Discworld Annotations (7) - Pyramids - part 2

@~Concluded from Issue 67

[p. 64/62] "'[...] I didn't think much of the Gottle of Geer
routine, either.'"

Ventriloquists who want to demonstrate their skill will include
the phrase "bottle of beer" as part of their patter. However, as
it is impossible to pronounce the 'B' without moving your lips, it
usually comes out as "gottle of geer". Gern has presumably been
playing macabre ventriloquism games with the corpse.

[p. 64/63] "'Good big sinuses, which is what I always look for in
a king.'"

In the process of embalming, the Egyptians removed the deceased's
brain through the nose cavity. That's all I know about the
process, and if it's all right with you people I'd rather keep it
that way.

[p. 71/69] "'Do I really have to wear this gold mask?'"

Terry has confirmed that the scenes in which Dios dresses up
Teppic in his King's outfit (starting with the Flail of Mercy and
culminating in the Cabbage of Vegetative Increase) are a parody of
the old BBC children's game show Crackerjack. In this show the
contestants were asked questions, and for each correct answer they
received a prize, which they had to hold on to. If they answered
wrong, they were given a large cabbage, increasing the likelihood
of dropping everything. The person left at the end who hadn't
dropped anything won the game.

[p. 73/71] "'Interfamilial marriage is a proud tradition of our
lineage,' said Dios."

Teppic is astonished to hear that his great-great-grandmother once
declared herself male as a matter of political expediency. It was
in fact indeed the custom of the Egyptians to marry their pharaohs
to close relatives, and Hatshepsut, daughter of Thutmose I, wife
and half-sister of Thutmose II, and mother-in-law of Thutmose III
actually did proclaim herself king in order to seize the throne.

Incidentally, Dios is using the wrong word here: A marriage
between relatives would be intrafamilial, not interfamilial.

[p. 90/87] "'This thing could put an edge on a rolling pin.'"

See the annotation for p. 35/35 of The Light Fantastic . There's
another more explicit reference on p. 140/134: "[...] contrary to
popular opinion pyramids don't sharpen razor blades".

[p. 95/91] "'Squiggle, constipated eagle, wiggly line, hippo's
bottom, squiggle' [...] the Sun God Teppic had Plumbing Installed
and Scorned the Pillows of his Forebears."

The constipated eagle is obviously the plumbing system, but what
not many people outside Britain will realise is that the hippo's
bottom comes from an advert for Slumberdown beds, which featured a
hippo sitting down next to a chick.

[p. 95/92] Pteppic's dream about the seven fat and seven thin cows
is a reference to the Bible's Joseph, who had to explain a similar
dream (which did not have the bit about the trombone, though), to
the Pharaoh. Pyramids is of course riddled with religious
references, most of which are too obvious or too vague to warrant
inclusion here.

[p. 100/97] "All things are defined by names. Change the name, and
you change the thing."

This is a very ancient concept in magic and 'primitive' religions.
Although I haven't asked him, I'm willing to bet money that Terry
did not take his inspiration from Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of
Earthsea, despite the many e-mails I have received suggesting a
connection.

For a definitive reference on this subject, read James George
Frazer's The Golden Bough.

[p. 102/99] "[...] I am a stranger in a familiar land."

The phrase "stranger in a strange land" originates from the Bible,
Exodus 2:22, "And she bare [Moses] a son, and he called his name
Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land."

Since the "strange land" in question was Egypt, there's a nice
resonance with Pyramids itself in Terry's use of the phrase.

These days, people may be more familiar with the quote as the
title of Robert Heinlein's 60s cult science fiction book.

[p. 109/105] "'Doppelgangs,' he said."

Pun on the German word 'doppelg„nger', meaning 'body double'.
Thanks to dozens of bad sf-movies the word has entered the English
language in the mostly sinister meaning of some metamorphic life
form taking the shape of a human being.


[p. 127/121] Notice the sound accompanying the pyramid flares.  It
phonetically spells 'Cheops'.

[p. 134/128] "It seemed to Teppic that its very weight was
deforming the shape of things, stretching the kingdom like a lead
ball on a rubber sheet."

This metaphor ties in neatly with the quantum aspects of the
Pyramids: rubber sheets distorted by balls are one popular way of
visualising Einstein's general theory of relativity. The sheet
represents the space-time-continuum, and the balls are bits of
mass (like suns and planets). The balls press down and deform the
space around them. When things try to move along the rubber sheet,
not only are they attracted into the dimples in the sheet
(gravity), but things like light which try to travel in a straight
line find little kinks in their path around an object.

[p. 144/138] "'She can play the dulcimer,' said the ghost of
Teppicymon XXVII, apropos of nothing much."

Reference to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Khan. See also the
annotation for p. 127/115 of Sourcery .

[p. 156/150] "[...] distilling the testicles of a small
tree-dwelling species of bear with the vomit of a whale, [...]"

Animal substances are extensively used as fixatives in perfume.
Examples include musk (from deer-testicles; 'musk' is Sanskrit for
'scrotum'), ambergris (from the intestines of whales) and castor
(from a beaver's perineal gland).

[p. 157/150] "...Phi * 1700[u/v]. Lateral e/v. Equals a tranche of
seven to twelve..."

Some confusion has arisen here, because the asterisk symbol '*' is
the same one used in at least some of the editions of Pyramids as
a footnote marker. This has caused a few people to wonder if
there's a 'missing footnote' intended for this page. Matters are
not helped much by the fact that the American paperback edition
does contain the text of a footnote on (their equivalent of) p.
157/150. This footnote is simply misplaced and the marker for it
occurs on the previous page (see also previous annotation).

We'll let Terry have the last word in order to remove any
remaining doubt: "I'm pretty sure the missing footnote in Pyramids
doesn't exist. If it's what I'm thinking of, we just bunged in
loads of gibberish maths and among the symbols was, yes, '*'."

I am told that in later paperback editions the asterisk in
question has been entirely removed from the text.

[p. 168/162] "'I've got as far as "Goblins Picnic" in Book I.'"

After the children's song called "Teddy Bears' Picnic":

"If you go down to the woods today
You're sure of a big surprise
If you go down to the woods today
You'd better go in disguise
For ev'ry bear that ever there was
Will gather there for certain, because
Today's the day the Teddy Bears have their picnic."

[p. 176/169] The philosophers shooting arrows at tortoises are
discussing one of Zeno's three motion paradoxes. See also Douglas
Hofstadter's G”del, Escher, Bach. Or Zeno.

[p. 178/171] "The rest of them die of Heisenberg's Uncertainty
Principle, [...]"

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (HUP) says that for a quantum
particle (e.g. an electron), it is impossible to know with
complete accuracy both where it is and how fast it is going. The
act of observing it interferes with the event you want to measure
(in fact, one might say that at the quantum level the observation
is the event) in such a way that it is physically impossible to
determine both velocity and position of the particle in question.

[p. 179/171] Philosophers' names - Xeno refers to Zeno, of
aforementioned paradox. Copolymer ("the greatest storyteller in
the history of the world") might refer to both Homer (because of
the name) and Herodotus, 'the father of history', who was known
for his very chatty and discursive style, and who basically made
his living as a story-teller/dinner guest. Pthagonal ("a very
acute man with an angle") refers to Pythagoras. Iesope ("the
greatest teller of fables") to Aesop. Antiphon ("the greatest
writer of comic plays") to Aristophanes. And Ibid (whose name
reminds us of Ovid) is actually short for ibidem, which means,
when citing literature references: 'same author as before'. Hence
the quip later on: "Ibid you already know".

The only one left is Endos the Listener, who is perhaps meant to
portray the standard second-man-in-a-Socratic-dialogue -- the man
who spends the entire dialogue saying things like "That is
correct, Socrates", "I agree", "you're right", "your reasoning
appears correct", and the like.

Also, an 'antiphon' is a name for a versicle or sentence sung by
one choir in response to another (e.g.: "No you can't / Yes I
can!"  repeated many times with rising pitch. Or a more modern
example would perhaps be Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody': "No, we will
not let you go / Let me go!"). 'Copolymer' is a term from
chemistry; it refers to a polymer (plastic) made from more than
one kind of monomer (simple compound).

[ Finally, my source also suspects that Copolymer's monologue may
be a take-off on a particular translation of his Histories.
Anybody? ]

[p. 179/172] "'The tortoise did beat the hare,' said Xeno
sulkily."

Reference to Aesop's classic fable The Hare and the Tortoise. If
you have access to the Internet, you can find an online version of
the Aesop fables at the URL:

<ftp://ftp.uu.net/doc/literary/obi/Aesop/Fables.Z>

[p. 180/173] "Now their gods existed. They had, as it were, the
complete Set."

For those of you whose Egyptian mythology is a little rusty: Set,
brother to Isis and Osiris and father of Anubis, was the Egyptian
God of evil and darkness.

[p. 181/174] "'Sacrifice a chicken under his nose.'"

Refers to the old practice of burning a feather under the nose of
an unconscious or fainted person.

[p. 181/174] "'[...] here comes Scarab again... yes, he's gaining
height... Jeht hasn't seen him yet, [...].'"

The high priest's commentary on the gods' battle for the sun is
obviously based on sports commentators. In particular, several of
the phrases are based on the diction of David Coleman, a popular
British figure of fun noted for his somewhat loose grasp on
reality and his tendency towards redundancy and solecism. In fact,
an amusingly redundant comment spoken live by a personality is

sometimes referred to as a 'Colemanball', after the column of that
name in the satirical magazine Private Eye.

Typical Colemanballs include, "...He's a real fighter, this lad,
who believes that football's a game of two halves, and that it
isn't over until the final whistle blows", or during the test
(cricket) matches, "And he's coming up to bowl now... The bowler's
Holding, the batsman's Willey...". (That last one wasn't even by
David Coleman, but still qualifies as a Colemanball).

[p. 197/189] "'Symposium' meant a knife-and-fork tea."

Etymologically, a symposium is indeed a "get-together for a
drink".  Since the Greeks believed in lubricating intellectual
discussion with drink, the term eventually came to be used for a
meeting which combined elements of partying and intellectual
interchange.

[p. 197/189] The Tsortean wars refer to the Trojan wars. (Read
also Eric. Or Homer.)

[p. 201/193] "A philosopher had averred that although truth was
beauty, beauty was not necessarily truth, and a fight was breaking
out."

A famous quotation from John Keats' 'Ode on a Grecian Urn':

"'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' -- that is all Ye know on earth,
and all ye need to know."

[p. 204/195] "[...] ships called the Marie Celeste, [...]"

The Marie Celeste left port in 1872 with a full crew, but was
later found (by the crew of the Dei Gratia), abandoned on the open
sea, with no crew, the single lifeboat missing, and half-eaten
meals in the mess hall. It was later discovered that captain
Morehouse of the Dei Gratia had dined with the captain of the
Celeste the night before she sailed, and Morehouse and his crew
were eventually tried for murder, but acquitted because there was
no hard evidence. The missing crewmen were never found.

[p. 205/197] "And one of them had reputedly turned himself into a
golden shower in pursuit of his intended."

According to Greek mythology the beautiful Dana‰ had been locked
away in a dungeon by her father (King Acrisius of Argos) because a
prophecy had foretold that his grandson would slay him. But Zeus,
King of the Gods, came upon Dana‰ in a shower of gold, and
fathered Perseus upon her.

[p. 250/239] "'Go, tell the Ephebians --' he began."

This is a paraphrase of "Go tell the Spartans", which is the
beginning of the memorial for the Spartan soldiers who got
massacred by the Persians at Thermopylae as a result of Greek
treachery. The full quote is given by Simonides (5th century BC)
as:

"Go, tell the Spartans, thou who passest by,
That here obedient to their laws we lie"

[p. 270/259] "And it was while he was staring vaguely ahead, [...]
that there was a faint pop in the air and an entire river valley
opened up in front of him."

People interested in more stories about magically disappearing
valleys are referred to R. A. Lafferty's 'Narrow Valley' (to be
found in his collection Nine Hundred Grandmothers), where a half a
mile wide valley is sorcerously narrowed (with its inhabitants) to
a few feet and then opened up again by the end of the story.

[p. 271/259] "[...] the birds said more with a simple bowel
movement than Ozymandias ever managed to say."

Ozymandias was the Greek name for Ramses the Second. Percy Bysshe
Shelley's poem Ozymandias is famous, but because it is short and
it has always been a favourite of mine I hope you will forgive me
the indulgence of reproducing it here in full:


Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that their sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

While I was browsing the net in order to find an on-line copy of
Ozymandias so that I could cut-and-paste the text, I came across a
wonderful piece of related information. It appears that in 1817
Shelley held a sonnet-writing session with his friend, the poet
Horace Smith. Both wrote a sonnet on the same subject, but while
Shelley came up with the aforementioned Ozymandias, Mr Smith
produced something so delightfully horrendous I simply have to
indulge even further, and include it here as well. By now the
connection to our original annotation has been completely lost,
but I think you might agree with me that Smith's poem would be
worthy of Creosote:

On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in
the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below.

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows.
"I am great Ozymandias," saith the stone,
"The King of kings: this mighty city shows
The wonders of my hand." The city's gone!
Naught but the leg remaining to disclose
The sight of that forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when through the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the wolf in chase,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What wonderful, but unrecorded, race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

The poem was cited by Guy Davenport of the University of Kentucky
in a New York Times article a few years ago, which concluded:
"Genius may also be knowing how to title a poem."

[p. 277/265] "'For the asses' milk?' said Koomi [...]"

See the annotation for p. 161/132 of Mort.

@~Next issue - Guards! Guards!



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