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Hello, and welcome to Humanities Matter brought to you by Brill. I'm Lee Chungreco, and this week we'll be looking at key issues in the field of humanities. Today we're speaking with Professor Anthony Spellinger. He's a professor in ancient Egyptian history at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.
His book is The Books Behind the Masks, Sources of Warfare Leadership in Ancient Egypt. It's part of the ancient warfare series. Professor Spellinger, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you very much.
I'm really quite happy to be here, and it's all new to me. So I'd like to really thank your whole organization and all of the complicated background that's gone into this short podcast. Well, thank you. And all of your work was new to me, even though it is technically quite old.
So let's get into it. Tommy, first of all, what do you mean by books behind the masks? Yes, well, I chose the title because I first thought of a more dramatic aspect as a play, for example, on stage when people wear masks and sometimes they take them off. That is the actors have what is called a persona that they exhibit to the audience, but it isn't their character.
So in this case, I was taking more something very straightforward from, say, the art of tragedy, comedy, or drama in itself. But also, it's the idea that what the kings in particular, what the rulers of the country have presented to us, are presented to their people, and now, if you will, the descendants in the human race ourselves, is a mask of what they really are. But it's what they wish to be, but they have stressed to be what they are performing for us again and again in their records, this case is the records of war. So I felt masks is not inappropriate.
And I felt, in addition, that it would at least bring people into looking at the book, not just the title, but the introduction and maybe actually going into the entire structure of what I'm presenting in there. Let me add that it was also an attempt to go behind the historical accounts of warfare, the historical background of international relationships in ancient Egypt and in the ancient Near East, to actually the records. And it forms, in a sense, a second, if you will, book or volume that continues from my long-range trend of trying to understand the aspects of military in ancient Egypt. And let's talk about some of those rulers.
Who is Kamoza? And how does this pharaoh set the stage for the rest of your work here? Yes, I used Kamoza at the beginning. I was, in a sense, way back in Paris in 2009, two years ago, but it's pre-COVID time.
So it's like anti-diluvian times. It was brought up to me that I should actually discuss him sometime in dealing with Egyptian warfare. And he would be the beginner, if you will, of what is called the Egyptian Empire, the Egyptian New Kingdom period, in where you have a massive expansion of the military arm physically in the Near East, into the North, into what is called Western Asia, into Palestine and Syria, but also upstream, up the Nile, into what is called the present-day Sudan, ancient Nubia. And Kamoza's war records, he has two big ones, inscribed on stone, and set up in the temple for his godfather, put a dash between god and father, please.
And these are the two Kamoza steel, which we have one in very good condition and one in very poor condition. And in that record, you get a whole historical and social and the personal nature being expressed by the composer of the inscription. And it is, I would claim, it is a reasonable literary attempt, a literary account of the king's war records, but he's still in Egypt. He's unifying the country.
He's beginning the process of conquest of the North. He is king in the South, in the Thebes, modern-day Luxor, and he's moving up downstream to the northeast Delta of Egypt. And the war records are so detailed and so personal, and they include his speeches on and off from where he is and his opponents that he has to deal with, that it is in a sense a good springboard to discuss what is basically the military of ancient Egypt. We date him to the end of what is called Dynasty 17, and the date, exact date will be, of course, in dispute, I'm laughing by ancient historians and chronologists and all Egyptologists.
So I hate to give a date, but if you wish 1575, I would go for that date. By the way, is this a parenthesis to be sure dates to chronology and ancient Europe is always in movement. It's like an ocean. So I don't like to be so, so precise.
He's a very famous founder of the new kingdom that is going to come into existence soon after he died. And he is also, in a sense, the founder of lengthy war records from ancient Egypt. So Camosa forms, in a sense, the first of the historical chapters in the book. It's actually chapter two, because in chapter one, I deal with the war records themselves as literature.
Chapter two is Camosa, and then I move down in time with his successes through various other dynasties. Yeah, so let's talk a bit about those war records as a piece of literature. When it comes to Camosa's war records, what's unique about his narrative style and the actual accounts of war here compared to other pharaohs? Yes, it's interesting because in Camosa, we know with all reasonable certitude from ancient Egypt, that's a lot that the author or composer was designated by his pharaoh by Camosa to set up these war inscriptions in the Temple of Amun and Konic.
And he happened to be a treasurer. He was with the army, I hope he was, or else he compiled it thereafter. And it's interesting that you do have, in a sense, the name of the composer. I hate to say he may not have written every line, but I do feel he's directly involved in the production.
And he's one of a series of people in the royal treasury that actually are connected with the kings, if you will, memorializations of what he's done. Camosa's record is unique in so far as the style is occurring at a period of time where the language of Egyptian was moving into a more colloquial aspect. And yet at the same time, his presentation wasn't followed by, say, the next pharaoh I deal with. That is Tomosa.
Tomosa III is next one I carry over in Chapter 3. In a sense, the war record is unique. It's so degenerous. That is to say, it is not one that's followed.
The narrative structure is not followed by later pharaohs, even though all the pharaohs will, of course, deal with enemies like I'm also do, and locate where they are with whom they fought, how they fought, how they were triumphant, how they managed the terrain, for example, took care of strategy difficulties, dealt in the tactical aspects of warfare on the ground, and the like, still, this one, this account of Camosa, run up by his member of the royal treasury is different, but it was long enough that you had that to, to limestone, they made a beautiful limestone and set up in the temple as the memorial of the king. And that is how the kings would memorialize their warfare by and large. It's in a cultic setting, it's in a religious setting, and in the greatest of all temples, the Godhead and the original capital of Egypt being in modern day locks or, as I said, in ancient thebes, is where you found or found these inscriptions. These are free-standing steelers.
They're not wall inscriptions. They're not carved on the wall. They are too independent stone monuments. If you want to write more, you need available space.
The space has to be blank, has to be a carved, finished, dressed, blank wall, and the Egyptians will do that as well, or they do shrine areas. But Camosa's beautiful steeler are there. By the way, there's no pictures of his campaigns. These are not pictorial ones I'm dealing with.
This is a written account. It's a narrative account. So, ultimately, how do these royal sources help us understand not just warfare, but ancient Egyptian culture? Yeah, they do.
Camosa, in a sense, does reflect on the attitudes towards the enemies in the North. The enemies, remember, as I said before, are still in Egypt. They happen to be asiatics. That makes it even more of a real, if you will, ferocious, more of liberation, as they would put it in as they themselves conceived it to be.
Later, pharaohs, of course, are campaigning outside of Egypt, so they can't use that favorite, if you're called, war-term, liberating wars or wars of liberation, they're doing wars of annexation, really, because people bother them in the royal ideology. And it's that ideological factor that is connected with the king, connected with the court, connected with what I guess, best to say, this highly archaic state of phoronic ancient Egypt that you receive from the documents, and that filters through, not merely, as you say, and pointed out to me just now, the issue of how they deal with warfare and the like, the minutei of actual fighting and the like. It's more also the ideology coming through or filtering through. And you have to deal with that prism that is always there in front of you as a historian or even as a textualist.
The prism is the ideological prism in front of you and how to manipulate what the ancients wants to what you want to understand. Reflections, of course, are on the far end, is the cultures of the foreigners to some degree, the lands, the places, how they operate, where they exist, the fortresses, the buildings, the mounds in Asia that you get, the so-called tells or mounds, and where the pharaohs have to go, and the like. So combined within these war records are aspects that were at the time a new exotic different to the Egyptians and how they deal with it in all sorts of ways is quite interesting. Professor Anthony's Ballinger, he is the author of the books Behind the Masks, Sources of Warfare Leadership in Ancient Egypt.
Professors Ballinger, thanks again for talking with us. Thank you very much Lee, I really appreciate it. You are listening to the Humanities Matter podcast. You can find more podcast episodes on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Podcast.