Goddess Durga Festivities

It's that time of year and festivities for the Goddess Durga are in full swing in India and elsewhere around the world wherever there are Hindus. 

Durga represents the raw, creative force of the Universe; "She" can be benign and benevolent, "She" can be fearsome and destructive.  "She" is often depicted riding a feline -- either a lion or a tiger.  In this, "She" shares similarities with the Goddess Hat-hert (Hathor) of ancient Egypt and the ancient Chinese Goddess Xi Wangmu (Hsi Wang Mu), both of whom, in their earliest forms (before they were "tamed" down over the centuries) displayed feline characteristics and could, in the blink of an eye, turn into fear-inspiring destructive creatures of death.  Hat-hert was the roaring lioness; Xiwangmu had tiger's teeth and claws and leopard's tail. 










From Washington Bangla Radio
The Old Sobhabazar Rajbari Puja | WBRi Kolkata Bonedi Barir Pujo Report
Sun, 10/02/2011 - 09:57   

Calcutta, October 1, 2011 (Washington Bangla Radio) Kolkata embraces few of the best known traditional house hold pujas that can be found in the entire nation. One such puja is of course the Sobha Bazar Rajbari Durga Puja. The puja is celebrated in two houses adjacent to each other.
"Baghbari" owned by Gopimohon Deb was constructed after the original residence was made by Raja Nabakrishna Deb.

Raja Nabakrishna Deb was the famous exponent of Hinduism during the Brahmo Samaj Movement by Raja Rammohon Roy. It was in the year 1757 after the famous Battle of Plassey that this Durga Puja was organized.

Like most of the families this one too has their own sets of rituals. The arrangement for the puja starts from the day of 'Rath Yatra' itself when the the wooden frame work of the idol is worshipped. The Durga idol is made inside the household and the ritual of bodhon starts 15 days before Nabami. For the Deb family, Goddess Durga is nothing else than the daughter of their household idol, Gopinath Jeu.

The devi is placed in 'Ek Chala', decked with silver ornaments. The silver foils which were imported from Germany came through post meaning 'dak' and thus the decoration came to be known as 'Daker Saaj'.

The idol of Sobha Bazar Raj Bari is adorned with gold ornaments like nose ring and 'bindi' which are the only metal used to decorate the goddess. Considered to be one of the oldest pujas in the city now, it is said that canons used to be fired in the initial days of the festival as a part of the celebration. But now, gun shots have replaced them.

Debs' perform a ritual called "Kanakanjali". Gold coins dating to the time of Akbar's reign were thrown at married women with children.

The immersion ceremony is very special and dazzling.

The ritual called 'Tarpan' is performed to let the dead ancestors know of the Puja is performed in the Dashami morning.

The Bisarjan ceremony (Immersion) is a spectacular affair.Women dress in red and white saris while men wear dhotis carrying seven golden umbrellas.
A musical band play along and two Nilkantha birds are released. Around 60 men lend their shoulders to the goddess on her way to the river. Previously the band was hired from Scotch Highlander (Gorar Baddi). The myth behind the release of Nilkantha Birds is quite interesting.

The first Nilkantha is set free to go to Kailash to convey the message of Devi Durga's departure to Shiva.

The other Nilkantha bird is set free in the middle of the river to ensure the message has been conveyed in case the first one fails. After the goddess is immersed in the water then the holy water collected which is called "Gana shanti jal" and it is sprinkled on everyone present.

So get ready for the next five days of fun and merry-making and amid visiting the famous club pujas of the city one should also squeeze some time and taste the cultural past of Kolkata by visiting one of these few ancient households that still worships the goddess of shakti with equal pomp and glory.


This article provides some explanation regarding the different aspects of the Goddess Durga and the rituals involving her celebration (puja):

From The Times of India
Nine leaves make goddess-devotee bond stronger
Shailvee ShardaShailvee Sharda, TNN | Oct 2, 2011, 04.16AM IST

LUCKNOW: Before her formal incarnation in the clay idol, avtaars of Goddess Durga is invoked in nine different leaves. Turmeric for instance denotes Durga, while the paddy plant represents Lakshmi. Kachu (arbi) and Mankachu represent Kalika and Chamnuda respectively, while Jayanti embodies Kartiki, the way Bel bears Shivani. The pious banana leaves are seen as Brahmacharini and red pomegranate leaves remind of Raktadantika.

The leaves come together in a ritual is called Navapatrika. But, the customs of Navapatrika presents a deeper meaning and philosophy. "It not only strengthen the bond between humans and nature, they inspire us to get closer to mother Earth," said Swami Mukhtinathananda of Shri Ramakrishna Math.

"Instead of a clay idol, the goddess becomes an embodiment of these nine leaves to bless her devotees" he added. All these leaves have a medicinal value too. On Shashthi, devotees and priests wake up the goddess in a ritual called Akalbodhan. She is invited through the ritual of Aamantran and provided an Adhibaas or a place to stay with her children through the puja. Usually, the place where goddess stays is a Bel tree. In the evening or early hours of Saptami, the goddess is prepared for a formal incarnation in the clay idol. As a part of the same, she is invoked in the nine leaves, draped in a sari and taken to a pond or river for bathing. Nowadays, water from different sources is gathered near the puja pandal for this purpose. Though the tradition has a universal nature in Bengal, some pandals in the city follow it ritualistically. Ramakrishna Mission's puja is an example.

Director of a national museum, Rajesh Purohit, had studied the ritual anthropologically and found its deep relationship with Chandipaath. "Verses in the Mahatmya chapter of Chandipaath have specific references on the type of leaf associated with a specific deity. I feel amazed realising how aware our ancestors were," Purohit told TOI.

Chandipaath is an important ritual that heralds Durga puja. Commonly its chanting is associated with victory of good over evil. S Bhaduri, of a puja committee in Indiranagar, agrees with Purohit. "The principle that god resides in every single particle on this earth turns true with Navapatrika," he said. Piyali Guha found the element of women empowerment in the ritual. "Strength is not a property of the physically strong. It is a result of will. Even leaves can become a Durga when they join hands," she said.

2011 NFC Championship: Packers v. Bears!

The Bears defeated the Seattle Seahawks in snow flurries in Chicago at Soldiers' Field today, and so it will be the Packers travelling to Chicago next week Sunday to play for the NFC Championship.



Ka statue.

 So much for my vision of the Pack playing the Seahawks for the NFC title.  That vision was based on faulty information, so it could not have been true!  I got suspicious and did an internet search and discovered that the arch-traitor Mike Holmgren is now the "President" of the Browns - bwwwwwwwaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!  He's not coaching the Seahawks any longer, despite the presence of so many Holmgren era players on the roster.

Maybe I knew that already and conveniently forgot it. Ah well - forget the Seahawks.  Matt Hasselbeck has lost most of his hair - okay, I should not laugh...

Packers v. Bears - HOLY FOOTBALL GODDESS!  May the ancient Football Goddess and her Ka be with the Green Bay Packers next Sunday.

Mooooo! The Milky Way, Mother's Milk, Cows and Creation

I've been wanting to write this up ever since last week, when I posted about the ancient Egyptians and the "ox leg" i.e., Big Dipper symbolism they used in their religious iconography as well as their astronomy and simultaneously.  Unknown to each other, Mr. Don in the meantime posted the most amazing photograph of an Old Europe religious sanctuary at Random Round-up.  One-half of the pair of icons in that Neolithic sanctuary is a model of a cow's (ox) head with horns.  Shades of Hathor!

I was so taken with that image that I emailed Mr. Don about it and spouted off about possible connections between Egypt and Old Europe via cow worship!  I don't think he took me seriously, or my email may have put him to sleep.  So, I was gearing up to do some research today when, lo and behold, after I posted here earlier today the entry from Barbara Walker's wonderful The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets about "Convent" - that one was sure an eye opener to yours truly, by the way, geez, I hapened to flip the page over and there is was, an entry on -- COW! 

First, a brief return visit to the November 14, 2010 Random Round-up at Goddesschess - honestly, we did not plan this!  Here is a photo of the reconstructed sanctuary at Parta at the Banat Museum.  Unfortunately, I am not clear by the description whether the "ox" is the female, or the other figure is the female -- the description of the reconstruction is rather ambiguous: 

The monumental statue has been reconstructed based on some fragments discovered, unfortunately very few fragments – thus, fragments of the shoulder of the statue have been very well preserved, the belly of the feminine statue (the Mother statue), the ear and the a part of the ox’s muzzle – based on these fragments the reconstruction of the ox was possible; the feminine statue, because no fragment of the head was kept it was built based on some analogies.



Reconstruction of the Parta sanctuary, at
Banat Museum.

Barbara Walker in her truly remarkable Encyclopedia did all of the research for me.  This is what she wrote under "Cow:"

Goddess Hathor giving sustenance
to young Horus, Temple of Hathor,
at Dendera, Egypt.

Perhaps the most common manifestation of the Great Mother as Preserver was the white, horned, milk-giving Moon-cow, still sacred in India as a symbol of Kali [how about that, Mr. Don, ha!]  Egypt revered Mother Hathor as the heavenly cow whose udder produced the Milky Way, whose body was the firmament, and who daily gave birth to the son, Horus-Ra, her Golden Calf, the same deity worshipped by Aaron and the Israelites: "These be the gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." (Exodus 32:4).

The name of Italy meant "calf-land."(1)  This country too was the gift of the Milk-giver, whom Etruscans called Lat, Arabs called Al-Lat, Greeks called Latona, Lada, Leto, or Leda.  She ruled Latium, and gave her milk (latte) to the world.

All Europe was named after the Goddess as a white Moon-cow, whom the Greeks mated to the white bull incarnation of Zeus.  Her alternative name was Io, "Moon."  Under this name she was presented in classic mythology as a rival of Hera, but patriarchal writers were always setting different manifestations of the same Goddess at odds with one another, posibly on the principle of divide and conquer.  Hera herself was named Io, ancestress of the Ionians.  In her temple on the site of Byzantium she appeared as teh same lunar cow, the Horned One, wearing the same crescent headdress as the Egyptian Cow-goddess.(2)

Herodotus said the milk-giving Mother Hera-lo-Latona was the same as Egypt's Buto, "an archaic queen of the Lower Kingdom."(3)  The holy city of Buto, Egypt's oldest oracular shrine, was known to the Greeks as Latopolis, "city of Lat."(4)  Of course Buto, or Lat, was only another name for Hathor, or Isis, or Mut, or Neith: all represented "the great cow which gave birth to Ra, the great goddess, the mother of all the gods ... the Cow, the great lady of the south, the great one who gave birth to the sun, who made the germ of gods and men, the mother of Ra, who raised up Tem in primeval time, who existed when nothing else had being, and who created that which exists."(5)

The Cow as creatress was equally prominent in myths of northern Europe, where she was named Audumia; she was also Freya, or a Valkyrie taking the form of a "fierce cow.(6)  A semi-patriarchal Norse myth tried to attribute the creation of the world to the giant Ymir, whose body and blood made the universe.  But he was not the first of creatures.  The Cow preceded him, for he lived on her milk.(7)

Earlier myths showed the universe being "curdled" into shape from the Cow's milk. In India, many still believe literally the creation myth known as Churning of the Sea of Milk.(8)  The Japanese version said the primordial deep went "curdlecurdle" (kowororkoworo) when stirred by the first deeities, to make clumps of land.(9)  The ancient near east thought human bodies too were curdled from the Goddess's milk.  One of her liturgies was copied into the Bible: "Has thou not poured me out as milk, and curled me like cheese?" (Job 10:10).

The root of "cow" was Sanskrit Gau, Egyptian kau or kau-t.  Goddess-names like Gauri and Kauri also designated the yonic cowrie shell.(10)  Brahman rebirth ceremonies used either a huge golden yoni or an image of the Cow-mother.  "When a man has for grave cause been expelled from his caste, he may be restored to it after passing several times under the belly of a cow."(11)  The Egyptian Goddess as birth-giver typically wore a cow's head or horns, as she offered her breasts with both hands.(12)  As the nursing mother who gave each Egyptian his secret soul-name (ren), she was entitled Renenet, the Lady of the Double Granary, a reference to her inexhaustible breasts.(13)  The bovine enzyme rennet, used even in antiquity to curdle milk, was also sacred to her.

A favorite Roman emblem of the Goddess was the Cornucopia, Horn of Plenty: a cow's horn pouring forth all the fruits of the earth.  The cow was honored as the wetnurse of humanity, and her image is still inadvertently invoked to this day as an expletive Holy Cow, or a perjorative Sacred Cow.

Notes:

1.  Thomson, 50.
2.  Elworthy, 183, 194.
3.  Larousse, 29. 
4.  Herodotus, 106.
5.  Budge, C.E. 1, 457-58, 463.
6.  Turville-Pette, 256.
7.  Larousse, 248.
8.  O'Flaherty, 274.
9.  Campbell, Or. M., 467.
10.  Waddell, 404.
11.  Frazer, F.O.T., 220-22.
12.  Neumann, G.M., pl. 9.
13.  Larousse, 38; H. Smith, 24. 



The Narmer Palette, c. 3500 BCE, Egypt.  Note the presence of Hathor at the top of both the front and reverse sides.

Hathor: The Miners' Goddess of Ancient Egypt

Al-Ahram has an interesting feature article on a recent reported "theft" of a statue of Hathor. Very strange.
21 - 27 October 2010
Issue No. 1020

The miners' goddess
As world attention was focussed on a gold and copper mine in Chile, it emerged that there may have been a failed bid to steal one of the remaining sandstone statues of the goddess Hathor, the ancient Egyptian protector of miners. Nevine El-Aref accompanied the statues as they were transferred to a Sinai gallery for restoration

Some few thousand years ago, ancient Egyptians made their way overland to the Sinai peninsula -- or travelled there across the Red Sea -- in search of minerals. Their chief targets were the turquoise and copper veins which had been mined in the Sinai mountains since time immemorial.

Once they had achieved mastery over Sinai, the Egyptian overseers set up a large and systematic mining operation at Serabit Al-Khadim in South Sinai, where they carved out great quantities of turquoise which was so highly valued that it became an important part of ritual symbolism in their religious ceremonies. Even today, pure, unveined turquoise is weight-for-weight more costly than gold.

To mine the turquoise the Egyptians would hollow out large galleries in the mountains, carving at the entrance to each as a representation of the reigning Pharaoh who was the symbol of the authority of the Egyptian state over the mines.



This is a temple to Hathor? Not much left, is there.  How sad.

 During the 12th Dynasty, when Serabit Al-Khadim was the centre of copper and turquoise mining and a flourishing trade was established, a temple dedicated to the goddess Hathor was built on top of a massive, rocky outcrop at an altitude of 1,100m above sea level. One of few Pharaonic monuments known in Sinai, the temple is unlike other temples of the period in that it contains a large number of bas-reliefs and carved stelae showing the dates of the various turquoise- mining expeditions carried out in antiquity, the number of team members; and the goal and duration of each mission. From dynasty to dynasty the temple was expanded and beautified, with the last known enlargement taking place during the 20th Dynasty.

To reach the temple the visitor must pass through a sequence of 14 perfectly-cut blocks that form ante-rooms, and even a small pylon, before reaching the central courtyard. At the far end of this courtyard are the sanctum and two grottos, where the deities Hathor and Sopdu were adored and where their images still remain. This part of the temple was accessible only to the priests and the Pharaoh. Regrettably, a British colonial attempt to reopen the mines in the mid-19th century led to some of the reliefs being destroyed.

The site of Serabit Al-Khadim, which sits on top of a mountain 2,600 feet above sea level, was discovered by the British archaeologist Flinders Petrie in 1905. Petrie unearthed several royal and private sculptures, stelae and sacrificial tools dating back to the time of the Fourth-Dynasty King Senefru.

Petrie also found vestiges of the Proto-Sinaitic script, believed to be an early precursor of our modern alphabet. These scripts began with hieroglyphic signs used to write the names of the people who worked in the mines and to keep account of their labours. The signs developed into an "Aleph-Beta" script that recorded a Proto- Canaanite language.

The Serabit Al-Khadim temple resembles a double series of stelae leading to an underground chapel dedicated to Hathor. Many of the temple's large number of sanctuaries and shrines were dedicated to this goddess who, among her many other attributes, was the patron goddess of copper and turquoise miners. As we have seen, the earliest part of the main rock-cut Hathor Temple, which has a front court and portico, dates from the 12th Dynasty and was probably founded by Pharaoh Amenemhet III, during a period of time when the mines were particularly active.

A number of scenes depict the role Hathor played in the transformation of the new Pharaoh into the deified ruler of Egypt, which took place on his ascension to the throne. One scene depicts Hathor suckling the Pharaoh. Another scene from a stone tablet depicts Hathor offering the Pharaoh the ankh symbol, or key of life.

This older part of the temple was enlarged upon and extended during the New Kingdom by none other than Queen Hatshepsut, along with Tuthmosis III and Amenhotep III. This was a regeneration period for mining operations in the area after an apparent decline during the Second Intermediate Period. These extensions are unusual for a temple in the manner in which they are angled, that is to the west of the earlier structure.

On the north side of the temple is a shrine dedicated to the Pharaohs who were deified in this region. There are numerous stelae on one wall of this shrine. A little to the south of the main temple is another shrine, smaller than the one to the north, this time dedicated to Sopdu, god of the Eastern Desert.

Last year the whole site was subjected to restoration and documentation in order to make it more tourist-friendly and accessible to visitors. Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud, head of the central administration for Lower Egypt antiquities, said that the restoration, which took about a year on a budget of LE500,000, removed all the signs of time that marred the temple's walls and reliefs. It also consolidated them and strengthened the fabric and colours of the wall paintings.

Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said that every relief had been photographed, drawn and videotaped on all four sides and then returned to its original position. A site management project is now being carried out.

Early this month, however, with the site almost ready for its official inauguration, the archaeologist in charge of the temple reported that one of the six remaining sandstone statues of Hathor was missing from its original display inside the open court of the temple. The statue, which was erected during the reign of the New Kingdom Pharaoh Amenhotep III, features the lower part of the body of Hathor seated on a chair and holding the ankh symbol in her hand.

Six hours after the reported theft, with the help of the antiquities and tourist police and members of the local resident Bedouin community, the statue was found inside one of the mines tunnelled into the mountains during the ancient Egyptian era to extract turquoise.

Investigations revealed that the statue had not been stolen as was first thought, but had been hidden as part of an ongoing feud between two rival Bedouin tribes. It was the Bedouin themselves who led the police to the hiding place.

Abdel-Maqsoud confirmed that it was impossible to steal a statue of this description for three reasons. First, the temple was located 1,100m above sea level and is difficult to reach. Second, the statue was too heavy to carry over the rocks to reach the road. Third, Abdel-Maqsoud said, the site was protected by local Bedouin who did not allow strangers to enter the site, and furthermore the temple was guarded by a team of 24 guards and 10 archaeologists who made daily tours of inspection.

The SCA is currently removing the six statues in the temple to Qantara Sharq galleries for restoration and to await a second removal to the new Sharm El-Sheikh National Museum, which is planned for completion in 2011.

© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved

The Truth About Easter

Thanks to the internet, the truth about the spring festival of Easter is now widely disseminated, and around Easter every year there are a host of new articles on the ancient origins of this yearly celebration. Here is one: World Net Daily Exclusive The truth about Easter Posted: March 23, 20091:00 am Eastern By Richard Rives© 2009 The renowned Oxford English Dictionary informs us that the name "Easter" is derived from the name of a goddess whose festival was celebrated at the time of the vernal equinox. We are told that she was originally known as the dawn goddess – no doubt the origin of sunrise celebrations at the time of Easter. According to Venerable Bede, a seventh century Anglo Saxon theologian, the English word "Easter" is derived from the name of the pagan fertility goddess Eostra. He tells us that "the heathen Anglo-Saxons called the fourth month "Esturmonath" after their goddess Eostra – another name representing the spring fertility goddesses such as Astarte or Ashtaroth, the goddess who was introduced into the British Isles by the Druids. In all actuality, Easter is just another name for Beltis or Ishtar of the ancient Babylonians and can be traced all the way back to Hathor, the cow goddess of Egypt that was associated with the building of the golden calf at Mount Sinai. Rest of article.

Paintings from the Lost Tomb of Nebamun

How grateful I am that any of these magnificent tomb paintings have survived since c. 1500 BCE, and how sad I am that antiquities robbers destroyed so much of their beauty for money. Irreplaceable heritage and history destroyed forever and hacked out of the 'living rock' of our memories for a few lousy bucks. A pox and a curse on the houses of those people who dealt in and continue to deal in such iniquity! I am really GLAD the man who destroyed Nebamun's tomb died on the streets of London a pauper. Photo: Nebamun, his wife and daughter on board a skiff, during a hunting trip. For colours, the unknown 'Michelangelo of the Nile' would have used soot, desert stones and ground glass Photograph: Corbis (Notice the cat, sort of "floating" at the knees of Nebamun, helping herself to the plethora of birds! Cats - invariably female - were Egyptian symbols for female sexuality and the recreative force, embodied in such goddesses as Bast (Bastet) and the powerful and ancient lioness-headed Sekhmet (Sakhmet), an aspect of equally ancient goddess Hathor (Het-hert), often depicted as a cow-headed woman. In later depictions, Hathor was depicted as a woman sporting long cow horns with the Sun resting in-between, and often confused with renditions of Isis.) Raiders of the lost art They are ancient Egypt's greatest tomb paintings, yet they were created for a middle-ranking official by an unknown artist. As the Nebamun panels go on display in the British Museum, Robin McKie reveals a tale of exquisite craftsmanship and a 3,500-year-old tabby cat Robin McKie The Observer, Sunday 4 January 2009 Enter the British Museum's new Egyptian gallery and you will be struck by a line of painted panels of unexpectedly rich colouring and extravagant composition. On one panel, a pair of naked female dancers, their fingers interlaced, glide sinuously before a crowd at a banquet. Beside them, a flute player stares out from the painting, her hair shimmering as if she is swaying to the music. Each figure is distinct, individual and freely drawn, their proportions and detail captured perfectly. Wander further along the main wall and you will find other exuberant depictions of everyday life in 18th Dynasty Egypt: a boy driving cattle along a road; geese, stored in baskets, ready for the market; a farmer, stooped and balding, checking his fields, and a hunt through reed beds that burst with creatures - shrike, wagtails and pintail ducks - easily identifiable still. These are the tomb paintings that once belonged to Nebamun, a court official who lived almost 3,500 years ago, and they are the greatest surviving paintings we have from ancient Egypt. Each was created for Nebamun by a painter as gifted as any of the Renaissance's finest artists, and they will be revealed to the public this month when the British Museum opens a special gallery dedicated to them, a 10-year project that has cost £1.5m to complete. It will be a striking addition to the museum. Yet for all the effort that has gone into the gallery's construction and the studies of its paintings, mystery still shrouds the Nebamun panels. For a start, archaeologists have no idea about the identity of the artist who created them and are equally puzzled why a painter of such talent was involved with a relatively minor clerk like Nebamun. Nor do historians have any record of the original tomb's location. The man who discovered them was a Greek grave robber called Giovanni d'Athanasi, who dug them up in Thebes, as Luxor was then known, and then passed them on, via a collector, to the British Museum. However, in 1835 D'Athanasi fell out with curators over his finder's fee and refused to divulge the precise position of the tomb. He took his secret to the grave, dying a pauper in 1854 in Howland Street, a few minutes' walk from the museum. Ever since, archaeologists have searched in vain for the tomb of Nebamun and any treasures that it may still contain. The Nebamun paintings have - to say the least - a colourful history, and the task of unravelling it, and for caring for these remarkable works, has been handled by Egyptologist Richard Parkinson. Dapper, bow-tied and possessed of an infectious enthusiasm for his subject, Parkinson showed me the panels last November, when they were cased in wood and glass, ready for removal to their new gallery. They were stacked in a museum basement store which held other Egyptian artefacts, including a series of panels dedicated to a chief treasurer, Sobekhotep. Think of him as the 18th Dynasty's answer to Alistair Darling, a politician who controlled the nation's wealth and economic destiny. Yet the panels commemorating him are thin, lifeless and provide little feeling for the man's life or times, or any sense of artistic sensitivity. By contrast, the artwork that celebrates Nebamun's life bursts with energy. In one panel, he stands on a papyrus skiff at the head of a hunting trip into reed-covered marshes filled with tilapia and puffer fish, Egyptian red geese, tiger butterflies, black and white wagtails and an exquisitely painted tawny cat that is helping itself to the birds being brought down by Nebamun. The cat is a product of particularly grand draughtsmanship, in which stripes and dots have been delicately assembled to produce a magnificently whiskered tabby. Scales on fish, feathers on ducks and soft folds in the clothes of the Nebamun retinue have also been created this way. It is an extraordinary evocation of Egyptian life, its vitality undimmed 3,500 years later. As for Nebamun, in the hunting panel he towers over proceedings, his wife Hatshepsut beside him and their daughter at his feet. Wearing a black wig and a great collar of beads, he strikes a pose that is assured and proud, almost regal. Yet Nebamun was really just a bean counter - or to be precise, a grain counter whose job was to make sure the wheat stores in the temple of Amun were properly controlled. So how did this middle-grade civil servant acquire the services of one of the greatest painters of ancient Egypt while his superiors had to make do with second-rate artists? "These are the greatest paintings we have from ancient Egypt," Parkinson says. "There is nothing to touch them in any museum in the world. Yet they were created for an official too lowly to have been known by the pharaoh. It is quite extraordinary." Parkinson does, however, have an intriguing explanation. The "Michelangelo of the Nile" who created these great tomb panels was almost certainly working on another project in the neighbourhood of Nebamun's tomb at the time. This building or burial complex would have been constructed, and decorated, on a far grander style for a far more important figure. Nebamun merely slipped the artist and his team some extra cash and they stole off to paint his own panels. In short, the secret of his tomb and its great painting lies with one word: backhanders. "Life then was not that different from today," says Parkinson. Ironically, the artist's main project was no doubt a finer work, but it has disappeared, looted and trashed like the vast majority of ancient Egypt's great treasures. The Nebamun panels are the only record we have of this genius. We have therefore good reason to be grateful to Nebamun, one of life's perennial opportunists, but an astute collector of fine art just the same. As to their purpose, the paintings were intended to make Nebamun appear important in the afterlife. They would have covered the tomb's upper level, while his body was interred in a chamber below ground. Friends and family would have visited the upper part of the tomb, left gifts and held feasts to commemorate Nebamun's life. "This was where life and death merged," says Parkinson. Thus the paintings were not buried and hidden away but established a link between the living and the dead. Hence their importance to Nebamun's family. They were to be appreciated, leisurely, after the man's death as reminders of his achievements. They were certainly not created at a leisurely rate, however, as Parkinson has found in his investigations of the paintings. Once the tomb's stone walls had been erected, they were covered in straw and Nile mud mixed together into a squishy paste. Then, when this was dry, a thin layer of white plaster was added. As that started to dry, the artist and his team began to paint, using soot from cooking pots, desert stones for red, yellow and white pigments, and ground glass for blue and green. Rushes, chewed at the end, would have acted as brushes. Squashed into the dark, narrow upper tomb, the painters would have had to work by lamplight before the plaster dried. The results are almost impressionistic in the freedom of their execution. "I think Nebamun had all his paintings done for his tomb-chapel walls in three months," says Parkinson. "Yet the draughtsmanship was quite wonderful. The thing is that although the artist and his team may have done them in a few weeks, I have now spent a quarter of my life studying their handiwork." The panels' importance to modern eyes is clear. They tell us a great deal about ancient Egypt and its everyday activities, and about differences and similarities between life then and now. "The straw crates in which geese are sold at market - you see these on just about every street corner in Cairo," says Parkinson. "And the women's jet-black hair and skin colour are just the same as we see in Egypt today." However, Parkinson warns about drawing too many parallels between modern life and the scenes depicted in the panels. Objects and animals are often included because they had great symbolic importance. That great hunt scene is more than a depiction of everyday life: the birds and cat are symbols of fertility and female sexuality, and Nebamun's expedition can also be seen as "taking possession of the cycle of creations and rebirth", as one scholar has put it. Certainly, visitors should take care when trying to interpret the panels' meaning. Nevertheless, the paintings repay detailed inspection. On several of them, you can see where d'Athanasi's grave robbers had started to crowbar a panel from a wall only to find it cracking, ready to split. They would then move on to splinter open the panel at a new spot. "Only 20 per cent of the panels survived these attacks," adds Parkinson. "Only sections that would appeal to British audiences were taken: the ones with naked dancing girls and scenes from gardens. Perfect for our taste, in short." One or two other fragments did end up in other museums, including several that are now kept in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin. Evidence also suggests that a handful of fragments may survive elsewhere. For example, records from the Cairo Museum show that, just after the second world war, a few sections from the tomb were about to be exported from Egypt, a move that was opposed by its government - so officials had the panel pieces photographed and stored in the great vaults below the Cairo Museum. And that is where they rest today, though their precise location has been lost. All that is known is that among the tens of thousands of other ancient treasures kept in the museum's store, the missing Nebamun panels are today gathering dust in a dark, lost corner. It is a strange fate and it invites - irresistibly - a comparison with the fictional resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, dumped in a mammoth warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. In short, a fantastic end for some fantastic art.

The Hind of Hinds - Continued

I want to relate a couple of very interesting "hallucinations" I had last night that are related to the material above and – well, you’ll see where this goes -- I’ve mentioned in earlier posts about how I tend to have hallucinatory "dreams" – not sure what to call the state, exactly, it tends to happens in that area where I’m half awake, or not quite asleep. Last night, or I should say, early this morning, it was between 2 and 3 a.m. when I am prone to wake up these days – anyway, I did my usual, wake up, roll over, look at the clock, roll back to settle into the pillows and I saw what, for the life of me, appeared to be the outline of a bear sitting in my wing chair by the south window. Now darlings, I knew it couldn’t possibly be a bear sitting in my chair, not at 2 in the morning, but it was quite distinctly the outline of a bear, even after I shook my head and blinked my eyes a couple of times and tried to "wake up." It was still there. I laid back down and watched it for awhile; it’s head was moving! It didn’t occur to me until I was having my morning coffee that it was moving in a barely perceptible nodding motion. I was totally stumped as to why this hallucination would not go away even though I thought I was almost fully awake; I fell back asleep – perhaps it was 10 minutes later while continuing to look at the "bear in the chair." It’s a bit hard to explain – this half-baked/half-awake thought process, but since the bear did NOT attack me, I KNEW it was an hallucination, not the real thing (forget about the logic of how a bear would happen to get into a locked house without any noise, happen to wander upstairs into my bedroom, and happen to sit in my chair quietly waiting for me to "wake" up), and so I wasn’t afraid to try and fall back asleep, only annoyed that whatever it was wouldn’t go away. As often happens in these post-menopausal times (women of a certain age in the audience will know exactly what I mean), I then proceeded to wake up about every 45 to 55 minutes for the next couple of hours – sometimes this happens until the alarm goes off at 6 a.m., but last night/early this morning it only happened two more times, and so I was able to get in a last couple of hours of "quality" sleep before the alarm went off. Anyway, when I next awoke, I turned my head and crinked my neck up just to get a look and sure enough, the bear was still sitting in the chair by the window on the south wall. Damn! And still ever so slightly nodding it’s head. I could see it distinctly because my south window overlooks a street light perhaps 50 feet away, and it casts enough light through the curtains to cast eerie shadows inside my bedroom (cue spooky music….) Hmmmmm. Then I rolled over toward the west wall and caught a glimpse of something that set my heart to pounding – a giant serpent! I nearly leaped out of bed -- Of course it wasn’t a giant serpent, it was my "pharmacy" style floor lamp that I have sitting next to the computer hutch, but to my half-awake eyes it took on the form of a gigantic hooded cobra. Hmmmm, a bear and a snake? Very weird. Someone must be trying to tell me something, I thought, as I settled back into my pillows and went back to sleep. OKAY! A bit of back story. The serpent I understand because for the past couple of weeks delion and I have been nattering back and forth about things Egyptian, etc. and I’ve been refreshing my memory by checking out information on Uadjet, the serpent tutorial Goddess of "Upper" (Southern) Egypt, very ancient, who also represents the Sun God (Ra/Re) and, in one of her aspects, is also His Sacred Eye. So the lamp-turning-into-cobra makes sense, in a "dream" way. But the bear? Now, mind you darlings, this all happened before I ever cracked open Walker’s Woman’s Encyclopedia today and copied out the information on "Arabia" published above. As it so happens, when I first opened the book, I came upon an entry of Atalanta: Amazonian huntress, the best athlete in Calydon. As an infant, Atalanta was suckled by Artemis herself, in totemic form as a She-Bear. When she grew up, she took part in the famous hunt of the Calydonian Boar and drew first blood, pausing only to kill two centaurs who tried to rape her on the hunting field. Ah ha! Bells went off in my head. Artemis was the bear! But not only a bear, Walker links her to the "Hind of Hinds" (Hind al-Hunud): "Many Koreshites remained faithful to the Goddess and to their queen, Hind al-Hunud: the Hind of Hinds, similar to the title of Artemis" – but I didn’t know that until I read and then posted the entry on Arabia from The Woman’s Encyclopedia today! So – my admittedly amateur interpretation of my "waking dreams" is that the Goddess (in bear and serpent forms) approve/approved my intent/plan to post more about the ancient battle queens here – even before I knew I was going to do it. Well, they are goddesses, they can "see" the future! A couple notes. Based on what I read in Walker, Fatima, the putative daughter of Mohammed, is a "sister" of the ancient Egyptian cow-goddess Hathor. One of Fatima’s titles is "Red Cow," and Fatima shares many other titles and attributes with Egyptian Hathor. Hathor was also considered a moon goddess, because her horns formed a "crescent" moon. Hmmm, where have we seen that symbol before? Oh yeah, on the flags of many countries where Islam is the majority religion. Hmmm….