Category: Egypt

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Granodiorite Head Of Amun

Carved in dark granodiorite, this commanding head of Amun bears features closely aligned with those of Tutankhamun, marking it as a royal commission of his reign. Though acquired in Cairo in 1907, the sculpture was almost certainly created for Karnak, Amun’s great temple at Thebes.

The head belongs to the young king’s programme of restoration, undertaken after the upheavals of the Amarna Period, when Akhenaten had defaced or dismantled the god’s monuments. Here, Amun is restored not only in stone, but in presence; his divine image once again fashioned with care, permanence, and royal authority.

Continuously exhibited and widely published since its acquisition, this fragment stands as a quiet testament to Tutankhamun’s role not merely as a boy king, but as a restorer of tradition, order, and the ancient gods.

Tutankhamun and the Restoration of Amun

Tutankhamun ascended the throne as a child, and the reins of power were likely held by senior courtiers and priests, who guided the kingdom back toward tradition after the religious upheaval of the Amarna Period. Born Tutankhaten, “the Living Image of Aten,” the young king soon changed his name to Tutankhamun, signalling the formal restoration of Amun and the ancient pantheon.

Under Akhenaten, Amun’s temples had been closed, his images defaced, and his supremacy deliberately diminished in favour of the solar Aten. The return of Amun restored not only a god, but the balance of divine order, temple economy, and royal legitimacy; an act as political as it was pious.

Amun, Head of the Egyptian Pantheon

Amun rose from a local Theban deity to become king of the gods, embodying creative force, hidden power, and divine authority. Often merged with Ra as Amun-Ra, he ruled not through visibility, but through presence; “the hidden one” whose influence permeated all things.

His vast temple complex at Karnak stood at the heart of Egypt’s religious and economic life, and devotion to Amun underpinned kingship itself. To restore Amun was to restore Egypt’s cosmic equilibrium, where gods, king, and people once more moved in harmony.

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“Copper Chisels and Stone Knives”

Triads of Menkaure

These three schist triads of Menkaure were found by the Egyptologist George Reisner in the valley temple of Menkaure near his pyramid in Giza.

The triads was discovered in 1908 in the valley temple of Menkaure in its own hierarchical group, and 5 were found and it is believed that they were eight as there are eight places allocated for them there, in the eight corridors of the temple.

1- In this triad, the king can be seen standing, the muscles of his body well defined, wearing the white Hedjet crown of Upper Egypt, a false beard, and a short kilt. His left leg strides forward, in the conventional manner.

The goddess Hathor, to his right, holds his hand, identifiable by the cow’s horns and sun-disc that surmount her wig, and by the inscription below, which reads, Hathor, Lady of the Sycamore Tree in all her places.

To his left stands a personification of the Diospolis Parva Nome (Hu district) of Egypt, herself identifiable by the standard above her head.

2- Menkaure in the center, accompanied by Hathor on his right, standing with her hands at her sides.

The personification of the Theban Nome stands to his left, presented as a short man with his left leg advancing forward, and his arms down by his sides.

As with the other Nome personification described above, he is identifiable by the standard above his head. The king’s beard has broken off.

3- This piece shows the king accompanied by Hathor and a Nome Goddess with the crouching jackal emblem of the nome of Cynopolis. Menkaure is wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt.

It was believed that they were placed in each region of Egypt, but this is an exaggeration, and the five were found in good condition, except for one completely broken and the other almost intact, and there are now three of them in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and two in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (11.1738 – 09.200.1)

Menkaure was the fifth king of the 4th Dynasty. These are the oldest triads in the history of ancient Egyptian statuary.

Old Kingdom, 4th Dynasty, ca. 2530-2500 BC. Now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. JE 46499, JE 40679, JE 40678

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That’s a View You Don’t Often See

The top of the pyramid of Khafre, with the original casing stones still in place. When the pyramid was new, these fine limestone blocks were polished and bright white in color. It was said you could see them for miles.

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Another View From The Top

No, I don’t believe it was aliens. I do, however, believe these and other megalithic structures were built by an advanced planet-wide civilization that preceded our own and was blasted into oblivion by a cometary impact around 12,000 years ago. See: Younger-Dryas Impact

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The Pyramids From Above

Climbing to the top of any of the Giza pyramids was banned in 1951. Enforcement has been lax, but if caught, one can face up to three years in an Egyptian prison, although it appears more likely that If you’re a tourist who feigns ignorance of the law,  punishment is simply being banned from the country for life.

Thanks to modern drone photography, actually scaling the monument is no longer physically necessary, as shown in the photos above of the “Great” pyramid, or as it’s also known, the  Pyramid of Khufu/Cheops.

While certainly not impossible, climbing to the top of the “smaller” of the two largest Giza Pyramids, the  Pyramid of Khafre (or Chephren as it’s known in Greek). has always been a bit more problematic as the original smooth casing stones are more-or-less intact on the upper quarter of the edifice as shown below:

But again, thanks to modern drone technology, we get a birds-eye view of this Pyramid as well:

 

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So the Other Day I Was Watching This Documentary…

…called Scanning The Pyramids, and they were describing Caliph al Ma’mun’s breaching of the Great Pyramid in the ninth century. (Supposedly the first time it had been entered since its construction was completed ~2000 years earlier.) At the time of the breaching, the exterior of the pyramid was still covered in polished limestone and there were no visible entrances. The original account described how, once they gained entrance, Ma’mum’s men were overcome by the number of bats and their guano found in the inner passageways.

In my mind, this raises an interesting question: if there were no openings to the pyramid prior to al Ma’mun’s exploration where did the bats come from? How did they get inside? We now know there are at least two “air shafts” that lead from both the King’s and Queen’s chambers to the outer casing of the pyramid, but are we to believe that bats somehow managed to fly the hundreds of feet down the narrow shafts that led into the still-sealed chambers?

I’m sorry, but something just doesn’t add up. Either there was another, unknown entrance through which the bats were coming and going, or the inner chambers weren’t sealed up as described.

Just another question about those ancient, enigmatic structures which we’ll probably never have an answer to.

BTW, the documentary is very interesting and worth your time if you’re even slightly interested in this stuff. I also found it not at all surprising that Zahi Hawass, former Minister of State for Egyptian Antiquities Affairs—known for rejecting pretty much anything that does not conform to his self-proclaimned archeological orthodoxy—was looking at the data and outright rejected the findings of the team which claims they had located additional chambers in the Great Pyramid—stating outright that there was nothing additional to be found within the structure and refusing to allow any followup investigations that might definitively settle the matter one way or another.

Infuriating. And as always it makes me wonder what he’s so afraid of finding.

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Living Vicariously Through the Lenses of Others

One place I have wanted to see since I was in my early 20s was Egypt. The pyramids, the ancient monuments…they’ve always been like a siren’s call. Unfortunately, I never made it while I had the energy (and the lithe body) that would have allowed me to navigate the tunnels and chambers of the Great Pyramid, and now it’s all but certain I’ll never see Luxor, or Abu Simbel, or Karnak with my own eyes. With the ongoing instability in the region over the past four decades, I’ve always been concerned about the safety of traveling to the country, but at this point, with the standing of the United States dropping precipitously with each passing day Orange Twitler is allowed to remain in the White House, I think I’d be too frightened to travel at all as a US citizen.

But there is, I discovered, a vicarious alternative to being limited to the stock photos published in books of the ancient monuments, something I stumbled upon quite by accident.

One day I opened Instagram, and one of the many hot, bearded “Instagram models” I follow was posed in front of the Temple Complex at Luxor. I clicked on the geo location link and my screen filled with hundreds of pictures of the temple—with views of the complex I’d never seen before.

Naturally this led me to the great pyramid. And the temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel. And Karnak. Even a generic #egypt hashtag showed me ancient wonders from a perspective I’d never seen before. I was hooked. The multitude of tourist photos posted to Instagram was showing me Egypt in a totally new way.

Here are a few that caught my eye…

























I can’t help but wonder what the people who built these monuments were like. Were they like us, with the same wants, needs, and desires? What drove them? What inspired them? Did they suffer the same petty jealousies and insecurities that we do today? Were they as driven to buy, sell, and own stuff as we are? Despite their apparent lack of “technology” were they actually more advanced in certain areas than we are? Did they possess esoteric knowledge we lack, or were they as clueless about the ultimate meaning of “Life, the Universe, and Everything” as we are now?