Monday, January 19, 2009

"A Bit of Mischief"
9:47pm


Sunlight on images of Set and Ma'at...

I looked at the photo of the sunbathed Ma'at and Set, and above me at the actual pictures, and a mischievious thought occurred to me, "Set's left hand isn't visible, but I bet I know what he'd like to do with it!" The boundary of the frame no impediment, he bursts beyond it to...


POKE! POKE!
Heh! Heh!

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

"Historic Day"
7:15pm


The Nemes Headdress is So Right for Obama

Yes, I thought he looked like a leader when I first saw him early in the campaigns! When I read of the "More than 1 million people crammed onto the National Mall and along the inauguration parade route Tuesday to celebrate the swearing-in of the nation's first black president," having walked that huge mall and that long street, I can better know just how vast the crowds were:


View up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capital building, as I saw from the Old Post office tower

Before I left for work this morning, I reminded Julia that the inauguration would be on TV, live. She did watch, and said she was very moved by his speech. Even though the radio station at work isn't a news station, the DJs made reference to the events as they happened. Later, when I came home, I found its entirety online. "Because we have chosen hope over fear", and because we will continue to do so, we can be proud.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

"Waking Briefly for a Drawing"
12:50am

If at first I did not see
the glowing light,
it was because my eyes were shut tight.
Such brightness hurts!


Now that I've drawn and scanned this, I will return to bed...

Friday, January 23, 2009

"Iconic"
5:38am

The Photo Friday theme this week is "Iconic". I took a look at the word's meaning:

icon
noun
Etymology:
Latin, from Greek eikōn, from eikenai
1: a usually pictorial representation : image
2 [Late Greek eikōn,, from Greek] : a conventional religious image typically painted on a small wooden panel and used in the devotions of Eastern Christians
3: an object of uncritical devotion : idol
4: emblem , symbol <the house became an icon of 1960's residential architecture — Paul Goldberger>
5 a: a sign (as a word or graphic symbol) whose form suggests its meaning b: a graphic symbol on a computer display screen that usually suggests the type of object represented or the purpose of an available function
— icon·ic adjective

For that theme, surely I should have a photo of something from ancient Egypt to fit this theme. I first thought of hieroglyphs, for their forms often suggest their meanings. As I looked through my photos, the capture of three djed pillars seems perfect:

From _Art for Eternity_, Fazzini, Romano and Cody, page 157
djed-pillar "An Egyptian hieroglyph, probably a manifestation of part of the spinal cord, that was a written form of the word for 'stability'. It was a commonly employed symbol in religious iconography."

Yes, it's a religious image whose form suggests its meaning!

Saturday, January 24, 2009

"Set and Hathor on a Stela"
6:49pm

While looking for something else, I found a tiny image I'd saved. It is a small mystery. I have no recollection of the image's original location. I vaguely recall this stele may now be in the Louvre, but I'm not certain of that recollection's accuracy. Meanwhile, Set is on a stele with Hathor, and due to my searching, I know where this stela originally came from:

A Google search brought up a reference to this stela in TeVelde's _Seth, God of Confusion_:

"There is no means of showing, however, that the Egyptian who left us a stela on which Seth and Hathor are depicted together,2)..."
"2) W. M. F. Petrie and J. E. Quibell, Naqada and Ballas, London, 1896, pl. XLIII, 3." (page 7)

_Naqada and Ballas_ is easily available through Etana:

"XLIII. Carvings from Ballas - ....The small limestone stele of Set and Hathor was found amid the main group of stairway tombs, buried a few inches only below the surface." (page 42)

Petrie has an illustration of it:


"Seth and Hathor, the well-known goddess of drunkenness and love, were tutelar god and goddess of wine."
(TeVelde, S,G of C, page 7)
Printable version is available

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