Tea at Trianon: New Discovery at Luxor

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

New Discovery at Luxor

From the BBC:

The coffins, whose brightly-coloured decorations are still visible, were uncovered at the Theban necropolis of Asasif, on the River Nile's west bank. They were in two layers, with the ones on top across those below. The ministry described the discovery as "one of the largest and most important" in recent years. More details will be released at a news conference on Saturday. Most of the tombs at Asasif, which is close to the Valley of the Kings, are from the Late Period (664-332BC) of ancient Egypt. However, there are also tombs from the earlier 18th Dynasty (1550-1292BC), which was the first of the New Kingdom and included the famous pharaohs Ahmose, Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Amenhotep III, Akhenaton and Tutankhamun.Last week, the antiquities ministry announced that archaeologists had discovered an ancient "industrial area" in Luxor's West Valley. The area included "houses for storage and the cleaning of funerary furniture, with many potteries dated to the 18th Dynasty", it said. (Read more.)

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