#East Bank Nile River

[suetravelblog]

Karnak and Luxor Temple Complexes Egypt

[soon-palestine]

Very significant change in weather patterns in Northern Sudan this year, likely induced by Global Warming. Floods do happen in the North but historically they’ve nearly always been caused by the Nile breaking its banks rather than due to rainfall as the region is mostly still classified as having a desert climate. This year the flooding has been caused by heavy rainfall. Abu Hamad has been especially affected because of its location. Abu Hamad is located at the point where the Nile bends South, the reason the river does this is because of the mountains located directly to the North and East of the town. This also means that when there is heavy rains rain water will flow from the higher lands down to Abu Hamad.

[talonabraxas]

Orion's belt aligned with the Giza pyramids. Al Nitak points to the Great Pyramid. The gods left many signs using mathematics and astronomy, especially those signs built into the Great Pyramid.

Lions Gate Portal 8/8

August 8th, known as the Lions Gate, has been revered for several thousand years as the date that marks the peak of an influx of high-frequency energy onto planet Earth from the star Sirius, which is in its closest proximity to earth from July 26th through August 12th – the full period of the Lions Gate opening or Galactic New Year. Second in brightness only to the sun, to Ancient Egyptians this star was revered as their “Spiritual Sun” and referred to as Auset’s star Sopdet – Spdt, meaning “she who is sharp.”

The Lions Gate is the annual season when Spdt comes into her most pristine alignment with Re [the Sun], Geb [the Earth], and Sah – the Hunter constellation identified with ancient Egypt’s King Ausar – called Orion in Greek. During this cosmic portal, Sopdet – the spiritual Sun – emits an ancient activating energy so powerful as to cause the annual inundation which has sustained Nile River Valley communities over several millennia, whilst spurring the collective ascension of human consciousness throughout earth – the land or house of Geb/Keb. As God Djehuti proclaimed, “If the truth must be told, this land is indeed THE TEMPLE OF THE WORLD…” The August 8th peak of the Lions Gate is when Sopdet is said to perfectly align with the shaft from Queen Auset’s Chamber within the Great Pyramid of Giza, in concert with that from King Ausar’s Chamber aligning with Alnitak, one of the three stars of the Hunter constellation’s belt. Known as the “3 Wise Men” or the “3 Sisters,” these three stars form the cosmic blueprint from which the complex known as the Pyramids of Giza was built.

“As above, so below… As within, so without” are codes which remain key to Kemet’s ancient Mystery System. Thus, the Nile River represents the Milky Way (called Maziwa Mkuu in Kiswahili, meaning ‘great milk’) on earth ‘below’ as in heaven ‘above’. Two lions are said to hold open this magnificent time-space portal, one of which is represented by the Great Sphinx whose figure is an earthly representation of the constellation of Leo and a key piece of the puzzle of relationships within the Milky Way galaxy ‘above & below’. Lying on the west bank of the Nile river, the Great Sphinx is poised with its tail to the west [where the sun exits] as it faces directly east towards the sun’s reentry. The Lions Gate [7/26 – 8/12] opens within the astrological season of Leo, adding to the influx of regal energy from the alignment between Earth and the Universe’s Galactic Center, which reaches its peak on 8/8 over African soil. It is a powerful reminder of Heaven-on-Earth’s potency, symbolized ‘within & without’ through the quintessential Divine Love that exists between cosmic Hunter Ausar and his earthly Gatherer, Throne Queen, and Spiritual Sun – Auset.

According to the mythology of Ausar-Auset, in a jealous bid to usurp their Heaven-on-Earth throne, Set murders King Ausar, dismembering his body into 14 parts and scattering them in the wilderness [African Diaspora] so as to prevent his resurrection and return. Set the antagonist is god of chaos, foreign oppressors, violence, perversion, illness, and the desert who caused Egypt to be widowed of the gods and humanity to be trapped in his false predatory & parasitic matrix. After widow Auset searches the wilderness and manages to retrieve and mummify only 13 of her husband’s mutilated body parts, it is up to Heru, her posthumously/immaculately-conceived son with King Ausar, to become the Warrior who avenges his father’s fate and restores divine order to the kingdom by defeating Set…

Pyramid texts speak of Heru as the Great Lion: “Horus who comes forth from the acacia to whom it was commanded: ‘Beware of the lion’. May he come forth to whom it was commanded: ‘Beware of the lion’.” [Pyramid Text 436a-b]

Africa’s Acacia tree, which is sacred to goddess Auset, has long been associated with ancient mysteries including the secrets to life, death, healing, sustenance, and resurrection – hence their organic ties to matriarchal goddesses. Linked to the Akashic Records, the astral ancestral library where everything that has or will ever occur is recorded, the Acacia trees in Heliopolis were thought to have been the birthplace of the very first deities. Heliopolis (called On in Lower Egypt), was the ancient worship center of sun-god Re whose celestial boat was made of Acacia wood in its hind parts (palm wood in its fore-parts). The mythologies of Ausar-Auset are Heliopolitan in their derivation and orientation, e.g. the reference to Ausar as ‘the one in the tree… the solitary one in the acacia.’ This saying was based on the version of their story in which Auset releases her husband’s body from a pillar in Byblos [a prophecy relating to the scripted bible?] that had been fashioned out of the tree which enclosed the coffin King Ausar had been tricked into entering as Set’s ploy to usurp/colonize Egypt’s throne. Symbolizing the immortality of the soul in Freemasonry, the thorny acacia tree otherwise represents Ausar’s backbone, depicted as the Djed Pillar in this particular mythological account.

Trees act as resurrection portals and/or gateways between worlds in ancient Egyptian Mysteries, such as the Sycamores (associated with goddesses Nut & Hathor) through which Re rises as the Sun each day from the east: “I know the two sycamores of turquoise between which Re comes forth, when he passes over the supports of Shu to the gate of the lord of the east from which Re comes forth” [Book of the Dead: Ch. 109]. Auset & Nepthys were regarded similarly as “the two Acacias.” Thus, these Mother Trees act as do the two lions which hold open the portal for the “Spiritual Sun” Sopdet to rise as the consort of Sah during the Lions Gate season, in order to usher forth the blessings of the Galactic New Year with the annual inundation of the Nile River. Their child, hawk god Heru-Sopdu is referred to as “Lord of the East,” thus presaging mythologies surrounding the Ausar-Auset-Heru trinity as archetypal personifications of key spiritual motifs that connect us organically to our higher selves… “As above, so below.”

“As within, so without” is a principle that plays out in the eternal relationship that exists between Ausar-Auset, their love representing a Heaven-on-Earth divine order, which is interrupted by the chaos that Set’s predatory & parasitic rule brings, i.e. until Heru is able to successfully accomplish his Hero’s Journey and restore Ma’at/UbuNtu… unity-consciousness. For Africa, the earthly source and staging of these love-as-salvation narratives, Set is representative of a false matrix built on slavery, (neo)colonialism, apartheid, misogyny, misogynoir, etc. – controlling foreign narratives which have in-formed external elite-run global systems & misled most of humanity into profound states of isolation, alienation, disconnection, and disorientation from organic & natal bonds. Heru – “[the Lion] who comes forth from the acacia…” [Pyramid Text 436a-b] – thus has his work cut out for him.

Again, in this case the acacia reference represents a fascinating organic matriarchal portal between worlds for Heru as a human prototype resident in each of those who do not entertain predatory or parasitic relationships of dysfunctional dependency [read “slavery… apartheid… (neo)colonialism… misogyny… misogynoir…”], but strategically translated into self-referential Europatriarchal scripture as mankind’s singular “savior” [Jesus]. Deep inside Africa – the regal lion‘s natal home – the acacia tree itself has a characteristic dome-shaped canopy due to the way indigenous giraffes graze, which they have to do carefully because the acacia senses this feeding activity and releases tannin, a defensive poison that can kill from the overgrazing of its leaves. The acacia then emits ethylene on the wind, a chemical that alerts other acacia trees to preemptively defend themselves against “predators” by producing tannin also. DMT, a hallucinogen associated with spiritual experiences, is present in various species of the tree such as the Acacia Nilotica.

The Lions Gate represents so much to so many, especially during this dramatic period of humanity’s ascension in 2020 (Gregorian timeline). Feline power, highly revered in Kemet, is front and center as the astrological symbol for Leo and also as the identity of the African goddess annointed as “Opener of Heaven’s Door.” Among her other titles, Goddess Seshat – “Foremost of the per-Ankh” – is also known as the “Panther Goddess” and “She of Seven Points” in reference to her highly emblematic dress and crown, respectively. Appropriated by Europatriarchs in their design of Lady Liberty following America’s post-Civil War end of slavery, Seshat‘s 7-pointed crown has symbolically countered the racist & misogynistic tendencies of false 3D matrix systems. Seshat‘s traditional panther-skin dress returns our consciousness to humanity’s African source and the need to descramble & purge predatory Victorian-era matrix codes which, during the receding Piscean era, morphed into parasitic neo-colonial arrangements, hijacking the human spirit and its potential. These & other ancient unity-conscious codes [UbuNtu] are key to human ascension and Heaven-on-Earth reparations in the dawning age of Ma’at... “Return, return, O Shulamite; return that we may look upon thee…” [SoS 6:13] “Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.” [Rev. 3:11] Blessed Be…

[mariacallous]

Over the last 10 months, the world’s attention has been focused on Israel and the Gaza Strip. The war that began on Oct. 7, 2023, with Hamas’s attack on Israel has been cataclysmic. But the conflict has overshadowed another crisis enveloping the region: intense heat and water scarcity.

In mid-July, the heat index in Dubai was 144 degrees Fahrenheit. In late June, the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, registered a temperature of 125 degrees. This heat coincided with Hajj season. When it was over, more than 1,300 people had lost their lives. And in Egypt, temperatures have rarely fallen below 100 degrees since May.

It was actually hotter in the Gulf region last summer, topping out at an eye-popping real feel of 158 degrees in the coastal areas of Iran and the United Arab Emirates. That reading and the unrelenting heat this season exceeded the “wet-bulb temperature” at which humans, if exposed for six hours, can no longer cool themselves off, leading to heat-related illnesses and death.

The World Bank estimates that by 2050, water scarcity will result in GDP reductions of up to 14 percent in the region. In 2021, a UNICEF report stated that Egypt could run out of water by 2025, with the Nile River coming under particular stress. Water stress in countries such as Egypt is exacerbated by the upriver flow of the Nile being restricted because of the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Syria and Turkey have been at odds over many years because the Turks have built dams along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, cutting the flow south. And among the many issue that divide Israelis and Palestinians is water and who has the right to tap into the Mountain Aquifer of the West Bank.

In addition to the extreme heat’s significant threat to life and livelihood in the Middle East and North Africa, a hotter region has the potential to destabilize politics well beyond its borders.

Before going further, it is important to underscore that this is not a column about “climate conflict.” About a decade ago, there was a spate of articles on this issue, highlighting the Syrian Civil War as an example of what the future would look like as the globe warmed. Even though this idea captured the imagination of a variety of notables including then-Prince Charles, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, and others, the claim about Syria in particular was based on incomplete data, faulty interpretation of that data, over-generalization, and, as a result, erroneous conclusions.

As the October 2021 National Intelligence Estimate on climate change dryly noted, the U.S. intelligence community had “low to moderate confidence in how physical climate impacts will affect US national security interests and the nature of geopolitical conflict, given the complex dimensions of human and state decisionmaking.” Basically, the spies are saying it is hard to make a causal connection between climate and conflict because there are so many variables that contribute to conflict.

A clearer and more pressing problem is how people adapt to rising temperatures and water scarcity. They migrate to places with lower temperatures and more water. According to the World Bank, as many as 19 million people—approximately 9 percent of the local population—will become displaced in North Africa by 2050 because of the climate crisis. And for people in the region, the destination of choice is Europe.

A number of caveats are in order: First, the bank is extrapolating. It is possible that there may be political, economic, or technological changes that limit the number of migrants. Second, not every person on the move will be migrating because of the changing climate. And finally, some of those displaced people will remain somewhere in the region given the resources necessary to make it across the Mediterranean. (That presents its own set of problems, however. Internally displaced people, who generally settle in urban areas, will put pressure on the budgets and infrastructure of places whose resources and capacity to absorb migrants are limited.)

All this said, in the abstract migration is positive for countries in the European Union, which have aging populations and need workers to pay into generous social safety nets. Yet the claim that migration provides benefits to society remains unconvincing to a significant number of Europeans who oppose large (or perceptively large) numbers of newcomers into their countries.

France’s National Front party, which long flirted with fascism and a coy version of Holocaust denial and rebranded itself as the National Rally in 2018 in an effort to shed this ugly legacy, has become a major force in French politics in large part due to its opposition to immigration, especially from Islamic countries. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the avatar of European illiberalism, built his authoritarian system on fears of the threat that migrants pose to Hungarian society.

Brexit, which British voters approved in 2016, was about a lot of things, but immigration propelled the United Kingdom’s imprudent decision to leave the European Union. More recently, the proximate cause of the recent riots in England was the allegation that an immigrant was responsible for the murder of three young girls at a dance class in the seaside town of Southport. Despite the allegation being demonstrably false, the ensuing street violence suggests that simmering resentment toward migrants within a segment of the marginalized English working class stoked by, and combined with, right-wing populism is dangerous and potentially destabilizing.

Then there is Germany, where in 2015 hundreds of thousands of Syrians sought refuge from the violence enveloping their country. Then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel made the decision to grant Syrians entry. It was a decision that many Germans embraced, but it also produced a backlash that has helped drive the emergence of the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party. The AfD is different from other right-wing populist parties in Europe given its provenance. Although it began as a party based on Euro-skepticism, it has moved steadily toward embracing fascism, downplaying the atrocities of the Third Reich, spreading Islamophobia, and inveighing against foreigners in general. Of course, there is a whole host of reasons for the rise of the AfD and other fascist, illiberal, right-wing populist parties in Europe. But scholars agree that migration is the through line in this phenomenon.

The Unites States has a compelling interest in a Europe that is stable, whole, free, and prosperous. The emergence and success of xenophobic, fascist, or fascist-adjacent parties that make common cause with the enemies of Western liberalism are a threat to that core U.S. interest. That’s why Washington needs to help head off mass migration to Europe. There is not a lot that the United States can do about conflicts—such as the one in Sudan—that drive migration, but U.S. policymakers can help when it comes to the climate crisis, which will contribute to the increasing numbers of people seeking refuge in Europe.

This requires not increasing financial assistance or green infrastructure projects but something both more cost-effective and influential: creative diplomacy. High heat makes the problem of water scarcity worse, which is why people migrate. Using its own experience and technical expertise from managing resources in the increasingly hot western United States, the U.S government can play a useful role in helping countries in the Middle East do a better job managing what water they have.

The conflicts that span the region make assistance harder, given the fact that water sources often cross boundaries. But that is a challenge that can be overcome. Not only are there technical solutions to the problem of water scarcity, but there are also political incentives to come to agreement even across conflict zones.

Leaders across the region may disdain their citizens, but they have a political interest in satisfying at least their people’s minimum demands, including access to water. Even with all the nationalist huffing and puffing of their governments, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed have a strong interest in sharing the waters of the Nile. Without such an agreement, the political and economic problems of both countries will deepen, threatening both leaders.

Of all things, the maritime border agreement between Israel and Lebanon can be a template of sorts for the way U.S. officials approach the problem of water sharing in the region. There was a range of critics of the agreement in the United States, Israel, and Lebanon, but the actual substance is less important than the way U.S. diplomats brought it about. They separated Israeli concerns about Lebanon and Lebanese concerns about Israel and focused instead on the upside for each country. Once that became clear—the exploitation of gas deposits off the Israeli and Lebanese coasts—it was hard for the two countries that nonetheless remain in a state of war to not agree to a boundary. Despite 10 months of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the agreement has not been breached. That is important and suggests a way forward for negotiations over water.

It is tempting to want to place efforts to deal with water scarcity in some broader climate agenda for the Middle East. That is exactly what U.S. officials should not do. Washington should focus on issues where it has a realistic chance of making a difference. There is little the United States can do about the intense heat, and mitigation of greenhouse gases is not a pressing problem in the region because it does not actually emit that much greenhouse gas. Water, however, is critically important, and it is an area where the United States has expertise to bring to bear.

Indeed, helping strike agreements to manage water scarcity in the Middle East is a low-cost way the United States can mitigate the perversions of European politics and help shape the global order to come.

[warningsine]

PORT SUDAN, SUDAN — 

Paramilitary forces battling Sudan's regular army for more than a year said Saturday they had taken a key state capital in the southeast, prompting thousands to flee, witnesses said.

"We have liberated the 17th Infantry Division from Singa," the capital of Sennar state, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) announced on the social media platform X.

Residents confirmed to AFP: "The RSF have deployed in the streets of Singa," and witnesses reported aircraft from the regular army flying overhead and anti-aircraft fire.

Earlier Saturday, other witnesses said there was fighting in the streets and "rising panic among residents seeking to flee."

Sudan has been gripped by war since April 2023, when fighting erupted between forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the RSF led by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo.

The conflict in the country of 48 million has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions and triggered one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

The latest RSF breakthrough means the paramilitaries are tightening the noose around Port Sudan on the Red Sea, where the army, government and U.N. agencies are now based.

The RSF controls most of the capital Khartoum, Al-Jazira state in the center of the country, the vast western region of Darfur and much of Kordofan to the south.

Sennar state is already home to more than 1 million displaced Sudanese. It connects central Sudan to the army-controlled southeast.

Posts on social media showed thousands of people fleeing in vehicles and on foot, and witnesses told AFP, "Thousands of people have taken refuge on the east bank of the Blue Nile" river east of Singa.

RSF forces are also besieging the town of El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state.

On Thursday, a report cited by the United Nations said nearly 26 million people in war-torn Sudan are facing high levels of "acute food insecurity."

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

Joseph Interprets Pharaoh’s Dreams

After two full years had passed, Pharaoh had a dream: He was standing beside the Nile, when seven cows, sleek and well-fed, came up from the river and began to graze among the reeds. After them, seven other cows, sickly and thin, came up from the Nile and stood beside the well-fed cows on the bank of the river. And the cows that were sickly and thin devoured the seven sleek, well-fed cows.

Then Pharaoh woke up, but he fell back asleep and dreamed a second time: Seven heads of grain, plump and ripe, came up on one stalk. After them, seven other heads of grain sprouted, thin and scorched by the east wind. And the thin heads of grain swallowed up the seven plump, ripe ones. Then Pharaoh awoke and realized it was a dream.

In the morning his spirit was troubled, so he summoned all the magicians and wise men of Egypt. Pharaoh told them his dreams, but no one could interpret them for him.

Then the chief cupbearer said to Pharaoh, “Today I recall my failures. Pharaoh was once angry with his servants, and he put me and the chief baker in the custody of the captain of the guard. One night both the chief baker and I had dreams, and each dream had its own meaning. Now a young Hebrew was there with us, a servant of the captain of the guard. We told him our dreams and he interpreted them for us individually. And it happened to us just as he had interpreted: I was restored to my position, and the other man was hanged.”

So Pharaoh sent for Joseph, who was quickly brought out of the dungeon. After he had shaved and changed his clothes, he went in before Pharaoh.

Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I had a dream, and no one can interpret it. But I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.”

“I myself cannot do it,” Joseph replied, “but God will give Pharaoh a sound answer.”

Then Pharaoh said to Joseph: “In my dream I was standing on the bank of the Nile, when seven cows, well-fed and sleek, came up from the river and began to graze among the reeds. After them, seven other cows—sickly, ugly, and thin—came up. I have never seen such ugly cows in all the land of Egypt! Then the thin, ugly cows devoured the seven well-fed cows that were there first. When they had devoured them, however, no one could tell that they had done so; their appearance was as ugly as it had been before. Then I awoke.

In my dream I also saw seven heads of grain, plump and ripe, growing on a single stalk. After them, seven other heads of grain sprouted—withered, thin, and scorched by the east wind. And the thin heads of grain swallowed the seven plump ones.

I told this dream to the magicians, but no one could explain it to me.”

At this, Joseph said to Pharaoh, “The dreams of Pharaoh are one and the same. God has revealed to Pharaoh what He is about to do. The seven good cows are seven years, and the seven ripe heads of grain are seven years. The dreams have the same meaning. Moreover, the seven thin, ugly cows that came up after them are seven years, and so are the seven worthless heads of grain scorched by the east wind—they are seven years of famine.

It is just as I said to Pharaoh: God has shown Pharaoh what He is about to do. Behold, seven years of great abundance are coming throughout the land of Egypt, but seven years of famine will follow them. Then all the abundance in the land of Egypt will be forgotten, and the famine will devastate the land. The abundance in the land will not be remembered, since the famine that follows it will be so severe.

Moreover, because the dream was given to Pharaoh in two versions, the matter has been decreed by God, and He will carry it out shortly.

Now, therefore, Pharaoh should look for a discerning and wise man and set him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh take action and appoint commissioners over the land to take a fifth of the harvest of Egypt during the seven years of abundance. Under the authority of Pharaoh, let them collect all the excess food from these good years, that they may come and lay up the grain to be preserved as food in the cities. This food will be a reserve for the land during the seven years of famine to come upon the land of Egypt. Then the country will not perish in the famine.”

This proposal pleased Pharaoh and all his officials. So Pharaoh asked them, “Can we find anyone like this man, in whom the Spirit of God abides?”

Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has made all this known to you, there is no one as discerning and wise as you. You shall be in charge of my house, and all my people are to obey your commands. Only with regard to the throne will I be greater than you.”

Pharaoh also told Joseph, “I hereby place you over all the land of Egypt.” Then Pharaoh removed the signet ring from his finger, put it on Joseph’s finger, clothed him in garments of fine linen, and placed a gold chain around his neck. He had Joseph ride in his second chariot, with men calling out before him, “Bow the knee!” So he placed him over all the land of Egypt.

And Pharaoh declared to Joseph, “I am Pharaoh, but without your permission, no one in all the land of Egypt shall lift his hand or foot.”

Pharaoh gave Joseph the name Zaphenath-paneah, and he gave him Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, to be his wife. And Joseph took charge of all the land of Egypt.

Now Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph left Pharaoh’s presence and traveled throughout the land of Egypt.

During the seven years of abundance, the land brought forth bountifully. During those seven years, Joseph collected all the excess food in the land of Egypt and stored it in the cities. In every city he laid up the food from the fields around it. So Joseph stored up grain in such abundance, like the sand of the sea, that he stopped keeping track of it; for it was beyond measure.

Before the years of famine arrived, two sons were born to Joseph by Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On. Joseph named the firstborn Manasseh, saying, “God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s household.” And the second son he named Ephraim, saying, “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.”

When the seven years of abundance in the land of Egypt came to an end, the seven years of famine began, just as Joseph had said. And although there was famine in every country, there was food throughout the land of Egypt. When extreme hunger came to all the land of Egypt and the people cried out to Pharaoh for food, he told all the Egyptians, “Go to Joseph and do whatever he tells you.”

When the famine had spread over all the land, Joseph opened up all the storehouses and sold grain to the Egyptians; for the famine was severe in the land of Egypt. And every nation came to Joseph in Egypt to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth. — Genesis 41 | The Reader’s Bible (BRB) The Reader’s Bible © 2020 by Bible Hub and Berean.Bible. All rights Reserved. Cross References: Genesis 12:10; Genesis 17:6; Genesis 28:12; Genesis 37:2; Genesis 37:36; Genesis 38:18; Genesis 39:9; Genesis 40:1-2; Genesis 40:8; Genesis 42:6; Genesis 43:1; Genesis 45:6; Genesis 46:20; Genesis 47:24; Genesis 48:1; Genesis 48:5; Genesis 50:18; 1 Kings 3:15; 2 Kings 8:1; Esther 10:3; Job 8:11; Job 32:8; Psalm 105:20; Psalm 105:22; Psalm 109:24; Isaiah 8:19; Isaiah 9:11; Daniel 2:11; Daniel 2:28-29; Daniel 2:45; Daniel 5:11; Hosea 12:1; Matthew 2:1; Luke 15:22; John 2:5; Acts 3:12; Acts 7:10-11

Genesis 41 Bible Commentary - Matthew Henry (complete)

[thepastisalreadywritten]

SAINT OF THE DAY (January 17)

On his January 17 feast day, both Eastern and Western Catholics celebrate the life and legacy of St. Anthony of Egypt, the founder of Christian monasticism whose radical approach to discipleship permanently impacted the Church.

In Egypt's Coptic Catholic and Orthodox Churches, which have a special devotion to the native saint, his feast day is celebrated on January 30.

Anthony was born around 251 to wealthy parents who owned land in the present-day Faiyum region near Cairo.

During this time, the Catholic Church was rapidly spreading its influence throughout the vast expanses of the Roman empire, while the empire remained officially pagan and did not legally recognize the new religion.

In the course of his remarkable and extraordinarily long life, Anthony would live to see Emperor Constantine's establishment of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman empire.

Anthony himself, however, would establish something more lasting – by becoming the spiritual father of the monastic communities that have existed throughout the subsequent history of the Church.

Around the year 270, two great burdens came upon Anthony simultaneously: the deaths of both his parents, and his inheritance of their possessions and property.

These simultaneous occurrences prompted Anthony to reevaluate his entire life in light of the principles of the Gospel — which proposed both the redemptive possibilities of his personal loss and the spiritual danger of his financial gains.

Attending church one day, he heard – as if for the first time – Jesus' exhortation to another rich young man in the Biblical narrative:

“If you wish to be perfect, go sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”

Anthony told his disciples in later years that it was as though Christ has spoken those words to him directly.

He duly followed the advice of selling everything he owned and donating the proceeds, setting aside a portion to provide for his sister.

Although organized monasticism did not yet exist, it was not unknown for Christians to abstain from marriage, divest themselves of possessions to some extent, and live a life focused on prayer and fasting.

Anthony's sister would eventually join a group of consecrated virgins.

Anthony himself, however, sought a more comprehensive vision of Christian asceticism.

He found it among the hermits of the Egyptian desert, individuals who chose to withdraw physically and culturally from the surrounding society in order to devote themselves more fully to God.

But these individuals' radical way of life had not yet become an organized movement.

After studying with one of these hermits, Anthony made his own sustained attempt to live alone in a secluded desert location, depending on the charity of a few patrons who would provide him with enough food to survive.

This first period as a hermit lasted between 13 and 15 years.

Like many saints both before and after him, Anthony became engaged in a type of spiritual combat against unseen forces seeking to remove him from the way of perfection he had chosen.

These conflicts took their toll on Anthony in many respects.

When he was around 33 years old, a group of his patrons found him in serious condition and took him back to a local church to recover.

This setback did not dissuade Anthony from his goal of seeking God intensely, and he soon redoubled his efforts by moving to a mountain on the east bank of the Nile river.

There, he lived in an abandoned fort, once again subsisting on the charity of those who implored his prayers on their behalf.

He attracted not only these benefactors but a group of inquirers seeking to follow after his example.

In the first years of the fourth century, when he was about 54, Anthony emerged from his solitude to provide guidance to the growing community of hermits that had become established in his vicinity.

Although Anthony had not sought to form such a community, his decision to become its spiritual father – or “Abbot” – marked the beginning of monasticism as it is known today.

Anthony himself would live out this monastic calling for another four decades, providing spiritual and practical advice to disciples who would ensure the movement's continued existence.

According to Anthony's biographer, St. Athanasius, Emperor Constantine himself eventually wrote to the Abbot, seeking advice on the administration of an empire that was now officially Christian.

“Do not be astonished if an emperor writes to us, for he is a man,” Anthony told the other monks. “But rather, wonder that God wrote the Law for men and has spoken to us through his own Son.”

Anthony wrote back to Constantine, advising him “not to think much of the present but rather to remember the judgment that is coming, and to know that Christ alone was the true and Eternal King.”

St. Anthony may have been up to 105 years old when he died, sometime between 350 and 356.

In keeping with his instructions, two of his disciples buried his body secretly in an unmarked grave.

[knightofdeer]

One of the worst takes on mythology that I know is "popularity of flood myth means that something like this happened", because yeah, it happened. In fact, it happens every few years to people living on banks of rivers that are prone to spring floods. You dumbfuck.

Especially makes sense if you consider that such myths are especially prominent in Near East and China, two regions that critically depend on complicated irrigation systems and that have notoriously unstable rivers. And barely present in Egypt, because Nile is very stable, and Europe, because people here were not so dependent on behaviour of any specific river. Greek flood myth is directly borrowed from Phoenicians and doesn't count.

Literally so much "mysteries" of world mythologies are solved once you leave purely virtual world of ideas and meanings and look at actual living conditions, but I will elaborate on it later

[madamlaydebug]

Yoga was practiced in Ancient Egypt, North East Africa, for a very long time. Research has indicated that the philosophy of personality integration, or yoga, was practiced in Egypt for about 10,000 years which is a great expanse of time.

The teaching of yoga that was espoused in the country of Egypt was derived from the meditations and insights by the early sage priests and priestesses. Egypt is not the original term for the country. Egypt is a modern term; the original inhabitants of the country called it Kemet, meaning black or the black land, because of the yearly inundation of the Nile River which caused the rich silt to overflow its banks.

So if yoga was practiced in Kemet for such a long period of time, then the question beckons, what is yoga? The term YOGA is not indigenous to Kemet either. Yoga is a term of Sanskrit origin, one of the languages of present day India. Yoga, when translated into English means to yoke or to bind. Then again, to yoke or to bind what, some may ask? Each human being has an individual consciousness and individual mind upon which they are perceiving the world. No two people think in exactly the same manner, no two people have identical ideas on things, which is a manifestation of individual reality.

However, there is universal consciousness that is beyond the scope of the normal realm of consciousness, or individual reality of people. Hence, the practice of yoga is a personality integration method that allows human beings to bind their individual transitory reality with the universal consciousness. The universal consciousness is stable and unchanging, unmoving, therefore, it is the substantial reality while human beings are existing in transitory phenomenon. When this process is accomplished one can say that they have experienced the way things really are or have experienced reality; universal consciousness.

Yoga is the practice of binding individual consciousness with universal consciousness. This individual reality that you are experiencing is actually only a small reflection of your true nature and yoga is the practice of how to achieve the knowledge of one’s abiding and immortal aspect.

[readyforevolution]

THE ANCIENT KEMETIANS

The Ancient Kemetians were descendants of the Nubians, who had themselves originated from farther south into the heart of Africa at the Great Lakes region, the sources of the Nile River. These ancient African people called their land Kemet (Kemet), and they developed a well-ordered society based on the concept of cosmic ethics and spiritual conscience (Maat Philosophy).

The Ancient Kemetians lived for thousands of years in the northeastern corner of the African continent in the area known as the Nile Valley. The Nile River was a source of dependable enrichment for the land and allowed them to prosper for a very long time without the harsh struggles experienced by people in other geographic locations such as the desert regions of Asia Minor, and the temperate zones of East Asia and Western Asia (Europe). Their prosperity was so great that they created art, culture,religion,philosophy and a civilization which surpassed everything that had come before, and has not been duplicated ever since.

The Ancient Kemetians based their government and business concerns on spiritual values and therefore, enjoyed an orderly society which included equality between the sexes, and a legal system based on universal spiritual laws (Maat Philosophy). The Kemetic Mystery System is a tribute to their history, culture and legacy. As historical insights unfold, it becomes clearer that modern culture has derived its basis from Ancient Kemet , though the credit is not often given, nor the integrity of the practices maintained in the new religions.

Kemet is located in the north-eastern corner of the continent of Africa. It is composed of towns along the banks of the Hapi (Nile River). In the north there is the Nile Delta region where the river contacts the Mediterranean Sea. This part is referred to as the North or Lower Kemet , “lower,” because that is the lowest

elevation and the river flows from south to north. The middle of the country is referred to as Middle Kemet . The south is referred to as Upper Kemet because it is the higher elevation and the river flows from there to the north.

The south is the older region of the dynastic civilization and the middle and north are later.

#africa #Egypt #ancientegypt #kemet

[myrachidh]

Pied Kingfisher ~ Ceryle rudis ~ Martin-pêcheur pie ~ Flying over the East Bank of the Nile River in Maadi, Cairo, Egypt

#PiedKingfisher #Kingfisher #Ceryle #Cerylerudis #Martin-pêcheurPie #Marinpêcheur #Pie #Maadi #Cairo #Egypt #Birds #Oiseaux #birdsofinstagram #wildlifephotography #Wildlife #Nile #River #DivingBirds #birding #waterfowl #waterreflection #shadows #watershadows #watercircles #waterphoto #waterphotography #Ornithology ~ https://www.flickr.com/photos/rachidh/albums

[reasoningdaily]

The Rift Valley tells the entire human story from the start | Aeon Essays

We are restless even in death. Entombed in stone, our most distant ancestors still travel along Earth’s subterranean passageways. One of them, a man in his 20s, began his journey around 230,000 years ago after collapsing into marshland on the lush edge of a river delta feeding a vast lake in East Africa’s Rift Valley. He became the earth in which he lay as nutrients leached from his body and his bone mineralised into fossil. Buried in the sediment of the Rift, he moved as the earth moved: gradually, inexorably.

Millions of years before he died, tectonic processes began pushing the Rift Valley up and apart, like a mighty inhalation inflating the ribcage of the African continent. The force of it peeled apart a 4,000-mile fissure in Earth’s crust. As geological movements continued, and the rift grew, the land became pallbearer, lifting and carrying our ancestor away to Omo-Kibish in southern Ethiopia where, in 1967, a team of Kenyan archaeologists led by Richard Leakey disinterred his shattered remains from an eroding rock bank.

Lifted from the ground, the man became the earliest anatomically modern human, and the start of a new branch – Homo sapiens – on the tangled family tree of humanity that first sprouted 4 million years ago. Unearthed, he emerged into the same air and the same sunlight, the same crested larks greeting the same rising sun, the same swifts darting through the same acacia trees. But it was a different world, too: the nearby lake had retreated hundreds of miles, the delta had long since narrowed to a river, the spreading wetland had become parched scrub. His partial skull, named Omo 1, now resides in a recessed display case at Kenya’s national museum in Nairobi, near the edge of that immense fault line.

I don’t remember exactly when I first learned about the Rift Valley. I recall knowing almost nothing of it when I opened an atlas one day and saw, spread across two colourful pages, a large topographical map of the African continent. Toward the eastern edge of the landmass, a line of mountains, valleys and lakes – the products of the Rift – drew my eye and drove my imagination, more surely than either the yellow expanse of the Sahara or the green immensity of the Congo. Rainforests and deserts appeared uncomplicated, placid swathes of land in comparison with the fragmenting, shattering fissures of the Rift.

On a map, you can trace the valley’s path from the tropical coastal lowlands of Mozambique to the Red Sea shores of the Arabian Peninsula. It heads due north, up the length of Lake Malawi, before splitting. The western branch takes a left turn, carving a scythe-shaped crescent of deep lake-filled valleys – Tanganyika, Kivu, Edward – that form natural borders between the Democratic Republic of Congo and a succession of eastern neighbours: Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda. But the western branch peters out, becoming the broad shallow valley of the White Nile before dissipating in the Sudd, a vast swamp in South Sudan.

The eastern branch is more determined in its northward march. A hanging valley between steep ridges, it runs through the centre of Tanzania, weaving its way across Kenya and into Ethiopia where, in the northern Afar region, it splits again at what geologists call a ‘triple junction’, the point where three tectonic plates meet or, in this case, bid farewell. The Nubian and Somalian plates are pulling apart and both are pulling away from the Arabian plate to their north, deepening and widening the Rift Valley as they unzip the African continent. Here in the Rift, our origins and that of the land are uniquely entwined. Understanding this connection demands more than a bird’s-eye view of the continent.

The Rift Valley is the only place where human history can be seen in its entirety

Looking out across a landscape such as East Africa’s Rift Valley reveals a view of beauty and scale. But this way of seeing, however breath-taking, will only ever be a snapshot of the present, a static moment in time. Another way of looking comes from tipping your perspective 90 degrees, from the horizontal plane to the vertical axis, a shift from space to time, from geography to stratigraphy, which allows us to see the Rift in all its dizzying, vertiginous complexity. Here, among seemingly unending geological strata, we can gaze into what the natural philosopher John Playfair called ‘the abyss of time’, a description he made after he, James Hall and James Hutton in 1788 observed layered geological aeons in the rocky outcrops of Scotland’s Siccar Point – a revelation that would eventually lead Hutton to become the founder of modern geology. In the Rift Valley, this vertical, tilted way of seeing is all the more powerful because the story of the Rift is the story of all of us, our past, our present, and our future. It’s a landscape that offers a diachronous view of humanity that is essential to make sense of the Anthropocene, the putative geological epoch in which humans are understood to be a planetary force with Promethean powers of world-making and transformation.

The Rift Valley humbles us. It punctures the transcendent grandiosity of human exceptionalism by returning us to a specific time and a particular place: to the birth of our species. Here, we are confronted with a kind of homecoming as we discern our origins among rock, bones and dust. The Rift Valley is the only place where human history can be seen in its entirety, the only place we have perpetually inhabited, from our first faltering bipedal steps to the present day, when the planetary impacts of climatic changes and population growth can be keenly felt in the equatorial heat, in drought and floods, and in the chaotic urbanisation of fast-growing nations. The Rift is one of many frontiers in the climate crisis where we can witness a tangling of causes and effects.

But locating ourselves here, within Earth’s processes, and understanding ourselves as part of them, is more than just a way of seeing. It is a way of challenging the kind of short-term, atemporal, election-cycle thinking that is failing to deliver us from the climate and biodiversity crises. It allows us to conceive of our current moment not as an endpoint but as the culmination of millions of years of prior events, the fleeting staging point for what will come next, and echo for millennia to come. We exist on a continuum: a sliver in a sediment core bored out of the earth, a plot point in an unfolding narrative, of which we are both author and character. It brings the impact of what we do now into focus, allowing facts about atmospheric carbon or sea level rises to resolve as our present responsibilities.

The Rift is a place, but ‘rift’ is also a word. It’s a noun for splits in things or relationships, a geological term for the result of a process in which Earth shifts, and it’s a verb apt to describe our current connection to the planet: alienation, separation, breakdown. The Rift offers us another way of thinking.

That we come from the earth and return to it is not a burial metaphor but a fact. Geological processes create particular landforms that generate particular environments and support particular kinds of life. In a literal sense, the earth made us. The hominin fossils scattered through the Rift Valley are anthropological evidence but also confronting artefacts. Made of rock not bone, they are familiar yet unexpected, turning up in strange places, emerging from the dirt weirdly heavy, as if burdened with the physical weight of time. They are caught up in our ‘origin stories and endgames’, writes the geographer Kathryn Yusoff, as simultaneous manifestations of mortality and immortality. They embody both the vanishing brevity of an individual life and the near-eternity of a mineralised ‘geologic life’, once – as the philosopher Manuel DeLanda puts it in A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (1997) – bodies and bones cross ‘the threshold back into the world of rocks’. There is fear in this, but hope too, because we can neither measure, contend with, nor understand the Anthropocene without embedding ourselves in different timescales and grounding ourselves in the earth. Hominin fossils are a path to both.

The rain, wind and tectonics summon long-buried bones, skulls and teeth from the earth

Those species that cannot adapt, die. Humans, it turns out – fortunately for us, less so for the planet – are expert adapters. We had to be, because the Rift Valley in which we were born is a complex, fragmented, shifting place, so diverse in habitats that it seems to contain the world. It is as varied as it is immense, so broad that on all but the clearest of days its edges are lost in haze. From high on its eastern shoulder, successive hills descend thousands of feet to the plains below, like ridges of shoreward ocean swell. Here, the valley floor is hard-baked dirt, the hot air summoning dust devils to dance among whistling thorns, camphor and silver-leafed myrrh. Dormant volcanoes puncture the land, their ragged, uneven craters stark against the sky. Fissures snake across the earth. Valley basins are filled with vast lakes, or dried out and clogged with sand and sediment. An ice-capped mountain stands sentinel, its razor ridges of black basalt rearing out of cloud forest. Elsewhere, patches of woodland cluster on sky islands, or carpet hills and plateaus. In some of the world’s least hospitable lands, the rain, wind and tectonics summon long-buried bones, skulls and teeth from the earth. This is restless territory, a landscape of tumult and movement, and the birthplace of us all.

My forays into this territory over the past dozen years have only scratched at the surface of its immense variety. I have travelled to blistering basalt hillsides, damp old-growth forests, ancient volcanoes with razor rims, smoking geothermal vents, hardened fields of lava, eroding sandstone landscapes that spill fossils, lakes with water that is salty and warm, desert dunes with dizzying escarpments, gently wooded savannah, and rivers as clear as gin. Here, you can travel through ecosystems and landscapes, but also through time

I used to live beside the Rift. For many years, my Nairobi home was 30 kilometres from the clenched knuckles of the Valley’s Ngong Hills, which slope downwards to meet a broad, flat ridge. Here, the road out of the city makes a sharp turn to the right, pitching over the escarpment’s edge before weaving its way, thousands of feet downwards over dozens of kilometres, through patchy pasture and whistling thorns. The weather is always unsettled here and, at 6,500 feet can be cold even on the clearest and brightest of days.

One particularly chilly bend in the road has been given the name ‘Corner Baridi’, cold corner. Occasionally, I would sit here, on scrubby grass by the crumbling edge of a ribbon of old tarmac, and look westwards across a transect of the Rift Valley as young herders wandered past, bells jangling at their goats’ necks. The view was always spectacular, never tired: a giant’s staircase of descending bluffs, steep, rocky and wooded, volcanic peaks and ridges, the sheen of Lake Magadi, a smudge of smoke above Ol Doinyo Lengai’s active caldera, the mirrored surface of Lake Natron, the undulating expanse of the valley floor.

And the feeling the scene conjured was always the same: awe, and nostalgia, in its original sense of a longing for home, a knowledge rooted in bone not books. This is where Homo sapiens are from. This is fundamental terrane, where all our stories begin. Sitting, I would picture the landscape as a time-lapse film, changing over millions of years with spectral life drifting across its shifting surface like smoke.

Humankind was forged in the tectonic crucible of the Rift Valley. The physical and cognitive advances that led to Homo sapiens were driven by changes of topography and climate right here, as Earth tipped on its axis and its surface roiled with volcanism, creating a complex, fragmented environment that demanded a creative, problem-solving creature.

Much of what we know of human evolution in the Rift Valley builds on the fossil finds and theoretical thinking of Richard Leakey, the renowned Kenyan palaeoanthropologist. Over the years I lived in Nairobi, we met and talked on various occasions and, one day in 2021, I visited him at his home, a few miles from Corner Baridi.

Millennia from now, the Rift Valley will have torn the landmass apart and become the floor of a new sea

It was a damp, chilly morning and, when I arrived, Leakey was finishing some toast with jam. Halved red grapefruit and a pot of stovetop espresso coffee sat on the Lazy Susan, a clutch bag stuffed with pills and tubes of Deep Heat and arthritis gel lay on the table among the breakfast debris, a walking stick hung from the doorknob behind him, and from the cuffs of his safari shorts extended two metal prosthetic legs, ending in a pair of brown leather shoes.

Afterwards, I drove out to the spot where Leakey envisioned his museum being built: a dramatic basalt outcropping amid knee-high grass and claw-branched acacias, perched at the end of a ridge, the land falling precipitously away on three sides. It felt like an immense pulpit or perhaps, given Leakey’s paternal, didactic style, atheist beliefs, and academic rigour, a lectern.

A little way north of Leakey’s home, beyond Corner Baridi, a new railway tunnel burrows through the Ngong Hills to the foot of the escarpment where there is a town of low-slung concrete, and unfinished roofs punctured by reinforced steel bars. For most hours of most days, lorries rumble by, nose to tail, belching smoke and leaking oil. They ferry goods back and forth across the valley plains. The new railway will do the same, moving more stuff, more quickly. The railway, like the road, is indifferent to its surroundings, its berms, bridges, cuttings and tunnels defy topography, mock geography.

Running perpendicular to these transport arteries, pylons stride across the landscape, bringing electricity in high voltage lines from a wind farm in the far north to a new relay station at the foot of a dormant volcano. The promise of all this infrastructure increases the land’s value and, where once there were open plains, now there are fences, For Sale signs, and quarter-acre plots sold in their hundreds. Occasionally, geology intervenes, as it did early one March morning in 2018 when Eliud Njoroge Mbugua’s home disappeared.

It began with a feathering crack scurrying across his cement floor, which widened as the hours passed. Then the crack became a fissure, and eventually split his cinderblock shack apart, hauling its tin-roofed remnants into the depths. Close by, the highway was also torn in two. The next day, journalists launched drones into the sky capturing footage that revealed a lightning-bolt crack in the earth stretching hundreds of metres across the flat valley floor. Breathless news reports followed, mangling the science and making out that an apocalyptic splitting of the African continent was underway. They were half-right.

Ten thousand millennia from now, the Rift Valley will have torn the landmass apart and become the floor of a new sea. Where the reports were wrong, however, was in failing to recognise that Mbugua’s home had fallen victim to old tectonics, not new ones: heavy rains had washed away the compacted sediment on which his home had been built, revealing a fault line hidden below the surface. Sometimes, the changes here can point us forward in time, toward our endings. But more often, they point backwards.

Just a few years earlier, when I first moved to Nairobi, the railway line and pylons did not exist. Such is the velocity of change that, a generation ago, the nearby hardscrabble truck stop town of Mai Mahiu also did not exist. If we go four generations back, there were neither trucks nor the roads to carry them, neither fence posts nor brick homes. The land may look empty in this imagined past, but is not: pastoralist herders graze their cows, moving in search of grass and water for their cattle, sharing the valley with herds of elephant, giraffe and antelope, and the lions that stalk them.

Thousands of years earlier still, and the herders are gone, too. Their forebears are more than 1,000 miles to the northwest, grazing their herds on pastures that will become the Sahara as temperatures rise in the millennia following the end of the ice age, the great northern glaciers retreat and humidity falls, parching the African land. Instead, the valley is home to hunter-gatherers and fishermen who tread the land with a lighter foot.

Go further. At the dawn of the Holocene – the warm interglacial period that began 12,000 years ago and may be coming to a close – the Rift is different, filled with forests of cedar, yellowwood and olive, sedge in the understory. The temperature is cooler, the climate wetter. Dispersed communities of human hunter-gatherers, semi-nomads, live together, surviving on berries, grasses and meat, cooking with fire, hunting with sharpened stone. Others of us have already left during the preceding 40,000 years, moving north up the Rift to colonise what will come to be called the Middle East, Europe, Asia, the Americas.

As geology remakes the land, climate makes its power felt too, swinging between humidity and aridity

Some 200,000 years ago, the Rift is inhabited by the earliest creature that is undoubtedly us: the first Homo sapiens, like our ancestor found in Ethiopia. Scrubbed and dressed, he would not turn heads on the streets of modern-day Nairobi, London or New York. At this time, our ancestors are here, and only here: in the Rift.

Two million years ago, we are not alone. There are at least two species of our Homo genus sharing the Rift with the more ape-like, thicker-skulled and less dexterous members of the hominin family: Australopithecus and Paranthropus. A million years earlier, a small, ape-like Australopithecus (whom archaeologists will one day name ‘Lucy’) lopes about on two legs through a mid-Pliocene world that is even less recognisable, full of megafauna, forests and vast lakes.

Further still – rewinding into the deep time of geology and tectonics, through the Pliocene and Miocene – there is nothing we could call ‘us’ anymore. The landscape has shifted and changed. As geology remakes the land, climate makes its power felt too, swinging between humidity and aridity. Earth wobbles on its axis and spins through its orbit, bringing millennia-long periods of oscillation between wetness and dryness. The acute climate sensitivity of the equatorial valley means basin lakes become deserts, and salt pans fill with water.

On higher ground, trees and grasses engage in an endless waltz, ceding and gaining ground, as atmospheric carbon levels rise and fall, favouring one family of plant, then the other. Eventually, the Rift Valley itself is gone, closing up as Earth’s crust slumps back towards sea level and the magma beneath calms and subsides. A continent-spanning tropical forest, exuberant in its humidity, covers Africa from coast to coast. High in the branches of an immense tree sits a small ape, the common ancestor of human and chimpanzee before tectonics, celestial mechanics and climate conspire to draw us apart, beginning the long, slow process of splitting, separating, fissuring, that leads to today, tens of millions of years later, but perhaps at the same latitude and longitude of that immense tree: a degree and a half south, 36.5 degrees west, on a patch of scrubby grass at the edge of the Rift.

[aristocraticvision]

Chapter 322: Digging for Clues (Pt. 1)

It was early afternoon before Stephanie and Theresa arrived at the dig site. Having flown south into Luxor on the east bank of the Nile, Stephanie and Theresa quickly found themselves ushered into a ministry SUV and ferried across the river and into the deep desert.

Finally, in a rocky basin at the Eastern edge of the Valley of the Kings, they stopped at an encampment next to a large excavation.

“Wow,” Stephanie said as they stepped out of the vehicle. “This is amazing. And to think you grew up coming on these digs.”

“It’s not as glamorous as it sounds,” Theresa said, wrinkling her nose in distaste. “Living in a tent in 100-plus-degree temperatures, no running water, scorpions everywhere – I hated every minute. But I loved being with my mom, so I put up with it.”

Faisal Hassan of the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, came round the car to stand next to them as a large man approached.

“Uncle Sullah?” Theresa asked, launching herself into the big man’s arms. “It IS you!”

“Theresa! It has been much too long,” the man cried, embracing her. “I’m sorry that our reunion must be so ….”

Theresa’s eyes dropped and she reached for Sullah’s hands.

“What happened here, uncle?” she asked.

The man’s expression darkened.

“I don’t know, Theresa,” he replied. “I’ve been working with the authorities, but I don’t have any idea what happened to your mother. One moment, she was here – the next, she was just … gone.”

“Where was she when she disappeared?” Stephanie asked.

Sullah looked at her, blankly, for a moment.

“Oh, I’m sorry, uncle,” Theresa said. “This is my best friend, Princess Stephanie of Weston.”

Sullah bowed.

“Your highness,” he said. “Please come this way. I’ll show you the dig where Mrs. Matthews was working.”

Leading them down a steep ramp, they found themselves in the remains of an ancient courtyard. What had once been a fountain stood in the center, surrounded by columns.

“Your mother suspected this structure extended several hundred feet further back into the dunes, but this is all she had uncovered so far," Sullah said. "I halted all work once we knew she’d disappeared, so things are pretty much the same as she left them.”

Theresa walked slowly around the pool edge when she stopped suddenly and dropped to her knees.

“That’s one of my mom’s tools, I’m sure of it,” she said. “Mom never left her tools laying about – you know that, Sullah.”

“Please don’t touch that, Mrs. Vanderhall,” Inspector Valsan said, approaching. “This is a crime scene, after all.”

“She wouldn’t have left it just laying here,” Theresa said. “She was always so careful with her tools, and ….”

She leapt to her feet.

“Oh my God … is that what I think it is? Is that BLOOD?”

“We don’t know, Mrs. Vanderhall,” Valsan replied. “It’s still being tested, so it’s unwise to jump to conclusions. It could be ….”

“Just stop,” Theresa said, angrily. “We both know what it is, and what it means. Stop trying to make me feel better, because it’s not working.”

CHAPTER 1 | BEGINNING OF PART 4 | PREV | NEXT

Continent of Oceana | History of Weston | History of Corwyn | History of Torenth | History of Allycia

[hagerkamal]

The most beautiful Egyptian beaches

Egypt is one of the most beautiful countries in the world, and it is characterized by enchanting deserts, wonderful greenery, and stunning beaches. Due to its privileged location, Egypt has beaches on both the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, in addition to the banks of the Nile and many beautiful lakes and oases. Let's take a ride along the most beautiful beaches in Egypt. You can enjoy the most beautiful tours through Egypt Trip, Also, you can make the most beautiful tourist tours by choosing multiple places and making it possible to visit a number of places and provinces on the same trip through Egypt travel packages. Cairo Day Tour from Port Said: Stay tuned for a special day tour departing from Port Said that will take you to Cairo’s ancient and historical monuments, such as the Great Pyramids of Giza, the Egyptian Museum, and Khan El Khalili, the oldest bazaar in the Middle East.  You can enjoy Giza Pyramids and Sakkara Trip from Port Said: From Port Said, you can join us to make a shore excursion to visit the Giza Pyramids and Saqqara which will allow you to understand the history of Egypt and its main places. Enjoy the stunning view of the pyramids and the step pyramid of King Djoser from Saqqara. Don’t miss this exciting experience!2 Days Tour Port Said to Cairo and Alexandria: Departing from Port Said, spend 2 magnificent days in Cairo and Alexandria to visit Cairo’s remarkable attractions, such as the Great Pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx, and the Egyptian Museum, before visiting most of Alexandria‘s famous places like the citadel of Qaitbay, Pompey pillar, the catacomb tombs. Overnight Trip to Cairo from Port Said: Start your 2 days tour from the city of Port Said to enjoy Cairo attractions and visit all the astonishing, unique, and attractive places in Cairo, such as the pyramids of Giza, the step pyramid of Saqqara, and the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir square to see the largest collection exhibited in the museum. Amazing Pyramids and Nile Cruise Lunch from Port Said: Relish yourself with our shore excursions from Port Said to visit Cairo which includes a delectable lunch on a Nile cruise with a dazzling view of the river and an oriental folkloric show to amuse you during this trip. Day Tour to Giza Pyramids with Camel Riding: Explore the Great Pyramids of Giza in a half-day private tour from port said which includes a camel ride around the pyramids and seeing the Sphinx, which was a protector for thousands of years, all of this before returning back to Port Said. Grand Egyptian Museum and Pyramids Tous from Port Said: From Port Said, take a one-of-a-kind trip to the Grand Egyptian Museum and the Pyramids of Giza, and be among the first to see the Great Egyptian Museum and see the most valuable treasures of Ancient Egypt. Islamic Cairo Tour from Port Said and drop off at Alexandria: You Will Enjoy one of our most amazing tours in Cairo Top Tours to discover all the historical Islamic monuments in Cairo through Islamic Cairo Tour from Port Said and drop off at Alexandria which is a way to know more about Muhamed Ali Pasha by visiting his mosque which is located in Cairo Citadel which was built by Salah EL-Din.Pyramids Desert Safari Trip from Port Said: you will see the Giza pyramids up close and personal, and it was truly an incredible experience. you will also go on a camel ride, which was something you had always wanted to do.Trips vary and are characterized for a day or two in several ways, as it was by flying or riding modern air-conditioned cars through Egypt Day tours, A unique distinction in the rapid journeys through Egypt shore excursions, And you can combine the country between Egypt and any other country or any two countries with each other or three or more through our distinguished international trips

@cairo-top-tours @sohilaesam @lailaessam2910

[antinous-posts]

Raising Antinoos

By Ptahmassu Nofra-Uaa

Hear my words O you who follow

in my tread, for I shall speak of the beloved

of the eternal Gods, whose name Antinoös

has risen as a star in the eastern vault

of the sky; from its rays the heavens draw

nigh his light, to forever shine upon the world.

Hear my words O you sibyls,

who have caused the ages to speak again

even after the past has gone to its grave.

Hear my words O you Gods in the company

of Hermes Trismegistus,

for I am pure of speech and have come

clad in the vestments of the newly born sun;

I have become Helios in his chariot, from

whose radiance the worlds flowers,

and the body of the earth is revivified.

Listen, O you Gods of the Holy River,

for favored is my countenance

with the coming of the dawn;

my approach heralds the victory of

those long dead and beloved,

who shall live again when the living

draw breath to speak their venerated

names.

In the east rose the star of Bithynia,

whose youth found Apollôn blushing

in admiration.

Proopsios saw how far-reaching

would be the brilliance of this star;

its light to fall upon the world ever after

its body had been sent to rest.

How far this star of Antinoös had

claimed heaven’s graces when gathered

by the eyes of Hadrianus Augustus;

this heaven installed within the sanctuary

no woman had yet entered, where footsteps

like Epikourios advanced softly to cure the

heart of all its ills.

Come Akesios in the name of Antinoös,

for what dazzling light may enter the

lonely heart at midnight;

the heart finds such a time clad in the beauty

of stellar courses, running through the

dusky veil like a sword.

His countenance shines as Apollôn when he

appears in his rosy-gold mantle;

men know him as Hekatos when they are

smitten fast by his beauty.

Come Antinoös, who like Apollôn possesses

the darts of the sun from which the earth

awakens; you are the Lord of Light whose

face pierces midnight, whose rays strike

a heart in darkness as the faces of stars

chase the shadows.

Your eyes are twilight, from which trees

swoon and men become docile.

To take their rest in you, men become

as dreamers, and you as Thearios,

appearing like a sacred vision.

Come Erôs, Himeros, Anteros,

best beloved of all the Erôtes!

Erôs has whispered your name upon

his pillow; he has furnished the bedchamber

with a lamp filled with oil, gleaming as

you gleam, diffusing light to intoxicate

the eyes.

O Antinoös who glistens like Apollôn

in yonder eastern vault, approach me

with such light that I may be enveloped

in it; requited by your divine kiss when

my heart is ensnared by sorrow.

Come Antinoös, come light;

I summon the star of Bithynia

which shines from the east!

Come Antinoös, come light;

I summon the face that caused

Roma to shine with divine favors!

Come Antinoös, come light;

I summon the heart which grants

boons from the Gods of love!

Come Antinoös, come light;

I summon the graces of the Erôtes,

whose swift wings bring with them

the cool kiss of love’s joys!

Come Antinoös, come light;

I summon the lotus of the Nile,

which rises again and again in its

fertile season!

Come Antinoös, come light;

I summon from your loins the

eternal sun from which new life

springs!

Come Antinoös, come light;

I summon a torch in the Underworld

of the Gods, where traverse the

Spirits who converse with immortality!

Come Antinoös, come light;

I summon the life you bestow to

your beloved!

Come Antinoös, come light;

I summon the heart you restored

as Ausir-Osiris, which made the

Holy Nile to rise and the Two Lands

to flourish!

Come Antinoös, come light;

I summon the dawn which

possesses the two horizons as Ra!

Come Antinoös, come light;

I summon the One whom Harakhty

has beheld with His two almighty eyes!

Come Antinoös, come light;

he who has become the Lord of the Two Banks,

rising in his season to grant life to all the world!

Come Antinoös, come light;

for you are the light of love crowning

the two horizons, whom the Gods have

showered with their favors!

Come Antinoös, come light;

you are the Lord of Life, making his appearance

as Ausir-Osiris, causing the world to rise again,

causing the dead to live again.

In your glory of life you cause hearts to live

again; and I summon you, O Antinoös,

O Ausir-Osiris, to make the world live again,

to make me live again, to make my heart live again!

Antinoös, Ausir-Osiris, having been embraced

by the Goddess Auset-Isis, has come forth

in glory to shine as Orion;

he has received the power of Isis-Sothis,

which grants the eternal cycle of heaven

to the body of Osiris.

Come Antinoös, appearing as gold in the east,

bearing myrtle upon your youthful brow;

Aphrodite has provided this boon for you,

which clothes the hearts of men with love,

which flourishes evergreen, which stands

firm like the sacred oak.

And I saw the star of Bithynia rise again

as the Nile in its season, the fragile dawn

sky awakening with a song of joy upon

her lips.

Antinoös the beloved of the Gods has risen;

the sky has risen!

Antinoös the star of Bithynia has risen;

the constellations have risen!

Antinoös the face of Apollôn has risen;

the sun has risen!

Antinoös the torch of the world has risen;

the God Ra has risen!

Antinoös the water of life has risen;

the Holy Nile has risen!

Antinoös the Lord of the East has risen;

Orion has risen!

Antinoös who appears with Isis has risen;

Sothis has risen!

Antinoös who grants the boon of immortality

has risen;

the dead have risen!

Antinoös the light of the world has risen;

the earth has risen, and all that was once

in darkness has risen to behold the coming

of the triumphant day!

We come with the Erôtes to dance and strike

the lyre for Antinoös;

Himeros who sports with Erôs to make life

from love, wherever death’s unforgiving

hand has reached.

We live through Antinoös when we live

through love, thus all the immortal Gods

come to pay him homage with their song.

Hear my words O you who follow

in my tread, for I shall speak of the beloved

of the eternal Gods, whose name Antinoös

has risen as a star in the eastern vault

of the sky; from its rays the heavens draw

nigh his light, to forever shine upon the world.

All text copyright © 2015 Ptahmassu Nofra-Uaa

[lailaessam2910]

Luxor’s Governor discusses preparations for the winter tourism season

Minister of Tourism and Antiquities for Tourism Affairs met with the Governor of Luxor to discuss a number of files that would contribute to pushing the incoming tourist movement to Luxor that will participate in Egypt Travel Packages.

she also met with a group of investors, owners, and managers of fixed and floating hotel establishments in the governorate to discuss preparations for the winter tourism season, stressing the need for all hotel and tourist establishments to adhere to all procedures and requirements for health and food safety standards that can be offered through Egypt Classic Tours and also one of the most unique tours that exists in Egypt which Egypt Nile Cruise Tours that allows you to discover the historical monuments in Luxor and Aswan sites that can be visited during Egypt Luxury Tours that offers high standard services in addition to the adventure that you can try during one of Egypt Cheap budget tours that can be easily accessed for people who suffer injuries through Egypt Wheelchair Accessible tour packages or while having fun during your Egypt Christmas tour which also can be done at the fresh air in April during Egypt Easter tours.

Only Luxor Governorate contains a third of the world's monuments that you can discover during the Luxor day tour to the east and the west Bank on both sides of the river while visiting the magnificent temple complex of Karnak and the Luxor temple on the east bank, before moving to the west bank to visit the valley of the kings. You'll take many tours and excursions in Luxor, visiting the western and eastern banks of Luxor, as well as in Aswan, where you can visit the High Dam and the Temple of Philae during the Luxor Aswan Cruise with Abu Simble tour. Experience the hot air balloon ride in Luxor which takes place over the largest open-air museum in the world it also overlooks the clear blue water of the Nile River and the green gardens of Luxor through the Luxor Hot Air Balloon Ride. discover the attractive antiques of the Egyptian Museum, the churches, and the mosques of Cairo you can have a Day trip to Cairo from Luxor by flight. Spend an unexceptional day Tour to Edfu and Kom Ombo temples from Luxor to enjoy the site where the kings of ancient Egypt built their palaces and temples. Enjoy fantastic nighttime that can never be ignored on the fascinating laser data show during the Sound and Light show in Karnak temple. Dendera and Abydos tour from Luxor is the way to discover the temple of Abydos which is dedicated to the god Osiris, the god of the underworld and death together with the temple of the cow Goddess Hathor at Dendera. Luxor West Bank tour will make you able to watch the impressive wonders of the west bank such as the Valley of the Queens and the Ramesseum temple of king Rameses II. Take the opportunity and visit Luxor East Bank including the temple of Luxor and Karnak temples. an Overnight tour to EL-Minya from Luxor is a chance to discover the secrets of upper Egypt where the ancient capital of King Akhenaton is at tell el Amarna. Banana Island Tour in Luxor can attract you with its little banana plantation, where you can know more about how they are being kept.

@cairo-top-tours @sohilaesam @hagerkamal @travelegyptinstylewithme