Migrations

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks."

Indo-Europeans migrated across Eurasia, becoming Indians, Europeans etc.

Norsemen settled in France and became Normans who conquered England and invaded Ireland.

"...the Sea Peoples - that buccaneer horde of displaced Cretans and European barbarians, some of them from the far North..." (p. 284)

- mostly raided Egypt and became ancestors of the Philistines although a smaller number of them entered and intermarried in Lebanon and Syria, becoming ancestors of the Phoenicians. 

The Time Patrol has to know about unrecorded migrations. Specialist Keith Denison traces Aryan clan migrations in "Brave To Be A King" and "Amazement of the World." Poul Anderson summarizes the ancestry of both Philistines and Phoenicians in "Ivory..." He embeds his readers in history and prehistory.

Then And Now

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks."

Manse Everard and his Tyrian guide, Pummairam/Pum:

"...threaded their way through jostling, shouting, odorous throngs." (p. 265)

Pum:

"...had become an acolyte at a dockside temple of the comparatively unimportant god Baal Hammon. (Everard harked back to tumbledown churches in the slums of twentieth-century America.)" (p. 266)

And I read about Everard in twenty-first-century Lancaster where, in Market Square today, there were:

Evangelical preachers accompanied by black musicians;

Jehovah's Witnesses displaying pamphlets in English and Polish;

left newspaper sellers;

curries, samosas and bhajis sold by an Asian man and his two sons - the older son informs me that he is conservative in religion but not in politics.

I observe all this, read Poul Anderson, remember Baal Hammon and feel kinship with humanity throughout the ages. 

Time Travellers And Famous People

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks."

Manse Everard has an interview with King Hiram of Tyre. What happens when time travellers meet famous people? Different things. Keith Denison is Cyrus the Great in one timeline.

The Doctor met:

Henry VIII who threw (I can't remember what) at him which the Doctor threw back and was sent to the Tower - where the TARDIS was concealed;

Marco Polo who decided not to write about journeys through time because that would not be believed;

Winston Churchill, but they already knew each other whether from a previous episode or from an incident between episodes;

Queen Victoria who founded an organization to defend the British Empire against threats either extraterrestrial or supernatural.

OK. A trivial introduction to a big topic before going out for the evening.

The Significance Of Tyre And Phoenicia

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks."

Tyre was the main civilizing influence on the Hebrew kingdom and its main trading partner. Tyrians supplied the materials and the skilled labour for the construction of the Temple and advanced many goods to Solomon. Tyrians and Hebrews:

"...would embark on joint exploratory and commercial ventures..." (p. 248)

Solomon sacrificed to Phoenician gods and hostility to Phoenician polytheism motivated the Hebrew prophets.

Hiram became the most powerful Canaanite king. Tyre stood off the Assyrians, traded as far as Britain, founded colonies, including Carthage, provided most of the Persian fleet that attacked Greece and delayed Alexander's progress. 

Several Greek gods began as Phoenician. Phoenicians invented the alphabet, advanced shipbuilding and seamanship and brought back knowledge of Africa, Europe and Asia. Their ideal was the merchant adventurer/explorer/entrepreneur. Hiram presided over the sufettes/magnates and required their approval. Phoenicia and Tyre possibly influenced Greek democracy.

See also:

The Importance Of Tyre

Prophetic Fiction

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks."

Chaim and Yael Zorach's children will join the Time Patrol. Manse Everard reflects:

"If not...could you stand it, watching them grow old, suffer the horrors that will come, finally die, while you are still young of body." (p. 247)

The phrase that attracts my attention here is "...the horrors that will come..." Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series was published from 1955 to 1995, this instalment in 1983. Anderson avoided describing any near future events and this paid off. The series has not become dated by specifying any "horrors" that have not come to pass, e.g., in the 1990's or in the early twenty-first century - but it was a safe bet that there would be horrors. In 2025, we have experienced and are still experiencing them. Anderson was able to leave it vague and yet get it right. The Time Patrol could still be part of our timeline - and yet no, it could not, because, in the Patrol's timeline, Sherlock Holmes was a real person! Also maybe Cyrus the Great was not really a Zoroastrian? Changes in historical understanding can date time travel fiction.

In any case, the "...horrors that will come..." is accurate.

Some Details In Tyre

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks."

Warm, windless weather;

creaking, splashing sweeps;

coxswain's drumbeat;

blue wavelets, glittering, chuckling and swirling;

dazzling water blurring sight;

"...trade through the known world..." (p. 230);

multi-storey houses of stone or cedar;

bustling piers;

list descriptions of men and their activities;

Tyrian dyes;

rolling sounds;

overwhelming vitality;

crippled beggars;

ancient Eastern smells.

There is more.

Tyre

"Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks."

Sorry, folks, today we are mainly gardening and preparing to deliver a talk this evening.

Years ago, an sf fan remarked to me that usually a time travel story merely informs its readers that its characters are in a particular past year whereas Poul Anderson describes the world in any given past year in minute detail. For example, he devotes several pages to the sights, sounds, smells and life in the harbour and streets of Tyre in 950 AD and all of this is well worth reading even before we arrive at the action: an attempt on Manse Everard's life. Another author might have started with the action.

Meanwhile, since I am an active being, that is all that I have time for right now.

Tyre, 950 BC

Poul Anderson, "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacocks" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 229-331.

Manse Everard/Eborix the Celt arrives in Tyre in 950 BC. The Time Patrol base has received a blackmail threat to destroy the city. Everard suspects Merau Varagan. If we are reading the Time Patrol series in its original publication order, then we are as yet unfamiliar with Varagan. Everard recounts his first encounter with that individual, which has to have occurred between episodes, and, at the end of this story, he does indeed apprehend Varagan. Thus, like Moriarty, Varagan is introduced and defeated within a single episode. However, there is more. Another incident involving Exaltationists including Varagan had occurred between the first encounter and the Tyre incident and that is recounted in the later written "The Year of the Ransom." Finally, the tracking down of the remaining Exaltationists occurs in The Shield Of Time, PART TWO, which also involves a flashback to a conversation between Everard and Varagan after the arrest of the latter. Varagan has been promoted to the status of a continuing villain.

Everard And Exaltationists

Manse Everard encounters Exaltationists four times in three instalments in two volumes.

(i) The encounter in Colombia is recounted in a flashback in "Ivory, and Apes, and Peacock," collected in Time Patrol.

(ii) The encounter in Peru is recounted in "The Year of the Ransom," collected in Time Patrol.

(iii) The encounter in Phoenicia is recounted in "Ivory..." but with a coda in a flashback in The Shield Of Time, PART TWO.

(iv) The encounter in Bactria is recounted in The Shield Of Time, PART TWO.

This becomes confusing which is why I thought that it was worthwhile to set it out. That is the entire saga of the Exaltationists.

A Long Way

 

What a long way we have come from The Time Machine to the Time Patrol! 

The Time Machine is a single long story or short novel in which a single Time Traveller makes a single journey on a single Time Machine while the outer narrator considers "...curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion..." (see here) whereas the Time Patrol is a series of stories and novels in which an organization of time travellers with bases throughout history avoids anachronisms and averts utter confusion. 

In The Time Machine, we engage with the discussion of Time and enjoy the descriptions of time travelling. With the Time Patrol, we engage with the discussion of time travel paradoxes and enjoy the history. 

Although Patrol timecycles bypass spacetime instead of dilating through it, the mutant time travellers of Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time recapture the Time Traveller's experience of observing external events flickering past. Anderson, in the Time Patrol and in his other time travel narratives, fully develops all those implicit "curious possibilities."