Let’s not kid
ourselves. Folks who read “historical fiction” are darn smart. Everyone who
reads Fiction is darn smart, but if anything, those who read “historical
novels” are more so. One of the reasons is their intense interest in the
subject matter (be it a historical personality, a historical period in
particular, or in general). They also read copious amounts of History (i.e.,
“non-fiction” books) to supplement their knowledge base. I’m not ashamed to
admit I do the same.
I often get asked by these very smart
folks how “accurate” the history in “The
Horizon Keeper” series really is. It seems a sincere if not innocuous
question. Sometimes it’s asked through innocent, sparkling eyes. But that’s
what throws me. I wonder if that’s a trick question or not. So I have to ask: But
“accurate” in comparison to what? To Herodotus? Manetho (Egyptian historian of
the 3rd Century B.C.)? Thucydides? Cato? Sima Qian? To what Urwah
ibn Zubayr knew of History in 700 A.D.? Isn’t what passed for “history” a
thousand years ago, not legend today? Isn’t “accuracy” a function of
interpretation?
It’s clear we fail on the “interpretation”
side more than we should, especially when it comes to “As Above, so Below.”
History to the ancients was “written in the stars” and as a result, most
reputable Historians were really Astrologers (as was Sima Qian of the Han
Dynasty in China). The very best were most likely also Alchemists, as the
famous case of Ptolemy bears noting. Ptolemy essentially did the work of what
we today would call a Historian...
This leads me to the fabulous nature of
historical accounts which are accepted as “objective” or “accurate” by very
intelligent people nowadays. These very same folks harp on the fact that the
books they read are found in the “non-fiction” section of their local
bookstores (or eBook retailers). But I have to ask myself: Who writes the
non-fiction History they read? Don’t people know WHO writes History? Yeah, it’s
written by the murderers (a.k.a. as the “victors” or “winners”), or by
frustrated novelists -- I forget which. Accuracy doesn’t enter into it! If it’s
a good yarn and some of the obvious “holes” are covered it can easily pass as
“rigorous” historical facts.
Not to demean the profession of the
Historian. I admire them a great deal, especially Herodotus. I also admire
Manetho, the Temple Pure One (priest) who decided to compile the King List for
a dying civilization. Ah... the tomb-like smell of musty air. What can be more
fun than pulling back the cobwebs of time to reveal the ancient past? (O.K.,
how about a good Mai-Tai on a white sand beach lined with swaying hula dancers
and palm trees?) Ehem!
Before “The Horizon Keeper” gets started, as a cautionary missive, I present
my readers with a little known quote from Voltaire, circa 1764. It’s from the Encyclopédie des Citations (1959), by P.
Dupré (a French “Encyclopaedia of Quotations”).
“Toutes les histoires anciennes, comme le disait un de nos beaux esprits,
ne sont que des fables convenues...” -François-Marie
Arouet- “Voltaire”
Translation: “All the ancient histories,
as one of our great minds used to say, are only fables agreed upon...”
A fable is a tale to teach us a “moral”
lesson -- a story not founded on fact. I happen to agree with Voltaire in this
instance (although Internet sources attribute this quote to Napoleon, at a much
later time, of course). This is an interpretation of History we do well to keep
firmly in mind... even though Voltaire was speaking about “ancient history” it
is more so the case for “recent history.” All History we may choose to read
about, especially as it has been produced in Academia for public school
consumption, is merely the repetition of a “fable convenue.” What I like to
call a “convenient fable.”
Who will deny that we currently live in an
epoch, in a cultural age, too “accustomed to lying,” too ready to embrace “the
lie” wholeheartedly and with open arms? Doesn’t this type of critique ring a
bell? And, it’s not just that we actually and fully live within Maya (in the Hindu and Vedic sense of
“delusion”) but that our “knowledge of the vital air” (that which is breathed
in as Atma) is purely abstract and
intellectualized and so easily falsified. We’re living in a time of
“flip-flops” (and I don’t mean the footwear) where the apparently “deep” is
merely an in-bred prejudice and an a
priori judgment. Our time, even our Zeitgeist, is one wherein the past is
being erased before our very eyes by very irresponsible people (most of which
are our “voted” representatives) who can only see their own immediate gain,
because they live in an un-rooted (possibly uprooted) present. (“Without the
firm ground of the past beneath your feet, you’re a tree without roots.” If
someone wise didn’t say that, they should have! If not, I should quote it more
often and attribute it to Yours Truly).
Doesn’t it seems as if History, as we’ve
come to know it, is a “convenient fable,” a fable “agreed upon” by those who
lord over us? We receive this History as fact, instead of interpretation, and
we meekly form all our judgments and prejudices based on such fables, for we
are, if anything, conscientious (and sometimes unconscious) members of a “civilized”
society. History’s “accuracy” (i.e., its interpretation) depends on who
“controls the present” (as George Orwell so keenly pointed out). If you trust
the mental midgets running things today... well, I wish you lots of luck with
that one.
So what is my hidden objection in this
type of question? It is one of perspective. If there are no facts, only
interpretations, then it’s of some consequence what that interpretation aims
at. Does it perpetuate an old prejudice? Does it “invert” it? I’ll displease
many, but my inclination is for “inverting” it -- all of it -- History,
Prejudices, Values, the whole lot. And, in the end, is that not the task of any
Age? To invert the previous Age’s most cherished “values” and repudiate them as
“pure evil”?
To get back to
our “history”... I suspect that I get this question about “historical accuracy”
simply because I’ve chosen to portray the Ancient Egyptians against type. That
is, against the conventional Hollywood type. The “fable convenue” about the Ancient
Egyptians is not unlike what’s been suffered by Native-Americans for most of
the 20th Century (and for 400 years before that!). They were
savages! They were cruel, bloodthirsty slave owners par excellence. That this
is an improbable and unsustainable point-of-view is never really
questioned in our “popular culture” because it has already become a
deeply-rooted and long-held prejudice. So suffice it to say I’m “rewriting
history” from the side of the “losers,” which in this instance is the Ancient
Egyptians themselves.
