Platform 9

It has been claimed that Boudica is buried beneath platform 9 of King's Cross Station. Some say 8, others 10, JK Rowling probably 9¾. According to londonist.com "This idea began with John Bagford and a dead elephant. The elephant was discovered near a flint axe head in a gravel pit at the top of Gray’s Inn Road. In 1715, Bagford published a suggestion that the elephant has been brought over by the Romans, and that the flint was a spearhead of a British warrior who fought them." Whatever.

Anyway, I was introduced to Boudica - Boadicea as we knew her then - as a child hooked on I-Spy books. I guess they are called i-spy now. Away on our summer holidays? Get out I-Spy At The Seaside. A day at the zoo? I-Spy At The Zoo: Birds And Reptiles. Outside our house? I-Spy In The Street.

A trip to the smoke? I-Spy The Sights Of London. And there on the Embankment (and on page 15) is the glorious statue of Boudica/Boadicea and her daughters.

In the first century AD, Boudica led an uprising against the Romans. She was the queen of the Iceni, a Brittonic tribe from East Anglia (the trains from Cambridge come into King's Cross on platform 10 BTW) and they joined with the Celtic Britons and others to attempt to throw off the yoke of the invaders. According to Mr Wiki:

An estimated 70,000–80,000 Romans and Britons were killed in the three cities by those following Boudica, many by torture. Suetonius, meanwhile, regrouped his forces, possibly in the West Midlands; despite being heavily outnumbered, he decisively defeated the Britons. The crisis caused Nero to consider withdrawing all Roman forces from Britain, but Suetonius's victory over Boudica confirmed Roman control of the province. Boudica then either killed herself to avoid capture (according to Tacitus) or died of illness (according to Cassius Dio).

Don't mention the torture, or that statue may not have long ..............

A tiger and an eagle

We are familiar, to a degree, with the Koran and the Bible, but less so with The Analects. It's a collection of sayings attributed to Confucius. Not a sacred text, since Confucianism is not a religion, but as close as we can get to the principles of that philosophy.

Qufu cave is where Confucius is said to have been born. lonelyplanet.com tells us he was "frighteningly ugly" and "abandoned and cared for by a tiger and an eagle". The cave is on Mount Ni in Shandong province, China.

According to the Book Of Han, a history of the Former Han dynasty - the second imperial dynasty of China - The Analects arose from conversations with Confucius by various of his disciples. I thought I'd mention a few of the sayings, starting with an enigmatic one.

“He Who Knows And Knows That He Knows Is A Wise Man - Follow Him; He Who Knows Not And Knows Not That He Knows Not Is A Fool - Shun Him”

"He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions."

“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.”

“When you see a good person, think of becoming like her/him. When you see someone not so good, reflect on your own weak points.”

“Attack the evil that is within yourself, rather than attacking the evil that is in others.”

“What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.”

“The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat.”

I'm not sure how useful these are for your next pub quiz.

Confucianism is characterised by a focus on innate human goodness and the importance of interpersonal human relationships. Those relationships, however, are structured as "a strict hierarchy, with each relation acknowledging and exercising their dominance or submission. There are five key relations under which all social interaction falls: the ruler to the subject, the parent to the child, the husband to the wife, the older brother to the younger brother, and the friend to the friend. Even within friendship, a hierarchy must exist to ensure continuous harmony. Dominant parties should treat the submissive parties with kindness and gentleness, and submissive parties should treat the dominant with reverence and respect. For example, children should only speak when spoken to." [McKenzie Perkins, learnreligions.com]

In my research I discovered the existence of Confucius Institutes, which exist to foster the study of Chinese language and culture. In our post-modern, Sinophobic world, many see this as propaganda. Maybe there are some who think the same of the British Council. The Danes, Hungarians and Latvians, among many others, have cultural institutes with branches in different countries. Western nations perceive the Confucius Institutes, though, as representing malign influencers of a malign, authoritarian government. According to the National Association of Scholars (NAS) of the USA, a conservative group that has advocated the closure of CIs, only around 30 will remain in the United States by the end of 2021, down from 110 in 44 states in 2017.

There are something like 500 Confucius Institutes around the world. The UK has 29. Liexu Cai, of the University of Glasgow School of Education, wrote an article "A comparative study of the Confucius Institute in the United Kingdom and the British Council in China". In it she notes that "the activities of the British Council in China also became popular as one of the central paradigms for educational communication between China and the United Kingdom". You can see an abstract at researchgate.net and even request the whole article if you wish.

I'm not in any position to make judgements on this; I merely offer their existence as something readers may care to examine for themselves.

The Dawn of a Golden Age

I felt that a new Golden Age arrived today, as I ate a cooked breakfast - egg, bacon, mushrooms, fresh tomato, hash brown and beans, since you ask - in Asda this morning, resuming a twice a week routine - Wednesdays and Saturdays - from a previous era, aka a Dark Age. Accompanied by a real paper version of the Times, rather than that on iPad. A true feeling of liberation from the dark, satanic (should that be capitalised, I wonder? Satan as a quasi deity?) days of lockdowns, tiers and tears. A week from now, all being well, I shall be on my way to London and thence to Kent to visit friends and family; I shall breathe a sigh of relief.

Fellow video game players will be familiar with the concept of a Golden Age, during which you can earn more gold, produce more killing machines and build more wonders. In real life, historians look back on particular times and nominate them as Golden Ages.

The ancient Greek philosopher Hesiod introduced the term in his Works and Days, when referring to the period when the "Golden Race" of man lived.

That is from Wikipedia and it occurred to me that I use a lot of their material, so I decided to make a small monthly donation in recognition of that. As Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, writes: "We're a non-profit that depends on donations to stay online and thriving, but 98% of our readers don't give; they simply look the other way. If everyone who reads Wikipedia gave just a little, we could keep Wikipedia thriving for years to come."

I'm happy to be in the 2%.

I guess the designation of a Golden Age is often nationalistic: the Greeks pre-Prometheus, the Romans of Virgil and Ovid, Japan's Helan Period, the English first Elizabethan age, the French Belle Époque. Even pirates (1650-1726) and Hollywood (1920s?) have their 'Golden Ages': a bit budget, perhaps, but no more so than an Asda breakfast.

For some extremists, Brexit was posited as heralding a new Golden Age for Britain. Although I voted for Brexit, mine was a vote against the increasing, anti-democratic centralisation of the European Union, a realisation that the UK could never have enough influence to counter that in a union trying to grow its membership and behave on the international stage as an economic closed shop with tariff barriers when the rest of the world is trying to achieve a free trade Golden Age. I don't believe there will be a post-Brexit Golden Age for us, just as I don't believe there would have been a new Golden Age as part of the EU. For us, it's a slow, inexorable post-imperial, post-colonial decline and we can make the best of it in whatever guise we choose.

In my research for this post, I discovered a Golden Ages board game which seems to be just completely me. Problem is I have never been able to interest any family or friends in gaming; I'm hoping that, in a few years' time, my grandsons will be compliant. Anyone for a game? 2-4 players, 90 minutes, ages 12+, complexity rating 2.89/5.

We should all beware: in Civilization VI a Golden Age is often succeeded by a Dark Age, as a result of over-producing, increasing debt and just general hubris. From Wiki again:

In Hesiod's Works and Days, the Golden Age ended when the Titan Prometheus conferred on mankind the gift of fire and all the other arts. For this, Zeus punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock in the Caucasus, where an eagle eternally ate at his liver.

Just not in the next two weeks, please.

News Chronicle

I woke on Saturday morning to the news that "The eldest son of South Africa's late Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini has been chosen as successor to the throne, amid a bitter family feud." [BBC]. It felt as though as though I had been transported to a real life version of my favourite historical strategy game Civilization VI. In that case though it would have been Shaka leading the Zulus. He was their King for 12 years, during which he built a strong and well organised military. This map shows the rise of the Zulu Empire under Shaka (1816–1828) in present-day South Africa:

This took me back to my youth - I have a dim recollection of knowledge of Zulu and Mau Mau in the news, which must have been in the 1950s. I guess I must have been an avid newspaper reader even then [yes television had been invented; don't be cheeky]. Which in turn led me to think which newspaper would have been in my house. I'm pretty sure it was the News Chronicle, which would have fitted my father's Liberal politics. I don't remember my mother ever expressing a political view and am pretty certain I recall her refusing to tell me which party she voted for.

Obviously my reminiscence of the time was about the Mau Mau rebellion rather than anything about the Zulu but I feel that the latter appear somewhere in my memory. Perhaps media reports referenced earlier Zulu uprisings against the British Empire as colour; maybe there was just a sense of ... Africa. I was disappointed to discover that the British Newspaper Archive didn't give me any News Chronicle articles but it could easily be that I'm not familiar enough with it to search appropriately. The paper was subsumed into the Daily Mail empire in 1960 in what was undoubtedly a trend towards fewer, larger titles but unfortunately also a trend towards political polarisation of the print media with middle-ground views unrepresented.

Today the Zulu nation is part of South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal province. Amazingly - to me in my ignorance - there remain 11 million who identify as Zulu living there. According to the BBC report "The throne does not have formal political power and the monarch's role within broader South African society is largely ceremonial. But the Zulu monarchy remains hugely influential, and has a yearly taxpayer-funded budget of more than $4.9m (£3.5m)."

I hope Prince Misizulu avoids Shaka's fate - assassinated by his half brothers.

I dedicate this post to my good friend Trevor, who knows far more about the history of Britain's newspaper industry than I ever will. Maybe he'll honour us with a comment!

You thought the Mayans died out four centuries ago?

Maya was a pre-Columbian civilisation in Mesoamerica.

The Spanish arrived in the Caribbean in the early 16th century and eventually conquered the whole region of what we now call Central and South America. Except for Brazil, where the Portuguese got there first. Until then, the major Mesoamerican cultures were the Maya, the Incas, Aztecs and Olmecs.

The name Maya was not in fact what the people called themselves. Their political culture developed as a number of city states and it wasn't until the city of Mayapan became the  predominant political and cultural capital that the name Maya came into usage, in the 13th, 14th and early 15th centuries. Mayan peoples still identified themselves by their sub cultures such as the Yucatecs, the Tztzil and the Tzeltal. I'm not sure why there are so many instances of the letter z in Mesoamerican names but they can be useful in Scrabble - if your house rules allow proper names.

Rather than bore you with a dry historical journey, which I am definitely not qualified to write, my interest was piqued by the discovery that Mayan people still live today. Can you guess how many? I'd have ignorantly thought maybe a few hundred thousand but it's actually around six million! Primarily in Mexico, they also live in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Belize. There are apparently 31 distinct groups, speaking different, mutually unintelligible (at least according to the Canadian Museum of History) languages. I imagine that's a bit like a Cornishman trying to understand a Geordie. When I was a young teenager, a Londoner, I went with my parents to an event in Scotland and I literally could not understand a word of what the locals said.

The modern Mayan people maintain many of their historical customs. They engage in agriculture and practise various crafts.

Although of course many have adapted to and adopted modern cultures, traditional groups still follow the old ways. The Lacandón of the Chiapas rain forest, in Mexico, hunted with bow and arrow until the 1950s. One of the biggest threats to the Mayan culture is their felling of tropical rain forests to to make way for corn fields. This obviously doesn't endear them to the modern world. Or Greta Thunberg.

I would love to be able to visit Mayan sites such as Chichen Itza.

This is one of the "new seven wonders of the world", voted by tens of millions of people in a contest run by a Swiss company, The New 7 Wonders Foundation (which, frankly, isn't the catchiest name they could have used). I'm going to post separately about them. You might like to think about what you'd include in the list, before I start.

I guess modern nations have been pretty slow to recognise and respect the old civilisations and peoples in their midst. The Native Americans, the Aborigines, the Kikuyu and many others have suffered greatly at the hands of colonial conquerors and today's nation states perhaps don't understand the concepts of city states, tribal groupings and diverse languages, or the desire of their people to maintain their traditions. Homogeneity rules! I hope one day I will get to see Chichen Itza; in doing so, I will do my part in honouring an amazing culture.

16 January 1944

An auspicious day. A Sunday.

A German U boat was sunk. Eisenhower assumed control of the Allied Expeditionary Force. A Japanese submarine ran aground in New Guinea; a US Navy submarine ran aground on the island of Midway (these were the days before Google Maps).

The painter/designer Chris de Marigny was born. Later he became a writer on modern dance. He died in 1995. This painting of his

apparently shows "two figures reclining in a garden". I actually thought it was a Cornish Pasty.

Churchill was the UK Prime Minister, FDR the US President and Pius XII the Pope.

After being evacuated from London to Reading during World War II, my mother, in a moment of defiance towards the Führer, gave birth to a handsome boy.

Me.

I don't know the exact time of day that this momentous event occurred but I have now been alive for approximately 675,000 hours. I'm exhausted just thinking about that. That's 450,000 football matches (excluding added time for injuries, extra time, penalties, etc etc.)

To honour this poster, I shall spend my birthday in trivial endeavours but also writing authoritative blog posts based on my 40,500,000 minutes experience of life.

Moving on. Don't look back.

Code of Hammurabi

Hammurabi was King of Babylon from 1792 to 1750 B.C. He is best known for issuing the Code of Hammurabi. This code of laws is one of the oldest deciphered writings of significant length in the world. A partial copy exists on a 2.25-metre-tall (7.4 ft) stone stele, which is today in the Louvre.

The code contains 282 laws. You can see a list of all of them in the Avalon Project of the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale University. For those of you without that much time, here are a few pertinent examples.

3. If any one bring an accusation of any crime before the elders, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it be a capital offense charged, be put to death.

I guess that gives you a flavour of what is to come. However:

2. If any one bring an accusation against a man, and the accused go to the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river prove that the accused is not guilty, and he escape unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser.

So what's so special about a river?

I guess rivers were important in ancient Babylon.

5. If a judge try a case, reach a decision, and present his judgment in writing; if later error shall appear in his decision, and it be through his own fault, then he shall pay twelve times the fine set by him in the case, and he shall be publicly removed from the judge's bench, and never again shall he sit there to render judgement.

Now there's a thing. Judges are accountable for their actions. I can think of a few authoritarian leaders who would love that.

21. If any one break a hole into a house (break in to steal), he shall be put to death before that hole and be buried.

Harsh.

65. If the gardener do not work in the garden and the product fall off, the gardener shall pay in proportion to other neighboring gardens.

That reminds me of my getting warned off because I allowed my allotment to grow an impressive array of weeds.

109. If conspirators meet in the house of a tavern-keeper, and these conspirators are not captured and delivered to the court, the tavern-keeper shall be put to death.

That's one for lockdown rules.

195. If a son strike his father, his hands shall be hewn off.

196. If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out.

197. If he break another man's bone, his bone shall be broken.

200. If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out.

You get the message.

226. If a barber, without the knowledge of his master, cut the sign of a slave on a slave not to be sold, the hands of this barber shall be cut off.

There's a lot more about slaves, tenant farming and adultery.

Nice chap, Hammurabi. Good job there are no statues of him around. However, it should be remembered that he was - as we all are - a man of his time, and this codification of the rule of law is remarkable.

I wonder whether students are taught this as part of the history of laws in a law degree course. I have a son who could answer that.........