I enjoy the sunrise – it’s a very special time of the day. Anyway, I’ve been reading Leonard Cottrell’s classic book on Egyptology ‘The Lost Pharaohs’ and I came across something about the sunrise that I found very moving. It’s in a hymn to Ra, the Sun God, the only god in the huge pantheon of Egyptian deities approved by the highly controversial Pharaoh, Akhenaton of the 18th Dynasty, about 2 300 years ago. He turned religion on its head by founding the first monotheistic faith. Part of the hymn is about the sunrise and it goes like this:
“The whole earth does its work, all cattle rest in their pastures, the trees and herbage grow green, the birds fly up from their nests, their wings are raised in praise of Ra, all goats leap to their feet, and all flying and fluttering things live when thou has shone upon them.”*
I’m sure it looks and sounds as good in the original hieroglyphics, but this is good enough for me. I’m very fortunate, our cottage faces directly south, but my study’s main window faces east, this means that every morning (or most mornings) the sun comes up through the trees and over the neighbour’s roof, straight into my study. I sit at my desk in the early morning sun and now I can think of Akhenaton and the hymn to Ra.
And … from the distant past into the imminent future. This is a story for the ‘been there, done that, got the T-shirt’ brigade. A company in California is accepting deposits for holidays in the first hotel in space. The inaugural trip is scheduled for 2022 in the Aurora Space Hotel, which will take four guests and two crew for a 12-day flip around the Earth at about 300 kilometres up. They will be in zero gravity and circling the Earth once every 90 minutes, which means that every 24 hours they will see 16 sunrises (I hope they think of Akhenaton and the hymn to Ra) and 24 sunsets.** It sounds like fun and surely beats the average package tour – and it’s a snip at about R140-million per passenger – better start saving.
… And an elephant story, well, sort of. At least one country, New Zealand, is taking the general ban on elephant ivory very seriously. A university professor who emigrated from England to New Zealand last year, has just received the rest of the family goods that arrived by sea, or at least most of them. On the orders of the Department of Conservation the antique family piano, made in 1895, had had its ivory piano keys stripped at Auckland harbour. The professor apparently did not have the right paperwork for the piano and particularly those keys, and to add insult to injury he has now been presented with a bill for the work of removal.*** His comment is not available.
*Cottrell, Leonard, The Lost Pharaohs, Pan, London, 1962.
**The Week: The Best of the British and Foreign Media.
***Save the Elephants News Service.
