Stonehenge: Where Atlantis Died is an expanded version of
Stonehenge. Or, to be more accurate, it is the
original version
of
Stonehenge...
In his review of the book for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
(January 1974), Harlan Ellison writes:
"I'm privy to 'inner circle' information which, because this is the season of
Watergate I'll pass on to you.
"Harry and Leon Stover sold this book first in England, at 110,000 words, and
had trouble re-selling it here in America, so the British said, 'Let us cut
it a little,' to make it more saleable, and Harry reluctantly said okay, and
they circumcised the book down to 80,000 words and sold the original plates to
Scribner's."
Stonehenge: Where Atlantis Died - what a title! As co-author Leon Stover points out in the interview elsewhere on this site, that four-word title encompasses two of Western civilisation's greatest mysteries. And the story itself provides possible solutions for both of them. If you have ever wondered where Atlantis really was, and where its underwater remains now lie, this is the book for you. Similarly, if you have ever wondered who built Stonehenge and what its function could be, an explanation is here.
At Last, the True Story of Atlantis
The mystery of Atlantis was actually solved by archaeologists some years ago, though their explanation has not made the same impression on the public consciousness as the idea of a mythical underwater kingdom. The archaeologists believe that the Atlanteans were in fact Minoans. Leon Stover reveals the archaeological explanation of the whereabouts and fate of Atlantis in the interview.
The Secret of Stonehenge
The mystery of Stonehenge has not been so convincingly laid to rest. The most popular 'explanation' of the purpose of the monumental stone circle - and the one still trotted out to tourists visiting Salisbury Plain - is that Stonehenge is a kind of computer, used by the ancients to monitor and predict solar and lunar eclipses. This theory was documented by Gerald Hawkins and John B. White in their book Stonehenge Decoded in 1965.
Hawkins' theory has been effectively disproved on two counts. Mathematician and theoretical astronomer Douglass Hettie of Edinburgh University proved that by chance 48 of the 240 alignments investigated by Hawkins could be expected to appear have astronomical significance. In fact, less than 32 of them do. But, more importantly, Hawkins' theory argues that Stonehenge is a single entity, built by a single people, for a single purpose. In fact, the stone circle as we see it today was built by three separate groups of people over a period of around 1,000 years, and it is not a single entity: later additions are actually built on top of earlier ones. It is difficult to believe then that these separate versions are part of a single functioning whole.
So in both statistical and practical terms, the 'astronomical computer' theory of Stonehenge is highly improbable. But if it wasn't used to predict eclipses, what was it for?
Leon E. Stover, Professor of Anthropology at the Illinois Institute of Technology, developed his own theory, which he published, along with convincing argument and documentary evidence, in an academic text: Stonehenge and the Origins of Western Culture (1979). But almost a decade earlier he explored the idea in a novel co-written with Harry Harrison. An explanation of Stover's theory, in his own words, can be found in the interview.
Harry Harrison and Leon Stover wrote the novel in the early 1970s, and it was first published in 1972 in England by Peter Davies Ltd. But the version published then was heavily cut to bring it down to what the publisher considered to be a manageable size. It was published under the title Stonehenge.
When it decided to republish the book ten years later, the authors decided to reinstate the cut material, and had to recreate the complete manuscript based on their original notes from the 1970s.
Stonehenge: Where Atlantis Died was first published in 1983 in the United States by Tor. This later version significantly improves on the earlier.
Background
Stonehenge: Where Atlantis Died is set in the year 1480 BC, during the historical period known as the Bronze Age. One of the most important commodities during this period was the metal tin, which was mixed with copper to form a strong alloy - bronze - which was ideal, among other things, the forging of blades for weapons.
At the time when the novel is set, two groups are vying for dominance: the Atlanteans (or Minoans) and the Mycenaens. The Atlanteans control the tin mines along the River Danube, and so the Mycenaens are forced further afield to seek deposits of the metal. Their search leads them to the Cornish tin mines in Britain, home of the Yerni.
When the Atlanteans invade Britain, the hero of the story, Ason - a Mycenaen prince - thousands of miles from home, must rely on the local Yerni tribesmen to join him to fight off the invaders. But the local tribes are a warlike people, forever fighting among themselves, and so Ason must first unite the tribes before he can get them to face the Atlanteans in battle.
Stonehenge: Where Atlantis Died tells of Ason's struggle to save the Mycenaens and the Yerni from the Atlanteans, and reveals how he was instrumental in the creation of Stonehenge as a sort of 'round table' around which the Yerni kings were united, and how it was built with the help of an Egyptian architect using the same techniques that were used to shape and transport stone to build the pyramids. During his epic struggle, Ason is also on hand to witness the destruction of the island kingdom of Atlantis in a world-shattering event which is recorded in the Bible.
In an Authors' Note in the original edition of the novel, Stover and Harrison say:
"Above all we want to entertain with a rousing adventure story. But entertaining is the means by which we aim to accomplish a serious pedagogical end: to dramatise the case for a non-astronomical interpretation of Stonehenge
Of course, its characters and events are imaginary - but the anthropological thinking behind the storyline is meant to be taken as a deliberate contribution to the continuing debate over Stonehenge."
They also point out the difference between their approach and that of other historical novelists:
"In most other historical novels the setting is nothing but a setting, a painted backdrop of exquisitely researched detail. This is just so much wallowing in historical content, with modern personalities in ancient dress cast up in the foreground. What we are after is pattern, the cultural pattern of a vanished society - Britain in the middle of the second millennium BC: The tribal politics of the Yerni and the technology of stone-working that Inteb brings to bear in their name have been used not as ornamentation but as key concepts in the reconstruction of a prehistoric culture."
In his own book Harry Harrison, Leon Stover says: "We determined that we were not writing a historical novel but a novel about history, whose purpose was to authenticate the past. Historical novelists do not as a rule aim at this."
Stonehenge: Where Atlantis Died is not a theory dressed up as a novel, it is - as the authors hoped - a rousing adventure story, and a violent and bloody one too, as the they admit in their Afterword to the later editions - "as it should be, given the history of the European Bronze Age. The world of 1500 BC was like this, or so we are told in the epics of Homer." In Stover's words - in Harry Harrison - his theory had "Harrison's wonderful adventure story to give it life."
There is a - mostly irrelevant - question as to whether Stonehenge: Where Atlantis Died is actually science fiction. Stover believes it is: "One feature, perhaps the most important one, marks this novel as science fiction: its backplotting. The last lines, concerning how the dagger carving got on stone no. 53, were written first. Everything else was plotted towards that revelation, by way of accommodating both background as foreground and theory as hero. It is not a novel of character, as regular historical novels are; it is, and can be, nothing else but science fiction."
Unfortunately, as Stover himself points out in Harry Harrison, since the novel was first published, radiocarbon dating has proved that, though the dagger carving itself dates from the time of the Mycenaens, the stone it is carved upon was erected more than 500 years before, back in 2000 BC, which means that the Mycenaens couldn't have had a hand in the construction of Stonehenge. Perhaps this spoils the story somewhat - the construction of Stonehenge and the destruction of Atlantis did not occur in the same period - but that does not disprove Stover's theory: "My political interpretation of the monument
is not shaken. I still hold to its function as a royal election court for the elevation of Bronze Age kings or chieftains, long before royalty passed from elective to dynastic status."
So the theory which the novel dramatises is still sound, and the adventure story is still wonderful.
© Paul Tomlinson, July 1999
Stonehenge: Where Atlantis Died
by Harry Harrison & Leon E. Stover
Chapter 1
Britain, 1480 B.C.
The wind swooped out of the wooded hills to the north, driving a scud of fine snow before it. It rushed through the tall, dark trees of the forest, rattling the bare twigs and bending the tops of the evergreens. Here and there in the endless forest it crossed clearings, man made, with short stubble in the frozen furrows and squat buildings leaking feathers of smoke to be snatched away by the wind. Over a ridge it moved and down into an open-ended valley well cleared of trees. Here the wind pressed close to the ground and moaned about the squat sod buildings and tore fragments of reeds from their roofs.
Lycos of Mycenae walked with his chin bent into his chest to keep the stinging snow from his face, wrapping his white wool cloak more tightly about him. His conical helmet of rows of boars' tusks offered protection from sword blows but not from the weather. He stopped under a low lintel and pushed open the door of the last building. The air inside was as cold and damp as that outside, and it stank.
"What happened?" Lycos asked. "We don't know," Koza said. A grey-haired and scarred warrior, his bronze half armour bore the traces of much hard use as did his sharp-pointed bronze helmet. He squinted in the dim light as he looked down at the man who lay bubbling and moaning on the dirt floor of the hut. "One of the boys saw him at the edge of the forest and told me. He was unconscious, just like this. I dragged him in here." A short, compact man in stained, brown garments. Dying.
"Do any of them know who he is?" Lycos asked from the doorway, not interested in entering the foul-smelling hut.
"He's not one of them, he's an Albi," Koza said. "That's all they can say. They're frightened. One of them thinks he may have seen him before, but he doesn't know his name. They're all stupid." The small boys crouched together in the boxlike bunk, among the matted furs, looking on fearfully, their eyes round white splotches in their dirty faces. They shrank even further when Koza talked about them.
Koza did not like this. He poked his toe into the man's ribs with no effect. The man's eyes stayed closed and a pink froth dribbled from his lips. Fresh moss had been pressed into the great wound in his chest, but it could not stop the flow of blood that oozed out and snaked in thick streams down his ribs. Koza had fought in a great number of battles and had seen many men die, so it was not the familiar presence of death that troubled him now.
"Leave him," Lycos ordered and turned to go. He halted and pointed at the boys, who shied away at the gesture. "Why aren't they working?"
"One of the tin streams has been flooded." Koza fell into step to the left and slightly behind Lycos. "We can't dig in it until the water goes down."
"Then put them to work on the charcoal kilns or to pounding ore; there's plenty for them to do."
Koza nodded agreement, uncaring. They were just Donbaksho boys sold into bondage by their parents in exchange for a few gifts. The wind whirled the snowflakes about them; spring was coming later this year. The sun was a glowing cold eye close to the horizon. They strode through the half-frozen mud and long drifts of white ashes to the welcome beat that surrounded one of the furnaces. Under the lean-to a pile of burning charcoal, mixed with the ore, had been heaped into a cupped depression in the ground. It needed a forced draught, and when Lycos appeared the two boys, who had been half-heartedly leaning on the pair of bellows, began to apply themselves with great energy; sparks glowed and scattered wide. The bellows, each made from a length of wood fastened to an entire pigskin with its legs kicking in the air, squealed with restored life.
"This one will be finished soon," Lycos said, squinting into the pile of red coals with a professional eye.
"I don't like that Albi coming here like this, wounded. None of them live that close. Why..."
"They fight with each other and die. Has nothing to do with us."
This was dismissal enough. Koza reluctantly left the heat and went to his own quarters to get his bronze-studded shield and sword. A dagger and half armour were safe to wear in the security of the settlement - but nowhere else. A foot beyond the protective embankment a man had to be armed and walk with caution. There were bears out there that would attack if they were disturbed, and wolves, often in packs, that considered men just another welcome source of meat after the long winter. Boars, savage killers, in the thick brush. And men, the most dangerous killers of all. A stranger was an enemy. Once you left the home circle all men were strangers.
Mirisati was sitting on his heels just below the top of the embankment that had been thrown up to seal off the end of the valley, his heavy shield at his side while he traced circles in the dirt with the tip of his sword.
"I could have killed you," Koza growled. "Squatting down like you're enjoying a good bowel movement."
"No, you couldn't," Mirisati said with the indifference of the young for the concerns of the old. He sat and stretched, then climbed to his feet. "I beard you coming one hundred paces off with your knee joints squeaking and your armour rattling."
"What have you seen?"
Koza squinted through the thin curtain of failing snow. The land before him was bare the full width of the narrow valley that held the settlement, tufted with grass now brown and dead. Beyond this were heather bushes backed by the dark curtain of the forest that covered the Island of the Yerni from east to west, from the sea-washed beaches of the south to the fogs and swamps of the far north. The valley was wrapped in silence. The only movement was a flock of crows that rose up and swept away out of sight.
"I've seen what you are seeing now. Nothing. No one is coming here. I wish they would. Butchering a few of these savages would be a change."
"Nothing? What about the one with the hole in his chest the boy found?" The dying man's presence still troubled Koza.
"Who knows? Better, who cares? They just like to kill each other. And I can understand that. What else is there to do in this cold land?"
"The Albi don't fight."
"Tell that to the dying one. If you want to talk to me, tell me about the sun-warmed stones of the Mycenae. What a distance we have travelled from that happy place! My arms ache just thinking about it, but I would start rowing tomorrow if it meant we could return. Fifteen days across the green water of that cold ocean to the Pillars of Herakles. Thirty days more on the blue waters of Argolid. The first olives will be ready for the pressing by then."
"We'll leave when we're ordered to leave," Koza grumbled. He had no more love than the other for this Island of the Yerni. The wind drew the failing traceries of snow aside for a moment and he saw the dark silhouettes of the birds settling down into the forest. They were roosting for the night - but why had they moved? Had something disturbed them?
"You better go back and start the boys in the hut working again. Orders from Lycos. And when you see him, tell him that the underbrush is growing up here again. We'll have to clear it back."
"Always looking for new labours, Koza?" Mirisati was in no hurry to return to the camp.
"We've had attacks here before. The Yerni stay away now because we killed all of the ones that tried. And they'll try again someday. The brush is protection for them. Men could lie out there, get close."
"You have bad dreams, old man. My dreams are of a superior sort, of warm sun and olive groves and cool wine. Fine Epidaurian wine, so rich you must thin it twenty times with water. And then a girl, not one of these Donbaksho sluts whose wrappings you have to cut away to be sure it isn't a boy or an old man, but a honey-skinned girl who smells of frankincense."
"You won't find any of that out here," Koza said, gesturing at the shadow-filled forest.
"No, I don't think I will. Is it all like this - the whole island?"
"The parts I've seen. We went out there two summers ago; Lycos had dealings with the tribes. Forest everywhere, too thick to get through except on the high downs. Almost a five-day march to reach the tribes where the big stones are. Dig like moles, these Yerni, circles and banks and hills and burial mounds, then stand these stones around, great ugly things."
"Why?"
"Ask them. This one tribe, Uala's, where we went that time, they have them in a big double circle, blue stones with their tips painted red like big pricks stuck in the ground. Dirty-minded people..."
"What was that?" Mirisati pointed his sword at a clump of heather in the darkness below the beech trees.
"I didn't see anything." Koza stared hard, but nothing was clear in the fading light.
"Well, 1 did. A fox, perhaps a deer. We could use a little fresh meat in the stewpot." He climbed to the top of the embankment to see better.
"Get back here! It could have been anything."
"Don't fear the shadows, old man. They can't hurt you." Mirisati laughed and turned to jump back down. A sudden, whispering sound cut the air. The spear buried itself deep into the side of his neck, hurling him over and down with a clatter. His legs were spread wide, his eyes wider with surprise. He reached up for the wooden shaft and died.
"Alarm!" Koza shouted. "Alarm!" over and over, beating his sword against his shield..
There were no more spears. But when he looked cautiously over the top of the ridge, he could see the men running forward now from the shelter of the forest, silent and fast as wolves. Naked, even in this weather, except for short leather kirtles. One man, ahead of the others, held a spear which he hurled at Koza, who dodged it easily. There were no more; they used spears only for hunting. The others came on, round shields on their left arms, brandishing stone battle-axes in their right bands. Some had daggers about their necks; all had whitened hair and stiff white moustaches. There were a great number of them. As they reached the foot of the ridge they cried out, Abuabu!, piercingly, a scream meant to drive fear into their enemies so they would flee. Koza stood firm.
"Yerni!" He bellowed it out and heard the alarm being shouted behind him. They would fight now. His heart beat strongly in his chest as he saw more and more of the near-naked men emerging from the shelter of the trees. The snow had stopped and he could see their mass stretching the width of the valley. Never before had he seen so many of their warriors together at one time. This was an entire tribe or more.
Heavy running footsteps sounded behind Koza and he knew he was no longer alone. Well, then, this would be a battle.
When the first of the warriors were puffing up the slope, he leaped to the top of the embankment and shook his sword at them.
"Sons of goats! Come meet a Mycenaean!"
He raised his shield so the battle-axe bounced from it, then plunged his sword into the man's stomach. Not too deep; he was too experienced for that. A twist and a pull had it out. Even before the first Yerni had dropped, Koza's sword was chopping the neck of another man, his shield pushing aside an axe. Then another and another, until the blood ran wetly from his sword on to his arm. Something struck sharp pain through his leg so that he almost fell; with the edge of his shield he knocked that attacker away. But others were behind him. Many of them. Too many of them. They ran by on all sides, howling in high voices.
He fell only when his legs were too butchered to support him, and even then he rolled and chopped upwards with his sword, wounding and killing those he could, only stopping when his helmet was torn away and an axe crushed in his skull. A dagger was pressed to his neck, sawing through it, severing his head from his body.
More and more of the screaming tribesmen ran by, and the snow was trampled by many feet and soon stained and splashed with red.
Chapter 2
Mycenae
In the grey dawn the city was as sharply etched as a silhouette against the sky and the blur of distant hills. Its presence commanded the valley all about it; the paths between the trees and fields led to it. The hill on which it sat was gently rounded at the base, but angled up steeply at the top to the thick-walled and impregnable city. As the first light coloured the stone, the great gate under the rampant carved lions was swung open by invisible hands. Threads of smoke from the many cooking fires within the walls rose straight up through the motionless air. A boy leading a goat came slowly along the rutted road between the fields: men and women with baskets of produce appeared down the lanes. They halted when they reached the road, stopped by the sound of sudden hoofbeats, staring with dumb curiosity at the two-horse chariot as it rumbled by them.
In the open gateway high above, the guards looked down with interest as the horses clattered on the stones of the ramp leading up to them. The charioteer was in a great hurry. One of the horses slipped and nearly fell; the rider lashed it forward. Since the sun was only newly risen the man must have been riding by night, a dangerous thing to do, and one that evidenced a most unusual need for haste. One didn't hurry in Mycenae; the seasons came and went, the rain dampened the earth and crops sprang up, the animals were slaughtered and the young ones grew. There was no reason for unseemly haste by night, no reason to risk crippling and killing a sacred horse.
"I know him now," a guard called out. He pointed his bronze-bladed spear. "It is Phoros, cousin of the king."
They drew aside, raising their weapons in salute to his rank as Phoros came up. His white cloak was black with blown spittle from the stumbling horses, and he appeared no less tired himself. Looking to neither right nor left he drove the exhausted animals through the tall opening of the gate, under the carved lions, and past the royal grave circle into the hilltop city of Mycenae. Slaves hurried out to hold the horses while Phoros climbed stiffly to the ground. He staggered at first, his legs so fatigued from the ride, and had to lean against the great stone wall. The ride was a nightmare better forgotten; he was no charioteer and he entertained a secret fear of the noble beasts. But he had driven the creatures, despite this fear, just as he had driven his rowers that last day along the coast, forcing speed from them despite their exhaustion. The king must be told.
There was a trough here for the horses and he bent wearily over it and filled his cupped hands again and again, splashing the water over his face and arms. It was still cool from the night, and it washed away the dust and some of his fatigue. Water dripped from his hair and beard, and he wiped at it with the tail of his cloak as he climbed the steep ramp to the residential part of the palace city. The muscles in his legs loosened as he went along the paths by the kitchen gardens, past the workshops and houses where the people were just stirring. They came to their doorways and looked on curiously as he hurried by. Then he was at the great palace itself, climbing the smoothly dressed stone steps to the entrance. The door with its hammered bronze covering was open, and the oldest house slave, Avull, was waiting, bowing and clasping his knob-knuckled and shaking hands together. He had already sent a slave running with word to the king.
Perimedes, war king of the Argolid and master of the House of Perseus at Mycenae, was not at his very best this morning. He had slept fitfully the night before. The wine perhaps, or the dull ache of old wounds or, more surely, Atlantis.
"Oh, the bastards," he muttered to no one and to everyone, slumping low in his great chair and reaching for the figs in the basket on the table before him. He chewed on one, and even its rich sweetness could not sweeten his mood. Atlantis. The name alone stung like a thorn or a scorpion's lance.
Around him the day's work of the great megaron was already beginning. With the king awake no one sleeps. There were occasional hushed voices; no one dared to speak too loud. On the elevated round hearth in the middle of the chamber the fire was being built higher to cook the meat, the fire he himself had kindled years before when the palace and this megaron had been first built. The thought did not warm him today, just as the figs could not sweeten him. Under a nearby canopy his two daughters and some house slaves were carding fleeces and spinning the wool into thread. They stopped talking when he glanced their way, turning their attention more closely to their work. Though his face was set in anger, Perimedes was still a handsome man, heavy browed, with a thin-edged nose above a wide mouth. He was well into middle age, yet his hair and beard were still as brown as in his youth, and there was no thickening of his waist.
The white scars of old wounds made patterns on the tanned skin of his arms, and when he reached out for another fig it was obvious that the last two fingers were missing from his right hand. Kingship was something hard won in the Argolid.
The slave, Avull, entered at the far side of the megaron and hurried over to him, bowing low.
"Well?"
"Your cousin, the noble Phoros, son of..."
"Get him in here, you son of a chancred goat. This is the man I have been waiting for." Perimedes almost smiled as the slave hurried away to usher in the ship's captain..
"We need you, Phoros. Come here, sit by me, they'll bring us wine. How was your voyage?"
Phoros sat on the edge of the bench and looked at the polished marble tabletop. "Uncle Poseidon in his might drove our ship quickly all the distance."
"I'm sure of that, but it is not details of the seafaring that I care about. You have returned with the ingots of tin?"
"Yes, but a small amount, less than a tenth of a shipload."
"Why is this?' Perimedes asked quietly, a sudden premonition darkening his vision. "Why so little?"
Phoros still stared at the table, ignoring the wine in the gold cup that had been set before him. "We arrived during a fog; there is much fog off the coast of the Island of the Yerni. Then we waited until it had cleared before we could sail along the coast to the mouth of the river we know. I bleached the boat there and left men to guard it, then followed the overgrown path to the mine. We came to the place where the tin is stored, but there were no ingots there. We searched nearby and found some, but almost all were missing. The ingots are kept close to the mine."
Phoros looked up now, staring squarely at the king as he spoke.
"This is not the word you wish to hear. The mine is destroyed, all there are dead."
A wave of quick whispers died away as those nearest in the megaron passed the word backwards as to what had been said. Then there was silence and Perimedes was silent as well, his fists clenched, the only movement a heavy pulse that beat beneath the skin of his forehead.
"My brother, Lycos, what of him?"
"I don't know. It was hard to tell. All of the bodies had been stripped of armour and clothing and had been there many months. The animals and birds had done their work. There had been hard fighting, a battle with the Yerni. All the beads gone, not a skull. The Yerni take heads, you know."
"Then Lycos is dead. He would never surrender or be captured by savages like that."
Anger burned a knot of pain in his midriff and Perimedes kneaded it with his hand. His brother, the lost tin, the dead men, the Atlantean ships, all coming together; these were dark, unhappy days. He wanted to shout aloud with this anger, to take his sword and kill something, someone - fight back. He might have done this once, when he was young, but a wisdom had come with the years. Now the anger stayed inside of him and he squeezed it with his fingers and tried instead to think what should be done. The pain did not go away.
"Is it true? My kinsman Mirisati is dead?" Perimedes looked up at the angry man before him. Qurra, first among the chalcei, the workers in metal. He must have come directly from his furnace when he heard the news, because he was wearing his leather apron, burned by many sparks, and soot was on his arms and smeared across his forehead. Forgotten, the stubby tongs were still clasped in his right hand.
"Dead, certainly," Phoros said. "Everyone at the mine must be dead. Mycenaeans do not become slaves."
Qurra, an emotional man, shouted aloud in pain. "What ruin is upon us! The mine is gone, our people killed, my kinsmen slain." He shook his tongs angrily. "Mirisati is dead, to whom you promised your younger daughter when she comes of age..." The words ended in a fit of coughing. The chalceus always coughed from breathing his metal fumes, and many died because of it.
"I did not kill him," Perimedes said. "Nor my brother Lycos. But I will see that they are avenged. Return to your furnace, Qurra, you serve us best there."
Qurra started away, but called back over his shoulder. "And tell me, noble Perimedes, how long will my furnace burn with the mine closed?"
How long? This was the question that gnawed at Perimedes's vitals the most. Had he been too ambitious? Perimedes thought. No, there had been no other course open to him. As long as the Greek cities of the Argolid warred one with the other, they remained weak. Lerna fought Epidaurus, Nemea sank the ships of Corinth. While at the same time the ships of Atlantis sailed freely where they would and grew rich. Only the united power of the cities of the Argolid could challenge that ancient power. The rocky plains of home had been tilled and bore fruit, but never enough. Across the sea were the tempting riches of many lands, and his people already had a taste for these riches. Bronze-armoured warriors with brazen weapons could take what they willed. Bronze made them. They ate bronze and drank it because they would be nothing without it. Soft golden copper was everywhere, but that was not enough.
With a technique known only to them, the chalcei blended the copper with the grey tin in the burning throats of their forges. The result was noble bronze. Of this bronze Mycenae forged weapons to conquer, more weapons as gifts for the other cities of the Argolid to bind them all together.
Without bronze, this loose union would fall apart and they would war with one another as they had always done. The sea empire of Atlantis would rule as it had always ruled. Atlantis had all the tin they needed. Their camps and mines were along the Danube. Mycenae had tin; not as much, but they had tin. They had to travel the length of the warm sea to the cold ocean beyond, to that distant island, to get it, then bring it home the same distance. But they had it, and Mycenae had bronze.
Mycenae no longer had bronze.
"The mine. We must reopen the mine."
Perimedes spoke the words aloud before he saw that another had joined them, a short, brown man. Inteb the Egyptian, now wearing a robe of thin white flax instead of his usual rough working clothes. Gold thread was set into the edge of the robe and there was a collar with precious stones about his neck; his black hair was oiled and glistening. Looking at him, Perimedes remembered.
"You are leaving us."
"Very soon. My work here is finished."
"It is a work well done, you must tell your Pharaoh that. Here, sit, you will eat with me before you leave."
The women quickly brought plates of small fish fried in oil, cakes drenched with honey, salty white goatsmilk cheese. Inteb picked delicately at the fish with a gold fork taken from his pouch. A strange man, young for his work, though he knew it well. He came from a noble family, so in a sense he was the ambassador for Thuthmosis III, not only a builder. He knew things about the stars, as well, and could read and write. He had supervised the building of the new, massive outer wall of the city. As if this were not enough, through his craft, he had erected the great gate and mounted above it the royal lions of Mycenae. It was well done indeed - nor had the price been too high. There had been agreements. Thuthmosis III, busy with his wars in the south, would no longer be troubled by the Argolid raider's who sank his ships and burned his coastal towns. An arrangement between kings.
"You seem troubled?" Inteb asked, his voice bland, his face emotionless. He freed a fish bone from between his teeth and dropped it to the floor.
Perimedes sipped at his wine. How much had the Egyptian heard about the tin mine? There should be no stories going back to Pharaoh of Mycenaean weakness.
"A king always has troubles, just as Pharaoh has troubles; that is the way of kings."
If the comparison between the ruler of this brawling city state and the mighty ruler of all Egypt troubled Inteb, he did not show it; he took a honey cake in his fingertips.
"I am troubled by the dung-flies of Atlantis," Perimedes said. "Not satisfied with their own shores, they come here and cause dissension among us. Their ships appear along the coast with weapons for sale, and our little squabbling princes are only too eager to buy. They know little of loyalty. Mycenae is the armoury of the Argolid. Some forget that. Now there is an Atlantean ship at Asine in the south, a floating bronzesmith's shop, doing business in our waters. But it will not be there long - nor will it be returning to Atlantis. My son Ason led our men against it as soon as we heard of its presence. You may tell Pharaoh of this. You have my gifts?"
"Safe aboard my ship. I am sure Pharaoh will be pleased."
Perimedes was not so sure. He talked of equality among kings, but in his innermost thoughts he knew the truth. He had seen Egypt, the cities of the dead and living, the teeming people and the soldiers. If that power were turned against Mycenae, his city would cease to exist. Yet there was power and power - because Egypt was so great it did not follow that Mycenae became small. It was the first city of the Argolid and the mightiest, and that was something to be proud of.
"We will walk together before you leave," Perimedes said, rising and buckling on the square-shouldered royal dagger of Mycenae. Graven on its long and narrow straight-edged blade was the scene of a royal lion hunt, incised with gold and silver and niello. Its pommel, a peculiar rounded cap of solid gold upon a golden stem - another royal insignia, this one vegetative.
They walked side by side, with the slaves rushing ahead to open the coffered doors of bronze. It was not by chance that they passed by the roofed mushroom beds just inside the palace walls. Perimedes paused and looked on with a critical eye while the gardeners prepared a fresh bed, laying down the layer of cow dung, then scattering the tree bark over it. As they moved on, Perimedes bent and picked a mushroom, twisting it in his fingers as he walked. It was white crowned and pale stemmed, with lacy edges. He broke off a piece and sampled it, extending some to Inteb. The Egyptian also ate it, although he really did not like the musty flavour. He knew everyone else thought it delicious.
"This is history." Perimedes said, pointing to the dung and the mushroom beds, and Inteb, being a diplomat, managed not to smile. He knew that the mushroom was held in great esteem here. Myces they called them; they shaped their sword and dagger hilts to their form and had even named their city after them. Mycenae. Though he found it hard to understand why. Perhaps because of the maleness of the shape of the things, always an important concern with these kinds of people.
"The royal mushrooms," Perimedes said. "Perseus found them growing here and named the city for them. We have a long history, just like Egypt, and like Egypt we have those who can read and write and keep our records."
Perimedes paused before a wooden door and hammered on it until it screeched open. The elderly slave peered out, blinking into the sunlight, a soft clay tablet in his hand. An Atlantean, from the look of him, no doubt captured; so much for Mycenaean culture, Inteb thought. He, who had visited often at the library in Thebes, with its papyrus scrolls neatly shelved in a complex of rooms larger than this entire palace, pretended interest in the tottering piles of baskets filled with unsorted tablets. He tried to ignore the squashed ones on the filthy dirt floor. Probably vital records of cauldrons and wine jars and fire tongs and foot-stools and other things of equal importance. He doubted if he would tell Pharaoh of this.
But before they could pass through the doorway, there was a cry, and they turned to see two men in armour half carrying a third man between them. He was coated with dust mixed with blood, his mouth gaping in the agony of near exhaustion.
"We found him this way, crawling on the road," one of the men said. "He has word; he is one of those who marched with Ason."
Once again the coldness possessed Perimedes. He could almost hear the words the man would speak - and he did not wish to hear them. This was a day of evil. If there were a way to remove this day from his life, he would. He seized the man by the hair and crashed him against the wall of the archive building, shaking him until he gaped like a fish drawn from the water.
"Speak. What of the ship?" The man could only gasp. One of the slaves came running with a jar of wine and Perimedes tore it from his hands and dashed the contents into the exhausted man's face.
"Speak!" he ordered.
"We attacked the ship - the men of Asine, there..." He licked at the wine that streamed down his face.
"Asine, what of them? They fought by your side, they are of the Argolid. The Atlanteans, tell me."
"We fought..." He choked the words out one by one. "We fought them all... Asine fought with Atlantis against us... They were too many..."
"My son, Ason, in command, What of him?"
"He was wounded. I saw him fall - dead or captured..."
"And you returned? To bring me this word?"
This time the king could not control the anger that flooded through him. With a single motion he drew his dagger and plunged it into the man's chest.
© Harry Harrison and Leon E. Stover 1972 & 1983
Leon E. Stover is Professor of Anthropology at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he teaches courses on H.G. Wells, Robert A. Heinlein and modern science fiction. He has written several books and papers on science fiction, including
The Prophetic Soul: A Reading of H.G. Wells' Things To Come, a thorough examination of the film, which includes the 'final release script' for it.
Stover has worked with Harry Harrison on a number of projects: they co-edited the anthology Apeman, Spaceman; co-wrote the novel Stonehenge: Where Atlantis Died, and Stover also provided some uncredited anthropological background material for the West of Eden series.
In 1987 Stover wrote Robert Heinlein in the Twayne's United States Author Series, and followed that in 1990 with the publication of a book on Harry Harrison in the same series. The book is based, as Stover wrote to me, "almost entirely upon my critical study of the author's own texts. From the viewpoint of scholarship, I start at ground zero; for there is almost nothing in the critical literature on HH, least of all among my fellow American academics. But this book aims to set things right on that front!" When asked what approach he would be taking in his book on Harrison, he wrote: "What the theme of my HH book will be, I won't know until I begin writing it. Then again, theme hunting may turn out to be marginal in my effort, as I begin thinking about language usage and craftsmanship. Such textual matters interest me very much, and they accord with the policy of the series for which I write, it being directed to advanced students in the arcane mysteries of the lit. crit. business.
But don't let that put you off! My sense of fandom and partisanship will shine through, whatever my contractual obligations!
"Academic critics of my Heinlein book thought me too partisan to a 'Conservative' writer. What will they say when they find me equally so to HH, a 'Liberal' writer? Ideology interests me less than art and the craft of polished writing. In this respect, HH is one of the modern masters. I leave it to his readers to harken to his message; my job is to explain how well he sends it, entertaining all the while. My subject is Literature, not alone its thematic content. And I think HH deserving of attention as a masterly writer."
I met up with Professor Stover in London in July 1988. He was over to give a talk to the H.G. Wells Society, and to spend a week in conversation with Harry Harrison in preparation for his book. Over lunch at the Hotel Russell he told me how he first met Harry Harrison, when the Harrisons and Stover lived on the same floor of an apartment block in San Diego:
"One night I heard a noise. It sounded like a bunch of drunken sailors coming up the stairs. I went to the door, it was sailors coming up the stairs! Harry's friend Dan Barry, World Citizen Number One, was rounding up sailors and sending them back to Harry's apartment to give out world passports."
Stover tells the story in full in his book Harry Harrison.
Back in Professor Stover's hotel room, we sat down with the tape recorder running. Often during the interview Stover seemed like a professor wearily explaining his theories to a student who hadn't done his homework properly I'm suffering from jet-lag, he apologised afterwards but when he spoke of Harry Harrison, he became more enthusiastic, as though he was speaking of a brother of whom he is very proud, and he seemed to have many fond memories of their working together. Of their collaboration on Apeman, Spaceman he recalled that the most difficult part was coming up with a title. Both he and Harrison travelled considerable distances to meet and decide on a title, but once together their talk turned to other things and the task was avoided. At the very last minute, Harry came up with an idea Stover would make a list of words associated with anthropology, and he himself would list words associated with science fiction.
Harrison then held up the two lists, shifting them up and down to try out different pairings of words, eventually coming up with Apeman, Spaceman...
PT: What is anthropology?
LS: You're asking that no doubt because the subtitle to Apeman, Spaceman is 'Anthropological Science Fiction'... The definition there is not very rigorous. The stories have anthropologists in them or are written by anthropologists. There's also some non-fiction that we thought was exotic or interesting.
I guess there are as many definitions of anthropology as there are anthropologists. It has been defined as the science of left-overs: a little bit of archaeology, a little bit of geology, a little bit of comparative anatomy, and medicine for physical anthropology. And then cultural history for the social anthropology.
Anthropology is a number of disciplines, collectively known as 'the science of man'. It's two main branches are physical and cultural anthropology. In short: Man and his works. That is how Apeman, Spaceman is divided up; the first part includes stories about Man, the human animal, and the second part includes stories about man's cultural products, his works.
PT: The second book you worked on with Harry Harrison was Stonehenge. You have also written a non-fiction work on Stonehenge, explaining your theory of the function of the monument: which came first?
LS: There is an academic book, Stonehenge And The Origins Of Western Culture, published in 1978. The first version of the Stonehenge novel was 1972, so the novel came first.
My idea is contra to Gerald Hawkins' astronomical thesis in his Stonehenge Decoded. His explanation of Stonehenge makes, to me, a modernist error, in thinking that the Ancients had the same interests that we do. Or in proving that they are just as good as we are... in saying that to be our equals they must have had astronomy, or cosmology, or something else. Actually, there's more of an ideological thesis behind it than that, but to say that it is a solar and lunar observatory, and an eclipsic computer... this is fallacious just on the face of it! Hawkins is evidently not aware that Stonehenge was built in three major phases over a period of about a thousand years. Stonehenge I, II and III, as the archaeologists call them. He conflates all three phases as working parts of his eclipsic computer. Some of the more recent phases have obliterated parts of Phase II, yet he counts all these parts together. That is stupid and wrong. So I wanted to rebut that. It just can't be an astronomical Stonehenge.
My own view began by considering the significance of the fact that the monument, as everybody thinks of it, is located in the middle of an immense cemetery, hundreds of burial mounds stretching to the horizon, three or four miles in every direction. I detected that the architecture of Stonehenge is modelled after that of the Megalithic tomb. The very burial mounds around Stonehenge contributed to its architecture. It is sepulchral architecture. It has religious significance. And then I got to thinking about how the Celts held their elections. They raised up their chiefs and kings at election ceremonies in the middle of their graveyards. So probably Stonehenge was a court of election.
Harry and I got to talking about that, and he said: Let's do a novel about that. So that became our second project after Apeman, Spaceman.
PT: There are two versions of the Stonehenge novel, the later version being a much expanded version of the first...
LS: Originally it was a longer novel, but the publisher thought it was too long and cut it back. More recently we had another go at it, with Harry replacing the cut material based on my original notes, and we renamed it Stonehenge: Where Atlantis Died. What a title! In a four word title we have two of the biggest enigmas in the world: Stonehenge and Atlantis. It wasn't easy to get them in one title. But it was all very serious, as I explained in the Afterword.
PT: And is it definite that Atlantis was this volcanic island, as you describe in the novel?
LS: Oh, yes.
PT: There's no mystery about it?
LS: Not to the archaeologists. That has been in the archaeological literature from the 1920s. It is well-established in the literature and has been reaffirmed by excavations down there. It blew up and the ash fell on Egypt, and that's where the Biblical reference as one of the Seven Plagues of Egypt comes from. It destroyed the old Thessalocracy of the Minoans, knocked down the pillars of the palace buildings there on Crete we got all that into the novel, that's all authentic stuff.
Atlantis was at the centre of a vast sea empire a Bronze Age Empire which was getting its tin from up the Danube river. They had effectively closed off the Eastern Mediterranean to the Mycenaens and that's why some archaeologists suspect that the Mycenaens were probably driven all the way up to Britain and the tin mines in Cornwall. Bronze is one part tin to nine parts copper. Copper you can find almost anywhere, but tin, the stuff that hardens up the copper, is a scarce ingredient. It was kind of a world war. The Mycenaens and the Atlanteans or Minoans, as they are called in the archaeological literature had a struggle of epic proportions.
In the novel we had Ason in Britain to get tin for the Mycenaen bronze so that his father could fight their hereditary enemy, the Minoans. Ason has trouble with the local natives, who are fighting with each other, and making raids on the tin mines, so he organises them and has Stonehenge built as a political monument that unites them. And that's where my political theory of a court of election comes in. They elevate Ason and he becomes a Bull Chief of the region.
PT: It reminded me in a way of the legends of King Arthur and the Round Table one man bringing all the chiefs together and uniting them...
LS: No, no. Bronze Age kings were elected kings. King Arthur already belonged to a historical period of dynastic kings, the kingship and the office was hereditary. We know that figures like Agamemnon were elected kings. There was a court of electors, the nobles of the land. The Celts also had this practice, we know this of the Iron Age Celts, and can read this back into the Bronze Age. In the time of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V there was a famous document issued called The Golden Bull, in which he ruled out the last vestiges of elected kingship, which had survived in Denmark. So up until then there was still a court of election.
The Golden Bull described this electoral process which they wanted to get rid of, which is partly where I got my idea from. The Court of Election got together and each elector stood on a stone in a ring of stones. In the centre was a taller stone and on that stood the man that they elected to raise literally elevated to kingship. This is not in the book, I have worked this out since, but it is my view that the electors stood on the lintels of Stonehenge, and the five Wessex chiefs stood on the lintels of the trilithon.
PT: How did you and Harry divide the work on the novel between you, presumably you had to do all the research first?
LS: Yes, that obviously had to come first. It was my theory, and Harry's job essentially to make a story out of it. Although I already had my theory, I had to get together a lot of details. At the time Harry was in San Diego and I was in Chicago. The major plot problem we had was to get the builder of Stonehenge together with our hero, Ason. It could have been an Egyptian architect or a Mycenaen architect. I settled finally on an Egyptian architect because we know historically that the Egyptians were working for the Mycenaens. The Cyclopean Wall, the Lion Gate and the wall around the citadel of Mycenae, were no doubt the work of an Egyptian architect. The problem was how to get him to Britain with somebody from the Mycenaen court. You've got to have a damn good excuse for that. I started plotting this thing, and I called up Harry, I'd got stuck. I'd managed to get Inteb, the architect, up from Egypt, he's in the court of Mycenae and he's building the Lion Gate for Ason's father.
And I'd figured out that Ason and Inteb should go up to Britain and build Stonehenge, and the story would carry on from there. But, I said: Harry, what's the excuse? Why should Inteb go with Ason to Britain? How can we arrange that? Silence. Harry said: I've got it! He loves him! [Laughter]... I carried on from there!
PT: But it worked.
LS: We hadn't intended to have this homosexual thing in it. It's now very fashionable, but we got a lot of complaints that it was a dirty book. But it was there to solve a plot problem, how to get these two chaps together. "I have it, he loves him!"
PT: It also makes the Egyptian more of a character, though doesn't it? It also makes him very sad right at the end...
LS: Yes, it does. There's some fine characterisation there.
To answer your question: I did the theory, and the major plotting, and I would write up technical memos, the 'Stonehenge Papers', and sometimes I would draft chapters and Harry would rewrite it and give it the final polishing. It was a division of labour that worked perfectly, there were no problems. Collaborations are usually difficult, and Harry said that this was very unusual that we could work together with none of the problems that collaborators usually have. Then the theoretical basis that I worked out for the novel was spelled out with all the proper footnotes in the academic book Stonehenge And The Origins Of Western Culture, in which I was able to read some Celtic politics back into the Bronze Age. I called the builders of Stonehenge Proto-Celts, and in fact, thanks to my book, this phrase and concept has actually entered the archaeological literature. It is one of the contributions that the book made: to establish and make legitimate the Proto-Celts of the Bronze Age.
They were the builders of Stonehenge, and they are buried all around it. The 'Proto-Celt' is cognate with Homer's heroes.
PT: It must be very satisfying to see all the bits fit together and finally make sense, like a piece of detection...
LS: Yes, it is. Tracking certain things down, finding the evidence... I had intuitive thoughts about it, and then backed it up. That's how science really works. You have a hypothesis 'hypo', underneath, your thesis which is your hunch, that's step one in any scientific research. Then you back it up with your thesis. There is a very unscientific underpinning to a thesis!
PT: But that's what makes science an art, isn't it?
LS: [Laughs] You got it! But they don't like to admit that. Scientists who are bad artists don't like to admit that!
PT: Do people now generally accept that Stonehenge was a political meeting place has your theory been accepted?
LS: Some few have accepted it. I've got reviews from people who got unconverted from the astronomical thesis after reading my book. But as far as the general public is concerned, and what the guides still teach at Stonehenge itself, it is Hawkins' that is still the popular story, and I have not been able to break that. I don't know whether I'll go back and try it again... I don't know.
© Paul Tomlinson - July 1988
