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Title: Parallax
Author: Canaan Alexander
Characters/pairings: Ten/Jack
Chapter Rating: PG-13 for concepts
Spoilers/warnings: SoD/LotTL
Continuity: How it Could Have Happened
Beta: yamx and aibhinn. Any mistakes are All Mine.
Disclaimer: I don't own them, I'm just haunted by them.
Summary: Dying's no picnic. Ten/Jack

A/N: A drabble-and-a-half in response to a couple of prompts--I don't know if I filled either of them, it's more like I sideswiped both of them. Prompts are at the bottom. Falls before "And the Greatest of These . . . ", but it's stand-alone.


Parallax

To the Anglo-Saxon world, Ancient Egypt may seem to be a distant, exotic place, remote in both distance and time. Whereas there may be some truth in that as regards Pharaonic Egypt, this is a misconception for the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

Alexander III of Macedon integrated Egypt into the wider world. His immediate successors, those generals who inherited and fought over his empire (the Diadochi), of whom one, Ptolemy, founded the great Hellenistic dynasty in Egypt (which ended formally with Cleopatra VII, the subject of my first post here), made of Egypt a colony of Greek cultural orientation, with its capital at Alexandria.

The achievements of the Greeks in the ancient world, by no means few, may have reached their peak in the city of Alexandria. No less a ruler than its namesake, Alexander III of Macedonia (Alexander the Great), Alexandria dominated the eastern Mediterranean world culturally, politically, and economically for more than nine hundred years, the latter three hundred of which it competed with even the eastern capital of the Byzantine Empire, the famous Constantinople. Few cities in the world can claim success of this magnitude for close to a millenium, and even fewer still flourish to this day. Part of the reason for Alexandria's success was its location, both geographically as well as politically. Situated on the coast of the Mediterranean, it was the true bridge between Europe and Africa while still being a world all to itself.
- Alexandria: The Ptolemaic Dynasty

Transasia trade routes 1st century CE

It is necessary to understand how integrated was Alexandria and the other ports of Egypt into the world at large, in order to appreciate how ideas, trade goods, people, entered Egypt. The Anglo Saxon - whether in the British Isles, or North America - must use some mechanical means of transport to reach Egypt and this limitation on travel distorts perception. For most of the world, though, people are able to walk to Egypt, or from Egypt to just about anywhere else in Europe, Asia or the Indian Subcontinent.

Even maritime travel is no great feat, using mere coastal navigation, from port to port, to reach the Persian Gulf and India.

Just as the Romans, after conquest, founded new towns and cities with retired soldiers, so did Alexander as his army moved eastwards to the Indus. These Alexandrian cities became the basis for Greco-India, where Hellenistic ideas fused with Asian to produce new forms, such as Buddha.

Not only was it possible to walk between all these cities - and the first-century story of Apollonius of Tyana is of a (divine) man doing precisely that - trade became so great that great caravans and convoys of ships were organised and with this trade, came tax.

Tax farming was originally a Roman practice whereby the burden of tax collection was reassigned by the Roman State to private individuals or groups.
In essence, these individuals or groups paid the taxes for a certain area and for a certain period of time and then attempted to cover their outlay by collecting money or saleable goods from the people within that area. The system was set up by Gaius Gracchus in 123 BC primarily to increase the efficiency of tax collection within Rome itself but the system quickly spread to the Provinces.
- Tax farming

Now let us dive into some archaeology to illustrate this.

The British Empire opened Egypt and India to archaeological study and by a type of scholar increasing rare - the Classicist, students of that branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world. I mention this because in the 19th century, education also included a strong Christian basis and as these scholars studied abroad, so they marvelled at both the wonders of these exotic cultures, but also at the  syncretisms which were novel to them.

Of these marvellous Victorians, it wasFlinders Petrie who became the pioneer in systemising the methodology of archaeology, laying the foundations for us, today. Most of his career was in Egypt.

Qift: (Arabic: قفط‎; Coptic: Keft or Kebto; Egyptian Gebtu; Greek Coptos or Koptos; Roman Justinianopolis)

From here, trading expeditions heading for the Red Sea and many mining expeditions into the Eastern Desert left the Nile Valley. Gebtu was at the starting-point of the two great caravan routes leading to the coast of the Red Sea, the one toward the port Tââou (Myoshormos), the other more southerly, toward the port of Shashirît (Berenice).

Its principal god was Manou, with an Isis and an Horus infant; the remains of their temple were explored by Flinders Petrie in 1894.

Koptos, by W. M. Flinders Petrie (1896)

Inscriptions: The earliest is the one which I publish here, set up at Coptos in the year 90, in the reign of Domitian. The next was engraved at Palmyra in 136, under Hadrian ; and the third at Zarai in Numidia in 202, during the joint reign of Septimius Severus and his eldest son.

Tariff of Coptos...there exists no parallel to it as a whole in any part of the Roman world...It owes this singularity, no doubt, to the unique constitution of Egypt, inherited by the Emperors from the Ptolemies as a sort of private royal estate

The first group might be interpreted equally, as arrivals or departures...mariners and craftsmen...there is every reason why they should go down to the desolate and thinly populated littoral of the Red Sea. There must always have been a demand for fresh hands to man the merchant fleets, far beyond what barren settlements, like Berenice or Myos Hormos, dependent, as Kosseir is nowadays, on cistern-water, could supply.

The second group, the women, could hardly be anything but arrivals...Prostitutes, paying at the huge rate of 108 drachmas, could ply their trade at a profit only in the greatest cities of the empire...

The enormous duty here levied on prostitutes needs some explanation...How, then, could the purveyors afford to pay 108 drachmas on imported women? Two explanations are possible: (1) That the rate at Coptos is intended to be prohibitive, in order that a certain class of Eastern prostitute should not be imported in great numbers to corrupt health and manners : perhaps Coptos with its large garrison needed especial protection; (2) That some peculiarly fashionable class of prostitute was imported from the Red Sea...It would certainly not be to the obvious interest of the government or lessees to discourage the use of the Coptos-Berenice road, and it is easier to suppose that a high rate was exacted because it would be paid, than that it was demanded in order to prohibit...We have to do in this clause not with women for private concubinage, but those for the supply of public brothels, and must infer that in the great cities (as distinguished from such little towns as Pompeii) there was a demand for Arabian, Indian or negro women, which admitted of very high fees being asked for and paid.

The "women, immigrant" are probably those coming voluntarily...Such would become harlots, living apart, or private concubines.

Large numbers of Indian women were imported by sea into the Greco-Roman world , for their sexual services. The Red Sea ports also imported incense, spices and gemstones. In the Roman period, the greatest export east was wine.

Memphis:
the name (Μέμφις) is the Greek corruption of the Egyptian name of Pepi I's (6th dynasty) pyramid, Men-nefer, which became Menfe in Coptic. Memphis was also known in Ancient Egypt as Ankh Tawy ("That which binds the Two Lands"), thus stressing the strategic position of the city between Upper and Lower Egypt.

Memphis became the capital of Ancient Egypt for many consecutive dynasties during the Old Kingdom. Memphis reached a peak of prestige under the 6th Dynasty as a centre of the cult of Ptah, the Egyptian god of creation and artworks. It declined briefly after the 18th Dynasty with the rise of Thebes and the New Kingdom, and was revived under the Persian satraps before falling firmly into second place following the foundation of Alexandria.

Memphis I by W. M. Flinders Petrie (British school of Archaeology in Egypt 1908)

When commerce became established with Arabia and India in Greek and Roman times, Koptos became the port of the Oriental trade.

The importance of these caravan routes in the time of Domitian was enormous; and most important was the road from Berenice, which, though longer, started from a more convenient port than Myos Hormos. The other well-known route from Berenice to the Nile opposite Hermopolis Parva, was not opened out by Hadrian until 137 A.D. (See inscription of Antinoe, found at Sheikh Abadeh, and qu. by Lumbroso, Egitto al tempo dei greci e dei romani, c. iv.) The more southern route from Leuce Come to Syene (Assuan) was not nearly so much in favour as those to Coptos, partly owing to the great distance of desert to be traversed, partly also, it seems, owing to definite discouragement by the Romans. Only on such a supposition can the enormous rate of 25 per cent., levied both on imports and exports at Leuce Come (Peripl. 1. c. cf Strabo, xvii. p. 798), be accounted for. Such figures only become intelligible if the Imperial Government, which had been at great expense and trouble to make, maintain, and protect the Coptos routes, had to depend for reimbursement on the caravan tax with which our inscription is concerned. It might in that case determine very reasonably to confine trade to these latter routes.

Its policy, however, was not wholly successful, as the existence of a great mart at Syene for spices, gems, and Indian and Arabian products generally sufficiently proves ; but nevertheless a vast proportion (cf Arist. Or. 48, p. 485) of the commerce with Arabia, India, and the still farther East, arrived at or started from Coptos, and gave to that place a fame as the trading-town par excellence of inland Egypt...

As early as Darius, about 500 B.C., the India subject to the Persians was the most populous province of that empire, and yielded 360 talents of gold yearly. The Indians fought in Greece with Xerxes 480 B.C., and when Mardonius picked the flower of the army to stay in Greece, he took the Persian Immortals, Medes, Sacae, Bactrians, and Indians. The contact of India with Europe dates then to the early years of the Persian empire.

Settlements of Indians appear at Nippur in Babylonia, as early as 425 B.C., and in the Aswan papyri in Egypt.

Memphis terracotta figures of Indians 35	Memphis terracotta figures of Indians 36
Memphis terracotta figures of Indians 37-40	Memphis terracotta figures of Indians 41

In view of these connections there seems no difficulty in accepting the Indian colony in Memphis as being due to the Persian intercourse from 525 to 405 B.C. And the introduction of asceticism, already in a communal form by 340 B.C., points also to the growth of Indian ideas. To date these solid modelled figures, 35, 37-40, to the Vth century B.C., and the hollow moulded figure, 36, to the IIIrd century. B.C., in accord with the general dating of the other figures, seems therefore the most reasonable result. The importance of such tangible remains of India, as bearing on the Indian colony, and the spread of Indian ideas in the West, will be obvious to all students.

Scythian Koul-Oba vase	Memphis Terracotta figures of Scythians 42

51. PI. XL. The other extreme of the Persian empire is seen in the figures of Scythians. The tall pointed hood, the bushy beard, and the riding on horseback, all shew that we have here the Sacae cavalry of the Persian army. For comparison see the head of a Scythian, 41, from the silver vase found at Koul-oba in the Crimea. These figures are all moulded, but solid, and therefore intermediate between the modelled solid figures and the moulded hollow figures. The roughest of them, 46, was found with the pottery in PI. XLVI, and is dated therefore to about 300 B.C. It seems not improbable that these Scythians belong to the second Persian occupation, 342 to 332 B.C.

In the first century, the tax farmer appointed by Rome was the brother of Philo of Alexandra, whom I mentioned in an earlier post as the author of a syncretic (Greco-Judean) christology. His name is Tiberius Julius Alexander and he played an important role in the first century. His family, in fact, laid the foundations for the modern world, but that is another story.

Hey,
A few months ago I came on here and introduced myself as an English prospective undergraduate student in Anthropology.
I have just received an unconditional offer to do an MA in Social Anthropology at Edinburgh university, which I'm very pleased about :) Anyone here know much about the course/city/lecturers? Anyone enrolled on an Anthropology course there now or in the past? Look forward to hearing from you.

Liz

Hello everyone!

I'm in a little predicament. I'm currently finishing up my second year of my cultural anthropology BA and for my religion class, our final paper is an annotative essay. The professor granted us the freedom of choosing our own topics because the class is cross referenced and many students are not anthropology majors.

I decided to choose death rituals involving the skeletal remains of the deceased (whether that be simple burial rituals, second burial rituals, even grinding of the bones to ingest the deceased.)

I've come across an obstacle. I've searched high and low the library at my university and there really is not much in regards to this topic. I've also searched through the Anthropology abstracts for any articles but it seems that many of them are not available online or my university doesn't carry the actual publication.

The only source I have so far is a book called "Chinese death rituals in Singapore" by Tong Chee-Kiong. I haven't had the opportunity to browse through it yet since it's been taken out of the library and is due back in 5 days.

A nudge in the right direction or any help what so ever would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks! :)