, and an emerging male dominated pantheon, with An as a fatherly figure, ruling the other gods. This conflict is evident in several other Sumerian and Akkadian mythological stories where, for instance, Inanna is pitted against her brother Gilgamesh. 

This is a very interesting interpretation as it implies that “Inanna and Ebih” is related to even more ancient myths, perhaps going back to pre-literate times. This seems to be hinted in the text, when Inanna is said (in Meador's translation) to “wear the robes of the old, old Gods” (3)⁠. Attinger (5)⁠ and Pettinato (6)⁠ explicitly name these "old Gods" as “Enul and Enŝar” who may be, indeed, Gods of a more ancient age (10)⁠ (p. 53). However, even this way of seeing the myth does not explain the meaning of some elements; for instance, if this is the story of a conflict between a mother Goddess and a father God, what is exactly the role of the mountain Ebih?

A different way to look at this myth is the “Euhemeristic” or “rationalistic” way, consisting in explaining the myth in terms of natural phenomena. This way of interpreting ancient myths was more popular in the past than it is today, but it never went out of fashion. However, modern scholars tend to be much more cautious in explaining (some could say, “explaining away”) the elements of complex stories into banal physical phenomena. When Servius said that the Chimera was a volcano, he may have meant that the ancient were so naïve to mistake a volcano for a lion, but that, of course, is unlikely, to say the least. Rather, the ancient were facing the same physical phenomena as we do and, for them, describing a thunderstorm in terms of actions performed by a God named Zeus was a way to make it consistent with their cultural and mental tools. We do the same in modern times when we ascribe certain events to abstract and perhaps supernatural entities whose existence can be reasonably doubted (e.g. “the free market”).

Regarding Sumerian/Akkadian myths, naturalistic explanations have been proposed by Jacobsen (11)⁠, but not specifically for the story of Inanna and Ebih. However, if we examine the story in light of a possible rationalistic interpretation, we immediately see how the destruction of the mountain hints to an ecological catastrophe caused by deforestation and overgrazing.

In the myth, the Ebih mountain is described as a luxuriant place: fruits hang in its flourishing gardens. It has magnificent trees; lions, wild bulls and deer are abundant, just as wild bulls and grass. Then, we see Inanna attacking the mountain with fire and with a rain of rocks. In another of Enheduanna's poems, translated by Meador as “Lady of Largest Heart” (3)⁠ we read some lines that may refer to Inanna's fight against Ebih:

She crushes the mountain to garbage,

scattering the trash from dawn to dark,

with mighty stones she pelts,

and the mountain,

like a clay pot

crumbles

with her might

she melts the mountain

into a vat of sheepfat.

It takes little imagination to see that the poem could well be referring here to the degradation of the soil on the slopes of a mountain, turned into mud slipping downhill. Mountain terrains are especially sensitive to soil erosion and the problem is especially severe in hot climates subjected to episodes of heavy rain interspersed with dry period, as it is the case of the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern climate.

Mesopotamia is a flat land, but its inhabitants briskly traded wood and other forest commodities with mountainous areas. Today, most of the mountain ranges of Northern Africa and Middle East are degraded and eroded in various degrees. But that was not the case in ancient times and it will suffice to note how the mountains of Lebanon were a source of timber for ancient Sumerians (as recorded in the myth of Gilgamesh and Enkidu), whereas in modern times these regions are nearly completely deforested and eroded (12)⁠. From the available data (13)⁠, it appears clear that the mountains of the Zagros region, which are probably where the “Inanna and Ebih” refers to, were still largely forested in Sumerian times. But it is also clear that these mountains were already being deforested at that time; a slow process that has led to the present condition of serious environmental degradation (14)⁠.

The ancient knew about the problem of soil degradation. McNeill and Viniwarter (15) summarized several elements of the question, reporting that already in 2000 BCE, that is at a time not far from that of Enheduanna, farmers in the Middle East had already developed ways to fight soil erosion. They also report how Roman writers, such as Varro, had a keen interest in soil quality and on the need of avoiding erosion. It is also well known how Plato, in his "Critias" (4th century BCE) describes the erosion and the degradation of the mountains of Greece. An interesting pre-industrial document on this issue was written by Matteo Biffi Tolomei around the end of the 18^th Century (16)⁠. It tells of the attempt to maintain the forest cover of the Appennini mountains in Tuscany, Italy, and of how the attempt failed after much debate among those who defined themselves the “modern” party (favoring the cutting of the trees) and the “old” party (favoring, instead, to keep the forest cover). This conflict of a few centuries ago is not framed in religious terms, but, in it, we may perhaps see a reflection of the much older conflict of Sumerian time that may be reflected in the story of Inanna and Ebih.

3. Conclusion: religion as a way to interpret the world

Religion in Sumerian times was certainly something very different than the way we intend it nowadays. However, certain elements of the concept of religion are common to all its forms (see e.g. Thorkild Jacobsen (11)⁠ for an exhaustive account of the characteristics and of the historical development of the Sumerian religious view of the world). A religious view of the world may see beyond the simple, short term advantage of an action (cutting trees), to note the long terms disadvantages (soil erosion). Today, we may see this kind of approach in the recent papal encyclical on climate change (17)⁠ and the Islamic declaration on global climate change (18)⁠. That may have been the point also of the history of Inanna “punishing” the mountain named Ebih, something that may be interpreted as destroying the humans who weren't been careful enough to maintain and sustain its ecosystem.

References

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