Dice Game Cheats? The Solution is the Roman Dice Tower

Ever have a guy that wants to use his “personal lucky dice” for a game and when he does he makes his roll every time?  How about the gamer who had a “special” way to hold dice so he wins consistently or the guy that rolls wildly so that he hits “dead” dice that were already thrown to change the outcome?  Everybody who has gamed has seen this problem player. 

The ancient Greeks and Romans had a partial cure for this abuse in the fritillus, which was a dice box or dice cup.  The best way from keeping somebody from using slight of hand or using English (if you will) on the dice throw was to put the dice into a cup and shake them around.  Keep in mind that these “boxes” were generally cylindrical, so don’t let prejudice lead you to think that all dice boxes are square, in fact they were generally circular like a cup or bowl shaped.  In fact a common shape for the fritillus was one that looked a like a long cylinder and it was called a turricula, some tapering slightly to the mouth.  To help matters, some of these dice cups had grooves inside to help agitate the dice for greater randomness while shaking them up.

An amusing recurring theme from the film, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) was the slave Pseudolus, who cheated at dice constantly even when using a dice box, because he has his personal turricula rigged for cheating.

The dice box, however, was a useful curb on cheating as Martial, the first century Roman poet wrote in the Tabula Lussora, saying of the use of the fritillus or turricula: 

    Quae scit compositos manus inproba mittere talos, 
    si per me misit, nil nisi vota feret.

    If the cheating hand, that knows how to arrange and 
    throw the dice, has thrown them through me, he will 
    achieve nothing beyond prayers.

Now the ultimate cure for cheating dicers of all types was created by the Romans and it was the pyrgus, which was a hands-free dice rolling device we call a dice tower.  This clever device had baffles inside to mix up the dice as they descended by gravity and then they rolled down a stair, randomizing them even more to obtain fair throw.  Additionally, some pyrguii had little courtyards or enclosures at the base to keep the dice that tumbled down the tower from rolling out father into the play area.  Remember back when you were gaming and you had players throwing dice into a box top to keep them constrained when some gamers were notorious wild throwers.  This courtyard was the ancient cure for enthusiastic or wild throws.   Nobody wants their miniatures knocked about by errant dice.

There are only a couple of intact dice towers found to date, one is wood and the other is made of metal, a copper alloy.  I suspect that there were once a large number of wooden dice towers, but all that exists of these now of these are some bone inlay as the wood has long deteriorated with age ^[1] . 

Here’s an article with a contemporary Roman era quote from letters of Sidonius Apollinaris that cites the use of the pyrgus: 

http://www.aerobiologicalengineering.com/wxk116/Roman/BoardGames/tabula.html

The pyrgus was a dice-box, usually wooden and shaped like a tower with inlaid steps, which was used to cast the three dice. Because the various references in Latin literature are sketchy, . . . but in another letter Sidonius [Apollinaris] clearly makes reference to the fact that tabula used a board, bicolored playing pieces, and dice:

‘Here there await you a couch built with cushions, a tabula board laid out with bicolored stones, and dice ready to fly from the ivory steps of the pyrgus.’

Discovered in 1985, some 30 years ago, this amazing metal prygus shown was found in what is now modern Germany near the villages of Vettweiss-Froitzheim, for which this dice tower was named.  This outstanding metal prygus, made from a copper alloy and now resides at the Reinisches Landesmuseum at Bonn, Germany.  

The dice tower was found near the remains of a Roman villa located 25 miles southwest of Cologne, which was then called Colonial in ancient times and was the capital of the Roman province of Germania Inferior.  The site is also about 20 miles straight due west of modern Bonn, which was once ancient Bonna.  It had a major Roman military complex called Castra Bonnesis, housing a large, permanent military presence to guard the west bank of the Rhine. The Legio I Minerva was stationed at Castra Bonnesis from 82 to 359 CE.  Previously it was manned by the Legio I Germanica, which was disbanded in 70 CE for cowardice during the Batavi Revolt.

You’ll note this metal dice tower has a inscription on the front which translates:

     The Picts are defeated

     The enemy is destroyed

     Play in safety

The sides and back has only a single inscription repeated:

    Use it and live lucky.

Clearly the Pict reference on the tower suggests it was owned at some time by a Legionaire or officer who served on the frontier against the Picts, possibly at one of the forts on Hadrian’s Wall.  Who knows how long it was used and changed hands until it was carefully hidden away in its box in the waning years of the Roman presence in Germania, 400 miles from Hadrian’s Wall, having crossed the channel from the British Isles.  Given the proximity of its final resting place near a villa close to the Roman super-fort on the Rhine, my guess is that the dice tower with its military reference had a closer association with Castra Bonnesis or was owned by a retired officer who was given land in Germania as reward for service.  Then again, it might have been won in a dice game.

The photo above is of the original restored artifact prygus.  Note that it originally had three bells (only one now exists) which would ring when struck by a die on exiting.  You’ll also notice that the dice tower has a lot of perforations much like lattice work on a wooden on a Roman window lattice.  I suspect that this is a form of gaming transparency to show that the same set of dice that entered the tower have run the course and exited.  Since the dice tower was an anti-cheater device, this extra step of showing that the dice box was not rigged and it was used in a fair game.  That may seem a bit excessive, but remember the rigged fritillus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and the period references to cheating at dice cited in this blog entry.

I suspect the most common dice towers were more than likely wood, probably with bone or ivory inlay according to taste and pocketbook.  But it’s not beyond the realm for a really wealthy person to have one in silver or even gold, but given the chances of one in precious metal surviving being melted down would be pretty slim.  About the only material that probably wasn’t used in a dice tower is terracotta as there have been no fragments found.  Although there are only two identified, complete dice towers discovered, the one in Germany and the other in Egypt (probably Ptolemaic or Roman era) housed at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo ^[2].   Archeologist R. E. Cobbett suggests that decorative bone fragments found at the Richborough Roman fort in the UK are fragmentary remains of a wooden dice tower used in ancient Britain ^[1].

Here is an article in Portuguese about a new find, which may prove to be a portion of another metal dice tower.  If so, it would be only the second metal prygus known to date.  My Portuguese is very poor, so I leave it to a reader to help me with a translation and maybe some additional information on this new find.

In the past few decades Roman style dice towers have made a small comeback with gamers and they can be seen on occasion.  Some are of new design and others are quite good reproduction of the originals.  Amusingly there are even some made of Legos.  If you Google around a bit on the internet, you’ll turn them up.  Check out the links at the end of the post for some that I found.  Check out the photo at the very end of the post of an outstanding reproduction of the Vettweiss-Froitzheim pyrgus.  Kudos (κῦδος) Steven!

Anyway, I hope this post about dicing cheats wasn’t too dry or esoteric.  I just wanted to give a brief overview of early devices to curb dice fudging and cheating, which is something I know you gamers out there have experienced over the years.  I really enjoy the historical context of games and eventually I want to make a post about just the dice themselves, but I felt it would make this post over long.  Happy gaming!

                                                 CoastConFan

Footnotes:

^[1]  Article from Britannia, A Journal of Romano-British and Kindred Studies, Vol XXXIX, 2008, Pgs 219-235, R. E. Cobbett:  A Dice Tower from Richborough.   This article shows a suggested reconstruction of a dice tower from bone fragment decoration found at an archeological dig.

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=7253636 

^[2]  Other than a very old photogravure from an unknown publication showing this wooden Egyptian dice tower, I can’t find any recent information or images.  I suspect it may not be on display anywhere, but in storage.  Hopefully a reader will help me out with a better photo and more information about where it was found & etc.  I really hope it wasn’t destroyed in the recent round of looting by cultural barbarians. 

Additional notes:

The famous image shown at the start of the article of two Greek soldiers playing a board game on an amphora shaped vase is attributed to the Athenian painter Exekias, circa 540 BCE showing Achilles and Ajax sitting down playing a game during the siege of Troy.  Mind you, this particular vase was painted a thousand years after the famous siege.  Although anachronistically depicted in armor of a type dating thousand years after the Siege of Troy, it shows the popularity of board games and dice even at an early time.  This vase (#344) now resides in the Vatican Museum.

Links of interest:

On collecting RPG dice  http://www.rpgcollecting.com/dice/

History of polyhedra dice  http://savevsdragon.blogspot.com/2011/11/brief-history-of-polyhedral-dice.html

The Roman dice rolling box the fritillus http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Fritillus.html

The dice tower and the fritillus must have seen heavy use, see this article on gambling and cheating in ancient Rome  https://archive.org/stream/jstor-25102412/25102412_djvu.txt

and an article on loaded dice  http://www.metal-express.net/general-articles/unfair-dice

See the Wikipedia article on the famous Vettweiss-Froitzheim dice tower  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vettweiss-Froitzheim_Dice_Tower

An article about the Richborough dice tower find

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/27793197?uid=3739696&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21106351133131

The Earlyworks blog has a nice reproduction of the metal Vettweiss-Froitzheim dice tower made by Steve Wagstaff

http://earlyworks.weebly.com/roman-games-2.html

See the article, Literate Games:  Roman Urban Society and the Game of Alea

http://www.academia.edu/4459724/Literate_games_Roman_society_and_the_game_of_alea_1995_

Even more links about Roman games

http://www.academia.edu/4459724/Literate_games_Roman_society_and_the_game_of_alea_1995_

http://www.mariamilani.com/ancient_rome/ancient_roman_games_entertainment.htm

http://jducoeur.org/game-hist/roman-games.htm

Repro dice tower by Steve Wagstaff

Letters of Sidonius Apollinaris who lived in  Roman Gaul:   http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/sidonius1.html

Roman soldiers and the Picts as mentioned on the German dice tower http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/01/2014/manning-the-ramparts-a-hillfort-on-the-edge-of-empire

For more information about Romans fighting Picts, which begins in 80 CE and drags on for 300 years see below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland_during_the_Roman_Empire  and 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legio_IX_Hispana

Constantius I repelled a Pictish invasion and campaigns beyond the Antonine Wall in 305 CE dies in 306 CE:  

Maximus defeats an incursion of Picts in 381 

 

A German article on gaming with both dice towers shown.

http://imperiumromanum.com/kultur/unterhaltung/gluecksspiele_wuerfel.htm

Here’s a dice tower made of Lego blocks  http://www.daemonstorm.com/role-playing/accessory/Lego-Dice-Tower
 

A modern laser cut dice tower for sale  http://danbecker.info/games/articles/FlyingTricycleTower.html

Ancient Tanis, Forgotten Occasionally But Not Lost – From Rosemary’s Baby to Indiana Jones

What has the Nile delta, the movie Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Rosemary’s Baby have in common?

Tanis … a city to conjure with, is an actual city rooted in history and interestingly enough, not lost at all and it never was; but it did get forgotten on occasion.  With this grammatically clumsy and editorially nightmarish opening sentence, let me introduce you to the historical Egyptian city of Tanis, by way of fiction and hearsay.  Most have only heard of Tanis through fiction, either in books or movies, probably primarily through the late 60s book and film, Rosemary’s Baby and through the classic 80s film, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. so let’s use those as a jumping off point.  Motherhood first.  

Rosemary’s Baby ^[1] (the 1967 book by Ira Levin and the 1968 film by Roman Polanski) features a silver filigree talisman filled with what is referred to as “Tannis Root”, that is part and parcel of making her baby “more like her father.”  It is associated with evil (according to the book quoted below) and as a partial MacGuffin (plot device) required to help things along as well as to cue you in as to who is in on the conspiracy.

In the book & film a (fictional) book is cited, All Them Witches, which just happens to have an underlined passage, (for the slow learners no doubt) shedding light on Tannis Root:  

 In their rituals, they often use the fungus called Devil's Pepper.  This is a spongy matter derived from swampy regions having a strong pungent odor. Devil's Pepper is considered to have special powers.  It has been used in rituals and worn on charms.

The chatty Marilyn Harvey, who is Dr. Saperstein’s receptionist, happens to mention that the good doctor, “… has the same smell once in a while, whatever it is, and when he does, oh boy."

In the story, a neighbor in the apartment building, Terry Gionoffrio, plunges to her death, wearing a “Tannis Root” filled pendant, after putting up with a wild night of chanting by her neighbors.  If you have ever lived in thin-wall apartments, you know the feeling.  Confusingly, there is a real plant called Devil’s Pepper, which is toxic, but there is no Tannis Root because it’s only a plot device^.[2]  BTW, the actual Devil’s Pepper is not a fungus or a tuber, it’s a tree, all parts of which are toxic as the name Rauvolfia Vomitoria might suggest.  I haven’t found anything to indicate Devil’s Pepper (aka Tannis Root) has any strong, disagreeable odor.  Like in Lovecraft’s works, the horror from this story comes from the inevitability of the conclusion as well as the steps of getting there, not in the ending itself.  Remember that horror is a process, not a destination. 

You might be thinking, why this Tanis place anyway?  Tanis (Zoan in the Bible, but also under other names) might have gotten this magical association because ancient Egypt in general had a strong traditional association with magic starting from the time of the early era of the Hebrews, then the Greeks and Romans ^[3], through the Middle Ages and Renaissance right down to today.  Tanis, is in proximity to Alexandria (one of the great epicenters of magic teachings in ancient times) and the fact that Tanis supposedly becomes “lost” or destroyed by an angry deity gets some of that classical magical association with the big plus of being in the lost city genre.  But it’s not as easy as that.

The only problem is that Tanis was never actually lost or destroyed, but nearby Lake Manzala and its associated canal silted up and the city slowly went into decline over the centuries.   It was eventually abandoned with the ruins showing clearly there had been an important city at one time.  Tanis was located on the north east portion of the Nile delta with a useful lake and canal, making it an important seaport to the known world and land conduit to lands to the east.  Founded around 1070 BCE and it peaked in the XIX and XXI dynasties as a southern capital of a divided nation, but eventually had a long languishing decline and was final abandoned about 500 CE.  Tanis lived on a heck of a long time after the biblical era.  Tanis is noted by the ancient writers Strabo, Julius Caesar, Mantheo, Herodotus, Pliny, and Ptolemy, who mentioned Tanis, none as a ruin.  No, this time around I’m not going to dig out the refs, page, and line numbers, do it yourself.  But here's a map to put the location into perspective.

In fact, later Tanis was the site of numerous archaeological digs beginning in the mid 19th century, involving such luminaries as Auguste Mariette and Flinders Petrie.  Both these guys are well worth some reading if you have any sort of interest in the history of archeology.  Between the two of them, you can trace the change from artifact collecting to what we now know as modern archeological technique.

Jumping way ahead, in 1939 several intact royal tombs of the 21st and 22nd dynasties were excavated in the main temple enclosure in Tanis, but it wasn;t by Germans but by the French.  No, not Dr. René Emile Belloq, but Prof. Pierre Montet. They found lots of wonderful artifacts, silver coffins, gold masks, and jewelry in gold, which recall the burial of Tutankhamen, though the Tanis finds are not quite as rich or as well known.  Moreover, the Tanis tombs were secondhand and even the sarcophagi were reused material from earlier periods.  In 2009 a sacred lake measuring 50 by 40 feet (15 by 12 meters) and dedicated to the goddess Mut was found at Tanis and work in the area continues.

In Weird Fiction, setting and background information is very important.  Ancient missing cities are great stuff of fiction and that glamour is transferred to whatever you are writing about when it’s associated together with your subject.  Read that as “street cred.”  Sprinkle on the magical association of ancient Egypt and you have instant mystery in ancient settings, especially if it is unverifiable because the city is lost.

The Tanis of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, is all pretty much ballyhoo because Tanis was never lost and it wasn’t destroyed by a sand storm, the Well of Souls isn’t in Tanis – it’s supposedly in Jerusalem under the Dome of The Rock.  For that matter, the Staff of Ra is totally fictional, but makes a great MacGuffin and a beautiful scene in the fictional map room.  Of course the Nazis didn’t “discover Tanis” in 1936, because it has been an important archeological dig site for well 50 years prior.  Today it continues to yield archeological objects and data.  But hey, mystery sells – even if you have to invent it. 

But let’s recap Raiders for those who were asleep: 

Jones:  Yes, the actual Ten Commandments. The original stone tablets Moses brought down  

 from Mount Horeb and smashed, if you believe in that sort of thing. Any of you guys ever go to Sunday school?

Musgrove:  Well, I --

Jones:  Oh, look.  The Hebrews took the broken pieces and put them in the Ark. When they settled in Canaan, they put the Ark in a place called the Temple of Solomon.

Marcus:  In Jerusalem.

Jones:  Where it stayed for many years. Until, all of a sudden, whoosh, it's gone.

Eaton:  Where?

Jones:  Well, nobody knows where or when.

Marcus:  However, an Egyptian pharaoh --

Jones:  Shishak.

Marcus: Yes... invaded the city of Jerusalem in 980 B.C., and he may have taken the Ark 

back to the city of Tanis and hidden it in a secret chamber called the Well of Souls.

Eaton:  Secret chamber?

Marcus Brody:  However, about a year after the pharaoh had returned to Egypt, the city 

of Tanis was consumed by the desert in a sandstorm that lasted a whole year.  Wiped clean by the wrath of God. ^[4]

Musgrove:  Obviously, we've come to the right men.  Now, you seem to know, uh, all about

this Tanis, then.

Know Tanis they do, at least they know an important way of using fiction to embed the Macguffin(s) into history, or at least quasi-history, with a big dollup of goose grease and a lot of chrome.  But it works well for story progression.  Remember what H. P. Lovecraft said about writing Weird Fiction. 

If I may quote a bit of dialogue from earlier in Raiders which illustrates the point perfectly.  The scene is Prof Jones, teaching his archeology class:  “This site also demonstrates one of the great dangers of archeology, not to life and limb, although that does sometimes take place, I'm talking about folklore.”  In this case it’s folklore injected directly into the story by the writers ^[5] of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.  The folklore is added by the movie makers themselves to the story of “lost” Tanis, the location of Well of Souls to Tanis, the Ark of the Covenant in Tanis, Staff of Ra, the Map Room & etc. 

By now you probably have a few questions.  Here’s a few links to answer some of your questions about the real Tanis and also the Raider’s fictional Tanis rather than drag this out any further.  There will be no test.

Ark, Ark, who has the Ark?  https://www.bibleandscience.com/archaeology/ark.htm

Well of Souls?  http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/archaeology/well-of-souls/   and  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_of_Souls   and   http://www.islamiclandmarks.com/palestine/jerusalem/dome_of_the_rock_underneath.html

Who the heck is Pharaoh Shishak anyway?  https://answersingenesis.org/archaeology/ancient-egypt/will-the-real-shishak-please-stand-up/

And finally, Tannis anyone?  http://www.filmsite.org/rosem3.html  (Yeah, I had to say it).  That cliche goes back a long way to Humphrey Bogart's youth when he played young aristocrats on stage.  See the link https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/02/14/tennis-anyone/  Sorry for the diversion, back to the subject at hand.

By embedding your story or prop into history and weaving a bit of folklore into the mix, you can add depth to your work, just don’t start believing your own inventions and propaganda.  There are also plenty of fringe and crank books that you can mine for “associations” to fill out your pseudo history if the actual historical record is a bit thin.  It worked well for Raiders sequel Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls – well kinda.  As an aside, why do all these ancient temples that stood for thousands of years always just happen to cave in when the good guys show up?

Hopefully this viewing of historical Tanis through the distorting lens of fictional book and film will make you more interested in the history of Tanis as well as understand a bit better about the use of historical settings in building up credibility in Weird Fiction as well as touching on the important of props and their backstory. 

I felt my previous posts were getting a bit heavy and relied a lot on ancient writings, so I thought I would lighten it up a bit with some popular fiction references and how they tie into history and the importance of settings and background information in weird fiction for writers and prop makers.  The techniques of fiction writers are worth some study to gain insight into the technique.  In prop making, the backstory and presentation is nearly as important as the prop itself to make a believable whole and a create a lifting of disbelief. 

Mea Culpa – Kinda, Sorta

I’m not a biblical scholar by any means and frankly a lot has been debated by theologians and scholars for centuries, so I expect that some of the dates and explanations here might fall short in somebody’s eyes (be it scholar, theologian, or just plain crank) at some time or another.  I’m not really interested in stirring soul-searching debate, just making discussion about the use of the historical Tanis in fictional works.  I also attempted to keep it under my 3,000 word cap by using lots of links.  If you enjoyed this Egyptian article, you might also check out my other post about The First Female Pharaoh Nitocris and her association with the Weird Tales crowd.  Again, I am no historian and not an author, so any errors I made, were made … uh, erroneously. 

I really had a lot of fun putting together this article and found there was way too much to include, so I added a lot of interesting links below.  Hopefully this tantalization will encourage you to check out some of the material.  Happy reading.                                 CoastConFan

Update, March 2015 – I did some reading recently and turned up some more Tanis information: 

During the western attack on Fatimid Egypt, the town of Tanis was attacked by a small fleet of forces of crusaders, mostly newly arrived in the mideast from Nevers, France, in early November of 1168 and all the people in the town slaughtered.  This late destruction added in with the ongoing silting up of the access route and the terrible slaughter of the inhabitants, many of which were Christian Copts, which was probably was a major step in the decline of Tanis.  The fact that the French forces has lost their commander while reroute meant that they were only controlled with great exertion by the overall commander, King Amalric I of Jerusalem with his Hospitaller Knights. 

Source, P381, Vol II, A History of the Crusades, Steven Runciman, Cambridge University Press 1951.  

Fifty years later, the Crusaders came back (5th Crusade) and invaded Egypt again.  While besieging the delta city of Diametta they decided to go over to Tanis for another swipe in November 1219.  They found the town evacuated and the Crusaders looted to their heart's content. They eventually also took Diametta, but didn't hold it for long and the whole bunch got ejected.  Source, P162, Vol III op. cit. 

H. Rider Haggard wrote the novel, The World’s Desire (1889 in serial form) in collaboration with Andrew Lang.  A good portion of the story takes place in Tanis where Odysseus, an eternal wanderer, tries to choose between two women after his wife is slain.  There are some interesting modern spins on the meaning of the story of dualities and choice.    I read this back in the early 70s and probably will have to do a reread since its gotten a bit fuzzy in my memory.  But we are in luck because it’s available in electronic form on Project Gutenberg, for free.   Download The World’s Desire here.

Update May 2017-- I added a map (above) that shows the Nile Delta and the location of Tanis.

Footnotes
  [1] Rosemary’s Baby was the best selling horror novel of the 1960s and is well worth a read as a highly influential suspense/horror work that taps into some of the most primal of fears:  What if our baby is “not normal” and “what if my spouse is working against me.”  These fears are right up there with fear of the dead/returning dead on the Fear Index.  The film and book are underrated these days, but really needs to be included in any list of classic horror works.

  [2] BTW, Lovecraft associations run deep in Levins’ Rosemary’s Baby:  Hutch the landlord knows the apartment’s dark reputation. He tells them of terrible things that took place in the building around the turn of the century:  about two sisters, who cooked and ate several children including a niece of theirs in the Victorian era.  Adrian Marcato, lived there in the 1890s and practiced witchcraft, claiming to have conjured up the living devil.  Some residents and neighbors must have believed him because he was attacked and nearly killed in the lobby.  
  According to the story line, after that, the building was known as The Black Bramford.  But things didn’t end there, because in 1959, a dead infant was found in the basement wrapped in newspaper.  Despite all that, our couple decides to live there anyway (classic).  After they move in, their neighbor leaps to his death, wearing a Tannis Root talisman.  But this doesn’t deter the couple and they conceive a child who looks like its daddy.  Doesn’t this sound a bit like The Dunwich Horror, Pickman’s Model, or Dreams in the Witch House?  See this synopsis of Rosemary’s Baby if you are interested:  http://www.terrortrap.com/topten/rosemarysbaby/
  The building exterior used in the film version was an actual NYC structure, the Dakota, (1 West 72^nd Street) started in Oct 1880 and finished in Oct 1884 and is a historic building on Central Park West.  Coincidently it was at the Dakota, that John Lennon lived and was killed outside the entrance 8 Dec 1980 by Mark Chapman, nearly 100 years after construction started on the Dakota.  Note that the fictional Black Bramford of Rosemary’s Baby fame is located by Levin at 55^th St and 7^th Ave in the book.  Since only the exterior was used, interiors were filmed on sets in Hollywood.
  [3] Egypt was considered so contaminating by the Roman government, that travel to Egypt by Romans was highly restricted for many years after the conquest, especially for high-level functionaries of the Empire. http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/5884/could-senators-visit-roman-egypt

  [4] So the historical Tanis wasn’t swallowed up by a sandstorm at that time, since it was around circa 500 CE, about 1,500 years after the sacking of the First Temple, but it does make for a good story.

  [5] See http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/raidersconference.html  

Encyclopedia Brittanica says:  “Tanis, biblical Zoan, modern Ṣān al-Ḥajar al-Qibliyyah,  ancient city in the Nile River delta, capital of the 14th nome (province) of Lower Egypt and, at one time, of the whole country. The city was important as one of the nearest ports to the Asiatic seaboard. With the decline of Egypt’s Asiatic empire in the late 20th dynasty, the capital was shifted from Per Ramessu, and about 1075 BCE the 21st-dynasty pharaohs made Tanis their capital. A large temple of Amon was built, mainly with stone from the ruins of Per Ramessu. The Libyan pharaohs of the 22nd dynasty continued to reside at Tanis until the collapse of their shrinking domain before Shabaka, the Kushite founder of the 25th dynasty, in 712 BCE. Tanis declined with Shabaka’s shift of the royal capital to Memphis and with the rise of Pelusium, 20 miles (32 km) to the east, as the main eastern-frontier fortress and trade centre.”

Links of interest

Tannis Root from Rosemary’s Baby  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary%27s_Baby_%28film%29

Film script of Rosemary’s Baby http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/r/rosemarys-baby-script-transcript-polanski.html

A blog article about Polanski’s additions to the Rosemary’s Baby script

http://polanski-oddmanout.blogspot.com/2012/08/rosemarys-baby-novel-and-film.html

Links about the real, historical Tanis with great photos: 

Tombs of Tanis  http://www.narmer.pl/map/tanis_en.htm  and  http://lexicorient.com/egypt/tanis.htm and  http://lexicorient.com/egypt/tanis05.htm 

Jewelry of ancient Tanis  http://tamarexclusive.blogspot.com/2011/08/o-tesouro-de-tanis.htm

A nice site with an overview of Tanis tombs http://egyptsites.wordpress.com/2009/03/03/san-el-hagar-tanis/

Some assorted Tanis sites http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/tanis.htm

http://superbien.fr/backoffice/tanis-egypt

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/tanis.htm

http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/archaeology/tanis-egypt/

Biblical importance of Tanis/Zoan  http://biblehub.com/topical/z/zoan.htm

Abbreviated account of Petrie’s Findings at Tanis http://www.specialtyinterests.net/petries_tanis.html

For the hard-core archeology fan: dig books of Flinder Petrie 1883-4 Pt I  https://archive.org/details/tanispti00egypgoog 

Pt II, 1885  https://ia600308.us.archive.org/17/items/tanis04petr/tanis04petr.pdf

Biblical historical associations of Tanis

http://jerryandgod.com/2014/06/03/the-lost-cities-of-africa-tanis-2-of-5-and-mark-10-marriage-and-divorce/

Photos of the filming of Raiders at the set of Tanis

Tanis Film site for Raiders  http://www.csroadtrips.5u.com/Raiders/13tanis1.html  more Tanis dig stuff   http://www.csroadtrips.5u.com/Raiders/15tanis2.html

More Tanis dig shots  http://www.csroadtrips.5u.com/Raiders/17tanis3.html 

Map Room  http://www.csroadtrips.5u.com/Raiders/14maproom.html    http://www.csroadtrips.5u.com/Raiders/19tanis4.html 

Some shots where they filed the Tanis dig location for the film  http://www.propstore.com/content/tunisia/indianajones.html

Raider’s Well of Souls  http://www.csroadtrips.5u.com/Raiders/18souls.html

For those of you with a quick eye, you may have noticed the R2D2 & 3CPO friez in the tomb:  http://www.nerf-herders-anonymous.com/2001/07/filmrefsrz.html

He also points out that:  THX1138 is on a license plate of a car in Egypt (that license plate gets around – it was in American Grafitti as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX_1138

Raiders prop stuff

Image in the Bible in Raiders. 

http://theartofilm.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-ark-of-covenant-in-raiders-of-lost.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ark_of_the_Covenant

Design of the prop ark based on artwork by 19^th century James Tissot

http://indianajones.wikia.com/wiki/James_Tissot

James Jacques Joseph Tissot, 1836 – 1902

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Tissot

A bit of trivia about the name Tanis

Far from having a sinister association, Tanis has been used as a personal name for over 100 years.  I haven’t delved into it deeply but I did turn up a few facts.  The use of Tanis as a male name in English seems to be much more recent than its use as a female name. One of the first uses of it for a female character was in American author Amelie Rives's novel, Tanis the Sand-digger (1893).  Sinclair Lewis's famous 1922 novel, Babbitt features a female character named Tanis Judique.

Belloq:

You and I are very much alike. Archeology is our religion, yet we have both fallen from the pure faith. Our methods have not differed as much as you pretend. I am but a shadowy reflection of you. It would take only a nudge to make you like me. To push you out of the light.

The First Female Pharaoh Nitocris, H. P. Lovecraft, and the Tennessee Williams Connection

If you like strong women, you have come to the right place. 

The Father of History, Herodotus wrote of a female pharaoh called Nitocris in his histories (which he finished circa 440 BCE) and the story was picked up by Lovecraft and Tennessee Williams four thousand years after her death.  That’s some staying power and some story: murder, revenge, mass killings, and suicide.  Her closest rival in that scenario would be Cleopatra VII and that is two thousand years later.  The pharaoh Nitocris was supposed to have ruled from 2148 to 2144 BCE, the last ruler of the 6^th Dynasty and ended up on a barbeque. 

Herodotus says of the Pharaoh Nitocris:  (Book II, 100)  

" ... the name of the woman who reigned was the same as that of the Babylonian queen, namely Nitocris*. Of her [the Egyptian one] they said that, desiring to take vengeance for her brother, whom the Egyptians had slain when he was their king and then, after having slain him, had given his kingdom to her, desiring I say, to take vengeance for him, she destroyed by craft many of the Egyptians.  For she caused to be constructed a very large chamber under ground, and making as though she would  [make a] handsel [of] it, but in her mind devising other things, she invited those of the Egyptians whom she knew to have had most part in the murder, and gave a great banquet.  Then while they were feasting, she let in the river upon them by a secret conduit of large size.  Of her they told no more than this, except that, when this had been accomplished, she threw herself into a room full of [burning] embers, in order that she might escape vengeance."

Now Nitocris may have been the first female Pharaoh, but certainly not the last, click the links to find out more.

http://www.ancientnile.co.uk/pharaohs-women.php

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/ancientqueens/tp/women_pharaohs.htm

http://www.womenintheancientworld.com/women%20who%20reigned%20as%20pharaohs.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra

The 3^rd century BCE Ptolemaic era Egyptian historian, Manetho says of her in his history of Egyptian rulers, Aegyptiaca, “There was a queen Nitôcris, the noblest and loveliest of the women of her time; she had a fair complexion, and is said to have built the third pyramid.”   The Greek version by Eusebius is a bit more expansive, “There was a queen Nitôcris, braver than all the men of her time, the most beautiful of all the women, fair-skinned with red cheeks.  By her, it is said, the third pyramid was reared, with the aspect of a mountain.”  Other versions, such as a Latin Armenian version says about the same, but if they were copying from each other and from the same text, you would expect it.  By those accounts, she was a looker.  There is a  possibility that she appears under other names or honorifics, which is common enough in Egyptian royalty.  Additionally, the Turin Egyptian King List also mentions her as pharaoh on a papyrus fragment, but that is now under question.+  Real or not, Nitocris has survived the centuries to be written about and we’ll just have to wait until the academic heavyweights thrash it out.  In the mean time we have some excellent fiction written in the early 20^th century.

Now that we have established a basis for Nitocris by historians, let’s jump forward a few thousand years and on the other side of the planet.  When only 16, budding southern author Tennessee Williams (but born in Columbus, Mississippi, go figure) wrote a historical fiction short story, The Vengeance of Nitocris and it was published in the magazine Weird Tales in August of 1928.  This was his first published story, but not his last.  Tennessee Williams didn’t do much more with his weird fiction writing experience, but instead began writing his own weird tales of the 20^th century about his view of America, families, and the south.  

 

As an aside, Robert E. Howard's story Red Shadows, the story that introduced Solomon Kane, which is the cover story of Weird Tales of the same edition that also had Tennessee William’s The Vengeance of Nitocris story inside.  As you may know, Howard also wrote Lovecraftian types tales.  See my previous blog entry:  The Sixtystone – A Web of Deceit and Illusion. 

H. P. Lovecraft ghostwrote a short story for Harry Houdini, which mentions Nitrocris.   It was originally published under Houdini’s name in Weird Tales in February 1924, as Under the Pyramids (AKA Entombed with the Pharaohs, Imprisoned with the Pharaohs).  But even before that, Lovecraft  had written a short story, The Outsider in 1921, (but published in 1926) with a reference to Nitocris in the story.   This early date shows he was aware of Nitocris  (maybe from Herodotus and possibly even Manetho) and had written about her rather early on and before he wrote Under the Pyramids. 

Part of this story has some synchronicity, with Propnomicon having recently published a blog post based on the story, Entombed with the Pharaohs and me just reading a short bio of Tennessee Williams, which mentions his Nitocris story.  Of course I quickly remembered the Lovecraft story and the Propnomicon blog entry, so it all began to fall together along with a bit remembered bits from Herodotus about Nitocris.  Well the entry just pretty much wrote itself with all the connections and coincidences jelling at once. 

Clearly there is something enticing about the Egyptian Nitocris story, which has kept it in circulation for centuries.  I have to wonder if there is any link between H. Rider Haggard’s novel about another strong beautiful ruler, She A History of Adventure (1886) and the two Nitocris mentioned in Herodotus?  Maybe, but I haven’t found proof of it yet.  Haggard’s first novel, King Soloman’s Mines was an instant hit and created the new fiction genre of the Lost World, but that’s another story for another time.

Bram Stoker (you know Dracula and all that) wrote a story called, The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903), about an attempt to revive an ancient Egyptian female ruler’s mummy (fictional Queen Tera), which makes me wonder if Lovecraft had read it and if the story had had any connection to Stoker possibly reading Herodotus.  I’m sure a Lovecraft scholar out there might know the answer. 

Well we can see that a four thousand year old queen, who may or may not be mythical, can still generate some classic weird fiction stories.  I hope that this blog entry wasn’t too long or too serious, but I felt that the information was far too interesting to leave out of the article.  There are probably some that feel it was too much and other too little information.  But I sincerely hope that it has piqued your interest and you will download some of the cited stories.  Additionally, you prop makers out there ought to be interested in the two historical rulers named Nitocris, the weird fiction stories spawned, and the possible earlier association with H. Rider Haggard’s She, who gained her immortality in flames, rather than killed  For you writers and prop makers, there should be some good ideas in all this.  Good reading to you all.     CoastConFan

FOOTNOTES

* There is another queen called Nitocris (6^th century BCE, daughter of Nebuchadnezzer II, who made the Hanging Gardens) and also mentioned by Herodotus, but this other one is Babylonian and 1,500 years later, but just as crafty.  She also had a flair for architecture, especially her tomb.  Go to the bottom of the article to find out about her according to Herodotus (Book II, 185), if you have any interest.  Nebuchadnezzer is also mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible, during the period of the Babylonian Captivity, but you'll have to look that one up yourself.

+ See Kim Ryholt’s article, The Late Old Kingdom in the Turin King-list and the Identity of Nitocris, ZAS 127 (2000) pgs 87-100.  It’s a little involved, but also sheds light on the difficulties in reconstruction of damaged ancient records.  
     Update Dec 2014:  For those of you deeply interested in Egyptology, the New Reconstructed Chronology of Egyptian Kings by M. Christine Tetley (Vols I & II) is available for download at  http://www.egyptchronology.com/vols-1--2.html

LINKS OF INTEREST AND FREE DOWNLOADS

Download Herodotus’ history in English:  http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.html

A smaller 1464k text-only version is available for download. 

Download Mantho’s book of Egypt’s history, Aegyptiaca in English  http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Manetho/History_of_Egypt/1*.html

Article on the Lovecraft/Howard axis   http://lovecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Robert_E._Howard

And http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/01.02.97/cover/horror1-9701.html

Blog article about archeology in H. P. Lovecraft  http://archaeopop.blogspot.com/2009/06/archaeology-in-fiction-hp-lovecraft.html

Download Tennessee Williams’ story, The Vengeance of Nitocris http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Vengeance_of_Nitocris

Download H. P. Lovecraft’s story, The Outsider http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/theoutsider.htm  and Imprisoned with the Pharaohs http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/lovecraft/hp/pharaohs/

Download Bram Stoker’s story, Jewel of Seven Stars  https://archive.org/details/BramStoker-TheJewelOfSevenStars

Now for a bit of lagniappe, some information on the Babylonian queen Nitocris:   An absolutely outstanding article about the Babylonian Queen Nitocris by Robert Lebling on his blog, A Strange Manuscript  http://rlebling.blogspot.com/2012/11/queens-of-mesopotamia-part-ii-nitocris.html  and some obligatory Herodotus.

What Herodotus says this about the Babylonian Queen Nitocris (Book II, 187):  

 "This same queen [Nitocris] also contrived a snare of the following kind: - Over that gate of the city through which the greatest number of people passed she set up for herself a tomb above the very gate itself.  And on the tomb she engraved writing which said thus: "If any of the kings of Babylon who come after me shall be in want of wealth, let him open my tomb and take as much as he desires; but let him not open it for any other cause, if he be not in want; for that will not be well."  This tomb was undisturbed until the kingdom came to Dareios [Darius]; but to Dareios it seemed that it was a monstrous thing not to make any use of this gate, and also, when there was money lying there^, not to take it, considering that the money itself invited him to do so.  Now the reason why he would not make any use of this gate was because the corpse would have been above his head as he drove through.  He then, I say, opened the tomb and found not indeed money but the corpse, with writing which said thus: ‘If thou hadst not been insatiable of wealth and basely covetous, thou wouldest not have opened the resting-places of the dead."

^I’m guessing she was not actually buried with her treasure or that it was pilfered long before Darius shows up.  Her impressive architectural exploits start at 185, but the above concerns the tomb alone.

If you are interested, you can download Herodotus in English:  http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.html   or  http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.mb.txt