Possible new Necropolis found

Greco-Roman mummy, tombs uncovered in Egypt oasis
New mummies found! Yeah:

(Reuters) - Egyptian archaeologists carrying out excavations at the site of a planned youth center have found 14 tombs dating back to the third century BC, including one with a female mummy adorned with jewelry.

Cleopatra's Tomb may be found

Cleopatra's Tomb Believed To Be At 1 Of 3 Egyptian Archaeological Sites

A find of coins bearing Cleopatra's image and a mask of Antony my point the way to the famous lover's tomb:

...Archaeologists looking for the tombs of the celebrated queen of Egypt and the Roman general will begin excavating three sites at a temple where tombs may be located, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said in a statement Wednesday.

Always the defender of all things ancient Egyptian, Zahi Hawass chimes in, attacking a recent reconstruction of Cleopatra by a British team:

...Zahi Hawass, Egypt's top archaeologist, said the Cleopatra statue and coins _ which show an attractive face _ debunk a recent theory that the queen was "quite ugly. The finds from Taposiris reflect a charm ... and indicate that Cleopatra was in no way unattractive," said Hawass, according to the statement.


The British scientists based their reconstruction on Roman coins, which may have portrayed a less than flattering image of the Queen. But I'm with Hawass on this one: Cleopatra was HOT!

Going to Babylon

Beyond Babylon

This weekend I'm visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a number of our Coven members. I'm particularly excited about the "Beyond Babylon" exhibit. There was a good review of it in the NYTimes entitled "Global Exchange, Early Version". From the article, something I'm really looking forward to seeing:

"...a ceramic goddess with wings and talons for feet is an exuberant arrival from cultural sources unknown...Referred to by archaeologists as “The Queen of the Night,” she is so hybrid a creation that she was at one time labeled a fake. She is now considered authentic, but authentically what is the question..."

A good portion of the exhibit focus on the remarkable artifacts recovered from a ship wreck:

...For a truly cornucopian example of multiculturalism, though, nothing matches the contents of the Late Bronze Age merchant ship recovered from the sea off the southern coast of Turkey...it probably sank around 1300 B.C., packed with cargo representing a dozen cultures, from Nubia to the Balkans...Although the ship’s home port is unknown, it appears to have traveled a circular route through the Mediterranean and Aegean, stopping in Greece, Crete, Turkey, Syria and Egypt, picking up and unloading as it went. Bulk materials included copper ingots, Cypriot pottery, African wood and Near Eastern textiles, all for waiting markets...Divers also found luxury items, possibly personal possessions of the ship’s crew and passengers. Examples of ivory containers in the form of ducks have parallels with Egyptian prototypes, but were probably made in Mediterranean Asia. The two sources merge in a figure found in a tomb: a nude female swimmer with a chic, Nile-style pageboy who is hitching a ride behind an ivory-headed bird...

Follow the link for the NYTimes article for a pic of the swimmer and her bird friend.

Pagan Eye candy

Still of Rachel Weisz as Hypatia of Alexandria in the upcoming film "Agora", to be released December 18th.
(Original image here)

Changing Museum Policies

How Did That Vase Wind Up in the Metropolitan?

I've blogged before about the repatriation of pilfered artifacts . Today there's an Opinion piece in NYTimes by Sharon Waxman, who is the author of “Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World.”. It seems the new director of the MET (Thomas Campbell) has the opportunity (according to Sharon Waxman) to set a new course when dealing with artifacts of dubious origin. New guidelines are being issued by and association of museums:

...This past summer, the association finally issued new guidelines, which recognize that buying unprovenanced antiquities encourages their illicit trade and recommend that its members purchase only antiquities that can be proven to have been legally exported after 1970, or else removed from their country of origin before that date. (It was in 1970 that Unesco adopted an international convention barring the illegal export and transfer of cultural property....

Sharon Waxman continues:

...The Metropolitan needs to come clean about its past of appropriation of ancient art in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And it needs to tell a much fuller story about its more recent role in purchasing looted and smuggled antiquities...

She feels the new director of the MET, Thomas Campbell, can:

...inaugurate a new era of transparency for all museums, and to recalibrate the Met’s relations with countries that feel aggrieved...By publicly acknowledging the controversial or otherwise dubious histories of some artifacts and by making the recent past as much a part of the artifacts’ stories as the ancient past, Mr. Campbell can set an example for all museums and build new bridges of respect and cooperation...Transparency may not end every demand for repatriation. But it will disarm those critics in source countries who know — but rarely acknowledge — that regardless of past transgressions, their treasures may be safer, better preserved and more widely adored in the world’s great museums like the Met...

First soul discovered: 800 BC

Found: An Ancient Monument to the Soul

Good King Kuttamuwa left his soul entombed in a stone structure, so people could leave offerings and party with it. How cool is that!

"...In a mountainous kingdom in what is now southeastern Turkey, there lived in the eighth century B.C. a royal official, Kuttamuwa, who oversaw the completion of an inscribed stone monument, or stele, to be erected upon his death. The words instructed mourners to commemorate his life and afterlife with feasts “for my soul that is in this stele..."

“...Normally, in the Semitic cultures, the soul of a person, their vital essence, adheres to the bones of the deceased,” said David Schloen, an archaeologist at the university’s Oriental Institute and director of the excavations. “But here we have a culture that believed the soul is not in the corpse but has been transferred to the mortuary stone...”

As pointed out in the article, there's similarities here to the Ancient Egyptian belief in our spiritual essence to be divided in to two halves, a soul-like personality containing 'ba', and a life-force spirit known as the 'ka'.

New Pyramid discovered...MAALESH!

In the Shadow of a Long Past, Patiently Awaiting the Future

"Maalesh", in modern Egyptian means 'never mind' or 'Oh, well". That seems to be the attitude of many Egyptians regarding the unearthing of a new pyramid in Gaza. This pyramid was built for Queen Sesheshet, mother of Pharaoh Teti. But many modern Egyptians are ambivalent:

"...Can you believe our government can do nothing for us, and this thing that was built thousands of years ago is still helping me feed my family?" Ahmed Sayed Baghali, 49, said as he sat in a plastic chair selling postcards to tourists outside the Egyptian Museum here, which
displays millenniums of antiquities. "Who would buy my things if they were not about the pharaohs? People come here from very far to see the pyramids, not to see Cairo..."

The above article points out that the country has numerous problems with infrastructure and government services. Officials change, but that can mean different things to different people:

"...When other people talk about hoping to see something happen soon, they probably mean within the next few months," said Salem, an Egyptian playwright. "For an Egyptian, it could mean in the next 50 or 60 years. An Egyptian has a particular pace. His pace is
different than an American's. And a long history can do this..."

But Egyptians have patience and sometimes see humor in the slow pace of change:

"...A man without history is a man without humor," said Galal, an economist and author who has written about Egypt’s modern decline. "A man with history is more likely to have humor, because he is more likely to see the irony in things, how things were and how they turned out to be. And patience..."

Maybe "whatever" would be a better translation of "maalesh"?

Ramses II head uncovered

In Egypt, a 3,000-year-old find

More signs that Horus, the son of Egypt and Africa, will soon ascend the throne:

...CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Egypt's antiquities council says that archaeologists have unearthed a 3,000-year-old red granite head believed to portray the 19th Dynasty Pharaoh Ramses II...the 30-inch-high head belonged to a colossal statue of Ramses II that once stood in the area. Its nose is broken and the beard that was once attached to the king's chin is missing...the site at Tell Basta was dedicated to the cat-goddess Bastet and was an important center from the Old Kingdom until the end of the Roman Period...

The hand is quicker than the brain

While a Magician Works, the Mind Does the Tricks

According to some recent research, it appears much of a magician's art relies on gaps in our perception, which they have learned to exploit:

...a team of brain scientists and prominent magicians described how magic tricks, both simple and spectacular, take advantage of glitches in how the brain constructs a model of the outside world from moment to moment, or what we think of as objective reality...For the magicians...the collaboration provided scientific validation, as well as a few new ideas. For the scientists...it raised hope that magic could accelerate research into perception. “Here’s this art form going back perhaps to ancient Egypt, and basically the neuroscience community had been unaware” of its direct application to the study of perception, Dr. Martinez-Conde said...

There those darn Ancient Egyptians go again, figuring everything out thousands of years ago! Heh!

Is Hatshepsut still hiding?

DNA tests to study tiny mummies from King Tut tomb

This article is about the upcoming DNA testing on two infant mummies found in King Tutankhamun's tomb. But the part that interests me the most concerns Hatshepsut. I've blogged on the discovery of her body before ( here and here). The Discovery Channel special on the testing of unidentified mummies, in the quest to find Hatshepsut's remains, was certainly interesting. But there are now some problems. The media savvy Head of Egyptian Antiquities, Zahi Hawas has not exactly been forthcoming about his results:

...He has never disclosed the full outcome of the examinations of the mummy of Hatshepsut, Egypt's most powerful queen and the only female pharaoh. Nor has he submitted the results for a test by second lab, as it is a common practice. This has raised concerns about the validity of the Egyptian results...

In the last year, I've been reading of increasing concern in regards to the above. The thing is, even just a careful watching of the televised special reveals some concerns. First off, a great deal of the identification relies on a scan of a supposed tooth fragment imaged in an unopened canopic box. The box has been accurately attributed as containing the organs of Hatshepsut, and the mummy id'ed as her body is missing a tooth. But that seems rather flimsy evidence. (The box remains unopened, so we don't even know if the object is indeed a tooth.) In addition, Hatshepsut has always been portrayed as rather a petite woman. Yet this mummy is large and obese. In addition, a number of mummies from the Tuthmosis line have been accurately identified, all of them having rather similar facial appearances. Although a forensic match-up was provided in the documentary, the fact is, at least to my eyes, the faces don't really match up.

The Mummy

New DVDs: ‘Vampyr’ and ‘The Mummy’

I recenlty read a brief review of the original 1933 version of "The Mummy", starring Boris Karlof. I have the blank version of the film, but another print is being release in conjunction with the newest mummy movie.

Critics are certainly welcome to their opinions. But the review makes some statements that I think should be challenged. First off:

...there are no sinuous camera moves...Rather, the film is characterized by the stillness within its vertically composed images and the studied stiffness of the performances, particularly that of Karloff, who holds himself ramrod straight, barely moving a muscle of his body or his face, which is covered in a network of narrow wrinkles..."

On the contrary, there's some inspired camera work. The scene near the beginning where the just discovered box containing 'The Scroll of Thoth" is opened is particularly memorable. In regards to Karlof's "stiffness", is he not 'of the living dead'? In "The Mummy", the character of Im-Ho-Tep wields his power through mastery of Egyptian magic and mysticism. Although immortal and able to magically effect those around him, he is a fragile being, kept alive through a curse and by his own will. People fear him, not because of his physical prowess, but because he can control--even kill--by thoughts and words alone.

But then the reviewer makes this comment:

... Disguised as a wealthy Egyptian aristocrat, he is in fact Im-Ho-Tep, a priest of Isis executed 3,600 years ago for daring to love a temple virgin...

Well, that's factually wrong. In the movie, Karlof's Im-Ho-Tep was a High Priest of Anubis, not Isis. It was the female lead, Im-Ho-Tep's love interest (in the played effectively by Zita Johann) who was a High Priestess of Isis. As far as I recall, the status of her maidenhood was never explored.

Btw, Zita Johann was an inspired choice for the roll of Anks-En-Amon/Helen Grosvner. According to the commentary, she practiced spiritualism. Someone even states that she 'cast circles'! However, I cannot find any independent confirmation of that.

I have the Universal "Legacy Collection" for 'The Mummy'. It's excellent and has good commentary. Sadly, the sequels Universal dreamed-up in the 40's, and included in the 'The Legacy' collection, were rather piss-poor. They didn't advance the story and the mummy devolves into a hulking murderer.

Goddess Isis: Unfit Mother!!!

Over at memeton blog, the always interesting Yvonne posted about an article, "There's nothing magical about fathers", which deals with Lesbian households. Yvonne contributed her thoughts about the 'nuclear family', which generated some discussion in the Comments section. I agreed about the silliness demonizing such family structures:

...But I don't believe the nuclear family is that recent of a development. It's ironic that the definition of a 'nuclear family' can also include a single parent and child, the parent almost always being the mother. So when dominionist Xtains pick on single parents, they are denigrating the nuclear family. Isis raised Horus for a good bit on her own, and he turned out alright. :)

I get the feeling Yvonne enjoyed my take on Isis, and she put together a hysterical post:

Ancient Tabloid Frenzy: Queen Isis in Single Mother Row

Please check it out for yourself, but one of the high points for me was, "...A spokesbeing for the government said, "We are concerned about the absence of a positive male role model for the boy. His uncle Set is currently standing trial for murder, and Isis has been seen to be accompanied by Sekhmet, who is known to have had violent episodes, and Ishtar Kilili, who was last week arrested for soliciting..."

Heh! Thanx, Yvonne. But here's a few juicy tidbits I can add to help the powers that be determine the parenting abilities of Isis:

First off, she has often been seen in the company of other men besides her husband Osiris, namely Ptah, an elitist artist, and Sarapis--a foreigner! Besides these questionable associations, she is often seen in the company of her adulterous sister, Nephyths. The fact this adultery involved Isis's husband Osiris should come as no surprise. But what will shock even the most jaded among us is the fact that Isis forgave her sister, and even adopted her sister's love child. Besides her rage-aholic gal-pal Sekhmet, Isis's posse includes scorpions and poisonous snakes! As she is also purported to be "the wisest of magicians", she should be considered armed and dangerous. Her whereabouts are currently unknown, but it's reported she is hiding out with her unfortunate son Horus in a crocodile infested swamp.

Egyptologist Cathleen Keller dies at age 62

Cathleen Keller was the co-creatrix of one of the best museum exhibits I have ever seen, "Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh.":

...Keller was one of three editors of "Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh." Published in 2005 in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the book offers an in-depth treatment of the controversial Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh who sometimes was depicted as male...When the M.H. de Young Museum in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park reopened in October 2005, it featured a crowd-pleasing exhibit on Hatshepsut. Keller developed the concept for "Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh" and was its co-curator. The exhibit also was featured at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas...

The book is still available (for a very reasonable price)from the Met.

Cathleen, may you become a star on the sky-dress of the Goddess Mut, where Hatshepsut awaits you.

Mourning Moon, the Lament of Isis

We celebrated a full moon Esbat last weekend, the Mourning Moon. I have to admit I don't attend Esbats as regularly as I should. But our High Priestess is a follower of Hecate, and the Greeks had celebrations for her at this time of year. In addition, Nov. 24th is the Egyptian 'Festival of Burning Lamps' for Isis and Osiris. Not only that, there was just a celebration for Bast. So I figured I should attend. During the ritual, I read "The Lament of Isis", from James Frazer's 'Golden Bough'. After the ritual, one of our coveners said she really liked the reading. So I've posted it here.

When Isis and her sister Nephthys found the body of the murdered Osiris, they collapsed beside him. The two Goddess then commenced with this lamentation, which was heard throughout the world, even reaching Heaven and the Underworld:

Come to thy House, Come to thy House.
Oh god On! Come to thy house, thou who has no foes.
O fair youth, come to thy house, that thou mayest see me.
O fair boy, come to thy house...

I see thee not, yet doth my heart yearn after thee and mine eyes desire thee. Come to her who loves thee, who loves thee, Unnefer, thou blessed one!

Come to thy sister, come to thy wife, to thy wife, thou whose heart stands still. Come to thy housewife. I am thy sister by the same mother, thou shalt not be far from me. Gods and men have turned their faces toward thee and weep for thee together...

I call after thee and weep, so that my cry is heard to heaven, thou hearest not my voice; yet am I thy sister, whom thou didst love on earth; thou didst love none but me, my brother! my brother!

No God or mortal ever mourned more than Isis. Even the Nile could not contain her immeasurable tears, causing the mighy river to flood for the first time. (In the lament, Isis refers to Osiris as 'Unnefer' , which means 'Good Being", a title bestowed on the kindly God.)

The words of Isis come to me whenever I recall the events surrounding the untimely death of a friend. I remember her mother crying, "I only wish I could bring her home". Everyone suffers from loss. But I feel we experience the most searing grief when someone is taken from us tragically, randomly, or prematurely. We have all felt what Isis felt: the loss of someone good and dear, taken far too soon, who is actually a part of us.

We thank and honor you, Isis, for showing us that even a Goddess can suffer tragedy. "Come to thy House" you wailed. Like us, all you wished to do was bring your loved-one home.

Pharaohs, Queens, and Goddesses

Brooklyn Museum: Pharaohs, Queens, and Goddesses

March 23–September 16, 2007

A great long-term exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, featuring our darling Hatshepsut, at the newly opened Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art:

...This exhibition is the inaugural biographical gallery show of a series in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Presented in tandem with The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, the exhibition is dedicated to powerful female pharaohs, queens, and goddesses from Egyptian history. The central object of the exhibition is an important granite head from the Brooklyn Museum collection of Hatshepsut, the fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty (1539–1292 b.c.), and one of the 39 women represented with a plate at The Dinner Party. Hatshepsut is featured alongside other women and goddesses from Egyptian history, including queens Cleopatra, Nefertiti, and Tiye and the goddesses Sakhmet, Mut, Neith, Wadjet, Bastet, Satis, and Nephthys...By incorporating multiple objects from the Museum's extraordinary Egyptian collection, the exhibition encourages viewers to make visual and historical connections with the Museum's long-term installation Egypt Reborn, which has additional objects on view pertaining to Pharaohs, Queens, and Goddesses.