𓆫𓂋𓁐 (12. 163)

A rather spectacular tomb (mastaba) was recently excavated in the necropolis of Saqqara in the Giza campus, a burial grounds for the royalty of the ancient capital of Memphis dating to the Sixth Dynasty (circa mid 2200 BC) of one multi-hyphenate called Teti Neb Fu, via Strange Company. Richly decorated with relief depictions of everyday life as well as a catalog of offerings and grave-goods (the body and the originals were looted ages ago) and tools of the trade, the individual was not only physician to the pharaoh and chief doctor of the court, inscriptions also bestow the titles great dentist, director of pharmabotany and priest and magician of the goddess Selket (the scorpion deity who governed venom and its antidotes), providing insight into the intersectionality of religious ritual and medicine of the Old Kingdom. The Swiss-led archaeological dig has uncovered other sites in the area in recent years including one of the vizier Uni with an extensive autobiographical record of his administrative and political achievements, greatly augmenting the knowledge and chronology of the time. More from The History Blog at the link above.

ⲡⲁⲡⲁ ⲁⲃⲃⲁ ϣⲉⲛⲟⲩϯ ⲅ̅ (12. 136)

Having rescinded the presidential decree recognising him as the patriarch of the See of Saint Mark by Anwar Sadat after a contentious decade for the secular and spiritual leadership of Egypt, the president seen as stoking violence between Islamic and Christian communities to solidify his own power, and banished to the remote desert monastery of St Pishoy, on this day in 1985 the successor administration of Hosni Mubarak fully restored Pope Shenouda III to his original office. Committed to ecumenism and healing religious schisms through interdenominational dialogue, Shenouda met the Bishop of Rome in 1973, the first such summit in fifteen-hundred years, and together with Pope Paul VI forged a path towards reconciliation and was also respected by the Muslim population for his support for Palestinian autonomy and criticism of the Camp David Accords—going on the serve in the papacy for over forty years, until his death in March 2012.

synchronoptica 

one year ago: a survey of overused phrases (with synchronoptica), China in miniature plus the Japanese verses of Auld Lang Syne

seven years ago: a robotic DJ, Public Domain Day plus Monumental Trees

eight years ago: the assertion that progress hinges on the unreasonable

nine years ago: more accidental Renaissance art,  a year in full moons plus the Twelve Days of Christmas

ten years ago: plastic coins, songs reimagined as video games, a synaesthetic clock, Martin Luther’s messaging plus motivations for the American Revolution

outline of egypt (11. 483)

Through a series of photographs capturing the outlines of the ensemble of the Pyramids at Giza shrouded in mist, we discover the extensive portfolio of Karim Amr, a young professional whose able to hone and articulate his eye for images and subjects of choice partially by dent of living near the ancient necropolis. The nested silhouettes of the monumental tombs look like computer-rendered backgrounds of an vintage video game. Much more at the links above.

synchronoptica

one year ago: NPR leaves Twitter plus a classic from The Fifth Dimension

two years ago: assorted links to revisit

three years ago: Yuri’s Night, the Union Jack, Bill Haley and his Comets plus On the Record

four years ago: a historic vaccination campaign, artist Jim Gary, St Julius, an Eames multipurpose piece of furniture plus a sketching lesson

five years ago: the found of Bauhaus (1919), more on First Flight, outsider artist Emma Kunz plus the first racoons in Germany

aïda (11. 211)

When originally approached by the Ottoman Pasha Isma’il of the Khedive of Egypt to produce an opera celebrating the opening of the Suez Canal—see also, Giuseppe Verdi declined. Later, however, presented a libretto set sometime in the Old Kingdom, a stretch of three millennia, by famed French Egyptologist and archeological authority Auguste Mariette, the composer ultimately conceded. Delayed by the ongoing Franco-Prussian War (see above) that prevented the elaborate scenery and costumes from being shipped from Paris, the opera eventually debuted in Cairo on this day in 1871. Egyptians forces have captured the titular Ethiopian princess and her captor, military commander Radamès, is caught in a love triangle with the pharaoh’s daughter, whose affections go unrequited, his desire for his prisoner and loyalty to his king and country. One of the most famously choreographed scenes is the Grand March from act II, below, when Radamès enters triumphantly, the chorus chanting “Gloria all’Egitto, ad Iside (Glory to Egypt and to Isis),” through the Gates of Thebes and is granted anything he wishes as a reward for his services.

constructive ambiguity (11. 113)

Credited as the prime negotiation tactic of US diplomat Henry Kissinger, employed both as a way to mask an irreconcilable impasse when sides remain far apart on an issue and as a means for both parties to save face and claim concessions from the other. Postponing true resolution is in retrospect disparaged as papering over systemic and deeper conflicts for its tendency for subsequent eruption for a temporary stay. Examples include the Shanghai Communiqué, considered America’s first expression of the one-China policy during Nixon’s visit and the so called “Six-Point Agreement”—both brokered by Kissinger—and the latter signed on this day in 1973 at the Kilometre 101 of the Cairo-Suez highway. At inroads after the first phase of peace talks to end the Yom Kippur War achieved little progress in de-escalation with the encirclement of the Egyptian army by the Israeli Defence Forces and neither side willing to withdraw. Provision B of the settlement was ambiguously worded so as to incentivise further negotiations to go back to status quo, which both sides choose to interpret as favourable to their cause: Egypt as clear mandate that Israel would surrender its claim on their territory and for Israel a disentanglement of belligerents without the obligation for capitulation.

the battle of the chinese farm (11. 060)

Occurring this day in 1973 after Egyptian forces had advanced beyond the Israeli line of defence during the previous engagement, the Battle of the Sinai, ultimately repulsed but with Israel sustaining significant losses, the titular battlefield that marked a turning point in the Yom Kippur War was given the misnomer for an Egyptian agricultural research station equipped with Japanese-made technology and over the next two days managed to push Egyptian forces back across the Suez Canal in one of the deadliest and brutal clashes of the conflict. Plans for crossing and securing a corridor for re-supply and relief were considered too ambitious and exacting with deviations from the established dead-lines resulting in losses for the Israeli Defence Force, but the Egyptians girded the exposed flank of their forward division (as the IDF had hoped, misinterpreting their objective) and were cut of from re-enforcements, causing Egypt’s withdrawal from the Sinai and abandon its attempts to re-establish control over the peninsula.

operation nickel grass (11. 050)

To replace materiel spent in the first four days of the conflict, the Soviet Union began an airlift on this day in 1973 of military equipment to Syria and Egypt that led a coalition of Arab states against Israel (to gain purchase on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal and regain the Sinai) in the Yom Kippur/Ramandan War. The US followed suit with a massive resupply of Israel two days later, and having discovered that Prime Minister Golda Meir had authorised the assembly of thirteen nuclear warheads aimed at targets in Egypt and Syria, a move that was made easily detectable so as to conduce American aid and avoid further escalation, wanting officially to minimise the appearance of involvement. Upon receiving intelligence of this development, US president Richard Nixon ordered the deployment of the Air Force to transport all munitions possible to Israel via the Azores and along a narrow airspace over the Mediterranean to comply with European countries that did not wish to be party to a proxy war between the US and the Soviet Union. Although resupply missions on both sides slowed significantly after the 24 October cease-fire resolution, OPEC leaders enacted an oil embargo against America and her allies.

synchronoptica

one year ago: AI movie posters plus conjuring Swedish nonsense words

two years ago:  assorted links to revisit plus Upstairs, Downstairs (1971)

three years ago: revolutionary China, happy birthday to the Candy Bomber, the moon Triton, the role of sharks in vaccines plus coin-op convenience

four years ago: Dunbar Number, guerilla advertising plus more on noise pollution

five years ago: more on Osaka’s Expo’70 plus a shopping cart that gauges one’s mood

 

la pierre de rosette (10. 886)

An earlier iteration of Egyptomania gripped the public in Europe following Napoleon’s 1798 campaign in the Ottoman Levant to secure the empire’s trading interests and advance “scientific enterprise,” drawing many scholars, a corps of savants that accompanied the expeditionary army to the newly occupied territories and established égyptologie as a distinct branch of archaeology and philological discipline, and whose presence aided the recognition of the importance of the slab bearing inscriptions spotted by Lieutenant Pierre François Bouchard destined for building material to fortify Fort Julien (an old Mameluk outpost), a few kilometres north of the port city of Rosetta—rediscovered on this day in 1799. The stele bears a bi-lingual decree issued in the first century BC on behalf of Ptolemy V Epiphanes (a council of priests confirming his royal cult) and the Ancient Greek text enabled researchers to understand the profane Demotic script and decipher the heretofore mysterious hieroglyphics (Greek for sacred writing). Fellow officer Nicolas-Jacques Conté, inventor of the modern, lead-graphite pencil just a few years prior, devised a way to use the slab itself as a printing block and helped make the text of the Rosetta Stone accessible to world-wide scholarship.

the great belzoni

On this day two centuries ago, and with the express permission of the Pasha of Egypt, adventurer and pioneering archaeologist Giovanni Battista Belzoni became the first person since Antiquity to penetrate and explore the Pyramid of Chephren, the second largest structure of the complex at Giza—though looters from nearly a millennium before had already partially plundered the burial chambers. How the Great Belzoni, as he styled himself, came to be there is a pretty intriguing tale in itself—born one of thirteen siblings to a father who was a barber in Padua—he went to Rome as an apprentice plumber with the intent on taking monastic orders but his career path was suddenly diverted by the occupation of the city by the forces of the Napoleonic armies and abduction of the Pope.
After a stint as a barber in the Netherlands, Belzoni moved to London and found his wife and joined a travelling circus (as you do), incorporating magic lanterns into his acts. After nearly a decade of performing with the circus, they allowed him on the international circuit, touring with shows on the Iberian peninsula and Malta—where he happened to meet an emissary of Ottoman Egypt. Informing Belzoni of the pasha’s public works scheme which included large-scale irrigation and land-reclamation, the sideshow actor offered his expertise in in hydraulics and presented the ambassador with a proposal. Ultimately, Belzoni’s damming project was not undertaken but it was enough to get him to Cairo and a relationship with the governor of the county. After a demonstration of engineering prowess and appreciation for the conservation of artefacts with the successful removal (again with the pasha’s permission), transportation and installation of a monumental bust of Rameses II (at the British Museum) and his exploration was partially underwritten by the British consulate. Belzoni embarked on several excavations, making several discoveries. Contracting dysentery, he died en route to explore a dig underway in Timbuktu.

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The situation in North Africa and the Mid-East is still explosive, and despite progress won there is a distinct and present risk of recidivist tyrannies and back-sliding into chaos. Some protesters’ honeymoons have lost their sheen as police are doing their job of civil policing and concessions, sometimes meaningful, betimes empty, are being offered by leaders of a whole range of vested and divested authority.

People have been inspired towards revolution, though no oppression is exercised in quite the same way—Libya is a very different place than Egypt or Tunisia or Algeria or Jordan or Iran or Iraq or Yemen or Saudi Arabia—and though steady-state strife, disenfranchisement or even civil war is influenced by macroeconomic factors and policy-decisions that have left a younger population disaffected and without many opportunities for a commensurate career, aside from daily staples and small freedoms. Many observers seemed spooked by talk of civil war and the subsequent disruption to oil supplies and overall destabilization that would make it more difficult for carpetbagger corporations to operate there.

I hope that outsiders are not just wishing this away, support tepid at best, to keep cheap oil pumping and promote continued expansion opportunities to export Western luxuries and fast food franchises and to ensure that the standard of living stays low and not too much of the treasure and resources are retained and used in these places. Just like it is billed as a rarity to witness a revolt that was not under the ægis of the forces that spread freedom and democracy in the world, it is likewise billed as unusual to see a civil war starting, as most assume such regional conflicts have always been, some warring tribes in lands with borders jimmied out arbitrarily when the colonial powers moved on to pure mercantilism—and what of that blood and treasure in a decade not so well invested in Iraq as protests begin in Baghdad. Years of war and occupation have left the people with precious little left to loose, and makes the chance ripe to regain and reclaim what was once theirs without meddling, direct or tangential.

cornflower revolution or oh mary, don’t you weep, pharaoh’s army got drown’ded

The establishment is attempting to simonize some fatalistic pronouncements, wresting the revolt from the people and recasting it as a choice, between stability and chaos, which is really no kind of choice. The co-opting of the movement came lightly on a couple of haughty and angry promises and continued, first with the US equivocation and staunch neutrality that transformed into a well-place claim for support and influence, though infinitely deniable and far-removed depending on what proves the most expedient, and then to long-discredited leadership belittling and perverting the very nature and message of the protest—saying it itself had been co-opted by radical elements that were denaturing the people’s grievances.

Seamlessly, these players were introduced and quickly and violently degraded the situation and endangered everyone as clashes escalated and reporting was shut out. The theater and methodology of control was diabolical. Regardless of what factors are being transposed on to this struggle, however, it will not fail. The message has gotten out and this is not abortive, whatever help or hindrance may come. Hopefully, others in the world will find their apathy and tolerance quenched, recognizing without idleness, their own mounting injustices: governments and welfare pawned off to corporate interests, robber barons and carpetbaggers, who are only kept at arm’s length by ransoming one’s livelihood and dignity and liberties to a system that is forever demanding more and more.  Though the usual cover for such activities is Saint Swithin appearing in a burrito or some football game, it is no coincidence that the tempo of legislation has picked up during this crisis.  Surely this is the single most important news story going on now, and all focus is on Egypt, but there are forces who would use this to their peripheral advantage, like the motion to rescind the health care reform that would have brought the greater part of the US on par with the greater part of the world.  That is being presented with a choice that is no choice.