Three Footnotes from Cosmos

Thanks to lovely Abebooks, I'm now the proud owner of a battered paperback of Carl Sagan's Cosmos and a battered hardback (without dust jacket) of James Burke's Connections – and both for less than a fiver, including P&P. Bargain.

I've been working my way through the TV version of Connections on Youtube and will blog about it more when I get to the end (at my current rate, sometime towards the end of the century). But for a flavour of its style and confidence, you can't beat this extraordinary piece to camera:



I've not seen all the TV version of Cosmos but a lot of the material was covered in my astronomy GCSE, so reading the book has been a bit of a refresher course. It's a history of science, similar to The Ascent of Man, but focusing on our knowledge of astronomy.

It's striking how much has been learned and achieved in the 30 years since the book came out. Sagan details Voyager's exciting new discoveries about the Galilean moons but can only guess at the nature of Titan. He enthuses about the possibility of sending roving machines to explore Mars. He speculates on the causes of the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event (which wiped out the dinosaurs), but doesn't mention the possibility of a large meteorite hitting the Earth. That's especially odd given that elsewhere he talks about the probabilities of large meteorite impacts, such as in Tunguska in 1908.

Sagan packs in fascinating titbits and detail, such as Kepler's efforts to save his mum from being tried as a witch. Excitingly, it's got footnotes instead of endnotes (and an index – so top marks all round), which means plenty of extra nuggets of fact to explode your brain.

For example, Sagan talks at one point about the scale of the Solar System, reminding us that, in terms of our ability to traverse it, the Earth was once a much bigger place. And then he drops in another striking analogy:

“In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries you could travel from Holland to China in a year or two, the time it has taken Voyager to travel from Earth to Jupiter.* 

* Or, to make a different comparison, a fertilized egg takes as long to wander from the Fallopian tubes and implant itself in the uterus as Apollo 11 took to journey to the Moon; and as long to develop into a full-term infant as Viking took on its trip to Mars. The normal human lifetime is longer than Voyager will take to venture beyond the orbit of Pluto.”

Carl Sagan, Cosmos, p. 159. 

Like James Burke, Sagan is good at making a connection between two apparently disparate things to create a sense of wonder. But I like how the last sentence of the following footnote so lightly declines to impose or invent a reason:

“The sixth century B.C. was a time of remarkable intellectual and spiritual ferment across the planet. Not only was it the time of Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras and others in Ionia, but also the time of the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho who caused Africa to be circumnavigated, of Zoroaster in Persia, Confucius and Lao-tse in China, the Jewish prophets in Israel, Egypt and Babylon, and Gautama Buddha in India. It is hard to think these activities altogether unrelated.”  

Ibid., p. 206.

And, again like Burke, Sagan is good at accounting for chance and circumstance in the slow, steady progress of science through the ages. He uses a Tlingit (Native American) account of meeting the French explorer Count of La Pérouse when he “discovered” Alaska in the 1780s to discuss what first contact with an alien culture might be like. But, explaining that La Pérouse and all but one of his crew died in the South Pacific in 1788, Sagan notes:

“When La Pérouse was mustering the ship's company in France, there were many bright and eager young men who applied but were turned down. One of them was a Corsican artillery officer named Napoleon Bonaparte. It was an interesting branch point in the history of the world. If La Pérouse had accepted Bonaparte, the Rosetta stone might never have been found, Champollion might never have decrypted Egyptian hieroglyphics, and in many more important respects our recent history might have changed significantly.” 

Ibid. p 334. 

Three short asides, additional to the main narrative, and you could base a science-fiction novel on each of them. Yet the thing that's stayed with me most since I finished the book earlier this week is his reference to the 1975 paper “Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence” by James W Prescott:

“The neuropsychologist James W. Prescott has performed a startling cross-cultural statistical analysis of 400 preindustrial societies and found that cultures that lavish physical affection on infants tend to be disinclined to violence ... Prescott believes that cultures with a predisposition for violence are composed of individuals who have been deprived – during at least one or two critical stages in life, infancy and adolescence – of the pleasures of the body. Where physical affection is encouraged, theft, organized religion and invidious displays of wealth are inconspicuous; where infants are physically punished, there tends to be slavery, frequent killing, torturing and mutilation of enemies, a devotion to the inferiority of women, and a belief in one or more supernatural beings who intervene in daily life.” 

Ibid., p. 360.

I'm fascinated by this, but can't help wondering if that conclusion isn't too much what we'd like to believe to be true. There's something chilling, too, in the lightness with which he seems to suggest that organised religion is a symptom of childhood neglect.

LA story

A week ago, I was on Venice Beach in Los Angeles with the Dr. She took me to Small World Books - a cool little bookshop crammed with good stuff I'd never heard of, exactly my idea of a treat - and I looked for something with a link to LA. I found Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye.

It's been odd reading it this week and recognising street names and districts from our gadding about - places we went to, names I steered by on Googlemaps. I'd noticed the strange, uneasy mix of the very rich and the very poor, living side by side, that Chandler captures so perfectly. We'd gone to gawp at the Egyptian Theater because it's apparently based on Luxor - but the thing that was most like our recent trip to Egypt was the constant, desperate effort by hungry-looking guys to raise a smile or shock us so we'd buy their meagre tat. All this while Broadway hosed itself down in readiness for millionaires to present each other with golden statues.

But Chandler's tale of corruption circling seedy crime, and a newspaper mogul indirectly paying off the police and burying a story, has struck a chord this week.

Chandler's Marlowe is a cynical guy in a cynical world. And yet for all he's sarcastic to cops and hoodlums, millionaires and servants, and the more his story drips with weary resignation at the city-sized mess, Marlowe's revealed - like Rick at the end of Casablanca - to be a strong, moral character, doing the difficult, right thing for no reward and quite a lot of grief. For such a cynical story, it's an oddly uplifting read.

The book's at its best when the dialogue is short and crisp, the wise cracks sharp as a Mexian's throwing knife. It's slightly breaks the spell when characters rant at length about what's wrong with the modern life. And yet this from rich Harlan Potter (do his friends ever call him Harry?) seems especially timely - or depressingly timeless.

"We live in what is called am a democracy, rule by the majority of the people. A fine ideal if it could be made to work. The people elect, but the party machines dominate, and the party machines to be effective must spend a great deal of money. Somebody has to give it to them, and that somebody, whether it be an individual, a financial group, a trade union or what have you, expects some consideration in return. What I and people of my kind expect is to be allowed to live our lives in decent privacy. I own newspapers, but I don't like them. I regard them as a constant meance to whatever privacy we have left. Their constant yelping about a free press means, with a few honorable exceptions, freedom to peddle scandal, crime, sex, sensationalism, hate, innuendo, and the political and financial uses of propaganda. A newspaper is a business out to make money through advertising revenue. That is predicated on its circulation and you know what the circulation depends on."

Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye, pp. 233-4.

The Masters of Luxor

The Dr has already blogged about our trip to Luxor in Egypt over new year. I've been writing what follows in fits and starts.

We stayed for a week and packed in as much as possible. Our hotel was a short walk from Luxor temple, the Luxor and mummification museums and a longer walk from Karnak – we arrived there at half eight in the morning and pretty much had the place to ourselves.

We hired a guide and driver to take us to the Valley of the Kings where we poked our noses in the tombs of Ramsees IX, III and IV (but sadly not Thutmoses III which is mentioned in the Doctor Who story Pyramids of Mars). We went to Deir al-Madina (the village of the workers who built the kings' tombs) and the Ramesseum – where we saw the vast, fallen statue that inspired Shelley's poem Ozymandias (which is more than Shelley did, as he based it on a visit to the British Museum). We got to see the Al-deir Al-bahari temple, the Valley of the Queens, Medinet Habu temple and took a cruise up the Nile to Dandara, where the Dr was delighted that opposite a rare carved portrait of Cleopatra and Caesareon is a temple (and the equivalent of two fingers) built on the orders of Caesar Augustus. Having admired the pale blue ceiling that showed an ancient zodiac, we spent the four-hour trip back down the river gazing up at the stars.

We also took a four-hour drive to Abydos, a vast, impressive place still with its original ceiling, where I snapped the following two short videos on my wireless phone:

We saw so much, the Dr took 400-odd photos and pages and pages of notes. The ancient building are covered all over, often with huge Pharaohs smiting people from different countries. Flinders Petrie collected casts of the people’s faces as part of his study of race – something the Dr is writing a book about. And while she gathered evidence, I was struck by how often we saw the same posture, one Pharaoh or other stood with feet apart, one arm raised and the other pointing out, while wearing a kilt with a hanging belt. Here are two examples:

Surely, I thought, that’s Orion.

There were relatively few other tourists: the hotel was only 40% full and was a bit desperate in asking us to come to its gala new year's eve dinner. The local people were keen to tell us that Luxor is safe for tourists – horrified that the Arab Spring and ongoing events in Cairo might have scared people off.

Since so much of the economy is based on tourism, that's a real problem. We'd been warned before we went, but the constant hassle was a bit of a shock at first and then a wearying nuisance. Wherever we stepped, people hurried over to offer taxis, boats or horse-drawn rides – some of the horses barely skin and bone. They wanted to know where we came from, where we were staying, where we were walking to. They wished us happy new year or called out “Lucky man” and “Why not smile?” – and if they got any hint of an answer they'd then offer us taxis, boats or horse-drawn rides. If they couldn't get a reaction from me they'd run round to the Dr. “Madam”, they'd say, and the try exactly the same tack.

One man followed us down the road telling us which hotel we were staying in and for how long – the creepiest sales pitch ever. Another promised us “no hassle” and then continued the pitching in a whisper as if we weren't meant to hear.

In every temple and museum there seemed to be someone keen to point out something in plain sight or to offer to take us past roped-off sections, if we’d only pay out some small change. At the airport, the man loading our bags through the scanner expected something. The guide books advised us to keep a separate pocket of this grubby baksheesh.

It was exhausting at first, but within a couple of days we'd developed thick skins. Sadly, some people did just want to say happy new year – but even saying thank you to them brought more people hurrying over. I managed to offend a man working in a bar by blanking his polite inquiries about where we were from. I apologised, said I'd thought he would only try to sell us something. And without missing a beat he pointed over to his stall of souvenirs and invited us to browse. There’d be something for free if we did. We finished our drinks and escaped.

The worst part was if you did actually want to buy something. You couldn't browse – the people in shops would flap around beside you making suggestions, or trying to put items in your hand. We tried to buy a bottle of water and the man in the shop kept repeating, “Only one?” and then offering to drive us to a place out of town where we could buy souvenirs at a bargain price. Trying to buy a guidebook, we were surrounded by people offering advice, eager to fetch us the same books in French or Italian, a constant, desperate witter that just made us want to give up and walk away. This hustling sometimes just confused us, so we bought more than you wanted or paid a silly price.

“It’s a different culture,” explained the tour rep, before offering to sell us day-trips. We had to buy them from her then and there, and soon found other guests who’d turned her down only to buy much cheaper tickets for the same trips just by asking at reception. Ho hum.

But it is a different culture, one where sharing wealth is a sign of virtue. We have our own strange ways. In crowded London, giving people space (such as by not talking on the Tube) is a mark of respect – though that’s not how it often appears to people visiting the city. But also, baksheesh isn’t so foreign an idea. Watching old films since I’ve been home – The Hound of the Baskervilles from 1939, Doctor No from 1962 – I’ve been struck by the number of times Holmes and Bond hand out money to people who offer them help. Those they patronise seem grateful, and it’s used to show our heroes’ impeccable manners.

Once the Dr met up with a local archaeologist and he organised a driver to take us round, the bothering changed gear. There were still people eager to sell us souvenirs, but they didn’t trail after or crowd us. And it was oddly reassuring to see Egyptian tourists visiting from Cairo treated exactly as we were. (The Dr was thrilled by the numbers of Egyptian tourists visiting their own heritage sites – she thinks it bodes well for the future.)

Generally everyone we met – even the people trying to flog us vastly inflated old tat – were welcoming and friendly. We went to a brilliant new year’s eve party on the roof of a hostel where there was live music and a dancing girl, though (having been shoved forward by the Dr) I felt too awkward and sober to dance with her for very long.

We'd planned to mix the sightseeing with days by the pool, but there was so much we wanted to see that we didn't exactly stop. Most days we were up with or before the sun, having breakfast as the hot air balloons rose slowly over the Valley of the Kings. When we weren't touring, I wrote pages of spec script and read Claire Tomalin's biography of Dickens - which I might blog about if there's ever a spare moment. But don't expect much: Egypt was my last break for some time...

AAAGH! The Wedding of Mrs Tinkle

Another AAAGH!, this one from Doctor Who Adventures #238, published a few days after The Wedding of River Song.

As ever it's written by me, illustrated by the amazing Brian Williamson and edited by Paul Lang and Natalie Barnes, who gave kind permission to post it here. Paul takes over the AAAGH! duties for the new weeks. But I shall return. Oh yes, I shall return.

In the meantime, you can read all the AAAGH!s I done wrote.

Wheeler

“Archaeologist and Man of Action” says the back cover of Still Digging, the 1955 autobiography by archaeologist, soldier and “acclaimed Television Personality of the Year”, Mortimer Wheeler. Wheeler's something of a hero – Indiana Jones as played by Terry-Thomas, with moustache and twinkling mischief. This illustrated 2'6 paperback has been a joy to read.

Wheeler himself calls the book,

“an average life in one of the great formative periods of history”.

Sir Mortimer Wheeler, Still Digging – Adventures in Archaeology (1958 [55]), p 9.

He deftly brings to life service in two World Wars and the violence of the partitioning of India up close – there's a thrilling account of him rescuing a Muslim colleague's family from a siege only for them to tick him off for not bringing their luggage, too. All in all, it's a rather chappish rollick through his life, with excerpts from diaries and correspondence to add vivid contemporary detail. It's generally fun and good-humoured, with an eye for the absurd character or moment. At the same time, he's forthright in his opinions.

“The British Museum I abjured [as a young man] as I abjure it today, a place that suffers from a sort of spiritual cataract and out-stares the visitor with unseeing eyes.”

My 1958 edition adds a footnote to this view:

“I regret this remark. It was written before I became a Trustee of the British Museum and, had truth permitted, I should have deleted it.”

Ibid., p. 24.

That forthrightness is matched by an unapologetic vocabulary when speaking of other nations. There's plenty, for example, on the habits of “the Hun”. Yet for all the racial terminology, he's also strikingly tolerant for his time. The following passage is a typical mix:

“I have in mind the sixty-one students who flocked to me from the universities of India and from the archaeological departments of the Indian states: swarthy Muslims from the North-West Frontier and the Punjab, little round-faced talkative Bengalis, quick-witted Madrasis, dark southerners from Cochin and Travancore. Also, today – only a few years later – such an assemblage of races, tongues and creeds would no longer be feasible. Religious and political barriers have split asunder those who in 1944 worked together with single purpose and common understanding.”

Ibid., p. 174.

It's not just that he wished other races would bally well get along with one another. He's an enthusiastic participant in World War Two, but when the Eighth Army pushes the Germans out of Libya, he's happy to work with Italian – that is, enemy – and Libyan archaeologists, freely acknowledging their superior skill and expertise. He also readily credits the many women archaeologists he's worked with over the years, and is carefully to cite both their unmarried and married names. Foreigners, natives and ladies are treated as equals – all that matters is that they're up to the job.

Wheeler delights in archaeology as a proper, bona fide science, describing particularly fine discoveries or developments in method, and reporting with special glee when some new piece of evidence torpedoes a long-standing theory. He's surprisingly modest about his own contributions to the field – such as dividing digs into grids. Acutely aware that so many of his peers had been killed in the First World War, he concludes that his eminence in the profession,

“was the outcome of circumstance, not merit”.

Ibid., p. 206.

There's a shadow over much of his otherwise jolly outlook. As well as the wars, there's the death of Wheeler's first wife, Tessa, in 1936. Wheeler was away on a dig at the time. His account of learning the news while heading back to England and seeing it in the paper is told with exemplary restraint, which makes it all the more haunting.

He's quick to credit Tessa's contributions to several of his digs. But there's just a single, brief mention (on page 183) of Margaret, his wife at the time of writing, and no mention at all of the wife in between.

As I posted a few weeks back, Mavis was drawn and bedded by Augustus John – before and perhaps after her marriage to Wheeler. Wheeler divorced her in 1942 having caught her with another lover and excised her completely from his memoirs. John, though, gets a mention several times – and even gave the book it's title. (There's no mention of the duel.)

Wheeler is otherwise cagey on the subject of girls. Apart from Tessa, the only romantic entanglement is a newly liberated Italian contessa, who calls him “the General” before he escapes her advances. He's such an old rascal otherwise I suspect his private life might not have been nearly so tame as the book implies.

There are plenty of vignettes about the celebrities he encountered – such as eminent archaeologists Pitt-Rivers and Petrie. But Wheeler was also clearly interested in everyone, no matter their origin or status. The appeal here is as much his perspective as what he did or who he met. As an archaeologist and war-veteran, he takes the long view and sees his own insignificance in history.

“At its best, this book will be little more than a scrapbook: probably few lives are otherwise, save those of the very successful or the very humdrum.”

But there's also a compelling philosophy behind these rag-tag adventures. On the same page, he says,

“I do not believe in much except hard work, which serves as an antidote to disillusion and a substitute for faith.”
Ibid., p. 9.

He says, but for John and his publishers, he'd have called his book “Twenty Years Asleep” - based on the line in Don Juan that we miss a whole third of our lives. Wheeler is a fidget, too eager to get out and explore all the fascinating stuff. His enthusiasm engaged generations of young archaeologists all around the world, and then the TV-viewing public. That delight in rigorous investigation, and the wry, self-mocking twinkle in his eye, is just as arresting today.

“Whilst adoring luxury I abhor waste, and am firmly of the view that most of us are unconscionably wasteful in this matter of sleep. It must at the same time be added that I have been made aware of other opinions.”

Ibid., p. 205.

Events, dear boy, events

I've reviewed Project Nim for the Lancet. It's slightly informed by a post here a while back about Baboon Metaphysics.

Will resist the temptation to link ape behaviour to the events in London and round the country this week. On Monday, we could see the fire in Croydon from our house - smoke and helicopters in an otherwise clear and moonlit sky. We followed it on the news until the news stopped having anything new to say. Over the next couple of days we saw lots of police cars and vans whizzing about and my train was a bit delayed on Monday.

On Tuesday, we thought we get out of the house for lunch and wandered up the hill to the nice coffee shop. A small number of women and children were running towards us, terrified by reports of rioters coming our way. We turned round and walked back down the hill - and the reports turned out to be untrue. Tesco was busy with people as we bought lunch, with lots of people on the tills trying to serve customers quickly (truly a sign of the End of Times). The staff were also lining up trolleys in front of the shop windows, building a barricade. And there was a palpable sense of terror - all anticipating the worst.

And yet outside it was sunny and quiet and people were getting on with their lives. It was all a bit strange and surreal - and unsettling - but there's not a lot to report. Had to do some extra work yesterday as a result of the riots, but even that was pretty quiet.

So, other stuff...

I'll also be talking about the Tomb of the Cybermen and Tutankhamun with Christopher Frayling and John J Johnston at the free Cybertut event next month. Do come along. There will probably be wine.

And the new issue of Doctor Who Adventures (#230) features another AAAGH comic strip by me. I helped out at at a DWA event at the Doctor Who Experience last week - and got to sneak round the exhibition too. It is cool. There is a Zygon and an Ice Warrior and even, if you look for it, the swimming pool robot from Paradise Towers.

Otherwise, caught up in a bundle-load of writing, which I must get back to...

Sci-Fi Ancient Egypt

I wrote this trail for the Petrie Museum of Ancient Egyptology, which has just had a spangly new makeover. Cat and gothic trails are also available (not by me). Download the latest versions from the Petrie's trails and resources page.

(Will add more images and links when I have a chance.)

“With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same.”

HG Wells (1898), The War of the Worlds, p. 1.

“The man who knows and dwells in history adds a new dimension to his existence; he no longer lives in the one plane of present ways and thoughts, he lives in the whole space of life, past and present, and dimly future. He sees the present narrow line of existence, momentarily fluctuating, as one stage like innumerable other stages that have each been the all-important present to the short-sighted people of their own day”.

WM Flinders Petrie (1904), Methods and Aims in Archaeology, p. 193.

“The point of archaeology is to carefully recover the past, not disintegrate it.”

The Doctor (1989), Doctor Who: Battlefield.

SPHINX
1. UC14769 (IC13, 2nd from top): Part of base of a sandstone sphinx with 2 paws and cartouches each side denoting Seti I.

As Petrie argued, understanding the past helps to place the worries and wants of the present day in context. Archaeology strives to understand the past from the meagre fragments left to us. From the exquisitely crafted jewels and sculptures to the shards of broken pottery, collecting and comparing these fragments slowly brings the long dead back to life.

We know the fragment here shows the paws of a sphinx from comparison with other artefacts and sources. A sphinx is a mythological creature, often (though not always) having the body of a lioness and the head of a woman. Sphinxes are usually found “guarding” royal tombs.

Science fiction can also place the worries and wants of the present day in context by imagining things to come. HG Wells wrote what many consider the first science-fiction novel The Time Machine in 1895 when the British Empire reached across the world.

In the story, a Victorian inventor travels to the year 802,701 where he discovers that humans have died out. Instead, creatures called Eloi and Morlocks live in the shadow of an ancient monument, the only visible remaining trace of civilisation. Wells makes this ancient monument a sphinx, likening the fall of civilisation (and the British Empire) to the fall of ancient empires such as Egypt. The story – and these fragments of two paws – remind us that nothing lasts forever.

Several science-fiction stories show us future societies struggling to understand the fragments left of our own civilisation – often for comic effect. In the 2005 Doctor Who story The End of the World, for example, the Lady Cassandra insists that an old Wurlitzer jukebox is an ‘iPod’.

But there's a sadder connection between the fragments of the past and science fiction. The Petrie Museum holds scant fragments of one of the earliest-known copies of The Iliad. Doctor Who visited the events of The Iliad in the 1965 story The Myth Makers, a story that has since been deleted from the BBC archive. Fragments are left: a full soundtrack (released on CD by BBC Audio), some photographs from the set and a few seconds of low-quality footage.

RAT TRAP
2. UC16773 (Object by Site: Lahun, bottom): Pottery rat trap. Handle, one end and trap door missing - one enlarged air slit partly blocked with ancient plaster. (Originally identified as a coop for small chickens or incubator).

Archaeology and science fiction can both show us how similar we are today to the people of the distant past and future, with the same worries and wants. Here is a pottery rat trap from 1985 -1795 BCE. It gives a vivid sense of the kind of everyday problems faced by people 4,000 years ago. Beside the rat trap is a modern version of the type still in use across Africa. The suggestion might be that little has changed in all that time, that people will always be people. This can also be used to dramatic effect.

In the 2008 Doctor Who story The Fires of Pompeii, Caecillius is pretentious about art, worries about his son getting drunk and how his daughter is dressed. Though this is jokey to begin with, when the volcano Vesuvius erupts, the story is all the more effecting because we've seen these people are so like us.

In The Fires of Pompeii, the Doctor mentions meeting the Emperor Nero – as he does in the 1964 story The Romans. 3. Nero is named in the cartouche on the blocks UC14528 and 16516 (case IC16).

MINOTAUR and MEDUSA
4. UC14518 (case IC9): Limestone slab with bull-headed god, between parts of 2 other figures.

We tend to think of ancient civilisations existing in isolation – the ancient Greeks and Romans separate from the ancient Egyptians. But it's evident from finds made by archaeologists that ancient cultures traded with one another, and that ideas and stories spread. Myths were retold and reworked by different people, as they have been ever since.

Gene Wolfe's Soldier of Sidion (2006) is set in Ptolemaic Egypt, the third in a series about a Roman mercenary making his way through the ancient world but one where the ancient gods walk among the ordinary mortals. A rich, clever adventure, it dares suggest itself less “fantasy” as historical novel.

In the examples on display in the museum here, we can see that the ancient Egyptians themselves told stories featuring characters we traditionally think of as “belonging” to other cultures – such as bull-headed people (like the Minotaur from Greek mythology) and gorgons (like Medusa).

Many science fiction stories rework myths or elements of them. They might reveal that the gods and monsters of the ancient world were aliens or robots. They retell the ancient stories in space instead of Egypt or cherry-pick incidents or characters.

5. UC48468 (case PC 35): Terracotta medallion of a gorgon head; there are traces of white paint on the surface. The facial features are sharply moulded and the hair wavy with two entwined snakes at the top.

Medusa appears in the Doctor Who story The Mind Robber (1968), the Minotaur in The Time Monster (1972). The latter was released on DVD in March 2010 as part of the “Myths and Legends” box-set (BBC DVD 2851), along with two other Doctor Who stories that rework ancient stories.

SOUNDS FAMILIAR

Sometimes science fiction doesn't rework the myths so much as just borrow the names. For example, the Doctor and the Daleks briefly visit the pyramids in episodes 9 and 10 of The Daleks' Masterplan (1966).

(Episode 9 no longer exists in the BBC archive but episode 10 is included in the "Lost in Time" box-set, along with the few existing seconds of footage from The Myth Makers).

The three Egyptians who help fight the Daleks are named “Khephren”, “Tuthmos” and “Hyksos”.

Khephren takes his name from Chephren / Khafre (c.2558 - c.2532 BCE), the pharaoh who built the second great pyramid at Giza and whose face was the model for the sphinx that guards it. You can see a cuboid fragment from the second pyramid at 6. UC16043 (entrance case on right).

Tuthmos is derived from “Tuthmosis”, the name of several pharaohs in the 16th and 15th centuries BCE. Most notably, Tuthmosis III (1479 – 1425 BCE) was a military genius who massively expanded the Egyptian empire. A cartouche of his name can be seen at 7. UC14542 (case IC5).

The tomb of Tuthmosis III was excavated in 1898 by Petrie's contemporary, Victor Loret (1859-1946). The tomb (KV34) in the Valley of Kings included the first complete-found “Amduat” - the book of the Underworld. It is also, as Sarah Jane Smith tells the Doctor in the 1975 story The Pyramids of Mars, where an account is given of Sutekh's battle with his brother Horus.

Hyksos is named after the people from Palestine who ruled in Egypt in the 17th century BCE. Examples of pottery from their time and influenced by them include the black duck jug at 8. UC13479 (case PC27), with white incisions on display in the Pottery Gallery.

SEQUENCE DATING
The film and TV series Stargate (1994, 1997- ) explain that the myths and names of ancient Egypt derive from meetings (via gateways across space) with aliens. The hero of the film is an archaeologist and sarcophagi are used to resurrect people. In the film, the planet on the far side of the stargate is called Abydos, which is the name of the place where the tomb of Osiris is located and where this limestone stele 9. UC14488 (case IC2) was found.

The film shows us the “real” Egyptian gods Anubis and Ra. The TV series has also shown Apophis, Anubis, Ba'al, Hathor, Nirrti, Osiris and Seth – among others. It has also freely used names and events from other mythologies.

(By comparing the names and events of other mythologies rather than Egypt specifically, Stargate follows in a tradition of science fiction stories taking their cue from Joseph Campbell's 1949 book on comparative anthropology, The Hero With a Thousand Faces.)

The stargates and other technology in the series are made of an element called “naqahdah”. The name is reminiscent of Naqada, a town on the west bank of the Nile that Petrie excavated in 1894.

Whereas some archaeologists before him had been more interested in finding treasure and texts, Petrie carefully recorded everything he found, including the broken pieces of pottery on display in the Pottery Room. (Start at PC3 and also see www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/pottery/seqdates.html)

By comparing the styles of pottery itself and its decoration, Petrie developed a Sequence Dating system – a timeline of nine developments in Egyptian pottery. This could then be used to give approximate dates to any further finds made which contained fragments of pottery.

According to Petrie's system – and subsequent testing – the town of Naqada is one of the oldest in Egypt, with pottery found from 4000 BCE in the pre-dynastic period. As a result, the name of the town often appears near the top of any timeline. That may well be why the producers of Stargate chose it.

Like Stargate, a 2009 episode of the TV series Primeval suggested that the “gods” from ancient Egypt were real creatures. One of them chased through the Egyptian galleries at the British Museum.

SCARAB BEETLES
10. UC69860 winged scarab beetle (case L)

The way that scarab beetles rolled great balls of dung seemed, to the ancient Egyptians, like the way the Sun rolled across the sky. Perhaps the Sun, too, was pushed by a giant beetle. The beetle was therefore symbolic of time.

The beetles also ate the balls of dung and their young emerged from them – as if, the ancient Egyptians thought, they had been spontaneously created. The beetles were therefore also symbolic of regeneration.

Time and regeneration are, of course, quite important to Doctor Who. But beetles usually play a more sinister role in modern stories that loot the relics of ancient Egypt. In the 1999 film The Mummy, the tomb of Imhotep is guarded by flesh-eating scarabs.

The 1967 Doctor Who story The Tomb of the Cybermen reworks many familiar elements from Mummy stories in a science-fiction context. In the 1959 Hammer film The Mummy, actor George Pastell plays Mehemet Bey, worshipper of Karnak, who pretends to be a friend of the archaeologists then entreats the risen Mummy to kill them. In the Doctor Who story Pastell plays much the same part, but here he's a member of the Brotherhood of Logicians. Instead of scarabs, we are introduced to Cybermats, which poison and kill the archaeologists as the story requires.

ANKH
11. UC43949 (case WEC9) Light green faience ankh inscribed on both sides of shaft with epithets and cartouches of Aspelta.

Egyptian gods are often shown carrying the ankh, also known as the “key of life”, the hieroglyphic symbol for eternal life. There are several different theories about what the ankh derives from. Is it meant to show a man and woman united under the Sun, or does it show the Nile at the centre of Egypt, the loop at the top representing the Nile Delta, or a penis sheath?

In Neil Gaiman's award-winning Sandman comics, the ankh is the symbol of the character Death. In the TV series Lost, several characters are seen wearing ankh pendants, while the giant statue of the hippo-god Taweret holds an ankh in each hand. (Lost is littered with Egyptian symbols and hieroglyphs, see http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Hieroglyphs.)

NEMES HEADRESS
12. UC14363 (case IC17) Head of mottled diroite (about 1/2 size) of King Amenemhat III, wearing Nemes head-dress and uraeus.

The distinctive striped “nemes” head cloth was worn by Egyptian pharaohs. The flaps of the head cloth taper out behind the wearer's ears and hang down below both shoulders. The golden mask of Tutankhamun and the great statues of Ramesses II are famous examples of pharaohs wearing the nemes. It was often worn with a “uraeus” or “cobra” on the forehead, symbol of royalty.

The space helmets worn by Viper pilots in the original Battlestar Galactica TV series (1978-9) were based on the nemes head cloth, subtly suggesting the links between the human refugees seen in the series and the “legendary” planet Earth they were searching for. The helmets featured a viper symbol instead of the uraeus.

The modern version of Battlestar Galactica (2004- ) has not retained the nemes-style helmets, but there are still occasional hints of the links between the refugees and Earth's ancient civilisations. For example, pyramids can be glimpsed on the colony planet Kobol.

Both the original and modern versions of Battlestar Galactica are available to buy on DVD.

MAGIC
13. UC36314 (case J): Hippopotamus ivory clapper, reconstructed from fragments, in form of right hand; incised bracelet band at wrist and ornate net pattern on arm.

There are many theories about the wands found, usually made of hippopotamus ivory. Hippopotamuses and elephants are dangerous creatures, so acquiring the ivory from a living animal may have been part of the ritual. The wands do not use all of the tusk, either, so each tusk may have produced a “family” of linked wands (not dissimilar to the families of wands in Harry Potter). Wands were clearly of great value. Some use ebony and other precious materials.

Little is known of Egyptian magic, which makes it ripe for speculation in horror and science fiction stories. The Book of the Dead is central to many stories dealing with mummies and resurrection. But Egyptian magic is also used to time travel in both Tim Powers' award-winning The Anubis Gates (1983) and Terry Pratchett's less serious Pyramids (1989).

SUTEKH
14. UC45093 (case IC7): Upper part of a green glazed steatite round-topped plaque incised with image of Seth standing, to his right a column of hieroglyphs 'excellent praised one, beloved of Seth lord of Nubt'.

In the 1975 Doctor Who story The Pyramids of Mars, the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith battle the Egyptian god Sutekh – also known as Set or Seth. The inscription says that Seth was “Lord of Nubt”, the ancient name for Naqara (see above).

Though Seth was Lord of Nubt, the opening shot of The Pyramids of Mars uses stock footage of the step pyramid at Saqqara. A block, possibly an altar or the top of a pyramid looks like the Step Pyramid in Stonework: Statuary IC15 15. UC69838.

Sarah knows about Sutekh's battles with his brother Horus: she explains Sutekh was captured by Horus and “the 740 gods named on the tomb of Tuthmosis III”.

The story includes robot mummies, sarcophagi that transport people, a forcefield controlled by canopic jars, and sphinx-like riddles to get into the pyramid on Mars. It draws heavily on the 1959 Hammer film The Mummy, as did The Tomb of the Cybermen (see above).

While Egyptian mythology (and Doctor Who) is full of creatures that are human but for animal heads, unusually, the animal that provides Seth with his head is unknown to science.

HEROES
16. Portrait of Flinders Petrie by Fülöp László (1934). The old man in the picture might not seem a likely inspiration for Indiana Jones. Yet the traveller-archaeologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries told exciting tales of the worlds they'd discovered – and the adventures they had in discovering them.

Indiana Jones, Rick O'Connell in The Mummy, Daniel Jackson in Stargate and the Doctor's future wife, River Song in Doctor Who have followed that lead. The archaeologist battles the odds to uncover strange and surprising artefacts that change how we see our own place and time.

Like detectives, they use the clues left behind (17. UC50615 Roman Terracotta Tower lamp, like the ‘TARDIS’ lamp on the altar to the household gods in The Fires of Pompeii), the battered artefacts and writings. They don't use them just to solve crimes but to build whole cities and empires and worlds. Exploring the real, ancient world turns out to be just as rich, strange and exciting as anything we can imagine in a story.

© Simon Guerrier, 2010

Primary sources
Battlestar Gallactica (1978-9, 2004-)
Doctor Who

• The Romans (1964) – BBC DVD 2698
• The Myth Makers (1965) – soundtrack available from BBC Audio
• The Daleks' Masterplan (1965-66) – episode 10 available on Lost in Time, BBC DVD 1353
• The Tomb of the Cybermen (1967) – BBC DVD 1032
• The Mind Robber (1968) – BBC DVD 1358
• The Time Monster (1972), included in Myths and Legends, BBC DVD 2851
• The Pyramids of Mars (1975) – BBC DVD 1350
• Battlefield (1989) – BBC DVD 2440
• The End of the World (2005) – BBC DVD 1755
• The Fires of Pompeii (2008) – BBC DVD 2605

Gaiman, Neil, The Sandman (1989-96)
Lost (2004-10)
The Mummy (1959)
The Mummy (1999)
Rowling, JK, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)
Powers, Tim, The Anubis Gates (1983)
Pratchett, Terry, Pyramids (1989)
Primeval (2007-)
Stargate (1994, 1997-)
Wells, HG, The Time Machine (1895)
Wells, HG, The War of the Worlds (1898)
Wolfe, Gene, Soldier of Sidion (2006)

Secondary sources
Burdge, Anthony, Burke, Jessica, and Larsen, Kristine (eds.), The Mythological Dimensions of Doctor Who (2010)
Campbell, Joseph, The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949)
Dowden, Ken, The Uses of Greek Mythology (1992)
Petrie, WM Flinders, Methods and Aims in Archaeology, (1904)

Thanks to Scott Andrews, Debbie Challis, John J Johnston and Stephen Quirke.

Forthcoming events

Suddenly I'm quite busy. A freelance gig is now going to run pretty much full-time til Christmas, and I've a number of commitments to fit in around it. This is truly a GOOD THING, but don't expect much action here on t'blog.

Here are two things I'm up to:

Astrobiology at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich
Thursday 14 October, 18:30-21:00
The range of talks, screenings and activities include "Good monster/bad monster – scientists and writers discuss what makes a believable alien lifeform. With Simon Guerrier and Dr Zita Martins." (Part of Sci-Fi London)

Sci-fi Egypt at Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology
Saturday 23 October, 19:00-21:00
Time travel back to Ancient Egypt to see monsters and aliens pitted against the Egyptian Gods. From the Daleks, who visited the building of the Pyramids, to the Stargates which reach across space and time, the history of Egypt has been a rich source for science-fiction. Grab a free trail, written by Doctor Who books author Simon Guerrier, on Egypt's use in sci-fi and explore the Petrie Museum with a glass of wine! (Part of the Bloomsbury Festival)

Books finished, May 2010

I've already blogged about Doctor No. I reread The Mythological Dimensions of Doctor Who - for which I wrote a foreword - in advance of being on a panel at the launch last week. (I've also skimmed through a PDF of Daddy's Girl by Deborah Watling, in advance of interviewing her a fortnight ago at Utopia.)

Roald Dahl is keen to explain upfront that Boy is "not an autobiography", but rather a series of vivid memories that made an impression on him. This first volume sees him up to leaving school, and is full of the kind of hi-jinks we'd expect from his fictional stories. There are beastly teachers and grown-ups, outrageous (and cruel) pranks like putting a dead mouse in a jar of sweets or making his brother-in-law smoke a pipe of poo.

The book is aided by extracts from Dahl's own letters, meticulously kept by his mother. We get glimpses of the rather serious child, struggling with spelling and the expectations of his posh school. There are plenty of insights into corporal punishment and the etiquette of the tuck box.

It's a fun, engaging read but there's little to suggest Dahl has particularly re-examined these scenes. There's little reappraisal or apology, so that though we learn a lot about the early life of the author, there's no sense that, in writing this, he has.

Going Solo - which I'd not read before - is an altogether more adult book, and I think would have shocked me as a child. Dahl joins Shell and is posted out to Africa, where he lives a rather comfy existence with servants (or "boys" - he doesn't notice the irony of his own nickname) before the outbreak of war.

The episodes are a lot more vicious than the innocence of Boy, with a man being shot in the face right in front of him and his servant murdering a German. As always, Dahl is good on vivid detail, and the book is again littered with extracts from his original letters and also from his log book.

There's a lot on Dahl the pilot, flying in the 1941 Battle of Athens and barely surviving a crash in Egypt. Writing decades after the events, he's still furious about the poor management of the air force and the ghastly waste of lives. Characters are introduced quickly and are then abruptly shot down. While Dahl never shies away from telling us he was a brilliant flyer, he also admits repeatedly that he only got through it by luck.

The book ends with Dahl sent back to England in the summer of 1941, the persistent headaches following his crash invaliding him out of service. It's frustrating to leave it there with so much more still to tell, and I assume there'd have been at least a third volume if Dahl had only lived. With a birthday looming I've set the Dr to find me a good biography so I can find out what happened next (and how much of the story Dahl's already told me can be considered true).

"The achievements of great men always escape final assessment. Succeeding generations feel bound to reinterpret their work. For the Victorians, Morris was above all a poet. For many today he is a forerunner of contemporary design. Tomorrow may remember him best as a social and moral critic of capitalism and a pioneer of a society of equality."

Graeme Shankland, "William Morris - Designer", in News From Nowhere and Selected Writings And Designs (ed. Asa Briggs).

Shankland's introduction to a short supplement on Morris the designer underlines the emphasis of this odd collection. The first 180 pages comprise letters, lectures and reflections in which Morris puts forward socialist ideas, plus some pretty uninspiring poetry and hymns with which to entertain the workers. Though the sentiments are noble, there's little of great wit or insight, and I couldn't help feeling I'd read this kind of thing better put by other people.

Shankland's short supplement addresses the extraordinary design work, with 24 photographic plates that, being in black and white, don't quite show the sumptuous richness of the man's achievements. Vibrant and heavy, Morris's stuff is from an age of large rooms with high ceilings before the anti-chintz mandate of Ikea. Even in their own time they were retro, harking back to a pre-industrial, hand-crafted age.

Being so woefully impractical myself, I view Morris with considerable envy. (The Dr is also a great fan, so I live with a fair bit of his wallpaper.) He willfully embraces a romantic myth of England's past in his subjects, and believes in good and practical design. His infamous quotation to "have nothing in your home that is neither beautiful nor useful” is a rejection of Victorian tat and ornament but is all the more relevant in our jostling flats and apartments. Ikea might have extolled us to chuck out the chintz, but it's elegant, uncluttered and socialist use of space is not a million miles from his.

The main meat of the book, though, is a maddeningly abridged News From Nowhere, the science-fiction tract about a man from 1890 popping to the 21st Century. It's largely a chance to explore a sunshiney, communist idyll, where dustmen wear gold clothes, the Palace of Westminster is used for storing manure and crime and ugly children no longer exist. There's equality between the sexes and a minimum wage.

It'd difficult reading this idealised parable without comparing it to the practical examples of Communism that existed in the 20th Century. As in Child 44, the dogma that socialism will rid the world of crime merely meant crimes were ignored or brushed under the carpet, and the abuses of the capitalist system were replaced by abuses of different kinds. We keep being told it's like something out of the 14th Century, too, which hardly makes it sound inviting.

There are some fascinating things in Morris' vision, though. London seems comfortably multiracial in this future:

"Within [the shop] were a couple of children - a brown-skinned boy of about twelve, who sat reading a book, and a pretty little girl of about a year older, who was sitting also reading behind the counter; they were obviously brother and sister."

Morris, William, "News From Nowhere And Selected Writings And Designs", p. 212.

(Yes, I appreciate that the boy might just be tanned from lots of time playing outside, but that's not quite how it reads today.)

There's free love and yet with the propriety of marriage (a young couple have been married, she's then married someone else, and now they're getting back together). People are prettier and seem younger than they would in 1890 as a result of better living conditions (something that turns out to be true).

There are also odd things: quarrels between lovers leading to death is not uncommon in this paradise. They still use whips to drive their horses, and it's weird reading of,

"the natural and necessary pains which the mother must go through [in childbirth, that] form a bond of union between man and woman".

Ibid., p. 235.

Mostly, the book is taken up by a long dialogue between our Victorian traveller and an ancient man who knows his 20th Century history, explaining some of the changes. For all its aping the style of Plato's Republic, this is really a monologue setting out the vision of a cheery future.

And, then at the end of this lengthy interview, this edition skips to the end:

"[Chapters 19 to 32 describe Morris's journey up the River Thames past Hampton Court and Runnymede, the characters he met and the sights he saw. The book ends with a feast at Kelmscott and his sudden return from utopia to the nineteenth century, from the world of 'joyous, beautiful people' to the 'dirt and rags' of his own time. He ends with these reflections.]"

Ibid., p. 300.

It's like deciding to publish 1984 but only with the excerpts from The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, and none of that boring stuff between Winston and Julia. This edition could easily have included the whole unabridged text, making room for it by excising the selected other writings. You can't hope to convince us of the importance of Morris's utopian vision by such brazen selective quotation.

You too can kneel before Sutekh

The What's On page for UCL Museums and Collections has announced a date for your diary in May:

"LATES AT THE PETRIE: SCI-FI ANCIENT EGYPT

Date: Thursday 6 May 2010 | Time: Drop-in from 5 - 8pm
Location:The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology
Price: Free | Age group: Any

Time travel back to Ancient Egypt to see monsters and aliens pitted against the Egyptian Gods. From the Daleks, who visited the building of the Pyramids, to the Stargates which reach across space and time, the history of Egypt has been a rich source for science-fiction. Grab a free trail, written by Dr Who books author Simon Guerrier, on Egypt's use in sci-fi. explore the Petrie Museum and ‘Kneel before Sutekh.’ Drop in!"

I should add that I had help in the research from fellow sci-fi hack Scott Andrews and the clever academic John Johnston - seen in this YouTube video outing Sutekh as both gay and author of the first ever recorded chat-up line.

Incidentally, two years ago I introduced a screening of Pyramids of Mars.

"In European countries this use of boys is scarcely possible"

To the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology last night for a sneaky peek at the "Framing the Archaeologist" exhibition. It's a series of photographs and related notes and diary extracts from Flinders Petrie's excavations in Egypt at the end of the nineteenth century, with the emphasis on the workers who lived locally.

The photographs and notes are also handily available on the Framing the Archaeologist blog, where you're invited to leave comments.

Some of the photos might have been taken this week, others - and the accompanying notes - are from another world. They reveal attitudes to race, to child labour, to archaeological practice which seem startling from our lofty position looking backward.

But they also change our sense of the ancient relics on display in the museum, around which the photographs are displayed. They are not just art objects behind glass with puzzling, technical descriptions typed beside them. They are the possessions of people, unearthed and pieced together by diligent, long-dead hands.

I was surprised by Image 5 - Muhd es Said, Muhd Jafur, Muhd Timras, the notes explaining how Petrie chose his child labour - over 20 years-old, he explains, the workers get "stupid" and "lazy". He also laments that boys aren't available to work in England because in the school holidays they must collect the harvest.

Image 6 - Ahmed Hafnawi and Muhd Hassan describes a girl who gave her name as "Muhammad" (her father's name), thinking Petrie employed only boys. No, he was an equal opportunities sort of guy.

Another favourite is Image 18 - Amy (Petrie's sister-in-law) buying antiquities.

Things Exploding 2: Everything’s Exploding!

For research purposes, obviously, the Dr and I went on a date to see Night at the Museum 2. Spent most of the weekend proofing 310 pages of a new book, with the film ticking through the back of my brain. Here are some too-serious thoughts.

It should really be “Night at the Museums”, as night-watchman Ben Stiller leaves the American Museum of Natural History in New York for the Smithsonian in Washington DC – which, he reminds us, is really 19 museums arranged round a lawn (and, in the movie, sharing underground vaults). Though the National Gallery of Art isn’t part of the Smithsonian. And also Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” is in the Chicago Art Institute. But hush. It’s only a movie.

It’s a fun and funny movie, with a massive cast it struggles to fully accommodate. Much of the cast of the first film spends most of this one stuck in a crate. Then there are weird cameos – a couple of would-be villains from other franchises, and a scene with the Smithsonian’s own guard. Both are funny at first but just go on and on…

There are some great comic moments and absurd characters and performances, but I kept feeling it was a rough draft, everything in the script filmed and edited into order before the judicious pruning.

The film is full of incongruous, odd things: a love interest who can’t be a love interest because she’s a museum object; Stiller leaving his son – so crucial to the first film – home alone in another city while he jets off to have this adventure…

A Doctor Who episode like Love & Monsters makes a virtue of the strange incongruity of real life; here everything’s put neatly back in the box. In the final scene, the awkward love interest gets swapped for a real woman played by the same actress (no mention of the artefact-woman flying off stiff-lipped to her death).

And it’s really talkie. Like American football, as soon as there’s a bit of action and excitement, it stops to discuss it in depth. There is much tedious guff about the brilliance of America – and obviously no mention of the cultural imperialism implicit in the museums’ display of precious objects from all round the world. What’s the provenance, say, of this ancient Egyptian portal to Hell?

For all the moral is Stiller realising the nobility of his vocation in guarding these artefacts, the ending depends on a big brawl where a whole load of old stuff gets trashed. The Dr watched in horror – at one point, as the first ever airplane smashed into a huge cabinet of precious things, she even grabbed my hand.

At the end, the museum is bustling with thrilled and interested public from a cross-section of demographic groups – a museum’s happy ending. But what does the mannequin Theodore Roosevelt offer that his (evil) computer hologram version didn’t? He tells the kids the years he was born and died, and we see he rode a horse… The hologram’s just the same, but you don’t need to stay up late to see it.

The museums’ presidents and cowboys get to offer stoic wisdom, but it never really suggests why museums might be important or worth preserving. The artefacts here are only of interest because they come to life.

Five exhibitions

The Dr and I have spent Christmas eating too much, drinking even more, seeing some chums and enjoying – for the Dr at least – a busman's holiday. If that busman also worked in museums.

1. Cold War Modern – Design 1945-1970
(Victoria and Albert Museum until 11 January 2009)
There's a lot of big ideas crammed into this exhibition – even for such a large space. As I've blogged before, the post-war period saw a punch-drunk sweeping away of the past in favour of big, bold ideas in art, design and ideology. Perhaps it was the horror and damage done by the Second World War, perhaps the burgeoning threat of mutually assured destruction, but the artefacts of that time spell out a bleak and awful picture of the world, with a yearning for something better.

I liked how they put astronaut and environment suits up close with the fab and groovy gear available off the peg in the Portobello Road. There's examples of revolutionary politics from all round the world; '68 and Nam and Che, both the hope and frenzied propaganda from all sides.

Into this context they squeeze clips of Ipcress, Bond and Strangelove, all featuring big, futuristic set design by Ken Adam (the sketch for the play area where Goldfinger spells out to his hoods the details of Operation Grand Slam is, marvellously, called “the Rumpus Room”). These sit beside drawings and photographs of grand housing projects on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and then plans for domes over New York or cities on the Moon. On big screens high above the space stuff, the “stargate” sequence from the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey faces the arrival of Kris Kelvin on the space station above Solaris. East and West's visions of man reaching for cold, unfathomable space - opposite and yet so much the same.

In all this grandeur, there's a disturbing desperation. I wondered who they – the hopeful people who dreamt up these things – thought they were kidding. The problem with planning such a monumental new programme of building and social organisation, of so radically creating a new world, is that it assumes we've already lost this one.

(Afterwards, we had coffee and pastries while enjoying the William Morris-styled bit of the cafe, but there wasn't enough light for my camera-phone to get pictures. And the V&A shop proved very good for small trinkets and silliness for the Dr's stocking. No, she didn't just get coal and birch twigs.)

2. Darwin (a.k.a Big Idea exhibition)
Natural History Museum until 19 April 2009

“Before Darwin, the great majority of naturalists believed that species were immutable productions, and had been separately created. Today, his theory that they undergo modification and are all descendants of pre-existing forms is accepted by everyone (or by everyone not determined to disbelive it). Most people would, if asked, find it hard to explain why.”

Steve Jones, Almost Like a Whale, p. xxii.

Like Jones' book, the Natural History Museum exhibition shows how Darwin came to his radical proposition of the history of species as a family tree of connected, branching variance – and then updates the evidence. We see the specimens of birds and beetles Darwin himself caught on his boat trip round the world, and then – like Jones – how 150 years of scientific hard graft has honed and bolstered that central idea, filling in the gaps Darwin himself acknowledged.

There's stuff on why Darwin delayed publishing his findings for so long, and a glimpse of his home life. There are even real creatures to coo at – a lizard called Charlie who apparently doesn't like it if you tap the glass, and a fat, ugly toad that looks like a green and yellow cow pat.

There's sensibly no apology at all to the dissenters, and no mention of “intelligent design”. Yet, the Dr noted they kept speaking of evolution as a “theory”. Her research elsewhere has shown a strange shift in the 1980s and 90s; telly and radio before that rarely felt the need to qualify Darwin's idea as a “theory”, now it's rare that they don't.

That said, the exhibition is keen to explain that, in science, a theory isn't the same as a guess; it's a carefully worked out and tested hypothesis from evidence, one from which you can make accurate predictions. I thought that was what we called a “fact”, but apparently not. Wikipedia boasts a whole page discussing evolution as theory and fact. But why qualify Darwin like that? We don't talk of Newton's “theory of gravity” - which the work of Einstein (and Eddington) actually disproved (or, at best, radically refined).

3. Byzantium 330-1453
Royal Academy of Arts until 22 March 2009
By the time we got to this one in the mid-afternoon, London was swollen with tourists enjoying the hilarious ratio of euro to pound. They crowded the pavements and train stations, and – a bit to our surprise – the Royal Academy. Yes, let's go to England for the closing down January sales and while we're at it shell out to see some trinkets from the wrong side of Europe...

The exhibition apes the dark and churchy feel of Istanbul's grand churches and mosques, from which the objects come. Boris Johnson's surprisingly superb two-part series After Rome had important things to say about Western prejudice; not only the destruction of the city during the Crusades (and the legacy of that word in the Middle East) but also the fact that Constantinople was a second Rome, continuing the traditions and learning of the Empire long after the West has succumbed to its Dark Age. The Renaissance was less a “rebirth” as the Western powers learning to stop bashing their neighbours and instead start borrowing their books...

(I meant to post my thoughts on Seville and Cordoba ages ago, having visited in September. And then there's Boris going and saying a whole load of stuff I wish I'd thought of...)

In the exhibition, I struggled to follow particular ideas or stories. The exhibition seemed to assume a robust, academic knowledge on the part of its visitors – artefacts, for example, were described as being from Harare or Sinai without any explanation of where these were or on what terms they stood against Byzantium / Constantinople at the time. The Dr, meanwhile, muttered that it grouped different traditions all in together – Coptic (especially) and Ptolemaic with Orthodox and Islamic. It seemed less an attempt to explain or explore the history of and our relationship with the Middle East as a collection of pretty, glittery things.

Favourite artefact: a painting of monks being tempted off a ladder to heaven by spindly, sneaky devils. Weirdly they had postcards of this in the shop after – they almost never have the ones that I like.

4. Babylon – Myth and Reality
British Museum until 15 March 2009
Two years ago, the Doctor and I marvelled down the brilliant blue streets of Babylon, up to the Ishtar Gate. It's vast, it's bright blue and it was nicked by German archaeologists from what's now Iraq and reconstructed in Berlin's Pergamon museum. If you can, go see that before you see this exhibition, which struggles to convey the scale of the Biblical city, squeezed as it is into the upstairs of the old Reading Room.

“Many individuals' first encounter with the name of Babylon will have come from the Old Testament. Of the momentous events that took place in the city, not the least concerned the Judaean exiles taken from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar as part of a conventional military campaign. The repercussions of the Babylonian Captivity in theology, culture and art are still with us, while our knowledge of the historical events has been enhanced by some of the world's most important cuneiform texts.”

IL Finkel and MJ Seymour (eds.), Babylon – Myth and Reality, p. 142.

The Old Testament paints Babylon as cruel conqueror and enslaver. Daniel and his pals Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are remarkable because they stand up to Nebuchadnezzar – the implication being that no one else ever dared to. Interestingly, the section on Rastafarianism linked Babylon to Western greed and commercialism, not to the West's history of enslavement.

Brilliantly, the exhibition closes with those who identify not with the oppressed but the oppressors. It is pretty out-spoken about the site today and the damage done by, first, Saddam Hussein and then the US army. For both, the ancient site is an excuse for extraordinary grand-standing, on a scale beloved by tyranny.

There's comparatively little of the actual city here: some bits of bright blue stone, some small, ancient objects. There are models of the street up to the Ishtar Gate and of the Etemenanki ziggurat – also known as the tower of Babel. Tiny little Scale Guys help suggest the mahoossive. But mostly it's about the how the city's been interpreted since it fell. It compares representations of the city in the Bible or myth (while never quite daring to suggest they're the same thing) with the evidence uncovered since the 19th century, and it discusses how Babylon continues to play a part in stories. There's a picture of a Rod Lord-designed Babel fish and the cover of Hollywood Babylon.

With the same mythic buildings and characters depicted by different art traditions over the centuries, this is an exploration of stories and cultures bleeding into one another, becoming scared as they help define – or at least shape – identity and power. The real ninth century BC Assyrian queen, Sammu-rammat, for example, ends up worshipped as the goddess Semiramas by the Greeks.

We emerged into a crowded museum, the Dr spitting feathers as a huge Biblical tour stopped for no man or woman or child. She was not incensed at their rudeness but the nonsense they were being told, provenance and context completely ignored to make chosen objects fit the pre-agreed story.

5. Taking Liberties
British Library until 1 March 2009

This one is exemplary: a collection of iconic documents brilliantly grouped and explained so that visitors are challenged on their own political ideas. There's Magna Carta, or the death warrant for Charles I, the 1832 Reform Act, a copy not just of the Beveridge report in English but in half a dozen other languages as the world looked in awe at our pioneering social wheeze. It's fascinating enough just to gaze on these things, and all of it for free. But there's more.

The documents – and explanations, associated items and illustrations – are grouped under broad headings like “Rule of law” or “Freedom of speech”. There's stuff on Lords reform and on whether referenda are actually democratic, CCTV and a national DNA database – all sorts of complex, knotty stuff. It's brilliant at simply and concisely laying out the different sides on a given issue and then getting you to do some thinking. In fact, it's a shame this isn't a permanent exhibition. It's the only one of the five discussed here I'd want to mooch round a second time.

At the end of each section you're encourage to vote on three or four questions, choosing a statement from a list. To do this, you have to scan your wristband, so the machine remembers your answers. At the end of the exhibition, you can see how you voted compared to the mass of other visitors, and where on a political graph your votes place you.

A couple of times, what I'd seen in the exhibition made me at least reconsider my natural instincts at the poll. But I also found on several occasions I didn't quite agree with any of the statements, that there were exceptions or at least things I'd want to clarify. So there was some fudging towards the statement that best exemplified by fluffy, why-can't-we-all-just-get-along sensibilities.

And that's, I think, the one thing the exhibition lacked: something about party politics, the Whip system, the way it reduces any kind of issue to a simplistic yes or no, your answer as much dependent on the will of HQ as your own insight or conscience. (I'd quote Paxman on just this point in The Political Animal, but we seem to have leant it to someone.) There's nothing on political compromise, on supporting something because that's supporting your team.

The exhibition raises an eyebrow at the Levellers and Chartists – whose ideas that were so terrifying and radical in their own day are now rights we take for granted. But it doesn't explain why that happens. It's a great strength and a great weakness that our system allows change only in a series of small, hard-negotiated steps. That's fundamental because you can't understand the liberties and law we have now without understanding how these decisions are made.

Head bone’s connected to the...

On Friday night, having spent the afternoon with young actors and Lance from Doctor Who, the Dr and I made our way to the Institute of Archaeology for a talk about some dead faces.

The authors of “Living images – Egyptian funerary portraits in the Petrie Museum” each spoke, giving context to the writing of the book and to the portraits themselves. The portraits were discovered while Flinders Petrie was looking for something else entirely. But he found a great cache of sarcophagi, each painted with their contents.

The sarcophagi in question are from the period when Egypt was governed by Romans (as seen in the TV show Rome). Which is also, of course, the Dr’s period and she loves the details in the faces. The Roman ex-pats couldn’t afford the gold opulence that was once lavished on mummified pharaohs, so a portrait was the next best thing. These portraits, and the grave goods found with them, give all kinds of clues about the Roman middle-classes – their clothes, jewellery, diets and lives.

Petrie’s interest, though, was in their use for phrenology. His notebooks detail how he eagerly reaped the shrunken heads of the mummies – as well as the portraits of them alive. Skull A, says his notes, goes with Portrait A.

Phrenology, and its emphasis on the supremacy of particular races based on the shape of their heads, is less in vogue today. This is because it is bonkers. Over the years, many museums and institutions have quietly returned or got shot of their less savoury human remains. The authors of the portraits book believed the skulls Petrie collected were long lost when they started writing their book. Only for them to turn up in a box at the V&A. Matching the skulls to the portraits gives a sense of how good the likenesses are.

The Dr, though, is still troubled by Petrie’s head-snatching antics. The Egyptians were keen on their heads, you see. Heads weren’t just where your brains were, but your heart and soul as well. (BBC Four’s recent repeat of Magnus Magnusson’s trip to the 1972 Tutankhamun exhibition included an ornate and uncomfy-looking head rest.) So removing the heads from the mummies is especially problematic.

This makes studying, displaying or even acknowledging the heads a little problematic, what with the new but relatively untested rules set down in the Human Tissues Act (2004) – which came into force last September.

It’s a complex and controversial topic, though I’m rather of the side of the late Sir Mortimer Wheeler.

“If you dig up a man with bowls and things all round him, like those people we dug up at the east end of Maiden Castle… They were dead, they’d been dead a long time and they were going to be dead a long time. They’re still dead. But round them were all sorts of possessions which were of interest to us. They helped us to put a little piece of our history into perspective which we otherwise wouldn’t have had, and so on. They enabled us to reconstruct the world and the history within which we lived. And I think that’s worthwhile. We do know harm to these poor chaps. When I’m dead you can did me up ten times. I won’t haunt you… much.”

Chronicle: Sir Mortimer (BBC Two, 1973)

And, glibly and probably wrongly, I forgive Petrie a lot for one very good joke. His notebooks include a sketch of the excavation, showing where the sarcophagi were recovered. And the building where he kept all the mummies heads is marked “Skullery”.