OLD FAKE NEWS
Alternative facts and dodgy dossiers have been with us for a very long time – at least since one Babylonian deity discovered ambiguity
A Cambridge academic believes he has discovered an early example of fake news, in the text of a 3,000-year-old Babylonian tale inscribed on a clay tablet from 700 BC. The Gilgamesh Flood myth (believed to have inspired the Old Testament account of Noah’s Ark, in Genesis 6-9) was examined by Assyriologist Dr Martin Worthington, a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, who specialises in Babylonian, Assyrian and Sumerian grammar, literature and medicine. He says that nine lines of the text may be understood in very different ways.
The Babylonian deity Ea (a trickster god of water, knowledge and mischief) apparently promises a rain of food, but concealed within these lines are a warning of an apocalyptic flood to come. Dr Worthington argues that Ea was motivated by self-interest, and that he tricks humanity “by spreading fake news. He tells the Babylonian Noah, known as Utanapishti, to promise his people that food will rain from the sky if they help him build the ark. What the people don’t realise is that Ea’s nine-line message is a trick: it is a sequence of sounds that can be understood in radically different ways, like English ‘ice cream’ and ‘I scream’”.
Contemplating the god’s duplicity, Dr Worthington said: “He might want to retain deniability. If asked, ‘Why didn’t you warn the people?’ he could say ‘They decided to interpret it that way. That’s nothing to do with me’ [..] Once the ark is built, Uta–napishti and his family clamber aboard and survive with a menagerie of animals. Everyone else drowns. With this early episode, set in mythological time, the manipulation of information and language has begun. It may be the earliest ever example of fake news”.
Dr Worthington’s research focuses on nine lines which, he says, can be interpreted contrarily: “Ea’s lines are a
verbal trick which can be understood in different ways which are phonetically identical. Besides the obvious positive reading promising food, I found multiple negative ones that warn of the impending catastrophe. Ea is clearly a master wordsmith who is able to compress multiple simultaneous meanings into one duplicitous utterance”. In Babylonian, one line reads: “ina lilati usaznanakkunusi samut kibati”, which translates as either “at dawn there will be kukku cakes” or “at dawn, he will rain down upon you darkness”. Another can be translated as “he will rain down on you abundance”, but also carries an alternative meaning “he will rain down on you abundantly”.
But why would a god lie? Dr Worthington explained: “Babylonian gods only survive because people feed them. If humanity had been wiped out, the gods would have starved. The god Ea manipulates language and misleads people into doing his will because it serves his self-interest. Modern parallels
are legion!”
Fanciful press reports of the so-called ‘Mummy’s Curse’ or ‘Curse of the Pharaohs’ following Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb and Lord Carnarvon’s death, both in 1923, (see FT386:28-36) constitute a sterling example of fake news. It is thought that Daily Mail reporter Arthur Weigall, frustrated that Carnarvon had granted exclusive tomb access to rival newspaper The Times, was the first to write sensational copy suggesting the Earl’s death was the result of an ancient Egyptian curse placed on anyone who dared enter the tomb. Other correspondents swiftly followed Weigall. The enduring nature of the ‘King Tut’s Curse’ story is such that it may still be found in numerous books, blogs and on websites, despite having been thoroughly debunked numerous times.
Another instance of fake news appeared in 1835, when the New York Sun published a story (25 Aug) it claimed to have derived from a Scottish newspaper, the Edinburgh
Courant. The sensational report focused on the recent discoveries of eminent astronomer Sir John Herschel, stating that Herschel’s new telescope, when trained upon the Moon, had observed various animals living in harmony amidst a lunar civilisation. In total, the Sun published six stories of fantastical nonsense, including astounding details of unicorns; bi-pedal tail-less beavers; goatlike creatures with blue skin; and giant winged man-bats who passed their time collecting fruit and holding animated conversations; they also constructed a wonderful temple made of polished sapphire (shades of HP Lovecraft?). The Moon, it was claimed, was home to trees, oceans and beaches, all of which had been discovered thanks to “an immense telescope of an entirely new principle”.
The author was given as one Dr Andrew Grant, supposedly Herschel’s travelling companion. However, Grant was completely invented – no such person existed. Eventually it was announced that these staggering observations had come to an end after the telescope had unfortunately been burned by the Sun’s powerful rays, its glass set alight, and Herschel’s entire observatory incinerated. The actual author was the
Sun’s editor, Richard Adams Locke, and while Herschel was indeed conducting astronomical observations in South Africa at the time, Locke knew it would take months for his hoax to be exposed, since the sole method of communication with the Cape was by letter.
Although this may sound like a pointless farrago of balderdash, it should be noted that the Sun’s circulation figures reportedly increased from 8,000 to 19,000, and sales remained much higher even after these stories dried up. Herschel himself was unhappy, remarking that his actual lunar observations could never match those of the Great Moon Hoax, and stating how irritating it was when members of the public
quizzed him about the New York Sun’s revelations. The paper never published a retraction or apology. (For more on the Great Moon Hoax, see FT109:28-30.)
Earlier examples of the press’s cavalier attitude to truth may be found in 16th and 17th century pamphlets, wherein ‘Trew and Faithfull Relaciouns’ of fantastical events were often published. A Catalonian newsbook published in 1654 reported the discovery of a monster with “goat’s legs, a human body, seven arms and seven heads”; a 1611 English pamphlet tells of a Dutch woman who lived for 14 years without eating or drinking.
Earlier still, before the print era, various manuscripts entitled The Travels of Sir John Mandeville began to be circulated in the 14th century. Purportedly the account of an English knight’s travels in the Holy Land, Africa and Asia begun in 1322, in fact, no such person existed, the work being compiled by an anonymous Flemish or French author. (Anthony Bale’s translation reviewed, FT296:59). Cyclopes, cannibals and dog-headed men all appear, as well as blemmyae or akephaloi, a race of people with no head, instead having their facial features placed squarely in their chests. Here is a sample of the book’s style:
“In the land of Bactria there are trees which grow wool as you would find on the body of a sheep. Bactria is also filled with griffins, which have ‘the front of an eagle and the back of a lion’, while in Cairo people incubate hens’ eggs in a giant house filled with horse dung”.
Today we like to think of ourselves as better informed, with more trustworthy media outlets and politicians. But recall the British Government’s 2002 September Dossier that claimed Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) including chemical and biological weaponry, deployable within 45 minutes. These spurious claims were reported in much of the British tabloid press as proof that Iraq presented an immediate threat to the UK, and preceded the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Similarly, the US President’s official press secretary described Mr Trump’s 2017 inauguration attendance as “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe”, despite photographic proof to the contrary, and when such evidence was presented to Mr Trump’s spokesperson, these inaccuracies were described merely as “alternative facts”. Progress? historyanswers.co.uk, 3 May 2017; D.Telegraph, 26 Nov 2019. See also ‘Fortfoolery: Forteana and April Fool Hoaxes’ [FT352:28-31].