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scinerds:

Oldest Pharaoh Carvings Discovered in Egypt

The oldest-known representations of a pharaoh are carved on rocks near the Nile River in southern Egypt, researchers report.

Look closely — standing on the top of this boat is a crowned figure who may represent Narmer, the first pharaoh to rule unified Egypt. Oarsmen propel the boat along. Credit: Stan Hendrickx, John Coleman Darnell & Maria Carmela Gatto

The carvings were first observed and recorded in the 1890s, but only rediscovered in 2008. In them, a white-crowned figure travels in ceremonial processions and on sickle-shaped boats, perhaps representing an early tax-collecting tour of Egypt.

The scenes place the age of the carvings between 3200 B.C. and 3100 B.C., researchers report in the December issue of the journal Antiquity. During that time, Egypt was transitioning into the dynastic rule of the pharaohs.

“It’s really the end of prehistory and the beginning of history,” in Egypt, study researcher Maria Gatto told LiveScience.

Scenes of a ruler

Gatto, a Yale University researcher, led the archaeologists who rediscovered the site in 2008. Archaeologist Archibald Sayce first sketched the carvings, found at the village Nag el-Hamdulab, in the 1890s, but the only record of Sayce’s discovery was a partial illustration published in a book.

The site was then forgotten until the 1960s, when Egyptian archaeologist Labib Habachi took photographs of the carvings, which he never published. It wasn’t until one of these photos resurfaced in 2008 that Gatto and her team started searching for the site, which many people assumed had been destroyed in the interim.

Some of the carvings have indeed been vandalized since the 1960s, but Gatto and her team found the etched rocks in a natural amphitheater west of Nag el-Hamdulab. They then compared the carvings to Habachi’s 1960s photographs.

There are seven carvings scattered throughout the area, and many are tableaus of boats flanked by prisoners. One of the most extensive carvings shows five boats, one of which houses the white-crowned pharaoh, his fan-bearer and two standard-bearers. Falcon and bull insignia on the pharaoh’s boat symbolize royalty, further emphasized by the four men with ropes standing alongside that boat, likely towing it along the Nile.

A hieroglyph labels this scene a “nautical following,” a likely reference to the following of Horus, Gatto said. In this periodic royal jaunt across Egypt, the pharaoh cemented power and collected taxes. Thus, not only do the carvings represent the oldest known vision of a pharaoh, they may also show the oldest Egyptian tax campaign.

Other carvings include a scene of people and dogs herding cattle and a cluster of animals, two of them apparently some mythical part-lion beasts. The other animals are familiar native African species, including two ostriches, an ibex and a bull. Another scene shows the brewing and drinking of beer, perhaps a reference to a festival.

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vicemag:

VIGILANTES ARE TAGGING EGYPT’S SEXUAL HARASSERS WITH SPRAY PAINT

Despite worldwide publicity and campaigning, the approach to actually solving the sexual harassment epidemic in Egypt has sadly been a pretty apathetic one, with police giving less than a gram of shit about the situation, leaving street perverts to grope away until their hands are content. So it’s perhaps no surprise that anti-harassment groups in Cairo have gone vigilante, taking what’s left of the law into their own hands and patroling the streets to fight the harassment epidemic themselves. 

We first heard about “Be A Man,” one of the more radical anti-harassment campaigns, from a story on NPR. The members of the group patroled during the recent Eid al-Adha festival celebrations, armed with cans of black and white spray paint, attacking, pinning down, and scarlet-lettering the shit out of grabbers and gropers with the words “I Am a Harasser.” Mostly men themselves, the activists wore matching fluoro jackets with “Harassment Prevention” scrawled across their backs in Arabic. I spoke to Muhammad Taimoor, leader and founder of the campaign, about their controversial tactics during the festival.

VICE: Hey Muhammad. Can you tell me a little bit about what’s been going on in the past few weeks?
Muhammad Taimoor: Yeah, we’ve been working against harassment with our campaign, “Be a Man.” A big problem here is that women-only carriages on the subway are being invaded by men who are then harassing the women onboard, so we’ve been working against that. It was Eid a couple of weeks ago and we were expecting that would be a particularly bad time for harassment. In the three days of Eid that I participated in, we caught about 300 cases of harassment—that’s 100 every day.   

Wow, good job. How do you “catch” these cases?
Our tactics this time were pretty violent—a lot of people were offended because they didn’t like what we were doing. Basically, we attacked the harassers and spray-painted “I Am a Harasser” on anyone we caught in the act. The police weren’t at all supportive of what we were trying to do and they clearly weren’t ready to keep Egyptian women safe during Eid, so we did all the work on our own. 

Why did you choose tagging with spray-paint as a tactic?
Because, in our society, a girl blames herself when she gets harassed. When she speaks out to her family about it, they blame her. Sometimes they prevent her from going to school or going outside because they think that sexual harassment is the girl’s problem, not the harasser’s problem. So, when our group attacks the harasser, the girl feels confident in herself. She feels like she was right, she feels like the street is supporting her. She’ll have the confidence to walk in the street without fear and she won’t be afraid to speak out if it happens again.

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Severed Hands Discovered in Ancient Egypt Palace

A team of archaeologists excavating a palace in the ancient city of Avaris, in Egypt, has made a gruesome discovery.

The archaeologists have unearthed the skeletons of 16 human hands buried in four pits. Two of the pits, located in front of what is believed to be a throne room, hold one hand each. Two other pits, constructed at a slightly later time in an outer space of the palace, contain the 14 remaining hands.

They are all right hands; there are no lefts.

“Most of the hands are quite large and some of them are very large,” Manfred Bietak, project and field director of the excavations, told LiveScience.

The finds, made in the Nile Delta northeast of Cairo, date back about 3,600 years to a time when the Hyksos, a people believed to be originally from northern Canaan, controlled part of Egypt and made their capital at Avaris a location known today as Tell el-Daba. At the time the hands were buried, the palace was being used by one of the Hyksos rulers, King Khayan.

fotojournalismus:

Egyptians gather for a protest in downtown Cairo to denounce the military’s attacks on women and to call for an immediate end to the violence against protesters on Tuesday, December 20, 2011. Around 10,000 women marched through central Cairo demanding Egypt’s ruling military step down Tuesday in an unprecedented show of outrage over soldiers who dragged women by the hair and stomped on them, and stripped one half-naked in the street during a fierce crackdown on activists the past week.

[Credit : Khaled Desouki / AFP / Getty Images]

The Middle East is Ripe for A Scientific Revolution

The Arab Spring puts the Middle East in a position to become a scientific powerhouse, but it needs help, says the US science envoy to the region

Scientific research in the Arabian, Persian and Turkish Middle East lags behind that of the west. Of course, there are individual scientists who produce world-class research and there are institutions and nations which make significant contributions in certain fields. Publication and citation indicators show some encouraging trends. But naturally one asks: “Why have Arab, Persian and Turkish scientists as a group underperformed compared with their colleagues in the west or with those rising in the east?”

It is simplistic to say that there is a single cause, such as a (false) dichotomy between faith and reason. Muslims are no different from anyone else; there is no ethnic or geographic monopoly on intelligence. Muslims in Spain, north Africa and Arabia were at the peak of a sophisticated civilisation when Christian Europe was in the Dark Ages.

I think the answer lies in the recent history of the Arab, Persian and Turkish world. Consider what happened in the past century. First there was colonisation by western empires, which installed class and caste systems from outside. The result was huge populations of illiterate peasants. Illiteracy reached nearly 50 per cent, and among women it was as high as 80 per cent in many countries. When colonisation ended after the second world war, these countries looked to the superpowers for help, first west then east. And when the cold war ended, there was only one place left to look: up. That search for answers has been exploited by some to politicise religion.

It goes without saying that the developing world should help itself. The Middle East must not think itself incapable of competing with developed nations. But in addressing the gap, one must bear in mind a history that has resulted in large populations of frustrated people who lack real opportunity.

Many graduates in the Middle East are without jobs. What are their options? Their energy must not be allowed to be diverted into fanaticism and violence. In contrast to the silver wave faced by rest of the world, the Arab world is facing a youth wave. These young people can achieve great things in science if they are given the chance.

I see three essential ingredients for progress. First is the building of human resources by promoting literacy, ensuring participation of women in society and improving education. Second, there is a need to reform national constitutions to allow freedom of thought, minimise bureaucracy, reward merit, and create credible- and enforceable- legal codes.

The recent revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere show that these changes are possible. Over the past two decades I have been involved in promoting political and educational reforms, and I feel we now have an opportunity to make a real change.

Thirdly, the best way to regain self-confidence is to start centres of excellence in science and technology in each Muslim country to show that Muslims can compete in today’s globalised economy and to instil in the youth the desire for learning. It is gratifying to see such centres being set up in Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, Qatar and elsewhere. In Egypt I am reviving the National Project for the Development of Science and Technology, which the Mubarak regime made every effort to derail despite the overwhelming support of the Egyptian people.

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Side Note:

Middle east ripe for scientific revolution

BRBMOVINGTHERENOW

Hale-Bopp and the Pyramid

Site: Giza - Egypt

Comet Hale-Bopp appears above the Pyramid of Khafre, one of the three Great Pyramids of Giza. The monument is illuminated in lilac (pink and blue) floodlights during the famous Sound and Light show.

Copyright: John Goldsmith

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

Protesters wave Egyptian flags and chant slogans as they gather in Tahrir Square, the focal point of the Egyptian uprising, in Cairo, Egypt, July 8, 2011.

Thousands of Egyptians took to the streets around the country Friday to demand justice for victims of Hosni Mubarak’s regime and press the new military rulers for a clear plan of transition to democracy. The banner in the background, in Arabic, reads, “the free people are behind bars and the killers are free.”

Hale-Bopp and the Pyramid

Site: Giza - Egypt

Comet Hale-Bopp appears above the Pyramid of Khafre, one of the three Great Pyramids of Giza. The monument is illuminated in lilac (pink and blue) floodlights during the famous Sound and Light show.

Copyright: John Goldsmith

The Middle East is Ripe for A Scientific Revolution

The Arab Spring puts the Middle East in a position to become a scientific powerhouse, but it needs help, says the US science envoy to the region

Scientific research in the Arabian, Persian and Turkish Middle East lags behind that of the west. Of course, there are individual scientists who produce world-class research and there are institutions and nations which make significant contributions in certain fields. Publication and citation indicators show some encouraging trends. But naturally one asks: “Why have Arab, Persian and Turkish scientists as a group underperformed compared with their colleagues in the west or with those rising in the east?”

It is simplistic to say that there is a single cause, such as a (false) dichotomy between faith and reason. Muslims are no different from anyone else; there is no ethnic or geographic monopoly on intelligence. Muslims in Spain, north Africa and Arabia were at the peak of a sophisticated civilisation when Christian Europe was in the Dark Ages.

I think the answer lies in the recent history of the Arab, Persian and Turkish world. Consider what happened in the past century. First there was colonisation by western empires, which installed class and caste systems from outside. The result was huge populations of illiterate peasants. Illiteracy reached nearly 50 per cent, and among women it was as high as 80 per cent in many countries. When colonisation ended after the second world war, these countries looked to the superpowers for help, first west then east. And when the cold war ended, there was only one place left to look: up. That search for answers has been exploited by some to politicise religion.

It goes without saying that the developing world should help itself. The Middle East must not think itself incapable of competing with developed nations. But in addressing the gap, one must bear in mind a history that has resulted in large populations of frustrated people who lack real opportunity.

Many graduates in the Middle East are without jobs. What are their options? Their energy must not be allowed to be diverted into fanaticism and violence. In contrast to the silver wave faced by rest of the world, the Arab world is facing a youth wave. These young people can achieve great things in science if they are given the chance.

I see three essential ingredients for progress. First is the building of human resources by promoting literacy, ensuring participation of women in society and improving education. Second, there is a need to reform national constitutions to allow freedom of thought, minimise bureaucracy, reward merit, and create credible- and enforceable- legal codes.

The recent revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere show that these changes are possible. Over the past two decades I have been involved in promoting political and educational reforms, and I feel we now have an opportunity to make a real change.

Thirdly, the best way to regain self-confidence is to start centres of excellence in science and technology in each Muslim country to show that Muslims can compete in today’s globalised economy and to instil in the youth the desire for learning. It is gratifying to see such centres being set up in Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, Qatar and elsewhere. In Egypt I am reviving the National Project for the Development of Science and Technology, which the Mubarak regime made every effort to derail despite the overwhelming support of the Egyptian people.

Read More

Side Note:

Middle east ripe for scientific revolution

BRBMOVING THEFUCK THERENOW