{"id":1222,"date":"2016-11-26T14:00:17","date_gmt":"2016-11-26T14:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/?p=1222"},"modified":"2016-11-26T14:00:17","modified_gmt":"2016-11-26T14:00:17","slug":"building-a-wall-against-gog-and-magog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/26\/building-a-wall-against-gog-and-magog\/","title":{"rendered":"Building A Wall Against Gog and Magog"},"content":{"rendered":"

A wall cast a long shadow across the recent U.S. presidential election: the 1,954 mile-long wall which Donald Trump has promised will soon stretch the length of the U.S.-Mexico border.<\/a> Whether a foundation will ever actually be dug for this wall, or what that wall should look like, are matters of hot debate right now. Archaeologists and historians have pointed out that there is little historical precedence<\/a> for the efficacy of<\/a> these kinds of border walls<\/a>. Still, its proponents are adamant that a wall is necessary to preserve the integrity of the United States: that fearsome and alien things lurk just on the other side of the border, that a wall can be a firm dividing line between “us” and “them”.<\/p>\n

This understanding of a wall\u2014one built as much out of rhetoric and identity as it is out of bricks and mortar\u2014has a long history. Medieval Europeans’ sense of themselves was defined in part by what they were not. They believed that they were normal, while the far reaches of Africa and Asia were inhabited by all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures barely recognisable as people. The blemmyes<\/em> had no heads but rather faces that were embedded in their chest; the homodubii <\/em>were a kind of centaur with the body of a donkey; the panotti <\/em>had ears so large that they could wrap them around their bodies like blankets, protection against the cold of their homeland in the far north. The most ferocious of these quasi-humans were the peoples of Gog and Magog, cannibalistic invaders who were kept at bay only by the walls which had been built around them.<\/p>\n

\"Biblioth\u00e8que<\/a>
The cannibalistic inhabitants of Gog and Magog. From a recension of Thomas of Kent’s Roman de toute chevalerie<\/em>, ca. 1308-12. Biblioth\u00e8que nationale de France, MS Fran\u00e7ais 24364, f. 60v.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gog and Magog loomed large in the medieval imagination. They appear in the Hebrew Bible (Yechezkel\/Ezekiel 38-39<\/a>), in the Christian New Testament (Revelation 20:7-8<\/a>) and the Qur’an (Surah Al-Kahf, 83-101<\/a>). While the exact details of who they were and what actions they were prophesied to carry out varied, all faith traditions agreed that the inhabitants of Gog and Magog were a wild and fearsome people who were held at bay for now, but who would one day help to bring about the end of the world. Though relatively obscure figures in religious scripture, they took on a life of their own in popular legends and stories, particularly in the series of interconnected and apocryphal tales known as the Alexander Romances.<\/p>\n

According to many medieval tales\u2014based in part on the stories of the first-century CE Jewish historian Josephus\u2014Alexander the Great had come across wild and unclean peoples as he and his forces pushed eastwards across Asia. To keep these peoples from destroying humanity, Alexander drove them between two huge mountains, then prayed that God would push the mountains together and so imprison them. His wish was granted. This story was repeated and embellished on in later influential medieval texts, such as the seventh-century Syriac Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius <\/em>and the Alexander Romance cycle<\/a>, where the peoples imprisoned by Alexander became identified with Gog and Magog. In some of the stories, Alexander orders his army to build a set of gates across passes in the Caucasus mountains to keep back these apocalyptic forces. These gates\u2014variously described as of iron or bronze\u2014were coated with a fast-sticking kind of oil.<\/p>\n

\"bnf9342_f131v\"<\/a>
Alexander the Great’s army build a wall around the people of Gog and Magog. 15th c., France. BNF MS fr. 9342, f. 131v<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As the Middle Ages progressed, western Europeans began to look beyond their home regions, to become aware of the scale of the globe in a way they had not in generations. They produced\u00a0mappa mundi<\/em>, maps of the world, of increasing complexity and sophistication. Gog and Magog appeared on many of these maps, though the location of their homeland and their affiliation shifted according to contemporary concerns and fears.<\/p>\n

The Ebstorf mappa mundi<\/em><\/a> (a detail of which appears in the header image of this post), shows a walled-off area labelled Gog and Magog where the monstrous inhabitants are in the act of devouring a disfigured victim. On the border of the same map, closer to Europe, there is also text which describes the “city and island of Taraconta which is inhabited by Turks of the race of Gog and Magog, a barbarous and wild people who eat the flesh of young people and aborted foetuses<\/span>.”\u00a0 Other maps identified Gog and Magog with the Lost Tribes of Israel, showing iudei inclusi<\/em> (“enclosed Jews”) or “Red Jews” on maps of Asia and creating artwork depicting Gog and Magog that drew on overtly anti-Semitic imagery. Hostility towards Islam and Judaism clearly drove these identifications on the part of medieval Christians.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
A depiction of the people of Gog and Magog attacking a city, with distinct anti-Semitic undertones. From a French\/Anglo-Norman verse apocalypse, ca. 1220-70. Toulouse, Biblioth\u00e8que municipale, MS 815, f. 49v.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When the Mongol empire was at its height in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, many Europeans came to the conclusion that they<\/a>\u2014appearing suddenly out of the east and sweeping all before them in the creation of an empire of unprecedented size\u2014were the peoples of Gog and Magog, or sometimes descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel who had abandoned Judaism. What else could they be but harbingers of the apocalypse? Not only were they conquerors but their way of life was alien from that of the vast majority of Europeans.<\/p>\n

In an age of Google Maps and accurate cartography, it’s tempting to consign the land of Gog and Magog to the past, as simply yet another funny and ignorant quirk of the medieval European worldview.\u00a0Yet to do so is to ignore that even at the highest political levels, many nowadays still believe that was was written in the book of Ezekiel will literally come to pass, even if they don’t imagine a lost, walled-off city somewhere in Eurasia. For instance, in 1971, Ronald Reagan\u2014then governor of California\u2014explicitly stated that the “communistic and atheistic” USSR was the fulfilment of the prophecy<\/a> in Ezekiel. It’s been claimed<\/a> that in a 2003 phone call to Jacques Chirac<\/a>, George W. Bush cited end-time prophecies about Gog and Magog in an (ultimately futile) attempt to persuade the French to participate in the invasion of Iraq.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The inhabitants of Gog and Magog, shown in Turkish dress, attack a European city in this scene from the sixteenth-century L\u00fcbeck Bible. British Library<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is also to overlook the ways in which modern people are still capable of making sharp divisions between “us” and “them” based on little if any evidence. Political rhetoric turns desperate refugees into an overwhelming horde<\/a>; it conjures up a criminal threat poised just the other side of the border<\/a>. Whether in medieval Europe or the modern West, people tend to define themselves by what they are not\u2014but as was the case with Gog and Magog, these fears do not truly originate behind distant mountains in lands with unfamiliar names. Their origins lie far closer to home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A wall cast a long shadow across the recent U.S. presidential election: the 1,954 mile-long wall which Donald Trump has promised will soon stretch the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[34,11,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-of-religion","category-medievalism","category-religious-history"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1612,"url":"https:\/\/yvonneseale.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/23\/the-medieval-turkey\/","url_meta":{"origin":1222,"position":0},"title":"The Medieval Turkey? 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