The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate

Author's Note

For the name of this novel, I am indebted to Willy Ley, who let me use the title of Chapter 9 of his book The Lungfish, the Dodo, and the Unicorn. Here you can read about the sirrush and the speculations that its discovery stirred up after Koldewey excavated the Ishtar Gate around 1900. My story is based partly upon Koldewey's surmise that the priests of Marduk used to pass off some reptile (probably a monitor lizard) on their credulous worshipers as a young sirrush.

The novel is also based upon the story of Sataspes, as told by Herodotus (IV, 43), and upon the fact that, of the twenty-three groups of tribute bearers sculptured on each of the two retaining walls of the Apadana at Persepolis, the last group of each set shows three unmistakable African Pygmies. One carries a pot, one an elephant's tusk, while the third leads an okapi. Although this relief has been known for decades, not until recently was its true nature realized. Even Olmstead's monumental History of the Persian Empire (1948) describes the animal depicted as "a curiously foreshortened giraffe."

This sculpture proves that in the reign of Xerxes (486-465 b.c.) somebody traveled from the Achaemenid Empire to a country where Pygmies and okapis dwelt and returned to tell the tale. Today this would mean that the traveler reached the Ituri Forest of the northeastern Congo. In Xerxes' time, Pygmies were widely spread about Africa and the okapi probably had a wider range than it does now. But, as the okapi is adapted to life in a dense tropical rain forest, it cannot have ranged very far outside the present Congo, because east of the Congo-Uganda line the country becomes open parkland except for gallery forests along the streams. (In ancient times, however, the forest may have been somewhat more extensive because the Africans had not deforested large areas by annual grass burnings.)

Nothing is known about the contact opened up at this time between the Mediterranean world and the Lake Region of Central Africa save the bare fact that it happened. Whoever fetched the three Pygmies and their beast to Xerxes' court must have adventures quite as hair-raising as those attributed to my fictional characters.

The unknown explorer's feat of bringing a living okapi to Persepolis is matched by a similar exploit from later times. D. N. Wilber informs me that, about 1402, the Sultan of Egypt gave a giraffe to Timur, the Tatar king. And that poor giraffe walked all the way, presumably from its home in the Sudan, to Samarqand—well over 3,000 miles.

Afterwards the episode of the okapi was forgotten, except for the knowledge, alluded to by classical authors (Aeschylus, Anaxagoras, Euripides, Aristotle, Poseidonius, Diodorus, Claudius Ptolemaeus, etc.), that the Nile originated in rain or melting snow on tall equatorial mountains. This range was sometimes called the "Silver Mountain" and sometimes the "Mountains of the Moon," probably because of the snows of Mount Ruwenzori. Until the invasion of the country by European explorers in the nineteenth century, it was not generally believed that mountains in so tropical a region could have snow on them. But the discovery of Mounts Kenya, Kilimanjaro, and Ruwenzori proved otherwise.

It seems as if the travel route between the Mediterranean world and Central Africa did not remain open long. I suspect that it closed when the Nilotic Negroes of the southern Sudan learned to smelt iron and put iron heads on their spears. They thus became more formidable than when their spears were tipped only with horn. Having been raided by slavers, they probably attacked any outsiders on sight.

For many centuries the Nilotics kept all foreigners at bay, until the gun gave the outlanders another great advantage. Then slave raiding on the Upper Nile was resumed by the Arabs, Turks, and Egyptians, and by adventurers and riffraff from many nations.

The definitely historical characters in this novel are King Xerxes and his officials and relatives: Achaemenes, Apollonides, Artabanus, Aspamitres, Bagabyxas, Tithraustes, and Zopyrus; Murashu the banker and his son Belhatin; King Saas-herqa (whose cartouche can be read in several ways, such as Sa'as-heriqa, Si'aspiqa, Asâs-heraq, etc.); and various offstage and deceased characters alluded to, such as Amestris, Artaxerxes, Darius, Iranu, Masistes, Naburimanni, Sataspes, Themistokles, and Vaus.

King Takarta is imaginary, though his predecessor Karkamon and his successor Astabarqamon are real. The exact date and cause of the removal of Kushite capital from Napata to Meroê are not known, but the change may have taken place somewhat as set forth in the story.

Three characters are on the border line between history and legend. Salîmat is a legendary Arab warrior princess for whom the Selîma Oasis (called the Fifty-League Oasis in the story) is named. Ostanas (or Osthanes) is a half-legendary magician alluded to by Pliny and Diogenes Laërtius, whose story was further embroidered by later writers on alchemy.

Orontes is based upon two sentences, of no great historical weight, by ancient writers. Strabo the geographer says of the Orontes River (XVI, ii, 7) that: "Though formerly called Typhon, its name was changed to that of Orontes, the man who built a bridge across it." John Zonaras, the Byzantine historian, says of the Orontes (XIII, 8) that it was "... according to some formerly called the Ophites, later named after the son of Cambyses, king of the Persians, who was drowned therein."

Now, Typhon was a dragon of Greek mythology, and ophites is Greek for "serpentine." Other sources call the river the Draco, or dragon. So we can infer that the original Semitic name for the river probably meant something like "serpentine" or "reptilian"; wherefore I have called the river the "Serpentine" in the story. The legend of the channel's having been dug by a flying dragon is based upon that given by Strabo, loc. cit.

However, the river cannot have been really renamed for the suppositious Orontes, because the original name was already very much like Orontes. It appears in Egyptian inscriptions of the fifteenth century B.C. as the Yernet or Yerset (the latter probably a misspelling) and Assyrian inscriptions of the ninth call it the Arantu. If the man Orontes lived, the resemblance between his name (probably something like Auravanda in Old Persian) and that of the river could have given rise to the story of the river's being named for the man, although the name of the river is at least a thousand years older.

The main characters in the story—Myron, Bessas, and their comrades—-are all imaginary. It is not known who first suggested that the earth is round, but the idea appeared some time in the century in which the story is laid. Some ancient writers, such as Aristotle, attribute it to one of the followers of the philosopher Pythagoras—possibly Philolaos of Crotona, who was probably born within a few years of the time Of my story, but of whom very little is definitely known. It may well have been suggested by the changing aspect of the heavens during a journey of exploration that covered many degrees of latitude.

Although the names of Greek, Babylonian, and other non-Persian characters are given in the most convenient approximation of their original forms, those of the Persians are given in their Latinized Greek guise. The reason is that Old, Persian names are difficult. In some cases the Old Persian forms are not known while in others they are inordinately long or hard to pronounce.

For those who are curious about the original forms of these names, I add a list of OP names appearing in the story, whose OP forms are known, both in classical and in OP forms. By the use of diacritical marks, the OP names can be spelled in various ways. As you can see, the Greeks and Romans did not use any consistent system of transliterating Persian names. Starred names I made up by analogy with known forms:

CLASSICAL

Achaemenes

Arsaces, -kes

Arsames

Artabanus, -os, Artapanus

Artaxerxes

Aryandes

Aspamitres

Astes

Bagabyxas*, Bacabasus, Bagazos, Megabyzes, -myxos

Bardias*, Mardos, Merdias, Smerdis

Bessas*, -us, -os, Besas

Cambyses, Kam-

Cyaxares, Ky-

Cyrus, Kyros

Daduchus, -ouchos, Daüchas, Daou-

Darius, Dareios, -eiaios

Datas, -is

Daurises

Embas

Gomates

Haraspes

Hydarnes

Hystaspes

Izates

Masdaeus, Mazae-, -aios

Masistes

Ochus, -os

Pharnuchus, -nouchos

Phraates

Sataspes

Teaspes

Tithraustes

Vans*

Xerxes

Zamaspes

Zarina, -naia

Zoroaster, -astres, Zarathroustes, Zaravastes,Zathraustes, Zaratas

OLD PERSIAN

Hakhamanish

Arshaka

Arshama

Artabanush

Artakhshathra

Haruvanta

Aspamithra

Ashta

Bagabukhsha

Bardiya

Besha

Kambujiya

Uvakhshatra, Hua-

Kurush

Datavahya, Daduhya

Darayavahush, Dareyavosh

Data

Davirisha

Emba

Gaumata

Haraspa

Vidarna

Vishtaspa

Yazata

Mazdai

Mathishta

Vahauka

Farnukha

Frahata

Sataspa

Chaispish

Chithravahishta

Vahush

Khshayarsha

Jamaspa

Zarinari

Zarathushtra

Readers who find the name "Skhâ" bothersome may pronounce it simply like "scar" without the r.

As for place names, in most of the area covered by the story there are three strata of names: pre-classical names (Babylonian, Aramaic, Egyptian, etc.); classical names (Greek or Latin); and post-classical—medieval or modern—names (mostly Arabic). I have usually given places in the story their oldest known names, except in cases where a more recent form is much better known. Hence Marath (not Marathus or Amrît) but Damascus (not Dar Mesheq or Damaskos or Dimishq or esh-Shams). For ancient and modern forms of these various places see Baedeker's Egypt and the Sudan (1929) and Palestine and Syria (1912). The map at the end of the first volume of Baikie's History of Egypt (1929) and Map No. 20 in Shepherd's Historical Atlas also have many such variant forms of place names. The pre-classical forms of the names of Meroê and Napata were Barua and Nepita or (or Nept) respectively.

All the places named in the novel are real except Ravonga and the castle of Takarta, which are imaginary. However, it is pure surmise to have located Pliny's Tenupsis near modern Kaka, and to have identified his Boron with modern Bor, and ancient Karutjet with modern Korti, because the true locations of these places are not certainly known. The Tower of the Snail (Burj el-Bazzâq, more accurately "of snails") at Marath =: Amrît exists, although I may have taken liberties with its date. While this date is not certainly known, some archaeologists believe it to be later than the time of my story. The tomb of King Siptah is as I described it.

Ancient geographers distinguished between the White Nile and the Blue Nile, calling them the Astapous and the Astasobas, but they differed as to which affluent bore which name. Since the Blue Nile once had a town named Soba on it, and the White Nile has a tributary called the Sobat, one can argue either way.

Most of the African tribes mentioned are from Pliny. As no more "authentic" forms of their names are known, I have left these names in their Latin form. I have assumed that the Alabi, Bugaitae or Bougaeitai, Dankala, Mattitae, Nubae or Nubians, Ophirites, and Shaikaru of ancient writings are identical with the modern Aliab Dinka, Bega or Bisharin, Dongolavi, Madi, Nuba and Nubians, Afar or Danakil, and Shankalla. This may or may not be true in all cases.

The customs attributed to the Kushites and other peoples of the Upper Nile are based upon those reported by the first European explorers to penetrate those regions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Remarks of ancient writers about the customs of the Negroes of the White Nile of going naked, smearing themselves with ash or clay, extracting some of their teeth, and raising cattle indicate that the Nilotics have changed their ways but little in 2,000 years.

In the Central African episodes, the native words used by African characters are (with a few minor exceptions) in Swahili. Of course Swahili (properly Kiswahili) was not spoken in the fifth century B.C. It is a trade language, which grew up in recent centuries on the East African coast. Its basis is a simplified Bantu, but it also has a large minority of words of Arabic and other non-African origin.

On the other hand, nobody knows what sort of languages were spoken in the Lake Region of Africa 2,400 years ago. One can only guess that they were related to those used there today. So the Swahili phrases are meant to give the right fictional flavor but not to mislead the reader. Kahawa is Swahili for "coffee," from the Arabic qahwa. Nagana is a corruption of the modern Zulu name for the livestock disease caused by the flagellate Trypanosoma brucei, spread by the bite of the tsetse fly Glossina rhodesiensis.

The day on which the story starts, 3 Nisanu, 20 Xerxes in the Babylonian calendar, would be April 8, 466 B.C. in ours. Xerxes was murdered in 465 B.C., not sooner than August 4 and not later than August 8; I have assumed August 6 as the date. Diodorus, Ctesias (apud Photius), and Justin give somewhat divergent accounts of the murder; I have followed the first of these because it best suited my story. Dates are given throughout in the Babylonian calender, although the calendric situation in the Achaemenid Empire had been complicated by the attempt of Darius, some decades before, to make the Egyptian solar year standard for the whole Empire. A lunar calendar like the Babylonian has a great advantage for the historical novelist, namely: it is always easy to tell what the moon looked like on any date, without calling up the planetarium.

A "penny" in the story means "one twelfth of a shekel." The people of those days actually used such awkward expressions, or some even clumsier, such as "three twenty-fourths of a shekel." Distinctive names for small coins had not yet been invented, and the coins themselves had not yet come into wide use. As a weight, a shekel was one sixtieth of a pound (the Babylonian pound being 1.1 times ours). A silver coin of that weight was about the size of a U.S. quarter or a British shilling, but its purchasing power was something like that of ten or twenty dollars. The daric stater, the standard Achaemenid golden coin, was worth twenty silver shekels.

"The boats" and "the ashes" were two methods of capital punishment employed by the Achaemenids. In the former, the culprit was placed in a coffinlike structure with his extremities sticking out and then left in the sun to die. In "the ashes" he was placed on a beam above a deep bed of ashes and left until he fell off to smother.

The rules of Egyptian checkers, or tjau (later known to the Romans as ludus latrunculorum, "the game of robbers") were reconstructed by Edward Falkener in his book Games Ancient and Oriental and How to Play Them (1892, 1961). If Falkener is right, the game is played on a board twelve cells on a side. Each of the two players has thirty pieces ("dogs") arranged at the start in five rows on alternate squares as in modern checkers. Each piece may move one square in any direction, orthogonally or diagonally, and may jump a hostile piece if the cell beyond it is vacant. But the only way that a player can take a hostile piece is by placing two of his pieces on opposite sides of that piece, orthogonally or diagonally. (One may move a piece between two of one's opponent's without losing it.) It is not a bad game as board games go, though each game takes much longer than a game of modern checkers.

The research trip for this novel proved exceptionally lively. In Uganda I was chased by a camera-shy hippopotamus. In the Congo I unwisely tried to swing, like Tarzan, on one of those dangling jungle vines, and shook down on myself a swarm of venomous ants.

The thing I remember with the most amusement happened when I was driving from Khartoum to the ruins of Meroê (a fifteen-hour round trip, and you need a four-wheel drive because of the sand). Seeing dead camels by the roadside with vultures picturesquely perched upon them, I thought that what I needed to add to the junk in my study was a well-bleached Sudanese camel's skull.

Then I tried to explain to my driver what I wanted. Not knowing the Arabic for "skull," I said I wanted the head of a camel, râs al-jamal. Oh, said Tejani, that would be easy. We'd stop at Shendi, where I could buy a camel, cut off its head, and take it with me! My wife is heartily thankful that I did not follow up this suggestion.

L. Sprague de Camp