Postaday2013 - Sounds like wish

7 September, 20138 December, 2019

Hidden

Tomb of Queen Hatsepshut, Valley of the Kings, Egypt, c1941 — Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, Valley of the Kings, Egypt, c1941

Hidden behind tall cliffs on the west bank of the Nile is the Valley of the Kings, Biban el-Muluk, in Luxor.

And trying to hide in the rock face of the limestone cliff is the temple of Queen Hatshepsut, known as Djeser Djeseru (Holy of Holies or Sacred of Sacreds), which is the main building of the mortuary temple complex at Deir el-Bahri. Hatshepsut ruled from 1473-1458 BC, one of the few women to rule as Pharaoh.

Excavations at the complex began in the 1890s and continued until 1936. There seems to have been some archaeological work in progress when this photo was taken during WWII. New photos available online (for example here), compared with the one above reveal some reconstruction since the 1940s.

The temple complex is a symmetrical structure, 30 metres tall and the length of about two and a half football fields. On the lower terraces there were gardens; fossilised remains of trees have been found lining the walkway to the temple, fragrant incense trees which Queen Hatshepsut had brought back from Punt (south-east of Egypt, possibly present-day Somalia). About 100 colossal statues of her as a sphinx guarded the entrance, and more massive statues of the queen wearing male clothing and a false beard adorned the temple.

The black and white photo above comes from my father’s WWII photo album.

The colour photo below is of statues of Hatshepsut in the Hatshepsut Room in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Large Kneeling Statue of Hatshepsut Egypt, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ailsa came across a few strange hidden things in her travels and posted photos of them on her blog, then asked us to find some things hiding in other parts of the world. Ailsa comes up with fantastic prompts for photos and blogging, and I really appreciate the ideas. Check out her post!

4 September, 2013

Pink

Marianne has challenged me to find a photo of something pink this month. I wasn’t keen because I’ve had three sons so I’ve never had to buy pink stuff, and I almost never wear pink myself (give me red or turquoise). However, this afternoon I drove past this line of trees near my house which have recently burst into bloom, looking spectacular in straight masses. They’re minutes from my house, so I stopped and snapped them. When I moved closer to the flowers (go to the subject, don’t zoom in – that’s what I’ve been told) I was tickled to see red stalks and centres. Check out the photo in the header.

Marianne requests we spread news about great blogs we’ve read. One I’ve commented on recently is Wholeyjeans, where Jean has a very interesting look at environmental destruction and adds a poem that I had to read twice; it was meaningful and not beyond me (as much poetry is…).

I also commented on Ici & Là Nature Pictures, a blog about the beauty of France seen by biking and walking. I commented simply because I love France almost as much as I love Australia.

17 August, 20138 December, 2019

Ailsa’s travel photo challenge: Big

Think ‘big’. Now think ‘Egypt’. Perhaps you’re having visions of big protests in the streets, and as I’ve just heard five minutes ago on the evening news: ‘Another day of rage and bloodshed’.

Perhaps you’re thinking of other big Egyptian things: pyramids, massive pharaonic statues, or the sphinx. But here’s something else that’s big in Egypt: the citadel in Cairo, a 12th-century fortification against the Crusaders, and the mosque on its summit built centuries later by Muhammad Ali between 1824 and 1848.

In 1801, Muhammad Ali was appointed by the Ottoman Sultan in Constantinople to be governor in Egypt. But he had bigger plans.

In 1805 he began eliminating the Mamluks, his main competition, a warrior group who for centuries had worked for the Ottoman Empire and the Sultan. In 1811, Muhammad Ali invited the Mamluk leaders to a ceremony in his palace in the citadel, and as they were leaving he had them massacred. In the following days large numbers of Mamluks were killed in the city. Years later, in 1824, he razed the Mamluk buildings in the citadel and in 1830 began building his mosque in the style of the Ottomans in Turkey. The building, with its one main cupola, four smaller and four half-cupolas, resembles the Turkish Blue Mosque. On his death in 1849 Muhammad Ali was buried under it.

Next to it in this photo is one of the Mamluk mosques that remained in the citadel, the Mosque of Mahmud Pasha built in 1567 in the Mamluk architectural tradition, with a pencil-shaped minaret characteristic of Ottoman mosques.

Muhammad Ali Mosque and Mosque of Mahmud Pasha on the Citadel, Cairo

The painting below by David Roberts in 1839 shows the citadel before Muhammad Ali’s mosque was built; it looks quite different from the photo, but the title on the painting tells us it’s the same place:

Even the painting evokes something big! We can see the grandeur of the citadel viewed from above a parapet and also a sense of the size of the structures when compared with the Arab groups dotted in the foreground.

But return to the photo and take a moment to look at the street scene. Peace. It will come again.

Please have a look at Ailsa’s blog post because it was her BIG idea!

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10 August, 2013

Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Architecture

My father was born 93 years ago today, so I knew I had to post some photos from his album. I found these two in his collection of images from Heliopolis, Cairo in 1941/42. They show the racecourse built as part of the plan for the model suburb of Heliopolis, designed by the Belgian industrialist, Baron Empain. The baron had the idea of raising a garden city in the desert, to be a place of luxury and leisure for mostly European visitors and residents. Heliopolis is now a part of greater Cairo. Empain began his development of Heliopolis in 1905 and continued to build it over the next couple of decades. The racecourse was built in 1910.

A colour image of the building shows its deteriorated state in 2011, though it has since become Merryland, an area of shops, cafés and gardens. However, the colour photo also shows how beautiful the detail of the architecture was.

Racecourse, Heliopolis, Cairo, c1941 — Racecourse, track side, Heliopolis, Cairo, c1941

Racecourse, street side, Heliopolis, Cairo, c1941 — Services Club, formally the Royal Pavilion at the Racecourse, Heliopolis, Cairo, c1941

Check out the beautiful photos of architecture on Ailsa’s blog pages.

6 August, 201327 August, 2018

Foreshadow

This is an account of connections observed when a translator, or any writer, is absorbed in a story.

This morning as I searched through a Wikipedia entry about One Thousand and One Nights for the use of a particular phrase, I came across the sub-heading ‘Foreshadowing’, which, I learned, is a literary device used by an author to hint at certain plot developments such as a disastrous end for the hero. Ah, what a coincidence, I thought, having just posted a blog entry in response to the WordPress weekly photo challenge for which the prompt was foreshadow. Clicking on the highlighted term ‘foreshadowing’ on the Wikipedia page took me to another page where I saw an illustration by Arthur Rackham of the Rhine maidens warning Siegfried of a curse and looming disaster.

The Rhinemaidens warn Siegfried, Arthur Rackham, 1911 (With thanks to attemptedbloggery.blogspot.com.au for this superior image)

Ah, I thought again, what a coincidence! Just a few days ago, reading up on the Symbolism of artists and writers of the 1890s, all the better to understand the story I was translating that day, I came across a painting in a large book about nineteenth-century art, a work by Albert Pinkham Ryder called Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens. It surprised me at the time because it virtually depicts a particular detail in the story I was working on, Useless Virtue (L’Inutile Vertu) by Jean Lorrain (1895). Yet another coincidence. Here’s the painting from Wikimedia Commons:

Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens, Albert Pinkham Ryder

The scene with Siegfried and the maidens comes from Wagner’s opera, Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods), which inspired many painters and writers of the 1890s who produced stories and paintings that transport the reader or viewer, as Wagner did, to a mystical land where symbols foreshadow an unhappy destiny for the hero. There is often a sunless sky or a glowing moon, a mythical natural landscape of forests, mists, bodies of water, and nymphs – often in groups – who seductively invite the hero to join them.

In a few paragraphs from Useless Virtue, Jean Lorrain could have been writing about Wagner’s Rhine maidens. The hero, Bertram, even wears a winged helmet like Siegfried in the paintings above. The story is a gloomy one and quite different from Götterdämmerung, but there’s a moral at the end: there is punishment for a man who avoids temptation all his life! I enjoyed translating the vivid imagery, partly because this week I’ve stumbled across these few connections to the story. Vive la coïncidence!

4 August, 20133 May, 2018

Ailsa’s travel photo challenge: Wild

“Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr Heathcliff’s dwelling, ‘Wuthering’ being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there, at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind, blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few, stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun.”

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

Wuthering is the word that played in my head one day in May as I walked along the cliffs beside the Mediterranean, in winds strong enough to blow me over the edge. I was alone up here for half an hour until defeated by howling gusts. The wilder the wind blew, the more scenes I recalled from Brontë novels where heroines wander in windy places. This isn’t the English moors, but these cliffs gave me nonetheless a Gothic taste of desolation with a hint of fear. At least on the moors there is no jagged edge to tumble over.

Schist cliffs, Mediterranean, between Colliour and Port-Vendres — Schist cliffs, Mediterranean, between Collioure and Port-Vendres, France

Schist cliffs between Collioure and Port-Vendres, France

Before you leave, click here to see Ailsa’s photos of places where the wild things are.

19 July, 201327 August, 2018

Ailsa’s travel photo challenge: Tilted

Feluccas are traditional motorless boats that have been used for transport on the Nile River since biblical times. From the photo below you’d have to agree that they are graceful whether their masts are tilted into the wind or tilted at rest on the beach. The design is simple, a small wooden boat with a few cushioned seats around the sides, a table in the middle, and sails made from cotton or other natural fibres.

Today feluccas carry tourists and locals on peaceful pleasure boat trips along the Nile. This photo is from my father’s World War two album and was taken in 1941 or 1942. Aren’t the large creamy triangular sails ideal in black and white photography!

Ailsa came up with this theme for a photo challenge. Check out an amazing tilted tree and other photos here.

11 July, 2013

I spy with my little eye

Marianne from East of Málaga asks
what can I spy
and what is my point of view?
I spy with my little eye
a window I can’t see through:

One of the stained glass windows by Leonard French in the National Library of Australia — One of 16 stained glass windows by Leonard French in the National Library of Australia

Bottom panel of a stained glass window by Leonard French, National Library of Australia

The glass is about 20cm thick, hand-chiselled and set into pewter-coloured concrete. The artist is an amazing Australian, Leonard French, who made 16 of these windows for the National Library in 1967. They are all visible from the foyer of the library through the interior plain glass walls of the café and the bookshop. The windows on the side of the building receiving the morning sun are in warm colours, those you see here decorating the walls of the café. On the other side of the foyer, the afternoon sun side, the colours are cool blues and purples filling two walls of the bookshop. French had a philosophy that art should be accessible to the masses and not just for viewing, a philosophy which makes me happy every time I sit at a window table in the café (I’m a little less happy when they’re all taken.). The chiselled edges of the glass are not sharp. I know this because I like to stroke it. The sun shining on the glass makes it glow and makes it warm to touch, but not hot. A spirit-lifter.

As part of the photo challenge, Marianne suggests we recommend two blogs. Two come to mind immediately: The Wanderlust Gene and Covetotop. Their blogs don’t just have interesting photos of faraway places, but more importantly for me they are well-written. I’m always on the lookout for readable writers.

30 June, 2013

Ailsa's photo challenge: Sculpture

For a couple of hours every afternoon in the sculpture garden at the National Gallery of Australia, an artistic mist drifts over a pond, hiding the water and reeds and reflections and ducks and sixty-six sculpted heads.

Heads from the North and duck, Sculpture Garden, National Gallery of Australia (NGA)

When the mist clears it’s an uncomfortable experience to circle the pond, looking at the heads facing in many directions.

Dadang Christanto, an Indonesian-born sculptor now living in Australia, created Heads from the North in 2004 as a memorial to an Indonesian military coup in which his father died.

Beside the pond there’s a restaurant in a marquis. I couldn’t eat there.

Sculpture Garden restaurant, National Gallery of Australia — Sculpture Garden restaurant, NGA

Though I frequent the sculpture garden, I have, until today, always skipped quickly past this pond and over to the sculptures I understand, those I would have in my own garden (if I could), like Rodin’s Burghers of Calais. But this afternoon I twisted my own arm and stopped to look into the eyes of these drowning men. Now I see, in a small way, what a task it must have been for Dadang Christanto to create this work of art to honour his father.

Ailsa came up with this great theme of Sculpture. Take a look at her photos here.

23 June, 201327 August, 2018

Ailsa’s travel photo challenge: Ripples

Ailsa is looking for photos of ripples.

Yesterday I was on Hyams Beach in Jervis Bay, NSW, when I was taken aback by this rippling rock erosion that resembles skulls:

And the ripples led to a flow, crossing Hyams Beach, one of the whitest beaches in the world; its fine white grains are mostly composed of quartz. In the distance that’s my husband again, as he was in my last post:

And this morning in the icy atmosphere of a highland reserve, I saw the rippling Yarrunga Creek rushing through heavy fog towards Fitzroy Falls:

Again, the ripples led to a flow and then a plummet a short distance further on where the water tumbled over the edge; there was just enough visibility around the waterfall to take this photo. The rest of the space was white, like standing in cloud.

I remembered seeing a recent photo of these falls on another blog, where Christopher captured the water in sunlight. : http://christopheryardin.com/2013/06/17/travel-theme-flow/

It’s worth a look!