Papremis, take IIa

OK, I could have used the existing thread, but this way I generatw more blog entries :-)

The thing now is: how could an army able to resist a siege in Memphis against the lybian/egypt rebels and the Greek army/navy that went to assist them for about four years have lost the battle at Papremis against the rebls only?

Hoplologically speaking, there are certain possibilities, but all of them are a bit far-fetched, to say the least. First of all, I dunno how was Papremis at the time, so I'm making up most of this, also considering that the information of these events is basically close to nil. The setup is that Papremis has a fluvial, important harbor, not far from the town, which is located in "high" land, to avoid the annual flooding of the Nile. The conecction between harbor and town could be walled, but it's unlikely, as it would have served to channel the waters into the city in the annual floodings: not a brilliant idea, really... But if physical conditions about terrain are given, it could be possible.

In any way, and therefore, before the flood, the town is (must be) sieged by the rebels, who have (necessarily) taken control of the harbor as well, when the satrap's forces arrive. After some fluvial conflicts to try and re-take the harbor under loyal control, the scene is set-up for the ground battle.

The only know fact about this is that Achaemenes was killed or badly hurt by Inaros during that battle, and that the rebels won the upper hand, and managed to ask for Greek help to storm into Memphis.

Now, the fun begins: the satrap's army must have been good and strong, after all it was Lower Egypt's army, and it's remnants, without a power figure to back 'em up, managed to resist the combined force of Lybian rebels and Delian League army for four years, giving time to Artaxerxes I to send Megabyzos with a huge army (to be discussed sometime in the future) and re-take Memphis and siege the rebel and allied forces.

Therefore, it was not a tiny, bad, or poorly equiped army. It must have been abig, strong one, considering the Egyptians relationship to the Persians, and this being the second big time rebellion (the first one ca. 485 bloodily repressed) I wouldn't think Achaemenes would have taken it too lightly, but instead, in his place, I would have sent, if not most, at least a big and powerful army, to smash the rebellion, and as a showoff/display of strength and power to the populace, just in case anyone else thought they could rebel as well...

thus, we can agree in a powerful, loyal-side army, with Persian and Median forces displaced to Egypt, plus mercenaries, plus local conscripts, and a so-far successful rebel army, formed mainly by mercenaries Inaros's money could muster from the local garrisons, and cities in the western Delta (I have included greek Cyrenaic mercenaries, as they fall within this sphere of influence) and then by conscripted lybians and egyptians following their "rightful" pharaoh, plus anything Inaros could have had under his arm when living in Mareia, I've supposed so far a palace guard (he was of royal blood, after all... If Darius didn't kill him, why leave him completely unprotected?), and some secretly trained pluses... therefore, including all the recruiting he could have done after winning over Mareia, Naucratis and Sais, he couldn't have had such a big army to use at Papremis...

Therefore, how does a small army win a bigger, better prepared one?

Motivation is one way. Sound strategical and tactical work is another. Even pushing both into one, it was a tremendous feat... My take is that the mercenaries Inaros had, in my case the Cyrenian mercenaries, managed to take over a part of Achaemenes's army long enough to allow Inaros to fight him. Face to face combat may seem romantic, but it's feasible that both generals were up-front ahead of their armies and seeking each other; at least Persian kings were expected to lead their armies personally, despite the accounts we have by Greek historians, and Darius III's own behavior before Alexander II of Makedon... I can't see why Egyptian military traditions were to be different (Ramses II is always depicted at the Battle of Kadesh leading the army on his chariot...).

Once Inaros wounded/killed Achaemenes, morale on the persian side would have fallen very quickly, and the rest, as it is said, is History.

Another possibility is a massive (or at least big enough) betrayal of locally conscripted egyptians in the Persian, faced at the possibility of liberation from Persian rule... But that's not documented, and it would have weakened the Persian position for the battle of Memphis, which is unlikely, given the results...

Okay, the dilemma is served, what happened? I may start answering it later today, when I resume my writing, as I am writing exactly this part, but your thoughts and insights will be very welcome anyway...

laters!

Battle of Papremis, how?

Okay, things are like this:

Rebel lybian prince of saitian origins has managed to collect an army big enough to present battle to Lower Egypt Satrap Achemenes's army. The battle happened at Papremis ca. 461BCE, some 100 Km down the Nile from Memphis.

Inaros won, and killed Achemenes. The trick is: how?

I'm setting things up this way: Inaros's army is blocking Papremis harbor and sieging the city when the Egyptian-Persian army arrives. It seems logical that after negotiations are conducted (and failed) the Satrap must have tried to get Papremis harbor back into his control, because that way he could reinforce Papremis garrison (necessarily small) and take the rebels in a clamp movement.

Now, fluvial battles and night incursions to re-take the harbor must have failed, because we know they had a big, ground battle, where Inaros killed Achemenes (in personal combat? romantic but doubtful).

I have imagined Papremis with a walled town and walls that could even extend to the harbor, but this is not necessary for the story to work out well. Nevertheless it would have made sense, and my analysis comes from this suposition. Even if Papremis could be isolated from her harbor, taking control of it would cut the rebels' ability to receive support from other cities down the Nile, water, food, etc... what's bad for the enemy is good for you, uh?

So, does this make any sense?

And, better, any reliable (or demi-reliable) maps of Papremis I could work on? *grin*

And worry not, we'll be back to this discussion (and much better, even) when we talk about Memphis, and how a composite force of Egyptian rebels and Greek forces (200 triremes!) weren't able to take Memphis fort in 5 years! Sounds like fun? Sure it is! :-)

thanks, I'll eagerly wait for your suggestions

Back!

OK, I'm back, and back for good...

Since I returned I added several words to my wordcount, and ION#2 is about to fall into place... IONs #3 and #4 should be short, sweet, and right to the point, and it should close Chapter 1...

The novelty is that I wrote the new words on the Palm, by handwriting. Fun, though a bit slower... The thing is a mate of mine has told me he's giving me a folding keyboard for the PDA. Tomorow he should be bringing it in. If it works with my Palm model, it will be an additional boost in productivity.

Not that it is a better writing solution than my old AlphaSmart, Alfie is really fantastic, but I lack PCs with PS/2 ports, and the Mac solution is really uncomfortable. The Palm has, however, USB ports and, additionally, the PalmOS works like a charm with GNU/Linux, therefore I can use it more conveniently...

Alfie is great, but if this works, I will probably change my writing equipment... Writing on the go is the way to scratch more words to every train conmuting, subway trip and waiting times... Even coffee breaks! ;-)

I'll keep you updated... Cheers!

Holidays

If you're wondering why I'm not blogging as of late, it's because I'm off for some holidays, and I was so excited about it that I forgot to tell you! :-)

Good things about the holidays: rest, a second hand, brand new Palm Tungsten T3, upgraded my laptop to GNU/Linux Ubuntu 5.04, friends, family, great weather, sea!

Bad things: cleaning, hard work, some family issues, and very light writing. I'll catch up with my wordcount when I'm back, but I've been, nevertheless, working on it, and I have some hundreds to add, anyway, so worry not :-)

I'll back the 16th, till then, I'll have scarce Inet access, so if I don't write, 'till then, and have a good time!

The Lybian

Okay, thanks a bunch to Scott Oden for his suggestions for a working title for project codename "Inaros". I'll stick with his suggestion of The Lybian, which I like a lot (sounds better in english than in spanish, though, El libio).

BTW, as promised, I started writing, and having trouble, but I'll manage, I guess. I hope.

On the analysis phase I identified 22 items of narration. Item of narration (I.O.N) is my coined-term for story events that must be narrated in a sequential way. They can roughly be equivalent to chapters, but they need not. Actually I am breaking them into scenes, parallel scenes, at that, in which I am introducing characters.

The "problem" is, I have identified 22!!! My current estimation, based upon what I've written so far, throws an average of 5,900-6,200 words per ION!!! This is, the novel draft can be estimated at somewhere between 129,800 and 136,400 words! At 250 words per manuscripted page (which is a fairly standard metric in the publishing world, apparently) this throws a grand totale of 512-546 manuscripted pages, with averages of 23.6-24.8 pages per ION.

"Traditionally" (which is, in my two previous novel adventures), IONs were much shorter. For example, in Damned Lineage, my NaNoWriMo 2004 novel (which got almost mid-way at 30,000+ words), IONs averaged some 12-14 manuscripted pages... What's going on with me? Am I getting much verboser? Is this story complexer than my Mykenaean recreation of the myths of OEdipus? Humphr... Also, it took me a real world month to write those... And about the same for my Alexander "what-if" story, which is some 32K-words... Therefore, it will take me some 5 months of real world time (with few books reading!) to just write the first draft of the story... grrr... I am supposed to start my Visigoths novel in November (that's just 3 months to write this sucker... Ops!). We'll see...

Well, I'll add a counter that I'll update from time to time so you can check how I'm doing... So far, I'm about 2170 words, including title, TOC, and other metainfo... Let's say I have some 2130 words into the story... 8 pages of manuscripted first draft. Not bad for basically one day of writing, uh?

Of course, lots of it will get gone on revision. But nevertheless... it will be big... I better try to make it good :-)

Thanks for your support and understanding for the next years of novelling, I will need help, and your patience... (forward-thinking I got, uh? ;-)

OK, rant finished. Kallisti!

Book tittle wanted

All right, I'm almost ready to start writing the 1st draft of my Greek/Persian/Egyptian novel, at last!

The project codename is Inaros, but as you may guess, it's a bad working tittle. Therefore I admit votes and suggestions for a working tittle.

This is the one paragraph synopsis:

Lower Egypt is in rebellion, and the greatest powers on the Eastern Mediterranean Sea are there to fight for it: the growing force of Athens and her Delian League, and the huge Achaemenid Persian Empire. Three civilizations clash at the God-river Nile, and the result will determine who will rule in the Mediterraean, and, eventually the fate of Western Civilization.

My thoughts on it (in no particular order):

1) The Egyptian Expedition
2) The Egyptian Disaster
3) Rebellion in Egypt
4) The Egyptian Vector
5) The Inaros's Rebellion
6) Inaros

Actually, those are all pretty lame tittles... But I cannot find a great one. Anyway, I will start to write pretty soon. You can help me now, or suffer a bad tittle for the following months... >:-)

thanks!

When the Real Thing is not enough

When you are researching a topic for your novel, story, etc and Ctesias is your (almost) only source, you know you are in trouble.

He was famed as one of the greater liars of the Ancient Times. Lucian of Samosata, an author I have started to read recently, (and to love deeply, he was good!) clearly exposes (exposed?) so in many of his works. Ctesias was a liar.

When Thukidides barely mentions something in 3 paragraphs, and Diodorus in a couple more paragraphs, and Ctesias has a couple of pages, you are in deep trouble.

This is, more or less, the situation I find myself researching information about the so-called Inaros's Rebellion, ca. 465BCE, and the Athenian help forces sent to assist him against the new Great King of the Medes, Artaxerxes I. This is an old project of mine, Hellas in Egypt, with Persians and ships and basically every single hoplological situation one can dream of (phalanxes, skirmishers, naval battles, sieges, escapades, lots of exhausting work, and all kind of war niceties, at least there wasn't, at the time, the term "collateral effects": you raped, burned, chomped and basically did whatever, and it was okay, such is war. Nowadays we have a kind of sissy morals).

Thus the story, if well told, should be good. Indeed! The problem is, the Egyptians lost, the Greek lost and they won. Therefore, understandably, the Greek historians barely mention it, as a small episode in the grandeur of Perikles's powerful, and more powerful everyday, Athens.

If you can help, I'll be thankful. Anyway, I need to write this in order not to go crazy with the Visigoths. It will help me to slow down a bit, and I will be writing! :-)

Kallisti!

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On Wed the 6^th of July, the European Parliament will have the last chance to prevent this. To do so, 367 of the 732 members must be present and vote for the right amendments.

Goths and History

Investigating for your novel is fun, but you cannot get lost on it, as we have just discussed, or you'll never write a single line of it.

On the other hand, you cannot just make up History and be proud of it, for it will be a lie: call it Fantasy and be proud of it! (remember Lucian of Samosata, which incidentally I'm currently reading, pretty interesting author, indeed!) But it's History and historical novel or fiction what we are dealing with in here, Fantasy has its place elsewhere.

I am investigating the Goths, specifically I'm concentrating on the Visigoths, a.k.a. Tervingi, Getae, Gutons, etc on the Sources.

Problem is, the Sources are not necessarily trustier than any other current author that could write the History of its People (or others). We are used to manipulation of truth, and how easy it is to set in stone that someone is, indeed, the Bad Guy (do you remember "terrorism" and its, say, "malleable" nature?). I mean, victors write History, and most sources on Goths were Roman or Greek (and then, most when it was a Roman province).

Tacitus, Cassiodorus, Jordanes, Orosius, &c . . . Sorting through their works is like moving in moody waters. If you add to the mix Ulfila's bible translation, the first and basically only "Germanic" text from the old times, things get really ugly. I put 'Germanic' between double quotations, because the Germanic origins of the Goths can be doubted. At least the origins as we thought they were. Some authors point to Alphonse X's and Jordanes's texts to show the Baltic origins of the Goths, others suggest they are from Jatt (Indo-Iranian) origins, although, apparently, that hypothesis is very discredited nowadaus, and others that they were Germanic, but not quite as we thought they were, with very different origins (and therefore, probably, societies and culture).

Which path to follow when writing them?

I'll let you know when I find out. In the meantime I'm watching the nicer and uglier faces of Science and Scientific Method. Which I do like. And not.