The Book of Ancient Bastards (3 page)

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!

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 . . . .”

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 dealing 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.

Apparently it was only a matter of time before Solomon picked up many of these bad, idolatrous habits and displeased God. It was at that point that God told Solomon that he was going to break up his kingdom (in the quote at the opening of the chapter).

Some religious traditions hold that Solomon eventually saw the error of his ways, got rid of his idols (not sure about all those wives and concubines), and found redemption in the eyes of God. Muslims even hold that he never really fell away from his beliefs.

Pious bastard.

Born-of-Sin Bastard

The son of David and Bathsheba, Solomon was the tangible result of David’s great sin. When the king first met Bathsheba, she was already married to one of his most trusted soldiers, a man known in the Bible as Uriah the Hittite. Consumed with passion for her, David seduced her and got her pregnant, then arranged for Uriah’s death in battle. Bathsheba lost her baby (according to the prophet Nathan, as punishment for the sin she and David had committed together), but she and David had a second son after they were married. That was Solomon.