Kem

Kem (Shinasthana: 咸, kem) was a state that existed during Themiclesian Antiquity and was ultimately destroyed by Tsinh in the Battle of Ku-ngwyan in 330. Its territories encompassed what is now northwestern Themiclesia and seems to have been ruled from Kengrak at some point.

The state's historical narrative is highly negative in received texts, described as a polity given to immorality, violence, and cruelty. The notion that has been challenged by historians in recent centuries based on more critical reading of historical documents dating to the time of the state's destruction and archaeological information.

The name Kem may not have been the historical name of the state and seems to be a derogatory slur.

History

Kem is notable as there did not arise a highly literate centre of administration within its territories supporting the development of a Ken-centric historical tradition. As such, virtually everything written about Kem has been through a lens at best foreign and at worst hostile to it.

The cultural centre of Themiclesian Antiquity was towards the east of what is now Themiclesia-proper, and it was there the earliest historical records appeared, first in Sin around 385 BCE and then in Tsinh in 320 and Qanar in 308 BCE. Literate history gradually spread west to the states of Qlwa and Kenhak in 294 and 281 BCE. Of the six major states vying for dominance in the 3rd and 4th centuries CE, Kem was the last to enter datable history in 51 BCE. This lateness seems to have contributed to the notion that Kem's ancestry was unclear and barbarous, even though by all accounts its populace was of Meng stock and had comparable cultural preferences with other Meng states in Themiclesia.

Culture

Canonical history are univocal and unequivocal in describing the state of Kem as one permeated by injustice and immorality. Kem kings were supposedly motivated by a consistent desire to rob others and a hatred for morality; at the same time any property they acquired was used for debauchery and buying the support of rogues and not for the supplication of gods. The total lack of any redeeming narrative has long been considered strange by careful historians.

In contrast, the material evidence presents a different narrative for Kem. An oft-cited example is burial practice. In tombs dating to the High Archaic (c. 200 BCE), most states provided lavish furnerals for rulers, filling their sarcophagi with bronzes and jewellery. There would then be ostentatious quantities of swords, spearheads, arrowheads, armour etc. each in a separate pit. Retainers and bodyguards were sacrificed at their lords' funerals and buried together in pits, as a kind of property.

Kem's practice, in contrast, was to bury each retainer and bodyguard with their armour and weaponry instead. Kem culture is thus interpreted to attach a higher degree of personhood to such sacrificed retainers and bodyguards, being at least capable of owning their own set of armour and weaponry, while their peers in other states were considered another kind of property of equal rank as inanimate swords, spreaheads, etc. The scale of human sacrifice in Kem was smaller than in other states of comparable strength, and at least a portion of the sacrificial victims buried with every ruler has been shown not to have been sacrificed but buried long after the ruler themselves.

It has been argued that the notion of Kem rulers being "impious" and "unfilial" may be connected with these burial practices when the norm in Themiclesia was for a ruler's successor to bury or sacrifice a large portion of a ruler's property at the predecessor's death. The quantity and quality of the goods buried or individuals sacrificed was to both the honour of the dead predecessor and the living successor. For the dead their wealth was publicly displayed, and for the living their willingness to part with material possessions to exalt their predecessor was demonstrated. The successor, willing to bury/sacrifice such property, showed that they were more concerned with the honour of their predecessor than for their own material wealth, because they otherwise stood to inherit it if they didn't bury/sacrifice such property.

Despite Kem apparently not sacrificing as many persons in routine worship, its human sacrifices are described as more intentional and directed. A common observation by scholars is that Kem tended to sacrifice enemy leaders more than their subordinates, who were often absorbed into Kem's social fabric or even warrior ranks. This may have rendered the sacrifice less pious in tone and more akin to political or strategic murder in the eyes of other Themiclesian states, which generally spared enemy leaders but took and sacrificed their subordinates, sometimes with the assent of the captured leaders. Yet this observation is based on selected historical record which had a pronounced anti-Kem bias, and the archaeological record cannot demonstrate that a higher proportion of its sacrificial victims were enemy leaders.

See also

• Themiclesia
• Themiclesian Antiquity