Showing posts from category: Archaeology
The Sea Peoples Puzzle and the Collapse of Civilisations in the Late Bronze Age
By about 1200 BC the Late Bronze Age in the Eastern Mediterranean and Aegean world was in turmoil. War and the movement of peoples around the region abounded as international trade ceased, cities crumbling and civilisations collapsed. With a scarcity of hard evidence for a period of history so very distant from our own, the default explanation of many historians until recent times was that the large-scale collapse and destruction was down to one factor, the emergence of vast hordes of nomadic warriors, enigmatic and mysterious pirates and marauders which have been subsumed under the name “Sea Peoples”𝕒. Very little is known of the Sea Peoples outside of what the ancient Egyptians have recorded about these shadowy invaders of the Eastern Mediterranean littoral…which is problematic for historical enquiry in itself – having “the (hefty) disadvantage of being known only by their enemies” [Duke, T. T. The Classical Journal, vol. 65, no. 3, 1969, pp. 134–37. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3296263. Accessed 15 Feb. 2025]
The assumption that the Sea Peoples were pretty much wholly responsible for the collapse of civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 12th century BC has been challenged by historians of recent time. This revisionist view maintains that other factors could equally have caused the carnage of that world…drought, grave food shortages leading to a state of famine, the effects of climate change. Research into early agro-economies indicates their vulnerability to drought and long-term temperature change owing to general cooling which truncates their crop-growing season [McCormack et al (2012) cited in Wiener, M. H., FISCHER, P. M., & BÜRGE, T. (2017). Causes of Complex Systems Collapse at the End of the Bronze Age. In “Sea Peoples” Up-to-Date: New Research on Transformation in the Eastern Mediterranean in 13th-11th Centuries BCE (1st ed., pp. 43–74). Austrian Academy of Sciences Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1v2xvsn.7].
Historian and archaeologist Eric H Cline in particular argues that rather than being the perpetrators of the mega-devastation that befell the region by ca.1177 BC, the Sea Peoples were victims of the collapse as much as anyone else. Cline describes them as refugees fleeing from the drought and famine of cities and civilisations collapsing asunder [‘The Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Aftermath’, Eric H. Cline with Javier Mejia, YouTube interview 2024].
Primary sources illuminating the identity of the Sea Peoples: The first reference we have to the Sea Peoples is the Amarna Letters of Upper Egypt (ca.1345 BC), clay tablets mentioning, among other things, the existence of and contact with various foreign peoples named as the Sherden, Lukka and Danuna. The richest source of information on the activities of these mysterious seafaring tribes resides in Medinet Habu, Ramesses III’s memorial temple near Luxor. The inscriptions of the scribes tell the Egyptian version of the story of the Sea Peoples who having defeated all other city-states and settlements in their way, launched an armada and land force led by the kingdom of Ekwesh, attacking the Nile Delta with the objective of establishing settlements on its fertile farmlands𝕓. They launched three attempts at invasion of Egypt over a period of 30-odd years and three times they were defeated by the Egyptians. The temple walls reveal the death toll and punishments of the vanquished Sea Peoples and the enslavement of many of them (some of the captured Shardans were incorporated into the Egyptian army to defend the kingdom’s northern frontiers from the Hittites).
So, who were the Sea Peoples and where did they come from?: In regard to the identity of the Sea Peoples the extant records give us names but little understanding of who they were. There appears to have been at least nine culturally separate tribal groups–including the Sherdan, the Peleset, the Lukka, the Shekelesh, the Tjekker, the Denyen (or Danuna), the Ekwesh, the Teresh, the Meshwesh and the Weshesh—some much better known than others. They formed themselves into a warring confederation (Egyptian records give it the name the “Nine Bows Confederation” whilst under the leadership of King Meryey of Libya). The question of their origins is more problematic to scholars. The Lukka is associated with the region of Lycia (in Anatolia) although they were thought to be highly mobile. Historians have tended to identify the Peleset with the later Philistines (in the Bible also called Phlishtim (“invaders”) and located vaguely in the region of the Aegean. The Shekelesh have been associated with the island of Sicily although this wasn’t necessarily their original homeland as it’s also speculated that they may have moved there some time during the Bronze Age. The origins of the Sherden (or Shardan) is equally mysterious, with some archaeologists placing them within the Nuragic civilisation of Sardinia. The Tjekker have been variously linked to Canaan, Eastern Crete and the Sicals of Sicily, but without any conclusiveness. The Ekwesh are thought to have been from or based in the land of Libya, as was the Meshwesh. The origins of other groups are even more shadowy, such as the Denyen (or Danuna), the Karkiya and the Weshesh. Balancing these theories, Cline and other noted scholars hypothesise that the Sea Peoples’ migration began from the Western Mediterranean.
As Prof. Cline summed up the enigmatic Sea Peoples story: “the simple answer is that there is no simple answer. It remains an archaeological mystery that is the subject of much debate even today, more than 150 years after the discussions first began”.
𝕒 “Sea Peoples” was not a term used by contemporaries—Egyptians called them simply “Northerners”—but arose out of convenience to describe disparate groups of peoples thought to have come from islands and coastal areas of the Mediterranean (in reality, ironically, some came not from the sea at all!). What is established is that the Sea Peoples pursued a systematic pattern of invading and defeating the smaller empires and states of the region (Hittite kingdom, Mycenae (Greece), Syria, the Levant), culminating in a series of invasions of Egyptian Empire between ca.1213 BC and ca.1177 BC. They were repulsed and routed by the Egyptians (according to the Egyptian inscriptions) during the reigns of three succeeding pharaohs. The final Egyptian victory under Pharaoh Ramesses III was a Pyrrhic one. The war weakened the Egyptian economy to the point of bankruptcy, the empire was greatly diminished in size and by ca.1250 BC the Egyptian New Kingdom was finished.
𝕓 the Sea Peoples were atypical invaders, accompanying the fighting men was an entourage that included the families of the raiders and their livestock. The phenomena was a complete package, it’s objective included migration and the settlement of good farming lands…all of this added weight to the theory that the Sea Peoples were refugees in search of a permanent home
𓂉 𓂉 𓁈 ༗ ༗𓁈 ༗༗ 𓁈 𓂉 𓂉
.
Lost Medieval Cities on the Caspian Sea Littoral
The Caspian “Sea”—geographically more correctly an inland saltwater lake, the biggest of its kind in the world—is bordered by five modern nations, Kazakhstan and Russia (to the north), Azerbaijan (west), Turkmenistan (east) and Iran (south). With a melting pot of ethnicities in the region, below we will meet some medieval cities situated on the Caspian littoral that prospered for a time during the Middle Ages before vanishing entirely from history.
Lost city of Aktobe–Laeti: Archaeologists whose fieldwork focuses on the Caspian Sea and Caucasus regions have had much to occupy themselves with in recent decades. Systematic excavations started in the 1970s and have unearthed hitherto-disappeared sites like Aktobe–Laeti, a buried urban settlement on the Great Silk Road route that thrived in the 14th and 15th centuries. Atkobi–Laeti is located in the Atyrau (western) region of Kazakhstan. Archaeologists discovered that the settlement contains three cultural layers on top of each other (cf. Troy). Furnaces and fragments found among the debris point to the erstwhile city having skilled artisans in metalwork and pottery crafts. Many of the newly unearthed artefacts are now on display at the local history museum [‘Ancient Land of the Caspian Sea Holds Secrets of the Past’, Aruzhan Ualikhanova, The Astana Times, 15-July-2023, www.astanatimes.com].
Reconstructing a Golden Horde settlement: It’s estimated that at its peak Aktobe–Laeti housed around 10,000 inhabitants who traded their goods and wares with travelling foreign merchants. It’s key position on the Silk Road linking Central Asia and the lower Volga and evidence of the minting of coins suggest that the city was a prosperous one during these times. Traces of a substantial urban settlement in Aktobe–Laeti having existed, contradicts the established view that the peoples of the Caspian Sea led exclusively nomadic lives (Ualikhanova).
In the 14th century this important city of commerce could be identified on maps of Italian travellers but by the 16th century Aktobe-Laeti had vanished without a trace. There are two theories put forward that account for it’s sudden disappearance – it was submerged under the rising waters of the Caspian, or the city was destroyed by Timur of Samarkand in his vast empire-extending, take-no-prisoners rampage across central and western Asia (Ualikhanova).
Sabayil castle, Atlantis for real: Climate change, the damming of some 100 rivers which flow into the sea including the Volga and the flow-on effects of the Aral Sea disaster, have all resulted in a shrinking of the Caspian and an on-going drop in the sea-level. The singular upside of this ominous ecological change, perhaps for archaeologists alone, is the surfacing of the upper sections of the long-disappeared Sabayil (or Bayil) Castle. The structure, built by Shirvanshah Faribirz III in 1232–1235 as an off-shore watchtower 350m from the shoreline to give the citizens of Baku advanced notice of impending attacks on the city. In 1306 the castle sank under water due to a mega-earthquake. The now visible tops of the towers reveals huge stone tablets engraved in both Arabic and Farsi script and decorations depicting imaginary animals and human faces [‘As the Caspian Sea Disappears, Life Goes on for Those Living by Its Shores’, Felix Light, Moscow Times, 27-Apr-2021,
www.themoscowtimes.com; ‘Sabayil Castle, vicinity of Baku’, OrexCA, www.orexca.com].
Caspian cities of the Khazar Khanate: Lost cities were also a feature of the medieval Khazaria Kingdom (a large area mainly to the north and northwest of the Caspian Sea). Prominent among these were Ithill (sometimes written “Atil”) and Balanjar. Ithill’s precise location is unknown, however Russian archeologists claim to have discovered the site of Ithill (near Astrakhan in Northern Dagestan), having unearthed a fortress, flamed bricks (a speciality of the Khazars) and yurt-shaped dwellings. The claim has not been substantiated. On the Silk Road route, Ithill, the Khazaria capital at one stage, at its zenith was a major centre of trade, including the Khazaria slave trade. Ithill’s road to ruin and downfall began in the 10th century after the city was sacked by Kievan Rus led by Prince Sviatoslav I. It may have been rebuilt afterwards but it was again decimated in the 11th century and wiped off the map for keeps. Balanjar was also a capital of Khazaria for a time and a city of considerable importance. It suffered the same fate as Ithill, decimated by nomadic conquerors (in the Arab-Khazar wars), rebuilt but went into terminal decline and was no more heard of after ca.1100𖤓.
Abuskūn: Medieval Persia was the site of a lost city on the southwestern shore of the Caspian Sea, the port of Abuskūn. It’s location is uncertain but most scholars place it in within the Gorgān region. Abuskūn was a prosperous trading hub for its merchants who traded as far away as the land of the Khazars on the Volga trade route. The city’s wealth and vulnerable location made it a sought-after prize for the Rus and their Caspian expeditions. After 1220 Abuskūn is not mentioned in the documents, although in the 14th century a Persian geographer wrote that it had been an island in the Caspian which was submerged due to the sea’s rise in level.
Abandoned Dekhistan in the desert: Modern Turkmenistan is host to one or two lost cities of its own. The most significant was Dekhistan, aka Dekhistan-Misrian (S.W. Turkmenistan), near the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea…a ruined Silk Road city but at its peak (11th century) a major economic centre and the foremost medieval oasis in the region. It managed to survive the Mongol invasion albeit weakened, limped on till the 15th century but was ultimately undone by large scale deforestation precipitating an ecological disaster (failed irrigation system), turning the city into a ghost town. All that remains are mud-brick foundations, the outlines of a few caravanserais and what’s left of several minarets in varying degrees of decay [‘Ancient settlement of Dekhistan’, Silk Road Adventures, www.silkadv.com].
Derbent continuity: Derbent in the Dagestan region of Russia differs from the impermanence of these other medieval Caspian cities in it having achieved a continuity of existence right through to the present day. Archeological diggings reveal that the city has clocked up nearly 2,000 years of continuous urban settlement. The existence of Derbent (romanised as “Derbend”, from a Farsi word meaning “gateway”) as a fortified settlement, was known by Greek and Roman authors as early as the 3rd century BC [‘Citadel, Ancient City and Fortress Buildings of Derbent’, UNESCO, www.whc.unesco.org]. Derbent’s strategic location, nestled tightly between natural barriers—the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus Mountains—has seen control of it pass from empire to empire – Persian, Arab, Mongol, Timurid, Shirvan and finally Russian§. Under the Persians it formed part of the northern lines of the Sasanian Empire.
.
𖤓 another Khazar city, Samandar—thought to be situated on the western shore of the Caspian roughly midway between Atil and Derbent—was also lost to history during this period
§ so prized because it allowed rulers of Derbent to control land traffic between the Eurasian Steppe and the Middle East [‘Derbent’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]
“U” and “V” Words from Left Field II: Redux. A Supplement to the Logolept’s Diet
<: word meaning root formation:>
Ucalegon: neighbour whose house is on fire or has burned down [from Gk. Oukalégōn – one of the Elders of whose house was set on fire by the Achaeans during the sack of Troy, a character in the Iliad (3.148)]
Ultracrepidarian: going too far; overstepping the mark; presumptious; intruding in someone else’s beeswax [from L. ultra- (“beyond”) + –crepidarian (“things concerning shoemaking”); attributed to the 18th–19th cent English essayist and writer William Hazlitt]
Ululate: to howl like a wolf [from L. ululāre (“to howl or bay”)]
Umbersorrow: fit, robust, sturdy, resisting disease or the effects of severe weather; rugged, uncultivated, surly disposition [from Scot. Eng. origin obscure]
Umbriferous: shady; making shade [from L. umbrifer, from umbra (“a shade”) + –ferre (“to bear”)]
Undinism: the association of water with erotic thoughts; sexual arousal from urination [from Ger. undine from L. unda (“wave”)+ -ism]
Unidextral: capable of using one hand only [L. uni (“one only”) + –dexter (“right hand”)] ✋
Upaithric: (Arch.) (a building or structure) without a roof [Gk. Origin obscure] (Synonym: Hypethral)
Urorilocal: (refer to Uxorious in the Logolept’s Diet 1.0) living with one’s wife’s family [borrowed from L. uxōrius (“of or pertaining to a wife”), from uxor (“wife”) + -local(?)]
<: word meaning root formation:>
Valetudinarian: an invalid, esp one with a tendency towards hypochondria; a person who is unduly anxious about their health [from L. valēre, (“to have strength” or “to be well”) + -arian]
Vapulatory: relating to flogging or beating [from L. vāpulō (“cry”; “wail”)]
Venery: sexual indulgence (from L. vener-, venus– (“sexual desire, sexual intercourse”) + -ery]
Verecund: modest; shy; bashful [from L. verēcundus (“shy, modest”)]
Verkramp: someone narrow-minded or extremely conservative in their views [Afrik. “cramped”]
Vetust: venerable from antiquity [from L. vetustus (“old, ancient”)]
Viduity: widowhood [from MidEng. (Scots) viduite, from L. vidua (“widow”) + –ity]
Viviseplture: the practice of burying someone alive [from L. vivus (“alive”) + –sepulture (from L. sepultura (“bury”)]
Voteen: a zealously pious person [from Gael. Irish. corruption of devotee + -een]
Vulpinate: to wilily cheat or deceive someone [from L. vulpes (“fox” )]
Dilmun, the Lost Bronze Age Civilisation in the Gulf
The culmination of archaeological excavations on the island state of Bahrain during the 20th century (see endnote) saw the emergence of a fully-formed Bronze Age city that had been buried for 4,000 years. The Saar settlement, as it is known, was found to comprise two sections, a residential zone and some distance away a “honeycomb” cemetery. Archaeologists working at the site described Saar as having all the elements of a modern city including houses, restaurants, commercial outlets and a place of worship [Sylvia Smith, ‘Bahrain digs unveil one of oldest civilisations’, BBC News, 20-May-2013, www.bbc.com].
The great Qal’at tell: Saar is the not the only Bahraini site to yield evidence of ancient civilisation. Located at the northern point of the island is Qal’at–al-Bahrain (Fort of Bahrain), a vast tell (artificial mound) 18-hectare in size, which when excavated revealed three early Dilmun cities (dating to 2,800BC) and one later Greek city (200BC), all built on top of one another!(ᗩ) Like Saar, Qal’at–al-Bahrain had multiple human uses, public, residential, religious as well as military, and was in all likelihood the capital of the ancient Dilmun state. There are also approximately 170,000 burial mounds, in Bahrain occupying some 5% of the of the island (Smith)(ᗷ)…including the royal tombs at A’ali which are 15 metres in height.
The archaeological finds pieced together testify to the existence of an ancient civilisation known as Dilmun (also rendered as Telmun), which means in the Akkadian language “the place where the sun rises”. The Dilmun region in antiquity—populated by an East Semitic people—stretched over an area comprising Bahrain, the islands of Failaka (today part of Kuwait) and Tarout (now part of Saudi Arabia) and a coastal strip on the East Arabian mainland.
Dilmun as entrepôt for north and south: Dilmuth is mentioned in Near Eastern historical sources, in Sumerian economic texts of the Fourth Millennium BC, written on cuneiform clay tablets, which identify Dilmun as a regional commercial centre [‘Dilmun’, Encyclopedia Britannica, www.britannica.com]. Seen from the early Mesopotamian civilisations’ perspective, the key strategic location of Dilmun was central to trade. Sumer (and Babylon) wanted the luxury commodities produced by the Indus Valley civilisations (Meluha) – spices, precious stones, ivory, etc. But to facilitate trade with the Indian merchants and secure these highly desirable goods, the Sumerians sought to avoid the overland route which took them through a habitually hostile Persia…the sea route via the Gulf and Dilmun allowed Sumer to bypass Persian territory altogether [‘The Sumerian Connection’, (Jon Mandaville), Saudi Aramco World, (1980), www.archives.aramco.org]. By this circumstance Dilmun was able to establish itself as the hub for trade between Mesopotamia and South Asia. Dilmun merchants at one point maintained a monopoly over the supply of copper, a precious commodity produced in the mines of Oman (then called Magan), also much in demand in the cities of Mesopotamia as a metal of improved durability for weapons, utensils and tools(ᑕ). Dilmun also had commercial ties with other cities in the Near East, with Elam in Iran/Iraq, Alba in Syria and Haitian in Turkey (Smith).
By some time around 2,050 BC an independent kingdom of Dilmun was at the apex of its powers. Control over the Persian/Arabian Gulf trading routes had made Dilmun a very prosperous state. Agriculture played its part in Dilmun’s commercial ascent as well. The countryside was fertile land both for the farming of livestock and the growing of diverse crops due to the presence of artesian springs.
Decline of Dilmun: From the mid-Second Millennium Dilmun started to enter a decline. Beginning before 1,500 BC the kingdom(ᗪ) is conquered by the first of a series of dominant regional powers – the Sealand Dynasty, followed by the Middle Assyrian Empire, the Neo-Assyrian Empire and the Kessite Dynasty (Neo-Babylonian Empire). Dilmun was further weakened after 1,000 BC by the flourishing of piracy in the Gulf. By 800 BC it is no longer a trading power, having entered a Hellenistic period, it becomes Tylos. By the time of the fall of Babylon, 539 BC, the Dilmun civilisation had been abandoned.
Dilmun in the Sumerian creation myth: In Mesopotamian mythology Dilmun held special significance to Sumerians, referred to regularly in texts as a paradisal place to the south…a pure, virginal and pristine land which the (Sumerian) god Enki provides with abundant fresh water, a place where its inhabitants are no longer plagued by the ravages of disease and old age [‘Paradise Found? The Archaeology of Bahrain’ www.peterborougharchaeology.org]. The heavenly characterisation of Dilmun has led some scholars to hypothesise that arguably it may be the location of the Biblical Garden of Eden(ᗴ).
Endnote: The key pioneering work on the location and unearthing of Dilmun civilisation was undertaken by archaeologists Geoffrey Bibby and Prof Peter Glob in the 1950s. Bibby and Glob led a Danish expedition which was the first to excavate the ruins of the ancient civilisation at the Qal’at and Saar sites and date it to the early Dilmun era.
(ᗩ) there is also a Portuguese fort at the Qal’at site built during their occupancy of Bahrain in the 16-17th centuries
(ᗷ) prompting one academic to conjecture that perhaps as many as 20,000 people lived in Dilmun at the ancient civilisation’s peak [C.E. Larson, Life and Land Use on the Bahrain Islands (1983)]
(ᑕ) Dilmun itself exported dates and pearls, the latter especially prized for their quality, thought to be the result of the mixing of salt-water and submarine spring-waters (www.ngwa.org)
(ᗪ) Virtually nothing is known of the Dilmun dynasties or rulers other than the names of some of the kings, garnered from discovered cuneiform inscriptions (eg, Yagli-El, Ilī-ippašra)
(ᗴ) also echoed in the great epic poem of the late Second Millennium, the Gilgamesh Epic
WWII’s Psychological Warriors of the Airwaves 2: The “Axis Sallys”, Disinforming the Allies
1940s radio in the home (Source: Pinterest)
After the early prominence of “Lord Haw-Haw” in World War II (see previous blog ‘WWII’s Psychological Warriors of the Airwaves I: Lord Haw-Haw’s Career in Radio Propaganda’), the Nazis obviously thought the idea of employing native English speakers to undermine the British enemy through radio propagandising was one worth replicating against the Americans when they too entered the global conflict. For this special communications role the Germans choose a woman, moreover an expatriate American woman living in the Third Reich.
Fräulein Gillars (Source: Alamy Stock Photo)
Mildred Gillars
Maine-born Mildred Gillars had demonstrated her loyalty to the Fatherland by staying in Germany after war broke out (not wanting to part from her German fiancé). Recruited by program director Max Otto Koischewitz for the German State Radio (Reichsrundfunkgesellschaft), Gillars, dubbed “Axis Sally” by US GIsa̳, had a DJ segment on Radio Berlin which was beamed over the American airwaves. Her messages to America followed predictable themes, eg, “Damn all Jews who made this war popular. I love America, but I do not love Roosevelt and all his kike boyfriends”b̳. Gillars had visited American POWs in German camps while posing as a Red Cross worker, collected their messages for home and then after giving them a pro-Germany tweak, broadcast them on the airwaves (‘Axis Sally. World War II Propagandist/The Bride of Lord Haw-Haw!’, Rob Weisburg, Lives of the Great DJs, www.wfmu.org).
Max Koischewitz (Image: www.popularbio.com)
Berlin calling
Gillars’s on air style was diametrically the opposite of Joyce’s hectoring tone, she used a pleasant, conversational approach which sought to sow the seeds of doubt, posing the question whether the wives and girlfriends of the serving soldiers, sailors and airmen would remain faithful during their absence. However, as with Lord Haw-Haw, many of the GIs only listened because they found Axis Sally’s shows humorous (‘6 World War II Propaganda Broadcasters’, Evan Andrews, History, Upd. 29-Aug-2018, www.history.com).
Gillars’ greatest notoriety lies with the radio play (Vision of Invasion) she broadcast to American soldiers in England a month prior to D-Day, forecasting doom and devastation awaiting the Allies if they were to invade occupied France. After the war Gillars was apprehended and eventually returned to the US in 1948 to stand trial on 10 counts of treason. The ”voice of Axis Sally” was acquitted on nine of the counts but was convicted on the 10th count, the broadcast of Vision of Invasion. Gillars was sentenced to 10 to 30 years in a West Virginian prison and ultimately served 12 years (released in 1961).
༄࿓ ༄࿓ ༄࿓
The strabismic but sexy sounding Rita
Axis Sally, Italian style
In 1943 the Fascist Regime in Italy sought to capitalise on Nazi Germany’s success with the Axis Sally broadcasts by coming up with an Axis Sally of their own. Actually this Axis Sally, Rita Zucca, was born in New York of Italian parents. Rita Zucca with her sweet and seductive voice was teamed up with a German broadcaster in a radio program entitled “Jerry’s Front Calling”, spewing out defeatist propaganda from Rome to Allied troops in North Africa, Sicily and Italy. When the original ’Sally’, Midge Gillars, heard that someone else had appropriated her moniker, she was ropeable (‘Rita Zucca’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org).
One of Signorina Zucca’s ploys was using intelligence provided by the Nazis to try to deceive and confuse the Allied forces. In 1944 when the enemy advanced on Rome, Zucca fled north with the retreating Germans to Milan where she resumed her radio communication with American soldiers. After the war the victorious Allies caught up with Zucca in Turin, any plans the Americans to try the Italian-American broadcaster as a traitor were quickly squashed however after it became known that Rita had renounced her American citizenship in 1941 (before taking up her propaganda broadcasting role)c̳. Instead, Zucca was tried by an Italian military tribunal on charges of collaboration and sentenced to four years and five months. She only served nine months of her term but was barred from ever returning to the US (‘“Axis Sally” Mildred Gillars and Rita Luisa Zucca’, www.psywarrior.com) .
“Argentine Annie:” “Hello Tommy, I am Liberty” (Source: Infobae.com)
Postscript: Continuing Axis Sally’s legacy
The two Axis Sallys (and their pro-Japanese counterpart Tokyo Rose) were not to be the last we would see of female propaganda broadcasters in wartime. The Korean War produced its version in ”Seoul City Sue”, an American born missionary in Korea (Anna Wallis Suh) who defected to the North Korean side, joining “Radio Seoul” (when the city was occupied by the North) for a on air spot of undermining American troop morale in the war. The tradition continued in the Vietnam War with “Hanoi Hannah”, a North Vietnamese female broadcaster whose propaganda was directed at “war-weary” American GIs, trying to persuade them that their involvement in the Indochina war was unjust and immoral (“‘Smooth as Silk’ Vietnamese Propagandist ‘Hanoi Hannah’ Dies at 87”, Jeff Stein, Newsweek, 03-Oct-2016, www.newsweek.com). More recently, the Argentine military dictatorship (el Proceso) during the Falklands/Malvinas War in 1982 employed the same tactic of a feminine radio announcer—known as “Argentine Annie” or to the Argentinian side, “Liberty”—as the sultry-voiced Anglophone bearer of bad (and fake) news for serving British combatants in the ward̳.‘Argentine Annie’ (YouTube video)
➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿➿
Gillars in her radio show referred to herself as “Midge at the mike”a̳
b̳ a common refrain from Nazis and other anti-Semitic fascist wannabes such as William Joyce and the BUF was that the world war was a war caused by Jews for the benefit of international Jewry which they tended to equate with capitalism
c̳ renounced to save her family’s property from being expropriated by the Mussolini regime
d̳ ’Liberty’ no doubt kept the British forces in the South Atlantic amused with her references to the Royal Marines counting sheep and bizarre diversions into the historic origins of the modern lavatory
ೄྀೃ ༘ೃ ೃ ೃ ೄྀ
DeMille’s Lost “Egyptian City” Found in the Sand-dunes of Central Coast, CA
Mention “The Ten Commandments” to cinephiles and almost invariably they’ll think of the 1956 epic with Chuck Heston as the resolute Moses. But that was Cecil B DeMille’s second attempt at filming the Old Testament story, or his (Cold War-inspired) interpretation of it at least. Back when Hollywood was still in it’s adolescence, 1923, DeMille made a silent version of The Ten Commandments, in black and white with some sequences in Technicolor.
(Image: www.bestplaces.com)
The location chosen by DeMille for his first go at shooting the biblical epic was a barren 18-mile stretch of sand some 170 miles north of LA, at Guadalupe on California’s central coast. Today, the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes, as they are called, are a protected sea coast and wildlife refuge (eg, for the endangered western snowy plover) and largely unchanged, but for three months in 1923 it was a hive of mega-budget movie-making activity as DeMille transformed the empty dunes into a reconstruction of an ancient Egyptian city. DeMille chose the Guadalupe dunes for the movie set because he thought it might pass for the Egyptian desert (or at least the Sahara Desert) [‘Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes’, Atlas Obscura, www.altasobscura.com].
Hollywood scale extravaganza
The set was massive scale, destined to become the director’s trademark – 120 foot high by 720 feet wide, erected by 1,500 construction workers, a twelve-story tall “Egyptian city” of plaster, wood and straw. The city’s human population comprised a further 3,500 actors✖and technicians plus 125 cooks to feed the assembled masses. Add to these impressive numbers some 5,000 animals, 300 chariots and 21 plaster sphinxes. Statues of Pharaoh Rameses were eleven metres tall and the facade had a 110-foot high gate enclosure✧ [‘The Ten Commandments, (1923 film)’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; Bob Brier, Egyptomania: Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs, (2013); www.lostcitydemille.com].
(Source: G-N Dune Center)
A Virtuous Camp DeMille? DeMille had a huge makeshift tent city erected (nicknamed “Camp DeMille”) to house all of the personnel on the set. Perhaps, in keeping with the overtly religious theme of the film⊡, DeMille laid down strict rules of non-engagement for everyone involved on the production…men and women were billeted separately with no fraternisation allowed, no gambling, no alcohol and no coarse language [‘The Ten Commandments of 1923: The Exodus, Take One’, Patheos, 20-Apr-2012, www.patheos.com]. The alcohol ban adhered to the Prohibition rules in place in America at the time, but subsequent generations of beach-combing visitors to Guadalupe’s dunes have discovered evidence that participants on the movie set found a way round that…the debris of empty bottles of alcohol-laced cough syrup strewn all over the dunes [PJ Grisar, ‘How DeMille made his ‘Ten Commandments’ Jewish again’, Forward, 08-Apr-2020, www.forward.com].
A vanishing “Egyptian metropolis” After filming of The Ten Commandments on the Central Coast finished in August 1923✥, what DeMille did next astounds. Instead of dismantling and hauling the costly set (the overall budget for the movie was a staggering $1.5M or more) back to Hollywood, DeMille had it bulldozed and buried in the Guadalupe dunes. The film-maker just didn’t want to be bothered with the logistics or expense of an enormous removal task and/or he didn’t want rival Hollywood film-makers or studios to get their hands on the set.
(Photo:www.fws.gov)Unearthing cinematic artefacts
And there it sat—or shifted around in the constantly swirling winds of the dunes—for sixty years, one of Hollywood’s most expensive-ever film sets. Then in 1983 film-maker Peter Brosnan became intrigued after a chance encounter with the story, got hooked on it and spent the next 30 years searching for the site, finding it and trying (frustratingly) to excavate it. The project is ongoing, and has taken this length of time due to a combination of factors – local “red tape” (jurisdiction of the dunes falls under two separate counties); the site is a bird-life sanctuary with limited, seasonal access; plus there’s the extremely high cost of funding excavations. Over the years, archaeologists, both professional and amateur, have joined the quest to dig up DeMille’s treasure-trove. Buried replicas from DeMille’s Lost City have been unearthed including a 300-pound plaster sphinx which now resides in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center [‘There’s a Fake Egyptian City Buried in California’, (Marissa Fessenden), Smithsonian Magazine, 15-Oct-2015, www.smithsonianmag.com]. Brosnan compiled his years of research, including interviews with surviving actors, extras and other crew members, into a documentary film, The Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille, screened in 2016.
▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️▫️▪️
✖DeMille also bused in some 250 Orthodox Jews as extras to give the movie a more authentic Hebrew look
✧ Rameses’ ‘temple’ contained recreations of hieroglyphics copied from the discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922
⊡ certainly in keeping with the sternly moralising tone of DeMille’s film
✥ only part of the film was made on the Guadalupe dunes, the wonky parting of the Red Sea scene was shot at Seal Beach in Orange County, and a modern-day morality tale DeMille tacked on to the film was shot back at the studios