Last Saturday I attended the Albany Book Festival at the Albany University Upper Campus. This is always one of my favorite events as it gives me a chance to talk to both other writers and of course many readers.
Jacqueline Boulden, Carol Pouliot, Chris Keefer, Amy Patricia Meade, Syr Lazlo, Catherine Bruns, Eleanor Kuhns – some of the Mavens of Mayhem.
My contest on Fresh Fiction has been extended through October. Follow this link: https://gleam.io/Jghrh/eleanor-kuhns-september to join and possibly win a copy of my new book, In the Shadow of the Bull, as well as A Simple Murder and a $10.00 Amazon gift card.
Very excited to announce I will be speaking at Newburgh Free Library next Wednesday, October 4 at 6:30. The event is free.
First, a note. My website went down on Friday for some as yet unknown reason. However, after a discussion with Bluehost, it is now working again. So, this is the blog I would have written on Thursday.
This Bronze Age civilization was the pinnacle of sophistication and culture in the Mediterranean. Their art – the paintings, mosaics, sculpture, jewelry – even their pottery – was much sought after. Excavations on mainland Greece, Turkey and Egypt have found remnants of these trade goods.
They were also noted for their textiles, especially a purple dye. The murals, sculptures, and sculptures reveal clothing dyed many colors. Indigo was known. (In fact, our name for this blue comes from the Greek name – which went into Latin – for Indian. The dye was originally exported from India. Madder was also known, although the Minoans also knew of the cochineal beetle for scarlet.
But the dye for which they are known is Tyrian purple, a deep color extracted from tens of thousands of murex snail shells. The dye was so expensive that it became known as Royal purple.
The one color they did not have was green unless they overdyed blue and yellow. A green dye was discovered in the 1800’s, but since it was made with copper arsenide, it was incredibly toxic.
What do we know about the cosmetics used by the women in Ancient Crete and the clothing they wore? Because we have no written records, archaeologists (and writers like me) are forced to rely on interpretations of murals, statuary and other art work.
Cosmetics were commonly used in the Ancient World: Egypt, the Middle Ages, and Asia. In Egypt and Mesopotamia, they were used by both men and women and all classes. Kohl was the most commonly used cosmetic. Kohl was made from galena, a dark gray ore and crushed charcoal, mixed with gum or water to make a paste. Cosmetics were so important cosmetic palettes were found buried in gold with the deceased’s grave goods.
Kohl was used for lining the eyes, like modern eyeliner. It offered health benefits in the form of protection from disease, bugs and sun rays. Red ochre clay was ground up and mixed with water to create a paste to paint on the lips and cheeks.
The murals also show the hairstyle fashionable at that time. Locks of hair were brought over the front of the shoulders. Most of the hair was drawn back from the forehead and decorated with pearls, gold beads or gems. Both sexes wore their hair in this manner.
Note in the graphic above the white ribbon at the back of the women’s necks. This was a sacral knot worn by the priestesses.
Finally, the murals and statuary depict a certain style of dress. All the women wear long skirts, usually ruffled or arranged in tiers, with a short short-sleeved jacket. Opinions vary about what women wore under the jacket. Were they nude or did they wear a blouse? It is difficult to tell from the artifacts available to us.
Below, a statue of a goddess or priestess holding snakes.
Minoan statue
Notice the elaborate belt around her wasp waist. Apparently, tiny waists were also the fashion and tight belts were worn to accentuate it. These wasp waists and tight belts were worn by men as well as by women.
This is the setting I use for In The Shadow of the Bull, a mystery set in Bronze Age Crete. Martis’s preference for more comfortable clothing, and only a loincloth when she is bull leaping, is frequently mentioned. As she grows up, she too adopts the tiered skirt with its tight belt and the short-sleeved jacket.
Writing Historical Fiction has some unique issues. (So does writing mysteries but those usually revolves around plot.) Conveying a compelling setting is one difficulty. The writer wants to make the reader feel the culture and the time period – without using the dreaded data dump. Descriptions must be seeded throughout the story like pepper grains, not lumped in a pile. And the descriptions of the clothing, the food, the buildings – they can’t stop the flow of the action. Believe me, this is hard. At best, the writer uses the setting in an organic manner. I wrapped my cloak around me against the cold rain – for example.
Second is the issue of characters. For example, in my latest book, In the Shadow of the Bull, Martis is fifteen. But that is just a child, right? As I discussed last week, age is relative. Even in this country, and not so long ago, girls were allowed to marry at fifteen – or even younger. Because girls married young, Martis knows she will be expected to marry in a few years. Her only escape is to follow the Virgin Goddess Artemis, and never marry.
Another challenge is culture. What language does the writer use? Language that was common not long ago is offensive now. While we may deplore that, it still asks a question: should a writer use language that was accurate to the time but offensive now? Any writer who sets a story in the past of the United States wrestles with this one.
Language ties in to the culture. In the past, and not a very distant past, a number of groups were marginalized. Writing a story in the 1950s South doesn’t mean that LBGTQ+ people didn’t exist, just that they were hiding. In Bronze Age Crete, current scholarship suggests a complicated structure of slavery. A child’s status might rest on where he or she was born rather than the status of the mother.
Finally, one of the most difficult issues to address is what the reader brings to the book. I have had disputes with readers about certain facts, despite verifying a fact with documentary proof. Some readers just know they are correct and will flame you for not agreeing with them. This is by far the most frustrating, especially since the writer does not know where these beliefs come from.
Outside of the usual difficulties of writing a book, (grammar, character development, plot, setting) the historical writer faces a raft of unique problems,
One of the questions I’ve been asked consistently is why Martis is so young. Martis is a fifteen year old-aspiring bull leaper, When her sister dies at the altar on her wedding day, and Martis is told by her sister’s spirit that she was murdered, Martis takes on the responsibility of investigating.
Isn’t a fifteen year old too young? We would certainly think so. But the average lifespan then, and through most of human history, was only about forty.
This is a somewhat misleading statistic since the average lifespan was brought down by maternal death during childbirth. Illness and accidents, and of course war injuries, account for significant mortality. Still, a few of the bodies disinterred from graves, even from this time, indicate some people survived to their sixties or even their seventies. But that was not common.
All of life’s milestones were earlier. Women married in their teens and were grandmothers in their thirties. Many of the seasoned warriors described in the Iliad were barely in their twenties.
The other factor is that any bull leaper would have to be young: fast, agile and strong. Even now, with all the benefits modern health has to offer, sports figures in their forties are a rarity. I make a point of emphasizing that most of the bull leapers age out of the sport by their late teens. At fifteen, Martis is already facing the end of her career as a bull-dancer.
What did they eat in Ancient Crete? Archaeologists struggle with determining the food eaten by ancient peoples. The remains of bones – meat or fish – provides a clue. But what else do they eat?
We know the Minoan civilization already had the olive tree and were pressing oil. Grapes were harvested and fermented into wine long before the beginnings of the so-called Minoan society. What else? Since they had flocks of sheep and goats, and bones with cut marks have been discovered we are pretty sure they ate goat, lamb and mutton. What about beef? Well, they had bulls (for the bull leaping) so maybe they ate beef.
What about cheese? They would have had milk, goat and sheep milk at least. Although there are theories, I haven’t found a definitive answer on cheese.
Vegetables and grains are tougher. We know they grew herbs, at least for medical and religious uses. Maybe they used them to season their food. The remains of grains have been found in bowls excavated at digs. But did these ancient peoples eat bread? Ancient Egypt had bread from about the fourth century B.C.E. Did they eat it earlier? Maybe. Since the ties between Crete and Egypt were strong, I assume that the Minoan culture also had some form of bread, maybe a flat bread. They certainly had beer and beer and bread were usually companions. Even in the Middle Ages, the bread makers and the brewers were part of the same guild. I took a calculated guess and had my characters in In the Shadow of the Bull eat flatbread.
No potatoes, no squash and no corn – these are from the New World and wouldn’t make it to Europe for another thousand years.
Why did I make one of my most important characters in In the Shadow of the Bull a spirit, a ghost if you will?
After Arge dies, poisoned as she stands at the altar on her wedding day, she returns as a spirit to ask Martis for help in identifying the killer.
Willies, spirits of young girls who were murdered before they married or had children, were a common feature of ancient myth. Sometimes they were good, sometimes not, but almost every myth includes the haunting of the family by these willies. It was necessary to perform the proper rituals to prevent disaster. The importance of young women living long enough to bear children is certainly striking, but I digress.
In Martis’ case, Arge is helpful – and also the voice of Martis’s subconscious. In this way, Martis can have help figuring out what she’s seen and heard without involving someone who might be a suspect.
The volcano underneath Santorini is not extinct. It has continued to erupt and spew lava.
The small volcanic island off Santorini’s coast is made up of the cooled lava coming from beneath the ocean.
We hiked up to the top of this island, and it was really hot too. Since it is being added to, this little piece continues to grow.
When the volcano exploded in approximately 1450 B.C.E., it spread ash as Far East as Turkey. Archaeologists discovered a city on Santorini that had been buried in ash. Akrotiri is currently being excavated. Unlike Pompeii where entombed bodies have been discovered, no bodies have been found. So far, anyway. It is thought that they had enough warning to escape.
What led to the end of the Minoan culture? As you might expect, there are several theories. War? Invasion? Natural Disaster? The current favorite is a combination of the final two.
The Mediterranean basin has, in a sense, its own small ring of fire. Because the African tectonic plate is colliding with the western portion of the Eurasian plate, the area is subject to earthquakes and to volcanoes. Two famous volcanoes are situated in Italy: Vesuvius and Etna. Both have erupted more than once during human history. Think Pompeii.
Next to Crete is a small island named Thera but now called Thera. In ancient times, it was a small circular island with a caldera in the center. Santorini now looks quite different, more like a comma with another piece a short distance away. Thera is the site of a volcano which blew in approximately 1450 B.C.E. It blew out the center of the island, depositing ash as far away as Turkey and causing a tsunami that, it is theorized, swamped the boats of the Minoan Navy. (This is where the second part – invasion – comes in. The Cretan society would have been seriously damaged and in disarray after such a catastrophe and would have been easy pickings for the early Mainland Greeks.)
This volcano is still active. It is under the ocean but continues to erupt, sending lava to the surface. The small piece separated from the larger island? It is now growing as the lava pushed up from below cools and is added to the baby island. Walking on the black volcanic stone is a strange feeling.
A cataclysm of such magnitude would not be easily forgotten. In fact it has been suggested, by Velikovsky and others, that this explosion was the germ of the Atlantis tale. Plato wrote about Atlantis and Velikovsky suggested the dimensions from Atlantis fit Crete if divided by 100.
Is there a kernel of truth to the legend of the Minotaur? We already know there are many theories regarding the location of a labyrinth as described in the Greek myth. One theory mentioned previously is the complicated floor plan of the Knossos palace complex. Many of the Achaeans, the early mainland Greeks, would have come from halls with much fewer rooms so it is possible they saw the complicated and many roomed palace and were overwhelmed.
. A fragment of a floor with a labyrinth has been found during the excavation at Knossos. Was it decoration? Or something more? No one knows.
Or perhaps the maze as described in the myth hasn’t been found. Pieces of tablets from Knossos, talk about a place with a labyrinth. So far, no one knows where that might be. Or even if it was a different location.
What about the minotaur, a bull-headed man? Considering the number of ancient cultures who used masks to represent animals and/or Gods, it doesn’t take much imagination to guess a man wearing a mask played the part of the Minotaur in religious rites. Bulls were very important; sacred in fact in this Bronze Age culture.
Finally, we come to the core of the Theseus and Minotaur myth. The tribute of young men and women were chased through the labyrinth and consumed. The Minoans have the reputation for being a peaceful society. It is probably true that, because they were an island with an excellent Navy, they were well defended from outside invaders. But certain finds have suggested this society was not as peaceful as it appears to us now. Bones of children mixed in with the bones of bovines and sheep, and bearing the same cut marks, suggest they were eaten as the animals were. Were these ancient Cretans cannibals? Was eating human flesh part of their religious rites?
Another finding suggests human sacrifice. Three bodies, crushed by falling debris during an earthquake, seem to indicate the sacrifice of a young man by a priest. Many cultures sacrificed to appease the Gods. However, if they were sacrificing this young man to prevent an earthquake, they left it to late.
