SWIMMER SPOON
Carved figurine of ancient Egyptian girl swimmer with duck, in the shape of cosmetic spoon, in the Louvre, Paris (France).
I took this as a very speculative shot through the glass of its display glass. Amazing how neat the swimmer keeps her hair-do as she swims along ! - and how modern-looking (well Art-Deco-ish) the ancient Egyptian sense of stylised female beauty seems. In fact the whole piece is just beautifully surreal once you start to look at it, with the duck so large in relation to the girl. The background is not an editing effect on my part, but the back panel of the display case, appropriately in a watery pattern in shades of Nile green.
A similar spoon in the Louvre is described here:
www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/cosmetic-spoon
- not as pretty, I think as the one in this photo, but the one on the Louvre webpage has more painted detail but no duck. Also, the duck's body here seems to be a very small casket, its flat back looking as if it is a lid with two little lifting handles. This Louvre page also gives a lot of interesting explanation and interpretation. The actual use of these swimmer spoons seems unclear. The age of the spoon on the Louvre page is New Kingdom (about 1550 to about 1069 BC) so I assume this was much the same, in which case it was by far the oldest human-made thing we knowingly saw on our whole trip.
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LONDON - PARIS - CATANIA - ROME - LONDON ----- DAY 2
Photo from the second day of our crazy long distance rail trip from home (London) to Sicily. We spent the first day travelling from home in London to Paris, by Eurostar train, and were meant to the take an overnight train from Paris to Rome that same evening. But our Eurostar train out of London was badly delayed due to 'a fatality [unexplained - perhaps fortunately] on the train'. So we missed our onward connection to Rome and had an unexpected but happy second day in Paris. We left Paris that evening, on the equivalent Rome service.
By the end of the whole holiday trip we had seen things and sites from ancient Greek time to modern, so the trip felt like a mini Grand Tour. Or given the rich mythology of Sicily, Etna and the Straits of Messina (Odysseus, the Cyclops, Scylla & Charybdis, etc.) perhaps our trip was like a modern mini Odyssey of our times. Odysseus took ten years to get home. It took us ten trains - but no monsters.
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PROBLEM WITH FLICKR MAP
According to Wikipedia "The Musée du Louvre is one of the world's largest museums, and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, France, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement (district) .... With more than 8 million visitors each year, the Louvre is the world's most visited museum." All the more astonishing therefore that the (often infuriating) database of Flickr's geotagging system was unable to recognize 'Louvre' or any Paris place name that included the word 'Louvre'.)
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Photo
Darkroom Daze © Creative Commons.
If you would like to use or refer to this image, please attribute.
ID: DSC_6558
SWIMMER SPOON
Carved figurine of ancient Egyptian girl swimmer with duck, in the shape of cosmetic spoon, in the Louvre, Paris (France).
I took this as a very speculative shot through the glass of its display glass. Amazing how neat the swimmer keeps her hair-do as she swims along ! - and how modern-looking (well Art-Deco-ish) the ancient Egyptian sense of stylised female beauty seems. In fact the whole piece is just beautifully surreal once you start to look at it, with the duck so large in relation to the girl. The background is not an editing effect on my part, but the back panel of the display case, appropriately in a watery pattern in shades of Nile green.
A similar spoon in the Louvre is described here:
www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/cosmetic-spoon
- not as pretty, I think as the one in this photo, but the one on the Louvre webpage has more painted detail but no duck. Also, the duck's body here seems to be a very small casket, its flat back looking as if it is a lid with two little lifting handles. This Louvre page also gives a lot of interesting explanation and interpretation. The actual use of these swimmer spoons seems unclear. The age of the spoon on the Louvre page is New Kingdom (about 1550 to about 1069 BC) so I assume this was much the same, in which case it was by far the oldest human-made thing we knowingly saw on our whole trip.
----------
LONDON - PARIS - CATANIA - ROME - LONDON ----- DAY 2
Photo from the second day of our crazy long distance rail trip from home (London) to Sicily. We spent the first day travelling from home in London to Paris, by Eurostar train, and were meant to the take an overnight train from Paris to Rome that same evening. But our Eurostar train out of London was badly delayed due to 'a fatality [unexplained - perhaps fortunately] on the train'. So we missed our onward connection to Rome and had an unexpected but happy second day in Paris. We left Paris that evening, on the equivalent Rome service.
By the end of the whole holiday trip we had seen things and sites from ancient Greek time to modern, so the trip felt like a mini Grand Tour. Or given the rich mythology of Sicily, Etna and the Straits of Messina (Odysseus, the Cyclops, Scylla & Charybdis, etc.) perhaps our trip was like a modern mini Odyssey of our times. Odysseus took ten years to get home. It took us ten trains - but no monsters.
----------
PROBLEM WITH FLICKR MAP
According to Wikipedia "The Musée du Louvre is one of the world's largest museums, and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, France, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement (district) .... With more than 8 million visitors each year, the Louvre is the world's most visited museum." All the more astonishing therefore that the (often infuriating) database of Flickr's geotagging system was unable to recognize 'Louvre' or any Paris place name that included the word 'Louvre'.)
----------
Photo
Darkroom Daze © Creative Commons.
If you would like to use or refer to this image, please attribute.
ID: DSC_6558