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Wee Ones and Picts, Oh My! - Episode 23
64 Plays9 years ago
In episode 23 of the podcast we travel back in time to the coast of Scotland, where adventure archaeologists are discovering Pictish forts from the Iron Age. Then we explore childbirth in Egyptian Mythology because, wait for it... The Struggling Archaeologist is expecting a little shovelbum of her own!
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Transcript
Return and Personal Updates
00:00:01
Speaker
You are listening to the OQLG Podcast Network.
00:00:21
Speaker
Well, hello, hello, hello. Welcome back, listeners, to the struggling archeologist's guide to getting dirty. This is Jenny, and how have you been? It's been a little while, hasn't it now? Oh yeah, well, you know, things happen and I wasn't really planning on taking a two-month holiday from the podcast, but you know what? That's just...
00:00:49
Speaker
How it goes sometimes. Jenny needed a little bit of a vacation. A little vacay, if you will. And if you are not a follower of my Facebook page, you should be. It's facebook.com slash The Struggling Archaeologist. Get on it.
00:01:07
Speaker
But if you are not on my Facebook page, then you might have missed the big news from the last couple months of what's been going on with me that may have been keeping me a little bit distracted and a little bit busier than usual.
00:01:22
Speaker
which is part of the reason why I haven't been able to bring you this wonderful podcast in a while. So first of all, I've been working full time and that has really kept me busy and tired and you know all those things that people with real jobs feel, which keep them from doing all of their hobbies. And then, you know, on kind of a bigger, more grand scheme type of thing, I am pregnant. So there's that.
00:01:51
Speaker
Ah yes, if you hadn't heard, there is a little struggling archaeologist inside of me and he is due to make his debut this fall and my husband and I could not be more excited. So, yeah.
00:02:08
Speaker
This is what has been going on the last couple of months. I've been just a little bit overwhelmed with getting prepared for this new adventure in my life and just sort of enjoying myself as I go through this process. I'm just about six months pregnant right now and it's been going splendidly if I do say so myself.
00:02:30
Speaker
I've been feeling wonderful. I've had just a really great couple of months to be excited and get used to the idea of having a little one. He is going to be just wonderful and I cannot wait to meet him. I apologize for my absence, but I hope you understand that it was for a fairly good reason. If you're going to be distracted by something, this is a pretty good thing to be distracted by.
00:03:00
Speaker
So, yeah, that's the story and I'm sticking to it.
Scottish Archaeology Highlights
00:03:06
Speaker
So anyway, let's get started with today's podcast because we haven't had one in a while. And so, you know, I had a lot of ideas.
00:03:17
Speaker
going on about what I wanted to write about or talk about today with you guys and I just you know there were so many things I have kind of a little mishmash of a couple different topics that I wanted to discuss and so let's just get started with our first segment one that you may not have heard in a little while you guys it's time for news and goings-on from around the spheroid
00:03:44
Speaker
And if you were waiting for me to sing it, here it is. News and goings on from around the spheroid. Yeah!
00:03:53
Speaker
I know you missed that. I know I did. And so our news and goings on story today is something that I came across actually a little while ago. And it is a story, a news story about some research going on in Scotland right now. And if you guys haven't already figured it out, I don't know how many times I've mentioned it on the podcast. I'm a huge fan of Scotland. Yeah, I am Scottish myself.
00:04:21
Speaker
The name McNiven comes from the Scottish family, the Macniven, who were a sept of Clan McIntosh, and I'm very proud of my Scottish heritage. If you want to hear more about it, you should listen to the episode of the Anomaly podcast that I recorded about two months ago now on the Outlander series, in which me and the fabulous Anomaly founder, Jen, discussed the series.
00:04:47
Speaker
as well as my Scottish ancestry. It was a very exciting episode and a fun time to be a part of. And so, because I was kind of still on this, you know, trend of Scottish history, when I saw this story come out, I was like, ooh, I think I would like to talk more about Scotland because you can never have enough Scotland, you know?
00:05:09
Speaker
So this story comes out of Aberdeenshire, which is on the eastern coast of Scotland. And I read a couple of articles regarding it. The main ones that I'm going to be talking about were the article Pictish Fort found off Aberdeenshire coast by the BBC's Fiona Stocker, and also an article called Scots on the Rocks by Peter Robertshaw.
00:05:35
Speaker
These are basically chronicling the archaeological investigation of Pictish settlements, thought to be forts for the most part, that have been discovered on the coast of Scotland. This isn't just the eastern coast, it's actually a phenomenon that happened all around the Scottish coast. The most interesting thing about these forts is that they've been constructed
00:06:01
Speaker
in a very precarious location. They're on the top of what are these things called sea stacks, and it's just so cool. So let me tell you about it a little bit. Okay, so there is an archaeological adventure. I love calling it that. Underway,
00:06:20
Speaker
on the eastern coast of Scotland. And this is the main story I wanted to talk about. It's about archaeologists from the University of Aberdeen who have recently discovered the remains of a Pictish fort, or they're fairly certain it's a Pictish fort, on top of a jut of land, which is what I was just referring to, called a sea stack, off the coast near the town of Stonehaven.
00:06:42
Speaker
And so if you're not familiar, sea stacks are landforms on the coastlines of a place that are tall and treacherous. They are tentatively connected to the mainland depending on the sea level, the tides, and erosion processes. But for all intents and purposes, they're basically like tall, jagged islands off the coast.
00:07:08
Speaker
And they're not always complete islands. Sometimes there's an isthmus of land that still connects them. But for the most part, even if they were at one time connected, they have been eroded down through the water and the wind and the ocean to this tall, jutted island sticking out right off the coast.
00:07:28
Speaker
And so for the most part, these sea stacks are inaccessible by normal means. You can't drive to them. You can't walk up them because they're very rocky and cliffy. So it's hard to get up to the top of them, obviously. But despite this, we know that there is evidence of human habitation on many of these sea stacks going back to the Neolithic era.
00:07:53
Speaker
which is pretty good. So work on these landforms has not actually been widely attempted in the past because of the difficulty in getting to the archaeology on top of them. And so this has left us a gap in the record around the Scottish coastline.
00:08:09
Speaker
Recently, more efforts have been made to explore these cliffs. A lot of this is taking place in the Outer Hebrids, which are the islands on the western coast of Scotland. But obviously, it's also happening on the northern coast and the eastern coast.
00:08:26
Speaker
And there appears in these areas to have been a very long history of occupation as peoples were traveling the ocean highway around what is now the UK, which was actually much more common than you might think it was a couple of millennia ago. And so now UK archaeologists are working with like climbing experts and professionals and mountaineering
00:08:52
Speaker
to scale these cliffs and excavate the cultural materials hidden at the top. So we can finally start uncovering more of this Neolithic history, Iron Age history of a time when maybe not all of these sea stacks were out to sea, some of them were probably still connected to the land, but either way these
00:09:14
Speaker
people were climbing the cliffs, they were getting onto the top, they were settling, making forts, defensive structures, this type of thing. And all around the coast of Scotland, it's a really interesting phenomenon and one that needs to be explored much more. And because it's such a like a
00:09:31
Speaker
crazy adventure to get to the top of the sea stacks and they're roping and climbing and all this stuff. It's just like a really fun archaeological adventure. And you don't always get to hear very much about those going on in the normal world of archaeology, right?
00:09:47
Speaker
So that's why I thought this story was pretty exciting and interesting to talk about. And also it's the Picts. Who doesn't think the Picts are awesome and fun and cool and great? So that's that. So getting down to it. What has been discovered on top of these sea stacks? And who were the people brave enough to settle these unusual cliff tops?
00:10:08
Speaker
Well, let's answer those questions. First, the Aberdeen team has discovered in this specific c-stack that they're referencing in these articles, RAM parts, parts of a house or structure, and a hearth. So this is pretty typical
00:10:24
Speaker
old school structural remains. They're mostly built from stone and they're meant to obviously house and protect its residents and the hearth is there to provide heat as well as a way to cook food and do a number of other functions that were very common in the prehistoric time period that we're talking about here.
00:10:44
Speaker
It is the location on top of these sea stacks as well as the presence of protective structures like the ramparts that suggest that it may have been used as a fort, which is very interesting as well. In the 19th century at this site,
00:11:01
Speaker
Several stones with Pictish symbols on them had been found by local kids in and around the sea stack. And so the discovery of these remains reinforced the pre-existing evidence that the Pictish people had settled the sea stack for at least part of the year.
00:11:17
Speaker
And the site is interesting partly because it is also quite near Scotland's famous Dunatar Castle, which is a really impressive and beautiful rock fortress on a very large sea stack that connects to the mainland through a narrow isthmus.
00:11:34
Speaker
And this castle's origins are most definitely Pictish, though it was reappropriated over time and became an important medieval castle for both the Scottish and the English. And in 1297 CE, it was actually attacked by none other than William Wallace during his campaign to defeat Edward I of England and to destroy the castle's garrison.
00:11:58
Speaker
Or at least that's what I had read in my research for this piece. So it seems to be at least what the history records have documented.
Pictish History and Cultural Context
00:12:08
Speaker
Although, when I was telling my husband about this yesterday, he was definitely like, no, that is completely wrong.
00:12:17
Speaker
I don't know how exactly he knows that he is a huge history buff and he has always been extremely interested in Scottish history and William Wallace himself. And he did a William Wallace tour of Scotland, believe it or not, when he was a teenager. That's how much he was into William Wallace. So this is a guy who knows his Wallace. So I'm guessing at some point
00:12:43
Speaker
He familiarized himself with the campaigns of Wallace? I don't know. But he told me that he was pretty darn sure that there was no way that it was William Wallace who was actually attacking Donatar Castle in 1297. And so, um, I don't know. We'll have to just leave that one be for now. Um, I'm gonna just assume that my husband knew what he was talking about and leave it at that.
00:13:11
Speaker
But anyway, that is what the legend and the history tells us happened. Who knows the truth. But back to the Donatar Castle, which is still standing for the most part, by the way, if you are ever in Scotland and do want to go check it out. So this castle fortress was originally built in the middle of Pictland, the land of the Picts.
00:13:37
Speaker
And it is known to have some sort of strategic importance in a Pictish Civil War taking place around 681 CE. So we know that it dates to at least that date because that is when it is first mentioned in the Dark Age histories. I believe this is something that was recorded by Beatty, but I am not positive on that. But yes, so it does date to at least that period.
00:14:02
Speaker
Whereas no specific date was mentioned for the Stonehaven fort that was newly discovered in the article I was talking about, but they do believe that it is possibly a precursor to the Dunatar fortress, so it may predate the 7th century. And so as for the people of the stacks, the Picts,
00:14:23
Speaker
These people were a confederation of tribes spread over eastern and northern Scotland during the late Iron Age and early medieval period. And the Picts are a very interesting and somewhat mysterious people. We believe they were ethnically Celtic and spoke a now extinct language related to the Celts and the Britons, who had habitated a bit more south than a present-day Scotland.
00:14:50
Speaker
And then later on in Pict history, they merged with the Gaels of the Gaelic language and other people of the North to form the Kingdom of Alba, which would become modern Scotland.
00:15:07
Speaker
Hey! So our accounts of them start from just before the Roman conquest of Britain in the first century and they go from then to about the 10th century when the Picts finally became part of this amalgamation of Scottish peoples and the Pictish culture kind of ceases to exist and they become this larger kingdom of Alba and then eventually just the Scottish people.
00:15:36
Speaker
So these pigs, they're basically a first millennia group, and they were known for their fierce defiance of the British Empire, which created a divide between the southern Romanized British Isles and the northern pagan wilds.
00:15:54
Speaker
And if you are familiar with Hadrian's Wall, that's basically its whole purpose was to separate the south where the Romans had settled and conquered from the north where they had not been able to conquer because of fierce resistance from those Picts. So they're often depicted in
00:16:13
Speaker
popular culture as these just bloodthirsty warriors, painted blue, covered in tribal markings. If you've seen any movie about King Arthur, maybe the last one with Keira Knightley, that was pretty good. This is the image of the Picts that we got that they're a very uncivilized prehistoric people who are still living in mud huts and all of this type of stuff.
00:16:40
Speaker
and that they're basically a warrior culture. This is not really so much accurate, though. According to archaeology, for the most part, the majority of picks were actually farmers who were living very similar lives to their southern contemporaries, the Anglo-Saxons, in the southern part of the UK. And so, yeah, they weren't exactly
00:17:06
Speaker
everything that you have been led to believe that they were. But that's cool.
00:17:14
Speaker
Now you know better. So this, yeah, this is the Picts. And so these were the people who were just trying to get by and to protect their territory from peoples who were invading them, both from the south throughout the Roman era. They were always trying to come up and take control of these lands. And then they were also under siege from the north and the east and the west.
00:17:40
Speaker
And a lot of this came from people like, hey, the Vikings, who were during this era, this first millennium, the Dark Ages, the late Iron Age, they were taking part in these voyages of discovery
00:17:55
Speaker
from Scandinavia and Norway in these areas. They would sail around the top of the now British Isles and they would land these little parties on the coasts to try and explore, to see what they could plunder, to see if there were any spots for viable habitation in these places where they could set up shop.
00:18:17
Speaker
And so, yeah, the Picts were constantly in need of places where they could scout, where they could see what was going on in the ocean if there were people coming up on them, where they could see over the land if there were people coming up to them. And not only were they defending themselves against these outsiders, there were also, of course, sort of these in wars with the Pictish tribes because they were not all one
00:18:42
Speaker
conglomeration of people. They were a bunch of different groups living throughout what is now Scotland. And so it does make a lot of sense that the groups who are living right near the coast would need these type of structures or fortresses right near the water on tall pieces of land that were well protected where they could carry out these duties.
00:19:04
Speaker
And so this is exactly what the archaeology seems to be telling us had happened along the eastern seaboard near Stonehaven and in other spots in the northern and western aisles of Scotland. And so yeah, that is
00:19:24
Speaker
everything I wanted to say about this exciting news story. Yeah, it was fun to talk about Scotland. It was fun to research Scotland some more and to learn more about the Picts, which were a very interesting people. And so, yeah, I really am excited to hear about further research in this area and to see what comes of further exploration and excavation at the top of these sea stacks.
00:19:50
Speaker
And so that's it for today's news and goings on from around the spheroid All these things we make no apology are the study of archaeology
00:20:09
Speaker
Did aliens build Stonehenge? Did the Easter Island statues walk? Did the Vikings colonize Midwest America? What does mainstream archaeology have to say about all of this? Listen to the Archaeological Fantasies podcast and learn about popular archaeological mysteries. Hoax or fact? Learn to tell the difference with Dr. Kenneth Fader and co-host Sarah of the Archaei Fantasies blog.
00:20:30
Speaker
Check out the show on iTunes and Stitcher Radio, and at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com, forward slash Arkey Fantasies, and get ready to think critically. Let's get back to the show. Except for this interesting factoid! Factoids by Jenny should be a regular segment on this show.
00:21:00
Speaker
So, interesting factoid on this story. The early Roman name for Pictish lands was Caledonia, if you didn't know that, from the Celtic word for men of the forest. Very fitting. Later, the Picts and the Gaelic became the Alba, or the Albans. Remember I told you they formed the kingdom of Alba.
00:21:21
Speaker
And this came from the Celtic words for high and large island. And it seems to me that the word albin is very fitting for the coastal landscape of areas like that of the Stonehaven Fort, right? So that both work. They both work. I like it.
00:21:36
Speaker
And so the word for this land, alba or albin, would later become part of a title given to its rulers, beginning in 1398 when the Scottish king bestowed the dukedom of Albany to his brother, Robert Stewart.
00:21:53
Speaker
Now, the stewards, who are a very famous family in Scottish and English royalty, maintained the dukedom for centuries. And eventually, when the English took over control of the newly founded Dutch city of Beverwick in the New World,
00:22:10
Speaker
in 1664, they decided to rename it after the current Duke of Albany and future King of England, James II, as he was also the Duke of York. The other Dutch city of New Amsterdam was conveniently also renamed New York, when the English took it later the same year after the same guy that they had just named Albany after.
00:22:36
Speaker
So the first city, Albany, is where I was born! Figure that, huh? And the second city, New York, is also my former home. Coincidence? I think not. Obviously this has some kind of obscure significance that is unknown even to me.
00:22:56
Speaker
And that, my friends, is how adventure archaeologists are exploring Pictish forts from the Iron Age and bringing generally badass Scottish history to light. Thank you, and I hope you've enjoyed this installment of Random Factoids by Jenny.
00:23:10
Speaker
And now for something completely different.
Mythology and Birth Stories
00:23:12
Speaker
Yes, time to switch things up. Why not? I think you guys would probably enjoy a little change of pace, and so now we're going to do a new segment. So, okay, I was inspired by me. Well, first of all, because I'm kind of preggers right now.
00:23:30
Speaker
And I was thinking, oh, it'd be cool to talk about things related to birth and pregnancy and stuff like that on the podcast, but how exactly to do this without alienating all of my male listeners and boring them to death? And I decided to introduce a segment called Spotlight on Stories that Shaped the World, where we talk about
00:23:53
Speaker
The way that things like birth and pregnancy and reproduction are dealt with in some of the most important stories and mythological tales from early civilizations that have influenced the way that people lived.
00:24:14
Speaker
And so, you know, once you start looking into it, there are an awful lot of very interesting stories about birth, about bringing new life into the world, and about that magical journey of pregnancy. And a lot of this is very symbolic in nature.
00:24:32
Speaker
And that's why I thought, you know, as an anthropologist, this is something I would love to look into more. And I think it would be a great way to really expound on some of these great legends and very important symbolic themes that have become important to us as human beings over the millennia.
00:24:53
Speaker
And so that's what we're going to do right now. We're going to start off this segment, which I'll probably be doing a couple installments of over the next couple podcasts, to talk about birth as a part of Egyptian mythology. And I was inspired to talk about Egypt today because of something you will hear about a little bit later, but it has to do with a book that I am reading.
00:25:18
Speaker
And so I was like, oh hey, I'm kind of feeling Egypt right now, so let's talk about that. And so, yeah, let's talk about birth in ancient Egyptian mythology. Okay, so let's get started. So obviously ancient Egyptian mythology is a pretty huge subject. I'm going to try to limit myself somewhat in the things I'll be talking about today. So let's talk first of all about the importance of fertility
00:25:46
Speaker
to the Egyptians in both reality and in their ritual and mythological belief system. Ancient Egypt had a lot of gods, first of all. They had
00:26:01
Speaker
pretty basic pantheon of their extremely important gods, the ones that you all know about, you know, Ra and Horus and Osiris and Isis and Set and all these people. But then they also had a humongous host of minor gods, domestic deities and these type of creatures.
00:26:23
Speaker
And so both of these type become extremely entwined in the importance of fertility and birth in these mythological stories and in the way that they affected real people's lives. For example, ancient Egypt had over 10 major gods of fertility, along with two gods of motherhood and two gods of childbirth.
00:26:46
Speaker
And those are only like the gods that you'd probably heard of. There's a lot more where that came from. So definitely a fair number of gods who were very concerned with what was going on with your lady parts. And to be fair, most cultures did have a preoccupation with fertility in their ritual and mythological systems in the ancient world. So throughout the millennia, there have been hundreds of fertility gods and goddesses. Egypt is not the only place where this was going down.
00:27:14
Speaker
It just happens to be one of the most well-known. So why focus so much on getting women knocked up, you ask? Well, practically, to give you a real world answer, life in ancient Egypt was hard, man. A lot of women and children died young, unfortunately. So in order to keep a population growing, everyone had to do their part to bring more people into it and replenish the pool of individuals available for things like manual labor, farming,
00:27:44
Speaker
all of the things necessary to support the overall population. Without people to build and to farm, a settlement could not survive. And if you got to the point where you were large enough, like Egypt was, to need to protect yourselves from other people who might be trying to get in on your territory or come and plunder or steal your stuff, you're probably going to need protection as well.
00:28:07
Speaker
And so you're going to need an army or some sort of protective force. And this also is a major source of people usage, I guess you could call it. So the main point is that you need a lot of people and you need a lot of future workers. And since a portion of these people would probably not survive until adulthood, they needed to make extras, to put it bluntly.
00:28:33
Speaker
Not that this was like how it was understood by every Egyptian citizen, not every man and woman who got together and had a family thought, oh, we're only doing this to grow the population so that we don't die out. No, of course not.
00:28:49
Speaker
In Egyptian art, actually, it's extremely clear that the bond of family was very important to these people. But as with the way that most ritual or symbolic systems develop, there is an underlying current of necessity lying at the basis of why it became an important social norm to get married and to start having children ASAP.
00:29:11
Speaker
So, because this was important for survival, it also became an important theme in their belief systems, including their mythology. So, from very early on, childbirth, the symbolism for fertility, and these type of things became entwined with survival of the Egyptian people, for reasons such as why I already mentioned above, and some others. So, what besides more people was important for Egyptian survival? How about food?
00:29:41
Speaker
That checks, right? Thankfully, there was no need to get a new symbol for this when you could just use the same one. So fertility and abundance and birth became associated with the inundation of the Nile River, the growth of crops and prosperity, these other things that were extremely essential elements in their religious and ritual symbolic life because of the important basic function to Egyptian life they served.
00:30:07
Speaker
And so because both of these aspects were associated with fertility and birth, the role of women and birth and mythology came to prominence. Which is what we like to hear, right ladies? And so there are many stories involving
00:30:24
Speaker
not only like the creation story itself of how the world was created and birthplace a prominent role in every creation story ever for the most part, but in a lot of other well-known stories and tales told throughout Egypt and well known to the people. One of these tales, which is probably one of the most well-known myths in Egypt, is the story of Isis and the death of Osiris.
00:30:52
Speaker
And I'm not gonna go over the entire story. I'm hoping if you guys are history nerds like me, you'll probably be familiar already with this story, but basically, um, the sky and the earth god and goddess Nut and Geb had five children, and four of them, Osiris and Isis got married, and then Set and Nephthys got married, and...
00:31:19
Speaker
And so Osiris was like the big guy and Set was, his brother was really jealous. And so he kind of tricked him and killed him. And so he cuts him up into little pieces and throws him into the Nile. And Isis and her sister, Nepthys, reconstruct Osiris from these pieces. And after they've done this, Isis is then able to conceive of the god Horus with her undead zombie husband, Osiris.
00:31:47
Speaker
That's not in the official storybooks, but that's how I like to think of it. In some versions of the story, it's a regular conception, and others it's actually considered like a virgin birth type of situation. So if you didn't know there were more than one of those in history, then now you do.
00:32:05
Speaker
So Horus becomes an extremely important Egyptian god. He goes on to defeat Set and he restores order to the world because Horus represents order, Set represents chaos, and so we always want order to reign over chaos. That is the main theme of basically all Egyptian mythology.
00:32:25
Speaker
So this is pretty important to them, obviously. And so these gods become pretty famous and they represent and are known for a lot of different reasons, some of them having to do with what we're talking about today. Isis becomes a goddess of fertility and motherhood.
00:32:46
Speaker
Osiris comes to represent the cycle of life, and he also kind of represents and controls the inundation of the Nile and the birth and growth of crops every year that sustain the Egyptian people. And then Horus becomes the symbol for divinity in Egypt. And then, you know, the pharaohs throughout history kind of consider themselves a human incarnation of the god Horus. So in a way, he kind of births them.
00:33:16
Speaker
And that allows them to be divine and to have this divine power within them. So yeah, this is the story of Isis and Osiris and how it kind of sets the stage for these gods to all become important symbolically for these reasons having to do with the cycle of life and rebirth and fertility and all of these powers.
00:33:40
Speaker
So these myths were influential in the development of social and ritual traditions for the Egyptian people as well as everyday behavior. As in Isis and Osiris were often called upon to bless Egypt with agricultural prosperity. Isis and Horus were important figures in the annals of the pharaohs who protected and ruled over their people as exemplified by the gods before them. Isis is often thought to be present during birth
00:34:07
Speaker
and she is an important protective power against evil and harm to mother and baby. So yeah, you can see that they're pretty busy, right? The stories told of these gods guided the people of Egypt both symbolically and also in kind of more practical ways. Birth, creation, and life were among the most important themes in the ancient Egyptian world. And for this reason, women and the power to create life were sacred to Egyptian society, which is what we like to hear, right ladies?
00:34:34
Speaker
Because of this, women and female deities, especially female royals, held positions of great power and influence. Many domestic gods and goddesses were created over time to help women conceive and birth and to help babies flourish. Some of the most influential of these besides Isis were Hathor, Bess, and Taleret.
00:34:59
Speaker
And each were called upon for protection and help during birth. And they and a number of other gods were called upon to help watch over the mother and the baby and help the process go smoothly and protect them from the influence of evil gods and things that would not be pleasant.
00:35:17
Speaker
And so you actually find many residential buildings in Egypt that are excavated. They're found to have small statues to these gods and goddesses inside of them. So you can see the evidence of just how important their belief in this type of otherworldly intervention was to everyday life. And so when
00:35:39
Speaker
They weren't busy having babies and looking to their protector gods to guide them into the world of motherhood safely. Egyptians could also be found making offerings or even having festivals to thank the gods for the harvest, for the rising of the sun, for the flooding of the Nile, and of course hoping for the endless prosperity that those portals of creation and new life bestowed on them year after year.
00:36:04
Speaker
when they weren't spending all of Egypt's money on war and killing all of their population in unnecessary battles and starving them and taking all of their crops and food and things. But, you know, that's like
00:36:20
Speaker
history stuff that we don't have time to go into today. I'd like to focus on the more idealized version of how life in Egypt was influenced by the gods and goddesses and the mythology having to do with birth and creation and new life.
00:36:37
Speaker
So that's what we're going to end it with today.
Book Club and Recommendations
00:36:40
Speaker
We'll save all the other history stuff maybe for another podcast. So there you go folks, a little quick tidbit there in stories that helped shape the world on the importance of babies and baby making in Egyptian mythology. And we'll be back with more of that series in the future. I hope you enjoyed it.
00:37:01
Speaker
And the only other thing I wanted to talk about today quick was the struggling archaeologist book club. If you guys aren't a part of the book club yet, you better get on it. Um, no, no pressure. It's not a huge thing. It's just, you know, I read a lot of books and
00:37:21
Speaker
I just had this idea that since I do read historical fiction, I read YA books with a lot of historical basis in them that maybe you guys would like to enjoy hearing about what I'm reading and if you'd like to join me and read along with me and then maybe we could have a little bit of a discussion about it. So I just wanted to remind you guys that you can find the Struggling Arc book club on my Goodreads page for you guys who
00:37:49
Speaker
aren't members. Goodreads is kind of like Facebook for readers. So if you go to goodreads.com, you can look up my account and you can see what books I have on my list for the Struggling Arc Book Club. My Goodreads name you can find me under Jenny McNiven or my handle is booksendcleverness81.
00:38:14
Speaker
which if you are a nerd like me, you will know as a quote, but none other than Miss Hermione Granger. So we started off our struggling arc book club with a very popular historical fiction that came out last year. It was actually Goodreads' number one choice for winner of the 2014 award for historical fiction. And it's a beautiful book called All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doar.
00:38:43
Speaker
And if you haven't had a chance to read the book yet and you are a fan of historical fiction, especially World War II era, then I would definitely recommend you get this book and give it a read. And I will try to explain it for you real quick without spoiling too much. But it's basically this story of two individuals during World War II
00:39:04
Speaker
Although most of the book actually takes place in the lead up to the outbreak of hostilities. So you have a young blind French girl named Marie-Lore and then you have a young German youth named Werner Fennec. And you follow both of their stories as the hostilities are breaking out, as tensions are rising, and you get these two different perspectives on
00:39:31
Speaker
what's going on and then you just see how their worlds kind of come together and intertwine for a moment in the midst of all of this chaos and war and ugliness. And they're two wonderful characters and the writing in this book is beautiful and poetic.
00:39:53
Speaker
And so it is a very good book, which I enjoyed, and I do recommend it. My favorite quote from the book is a quote from Werner, who is a wonderful young man, who also happens to be a Hitler Youth, but whatever.
00:40:10
Speaker
He writes, what I want to write about today is the sea. It is my favorite thing I think that I have ever seen. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel. Oh, it's a line that he's writing in a letter to his sister.
00:40:26
Speaker
And yeah, I'm not going to say anything else about it that's going to spoil you if you would like to get the book. But if you have read it or you read it with me during the Struggling Archaeology Book Club, I will be recording a book review with my thoughts on it for YouTube. And I will be adding that link to the blog post for this episode so you can find it on YouTube there under the Struggling Archaeologist on YouTube.
00:40:57
Speaker
on my page there where I will hopefully be doing more of this type of thing. So if you would like to talk about it, feel free to watch that and comment and let me know what you thought of the book and my review and all of this.
00:41:09
Speaker
And I would love to hear from you guys. So do that if you've read the book, if you haven't read it yet and you'd like to, go pick it up and see what you think. So that's the struggling arc, the first book for the struggling arc book club. And for those of you who read it with me and are ready to move on to the second and next book that I'm reading, I decided the last book was a little bit heavy. It was a very long book. It did take me quite a while to get through. And so I thought we would follow it up with something a little
00:41:39
Speaker
bit lighter. Our next book is going to be a YA historical adventure novel called The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan.
00:41:56
Speaker
This is a really fun book. It may be a little bit juvenile if you guys are only into mature reading, but I don't mind books that are YA or a little juvenile, so I was looking for books with some type of archaeological aspect, and I found this one after reading the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan, which is based on Greek mythology,
00:42:22
Speaker
which is also very fun if you are into history and mythology, although that is also a little bit for a younger audience, but I still enjoyed it. The Red Pyramid takes place all over the world, but also in Egypt, and it is about a family
00:42:37
Speaker
that has very, very old ties to ancient Egypt. And the father of this family is an archaeologist, and his two children, Carter, lovingly named of course after Howard Carter, who discovered King Tut's tomb in 1922, and Sadie is the daughter. They go on a wild adventure after their archaeologist father kind of
00:43:02
Speaker
unleashes some ancient Egyptian magic in the British Museum one day. And so it's actually a very educational book at times because you learn a lot about ancient Egypt, especially the gods and mythology, ancient Egyptian items, hieroglyphs. There's just a whole lot of stuff in there for even for me
00:43:25
Speaker
who was an ancient Egypt fanatic for years that I'm learning even though I have a fairly good basis in Egyptian history myself. So, I don't know, it's just nice to see a writer who appreciates this stuff and who talks about these things that we love and we've loved for our entire lives and studied and talked about and wished everyone else could share our enthusiasm about.
00:43:51
Speaker
And so it's actually a book series. I believe there's three books in it. And so I just started reading it and I am enjoying it very much. And so if you'd like to get your hands on that one, it is again called The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan. And once I'm done with it, I will be posting a YouTube book review as well. So keep your eyes posted for that. And so that is all about The Struggling Archaeologist Book Club for the month.
00:44:19
Speaker
I hope you join me and feel free to comment on this blog post, on my the APN blog, on my personal blog, on my Tumblr or Twitter, all of those social media things about what you thought about all the light we cannot see or if you are going to be reading it and as well as the Red Pyramid.
Closing Remarks
00:44:42
Speaker
So that is going to finish us up for this episode. Aren't you guys glad I didn't talk your ear off for an hour?
00:44:49
Speaker
I did try to keep this one a little bit shorter and so I'm going to say ta-ta for now and thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Again, I'm so sorry about my little lapse in recording, but I hope you understand.
00:45:08
Speaker
It's because I'm gestated in a human being for goodness sake, but anyway I will try to make the next couple months count before I really have my hands full.
00:45:20
Speaker
And so just thank you again for being a fan of the podcast. I hope you guys are all checking out all the other amazing podcasts on the Archaeology Podcast Network and listening and subscribing to all of those wonderful outlets of archaeological knowledge. And so we will catch you next time.
00:45:41
Speaker
on the Struggling Archaeologist's Guide to Getting Dirty. This has been episode 23, and I am your host, Jenny, as always. Wishing you guys a good night or day or whenever it is, and we will catch you next time. See you laters!
00:46:00
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the archaeology podcast network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com