Thursday, November 13, 2008
"Held Close to the Heart"
After seeing that, I couldn't go for very long without feeling inspired. I have an idea on how to proceed with another piece of mine, but meanwhile, I had fun with this quick colorful intuitive drawing: |
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Julia took one look at it, and said I was influenced by Van Gogh's gaslamps. Quite possibly...
Saturday, November 15, 2008
"No Matter the Hour"
"... that Henry Pitkin and his brother produced the first American-designed pocket watches (pictured with machine-made parts?"
 I started 'seeing things' in that image... |
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
"A Stela Yields Proof With Study"
7:57pm
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Remember when I spoke of a "late Second Dynasty inscribed stone slab from Helwan[which] belonged to a royal priest called Nefer-Sutesh, 'Seth is beautiful', Saad 1957: 51-3, pl. XXX [no. 25])."? I found a book written by the author Toby A. H. Wilkinson mentioned, 'Saad'. It wasn't the one from 1957, but from 1969. Perhaps _The Excavations at Helwan_ by Zaki Y. Saad would have this 'stone slab'. Nowhere in this book did I find mention of this priest. But I did find an intriguing stela, and I gazed closely at its hieroglyphs. Being from the Old Kingdom, they weren't the usual ones for Set, or even 'beautiful'. But the more I looked at it, the more I was certain I'd located Wilkinson's piece:
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Saad gives a line drawing to clarify the figure...
...But he does not attempt the hieroglyphs...
"Many different forms of the name of Seth occur in the Egyptian texts..."
"Often combined with one of the usual determinatives of gods or one of the different forms of the Seth-animal..."
(From TeVelde, _Seth, God of Confusion_)
The hieroglyphs in this stela do not closely resemble any of those seen above:
'Nefer' means 'beautiful, good', 'Neter' means 'god' (Budge)
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However, hieroglyphs in the early Dynasties were still evolving, and they used many composites, combining meanings to form a new meaning. (See _The Evolution of Composite Hieroglyphs in Ancient Egypt_, by Henry G. Fischer, Metropolitan Museum Journal, Vol. 12) While the stela doesn't use the 'T' TeVelde shows, it does use another 'T', a symbol which appears to me like a grasping tong. With the composite 'beautiful god', and the usual 'S', and this unusual 'T', it is showing 'Seth is beautiful', and therefore most likely the stela of the royal priest.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
"Stela Proof Now in PDF"
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