John Burridge

Yesterday, Mark and I went to the Portland Art Museum.  Mark wanted to revisit a exhibit of French painters from the 1890's (the Nabi Brotherhood) and I wanted to revisit the Nefertari exhibit.  Luckily, the weather cooperated and the drive was rainy and sunny instead of snowy and icy.

My impression that the Nefertari displays were oddly lit and poorly placed was reinforced during this second visit.  Several items were clearly meant to be seen from behind and were shoved against walls; coffin lids were placed next to each other so that one side was not accessable -- perhaps the museum's rectangular galleries constrained the displays, or maybe the curators wanted the best layout for minimizing COVID exposure.   

However, this time around there were fewer patrons thronging the halls, so I had more time to appreciate and photograph the New Kingdom artifacts.  Mark put it the best:  the exhibit is more more scholarly and archeological than it is artistic (sort of like one of those back study rooms at the MET); and reviewing my photos, many of them are studies in in form that I would refer to if I were designing graphics with Middle- and Late-Kingdom Egyptian motifs.  

Thinking back, my favorite pieces from the exhibit were the sculptures of Sekhmet, the lion goddess (Mark and I had a fun time looking at the ways the manes were different and how some Sekhmets looked happy while others looked fierce); the sculptures of the king between Amun and Mut; and a cat sculpture.  

Mark enjoyed the Nabi Brotherhood exhibit, especially some of the paintings of subjects interacting with their cats or dogs.  I will admit to being a philistine when it comes to paintings--very often I'll look at portraiture and it's either not speaking to me, or it's Yet Another Madonna and Child, or it doesn't have a strong narrative I can access, or it's Yet Another Crucifixion, or it just plain looks like an assortment of colored textures, or Look! It's Boobs!--but I did appreciate some black-and-white prints.  

Last week was the last of my Zoom classes on ancient Egypt and Egyptian magic.  Since I justified it as writing research, here's my writer's take-away from the last few weeks.

Ancient Egyptians conceived of a natural force, called heka, which was created by Re before time as a resource for humans to use to ward off bad things.  I suppose in a way it's like static electricity, in that some objects will hold it, and a user of heka can direct it.   To speak a spell is to have heka in one's mouth. Powerful magical items hold and direct lots of heka; some things have more intrinsic heka than others: like the king, graveyards, books, gold, names, precious stones.  

Heka was also used to combat the forces of chaos -- the desert, storms, sickness, dangerous animals, and foreigners --  in order to uphold "maat," or truth and order.  (The imagery of foreigners in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, foot ware,  religious iconography, and in magical texts is the xenophobic elephant in the pyramid of Egyptian studies.)  Heka could form a protective shield encircling the magician, or could in turn encircle and bind the forces of chaos.   

Ancient Egyptian spells involve ritual actions or gestures, special or exotic focus objects, and written or spoken words -- especially names.   So if you're writing a magic scene set in ancient Egypt, your spell-caster is going to be waving around an ankh (at least) while using as many True Names as possible.   Spells to subdue an enemy might involve breaking pots with a person's name written on them, or melting wax images of them.   In some rituals, a magician/priest has the goddess Maat painted with white paint upon his tongue so that his words are true and pure. 

Colors had magical correspondences.  Green was associated with plants, and therefore flourishing growth.  Blue (like lapis) was associated with heavenly powers.  Black was a powerful color (maybe associated with the fertile black soil?).  Red was a color of power, but also chaos, associated with the chaotic god Seth.  Magical scrolls might have magical names or chaotic powers written in red ink (otherwise, they mostly used black).

Scholars like to spend a lot of time writing about the boundaries between ancient Egyptian religion, magic, and medicine.  This is because the boundaries between the three are blurred.   Ancient Egyptian (Early- and Middle-Kingdom, at least) spells tend to begin with a story about the gods as a kind of "this is the way the universe works" starting statement, and then has the spell caster identify with one of the god-protagonists in the story.  Also, magic spells were part of a non-exclusive toolkit -- along with prayers and mundane actions -- for healing or averting ill fortune.

Scholars also like to talk about how ancient Egyptian magic is different from the modern (-ish) western concept of sympathetic magic as put forward by Sir James Frazer.  I'm not sure there are that many differences, since ancient Egyptian magic operates with the Law of the Macrocosm and Microcosm, the Law of True Names, the the Law of Contagion.  On the other hand, I'm not sure how to classify a spell that requires one write write the spell onto one's body and then lick it off for it to work -- consuming or otherwise taking the spell into one's mouth was a way for illiterate folks to activate the potency of a spell.   

Simplifying things greatly, ancient Egyptian magicians came in three flavors:  the king as high-priest of the nation casting spells to uphold order (maat), a scribe-priest associated with a temple's scriptorium (or House of Life) who might cast healing spells or compile magical guidebooks for navigating the afterlife, and common folks who used charms, talismans, and magical gestures during times of crisis (like birth or death) to manipulate health and luck (and hippos and crocodiles) or avert the evil eye. 

Although there was a mention of foreign (Nubian) women and their terrible spells, most magicians in ancient Egypt were male priests working out of a temple.  There might be a sample bias here, as temple priests were more likely to leave a record of spell (or medical triage) books.  Being a priest was a part time  job, and when they were off of temple duty, they were typically doctors or scribes.  As time went on, the priesthood became hereditary.  So if you're going to write an ancient Egyptian magician, they're going to be part of a literate elite, or connected with the royal court.  

Ancient Egyptians made heavy use of amulets, like the ankh (for life); others include the djed pillar (for stability), the shen (for protection), the scarab (for regeneration), and the wedjat eye (for wholeness and protection).  Amulets could be as simple as a knotted thread, or a magical word or symbol written onto a piece of cloth and put into a small bag, or even a tattoo.  

Finally, ancient Egyptian magic was concerned with helping folks attain a good afterlife.  Afterworld spells can be attested throughout the Egyptian kingdoms, starting with the Pyramid Texts (~2353 BCE, and which were reserved for the king),  to the Coffin Texts (~2100 BCE), to the Book of Gates (~1500 BCE) , The Book of Going Forth By Day (~1550 BCE, available to the upper classes), The Book of the Hidden Chamber, The Book of Adoring Re in the West (~1425), and other Netherworld Texts.  These contained spells and rituals a person would need to recite in order to navigate the perils of the netherworld or Duat and unite their ka (or spirit) with their ba (or soul) -- much in the same way Re the sun god was thought to unite with Osiris the mummiform god of the underworld.  The  Book of the Heavenly Cow (~1341) appears to be a collection of stories featuring gods and sorcerers.  

Once we get to around 300 BCE, Egyptian magic starts to look more familiar.  For one thing, it seems to be more about curses and bindings and less about protection, healing, and the afterlife.  The gods become more syncretic.  The spells begin to become more abbreviated and cryptic.  During this time we start to see gods like Abraxius, and magical anagram-like words, like abracadabra make their appearance.  

I suppose if I were going to write about an ancient Egyptian magician, I'd do an alternate history magician.  They would need to be able to read and write.  They'd need to have good observational skills in order to detect and move heka.  They'd need to be versed in the creation myths of their society in order to make use of the Law of Macro-and-Microcosm.  They'd be a boy-scout type concerned keeping the system running orderly.  I'm split on what gender to make them, although writing a non-traditional / non-male would be give them a social hurdle to get over.   Or maybe I'd make them a foreign magician trying to work within their adopted land's system (more opportunities for conflict there) -- maybe they could be a lover or spouse of a native.   I'd probably make my magician a mystery solver -- so I guess a police procedural or Brother Cadfael type of character.   

. . . or . . . 

 maybe I could make them a kind of shabti figure (a kind of Egyptian golem). . . doing work for a magician. . . 

. . . or . . . 

maybe this school-teacher / anthropologist is digging in modern Egypt, and she finds this box from the time of Queen Hatshepsut, and inside the box is an amulet of Isis, and....

Over the weekend Mark and I drove up to the Portland Art Museum to see an exhibition of ancient Egyptian artifacts from the time of Queen Nefertari, wife of Rameses II.  The artifacts were (most recently) from the Museum of Turin.

I'd say we've been spoiled by the MET.  I did wish the PAM could have turned up the lights some, although I understand that low lighting is needed for conservation purposes--but it made it difficult to see the minute details on some of the items (and I had to crank up my camera's ISO to the max to get any kind of photo).  I would have had a few of the items pulled away from the walls, turned ninety degrees, or installed in front of a mirror to make it easier to see the back.  I always want translations of what I'm looking at, and if I had been curator I would have had a augmented reality or video display of the artifacts with the hieroglyphs highlighted, along with transliterations and translations (the MET sort of does this sometimes when they shine projections onto the Temple of Dendur).

The artifacts were interesting early Late Kingdom items--but there was nothing of fabulously spectacular craftsmanship fashioned out of gold and inlayed with precious stones.  This wasn't too surprising, as the majority of the objects were every day things from a stonemason's village.  And, to be fair, the show wasn't trying to be a second King Tut exhibit.  There were a number of stelae, pointy-ended jars, little wooden or stone votive statues, and tons of shabti.  The curators did seem awfully fond of a pair of ladies' size nine palm flip-flops.  I'd say my favorite pieces were a bronze cat, an eyeliner case, a carving of the Two Ladies (a cobra and vulture representing Upper and Lower Egypt) with cool detail payed to the two neb baskets, and an early 1900's architectural model of Queen Nefertari's tomb.  

There were only one or two instances of the htp-di-nsw offering formula, so I was challenged to be able to read the writing, but I did on occasion manage to pick out someone's name or phrases like "forever" and "eternity."  To me it seems like New Kingdom era hieroglyphs are the ancient Egyptian equivalent of Helvetica.  It was cool to see some actual papyrus scrolls of The Negative Confession and what I think was Chapter Eleven from the Book of Gates, where Apep the Chaos Serpent is bound--even if they did have a line-drawing feel instead of a luscious carving feel.

Thursday was MET day.  We got up bright and early and managed to get to Dwyer Manse by eight-twenty.  Mark had ordered tickets several weeks ago for our timed entry.  V, The Child, Mark, and I climbed into the car and we were off.  

For the longest time, I've always enjoyed the love duet sung in Philip Glass's Akhenaten.  I'm not sure if my favorite lines are "I behold thy beauty every day," or "it is my desire to be rejuvenated with life through love of thee," or, "give me thy hands, holding thy spirit, that I may receive it and live by it," or "call thou my name unto eternity, and it shall never fail."   Okay--it's the last line with its image of a lover invoking their beloved's name and the sound rippling through time and space in a sustaining wave that speaks to me the most.   

The opera's libretto notes that this is a love poem found in a royal mummy of the Amarna period, from Journal of Egyptian Archæology, translated by Sir Alan Gardiner.  I imagined that a strip of poetry was wrapped up with other amulets and talismans, maybe even written by the surviving partner.  

Fast forward--for fun I'm taking an introductory class in Egyptian hieroglyphs, and I thought, if I'm learning how to actually read the things I'm seeing at the MET, I should see what the original love poem looks like.  If Gardiner translated it, that implies he worked from hieroglyphs.  And maybe I could reproduce the hieroglyphs into a translated piece of art for the home.  So I started to search.

I wound up on JSTOR, and spent what felt like six hours trying various searches of Journal of Egyptian Archæology AND Gardiner, or Gardiner AND "love poem", or Amarna and poem (it was here that I discovered the libretto I was working from had spelled Amarna "Armarna").   The problem was that the Journal spans over a hundred years of articles, and the libretto didn't specify which volume it was referencing.  It looked like I was going to need the services of an Honest to Horus Reference Librarian.

When I told Mark, and he realized I was working from an opera, he said, "Uh, John; maybe they made the poem up.  You know, it's art."  I protested that the journal and Gardiner were real, but Mark just smiled. 

I went back to JSTOR and figured that I had to do a different kind of search.  Somehow, I hit the right combinations of Akhenaten and Glass and came up with a Egyptologist's review of the Philip Glass opera.  While he didn't quote the poem, he did mention in the footnotes that it was from the King's Valley Tomb 55, and that Gardiner had written an article, "The So-Called Tomb of Queen Tiye" in the Dec 1957, 43rd volume of the Journal of Egyptian Archæology.   I would have never found it using the keywords I had been using.

I skimmed the article... old French archeologists..., haphazard tomb..., so-and-so can be forgiven for..., souvenirs..., this translation is gibberish..., is it a man or a woman in this sarcophagus, ... and I got to a description of bands of gold foil that had been affixed to the inside of the sarcophagus but had fallen onto the mummy... very likely Akhenaten's name had been removed from the gold foil and someone else's name replaced... and Gardiner's actual translation.  

Which was similar to the English words in the libretto.  But some phrases from the original had been omitted in the libretto, and the libretto's transliteration in general was short, present-tense declarations, instead of a long future-tense affirmation.  The result is that Glass's wording is more ambiguous, whereas Gardiner's translation is more firmly a prayer from a woman (probably Nefertiti) to a divine being (the Aten, or Akhenaten as the emissary of the Aten). It wasn't even wrapped in the mummy, the gold bands of a funerary prayer or spell had fallen off of the inside of the lid of the sarcophagus and onto the mummy.  

"It's not the real grail?!?!" I said, quoting Micheal Palin as Galahad in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Mark was right, sort of, Glass had taken artistic license with the poem.

Oh well.  I've got the original hieroglyphs now, I suppose I can work with Gardiner's scholarship and see what design I can come up with.

As part of my Intro to Hieroglyphs class, I've made some flashcards as a memory aid to the uniliteral phonetic hieroglyphs used during the Middle Kingdom period in Egypt.  Between visits to the MET and various books I've picked up over the years, I seem to have about half of them memorized already.  For the ones that I don't know, I've had to make up little stories to remember their sounds.  

𓄡  is a mammal's belly (and tail), and makes the "ch" sound in the German word, "ich;" so I had to come up with the rhyme, "We want a pitcher, not a belly "ich"-er.   Not to be confused with

𓍿 which is a rope hobble, and makes a "tch" sound, like in "itch."  

𓐍 is something Egyptologists debate (is it a loaf of bread or a placenta?), and makes the "ch" sound in the word "loch", so I pretend this is Nessie's (the Loch Ness Monster's) eye.  

𓂝  looks like a Boston valet's arm and hand as they offer to "park the car", and it makes the ayin sound, which is broad "a" sound.

I'm not sure if I have a favorite hieroglyph.  It would be something like 𓀆 (to purify?) or 𓇽 (star) or 𓇱(night?) or  𓇰(storm?)  or 𓆈 (a gecko) or 𓆣 (scarab; to manifest ,to become)

I'll have to make flashcards for bilateral and trilateral signs next.

I woke up earlier than I thought I would.  This was a good thing, as it allowed me enough time to drink a really big mug of tea, and then shower and gird myself for a Solo Trip Into The City.

The trip in went smoothly.  Once I was on the bus, I listed all the things I might want to do in the MET.  I used my new phone to research galleries and put those numbers in my list:  Gallery 158 (gold earring of Nike); Horn in the Hall of Music; Visit The Cow; Camera defying sarcophagus; “The Decorated Word” (Nothing); Mediaeval Instruments; Gallery 521 (hourglass); photograph jewelry; Greek Cyclades; Gallery 542; Galleries 301-303; Gallery 774 (Lantern  Clock); Gallery 532 (Sundials).   As I reviewed the list, I resolved that I would visit The Camera Defying Sarcophagus first, and then traipse through the Egyptian Wing, because I love Egyptian Stuff.

I put away my iPhone and gazed out the window at the passing cars and the skyline of New York City drawing closer.  Every so often, another bus slid by my window.  Through the tinted glass,  the silhouettes of other passengers looked down at glowing white rectangles of mobile phones and tablets.  Windows into windows into windows gliding in monochromatic motion — shadows without dimension peering at virtual light, a silent troupe, a mass of bodies, a scattering of minds.   It was weird, and made me aware of how ubiquitous mobile devices are.

I managed to find the subway (although I did have to convince a ticket machine to sell me a MetroPass).  I got to the S train just as one arrived.  The performer in the car I boarded seemed pious as he sang “This Little Light of Mine” and accompanied himself on a huge conga drum.  The drumming was fairly accomplished, if a bit loud, and I escaped at the other platform.   Then I managed to get to a 6 train just as it pulled in and found myself at 77th and Lexington Avenue at about 9:30 AM.

A short walk past La Maison du Chocolate confirmed that it wasn’t open until 10 AM, which was when the MET was going to open.  I wound my way toward Central Park and found an Honest To God Gargoyle on the side of a 1887 mansion on the corner of 79th Street and 5th Avenue.

In the back of my head, I wondered if the folks in the building wondered who I was, since I was photographing various doors and windowsills.  But I didn’t care — finding old stone work like this is gratifying, and taking close-up photos of them gives me a sense of acquisition and ownership.  There’s also a sense of participating in and appreciating the art of the craftwork when I take a good photograph.  I like the suggestion of the numinous, the sense of glimpsing a locus genii, and the over-the-top allegory of gargoyles and grotesques.

With a rising sense of urgency, I took a final photograph and crossed the street toward the MET.
I was glad I got there when I did.  With some brisk walking, I managed to get ahead of a large group of tourists and queued up for the entry.  It took something like ten minutes to go past the dancing fountains, climb up the stairs, go through security and check my camera backpack in.

In a moment, I paid admission and quickly made my way to Egypt.  All the way, to the very back of the galleries, almost to the Temple of Dendura.  I was going to finally get some descent photographs of the (Camera Defying) Sarcophagus of Harkhebit.  Every time I visit the MET, I try to get a descent photograph of Harkhebit’s Sarcophagus, and almost every time I get a bunch of blurry shots.   This is frustrating, because the hieroglyphs on it are very fine, especially the scarab beetles, the winged pectoral of Isis,  and the images of the four Canoptic Gods.   The combination of the Sarcophagus’s black granite and the gallery’s low lighting makes it impossible to get some of the side inscriptions:  I am not physically able to hold still long enough to get a clear image.   While this wasn’t the perfect photo-op, I was able to get more and clearer shots than ever before.   I had a good ten or so minutes with it to myself (and a very underwhelmed security guard) before the rest of the patrons began to osmose through the gallery.

And yes, it did cross my mind that I was taking photographs of a dead person’s coffin, and that many of the items in the Egyptian wing are funerary goods, or temple goods… or discarded or repurposed building materials.   What would Harkhebit think — does taking a picture count as coming to worship him as one of the Justified Dead?  I suppose being on display in the MET is better than having one’s sarcophagus repurposed to be a Roman bathtub.

I meandered through the Egyptian wing.  I gave into the impulse to video myself twirling like Maria VonTrapp before the statues of Hapsetshut.   I took some of the same photos I always take of various hieroglyphic inscriptions.  And I kept my eye out for jewelry photos to take.  Mark had asked for photographs of jewelry before I hopped out of the car to buy bus tickets.  So I re-shot the Tiara of a Harkonen Princess (which I wore in a past life, I’m sure).

By now I was hungry, and I went through the Mediaeval Galleries toward the cafe.  Along the way I found the hourglass I’d put on my list, along with some old mediaeval favorites:  the wind-up Artemis on a Stag, the Locksmith Masterpiece triangular lock, and the Pegasus Spherical Clock.  What I like about these pieces is that they’re precision metal craft from a time without Computer Assisted Drafting, 3-D printing, or laser etching.  Also, they’re shiny.  One new item that caught my eye was a silver ewer (Adam van Vianen I (ca. 1568/69-1627) in the shape of a European water dragon.  Then it was time for a sticker-shock lunch of a (burnt) cheeseburger, fries, and salad.

Back into the galleries, I sought out “The Decorated Word,” which I knew was somewhere in the Islamic Art galleries.  I love the zillage and metalwork , but I have to say “The Decorated Word” left me flat.  It was like looking at at calligraphic words like “wave” repeated in undulating forms until they bump into a block-letter word “keel”,  which sports a skinny “mast” poking out of the top along with the word “sail” repeated along the contours of billowing sheets.  Which have never struck my fancy.  Only in a script I can’t read.  The “Poet Turning into Heech” sculpture looked like the artist was trying to be clever and pass a penis joke off as fine art.  I think I might have received the sculpture more favorably if I could read the letters.

After enjoying the rest of the art in the Islamic wing, I wandered around the old favorites in the Ancient Near and Middle East galleries.   There were bands of “How Archeology of the Holy Land Proves the Bible” Tours going on in the Ancient Near East Gallery, which was slightly distracting — a crowd of folks would gather in front of a display while a guide would explain how the Dragon of the Ishtar Gate proved that the Ancient Babylonians’ religion was all about fertility (i.e. sex).

I found more jewelry to photograph for Mark, and rediscovered some rhytons. Rhytons fascinate me because they seem like a strangely intimate way to share drinks.  If you were an ancient host at a symposium or party, you’d walk around to the guest uncovering the hole in the bottom of the rhyton and squirting wine into a cup (?or maybe a mouth?).  It’s like if you were eating a sugar ice cream cone and bit the bottom off and offered the dripping end to your guests.  I suppose in a way they are like gargoyles, only for drinks.  

I bumped into some more cylinder seals of griffons and lions and trees from Syria and Mesopotamia.  After I photographed the seals, I had to say hi to The Cow.

In the American Arts wing, I revisited “Death Staying the Hand of the Artist.”  It’s a background screen on my laptop, so it’s a familiar image to me; this time, I spent some time focused on the face of the Young Artist instead of the entire composition.  The Artist has a look on his face which is a cross between “Seriously?” and “I’m kind of working here,” and an aside-like “that moment when you’re just getting into your work and this giant Death-Angel-Lady barges into your studio” with some “uh-oh” thrown in.

Then I went over to the staircase with angels on it because one simply cannot have too many pictures of an angel playing a triangle, or another angel blowing her horn into the backside of the showboat angel in front of her.  I also took some detail shots of a stain glass window with grape leaves, because I wanted to remember how the artist had composed the leaves and vines.

One of items on my list was photographing the MET’s pipe organ and also their display of horns.  The pipe organ photos were for my dad, who really likes pipe organs and is in the process of restoring and expanding some organ registers in his church.  The physics of how the pipes set up a standing wave of vibrating air inside them is interesting, since the fipple is essentially a fixed, wedge shaped reed.


The horns are in a stunning display radiating out of the most ancient of horns, a conch shell.  I think the best time to see it might be in the morning, as they weren’t quite as cool as I remember them.

There were still some Roman jewelry items on my list, so I went to the where they lived, passing through the Renaissance Sculpture wing, and the French Empire wing and skirted the African and Polynesian wings.   I didn’t spend as much time in the Mediaeval wings or the Classical Antiquities, Greek and Roman wings as much as I wanted to.

Next time I’ll have to start there.  Perhaps I can focus on magic charms of the ancient Mediterranean and Mediaeval worlds for my next visit.

In the final minutes of the museum, I revisited the MET shops and got some MET Cat pins for our cat sitters, and some books.  In the past I’ve had some good luck with sale books, but not so much this time.  I got a stain glass book for Mary (who does stained glass) and a book on ancient magic and another book on church architecture (research!).

After the MET, I went to Masion du Chocolate.  I think I might have looked a little dazed, because the young lady at the counter radiated an aura of slight concern.  Mark says it was probably because I plunked down a hefty amount of cash for a box of chocolates.  It turns out that there is a tea salon there, but alas, it closes when the MET does.  Chocolate in hand, I got onto the Metro and proceded to miss the S-connection at 42nd Street and had to walk from 36nd to the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

Ten years ago, I would have freaked out, but I knew the direction (sort of) that I wanted to go in, and it was a pleasant late afternoon, so I started walking.  Oddly, I managed to walk by The Morgan.  It was closed.  I walked a little farther, and found myself near the Empire State Building.   Which was funny.

I realized that my phone had a map program on it, so I spoke into it:  “How do I get to the Port Authority from here?”   Walking directions appeared on my screen (mostly confirming the way I was going), which took the second-guessing myself aspect out of the walk (mostly), and the rest of the trip went without incident.








Urn.  I love the pattern on this.











Cow figures and griffons and goah stone holder.






























  Vouging in Mesopotamia