I previously detailed seven sources for my thoughts on historical attitudes and views of elite warriors. In the intervening time, although I have not been posting, I haven’t stopped reading and thinking about chivalry and virtue.
The Book of Psalms – I didn’t want to ignore one of the fundamental books in the world tradition, but I’d rather stay clear of debates about the authorship of the Bible or get bogged down in another religious issue. After some review and study, I decided that the Book of Psalms was a way to touch upon that tradition without too much risk of straying into religious interpretation. The primary version I own is a King James Version, but I’ve also used the Online Parallel Bible to compare English translations to see if that raised any insights.
The Song of Roland – This is an 11th century epic poem in Old French about the events surrounding the Battle of Ronceveaux Pass in 778 C.E. in the time of Charlemagne. I am taking my selections from the 2011 Halcyon Press edition, which contains two English translations. I prefer the style of the translation by Léonce Rabillon, so that is the version I’ll use for quotations, unless the C.K. Moncreiff translation makes a point more clearly.
The Epic of Gilgamesh – often called the oldest recorded epic, the story of Gilgamesh is a foundational tale from ancient Mesopotamia. It is gathered from various tablets written in Old Babylonian or Akkadian and likely written after many years of oral transmission. I appreciate the short, clear poetry without overuse of archaisms in Peter Dyr’s 2013 translation presented in The Epic of Gilgamesh, the Teachings of Siduri and How Siduri’s Ancient Advice Can Help Guide Us to a Happier Life. (I found the quality of the analysis of the importance of Siduri in history seriously lacking. But the poetry is rendered beautifully and the story is faithfully related upon comparison to other translations.)
Sundiata, An Epic of Old Mali – This is the story of the founder of the Malinke (or Mandingo) Empire, Sundiata Keita, who reigned in the early 13th century. A history passed through the centuries by the griots, masters of an ancient oral tradition, the version I read was collected in the 20th Century by Djibriltamsir Niane and presented in English by G.D. Pickett. Sundiata occupies a place between the Muslim and indigenous Malinke traditions and represents a transition between the Ghana Empire and the Malinke in northwest Africa. As I will detail in an article dedicated to this story—which I had wanted to read for quite some time, but had not made time for until this project—the history of Sundiata reflects some commonalities in the qualities expected of elite warriors that I’ve identified in our European and Asian sources.
Sundiata was also the ruler who established the Manden Charter, considered the first charter of human rights and one of the world’s oldest comprehensive constitutions. The Manden Charter, which was recognized as part of the Intangible Cultural History of Humanity in 2009, will certainly become part of my future study.
Quills and Quintains 
