Beautiful Egypt Quotes

Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.

We choose to believe in Ma'at. We create order out of chaos, beauty out of ugly randomness. That's what Egypt is all about.

Sure, the Leaning Tower of Pisa leaned like everyone else said it would, the mountains of Tibet were more beautiful than you had ever expected, and the Pyramids of Egypt stood mysteriously in the sea of sand like in the pictures; yet is it the environment or rather the openness in mindset, that makes up the elusive essence of happiness that we experience when we travel?

Think about Isis,” Jaz repeated. “And Sadie…there is a purpose. You taught us that. We choose to believe in Ma'at. We create order out of chaos, beauty and meaning out of ugly randomness. That's what Egypt is all about. That's why its name, its ren, has endured for millennia. Don't despair. Otherwise Chaos wins.

Why lily?” “It’s the most sacred and beautiful of all flowers in Egypt. They bloom in mud and shine in the darkness like a gift from the gods to remind you that no matter how bad something is, it will get better. That no matter how dark the night, the light will come for you. If you partake of them, they have the power to calm and soothe you, and to heal your wounds.” When he spoke his next words, they were laced with emotion and sincerity. “You are, and will always be, my sšn.

Beautiful sunrise in the far away mountains, painting the wide horizon with vibrant warm colors, among the chill from the morning breeze. ☥

Just then a word floated out through the buzz saw of Zapata-speak: Nefertari. Dan tuned back in. "...the most beautiful tomb in Egypt," Ms. Zapata was saying. "You probably know the queen because there's a famous bust of her." A photo flashed on the screen. Dan raised his hand. "That's Nefertiti," he said. "Different queen." Ms. Zapata frowned. She looked at her notes. "You could be right, Dan. Uh...let's move on." Another slide flashed on-screen. "Now, this is the inner chamber of the tomb, where she was laid to rest." Dan's hand rose again. Ms. Zapata closed her eyes. "Actually? That's the side chamber." "Really." Ms. Zapata's lips pressed together. "And how do you know this, Dan?" "Because..." Dan hesitated. Because I was there. Because I was locked inside the tomb with an ex-KGB spy, so I got to know it pretty well. "Especially since the tomb is closed for conservation," Ms. Zapata said. Yeah. But we had this connection to an Egyptologist? Except he turned out to be a thief and a liar, so we captured him. I came this close to smashing him with a lamp...

It became clear to her that all men, however respectable in appearance and however elevated their position in society, were utter weaklings in front of a beautiful woman. - The Yacoubian Building, p. 42

Nefertiti Speaks: Sands of time released my ancient image to awaken you to the artistry and splendour of Egypt’s Camelot No mystery am I A modern woman trapped in an old time Go forward, beautiful ladies, and create new worlds of artistry and beauty out of the sands of time

if N is large enough, it is virtually impossible to deduce p and q from N, and this is perhaps the most beautiful and elegant aspect of the RSA asymmetric cipher.

She comes closer to me. She is beautiful, in the way lightning striking across a storm-swept sky is beautiful: dangerous and distant.

A fortune teller long ago warned him he would die in Egypt, and she walks like an Egyptian.

Lord Rameses of Egypt sighed Because a summer evening passed; And little Ariadne cried That summer fancy fell at last To dust; and young Verona died When beauty's hour was overcast. Theirs was the bitterness we know Because the clouds of hawthorn keep So short a state, and kisses go To tombs unfathomably deep, While Rameses and Romeo And little Ariadne sleep.

In the moment before I crossed over, I knew that the priests and magicians of Egypt were fools and charlatans for promising to prolong the beauties of life beyond the world we are give. Death is no enemy, but the foundation of gratitude, sympathy, and art. All of life's pleasures, only love owes no debt to death.

The fervor and single-mindedness of this deification probably have no precedent in history. It's not like Duvalier or Assad passing the torch to the son and heir. It surpasses anything I have read about the Roman or Babylonian or even Pharaonic excesses. An estimated $2.68 billion was spent on ceremonies and monuments in the aftermath of Kim Il Sung's death. The concept is not that his son is his successor, but that his son is his reincarnation. North Korea has an equivalent of Mount Fuji—a mountain sacred to all Koreans. It's called Mount Paekdu, a beautiful peak with a deep blue lake, on the Chinese border. Here, according to the new mythology, Kim Jong Il was born on February 16, 1942. His birth was attended by a double rainbow and by songs of praise (in human voice) uttered by the local birds. In fact, in February 1942 his father and mother were hiding under Stalin's protection in the dank Russian city of Khabarovsk, but as with all miraculous births it's considered best not to allow the facts to get in the way of a good story.

Between the onion and the parsley, therefore, I shall give the summation of my case for paying attention. Man's real work is to look at the things of the world and to love them for what they are. That is, after all, what God does, and man was not made in God's image for nothing. The fruits of his attention can be seen in all the arts, crafts, and sciences. It can cost him time and effort, but it pays handsomely. If an hour can be spent on one onion, think how much regarding it took on the part of that old Russian who looked at onions and church spires long enough to come up with St. Basil's Cathedral. Or how much curious and loving attention was expended by the first man who looked hard enough at the inside of trees, the entrails of cats, the hind ends of horses and the juice of pine trees to realize he could turn them all into the first fiddle. No doubt his wife urged him to get up and do something useful. I am sure that he was a stalwart enough lover of things to pay no attention at all to her nagging; but how wonderful it would have been if he had known what we know now about his dawdling. He could have silenced her with the greatest riposte of all time: Don't bother me; I am creating the possibility of the Bach unaccompanied sonatas. But if man's attention is repaid so handsomely, his inattention costs him dearly. Every time he diagrams something instead of looking at it, every time he regards not what a thing is but what it can be made to mean to him - every time he substitutes a conceit for a fact - he gets grease all over the kitchen of the world. Reality slips away from him; and he is left with nothing but the oldest monstrosity in the world: an idol. Things must be met for themselves. To take them only for their meaning is to convert them into gods - to make them too important, and therefore to make them unimportant altogether. Idolatry has two faults. It is not only a slur on the true God; it is also an insult to true things. They made a calf in Horeb; thus they turned their Glory into the similitude of a calf that eateth hay. Bad enough, you say. Ah, but it was worse than that. Whatever good may have resided in the Golden Calf - whatever loveliness of gold or beauty of line - went begging the minute the Israelites got the idea that it was their savior out of the bondage of Egypt. In making the statue a matter of the greatest point, they missed the point of its matter altogether.

When reading the history of the Jewish people, of their flight from slavery to death, of their exchange of tyrants, I must confess that my sympathies are all aroused in their behalf. They were cheated, deceived and abused. Their god was quick-tempered unreasonable, cruel, revengeful and dishonest. He was always promising but never performed. He wasted time in ceremony and childish detail, and in the exaggeration of what he had done. It is impossible for me to conceive of a character more utterly detestable than that of the Hebrew god. He had solemnly promised the Jews that he would take them from Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey. He had led them to believe that in a little while their troubles would be over, and that they would soon in the land of Canaan, surrounded by their wives and little ones, forget the stripes and tears of Egypt. After promising the poor wanderers again and again that he would lead them in safety to the promised land of joy and plenty, this God, forgetting every promise, said to the wretches in his power:—'Your carcasses shall fall in this wilderness and your children shall wander until your carcasses be wasted.' This curse was the conclusion of the whole matter. Into this dust of death and night faded all the promises of God. Into this rottenness of wandering despair fell all the dreams of liberty and home. Millions of corpses were left to rot in the desert, and each one certified to the dishonesty of Jehovah. I cannot believe these things. They are so cruel and heartless, that my blood is chilled and my sense of justice shocked. A book that is equally abhorrent to my head and heart, cannot be accepted as a revelation from God. When we think of the poor Jews, destroyed, murdered, bitten by serpents, visited by plagues, decimated by famine, butchered by each, other, swallowed by the earth, frightened, cursed, starved, deceived, robbed and outraged, how thankful we should be that we are not the chosen people of God. No wonder that they longed for the slavery of Egypt, and remembered with sorrow the unhappy day when they exchanged masters. Compared with Jehovah, Pharaoh was a benefactor, and the tyranny of Egypt was freedom to those who suffered the liberty of God. While reading the Pentateuch, I am filled with indignation, pity and horror. Nothing can be sadder than the history of the starved and frightened wretches who wandered over the desolate crags and sands of wilderness and desert, the prey of famine, sword, and plague. Ignorant and superstitious to the last degree, governed by falsehood, plundered by hypocrisy, they were the sport of priests, and the food of fear. God was their greatest enemy, and death their only friend. It is impossible to conceive of a more thoroughly despicable, hateful, and arrogant being, than the Jewish god. He is without a redeeming feature. In the mythology of the world he has no parallel. He, only, is never touched by agony and tears. He delights only in blood and pain. Human affections are naught to him. He cares neither for love nor music, beauty nor joy. A false friend, an unjust judge, a braggart, hypocrite, and tyrant, sincere in hatred, jealous, vain, and revengeful, false in promise, honest in curse, suspicious, ignorant, and changeable, infamous and hideous:—such is the God of the Pentateuch.

My soul will not sleep For want of my sister The river runs between us And I am sick with loss. My pool is broken By ripples unending, For the wind has blown her far away, The wind has blown her far away. Oh, sister, your perfume Is like honey dropped in water. Like spices and pomegranates, You stain my mouth with longing. My pool is broken By ripples unending; The wind has blown your odor far away, The wind has blown your odor far away. The gods have made your love Like the advance of flames on straw, My longing like the downward stoop Of the falcon in bright flight. My pool is broken By ripples unending. I will fly to you on wind far away, I will fly to you on wind far away. I am a hunted goose, a hunted one; The beauty of your shining hair Is a bait to trap me in your net; Your eyes, a snare of meryu-wood. Gratefully I fall Into ripples unending. Hunt me, sister, far away. Hunt me, sister, far away.

The lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.

All of my days in Egypt had been spent in that house, and looking back on them in the night air, I recalled little but good... The painful things... seems like the knots on a beautiful necklace, necessary for keeping the beads in place.

But Scripture says that before they even entered Egypt, Abraham discussed with Sarah the dangers this place posed for a man with a beautiful wife. "When the Egyptians see you...they will say, "this is his wife"; and they will kill me, but they will let you live," he told her (Gen.12:12) Abraham's motives were selfish and cowardly, and the scheme reflected a serious weakness in faith. But Sarah's devotion to her husband is nonetheless commendable, and God honored her for it.

A few of my Aramean ancestors went to Egypt. We grew into an entire nation there. The Egyptians enslaved us and treated us like shit, so we asked Yahweh, our forefathers’ god, for help. He turned Egyptian waters to blood, chased the Egyptians with frogs and insects, leperized them, turned off their sun, killed all their firstborn sons, and finally, he drowned Pharaoh and his entire army in the sea—all to free us from Egypt. Now he gave us this beautiful paradise. So thank you, Yahweh, for killing all the Canaanites and giving us their land! Here is a nice fruit basket for you!

More strange than true. I never may believe These antique fables, nor these fairy toys. Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold: That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt. The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination That if it would but apprehend some joy It comprehends some bringer of that joy; Or in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

I was sent here to be alive. To breathe and sweat and thirst and sometimes cry. And everything that happened to me, everything both great and small, was something I had to learn! There was room for it in the infinite mind of the Lord and I had to seek the lesson in it, no matter how hard it was to find. I almost laughed. It was so simple, so beautiful. If only I could keep it in my mind, this understanding, this moment—never forget it as one day followed another, never forget it no matter what happened, never forget it no matter what came to pass. Oh, yes, I would grow up, and there would come a time when I would leave Nazareth, surely. I would go out into the world and do what it was I was meant to do. Yes. But for now? All was clear. My fear was gone. It seemed the whole world was holding me. Why had I ever thought I was alone? I was in the embrace of the earth, of those who loved me no matter what they thought or understood, of the very stars. “Father,” I said. “I am your child.

I lived through beautiful times, Busayna. It was a different age. Cairo was like Europe. It was clean and smart and the people were well mannered and respectable and everyone knew his place exactly. I was different too. I had my station in life, my money, all my friends were of a certain niveau, I had my special places where I would spend the evening—the Automobile Club, the Club Muhammad Ali, the Gezira Club. What times! Every night was filled with laughter and parties and drinking and singing. There were lots of foreigners in Cairo. Most of the people living downtown were foreigners, until Abd el Nasser threw them out in 1956.” “Why did he throw them out?” “He threw the Jews out first, then the rest of the foreigners got scared and left. By the way, what’s your opinion of Abd el Nasser?” “I was born after he died. I don’t know. Some people say he was a hero and others say he was a criminal.” “Abd el Nasser was the worst ruler in the whole history of Egypt. He ruined the country and brought us defeat and poverty. The damage he did to the Egyptian character will take years to repair. Abd el Nasser taught the Egyptians to be cowards, opportunists, and hypocrites.” “So why do people love him?” “Who says people love him?” “Lots of people that I know love him.” “Anyone who loves Abd el Nasser is either an ignoramus or did well out of him. The Free Officers were a bunch of kids from the dregs of society, destitutes and sons of destitutes. Nahhas Basha was a good man and he cared about the poor. He allowed them to join the Military College and the result was that they made the coup of 1952. They ruled Egypt and they robbed it and looted it and made millions. Of course they have to love Abd el Nasser; he was the boss of their gang.

I'm thinking how beautiful the world is, Eben; and how it keeps on being beautiful--no matter what happens to us. The spring comes year after year, for us, or Egypt; the sun goes down in the same green, lovely sky; the birds sing...for us, or yesterday...or for yesterday...or for tomorrow. It was never made for anything but beauty, Eben--whether we lived now, or long ago.

And suddenly I knew, as I touched the damp, grainy surface of the seawall, that I would always remember this night, that in years to come I would remember sitting here, swept with confused longing as I listened to the water lapping the giant boulders beneath the promenade and watched the children head toward the shore in a winding, lambent procession. I wanted to come back tomorrow night, and the night after, and the one after that as well, sensing that what made leaving so fiercely painful was the knowledge that there would never be another night like this, that I would never eat soggy cakes along the coast road in the evening, not this year or any other year, nor feel the baffling, sudden beauty of that moment when, if only for an instant, I had caught myself longing for a city I never knew I loved. Exactly a year from now, I vowed, I would sit outside at night wherever I was, somewhere in Europe, or in America, and turn my face to Egypt, as Moslems do when they pray and face Mecca, and remember this very night, and how I had thought these things and made this vow. You're beginning to sound like Elsa and her silly seders, I said to myself, mimicking my father's humour. On my way home I thought of what the others were doing. I wanted to walk in, find the smaller living room still lit, the Beethoven still playing, with Abdou still cleaning the dining room, and, on closing the front door, suddenly hear someone say, "We were just waiting for you, we're thinking of going to the Royal." "But we've already seen that film," I would say. "What difference does it make. We'll see it again." And before we had time to argue, we would all rush downstairs, where my father would be waiting in a car that was no longer really ours, and, feeling the slight chill of a late April night, would huddle together with the windows shut, bicker as usual about who got to sit where, rub our hands, turn the radio to a French broadcast, and then speed to the Corniche, thinking that all this was as it always was, that nothing ever really changed, that the people enjoying their first stroll on the Corniche after fasting, or the woman selling tickets at the Royal, or the man who would watch our car in the side alley outside the theatre, or our neighbours across the hall, or the drizzle that was sure to greet us after the movie at midnight would never, ever know, nor even guess, that this was our last night in Alexandria.

America’s patriotic song “America the Beautiful” invokes our spacious skies, our amber waves of grain, from sea to shining sea. Actually, that song reverses geographic realities. As in Africa, in the Americas the spread of native crops and domestic animals was slowed by constricted skies and environmental barriers. No waves of native grain ever stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast of North America, from Canada to Patagonia, or from Egypt to South Africa, while amber waves of wheat and barley came to stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific across the spacious skies of Eurasia. That faster spread of Eurasian agriculture, compared with that of Native American and sub-Saharan African agriculture, played a role (as the next part of this book will show) in the more rapid diffusion of Eurasian writing, metallurgy, technology, and empires.

For her beauty, as we are told, was in itself not altogether incomparable, nor such as to strike those who saw her; but converse with her had an irresistible charm, and her presence, combined with the persuasiveness of her discourse and the character which was somehow diffused about her behaviour towards others, had something stimulating about it. 3 There was sweetness also in the tones of her voice; and her tongue, like an instrument of many strings, she could readily turn to whatever language she pleased, so that in her interviews with Barbarians she very seldom had need of an interpreter, but made her replies to most of them herself and unassisted, whether they were Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes or Parthians. 4 Nay, it is said that she knew the speech of many other peoples also, although the kings of Egypt before her had not even made an effort to learn the native language, and some actually gave up their Macedonian dialect.

What marked the Greeks off from Egypt and India was not an inferior degree of spirituality but a superior degree of mentality. Great mind and great spirit combined in them. The spiritual world was not to them another world from the natural world. It was the same world as that known to the mind. Beauty and rationality were both manifested in it. They did not see the conclusions reached by the spirit and those reached by the mind as opposed to each other. Reason and feeling were not antagonistic. The truth of poetry and the truth of science were both true.

The wretchedness of the masses, and their hopeless condition, had no relation whatever to religion; their murmurs and groans were not against their gods or for want of gods. In the oak-woods of Britain the Druids held their followers; Odin and Freya maintained their godships in Gaul and Germany and among the Hyperboreans; Egypt was satisfied with her crocodiles and Anubis; the Persians were yet devoted to Ormuzd and Ahriman, holding them in equal honor; in hope of the Nirvana, the Hindoos moved on patient as ever in the rayless paths of Brahm; the beautiful Greek mind, in pauses of philosophy, still sang the heroic gods of Homer; while in Rome nothing was so common and cheap as gods. According to whim, the masters of the world, because they were masters, carried their worship and offerings indifferently from altar to altar, delighted in the pandemonium they had erected. Their discontent, if they were discontented, was with the number of gods; for, after borrowing all the divinities of the earth they proceeded to deify their Caesars, and vote them altars and holy service. No, the unhappy condition was not from religion, but misgovernment and usurpations and countless tyrannies.

Sign of Life. Now Pharaoh and his house and the priests in every temple, and indeed all Egypt went mad with joy, though there were many who in secret mourned over the sex of the infant, whispering that a man and not a woman should wear the Double Crown. But in public they said nothing, since the story of this child had gone abroad and folk declared that it was sent by the gods, and divine, and that the goddesses, Isis, Nepthys, and Hathor, with Khemu, the Maker of Mankind, were seen in the birth chamber, glowing like gold. Also Pharaoh issued a decree that wherever the name of the Queen Ahura was graven in all the land, to it should be added the title "By the will of Amen, Mother of his Morning Star," and that a new hall should be built in the temple of Amen in the Northern Apt, and all about it carved the story of the coming of Prince Abi and of the vision of the Queen. But Ahura never lived to see this glorious place, since from the hour of her daughter's birth she began to sink. On the fourteenth day, the day of purification, she bade the nurse bring the beautiful babe, and gazed at it long and blessed it, and spoke with the Ka or Double of the child, which she said she saw lying on her arm beside it, bidding that Ka protect it well through the dangers of life and death until the

sent by the gods, and divine, and that the goddesses, Isis, Nepthys, and Hathor, with Khemu, the Maker of Mankind, were seen in the birth chamber, glowing like gold. Also Pharaoh issued a decree that wherever the name of the Queen Ahura was graven in all the land, to it should be added the title "By the will of Amen, Mother of his Morning Star," and that a new hall should be built in the temple of Amen in the Northern Apt, and all about it carved the story of the coming of Prince Abi and of the vision of the Queen. But Ahura never lived to see this glorious place, since from the hour of her daughter's birth she began to sink. On the fourteenth day, the day of purification, she bade the nurse bring the beautiful babe, and gazed at it long and blessed it, and spoke with the Ka or Double of the child, which she said she saw lying on her arm beside it, bidding that Ka protect it well through the dangers of life and death until the hour of resurrection. Then she said that she heard Amen calling to her to pay the price which she had promised for the gift of the divine child, the price of her own life, and smiled upon Pharaoh her husband, and died happily with a radiant face. Now joy was turned to mourning, and during all the days of embalming Egypt wept for Ahura until, at length, the time came when her body was rowed

Every time he moved, with every breath he took, it seemed the man was carried along by iridescent orange and black wings. She tried to convey how it was like travelling through the inside of a living body at times, the joints and folds of the earth, the liver-smooth flowstone, the helictites threading upward like synapses in search of a connection. She found it beautiful. Surely God would not have invented such a place as His spiritual gulag. It took Ali’s breath away. Sometimes, once men found out she was a nun, they would dare her in some way. What made Ike different was his abandon. He had a carelessness in his manner that was not reckless, but was full of risk. Winged. He was pursuing her, but not faster than she was pursuing him, and it made them like two ghosts circling. She ran her fingers along his back, and the bone and the muscle and hadal ink and scar tissue and the callouses from his pack straps astonished her. This was the body of a slave. Down from the Egypt, eye of the sun, in front of the Sinai, away from their skies like a sea inside out, their stars and planets spearing your soul, their cities like insects, all shell and mechanism, their blindness with eyes, their vertiginous plains and mind-crushing mountains. Down from the billions who had made the world in their own image. Their signature could be a thing of beauty. But it was a thing of death. Ali got one good look, then closed her eyes to the heat. In her mind, she imagined Ike sitting in the raft across from her wearing a vast grin while the pyre reflected off the lenses of his glacier glasses. That put a smile on her face. In death, he had become the light. There comes a time on every big mountain when you descend the snows and cross a border back to life. It is a first patch of green grass by the trail, or a waft of the forests far below, or the trickle of snowmelt braiding into a stream. Always before, whether he had been gone an hour or a week or much longer – and no matter how many mountains he had left behind – it was, for Ike, an instant that registered in his whole being. Ike was swept with a sense not of departure, but of advent. Not of survival. But of grace.

In Bruges he had carried out a work which was anonymous and brought no glory, but was seen as admirable once it had been understood. He was the embalmer of the town. Being dead, it would have decomposed, disintegrated. He had mummified it in the bandages of its inert waters, its regular columns of smoke, with the gilding and polychrome decoration on the facades like gold and unguents on nails and teeth; and the lily of Memling across the corpse, like the ancient lotus on the virgins of Egypt. It was thanks to him that the town stood triumphant and beautiful in the adornment of death. In that garb it would be eternal, no less than the mummies themselves, eternally in funeral finery, which has nothing sad about it, since it has transformed death into a work of art.

Zara slowly reaches forward, touches the Tetragrammaton with her index and middle finger, nothing at first, then an odd sensation, a feeling of divine power and knowledge. “It’s beautiful,” a surge of information overwhelms her senses—she turns her palms face up, as she does they turn transparent to reveal the constellations, “I am that which is not, born from the imperishable stars.” With that said her skin transforms a dark blue, filled with a star-blue sky, photons of rainbow-light encircle her body; she stops dead, lifeless, in a suspended state of animation. Just then she finds herself above, looking down at the pyramid, at herself, the entire universe all stopped dead in single frozen moment of time. And then it is all gone, she awakes in another place, another time-line. Ancient Egypt. The Pyramids of Giza.

On the contrary, Bernier wrote, he had encountered black women who were among the most beautiful in the world: What I have observed as regards the beauty of women is no less differentiated. Certainly, there are lovely ones, ugly ones to be found everywhere. I have seen some real beauties in Egypt, which put me in mind of the fair and famed Cleopatra. Among the Blacks of Africa I have also seen some very beautiful women who did not have thick lips and snub noses. I have encountered seven or eight in various places who were of such an astonishing beauty that they put in the shade the Venus of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome—with aquiline nose, small mouth, coral lips, ivory teeth, large bright eyes, gentle features and a bosom and everything else of utter perfection. At Moka, I saw several of them completely naked, waiting to be sold, and I can tell you, there could be nothing lovelier in the world to see.29

The fall of dusk upon the Egyptian scene is an unforgettable event, an event of unearthly beauty. Everything is transformed in colour and the most vivid contrasts come into being between sky and earth. I sat alone on the yielding yellow sand before the stately, regal figure of the crouching Sphinx, a little to one side, watching with fascinated eyes the wonderful play of ethereal colours which swiftly appear and as swiftly pass when the dying sun no longer covers Egypt with golden glory. For who can receive the sacred message which is given him by the beautiful, mysterious afterglow of an African sunset, without being taken into a temporary paradise? So long as men are not entirely coarse and spiritually dead, so long will they continue to love the Father of Life, the sun, which makes these things possible by its unique sorceries. They were not fools, those ancients, who revered Ra, the great light, and took it into their hearts as god.

Always there had been contacts between that sphere and Joseph’s present one; for the darkly beautiful Ishmael had taken to wife a daughter of the black earth, and from the marriage the half-Egyptian Ishmaelites had sprung, called and chosen to bring Joseph down hitherwards. And many like them traded between the rivers to and fro, and apron-skirted messengers had gone about, a thousand years and more, with letters written on bricks carried within their garments’ folds. But if this Naphtali-nature had always been, yet now in Joseph’s time it was as never before a regular, customary, and developed thing; for the land whither he was snatched and where he lived his second life was definitely a land of descendants: no longer piously self-sufficient and strict as Amun would have it be, but worldly and seeking the pleasures of the world; so that if a Come-hither Asiatic lad had but a cunning gift at saying good-night and could add two and two, he could become the body-servant to a great Egyptian and goodness knows what besides!

If we had no other knowledge of what the Greeks were like, if nothing were left of Greek art and literature, the fact that they were in love with play and played magnificently would be proof enough of how they lived and how they looked at life. Wretched people, toiling people, do not play. Nothing like the Greek games is conceivable in Egypt or Mesopotamia. The life of the Egyptian lies spread out in the mural paintings down to the minutest detail. If fun and sport had played any real part they would be there in some form for us to see. But the Egyptian did not play. “Solon, Solon, you Greeks are all children,” said the Egyptian priest to the great Athenian. At any rate, children or not, they enjoyed themselves. They had physical vigor and high spirits and time, too, for fun. The witness of the games is conclusive. And when Greece died and her reading of the great enigma was buried with her statues, play, too, died out of the world. The brutal, bloody Roman games had nothing to do with the spirit of play. They were fathered by the Orient, not by Greece. Play died when Greece died and many and many a century passed before it was resurrected. To rejoice in life, to find the world beautiful

There once was a female snake that roamed around a small village in the countryside of Egypt. She was commonly seen by villagers with her small baby as they grazed around the trees. One day, several men noticed the mother snake was searching back and forth throughout the village in a frenzy — without her young. Apparently, her baby had slithered off on its own to play while she was out looking for food. Yet the mother snake went on looking for her baby for days because it still hadn't returned back to her. So one day, one of the elder women in the village caught sight of the big snake climbing on top of their water supply — an open clay jug harvesting all the village's water. The snake latched its teeth on the big jug's opening and sprayed its venom into it. The woman who witnessed the event was mentally handicapped, so when she went to warn the other villagers, nobody really understood what she was saying. And when she approached the jug to try to knock it over, she was reprimanded by her two brothers and they locked her away in her room. Then early the next day, the mother snake returned to the village after a long evening searching for her baby. The children villagers quickly surrounded her while clapping and singing because she had finally found her baby. And as the mother snake watched the children rejoice in the reunion with her child, she suddenly took off straight for the water supply — leaving behind her baby with the villagers' children. Before an old man could gather some water to make some tea, she hissed in his direction, forcing him to step back as she immediately wrapped herself around the jug and squeezed it super hard. When the jug broke burst into a hundred fragments, she slithered away to gather her child and return to the safety of her hole. Many people reading this true story may not understand that the same feelings we are capable of having, snakes have too. Thinking the villagers killed her baby, the mother snake sought out revenge by poisoning the water to destroy those she thought had hurt her child. But when she found her baby and saw the villagers' children, her guilt and protective instincts urged her to save them before other mothers would be forced to experience the pain and grief of losing a child. Animals have hearts and minds too. They are capable of love, hatred, jealousy, revenge, hunger, fear, joy, and caring for their own and others. We look at animals as if they are inferior because they are savage and not civilized, but in truth, we are the ones who are not being civil by drawing a thick line between us and them — us and nature. A wild animal's life is very straightforward. They spend their time searching and gathering food, mating, building homes, and meditating and playing with their loved ones. They enjoy the simplicity of life without any of our technological gadgetry, materialism, mass consumption, wastefulness, superficiality, mindless wars, excessive greed and hatred. While we get excited by the vibrations coming from our TV sets, headphones and car stereos, they get stimulated by the vibrations of nature. So, just because animals may lack the sophisticated minds to create the technology we do or make brick homes and highways like us, does not mean their connections to the etheric world isn't more sophisticated than anything we could ever imagine. That means they are more spiritual, reflective, cosmic, and tuned into alternate universes beyond what our eyes can see. So in other words, animals are more advanced than us. They have the simple beauty we lack and the spiritual contentment we may never achieve.

Arnold," she said one day after school, "I hate this little town. It's so small, too small. Everything about it is small. The people here have small ideas. Small dreams. They all want to marry each other and live here forever." "What do you want to do?" I asked. "I want to leave as soon as I can. I think I was born with a suitcase." Yeah, she talked like that. All big and goofy and dramatic. I wanted to make fun of her, but she was so earnest. "Where do you want to go?" I asked. "Everywhere. I want to walk on the Great Wall of China. I want to walk to the top of pyramids in Egypt. I want to swim in every ocean. I want to climb Mount Everest. I want to go on an African safari. I want to ride a dogsled in Antarctica. I want all of it. Every single piece of everything." Her eyes got this strange faraway look, like she'd been hypnotized. I laughed. "Don't laugh at me," she said. "I'm not laughing at you," I said. "I'm laughing at your eyes." "That's the whole problem," she said. "Nobody takes me seriously." "Well, come on, it's kind of hard to take you seriously when you're talking about the Great Wall of China and Egypt and stuff. Those are just big goofy dreams. They're not real." "They're real to me," she said. "Why don't you quit talking in dreams and tell me what you really want to do with your life," I said. "Make it simple." "I want to go to Stanford and study architecture." "Wow, that's cool," I said. "But why architecture?" "Because I want to build something beautiful. Because I want to be remembered." And I couldn't make fun of her for that dream. It was my dream, too. And Indian boys weren't supposed to dream like that. And white girls from small towns weren't supposed to dream big, either. We were supposed to be happy with our limitations. But there was no way Penelope and I were going to sit still. Nope, we both wanted to fly:

The wedding of David and Michal was a glorious affair. Though Saul was normally stingy with his money, he was not so with his daughters. Michal had started the day with a bath followed by a bodily anointing of oil. She wore a linen and silk dress with embroidered cloth of Phoenician purple. Her hair was brushed to a soft perfection and placed beneath her Tyrian style crown of gold. She was bedecked with gold and silver jewelry from Egypt. Bracelets, necklaces, ear coverings and a ring on her nose. She walked through the Gibeah streets in fine calf leather sandals, surrounded by a cadre of dozens of virgin bridesmaid companions dressed in white linen. A band of minstrels led her with rejoicing on tambourine, flute, and lyre. She felt like a queen. She would be a queen one day. She knew that she was marrying the mightiest warrior in all of Israel. The gibborim who had killed the giant Rephaim Philistine, who her own father, the anointed warrior king, could not conquer. All she could think of the entire journey to the palace were the lyrics she first heard her from the lips of her bridegroom upon their first acquaintance. She had never forgot them. They were burned into her heart. He had sung a song of virginal submission to a manly king as a sample of his musical talent to her father. But she knew he had sung those words for her. She knew by the look in his eyes, his unquenchable stare of desire for her. It was like a prophecy. Now those words were coming true, she was going to be living them out any moment. Hear, O daughter, and consider, and incline your ear: forget your people and your father’s house, and the king will desire your beauty. Since he is your lord, bow to him. The people of Israel lined the streets and cheered their beautiful princess as she approached the entranceway to the palace. She could feel her heart pounding out of her chest. Would he sing to her on their wedding night? Would he seduce her with his musical talent before he ravished her? All glorious is the princess in her chamber, with robes interwoven with gold. In many-colored robes she is led to the king, with her virgin companions following behind her. With joy and gladness they are led along as they enter the palace of the king.

As the most perfect subject for painting I have already specified inwardly satisfied [reconciled and peaceful] love, the object of which is not a purely spiritual ‘beyond’ but is present, so that we can see love itself before us in what is loved. The supreme and unique form of this love is Mary’s love for the Christ-child, the love of the one mother who has borne the Saviour of the world and carries him in her arms. This is the most beautiful subject to which Christian art in general, and especially painting in its religious sphere, has risen. The love of God, and in particular the love of Christ who sits at’ the right hand of God, is of a purely spiritual kind. The object of this love is visible only to the eye of the soul, so that here there is strictly no question of that duality which love implies, nor is any natural bond established between the lovers or any linking them together from the start. On the other hand, any other love is accidental in the inclination of one lover for another, or,’ alternatively, the lovers, e.g. brothers and sisters or a father in his love for his children, have outside this relation other conceI1l8 with an essential claim on them. Fathers or brothers have to apply themselves to the world, to the state, business, war, or, in short, to general purposes, while sisters become wives, mothers, and so forth. But in the case of maternal love it is generally true that a mother’s love for her child is neither something accidental just a single feature in her life, but, on the contrary, it is her supreme vocation on earth, and her natural character and most sacred calling directly coincide. But while other loving mothers see and feel in their child their husband and their inmost union with him, in Mary’s relation to her child this aspect is always absent. For her feeling has nothing in common with a wife’s love for her husband; on the contrary, her relation to Joseph is more like a sister’s to a brother, while on Joseph’s side there is a secret awe of the child who is God’s and Mary’s. Thus religious love in its fullest and most intimate human form we contemplate not in the suffering and risen Christ or in his lingering amongst his friends but in the person of Mary with her womanly feeling. Her whole heart and being is human love for the child that she calls her own, and at the same time adoration, worship, and love of God with whom she feels herself at one. She is humble in God’s sight and yet has an infinite sense of being the one woman who is blessed above all other virgins. She is not self-subsistent on her own account, but is perfect only in her child, in God, but in him she is satisfied and blessed, whether. at the manger or as the Queen of Heaven, without passion or longing, without any further need, without any aim other than to have and to hold what she has. In its religious subject-matter the portrayal of this love has a wide series of events, including, for example, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Birth, the Flight into Egypt, etc. And then there are, added to this, other subjects from the later life of Christ, i.e. the Disciples and the women who follow him and in whom the love of God becomes more or less a personal relation of love for a living and present Saviour who walks amongst them as an actual man; there is also the love of the angels who hover over the birth of Christ and many other scenes in his life, in serious worship or innocent joy. In all these subjects it is painting especially which presents the peace and full satisfaction of love. But nevertheless this peace is followed by the deepest suffering. Mary sees Christ carry his cross, she sees him suffer and die on the cross, taken down from the cross and buried, and no grief of others is so profound as hers. Mary’s grief is of a totally different kind. She is emotional, she feels the thrust of the dagger into the centre of her soul, her heart breaks, but she does not turn into stone.

And there too was the cause of his happiness. Never far away, when I glanced over, he was standing in the full sun, and he looked bored, picking up small stones from the track and skimming them at a small bird, then absently rubbing a groove in the sand with the toe of his foot. The new boy, same as the old boys – healthy, young, beautiful and almost certainly stupid. Or clever enough to keep his mouth shut and know that opinions are not required of the emperor’s intimate companion. Those who talked least lasted longest. This one, with his thick, light brown hair, the tall fit body, the averted eyes, looked promising. I suppose he was the age Hadrian’s son might have been. Harmless enough. He had walked to the horses where they stood in their shelter and he was suddenly animated, rubbing their muzzles, letting the beasts lower their heads and push against him, taking a handful of grain which he scooped from the bucket, straight from his hand. Sabina said he had been a groom. He was smiling now, the ordinary beauty of youth transformed into something more special, so perhaps it was true. It was a good thing he liked horses; he would need some friends. At that moment I saw the emperor’s head turn across the earnest group of advisers and his eyes watch the boy as he stroked the animals. Perhaps this boy would do; would keep the emperor happy and occupied while they coped with Egypt.

From the beginning of the trip to Egypt there had been strange rumours. The dark anecdotes which make up much of the story of Hadrian’s stay in Egypt nearly all reflect a deep unease and the gradual emergence of the negative aspects of the emperor’s character. Despite the beautiful companion at his side, it seems that from the time he left Athens in 129 Hadrian was more introspective and more uneasy. How much of the account of the Egyptian tour has grown up as a dramatic framework to what happened next is impossible to clarify, but there was some kind of shadow hanging over the party and the tension was exacerbated by the volatile situation in Egypt itself.

10There was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. 11As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know* what a beautiful woman you are. 12If the Egyptians see you, and think, ‘She is his wife,’ they will kill me and let you live. 13Please say that you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that I may remain alive thanks to you.” 14When Abram entered Egypt, the Egyptians saw how very beautiful the woman was. 15Pharaoh’s courtiers saw her and praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s palace. 16And because of her, it went well with Abram;

Caleb was captivated by its beauty. He had never seen anything so colorful and artistic since he left Egypt so many years ago. Desert living was not conducive to the fragility of beauty. And yet, in this somber justice before him, that beauty became hideously ugly. It was like a smooth and graceful serpent that reared its head to bare its fangs and bite. A flood of terror came over him and he understood, like he had never before, the true nature of beauty without holiness. It was the seduction of the gods. It was the lie of the Garden. And it was evil. Monstrous evil. The meaning of the tragedy before him became clear. The judgment Achan received was not an extreme punishment for a minor misdemeanor. It was not the significance of the criminal act that warranted the consequences. It was the significance of the one against whom the act was committed that made it so serious. This puny created man defied the everlasting Creator of the heavens and earth, and threatened the lives of thousands of his countrymen, and the existence of his nation. The final thought that struck Caleb was that humanity does not consist of isolated autonomous individuals unconnected to others. We are all connected to our communities in inextricable consequences. Our choices and actions affect not only ourselves but also all those around us. It was time to get back to camp. Joshua had planned an immediate second attack on Ai.

nail, which mole was shaped like the holy Sign of Life. Now Pharaoh and his house and the priests in every temple, and indeed all Egypt went mad with joy, though there were many who in secret mourned over the sex of the infant, whispering that a man and not a woman should wear the Double Crown. But in public they said nothing, since the story of this child had gone abroad and folk declared that it was sent by the gods, and divine, and that the goddesses, Isis, Nepthys, and Hathor, with Khemu, the Maker of Mankind, were seen in the birth chamber, glowing like gold. Also Pharaoh issued a decree that wherever the name of the Queen Ahura was graven in all the land, to it should be added the title "By the will of Amen, Mother of his Morning Star," and that a new hall should be built in the temple of Amen in the Northern Apt, and all about it carved the story of the coming of Prince Abi and of the vision of the Queen. But Ahura never lived to see this glorious place, since from the hour of her daughter's birth she began to sink. On the fourteenth day, the day of purification, she bade the nurse bring the beautiful babe, and gazed at it

Also Pharaoh issued a decree that wherever the name of the Queen Ahura was graven in all the land, to it should be added the title "By the will of Amen, Mother of his Morning Star," and that a new hall should be built in the temple of Amen in the Northern Apt, and all about it carved the story of the coming of Prince Abi and of the vision of the Queen. But Ahura never lived to see this glorious place, since from the hour of her daughter's birth she began to sink. On the fourteenth day, the day of purification, she bade the nurse bring the beautiful babe, and gazed at it long and blessed it, and spoke with the Ka or Double of the child, which she said she saw lying on her arm beside it, bidding that Ka protect it well through the dangers of life and death until the hour of resurrection. Then she said that she heard Amen calling to her to pay the price which she had promised for the gift of the divine child, the price of her own life, and smiled upon Pharaoh her husband, and died happily with a radiant face. Now joy was turned to mourning, and during all the days of embalming Egypt

and his house and the priests in every temple, and indeed all Egypt went mad with joy, though there were many who in secret mourned over the sex of the infant, whispering that a man and not a woman should wear the Double Crown. But in public they said nothing, since the story of this child had gone abroad and folk declared that it was sent by the gods, and divine, and that the goddesses, Isis, Nepthys, and Hathor, with Khemu, the Maker of Mankind, were seen in the birth chamber, glowing like gold. Also Pharaoh issued a decree that wherever the name of the Queen Ahura was graven in all the land, to it should be added the title "By the will of Amen, Mother of his Morning Star," and that a new hall should be built in the temple of Amen in the Northern Apt, and all about it carved the story of the coming of Prince Abi and of the vision of the Queen. But Ahura never lived to see this glorious place, since from the hour of her daughter's birth she began to sink. On the fourteenth day, the day of purification, she bade the nurse bring the beautiful babe, and gazed at it long and blessed it, and spoke with the Ka or Double of the child, which she said she saw lying on her arm beside it, bidding that Ka protect it well through the dangers of life and death until the hour of resurrection. Then she said that she heard

Egypt went mad with joy, though there were many who in secret mourned over the sex of the infant, whispering that a man and not a woman should wear the Double Crown. But in public they said nothing, since the story of this child had gone abroad and folk declared that it was sent by the gods, and divine, and that the goddesses, Isis, Nepthys, and Hathor, with Khemu, the Maker of Mankind, were seen in the birth chamber, glowing like gold. Also Pharaoh issued a decree that wherever the name of the Queen Ahura was graven in all the land, to it should be added the title "By the will of Amen, Mother of his Morning Star," and that a new hall should be built in the temple of Amen in the Northern Apt, and all about it carved the story of the coming of Prince Abi and of the vision of the Queen. But Ahura never lived to see this glorious place, since from the hour of her daughter's birth she began to sink. On the fourteenth day, the day of purification, she bade the nurse bring the beautiful babe, and gazed at it long and blessed it, and spoke with the Ka or Double of the child, which she said she saw lying on her arm beside it, bidding that Ka protect it well through the dangers of life and death until the hour of resurrection. Then she said that she heard Amen calling to her to pay the price which she had promised for the gift of the divine child, the price

the holy Sign of Life. Now Pharaoh and his house and the priests in every temple, and indeed all Egypt went mad with joy, though there were many who in secret mourned over the sex of the infant, whispering that a man and not a woman should wear the Double Crown. But in public they said nothing, since the story of this child had gone abroad and folk declared that it was sent by the gods, and divine, and that the goddesses, Isis, Nepthys, and Hathor, with Khemu, the Maker of Mankind, were seen in the birth chamber, glowing like gold. Also Pharaoh issued a decree that wherever the name of the Queen Ahura was graven in all the land, to it should be added the title "By the will of Amen, Mother of his Morning Star," and that a new hall should be built in the temple of Amen in the Northern Apt, and all about it carved the story of the coming of Prince Abi and of the vision of the Queen. But Ahura never lived to see this glorious place, since from the hour of her daughter's birth she began to sink. On the fourteenth day, the day of purification, she bade the nurse bring the beautiful babe, and gazed at it long and blessed it, and spoke with the Ka or Double of the child,

You shine forth in beauty on the horizon of heaven, O living Orb, the

Based on the list in Gardiner's Egyptian Grammar, James P. Allen tells us about W10 as being a variant of N41 which resembles a well with water in it. That is beautifully aligning with my discovery of the link between Egypt and Mecca! Not only that, but phonetically speaking, W10 is 'jab', and this is the exact word for 'well' in Arabic. Looking at the two eyes of Horus embracing the hieroglyphs for water and cup as if there is a message of unity therein leads us directly to the variant N41 referring to a well with water in it. Viewing the two eyes with the Shen (which literally means, to protect) ring in the 'Stela of Harpist and Ra' is a direct reference to the ZamZam well of Arabia. The BenBen is flipped (i.e., to Tawy, to pleat) upside down in it (because it is folded) signifying its link with the well (i.e., Sema). Ancient Egypt yearned and ached for Arabia's heritage and portrayed that in the core of its tradition. After all, 'ZamZam' was protected and kept away from Egyptians' outreach. It became to them as a prayer of hope as in Psalm 33:2, and one can literally see the 10 tuners in the 'Stela of Harpist and Ra' image.

which mole was shaped like the holy Sign of Life. Now Pharaoh and his house and the priests in every temple, and indeed all Egypt went mad with joy, though there were many who in secret mourned over the sex of the infant, whispering that a man and not a woman should wear the Double Crown. But in public they said nothing, since the story of this child had gone abroad and folk declared that it was sent by the gods, and divine, and that the goddesses, Isis, Nepthys, and Hathor, with Khemu, the Maker of Mankind, were seen in the birth chamber, glowing like gold. Also Pharaoh issued a decree that wherever the name of the Queen Ahura was graven in all the land, to it should be added the title "By the will of Amen, Mother of his Morning Star," and that a new hall should be built in the temple of Amen in the Northern Apt, and all about it carved the story of the coming of Prince Abi and of the vision of the Queen. But Ahura never lived to see this glorious place, since from the hour of her daughter's birth she began to sink. On the fourteenth day, the day of purification, she bade the nurse bring the beautiful babe, and gazed at it

all Egypt went mad with joy, though there were many who in secret mourned over the sex of the infant, whispering that a man and not a woman should wear the Double Crown. But in public they said nothing, since the story of this child had gone abroad and folk declared that it was sent by the gods, and divine, and that the goddesses, Isis, Nepthys, and Hathor, with Khemu, the Maker of Mankind, were seen in the birth chamber, glowing like gold. Also Pharaoh issued a decree that wherever the name of the Queen Ahura was graven in all the land, to it should be added the title "By the will of Amen, Mother of his Morning Star," and that a new hall should be built in the temple of Amen in the Northern Apt, and all about it carved the story of the coming of Prince Abi and of the vision of the Queen. But Ahura never lived to see this glorious place, since from the hour of her daughter's birth she began to sink. On the fourteenth day, the day of purification, she bade the nurse bring the beautiful babe, and gazed at it long and blessed it, and spoke with the Ka or Double of the child, which she said she saw lying on her arm beside it, bidding that Ka protect it well through the dangers of life and death until the hour of resurrection. Then she said that she heard Amen calling to her to pay the price which she had promised for the gift of the divine child, the price

One woman appeared everywhere. A barefoot, black-haired beauty in robes of white. She wore strange horned crowns—feathers of gold sprouted from her forehead. The walls told her story. She played board games with the animal-headed monsters, bowed to jackal-faced men and danced among winged serpents. Sunrays enveloped her figure. Her beady white eyes stared from all surfaces. No corner of the underground maze was free of her strange spell.

At the end of the first century of Christian rule, the Colosseum still dominated Rome and the Parthenon towered above Athens. Yet when writers of this period discuss architecture, these aren’t the buildings that impress them. Instead, their admiration is drawn by another structure in Egypt. This building was so fabulous that writers in the ancient world struggled to find ways to convey its beauty. ‘Its splendour is such that mere words can only do it an injustice,’ wrote the historian Ammianus Marcellinus. It was, another writer thought, ‘one of the most unique and uncommon sights in the world. For nowhere else on earth can one find such a building.’ Its great halls, its columns, its astonishing statues and its art all made it, outside Rome, ‘the most magnificent building in the whole world’. Everyone had heard of it. No one has heard of it now. While tourists still toil up to the Parthenon, or look in awe at the Colosseum, outside academia few people know of the temple of Serapis. That is because in AD 392 a bishop, supported by a band of fanatical Christians, reduced it to rubble.

a culture so beautiful—with its golden masks and colossal statues, gods with crocodile heads, and hieroglyphs of whimsical complexity

Man does not like to think his history is short, but so it is; so short that it is the merest instant in the Earth's history. To see this, to put man's life in context with the Earth's, imagine the whole history of the Earth compressed into the six-day week of the Biblical Creation; a scale that makes eight thousand years pass in a single second. The first day and a half of this week is too early for life, which does not appear until about Tuesday noon. During the rest of Tuesday, and also Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and well into Saturday, life expands and transforms the planet: life becomes more diverse, more stable, more beautiful; life makes a home for itself and adapts itself to live there. At four in the afternoon on Saturday, the age of reptiles comes onstage; at nine in the evening it goes offstage, but pelicans and redwoods are already here, lifeforms now threatened by man's wish to have the whole world to himself. Man does not appear on the Earth until three minutes before Saturday midnight. A second before midnight, man the hunter becomes man the farmer, and wandering tribesmen become villagers. Two-fifths of a second before midnight, Tutankhamon rules Egypt. A third of a second before midnight, Kong Fuzi and Gautama Buddha walk the Earth. A fortieth of a second before midnight, the Industrial Revolution begins. It is midnight now, and some people are saying we can go on at the rate that has worked for this fortieth of a second, because we know all the answers. Do we really know that much?

ROSEMARY Beauty and Beauty’s son and rosemary— Venus and Love, her son, to speak plainly— born of the sea supposedly, at Christmas each, in company, braids a garland of festivity. Not always rosemary— since the flight to Egypt, blooming differently. With lancelike leaf, green but silver underneath, its flowers—white originally— turned blue. The herb of memory, imitating the blue robe of Mary, is not too legendary to flower both as symbol and as pungency. Springing from stones beside the sea, the height of Christ when thirty-three— it feeds on dew and to the bee “hath a dumb language”; is in reality a kind of Christmas-tree.

the first were blue like the summer sky at even. Also on her breast was a mole of the length of a finger nail, which mole was shaped like the holy Sign of Life. Now Pharaoh and his house and the priests in every temple, and indeed all Egypt went mad with joy, though there were many who in secret mourned over the sex of the infant, whispering that a man and not a woman should wear the Double Crown. But in public they said nothing, since the story of this child had gone abroad and folk declared that it was sent by the gods, and divine, and that the goddesses, Isis, Nepthys, and Hathor, with Khemu, the Maker of Mankind, were seen in the birth chamber, glowing like gold. Also Pharaoh issued a decree that wherever the name of the Queen Ahura was graven in all the land, to it should be added the title "By the will of Amen, Mother of his Morning Star," and that a new hall should be built in the temple of Amen in the Northern Apt, and all about it carved the story of the coming of Prince Abi and of the vision of the Queen. But Ahura never lived to see this glorious place, since from the hour of her daughter's birth she began to sink. On the fourteenth day, the day of purification, she bade the nurse bring the beautiful babe, and gazed at it long and blessed it, and spoke with the Ka or Double of the child, which she said she saw lying on her arm beside it, bidding that Ka protect it well through the dangers of life and death until the hour of resurrection. Then she said that she heard Amen calling to her to pay the price which she had promised for the gift of the divine child, the price of her own life, and smiled upon Pharaoh her husband, and

(from chapter 20, "Bezalel") "Worship is an art, using the sensory to bring us into an awareness of and attentiveness to the mystery of God. Worship has to do with practicing a way of life that is immersed in the salvation and revelation of Yahweh. Bezalel led the people whom Moses had led out of Egypt into making and worshipping in a sanctuary, a place designed to keep them aware and responsive to a way of life in which all their senses were brought into lively participation in the stuff of creation and the energies of salvation. he designed a worship center, the ark of the covenant, in which all visibilities converged into an Invisibility: Yahweh - a presence, a relationship - who can only be worshipped and never used.

The love of thee is in the Southern Sky; The sweetness of thee is in the Northern Sky. The beauty of thee carries away hearts; The love of thee makes arms languid; Thy beautiful form relaxes the hands; And hearts are forgetful at the sight of thee.

In Australia alone is to be found the Grotesque, the Weird, the strange scribblings of Nature learning how to write. Some see beauty in our trees without shade, our flowers without perfume, our birds who cannot fly, and our beasts who have not yet learned to walk on all fours. But the dweller in the wilderness acknowledges the subtle charm of this fantastic land of monstrosities. He becomes familiar with the beauty of loneliness... the phantasmagoria of that wild dreamland called the Bush interprets itself, and he begins to understand why free Esau loved his heritage of desert-sand better than all the bountiful richness of Egypt.

In the palm tree courtyard of the Villa Vinea, Nubia finished telling Aristo about her adventures in North Africa and Egypt. ‘Amazing,’ he kept saying. ‘That’s amazing.’ The jasmine-scented courtyard was dimly lit by bronze hanging lamps, some of them were reflected in the mirror smooth pool beside them. The silver light of the rising moon illuminated the tops of the four palm trees. ‘Tomorrow,’ said Aristo softly, ‘I am going to gather all the children together and begin to teach them. It’s what I know how to do, and it will keep them busy and occupied. Do you think that’s a good idea?’ ‘Yes,’ said Nubia. ‘That is a very good idea. You are a wonderful teacher, Aristo.’ The air was filled with the scent of jasmine, but as he moved a little closer she caught a subtle whiff of his musky lavender scent. It made her dizzy. ‘Nubia,’ he said softly. ‘I want to tell you something.’ The tone of his voice made her heart begin to pound. ‘Something you said a few days ago . . . about being old enough for love . . . For a long time I thought . . . But then Flavia said . . . and I couldn’t bear to think . . . I’ve been such a fool . . .’ Nubia couldn’t understand what he was saying. So she willed the pulsing roar in her ears to be quiet and when it was, she heard him say: ‘I loved Miriam so much!’ Nubia felt sick. How could she compete with the most beautiful girl in the Roman Empire? A girl whose beauty would never fade or grow wrinkled? She had been right not to tell Aristo her feelings. He would laugh at her. Or despise her. Or worst of all: pity her. In the darkness she felt him take her hand in his. The shock of his touch was so powerful that she almost cried out. ‘You’re trembling again,’ he said. ‘Are you cold?’ ‘No,’ she whispered. She wanted to cry out: Why do you still love Miriam? She never loved you. But I do. I will always love you. But she knew it would be the worst thing she could do. So instead she snatched her hand from his and ran upstairs and groped her way along the dim corridor to the bedroom and threw herself onto the bed. And in the lonely darkness, she wept.

You can take my word for it too that Greece, Egypt, ancient India and ancient China, the beauty of the world, the pure and authentic reflections of this beauty in art and science, what I have seen of the inner recesses of human hearts where religious belief is unknown, all these things have done as much as the visibly Christian ones to deliver me into Christ's hands as his captive. I think I might even say more. The love of those things which are outside visible Christianity keeps me outside the Church. Such a spiritual destiny must seem unintelligible to you. But for this very reason it provides useful matter for reflection. It is good to reflect about whatever forces us to come out of ourselves. I have difficult in imagining how it can be that you really have some friendship in me; but as you apparently have, it may be for this purpose.

There’s this Western desire to connect to something beautiful, abundant, and mythic—like the rose-scented sails of Cleopatra’s ship, all things ancient Egypt, Ayurvedic healing and yoga, traditional Chinese medicine. They yearn to belong to a sensuous past that existed before the colonizer arrived, before the violence and the genocide. But did that past ever exist? Oriental is an erasure of the actual living, breathing descendants of the Orient, the native people, the laborers, the low caste, the massacred, or the enslaved—the very people colonizers believed too inferior to comprehend their own ancient greatness.

You’re in love with the woman who makes a velociraptor look like a family pet?” “I never said I was in love with her!” Connor stops laughing. “Uh-huh. And denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.

Song and the lyric poem came first. Prose was invented centuries later. In Israel, Greece, and China came the primal, model lyrics for two and a half millennia. Read the biblical Song of Songs in Hebrew, Sappho in Greek, and Wang Wei in Chinese and be deeply civilized. You will know the passions, tragedy, spirit, politic, philosophy, and beauty that have commanded our solitary rooms and public spaces. I emphasize solitary, because the lyric, unlike theater and sport, is an intimate dialogue between maker and reader. From the Jews we have their two bibles of wisdom poetry, from the Chinese we have thousands of ancient nightingales whose song is calm ecstasy, and from the Greeks we have major and minor names and wondrous poems. However, because of bigotry, most of Greek poetry, especially Sappho, was by religious decree destroyed from the Fall of the Roman Empire to the Renaissance. So apart from one complete ode, we read Sappho in fragments. Yet there survive fragrant hills for lovers and dark and luminous mountains for metaphysicians. Most of ancient Greek lyric poetry is contained in this volume. Do not despair about loss. You are lucky if you can spend your life reading and rereading the individual poets. They shine. If technology or return to legal digs in Egypt and Syria are to reveal a library of buried papyri of Greek lyrics equivalent to the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Gnostic Nag Hammadi Library, we should be able to keep singing and dancing for ten moons straight. For now, we have the song, human comedy, political outrage, and personal cry for centuries of good reading.

Remember the Incarnation? The almighty Creator God who both pre-existed and birthed our whole universe had already come. Christ already established his kingdom. Remember also how he arrived. It was no military parade! Remember, the royal proclamation of the angels indicate a trudging journey, a smelly donkey, a tiny village. Recall the “No Vacancy” sign and of course, the crowded manger-cave. God, bursting into this dimension, crowning from between a virgin’s legs! God, a helpless newborn, wailing for momma’s milk. God, filling his first swaddling diaper with meconium! God, whisked away at night by a refugee family, barely ducking Herod’s sword, hunkering in Egypt. God came to earth, this way, on purpose! And how God came is itself an essential revelation of his true nature

You can take my word for it too that Greece, Egypt, ancient India and ancient China, the beauty of the world, the pure and authentic reflections of this beauty in art and science, what I have seen of the inner recesses of the human hearts where religious belief is unknown, all these things have done as much as the visibly Christian ones to deliver me into Christ’s hands as his captive. —Simone Weil

We should follow the spirit of the Fhurer in every way. And one thing that would’ve made the Fhurer indignant, if he had known it, is that... mass massacre of seals on the coast of Canada... I’ve seen pictures of it. And it’s more than enough for me. Poor baby seals, so beautiful, such trusting creatures that you can tame them if you like. Just killed. And how killed? A knock on the head, and their skin pulled off while they’re... practically alive. Their skins stolen from them... Trusting creatures that do no harm to anybody... I can see their corpses skinned, lying on the snow in pools of blood. Take away that sight. That’s an awful thing. And what’s even more awful than that, is to think that some Aryan men do it for two and a half dollars each. How can they do it? They are disgracing their race. Every Aryan who does something horrid disgraces his race. Disgraces his children first.

One doesn’t expect history from a Jew. From a Greek, yes—and a Roman. But a Jew.” “What does one expect from a Jew?” “Business, you know. You are a nation of merchants. The hand out all the time, you know. That’s why you are all so improbably rich. Go anywhere—anywhere in the world, and you find your rich Jew.” “We are merchants,” Joseph nodded. “I can’t deny that. Your emperors wear the purple because Jews crush the shell and extract the dye, and because Jewish ships bring the dye to Thrace to dye the cotton there, and other Jews buy the cotton cloth in Egypt. By virtue of the same, your silk tunic exists because Jewish caravans trade between here and Cathay, and the beautiful bronze clasp you wear, with the hawk emblazoned on it, exists because a Jewish trading station and synagogue has flourished in Cornwall for a hundred years before ever a Roman set foot in Britain, and because Jewish supercargoes directed Phoenician shipping into the tin trade before certain other peoples ever learned that bronze was an alloy of copper and tin. We create wealth, my dear procurator; we don’t steal it.

Nevertheless, I had recommended a diet of bull’s testicles fried in honey and counselled him to find the most beautiful virgin in Egypt and take her to his marriage-bed within a year of the first flowering of her woman’s moon.

Aa, Eye, EE, Ou, Uh (Ay EAO - Oh Hail) Hidden God Repeat first part that begins "Guardians of the House etc." Return to the North 2. "I summon you, Headless One, Who created earth and heaven, Who created night and day, You who created light and darkness; You are Unas, the beautiful whom none has ever seen; You are Iabas; You are Iapos;

You have distinguished the just from the unjust; You have made female and male; You have revealed seed and fruits; You have made men love each other And hate each other." "I am Moses your prophet to whom you have transmitted your mysteries celebrated by Israel; you have revealed the moist and the dry and all nourishment; hear me." "I am the messenger of the beautiful Pharaoh Unas This is your true name,

This process was also used on beautiful daggers with bifurcated blades, which look ahead to the Old Kingdom forked instruments known as pesesh-kef used in the Opening of the Mouth funerary ceremony.

Cairo is jazz. Not lounge jazz, not the commodified lobby jazz that works to blanch history, but the heat of New Orleans and gristle of Chicago: the jazz that is beauty in the destruction of the past, the jazz of an unknown future, the jazz that promises freedom from the bad old times.

Fifty years earlier, before its sandstone blocks were carried off to serve as the foundations of a factory in a nearby town, the ruins of a little temple had stood upon that hill. And it was there, in the footings of a vanished temple, by the remnants of a prehistoric shrine, that Quibell and Green uncovered a vast agglomeration of courtly objects, a cache such as had not been seen before and has never since been equalled in all of Egypt: a pair of beautiful life-sized pharaonic statues made of sheets of beaten copper; a golden image of a hawk with glittering obsidian eyes still standing in its ancient shrine; two splendidly engraved cosmetic palettes; some prehistoric slaughtering knives; a remarkable collection of stone vases; a heap of mace heads piled like potatoes, some of which were vividly engraved in a manner similar to the cosmetic palettes. And in amongst all this, suffused by ground-water and penetrated by the roots of thorn and halfa grass, lay a mass of ivories which, Quibell remarked, ‘resembled potted salmon’, but on inspection proved to be hundreds of separate and delicately carved objects from the time of the first kings but which were so cemented and decayed that they are still under restoration to this day.

Our ruins are not centuries-old testaments to the civilizations long gone; they are not the mysterious ciphers of Stonehenge or ancient Egypt. They have been birthed in modern memory, documented for all to see. And ruin porn photographs offer no way to understand the decline we’re witnessing; they’re anti-history, even as they embody the past and its decline. A ghost story’s reduction of a complex moment or the history of a building into a series of clichés is reproduced in beautifully staged photos that fetishize the past without truly representing it. Ruin porn is the visual analog of the ghost story.

I write about the fragile beauty of life, good, truth, and love, using humor to find it.

She was the opposite of an ineffectual leader. She helped solidify Egypt's position of power and wealth within the region, she oversaw dramatically beautiful construction projects, she sent expeditions to faraway lands and returned with riches, and she even oversaw military battles.