The Book of Ancient Bastards: 101 of the Worst Miscreants and Misdeeds From Ancient Sumer to the Enlightenment Read online

  Legendary Bastard

  Whether you’re a devoted daily reader of the Bible or merely have seen the Cecil B. DeMille movie, you’ve likely heard this story: woman has baby, for debatable reasons woman decides to get rid of said baby, and rather than killing it outright, sets it adrift in a basket on a great river, hoping it will be found and taken in by some kindly soul. Moses, right? Well, yes, but the story of the foundling-who-goes-on-to-be-great is first told in the legendary birth story of Sargon of Akkad. In his case, he is the son not of an Israelite slave but of a temple priestess, and raised, not by the royal family of Egypt, but by a humble gardener. Still, the whole “baby in a basket in the river” thing is virtually the same (Sargon was adrift on the Euphrates, though, not on the Nile).

  Willing to play politics, the man who became known as “Sargon” to us changed his birth name from whatever it was originally (we have no idea) to Sharru-kin (Akkadian for “rightful king”), a brilliant PR move, especially in light of the fact that Sargon was a usurper twice over (in other words, not the rightful king).

  Once he’d built up his empire, the “rightful king” ordered the construction of a capital city from which to rule it: Agade. (“Akkad” was a geographic region in central Mesopotamia so-named for the people who invaded and settled there. “Agade” was the capital city that Sargon built.) So not just a conqueror, but also a builder. And more than that, a survivor. The king’s own words show that he was most proud of that aspect of his personality. Sargon wrote in his autobiography: “In my old age of 55, all the lands revolted against me, and they besieged me in Agade ‘but the old lion still had teeth and claws’, I went forth to battle and defeated them: I knocked them over and destroyed their vast army. ‘Now, any king who wants to call himself my equal, wherever I went, let him go’!”

  Tough Old World bastard.

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  HAMMURABI

  THE LAW GIVER

  Sometimes You Really Don’t

  Want to Lick the Spoon

  (REIGNED 1792–1750 B.C.)

  If a man destroys the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye.

  —Hammurabi’s Code

  Hammurabi: a semimythical king of Babylon (a city-state in present-day Iraq) who handed down the first code of written laws more than 1,700 years before the birth of Christ. Hammurabi, the law-giver. Hammurabi, one tough bastard.

  Let’s face it, anyone who has ever been pulled over by a cop or spent a day in court (even if it’s just traffic court) knows the open secret surrounding laws: those who make and enforce them are frequently bastards.

  It’s easy to forget that someone, somewhere, came up with the notion not just of justice but of punishment. And while Hammurabi certainly wasn’t the first guy to mete out swift and terrible retribution for crimes real or imaginary, he was certainly the first one to make sure the rules of punishment got written down. In so doing, he intentionally codified quite a ledger of laws intended to protect both life and property. Unintentionally, he also preserved evidence of a fiendish imagination able to (with apologies to Shakespeare) “devise brave punishments” for the guilty.

  The “eye-for-an-eye” punishment quoted above is a decidedly harsh penalty for an admittedly heinous crime, but “eye-for-an-eye” is a day at the beach compared to other rules laid down by Hammurabi in his code, including the notorious “trial by ordeal,” wherein people suspected of a crime underwent torture to assess their guilt or innocence. In one example, thieves were expected to lick a red-hot spoon, and then their tongues were checked to see whether they had blistered. If the blister burst when pressed by the judge with a finger, then they were found guilty; if it didn’t, then innocent. Cold comfort when facing the possibility of having your taste buds singed off regardless of the verdict.

  Hammurabi’s Code is rife with examples of this form of “jurisprudence.” For example, if a woman who sells wine in her establishment (and it clearly states that this applies solely to women) is charged with inflating the price of her drinks, “she shall be convicted and thrown into the water,” meaning that the Euphrates River would be her final judge: if the woman floated, she was deemed innocent; if she sank, she was found guilty. Never mind whether or not the woman in question knew how to swim. Most people in the ancient Near East didn’t! Another portion of the code that gave the Euphrates the final say stated that if a woman “leaves her husband, and ruins her house, neglecting her husband, this woman shall be cast into the water,” and we all know how that turns out.

  The code didn’t require the Euphrates to mete out all ultimate penalties. Other methods were used as well: “if a ‘sister of a god’[nun] opens a tavern, or enters a tavern to drink, then shall this woman be burned to death.” What sort of bastard dreams up punishments such as these? Hammurabi of Babylon, that’s who!

  Bastards & Sons

  Under Hammurabi’s Code, fathers exercised enormous power within their immediate families. Fathers named their daughters’ dowry price, and kept the money to use as they saw fit. Sons who struck their fathers for any reason had their hands cut off. Wives had some protection. If a husband tired of his wife, he could set her aside, as long as he gave her the price of the house he’d just turned her out of.

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  AKHENATON

  Or How to Get Your Own People to Destroy Every Trace of You After You’re Gone

  (REIGNED ca. 1351–1334 B.C.)

  Akhenaton: the criminal of Amarna.

  —Ancient Egyptian saying

  Akhenaton, the unexpected heir to the Egyptian throne, unsettled his people by glorifying one god instead of a pantheon. In return, they tried to pretend he never existed.

  The “criminal of Amarna” didn’t start out as a criminal, or even as a pharaoh. Likely suffering from Marfan syndrome, a disorder of the connective tissue (which would explain the elongated facial features and long, thin fingers on the statues of him that have come down to us extant), Akhenaton began life as a younger son of the great pharaoh Amenhotep III, whose rule lasted thirty-nine years, one of the most prosperous periods in Egyptian history.

  Named Amenhotep after his father, the young boy was probably initially intended for the priesthood. But when his elder brother suddenly died, young Amenhotep became heir to the throne, and succeeded his father in 1351 B.C. as Amenhotep IV.

  For five years his reign was fairly conventional. Then in 1346 B.C., everything changed.

  Amenhotep IV changed his named to “Akhenaton” (which means “The servant of the Aton”), stating that there were no other gods, that the Aton (the Sun itself, as opposed to the sun-god Re) was the sole holy being, and that he himself, as pharaoh, was the Aton’s voice on earth. Then he shut down the temples of the other gods, declared their priesthoods dissolved and illegal, and made it clear how things were going to be in his new order: He would worship and serve his god, the Aton, and the people of Egypt would in turn worship and serve him. Akhenaton even cleared out of the capital city of Memphis, taking his family and royal retinue with him, founding a new capital city in the desert, about 200 miles south of present-day Cairo. The ancient name of the city, Akhetaton, means “horizon of the Aton” or “horizon of the Sun.” The city was later given the name “Amarna” by Bedouin tribes who settled nearby.

  Oddly Insightful Bastard

  Modern-day American presidents have made much of the fact that they live in a “bubble,” insulated from contact with most of the people in their country, and talk about how they try to pierce that bubble, to be able to understand their people, in order to better serve as their leader. Not so Akhenaton. He embraced the “bubble,” and if anything, made it harder to pierce. Not a very bright move for someone trying to make a sweeping fundamental change to a religious system that had flourished in the Nile Valley for millennia. In light of this, one of his homilies is oddly insightful, without demonstrating any actual insight on his part at all: “True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind; the fool is obstinate,
and doubteth not; he knoweth all things but his own ignorance.”

  For the next decade, Akhenaton ignored his neighbors, didn’t bother with diplomacy, and showed not the slightest interest in doing anything other than glorifying the Aton in his new capital out in the desert, out of touch with everything earthbound, a veritable hermit in the midst of his own people. In the end, it cost him his very identity as king of Egypt.

  After he died, Akhenaton’s subjects rebelled against his very memory, smashing his idols, abandoning both his cult and his new city, returning to Memphis and to Thebes, and to the old gods and their temples. His very name was scratched out of every place in the country where it had been chiseled into stone, be it stele or monument.

  Akhenaton himself faded from Egypt’s memory for millennia. Quite a comeuppance for such a religious rebel bastard.

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  RAMESSES II

  Or How to Make It Impossible for Your Own People to Forget You After

  You’re Gone

  (REIGNED 1279–1213 B.C.)

  His majesty slaughtered the armed forces of the Hittites in their entirety, their great rulers and all their brothers . . . their infantry and chariot troops fell prostrate, one on top of the other. His majesty killed them . . . and they lay stretched out in front of their horses. But his majesty was alone, nobody accompanied him. . . .”

  —Temple inscription, Luxor, Egypt

  The bit of boasting quoted above is nothing short of a public relations move on the part of one of the most remarkable individuals to hold the Egyptian throne, Ramesses II, who set out to do great things—and did.

  Ruling nearly twice as long as any pharaoh before or after him, Ramesses II began his reign in 1279 B.C. at the age of twenty-five. He ruled for over sixty-six years, and died at ninety-one, either of an abscessed tooth (common in ancient Egypt, where they had skilled physicians, but apparently not much in the way of dental care) or cardiac arrest.

  Incidentally, this is the first monarch in recorded history to get saddled with the whole “the Great” nickname. Builder of cities and of monuments, conqueror of foreign lands, Ramesses embraced being pharaoh with a gusto seldom seen before or since.

  At places such as Abu Simbel in Nubia (near the present-day border between Egypt and Sudan), Ramesses erected colossal statues of himself for visitors from outside of Egypt’s borders to see, admire, and most importantly, be intimidated by. At home, he impressed his own subjects in a similar manner with his massive temple complex at Karnak. He built a new capital city (named, of course, after himself) on the ruins of the former capital of the hated foreign invaders, the Hyksos, driven out of Egypt hundreds of years before his reign. The location was no coincidence: Ramesses was showing the world that Egypt was now invading the world, not the other way round.

  Bastard (Double) Daddy

  Ramesses had at least eight royal wives and any number of secondary wives, many of whom bore him children. Since Egyptian princesses were not allowed to marry anyone of lower social rank than they, it was common for them to marry brothers, cousins, even their fathers (in the Egyptian worldview, this form of incest merely doubled the “royalness” of any children born of two royal parents). Such was the case with Ramesses and the first of several daughters he married, Bintanath, who bore him at least one child. There were others! Cultural context aside, this little tidbit still makes you wanna say “Ewwww,” doesn’t it?

  This is pretty funny in light of the fact that Ramesses’s greatest military victory was actually his worst defeat. Early in his reign, he set out to reconquer foreign territories that had been lost to neighboring countries, such as Syria/Palestine to the north and Nubia to the south. It was in Syria, at a place called Kadesh, that Ramesses and his army, far from home, with their supply lines stretched thin, blundered into a trap set for them by their Hittite foes, an aggressive crowd who had extended their kingdom from Anatolia (present-day Turkey) into parts of Syria and Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) and now threatened Egypt’s frontier holdings in Palestine and Jordan.

  What happened next—according to Ramesses—was a legendary victory. In reality, the Egyptian troops were routed. Ramesses signed a peace treaty, went home, and hyped the disaster as a great victory. In truth, he had lost thousands of troops in the slaughter at Kadesh, and this battle marked the end of his foreign military adventures.

  Lying bastard!

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  SENNACHERIB, KING OF ASSYRIA

  If You Can’t Conquer Jerusalem, at Least Brag about All the Little Towns You Destroyed

  (REIGNED 704–681 B.C.)

  Who was there among all the gods of those nations that my fathers utterly destroyed, that could deliver his people out of mine hand, that your God should be able to deliver you out of mine hand? Now therefore let not Hezekiah [King of Judah] deceive you, nor persuade you on this manner, neither yet believe him: for no god of any nation or kingdom was able to deliver his people out of mine hand, and out of the hand of my fathers: how much less shall your God deliver you out of mine hand?

  —King Sennacherib of Assyria (attr.), 2 Chronicles, 32:13–15

  Sennacherib, the king of Assyria (in the northeastern part of present-day Iraq), rates a mention in the Bible for his siege of Jerusalem and other bastardry.

  While the question of the sheer wickedness of the Assyrian people as a whole is open for debate, the bastardry of their kings is not. It is pretty much agreed that these guys were ruthless, fearsome, terrifying, and bloodthirsty.

  Sennacherib was one of the worst. Not a conqueror himself, Sennacherib spent all of his time and energy consolidating the conquests of his father, Sargon II (reigned 722–705 B.C.). He consolidated vigorously and bloodily. When Hezekiah, the king of Judah (a kingdom in the southern portion of present-day Israel), refused to recognize Sennacherib’s authority, Sennacherib conquered dozens of Hezekiah’s cities and laid siege to Jerusalem.

  The Bible states that Sennacherib only lifted his siege of Jerusalem after an angel of the Lord went out among the Assyrian army and killed 185,000 of them. According to Sennacherib, he only left because he had killed so many thousands of Israelites, carried off thousands of others into slavery, and stripped every city and town that fell before him. Oh, and then there was the massive indemnity that Hezekiah agreed to pay him: about 1,800 pounds of gold and nearly 5,000 pounds of silver, not to mention “diverse treasures.”

  Sennacherib didn’t live long after receiving this massive bribe (he was murdered in 681 B.C. by his own sons). Nor, for that matter, did the Assyrian Empire. Assyria’s neighbors, grown tired enough of the depredations of these fierce warriors, formed the first international war coalition in recorded history and wiped Assyria off the map in 612 B.C.

  Bastard in His Own Words

  After putting down rebellions against him in Babylonia and the western provinces (Phoenicia, Philistia, and Judah), Sennacherib did what most kings do after accomplishing a great feat: he bragged about it, carving boast after boast into a stone monument known today as the “Taylor Prism.” It was the spin-doctoring of the day, and it reads in part: “Because Hezekiah, king of Judah, would not submit to my yoke, I came up against him, and by force of arms and by the might of my power I took 46 of his strong fenced cities; and of the smaller towns which were scattered about, I took and plundered a countless number . . . and Hezekiah himself I shut up in Jerusalem, his capital city, like a bird in a cage, building towers round the city to hem him in, and raising banks of earth against the gates, so as to prevent escape . . . .”

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  KING SOLOMON

  All Those Women, All Those Gods, All That Trouble

  (CA. 1011–931 B.C.)

  Wherefore the Lord said unto Solomon, Forasmuch as this is done of thee, and thou hast not kept my covenant and my statutes, which I have commanded thee, I will surely rend the kingdom from thee, and will give it to thy servant.

  —1 Kings, 11:11

  Solomon, the famously wise king of Judah, proved less than wise in dea
ling with his own carnal appetites.

  The favored son of the heroic King David, Solomon took the throne of Judah (a kingdom in the southern portion of present-day Israel) around 971 B.C. and ruled wisely and well for forty years. Stories abound of his sagacity in dealing out justice to his subjects, like the one about the two women who both claimed to be the mother of the same baby. Solomon ordered that the baby be cut in two, knowing that the real mother would beg him to give the child to the other woman rather than see the baby treated that way. He is also justly famous for ordering and overseeing the construction of the great temple that bore his name in Jerusalem.

  Then, of course, there’s the whole sex addiction thing.

  See, Solomon liked women. (Whether or not they liked him back is not recorded.) During his forty years on the throne, Solomon collected a harem that would have been the envy of any Turkish sultan. According to the Bible, he had an even 1,000 women at his disposal: 700 wives and 300 concubines. And the wives weren’t just any girls from off the street; they were princesses from neighboring countries married to Solomon by their fathers as part of any number of political alliances.

  As if having that many women (plus the Queen of Sheba, whom he knocked up when she came to visit him) on the line didn’t make him bastard enough, Solomon’s harem proved to be a political headache. Not because there were 699 more wives and 300 more hookers in his household than might be socially acceptable, but because the wives, foreigners after all, had their own gods, and none of them was the god of the Israelites, who had so favored the fair-haired boy, Solomon.