happily reading about plagues until my eyes dry out

Fireworks explode a block over, drawing the interest of helicopters, and I’m reading about plagues and post-plague societal hangovers, scrolling around for grim and oddly cheerful Danse Macabre art, taking notes on how people described and depicted plague times. I may watch The Seventh Seal again.

Is that weird? It’s probably weird. I think a lot about pandemics and that sort of thing, yeah, just so strange, of all things out of the clear blue to think about, such a mystery.

My questions about plagues, pandemics, epidemics, disease, and post viral conditions are not so much about death counts, pustules, black vomit, raging fevers, and general malaise but more about what becomes of a society touched by widespread suffering and death? What happens the years before, during, and after the reaper harvests en masse? How do artists depict it or writers describe it? Who are the healers, the victims, the rulers, the workers, what contemporary explanations and stories are told about the disease, what are the social, political, and religious consequences, what relics of the disease exist in our cultures nowadays?

The earliest mentions of plagues and sickness are not very detailed. We may only know something happened because someone wrote lists of misfortunes befalling their people, and “plague” was on the list. The lead-up and consequences of disease join other forms of upheaval as part of a consellation of events, a hyperobject encompassing the things of “collapse” and “near collapse.”

The next post may be a little short on plague and long on collapse because as far as I know, the plague of Meggido was only mentioned once. It was, however, likely one small part of the complex of disasters that collapsed the Bronze Age civilization. Though it is only a brief mention in one of the Amarna letters it seems like a good place to start, and right now I’m in my books/videos/articles trying to see what is known about that whole thing.

So excited to do this now — I have read that tablet — the translation on the internet, not the cuneiform (now requesting Duolingo for ancient writing systems) — and it says “plague” right there! I think I was always focused on the whole picture, the seige, archers, the harvest on the other side of the archers … and then, “Look, the city is consumed by death, by plague, by dust.”

OH!

I am in the “google: earliest plague references” and then jump like an infected flea to Wikipedia phase, I found lots of things to read, but my eyes are not working right so I’ll get back to this. Hopefully next time I post I’ll have something interesting to say about ancient diseases, but right now I have the present disease to endure.

Oh, one more thing — I have seen this video 9000 times and am kicking myself that I didn’t even try to guess before consulting google about oldest plague reference. This is Eric Cline talking about the Bronze Age Collapse, and its alarming parallels to the present.

Lmao, enjoy?