Heat Death Warriors: The Battle Against Entropy

The universe tends to wind down.

            As they taught us in high school science class, everything slowly – or sometimes quickly – deteriorates. Energy is lost, either suddenly or gradually.  Heat seeps away. Stars burn out. Complex systems collapse. This is the physical process we call entropy. Thermal equilibrium is the goal of the universe.

            There seem to be only two things that work against entropy. One is the Big Bang, which happened almost 14 billion years ago. Whatever caused the start of our universe, it created processes that led to complexity and molecules and galactic systems and everything else that makes up the universe. The Big Bang, mysterious as it was, challenged thermal equilibrium.

            The second opponent of entropy is life – just as mysterious as the Big Bang – which began some four billion years ago and which is ongoing. Living organisms store energy and fight the tendency toward collapse, breakdown, rot, disorder. These organisms do die, but they create successors, offspring, which carry on the struggle against entropy. Life creates systems that challenge the tendency of the universe.

            What does all this mean? Simply, that we human beings, as living organisms, are engineered, designed, created, to fight entropy. There may be other reasons why we exist, but fighting entropy is self-evident and clearly our most important priority – for if we fail to stave off heat death (the end of thermodynamic free energy) we are finished.

            It is not certain that humans or any other living species can win the battle against entropy. In fact, it is very likely that the struggle is unwinnable in the long run. But it is in our nature as a species to fight against our own deaths and against the heat death of the universe.

            It may be that in time – perhaps billions of years from now – we will figure out a way to outwit the laws of thermodynamics, keep energy pulsing, and become literal masters of the universe. We’re a long way from that outcome, but we will doubtless continue to pursue it.

When the World Shook

When the World Shook by H. Rider Haggard is an unusual if flawed piece of early science fiction, laced with philosophy, religion, colonial anthropology, romance and humor.

The journal Science Fiction Studies of DePauw University sums up the book as follows:

When The World Shook: Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley, and Arbuthnot. 1919. The most science-fictional of Haggard's novels, for along with such psychic phenomena as metempsychosis we have suspended animation with survivors from a technologically advanced civilization 250,000 years in the past, a chart comparing the star patterns of that time with those of today, and a monstrous machine — one capable of changing the tilt of the earth.

It is a post-Victorian novel, written during World War I, and the conflict impinges upon the narrative in various ways. When the World Shook was first published in serial form in the British Christian evangelical magazine The Quiver in 1918, at the end of the war, and was released as a novel the following year.

A thoughtful blogger was right on target when he recently observed:

When the World Shook is a beautiful and silly book. It has very clear flaws and is definitely not one of the best books ever written, but it may turn out to be one of my favorites. This thing is deeply flawed, but I fully intend to read it again and again throughout my life. The book is, at its core, the adventures of a troubled agnostic and his buddies the atheist and the believer, as they explore a mysterious island and meet the powerful man-god-king asleep in its bowels. They also argue philosophy and theology a lot. Oh and there’s World War I? Plus a touch of racism, but not as much as I expected! Basically, it’s your normal “boy widower who suffers anxiety about where we go when we die and what our place in the universe might be meets girl who is an ancient scientifimagical princess who has slept in the Earth for eons and might be a reincarnation of someone who lived during her sleep” story.

The author, Sir Henry Rider Haggard, wrote adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa – such as King Solomon’s Mines (1885), Allan Quatermain (1887) and She (1887) – and was a pioneer of the “lost world” literary genre, of which When the World Shook is a late example.

Haggard was a close friend of Rudyard Kipling, and Sir Henry’s biographer Morton Cohen says Kipling provided the idea for When the World Shook. The website HiLoBrow says Kipling “helped with the plot.”

HiLoBrow has posted a modern serialization of the novel, with some minor abridgements.

Here is HiLoBrow’s plot summary plus some interesting blurbs, old and new:

When the World Shook concerns adventurers Bastin, Bickley, and Arbuthnot, who discover two Atlanteans in a state of suspended animation on a remote island. One of the awakened sleepers, Lord Oro, is a superman — the last king of the Sons of Wisdom, who’d relied on hyper-advanced technology to subjugate the planet’s lesser peoples. The other is Oro’s sexy daughter, Yva… who falls in love with Arbuthnot. Using astral projection, Lord Oro visits London and the battlefields of the Western Front. Why? To determine whether or not he should once again employ an infernal chthonic machine to drown the worthless human race, as he’d done 250,000 years earlier!... 

“A really splendid romance, rich in color, fresh and gorgeous in its imaginative qualities and power, and needless to add, absorbingly interesting, is this wherein Rider Haggard tells us of what happened ‘When the World Shook.’” — The New York Times (1919) 

“Speaking quite soberly and without exaggeration, this story of ‘When the World Shook’ is an amazing novel. Amazing in its imaginative quality, its romance, the splendor of its descriptions, doubly amazing when one remembers that it is the successor to a long series of colorful tales of adventure in savage or extraordinary lands… We frankly admit that, in our opinion at least, Rider Haggard has never conceived and placed before our eyes any pictures more thrilling or more impressive that are contained in this latest book.” — New York Evening Post (1919) 

“Rider Haggard has again unbridled his splendid imagination. A thrilling, gigantic wonder tale.” — Pittsburgh Sun (1919) 

“If this is pulp fiction it’s high pulp: a Wagnerian opera of an adventure tale, a B-movie humanist apocalypse and chivalric romance. When the World Shook has it all — English gentlemen of leisure, a devastating shipwreck, a volcanic tropical island inhabited by cannibals, an ancient princess risen from the grave, and if that weren’t enough a friendly, ongoing debate between a godless materialist and a devout Christian. H. Rider Haggard’s rich universe is both profoundly camp and deeply idealistic.” — Lydia Millet (2012 blurb for HiLoBooks)

Another online version of the novel is available on an Australian website, freeread.com.au.

Queens of Mesopotamia – Part II: Nitocris

‘Darius Opens the Tomb of Nitocris’

By Eustache Le Sueur

In the previous post, we discussed the Assyrian queen Semiramis, as described in the Histories of Herodotus and other works. Now we will take a look at Nitocris, another queen who ruled Babylon five generations after Semiramis.

(Another, perhaps better-known, Nitocris was also mentioned by Herodotus as a ruler of Egypt. She was said to be the last pharaoh of the Sixth dynasty. Today, scholars question her very existence.)

The Assyrian-origin Nitocris, sometimes called Nitocris of Babylon, is said to be either the wife or daughter of Nebuchadnezzar II. This Nebuchadnezzar (a major figure in the Bible’s Book of Daniel) was the son of Nabopolassar, founder of the Neo-Babylonian or Chaldean Empire, which broke free from Nineveh-based Assyria by forming an alliance with the Medes of Persia. After the destruction of Nineveh, the Babylonians began to worry about the ambitions of their erstwhile Persian allies.

Nitocris is introduced by Herodotus as follows (in George Rawlinson’s translation):

The later of the two queens, whose name was Nitocris, a wiser princess than her predecessor, not only left behind her, as memorials of her occupancy of the throne, the works which I shall presently describe, but also, observing the great power and restless enterprise of the Medes, who had taken so large a number of cities, and among them Nineveh, and expecting to be attacked in her turn, made all possible exertions to increase the defences of her empire.

Herodotus says Nitocris ordered a number of grand civil works aimed at creating defensive positions north of Babylon and thereby deterring attacks by the Medes. Among other things, Babylonian excavations transformed the Euphrates, formerly a straight river course flowing into Babylon from the north, turning it into a winding river with a number of sharp bends. She also ordered a huge lake to be dug to the north of her capital.

As Herodotus put it: “All these works were on that side of Babylon where the passes lay, and the roads into Media were the straightest, and the aim of the queen in making them was to prevent the Medes from holding intercourse with the Babylonians, and so to keep them in ignorance of her affairs.”

She also took advantage of the massive construction projects to temporarily redirect the Euphrates into the new lake basin and build a stone bridge across the riverbed inside the city of Babylon, for the first time linking the two sides of the capital.

Says Herodotus: “When the river had filled the cutting, and the bridge was finished, the Euphrates was turned back again into its ancient bed; and thus the basin, transformed suddenly into a lake, was seen to answer the purpose for which it was made, and the inhabitants, by help of the basin, obtained the advantage of a bridge.”

The location of the bridge of Nitocris has been uncovered by archaeologists at the site of the city of Babylon.

The Achaemenid Persian King Cyrus used Nitocris’ public works against her in his conquest of Babylon. He diverted the Euphrates into her artificial lake, lowering the river’s level to allow his troops to enter the city under the defensive walls beneath which the river passed.

Nitocris also created what Herodotus called “a remarkable deception” to prevent anyone from seizing her burial treasure after her death. She built her tomb above one of the main gates of Babylon, rendering the entrance unusable, because of a widespread cultural prohibition against passing beneath a dead body:

She had her tomb constructed in the upper part of one of the principal gateways of the city, high above the heads of the passers by, with this inscription cut upon it:- "If there be one among my successors on the throne of Babylon who is in want of treasure, let him open my tomb, and take as much as he chooses -- not, however, unless he be truly in want, for it will not be for his good." This tomb continued untouched until [the Achaemenid Persian king] Darius came to the kingdom. To him it seemed a monstrous thing that he should be unable to use one of the gates of the town, and that a sum of money should be lying idle, and moreover inviting his grasp, and he not seize upon it. Now he could not use the gate, because, as he drove through, the dead body would have been over his head. Accordingly he opened the tomb; but instead of money, found only the dead body, and a writing which said- "Hadst thou not been insatiate of pelf, and careless how thou gottest it, thou wouldst not have broken open the sepulchres of the dead."

Herodotus does not specifically say what happened to Nitocris’ treasure, but his account suggests none was buried with her – that, of course, would have been the centerpiece of the deception.

Classicist Deborah Levine Gera, author of Warrior Women: The Anonymous Tractatus De Mulieribus, says Nitocris of Babylon appears to be more intelligent than Semiramis, particularly because of her public works projects and her awareness of Median expansionism. But she notes that some scholars suspect the two queens, if they actually existed, were in fact the same person. Plutarch, for example confuses the two, and has Darius plunder Semiramis’ tomb. Also some accounts attribute the bridge-building and artificial lake to Semiramis.

There are other theories about Nitocris’ identity, including:

(1) She was Nebuchadnezzar II, whose name Herodotus mistook for a feminine form. 

(2) She was Adad-Guppi, mother of Nabonidus, last of the Neo-Babylonian rulers. The influential Adad-Guppi, who helped engineer her son’s rise to the throne, was born in about 649 B.C., 150 years or five generations after the queen thought to be Semiramis. 

(3) Nitocris was a powerful Assyrian queen named Naqi’a, wife of Sennacherib (who ruled from 704-681 B.C.) and mother of Esarhaddon (who ruled from 680-669 B.C.). Many of the public works completed during Naqi’a’s lifetime resembled those of Nitocris.

To sum up, as Levine Gera puts it:

Nitocris is an elusive figure. All of the attempts to identify the Babylonian queen with an historical personage lead to difficulties of one kind or another and we cannot establish whether, in fact, she ever existed. Real or not, Nitocris is a complex, ambiguous personality whose successes and failures are inextricably linked.  She builds magnificent, monumental waterworks, but these are used by Cyrus to capture her city. She tricks Darius into opening her tomb only to bring about the violation of her own grave. Nitocris is said to be clever, but the queen is, in Herodotus’ tale, her own worst enemy: ultimately, her building feats and artful epitaph – the outstanding products of her intelligence – do her no good.

The mystery of Nitocris, like that of Semiramis, continues….

Queens of Mesopotamia – Part I: Semiramis

In his Histories, Herodotus discusses two famous Assyrian women who ruled ancient Babylon (among many other cities in the Neo-Assyrian Empire): Semiramis and Nitocris. Our historical knowledge of these leaders is scant, but there are plenty of colorful legends. We will first take a look at Semiramis, and consider Nitocris in a later post.

Herodotus says of Semiramis:

Many sovereigns have ruled over this city of Babylon, and lent their aid to the building of its walls and the adornment of its temples, of whom I shall make mention in my Assyrian history. Among them were two women. Of these, the earlier, called Semiramis, held the throne five generations before the later princess. She raised certain embankments well worthy of inspection, in the plain near Babylon, to control the [Euphrates] river, which, till then, used to overflow, and flood the whole country round about.

George Rawlinson, translator of the above lines, says in a footnote that Semiramis was the wife of Rammannirari III (812-783 B.C.) and that she may have introduced the worship of Nebo (or Nabu), the Assyrian-Babylonian god of wisdom and writing, into the great northern Assyrian city of Nineveh, near modern-day Mosul in Iraq. He pointedly adds: “Herodotus gives none of the wild tales attached to the mythical Semiramis.”

Historians today believe Semiramis (or Shammuramat) was the wife and queen of Assyrian King Shamsi-Adad IV, who ruled from 824-811 B.C. Semiramis is said to have ruled on her own as regent for four years from the death of her husband until her son Adad-nirari III came of age. Scholars question whether Semiramis was formally named regent during this period, but there is no doubt she was an influential force in the Neo-Assyrian Empire of the day.

Diodorus Siculus and other historians who related the legends surrounding Semiramis apparently drew much of their information from the accounts of Ctesias of Cnidus.

Here is one description of the legends, which notes that Semiramis was believed to be the daughter of a fish-goddess and that she eventually became the wife of a mythical Assyrian king named Ninus:

According to the legend as related by Diodorus, Semiramis was of noble parents, the daughter of the fish-goddess Derketo of Ascalon in Syria and a mortal. Derketo abandoned her at birth and drowned herself. The child was fed by doves until she was found and brought up by Simmas, the royal shepherd.
 Afterwards she married Onnes or Menones, one of the generals of Ninus. Ninus was so struck by her bravery at the capture of Bactra that he married her, forcing Onnes to commit suicide.
 She and Ninus had a son named Ninyas. After King Ninus conquered Asia, including the Bactrians, he was fatally wounded by an arrow. Semiramis then masqueraded as her son and tricked her late husband's army into following her instructions because they thought these came from their new ruler. After Ninus's death she reigned as queen regnant, conquering much of Asia.
 Not only was she able to reign effectively, she also added Ethiopia to the empire. She restored ancient Babylon and protected it with a high brick wall that completely surrounded the city. She is also credited with inventing the chastity belt. Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus credits her as the first person to castrate a male youth into eunuch-hood: "Semiramis, that ancient queen who was the first person to castrate male youths of tender age" (Lib. XIV).

Edwin Murphy, translator of Diodorus Siculus, says of Semiramis:

It is probable that Semiramis was originally a Semi-Divine Syrian Empress, (part goddess part-human), perhaps the same who was linked to the [deity] worshipped at Ascalon under the name of Astarte, or the Oriental Aphrodite, associated with the Babylonia Ishtar, from the Sumerian Innana, the Persian Anaitis, and the Armenian Saris to whom the dove was sacred. Hence the stories of her voluptuousness which were current even in the time of Augustus. The historical figure behind this legendary queen is to be identified with, and almost certain, the real Queen "Sammura-mat", the palace wife of Shamsi-Adad V, king of Assyria, and mother of King Adad-Nirari III; she lived towards the end of the ninth century (regent to 810-805 B.C.), and is known to us from ancient Assyrian inscriptions. Numerous operas, plays, and novels are still current that celebrate the fame of this greatest of queens "Semiramis"... who never really lived.

Murphy explores even further the legend that Semiramis was the daughter of a fish-goddess (mermaid?), a concept also discussed by Lucian in his De Dea Syria:

Diodorus has preserved the traces of some authentic Semitic religious lore. Ascalon was the site of a famous temple to the goddess Atargatis, or Adargatis, of whose name Derceto is a variant. Atargatis herself was a combination of two deities: Athtar (contracted to Atar, an Aramaic form of Phoenician Astarte, Babylonian Ishtar, Old Testament Astoreth); and Athe, a Palmyrene divinity. The Talmudic and Armenian rendition, Tar'atha, shows this duality quite well. The worship of Atargatis was a goddess of increase and fertility, sometimes identified by Greek writers with Hellenic Aphrodite. She was linked with the ideas of the life-giving power of water and the fertility of fish, and associated, at least in Palestine, with the male deity Dagon, who was also represented as part fish, reminiscent of Oannes, the enigmatic amphibious culture-bringer of the Chaldaeans.
 Many Syrians reverence fish and observed taboos on eating them. Lucian, in the second century A.D., described the practice at Hieropolis in northern Syria, the other great center of Derceto worship: "Others think that Semiramis ... founded this site, not for Hera, but for her own mother ... Derceto. There was a likeness of Derceto in Phoenicia, a strange sight! It is a woman for half of her length, but from the thighs to the tip of the feet a fish's tail stretches out. The Derceto in Hieropolis, however, is entirely a woman... They consider fish sacred and never touch one... There is also a lake not far from the sanctuary, in which sacred fish of all kinds are raised" (De Dea Syria 14,15). A fragment of Mnaseas adds: "Whenever they pray to the goddess, they offer fishes made of silver and gold; each day the priests offer her real fish, delicately cooked, on a table". Many classical authors mention the Syrians' abstention from fish, and connect this in various ways with Atargatis, whom some rationalized simply as a cruel queen of ancient Syria who instituted this practice.

Interestingly, Murphy finds a possible connection between Onnes, husband of Semiramis, and Oannes, the part-man part-fish creature who according to ancient legend emerged from the Persian/Arabian Gulf  and brought knowledge and culture to ancient Mesopotamia:

It is possible that Onnes represents, in a disguised and attenuated form, Oannes, the semi-human fish-like being who, according to the Babylonian History of Berosus, brought culture to ancient Mesopotamia. Oannes was Berosus' name for the Babylonian god Ea (equivalent to Sumerian En-ki). His widespread cult was adopted by the Assyrians, among others, who erected a temple to him at Nineveh. Ea's special domain was water and the deep, and this plus his icthyomorphic appearance and his worship at Nineveh may reflect a flimsy connection with the Semiramis legend through the fish-goddess Derceto, her mother. But the point should not be pressed too far, the evidence is only inferential. The slight resemblance between the name Derceto and that of Damkina, Ea's consort, may be coincidental. But it is curious that Hydaspes, mentioned below as a son of Onnes, bears the same name as a river in India: for Ea was of the deep or abyss, the source of all streams.

Thus, as we often find, legends and myths about historical figures frequently have more importance than the so-called factual data. We find Semiramis has connections to the great goddess of the Middle East and to the mysterious knowledge-bringer of early Mesopotamia. As a mythic and metaphoric figure, she has survived to the present day, has been featured in numerous plays and works of literature, including Dante’s Inferno and the Snopes trilogy of William Faulkner.