Disappeared Inca Empire Supremacy CUZCO part 3 September 19, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Cairo, Cuzco, Egypt, India, Map, Sydney, Tickets, Travel Gear, Travelling Bag, Zanzibar , 2commentsAre ceques therefore astronomical? That is part, but only part, of the answer. The chroniclers relate that the Incas had observatories with windows through which they watched points on the horizon, and they also mention sets of towers at various positions along the skyline as viewed from Cuzco, which were used to indicate timings for planting various crops either at Cuzco or at higher elevations up the valley sides at key ceremonial times of year. The Spanish totally destroyed these towers, but years of brilliant archive and field detective work by Zuidema and A. F. Aveni has resulted in the positions of the former towers being identified, and the arrangement of ceques ‘on the ground’ being clarified to a great extent. (more…)
The Pharaoh’s Curse (Wesday, Thrusday and Friday) August 26, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Airlines, Cairo, Hotels , 5commentsWEDNESDAY
Kom Ombo and Edfu, like the fitness of my charges, have been and gone, and now at Esna a few determined explorers rattle by horse- drawn carriage towards the town centre at 6am. Esna, a series of dusty streets and alleys, is still asleep, apart from the odd scavenging tat-eared dog.
The temple sits some fifty feet down in its own huge sandpit, buried for centuries until someone tripped over what turned out to be the top of a pillar. High above, in abrupt contrast, sit the comparatively recent buildings of the town, their roofs and turrets catching the early morning sun. (more…)
The Pharaoh’s Curse August 26, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Cairo, Hotels, The Nile, Tour , 5commentsMONDAY
The blastfurnace heat at Aswan jumps off the tarmac and hits us like a blow as I lead my group towards the terminal building. “Keeping the River rest to clean your teeth?” nudges Doctor Whistler, pointing to my depleted bottle of mineral water. SUDAN v “Aha, that’s right!” I smile, through gritted teeth. My head’s pounding like a sledgehammer, and my stomach feels frail. I touch my pocket for the reassuring packet of Diocalm. Tour Directors aren’t allowed the luxury of being ill. Away from Cairo HQ I’m in sole charge of ninety physicians and their wives on a pre-congress beano — four days of cruising the Nile and doing the sites. (more…)
Secret and Scared Ancient Greece Places: World Heritage Epidaurus August 5, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Cairo, Egypt, Europe, Greece, Hotels, Museum, Rail Pass, Sightseeing, Tickets, Tour, Trails, Travel Gear, Trip , 3commentsWorld Heritage list number 158 Consciousness, Evolved, Geomancy, Myth
The ruined sites of the Sanctuary of Aesculapius (Asklepios), or the Hieron of Epidaurus (Epidavros), is situated in an isolated valley between Mount Velanidhia (the ancient Titthion) to the northeast and Mount Kharani (the old Kynortion) to the southeast, in the vicinity of Ligourio on the Peloponnese Peninsula across the Saronic Gulf from Piraeus and Athens. (more…)
Historic Areas of Istanbul August 5, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Cairo, Cars, Istanbul, Museum, Rail Pass, Sightseeing, Tickets, Tour, Trip, Turkey , 3commentsLittle modern research seems to have been done (or, at least, published) with regard to the ancient geomancy of the Islamic world. We note the occurrence of mosques on a much older alignment in ancient Thebes, and a dramatic alignment of mosques and tombs in medieval Cairo has been recorded,’ but greater contemporary appraisal of Middle Eastern geomantic patterns needs to be carried out. The alignment in Istanbul described here was initiated as a result of preliminary observations made by architect Patrick Horsbrugh,2 and it is presented merely in the spirit of experimental research, to bring previously unconsidered material to the reader’s attention. (more…)
Egypt Ancient Thebes & its Necropolis August 3, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Cairo, Destination, Egypt, Hotels, Library, Memorial, Museum, The Nile , 5commentsThebes is the Greek name given to what was an ancient capital of Egypt, now most simply identified as Luxor, on the east side of the Nile about 370 miles (600km) south of Cairo. On the opposite side of the river is the great necropolis that includes the famed Valley of the Kings. (more…)
Boating in Eire Dolmens and Blarney, feeling of plunging Water, eXhilaration Adventure continue… July 25, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Africa, Air Tickets, Airlines, Asia, Cairo, Cars, China, Round The World, Sightseeing, Thailand, The Nile, Tokyo, Tour, Travel Gear, Travelling Bag, Trip, Victoria Falls , 3commentsLooking nervously over his shoulder in case the priest should hear, he scratched his head and rolled his eyes, all the time muttering that terrible word. Then suddenly he clicked his fingers and spat the word out.
“Pagans! Dere’s an old Protestant graveyard, overgrown now, you understand, up dere, by de old crossroads, as used to be dere.”
I waited patiently while he told me forty different ways to get there. Then, thanking him, I beat a hasty retreat to the sacristy door and knocked. (more…)
Hole in this sand continue… June 25, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Africa, Cairo, Cape Town, Egypt, Flight Schedule, Hotels, Round The World, The Nile, Victoria Falls , add a commentThe portion of sea deemed “safe” for bathing and surfing is marked by blue flags and an umpire’s chair. Does the immaculately-whiteclad, handsome-but-unintelligent umpire decide whether each death by drowning was fair play? He watches black frogmen emerge from the sea; soon they will haul in their golden treasure chests, spraying the worm-bubbling sand with ingots and ducats. Ah! It’s only surfboards they’re groping for. They are just the unchic relatives of those lemon, turquoise and sugar pink rubber-clad surfing super-heroes; those men who crouch, crest, lurch, then swirl in with the spent breakers and scrabble ignominiously at your feet. (more…)
Hole in this sand June 25, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Africa, Beach Resorts, Cairo, Egypt, Flight Schedule, Hotels, Round The World, South Africa , add a commentIt is just an ordinary hole, as holes go. Dug in the sand. About six feet by eight feet. Fairly shallow. Just deep enough for four bodies. The beaches of the Côte d’Atlantique, west of Bordeaux, are pock-marked with similar holes.
Occasionally a black Mirage fighter streaks low across the blue sky. A reminder of other times, other beaches, when men crouched, helpless, among the dunes and craters. But these French pilots are probably on the look-out for nothing more sinister than well-oiled, succulent, brown breasts. And the only threat from the Germans comes when, naked and ruthless in pursuit of their volley-ball, they bound over your hole, spraying their recumbent fellow-holiday‑makers with sand. (more…)
In Egypt, Temple as the House of God April 18, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Aquarium, Cairo, Egypt, Memorial, Museum, Restaurant, Round The World , add a commentThe religious life of the ancient Egyptians, at least as far as we can recreate it today, was focused on the temples. The texts that deal with the temple embellish its origin with a series of mythological elements. Thus, a temple was directly connected to the moment of the world’s creation : from the primordial waters of Chaos there emerged a little hill, the first earth, on which the god-creator found refuge (this god varying according to the temple that elaborated the creation myth). (more…)
Egypt Temple of Karnak April 17, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Cairo, Credit Card, Egypt , 5commentsIn fact, Karnak is not a temple; it is a complex of temples. Today’s visitor arrives there easily from Luxor, only a couple of miles away. We have already referred to Luxor as the modern town that grew up where Thebes was; in reality the true ancient center, the heart of the New Kingdom’s political and religious life, must have been Karnak. The first impression one has when crossing the threshold of the first pylon (there are many pylons at Karnak), and finding himself amid the ruins of what was the greatest ancient Egyptian sanctuary, is that he will not be able to make any sense out of it. Even the Giza pyramids, although mysterious looking, have an internal logic; they are closed up in themselves and one intuitively experiences them, even when we don’t understand them. Karnak does not offer this possibility. Walking along the courtyards, rooms, columns, obelisks, statues, and miles of hieroglyphic inscriptions, the visitor soon loses any capacity to link one element or monument with another. Therefore one must return to Karnak again and again. Even then, as we have warned, he must avoid searching among the monuments with aesthetic or rational criteria — in short, modern, Western standards. And we have also said that the true temple of Amon was always the sanctuary that formed the central nucleus. All the various additions made over the course of centuries have their own value per se; they are separate nuclei whose presence is independently justified by ceremonial needs, by new ideological lines, or by new links between the various divinities. (more…)
Tuthmosis III’s New Policies and Karnak April 14, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Art Gallery, Cairo, Egypt, Memorial, Museum , add a commentOn the contrary, the three rooms preceded by the hall formed the same pattern as the Twelfth Dynasty temple. In this way, Tuthmosis III reaffirmed the traditional relationship with Amon. Looking at the new temple from south to north, we see that the colonnaded hall forms a pavilion in which the royal jubilee took place. The eastern part of the temple — with the rooms of Sokaris (the funerary god) and of Amon, as well as the solar rooms — symbolically represented the fate of the king, who rises to the sun from the world of the dead. Osiris the king becomes Horus, but only through the mediation of Amon. (more…)
Other Nineteenth Dynasty Temples April 11, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Cairo, Egypt, Memorial, The Nile , add a commentIn discussing the great cult and ceremonial temples of the Eighteenth Dynasty, we did not explore the mortuary temples of the kings because they have been so poorly preserved. Their outer stones were taken off to be used for new constructions, and their inner cores became submerged by the flood waters and later covered over by cultivated fields. Their poor condition was probably also due to the fact that the further away, in time from the death of the king to whom these temples were dedicated, the more the cult tended to languish and then completely die. No pharaoh would be particularly interested in restoring the mortuary temple of one of his predecessors, and even less so in using the structures again, so that we have few remains of the Eighteenth Dynasty mortuary temples. However, it is known that the plan of these temples, in general, was not much different from that of Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahri ; that is, it had terraces and arcaded courtyards. (more…)
The Significance of Nineteenth Dynasty Temples April 11, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Cairo, Egypt , add a commentWhat can we learn from such a brief examination of the plans of the Nineteenth Dynasty temples? If we focus on the works of Ramesses II at Karnak and Luxor, the two greatest national sanctuaries, we will note one fact above all. Despite the grandiose nature of the constructions, they do not really impinge upon or modify the basic nucleus of the temple. We have already seen how the courtyard and the hypo- style hall constitute the least secret parts of the sanctuary, those open to the public. It is thus clear that the ruler’s interest did not lie in the cult itself, but rather in developing those features that allowed for wider contact with many levels of the population. Obviously, in doing this, the pharaoh had to choose a means of expression that would be much more immediately accessible for the spectators. (more…)
The Monuments in the Shadows continue… April 5, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Cairo, Egypt, Embassy, Europe, The Nile , add a commentWe begin to encounter many Western sources in the fifteenth and, particularly, the sixteenth centuries, when the pilgrims were joined by merchants. The frontiers of the Orient were opened to European merchants at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and the first European ambassadors began to install themselves in Egypt on a permanent basis. This was accompanied by an increase in the number of publications with accounts of journeys to eastern lands, and the taste for the foreign spread among cultivated Europeans. A visit to the pyramids was an adventure that might be dangerous, as there was the risk of being attacked by Bedouins. Despite this, many Europeans went there and then published accounts of their experiences. Among other things, we owe to these hardy adventurers the report of one of the first cases of “tourist exploitation,” on the part of the inhabitants of Giza. Although the Great Pyramid had been open for some time, the natives regularly blocked the entrance after every visit, in order to be able to “open” it up again for the next visitors and thus get a tip. At the end of the sixteenth century, Sakkara was added to the itinerary; the visitors liked to enter the mastabas and unearth the mummies in order to open them up and look for jewels. (more…)
The Monuments in the Shadows April 5, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Cairo, Egypt, Europe, The Nile , add a commentAnd so, little by little, the memory of ancient Egypt weakened in the consciousness of people increasingly dominated by classical culture. With the Arab occupation of Egypt and the spread of Islam that began in the seventh century of our era, the pharaonic past was to be found only in the descriptions of classical authors. For several centuries to come, no European, as far as is known, succeeded in visiting the Nile Valley; therefore we have little information about the Arab period that corresponds to Europe’s Middle Ages. Evidently all the most important pharaonic remains had fallen into disuse and had been more or less buried in the sand or had deteriorated. It is probable that they no longer interested the new conquerors, as they were merely souvenirs of a distant past that did not mean anything to them. It is not surprising, then, that Arab sources speak about them so little, especially those in Upper Egypt. (more…)
Ancient Greece, the Link Between Greece and Egypt March 28, 2008
Posted by flyman in : Africa, Cairo, Egypt, Italy , 1 comment so farThe links between Greece and Egypt developed first through Grecian military interventions during the 26th Dynasty (664-525Bc) to rescue Egypt from the Assyrian yoke, and second by trade. Greek craftsmen and artists helped to restore, albeit for a relatively short time, the architectural characteristics of the Old Kingdom, until, in 525Bc, Egypt fell under Persian rule for the first of two occasions during which a succession of pharaohs failed to establish the type of cultural, religious and political stability that enabled the great building works of earlier Dynasties to be undertaken. The last native pharaoh was Nectanebus II, but Egypt was effectively under Persian control until the arrival in 332Bc of Alexander the Great, whose capital Alexandria became the intellectual heart of Greek scholars and artists. From the stepping stone of Crete in the Mediterranean to the Aegean Sea builders, artists, architects and craftsmen travelled by sea or through Asia Minor and Troy to play a part in one of the most important turning points in architecture.
Although the Greeks followed their predecessors in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Anatolia in establishing their principal architectural works in the service of religion, the revolutionary aspect was rooted in the belief that beauty must be considered as a subject in its own right and that the philosophical search for all things beautiful will naturally lead to the perfect temple. However, the Greeks, like many other early civilizations, were subject to invasions, warring and catastrophes before they settled to build the great monuments that mark the Hellenic and Hellenistic periods (650-30Bc). (more…)
