## Gnosis, the _ogdoad_ , _syzygy_ and Linda Ronstadt. Last year, scientists announced they had discovered a new color. By shining a strong laser in people’s eyes, they were able to see a bluey-green tinge never seen by human eyes. Olo. I swear I worked with someone with a cardigan in the same shade. The image shared in the articles looks suspiciously like the particular hue of turquoise sold all over the world in Urban Outfitters in the early 2010s. But the scientists proudly assured us that humanity was on the cusp of something completely world changing, yet it was not a new experience. ## 02-03-74 In February and March 1974, the American Sci-Fi author, Philip K Dick experienced a series of mystical events. (I call them events as they were more than just internal experiences.) In one of the more dramatic moments, a laser beam of intense pink energy hit him squarely between the eyes, like Saul on the road to Damascus. A shade of pink unlike any he had seen before. Certain facts were revealed to him. * He identified a serious medical issue in his son, which was undiagnosed by medical experts, although his wife had long told him she suspected it * He was able to negotiate for $3000 more in royalties from his publisher. * He shaved his beard more neatly and changed for a time from wine to beer. At points, he said an ‘AI Voice’ gave him this advice. More importantly, it revealed this world was a false illusion, time itself did not exist and ancient Christians armed with advanced technology were breaking through the prison of reality from another dimension. He spent the rest of his life trying to explain this visitation, initially through his novel _VALIS_. *** I first read _VALIS_ at 16. On a very boring summer holiday, I read it in an empty park, sat on a metal slide and got sunburn. And it blew my mind. Like many books that hit you in adolescence it has stayed with me and seen through the blurred glasses of hindsight, it has shaped my life in unusual ways. Not least by introducing me to Gnosticism and the wide variety of forms that early Christianity took, a subject I went on to study many years later. I have read it several times since and gleaned different things on each occasion. I thought it would be valuable to re-read with the ‘expert knowledge’ I have gained through academic study of ancient religions, a life choice as bizarre as any made by Philip K Dick’s characters. *** What happened in early 1974? Phil struggled to answer this question across several works. The novel _VALIS_ is thematically and narratively linked with several other later books including _The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer_(collectively called the _Valis Trilogy)._ _Radio Free Albemuth_ was published posthumously. It was his first attempt to novelise his experiences. It is interesting to compare this novel with _VALIS_ in terms of themes, how he rationalised them at different points, but as a novel it feels insipid by comparison. Phil also spent several years writing notes to explain his reflection on 02-03-74, as he termed his mystical experiences. He called this work his _Exegesis_. A selection was published at the end of _VALIS_ , with further separate editions published after his death in 1991 and 2011. The 2011 version is an intimidating tome. At nearly a thousand pages, it is best left for retirement. _Exegesis_ is a term normally used for an interpretation of a spiritual _text_ which explains his sense of what the experience was, a form of cosmic information download. Taken together these works provide a comprehensive narrative of what he believed happened to him. Although there are subtle differences in each book, themes and images repeat like motifs in the classical music Phil adored. *** 02-03-74 was a profound experience. But the source, the nature and the reality of the visitation confused him. He used various names for it including Zebra (as he felt it came from an entity hiding in plain sight, like a Zebra) and VALIS (or Vast Active Living Information System, a synonym of the _Logos_ reason, as expressed in the Gospel of John) or _Sophia_ (divine wisdom). He saw this entity as a projection of divine truth into an illusory world built by a false creator god. “Basically”, a character in _VALIS_ (essentially a self-portrait) cheerfully explains to his psychologist “my doctrine is Valentinian, second century CE”. Valentinus was a major Christian thinker, taught by a disciple of St Paul (according to Clement of Alexandria). At the heart of his theology, was the figure of Sophia who fell from another reality (the pleroma, the fullness), becoming the mother of the demiurge, the creator of this world, identifiable with the Old Testament God. Sophia, like humanity in general, still has a divine spark hidden within. The aeons from the higher realm call out to us. But we are trapped in a false reality, a prison, created by the demiurge. Fat tries to explain to his psychiatrist. > **‘Okay’, Fat broke in, ‘but that’s the creator deity, not the true God’.** > > ******‘What?’ Maurice said.** > > ******Fat said, ‘That’s Yaldaboath. Sometimes called Samael, the blind god. He’s deranged.’** > > ******‘What the hell; are you talking about?’ Maurice said.** > > **‘Yaldaboath is a monster spawned by Sophia who fell from the Pleroma,’ Fat said. ‘He imagines he’s the only god but he’s wrong. There’s something the matter with him’ he can’t see. He creates our world but because he’s blind he botches the job. The real god sees down from above and in his pity sets to work to save us. Fragments of light from from the Pleroma are -’** In the novels, this divine emanation of truth sometimes comes from a satellite, from a different solar system, or from the caves of Palestine or Egypt. Philip K Dick’s short story “The World She Wanted” took the cover of the May 1953 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly. (Public Domain via Wikimedia) ## Qumran and Nag Hammadi One of the things that probably drew me to _VALIS_ was not just the playfulness of unreliable narrators and shifting realities, the druggy, sexy, sleazy ambience of 70s California, but the theme of early Christianity. I was brought up in the faith. Loosely Protestant: Methodist, although I attended Church of England Schools and I’m now more agnostic. A lot of people have been thinking recently about what it means to think about Ancient Rome. Is it imperialism, military glory, even Christian theocracy? For me growing up, an important source of my image of Rome developed from this low church background. Rome was the power that persecuted the Christians. This theme was repeated in film, books and on TV. When I first read that the Roman Empire ‘converted’ to Christianity, probably in the Usborne Guide to Ancient Rome, I was a little shocked. (The other thing that drew me to Rome at a young age was the weirder stuff like Caligula, but that’s a different story). It was through reading _VALIS_ that I first learnt there were wildly different forms of ancient Christianity, with their own claims to textual authority. This blew my mind. *** There are different sources of religious authority: * Organisational – like the Roman Catholic Church * Textual – via canonical texts and traditional readings taught through schools, * Visionary – the claim to a direct link to the divine. There is an important Biblical authority for this in St Paul. Part of Phil’s mystical experience was visionary. It was, to use a technical term, apocalyptical, Apocalypse as in revelation or disclosure, the uncovering of one level of reality for a deeper one. He saw first century Rome superimposed over the California of the 1970s. A sign that the contemporary world was false. In _VALIS_ , this sounds more like flickering white villas on the distant hills. Horselover Fat, the main character, sees “ancient Rome superimposed over California 1974”. It’s clear from other records that this was more visceral. “Rather than me being back in the ancient world,” a character explains In _Radio Free Albemuth_ , “Rome had revealed itself as the underlying reality of our present-day world”. Phil said he saw children playing in a playground with wire netting and visualised Christians held in prison awaiting death in the arena. Although he lived his whole life in California, and rarely left it, Phil was not so hot on his home state. He called this Rome-California the Black Iron Prison. It’s most pervasive symbol was Ferris F Fermont (FFF or 666), a stand-in for President Richard Milhouse Nixon, a native of Orange County. If Nixon/Fermont is antichrist, struggles against him took an apocalyptic edge. *** The merging of the ancient and modern was a key part of Phil’s experience. He felt another personality, a figure he called variously Fire Bright, James or Thomas, a first century Christian who has access to a secret form of knowledge shared directly by the Apostles. This figure was both separate to Phil and part of him. It explained why, during an acid trip, Phil spoke a language he didn’t know. The actual language seems to change in retellings from Latin to Koine Greek, German to Hebrew. (Phil was able to read Latin and was functionally fluent in German.) *** The source of this figure varies in the different novels, but in _VALIS_ , Thomas is awoken when Phil saw a woman wearing a fish symbol. Without giving away too much of the ‘plot’, Thomas was one of the earliest Christians, with access to teaching hidden from non-believers. When the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in the Sack of Jersualeum in 70 CE, this teaching disappeared from the earth. In Phil’s estimation it was linked with the Nag Hammadi Library and the Dead Sea Scrolls, two sets of religious texts discovered after the war. The Dead Sea Scrolls are more famous than the Nag Hammadi Library, the name given to a collection of twelve (and a bit) books, with 52 texts found in Nag Hammadi, Egypt. Many scholars believe the books were buried following the standardisation of the new testament canon by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, in the fourth century CE. Together, the texts represent widely different teachings and forms of Christianity, some of which were only previously known through the testimonies of their critics. For example, Ireaenus of Lyons and Epiphanius of Salamis both saw Valentinus as a heretic. (Clement of Alexandria was more ambiguous.) But, in the Nag Hammadi Library, we found original texts which reflected some of their reports, and may have been written (or used) by groups connected to Valentinus. A common thread is the belief in secret teaching withheld from ordinary followers. > **“Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables”** > > **Mark 4:11** In one reading, this teaching took place after the death of Jesus. Many of the books in the Nag Hammadi Library claim an authority from Christ through biblically attested figures. For example the _Gospel of Philip_ may have been used by ‘Valentian’ groups. The role of Christ is complex in Valentinian thought. In one version, the spiritual Christ forms a syzygy (a pair) with Sophia and projects the worldly Christ. This teaching opens up a docetic reading: The idea that Jesus was either a spiritual projection or that the divine aspect was imbued to Jesus during baptism and disappeared at the crucifixion. This is complex stuff, but as you imagine it has important connotations for how you see Christ. The beginning of the Gospel of Thomas from Codex II (Public Domain via Wikimedia) ## Bishop Pike What the hell, then, was an edgy Science Fiction Writer doing, messing about with advanced theology? I blame one man. Bishop James Pike. Phil had long investigated themes of reality and illusion, power and resistance, but his abiding interest in early Christianity developed through his friendship with Pike, the Episcopolian Bishop of California. Pike was a colourful figure, drawn to the fringe elements of belief, including spiritualism. He was even tried for heresy. The two men knew each other through Maren Hackett, a friend of Phil, with whom Pike lived openly in an extra marital affair. Two of the novels say he used the Discretionary Fund to pay for the meals and shared apartment with his partner. Phil later married Maren’s daughter, making the couple essentially his parents-in-law. Phil and Maren also joined Bishop Pike at seances as he tried to contact his son who may have killed himself. Pike wrote a book about his experiences at these seances in 1966 which damaged his reputation. In 1967 Maren herself took an overdose and died. She haunts all four novels. _VALIS_ starts with ‘Gloria’ phoning up the novel’s hero asking for Nembutals (a sedative drug). In 1969, Pike died in Israel, having taken insufficient liquid for a trip to the desert. He took two bottles of coke, spitefully picked up by Joan Didion in her portrait of Pike (_The White Album_) as one of the details “which lift the narrative into apologue”. *** Phil believed/half-believed that Pike was executed. In an excerpt from his larger _Exegesis_ , quoted in Valis, it is written: > **#15 The Sibyl of Cumae protected the Roman Republic and gave timely warnings. In the first century C.E. she foresaw the murders of the two Kennedy brothers, Dr King and Bishop Pike. She saw the two common denominators in the four murdered men: first, they stood in deference of the liberties of the Republic; and second, each man was a religious leader. For this they were killed. The Republic had once again become an empire with a caesar. ‘The Empire never ended.’** The murderer is named in _Radio Free Albemuth_ : Ferris F Fermont, the president who in that novel has masterminded an authoritarian take over of America. In _VALIS_ , divine forces intervene to prevent Fermont’s / Nixon’s takeover through the threat of impeachment. It is implied in the novel that he may somehow be connected to Pike’s death. *** In _The Transmigration of Timothy Archer,_ his final book published while alive, Phil responded to Didion’s version of the Bishop in the character of Timothy Archer. Archer is an intriguing character, a bit of an episcopal hot mess. He marched with Dr King in Selma and seeks to expand his mission in San Francisco, by commissioning a rock mass led by a popular band. But he is careless with the people around him, never picking up the shirt ties that he dropped. Phil and Pike enjoyed debating theological ideas, pushing each other to be more expansive and obscure. *** In this novel, Archer introduces the idea that the community at Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls community, identified by many as Essenes) used a psychoactive mushroom for religious ceremonies. During the sack of Jerusalem in 70 CE, Roman forces destroyed this source. Timothy Archer understands the mushroom as the Anokhi, the ‘I am’ of Jewish religion, the _logos_ of Christianity. “If I find the _anokhi”,_ he tells his daughter-in-law, “I will have access to God’s wisdom. After it has been absent from the world for over two thousand years”. The idea was first put forward by John Allegro, a scholar working on the Dead Sea Scrolls, in his book _The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross_. Although I think we should be open to the idea of mystical practices in some groups within early Christianity, this idea has not gained much support. In the immortal words of Wikipedia the theory ‘brought [Allegro] both popular fame and notoriety, and also complicated his career’. In fact, his scholarly reputation was almost destroyed. But it takes us back to an exciting period when an expansive state supported scholarship met cutting edge technology at a time when Christianity was still revered and religious history of enough interest to be published in popular books. *** When I first read _VALIS_ , I saw Bishop Pike as an ironic figure. One of the ways that Phil deflects some of the intensity of the novel. But it becomaes clear that Phil was profoundly affected by the loss of someone who was both a friend and spiritual comrade (if not father figure). Bishop James Pike (Shared via CC BY-SA 2.5 – Wikimedia) ## Ancient mystery cults I was once told there were two plots: the siege and the quest. Every story, every novel, every film, however long, however complex, however zany, meets one of these two narratives. _VALIS_ is a quest. But more than _Moby Dick_ (the Journey out) or the _Odyssey_ (the journey home), it resembles the initiation rites of antiquity (the journey within). *** In 1972, Phil moved to Orange County, psychologically broken from a harrowing stay in Canada. He arrived with a bible and a cardboard box tied with an extension lead. Although the OC was the stomping grounds of his adversary Nixon (Ferris F. Fermont), here he formed close friendships with a group of young sci-fi Authors. _VALIS_ fictionalises the discussions they had on Thursday evenings. In the novel, David is Fat’s Catholic Friend. Always conciliatory. He was based on Tim Powers, author of classic time travel tale _The Anubis Gates_. The cynical and irascible Kevin, was based on K.W. Jeter, the atheist of the group. If he ever met the single ultimate creator of the universe, he said he would hold out his dead cat and ask them to explain why they allowed death. The final member of this group is Sherri Solvig, more of whom later. It was a fun atmosphere. Phil, having discovered a new idea, would bring it over to Tim’s house. Tim later said he thought his friend shared the most outlandish ideas just to get a rise from him. In real life, the group took the same position formerly held by Bishop Pike, allowing Phil the space to explore and vent his ideas. In the novel, they form the Rhipidon Society, who eventually set off together on adventures to seek the answer to their spiritual questions. *** What I remembered from earlier readings was a deep engagement with gnosticism, ancient mysticism and classical myth. Re-reading, I realise the book is almost polyphonic, quoting Nag Hammadi one moment and then opera. > **“It all had to do with time. ‘Time can be overcome,’ Mircea Eliade wrote. That’s what it’s all about. The great mystery of Eleusis, of the Orphics, of the early Christians, of Sarapis, of the Greco-Roman mystery religions, of Hermes Trismegistos, of the Renaissance Hermetic alchemists, of the Rose Cross Brotherhood, of Apollonius of Tyana, of Simon Magus, of Asklepios, of Paracelsus, of Bruno, consists of the abolition of time.** That’s an impressive list of people and ideas. I’m not totally sure what Serapis has to do with time specifically. Although, the goddess Isis herself, at the end of a first person praise poem from the first century CE, says “I overcome fate”. Phil’s understanding of the mystery religions, reflects not just contemporary scholarship (heavily influenced by Mircea Eliade), but also New Age-y California. Eliade was a major scholar of rituals, such as the Eleusinian Mysteries, seeing links between vastly different cultures. He argues they helped participants come into contact with the divine (or aspects of the divine). There are tendencies to link Osiris with Christ, based on ideas of ‘Dying Gods’ or ‘Oriental Cults’, popularised by JG Frazer in _The Golden Bough_ who argued that there was an original vegetation ritual linked to a sacrificial victim, which played out in later myths, religions and rituals. Certainly ancient religions drew on each, intentionally or unintentionally. But this does not mean there was a single original myth or reason for myth. These passages give a sense of Phil as a renaissance man. His daughter Laura said “His apartment is full of bibles and religious books, encyclopedias and books of science fiction. Lots of records, especially Wagnerian opera” (Sutin, p. 262). Several friends noted that he obsessively read the encyclopedia, perhaps uncritically drawing any interesting element into his overarching theory. He also visited occult bookshops, buying piles of books. *** Timothy Archer is criticized as ‘Lost in meaningless words … _Flatus vocis_ , an empty noise”. Words I think Phil would apply to himself at times. “You know how I am with theories,” Philip K Dick, a character in _Radio Free Albemuth_ , tells another character (who is the actual Philip K Dick stand-in). “Theories are like planes at LA International: a new one along every minute”. At the heart of Phil’s religious beliefs is an almost magpie-like hoarding of detail, rather than a carefully compiled theology, but I think it shows an attempt to understand something complex. The passage from _VALIS_ complements a more articulate statement spoken by Timothy Archer: > **“The ancient world has seen the coming into existence of the Greco-Roman mystery Religions which were dedicated to overcoming fate by patching the worshippers into a god beyond the planetary spheres, a god capable of short-circuiting the ‘astral influences’ as it had been called in those days’.** > > **Timothy Archer, 185** Phil is drawing on an occult reading of Christianity, which emphasised the sharing of traditional teaching from ancient Egypt onwards, a form of truth complementary to the truth of Christianity. It also recalls the words of Symmachus, a fifth century Roman Senator, who said: > **“Does it matter what practical system we adopt in our search for the Truth? The heart of so great a mystery cannot be reached by following one road only.”** Demeter, enthroned and extending her hand in a benediction toward the kneeling Metaneira, who offers the wheat that is a recurring symbol of the mysteries (Varrese Painter, red-figure hydria, c. 340 BC, from Apulia) (Public Domain via Wikimedia) ## The redeemer redeemed? A friend told me that his wife has a trick. While watching TV, she will comment on female stars and say something like ‘She’s not pretty”. He sadly shakes his head. Why are women so cruel to women? Mostly she misses the mark, but every so often she hits the spot. While watching a documentary about Linda Ronstadt, she commented on her looks. Her mother told her that her father had been a fan. “But I thought my father liked more stunning beauties,” she said. “She looks so homely”. I did not also tell her that she was often on my Spotify wrapped, is a bit of a historical crush, and I completely understand my father-in-law’s predilections. So it was a surprise to learn that one of my favourite authors, also had a soft spot for Ms Ronstadt, identifying her not just as a foxy chick, his words, but also as a channel for divine revelation. *** Depending on the situation, I would normally say Philip K Dick is my favourite author. Because he was my favourite writer at a formative period of my life and more because he is better known than some of my other favourite writers. As we mature and as we learn more and experience more, our tastes change and we question such things. When I first read _VALIS_ as a teenage boy, I was open to a hippy-like existence and perhaps too naive about the cost that such a lifestyle would have on people around me. Like many probably, I assumed Phil was an inveterate dropper of acid. I later learned his drug of choice, like Johnny Cash, was amphetamines. It powered him through novels and stories at a rate that would give more elegant authors heart palpitations just to think about. This drug intake probably led to paranoid psychosis, which may have played a role in the 02-03-74 experiences. (Even if he had quit drugs a few years before and even tried to become a supporter of anti-drugs politicians.) It also affected his personal life. Phi saw himself as a “gentle saint-like sage” (Arnold, p. 62) but at times he could be controlling and violent, especially to the women in his life. At one point, he attempted to drive a car with a close female friend into oncoming traffic and he likely lied to medical authorities to have another wife sectioned. He hit wives several times. He also married younger wives. Nancy, the daughter of Maren Hackett, was 19 when they married. He was 38. After their divorce, he went on to marry another similarly aged woman. This side of his life I did not know until very recently as I began researching for this post. But it is clear the female characters in his books are not very positive. In _VALIS_ , the death of two women are seen as personal attacks on the Philip K Dick character: “Horselover Fat is dead. Dragged down into the grave by two malignant women”. *** Ursula Le Guin picked up on this aspect of Phil’s work. She wrote “The women were symbols – whether goddess, bitch, hag, witch”. Phil wrote _Timothy Archer_ , his final book published while alive, from the perspective of a female narrator, partly in response to this criticism. “This is the happiest moment of my life”, he later wrote to Le Guin, “to meet face-to-face this bright, scrappy, witty, educated, tender, woman […] and it had not been for your analysis of my writing I probably never would have discovered her” (Sutin, p. 277). *** Characters are not his strongest point, and female characters in particular are not fleshed out. But, Phil’s heroes are almost totally flat characters, to use E.M. Forster’s phrase, defined by single traits and not psychological depth. In other author’s work this would be a weakness, but in Phil it is a virtue allowing him to explore themes, sometimes of psychology, often to their absurd logical ends. There are four main female characters in _VALIS_ , three of whom were drawn from life. The ex-wife fighting for custody, Gloria who kills herself and Sherri Solvig who is dying from Cancer. The latter two deaths are treated as attacks on the Philip K Dick stand-in. * Ex-wife Beth was based on his fifth and final wife, Tessa. * Gloria was based on Maren Hackett, his ex-mother-in-law (fourth wife). * Sherri was based on Doris Sauter, a close friend and neighbour, who was very ill. (She lived for years, becoming a writer and lecturer.) Doris also inspired Sylvia Sardassa in _Radio Free Albemuth_. Like Sherri, Sylvia is dying from cancer and is a communicant of the (Episcoploan) Church. Unlike Sherri, she is a member of a secret, millennia old society directed by an ancient satellite. But she lacks some of Sherri’s bite. Certainly Sherri is two dimensional, but she is a strong character, perhaps the strongest character in the entire novel. When Sherri propositions her priest, Larry, he replies that he doesn’t like to mix business with pleasure. He later says that he has cried all the tears he has for Sherri. She spends her days reading about the Battle of the Kursk and volunteering at the church, where she separates the deserving and undeserving charity cases. Sherri represents a more normative Christianity. *** There is one other important female character in _VALIS_ : Sophia Lampton, the two year old daughter of the rock musicians Eric and Linda Lampton. She is the incarnation or avatar of divine wisdom, the force that broke through to Phil in 1974, and that was also experienced by his character. Her previous avatars are listed. Although female and non-binary messiahs have existed (or at least identified themselves as such) – Mother Ann Lee, Joanna Southcott, and Public Universal Friend – Sophia’s previous incarnations are all men. ‘I am the injured and the slain,’ Sophia tells the characters, “But I am not the slayer. I am the healer and the healed.’ This seems to directly recall the narrator of _Thunder, Perfect Mind_ , a text found at Nag Hammadi. The narrator may possibly be the Valentinian Sophia. She speaks in similar albeit**** more explicit terms: > **I am the whore and the holy one.**** > ****I am the wife and the**** > ****virgin. I am <the mother>**** > ****and the daughter. I am the members**** > ****of my mother. I am the barren one**** > ****and many are her sons. I**** > ****am she whose wedding is great, and**** > ****I have not taken a husband.** > > **MacRae Translation** This text also recalls the words of the goddess Isis. In _VALIS,_ Sophia very clearly identifies herself as divine wisdom. She tells the other characters: > **The day of Wisdom and the rule of Wisdom has come … Formerly you were alone within yourselves; formerly you were solitary. Now you have a companion who never sickens or fails or dies; you are bonded to the eternal and will shine like the healing sun itself.”** That is, she announces the coming kingdom. If madness is a diagnosis of being counter to society’s expectation, then the healing of madness is not necessarily the healing of the individual, but the healing of society. It is the revelation that the mad person is sane and society itself is mad. The personal is apocalyptic. *** This idea of female saviours is developed more fully in _The Divine Invasion_ , a novel which most fully maps Phil’s interest with different realities and the more occult discoveries of his later years. God has been driven out of the solar system, by a zone of evil. The novel’s plot is driven by his attempts to re-enter the system and defeat evil, through a plot heavily drawing on the gospels. Sci-Fi Opera Nativity. But this is a more gnostically informed religion. (It’s also a very good book.) _***_ There are different female characters who are twinned with the male characters, providing them transcendent knowledge and ultimately salvation. The novel ends with divine syzygy, the union of two cosmic powers, understood as male and female, although I think it is implied they transcend gender. This again in part of the Valentinian cosmology. (Also, Evil is represented on Earth by dangerously powerful police and immigration officials.) It is heady stuff, but Phil focuses on the domestic scale: Marital tensions, business opportunities and music. *** The singer Linda Fox is a massive star in one reality, but an up and coming singer in another. Phil spends a long period, focusing on both her ethereal voice and her physicality. “Linda wore an extremely low-cut gown and even from where he sat he could see the outline of her nipples”. It is clear that she is based on the popular singer Linda Ronstadt, even if an actual song by the real Linda Ronstadt is later described. “You’re no good”, one of the few pieces of authentic music mentioned in the novel alongside Mahler’s Second Symphony. All very meta. The Fox has her own insecurities and worries, but she is aware that there is another reality in which she is a big star. The novel ends with Linda Fox, understanding this other reality, and defeating a form of Belial, the personification of evil. G-d himself explains what she has done. “She has saved you. The poisonous snake is overcome … I told her that her music must exist for all eternity for all humans: that is part of it”. The serpent refers both to the subtil beast in the garden and to the final show-down with the dragon outlined in Revelation 12. As my more astute readers will remember, this final dragon was opposed by a woman with a child, an image that would have been familiar to followers of the goddess Isis, as well as the Virgin Mary. In _The Divine Invasion_ it is Herb Asher’s first wife, Rybys, who has given birth to a divine child, but he left her for the Fox. Indeed, it is Herb’s union with the Fox which brings to a close evil. *** It is hard to read these novels in the light of what we know about Phil’s relationships with the women in his life. They show an attempt to explain an experience clearly of some power and emotional truth in religious terms, but without the more normative concerns of sin. Throughout _VALIS_ , the line between truth or delusion, like the Morning Star, in the haze of LA, shimmers on the edge of sight and remains indistinct. In several of the later novels, Phil explores this theme by separating the Philip K Dick figure in the narrative from the more mad character. Perhaps this is a way to distance himself from a sense of culpability in evil. It’s also a neat way to articulate the psychological damage affecting humanity. If madness and insanity forms an important theme, then salvation and healing are the end goal of the character’s spiritual quests. It is not a new self, but the original self, the real self, cleansed of the obscurating matter of the world. > **‘Fat hoped that the Savior would heal what had become sick, restore what had been broken’** In this, it gets close to the promise of early Christianities. Cover photo: Philip K. Dick (c. 1953, age 24) (Public Domain via Wikimedia) ## Blade Runner 2049: a Coptologist’s appraisal A new visit to Blade Runner world. by Rhakotis Magazine October 28, 2017January 11, 2026 ## Apocryphal Gospels The new edition by Simon Gathercole reviewed. by Rhakotis Magazine December 7, 2021December 8, 2021 ### Share this: * Share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky * Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Like Loading... ### _Related_

## Charity At this time of year, it’s important to think about other people less fortunate. If you are able, please donate time, skills, old items or money to charity. If you know you will need to get rid of items (including kids toys), why not donate them before the holidays. I also encourage everyone to donate to charities like UNWRA, which are supporting Palestinian refugee families, ensuring that food is delivered and that children are cared for. ## Fashions **Keep the Royal Peculiars away.** Look tidy with this Hellebore sweater, decorated with an illustration by W Graham Robertson for _Wind in the Willows_ from 1908. Recently, a person was kicked out of Westminster Abbey for wearing this statement piece. Hellebore is a magazine specialising in folklore, folk horror and magic and would also be a good gift. **Justified, stylish** Prepare to meet the King of the Dead in style with this gorgeous t-shirt from the British Museum. **Stole from the Louvre** Wrap yourself in this stylish wool stole from the most luxurious museum gift shop in Paris and imagine you’re instantly a frazzled French woman (or man) who’s just discovered a ladder outside his museum… Also available in silk. **The still point of this moving world** Centre yourself in yoga practice with Im Pei Pyramid branded grey sweatshirt. **Thot accessories** You can make anything look good with the right accessories and this Thot badge from the V&A is just the ticket. ## _Objects for the home_ You can’t go wrong with Anubis. You can get a gorgeous gold Anubis figurine or a black plaster Anubis statuette from the British Museum. Timeless pieces. **Stoic chic** Dominate online meetings and events with a polychrome resin bust of Marcus Aurelius strategically placed behind you. Recalling ancient busts created from different marbles, this object evokes that perfect balance of philosophic calm and absolute power. Wipe dry your pots and save them from the ravages of time, with a tea towel from the Sir Josh Soane museum decorated with the accumulated treasure of the ages. **The original Christmas Tree?** A splendid wall ornament decorated with the Cerne Abbas Giant, created by Dr Aisling Tierney (lecturer at Bristol University). Would look gorgeous during the festive period and throughout the year. **Release the goddess within** A mirror decorated with the Willendorf Venus, created by Dr Aisling Tierney. ## _Stonehenge Range_ **Stonehenge candle** Light this candle, relax and ponder history with this Stonehenge candle. JD & Kate Industries specialise in historical themed candles. They claim it will help solve longstanding archaeological questions. **Historically accurate model of Stonehenge** Aliens beamed down from the mothership, building the mighty stone circle, an image etched on our collective memories. A fun piece. This fancy light will help you relax and is a real statement piece. A great gift for the business executive in your life. ## Kids corner The pyramid awaits with this fun educational toy from Playmobil, with secret chambers and more. **Riddle me this** Escape the far-famed-fearsome labyrinth, with this wooden game. **Join the gang** The chic present for cool kids of all ages, an enamel pin badge of the Egyptian gods from the British Museum. **Be the dread messenger between the powers above and the powers beneath the earth** Create your own Egyptian God Mask: Relive your favourite scene from __Apuleius’ _Golden Ass_, with this fantastic gift. Strategize the return of disputed objects, with this cute mini museum playset from the Ashmolean. You’ve got a lovely present for the Asterix fan in your life with this plush wild boar. Teach kids that it’s all been downhill since our ancestors crawled out the seas (or least left the caves) with this boardgame from always popular Horrible Histories series. ## Books * _All Roads Lead To Rome_ by Rhiannon Garth Jones focusing on the long influence of ancient Rome and what it says about us. * _Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire_ by Sarah Bond an eye opening study of organised labour in the ancient world. * _The Far Edges of the Known World_ by Owen Rees a tour of the lesser known areas and stories from ancient history * _The Cleopatras_ by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones gossipy, but academically rigorous history of the Ptolemaic queens. * _The Fall of Egypt and the Ride of Rome_ by Guy de la Bedoyere Egypt and Rome, the star-crossed lovers of antiquity. A great introduction to the topic. * _The Last Dynasty: Ancient Egypt from Alexander the Great to Cleopatra_ by Toby Wilkinson The Ptolemaic period of Egyptian history, told for a general readership, largely from the perspective of Egyptian sources. * _What to Expect When You’re Dead: An Ancient Tour of Death and the Afterlife_ by Robert Garland A fun, short, learned history of ancient history. The perfect stocking filler. * _Medea_ by Eilish Quin novelisation of the much maligned, reviled and written about figure of myth. * _No Friend to This House_ by Natalie Haynes, Medea as you’ve never seen here. * _Fulvia: The Woman Who Broke All the Rules in Ancient Rome_ by Jane Draycott a fascinating study of the important political figure in late Republic Rome. * And if you enjoyed that, you might live _Fulvia_ , a novel, by Kaarina Parker. * _Augustine the African_ by Catherine Conybeare an important new study on the celebrated late antique bishop. * _The African Emperor: A Life of Septimus Severus_ by Simon Elliott one of the seminal emperors of the later Roman period gets his moment. ### Share this: * Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky * Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Like Loading... ### _Related_

Most great civilisations are measured by the fruits of their highest achievements, the size of their ruins, the subtlety of their fine arts, the many piled splendours of their tombs. Egypt alone, perhaps, is measured by another thing: the treatment of its workers. The biblical narrative of servitude in Egypt, has informed a reading of the Nilotic civilisation that persists to this day. Gorgeous, golden pharaohs overseeing enslaved populations dragging massive blocks of stone to build their pyramids and temples is an image etched on our collective imagination. Bronze and silver statue of Khonsuirdis, 664 – 525 BCE. British Museum. Without dismissing the horrors of slavery, which were certainly true, modern research has revealed another side of ancient labour. Egypt was full of skilled workers (hemut), practising a range of crafts including sculpture, goldsmithing and glass. A new exhibition, currently on at the Fitzwilliam Museum until 12 April, aims to shed light on this less well known aspect of ancient history. Burnished black-topped red ware jar, 4,500 – 4,000 BCE, Fitzwilliam The exhibition is organised by the craft, using the Fitzwilliam’s own collection and loans from other museums. It explores workers in stone, potters, makers of faience and glass, metal workers, jewellers, makers of linen and baskets, wood workers, makers of papyrus and coffin makers. The exhibition also used large copies of Egyptian art (painted by Nina M Davies, in the 20s) to show how the objects on display were made. In a few cases, these were animated by Tomfoolery Ltd. There are also interactive activities, like a bow drill and a basket weaving station. These make the exhibition more accessible to young visitors, but they also highlight the hard work and physical skill of the workers. But ultimately the show was really about the artefacts themselves. The pieces selected were high energy, virtuoso, exquisite objects: gold, precious stones, figurines, ceramics, paintings. Image from book of the dead, painted 1290-1278 BCE, Fitzwilliam A highlight for me were the works in progress, the makers’ models, the objects that reveal something of their creation and duplication. An ostracon (piece of stone), with grid lines and the shapes of a cat, lion and antelope show a young artist how to depict animals in an Egyptian style. A cuboid sphinx emerging from limestone, the face half formed but the body is still held in potential in a superellipsoid, almost like a hatchling cracking the shell with its beak and emerging from the egg. This is not an unfinished work, but a sculptor’s model perhaps used as a teaching tool. This mandrake fruit vessel has long been a personal favourite in the Fitzwilliam’s Egypt galleries. I had not realised it was found in a tomb with other ceramics linked to childbirth and may have been chosen because the mandrake resembles a human breast (an important symbol in ancient Egyptian art). CT scanning has shown that the potter used a combination of molded and hand made parts and then burnished and decorated it before firing. In this way, the curators focus on the creative powers and imagination of the workers. The exhibition highlighted the work of skilled artistic labourers and given the remit of an art gallery, this is fair, but I would have liked a little bit more on other forms of labour, including unskilled and semi-skilled, that underpinned the ancient ‘economy’. The miners digging for stone, the agricultural workers growing the linen, the sailors responsible for bringing raw materials to Egypt. But it is a small exhibition space and I think the curators have struck the right balance on what to display. Visitors will be beguiled and inspired to find out more. Basket with lid, 1976-1648 BCE, Fitzwilliam ### Share this: * Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky * Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Like Loading... ### _Related_

7 September 1875, New York, after an invigorating lecture to a bespoke, almost chic, crowd on the occult secrets of the Great Pyramids of Giza, a member of the audience, a bearded Civil War veteran, arose and proposed creating a society ‘for this kind of study’. Colonel Henry Steel Olcott had had an abiding interest in spiritualism, but in recent years, this was galvanised into something more active when he met a charismatic Russian woman. The audience agreed and together they helped form a nucleus of the Theosophical Society, an influential group with lasting social and cultural impact. To tell the story of what happened in the fall of 1875, we have to go back multiple centuries to Roman Egypt. Here, texts were written which combined Greek philosophy and Egyptian religion mixed with a healthy dose of mysticism. They were said to be ancient, dating back to the earliest days of civilisation and representing an original, uncorrupted truth. Their proposed author was Thoth, identified with the Greek god Hermes, and so they were called Hermetica. These texts formed the basis of an important stream of occult thought, which surfaced and flourished at points throughout the centuries. For them was Bruno burnt, Kircher led astray. They lent to Egypt a mysterious allure it never lost, even as the texts were scientifically dated and shown to be Roman period creations. Blavatsky and Olcott in 1888 (Public Domain via Wikimedia) We skip forward a millennia and a half to Dnipro, now in the middle of Ukraine, then part of the Russian Tsarist Empire. A young woman of minor aristocratic background became immersed in the occult through her great-grandfather’s library. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky believed she had great powers and went in search of herself to develop them. After a short marriage to a Russian Vice-Governor in Armenia, she travelled widely in the 1850s and 1860s. The details are murky, but there is corroborating evidence that she was in Egypt, she almost certainly went around the Caucasus, Southern and Eastern Europe, and central Asia. She was in Britain in 1851. She told a later follower that she received a mystical visitation at the Great Exhibition in London. (In another version it was Ramsgate.) There she met a man of great spiritual power and insight, who she believed was a ‘master’. Some say the person she met was Edward Bulwer-Lytton, the author of __The Last Days of Pompeii__. She clearly had a wanderlust, even if the journeys are represented as a search for knowledge. Although she claimed it, we can never know if she really made it to Tibet to learn Buddhism first hand from the lamas. The country was then closed off to Russian and British travellers. It is possible, if unlikely. Her biographer Gary Lachman thinks she had her first direct contact with Buddhism in Astrakhan. But at this period of her life, Egypt was the abiding interest. *** On her first trip to Cairo in 1851 she made friends with Paulos Metamon, a Coptic magician who possessed a large library. An American she met on the trip later wrote that she tried to set up an occult research group but was told to delay this by Metamon. She next returned to Cairo in 1871, possibly after surviving a shipwreck. Settling in a luxury hotel, she tried to set up an occult study group, associated with a mysterious group called the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor. It claimed an ancient lineage but was likely set up in the 1860s. Blavatsky believed in ‘masters’, spiritually enlightened beings who guide humanity and could speak to individually gifted humans. One of them, she called Serapis Bey, the name combining the tutelary god of ancient Alexandria and an official of the Ottoman Empire. Serapis, in a letter to Olcott, described himself ‘not a disembodied spirit, [but] a living man’. (Goodwin, 291) *** By the mid-1870s, Blavatsky was in New York. There were many people, in the city, interested in the occult. America had experienced a vogue for spiritualism, partly inspired by the famous Fox sisters who claimed they could channel the spirits of dead people. One of these was Olcott, who met Blavatsky, while investigating spiritualism for a newspaper. They became very close during this time and Olcott eventually left his family to follow Blavatsky. Another was George Felt, also a civil war veteran and inventor of telegraph devices and rockets. Felt’s other major interest was the ‘Egyptian proportion’ of the pyramids and its links to the Kabbalah and a wish to introduce Egyptian initiations into freemasonry. It was Felt who gave the fateful lecture on the Great Pyramids in 1875 at which Olcott stood up and suggested the creation of a new society. A vote was taken and passed by the 16 or 17 people present (including Blavatsky). After a short discussion about a suitable name, someone took down a dictionary and found ‘Theosophy’ by chance. It was an old term, referring to those who believed they could attain a direct knowledge of god, often through mystical experiences. Blavatsky later said the name came from Alexandrian Philosophers, Philaletheians (Greek for Lovers of Truth). It was the perfect name, with enough antique credence in the general but agonistic to particularities. The new society was made official in November. *** Olcott and Blavatsky moved in together in the ‘Lamasery’, a smoked-filled apartment in Hell’s Kitchen hung with taxidermized animals and various bric-a-brac. This period of her life culminated in her first major work, _Isis Unveiled_ , published in 1877. Blavatsky never liked the book’s title. It was going to be called _The Veil of Isis_ until she was told another book with that title was about to be published. It comes from an epigraph on a statue of the goddess in Sais, recalled by Plutarch, “I am all that has been, all that is, all that shall ever be, and no mortal has lifted my veil’. Plutarch had a very philosophical reading of the Isis myth and so we should take passages like this carefully as historical facts of ancient beliefs. Nevertheless, it had become an important image of Egypt in the public imagination. Blavatsky worked on the book with Olcott, recalling passages from other texts in her memory. It is a complex and large book and likely rewards close reading. Gary Lachman notes her ‘hectoring, blustery style … didn’t want to convince the reader so much as to bowl him over’. It contains a mass of allusions and references, but the central thesis is that all religions spring from the same original source, an ancient religion which is Hermetica. It was also a massive success. *** Following publication, Blavatsky and Olcott travelled to India in 1879. Here they mostly avoided the British military leaders who occupied the country and engaged directly with Indian religious leaders. They both converted to Buddhism, taking the Five Vows. Blavatsky later claimed she had always been a Buddhist. Olcott became more and more involved with Buddhism, becoming an important figure in India. Their trip is seen as a critical moment when the focus of Western esotericism moved from Egypt to the subcontinent. Blavatsky’s second major work, _The Secret Doctrine_ , published in 1888, popularised ideas of reincarnation and karma, a direct reversal of what she had written in _Isis Unveiled_. In this new guise, the society helped open up roots for later popular trends like yoga and meditation. A lot more could be said about the later history of the movement and its leaders, not all of which is exemplary, but that is another story. Blavatsky standing behind Olcott in Bombay, 1881 (Public Domain via Wikimedia) In her colourful life, Blavatsky revolutionised occultism, merging different traditions into a persuasively uniform and expansive system. Together with figures like Olcott, she popularised Indian religious traditions, offering new ways for people in the west to engage with spiritualism. Even if you don’t subscribe to the tenets of Theosophy, this topic rewards study and reveals important lessons about Nineteenth century thought and the legacy of ancient Egypt. This post borrows heavily on _Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spiritualism_ by Gary Lachman and _The Theosophical Enlightenment_ by Josceylyn Godwin. Feature image: Madame Blavatsky (Public Domain via Wikimedia). ### Share this: * Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky * Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Like Loading... ### _Related_

After 8 years and a major refurb, the Jewry Wall and Roman Bath House has reopened. It is a triumph of museum design. The meeting point of two major roads of Roman Britain, Leicester (Ratae Corieltauvorum) was an important city with a forum, market, bathhouse and rich townhouses. It predates the Roman conquest. Archaeologists have established that the site was first settled in the first century BCE, although Geoffrey of Monmouth attributed the foundation of _Kaerleir_ even earlier __ to the mythic King Lear. The Latin name _Ratae_ may derive from the local word for ‘ramparts’, suggesting it was a military camp or fortified. But it was also an important civilian settlement. By the second century CE, its market sold a range of fresh goods produced locally and others from further afield like opium poppy to season dishes. Oyster shells have been found at the site, possibly from Essex (120 miles away). Archaeologists have also identified a Roman ‘delicatessen’ selling imports from the Mediterranean like figs, grapes and olives. On arrival, visitors are ushered into an immersive light show video in a large room. The young Marcus walks around Leicester looking for his dad and bumps into various characters at important sites. Including Lochita, a woman from Greece who owns a market stall, obviously based on the ‘delicatessen’. In general immersive lightshows can be a bit hit and miss, but Leicester’s was genuinely one of the best I’ve seen, with a strong story and impressive visuals. Roles were played by human actors which made the characters memorable and recognisable, but the artists sketched over them to emphasise the ‘reconstructive’ element of the display. The detail was immaculate, with close attention to hairstyle and clothes. The dog Ferox, an Anubis style breed, was based on mosaics found in Pompeii and on remains found in Britain. In such ways the video breathes life into archaeology. The video was not the only thing to impress. The architectural refurb has sensitively brought the 70s stylings back to life, adding much needed light and improving access. Previously the museum was in the basement of Vaughan College with visitors having to climb down an external staircase. It is now fully accessible. The new gift shop has settled in the old college library, much like an early medieval cottage built in the recesses of a ruined Roman villa. The original shelves are still in place across two storeys, leading the eyes up to a skylight. The basement’s vaulted concrete ceiling – now accentuated with white washed walls – recalls the arches of Roman architecture, but is a gorgeous bit of work in its own right. Although on a much smaller scale, I would place it in the same rank as London’s Southbank Centre or Barbican. The large plate glass windows on both floors make the most of the archaeological site, leading up to the impressive ‘Jewry Wall’. At 75 ft (23 m) long, 26 ft (8 m) high and 8.2 ft (2.5 m) thick, it is one of the largest surviving-above-ground Roman buildings in Britain, probably because it was used as part of later building. (A note on the name. It is not believed to come from Leicester’s medieval Jewish community who were violently expelled by the local warlord Simon de Montford in 1231, but may reflect folk beliefs about Jewish people in the later medieval and early modern period when the name was first recorded.) Dame Kathlen Kenyon excavated the site in the 1930s. There had been speculation on what might be found. Locals said it was a temple to Janus. Kenyon established that the site was a bath house (ironically the plan was to turn the site into a swimming pool). The Roman bath house was built in the second century CE and likely remained in use until the fourth century. The arches in the Jewry Wall were the old entry way into the baths proper, from a large basilica (today roughly the site of the church of St Nicholas). Not only was this an impressive building, it was highly resource intensive. Archaeologists estimate that 3,750 buckets of water and over 200 cartloads of wood to heat the pools, with 25-75 soccer pitches of woodland needed a year. Revd. Professor Martin Henig, the Vice President spoke of his memory of visiting as a child and his hope that the new museum would inspire future ancient historians and archaeologists. “Amongst other things”, he recalled, “we were taken to a draper’s shop – and making sure no one was changing – we were taken down to the basement to see the peacock pavement which was still _in situ_.” The mosaic is now proudly displayed in the museum in a new mounting, addressing long standing concerns about it in the old museum. It was made in the same mosaic workshop as the Blackfriars mosaic. When I visited an archaeologist on seeing the mosaic for the first time in ages said “It scrubs up a treat!” And she was right. They are both impressive works contrasting with other Romano-British examples, like those found in Cirencester _._ But Henig is more emphatic. These items are of international importance. Leicester’s collection contains archaeology that is either the best example of its kind or is unique. If I had to choose one or two objects, I would select those related to religion. Two curse tablets written on lead sheets were found in Vine St. On his tablet, Servandus listed 19 individuals from the quarters of enslaved people of a large house who he believed had stolen his cloak. One of the names is crossed out. Maybe Servandus went round asking everyone and he thought Senicianus had a credible alibi. Either way, we do not know how the local god Maglus dealt with the remaining 18 people. But it provides a fleeting insight into the lives of people in the Roman town. Another item is a small ivory fragment from a box made in Egypt. It depicts the god Anubis holding a lance amidst lotus flowers. Small bronze or terracotta figurines of Egyptian gods in armour have been found both in Egypt and across the Roman world. Although we have other items depicting the Egyptian gods from Roman Britain, this item would have been particularly expensive and may have been owned by a senior army officer who served in Egypt. A lead seal belonging to a legion that had served there was also found in Leicester. A powerful reminder of the long distance connections of the empire. The museum is certainly well placed to inspire people to learn more about the Romans. For me, the power of any museum display comes down to how much the objects tell their story and ask questions of visitors. When designing interpretations and interactive elements, there is a fine balance between the amount of information you should provide: too little and people leave without understanding important nuances or the hidden implications of objects, and too much and you overwhelm visitors. I would say the Jewry Wall Museum largely got this right. With this in mind, I thought the focus in the videos on the workers and producers of the Roman town was correct, but not enough was said about the coercive nature of Roman society and enslaved people were noticeable by their absence. But with that caveat, the museum provides a sensitive and engaging exploration of what it was like to live in Roman Leicester and is a triumph of museum design. I recommend a visit. Museum webpage ### Share this: * Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky * Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Like Loading... ### _Related_

A thing I will never understand, when people talk about forever homes. As if anything lasts forever, let alone a home. No, we are all part of a slow, imperceptible, but continuous decline. The word forever home, makes me think of the grave. That’s the place, we’ll stay longest and even that is not forever. Diodorus Siculus recognised something of this in the Egyptians of his day. They called their homes lodgings and their tombs, their forever homes. It was part of a worldview, he wrote, that held earthly lives of no account, but put the greatest value on life after death. We might think we recognise in this short summary something revealing about Ancient Egyptian culture. But this, according to Rune Nyord of Christ’s Egyptology, is because classical authors like Diodorus, informed scholarly readings of ancient Egyptian for centuries. In an important new study, he argues that a history of Egyptian beliefs in the afterlife, reveals more about the scholars and their historical contexts, than ancient Egyptians and their beliefs. He calls for a drastic recalibration in how we approach this topic. Make no mistake, this is a scholarly book, but it is written in a more accessible language than most. This makes it easy for a general audience to comprehend a challenging argument that could be a paradigm shift akin to Egyptology’s ‘Feathered Dinosaur’ moment. Turning first to the history of the history (the historiography) of ancient Egypt, Nyord argues that a major change happened during the Renaissance, when Greek texts were more easily accessible to Western scholars. This included works by Diodorus and Herodotus, but also the _Hermetic_ a and Horapollo’s small book on hieroglyphs. Before this, scholars relied on biblical passages and slight references in Latin authors, and Egyptian objects in cities like Rome. After this, scholars felt they had a direct insight into Egyptian beliefs. A close reading of these texts, highlighted two beliefs, one in metempsychosis, the transfer of the human soul to a new body after death, and one about immortality. Writers sought to combine these theories together in ways that reflected their own Christian beliefs and contemporary religious debates. Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680), for example, thought metempsychosis spread from Egypt. He called it the “stupid dogma” and asked “Why the Egyptians strove so much for incorruption?” But for him, it reflected the universalism of belief in immortality, even if corrupted. Nyord argues that as Egyptology became ‘scientific’ in the late 19th century, it reflected contemporary beliefs in the afterlife. The Prussian Scholar Karl Richard Lepius (1810 – 1884) invented the term ‘Book of the Dead’ for texts called in Egyptian ‘Coming out by Day’. He claimed he could draw a map of the underworld based on his reading. But he understood Egyptian religion in implicitly Christian terms, arguing the word ‘day’ in the Egyptian name, meant the final “Day of Resurrection, of Judgement, of Justification”. A slightly later scholar, E.A. Wallis Budge (1857 – 1934), was even more explicit. In a popular textbook on Ancient Egypt, published in 1899, he wrote: > **“The Egyptians of every period in which they are known to us believed that Osiris was of divine origin, that he suffered death and mutilation at the hands of the powers of evil, that after a great struggle with these powers he rose again, that he became henceforth the king of the underworld and judge of the dead, and that because he had conquered death the righteous also might conquer death.”** Nyord notes the similarity to the Apostles Creed. The historiography study ends with this ambiguous passage. ## The Enduring Legacy of Ancient Egypt In his summary, Nyord highlights the importance of history as a way of understanding or thinking through contemporary concerns. For ancient Egypt, this was often of a religious nature. He argues that relatively little changed, even given the massive difference in access to original _Egyptian_ sources between the Renaissance and today. Reflecting on the historiography of Egypt will lead to questions about whether we can accept specific theories or not: > **“Can we continue to speak confidently of the ancient Egyptian “afterlife beliefs” and “quest for immortality” knowing that these ideas can be traced back to the Renaissance, where they were constructed intuitively drawing on Christian concepts and a few passages from classical authors no longer regarded as authoritative in order speculatively to explain practices of burial and mummification that were known in very little detail?”** Given the focus of this book, little space is given to exploring alternative approaches. Nyord argues that the mummification of the dead could be as much part of ancestor worship. This argument, quickly sketched at the book’s closure, is persuasive if not interrogated in any depth. It raises important questions about the assumptions on belief and ritual that impact us all. And it makes a fascinating and insightful conclusion that demands further study and reflection from the reader. So should we see tombs, not as forever houses, but as spaces where time meets, the living and the dead, the present and the past? Perhaps. But, the extent to which this argument reflects contemporary concerns, only the future can judge. Feature image from the Tutankhamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh exhibition at the Saatchi in 2019. ### Share this: * Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky * Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Like Loading... ### _Related_

St Paul got into a few sticky situations during his travels, but none was more hairy than Ephesus. He was so successful in preaching his message of a reformed monotheism, people began turning away from the local goddess and stopped patronising the city’s great temple. This affected the bottom line of the city’s silversmiths and craftspeople. Stirred up by Demetrius, who convinced them “our craft is in danger to be set at nought”, a riot broke out that engulfed the whole city. An assembly collected in the theatre. They quickly proceeded to make collective demands “in one voice”. Paul went into hiding. The situation was eventually calmed by a town clerk telling them they should seek legal redress from the courts or face the full power of the law themselves. *** In her important new study, Sarah E. Bond (the Erling B. “Jack” Holtsmark Associate Professor in the Classics at the University of Iowa), analyses historical narratives like this within the context of ancient labor organisations and unions. Were the silversmiths an organised association in the same vein as the AFL-CIO, Workers United, the Teamsters or even further afield Britain’s mighty UCU union? There were obviously clear differences and Bond never makes this claim, but she is able to draw out details of ancient sources and highlight similarities, not least the power of work stoppage and collective bargaining. I am drawn again and again to this passage, because it reveals the interconnections between different forms of power in an ancient city: religious, economic, political, legal and military (threatened). The passage has an overt polemical purpose and has to be read carefully as a historical source, but it is evident that groups of craftspeople, like the silversmiths, could act collectively at points. Bond writes that the period when Paul preached (c. 40s – 64/65 CE) and the narrative above was recorded in Acts (c. 80 – 120 CE), was a “golden age of association formation”. *** These groups often centred around divinites. Sometimes, we can link the god to a particular craft or locality. Other times the link is more obscure. The Isis associations in Delos and other parts of the Roman Empire, may have initially been linked to Egypt, but soon became broader in their scope, suggesting a ‘religious’ group (as we would understand it today). Formerly enslaved people could join, as could women. Associations ensured funeral rites and sponsored group celebrations. More importantly to this study, workers organised themselves into groups, which may have made collective agreements. For example, the Aurelian Walls (between 271 – 275 CE) around Roman were most likely constructed by a building association the _fabrii tignuarii_ who had about 1,300 members during the reign of Hadrian. Alongside other associations connected to construction. These were clearly important groups, not just in terms of their numbers but also the political and strategic importance of the work they did. *** Bond persuasively presents the groups as labor organisations, arguing essentially that they could be seen as forms of alternative power. The Romans lacked a sense of ‘Civil Society’, groupings of people independent to government control and which may be centres of alternative power. Or maybe it is fairer to say they lacked a sense of why civil society was positive. The Roman state had a record of opposing religious groups that it saw as dangerous. Followers of Bacchus, Isis, Jews, Christians and Manicheans were all attacked by the state in various ways. But more broadly the Romans squashed any association which might gain great power. Bond highlights the anti-association actions that Emperors took over centuries, which shows a consistent concern against these groups. The power of collective action was most visible in the response against it. *** Religion was not just the background, but a source of inspiration. The leader of the first Roman Sicilian Revolution (First Servile War 135–132 BCE), Eunus claimed divine inspiration and may have been inspired by messianic myths. While the leader of the second Roman Sicilian Revolution (Second Servile War, 104-100 BCE) drew on the imagery and language of Eunus. For Bond, the religious aspects of Eunus leadership are part of the character assassination by Roman authors, but I think this misses something important. Religion does not just create new links and connections between formerly disparate people (“There is neither Jew nor Greek…”), it can potentially create new hierarchies and powers separate to worldly powers. What greater authority is there than a god? For me, the apocalyptic strain of radical politics needs pulling out. The coming world, the prelapsarian idyll, the turning over of the old. These are all ideas which grew within a religious context, often of a prophetic if not downright messianic nature. They run as a golden thread across the centuries. *** Even without these transcendent themes, ancient groups had radical aims. They would have had day-to-day demands for food, shelter and livelihoods, but dignity and self fulfillment were important. This is where they seem most similar to organised labor. In a world in which slavery was openly a part of the economy and social organisation, associations were an important counterweight. As Bond writes in conclusion: > “Roman history can also confer the less visible persons of the past with a degree of agency by exploring their participation, membership, and status within larger collectives. Rather than viewing these individuals as “primitive” workers only interested in social clubs for feasting, or poor laborers who needed collectives only to help to bury their loved ones, we can instead begin to acknowledge that many associations were vibrant and complex entities whose capabilities and impact still need further study.” > > (Page 188) _Strike_ is a vital book to help us understand ancient society and more broadly, given the use of ancient history in contemporary discourse, it can help us challenge reactionary politics today and the rise of fascist leaders. Strike: Labor, Unions, and Resistance in the Roman Empire by Sarah E. Bond. Published by Yale University Press (9780300281255) ### Share this: * Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky * Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Like Loading... ### _Related_

## **Rivers ancient as the world** TW: Please note this article references racial violence. It also uses old fashioned language when quoting contemporary works by black writers. **This article covers:** * Harlem * W.E.B. Du Bois and _the Crisis_ magazine * Laura Wheeler Waring * Alain Locke * Aaron Douglas * Langston Hughes * Wallace Thurman and _Fire!!_ * Richard Bruce Nugent * Ronald Moody ## **Harlem** In his introduction to _The New Negro_ anthology, published in 1925, its editor Alain Locke wrote: > **“In the last decade something beyond the watch and guard of statistics has happened in the life of the American Negro.”** > > Page 3 The 1920s saw the re-birth of a confident new spirit with the emergence of a Black Middle class, important national leaders such as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois and a wider popularity of African American art, especially music in the form of ragtime and jazz. The First World War, which led to the emigration of many recent European immigrants and an increased demand for war work, encouraged many black people to move from the rural south to cities in the north such as New York and Chicago. This was the start of the Great Migration, which saw around six million black people move internally within the USA between 1910 and 1970. The communities benefited from better pay and opportunities, and new urban identities and a refined sense of modernity. While several urban centers of black cultural life grew, the most important in this period was Harlem. Harlem, 20 blocks in upper Manhattan, bordered by 155th street, 5th and 8th avenues and Central Park. Here, Locke wrote: “The pulse of the Negro world has begun to beat.” While James Weldon Johnson called it the black metropolis, “The greatest Negro city in the world”. It was home to important writers, artists and musicians. Alongside Locke and Johnson, you might see W.E.B Du Bois and Marcus Garvey, two important community leaders and political thinkers, who if they did not always agree, lent the area a level of national importance akin to Washington. As well as the sculptor Richmond Barthé and the anthropologist and writer Zora Neale Hurston to name just a few. It is hard to think of a higher concentration of creative energy in a smaller and more condensed space, than at any other time in human history. This in short was the Harlem Renaissance, which is today judged by the artistic and creative outputs of its leading names. ## **W.E.B. Du Bois and _the Crisis_ magazine ** Ancient Egypt was an important reference to many of the thinkers and artists, who made up the ‘Harlem Renaissance’. It was not, of course, the only influence, but this is a blog examining the influence of ancient art, so I will focus on it here. The discovery of the Tutankhamun tomb and the publication of the Nefertiti bust after the war had popularized an important stream of contemporary art and design, sometimes called Art Deco. The engagement with Egyptian motifs, by black artists, was not superficial. Publications like _The New Negro_ played an important role in the spread of ideas and art forms beyond Harlem, but it was far from the first publication. From 1910, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) published _the Crisis_ edited by W.E.B. Du Bois. This remained an important magazine. Du Bois, in his own contribution to _The New Negro_ , discusses the important work of the NAACP to raise awareness of white terrorism and the extra-judicial murder of black people (lynching): “it looks as though the record of of 1924 was going to not more than one Negro lynched each month”. In fact 16 people were murdered this way. It is important to remember that the 20s were also a period of the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan and a series of brutal white-led progroms, such as the Tulsa race massacre of 1921, an attack that ‘was so systematic and coordinated that it transcended mere mob violence’. The 1917 Silent Parade in New York, protesting the East St. Louis riots. Organized by Du Bois. ## **Egypt in _the Crisis_ and Laura Wheeler Waring** As well as becoming an important voice for challenging the situation in America,_the Crisis_ engaged with the political situation in Egypt (as well as other African countries). The magazine’s Man of the Month in June 1921 was Saad Zaghul the Egyptian revolutionary who led a civil disobedience campaign against British imperial control and played an important role in the 1919 Egyptian Revolution. The journal also popularized new artists, some of whom were inspired by Egyptian art. The cover of the April 1923 issue depicts an African woman playing an Egyptian style harp, while the September 1924 cover depicts an Egyptian queen walking a lion, with a man fanning her. Both are illustrated with an almost Aubrey Beardsley-esque lightness by Laura Wheeler Waring. Wheeler Waring had traveled to Paris before the war, and she was soon to return between 1924 and 1925. Here she sketched in the Louvre and studied first-hand impressionist paintings. Her style is taut, economical and precise with detail, the energy coming from the layout and the contrast between tension and relaxation in her figures. The Crisis cover designed by Laura Wheeler Waring (From the New York Public Library Digital Collections) ## **Alain Locke** Egypt was understood not just as a source for new motifs, but as an important form of African culture. Alain Locke, who edited _the New Negro_ , was part of this intellectual circle. But in comparison to Du Bois he was more interested in art and culture. He visited Egypt in 1924, hoping to witness the excavation of Tutankhamun. This wasn’t possible due to long running disputes between the Egyptian authorities and Howard Carter. But during his time in Egypt, he was able to visit several important archaeological sites and museums. He was particularly drawn to the Coptic Museum in Cairo and to its charismatic founder, Marcos Simaika Pasha who introduced him to Belata Heroui, the Abyssinian (broadly modern day Ethiopia) envoy. This gave him a sense of a long history of connection and cultural transmission. In his essay, _Impressions of Luxor_ , he argued: > **“It was Egypt very probably that gave to culture the conception of immortality, there seems to be peculiar poetic justice in the fact of her having immortalized herself as no other early civilization. The cult of the dead, her most dominant and persistent concern, made the tomb the depositing center of her civilization, and except for this fact probably nothing would have remained to solve in any concrete way the historical problem of Egyptian life and culture.”** > > The works of Alain Locke, edited with an introduction by Charles Molesworth. Page 175 Locke understood Egypt as an African culture. He refuted arguments that Egypt was essentially and originally a Near Eastern (or ‘semitic’ as it was then called) culture, a claim popularised by the eugenicist Flinders Petrie, essentially for racist reasons. Locke was strongly aware that for African Americans, unlike other communities in America, there was a brutal break with older cultural traditions. He further argued that the North African cultures of Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia were part of a pan-African American heritage. This was part of a broader promotion of African art. Alongside, celebrating Egyptian art, magazines like _the Crisis_ and _the New Negr_ o published photos of African art (including in the latter, a photo of the Benin Bronze from the Berlin Ethnological Museum). Locke, plugged into contemporary art, was aware of the profound interest in ‘primitive art’ both in Europe and America. This was the period when artists like Pablo Picasso and the Surrealists were inspired by the African art they saw in European museums, often collected through colonial officials and imperial armies. African art revolutionised the art of what we would today call the Global North. Locke argued that a “more stylized art does not exist than the African’ (_The works of Alain Locke_ , p. 189) But he encouraged artists to seek new forms of expression. He understood the importance of talented minorities to lift the community and also the importance of the community to support artists. He believed that the recognition of African American art and culture, would lead eventually to full emancipation: > **“Negro things may reasonly be a fad for others; for us this must be a religion. Beauty, however, is its best priest and psalms will be more effective than sermons”.** > > The works of Alain Locke, P. 220 “Egypt was attractive”, says Jeffrey C. Stewart, Locke’s biographer reflecting on his interest in the Tutankhamun tomb items, “because Egyptian high aestheticism pioneered the use of art to revitalise an Empire”. It was against this backdrop that many artists of the Harlem Renaissance drew on Egyptian motifs. Alain Locke, c. 1907, (Public Domain) ## **Aaron Douglas** Two creative geniuses in particular were drawn to the theme of antiquity: Aaron Douglas and Langton Hughes. They had similar backgrounds and were both drawn to Harlem in the 20s. Aaron Douglas grew up in Topeka, Kansas which allowed him to access educational opportunities not available in other parts of the United States to African Americans. He was the first black student enrolled at the School of Fine Arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He received a formal art education taught through the study of old masters. Throughout his life, he retained a belief in education and a love of serious literature. He arrived in Harlem in 1925 en route to Paris and decided to stay. He was plugged into the important discussions of Harlem. He joined the Communist Party and supported the Scottsboro Boys, who were wrongly accused in the 1930s. Douglas was a successful commercial artist, illustrating for _Vanity Fair_ , _Opportunity_ and _Theatre Arts Magazine_ alongside other publications. He is most famous today for his work in black magazines and for murals. His art cannot be reduced to a simplistic list of influences; however, for the purposes of this article, we can argue ancient Egypt was an important inspiration. We see Egyptian elements throughout his paintings and design work. Book cover by Aaron Douglas. (Fair Use) His book cover for Wallace Thurman’s _The Black the Berry_ depicts the silhouette of a woman with a note of Egyptian and possibly Greek art: the nemes wig and kilt. It is similar to his cover of the September 1927 issue of _the Crisis_ which depicts a woman holding a globe, with ease above a smoky cityscape. The ancient and the modern coalesce. _The Crisis_ September 1927, Used under Fair Use. Image from Black Graphic Design History: Influence and Impact (Arobe Express) While in _Building More Stately Mansions, _African-American workmen build the new city, but the skyscrapers are dominated by ancient architecture, a Roman arch, two columns remaining of a Greek temple, a pagoda, an immense pyramid and above them all an Egyptian sphinx. Like Locke, Aaron saw Egypt as an African culture. The faces of his people and sphinges often have slit eyes resembling West African masks. Huggins argues that Douglas got two things from his deep engagement with African art: First, the belief that “art should be more than subject” and second a sense of Africa’s spiritual and cultural importance (_Harlem Renaissance_ by Nathan Irvin Huggins, page 169). Douglas’ art has an energy and a power, yet are also strangely soothing with their intentionally toned palette. To call them ‘timeless’ does disservice to their disruptive energy and yet they are strangely out of time. Susan Earle argued: > **The struggle for Douglas and others was to claim modernity in a way that was specific enough to speak to the very different history of African Americans while it also participated in the Utopian premise of modernism’s universality.** > > _Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist_ , edited by Susan Earle, page 26. Alongside the ancient, his art swirls in the dynamism of modernity. Paintings such as _Forge Foundry_ drip with the intensity of the urban experience. It depicts three figures dealing with the elements, fire, metal, earth. Dramatic lighting creates ethereal, almost-pyramid shapes in the background. On using ancient motifs throughout his work, Aaron wrote: > **“I did [this] as if I was an artist working 100 years previously. Say it was 1825, and what i was doing was unconscious of the white world; not that I was antagonistic, but I was interpreting this in terms of black life”** > > Quoted in _Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist_ , page 59. Portrait of Douglas by Edwin Harleston (1930). Photo taken by Rhododendrites and shared via Wikimedia (Public Domain). ## **Langston Hughes** Langston Hughes was largely raised in Kansas, moving to New York to study at Colombia. He left the university, due to its racism, and was drawn to Harlem by the vibrant black culture and its more cogent intellectual stimuli. Langston considered Douglas’s poetry to be the equivalent of his poems. They flow with an internal tension, an almost musical looseness that snaps back onto a resonate theme, a rhythm or an image, that hooks and then unsettles the reader. We see this clearly in one of his finest poems, ‘The Negro Speaks of Rivers’: > **I’ve known rivers:**** > ****I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.** > > **My soul has grown deep like the rivers.** > > **I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.**** > ****I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.**** > ****I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.**** > ****I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.** > > **I’ve known rivers:**** > ****Ancient, dusky rivers.** > > **My soul has grown deep like the rivers.** It sounds almost like jazz, with its improvisational hot solo in the middle section, returning to the original riff. The poem was first published in _the Crisis_ June 1921 and later in _The New Negro_ anthology in 1925. It was inspired by a train journey across a bridge, where Langston saw the sunset over the River Mississippi. **“No doubt I changed a few words the next day, or maybe crossed out a line or two. But there are seldom many changes in my poems, once they’re down.”** What I think interests me about the choice of rivers is not just which were included, but which were left out. There is no space for the River Jordan, the site of Christ’s baptism, a symbol of rebirth and redemption and an important subject of spirituals. Yet, the Euphrates and Nile are both biblical rivers. On the banks of the Euphrates the Israelites carried into captivity were forced to sing and replied with a song (later made immortal by the Melodians and Boney M). > **If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. > If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; > **Psalms, 137 5 -6 While on the great Nile, a baby was found in a rush basket, who would go on to lead his people to freedom and leave Pharaoh’s army and all his horses, drowned in the sea. The river is an enduring presence, an ever rolling power, hard to tame. ## **Fire!!** Egyptian motifs were a sign of power, even of rebellion against the powers that be, those seer-suckered white pharoahs of Pennsylvania Avenue. While _The New Negro_ remains the most famous of the many small magazines published during the Harlem Renaissance, the most interesting from a modern point of view is _Fire!!_ published in 1928. The catalogue for a recent exhibition of the Harlem Renaissance at the Met, called it a ‘Queer Modernist Manifesto’. Contributors included Richard Bruce Nugent, Gwendolyn Burnett, John P. Davis and Zora Neale Hurston. It was edited by Wallace Thurman. Thurman wrote two classic ‘Harlem Renaissance’ novels, both set in the district. _The Blacker the Berry_ is a powerful study of colourism in Harlem. I probably oversay this, but _Infants of the Spring_ should be turned into a TV show. It gives a sense of the background to the Harlem Renaissance and creation of _Fire!!_ _Infants of the Spring_ is set in the bohemian milieu of Harlem, featuring a cast of ambitious, bitchy and brilliant characters seemingly based loosely on well known figures. Paul the aesthete who cites Oscar Wilde and Des Esseintes as his heroes, is possibly based on Richard Bruce Nugent. But is Stephen Carl van Vetchen? Pelham, a contemptible character in Thurman’s hand is described as painting ‘well-rounded bodies, prominent nostrils, slit eyes and perpendicular ears’, which could also describe the art of Aaron Douglas. Possibly not. Thurman had his protagonist discuss the tension between two approaches of contemporary African Art in _Infants of the Spring_ : > **“If this Negro Renaissince is going to actually live up to its name and reputation, it’s going to be Paul’s we need, not Pelham’s.”** More Alain Lockes and less W.E.B. Du Boises. More Richard Bruce Nugents and less Aaron Douglases. Yet the magazine’s cover was designed by Aaron Douglas, an Egyptian sphinx whose eyes resemble the slit eyepieces of West African masks with African symbols printed in red ink on a black page. It is a powerful and urgent, high energy cover. As Dr Freud knew, the sphinx was a sexually ambiguous figure. The message from cover and title is clear. This is hot stuff. Fire!! Cover (Public Domain via Wikimedia) Langston Hughes, who also contributed, wrote the magazine aimed to “burn up a lot of the old, dead conventional Negro-white ideas of the past” It was controversial, not least for its overt homosexual themes and topics. In this it was very representative of the Harlem Renaissance. Henry Louis Gates Jr said the movement “was surely as gay as it was black, not that it was exclusively either of these”. Alain Locke was broadly supportive: > **“The youth section of the New Negro movement has marched off in a gay and self-confident manoeuver of artistic secession”.** He did not mean ‘gay’ in the modern sense, but he was aware that many readers might be upset at what they found: > **“The strong sex radicalism of many of the contributions will shock many well-wishes and elate some of our adversaries … But if Negro life is to provide a healthy antidote to Puritanism, and to become one of the effective instruments of sound artistic progress, its flesh values must more and more be expressed in the clean, original, primitive but fundamental terms of the senses and not, as too often in this particular issue of _Fire_ , in hectic imitation of the the “naughty nineties” and effete echoes of contemporary decadence.”** Like many of the contributors to _Fire!!_ Locke was gay but he was drawn to classical Greek art, both as a way to understand art, but also in terms of the concept of “Greek Love” as an expression of his homosexual side. The historian Jeffrey C. Stewart has noted that Locke’s model of support and patronage of younger artists was inspired in part by the “Greek ideal of ‘nobel friendship’”. **See p. 91 – HR: Modernism and Transformation** ## **Richard Bruce Nugent** Richard Bruce Nugent was openly homosexual throughout his life, recognising his sexual identity: > **I have never been in what they call “the closet.” It has never occurred to me that it was anything to be ashamed of, and it never occurred to me that it was anybody’s business but mine.** His contribution to _Fire!!_ was the classic prose poem _Smoke, Lilies and Jade_. A very sexy work: > **as they undressed by the blue dawn…Alex knew he had never seen a more perfect being…his body was all symmetry and music…and Alex called him Beauty…long they lay…blowing smoke and exchanging thoughts…and Alex swallowed with difficulty…he felt a glow of tremor…and they talked and…slept…** It is languorous, luxuriant and lapidary: the latter literally, precious gems gleam through Nugent’s work. Nugent was drawn to decadent themes. A photo portrait by Carl Vetchen shows him looking up lovingly to More explicit ancient themes can be found in his short ‘Biblical Stories’. Five were written in the later 20s, but were not published. Many more may have been planned or even written. They are some of the strangest and most sexually alluring biblical stories ever put to paper. They are set in the East, a land of treasures and decadence. One story begins with the tableware gracing the King of Ethiopia’s birthday celebrations: Samos glass, Egyptian gold, opal glasses. Later in the same novel, the king is awoken when the sun burns through the translucent emerald gem on his ring. Nugent hones in on the detail of clothing: **“Melchior donned pleated trousers that clasped at the ankles beneath his blue leather shoes. His great trousers hung like fabulous bags, and where the blue pleats broke at the ankle-fold, the gold lining could be seen. Around his waist was a broidered sash of deeper blue; its ends were weighted with polished brass signs of the heavens.”** The protagonist in _The Now Discordant Song of Bells_ is gifted an exquisite model of a temple to Bastet by Herod to house his cat Sextabius. He kills it, just to shave his eyebrows (which recalls Herodotus II. 66-67). He then meets Caspar, the king of Ethiopia with the gorgeous flatware mentioned above. On the negative side of the balance, the story also contains one of the densest lines of historical-romance dialogue I’ve ever read, spoken to the Egyptian cat: > **“Thou art flagellist. See how thine ears flatten to thy skull in pleasure, and hear how contented is thy purr. Thou hast a strange beauty, Sextabius. It is no wonder I love thee. Thou art so sleek and slim, so dun and dark. Thou art near as strange with thy unembarrassed blue stare in thy dark face as I. And thou art vain. Look how thou art preening.”** Given the lush economy of works like _Smoke, Lilies and Jade,_ the style is intentionally over flamboyant and camp. Nugent is interesting because he draws on a different aspect of non-classical antiquity to that of Langston Hughes and Aaron Douglas, but one just as alive to meaning and celebration. Richard Bruce Nugent photographed by Carl Van Vechten (Made available for free in the Yale University Libraru Digital Collections) ## **Ronald Moody** The sculptor Ronald Moody is a recent addition to the Harlem Renaissance canon. Born in Jamaica, he moved to London to train as a dentist. Other relatives had already made the journey. His brother Harold was a doctor who founded and led the League of Coloured People _s_ , an important Civil Rights organisation in the UK. (There is a Nubian JAK Community Trust blue plaque to Harold outside the YMCA on the corner of Tottenham Court Road on Great Russell Street, which you may see if you are walking to the British Museum.) Harold Moody by Ronald Moody (14GTR CC BY-SA 4.0) During his medical studies, Ronald visited London’s museums, one day making a ‘fatal trip’ to the Egyptian Hall in the British Museum. > **“Vowed as I was to search for truth whatever the consequences might be, I continued my way and found that I was taking an interest in Art. I often went to the British Museum, National Gallery and other Art Galleries, coming away, I am afraid, more puzzled than pleased, until one day I discovered Egyptian sculpture all for myself. It was an amazing experience and I haunted that room for a long time after. The use of the material, the massive forms treated with such amazing skill, sensitiveness, delicacy and daring, and lastly, the spirit behind it was strangely sympathetic. From that moment I felt I wanted to do sculpture. But how? I knew nothing about it and until now hardly thought of myself as an artist.”** He began sculpting, using the plaster of paris left over from his nascent dental work. Later he moved to wood carving, then enjoying a vogue. His sculpture _Midonz_ was exhibited in the Contemprary Negro Art exhibition in the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1939. The exhibition was conceived by Alain Locke. Locke’s biographer Jeffrey C Stewart writes that a photograph of two children looking up at Moody’s work represents Locke’s aims of this exhibition, and by extension more broadly across his career. As Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski writes in his biography of Moody “the children display hope, optimism and wonder at the huge possibilities before them”. Johanna by Ronald Moody (Rhakotis CC BY-SA 4.0) Moody fell in love with Paris. He and his wife Helene moved there in 1938 against the advice of close friends including Marie Seton and Antonia White who warned of the dangers of impending war. They were proved correct when Moody and his Jewish wife fled the city only a day before it fell. They fled to the South of France ‘a steady thirty kilometers in front’ of the Nazis. They were trapped in Marseille. At one point, Moody slept in a field, an experience that impacted his health for the rest of his life. Fortunately they both made it back to England. Moody was inspired by several ideas, motifs and styles throughout his career. For example, _Savacou _his sculpture of 1964 commissioned for the University of West Indies was a bird inspired by Carib mythology. The Caribs were the indigenous people who gave their name to the Caribbean islands. Moody wrote > **“I found Savacou a very exciting subject for a piece of sculpture. He is of West Indian origin, human and divine, and ruler over two very unruly elements. I confined myself to his stay on earth as a bird and have given him some tinge of earthly qualities; a certain arrogance expressed in his form and stance combined with a feeling of power, because of his difficult job, and perhaps a hint of things to come in the vaguely star-like shape of his comb.”** We might notice the implicit Egyptian themes of divine-animals, the earth-bound and the cosmic combined. Earlier Moody had described statues of Ra: > **“I have seen bronzes and carvings of this god that have all the majestic calm and greatness one associates with the portrait of a god, despite the incongruous mixture of animal and human.”** Although Savocou is not half-human half-god, it has the same majestic calm and awe-filled greatness. Moody was an important artist. His work was exhibited in major galleries. At one point, _Three Heads_ was the only modernist artwork displayed alongside classical Indian sculpture in Indira Gandhi’s collection. He also created sculpture portraits of several important cultural figures including his brother Harold, the poet and ‘translator’ of Homer Christopher Logue and Terry Thomas. My younger readers may not recognise this name, but Thomas was the synonymous upper class cad of post war British Film. Moody’s wife was his secretary and Terry became a close friend. A representative greeting ‘Happy New Year Chaps, and of course bottoms up.’ Moody also represented Britain as Chair of the Visual Arts Sub-Committee during FESTAC 77, a major international festival of Black and African Arts and Culture that took place in Lagos. (Its symbol was the Benin Mask, an art object taken by the British during the Punitive Campaign against Benin and held by them in the British Museum.) Although he was celebrated during his life, he was more or less forgotten after his death. His niece Cynthia Moody tirelessly campaigned to promote her uncle. Cataloging and collecting his work and writing to art historians and curators. It is largely thanks to her dedication that Moody is once again rightfully today he is recognised as a major artist connected to the international art-trends that linked Harlem, Paris, London and Kingston, Jamaica. Today, you can see his work in the National Gallery of Jamaica and Tate Britain. Onlooker by Ronald Moody (Rhakotis CC BY-SA 4.0) ## **Summary** This post just scratches the surface of the rich art and literature of the Harlem Renaissance. I hope I have inspired you to discover more. I wrote this post in the summer of 2024. Since then, a far right government has taken control of the United States. In these times, we do not need to be reminded of the importance of engaged criticism. It is a tool to educate, inform, enrich and enrage people. But in this fight against Trumpism, and all the grim permeations of his evil ideology, our great support and rallying cry will remain art, truth and beauty. * * * ## Read more ### Blog posts and web articles ‘Aaron Douglas: The covers of the Harlem Renaissance Aaron Douglas: The covers of the Harlem Renaissance How his magazine covers came to define a generation of black art’ by Sami Abdelazim. The Harlem Renaissance, art, politics and ancient Egypt published by the UCL Equiano Centre. ### Books _Harlem Renaissance by Nathan Irvin Huggins._ _The Harlem Renaissance and transatlantic modernism_ edited by Denise Murrell. _Ronald Moody: Sculpting Life_ edited by Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski. ### Share this: * Bluesky * Mastodon * LinkedIn * Facebook * Email * Like Loading... ### _Related_

<p>Crucifixion is perhaps the single most abiding image of the Roman Empire.</p> <p>Other icons rise and fall, the perfect “white” marble buildings crumbling into dust, the busts whose monocephalic form barely disguises the obvious bodily paunch their likenesses bore, even the Capitoline wolf that we now learn might be medieval, loses some of its whine, but the cross, the symbol of Roman brutality and control has endured. </p> <p>One of the most famous crucifixion scenes from antiquity is that, of course, of Spartacus and his self liberated army of freedom fighters.</p> <p>The most abiding version of this scene to the modern mind is from the film <em>Spartacus </em>starring Kirk Douglas, directed by Sir Stanley Kubrick, based on the novel by Howard Fast who was imprisoned for his political beliefs during America’s War on Communism. At the end of the film, the army of Spatacus are offered the chance to be enslaved again but to survive if they give up their leader. Spartacus, knowing that the alternative is the grim and lingering death by crucifixion (the traditional punishment for enslaved people who sought freedom by their own means or who demonstrated resistance), offers himself up. “I am Spatacus”. The crowd of followers, singularly and then together, also shout “I am Spartacus”, showing solidarity to the end and preferring death to enslavement. It is a stirring scene, still powerful, even after loads of pastiches. </p> <p>The reality of such a death was grim.</p> <p>Lewis Grassic Gibbon, the Scotch author, in his novel <em>Spatacus </em>(published in the ominous year of 1933) presents a more gruesome account of state reprisals. </p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p>And Licinius Crassus had the slaves brought forth, all through the heat of a summer day as he marched his army slowly up towards Rome, and one by one nailed on the new-made crosses. And at length even the men of the legions turned in horror from looking back along the horizon at that stretch of undulating, crying figures fading down into the sun-haze. Some, nailed on the cross, shrieked aloud with agony as the nails scraped through their bones or splintered those bones so that ragged slivers hung from the flesh. Some fainted. Some cried on strange Gods, and now at last pleaded for mercy while the legionaries drove the nails home through hands and feet. Then each cross was lifted, and the body of the slave upon it would bulge forth and the crack of the tearing flesh sound as the cross was flung in the hole new-dug. And the smell of blood and excrement increased as the day went by, wolves gathered that night and clouds of carrion-birds, waiting. And at last the last cross was flung in the earth, and the Romans departed.</p> </blockquote> <p>Coming at the end of the novel, this passage reveals something of Gibbon’s approach to the story of Spartacus. First we notice the poetic style that combines the austere, almost biblical use of the word ‘And’ at the start of the sentences, with long flowing sentences and visceral, physical descriptions. It is remorseless. </p> <p>Gibbon (a pseudonym of James Leslie Mitchell) was Scottish. In the 1920s he served in the British Forces in colonial outposts. He began writing full time in 1929. He died in 1935, having written and published 17 books in the short time allotted to him. His masterpiece is easily <em>Scots Quair</em>, a<em> </em>trilogy of novels which combine the same dreamlike descriptions of a hard life, this time, in the Highlands. </p> <p>His novels are rich in sound and visual poetry, but they never lose a hardness and bleakness. At points his characters can be rhapsodic with an intensity almost inhuman: </p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p>Then in her madness for the Thracian Gladiator, in the wild rides and hidings that followed Capua, when the world gaped to engulf their revolt, there had seemed no purpose to guard herself afresh. The days and the nights of the Thracian’s love would endure but a shining space ere the dark came down.</p> </blockquote> <p><em>Spartacus </em>explores Gibbon’s interests and political views. He was sympathetic to left wing views, writing to a friend  <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/foot-paul/2001/12/gibbon.htm#:~:text=Grassic%20Gibbon%20himself%20in%20a,the%20real%20horrors%20of%20Stalinism.">“I’m not an official Communist as they won’t let me in”</a>.</p> <p>One of the novel’s main characters, Kleon, is an educated enslaved person with some experience of previous revolutions. He identifies Spartacus as the power that might change ‘the order in Italy’ and encourages him to form a new state in Italy. He reads Plato, carrying around a copy of <em>The Republic. </em>He even tells Spartacus early in their relationship: “Then you’re in need of advice in how to the perfect state. I’ll read to you now from Plato the divine’. Although humorous, I think we are meant to understand Kleon (or Plato) as a proto-Marxist.</p> <div class="wp-block-image"> <figure class="aligncenter size-medium is-resized"><img alt="A photograph off Lewis Grassic Gibbon" class="wp-image-5256" data-attachment-id="5256" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta='{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}' data-image-title="Leslie-mitchell" data-large-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/leslie-mitchell.jpg?w=272" data-medium-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/leslie-mitchell.jpg?w=202" data-orig-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/leslie-mitchell.jpg" data-orig-size="272,403" data-permalink="https://rhakotis.com/2025/02/04/spartacus-by-lewis-grassic-gibbon/leslie-mitchell/" height="299" sizes="(max-width: 202px) 100vw, 202px" src="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/leslie-mitchell.jpg?w=202" srcset="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/leslie-mitchell.jpg?w=202 202w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/leslie-mitchell.jpg?w=101 101w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/leslie-mitchell.jpg 272w" style="width:610px;height:auto" width="202"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Lewis Grassic Gibbon (by unidentified photographer, Public Domain via <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17663549">Wikimedia</a>) </figcaption></figure></div> <p>The novel starts and ends with Kleon’s perspective. At the very end, he has a vision of another crucifixion:</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p>And he saw before him, gigantic, filling the sky, a great Cross with a figure that was crowned with thorns; and behind it, sky-towering as well, gladius in hand, his hand on the edge of the morning behind that Cross, the figure of a Gladiator.</p> <p>And he saw that these Two were One, and the world yet theirs: and he went into unending night and left them that shining earth.</p> </blockquote> <p>This scene unites Spartacus, Plato and Jesus. I would argue that Marx is also hidden somewhere in the vision, with the idea of revolution as a driving force of history culminating in a predefined end point. This scene also, of course, reflects the social and political importance of Christianity within the society in which Gibbon was writing, but I think it’s doing something more.</p> <p>Throughout the novel there are hints of divine favor. Towards the end of the novel Spartacus reflects, ‘What though they marched on Rome, and took it, and slew the Beast of the Tiber’, drawing clear parallels with the apocalyptic ‘Whore of Babylon’, the symbol of ‘that great city, which reigns over the kings of the earth’ (Revelation 17:18). </p> <p>I might also add the ‘What though…’ mirror’s Beelzebub’s lines in <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/20/pg20-images.html"><em>Paradise Lost</em></a>: </p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p>           ‘What though the field be lost?<br/>All is not Lost; the unconquerable will,<br/>And study of revenge, immortal hate,<br/>And the courage never to submit or yield.</p> </blockquote> <p>I don’t think this is unintentional. In the novel Spartacus’ army marches under the sign of the snake, an animal with a complex symbology (<a href="https://rhakotis.com/2020/06/25/snakes/">in the ancient world</a>, in Gibbon’s time and today), yet one most closely associated in many people’s minds with Satan and the serpent in the Garden.</p> <p>According to Plutarch, when Spartacus was first sold to slavery a snake coiled around his head while he slept.</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p>“his wife, who came from the same tribe and was a prophetess subject to possession by the frenzy of [the god of ecstasy] Dionysus, declared that this sign meant that he would have a great and terrible power which would end in misfortune.”</p> <p><a href="https://www.livius.org/sources/content/plutarch/plutarchs-crassus/plutarch-on-spartacus/">Plutarch’s Life of Crassus 8.1</a></p> </blockquote> <p>There is an energy and a dynamism driving the slave army. Marx called this dialectical materialism. Others might call it providence.</p> <p>We know from the histories that survive that some ancient revolutions may have had religious overtones.</p> <p>In the first Roman Sicilian Revolution (First Servile War 135–132 BCE), the leader Eunis, who may have carefully planned the rebellion over several years, claimed to have visions from the Syrian goddess Atargaris. He was also said to be something of a magician, belching fire (perhaps a parlor trick) and reading fortunes. </p> <p>He was a ‘<a href="https://mikedashhistory.com/2016/07/16/king-magician-general-slave-eunus-and-the-first-servile-war-against-rome/">messianic priest-king</a>’, having predicted his future reign, during the period of his enslavement, as part of his enslaver’s dinner entertainment. As a self-freed leader, he called himself Antiochus, thus identifying himself with the Syrian Seleucid dynasty. The Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes (215 – 164 BCE), better known for his role in the Hanukkah story was also the first Seleucid to use divine epithets identifying himself as Θεὸς Ἐπιφανής “manifest god”. </p> <p>Salvius Tryphon, the leader of the second Roman Sicilian Revolution (Second Servile War, 104-100 BCE) also identified himself as a Seleucid, suggesting memories of Eunus were still strong.</p> <p>These earlier political leaders offer a new way to see Kleon’s final vision as he loses consciousness. </p> <p>As the world in 1933 erupted into flames, fanned by fascist hatred, Gibbon wrote a novel to galvanize his readers and remind them of the long history of struggle. That Spartacus’ story seems to end in defeat is not the point. Like Christ, he is victorious in death, unconquered by the cross and still inspiring revolution.</p> <p class="has-secondary-color has-text-color has-link-color has-small-font-size wp-elements-434acae09eaf289982f3ca1f88c85a3e">Featured image: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacus#/media/File:Tod_des_Spartacus_by_Hermann_Vogel.jpg">Spartacus’ death by Hermann Vogel</a> (Public Domain)</p> <p></p> <div class="sharedaddy sd-like-enabled sd-sharing-enabled" id="jp-post-flair"><div class="sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled"><div class="robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing"><h3 class="sd-title">Share this:</h3><div class="sd-content"><ul><li class="share-bluesky"><a class="share-bluesky sd-button share-icon" data-shared="sharing-bluesky-5253" href="https://rhakotis.com/2025/02/04/spartacus-by-lewis-grassic-gibbon/?share=bluesky" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Bluesky"><span>Bluesky</span></a></li><li class="share-mastodon"><a class="share-mastodon sd-button share-icon" data-shared="sharing-mastodon-5253" href="https://rhakotis.com/2025/02/04/spartacus-by-lewis-grassic-gibbon/?share=mastodon" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Mastodon"><span>Mastodon</span></a></li><li class="share-linkedin"><a class="share-linkedin sd-button share-icon" data-shared="sharing-linkedin-5253" href="https://rhakotis.com/2025/02/04/spartacus-by-lewis-grassic-gibbon/?share=linkedin" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="Click to share on LinkedIn"><span>LinkedIn</span></a></li><li class="share-facebook"><a class="share-facebook sd-button share-icon" data-shared="sharing-facebook-5253" href="https://rhakotis.com/2025/02/04/spartacus-by-lewis-grassic-gibbon/?share=facebook" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Facebook"><span>Facebook</span></a></li><li class="share-email"><a class="share-email sd-button share-icon" data-email-share-error-text="If you're having problems sharing via email, you might not have email set up for your browser. 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<p>When I was very young, the toilets of our local church hall, cold, damp and a little spooky, had a wooden plaque hanging off an always empty toilet roll holder that said  “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again”. It had the image of a little spider at the side. The wording always confused me, why so many ‘tries’, but I recognised the story: a Scottish King, losing a battle, escaped to a cave where instead of commanding armies, he watched a small spider try to build a cobweb. The spider kept failing and kept trying again, until it finally succeeded. The king learnt his lesson and went on to win the battle. </p> <p>Unplagued by the curse of constipation, I lost some of the subtle humor and assumed the plaque was left in the toilet to encourage people during a meditative moment. The message was clear: animals, even the most smallest and unpleasant, can teach us all great lessons.</p> <p>At the heart of Julia Kindt’s new book <em>The Trojan Horse and other stories: Ten ancient Creatures That Make Us Human</em> lies the question of what makes us human. She writes “it is impossible to understand conceptions of the human animal without understanding conceptions of the non-human animal”.</p> <p>Humans and animals have never been separate, although the relationships between different species varies at any time and hinges on complex factors. Kindt begins her book with Argos, Odysseus’ dog which he left on Ithaca at the start of his travels. 20 years later, old and unloved, Argos recognises his master and runs up to and dies in his arms. It is one of the most poignant homecoming scenes in literature (certainly in the Homeric epics, where Odysseus’ celebrates his return with a spree of ritualistic vengeance killing. Who is more human in this setting?)</p> <p>Kindt’s book tackles over ten ‘stories’ about various animals in the ancient world. From <a href="https://rhakotis.com/2021/01/06/peoples-history-of-classics/">Grunter the talking pig</a> to the Trojan boar displayed on <a href="https://rhakotis.com/2021/12/21/peplum/">Trimalchio’s table</a>. From the <a href="https://rhakotis.com/2019/10/01/between-oedipus-and-freud/">Sphinx beloved on Freud</a> to Picasso’s troubling Minotaur. And explores what these tell us about how we as humans articulate and understand the world. </p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-4038" data-attachment-id="4038" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta='{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}' data-image-title="Goat" data-large-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/goat.jpeg?w=580" data-medium-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/goat.jpeg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/goat.jpeg" data-orig-size="2000,1333" data-permalink="https://rhakotis.com/2021/09/23/torlonia-marbles/goat/" height="386" sizes="(max-width: 580px) 100vw, 580px" src="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/goat.jpeg?w=580" srcset="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/goat.jpeg?w=580 580w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/goat.jpeg?w=1158 1158w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/goat.jpeg?w=150 150w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/goat.jpeg?w=300 300w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/goat.jpeg?w=768 768w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/goat.jpeg?w=1024 1024w" width="580"/></figure> <p>Greek heroes and monsters are the stuff of childhood and if they are enjoyed as adults, they are enjoyed apologetically. As lessons to learn or as rewritings. </p> <p>For myself, the most fascinating element of Kindt’s book was her study of Lucius from the <em><a href="https://rhakotis.com/2024/07/04/reflections-on-the-golden-ass-by-apuleius/">Golden Ass</a></em>. Kindt foregrounds the fact that Lucius never loses his humanity. He can tell this by a few facts. His consciousness and his tastes remains resolutely rational:</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p><strong>Every evening after Thyasus had dined – and he always dined in grand style – my masters used to carry back the left-overs to our little room: one brought generous helpings of roast pork, chicken, fish and similar delicacies: the other brought bread, tarts, puff-pastry, twisted cheese-straws, marzipan lizards and many varieties of honey-cake.</strong></p> <p><strong>But when they had locked the door and gone off to the baths to refresh themselves, I used to cram myself with the splendid food the gods had graciously put at my disposal, not being such a fool, such a complete ass, as to turn it down in favour of the coarse hay in my manger.</strong></p> <p><strong>For a long time I was wonderfully successful in my pilfering: my technique was to take only a little from each of the many dishes on the table, knowing that my masters would never suspect an ass of playing such tricks on them. But gradually I grew overconfident and ate whatever I fancied: in fact, I picked out the best dishes and licked them clean.</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>We return here to the Structuralist concept of social relations. What makes the human human and the non-human animal, a non-human animal is the raw and the cooked, but one thinks also of (Adam) Smithian  economics, rationality defined by measured self-interest. </p> <p>This scene of organised gluttony happens towards the end of the <em>Golden Ass</em>, as Lucius’ ability to fulfill his human desires return, but not yet his prudence. As the novel closes, his sense of modesty returns, he flees from a situation of shameful desire, he has a vision of the goddess Isis, and is transformed back to a man and a convert to the Isis religion. </p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-4408" data-attachment-id="4408" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="&lt;p&gt;Follower of Filippino Lippi&lt;br /&gt; The Worship of the Egyptian Bull God, Apis&lt;br /&gt; about 1500&lt;br /&gt; Oil and egg on wood, 78.1 x 137.2 cm&lt;br /&gt; Bequeathed by Sir Henry Bernhard Samuelson, Bt, in memory of his father, 1937&lt;br /&gt; NG4905&lt;br /&gt; https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG4905&lt;/p&gt; " data-image-description="" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;Photography and Imaging, The National Gallery, London&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;Follower of Filippino Lippi\r\nThe Worship of the Egyptian Bull God, Apis\r\nabout 1500\r\nOil and egg on wood, 78.1 x 137.2 cm\r\nBequeathed by Sir Henry Bernhard Samuelson, Bt, in memory of his father, 1937\r\nNG4905\r\nhttps:\/\/www.nationalgallery.org.uk\/paintings\/NG4905&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;Follower of Filippino Lippi, 'The Worship of the Egyptian Bull God, Apis' \u00a9 The National Gallery, London. Bequeathed by Sir Henry Bernhard Samuelson, Bt, in memory of his father, 1937. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}" data-image-title="Golden-Calf-lippi" data-large-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/golden-calf-lippi.jpg?w=580" data-medium-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/golden-calf-lippi.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/golden-calf-lippi.jpg" data-orig-size="800,457" data-permalink="https://rhakotis.com/2022/05/25/what-everybody-ought-to-know-about-ancient-egypt-in-the-renaissance/golden-calf-lippi/" height="331" sizes="(max-width: 580px) 100vw, 580px" src="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/golden-calf-lippi.jpg?w=580" srcset="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/golden-calf-lippi.jpg?w=580 580w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/golden-calf-lippi.jpg?w=150 150w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/golden-calf-lippi.jpg?w=300 300w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/golden-calf-lippi.jpg?w=768 768w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/golden-calf-lippi.jpg 800w" width="580"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Follower of Filippino Lippi, <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG4905">The Worship of the Egyptian Bull God, Apis</a> about 1500<br/>Oil and egg on wood, 78.1 x 137.2 cm (Bequeathed by Sir Henry Bernhard Samuelson, Bt, in memory of his father, 1937 NG4905)</figcaption></figure> <p>What I liked about this book was that Kindt analyzed the stories, reviewing what other people said about them, but still left space for us to answer the question on what the stories are about.</p> <p>I would have liked more on the nature of time and how this has impacted the human-animal relationship. Great social forces have impacted how we see ourselves and the world, most crucially ‘capitalism’ now impacts our relationship with the natural world, in sometimes positive ways, but also very negative ways such as climate change, and ecosystem and biodiversity loss. At the time I write, I am constantly reminded that microplastics have been found in animal and human bodies. The human is ceasing to become fully human, but is not becoming animal or divine, but something manmade and potentially toxic to itself. </p> <p>At the same time, it is important to acknowledge that we in “the West”,  understand pets and domestic animals in ways that other cultures would not.</p> <p>I would also have liked more non-Greek animals. Creatures like the crocodile<strong> </strong>which were both feared and loved by Egyptians and non-Egyptians and became a <em>de facto </em>symbol of the Nile, offer ways to discuss imperialism, cosmopolitanism and consumption. </p> <p>Nevertheless this is a fascinating book, provisioning important questions if not answers on what it means to be human.</p> <p>It is in our struggles, that we strain, to retain the most human.</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading has-secondary-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-bc70c5eeb6e66b17b8bf6c5d9b8ce084">About the Rhakotis Prize</h2> <p class="has-secondary-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-6e289ac76506f2593450654dba44ae44">The <a href="https://rhakotis.com/magazine/rhakotis-prizes/">Rhakotis Prize</a> is unique in rewarding our panel more than the winners. The panelists enjoy a generous honorarium sponsored by generous business interests, with the decision made over a series of exquisite meals in some of the world’s finest restaurants. </p> <p class="has-secondary-color has-text-color has-link-color wp-elements-586b6d4f0c3637d6bae60753d37f3388">The Rhakotis Award Laureates receive the glory and recognition of winning one of the most prestigious awards in the field of the classics beyond the classics.</p> <div class="sharedaddy sd-like-enabled sd-sharing-enabled" id="jp-post-flair"><div class="sharedaddy sd-sharing-enabled"><div class="robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing"><h3 class="sd-title">Share this:</h3><div class="sd-content"><ul><li class="share-bluesky"><a class="share-bluesky sd-button share-icon" data-shared="sharing-bluesky-5261" href="https://rhakotis.com/2025/01/02/the-trojan-horse-julia-kindt/?share=bluesky" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Bluesky"><span>Bluesky</span></a></li><li class="share-mastodon"><a class="share-mastodon sd-button share-icon" data-shared="sharing-mastodon-5261" href="https://rhakotis.com/2025/01/02/the-trojan-horse-julia-kindt/?share=mastodon" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Mastodon"><span>Mastodon</span></a></li><li class="share-linkedin"><a class="share-linkedin sd-button share-icon" data-shared="sharing-linkedin-5261" href="https://rhakotis.com/2025/01/02/the-trojan-horse-julia-kindt/?share=linkedin" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="Click to share on LinkedIn"><span>LinkedIn</span></a></li><li class="share-facebook"><a class="share-facebook sd-button share-icon" data-shared="sharing-facebook-5261" href="https://rhakotis.com/2025/01/02/the-trojan-horse-julia-kindt/?share=facebook" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank" title="Click to share on Facebook"><span>Facebook</span></a></li><li class="share-email"><a class="share-email sd-button share-icon" data-email-share-error-text="If you're having problems sharing via email, you might not have email set up for your browser. 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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">1. <a href="https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/judy-chicago-revelations/">Judy Chicago: Revelations at the Serpentine Galleries</a></h2> <p>The world was originally a matriarchy, centered around birth and creation until men, learning to kill, rebelled and took over. The primordial religion was directed towards a great goddess, who like Isis, was said to have many names. During the ensuing patriarchy, some chosen women acted as disciples, passing on the secret teaching.</p> <p>This is the basic premise of Judy Chicago’s exhibition Revelations, which was hosted at the Serpentine Galleries earlier this year. </p> <p>It is a textual show. Chicago, an artist who excels across a range of media, means this to be read like an illuminated manuscript. In an interview with the Serpentine’s Hans Ulrich Obrist, she even confirms it’s her bible of the Goddess. </p> <p>Chicago uses books as a complement to her art and a way to reach out and create a new audience. The book of <em>Revelations</em>, explores in more detail this mystic teaching, calling forth apostles and disciples to spread the new gospel and providing new visions of the apocalypse when Earth will become Eden once again.</p> <p>It is a powerfully affecting show, with beautiful art and complex ideas around gender, history and spirituality that invites deep reflection and slow engagement. </p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-5340" data-attachment-id="5340" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta='{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1"}' data-image-title="IMG_5414" data-large-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img_5414.jpg?w=580" data-medium-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img_5414.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img_5414.jpg" data-orig-size="640,570" data-permalink="https://rhakotis.com/2024/12/31/exhibitions-of-2024/img_5414/" height="570" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" src="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img_5414.jpg?w=640" srcset="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img_5414.jpg 640w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img_5414.jpg?w=150 150w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img_5414.jpg?w=300 300w" width="640"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Rainbow Warrior (for Greenpeace), 1980</figcaption></figure> <p>Alongside <em>Revelations</em>, the show displayed highlights from her oeuvre including photos of her <a href="https://judychicago.com/the-jordan-schnitzer-family-foundation/print-archive/smoke-and-fireworks-performances/">smoke installations</a> in the 1960s, the Dinner Party (1974-79), the Birth Project (1980) and In the beginning (1982) which explored women artists, and the experience of birth. During her six decades career, she has also returned back to themes like the great goddess and the female divine (the <a href="https://judychicago.com/gallery/dior-collaborations/artwork/">250 foot long installation</a> at the Musee Rodin, just one highlight). </p> <p>It is an impressive career, but not one without pushback. She writes:</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p><strong>“At a certain point—after The Dinner Party, after the art world tried to kill me—| realized I would have to be very, very isolated in order to continue down the path I had eked out. And as I got older and my energy began to wane, I wasn’t happy about the fact that I had to do everything myself. But that was just the way it had to be. I had to do it myself because I had to build what didn’t exist: a language for talking about women-centered art, a structure for showing it, a critical apparatus. I had to do that. There was no context for my work. I had to build it myself.”</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>This is art as world building, a form of fantasy that does not negate the ‘real world’ or ignore it, but rather actively engages with and challenges it.</p> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img alt="" class="wp-image-5339" data-attachment-id="5339" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta='{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1"}' data-image-title="IMG_5416" data-large-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img_5416.jpg?w=580" data-medium-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img_5416.jpg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img_5416.jpg" data-orig-size="1581,1214" data-permalink="https://rhakotis.com/2024/12/31/exhibitions-of-2024/img_5416/" height="786" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" src="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img_5416.jpg?w=1024" srcset="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img_5416.jpg?w=1024 1024w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img_5416.jpg?w=150 150w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img_5416.jpg?w=300 300w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img_5416.jpg?w=768 768w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img_5416.jpg 1581w" width="1024"/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The Creation, 1985</figcaption></figure> <p>The book of <em>Revelations</em> also contains short biographies of important women from antiquity including Hypatia, who is said to be initiated into the mysteries of Isis, and the Empress Theodora, a defender of women’s rights. This section of the book is fascinating, but makes me a little uncomfortable. Historically powerful women, while impacted by lack of opportunities and patriarchal oppression may themselves sometimes have been oppressors. Elizabeth I presented here as instigating a modern goddess cult, was also responsible for genocide in Ireland and instigated colonial expansion into North America, which under later British monarchs resulted in industrialised genocide of Native American and First Nation people and slavery. </p> <p>I would argue that while many of the women chosen by Chicago are worthy of highlighting, they are not figures to venerate uncritically.  </p> <p>Given its apocalyptic intent, it is intriguing that the book does not highlight lesser known non-elite women, like Joanna Southcott, who with her penchant of feminist theology and revelation was genuinely disruptive, if not radical. Such stories are harder to find, perhaps, but much more important to tell.</p> <p>Nevertheless Chicago’s celebration of noted women, is a way of countering male-focused history that also permeates Art. My focus on the literal also obscures Chicago’s more spiritual and abstract tendencies. In an interview with Jennifer Higgie about her abstractions of Great Women, Chicago said: </p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p><strong>“I have often said that until the advent of abstraction, there was no way for women artists to directly express their own experiences-their only choice was to work within the existing art-historical tradition, to make their work fit into the canon. Artemisia Gentileschi, for example, expressed her feelings about male power using the conventions of the day. Abstraction allowed women to invent their own forms, which led to female-centered art.”</strong></p> <p><strong>“Hilma af Klint and Agnes Pelton’s use of color is very akin to mine-high-key, thin, washed, the fusion of color and surface. It’s not a material object; it’s like a spiritual form, and I wanted to achieve that.”</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>Revelations is an astonishing installation, that shocks with instant impact, and permeates through the soul like glacier water through a mountain, accreting intellectual nutriments with each revisit or re-read.</p> <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-instagram wp-block-embed-instagram"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> <div class="embed-instagram"><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/C-KtBbqtbEy/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:580px; min-width:326px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:16px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C-KtBbqtbEy/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" background:#FFFFFF; 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overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C-KtBbqtbEy/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A post shared by Simon Bralee (@simonbralee)</a></p></div></blockquote><script async="" src="https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js"></script></div> </div></figure> <p>This exhibition was also twinned with <a href="https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/whats-on/yinka-shonibare-cbe-suspended-states/">Suspended States by Yinka Shonibare CBE</a> which explored the ecological impact of colonialism.\</p> <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-instagram wp-block-embed-instagram"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> <div class="embed-instagram"><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/C-j9766g-5q/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:580px; min-width:326px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:16px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C-j9766g-5q/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" background:#FFFFFF; line-height:0; padding:0 0; text-align:center; text-decoration:none; width:100%;" target="_blank"> <div style=" display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div></div></div><div style="padding: 19% 0;"></div> <div style="display:block; height:50px; margin:0 auto 12px; width:50px;"><svg height="50px" version="1.1" viewbox="0 0 60 60" width="50px" xmlns="https://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><g fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd" stroke="none" stroke-width="1"><g fill="#000000" transform="translate(-511.000000, -20.000000)"><g><path d="M556.869,30.41 C554.814,30.41 553.148,32.076 553.148,34.131 C553.148,36.186 554.814,37.852 556.869,37.852 C558.924,37.852 560.59,36.186 560.59,34.131 C560.59,32.076 558.924,30.41 556.869,30.41 M541,60.657 C535.114,60.657 530.342,55.887 530.342,50 C530.342,44.114 535.114,39.342 541,39.342 C546.887,39.342 551.658,44.114 551.658,50 C551.658,55.887 546.887,60.657 541,60.657 M541,33.886 C532.1,33.886 524.886,41.1 524.886,50 C524.886,58.899 532.1,66.113 541,66.113 C549.9,66.113 557.115,58.899 557.115,50 C557.115,41.1 549.9,33.886 541,33.886 M565.378,62.101 C565.244,65.022 564.756,66.606 564.346,67.663 C563.803,69.06 563.154,70.057 562.106,71.106 C561.058,72.155 560.06,72.803 558.662,73.347 C557.607,73.757 556.021,74.244 553.102,74.378 C549.944,74.521 548.997,74.552 541,74.552 C533.003,74.552 532.056,74.521 528.898,74.378 C525.979,74.244 524.393,73.757 523.338,73.347 C521.94,72.803 520.942,72.155 519.894,71.106 C518.846,70.057 518.197,69.06 517.654,67.663 C517.244,66.606 516.755,65.022 516.623,62.101 C516.479,58.943 516.448,57.996 516.448,50 C516.448,42.003 516.479,41.056 516.623,37.899 C516.755,34.978 517.244,33.391 517.654,32.338 C518.197,30.938 518.846,29.942 519.894,28.894 C520.942,27.846 521.94,27.196 523.338,26.654 C524.393,26.244 525.979,25.756 528.898,25.623 C532.057,25.479 533.004,25.448 541,25.448 C548.997,25.448 549.943,25.479 553.102,25.623 C556.021,25.756 557.607,26.244 558.662,26.654 C560.06,27.196 561.058,27.846 562.106,28.894 C563.154,29.942 563.803,30.938 564.346,32.338 C564.756,33.391 565.244,34.978 565.378,37.899 C565.522,41.056 565.552,42.003 565.552,50 C565.552,57.996 565.522,58.943 565.378,62.101 M570.82,37.631 C570.674,34.438 570.167,32.258 569.425,30.349 C568.659,28.377 567.633,26.702 565.965,25.035 C564.297,23.368 562.623,22.342 560.652,21.575 C558.743,20.834 556.562,20.326 553.369,20.18 C550.169,20.033 549.148,20 541,20 C532.853,20 531.831,20.033 528.631,20.18 C525.438,20.326 523.257,20.834 521.349,21.575 C519.376,22.342 517.703,23.368 516.035,25.035 C514.368,26.702 513.342,28.377 512.574,30.349 C511.834,32.258 511.326,34.438 511.181,37.631 C511.035,40.831 511,41.851 511,50 C511,58.147 511.035,59.17 511.181,62.369 C511.326,65.562 511.834,67.743 512.574,69.651 C513.342,71.625 514.368,73.296 516.035,74.965 C517.703,76.634 519.376,77.658 521.349,78.425 C523.257,79.167 525.438,79.673 528.631,79.82 C531.831,79.965 532.853,80.001 541,80.001 C549.148,80.001 550.169,79.965 553.369,79.82 C556.562,79.673 558.743,79.167 560.652,78.425 C562.623,77.658 564.297,76.634 565.965,74.965 C567.633,73.296 568.659,71.625 569.425,69.651 C570.167,67.743 570.674,65.562 570.82,62.369 C570.966,59.17 571,58.147 571,50 C571,41.851 570.966,40.831 570.82,37.631"></path></g></g></g></svg></div><div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style=" color:#3897f0; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:550; line-height:18px;">View this post on Instagram</div></div><div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"><div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"></div></div><div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg)"></div></div><div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style=" width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"></div></div></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"></div></div></a><p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C-j9766g-5q/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A post shared by Simon Bralee (@simonbralee)</a></p></div></blockquote><script async="" src="https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js"></script></div> </div></figure> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">2. <a href="https://www.mariangoodman.com/news/940-tavares-strachan-there-is-light-somewhere-hayward-gallery/">Tavares Strachan: There is light somewhere at the Hayward Gallery </a></h2> <p>Tavares Strachan’s encyclopedic installation at the Hayward Gallery encompasses deep history and the far future, travel and home. It is the art of exploration that highlights the field’s toxic history by neatly sidestepping it, focusing instead on black astronauts and sailors (like Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line). </p> <p>Tavares uses Classical African Art and Craft to examine identity – personal and cultural – and the roots that tie us not just to the past, but to the stars above. </p> <p>For an installation about travel and mobility, this felt more like an arrival, the arrival of a huge talent of great importance. </p> <p></p> <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-instagram wp-block-embed-instagram"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> <div class="embed-instagram"><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/C_XaHGqt-6I/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:580px; min-width:326px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:16px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C_XaHGqt-6I/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" background:#FFFFFF; line-height:0; padding:0 0; text-align:center; text-decoration:none; width:100%;" target="_blank"> <div style=" display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div></div></div><div style="padding: 19% 0;"></div> <div style="display:block; height:50px; margin:0 auto 12px; width:50px;"><svg height="50px" version="1.1" viewbox="0 0 60 60" width="50px" xmlns="https://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><g fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd" stroke="none" stroke-width="1"><g fill="#000000" transform="translate(-511.000000, -20.000000)"><g><path d="M556.869,30.41 C554.814,30.41 553.148,32.076 553.148,34.131 C553.148,36.186 554.814,37.852 556.869,37.852 C558.924,37.852 560.59,36.186 560.59,34.131 C560.59,32.076 558.924,30.41 556.869,30.41 M541,60.657 C535.114,60.657 530.342,55.887 530.342,50 C530.342,44.114 535.114,39.342 541,39.342 C546.887,39.342 551.658,44.114 551.658,50 C551.658,55.887 546.887,60.657 541,60.657 M541,33.886 C532.1,33.886 524.886,41.1 524.886,50 C524.886,58.899 532.1,66.113 541,66.113 C549.9,66.113 557.115,58.899 557.115,50 C557.115,41.1 549.9,33.886 541,33.886 M565.378,62.101 C565.244,65.022 564.756,66.606 564.346,67.663 C563.803,69.06 563.154,70.057 562.106,71.106 C561.058,72.155 560.06,72.803 558.662,73.347 C557.607,73.757 556.021,74.244 553.102,74.378 C549.944,74.521 548.997,74.552 541,74.552 C533.003,74.552 532.056,74.521 528.898,74.378 C525.979,74.244 524.393,73.757 523.338,73.347 C521.94,72.803 520.942,72.155 519.894,71.106 C518.846,70.057 518.197,69.06 517.654,67.663 C517.244,66.606 516.755,65.022 516.623,62.101 C516.479,58.943 516.448,57.996 516.448,50 C516.448,42.003 516.479,41.056 516.623,37.899 C516.755,34.978 517.244,33.391 517.654,32.338 C518.197,30.938 518.846,29.942 519.894,28.894 C520.942,27.846 521.94,27.196 523.338,26.654 C524.393,26.244 525.979,25.756 528.898,25.623 C532.057,25.479 533.004,25.448 541,25.448 C548.997,25.448 549.943,25.479 553.102,25.623 C556.021,25.756 557.607,26.244 558.662,26.654 C560.06,27.196 561.058,27.846 562.106,28.894 C563.154,29.942 563.803,30.938 564.346,32.338 C564.756,33.391 565.244,34.978 565.378,37.899 C565.522,41.056 565.552,42.003 565.552,50 C565.552,57.996 565.522,58.943 565.378,62.101 M570.82,37.631 C570.674,34.438 570.167,32.258 569.425,30.349 C568.659,28.377 567.633,26.702 565.965,25.035 C564.297,23.368 562.623,22.342 560.652,21.575 C558.743,20.834 556.562,20.326 553.369,20.18 C550.169,20.033 549.148,20 541,20 C532.853,20 531.831,20.033 528.631,20.18 C525.438,20.326 523.257,20.834 521.349,21.575 C519.376,22.342 517.703,23.368 516.035,25.035 C514.368,26.702 513.342,28.377 512.574,30.349 C511.834,32.258 511.326,34.438 511.181,37.631 C511.035,40.831 511,41.851 511,50 C511,58.147 511.035,59.17 511.181,62.369 C511.326,65.562 511.834,67.743 512.574,69.651 C513.342,71.625 514.368,73.296 516.035,74.965 C517.703,76.634 519.376,77.658 521.349,78.425 C523.257,79.167 525.438,79.673 528.631,79.82 C531.831,79.965 532.853,80.001 541,80.001 C549.148,80.001 550.169,79.965 553.369,79.82 C556.562,79.673 558.743,79.167 560.652,78.425 C562.623,77.658 564.297,76.634 565.965,74.965 C567.633,73.296 568.659,71.625 569.425,69.651 C570.167,67.743 570.674,65.562 570.82,62.369 C570.966,59.17 571,58.147 571,50 C571,41.851 570.966,40.831 570.82,37.631"></path></g></g></g></svg></div><div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style=" color:#3897f0; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:550; line-height:18px;">View this post on Instagram</div></div><div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"><div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"></div></div><div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg)"></div></div><div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style=" width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"></div></div></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"></div></div></a><p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C_XaHGqt-6I/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A post shared by Simon Bralee (@simonbralee)</a></p></div></blockquote><script async="" src="https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js"></script></div> </div></figure> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">3. Beatrice Offor at Bruce Castle</h2> <p>A small but fascinating exhibition in Tottenham’s bijou Bruce Castle museum and gallery space, exploring the life and art of Beatrice Offor. Trained at the Slade School of Art, she was plugged into the magical and politically radical circles of the time, whose ideas inspired her work. Enchanting. </p> <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-instagram wp-block-embed-instagram"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> <div class="embed-instagram"><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/C4Gx_ESNJBe/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:580px; min-width:326px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:16px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C4Gx_ESNJBe/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" background:#FFFFFF; line-height:0; padding:0 0; text-align:center; text-decoration:none; width:100%;" target="_blank"> <div style=" display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div></div></div><div style="padding: 19% 0;"></div> <div style="display:block; height:50px; margin:0 auto 12px; width:50px;"><svg height="50px" version="1.1" viewbox="0 0 60 60" width="50px" xmlns="https://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><g fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd" stroke="none" stroke-width="1"><g fill="#000000" transform="translate(-511.000000, -20.000000)"><g><path d="M556.869,30.41 C554.814,30.41 553.148,32.076 553.148,34.131 C553.148,36.186 554.814,37.852 556.869,37.852 C558.924,37.852 560.59,36.186 560.59,34.131 C560.59,32.076 558.924,30.41 556.869,30.41 M541,60.657 C535.114,60.657 530.342,55.887 530.342,50 C530.342,44.114 535.114,39.342 541,39.342 C546.887,39.342 551.658,44.114 551.658,50 C551.658,55.887 546.887,60.657 541,60.657 M541,33.886 C532.1,33.886 524.886,41.1 524.886,50 C524.886,58.899 532.1,66.113 541,66.113 C549.9,66.113 557.115,58.899 557.115,50 C557.115,41.1 549.9,33.886 541,33.886 M565.378,62.101 C565.244,65.022 564.756,66.606 564.346,67.663 C563.803,69.06 563.154,70.057 562.106,71.106 C561.058,72.155 560.06,72.803 558.662,73.347 C557.607,73.757 556.021,74.244 553.102,74.378 C549.944,74.521 548.997,74.552 541,74.552 C533.003,74.552 532.056,74.521 528.898,74.378 C525.979,74.244 524.393,73.757 523.338,73.347 C521.94,72.803 520.942,72.155 519.894,71.106 C518.846,70.057 518.197,69.06 517.654,67.663 C517.244,66.606 516.755,65.022 516.623,62.101 C516.479,58.943 516.448,57.996 516.448,50 C516.448,42.003 516.479,41.056 516.623,37.899 C516.755,34.978 517.244,33.391 517.654,32.338 C518.197,30.938 518.846,29.942 519.894,28.894 C520.942,27.846 521.94,27.196 523.338,26.654 C524.393,26.244 525.979,25.756 528.898,25.623 C532.057,25.479 533.004,25.448 541,25.448 C548.997,25.448 549.943,25.479 553.102,25.623 C556.021,25.756 557.607,26.244 558.662,26.654 C560.06,27.196 561.058,27.846 562.106,28.894 C563.154,29.942 563.803,30.938 564.346,32.338 C564.756,33.391 565.244,34.978 565.378,37.899 C565.522,41.056 565.552,42.003 565.552,50 C565.552,57.996 565.522,58.943 565.378,62.101 M570.82,37.631 C570.674,34.438 570.167,32.258 569.425,30.349 C568.659,28.377 567.633,26.702 565.965,25.035 C564.297,23.368 562.623,22.342 560.652,21.575 C558.743,20.834 556.562,20.326 553.369,20.18 C550.169,20.033 549.148,20 541,20 C532.853,20 531.831,20.033 528.631,20.18 C525.438,20.326 523.257,20.834 521.349,21.575 C519.376,22.342 517.703,23.368 516.035,25.035 C514.368,26.702 513.342,28.377 512.574,30.349 C511.834,32.258 511.326,34.438 511.181,37.631 C511.035,40.831 511,41.851 511,50 C511,58.147 511.035,59.17 511.181,62.369 C511.326,65.562 511.834,67.743 512.574,69.651 C513.342,71.625 514.368,73.296 516.035,74.965 C517.703,76.634 519.376,77.658 521.349,78.425 C523.257,79.167 525.438,79.673 528.631,79.82 C531.831,79.965 532.853,80.001 541,80.001 C549.148,80.001 550.169,79.965 553.369,79.82 C556.562,79.673 558.743,79.167 560.652,78.425 C562.623,77.658 564.297,76.634 565.965,74.965 C567.633,73.296 568.659,71.625 569.425,69.651 C570.167,67.743 570.674,65.562 570.82,62.369 C570.966,59.17 571,58.147 571,50 C571,41.851 570.966,40.831 570.82,37.631"></path></g></g></g></svg></div><div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style=" color:#3897f0; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:550; line-height:18px;">View this post on Instagram</div></div><div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"><div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"></div></div><div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg)"></div></div><div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style=" width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"></div></div></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"></div></div></a><p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C4Gx_ESNJBe/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A post shared by Simon Bralee (@simonbralee)</a></p></div></blockquote><script async="" src="https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js"></script></div> </div></figure> <h2 class="wp-block-heading"><a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/hew-locke-what-have-we-here">4. Hew Locke: what have we here? At the British Museum</a></h2> <p>An artist-led intervention into the holdings of the British Museum, foregrounding the violent colonial history of items whose histories are normally presented either as neutral or in terms of being ‘saved’ by European scholars.</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">5.The Horizon of Khufu</h2> <p>Not really an exhibition, but an entertaining and educational immersive experience that points to new ways of doing history. More please.</p> <div class="wp-block-newspack-blocks-homepage-articles wpnbha show-image image-aligntop ts-4 is-3 is-landscape has-text-align-left" style=""> <style id="newspack-blocks-inline-css" type="text/css"> .wp-block-newspack-blocks-homepage-articles article .entry-title { font-size: 1.2em; } .wp-block-newspack-blocks-homepage-articles .entry-meta { display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; align-items: center; margin-top: 0.5em; } .wp-block-newspack-blocks-homepage-articles article .entry-meta { font-size: 0.8em; } .wp-block-newspack-blocks-homepage-articles article .avatar { height: 25px; width: 25px; } .wp-block-newspack-blocks-homepage-articles .post-thumbnail{ margin: 0; margin-bottom: 0.25em; } .wp-block-newspack-blocks-homepage-articles .post-thumbnail img { height: auto; width: 100%; } .wp-block-newspack-blocks-homepage-articles .post-thumbnail figcaption { margin-bottom: 0.5em; } .wp-block-newspack-blocks-homepage-articles p { margin: 0.5em 0; } </style> <div data-current-post-id="5327" data-posts=""> <article class="tag-egypt tag-exhibitions tag-vr category-design category-museums-and-exhibitions category-reviews type-post post-has-image" data-post-id="5135"> <figure class="post-thumbnail"> <a aria-hidden="true" href="https://rhakotis.com/2024/04/09/immersive-egypt/" rel="bookmark" tabindex="-1"> <img alt="Immersive Egypt" class="attachment-newspack-article-block-landscape-small size-newspack-article-block-landscape-small wp-post-image" data-attachment-id="2493" data-comments-opened="1" data-hero-candidate="1" data-image-caption="&lt;p&gt;From Tutankhamun: Golden Treasures of the Pharaoh &lt;/p&gt; " data-image-description="" data-image-meta='{"aperture":"1.8","credit":"","camera":"iPhone XR","caption":"","created_timestamp":"1572606195","copyright":"","focal_length":"4.25","iso":"400","shutter_speed":"0.025641025641026","title":"","orientation":"1"}' data-image-title="IMG_2195" data-large-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/img_2195.jpg?w=480" data-medium-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/img_2195.jpg?w=225" data-orig-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/img_2195.jpg" data-orig-size="480,640" data-permalink="https://rhakotis.com/2020/01/21/birds/img_2195/" decoding="async" height="300" sizes="(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px" src="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/img_2195.jpg?w=400&amp;h=300&amp;crop=1" srcset="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/img_2195.jpg?w=400&amp;h=300&amp;crop=1 400w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/img_2195.jpg?w=150&amp;h=113&amp;crop=1 150w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/img_2195.jpg?w=300&amp;h=225&amp;crop=1 300w" width="400"/> </a> </figure><!-- .featured-image --> <div class="entry-wrapper"> <h2 class="entry-title"><a href="https://rhakotis.com/2024/04/09/immersive-egypt/" rel="bookmark">Immersive Egypt</a></h2> <div class="entry-meta"> <a href="https://rhakotis.com/author/rhakotis/"><img alt="" class="avatar avatar-48" decoding="async" height="48" loading="lazy" src="https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5befc88035dda32d9693baf7f3d5c357e9e8ac22daaf488081832eb2ca6ccd07?s=48&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=G" srcset="https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5befc88035dda32d9693baf7f3d5c357e9e8ac22daaf488081832eb2ca6ccd07?s=48&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=G 1x, https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5befc88035dda32d9693baf7f3d5c357e9e8ac22daaf488081832eb2ca6ccd07?s=72&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=G 1.5x, https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5befc88035dda32d9693baf7f3d5c357e9e8ac22daaf488081832eb2ca6ccd07?s=96&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=G 2x, https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5befc88035dda32d9693baf7f3d5c357e9e8ac22daaf488081832eb2ca6ccd07?s=144&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=G 3x, https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5befc88035dda32d9693baf7f3d5c357e9e8ac22daaf488081832eb2ca6ccd07?s=192&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=G 4x" width="48"/></a> <span class="byline"> <span class="author-prefix">by</span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="https://rhakotis.com/author/rhakotis/">Rhakotis Magazine</a></span> </span><!-- .author-name --> <time class="entry-date published" datetime="2024-04-09T14:30:00">April 9, 2024</time><time class="updated" datetime="2024-04-07T06:55:47+00:00">April 7, 2024</time> </div><!-- .entry-meta --> </div><!-- .entry-wrapper --> </article> </div> </div> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">6. <a href="https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/entangled-pasts">Entangled Pasts, 1768 – Now at the Royal Academy of Arts</a></h2> <p>A necessary show, informed by the Royal Academy’s research into its colonial origins, this exhibition brought together important artists including Yinka Shonibare CBE and Hew Locke.</p> <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-instagram wp-block-embed-instagram"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> <div class="embed-instagram"><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/C7BP8ElNafA/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14" style=" background:#FFF; 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font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:550; line-height:18px;">View this post on Instagram</div></div><div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"><div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"></div></div><div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg)"></div></div><div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style=" width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"></div></div></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"></div></div></a><p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C7BP8ElNafA/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A post shared by Simon Bralee (@simonbralee)</a></p></div></blockquote><script async="" src="https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js"></script></div> </div></figure> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">7. <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/silk-roads?gad_source=1&amp;gbraid=0AAAAADPXikZ2sNdMKOUZy_igPRaDvmjDp&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQiAyc67BhDSARIsAM95Qzs9y5yTjBJh0ID6nsjk_EZugMqwTxcUFOQ2nfov4PTEZD1J2nU3exQaArM5EALw_wcB">Silk Roads at the British Museum</a></h2> <p>Exploring objects from across the silk roads. A British Museum blockbuster of the old school, a return to form akin to Disney’s reimagination of Jilly Cooper’s <em>Rivals</em>. Beguiling, expansive and seductive.</p> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">8. <a href="https://twotempleplace.org/exhibitions/the-glass-heart/">The Glass Heart: Art, Industry &amp; Collaboration at Two Temple Place</a></h2> <p>An exploration of how craftspeople reinvigorated the ancient art of glass, first perfected by the ancient Phoenicians. A bewitching exhibition.</p> <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-instagram wp-block-embed-instagram"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> <div class="embed-instagram"><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/C6USxTztEsF/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:580px; min-width:326px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:16px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C6USxTztEsF/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" background:#FFFFFF; line-height:0; padding:0 0; text-align:center; text-decoration:none; width:100%;" target="_blank"> <div style=" display: flex; flex-direction: row; align-items: center;"> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 40px; margin-right: 14px; width: 40px;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 100px;"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 60px;"></div></div></div><div style="padding: 19% 0;"></div> <div style="display:block; height:50px; margin:0 auto 12px; width:50px;"><svg height="50px" version="1.1" viewbox="0 0 60 60" width="50px" xmlns="https://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><g fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd" stroke="none" stroke-width="1"><g fill="#000000" transform="translate(-511.000000, -20.000000)"><g><path d="M556.869,30.41 C554.814,30.41 553.148,32.076 553.148,34.131 C553.148,36.186 554.814,37.852 556.869,37.852 C558.924,37.852 560.59,36.186 560.59,34.131 C560.59,32.076 558.924,30.41 556.869,30.41 M541,60.657 C535.114,60.657 530.342,55.887 530.342,50 C530.342,44.114 535.114,39.342 541,39.342 C546.887,39.342 551.658,44.114 551.658,50 C551.658,55.887 546.887,60.657 541,60.657 M541,33.886 C532.1,33.886 524.886,41.1 524.886,50 C524.886,58.899 532.1,66.113 541,66.113 C549.9,66.113 557.115,58.899 557.115,50 C557.115,41.1 549.9,33.886 541,33.886 M565.378,62.101 C565.244,65.022 564.756,66.606 564.346,67.663 C563.803,69.06 563.154,70.057 562.106,71.106 C561.058,72.155 560.06,72.803 558.662,73.347 C557.607,73.757 556.021,74.244 553.102,74.378 C549.944,74.521 548.997,74.552 541,74.552 C533.003,74.552 532.056,74.521 528.898,74.378 C525.979,74.244 524.393,73.757 523.338,73.347 C521.94,72.803 520.942,72.155 519.894,71.106 C518.846,70.057 518.197,69.06 517.654,67.663 C517.244,66.606 516.755,65.022 516.623,62.101 C516.479,58.943 516.448,57.996 516.448,50 C516.448,42.003 516.479,41.056 516.623,37.899 C516.755,34.978 517.244,33.391 517.654,32.338 C518.197,30.938 518.846,29.942 519.894,28.894 C520.942,27.846 521.94,27.196 523.338,26.654 C524.393,26.244 525.979,25.756 528.898,25.623 C532.057,25.479 533.004,25.448 541,25.448 C548.997,25.448 549.943,25.479 553.102,25.623 C556.021,25.756 557.607,26.244 558.662,26.654 C560.06,27.196 561.058,27.846 562.106,28.894 C563.154,29.942 563.803,30.938 564.346,32.338 C564.756,33.391 565.244,34.978 565.378,37.899 C565.522,41.056 565.552,42.003 565.552,50 C565.552,57.996 565.522,58.943 565.378,62.101 M570.82,37.631 C570.674,34.438 570.167,32.258 569.425,30.349 C568.659,28.377 567.633,26.702 565.965,25.035 C564.297,23.368 562.623,22.342 560.652,21.575 C558.743,20.834 556.562,20.326 553.369,20.18 C550.169,20.033 549.148,20 541,20 C532.853,20 531.831,20.033 528.631,20.18 C525.438,20.326 523.257,20.834 521.349,21.575 C519.376,22.342 517.703,23.368 516.035,25.035 C514.368,26.702 513.342,28.377 512.574,30.349 C511.834,32.258 511.326,34.438 511.181,37.631 C511.035,40.831 511,41.851 511,50 C511,58.147 511.035,59.17 511.181,62.369 C511.326,65.562 511.834,67.743 512.574,69.651 C513.342,71.625 514.368,73.296 516.035,74.965 C517.703,76.634 519.376,77.658 521.349,78.425 C523.257,79.167 525.438,79.673 528.631,79.82 C531.831,79.965 532.853,80.001 541,80.001 C549.148,80.001 550.169,79.965 553.369,79.82 C556.562,79.673 558.743,79.167 560.652,78.425 C562.623,77.658 564.297,76.634 565.965,74.965 C567.633,73.296 568.659,71.625 569.425,69.651 C570.167,67.743 570.674,65.562 570.82,62.369 C570.966,59.17 571,58.147 571,50 C571,41.851 570.966,40.831 570.82,37.631"></path></g></g></g></svg></div><div style="padding-top: 8px;"> <div style=" color:#3897f0; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:550; line-height:18px;">View this post on Instagram</div></div><div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"><div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"></div></div><div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg)"></div></div><div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style=" width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"></div></div></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"></div></div></a><p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C6USxTztEsF/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A post shared by Simon Bralee (@simonbralee)</a></p></div></blockquote><script async="" src="https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js"></script></div> </div></figure> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">9. <a href="https://www.saatchigallery.com/exhibition/if-not-now-when">If not now, when? Generations of Women in Sculpture in Britain 1960-2023 at the Saatchi Gallery</a> </h2> <p>A genuinely epochal show highlighting a vital loose group of artists working in a field of media and inspired by various ideas of which the ancient was just one ingredient in a heady roux of creativity. </p> <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-instagram wp-block-embed-instagram"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> <div class="embed-instagram"><blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/C25gCyctIaV/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" data-instgrm-version="14" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:580px; min-width:326px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:16px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C25gCyctIaV/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" background:#FFFFFF; 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transform: translateX(16px) translateY(-4px) rotate(30deg)"></div></div><div style="margin-left: auto;"> <div style=" width: 0px; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-right: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(16px);"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; flex-grow: 0; height: 12px; width: 16px; transform: translateY(-4px);"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4; border-left: 8px solid transparent; transform: translateY(-4px) translateX(8px);"></div></div></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: column; flex-grow: 1; justify-content: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; width: 224px;"></div> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 4px; flex-grow: 0; height: 14px; width: 144px;"></div></div></a><p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C25gCyctIaV/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;" target="_blank">A post shared by Simon Bralee (@simonbralee)</a></p></div></blockquote><script async="" src="https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js"></script></div> </div></figure> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">10. <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/legion-life-roman-army">Legion: Life in the Roman Army at the British Museum</a></h2> <p>Full of fascinating objects, it was let down by a lack of confidence in its own story.</p> <div class="wp-block-newspack-blocks-homepage-articles wpnbha show-image image-aligntop ts-4 is-3 is-landscape has-text-align-left" style=""> <div data-current-post-id="5327" data-posts=""> <article class="category-reviews type-post post-has-image" data-post-id="5120"> <figure class="post-thumbnail"> <a aria-hidden="true" href="https://rhakotis.com/2024/03/05/legion-life-in-the-roman-army/" rel="bookmark" tabindex="-1"> <img alt="Legion: life in the Roman Army" class="attachment-newspack-article-block-landscape-intermediate size-newspack-article-block-landscape-intermediate wp-post-image" data-attachment-id="5125" data-comments-opened="1" data-hero-candidate="1" data-image-caption="" data-image-description="" data-image-meta='{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"1"}' data-image-title="IMG_2611" data-large-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/img_2611.jpeg?w=580" data-medium-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/img_2611.jpeg?w=300" data-orig-file="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/img_2611.jpeg" data-orig-size="640,640" data-permalink="https://rhakotis.com/2024/03/05/legion-life-in-the-roman-army/img_2611/" decoding="async" height="450" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" src="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/img_2611.jpeg?w=600&amp;h=450&amp;crop=1" srcset="https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/img_2611.jpeg?w=600&amp;h=450&amp;crop=1 600w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/img_2611.jpeg?w=150&amp;h=113&amp;crop=1 150w, https://rhakotis.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/img_2611.jpeg?w=300&amp;h=225&amp;crop=1 300w" width="600"/> </a> </figure><!-- .featured-image --> <div class="entry-wrapper"> <h2 class="entry-title"><a href="https://rhakotis.com/2024/03/05/legion-life-in-the-roman-army/" rel="bookmark">Legion: life in the Roman Army</a></h2> <div class="entry-meta"> <a href="https://rhakotis.com/author/rhakotis/"><img alt="" class="avatar avatar-48" decoding="async" height="48" loading="lazy" src="https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5befc88035dda32d9693baf7f3d5c357e9e8ac22daaf488081832eb2ca6ccd07?s=48&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=G" srcset="https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5befc88035dda32d9693baf7f3d5c357e9e8ac22daaf488081832eb2ca6ccd07?s=48&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=G 1x, https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5befc88035dda32d9693baf7f3d5c357e9e8ac22daaf488081832eb2ca6ccd07?s=72&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=G 1.5x, https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5befc88035dda32d9693baf7f3d5c357e9e8ac22daaf488081832eb2ca6ccd07?s=96&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=G 2x, https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5befc88035dda32d9693baf7f3d5c357e9e8ac22daaf488081832eb2ca6ccd07?s=144&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=G 3x, https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/5befc88035dda32d9693baf7f3d5c357e9e8ac22daaf488081832eb2ca6ccd07?s=192&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=G 4x" width="48"/></a> <span class="byline"> <span class="author-prefix">by</span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="https://rhakotis.com/author/rhakotis/">Rhakotis Magazine</a></span> </span><!-- .author-name --> <time class="entry-date published" datetime="2024-03-05T14:31:00">March 5, 2024</time><time class="updated" datetime="2024-03-04T18:44:13+00:00">March 4, 2024</time> </div><!-- .entry-meta --> </div><!-- .entry-wrapper --> </article> </div> </div> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Extra: <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/yoko-ono">Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind at Tate Modern</a></h2> <p>Sometimes you eat the art, sometimes the art eats you. At this show, I embodied sacks, climbed ladders, danced and entertained the exhibition attendees; unintentionally, as a result, becoming an artwork now owned by the Ono Corporation.</p> <p class="has-accent-background-color has-background has-large-font-size">What was your favourite exhibition this year? 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