How much longer until Egypt explodes?

Ever try to hold the lid down on a boiling pot?

I wouldn't recommend it. Eventually it will explode in your face.

Mubarak must go. He will go. If he does not go soon on his own two feet, he will be carried out in a coffin. That is obvious to everyone in the world but him.

What will come after him will probably not be orderly. Democracy, it has famously been said, is messy by nature. It will certainly not be very friendly to the United States. But we made that bed for ourselves propping up a dictator for 30+years, simply because he said the right words to us while standing on the neck of his people; now we must lie in the bed we have made.

There are casualties great and small in this struggle. Obviously, those who have died or been wounded. Those who will die or be wounded in coming days. Another likely casualty: The long struggle of Egypt to have its ancient antiquities returned from the various museum collections of the world. No sane museum curator with a love of the ancient, will take those requests seriously for a long time to come, not after the heartbreak of the shattered wooden artifacts from King Tut's tomb, now smashed by looters.

Immortality

"nh hr=k nfr ms.t=k rn=k rwd r nb." -- Egyptian Book of Breathings.

Translated, "Thy beautiful face liveth in thy children."

(Latter painting by Christine Daae)

Happy greenery

From Lefebure, commentary on the (Egyptian) Book of the Dead:

"The Field of Rest ... is not only a paradise of plants, but a paradise for plants, without whose exuberance and joy no paradise could be complete."

Six legs to heaven

I have learned today that the ancient Eygptians believed that the souls of the deceased could take the form of a grasshopper, and hence such insects have been found -- long dried-up, of course -- in their tombs.

It was because no other animal, not even a bird, seemed to possess such an amazing ability to transcend space, to go in an instant from crouching upon the earth to riding the sky. Grasshoppers also have a relationship to dawn and dusk, the only time when their eggs will hatch, and can still produce their song even when their sound organs have been destroyed, according to the author who enlightened me on this subject.

Perhaps in that mysterious connection of mythology, the same concept was known in ancient Greece, and lies behind the myth of Tethonis, a mortal granted immortality but not youthfulness, who ultimately vanished except for his voice.

On this cold November night, I am thinking back to a summer morning when I chased a grasshopper through a tall meadow in the middle of the woods, trying to take its picture. It vaulted a thousand times its height to the safety of some pine boughs, then into the air again just as I got the camera close.

Perhaps it was the soul of a celebrity and saw me as the paparazzi that had hounded it in its human phase.

Pondering salt

I am a strange duck, a weird little crumpet. Since I first learned about the elements in the universe, back in school,they have fascinated me ... helium, barium, uranium, etc., etc., the building blocks of the universe.

Tonight I am pondering sodium, one of the crucial elements of life. We all must imbibe of this metal to keep our cells humming happily.

Sodium marries carbon and creates soda. Not the brown fizzy stuff in a bottle that people drink because they like dental caries. Rather, the white powder that sits in a box in the back of your refrigerator absorbing the stench of onions and old fish.

Soda once led a more glamorous life. For the ancient Egyptians, it served as soap. And it was a vital part of sacred purification ceremonies, for the living and for the dead.

"Thy heart is pure, cleansed is thy front with washing, thy back with cleansing water, thine inward parts with soda and natron ..." (Papyrus Louvre N. 3284, Book of Breathings).

It may seem odd and grotesque to our Western minds, but the Egyptians believed that this soda was the saliva of the gods -- and that, to them, was not a bad thing.

I think about Jesus, next door in Israel, some years later, using saliva in some of his miracles without the recipient or witnesses apparently being horrified, and wonder if similar concepts were at work ... but that is digressing.

Thought for the day, on ancient Egypt

"It is a typically Egyptian practice to give several different symbolic formulations to one and the same event [such as a ritual bath]." -- Piankoff

My book list

A while back, Ms. Trisia expressed interest in my so-called book list.

Here's the first entry:

"LE-01-1. Ancient Egyptian Poetry and Prose
Collection of texts dating from 2800-1100 B.C. Ed. by Adolf Erman. Acq. May 6, 2000, from W&M Bookstore, $6 EV$5
(Consists of: Portions of the Pyramid Texts; Hymn to the Crowns; Morning Hymns; Story of Sinuhe; Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor; Story of the Herdsman; King Kheops and the Magicians; Deliverance of Mankind; Founding of a Temple; War of King Kamose (against the Hyksos); Wisdom Instructions of Ptahhotep, Kagemni, Duauf, Amennemhet, Merikeri, Sehetepibre; Dispute with the Soul; Admonitions of a Prophet; Complaint of Khekheperre-sonbu; Prophecy of Neferrohu; Complaints of the Peasant; Various Secular Songs; Various Hymns; The tale of Two Brothers; The Enchanted Prince, King Apophis and Sekenenre; Capture of Joppa; Concerning Astarte; A Ghost Story; Concerning a King and a Goddess; Quarrel of the Body and the Head; Voyage of Unamun: Exhortations to and letters of Schoolboys; Various Love Songs: Great Hymn to Amun; Hymns to Other gods.)
Reviewed: May-July 2001, Notes on Ancient Egyptian Literature."

In other words, I class it as LE(Egyptian literature), 01 for being the first in its genre, and the second 1 for being the first entry on the list. I bought it during a trip to the College of William and Mary in Virginia -- that was where Thomas Jefferson went to college.

I bought the book in 2000 and read it a year later, with the notes from that reading inscribed in a certain notebook devoted to Egyptian literature.

Not all that interesting of a post, IMHO, but there you have it. If it intrigues some of you, I'll keep going.