Yay, I am thinking too much about fandom again!

[oloriel]

This is again mostly for the Tolkien fans (or the incurably curious) on my flist - the rest may want to skip this for major weirdness. Not for the faint of heart. May contain zombies and other dead people.

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So I have started to write my first story for the Akallabêth in August project.

As per usual I can't help but having waaaay to much backstory. And questions.

The story deals with the "growing Númenorean obsession with death, longevity, and preservation", and is tentatively titled "The Embalmer's Apprentice". And I have to decide just how to interpret the bit in the Silmarillion about "Yet they achieved only the art of preserving incorrupt the dead flesh of Men".

So!
[Poll #1425973]

The Zombie question is random and has nothing to do with the story; it just popped up in my brain while researching what little we know of Númenorean preservation techniques (that were supposedly born out of the attempt of finding a way of bringing the dead back to life, though I find it more logically to place the two research fields parallel to each other instead of making one the result of the other).
The first question is really a bit of a bother. I mean, "incorrupt" is a big word. And if the purpose is basically to keep the bodies from rotting until some alchemist finally finds a way of bringing the dead back to life, something like the Egyptian mummies would be totally impractical (who'd want to be brought back to life into a brittle hull without brains and hearts and all that). Personally I tend towards the "Lady Dai" variant, because THAT would be really bloody good conservation. I mean, she's been dead for 2000 years, but she's in the state of the shortly dead - she's still got blood in her veins, and her joints still work, AFTER 2000 YEARS! Now that's a body to be reincarnated in (well, aside from the herniated disc and the gall stones...)!
Trouble is, nobody really knows just why exactly she was preserved so well. When she was buried, people apparently went to immense amounts of trouble, but it's hard to say just which part of the puzzle is the relevant one, which was just random, and why it all worked. If I wanted to use that for a story, shitloads of research would be necessary. In the middle of thesis preparation.
On the other hand, the much easier "remove the organs and dry the rest" is so unsatisfying. Even if it probably is what Tolkien had in mind, for lack of feasible alternatives at the time. (Then again you never really know.)

Blah.
Let's see what you think.

Comments

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

I'll help with the research if you'd like me to? Campus library isn't so great, but you never know what you'll find.

And zombies... I'm a big follower of the zombie virus thing ;), so no, don't think they would have created zombies, but the capslock was too imperative to not click that option. If that made no sense, blame it on the late hour?

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

See, I'm not a fan of the zombie virus thing, since that's just not how zombie stories came into the world. Zombies are neither vampires nor werewolves, and I really don't see why it's necessary to mix the whole stuff. Just because vampires have suddenly become cool and sexy in postromantic narration I don't see why the original variants have to find their outlet in combination with the zombie mythology. Totally different thing. Big pet peeve of mine, actually. >_>

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

How did zombies come into the world, then, out of curiosity? That is, which tradition of zombies are you going by, the African/Caribbean one, the (SE)European one, the popular culture one? That arguably is doing a lot of mixing and matching in all three mythologies, sometimes adding sparkles, but then that (the mixing, not the sparkles) is by no means a new thing - after all there are some vampire traditions that grant the undead/revenants the ability to shapeshift into wolves (hah!), for example. I'd argue that there is quite a difference between the bites of vampires (which make me think of a voluntary, somewhat calculated act that didn't always result in 'turning') vs. a werewolf attack (which was essentially just that, an animal attacking a person, happening to bite and transmit a curse/virus/whatever) that was probably modelled on real-life rabies transmission, which I always thought of the source of both werewolves and the popular culture zombie virus, if quite independently of each other. But you're the Ethnologist here, and if you're saying that the zombies plagiarized the vampires and werewolves, alright... ;)

But then that is quite a bit removed fom Númenor.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Obviously not the popular culture one, because that would be perfectly congruent with the "zombie virus" business. I was rather thinking of the African/ Caribbean version, really, seeing how that's where the name comes from.
The European revenant tradition allows for brainless half-rotten corpses as well, it is true - but these were originally no special kind of "zombie", but basically part of the vampire family. As I said yesterday, the turn towards vampires as attractive (whether or not they sparkle) and at least partly in charge of their own actions, capable of volition, is a Romantic notion. It is of course the more popular reading today.
I am assuming that the closer-to-the-original vampire mythology - disgusting, half-rotted creatures that come out of graves to stomp around brainlessly - merged with the exotic zombie mythology because of that Romantic development: If Vampires Are Sexy, The Ugly Undead Must Be Something Else. Zombies seemed to fit the bill. And thus the slave revenants that did only as they're told by whoever brought them back were turned into creatures that lust for brains like vampires lust for blood, and pass their zombie-ness on like vampires pass on vampirism or werewolves pass on lycanthropy (which, yes, may well have been an attempt to explain rabies, and which, yes, likely inspired the "virus" reading, but that was not the point, nor did I dispute it). They came in to fill the hole that was left when vampires stopped being half-rotted corpses and turned into suave counts with swishing capes. What they should rather be comparable to, in European terms, is golems.
The zombies, of course, do no plagiarising, lacking the free will necessary to do so. ;) Whether or not the pop-culture interpretation plagiarises the vampire/ werewolf genre is hard to tell; more likely it is feeding on ignorance of the origins of vampire stories and the conceived need for disgusting, dull humanoid revenant.
If that makes any sense.

It is! And we only got there because the "revived body that lacks free will of its own and thus makes a fine brainless slave"-zombie, poor thing, is being suppressed by the "BRAAAAAAAAINS" zombie horde...

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

Lyra erklärt die Welt, keine weiteren Fragen. ;)

Mixed approach with ignorance of origins aside, I still like the zombie virus. I suppose I'd also like it if they were the original vampires, if that is any consolation. And this was quite an enlightening conversation.

It is! And we only got there because the "revived body that lacks free will of its own and thus makes a fine brainless slave"-zombie, poor thing, is being suppressed by the "BRAAAAAAAAINS" zombie horde...

Poor original zombies indeed, and in that case it's only fair to give them a bit of a chance to shine. I admit that last night I was thinking only of pop-culture zombies, but in the way you put it I might just be able to accept the Númenorean kind of zombie. Or if you don't want to go quite so far (not sure how sophisticated you are imagining Númenorean medicine), people waking from apparent death and appearing as zombies due to the substances they were treated with in preservation?

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Ich hätte doch meinem Originalplan folgen und auf Lehramt studieren sollen... >_>


I figured as much ;)
But I think Númenorean medicine is certainly sophisticated enough to know whether or not someone is dead. No Romeo and Juliet bullshit in the Land of Gift! Whether or not fubu powder gets used to, um, motivate the poor slaves that had to row Ar-Pharazôn's fleet is of course a different question... but that is again waaay after the time I'm currently looking at. And again a different Zombie genre/theory, anyway.

[yoodi.livejournal.com]

Hmmmmm, ich seh das ganze mehr so aus dem Blickwinkel, wie in Arda die Moralvorstellung funktioniert. Find ich grad schwer zu erklären, mein Gehirn ist müde.
Die Numenorer waren ja zumindest zu Anfang ziemlich nobel (noble). Ich hab das Sil schon viel zu lange nichtmehr gelesen, aber hatten sie nicht auch zumindest am Anfang Kontakt zu Tol Eressea? Und hatten sie nicht auch Noldorin Lampen?

Von daher könnte ich mir vorstellen, dass (nach einer gewissen Lernphase natürlich, die den Elben aber nicht so lang vorkommt) die Konservierungstechnik perfektioniert wurde.
Und ich kann mir auch vorstellen, dass dieses Wissen gegen Ende ihrer Geschichte, als der Niedergang schon in vollem Gange war, verloren gegangen ist und sich die Technik zurückentwickelt hat zu "normalen" Mumien, von denen dann immer mehr immer "schlampiger" prepariert wurden. (War das nicht auch im alten Ägypten so?)

Zombies denke ich könnten allerhöchstens ganz gegen Ende entstanden sein, falls sich die Besessenheit immer weiter gesteigert hat.
Aber.
Ich denke, Zombies zu erschaffen wäre in Arda noch schlimmer als das was Morgoth beim Basteln der Goblins/Orks aus den ersten Elben gemacht hat. Eine solche "Sünde" müsste definitiv schwere Folgen haben und demnach auch erwähnt werden, zumindest in dunklen Andeutungen.


So seh ich das. Macht das für dich Sinn?

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Absolut. Ob es nach und nach dann wiederum zu den "herkömmlichen" Mumien kam, hatte ich jetzt noch gar nicht in Betracht gezogen (so lang lebt der Protagonist meiner Story eh nicht, die fängt schon unter Tar-Ancalimon an), aber das wäre jedenfalls eine gute Verknüpfung! Dann passen auch beide Lesarten, nur halt an unterschiedlichen Zeitpunkten. Hmm.

Die Besessenheit hat sich ja in der Tat immer weiter gesteigert, wobei die Versuche der Leichenkonservierung ja auch erst in einer Phase verstärkter Besessenheit (und Abkehr von elbischen Lehren und den Valar und überhaupt) angefangen haben ;) Und ich kann mir vorstellen, dass ein paar aus Versehen gebastelte Zombies (die dann vermutlich auch schnell wieder ge-ext wurden - man wollte ja keine Zombies, man wollte ja normale Menschen) in dem ganzen Drunter und Drüber mit Erdbeben und Vorzeichen und Menschenopfern (wo wir beim Thema "Sünde" sind...) und Morgoth-Anbetung glatt untergehen. Ganz besonders, wenn niemand Elendil davon erzählt hat, und ganz ehrlich, wieso sollte jemand ausgerechnet Elendil davon erzählen? Von daher könnte ich mir schon vorstellen, dass die Möglichkeit in der Geschichte drinsteckt. Natürlich nicht im großen "Dawn of the Dead"-Stil (die Art Zombie-Mythologie liegt mir eh nicht) - aber ein kleiner Voodoo-Zombie? Warum nicht ;)

(Irgendwann raff ich mich auch nochmal auf und schreib eine Story, wo Elendil ein total nerviger Bekehrer ist, so ein mittelirdischer Zeuge Jehovas. Das steckt in der Geschichte ja irgendwo auch drin...)

[kali921.livejournal.com]

If someone can write Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, isn't it high time that someone wrote a Númenorean zombie epic? Come on! ZOMBIE TAR-ELENDIL!

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Tar-Elendil is way too early for zombies - they wouldn't have started making them before Tar-Ancalimon or even Tar-Telemmaitë. And I'm no good with zombies! I'll gladly toss the revenant bunny out to the appreciative masses, though ;)

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

Well, if one looks at the barrow scene in Fellowship of the Ring, one can see a couple of things... first, that whatever height Numenorean embalmers reached, the later decline was still enough to preserve the equivalent of mummies, and second, that there clearly are undead things, as the lads are trapped by a barrow-weight, which doesn't seem that far from a Zombie.

[yoodi.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, that is a good point!

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

I didn't even think of that - thanks for pointing it out! Good points indeed.

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

My uncle, lysander_cat, also points out that the Nazgûl, the ring wraiths are Numenoreans as well.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Yeees, but there Sauron did the dirty work ;)

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

Not disputing the idea of mummification/preservation in the North Kingdom here (though, how would they know, though, being -originally- followers of Elendil? I can't see the Faithful being involved, unless it's via the 'criminal' approach, and then can't see how they would be rescued in the Fall, but nvm, there may have been other ways), but the barrow-wight itself probably wasn't a zombie, at least not in the sense we discussed above. With the ritual and incantations it certainly doesn't qualify as brainless/mindless, it rather sounds like one of Sauron's, perhaps Angmar's, evil creatures (spirits) inhabiting the body/barrow of the dead, or perhaps, going with the Necromancy idea, the dead owner of the grave twisted by evil? It definitely did mention the 'dark lord' in one of its verses.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

By the time of Elendil I could actually imagine that mummification/preservation had become the normal way of dealing with the dead, whether Faithful or King's Men. There's a thousand years between the origins of corpse preservation and Elendil - even with a people as long-lived as the Númenoreans that's enough time for an innovation to become a tradition.

Aaaaah, this is leading way further than I had planned!

[whitewave16.livejournal.com]

Am very excited to see whatever you come up with for AiA!

[independence1776]

I chose "Ugh" but just the fact that you asked that made me laugh aloud. And I'm looking forward to reading it!

[coppertone.livejournal.com]

I chose the last, because it is the most fun and also the closest to what I picture when I read that line-- to me the word "incorrupt" suggests something more like saintly incorruptibility: I picture a complete lack of change or decomposition of the corpse; a lot of Snow Whites in glass coffins. If they did absolutely perfect a process like that involved with Lady Dai (who I just looked up and that is really cool, I guess possibly they could have managed that.



On the other hand, YES ZOMBIES ALWAYS YES.

(...Really, given that Sauron is the Necromancer, and the Numenoreans have all those convenient incorrupt dead bodies lying around, it is probably not even possible to avoid that zombie apocalypse.)

[rahja.livejournal.com]

Zombies! Auf jeden fall zombies. *g* Hab ich nicht so drüber nachgedacht...aber wenn, dann gab es die zombies.