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Conflict Intensity The Power And The Poet Song From The Sands From Ellen Rachlin · Arroe Collins Like It's Live

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  Speaker 1: It's really all about having fun. Ero dot net, A
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  Speaker 1: r r Oe dot net. I know what you're doing
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  Speaker 1: when you're driving to work. I know what life is
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  Speaker 1: like when you're sitting there at the office looking for
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  Speaker 1: a podcast that doesn't sound like the rest of them.
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  Speaker 1: How about twenty one different podcasts, I'm serious, twenty one
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  Speaker 1: different platforms on one network. Aro dot net, A r
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  Speaker 1: r oe dot net. Enjoy your exploration. It's Ellen, Hi Ellen,
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  Speaker 1: it's Aerocollins. How are you doing today?
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  Speaker 2: Okay, okay, Oh, we've.
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  Speaker 1: Got to talk about your book because it's creating some conversation.
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  Speaker 1: And I love it when a book does that. These
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  Speaker 1: people that come from out of the woodwork and saying, oh,
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  Speaker 1: by the way, let me share with you on this,
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  Speaker 1: And I'm thinking, oh, Ellen is the one that planted
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  Speaker 1: this seed of conversation.
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  Speaker 2: Well, thank you. I'm glad to hear if people are
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  Speaker 2: talking about it.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, because we want to know who and I'm gonna
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  Speaker 1: I know, I'm not going to get the name right
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  Speaker 1: in hegena is Did I pronounce it right?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah? That's one of my big hurdles.
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  Speaker 3: It's getting people to pronounce it or want to announce it.
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  Speaker 3: It's quite a mouthful, but it's pretty fanetic.
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  Speaker 1: It's and hedwanna look at me taking radio notes like this.
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  Speaker 1: That's cool. But you know what's so interesting is I
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  Speaker 1: was talking to my very good friend Kenny, who was
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  Speaker 1: saying that, and for some reason, he was having a
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  Speaker 1: tough time digesting on how old this writing goes back
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  Speaker 1: because he wanted to whip out some things from other
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  Speaker 1: authors and things, and I kept going, I'm gonna go
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  Speaker 1: with Ellen on this and really be inspired by the
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  Speaker 1: fact that this is how it happens when it comes to,
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  Speaker 1: you know, erasing women from history when it comes to writing.
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  Speaker 1: And it's because we don't know her, but you're giving
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  Speaker 1: her back to us so that we can learn more
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  Speaker 1: about her.
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  Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, And she's so compelling. When I first encountered her,
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  Speaker 3: I really it wasn't as if I were trying to
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  Speaker 3: write something in ancient history or even explore characters from
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  Speaker 3: that time period. But when I got stumbled on these
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  Speaker 3: little details about her, because only little details survive, just
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  Speaker 3: fascinating and compelling, and of course then wanting to write
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  Speaker 3: about it put an enormous burden because I had to
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  Speaker 3: delve into this time period that's not well.
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  Speaker 2: Known at all.
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  Speaker 3: When you look at historians, they tend to you know,
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  Speaker 3: modern times. They can specialize in a twenty year time period.
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  Speaker 3: Maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not much. But
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  Speaker 3: when you look at her time period, a seriologist was
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  Speaker 3: special in a thousand year time period, and so you
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  Speaker 3: can imagine not only are than many of them, but
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  Speaker 3: their territory is so vast well see.
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  Speaker 1: And that's one of the things that I learned with
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  Speaker 1: even with Native American writers in the fact when they
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  Speaker 1: would use what people call the DreamCatcher and no, those
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  Speaker 1: were the women who left their stories on those things
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  Speaker 1: that were to resemble the spider's web, and the story
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  Speaker 1: would be in there. But I'm so with you on
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  Speaker 1: let's reidentify who it was that put the words in
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  Speaker 1: action wherever it was that they were able to plant it. S.
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  Speaker 3: So she herself did that, yeah, b just by virtue
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  Speaker 3: of how.
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  Speaker 2: Important her role was. Mm.
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  Speaker 3: She was high priestess of her which was n probably
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  Speaker 3: let's call it the most important in its ti day
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  Speaker 3: city state in the Akkadian Empire in ancient summer uh
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  Speaker 3: when it was taken over by for m military force
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  Speaker 3: by her father and became part of the Akkadian Empire,
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  Speaker 3: and she was sent to be the high priestess there.
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  Speaker 3: She was basically sent into the heart of rebel territory.
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  Speaker 3: People don't like to be conquered, right, So this, to me,
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  Speaker 3: this made her remarkable.
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  Speaker 2: How could a woman and a young woman be take.
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  Speaker 3: The most important religious role and there in that time
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  Speaker 3: period the gods determined everything in there and in.
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  Speaker 2: The people's lives.
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  Speaker 3: How could she be sent there into the heart of
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  Speaker 3: rebel territory or where there had to be in my mind
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  Speaker 3: enormous resistance to her appointment and survives, And that I
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  Speaker 3: think is a really interesting story. And when you layer
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  Speaker 3: that onto the fact that she's the world's first named author,
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  Speaker 3: tells you just how important she was.
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  Speaker 1: For you to create Songs of the Sands. First of all,
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  Speaker 1: I am such a true believer in the basically I
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  Speaker 1: always tell people I'm from Montana. We fell in love
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  Speaker 1: with dirt before we fell in love with other humans.
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  Speaker 1: So right away you get my attention with Songs from
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  Speaker 1: the Sand because I believe, even as an author, and
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  Speaker 1: you maybe agree with this, is that it doesn't come
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  Speaker 1: from our imaginations. We're feeling this energy to be writers
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  Speaker 1: and to be communicators, because to me, it is coming
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  Speaker 1: from the dirt or from the sands.
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  Speaker 3: Well, her story literally did because her work or the
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  Speaker 3: work attributed to her, And we can talk about that
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  Speaker 3: if you're interested. But the work that's attributed her, because
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  Speaker 3: we don't know if she wrote it or not, was copied.
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  Speaker 3: These hymns were copied for hundreds of years after her death,
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  Speaker 3: and then they literally disappeared, buried. They were dug up
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  Speaker 3: from the ground in the nineteen twenties by an archaeologist,
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  Speaker 3: British archaeologist named Woolley, and there her work.
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  Speaker 2: Resurfaced and.
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  Speaker 3: Got the attention very very slowly. I would say it's
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  Speaker 3: still emerging in terms of the attention it deserves that.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, it was dug out of the ground.
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  Speaker 1: How were you introduced to this? Because it's always fascinating
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  Speaker 1: when I will ask different authors, you know what brought
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  Speaker 1: them to the ability to be able to share stories,
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  Speaker 1: and they'll always point to the authors. How did you
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  Speaker 1: discover this author to be able to write such an
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  Speaker 1: amazing story and book?
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  Speaker 3: Well, I literally stumbled on her. I was looking at
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  Speaker 3: you know, I knew that I wanted to write historical fiction.
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  Speaker 3: As my first foray into fiction writing, and I was
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  Speaker 3: pretty agnostic to time period, and I I spent months
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  Speaker 3: going off, you know, rambling through history, and I are
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  Speaker 3: wandering through history. I found her father, who was pretty
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  Speaker 3: well known, sag On the Great, and when I was
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  Speaker 3: researching and looking at him, I noticed the little appendages
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  Speaker 3: on his progeny chart, and there was one daughter named
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  Speaker 3: in Hedwana. And then I saw, as I mentioned, the
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  Speaker 3: world's first named author, and.
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  Speaker 2: I was hooked.
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  Speaker 3: But more most importantly, when I found translations of the
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  Speaker 3: work attributed to her. I also write poetry, and I
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  Speaker 3: found the poetry attributed to her to be j just gorgeous, personal, humble,
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  Speaker 3: powerful that I had to I couldn't stop thinking about
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  Speaker 3: what her life might have been and might have looked like.
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  Speaker 1: Did she use the writing as a form of communicating.
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  Speaker 1: Like Dolly Parton always says that a good country song
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  Speaker 1: is nothing more than your latest headlines, it is.
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  Speaker 3: There's one piece which gets translated, most commonly to the
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  Speaker 3: exaltation of a Nana, and in that piece is a
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  Speaker 3: personal plea where she is in exile. It tells the story.
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  Speaker 3: It's you know, it's very narrative. I call it narrative poetry.
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  Speaker 3: I suppose it tells the story of how she was
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  Speaker 3: forced into exile, and she's pleading to the god and Nana,
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  Speaker 3: who she believes is the only god in the entire
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  Speaker 3: ancient Mesopotamian pantheon who can restore her and find justice,
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  Speaker 3: you know, against the people who forced her into exile.
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  Speaker 3: And this, if this becomes very much in people's minds
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  Speaker 3: who know it, and certainly in mind the plot of
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  Speaker 3: her life, that she was a powerful high priest. This
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  Speaker 3: she was in this position, posted in this rebel territory,
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  Speaker 3: and she was forced out in one of the rebellions,
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  Speaker 3: and no one her So these she was all high
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  Speaker 3: priestesses were married, had a god husband. Hers was Nana,
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  Speaker 3: the moon God. She viewed Nana the moon God, her
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  Speaker 3: husband is forsaking her. She viewed the other gods at
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  Speaker 3: the top of the pantheon as deaf to her please.
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  Speaker 3: And Nana was the only one that in her mind.
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  Speaker 2: Could restore her.
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  Speaker 3: So the poem tells her story, it glorifies Nana, and
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  Speaker 3: in the end it tells how she is restored and
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  Speaker 3: how Nana takes pity on her.
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  Speaker 1: Oh, we're just scratching the surface We're gonna dig deeper.
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  Speaker 1: Trust me. We're going to be right back with Ellen Raclan.
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  Speaker 1: The name of the book Song from the Sands. When
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  Speaker 1: you first pick it up, you're gonna go what. But
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  Speaker 1: when you really dive into it and you see what
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  Speaker 1: this book is about, you're going to go, thank god
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  Speaker 1: I did. We are back with author Ellen Racklan. How
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  Speaker 1: has your own personal writing changed now that you've Because
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  Speaker 1: that's always been one of my things that when I
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  Speaker 1: go in and I start researching different authors and really
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  Speaker 1: pulling in what they're writing and how they craft their
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  Speaker 1: their paragraphs that lead to full pages, which you lead
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  Speaker 1: to chapters, and all of a sudden, I start seeing
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  Speaker 1: them inside of my writing. How how did it change you?
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  Speaker 3: This changed me in so many ways because a debut novelist,
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  Speaker 3: and so everything I did was a first Yeah, the
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  Speaker 3: research process, the application of my education because I did
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  Speaker 3: study fiction writing, the application of my writing and finding
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  Speaker 3: her and and and sort of letting the character you
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  Speaker 3: come inside me so that I could express the joy,
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  Speaker 3: the anger, the rage, all the emotions of course that
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  Speaker 3: any person feels, but through her eyes. And it it
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  Speaker 3: changed how I viewed research. It changed most importantly, it
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  Speaker 3: changed my view of ancient Mesopotamia. It was a very
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  Speaker 3: flat landscape in my mind prior to this, and then
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  Speaker 3: I came out and I just couldn't believe what I think.
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  Speaker 2: It's in most super.
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  Speaker 3: Minds, pretty overlooked compared to Greece and Rome, certainly, And
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  Speaker 3: I found that this was the genesis of literature, of law,
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  Speaker 3: of justice, of politics, of fable, of so much was
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  Speaker 3: really foundational in this time period, and really the roots
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  Speaker 3: carried on through actually through modern times, the roots of
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  Speaker 3: what they did. So yes, this changed me and changed
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  Speaker 3: my perspective about where history begins.
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  Speaker 1: Well, you bring up names like you just did, and
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  Speaker 1: right away it takes me back to my conversation with Kenny,
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  Speaker 1: and he was telling me that he goes, You've got
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  Speaker 1: to ask her if this is during the days of Babylonia,
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  Speaker 1: And so I've got to ask you because you're you're
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  Speaker 1: bringing up names and figures. I'm going, oh my god,
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  Speaker 1: this is somebody that truly has been lost within the
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  Speaker 1: soils and or the rocks of history.
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  Speaker 3: Oh yes, and in fact this is pre pre what
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  Speaker 3: he is thinking of his.
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  Speaker 2: Babylonia before and God and just before.
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  Speaker 3: But the work that is attributed to her was found
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  Speaker 3: in Babylonian times. Okay, so we don't know whether some
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  Speaker 3: scribal school, you know, acted like a traditional author, which
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  Speaker 3: isn't one author. You always think of Homer as a
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  Speaker 3: traditional author or Moses in the Bible.
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  Speaker 2: But we don't know if if there.
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  Speaker 3: Were were created in Babylonian times or were created actually
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  Speaker 3: in her lifetime and then copied in Babylonian times.
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  Speaker 2: But all the evidence we have.
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  Speaker 3: Of her, what her writings, I would say, are from
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  Speaker 3: Babylonian times.
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  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it kind of reminds me of the days,
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  Speaker 1: you know, because what do they say, I mean, the
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  Speaker 1: King James Bible is the one that everybody studies from,
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  Speaker 1: and I'm going, well, that's not the original, that's the
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  Speaker 1: King James version of the Bible.
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  Speaker 3: Kay.
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  Speaker 1: And so she went through kind of the same thing
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  Speaker 1: where they just reverted her writing and put it in
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  Speaker 1: their own way.
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  Speaker 3: It had to well, if she is the author, and
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  Speaker 3: there's a very compelling argument that she truly wrote these
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  Speaker 3: works that are attributed to her. I had a fascinating
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  Speaker 3: conversation with an expert on seals, you know, the ancient
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  Speaker 3: seals of these to sort of sign things and He
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  Speaker 3: says that prior to her lifetime, mythology was not on seals.
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  Speaker 3: It just wasn't something that was ever depicted on the seal.
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  Speaker 3: And one of the works attributed to her is the
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  Speaker 3: story of Vanana and Ebbey's a Mountain, and that mythology
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  Speaker 3: is on a seal that is dated to her lifetime.
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  Speaker 3: And he takes this as firm evidence, and he's a
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  Speaker 3: very serious scholar, from evidence that.
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  Speaker 2: She wrote. She wrote these, at least some of them.
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  Speaker 3: We know her name is in two of the works
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  Speaker 3: attributed to her, But people are very passionate about whether
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  Speaker 3: she did or didn't on both sides of the argument.
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  Speaker 3: But I found this seal story pretty compelling. And the
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  Speaker 3: fact that why attribute these to her? This is a
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  Speaker 3: patriarchal society. Why honor a woman with this kind of legacy?
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  Speaker 3: All the legends were written about men, all of them.
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  Speaker 1: This book is women. This book is coming out at
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  Speaker 1: such a perfect time because when you go back and
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  Speaker 1: you start looking at where the ya readers are mythology,
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  Speaker 1: where are adults go? Look could the the odyssey that's
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  Speaker 1: been in movie theaters. Everybody wants mythology, They want exactly
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  Speaker 1: what you're writing. For and you're bringing us a better
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  Speaker 1: clearer picture of what came from that era.
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  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, no, And that's a great point you're raising.
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  Speaker 3: And I'm very excited about that because the gods, you know,
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  Speaker 3: Greek gods and Roman gods, they pretty much morphed from
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  Speaker 3: these ancient message from the ancient message Tamian pantheon. You know,
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  Speaker 3: Nana becomes ishtar and and becomes aphrodite.
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  Speaker 2: You know, they just they just evolve. Why not look
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  Speaker 2: at the roots.
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  Speaker 1: What have you learned from this project? Because book number
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  Speaker 1: two has got to be around the corner, because you
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: know how starving we are out here as readers. When
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: you when you get our attention, more, more, more and more,
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  Speaker 1: please more.
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  Speaker 3: I sort of have a few ideas that I'm working
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  Speaker 3: through right now.
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  Speaker 2: She character in Hedwana.
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  Speaker 3: Solidified ancient like a high priestess tradition that survived after her.
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  Speaker 3: She wasn't the first, but she was certainly I would say,
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  Speaker 3: the most prominent. But there were some really amazing high
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  Speaker 3: priestesses after her that have wonderful stories. And so I
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  Speaker 3: potentially am going to explore one of those.
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  Speaker 1: Wow, where can people go to find out more about you? Ellen?
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  Speaker 1: Because this to me is exciting. It's got to be
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  Speaker 1: reached beyond this writer here because I want listeners to
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: feel the same way that this is. This is something
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: that they need to add.
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  Speaker 3: So I'm pretty active putting a lot of content out
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  Speaker 3: on Instagram at Ellen at Ellen Racklan, I have a
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  Speaker 3: website with this little essay about about the book and
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: the background, and there's I think at this point there
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  Speaker 3: a lot kind of pops up on a Google search
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: for the book, lots of interviews, excerpts, reviews, so basic
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  Speaker 3: Google search, but definitely at on Instagram, I have a
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  Speaker 3: a lot of content there.
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  Speaker 1: Love it. You got to come back to this show
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  Speaker 1: anytime in the future. It's going to be fun to
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  Speaker 1: watch you grow as you put us in a place
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  Speaker 1: and a position of not only learning, but basically inspiring
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  Speaker 1: us as well.
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  Speaker 2: Well.
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  Speaker 3: I'm so grateful to you and to appear on your podcast.
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  Speaker 3: It's an amazing opportunity and to tell this story.
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  Speaker 2: And I hope anyone.
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  Speaker 3: Who who picks up and reads this book really loves
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  Speaker 3: and enjoys their journey through ancient Mesopotamia and getting to
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  Speaker 3: know and Hedwana.
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  Speaker 2: And I thank you so much.
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  Speaker 1: Will you be brilliant today Okay, Ellen, thank you, thank you.