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.
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.
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
A blog article about Polanski’s additions to the Rosemary’s
Baby script
Links about the real, historical Tanis with great
photos:
Biblical historical associations of Tanis
Photos of the filming of Raiders at the set of Tanis
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.
Raiders prop stuff
Image in the Bible in Raiders.
Design of the prop ark based on artwork by 19th
century James Tissot
James Jacques Joseph Tissot, 1836 – 1902
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.
|
I want to combine two important events in this post. Veteran’s Day, which is on the 11th
of November and the Fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago
today, 9 November 1989. In a sense you
can say that the Cold War
was really a sort of low intensity WWIII.
Unlike WWI and WWII, it wasn’t a big shooting war, but involved the
whole world and dozens of smaller conflicts.
But although there were not great classic battles, the Cold War had
dozens of regional wars, tens of thousands of hostile encounters and millions
under the yoke of statist
dictators, revolutionaries who functioned much like fascists than socialists,
and a lot of money and lives lost. The
fall of the Berlin Wall is a good a date as any to mark the end of the Cold War
and for once a war ended peacefully. 
There’s still a lot going on in the world and a lot of wars
happening, I won’t pretend that end of the Cold War stopped that. Human nature didn’t suddenly change and not
all the bad guys went away. Some morphed,
some napped for a while, and new ones have arisen. The challenge of being free is contested both inside and outside
of this country and not everybody has the same vision. But a difference of opinion is not a war nor
is disagreement. It takes a will to
start a war and a stronger will to end one, either by conflict or by conscience. I’ve focused on the Cold War because it was
one the ended magically – no atomic weapons, no hordes of Warsaw Pact tanks
flowing though Fulda Gap, no expansion of Communist Chinese might in unison
with the USSR. No Red Dawn. 
