Image of Meroe "Princess" Discovered

January 3, 2013 (Note:  Tonight, I was not able to download a single photo for this article due to Blogger errors.  Must I REALLY move this gigantic blog to Wordpress?  Geez!)

Ancient Carving Shows Stylishly Plump African Princess

By Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor | LiveScience.com – 11 hrs ago 

A 2,000-year-old relief carved with an image of what appears to be a, stylishly overweight, princess has been discovered in an "extremely fragile" palace in the ancient city of Meroë, in Sudan, archaeologists say.

At the time the relief was made, Meroë was the center of a kingdom named Kush, its borders stretching as far north as the southern edge of Egypt. It wasn't unusual for queens (sometimes referred to as "Candaces") to rule, facing down the armies of an expanding Rome.

The sandstone relief shows a woman smiling, her hair carefully dressed and an earring on her left ear. She appears to have a second chin and a bit of fat on her neck, something considered stylish, at the time, among royal women from Kush.

Team leader Krzysztof Grzymski presented the relief, among other finds from the palace at Meroë, at an Egyptology symposium held recently at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

Researchers don't know the identity of the woman being depicted, but based on the artistic style the relief appears to date back around 2,000 years and show someone royal. "It's similar to other images of princesses," Grzymski told LiveScience in an interview. He said that the headdress hasn't survived and it cannot be ruled out that it actually depicts a queen.

Why royal women in Kush preferred to be depicted overweight is a long-standing mystery. "There is a distinct possibility that the large size of the Candaces represented fertility and maternity," wrote the late Miriam Ma'at-Ka-Re Monges, who was a professor at California State University, Chico, and an expert on Kush, in an article published in The Encyclopedia of Black Studies (Sage Publications, 2005).

An ancient palace
The discovery occurred in 2007 as Grzymski's team was exploring a royal palace in the city, trying to determine its date. The sandstone blocks that made up its foundation were "extremely fragile," according to Grzymski, and the team found that the palace dated to late in the life of Kush's existence. The blocks were re-used in antiquity by the palace's builders and were originally from buildings that stood in earlier times.

When they found the relief it "was loose and falling apart so we just took it out," Grzymski said. It was brought to a museum in Khartoum, Sudan's modern capital, for safekeeping. "There's always a danger of robbers coming and taking [them] out, so many of those decorated blocks were in danger."
They found many other decorated blocks as well, Grzymski said. Because they had been re-used in antiquity the blocks were out of order and presented researchers with a giant jigsaw puzzle.

"Ideally, I would like to dismantle this whole wall, this foundation wall, and take out the decorated blocks and see if we would be able reconstruct some other structures from which the blocks came," Grzymski told the Toronto audience.

It's one of many, many, tasks that need to be done in the ancient city. "It's considered one of the largest archaeological sites in Africa," Grzymski said of Meroë. "This site will be worked on for a hundred years perhaps before it's fully explored."

Grzymski is a curator at the Royal Ontario Museum and the symposium was organized by the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities and the museum's Friends of Ancient Egypt group.
"Ideally, I would like to dismantle this whole wall, this foundation wall, and take out the decorated blocks and see if we would be able reconstruct some other structures from which the blocks came," Grzymski told the Toronto audience.

It's one of many, many, tasks that need to be done in the ancient city. "It's considered one of the largest archaeological sites in Africa," Grzymski said of Meroë. "This site will be worked on for a hundred years perhaps before it's fully explored."

Grzymski is a curator at the Royal Ontario Museum and the symposium was organized by the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities and the museum's Friends of Ancient Egypt group.

2013 Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival

It's January and that means the warm tradewinds of Gibraltar are beckoning chessplayers from around the world.  The weather, yes, but especially excellent playing conditions that the players have responded to over the years, and generous prize structures!  What's not to love about Gibraltar at the end of January?

The Masters attracts top talent from everywhere, and this year is no different.  Top female players include (all players numbered by rating):

25

14111330

Muzychuk, Anna

g

SLO

2582

29

13601903

Dzagnidze, Nana

g

GEO

2555

35

617822

Sebag, Marie

g

FRA

2530

36

1700030

Cramling, Pia

g

SWE

2518

38

2902257

Stefanova, Antoaneta

g

BUL

2516

39

12801259

Cmilyte, Viktorija

g

LTU

2515

40

5015197

Harika, Dronavalli

g

IND

2514

43

8603006

Ju, Wenjun

wg

CHN

2505

46

14101572

Zatonskih, Anna

m

USA

2491

47

4167570

Gunina, Valentina

m

RUS

2490

49

4641833

Paehtz, Elisabeth

m

GER

2482

52

4147855

Pogonina, Natalija

wg

RUS

2475

54

14114550

Muzychuk, Mariya

m

UKR

2471

55

12400149

Hoang, Thanh Trang

g

HUN

2470

69

13602446

Melia, Salome

m

GEO

2403

70

5007844

Tania, Sachdev

m

IND

2403

And many more chess femmes.  Thus far 233 players are registered just for the Masters Open!  A notable absence this year, though, is IM Irina Krush, currently U.S. Women's Chess Champion.  She will be providing live commentary instead!  Fellow Team America player IM Anna Zatonskih will again be holding a Master Class (she held one last year and it proved a very popular event), as well as playing in the Masters.

Prizes for the Masters Open:

Open to all		Prizes for best relative rating achievement
1st Prize	£20,000	Rating Band	1st Prize	2nd Prize
2nd Prize	£14,000	2500-2599	£3,000	£2,000
3rd Prize	£12,000	2400-2499	£2,000	£1,000
4th Prize	£10,000	2300-2399	£2,000	£1,000
5th Prize	£6,000	2200-2299	£2,000	£1,000
6th Prize	£4,000	2100-2199	£2,000	£1,000
7th Prize	£3,000	2000-2099	£2,000	£1,000
8th Prize	£2,500	Under 2000	£2,000	£1,000
9th Prize	£2,000	A player may not win more than one complete prize from this table.
10th Prize	£1,000
11th Prize	£1,000
12th Prize	£1,000

Open to all Women
1st Prize	£12,000
2nd Prize	£8,000
3rd Prize	£5,000
4th Prize	£3,500
5th Prize	£2,500
6th Prize	£2,000
7th Prize	£1,500
8th Prize	£1,000
9th Prize	£600
10th Prize	£400

You can be sure the fight for top women's prize of £12,000 will be fierce!  Top prizes for the Open and the special women's prizes are NOT shared.

The Festival runs January 21 - 31, 2013!  You can read more news and player entries at the official website. 

Rosgilde Viking Ship to Go on Display at British Museum

Rebirth of the Viking warship that may have helped Canute conquer the seas

27 December 2012
Maeve Kennedy

When the sleek, beautiful silhouette of Roskilde 6 appeared on the horizon, 1,000 years ago, it was very bad news. The ship was part of a fleet carrying an army of hungry, thirsty warriors, muscles toned by rowing and sailing across the North Sea; a war machine like nothing else in 11th-century Europe, its arrival meant disaster was imminent.

Now the ship's timbers are slowly drying out in giant steel tanks at the Danish national museum's conservation centre at Brede outside Copenhagen, and will soon again head across the North Sea – to be a star attraction at an exhibition in the British Museum.

The largest Viking warship ever found, it was discovered by chance in 1996 at Roskilde. It is estimated that building it would have taken up to 30,000 hours of skilled work, plus the labour of felling trees and hauling materials. At just over 36 metres, it was four metres longer than Henry VIII's flagship Mary Rose built 500 years later, and six metres longer than the Viking ship spectacularly recreated as Sea Stallion, which sailed from Scandinavia around Scotland to Dublin in 2007.

"This ship was a troop carrier," said Gareth Williams of the British Museum. It was built some time after 1025 when the oak trees were felled, and held 100 warriors taking turns on 39 pairs of oars if there was not enough wind to fill the square woollen sail. They would have been packed in tightly, sleeping as they could between the seats, with little room for supplies except a minimal amount of fresh water – or ale or mead, which would not have gone stale as fast – and dried salt mutton.

It would have been an uncomfortable journey, but short: they did not need to carry much as their ship could move startlingly fast – Sea Stallion managed an average speed of 5.5 knots, and a top speed of 20 knots. Once they landed, the warriors could forage with ruthless efficiency, as many a coastal community or wealthy monastery discovered.

The ship would probably not have come alone. "There are records in the annals of fleets of hundreds of ships," Williams said. "So you could be talking about an army of up to 10,000 men suddenly landing on your coast, highly trained, fit, capable of moving very fast on water or land." Such luxury ships were fabulously expensive to build and a devastating display of power, Williams said.

The dates suggest Roskilde 6 may have been built for King Canute, who according to legend set his throne in the path of the incoming tide, to prove to his courtiers that even a monarch could not control the force of nature. At the time the Vikings were consolidating their power from temporary raiders to permanent invaders.

With all the original timbers fitted into a steel frame that will recreate its full length and form, the ship will be the centrepiece of Viking, an exhibition opening at the Danish national museum in June, before being transported to London to launch the British Museum's new exhibition space in 2014. It will travel in two containers, by freighter and lorry.

Accident

The vessel was found by accident when an extension was being built to the Roskilde ship museum in Denmark, itself built to hold an earlier find of Viking ships that had been deliberately sunk to narrow the fjord and protect the approach to the town, the old royal capital of Denmark. In 1996 archaeologists watching the construction work discovered huge timbers turned up in the new foundations, some already chopped in half by the piling. It proved to be a treasure trove of nine ships, of which Roskilde 6, almost half of which was recovered, was the most spectacular.

The timbers stayed in storage while the museum worked out what to do with the unexpected addition to its collection, until the exhibition provided the opportunity for full conservation.

The original Roskilde ships are spectacularly displayed in a purpose-built ship hall, but could never travel: the timbers look solid but might shatter like glass. When excavated, the sodden timbers of Roskilde 6 would have disintegrated into a heap of dust if left exposed to air. National museum conservator Kristiane Straetkvern managed the project, which has been drying timbers up to 10 metres long far more slowly than the older techniques, then replacing the lost moisture with synthetic resin, leaving them lighter but stable.

It was a nervous moment for her when some completed timbers were test assembled, each resting in a felt lined individually laser-cut support, in a frame that bolts together like a giant Meccano set, but that dismantles into hundreds of components for travelling.

The exhibition will display finds from across Scandinavia and from deep into the countries they penetrated wherever a river could carry their shallow draft ships – as far inland as Lichfield in England, deep into Russia, to Byzantium in the east, where Vikings fought as mercenaries on both sides, and beyond. Objects from 12 countries, including many recent finds, will demonstrate that Vikings were traders, farmers, fishermen, and superb craft workers in timber, bone and metal.

However the most spectacular single artefact will be the ship, a potent witness that the Vikings were also dreaded raiders.

The Roskilde team are now experts on recreating ancient ships, regularly commissioned to build them. One day they hope to recreate a full-size, ocean-going replica Roskilde 6, and send it across the sea to awe rather than to terrorise the coasts of the British Isles.

 

3,500 Kg of Coins Discovered in China

3,500 kilograms?  What were they made of?  Precious metals?  Just plain metal (bronze, for instance?)  If the coins weren't valuable, why were people evidently stealing them???  I wonder how many were stolen, and where those coins ended up! 

Reported at The Times of India

Huge quantity of ancient coins found in China

IANS Dec 30, 2012, 06.11PM IST

 

BEIJING: Archaeologists have excavated about 3,500kg of ancient coins in China's Inner Mongolia Region, Xinhua reported on Sunday. Most of these coins were in prevalence during the Han dynasty (202 BC-220 AD).

 

According to Lian Jilin, a researcher with the regional Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, the coins were found in three millennia-old coin pits in the ancient town of Huoluochaideng after police cracked three theft cases.

 

Most of the coins were "Huoquan", the coins commonly used in the Han dynasty (202 BC-220 AD), said Lian.

 

Archaeologists also excavated over 100 casting moulds from the relics of a coin workshop. The moulds are believed to date back to the rule of Emperor Wudi (156 BC-87 BC) of the Western Han Dynasty and the short-lived Xin Dynasty (45 BC-23 AD) founded by Wang Mang.

 

Based on its size and cultural relics uncovered there, Huoluochaideng town is believed to have been a major town in northern China during the Han Dynasty, said Lian.

 

The findings are significant in the study of the ancient monetary system and casting technology, he added.

 

 

See also a report at Portable Antiquity Collecting and Heritage Issues December 31, 2012. 

The Notre Dame Cathedral (Paris) Celebrates 850th Birthday!

She wears her age well, this Grande Dame :)  I'll bet it was built upon an ancient sanctuary of goddess worship.  It has all of the hallmarks:  It was built on a island (check); it either had it's own source of water or was near a conjunction of rivers (check); it's named after the Roman Catholic Mother of God (check).  It incorporates well-known (if not to laymen of today) Goddess symbols ("Rose Window," bells, etc.)

This is the "Rose" Window of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.  If you count the small circles around the center-most circle in the "rosette," there are eight.  Eight, the number of the Goddess from ancient times, as in the eight-pointed rosette symbol of Inanna, back in the days of ancient Sumer.  Many "rose windows" also have center-most circles of five, another sacred number codified in the Fibonnaci Spiral and seen in nature repeatedly.  See "Rose Window" at Wikipedia for some great photographs of many different "Rose" windows. 


Paris Notre Dame cathedral turns 850 years old
December 24, 2012
By Christian Fraser BBC News, Paris

She stands in effortless command of the small island where medieval Paris was re-founded. Centuries of history have flowed past Notre Dame with the grey waters of the River Seine.

The mighty cathedral is neither the tallest, oldest nor biggest in the world, but it can rightly claim to be the best-known.  For centuries it has witnessed the greatest events in French history: 80 kings, two emperors, five republics - and two world wars.  Its famous gargoyles, there to guard against the evil spirits, have faced both glory and tragedy over the centuries.

The cathedral, with its original 13th-Century rose window, was pillaged and nearly demolished in revolutionary France.

She survived, and this month sees the start of a year of special events celebrating the landmark 850th anniversary of "Our Lady of Paris".

Holy wars
The first stone was laid in 1163. It took them 180 years to complete it. Yet as the magnificent structure took form, history was already playing out in its shadows. Crusaders prayed beneath the world's first flying buttresses as they set off on holy wars.

Within the walls, in 1431, a sickly boy of ten, King Henry VI of England, was crowned King of France.

And in 1804, to the sound of the 8,000 pipes of the cathedral's Grand Organ, Napoleon was crowned emperor.

Music is integral to the life of the cathedral; in the archive, the medieval manuscripts reveal it always has been.

Fittingly, then, the great sounds of Notre Dame will be at the heart of the anniversary celebrations.

Throughout next year, three choirs will bring to life some of the earliest sounds of Christianity.  Choir director Sylvain Dieudonne told me that, "in 1163, when they started building the cathedral, Paris became a centre of great intellectual, spiritual and musical development."

Quasimodo's bells
"The musical school was hugely influential," he said. "We know from the manuscripts we have recovered that it influenced music across Europe - in Spain, Italy, Germany and in England."

But there is another sound for which the cathedral is well known. The bells and "the grand peal" that so enthralled the hunchback, Quasimodo.

The biggest of them all is Emmanuel, installed in the south tower in 1685. It tolls to mark the hours of the day, as it tolled to mark the liberation of the city in 1944.

But this year, the smaller bells from the north tower are being recast; they are not the originals. Those were melted for cannon balls by the revolutionaries. Their 19th-Century replacements were "discordant".

Eight of the bells are being made in Villedieu-Les-Poeles, in Normandy, using ancient Egyptian methods; the moulds are fashioned from horsehair and manure. [Ha!  There are those pesky ancient Egyptians again!]

"It gives the bell a perfect skin, far better than if you made it with sand and cement," said Paul Bergamo, the foundry president.

'Best balls bells in France'
"But we are also using a lot of computerised techniques to hone the sound of the bell.

"We will use a spectral analyser to check the final tone. They will all be tuned to the great bourdon bell Emmanuel. It's really a mixture of the best technology - and the best of traditions. And I am confident that when we have finished this will be the best set of bells in France."

The year-long festival would not be complete without a celebration of the architecture. And to mark 850 years they will be improving the lighting.

The building was not originally designed to include the flying buttresses around the choir and nave, but after the construction began, the thinner walls grew ever higher and stress fractures began to appear as the walls pushed outward.

In response, the cathedral's architects built supports around the outside walls, and later additions continued the pattern.  Today the cathedral stands as a gothic masterpiece.

In his book The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo encapsulated that power.

"When a man understands the art of seeing," he wrote, "he can trace the spirit of an age, and the features of a king, even in the knocker on a door."

Interesting Finds at Pig Point, Maryland (USA)

Centuries old burial rituals uncovered at Pig Point
Posted: Saturday, December 22, 2012 11:00 pm | Updated: 11:13 am, Mon Dec 24, 2012

By E.B. FURGURSON III Staff Writer

It might have been the last thing they expected to find.

Since 2009, Anne Arundel County’s Lost Towns Project archaeologists have uncovered a trove of prehistoric Native American artifacts along the Patuxent River indicating the spot was a gathering place for thousands of years.  Now they think they know why.

This year’s dig at Pig Point uncovered what appears to be a ritualistic burial place with five or more oval pits with human bone and artifacts dating from 230 B.C. to 620 A.D.

“It looks like this was ritual central for 850 years or more,” county archaeologist Al Luckenbach said. “This casts all the things we discovered in the first three years in a completely different light. It is a hell of a mystery.”

Earlier finds suggested it was the area’s bounty (especially the fishing along the Patuxent) that lured bands of tribes to the site. But now it looks like the rituals surrounding the sacred dead — or were they enemies? — are also a key part of the continued occupation.

“This is completely new to science,” Luckenbach said. “And the first time professional archaeologists have been able to glimpse what is really going on in these places.”

Years ago, mostly in the 1930s and 1950s, similar deposits of what is known as Adena flint — tools, arrow and spear points and pipes made of stone found only in quarries in Ohio — have been found along a line stretching from Ohio to Delaware. But those were found by amateurs and hobbyists long before more modern archaeology theories and technology were developed. [Bullshit!  Amateurs and hobbyists made major discoveries in Egypt during the late 1800's; and what about the amateurs who discovered Troy and uncovered the treasures at Ur?  So-called amateurs and hobbyists today continue to make major archaeological discoveries, that are then turned over to the university and museum people.]

Luckenbach and other Lost Town staffers were amazed to find Adena artifacts at Pig Point on a bluff overlooking Jug Bay. Layer after layer of artifacts were found, one period of material stacked atop another, and another.

The first big find indicating the pre-historic sweep of time were wigwam post holes built on top of one another. The youngest was from the 16th century, the oldest could be 3,000 years old. They are the oldest structures ever uncovered in Maryland.

It was one eureka moment after another, from pottery preceding the birth of Christ to a Palmer point that could be 10,000 years old. Other points found were from 1,000 to 5,000 years old. A small paint pot, the first fully intact pre-historic pot Luckenbach has ever held, was made about two centuries before Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

Persistance Rewarded
Lost Town archeologists were not sure whether to pursue a fourth year digging at Pig Point. When they did, it was decided to dig test pits on an adjoining property just uphill from the previous work.
Of the scores of test pits, five proved fruitful.

“What we have is at least five oval pits, about 20 by 25 feet each,” Luckenbach said.

Most of the 2012 season was spent on just one of the oval pits, actually only one-third of that pit was painstakingly excavated, inch by inch.  What they found dwarfs previous work.
Archaeologists were all giddy a couple years back when they found a single copper bead. This summer yielded 180.

Luckenbach was thrilled to have found a couple of intact sections of Adena tube pipe in the previous Pig Point digs.  “Now we have 80 to 100 of them,” he said.

But it was the bones that opened up an entirely new realm of discovery.  “We were finding all these pieces of bone. For a few weeks we didn’t know they were human. Until we saw teeth,” he said.
Curiously, all the bone found is long bone, arm or leg bone, and skull fragments. There are no pelvic bone, spine, rib bones.

Dug and dug again
Early Native American tribes engaged in reburial rituals. Every year, 10 years, or more, a group would gather the remains of their dead and commit them to a common burial ground.  Iroquois tribes were noted for their reburial rituals as were the Nanticoke who took their ancestors’ remains with them when they moved to Pennsylvania from the Eastern Shore.

Ossuaries held the the dead whether nothing but skeleton or fresher remains. But the bodies were intact, or mostly so. The difference at Pig Point is that all the bones were smashed, broken on purpose. And so were thousands of artifacts such as fancy Adena points, beads, gorgets, and other items. All broken into bits.

“These are perhaps the most significant discoveries ever made by the (Lost Towns) project,” Luckenbach said. “It is an opportunity to uncover a type of ritual behavior never before seen by science.”

Doug Owsley, a preeminent forensic archaeologist at the Smithsonian, will examine the fragments — especially the teeth.  The long bones didn’t look like they included any children under 10, though some children’s teeth were found. The people were shorter than most of the Plains Indians.

The excavated pit, which was filled with ash and the fractured bone, points, pottery and such, shows evidence the Native Americans returned to the same pit, uncovered it and added more material over the years. “Were they ancestors, or enemies? Or could these be offerings to the gods.” Questions abound.  “This is unreported ritual behavior. The groups repeatedly gathered at this site to trade, fish, conduct rituals and arrange marriages,” Luckenbach said.

Other scientists agree. Chris Goodwin, of R. Christopher Goodwin and Associates in Frederick, said the benefits to science are immeasurable. “Although there are other Adena sites, this one is very different because of the amount of material...and the presence of apparently ritual behaviors.”

Pig Point’s “impact is significant, it can answer a lot of questions about this period,” said Darrin Lowrey, of the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History and the University of Delaware. “The way humans treat their dead will tell you a lot about what is going on.”

The remains, once studied, will be re-buried yet again, Luckenbach said. He has contacted the Piscataway tribe in Maryland to offer them the chance to perform the burial of the bones using rituals they see fit.

************************************************

So, about the same time as the Han through the start of the Tang Dynasties in ancient China, Pig Point was being used as a ritual/ceremonial center in what is now Maryland in eastern USA.  But people call Native Americans "primitive."  Really?  Europeans who came here have nothing in this land of equivalent age or ritual significance.

Excitement about Tal Motza Discoveries

Temple and sacred vessels from Biblical times discovered at Tel Motza

26 Dec 2012

The finds, dated to the early monarchic period and including pottery figurines of men and horses, provide rare testimony of a ritual cult in the Jerusalem region at the beginning of the period of the monarchy. Rare evidence of the religious practices and rituals in the early days of the Kingdom of Judah has recently been discovered at Tel Motza, to the west of Jerusalem. In excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority is currently conducting at the Tel Motza archaeological site, prior to work being carried out on the new Highway 1 from Sha'ar HaGai to Jerusalem by the National Roads Company (previously the Public Works Department), a ritual building (a temple) and a cache of sacred vessels some 2,750 years old have been uncovered.  Figurines of a person (Photo: Clara Amit, courtesy Israel Antiquities Authority) According to Anna Eirikh, Dr. Hamoudi Khalaily and Shua Kisilevitz, directors of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, "The ritual building at Tel Motza is an unusual and striking find, in light of the fact that there are hardly any remains of ritual buildings of the period in Judaea at the time of the First Temple. The uniqueness of the structure is even more remarkable because of the vicinity of the site's proximity to the capital city of Jerusalem, which acted as the Kingdom's main sacred center at the time." According to the archaeologists, "Among other finds, the site has yielded pottery figurines of men, one of them bearded, whose significance is still unknown." Tel Motza and the surrounding region are renowned for their prime archaeological importance. Many finds have previously been uncovered at the site, from a variety of different periods. From the 1990's to the beginning of the present millennium, the site was excavated in preparation for the new route taken by Highway 1. At the time, the site's archaeologists proposed once more identifying the site with the Biblical settlement "Mozah" mentioned in the Book of Joshua - a town in the tribal lands of Benjamin bordering on Judaea (Joshua 18: 26). The proposal was based, among other things, on the discovery at the site of a public building, a large structure with storehouses, and a considerable number of silos. At the time, archaeologists identified the site as a storehouse, run by high-ranking officials, for Jerusalem's grain supplies. The current excavations have revealed evidence that provides another aspect to our understanding of the site. According to archaeologists Eirikh, Dr. Khalaily and, Kisilevitz, the current excavation has revealed part of a large structure, from the early days of the monarchic period (Iron Age IIA). The walls of the structure are massive, and it includes a wide, east-facing entrance, conforming to the tradition of temple construction in the ancient Near East: the rays of the sun rising in the east would have illuminated the object placed inside the temple first, symbolizing the divine presence within. A square structure which was probably an altar was exposed in the temple courtyard, and the cache of sacred vessels was found near the structure. The assemblage includes ritual pottery vessels, with fragments of chalices (bowls on a high base which were used in sacred rituals), decorated ritual pedestals, and a number of pottery figurines of two kinds: the first, small heads in human form (anthropomorphic) with a flat headdress and curling hair; the second, figurines of animals (zoomorphic) - mainly of harnessed animals. The archeologists stress that "the find of the sacred structure together with the accompanying cache of sacred vessels, and especially the significant coastal influence evident in the anthropomorphic figurines, still require extensive research." Figurine of a horse (Photo: Clara Amit, courtesy Israel Antiquities Authority) What are those things on the horse's midsection?  Looks like a foot on this side, and on the far side, part of a leg?  Did this horse have a standing rider on it at one point?  Ritual elements in the Kingdom of Judah are recorded in archaeological research, especially from the numerous finds of pottery figurines and other sacred objects found at many sites in Israel, and these are usually attributed to domestic rituals. However, the remains of ritual platforms and temples used for ritual ceremonies have only been found at a few sites of this period. According to the site's directors, "The finds recently discovered at Tel Motza provide rare archaeological evidence for the existence of temples and ritual enclosures in the Kingdom of Judah in general, and in the Jerusalem region in particular, prior to the religious reforms throughout the kingdom at the end of the monarchic period (at the time of Hezekiah and Isaiah), which abolished all ritual sites, concentrating ritual practices solely at the Temple in Jerusalem."

More Discoveries on the Family Tree

Hola darlings!  Happy New Year to all of you, and Goddess Blessings!  May 2013 be better for all of us than 2012.

Today was a domestic day.  It's cold as Hell out there, wind chills below zero (dropped like a rock yesterday from a balmy 34 degrees F during my morning walk to the bus stop yesterday to go to the office, to a very uncomfortable walk home last night in brisk winds and wind chills hovering around 5 degrees F, brrrrrrr!) 

I didn't venture out.  Instead, I've been been putzing around the greater part of the day.  First I touched up nicked furniture legs on my bedroom furniture; then I dusted the cold air returns and heat registers, then I re-framed various prints for my bedroom and worked on plans for finally refinishing the family room re-do.  Yes, it has been torn-apart since March of 2012!  In between times, I was working on the family tree.  I have been busy since Christmas Day (on and off) printing it out and adding updates, including printing out interesting stories about our venerable ancestors and cleaning-up lines of descent. 

Today I came across an ancestor who has sometimes been called "the Father of Wisconsin."  HOLY HATHOR!  Along the way, I also confirmed suspicions that developed early-on in my research a couple years ago that in my mostly French paternal side of the family on both sides of the Canadian-USA border, there is plenty of mixed French-Native American ancestry.  Of course, back then, borders were a much more fluid concept and the French traders and fur trappers who ventured far into the Great Lakes region didn't care that the land around La Baye (eventually became the city of Green Bay) was in territory that would eventually become the state of Wisconsin, or that Mackinaw/Mackinac was in territory that would eventually become the state of Michigan.  The French traders, trappers and soldiers garrisoned in Detroit and at Mackinac had much friendlier relations (for sure!) with the Native Americans than most of the Anglaise, who looked down their noses at the Native Americans as "savages."  Those Anglaise later on became known as the Yankees.  No wonder I hate those damn Yankees!

I digress, ahem.  Direct line of descent going back in time --numbers in brackets [--] are for convenience to denote generations:

[1] Me
[2] Dad, Francis John Newton (1922 - 2002)
[3] Ida Newton nee Belanger (1893 - 1962)
[4] Mathilde A. Belanger nee Forsyth/Forsythe (1861 - 1943)
(Before around this time, the French tradition that married women kept their "maiden" names held sway in settlements primarily French, before the Anglaise tradition of erasing a woman's prior identity after she got married took root.  I employ that naming tradition going back:)
[5] Theotiste Marie Susane Brunette (1824 - 1904)
[6] Domitelle Grignon (1787 - 1847)
[7] Louise Domitilde de Langlade (1759 - 1823), daughter of Charles Michel de Langlade (1729 - 1800, or 1801 or 1802) and Charlotte Ambroisine (Ambroisie) Bourassa (1735 - 1817)

It is [8] Charles Michel De Langlade who has been sometimes called "the Father of Wisconsin."  We have a county in Wisconsin named after us, har :)  It's true! 

Going back one more generation, to the parents of Charles Michel de Langlade, his father was [9] Augustin Mouet de Moras dit Langlade, a French trader from Quebec, and his mother was Domitilde, a Native American of the Ottawa people.  Domitilde's brother was Nissowaquet (spelled phonetically), who became a Chief of the Ottawa.  The French called him "La Fourche." 

When Charles was about 10 years old, his Uncle, Nissowaquet a/k/a La Fourche, had a dream of great significance.  He dreamt that young Charles would be fighting at his side when they conquered a distant enemy.  And thus, Charles was called forth from his family to go fight with La Fourche and his warriors.  Despite propaganda that indicates otherwise, the battle ended in a stalemate and a peace treaty was entered into between the two tribes.  Nonetheless, Charles was designated a hero from the battle, and this experience was to color his life for decades to come. 

Here is a Wikipedia entry about my venerable ancestor. Also noted at the Wisconsin Historical Society's website. And for further history on the subject of French and Indian marriages with information about the Langlades and the Grignon families, see The Founders of Green Bay: A Marriage of Indian and White. 

Okay, so my question is this:  With my family background, why aren't I now governor of Wisconsin???  Hmmm....

Thoughts on 2012

Hola darlings!

Yes, I've been neglecting this blog.  I will try to do better in 2013, including trying to resurrect a form of the Goddesschess website.  Those are the plans, anyway.

As faithful fans and readers know, the year 2012, started out so wonderfully with Mr. Don and I travelling to Spain, nearly 10 years after our first visit there.  We had our obligatory fight in Madrid (LOL!) and had a marvelous time.  The weather was incredible -- well, to us, natives of Milwaukee, WI USA and Montreal, Canada -- in January we are used to temperatures well below freezing, unrelenting grey skies and snow, lots of ice and snow, and bone-chilling, teeth-rattling winds.  So, the weather in Madrid and Toledo, it was fabulous by comparison! 

We came back home and carried on as we'd been doing so since 1999 when Goddesschess first went online.  And then, Mr. Don got sick in March, with what seemed to be a lung thing that he has been prone to more and more since contracting pneumonia after our trip to Las Vegas in November, 2003.  That pneumonia hospitalized him, he nearly died!  And so, I was worried.  He didn't seem to get better.  Finally, he dragged himself to a clinic and was prescribed some drugs that only seemed to make him more ill.  Inhalers and pills and who knows what?  He wasn't able to, or refused to, describe everything that was going on to me.

I concluded he had lung cancer, and that is what I wrote to our friend, Georgia.  I thought that I must mentally prepare myself for the worst.

But he did get better, for a little while, anyway.  Warmer weather brought some relief to his condition, and toward the end of June Georgia and I chipped in and bought him two window air conditioners to use in his shot-gun style apartment (windows in the back and the front, no windows in-between), so that he would be able to spend his future summers in relative comfort of cooler, dryer air. 

It was on June 22nd, during a routine physical exam, that my doctor diagnosed me with heart arrythmia (irregular heart beat).  This was something more than the "heart murmur" that I've had for years, ever since contracting and surviving rheumatic fever as a toddler back in the 1950's.  Yeah, what you've suspected for years is true - I'm one tough bitch!

About this same time, unfortunately, it was also discovered that Mr. Don had arrythmia too!  What are the odds of both of us developing this condition?  We wrote a lot to each other during this period.

And then, my Mom got seriously ill and was hospitalized in intensive care.

And then, Mr. Don was whisked away to hospital where he had tubes put into him and all kinds of tests and procedures done, none of which he could or could be bothered with adequately explaining to me.  Here I was, sitting in Milwaukee, worrying about him, my Mom, and about me, too.  Because further testing revealed that I had a nasty disease that has no cure and is always fatal, usually in about 3 years, affecting more women than men in the USA.  It's called pulmonary arterial hypertension and it affects the arteries in the lungs, but causes severe complications in the heart that leads to heart failure in the end.

July and August were very bad months.  I had a visit to the emergency room at a local hospital one Sunday morning after I'd been bleeding pink urine for 4 days -- an overdose of blood thinner was diagnosed as the problem and I was one sick chick.  It didn't help that my only means of transportation other than my feet, begging for rides or paying for taxis, is the bus.  Yes, I took the bus to the emergency room on an early Sunday morning in late July, and it was about 100 degrees F outside.  In fact, we were breaking temperature records left and right around here the summer of 2012, and it seems I was sickest and waiting for buses in full sun and no breeze during the worst of it.  After spending half a day in the ER, I received a dose of Vitamin K to counter-act the blood thinner.  It took four long days to get back to normal.  During this time, I used up what was left of my "paid time off" at work.  All "sick days" and time taken off for medical appointments and medical procedures since then have been unpaid.  A couple hundred hours.  CHA CHING!  Thank Goddess I have pretty good health insurance through my employer.  But I am still several thousand dollars in the hole, paying for care not covered by the insurance. 

Mr. Don received at least one heart catheterization, and one, possibly two, atrial ablations, where parts of his heart tissue were "killed" with lazers to stop the erratic electric impulses causing his irregular heart beat.  My heart doctors also ordered a catheterization, the thought of which nearly terrified me to death -- I was sure I was going to die and, in fact, it was the impetus of that procedure that finally made me get serious and I put together my own estate plan -- a Will and a Trust, as well as Powers of Attorney for financial and medical affairs.

I survived my heart cath, and Mom was out of the hospital and back home again.  My siblings and I were taking turns visiting Mom to make sure she was taking decent care of herself.

Things seemed to be looking up.  Mr. Don was released from hospital near the end of July, and seemed to be recovering.  Toward the end of August, my heart cath revealed that my pulmonary arterial hypertension was not NEARLY as advanced or as bad as an echocardiogram taken on July 5th had suggested; in fact, the pressures measured inside my pulmonary arteries were normal to just slightly above normal!  All of that terror I experienced for weeks, and grapling with the thought of dying much earlier than I'd ever anticipated, and from a disease that would debilitate me, bit by bit by bit.., a slow, horrid death -- it turned out the doctors were so FUCKING WRONG! 

I was thinking things weren't so bad!  A few days later, Mom was rushed back to the hospital and was once again in intensive care, for a different problem.  And Mr. Don wasn't up to trying to get Goddesschess back online, which technical problems he kept experiencing with our web host, 3iX, had led him to take the website offline in June.  We were both taking hiatus time.  I was trying to get a certain measurement of blood thinness at an even level for three straight weeks, so that I could have a heart procedure called "cardioversion" -- where the heart is stopped and then shocked back to life (one hopes), in the hope that when the heart re-starts the beat will be regular instead of the crazy irregular one I was experiencing.  To entertain myself, I planned and suggested to Mr. Don a couple of different fun vacations but, much to my surprise (and secret chagrin), he shot them down.

It took more than two months for me to get that certain blood measurement to a decent level for three straight weeks, after which I could schedule my cardioversion which would, it was hoped, put my heart back into a normal rhythm.  Finally, the procedure was set for November 6.

Mr. Don had gotten sick again. The last communication I had from him, on October 11, he wrote that had contracted some kind of nasty "bug" that he said was going around Montreal, and it had knocked him for a loop.  It was affecting his lungs. I  could tell that he felt very sick, and tired.  He had also been potentially diagnosed with gallbladder problems and was scheduled for some further tests in November.

But he never got the chance.  The day after that last email from him, he died, evidently in his sleep, on October 12, 2012.

I learned about Mr. Don's death the next day, from his twin sister, Anne.  That night, when I laid down to go to sleep on the sofa in the living room -- I just could not bring myself to go to my bed -- I thought that I might die that night and I wanted to be found on the sofa, not in bed.

But I didn't die.  I thought, if I was going to die any time soon, that would be when it happened.  That's when I wanted it to happen.  I prayed for it to happen, actually.  Because my heart was broken.  Mr. Don and me, we've been together since 1999, through thick and thin, ups and downs, some fights, some break-ups and even a broken engagement, but mostly really wonderful times together.  And he was the mechanic that kept the technical heart of Goddesschess beating smoothly, day after day.  Until technical problems happened that he couldn't deal with -- well, he was sick, too.

I didn't die.  My 85 year old Mom came home from the hospital for the second time.  I had my cardioversion on November 6th, which was successful.  I am now on some kind of super-scary heart medication, along with still being on blood thinner, which I loathe and detest because eating just a little bit too much green lettuce at lunch can send that certain "thinnesss" level the heart doctors want dropping too low, and drinking an extra glass of wine can send it soaring too high.  My credo now is - eat tons of green lettuce and drink gallons of cheap wine, and as for the doctors -- well, I'm pretty sure they know what I think...

Now, I am in mourning.  The old-fashioned kind of mourning, except I didn't cut off my hair with scissors because it's already short enough and I don't constantly wear black (only several times a week), and I do not roll about in ashes or walk about incessantly beating my breast and wailing, even though sometimes I think maybe that would help. This is the kind of mourning where one does not pretend that everything is all light and sunshine, like nothing tragic happened, stiff upper lip and all that.  Like it's not a 48-hours news story and then everyone "moves on" until the next salacious scandal.  My family thinks I'm crazy.  After all, Mr. Don and I weren't MARRIED.  Of course, they've pretty much thought I'm out of my mind for the past 30 years. 

My now properly beating heart feels heavy.  I'm sad.  Every day when I roll over in bed and wake up, and stare up at my beautiful canopy above my bed during those first few seconds of waking awareness, I smile.  And then the sadness comes with awareness, just as the light coming into my room through the curtains continues to get lighter and lighter; fittingl, these days, it varying shades of gloom and grey.  How does one survive this?  And yet I keep waking up each day.

During this time, I also had major issues at the office with which I was trying to deal.  Suffice to say that no good deed goes unpunished; in twists and turns worthy of an epic novel, I agreed to take on a difficult position in order to save a job for another person, who ended up leaving the firm for greener pastures and there I was left, holding the bag. Fortunately - thus far - things have turned out far better than I could have dreamed. 

So, that is what happened during 2012, a true Year from Hell for me.  I missed the End of the World on December 21st, too.  Geez. 

So you know what - I give a flying fuck about the so-called stupidly named "Fiscal Cliff" and press that thinks it is more important to report on Kardashian and her has-been boyfriend (I mean - REALLY?) than how many women are killed every year in the United States by spouses, ex-spouses and boyfriends and ex-boyfriends every year with guns, knives and fists.  This year, I have lost so much that has been precious to me, and I am struggling with wondering whether it's even worth it to try and go on, and not just leave it up to the Goddess of Fate.