THE HYBORIAN AGE (Essay)

 "The Hyborian Age" (easily found all over the internet) is in some ways one of the best places to begin a Conan chronology, and in other ways is one of the worst. This essay, written by Robert E. Howard as a sort of bible to keep track of his fictional prehistory, reads a little bit like the first dozen pages or so of the AP World History textbook I had to read in high school, but is completely fictional. It traces the pre-Cataclysmic age (the somehow-even-more-mythical age of his Atlantean hero Kull, who is a fun character, but not nearly as fun as Conan) all the way through to actual prehistory. The essay is in some ways the long version of the quote which opens the 1982 Conan the Barbarian movie by telling of the Hyborian Age with more brevity than Howard could muster, "Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!"

The essay begins with the Thurian age, or the age of Atlanteans, details the Cataclysm that reshaped the planet and destroyed those ancient civilizations, and then explores the entire history of the people of the Hyborian age to recognizable, real-world kingdoms like Egypt.

This essay is a good place to start this chronology because it gives you an overview of the whole Hyborian Age to sort of ground you in the world of Conan, introducing you to the characteristics of the various empires and a few rulers. However, it's also a terrible place to begin because, as previously mentioned, the essay essentially reads with all the sex appeal of a history textbook. You do get the rise and fall of empires, barbarians, and battles, but it's all told from the 30,000-foot-view, putting it at such a distance that it would never be the place I would recommend new Conan readers at which to start. After all, as an internal document for Howard's own use, being an entertaining read was probably not at the forefront of his mind. I have always preferred that brief statement at the start of the movie (usually with the phrase "the rise of the great civilizations" subbed in for "the rise of the sons of Aryas," because, as we'll get to, Howard's racism is at times extremely uncomfortable and minimizing it as much as possible is preferable). 

Howard wrote "The Hyborian Age" fairly early on in his chronicling of Conan's adventures. Prior to any of his Conan stories actually making it to print, he had written at least drafts of "The Phoenix on the Sword" (a re-working of a rejected Kull story), "The Scarlet Citadel," "The God in the Bowl" and "The Frost-Giant's Daughter." When "The Phoenix on the Sword" appeared in the December 1932 issue of Weird Tales and "The Scarlet Citadel" was published the following month, Weird Tales editor Farnsworth Wright (fantastic name) spurred Howard to write "The Hyborian Age." It was then that he began working on drafting "The Tower of the Elephant" using the Hyborian Age as its coalesced setting, and the rest of Conan's stories would follow suit. He wrote to his friend HP Lovecraft in April 1932, "I’ve been working on a new character, providing him with a new epoch—the Hyborian Age, which men have forgotten, but which remains in classical names, and distorted myths. Wright rejected most of the series, but I did sell him one—‘The Phoenix on the Sword’ which deals with the adventures of King Conan the Cimmerian, in the kingdom of Aquilonia."

"The Phoenix on the Sword" opens with what feels like a highly-condensed version of "The Hyborian Age" essay. It's hard to tell whether Howard consulted it for consistency when writing the essay or if he just recycled the names.

"KNOW, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars—Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyperborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen- eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet."—The Nemedian Chronicles (in "The Phoenix on the Sword")

Now, I absolutely love a fictional age that takes place prior to our own history- there's something so magical about "an age undreamed of." An ancient world that is just a little bit stranger and a little bit closer to the primordial soup is tough for me to ignore. A few years ago, I watched that quickly-forgotten Darren Aronofsky Noah movie with Russell Crowe in the title role just because I heard that its worldbuilding was kind of cool (slightly alien landscapes, stars out in the daytime, that sort of thing). I adore the prologue to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for its similar "lost kingdom" vibes. I'll read Wikipedia pages about rejected books of the Old Testament for the same reason. Some accounts of the Hyborian Age put it from around 100,000 to about 30,000 years ago, or "just before the writing of the Epic of Gilgamesh," and in my mind, I've always wanted the Epic of Gilgamesh to refer back to some long-forgotten Hyborian hero, his story just barely reaching us across the ages.

I didn't think I would be mentioning it in my first foray into the chronology, but Robert E. Howard as a vicious racist, and it certainly inflected his work. Some of Howard's racism has begun to rear its head very early, with some distasteful characterizations of certain civilizations in this essay. The way he talks about races and bloodlines maintaining "purity" or avoiding "blemish." Throughout his tales, he treats southern and eastern empires as naturally more savage, more cruel, and more duplicitous, and you can already see that in this essay. While Aquilonia (essentially his analogue for the Holy Roman Empire in terms of culture and history) does have its faults like greed, it's treated as much more benign than his analogues for Black, Asian, or aboriginal cultures.

According to Wikipedia, there was an illustrated adaption of the essay in pieces through Savage Sword issues 7, 8, 9, 12, 15, 16, and 17, but it doesn't look like they were printed in any of the Savage Sword collections that I have. The only thing I seem to have is a map in volume 3, drawn by Tim Conrad, who did some of the art for several of those early issues. A google search yields some images that appear to be from that illustrated adaption, but there are only pieces and they're not usually the greatest image quality.

I know I had read "The Hyborian Age" before, but it hadn't really stuck with me. It doesn't truly count as a Conan story seeing as Conan is never even mentioned, but that's probably fine, because it doesn't sit with the best of them. Ultimately, I wouldn't recommend new readers begin here, but it's a fun curiosity if you want to know more about Conan's undreamed-of age.