always learning something
Nov. 28th, 2007 03:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerDifferent bits of my life are always intersecting.
When I started learning about Judaism, I got taught a lot of the background to Jewish ceremonies, customs, and holidays the way kids in Sunday school do (yes, at least here in the States, Jewish kids go to religious school on Sunday, the way Christian kids do--except it's usually close to a whole day of *school* instead of just somethign to keep the kids busy while the adults are doing "real" services.)
I was befuddled by the typical Jewish Sunday-school description of the Seleucids as "Syrians". Now, to me this was nonsense. I'd studied the Hellenic period since I was little and had my first book on Alexander the Great, so I knew that the Seleucids were no more Syrian than the Ptolemies were Egyptian, and for the same reason--they were all descendants of Macedonians who had followed Alexander to Asia and picked up kingdoms as they fell out of his pockets.
(Of course, since modern day Syria is an Arabic, Islamic country and a deadly enemy of Israel, it makes sense for the rulers of ancient Syria to be called "Syrians" for propaganda purposes.)
In another instance, I've always laughed heartily at the revisionist 'historians' who try to pretend the pharaohs were subSaharan Africans. It's pretty obvious from depictions of Egyptians and black Africans in ancient Egyptian artwork that they were not. But I hadn't realised that the same mythmakers had been hard at work elsewhere.
The same sort of people who insist that Cleopatra was a black lady because she came from 'Africa' often claim Hannibal as 'African' (which he certainly was, but not in the sense they mean). Now, I know to be suspicious of that. The nation of Carthage ruled the coast of North Africa and a good bit of southern Spain, either directly or through alliances, for several centuries before their defeat and destruction by the Romans in 146 BCE. I knew that the Carthaginians were a Semitic people from the Levant, who intermarried a bit with native peoples and the Iberians and Celts in Iberia. What I hadn't fully twigged to was that the very capable Numidians (sometimes allied to Carthage, sometimes to Rome) who are often (from the same motives) depicted as black were, in fact, *Berber*.
This may seem like it's all a bit silly and hardly worth worrying about; skin colour isn't important (or shouldn't be) when compared to what people achieve and how they behave.
Except that I have a large army of wee (15mm high) Numidians that at some point I need to paint. So it's kind of handy to know that they should look more like Zinedine Zidane than George Weah...
When I started learning about Judaism, I got taught a lot of the background to Jewish ceremonies, customs, and holidays the way kids in Sunday school do (yes, at least here in the States, Jewish kids go to religious school on Sunday, the way Christian kids do--except it's usually close to a whole day of *school* instead of just somethign to keep the kids busy while the adults are doing "real" services.)
I was befuddled by the typical Jewish Sunday-school description of the Seleucids as "Syrians". Now, to me this was nonsense. I'd studied the Hellenic period since I was little and had my first book on Alexander the Great, so I knew that the Seleucids were no more Syrian than the Ptolemies were Egyptian, and for the same reason--they were all descendants of Macedonians who had followed Alexander to Asia and picked up kingdoms as they fell out of his pockets.
(Of course, since modern day Syria is an Arabic, Islamic country and a deadly enemy of Israel, it makes sense for the rulers of ancient Syria to be called "Syrians" for propaganda purposes.)
In another instance, I've always laughed heartily at the revisionist 'historians' who try to pretend the pharaohs were subSaharan Africans. It's pretty obvious from depictions of Egyptians and black Africans in ancient Egyptian artwork that they were not. But I hadn't realised that the same mythmakers had been hard at work elsewhere.
The same sort of people who insist that Cleopatra was a black lady because she came from 'Africa' often claim Hannibal as 'African' (which he certainly was, but not in the sense they mean). Now, I know to be suspicious of that. The nation of Carthage ruled the coast of North Africa and a good bit of southern Spain, either directly or through alliances, for several centuries before their defeat and destruction by the Romans in 146 BCE. I knew that the Carthaginians were a Semitic people from the Levant, who intermarried a bit with native peoples and the Iberians and Celts in Iberia. What I hadn't fully twigged to was that the very capable Numidians (sometimes allied to Carthage, sometimes to Rome) who are often (from the same motives) depicted as black were, in fact, *Berber*.
This may seem like it's all a bit silly and hardly worth worrying about; skin colour isn't important (or shouldn't be) when compared to what people achieve and how they behave.
Except that I have a large army of wee (15mm high) Numidians that at some point I need to paint. So it's kind of handy to know that they should look more like Zinedine Zidane than George Weah...
