Tea at Trianon: The Great Pyramid of Giza

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

Sunday, April 11, 2021

The Great Pyramid of Giza

From Insider:

Hughes cited a 4,500-year-old journal by a man named Merer, which was discovered by French archaeologists in a cave near the Red Sea. Merer's account, written with hieroglyphs on papyrus, described the months he spent working on the majestic pyramid.

Among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Great Pyramid of Giza comprised two million casing stones and purportedly took about 20 years to be completed. Thanks to the diary, experts now know that the original stones were polished white, and "would [have] gleamed in the Egyptian Sun," Hughes detailed in the documentary. Merer explained that the pristinely white limestone blocks were carried from 15 miles away along the Nile. It would take a day for the stones to be ferried to the destination, he wrote in his journal. (Read more.)