April 29, 2005
Egyptian archaeologists have discovered a number of rare Pharaonic seals of soldiers sent out on desert missions in search of red paint to decorate the pyramids, Egypt's culture minister said Thursday.The 26 matchbox-sized seals belonged to Cheops, who ruled from 2551 to 2528 BC, in whose honour the greatest of the great pyramids of Giza southwest of Cairo was built, and show Pharaonic soldiers' ranks, the MENA news agency quoted Faruq Hosni as saying.
"These seals were used by a mission sent by Cheops to collect ferric oxide, which is necessary to make red paint," said Zahi Hawwas, secretary general of the Higher Council of Antiquities.
Over 50 pottery fragments bearing imprints from the clay and stone seals were found nearby in the region of the Giza pyramids.
"Artisans at the time needed ferric oxide to decorate the pyramids as well as (other) material and funerary installations of the IVth dynasty," to which Cheops belonged, said Hawwas.
"The seals proved the official nature of the missions sent to desert regions," he added.
"The mission was made up of 400 men and a group of people whose job it was to cook during the journey," according to inscriptions on the pottery pieces.
"Archaeologists also found a number of leather bags containing ferric oxide brought back by the mission," he said.
I will never cease to be amazed that, four and a half millenia after the fact,we are still finding the discarded refuse of the ancients and using it to learn about their lives and activities.
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April 22, 2005
VARAZDAT was six when his family were driven from their home by Turkish troops in 1915. But even 90 years after Ottoman troops began the slaughter of up to 1.5 million Armenians, fear still flickers in his eyes.As the family and 200,000 other Armenians fled east from their homes in Van, near modern Turkey’s eastern border, Turk and Kurdish forces opened fire from both sides. “They killed so many. Mothers threw their children in the lake. They said it was better to drown them than let the Turks have them,” Varadzat Harutyuniyan told The Times.
Turkey still denies responsibility, minimizes the number of Armenian dead, and paints the Turkish people as the greater victim. It is illegal in Turkey for anyone to claim that this genocide happened. It refuses to have diplomatic relations with Armenia and refuses to allow traffic across the border the two countries share. This unacknowledged genocide is one of many factors that stands in the way of Turkey’s admission to the EU – no less that 15 countries have demanded that Turkey do so before the EU allow Turkey to become a member.
How deep is this denial and refusal to acknowledge TurkeyÂ’s crime against the Armenians? Look at the high level denial of the genocide by a high level Turkish official.
On Wednesday the head of the Turkish Armed Forces, General Hilmi Ozkok, called on Armenia to drop the genocide allegations. The 1923 Lausanne Treaty, which established modern Turkey, “put an end to the baseless genocide claims politically and legally,” he said.
Yet in the end, this political claim cannot hide the historical truth of the murder of over 1 million people by the Turks. A treaty cannot deny the reality of photographs of Turkish soldiers posing with severed Armenian heads held (or stacked) as trophies. Until Turkey is willing to admit its historical guilt in the matter, there can be no allowing it into the EU.
Former Polish President Lech Walesa makes the case clearly.
“The truth must come out,” said Lech Walesa, the former Polish President, at this week’s conference. “It is a just claim of the Armenians that Turkey’s entrance into the European Union should come after admitting genocide.”
When will our president label what happened as genocide? When will he join other world leaders in making it clear that Turkey cannot be considered a member of the civilized world until it acknowledges the crime of its jihad against the Christian Armenians?
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The necropolis was discovered by a joint US and Egyptian team in the Kom al-Ahmar region, around 600 km (370 miles) south of the capital, Cairo.
Inside the tombs, the archaeologists found a cow's head carved from flint and the remains of seven people.They believe four of them were buried alive as human sacrifices.
The remains survived despite the fact that the tombs were plundered in ancient times.
Egypt's chief archaeologist, Zahi Hawass, said the discovery would add greatly to knowledge of the elusive pre-dynastic period, when Egypt was first becoming a nation.
The complex is thought to belong to a ruler of the ancient city of Hierakonpolis in around 3600 BC, when it was the largest urban centre on the Nile river.
Egyptologists say the city probably extended its influence northwards defeating rival entities. The unification of Upper and Lower Egypt eventually led to the establishment of rule by the Pharaohs.
Excavations at the site started in 2000 under the leadership of Egyptologist Barbara Adams, who died in 2002.
The site contains some of the earliest examples of mummification found in Egypt.
Call me a geek, but I find this stuff really cool.
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April 21, 2005
The author, Laurel Leff, a professor of journalism and a former reporter for TheWall Street Journal, has done a fine job of research in the archives of the paper of record. Others could have done that, but nobody has. More important, she has brilliantly analyzed the reasons Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the German-Jewish publisher of The Times, brought Jewish self-hatred to a head long before the rubric gained popularity.In 1939, when the Nazis began to destroy the Jews of Poland, what bothered Sulzberger was Franklin Roosevelt's casual remark that Jews were a "race." He got FDR to call them a "faith," which settled the issue of the Warsaw Ghetto for him.
On the eve of Thanksgiving 1942, the State Department confirmed that 2 million Jews were dead in Europe, and it allowed Rabbi Stephen Wise, the leader of American Jewry, to announce the news. The Times didn't send a reporter to the press conference in Washington. Instead, it ran a short from The Associated Press - on page 10, surrounded by turkey ads.
What if FDR had announced the news? Then, even a scared Jew like Sulzberger would have been afraid to keep it off the front page. And if that happened, millions of Jews could have been saved.
What if Sulzberger and the Times had spoken out? What if they had actively covered the story of the extermination of Europe’s Jews? They might well have forced Roosevelt to speak out. Instead, over the course of 6 years they buried over 1100 stories in the heart of the paper, somewhere between the police blotter and the grocery ads.
One can always argue that Pius XII didn’t say enough, but it is estimated that the Catholic Church saved between 750,000 and 1,000,000 Jews during the war, much of it with the active encouragement and support of the pope. The charge that Pius was “Hitler’s Pope†is a blood libel.
On the other hand, it seems clear that Sulzberger and the Times were certainly in the pocket of the Roosevelt Administration – and that the muting of the Times at the behest of an anti-Semitic president most likely resulted in the deaths of millions because it allowed the malignant neglect of the Jews at a time when they most needed help. As such, would it not be fair to say, using the standard the New York Times has applied in recent years to Pius XII, that Sulzberger was “Hitler’s Publisherâ€, and the New York Times was “Hitler’s Paperâ€?
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while Pope John Paul was 84 when he died. I wonder if the Vatican's trying to buy time for the right ("younger") Pope when "Papa Ratzi" (ha ha) may die at anytime due to him looking a bit on the frail side.
The author, Laurel Leff, a professor of journalism and a former reporter for TheWall Street Journal, has done a fine job of research in the archives of the paper of record. Others could have done that, but nobody has. More important, she has brilliantly analyzed the reasons Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the German-Jewish publisher of The Times, brought Jewish self-hatred to a head long before the rubric gained popularity.In 1939, when the Nazis began to destroy the Jews of Poland, what bothered Sulzberger was Franklin Roosevelt's casual remark that Jews were a "race." He got FDR to call them a "faith," which settled the issue of the Warsaw Ghetto for him.
On the eve of Thanksgiving 1942, the State Department confirmed that 2 million Jews were dead in Europe, and it allowed Rabbi Stephen Wise, the leader of American Jewry, to announce the news. The Times didn't send a reporter to the press conference in Washington. Instead, it ran a short from The Associated Press - on page 10, surrounded by turkey ads.
What if FDR had announced the news? Then, even a scared Jew like Sulzberger would have been afraid to keep it off the front page. And if that happened, millions of Jews could have been saved.
What if Sulzberger and the Times had spoken out? What if they had actively covered the story of the extermination of EuropeÂ’s Jews? They might well have forced Roosevelt to speak out. Instead, over the course of 6 years they buried over 1100 stories in the heart of the paper, somewhere between the police blotter and the grocery ads.
One can always argue that Pius XII didn’t say enough, but it is estimated that the Catholic Church saved between 750,000 and 1,000,000 Jews during the war, much of it with the active encouragement and support of the pope. The charge that Pius was “Hitler’s Pope” is a blood libel.
On the other hand, it seems clear that Sulzberger and the Times were certainly in the pocket of the Roosevelt Administration – and that the muting of the Times at the behest of an anti-Semitic president most likely resulted in the deaths of millions because it allowed the malignant neglect of the Jews at a time when they most needed help. As such, would it not be fair to say, using the standard the New York Times has applied in recent years to Pius XII, that Sulzberger was “Hitler’s Publisher”, and the New York Times was “Hitler’s Paper”?
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April 19, 2005
A teenage Abebe Alenayehu watched Italian soldiers haul away Axum's revered obelisk nearly seven decades ago and never thought he would live to see its return.But if the weather cooperates, he will see the dream he shares with his nation come true Tuesday when a giant cargo plane returns the 82-foot monument's top section to this wind-swept town that was the seat of the ancient Axumite Kingdom.
"The memory still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth," Abebe said about the loss of a monument that Ethiopians consider the symbol of their nation. "Every day for the last 67 years I have thought about the obelisk."
The Italian Foreign Ministry said Monday that the two other pieces of the 176-ton obelisk should be back by the end of April. Lattanzi, the Italian company organizing the return, says no one has attempted to fly such a massive monument before.
Abebe, 81, vividly recalls the day the masterpiece of the Axum civilization was taken away and shipped to Rome.
"All the adults in the town were under curfew," he said. "But we played with the soldiers who gave us sweets and sugar. We didn't realize what was happening, but our parents were hiding their faces and crying."
The restoration of this ancient monument is a fitting end to the evils committed by Mussolini and his forces against the Ethiopian people during the occupation of their nation from 1936-1941. And it sounds like it will be even more of an engineering nightmare than its removal was in 1937.
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