Edge of Inspiration: Bronze Age Trade

You know I kind of dig ancient history as a setting. Nefertiti Overdrive – set in 25th Dynasty Ancient Egypt – is on its way to backers and should be in stores by November and I had previously dabbled with Immortals of Bronze. Listening to the Great Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt over at the Great Courses has, as usual, hit on more than one points of inspiration.

Ruins of Byblos from “gordontour” used under Creative Commons

In the last lecture I discussed for the Listen Through, Dr. Brier talked about Old Kingdom Egypt’s trade missions, and specifically to the Sinai for turquoise and Lebanon for cedar. That definitely hit the right buttons. Immortals of Bronze was all about trade missions as the connectors of cultures, and  1177: The Year Civilization Collapsed does a great job of showing how trade created the kind of intricate, interwoven networks we believe happened only with “globalization.”

To me, the city of Byblos is key. This was likely the destination of the Egyptian mission to acquire cedars, and from the very cursory research I did, it sounds like a relatively cosmopolitan place. I’m thinking the group could similarly be cosmopolitan – my first thoughts are of an Egyptian emissary and his (or, if we want to have some fun with it, her) bodyguard, a Phoenician captain (yes, the Phoenicians were an artificial division of cultures used by the Greeks, but we’re gaming, so shorthand is acceptable), maybe an astrologer (wizard?) from Mesopotamia and a barbarian or two for “fish out of water” moments (maybe one from Central Asia/Turkey and one from Sub-Saharan Africa, just to stir things up).

Yes, the trade mission would get them to Byblos, but they would be facing political negotiations as well as economic ones as the city is rife with factions. There would be favours needed to achieve for the rulers, and that could lead to unexpected discoveries, possibly of “monsters” now thought mythological. The Sneferu mission described in the lecture would have been around 2600 BCE, so before even the Mycenean civilization in Greece, but easily encompassing the height of Mesopotamia. Adventures in and around “the Great Green” could be awesome, and this is a period with little actual primary evidence, so your version of history can be just as valid as any others.

You can find Great Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt here.

The Listen Through for lecture two “Sneferu” is here.

A discussion of my attempt at Bronze Age gaming here.

My review of 1177: The Year Civilization Collapsed here and you can learn more about the book here.

Howard Carter – Combat Archaeologist

He has two Webleys under his jacket.

I was listening to the Great Courses’ Great Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt – which I’ve mentioned before – and Dr. Brier is talking about the Tutankhamen expedition. He spoke of the life of Howard Carter, the man who led the excavation, and of his history in Egypt.

I have to say, that provided a lot of inspiration. This guy heads over to work in Egypt at the age of 17. He works cataloging, excavating, and he even loses a government job because he stood up for an Egyptian guard who had forcibly denied entrance to one of the tombs to a group of drunk French tourists.

This is all before he loses everything, and is picked up by Lord Carnarvon for that famous expedition.

Now, in my head, this is part of a mystical steampunk campaign. There are evil things living in the tombs of Egypt, set there to guard the dead. An interesting point that Dr. Brier made was that many of the mummies of the Pharaohs had been taken out of their tombs in the 20th or 21st Dynasty because the treasury of Egypt could no longer afford the guards. Perhaps in this setting, evil spirits are left in the tombs to punish grave robbers. Ever ingenious, the grave robbers find ways to release or trap these spirits.

After Carter stands up for his Egyptian guards, one of them – call him whatever you will, maybe Ahmed, which is supposed to be the most popular boy’s name in Egypt – who works for the ancient society that hunts down and destroys these spirits, brings Carter into his confidence.

So instead of making ends meet by painting landscapes for tourists, Carter and Ahmed become world-spanning mythic hunters – because so much of Egypt’s culture had been removed to foreign climes.

Yeah, that’d be pretty awesome.

You can find the Great Courses’ Great Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt here.

You can find Wikipedia‘s entry on Howard Carter here.

Read about  Tutankhamen here. Notice the link to Nefertiti? Not yet overdriven.

Most popular names in Egypt? I question its veracity, but who cares.