A.R. Van Halleorg

Photograph by Ed Yourdon. Visit his Flickr Photostream and read about his photo.

I’ve decided to write about Imhotep’s creation, because I believe it is one of the greatest things to ever have happened to architecture as a whole. He was the master of innovation and pushed the limits beyond anything of his time. I first heard about this pyramid while watching Engineering an Empire from the History Channel, which also includes topics about Senusret’s Nubian Superfortresses, Hatshepsut’s Mortuary Temple at Dier el-Bahri, Akhenaten’s city at Amarna, and the temples of Ramesses the Great at Abu Simbel.

When Imhotep set out to build Djoser’s Burial Complex, working with stone was very very new. In fact, he was the first architect to use it on a grand scale, much like other surrounding nations were doing with mud bricks. No one else in the world was making buildings out of stone yet.

The surprise about this pyramid if you aren’t familiar with it, is that a pyramid was not initially what the plan was. It was meant to be the grandest Mastaba ever. Imhotep began with the underground, building a vertical shaft under the ground and making the room where the Pharaoh would be buried, another shaft for how he’d be brought down to the chamber, and then a series of rooms was made for his home in the afterlife. A secondary portion of underground rooms was created as well. The northern one housed the mummified body of the Pharaoh, and the south housed the mummified organs of the Pharoah.

Over 10,000 men and women were hired to work on the funeral complex. Paid with food, beer, clothing and tax breaks.

Imhotep revolutionized the entire idea of architecture as it was known. When Djoser’s Mastaba was completed and the Pharaoh still wasn’t dead (they had to build until the Pharaoh died), he continued building upwards, adding a total of 5 extra Mastabas on top of the first, and building further outwards to add to the complex. The result was the first pyramid to ever be made in Egypt. Not the perfection that was obtained with the pyramid of Khufu, but the very first, which made it even greater.

I could go into further detail but you really should watch it yourself in Engineering an Empire, I can’t possibly do the documentary any justice with my description.

Enjoy!

Here are some resources :

Wikipedia : Pyramid of Djoser
Wikipedia : Imhotep
Tour Egypt dot Net : Imhotep, Doctor, Architect, High Priest, Scribe and Vizier to King Djoser
National Geographic : Step Pyramid of Djoser

Not sure about the rest of you, but I’m the kind of person who works best with sound in the background, so it doesn’t feel too quiet. Most use music, I use documentaries. Lately, I’ve been watching one in particular called Mummies Revealed.

In it, they take a cadaver and using ingredients from Egypt, Libya, etc, they mummify the body to find out how the Egyptians went about mummification. After 35 days, the body looked much like the mummies of Egypt did. So time wasn’t the factor in their distorted image.

In another place, a cache of mummified royalty was found.

In yet another, a tomb was left unfinished when the Pharaoh died before it’s completion. On the walls, you can see the red grid lain out to show the artist where to draw all the images…An outline of a figure that was later drawn smaller because it was the size of a god instead of a mortal…partially chiseled images which halfway down the wall weren’t complete. The day the Pharaoh died.

Further on, they show Lenin mummifed in Russia. The best maintained mummy who now is either buried or will be buried, since the Russian government no longer pays for those services.

It was a very enjoyable documentary, so I thought I’d put the embeds here. If they no longer work by the time you read this (After August 24th, 2009), let me know by commenting. I’m trying to find out who exactly sells the DVD for it, so others can go ahead and buy it if they want to.

If you love mummies, you’ll love this.

Mummies Revealed Part 1 of 6

Mummies Revealed Part 2 of 6

Mummies Revealed Part 3 of 6

Mummies Revealed Part 4 of 6

Mummies Revealed Part 5 of 6

Mummies Revealed Part 6 of 6

Alexander the Great exerted his influence with a legend that claimed his body imbued caretakers with his power.

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For all his power in life, Alexander the Great could not control the fate of his body after death.

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A video from National Geographic’s website. It’s in 2 short videos. Not very long, but kind of interesting.

Religious rituals carried Cleopatra’s message: I am a deity, Caesar is a deity, and our child is the product of a divine union.

There’s more to Cleopatra than the Romans would have you believe.

Photograph by Linda Reynolds/Flying Wing Films

Gotta love RSS feeds, I found this really random one earlier from a while back, not sure when it was posted but anyways!…

Before the rest, there’s an interesting link about this and the documentary that it comes from. Check out the link here.

So this is the stealth fighter that was designed during the second world war, but it arrived too late to make it to production, probably a good thing.  According to tests that were done, this was the result they gave :

The team tested the re-created Nazi jet against World War II-style radar. With its radar-resistant design and 600-mile-an-hour (970-kilometer-an-hour) speed, the team concluded, the Ho 2-29 would have allowed British antiaircraft forces only 9 minutes to respond, versus 18 with a conventional World War II fighter.

For more images visit this National Geographic News page

I’ve come across quite a few different portions of the web in the past while trying to understand the different things about Cleopatra VII and Hatshepsut.

For those of you who don’t recognize one or the other, Cleopatra VII was the Caesar one. And Hatshepsut was the female king.

Now, what I’ve been dying to find out since I’ve seen all the magazines with Hatshepsut plastered all over their covers for history, is…

Which of the two do you think is most influential and why? If you aren’t sure. Could you let me know what common ideas you know of based on hearing either name?

Personally, I’ve read about a few common misconceptions about Cleopatra…like being a slut to Rome. Many forget Cleopatra VII was one of the leading minds of Egypt during her reign. She had good knowledge of architecture and science and even believed to have been a bit of a scientist herself…Many would actually come to her to be able to speak with a like mind. Hatshepsut also wasn’t just a female king. Her mortuary temple – The Temple of Hatshepsut in Deir El-Bahri is known even more than the monuments of Ramses II.

Anyways…rambling. Let me know what you think about either?

I was just watching this documentary earlier called Aftermath on the History Channel. I’d get totally into the very core of the documentary, but this is one you really should see for yourself. I couldn’t even begin to give it justice by explaining all that it encompassed. Basically, the whole thing is to show how awesomely capable the planet is at rejuvenating itself back to it’s once majestic status, before Human’s destroyed most of it. Within 150 years…we barely leave any trace. All that to say the world doesn’t need us. We need it. We only kill it.

Find out more about Aftermath : The World After Humans from the History Channel website

The find, down crumbling steps in sand covered desert rock, debunks a prior understanding by archaeologists that the site dates back only to 12th dynasty pharaoh Senusret II who ruled 4,000 years ago

Read original article on Reuters

More to come up about the mass amounts of discoveries in Egypt over the last 5 years!

So they’ve discovered that the bust of Nefertiti has a second layer. Now my common sense tends to kick in at this point in the game and likes to state the obvious possibility. The artist could have done a ‘rough’ version of the bust initially to get a quick sketch of his Queen so as not to waste her precious time and then proceeded to re-layer it in the final material that he would paint.

I’d state more on the ideals of her age, but honestly I’m not entirely sure how old she got to be. I’ll look it up and update this post later.

Nefertiti’s Real, Wrinkled Face Found in Famous Bust? – National Geographic
Nefertiti Bust Has Two Faces, Radiology Reveals – Discovery News

Mathematician, chemist, philosopher; Often times when we think of the famous Egyptian ruler, we think of her relationship with Marc Antony, her ‘drug use’, and her promiscuity, but according to an article I read yesterday on Discovery’s website, it may appear that this woman may have been more of a scientist standing tall among other scientists of her time. She took on large building projects; much like Pharaoh Hatshepsut did in her time (The Temple of Hatshepsut, among the most famous).

An excerpt from : Cleopatra: Scientist, Not Seductress? By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

El Daly attributes the first Arab account of Cleopatra as a scientist to Al-Masudi, who died in 956 A.D. In his book “Muruj,” Al-Masudi wrote of Cleopatra, “She was a sage, a philosopher who elevated the ranks of scholars and enjoyed their company. She also wrote books on medicine, charms and cosmetics, in addition to many other books ascribed to her which are known to those who practice medicine.”

Medieval Arab writers such as Al-Bakri, Yaqut, Ibn Al-Ibri, Ibn Duqmaq and Al-Maqrizi also wrote how impressed they were by the queen’s building projects. In fact, El Daly believes the earliest Arabic book to mention Cleopatra, a history of Egypt by the Egyptian bishop John of Nikiou, says the queen’s building projects in Alexandria were “the like of which had never been seen before.”

Yet another Arab historian, Ibn Ab Al-Hakam, credits one of the greatest structures of the ancient world, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, to Cleopatra.

In an interview with Radio Netherlands, El Daly said, “It was not just a lighthouse to guide ships, it was a magnificent telescope and it had a huge lens that could burn the oncoming ships of enemies that were going to attack Egypt.”