“As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.”
~ Henry David Thoreau, unimpressed (1817-1862)
Joel Bowman, with today’s Note From the End of the World: Alexandria, Egypt…
One-armed and partially mummified himself, your editor spent the past week with his head firmly in the sand. That is, we’ve been traipsing the ancient sites of Egypt, making good on a birthday promise to dear, Cleopatra-mad daughter.
From the everlasting gaze of the mysterious Sphinx and the towering pyramids at Giza… to the Serapeum of Alexandria and Pompey's Pillar here in Alexander the Great’s namesake city on the sea, it’s impossible to escape the relics of the past, even as they crumble gently into the present…
A winding rumination on the nature of historical cycles, which you will find below, seemed therefore apposite for the week’s Notes.
But fear not, patient reader, for we will return to the present and the reliable, eternal folly of mankind next week, even as we head further south, along the Nile. In the meantime, please enjoy our wending musings below, as well as a modern flâneur from ancient Egypt, in the short video above…
And now for your Notes From the End of the Week…
Final Notes…
A mere ancient coincidence?
In Sophocles’s famous Oedipus trilogy, the eponymous hero encounters a sphinx while en route to the ancient Greek city of Thebes. In the myth, all travelers along the road must solve the riddle… or die. Here it is:
“What is it that has a voice and walks on four legs in the morning, on two at noon, and on three in the evening?”
As it so happens, the ancient Egyptians also had a city named Thebes, upon the ruins of which is built modern day Luxor. Encountering the Great Sphinx at Giza last week, and hearing the whispers on the winds, we were careful to correctly recall the answer to the Greek riddle, just in case.
We’ll let you know how it turns out from Luxor, when we arrive there safe and sound, next week.
Until then, stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World…
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
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