Tea at Trianon: The Abydos Landscape

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

Monday, May 25, 2020

The Abydos Landscape

From Ancient Origins:

Ramses II, or the Great (c. 1303– 1213 BC), was the third pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt and is often regarded as the greatest and most powerful pharaoh of the New Kingdom. During recent excavation work carried out at the southwest corner of the Temple of Ramses II in Abydos, archaeologists from the New York University-ISAW , led by Sameh Iskander, discovered the temple’s foundation deposits in niches cut into the walls of the storerooms, including twelve sacrificial votive bulls’ heads and bones dated to the Ptolemaic period.

A November 2019 Ancient Origins article described Abydos as having a “special place” in the sacred landscape of ancient Egypt, and it was an important cult center for Osiris where myths say the supreme god was buried. Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the new archaeological finds were buried in 1279 BC at the time of the construction ceremony and besides the bulls’ heads a complete skeleton of a bull was found carefully buried under the floor of the temple palace.

According to a report in Ahram, the researchers found 10 large mud-brick storerooms attached to the temple palace, which were originally roofed with vaulted brick ceilings and served the population as granaries (grain stores) and to keep other temple provisions and offerings. They also recovered small copper construction tool models, pottery vessels decorated with hieratic inscriptions, oval shaped quartzite grindstones, food offerings and plaques inscribed with Ramses II's throne name painted in blue or green. (Read more.)