Archives for April 2024

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

I’m back! 

Well, sort of. I am physically here, and I had seemed to have adjusted to the east coast timezone, but now I’m drifting to somewhere – maybe half way across the Atlantic?

The first day back I had the pleasure of not having to do anything. Part of my return trip worked better than I expected. I landed at Dulles at 4:50 a.m. and got through Global Entry in no time. (They’ve changed the procedure: no passport, no printed receipt after looking in the camera. You just look in the camera then proceed to the charge officer who looks at you as you stand in line and beckons you over, says something and you are free to go pick up your bags.)

My plan had been to land at Dulles, take the Metro Silver Line to Union Station and catch an Amtrak train to Richmond. I bought tickets for the 6  a.m. and the 9:30 a.m. trains – twelve bucks each if you buy early! The only problem was that on Saturday, the day I landed, the Metro didn’t start running until 9 a.m. Therefore, Uber became the plan, and why go to Union Station? Why not pick up the train in Alexandria? Done. 

I made it to Alexandria with plenty of time to catch the first train. I have to hand it to Amtrak they make simple things hard. I had wanted a schedule of when each of the two trains arrived in Alexandria, and more importantly, did they stop there? I have since learned that somewhere on the Amtrak website there is a way to find a schedule, but I’ll be darned if I could find it.

Likewise, in Egypt if you want to connect to the local airport’s Wi-Fi they want to send you an SMS message, but they will only do it for Egyptian phone numbers. Hey, you’re an airport. People with phones from all over the world are trying to get access to your Wi-Fi. Now, most airlines send you messages about your gate and boarding times to your phone via their app, but what if you can’t connect? Back to signs and in Egypt most signage is in Arabic. This makes finding your transfer gate more interesting. 

I got off from the flight from Luxor at gate G something. Where’s gate F5, my next flight? Well, the only signage in non-arabic says international flights this way. Cool. Found gates F22 to 45. Excuse me where’s F5? Downstairs? Go back the way I came? Thank you. But I need to go through Immigration here? Okay. Why isn’t the line moving? Oh, there’s no one at immigration. Got it. Okay, here come three official looking folks. Great. One is sorting old forms. One disappears, and the only lady does all the stamping and officiating. Through Immigration, where’s F5? Yikes, the sign says “Gate Open” and I’ve only got a few minutes to make the flight. Oh here’s a wooden Kool-aid type stand, Is this F5? Yes? But no one is here. Stand and wait. Here comes someone – business and first class and the something or other flight club members, first. Okay, now group A. I’m group D. I was two hours early to the airport how did I get D? I’m always C or D or group 5. How do you get to be group A? 

On the plane, aisle seat, perfect. Oh no woman in seat B next to me has wide shoulders and is asleep and taking the whole armrest plus a bit. Will I have this for eleven and a half hours? The row in front is open for seats A and B. Can I sit in A? Thank you. Let’s look at the movies, all ten of them. Hum. 1950 Elizabeth Taylor, a few hits from last year, just like the cinema at home – nothing. You know the weirdest thing? On the one hour flight from Luxor to Cairo they showed a silent Charlie Chaplin black and white movie. Last time I was in Luxor I went to my guide’s house and the women were sitting in the big room watching a black and white 50s sci-fi Buck Rogers type movie.

I get to Alexandria, Virginia and I realize I don’t have a ticket. I have a receipt and a reservation number for each train. There’s a man at the freight window and he says he can print one or I can use the Kiosk. I’ll try the kiosk. Thank you. Once again, Amtrak strikes with unintuitive prompts. No, I don’t want to buy a ticket. You want to know where I’m going? Fine. Now you want to sell me a ticket, $63. No thank you. Let’s go around the horn again. And again. And again. Okay, the man at the window said I can print out a ticket. There must be a way. Let’s try this button, which doesn’t say “ticket” or anything like that, maybe it will do it. Whoa! What’s my reservation number and name on the reservation. Do you want a ticket? Yeah. Thank you. I am a god of technology.

Uber home because Shelby is in the midst of more technology for a meeting she’s running. Shower. Fall asleep. Wake up to her in bed with me. How nice. We cuddle. I sleep. Nice.

The next day or two I unpack and put away. Yesterday was the eclipse and we got 7/8s coverage from our back deck. Perfect. I found our eclipse glasses from last time, 2017. And, in the first place I looked! More godliness. Screwed all three ND filters on the camera and I was good to go. Unfortunately, the camera has electronic focus which meant it continually was trying to focus. Yes, there’s a manual focus but … Never mind. I got some good shots. At the height of the eclipse it gets chilly and quiet. Except, that’s when the lawn care guys next door decide to start weed whacking and grass cutting with two loud machines. They finished as the eclipse was ending. Thanks guys. And a shout out to the fella on the motorcycle with little or no muffler who likes to gun it coming down the street. Still the eclipse was great.

I had on my calendar that I had a Zoom meeting at 11 a.m. Turns out it was 6 p.m. CST or 7 p.m. my time. This is unfortunate because I signed up for a class at the Penn Museum that starts at 6:30 p.m. and says it goes until eight, which would eliminate the 7-8 p.m. class. Is the Penn class being recorded I ask the instructor, Simon Martin. He responds – the class isn’t on Thursday but tonight. Yes, I know that. Why is it that you ask one question and you get an answer to another?

Oh well. My plan was to listen to the 6:30 lecture then switch over at seven. 

Let me say that as far as I’m concerned there are two people in the world who are the most facile with Mayan glyphs. David Stuart, who put the final piece in the puzzle of the glyphs. He demonstrated that the glyphs are phonetic much of the time and that the scribes used different symbols to represent the same sound. Once he published his “Ten Phonetic Signs” paper the flood gates opened. I have never seen anyone do what he does. He can just read the stuff. No hesitation. Not only that but he has an encyclopedic knowledge of seemingly every glyph there is and where it is and what it means.

The other person is Simon Martin. Simon co-wrote The History of Mayan Kings and Queens. He has read every stela there is to ferret out the history of who did what to whom when.

Between the two men there is a wealth of knowledge. When I’ve heard either talk they frequently reference the other. Okay so there are 365 days in a year. Both Simon and Dave are doing four lectures/work shops this year. What are the odds that they not only pick the same days to do their lectures, but the same hour? 100% 

However, Simon launched his talk a half hour earlier. I was going to listen to him for 30 minutes then switch over to Dave at seven p.m.

Dave’s lecture was an interesting exercise in trying to figure out where some pre-cast glyphs that had fallen off a wall in a temple in Palenque fit and what was the story they told. Because I had been in Egypt I missed the first Zoom meeting and the follow up Saturday working group (which was held at 11 a.m. Ah ha, that’s where I got eleven o’clock.) I was madly trying to just listen to lecture #1 before #2 and understand the technology we would be using.

Barely made it before Simon’s lecture started at 6:30.

 Having been in the training biz, I have to say, as we used to say (cleverly I might add) “That Simon gives good Vu-Graph.” (Vu-Graph? What’s that you say? Look it up under “rotary phone.”)

Simon’s slides were fabulous and his material clear and really helpful to the kid (that’s me.) I decided to stay. Turned out that his lecture ran til 7:30 and he left a half hour for questions. I cut over to David. He was using software that allowed him to move glyphs into various positions and the gang was considering various possibilities. Could glyph #474 go here? Possibly, but that would mean we need a day sign glyph before it. Do we have one? No. Maybe, it’s missing.

Dave’s knowledge is extraordinary and he makes me think Oh, yeah. I know this stuff. When in fact, I don’t. I can’t tell you how many times David has said, “This is a really important point…” and it makes sense to me when he is speaking about it. However, when I go back and try to replay in my head what he said and why it was important – I have no idea.

But, every time I try to do that replay thing I get a little further along. I understand a bit more.

Less than two weeks before going to Egypt I had been on a David trip. We were walking through Holmul and he commented that we were in the golden age of Maya hieroglyphs. I think he said that it was coming to a close. Most of the big pieces were now in place. It is interesting to me how scholars in the generation before David, and before that, made the same kind of mistakes and assumptions that the Egyptian scholars had made trying to understand the Egyptian hieroglyphs. The biggest thing standing in both the Mayan and the Egyptian scholars way seemed to be their own prejudices and preconceived notions.

I have just finished reading Dendera by José Maria Barrera, who photographed the ceiling of the pronaos of the Dendera Temple. His book not only has wonderful photographs but also explanations of the symbology and concepts illustrated on that hypostyle ceiling. One of the things he pointed out was that the Egyptian hour was not fixed. It worked off the passage of the sun and divided into twelve hours for the day and twelve for the night. Because the daylight changes every day, so do the length of the hours. I wonder how long it took for us to realize that? We still aren’t sure if the day is dawn til dusk or sunrise to sunset. Probably, the former.

When David and I were walking across the site of Holmul, I got a chance to ask him a story he had mentioned to me when we were at Calakmul some years earlier. ( I think it was Calakmul. NO. It was Caracol! ) The story I remember him mentioning to me was in regard to my asking him what was it like at a young age to be doing this glyph stuff.  He had attended the high school next to where my children had gone I felt a connection to the place.

The story he told me at that time was that he had to tell his seventh grade teacher (English or history?) that he wouldn’t be able to do the essay that weekend because he had to give a talk at a Mayan conference. The teacher had a hard time believing that, I think. In my retelling I may have embellished to say he was giving the keynote. I wanted clarification. 

As has happened to me before when I ask someone to retell a story I either get a completely different slant on the story or a different story or the person doesn’t remember and I have to tell them their story.

In this case, I’m not sure if I got the same story with a different slant or a totally new story.

David recounted how he had turned in an essay and the teacher gave him a “C.” Why? Well, it turns out David didn’t quote any sources. The reason being that he was the source. Kind of like when Einstein wrote Special Relativity, he didn’t quote anyone either. He was the source of all of it. In David’s case the teacher didn’t believe that this 7th grader could be the one who came up with all this. This enraged Mary Miller, a well known Mayanist, and upset David’s father, George, who was the cheif archaeologist for the National Geographic. They apparently had a talk with said teacher. David got a reconsideration with a note about he should quote sources. (Hum. Let that be a lesson to you. source: Me and me, and oh yeah that was me too.)

I have to wonder if that’s the same episode from what he told me before or a different one?

And then as I continue re-entry there’s important catching up to do. I’m still behind on The Voice, and other programs Shelby and I watch together. Then there’s the news.

How is it that one man can pull a Bill Murray type laugh in our faces and make a mockery of our system of governance and justice, and we let him get away with it? And most surprisingly people still want to vote for him? Why? Because the other guy is old. Yeah, well so is the liar. Oh the current President hasn’t done enough for you? Well, did the last guy? Oh that’s right he rode the coat tails for three years of the previous President until it all fell apart. How can people be so naive.

I’m back!

April 7, 2024

My daughter sent me a text saying my grandson Emmett asked her why I, Gabba, liked old mamas, and why were they in museums and not outside?

It’s a good question and one that deserves a serious answer. 

There are at least three immediate lessons to learn from this question:

1. Obviously, Emmett is asking about “mummies,” not mamas. However, it is better that you ask the question than not. Yes, your terminology might not be what everyone else uses but so what? Get your question out there. Damn, the terms. Now, I’m not advocating you should continue to speak improperly or use the wrong terminology. However, the job of helping a person learn the proper wording is that of others. Parents and elders may think a child’s ill conceived words are cute. However, the child will not forgive you if you don’t tell them the truth, the actual word. On at least two occasions I have heard how a young woman went to a fancy Italian restaurant and overwhelmed by the occasion decided to play it safe and ordered “Pasquetti.” Her friends laughed at her. Her first thought was “Thanks Mom.” Why didn’t mom or dad tell her it’s “spaghetti?” I guess they thought it was cute. But when you are seventeen and sitting in a restaurant on prom night it’s not cute. And another pet peeve of mine is people, especially teachers, talking to kids in a baby talk voice. How do you expect them to learn how to speak correctly if they don’t hear proper diction ad speech?

2. Emmett’s use of the term momas lead him to a conclusion that is incorrect, but proper given his frame of reference. Again, helping him understand what is being talked about will not doubt help him to realize why.

3. The fundamental question being raised by my grandson is an age old one. “Why?” or perhaps “Who cares?”

I’ve heard it voiced different ways but it comes down to “So what?” These questions are fundamental ones.

Let me begin by giving the answer Sir Edmund Hillary gave when asked why he climbed Mt. Everest, “Because it is there.”

I think people have a sense of wanting to know, to understand, and to do that they must. To go on quests to understand. What will it teach us? We don’t know until we go. It is only when standing atop the moutain that we get a glimpse. 

Those who seek that glimpse, that understanding, are the ones who can change the world, and by that I mean change our understanding of the world and how it works, (or worked at one time.)

Civilization and its changes over time is keen to our understanding of ourselves and how to form “more perfect” means of living together. Various forms of governance have been tried. Most are more beneficial to a few. Those at the top of these systems use various forms of coersion to keep it that way: religion, armies, courts, police, customs, stories and myths. All these things can be used to keep power, especially if you have the ability to control the outcome.

If you want to create a system that benefits the most people then you need to make sure no one has absolute authority. It’s a tricky business and prone to failure. It depends on honesty and the truth.

So why do I like old mamas? Old mummies give us a hint into the past. Into a system of belief that although changed over time, never really questioned the fundamental ideas. The ideas that the Egyptian had thousands of years ago, and held for thousands of years, still are with us today and influence our culture, our religions, and our very sense of who we are. It is worth learning to learn who we are and where we came from.

Can we do better? I don’t know. I’m not sure. Yes, I guess we could. Will we? That is the question.

Friday, April 5, 2024

I was “tombed out” three days ago.  I could have done more. Gone somewhere. Done something. But I didn’t. I hung out at the hotel. Rested and began the process of unloading my cameras to a disk drive.

I am beginning to understand the flow of this place. The morning light, the air – cool – giving way to hot, the quiet interrupted by the clarion call of the loud speakers of the mosques.

There is much to study and learn. I am now at the point where I recognize most of the scenes in a tomb. Like the Stations of the Cross or an artist’s painting of The Annunciation, these scenes are stylized and one can look for the same elements in each. There’s “The Weighing of the Heart.” “There’s the dead as Osiris,” “Anubis overlooking the mummy”, “The Opening of the Mouth ceremony,” etc.

What I keep asking myself, Did anyone ever question these ideas?

The short answer I have gotten is, “No.”

There’s also the problem that it all doesn’t make logical sense, but that doesn’t seem to be an issue.

But isn’t that true of most, if not all, religions? Isn’t there something in every religion that says, “you gotta believe!” even if every sense in your body says, “What? No.”?

How many religions have their savior rising from the dead or returning? Last count I had was five.

And what’s with The Lamb of God business? I never understood why his dying forgave my sins. I understand the extrapolation from sacrificing an animal to your god, but your own son? How does that work? Well, it doesn’t. And there’s the raising of the dead. A story from Egyptian times, but it was the pharaoh doing the raising. Just a quick substitution.

Then I get to the more scientific questions, which basically ask for evidence. Where’s the winged horse, the magic underpants, the golden: tablets, scrolls, calf etc.? Somehow they always get lost.

Like UFOs – never in focus.

I think what makes a nonsensical belief become believed is grandmothers and maybe parents. Kids ask, “Why?” Constantly, and in frustration a parent will say anything. Grandparents will say something with more conviction. It sticks. I remember hearing of an old woman from West Africa talking about guneroos (maybe my spelling is off. Yeah. Most probably.) They are ghosts that can be anywhere instantly and can be very dangerous. They can cut off your head. Imagine a kid listening to that? Terrified, huddling under their blankets at night.

Or what of the oft-repeated story of “Why did grandma cut the end off the ham?” (We don’t know, but she did, so we do it. Finally, we ask Grandma and she said her oven was small and that’s the only way to make it fit.)

Belief systems can be dangerous things. Look at our world. Three major religions, all descended from the same god; all fighting with each other. It’s the same god!

As I sit on this hotel balcony I see a tranquil world. Outside these walls it is not. The pharaohs’ main job was to bring order to the world. To combat chaos. We haven’t made much progress. There are glimpses of a better world. How many people want to come to America because of what they see on television? Green lawns, big houses, two cars, a clean house, wide streets, and most of all not being under the thumb of some corrupt authority?

Henry Kissinger went to South America and reported back to Nixon. He said that in order to prevent a huge wave of immigrants coming to the United States we needed to help those countries develop systems that ensured people’s freedom, their peace of mind. It would be costly, but cheaper than the alternative. We needed to build democracies in other countries. Did we? Not too much.

But as I travel the world I find people who love the U.S. Who admire what we have. They want the same thing. Can we help them? Yes. Will we? that question remains unanswered.

Thursday April 4, 2024

It’s early morning. The heat of the day has not driven me inside, but it will soon. I can see the hills of the Western Valley from my balcony. The hot air balloons are up and drifting across my view between two rows of palm trees. The garden below is being tended by the small phalanx of gardeners. No doubt the flamingoes have been released from their pen to wander the grounds. Such odd ungainly creatures.

There’s a haze. It seems to be every morning the same. A gray bluish color, I’m not sure if it’s humidity from the Nile or dew or sand. Whatever it is it lends a mystical timeless quality to the view of the deep ravines of the hills beyond. 

Timeless Egypt. I think about the long history of this place. Three periods of pharaonic rule, three periods of tumult. Any one of those periods of tumult are equal to the whole history of the United States. After those times Alexander entered Egypt, became a pharaoh and the Greeks came to rule. The country slipped into decline. The last real hoorah was Cleopatra, then the Romans, Christianity, and finally the Arabs and Allah. The end of ancient Egypt. The knowledge of the hieroglyphs was lost, as was the history. Slowly, it’s been regained. We still struggle to understand what they thought; what they knew.

A few weeks before I left I got a text from Martin. He wrote, “Get this book.” I have learned it is good to follow his advice. I got the book: Dendera, Temple of Time, The Celestial Wisdom of Ancient Egypt by José María Barrera. Barrera is an engineer. He was drawn back to the temple to photograph the Outer Hypostyle Hall. He took thousands of beautiful photographs and stitched them together to form panels to describe the ceiling. He took the time to describe the astronomical progression of the stars and their meaning in terms of the Zodiac and in terms of the motion of the Earth and its 40,000 year wobble.

I had to go to Dendera on this trip. I did so after the group left. My friend, Ahmed Ayasha who calls himself Laird Hamilton because of his resemblance to the Formula One driver, and I left at 6am to beat the heat. We arrived at eight. I spent time wandering and photographing the ceiling. I did a 360 video of the hall. The temple is dedicated to Hathor. She is often depicted as a cow and is associated with fertility. Each column is adorned atop with her bovine features.

This forecourt, called a pronaos, is a hypostyle hall, which means it stands before the naos (the holiest part of any Egyptian temple housing in a small stone box the temple’s god) and hypostyle refers to the fact that it is a stone covered pillared enclosure. This book only dealt with the pronaos, the forecourt. The rest of the temple complex is left for others to describe.

There are 24 columns in the pronaos, split down the middle by a center hall. The interior has nine columns on each side with six columns built into the front wall. The temple sits on a north south axis facing the Nile, which is odd, because most temples facing the Nile would be oriented east west, however, due to the fact that the river takes a huge jog at this point to face the temple toward the river required this ninety degree shift in orientation. As the Nile is the life blood of the country, now and back then, it is always a focus of whatever one is doing.

The forecourt is divided in half by a center hall. The ceiling describes day and night. There are three long panels running north and south on each side. On the east side working out from the center the panels describe day, light, and life. The west panels describe night, darkness, and death. This is in keeping with the Egyptian belief system that the sun rising in the east represents life and rebirth. The west where the sunsets represents the setting sun darkness and death. 

The central hall of the pronaos represents the present. The first east panel (the day side) represents the hours of the day, the west (the night side) the phases of the moon.

Unlike our idea of an hour, which is divided into sixty minutes, the ancient Egyptian hour was based upon the movement of the sun, and as the day lengthened so did the hour. The day and the night were divided into twelve hours. It seems that the day hours began at dawn (not sunrise) and ended at dusk. About an hour before sunrise and sunset. Night time was measured by phases of the moon and or by water clocks.

Each hour on the day side was represented by a boat with the sun (Ra or Re) in the middle of the boat being worshipped by various gods in different forms. The bow of the boat had a creature sitting. Each hour had a specific creature. The early morning hours had a youth sucking his thumb to signify the new young day. As the day progressed other iconic forms took the bow. The helm was steered by various gods as well.

The second panels moving outward represented the decans. Decans are the grouping of 36 stars. Each decan represents ten degrees longitude. The decan is used to measure the passage of time during the night and also the passage of time during the year, as a decan will advance ten days. The Egyptian calendar was made up of three seasons of four months each. Each month being thirty days. Plus a five day period. The decans advanced throughout the year marking the solar calendar.

The third panels, the outlying ones, measure the procession of the Zodiac throughout the year. Because the Zodiac is slightly delayed each year these panels also measure The Great Year (of 26,000 years). For astrological purposes it was important to know what Zodiac sign was behind the sun at the vernal equinox (ie the time in which the sun passes the equator and day and night are equal. March 20th.)  Each constellation having a period of some 2,166 years in that position, known as an astrological age. But the Zodiac falls behind each year a little bit, known as retrograde motion. In ancient times Taurus was the constellation behind the sun at the vernal equinox, then Aries. We are now entering the Age of Aquarius. (thank you Hair.)

This temple was built on the remains of an earlier temple. It was constructed during the Ptolemaic period with Cleopatra being one of the main proponents and finished under the Roman Emperor Claudius.

So there is a mixture of ancient Egyptian symbology along with Roman/Greek Zodiac symbology.

What makes this temple so intriguing is that it is in wonderful condition. There was some defacement by Christian fanatics, but by and large it is in excellent shape. The colors are all original.

It is stunning.

And that is just the forecourt. There is the rest of the temple, but that is a story for another time.