Tea at Trianon: The Forgotten City Beneath Egypt

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, October 24, 2022

The Forgotten City Beneath Egypt

From History of Yesterday:

Naukratis was partially excavated in 1880 when archaeologist Flinders Petrie found an inscription in ancient Greek. Amphorae fragments, bowls for sauces, and thousands of other Egyptian ceramics were also found. At first glance, one would say that it was not a Greek colony, but the specialists assure us that Naukratis was a Greek city inhabited by a mixed community. During the first excavations, from the end of the 19th century, small statues of Siris and Osiris were also discovered.

There is no more impressive evidence of the interaction between the two cultures that lived in Naukratis than in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. There resides a four-meter statue, which was found in the waters of the lake. Initially, visitors believe it is the statue of a pharaoh. Even though he is dressed like an Egyptian leader, he has rigid arms and was raised in the temple of Amun Ra, around 300 BC, his name according to the hieroglyphs on the back of the statue was Horemheb. (Read more.)