1938: Christiane
Desroches Noblecourt became the first woman to direct an archeological excavation (I will dig deeper into that miner achievement on some later carbon-datable occasion).
1960: Egypt began the construction of the Aswan Dam
And how on earth, or even underneath it, are these two events connected?
Because the area of land known as Abu Simbel, covering the south of Egypt and across the border into the Sudan, contained literally dozens of archaeological sites, including some of the most important clues to an understanding of the human world that had not yet been fully excavated; a dozen temples among them. And the dam was going to turn them into a desert version of Atlant-Ys. Drowned.
But the dam was needed to control the annual flooding of the Nile, and what had been done to achieve that up till now simply wasn't sufficient to meet the needs of a growing population in an industrial world. So a new reservoir was needed, and who else should it be named for but the ruler of Free Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, may the rays of the sun at the winter solstice shine directly upon him. A reservoir large enough to provide electricity for at least half the country. To which
Fighting Nasser she knew would not be easy; failing to get support from President de Gaulle in her campaign to stop the new lake being dug was rather surprising. So she talked to Jacqueline
Kennedy, America's new First Lady, who persuaded her husband to back her. And then to UNESCO, who appointed her as an "arbitrator", a totally meaningless title except that it gave her official documents and access to the people who mattered; she brought fifty countries into the campaign, across Cold War divides, hired from among them the range of experts the task would require, and raised - this was the early 1960s so you'll have to equivalate today's value for youself - forty million dollars.
While Nasser went on digging and digging in his less-than-archaeological manner. And time was running out before he won the race.
Between 1964 and 1968, every one of those temples, some of them, in the words of journalist Irene Fanizza "tens of meters high, carved into the rock,
fragile and precious as the finest crystal", had to be "cut into large blocks (weighing from 20 to 30 tons)" and then "dismantled,
reassembled and raised to a new location 65 meters higher and 300 meters back
from the river bank, with the labour of more than two thousand workers, led by
a group of Italian quarrymen, experts in marble from Carrara, in an
unprecedented technological effort. They faced one of the greatest challenges
in the history of archaeological engineering."
Of the twelve, none was more important, and none more difficult to move, than the Great Temple, built around 1265 BCE during the reign of Rameses II, and dedicated to the gods Amun, Ra-Horakhty and especially Ptah. Why difficult? Because the Egyptians were experts in astronomy (as well as the superstitions of astrolgy), and their civilisation, like so many in the ancient world, was built upon that knowledge. The Temple was alligned in such a way that the sun's rays entered the main sanctuary and lit up all the sculptures on the wall - save only that of Ptah, the god of the underworld who thereby remained in darkness where he belonged - today, October 21, sixty-one days before the winter solstice, and again on Feb 21, sixty-one days after the winter solstice.
The Underworld to the ancients was not a place of demons, was not Hell, but where the dead - human, animal, vegetal - went to be biodegraded, so that their renewed nitrogen could fertilise the earth in the coming year; the winter solstice was the day on which the earth was resurrected. Sixty-one was therefore not an arbitrary number; the priests had monitored the movements of the sun for centuries in order to work out these synchronicities. Nor was the placement of the statue of Pharaoh Rameses arbitrary or accidental: right where the living embodiment of the gods is meant to be, at the dead-central point of sun-entry (if this had been a Christian Temple, they would have placed the reborn Jesus in his mother's arms right there, among the straw on the threshing-floor). And for the UNESCO team this presented a problem, because they couldn't replicate it in the new location: one day forward for each was the best that they could do.
Most of what was rescued is still in situ in Abu Simbel. Of those that were taken away for further research, or simpy for the world to see, the Temple of Dendur is on permanent exhibition at
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Amber pages
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, British poet, critic, and philosopher, born today in 1772; an extended essay on him ("The Shaping Spirit of the Imagination") will be published, eventually, in my collection of literary essays, "Homage To Thomas Bowdler"
Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine, French poet, born today in 1790
Alfred Bernhard Nobel, inventor of dynamite and founder of the Nobel Prize, born today in 1833 (am I right in saying that he did not actually found the Nobel Peace Prize? He would certainly never have won it)
György Stern (Georg Solti), conductor, born today in 1912
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie, jazz trumpeter, born today in 1917
Malcolm Henry Arnold, composer, born today in 1921
Ursula Kroeber (Le Guin), authoress, born today in 1929
The British fleet defeated the Franco-Spanish fleet, off Trafalgar, today in 1805; many deaths, but the only one that gets specifically remembered is Horatio Nelson, the British naval commander - for whom see under Sept 29; and click here for some intriguing speculation as to whether Nelson plotted his own death at Trafalgar as an act of suicide
Thomas Edison invented the first practical incandescent lamp, today in 1879. Well, actually, no he didn't - see under July 24
Madame Eugénie Tell Éboué, the widow of Félix Éboué, former Governor General of French Equatorial Africa, became the first woman of African descent to be elected to the French National Assembly in Paris, today in 1945. Born Eugénie Tell on November 23, 1891 in Cayenne, French Guiana, she was the daughter of Herménégilde Tell, the leading black colonial official in French Guiana at the time. He was the Director of Prisons, a job which included the notorious Devil’s Island - I wonder if he was the man-in-charge of Alfred Dreyfus? (more on her accomplishments here in English, here in French)
Chinese troops occupied Tibet, today in 1950
The Aberfan disaster in Wales (see the photo at the top of this page), today in 1966, 140 people killed and half the town decimated, because stupid people wanting to save money build slag-heaps of coal-waste where they shouldn't.Vietnam protestors stormed the US Pentagon, today in 1967. Fortunately the Pentagon didn't use napalm or "agent orange" to disperse them, as they would have done if the protest had taken place in Vietnam.
The day started so well too, with all those worthy births. Then downhill all the way, sliding into Aberfan, slurrying into Vietnam. And then, god damn it, two of the best of them:
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac, “Jack” to his publisher, pulled his daisy and drove off the road, today in 1969. Who knew that was his real name?
And François Roland Truffaut, French film director, swapped day for night, today in 1984
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