Hatshepsut's Mummy Found?

Head Shot
Originally uploaded by Gibna Kebira.

This is a photo I took at Hatshepsut's mortuary temple at Deir el Bahri. Check out the latest buzz about her mummy by clicking on the title of this post.

A (soon-to-be) Published Photograph!

This photo of the Travertines at Pamukkale, Turkey will appear in "Bluelist 2008"! I've just signed an agreement with Lonely Planet Publications--and they're going to pay me for its use!!

Settling In

I'm back in California testing my newly acquired sheesha (shisha) or water-pipe or hookah or narghile packed with inaugural mint tobacco! I've usually smoked the ubiquitous apple sheesha (can refer either to the water-pipe or the tobacco) but I've branched out...

Now for a nice cup of helba tea (aka fenugreek, often served in Egyptian cafés as a companion to the sheesha)...

Moi et Champollion

Moi et Champollion
Originally uploaded by Gibna Kebira.

I'm on my way back to California via Paris. We spent the day yesterday in Père Lachaise Cemetery, and I made a point of paying hommage to "decoder" Champollion (you know–the Rosetta Stone, hieroglyphs...). I think it's also great that he was a municipal librarian. Only the best and the brightest!

Easter Greetings!

Easter Greetings!
Originally uploaded by Gibna Kebira.

Wishing you "new life" and an abundance of joy!

Late Afternoon at Luxor Temple

I never tire of taking a tour of Luxor Temple under the tutelage of the Mudhir (my boss, Dr. Johnson). I always learn something new and notice more details each time. Yesterday, I was able to attach myself to a late afternoon tour for members of an Oriental Institute group. It was an amazingly different experience, as I had never explored the temple at this time of day before.

There were several school groups at LT as you can see from this photo. These young girls in their white headscarves flitted about as if they were butterflies--never settling anywhere for very long! The young men "sauntering" about were much more brash and obtrusive. As usual, there were several groups of tourists from various countries, each led by their multilingual Egyptian guide (the linguistic skills of these guides never fail to amaze me, at the same time that the misinformation that is often shared appals me!).

One of the delights of my late afternoon visit was to be able to see the Abu el-Haggag Mosque in sunlight! This almost surreal juxtaposition of the ancient (1550 BC) and the merely old (ca. 969 AD) in the same space is fascinating. This original entrance to the mosque has three arches covered with marble and faience. Inside the mosque, there is a niche of simple design that is free of ornaments. There is also a small grave in which Yousef Ibn Abdel-Raheem, known as Abu Al-Haggag, was buried. On the top of the mosque, there is also a row of balconies that were built with baked bricks as it was restored in AD 1914 by Khedive Abbas Helmy the Second.


I really like this view of the minaret of the mosque framed by the papyrus-bundle columns of the peristyle court*. These columns are part of a triple shrine originally built by Hatshepsut (18th Dynasty) and later rebuilt by Ramesses II (19th Dynasty). The three shines belong to Mut, Amun, and Khonsu. The building was the southernmost of the bark shrines** used in processions between Karnak and Luxor temples and played an important role in the ceremony.
The slim minaret is located at the top of the northeast side of Luxor temple. Its height is about 14.15 meters or 46.41 feet and it was constructed on the thresholds above the four granite pillars in the temple, which form an invisible base.

*A court enclosed by columns
**A type of small temple in the shape of a Nile boat, with the prows and sterns decorated with the aegis of a god. The cabin contained the cult image of the deity.

We are now in the Colonnade of Amenhotep III, one of the most impressive spaces in any Egyptian monument. It has 14 massive columns with open papyrus capitals that once supported a roof 68 feet above the ground. The scenes in the Colonnade are the best sources available for study of the Opet Festival, one of the most important religious rituals in the New Kingdom. Five scenes on the west wall depict the procession from Karnak to Luxor and initial ceremonies in Luxor Temple. The five on the east wall show further festivities at Luxor and the return procession to Karnak.

There are approximately 50,000 decorated blocks in our blockyard at Luxor Temple. This is one I had not seen until yesterday. It is an intriguing depiction of a lunar cat! Actually the head of the cat is on the left, accompanied by the falcon god Horus above and just below him is his left eye, the Wadjet or Oudjat (meaning "healthy" or "whole"). In an ancient myth, about a battle between Horus and Seth (a storm god as well as the murderer of his brother Osiris), Horus' left eye (the moon) was torn out. The myth relates to the waxing and waning of the moon during which the moon appears to have been torn out of the sky before being restored once every lunar month. (Other myths suggest that it was Horus' right eye (the sun) which was torn out and thus the myth refers to a solar eclipse in which the sun is momentarily blotted from the sky.) The "eye" was also personified as the goddess Bastet and Bastet is a lunar goddess. Just another reminder of the saying: "Once cats were worshipped as gods. They have never forgotten this!"

My primary reason for wanting to visit the temple was to see the newly cleaned Roman wall paintings in the Chamber of the Divine King. The chamber had served as a bark shrine but was converted to a chapel for the Roman imperial cult. Scenes of Amenhotep III and Amun were plastered over and painted with scenes of Roman officials. [NB: There is a long-held belief which still surfaces on many websites about Ancient Egypt and is promulgated by many of the Egyptian guides that this room served as a Christian church and that the scenes were actually renderings of the Last Supper! In fact, it was on this spot that early Christians were made to forcibly declare their allegiance to the Roman god-emperor.] Just last year the Egyptian Antiquities Conservation Project under the auspices of the American Research Center in Egypt launched a major effort to clean and conserve these unique paintings with the assistance of a group of Italian conservators. The first stage was completed earlier this season, and I had not yet seen the results without scaffolding in front. The paintings are remarkably beautiful, as you can see in this photo.

As a perfect ending to a perfect visit to Luxor Temple, and as the sun sank slowly in the west, we headed for a much-anticipated gin-and-tonic on a dahabeeyah named the "Kingfisher" docked on the Nile....Life is good!

هس ا لسلا هة إ

Dwindling Mummy Population!

Egyptian Conservationists Fight To Protect Dwindling Mummy Population

CAIRO—The number of undead Egyptian princes roaming the desert has diminished from 12,000 in 1970 to just 300 today.

Sofia 2006

I wasn't in Luxor very long before I had an opportunity to travel to Sofia, Bulgaria for a library conference. Despite the fact that the conference was very intense, I was able to get out and about, both in and around Sofia and Plovdiv. This photomosaic represents some of the highlights of the trip. Viewing left to right and top to bottom they are:
1. Vitosha in the Morning, 2. Alexander Nevski Cathedral, 3. Alexander Nevski Cathedral (Detail), 4. St. Nikolai Russian Church (Detail), 5. Sofia Street Market: Icons, 6. Rainbow Door (Sofia), 7. Sofia Fountain, 8. St. Nikolai Russian Church (Detail), 9. Georgi Dimitrov Genchev, 10. Look Up!, 11. Lion of Bulgaria, 12. Luxor in Sofia, 13. Alafrangite Restaurant, 14. Archaeological Museum (Sofia), 15. Bachkovo Monastery, 16. Sofia Detail: Lion

Sophie and the Bastets

Sophie and the Bastets
Originally uploaded by Gibna Kebira.

Sophie is one of the three tiny kitties who came to live with us at CH (they were born in Cairo) last season. As you can see, he (yes, Sophie's a boy!) is no longer tiny! But he is truly a sweetheart of a cat :-} One morning I was snapping photos of him in the backlight of one of my bedroom windows when he assumed this pose. It's been a very popular photo among the cat lovers on Flickr!

Shopping Continued...

I mentioned the crowd in the tailor's shop in my last post and here's a picture I took from the doorway. Most shops in Luxor are "holes in the wall" like this one. No sense in paying rent for more space than you really need! The same day we went to the tailor's we also went to pick up yogurt and milk for CH. The Labanita brand seems to be competing with Vache Qui Rit/Laughing Cow in their marketing:

Scenes on a Luxor Street

Scenes on a Luxor Street
Originally uploaded by Gibna Kebira.

Shopping in Luxor is always an adventure. The day these photos were taken we were bringing fabric which one of us had purchased in Cairo to be made into curtains for her rooms at CH. As I waited outside for the confab to finish up (there were three people from CH--our driver, one of our artists and the person wanting the curtains--jammed into the tiny shop, in addition to the tailor! And they were joined by two Egyptian women who needed some work done, but were more than happy to observe the "hawagas" in action while waiting!!) I took these photos of some of the buildings across the street. There's an interesting mix of architectural styles in Luxor as you can see. Unfortunately for those of us who value examples of Egypt's more modern history, there is a concerted effort underway to tear down much of the lovely 18th and 19th century city and replace it with generic Egyptian 21st century construction.

Ramadan Sunset

Ramadan Sunset
Originally uploaded by Gibna Kebira.

Better late than never, right? This is one of the first photos I took in Egypt this season, from the roof of CH. Because it moves back 10 or 11 days every year, next season Ramadan will have ended by the time we arrive.

Woodland One Day at a Time

Now that I'm back in California I'm putting my Luxor blog into "estivation" (the summertime equivalent of hibernation). Clicking on the title of this post will take you to "Woodland One Day at a Time". Until October...

In Memoriam...

(Following is the "remembrance" that I shared at Dad's memorial service on April 29 at St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Challenge, CA.)

My Dad was a wonderful man.

He was never sorry that his firstborn was ONLY a girl. He treated me as if I were the best thing that could have happened to him.

He took me fishing on the Berkeley Marina and Mom was good enough to actually cook the results!

When he had to pick me up from school to take me for eye doctor appointments or to Children’s Hospital for eye therapy, I’d get to go and visit his shop at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab. I still remember the great little robot with the glowing red eyes that the guys there had built.

I still remember him comforting me after a science fair at which I had not succeeded in winning a ribbon.

Mom and Dad were serious about seeing we had a good education. Not only did they pay to allow us all to attend parochial elementary school, but they really came up with the big bucks to send us to parochial high schools. And on top of that, they worked for long hours to fill out the required financial forms every year to see to it that I was able to keep my full scholarship to Holy Names College. Mom recently told me that, compared to those forms, filling out stuff for the IRS was a piece of cake!

He always shared what he knew with us kids or we would learn something together—we tried lost wax casting and copper enameling, etc. etc. etc.

And he was really interested in my education, went the extra yard. My favorite memory of this goes back to Library School at UC Berkeley. I was taking a course in bibliography and I chose to do one of my bibliographies on Ancient Egypt (isn’t THAT ironic, considering what I’m doing now?!). At the time, I believe Louis Alvarez was working at LBL or at Cal. In any case, Dad had some contact with him and mentioned my project. Dr. Alvarez offered to loan me one of the plexiglass models of the Great Pyramid that he was using for the research they were doing to use lasers to investigate for hidden chambers!

We shared a quirky sense of humor. I’m going to miss the regular exchange when he answered the phone, based on a routine by Lily Tomlin on Laugh-In where she played Josephine the telephone operator (one ringy dingy...), always some variation of “Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?”

He was a gentle, unassuming man, but a man with great strength of character. I found this out when he, who had always smoked cigarettes, pipe and the occasional cigar, quit both the cigarettes and cigars “cold turkey” when I was about ten. A while later he also quit the pipe because he thought it might make him take up cigarettes and cigars again. As far as I know he never smoked again.

Peanut brittle—he love peanut brittle and as a joke just after he’d had his teeth taken out we gave him some as a gift. Of course, forever after that it became known as “peanut brutal”.

I think I inherited his love of trains: from riding the live steam trains at Redwood Park and then at Tilden, I graduated to riding the trains of the world. That’s included trains in England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and now Egypt. I’ll always choose a train over a plane if at all possible!

And his printing! He was so enchanted by being able to print. When I was in library school he got to know one of my professors who was also a printer. He printed my wedding invitations. He printed for the Sacramento Book Collectors Club. And of course he printed for your museum. I know that he was delighted to be part of living history! And I still remember vividly the perilous relocation of the linotype from the Bay Area to Forbestown!!

There are so many things I remember now that I’m putting this down on paper—going camping and using all his handmade camping equipment and reading Just So stories around the campfire; and his cooking and BBQing and baking...But we would be here forever!

Yes, Dad was a special man, and I know that he is in a special place (perhaps printing God’s weekly newsletter?). I know it’s selfish of me, but I wish he were still here...

Sad News...

I'm very sorry to have to announce my beloved father's death as the reason for not having posted here for so long. Joseph W. Bryan "passed into the West" on Tuesday, April 11, 2006 at the age of 85. I have arranged to fly home early and will be arriving in Woodland on Saturday evening. At some point after that I will post an appreciation of my sweet daddy to this blog. Please pray for those of us who are left behind...

Meet Dr. Franky!

Dr. François Gaudard (Dr. Franky) is the smaller ;-> of the two figures in this photo (left) taken at the Ramesseum in February of this year.

How to describe him?? Well, he's a Swiss UofC doctoral graduate-with-honors-demoticist-rockabilly-pianist-swing dancer-epigrapher-teacher-author (have I left anything out?)

The photo below shows the Doctor swinging with
Nefertiti!

Tonight (Wednesday, April 5) we celebrated his birthday. And thank you to all who have sent or who will send him birthday e-greetings! He has been quite touched by your best wishes. And I was mightily relieved to find out today that I am NOT old enough to be his mother!!

The photo below shows Dr. Franky enjoying the candles on his birthday cake in the company of Dr. Ray (the Mudhir).

Eclipsed!

Yesterday was a very unusual day for us here at CH. Luxor was treated to a 65%-of-total solar eclipse and we acted just like little kids during our lunch hour. We had smoked glass and double negatives for direct viewing, as well as binoculars for reflecting the eclipse onto paper. We also had great fun with the shadows cast by the eclipse.


And just to show you how lush our garden is right now, check out this bougainvillea:

High Noon at the Tomb...

Just a quick note to report that I have now been in KV 63! We had a house trip today and got to see the new discoveries at Amenhotep III's mortuary temple (west of the Colossi of Memnon) with the enthusiastic guidance of Mudhira Hourig Sourouzian. And then on to the Valley of the Kings and our encounter with the most recently discovered tomb in the valley. Photography was not allowed at either site, but I will do my best to paint word pictures for you in the next few days. I DO have some photos of the finches coming to drink from a bowl set on the wall surrounding the dig and some other shots from the valley.

I know this is a little snobbish, but it was great fun being on the inside looking out at all the poor tourists who will never have the opportunity to see these objects in situ ;-> But let me tell you--they need some fashion police around here!

In Love with Slovenia...

Are YOU in love with Slovenia yet? From Ljubljana in the center (top) to Planica near the Italian and Austrian borders in the north (center) and on to Piran on the Adriatic in the south (bottom) it's an absolutely lovely country...
Rather than distract from things Luxorian by posting more pictures on this blog, I will be uploading more of my Slovenian shots to my space at www.flickr.com where I am known as Gibna Kebira! I'll provide a link once I've completed that process.
Na zdrovje!

Slovenia Calling!

I certainly didn't expect to be going to Slovenia anytime soon when the season started, but I have been invited to the opening of a photographic exhibit in Ljubljana, after which I will be shown the country by my hosts, Dina and Matjaž. I will not be posting until after I return on March 20. Check out the announcement of the exhibit by clicking on the title of this post...