Innholdsfortegnelse for September/October 2021 i National Geographic History

The “stuff as dreams are made on” is among Shakespeare’s most beautiful, evocative phrases and perhaps the polar opposite of the Book of Revelation, which I would describe as pure nightmare fuel. Filled with beasts, blood, and a bottomless pit (among other horrors), the text is what historian Elaine Pagels has called both the “strangest” and “most controversial” book in the Bible. Written around a.d. 98, Revelation foretells the end of the world, and many scholars believe the author was a war survivor, John of Patmos, who witnessed Roman forces destroy Jerusalem in a.d. 70. The text can be interpreted not only as a spiritual work but also as a contemporary condemnation of Roman power. The city of Babylon and all its evil creatures symbolize Rome and its emperors, and…

From restaurant empires to countless cookbooks to cooking shows, celebrity chefs are everywhere in the modern world. Many credit television with their invention; while TV may have boosted the visibility of celebrity chefs, it did not invent them: 19th-century France did. In the decades following the French Revolution, Antonin Carême built the world’s first culinary empire—with shops, catering for royalty, and best-selling cookbooks. He published his first one in 1815, a combination of the encyclopedic and practical that exemplified his organized approach to cooking. It was the first comprehensive guide to the preparation of many classics of the French repertoire. Like modern-day professional chefs, he combined the roles of artist, scholar, and scientist, all generously garnished with self-promotion. Carême is best remembered today, however, for his brilliant pastries in the…

AT AGE 19 Carême opened his first patisserie in Paris on the rue de la Paix. Despite his youth, the shop became a civic landmark with a front window that showcased his ornate confectionery. In parallel with his work for Talleyrand, Carême ran the shop until 1815. Later, as patisseries multiplied in Paris, he attributed their popularity to his influence. “The pastry cooks of the suburbs, having my book in their hands, have not feared to move into the heart of the capital,” he said. Today many pastries Carême is credited with inventing are still sold in bakeries, like the Napoleon cake (or millefeuille).…

Old Kingdom ca 2575-2150 B.C. Starting around the 4th dynasty, individualized death masks in Egypt are shaped out of plaster. Middle Kingdom ca 1975-1640 B.C. Idealized portraits of the deceased adorn funerary masks made of wood, cartonnage, or plaster. New Kingdom ca 1539-1075 B.C. Epitomized by the golden mask of Tutankhamun, funerary masks reach an artistic peak. Greco-Roman era 332 B.C.-A.D. 395 Mummy masks blend Egyptian and Hellenistic styles in this last great phase of mask-making.…

Christ defeats Satan and chains him in the Abyss, where he will stay for a thousand years. For Beatus, writing his commentary in the late eighth century, the prediction that Satan would break free after a thousand years reinforced the idea that Christian Spain, beset by the forces of Islam, was approaching the Apocalypse. Beatus (who died in 798) predicted the world would end in 800, basing his calculation not on the thousand years that elapse from the time of Christ, but on the termination of six millennia since Creation. The Silos artists who illuminated his work three centuries later, had already lived through the millennium. Although apocalyptic zeal had faded by then, their depictions have lost none of the fiery urgency of Beatus’s vision. Locked Up Below Revelation 20:…

1100s Tuareg nomads found Timbuktu as a seasonal trading post. It is strategically sited just north of the Niger River. 1300s Mansa Musa makes Timbuktu the capital of his Mali Empire. It becomes a center of trade and culture. 1400-1500s Timbuktu experiences a golden age, attracting scholars and assembling massive libraries. 1500s Conquered by Moroccan invaders in 1591, Timbuktu goes into decline. Its manuscripts are dispersed. 1800s Inspired by medieval travelogues, European explorers travel to Timbuktu. In 1894 the city falls under French control. 1960 French colonial rule ends, and Timbuktu belongs to the newly independent Mali.…

The Carpathian region, where Vlad III lived, was politically and economically vital during his lifetime. Transylvania provided minerals that were exported to Nuremberg some 850 miles away, where they were used to produce armaments. Arms and cloth were then traded back in the other direction. The cities that had been settled by German migrants (especially Saxons) over the previous two centuries now found themselves key players in the regional trade. Meanwhile, the small states of Walachia, Serbia, and Bosnia constituted a buffer zone between the Kingdom of Hungary and the Ottoman Turks, who by the end of the 14th century had settled along the Danube River. In this era, the Kingdom of Hungary included much of the Transylvanian Plateau, surrounded to the north, east, and south by the Carpathian Mountains.…

IRISH WRITER BRAM STOKER published a novel in 1897, set in Transylvania, with a mysterious vampire as its hypnotic villain. Dracula thrilled readers who began to speculate on the source of Stoker’s inspiration. Many theorized that the bloody life of Vlad the Impaler, the medieval Walachian ruler also known as Dracula, was Stoker’s sole basis for the character, but Stoker drew on many sources for his most infamous creation. VAMPIRES WERE IN VOGUE in the late Victorian period, and Stoker would have likely been familiar with earlier Gothic works such as Goethe’s poem The Bride of Corinth (1797); “The Vampyre” (1819), a short story by John W. Polidori; and the novella Carmilla (1872), by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. The notable connections between Dracula and Captain Vampire (1879)—a novel written 18…

PHARAOH AMENHOTEP III (ca 1390-1353 b.c.) ruled Egypt when the recently unearthed city was at its peak. His reign is known for many well-funded building projects, such as his palace complex at Malkata and his mortuary temple at Luxor. These projects required a steady flow of goods and provisioning that the recently discovered city supplied. EXCAVATIONS of what proved to be a sprawling metropolis began in September 2020 on the west bank of the Nile near Luxor, some 300 miles south of Cairo. The site is located between the temples of Ramses III and Amenhotep III. The recent unearthing of an ancient Egyptian industrial center has been hailed as the biggest find in the region since the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb nearly a century ago. Located on the west bank…

1784 Marie-Antoine (later Antonin) Carême is born into poverty in Paris. Abandoned at age 10, he will find work in a tavern. 1803 Carême opens his own patisserie; within a couple years, he is hired by top diplomat Talleyrand to cook diplomatic banquets. 1810 Carême designs and bakes the wedding cake for the marriage of Napoleon and Marie-Louise of Austria. 1829 Carême draws on his vast experience to start writing his masterpiece, L’art de la cuisine française. 1833 Carême dies at age 48. His legacy as a great gastronome, practitioner, and theorist is assured.…

In 1940 French archaeologist Pierre Montet discovered the tomb of little-known but long-reigning Psusennes I (r. 1051–1006 b.c.), one of three pharaohs from the 21st and 22nd dynasties whose burials Montet found intact in the ancient city of Tanis. Among the grave goods found inside—including what may be Egypt’s only silver sarcophagus—the pharaoh’s mask stands out as a masterpiece of goldsmithing. The 19-inch-tall work is made from very fine, beaten gold foil that was left unpolished, resulting in a unique matte-satin finish. Perhaps most remarkable of all is the mask’s condition. Unlike the arid Valley of the Kings in Luxor, most of Lower Egypt, including Tanis, was humid and swampy. The wooden objects in Psusennes’ tomb and his mummy were probably destroyed by water seeping in through the ground. Yet…

The battle between the forces of heaven and hell is an important focus of the Book of Revelation. This theme resonated strongly in the Christian enclaves of northern Spain, where Beatus completed his Commentary on the Apocalypse in 784. On the following pages, details from the early 12th-century Silos Apocalypse (held today in the British Library) display the intensity and vibrance of the Mozarabic artistic style that conveys the destruction unleashed. God possesses a scroll bound by seven seals. As each seal is opened by the Lamb (representing Christ), a catastrophic event occurs, such as the arrival of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse—Conquest, War, Famine, and Death (opposite). Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Revelation 6 recounts what is revealed when the Lamb opens the first four seals: “I looked,…

Dracula, prince of darkness, lord of the undead! This mythical character leaped onto the page from the fevered imagination of Irish writer Bram Stoker in 1897. But the historical figure who shares a name with the literary icon was no less fearsome. Vlad III Draculea was the voivode (a princelike military leader) of Walachia—a principality that joined with Moldavia in 1859 to form Romania—on and off between 1448 and 1476. Also known as Vlad III, Vlad Dracula (son of the Dragon), and—most famously—Vlad the Impaler (Vlad Tepes in Romanian), he was a brutal, sadistic leader famous for torturing his foes. By some estimates he is responsible for the deaths of more than 80,000 people in his lifetime—a large percentage of them by impalement. Vlad III’s cruelty was real, but his…

ANTONIN CARÊME elevated the status of the chef to new heights. The showmanship of his confections could be seen by all at his pastry shop, and his cookbooks appealed to a public eager for access to the art of haute cuisine previously limited to the aristocracy. As his popularity grew, he put self-portraits in his books so fans might recognize him. Royalty and high society bid for his services, but he often turned them down to write. When the composer Gioacchino Rossini was asked if he planned to tour America, he replied, “Only if Carême comes with me.”…

GHOSTLY FLOATING OBJECTS were common sights at séances in the 19th century. One of the most famous mediums of the era, Daniel Dunglas Home, seemed regularly to feature levitation during his gatherings. In addition to the usual rapping, musical instruments would play by themselves. In 1854 Home described one of his séances in New York: Attendants heard a guitar rattling in its case and opened it. They put the guitar under the table and soon heard music “not, to be sure, in the highest grade of the art, but with very fair average skill.” Home himself was observed levitating. In 1852 an American journalist reported he felt himself rise from the ground (while holding Home’s hand) until his head grazed the ceiling. Nobody could pin down how Home created these…

Beginning with Eve, Hebrew scriptures and the books of the Old Testament provide key insights into ancient attitudes toward the role of women. Wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, and leaders—Sarah, Hagar, Rachel, Leah, and Deborah—are important figures in the journey of the Hebrew tribes that culminates in their people’s settlement in Canaan (modern-day Israel and the Palestinian territories). The women who come after them—when their people unite, divide, and are exiled—have high-profile roles in stories about their struggles as a people. As queens and leaders, these female figures take on larger symbolic meanings, whether as role models, dire warnings, or bastions of hope. Queen of Israel Bathsheba, wife to one king and mother of another, is queen during a golden age, the kingdom of David. After Moses leads the descendants of…

BEFORE QUEEN ESTHER thwarts his plans, the evil vizier Haman draws lots to choose the date to kill all the Jews in Persia. The word for “lots” in Hebrew is purim, which is how the most light-hearted of all Jewish festivals received its name. The day Haman chose was the 13th day of the Jewish month of Adar (which falls in either February or March), and the Feast of Purim is held on the following day. The Book of Esther, referred to as the Megillah (Scroll), is read in its entirety before celebrations begin. Feasting, wine, and sweets are enjoyed, including cakes known as “Haman’s ears.” Some celebrate by donning festive costumes, giving the holiday a carnival-like atmosphere.…

Revelation presents Babylon as the antagonist of Christ, God, and his people. In the text, the city is personified as the “Whore of Babylon,” who has made all nations complicit in her immorality. Seduced by the wine of this woman, the inhabitants of the Earth are led to perdition. When the Book of Revelation was written in circa a.d. 98, Babylon may have been a symbol for Rome, whose extensive persecution of Christians under Emperor Domitian had earned it the ire of Christians. By the ninth to 12th centuries, when the illustrated versions of Beatus’s commentary were being produced, Spanish Christians associated Babylon with the power of Muslim Córdoba. The Silos Apocalypse artists, when depicting the architecture of Babylon (above), used distinctly Islamic features, including rounded arches, in their work.…

during the 1370s King Charles V of France commissioned a detailed map of the known world from the Mallorcan cartographer Abraham Cresques. He created what is now known as the Catalan Atlas, which includes a richly detailed look at the Timbuktu region and its inhabitants. The map’s legends describe local Tuareg traders (represented by a figure on a camel, below left) as a people “who cover themselves such that only their eyes can be seen; they live in tents and ride in camels.” The enthroned figure wearing a gold crown and carrying royal regalia (below, right) is Mansa Musa—“This king is the richest and noblest of all these lands due to the abundance of gold that is extracted from his lands.”…