The Chaffey Story: Mildura and Renmark.

When we go out to Nichols Point to see the grave of William Chaffey you can see the kind of country that typified the Mildura area in the 19th century. Yet the Chaffey brothers of Canada were such amazing visionaries that they could see how this semi-desert country could be transformed into a fruit bowl with verdant growth. Their foresight was remarkable. Their story is almost amazing. In 1884 the Victorian Premier, Alfred Deakin (later PM of Australia) went to California to visit irrigated colonies as Victoria had suffered a long drought from 1877-84. There he met George and William Chaffey and invited them to come and work irrigation miracles in Victoria. The concept was for the Chaffey brothers to buy the land and water rights at a low price, start irrigation and develop the land and sell it on at a high price. The Victorian government in 1886 gave the Chaffey brothers 250,000 acres of land on the old Mildura sheep station on the Murray for an irrigated colony development. The Chaffeys had to build pumping stations to obtain the water from the river, dig water canals and trenches, clear the land, level it for irrigation and then sell it. Their agreement with the government meant they had to spend £300,000 on these improvements over 20 years. They advertised for investors in California and Canada where they were already known as well as Melbourne and Adelaide. They advertised the 10 acre fruit blocks as grape, fruit orchard and orange grove lands. The Chaffeys began work in 1887 led by William. Younger brother Charles went to oversee the development of Renmark in SA. William selected 200 acres for himself near the Psyche Bend Pumping Station and now the site of the Chateau Mildura Winery. William Chaffey established this in 1888 one year after settlement work began. They hoped to irrigate 33,000 acres in the first stage. By 1890 3,300 people were living in the Mildura district. But the land boom of the 1880s collapsed around 1890 as Australia headed into drought and a major economic depression. Consequently the Chaffeys went bankrupt in both Mildura and Renmark in 1895. A Victorian Royal Commission in 1896 found the Chaffeys responsible for the collapse of the irrigated colonies. The Chaffeys certainly advertised and painted a rosy picture of the prospects of Mildura and Renmark but such a grandiose scheme without government financial backing was doomed to failure in Australia, especially when a worldwide economic depression hit it.

 

All that William had left after their bankruptcy was his winery, 200 acres of irrigated fruit block and the mansion he had built earlier in 1889 called Rio Vista (river view). William worked like any other fruit blocker. He unsuccessfully tried to sell Rio Vista but could not find a buyer. He helped the area establish a dried fruit marketing board and he earned the respect of the citizens of Mildura. He became President of the shire council in 1903 and the first city Mayor in 1920. He was so admired by the town residents that they presented him with a Ford motor car in 1911. He eventually paid off his debts to the Victorian government. He died at Rio Vista in 1926. There is now a fine statue of him in the centre of Deakin Avenue- the main street- named after the Victorian Premier and later Australian Prime Minister, Alfred Deakin. It was erected in 1929. This street is also one of the longest avenues in the world at 12.1 kms in length!

 

Throughout this period most of William’s income came from the winery. It produced table wine until around 1900 when it switched to fortified wines (sherry and port) and the distilling of brandy. Transport of produce was difficult until the railway arrived in Mildura in 1903. In 1910 he formed the larger Mildura Winery Company with a second distillery at Merbein. After William’s death the brand name was changed to Mildara in 1937. As an adjunct to the winery he established the Australia Dried Fruits Association around 1895. This was a way of using local fruit because there was no transport available for perishable food before the arrival of the railway from Melbourne in 1903. Dried fruit could be stored for a long time and it did not matter if considerable time was taken to get it to the city markets. So Chaffey established the two main products of the Mildura region- wines and spirits and dried fruit. Both were exported to England. William married twice. His first wife and some infant children are buried near the original Mildura Station on the Murray. His second wife is buried near him in Nichols Point cemetery. He was survived by 3 sons and 3 daughters. One later bought Avoca Station from the Cudmores!

 

Meantime the SA Premier, Sir John Downer offered the Chaffey brothers 250,000 acres of Crown Land at Renmark and they accepted that too. With 500,000 acres to develop the brothers George and William worked hard and their younger brother Charles also came out from California to manage the Renmark operation. The Mildura and the Renmark scheme were losing money so George tried to sell land blocks in the irrigation schemes in London in 1894 but he failed to find a buyer. In December 1894 the Chaffey brothers went into liquidation with huge debts and owing extensive wages to their employees. George then returned to Canada; William stayed on in Mildura; and Charles stayed on in Renmark. Charles Chaffey’s residence in Renmark called Olivewood is owned by the National Trust. It is built in Canadian log cabin style but with Australian verandas. It is probably the oldest residence in Renmark as it was erected in 1889. Charles ran the operation in Renmark until 1904 when he returned to Canada with his family and the bank repossessed the home. It had several owners until acquired by the National Trust in 1979. Only William and his family stayed the course and really developed the Australian irrigation colonies. When the Chaffeys went bankrupt the state governments took over the management and operation of the irrigation colonies with SA setting up the Renmark Irrigation Trust and Victoria the Mildura Irrigation Trust. Another of the legacies of the Chaffeys is the layout of both Renmark and Mildura which are remarkably similar. William Chaffey followed a standard California/USA approach with a wide divided avenue to be the centre thoroughfare of each town, with consecutively numbered streets running across the grand avenue. Streets running parallel to the main avenue had individual names. Hence in Mildura you have Ontario Avenue (reflecting the Chaffey Canadian origins) and San Mateo Avenue (California linkages) etc.

 

Mildura – founded in 1887.

The town was named after the original Mildura station which in turn was named from a local aboriginal word meaning “red earth”. Pastoralism began in 1847 when squatter Francis Jenkins moved here from NSW. He thought he was in SA! But his occupation was not legal and the leasehold went to Hugh and Bushby Jamieson who called their property of 150,000 acres Mildura. Once the river boat trade began in 1854 they expanded their sheep flock to 10,000. Alexander McEdward bought the property in the 1870s and later the government resumed it for the Chaffeys irrigation colony in 1887. Mildura grew very slowly even after the Chaffeys started their great work of clearing, felling, levelling and pumping water to turn the semi-desert into fruit blocks. The 1890s were economically depressed. The government Irrigation Trust continued the Chaffey work after 1894 and by 1910 the town was well established with a railway station (1903), a large temperance hotel, a school, stores, churches, a Carnegie Library, a public institute and a Working Man’s’ Club. Opposite the railway station was a well patronised river wharf and port. William Chaffey became the first Mildura mayor in 1920 and when the population had reached 15,000 in 1934 the town was declared a city.

 

Soldier settlers after World War One and Two were offered fruit blocks in the district and in both eras they helped boost the growth and population of the area. Today Mildura has the second busiest airport in Victoria outside the Melbourne area, and it is still growing. It now relies on tourism and retirement living as well as fruit and grape production for its economic output. Its warm climate makes it a favoured retirement spot for southern Victorians!

 

Fruits and vegetables scraps in decomposition.

2009

 

This was a setup in my new basement “studio” with perishable props bought for the purpose. The durable props were just things we had sitting around at home. I had a blue tablecloth on a folding table, and a piece of black fabric suspended behind it.

 

Strobist; Fill light was a Canon 580-EX2 at ½-power fired into the white ceiling, which produced about a -2ev fill; key-light was a Canon 600-XRT with a small-cell grid at 1/8th-power. The key-light flash was mounted on a monopod that I held above and camera-right of the scene at about 3-ft away; camera was in manual-mode, and flash fired with Vello Aviator RF-triggers.

 

This was processed in Lightroom and Photoshop with Viviza and Color-Efex modules from DxO/NIK.

  

5D4-01272-20191202-Repast

Angkor Wat (/ˌæŋkɔːr ˈwɒt/; Khmer: អង្គរវត្ត, "City/Capital of Temples") is a Hindu-Buddhist temple complex in Cambodia, located on a site measuring 162.6 hectares (1,626,000 m2; 402 acres). It resides within the ancient Khmer capital city of Angkor. The Guinness World Records considers it as the largest religious structure in the world. Originally constructed as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu for the Khmer Empire by King Suryavarman II during the 12th century, it was gradually transformed into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the century; as such, it is also described as a "Hindu-Buddhist" temple.

 

Angkor Wat was built at the behest of the Khmer King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century in Yaśodharapura (Khmer: យសោធរបុរៈ, present-day Angkor), the capital of the Khmer Empire, as his state temple and eventual mausoleum. Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple-mountain and the later galleried temple. It is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the devas in Hindu mythology: within a moat more than 5 kilometres (3 mi) long and an outer wall 3.6 kilometres (2.2 mi) long are three rectangular galleries, each raised above the next. At the centre of the temple stands a quincunx of towers. Unlike most Angkorian temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the west; scholars are divided as to the significance of this. The temple is admired for the grandeur and harmony of the architecture, its extensive bas-reliefs, and for the numerous devatas adorning its walls. The modern name Angkor Wat, alternatively Nokor Wat, means "Temple City" or "City of Temples" in Khmer. Angkor (អង្គរ ângkôr), meaning "city" or "capital city", is a vernacular form of the word nokor (នគរ nôkôr), which comes from the Sanskrit/Pali word nagara (Devanāgarī: नगर). Wat (វត្ត vôtt) is the word for "temple grounds", also derived from Sanskrit/Pali vāṭa (Devanāgarī: वाट), meaning "enclosure"

 

The original name of the temple was Vrah Viṣṇuloka or Parama Viṣṇuloka meaning "the sacred dwelling of Vishnu".

 

History

Angkor Wat lies 5.5 kilometres (3+1⁄2 mi) north of the modern town of Siem Reap, and a short distance south and slightly east of the previous capital, which was centred at Baphuon. In an area of Cambodia where there is an essential group of ancient structures, it is the southernmost of Angkor's main sites.

 

The construction of Angkor Wat took place over 28 years from 1122 to 1150 CE during the reign of King Suryavarman II (ruled 1113–c. 1150).[1] A brahmin by the name of Divākarapaṇḍita (1040–c. 1120) was responsible for urging Suryavarman II to construct the temple. All of the original religious motifs at Angkor Wat derived from Hinduism. Breaking from the Shaiva tradition of previous kings, Angkor Wat was instead dedicated to Vishnu. It was built as the king's state temple and capital city. As neither the foundation stela nor any contemporary inscriptions referring to the temple have been found, its original name is unknown, but it may have been known as Vrah Viṣṇuloka after the presiding deity. Work seems to have ended shortly after the king's death, leaving some of the bas-relief decoration unfinished. The term Vrah Viṣṇuloka or Parama Viṣṇuloka literally means "The king who has gone to the supreme world of Vishnu", which refer to Suryavarman II posthumously and intend to venerate his glory and memory.

 

In 1177, approximately 27 years after the death of Suryavarman II, Angkor was sacked by the Chams, the traditional enemies of the Khmer. Thereafter the empire was restored by a new king, Jayavarman VII, who established a new capital and state temple (Angkor Thom and the Bayon, respectively), a few kilometers north, dedicated to Buddhism, because the king's new wife, Indratevi, a devout Mahayana Buddhist, encouraged him to convert. Angkor Wat was therefore also gradually converted into a Buddhist site, and many Hindu sculptures were replaced by Buddhist art.

 

Towards the end of the 12th century, Angkor Wat gradually transformed from a Hindu centre of worship to Buddhism, which continues to the present day. Angkor Wat is unusual among the Angkor temples in that although it was largely neglected after the 16th century, it was never completely abandoned. Fourteen inscriptions dated from the 17th century, discovered in the Angkor area, testify to Japanese Buddhist pilgrims that had established small settlements alongside Khmer locals. At that time, the temple was thought by the Japanese visitors to be the famed Jetavana garden of the Buddha, which was originally located in the kingdom of Magadha, India. The best-known inscription tells of Ukondayu Kazufusa, who celebrated the Khmer New Year at Angkor Wat in 1632.

 

The first Western visitor to the temple was António da Madalena, a Portuguese friar who visited in 1586 and said that it "is of such extraordinary construction that it is not possible to describe it with a pen, particularly since it is like no other building in the world. It has towers and decoration and all the refinements which the human genius can conceive of."

 

In 1622, The Poem of Angkor Wat composed in Khmer verse describes the beauty of Angkor Wat and creates a legend around the construction of the complex, supposedly a divine castle built for legendary Khmer king Preah Ket Mealea by Hindu god Preah Pisnukar (or Braḥ Bisṇukār, Vishvakarman), as Suryavarman II had already vanished from people's minds.

 

In 1860, with the help of French missionary Father Charles-Émile Bouillevaux, the temple was effectively rediscovered by the French naturalist and explorer Henri Mouhot, who popularised the site in the West through the publication of travel notes, in which he wrote:

One of these temples, a rival to that of Solomon, and erected by some ancient Michelangelo, might take an honorable place beside our most beautiful buildings. It is grander than anything left to us by Greece or Rome, and presents a sad contrast to the state of barbarism in which the nation is now plunged.

 

In 1861 German anthropologist Adolf Bastian undertook a four-year trip to Southeast Asia. His account of this trip, The People of East Asia, ran to six volumes. When Bastian finally published the studies and observations during his Journey through Cambodia to Cochinchina in Germany in 1868 – told in detail but uninspiredly, above all without a single one of his drawings of the Angkorian sites – this work hardly made an impression, while everyone was talking about Henri Mouhot's posthumous work with vivid descriptions of Angkor, Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China, Siam, Cambodia and Laos, published in 1864 through the Royal Geographical Society.

 

There were no ordinary dwellings or houses or other signs of settlement, including cooking utensils, weapons, or items of clothing usually found at ancient sites.

 

The artistic legacy of Angkor Wat and other Khmer monuments in the Angkor region led directly to France adopting Cambodia as a protectorate on 11 August 1863 and invading Siam to take control of the ruins. This quickly led to Cambodia reclaiming lands in the northwestern corner of the country such as the areas of Siem Reap, Battambang, and Sisophon which were under Siamese rule from 1795 to 1907.

 

Angkor Wat's aesthetics were on display in the plaster cast museum of Louis Delaporte called musée Indo-chinois which existed in the Parisian Trocadero Palace from c.1880 to the mid-1920s.

 

The 20th century saw a considerable restoration of Angkor Wat. Gradually teams of laborers and archeologists pushed back the jungle and exposed the expanses of stone, permitting the sun to once again illuminate the dark corners of the temple. Angkor Wat caught the attention and imagination of a wider audience in Europe when the pavilion of French protectorate of Cambodia, as part of French Indochina, recreated the life-size replica of Angkor Wat during Paris Colonial Exposition in 1931.

 

Cambodia gained independence from France on 9 November 1953 and has controlled Angkor Wat since then. From the colonial period onwards, until the site was nominated a UNESCO World Heritage in 1992, the temple of Angkor Wat was instrumental in the formation of the modern and gradually globalised concept of built cultural heritage.

 

Restoration work was interrupted by the Cambodian Civil War and Khmer Rouge control of the country during the 1970s and 1980s, but relatively little damage was done during this period. Camping Khmer Rouge forces used whatever wood remained in the building structures for firewood, and a shoot-out between Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese forces put a few bullet holes in a basrelief. Far more damage was done after the wars, by art thieves working out of Thailand, which, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, claimed almost every head that could be lopped off the structures, including reconstructions.

 

The temple is a symbol of Cambodia and is a source of national pride that has factored into Cambodia's diplomatic relations with France, the United States, and its neighbour Thailand. A depiction of Angkor Wat has been a part of Cambodian national flags since the introduction of the first version circa 1863. From a larger historical and transcultural perspective, however, the temple of Angkor Wat did not become a symbol of national pride sui generis but had been inscribed into a larger politico-cultural process of French-colonial heritage production in which the original temple site was presented in French colonial and universal exhibitions in Paris and Marseille between 1889 and 1937.

 

In December 2015, it was announced that a research team from the University of Sydney had found a previously unseen ensemble of buried towers built and demolished during the construction of Angkor Wat, as well as a massive structure of unknown purpose on its south side and wooden fortifications. The findings include evidence of low-density residential occupation in the region, with a road grid, ponds, and mounds. These indicate that the temple precinct, bounded by a moat and wall, may not have been used exclusively by the priestly elite, as was previously thought. The team used LiDAR, ground-penetrating radar and targeted excavation to map Angkor Wat.

 

According to a myth, the construction of Angkor Wat was ordered by Indra to serve as a palace for his son Precha Ket Mealea. According to the 13th-century Chinese traveller Zhou Daguan, some believed that the temple was constructed in a single night by a divine architect.

 

Architecture

Angkor Wat is a unique combination of the temple mountain (the standard design for the empire's state temples) and the later plan of concentric galleries, most of which were originally derived from religious beliefs of Hinduism. The construction of Angkor Wat suggests that there was a celestial significance with certain features of the temple. This is observed in the temple's east–west orientation, and lines of sight from terraces within the temple that show specific towers to be at the precise location of the solstice at sunrise. The temple is a representation of Mount Meru, the home of the gods according to Hindu mythology: the central quincunx of towers symbolise the five peaks of the mountain, and the walls and moat symbolise the surrounding mountain ranges and ocean. Access to the upper areas of the temple was progressively more exclusive, with the laity being admitted only to the lowest level.

 

The Angkor Wat temple's main tower aligns with the morning sun of the spring equinox. Unlike most Khmer temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the west rather than the east. This has led many (including Maurice Glaize and George Coedès) to conclude that Suryavarman intended it to serve as his funerary temple. Further evidence for this view is provided by the bas-reliefs, which proceed in a counter-clockwise direction—prasavya in Hindu terminology—as this is the reverse of the normal order. Rituals take place in reverse order during Brahminic funeral services.

 

Archaeologist Charles Higham also describes a container that may have been a funerary jar that was recovered from the central tower. It has been nominated by some as the greatest expenditure of energy on the disposal of a corpse. Freeman and Jacques, however, note that several other temples of Angkor depart from the typical eastern orientation, and suggest that Angkor Wat's alignment was due to its dedication to Vishnu, who was associated with the west.

 

Drawing on the temple's alignment and dimensions, and on the content and arrangement of the bas-reliefs, researcher Eleanor Mannikka argues that the structure represents a claimed new era of peace under King Suryavarman II: "as the measurements of solar and lunar time cycles were built into the sacred space of Angkor Wat, this divine mandate to rule was anchored to consecrated chambers and corridors meant to perpetuate the king's power and to honour and placate the deities manifest in the heavens above." Mannikka's suggestions have been received with a mixture of interest and scepticism in academic circles. She distances herself from the speculations of others, such as Graham Hancock, that Angkor Wat is part of a representation of the constellation Draco.

 

The oldest surviving plan of Angkor Wat dates to 1715 and is credited to Fujiwara Tadayoshi. The plan is stored in the Suifu Meitoku-kai Shokokan Museum in Mito, Japan.

 

Style

Angkor Wat is the prime example of the classical style of

Khmer architecture—the Angkor Wat style—to which it has given its name. By the 12th century, Khmer architects had become skilled and confident in the use of sandstone (rather than brick or laterite) as the main building material. Most of the visible areas are sandstone blocks, while laterite was used for the outer wall and hidden structural parts. The binding agent used to join the blocks is yet to be identified, although natural resins or slaked lime has been suggested.

 

The temple has drawn praise above all for the harmony of its design. According to Maurice Glaize, a mid-20th-century conservator of Angkor, the temple "attains a classic perfection by the restrained monumentality of its finely balanced elements and the precise arrangement of its proportions. It is a work of power, unity, and style."

 

Architecturally, the elements characteristic of the style include the ogival, redented towers shaped like lotus buds; half-galleries to broaden passageways; axial galleries connecting enclosures; and the cruciform terraces which appear along the main axis of the temple. Typical decorative elements are devatas (or apsaras), bas-reliefs, pediments, extensive garlands and narrative scenes. The statuary of Angkor Wat is considered conservative, being more static and less graceful than earlier work. Other elements of the design have been destroyed by looting and the passage of time, including gilded stucco on the towers, gilding on some figures on the bas-reliefs, and wooden ceiling panels and doors.

 

Architect Jacques Dumarçay believes the layout of Angkor Wat borrows Chinese influence in its system of galleries which join at right angles to form courtyards. However, the axial pattern embedded in the plan of Angkor Wat may be derived from Southeast Asian cosmology in combination with the mandala represented by the main temple.

 

Features

The outer wall, 1,024 m (3,360 ft) by 802 m (2,631 ft) and 4.5 m (15 ft) high, is surrounded by a 30 m (98 ft) apron of open ground and a moat 190 m (620 ft) wide and over 5 kilometres (3 mi) in perimeter. The moat extends 1.5 kilometres from east to west and 1.3 kilometres from north to south. Access to the temple is by an earth bank to the east and a sandstone causeway to the west; the latter, the main entrance, is a later addition, possibly replacing a wooden bridge. There are gopuras at each of the cardinal points; the western is by far the largest and has three ruined towers. Glaize notes that this gopura both hides and echoes the form of the temple proper.

 

Under the southern tower is a statue known as Ta Reach, originally an eight-armed statue of Vishnu that may have occupied the temple's central shrine. Galleries run between the towers and as far as two further entrances on either side of the gopura often referred to as "elephant gates", as they are large enough to admit those animals. These galleries have square pillars on the outer (west) side and a closed wall on the inner (east) side. The ceiling between the pillars is decorated with lotus rosettes; the west face of the wall with dancing figures; and the east face of the wall with balustered windows, dancing male figures on prancing animals, and devatas, including (south of the entrance) the only one in the temple to be showing her teeth.

 

The outer wall encloses a space of 820,000 square metres (203 acres), which besides the temple proper was originally occupied by the city and, to the north of the temple, the royal palace. Like all secular buildings of Angkor, these were built of perishable materials rather than of stone, so nothing remains of them except the outlines of some of the streets. Most of the area is now covered by forest. A 350 m (1,150 ft) causeway connects the western gopura to the temple proper, with naga balustrades and six sets of steps leading down to the city on either side. Each side also features a library with entrances at each cardinal point, in front of the third set of stairs from the entrance, and a pond between the library and the temple itself. The ponds are later additions to the design, as is the cruciform terrace guarded by lions connecting the causeway to the central structure.

 

Central structure

The temple stands on a terrace raised higher than the city. It is made of three rectangular galleries rising to a central tower, each level higher than the last. The two inner galleries each have four large towers at their ordinal corners (that is, NW, NE, SE, and SW) surrounding a higher fifth tower. This pattern is sometimes called a quincunx and represents the mountains of Meru. Because the temple faces west, the features are set back towards the east, leaving more space to be filled in each enclosure and gallery on the west side; for the same reason, the west-facing steps are shallower than those on the other sides.

 

Mannikka interprets the galleries as being dedicated to the king, Brahma, the moon, and Vishnu. Each gallery has a gopura at each of the points. The outer gallery measures 187 m (614 ft) by 215 m (705 ft), with pavilions rather than towers at the corners. The gallery is open to the outside of the temple, with columned half-galleries extending and buttressing the structure. Connecting the outer gallery to the second enclosure on the west side is a cruciform cloister called Preah Poan (meaning "The Thousand Buddhas" Gallery). Buddha images were left in the cloister by pilgrims over the centuries, although most have now been removed. This area has many inscriptions relating to the good deeds of pilgrims, most written in Khmer but others in Burmese and Japanese. The four small courtyards marked out by the cloister may originally have been filled with water. North and south of the cloister are libraries.

 

Beyond, the second and inner galleries are connected to two flanking libraries by another cruciform terrace, again a later addition. From the second level upwards, devatas abound on the walls, singly or in groups of up to four. The second-level enclosure is 100 m (330 ft) by 115 m (377 ft), and may originally have been flooded to represent the ocean around Mount Meru. Three sets of steps on each side lead up to the corner towers and gopuras of the inner gallery. The steep stairways may represent the difficulty of ascending to the kingdom of the gods. This inner gallery, called the Bakan, is a 60 m (200 ft) square with axial galleries connecting each gopura with the central shrine and subsidiary shrines located below the corner towers.

 

The roofings of the galleries are decorated with the motif of the body of a snake ending in the heads of lions or garudas. Carved lintels and pediments decorate the entrances to the galleries and the shrines. The tower above the central shrine rises 43 m (141 ft) to a height of 65 m (213 ft) above the ground; unlike those of previous temple mountains, the central tower is raised above the surrounding four. The shrine itself, originally occupied by a statue of Vishnu and open on each side, was walled in when the temple was converted to Theravada Buddhism, the new walls featuring standing Buddhas. In 1934, the conservator George Trouvé excavated the pit beneath the central shrine: filled with sand and water it had already been robbed of its treasure, but he did find a sacred foundation deposit of gold leaf two metres above ground level.

 

Decoration

Integrated with the architecture of the building, one of the causes for its fame is Angkor Wat's extensive decoration, which predominantly takes the form of bas-relief friezes. The inner walls of the outer gallery bear a series of large-scale scenes mainly depicting episodes from the Hindu epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Higham has called these "the greatest known linear arrangement of stone carving". From the north-west corner anti-clockwise, the western gallery shows the Battle of Lanka (from the Ramayana, in which Rama defeats Ravana) and the Battle of Kurukshetra (from the Mahabharata, showing the mutual annihilation of the Kaurava and Pandava clans). On the southern gallery follow the only historical scene, a procession of Suryavarman II, then the 32 hells and 37 heavens of Hinduism.

 

On the eastern gallery is one of the most celebrated scenes, the Churning of the Sea of Milk, showing 92 asuras and 88 devas using the serpent Vasuki to churn the sea under Vishnu's direction (Mannikka counts only 91 asuras and explains the asymmetrical numbers as representing the number of days from the winter solstice to the spring equinox, and from the equinox to the summer solstice). It is followed by Vishnu defeating asuras (a 16th-century addition). The northern gallery shows Krishna's victory over Bana (where according to Glaize, "The workmanship is at its worst").

 

Angkor Wat is decorated with depictions of apsaras and devata; there are more than 1,796 depictions of devata in the present research inventory. Angkor Wat architects employed small apsara images (30–40 cm or 12–16 in) as decorative motifs on pillars and walls. They incorporated larger devata images (all full-body portraits measuring approximately 95–110 cm or 37–43 in) more prominently at every level of the temple from the entry pavilion to the tops of the high towers. In 1927, Sappho Marchal published a study cataloging the remarkable diversity of their hair, headdresses, garments, stance, jewellery, and decorative flowers, which Marchal concluded were based on actual practices of the Angkor period.

 

Construction techniques

The monument was made of five to ten million sandstone blocks with a maximum weight of 1.5 tons each. The entire city of Angkor used far greater amounts of stone than all the Egyptian pyramids combined and occupied an area significantly greater than modern-day Paris. Moreover, unlike the Egyptian pyramids, which use limestone quarried 0.5 km (1⁄4 mi) away, the entire city of Angkor was built with sandstone quarried 40 km (25 mi) (or more) away. This sandstone was transported from Mount Kulen, a quarry approximately 40 kilometres (25 mi) northeast.

 

The route has been suggested to span 35 kilometres (22 mi) along a canal towards Tonlé Sap lake, another 35 kilometres (22 mi) crossing the lake, and finally 15 kilometres (9 mi) against the current along Siem Reap River, making a total journey of 90 kilometres (55 mi). However, Etsuo Uchida and Ichita Shimoda of Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan have discovered in 2011 a shorter 35-kilometre (22 mi) canal connecting Mount Kulen and Angkor Wat using satellite imagery. The two believe that the Khmer used this route instead.

 

Virtually all of its surfaces, columns, lintels and even roofs are carved. There are kilometres of reliefs illustrating scenes from Indian literature including unicorns, griffins, winged dragons pulling chariots, as well as warriors following an elephant-mounted leader, and celestial dancing girls with elaborate hairstyles. The gallery wall alone is decorated with almost 1,000 m2 (11,000 sq ft) of bas reliefs. Holes on some of the Angkor walls indicate that they may have been decorated with bronze sheets. These were highly prized in ancient times and were prime targets for robbers.

 

While excavating Khajuraho, Alex Evans, a stonemason, and sculptor recreated a stone sculpture under 1.2 metres (4 ft), this took about 60 days to carve. Roger Hopkins and Mark Lehner also conducted experiments to quarry limestone which took 12 quarrymen 22 days to quarry about 400 tons of stone. The labour force to quarry, transport, carve and install so much sandstone probably ran into the thousands including many highly skilled artisans. The skills required to carve these sculptures were developed hundreds of years earlier, as demonstrated by some artefacts that have been dated to the seventh century, before the Khmer came to power.

 

Restoration and conservation

The contrast between restored and unrestored figures is deliberate. The major restoration of the causeway was first initiated in the 1960s by the French.

As with most other ancient temples in Cambodia, Angkor Wat has faced extensive damage and deterioration by a combination of plant overgrowth, fungi, ground movements, war damage, and theft. The war damage to Angkor Wat's temples however has been very limited, compared to the rest of Cambodia's temple ruins, and it has also received the most attentive restoration.

 

The restoration of Angkor Wat in the modern era began with the establishment of the Conservation d'Angkor (Angkor Conservancy) by the École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) in 1908; before that date, activities at the site were primarily concerned with exploration. The Conservation d'Angkor was responsible for the research, conservation, and restoration activities carried out at Angkor until the early 1970s, and a major restoration of Angkor was undertaken in the 1960s.

 

Work on Angkor was abandoned during the Khmer Rouge era and the Conservation d'Angkor was disbanded in 1975. Between 1986 and 1992, the Archaeological Survey of India carried out restoration work on the temple, as France did not recognise the Cambodian government at the time. Criticisms have been raised about both the early French restoration attempts and the later Indian work, with concerns over the damage done to the stone surface by the use of chemicals and cement.

 

In 1992, following an appeal for help by Norodom Sihanouk, Angkor Wat was listed in UNESCO's World Heritage in Danger (later removed in 2004) and as a World Heritage Site together with an appeal by UNESCO to the international community to save Angkor. Zoning of the area was designated to protect the Angkor site in 1994, APSARA was established in 1995 to protect and manage the area, and a law to protect Cambodian heritage was passed in 1996.

 

Several countries such as France, Japan, and China are now involved in Angkor Wat conservation projects. The German Apsara Conservation Project (GACP) is working to protect the devatas, and other bas-reliefs that decorate the temple, from damage. The organisation's survey found that around 20% of the devatas were in very poor condition, mainly because of natural erosion and deterioration of the stone but in part also due to earlier restoration efforts. Other work involves the repair of collapsed sections of the structure, and prevention of further collapse: the west facade of the upper level, for example, has been buttressed by scaffolding since 2002, while a Japanese team completed the restoration of the north library of the outer enclosure in 2005.

 

Microbial biofilms have been found degrading sandstone at Angkor Wat, Preah Khan, and the Bayon and West Prasat in Angkor. The dehydration- and radiation-resistant filamentous cyanobacteria produce organic acids that degrade the stone. A dark filamentous fungus was found in internal and external Preah Khan samples, while the alga Trentepohlia was found only in samples taken from external, pink-stained stone at Preah Khan. Replicas have been made to replace some of the lost or damaged sculptures.

 

Tourism

Since the 1990s, Angkor Wat has become a major tourist destination. In 1993, there were only 7,650 visitors to the site; by 2004, government figures show that 561,000 foreign visitors had arrived in Siem Reap province that year, approximately 50% of all foreign tourists in Cambodia. The number reached over a million in 2007, and over two million by 2012. Most visited Angkor Wat, which received over two million foreign tourists in 2013, and 2.6 million by 2018.

 

The site was managed by the private SOKIMEX group between 1990 and 2016, which rented it from the Cambodian government. The influx of tourists has so far caused relatively little damage, other than some graffiti. Ropes and wooden steps have been introduced to protect the bas-reliefs and floors, respectively. Tourism has also provided some additional funds for maintenance—as of 2000 approximately 28% of ticket revenues across the entire Angkor site was spent on the temples—although most work is carried out by teams sponsored by foreign governments rather than by the Cambodian authorities.

 

Since Angkor Wat has seen significant growth in tourism throughout the years, UNESCO and its International Co-ordinating Committee for the Safeguarding and Development of the Historic Site of Angkor (ICC), in association with representatives from the Royal Government and APSARA, organised seminars to discuss the concept of "cultural tourism". Wanting to avoid commercial and mass tourism, the seminars emphasised the importance of providing high-quality accommodation and services for the Cambodian government to benefit economically, while also incorporating the richness of Cambodian culture. In 2001, this incentive resulted in the concept of the "Angkor Tourist City" which would be developed about traditional Khmer architecture, contain leisure and tourist facilities, and provide luxurious hotels capable of accommodating large numbers of tourists.

 

The prospect of developing such large tourist accommodations has encountered concerns from both APSARA and the ICC, claiming that previous tourism developments in the area have neglected construction regulations and that more of these projects have the potential to damage landscape features. Also, the large scale of these projects have begun to threaten the quality of the nearby town's water, sewage, and electricity systems. It has been noted that such high frequency of tourism and growing demand for quality accommodations in the area, such as the development of a large highway, has had a direct effect on the underground water table, subsequently straining the structural stability of the temples at Angkor Wat.

 

Locals of Siem Reap have also voiced concern that the charm and atmosphere of their town have been compromised to entertain tourism.[103] Since this local atmosphere is the key component to projects like Angkor Tourist City, the local officials continue to discuss how to successfully incorporate future tourism without sacrificing local values and culture.

 

At the ASEAN Tourism Forum 2012, it was agreed that Borobudur and Angkor Wat would become sister sites and the provinces sister provinces.

 

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic led to travel restrictions being introduced across the world, which had a severe impact on Cambodia's tourism sector. As a result, visitors to Angkor Wat plummeted, leaving the usually crowded complex almost deserted. Cambodia, including Angkor Wat, reopened to international visitors in late 2021, but as of the end of 2022 had only received a fraction of its pre-pandemic traffic: a total of 280,000 tourists visited the complex in 2022, versus 2.6 million in 2018. In 2023, the temple is seeing an increase in numbers over the previous year, having over 400,000 tourists by late July.

Carta (Sibiu County): Cistercian monastery

The city and monastery of Carta are located 43 km from Sibiu on the road to Brasov. Here are preserved the ruins of the Cistercian monastery, one of the oldest and most important monuments of the primitive Gothic church in Transylvania. The Cistercians are a monastic order originating in France and widespread in several countries.

The Carta Cistercian Abbey played a major role in the political, economic and cultural history of medieval Transylvania, as well as in the introduction but also in the dissemination of Gothic art in the inter-Carpathian space.

The monastery was founded in the years 1205-1206 by King Andrew II of Hungary.

The beginnings of the monastery are confirmed with the erection of its first buildings, used, as the Cistercians used it, from perishable materials, that is to say wood. These can be dated with relative certainty between the years 1205-1206.

The stone parts of the monastery will be erected between the years 1220 and the end of 1230. The construction of the monastery was carried out in two main phases of execution, chronologically interrupted by the great Tatar invasion of 1241.

In the first phase of construction, which has stylistic characteristics dependent on the late Romanesque, the general plan of the monastery was drawn, the walls delimiting its inner courtyard being raised to a height of 3-4m above the ground.

In 1260, after the assassination caused by the Mongol invasion in the spring of 1241, construction work will resume under the direction of a new architect, trained in the environment of mature Gothic, and with the contribution of a workshop of stone with an eclectic structure.

By 1300, the church and the eastern wing of the Charter Monastery were completed, with the completion and construction of the southern wing of the abbey continuing for approximately two decades.

The fierce struggles with the Ottomans from 1421 to 1432 and the decline of the order made the church and its monastery a ruin. This also led to its closure by King Mathias Corvin in 1474.

However, the west facade is still standing and above the Gothic portal is a large rose window. The tower attached to the facade was built later, in the middle of the 15th century, and its transformation into a bell tower took place later.

Currently, the monastery no longer has all the original buildings and annexes, many of which collapse. The vaults of the huge church have collapsed and there are only a few exterior walls and two interior beams (south and north). To the south, there is still a single Roman column, and the side ships, according to the Cistercian plan, end in a small square choir. The main ship no longer has a ceiling - in its place is a cemetery in memory of the German soldiers killed in the First World War.

The Reformed Church today occupies only the choir and the apse of the old basilica. The Gothic portal has probably been moved from a side entrance and its profile betrays Gothic influences.

Numerous examples of the tombs of the founders of Cistercian churches allow the existence of a royal necropolis under Carta.

  

More: www.urbanimagephotography.com in the blog

52 Years

 

C&N EVERYTHING STORE was located on E.161st Street by Elton Avenue in the Morrisanaia section of the Bronx. It is a family-owned business run by Cobert and Novil Seward that has been in operation since 1956.

The sign is the original one taken from our old store on 165th Street and Teller Avenue. We moved to this location in 1977 because the landlord raised the rent so high at the other store that we were forced to move. My husband and I ended up buying this whole building so that would never happen again to us. We took with us all our shelving, cabinetry, and merchandise so the inside of the store still looks very much like it did in 1956 except that maybe it’s a bit more crowded with merchandise now. We literally sell everything in here from candy to pipe-fittings. We are open 7 days a week, every day of the year except for Christmas Day. I really don’t have a most popular item, I just sell what I can. We used to sell more food items like milk and eggs but business is slower now so I don’t stock perishables anymore and I’ve cut back on the amount of newspapers I carry. I used to sell every New York paper including the New York Times but now I only carry the Daily News and the Post because they are the only ones that let me buy only a few a day, otherwise you’ve got to buy in bulk and I can’t afford that. I’ve been in this neighborhood so long that I’ve watched many of my customers grow up and now some of them even bring in their grandchildren. I know most everybody by name and I treat all of them like family. One of the biggest things happening in this neighborhood lately is that there’s lots of new construction. I don’t know who can afford the rents they are charging. Most of these new buildings are empty and you’d think the owners would lower the rents instead of them staying empty but I guess they’d rather leave them unoccupied. If we didn’t own this building we would have been out of here long ago.

Novil Seward, owner of C&N Everything Store

  

The ∞ Faces of Bangkok 042

 

On the campus of the Bangkok National Museum

 

Frangipani blossom fallen in a pond

 

Il Monumento alle Scoperte o Padrão dos Descobrimentos in portoghese, situato sulla riva del fiume Tago a Lisbona di fronte al Monastero dos Jerónimos, fu realizzato nel 1960 (rifacimento dell'originale del 1940), a cinquecento anni dalla morte di Enrico il Navigatore, per celebrare l'era delle scoperte realizzate dai navigatori portoghesi fra il XV ed il XVI secolo.

La caravella che costituisce il monumento porta lo scudo portoghese su entrambi i lati e la spada della Dinastia di Aviz sulla porta d'ingresso. Sulla prua della caravella è rappresentato Enrico il Navigatore con una caravella in mano; dietro di lui, in due file discendenti da entrambi i lati del monumento, sono rappresentati gli eroi portoghesi che parteciparono alle scoperte.

 

Padrão dos Descobrimentos is a monument that celebrates the Portuguese who took part in the Age of Discovery, or the Age of Exploration, of the 15th and 16th centuries. It is located on the estuary of the Tagus river in the Belém parish of Lisbon, Portugal, where ships departed to their often unknown destinations.

The original monument (1940) was built with perishable materials, but it was rebuilt in concrete in 1960, in time for the commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the death of Henry the Navigator, the sponsor of the Portuguese Discoveries. He is the figure at the tip of the monument, looking out over the river. Behind Henry, on both sides of the monument, are statues of other great people of that era, including explorers, cartographers, artists, scientists and missionaries.

An eBay purchase.

I can't remember the last time that I saw CSX train Q090, a Union Pacific run-through train with perishable produce from the California and the Pacific Northwest that goes to a warehouse near Albany, New York. Here it is on Tuesday afternoon in Berea, Ohio. It still operates with Union Pacific motive power.

Gautama Buddha, also known as Siddhārtha Gautama, Shakyamuni, or simply the Buddha, was a sage on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. He is believed to have lived and taught mostly in northeastern India sometime between the sixth and fourth centuries BCE.

 

The word Buddha means "awakened one" or "the enlightened one". "Buddha" is also used as a title for the first awakened being in a Yuga era. In most Buddhist traditions, Siddhartha Gautama is regarded as the Supreme Buddha (Pali sammāsambuddha, Sanskrit samyaksaṃbuddha) of the present age. Gautama taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and the severe asceticism found in the śramaṇa movement common in his region. He later taught throughout regions of eastern India such as Magadha and Kosala.

 

Gautama is the primary figure in Buddhism and accounts of his life, discourses, and monastic rules are believed by Buddhists to have been summarized after his death and memorized by his followers. Various collections of teachings attributed to him were passed down by oral tradition and first committed to writing about 400 years later.

 

CONTENTS

HISTORICAL SIDDHARTA GAUTAMA

Scholars are hesitant to make unqualified claims about the historical facts of the Buddha's life. Most accept that he lived, taught and founded a monastic order during the Mahajanapada era during the reign of Bimbisara, the ruler of the Magadha empire, and died during the early years of the reign of Ajasattu, who was the successor of Bimbisara, thus making him a younger contemporary of Mahavira, the Jain tirthankara. Apart from the Vedic Brahmins, the Buddha's lifetime coincided with the flourishing of other influential śramaṇa schools of thoughts like Ājīvika, Cārvāka, Jainism, and Ajñana. It was also the age of influential thinkers like Mahavira, Pūraṇa Kassapa , Makkhali Gosāla, Ajita Kesakambalī, Pakudha Kaccāyana, and Sañjaya Belaṭṭhaputta, whose viewpoints the Buddha most certainly must have been acquainted with and influenced by. Indeed, Sariputta and Moggallāna, two of the foremost disciples of the Buddha, were formerly the foremost disciples of Sañjaya Belaṭṭhaputta, the skeptic. There is also evidence to suggest that the two masters, Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta, were indeed historical figures and they most probably taught Buddha two different forms of meditative techniques. While the general sequence of "birth, maturity, renunciation, search, awakening and liberation, teaching, death" is widely accepted, there is less consensus on the veracity of many details contained in traditional biographies.

 

The times of Gautama's birth and death are uncertain. Most historians in the early 20th century dated his lifetime as circa 563 BCE to 483 BCE. More recently his death is dated later, between 411 and 400 BCE, while at a symposium on this question held in 1988, the majority of those who presented definite opinions gave dates within 20 years either side of 400 BCE for the Buddha's death. These alternative chronologies, however, have not yet been accepted by all historians.

 

The evidence of the early texts suggests that Siddhārtha Gautama was born into the Shakya clan, a community that was on the periphery, both geographically and culturally, of the northeastern Indian subcontinent in the 5th century BCE. It was either a small republic, in which case his father was an elected chieftain, or an oligarchy, in which case his father was an oligarch. According to the Buddhist tradition, Gautama was born in Lumbini, nowadays in modern-day Nepal, and raised in the Shakya capital of Kapilavastu, which may have been in either present day Tilaurakot, Nepal or Piprahwa, India. He obtained his enlightenment in Bodh Gaya, gave his first sermon in Sarnath, and died in Kushinagar.

 

No written records about Gautama have been found from his lifetime or some centuries thereafter. One Edict of Asoka, who reigned from circa 269 BCE to 232 BCE, commemorates the Emperor's pilgrimage to the Buddha's birthplace in Lumbini. Another one of his edicts mentions several Dhamma texts, establishing the existence of a written Buddhist tradition at least by the time of the Maurya era and which may be the precursors of the Pāli Canon. The oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts are the Gandhāran Buddhist texts, reported to have been found in or around Haḍḍa near Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan and now preserved in the British Library. They are written in the Gāndhārī language using the Kharosthi script on twenty-seven birch bark manuscripts and date from the first century BCE to the third century CE.

 

TRADITIONAL BIOGRAPHIES

BIOGRAPHICAL SOURCES

The sources for the life of Siddhārtha Gautama are a variety of different, and sometimes conflicting, traditional biographies. These include the Buddhacarita, Lalitavistara Sūtra, Mahāvastu, and the Nidānakathā. Of these, the Buddhacarita is the earliest full biography, an epic poem written by the poet Aśvaghoṣa, and dating around the beginning of the 2nd century CE. The Lalitavistara Sūtra is the next oldest biography, a Mahāyāna/Sarvāstivāda biography dating to the 3rd century CE. The Mahāvastu from the Mahāsāṃghika Lokottaravāda tradition is another major biography, composed incrementally until perhaps the 4th century CE. The Dharmaguptaka biography of the Buddha is the most exhaustive, and is entitled the Abhiniṣkramaṇa Sūtra, and various Chinese translations of this date between the 3rd and 6th century CE. The Nidānakathā is from the Theravada tradition in Sri Lanka and was composed in the 5th century by Buddhaghoṣa.

 

From canonical sources, the Jataka tales, the Mahapadana Sutta (DN 14), and the Achariyabhuta Sutta (MN 123) which include selective accounts that may be older, but are not full biographies. The Jātakas retell previous lives of Gautama as a bodhisattva, and the first collection of these can be dated among the earliest Buddhist texts. The Mahāpadāna Sutta and Achariyabhuta Sutta both recount miraculous events surrounding Gautama's birth, such as the bodhisattva's descent from the Tuṣita Heaven into his mother's womb.

 

NATURE OF TRADITIONAL DEPICTIONS

In the earliest Buddhists texts, the nikāyas and āgamas, the Buddha is not depicted as possessing omniscience (sabbaññu) nor is he depicted as being an eternal transcendent (lokottara) being. According to Bhikkhu Analayo, ideas of the Buddha's omniscience (along with an increasing tendency to deify him and his biography) are found only later, in the Mahayana sutras and later Pali commentaries or texts such as the Mahāvastu. In the Sandaka Sutta, the Buddha's disciple Ananda outlines an argument against the claims of teachers who say they are all knowing while in the Tevijjavacchagotta Sutta the Buddha himself states that he has never made a claim to being omniscient, instead he claimed to have the "higher knowledges" (abhijñā). The earliest biographical material from the Pali Nikayas focuses on the Buddha's life as a śramaṇa, his search for enlightenment under various teachers such as Alara Kalama and his forty five year career as a teacher.

 

Traditional biographies of Gautama generally include numerous miracles, omens, and supernatural events. The character of the Buddha in these traditional biographies is often that of a fully transcendent (Skt. lokottara) and perfected being who is unencumbered by the mundane world. In the Mahāvastu, over the course of many lives, Gautama is said to have developed supra-mundane abilities including: a painless birth conceived without intercourse; no need for sleep, food, medicine, or bathing, although engaging in such "in conformity with the world"; omniscience, and the ability to "suppress karma". Nevertheless, some of the more ordinary details of his life have been gathered from these traditional sources. In modern times there has been an attempt to form a secular understanding of Siddhārtha Gautama's life by omitting the traditional supernatural elements of his early biographies.

 

Andrew Skilton writes that the Buddha was never historically regarded by Buddhist traditions as being merely human:

It is important to stress that, despite modern Theravada teachings to the contrary (often a sop to skeptical Western pupils), he was never seen as being merely human. For instance, he is often described as having the thirty-two major and eighty minor marks or signs of a mahāpuruṣa, "superman"; the Buddha himself denied that he was either a man or a god; and in the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta he states that he could live for an aeon were he asked to do so.The ancient Indians were generally unconcerned with chronologies, being more focused on philosophy. Buddhist texts reflect this tendency, providing a clearer picture of what Gautama may have taught than of the dates of the events in his life. These texts contain descriptions of the culture and daily life of ancient India which can be corroborated from the Jain scriptures, and make the Buddha's time the earliest period in Indian history for which significant accounts exist. British author Karen Armstrong writes that although there is very little information that can be considered historically sound, we can be reasonably confident that Siddhārtha Gautama did exist as a historical figure. Michael Carrithers goes a bit further by stating that the most general outline of "birth, maturity, renunciation, search, awakening and liberation, teaching, death" must be true.

 

BIOGRAPHY

CONCEPTION AND BIRTH

The Buddhist tradition regards Lumbini, in present-day Nepal to be the birthplace of the Buddha. He grew up in Kapilavastu. The exact site of ancient Kapilavastu is unknown. It may have been either Piprahwa, Uttar Pradesh, present-day India, or Tilaurakot, present-day Nepal. Both places belonged to the Sakya territory, and are located only 15 miles apart from each other.

 

Gautama was born as a Kshatriya, the son of Śuddhodana, "an elected chief of the Shakya clan", whose capital was Kapilavastu, and who were later annexed by the growing Kingdom of Kosala during the Buddha's lifetime. Gautama was the family name. His mother, Maya (Māyādevī), Suddhodana's wife, was a Koliyan princess. Legend has it that, on the night Siddhartha was conceived, Queen Maya dreamt that a white elephant with six white tusks entered her right side, and ten months later Siddhartha was born. As was the Shakya tradition, when his mother Queen Maya became pregnant, she left Kapilvastu for her father's kingdom to give birth. However, her son is said to have been born on the way, at Lumbini, in a garden beneath a sal tree.

 

The day of the Buddha's birth is widely celebrated in Theravada countries as Vesak. Buddha's Birthday is called Buddha Purnima in Nepal and India as he is believed to have been born on a full moon day. Various sources hold that the Buddha's mother died at his birth, a few days or seven days later. The infant was given the name Siddhartha (Pāli: Siddhattha), meaning "he who achieves his aim". During the birth celebrations, the hermit seer Asita journeyed from his mountain abode and announced that the child would either become a great king (chakravartin) or a great sadhu. By traditional account, this occurred after Siddhartha placed his feet in Asita's hair and Asita examined the birthmarks. Suddhodana held a naming ceremony on the fifth day, and invited eight Brahmin scholars to read the future. All gave a dual prediction that the baby would either become a great king or a great holy man. Kondañña, the youngest, and later to be the first arhat other than the Buddha, was reputed to be the only one who unequivocally predicted that Siddhartha would become a Buddha.

 

While later tradition and legend characterized Śuddhodana as a hereditary monarch, the descendant of the Suryavansha (Solar dynasty) of Ikṣvāku (Pāli: Okkāka), many scholars think that Śuddhodana was the elected chief of a tribal confederacy.

 

Early texts suggest that Gautama was not familiar with the dominant religious teachings of his time until he left on his religious quest, which is said to have been motivated by existential concern for the human condition. The state of the Shakya clan was not a monarchy, and seems to have been structured either as an oligarchy, or as a form of republic. The more egalitarian gana-sangha form of government, as a political alternative to the strongly hierarchical kingdoms, may have influenced the development of the śramanic Jain and Buddhist sanghas, where monarchies tended toward Vedic Brahmanism.

 

EARLY LIFE AND MARRIAGE

Siddhartha was brought up by his mother's younger sister, Maha Pajapati. By tradition, he is said to have been destined by birth to the life of a prince, and had three palaces (for seasonal occupation) built for him. Although more recent scholarship doubts this status, his father, said to be King Śuddhodana, wishing for his son to be a great king, is said to have shielded him from religious teachings and from knowledge of human suffering.

 

When he reached the age of 16, his father reputedly arranged his marriage to a cousin of the same age named Yaśodharā (Pāli: Yasodharā). According to the traditional account, she gave birth to a son, named Rāhula. Siddhartha is said to have spent 29 years as a prince in Kapilavastu. Although his father ensured that Siddhartha was provided with everything he could want or need, Buddhist scriptures say that the future Buddha felt that material wealth was not life's ultimate goal.

 

RENUNCIATION AND ASCETIC LIFE

At the age of 29, the popular biography continues, Siddhartha left his palace to meet his subjects. Despite his father's efforts to hide from him the sick, aged and suffering, Siddhartha was said to have seen an old man. When his charioteer Channa explained to him that all people grew old, the prince went on further trips beyond the palace. On these he encountered a diseased man, a decaying corpse, and an ascetic. These depressed him, and he initially strove to overcome aging, sickness, and death by living the life of an ascetic.

 

Accompanied by Channa and riding his horse Kanthaka, Gautama quit his palace for the life of a mendicant. It's said that, "the horse's hooves were muffled by the gods" to prevent guards from knowing of his departure.

 

Gautama initially went to Rajagaha and began his ascetic life by begging for alms in the street. After King Bimbisara's men recognised Siddhartha and the king learned of his quest, Bimbisara offered Siddhartha the throne. Siddhartha rejected the offer, but promised to visit his kingdom of Magadha first, upon attaining enlightenment.

 

He left Rajagaha and practised under two hermit teachers of yogic meditation. After mastering the teachings of Alara Kalama (Skr. Ārāḍa Kālāma), he was asked by Kalama to succeed him. However, Gautama felt unsatisfied by the practice, and moved on to become a student of yoga with Udaka Ramaputta (Skr. Udraka Rāmaputra). With him he achieved high levels of meditative consciousness, and was again asked to succeed his teacher. But, once more, he was not satisfied, and again moved on.

 

Siddhartha and a group of five companions led by Kaundinya are then said to have set out to take their austerities even further. They tried to find enlightenment through deprivation of worldly goods, including food, practising self-mortification. After nearly starving himself to death by restricting his food intake to around a leaf or nut per day, he collapsed in a river while bathing and almost drowned. Siddhartha was rescued by a village girl named Sujata and she gave him some payasam (a pudding made from milk and jaggery) after which Siddhartha got back some energy. Siddhartha began to reconsider his path. Then, he remembered a moment in childhood in which he had been watching his father start the season's ploughing. He attained a concentrated and focused state that was blissful and refreshing, the jhāna.

 

AWAKENING

According to the early Buddhist texts, after realizing that meditative dhyana was the right path to awakening, but that extreme asceticism didn't work, Gautama discovered what Buddhists call the Middle Way - a path of moderation away from the extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification, or the Noble Eightfold Path, as was identified and described by the Buddha in his first discourse, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta. In a famous incident, after becoming starved and weakened, he is said to have accepted milk and rice pudding from a village girl named Sujata. Such was his emaciated appearance that she wrongly believed him to be a spirit that had granted her a wish.

 

Following this incident, Gautama was famously seated under a pipal tree - now known as the Bodhi tree - in Bodh Gaya, India, when he vowed never to arise until he had found the truth. Kaundinya and four other companions, believing that he had abandoned his search and become undisciplined, left. After a reputed 49 days of meditation, at the age of 35, he is said to have attained Enlightenment. According to some traditions, this occurred in approximately the fifth lunar month, while, according to others, it was in the twelfth month. From that time, Gautama was known to his followers as the Buddha or "Awakened One" ("Buddha" is also sometimes translated as "The Enlightened One").

 

According to Buddhism, at the time of his awakening he realized complete insight into the cause of suffering, and the steps necessary to eliminate it. These discoveries became known as the "Four Noble Truths", which are at the heart of Buddhist teaching. Through mastery of these truths, a state of supreme liberation, or Nirvana, is believed to be possible for any being. The Buddha described Nirvāna as the perfect peace of a mind that's free from ignorance, greed, hatred and other afflictive states, or "defilements" (kilesas). Nirvana is also regarded as the "end of the world", in that no personal identity or boundaries of the mind remain. In such a state, a being is said to possess the Ten Characteristics, belonging to every Buddha.

 

According to a story in the Āyācana Sutta (Samyutta Nikaya VI.1) - a scripture found in the Pāli and other canons - immediately after his awakening, the Buddha debated whether or not he should teach the Dharma to others. He was concerned that humans were so overpowered by ignorance, greed and hatred that they could never recognise the path, which is subtle, deep and hard to grasp. However, in the story, Brahmā Sahampati convinced him, arguing that at least some will understand it. The Buddha relented, and agreed to teach.

 

FORMATION OF THE SANGHA

After his awakening, the Buddha met Taphussa and Bhallika — two merchant brothers from the city of Balkh in what is currently Afghanistan - who became his first lay disciples. It is said that each was given hairs from his head, which are now claimed to be enshrined as relics in the Shwe Dagon Temple in Rangoon, Burma. The Buddha intended to visit Asita, and his former teachers, Alara Kalama and Udaka Ramaputta, to explain his findings, but they had already died.

 

He then travelled to the Deer Park near Varanasi (Benares) in northern India, where he set in motion what Buddhists call the Wheel of Dharma by delivering his first sermon to the five companions with whom he had sought enlightenment. Together with him, they formed the first saṅgha: the company of Buddhist monks.

 

All five become arahants, and within the first two months, with the conversion of Yasa and fifty four of his friends, the number of such arahants is said to have grown to 60. The conversion of three brothers named Kassapa followed, with their reputed 200, 300 and 500 disciples, respectively. This swelled the sangha to more than 1,000.

 

TRAVELS AND TEACHING

For the remaining 45 years of his life, the Buddha is said to have traveled in the Gangetic Plain, in what is now Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and southern Nepal, teaching a diverse range of people: from nobles to servants, murderers such as Angulimala, and cannibals such as Alavaka. Although the Buddha's language remains unknown, it's likely that he taught in one or more of a variety of closely related Middle Indo-Aryan dialects, of which Pali may be a standardization.

 

The sangha traveled through the subcontinent, expounding the dharma. This continued throughout the year, except during the four months of the Vāsanā rainy season when ascetics of all religions rarely traveled. One reason was that it was more difficult to do so without causing harm to animal life. At this time of year, the sangha would retreat to monasteries, public parks or forests, where people would come to them.

 

The first vassana was spent at Varanasi when the sangha was formed. After this, the Buddha kept a promise to travel to Rajagaha, capital of Magadha, to visit King Bimbisara. During this visit, Sariputta and Maudgalyayana were converted by Assaji, one of the first five disciples, after which they were to become the Buddha's two foremost followers. The Buddha spent the next three seasons at Veluvana Bamboo Grove monastery in Rajagaha, capital of Magadha.

 

Upon hearing of his son's awakening, Suddhodana sent, over a period, ten delegations to ask him to return to Kapilavastu. On the first nine occasions, the delegates failed to deliver the message, and instead joined the sangha to become arahants. The tenth delegation, led by Kaludayi, a childhood friend of Gautama's (who also became an arahant), however, delivered the message.

 

Now two years after his awakening, the Buddha agreed to return, and made a two-month journey by foot to Kapilavastu, teaching the dharma as he went. At his return, the royal palace prepared a midday meal, but the sangha was making an alms round in Kapilavastu. Hearing this, Suddhodana approached his son, the Buddha, saying:

 

"Ours is the warrior lineage of Mahamassata, and not a single warrior has gone seeking alms."

 

The Buddha is said to have replied:

 

"That is not the custom of your royal lineage. But it is the custom of my Buddha lineage. Several thousands of Buddhas have gone by seeking alms."

 

Buddhist texts say that Suddhodana invited the sangha into the palace for the meal, followed by a dharma talk. After this he is said to have become a sotapanna. During the visit, many members of the royal family joined the sangha. The Buddha's cousins Ananda and Anuruddha became two of his five chief disciples. At the age of seven, his son Rahula also joined, and became one of his ten chief disciples. His half-brother Nanda also joined and became an arahant.

 

Of the Buddha's disciples, Sariputta, Maudgalyayana, Mahakasyapa, Ananda and Anuruddha are believed to have been the five closest to him. His ten foremost disciples were reputedly completed by the quintet of Upali, Subhoti, Rahula, Mahakaccana and Punna.

 

In the fifth vassana, the Buddha was staying at Mahavana near Vesali when he heard news of the impending death of his father. He is said to have gone to Suddhodana and taught the dharma, after which his father became an arahant.The king's death and cremation was to inspire the creation of an order of nuns. Buddhist texts record that the Buddha was reluctant to ordain women. His foster mother Maha Pajapati, for example, approached him, asking to join the sangha, but he refused. Maha Pajapati, however, was so intent on the path of awakening that she led a group of royal Sakyan and Koliyan ladies, which followed the sangha on a long journey to Rajagaha. In time, after Ananda championed their cause, the Buddha is said to have reconsidered and, five years after the formation of the sangha, agreed to the ordination of women as nuns. He reasoned that males and females had an equal capacity for awakening. But he gave women additional rules (Vinaya) to follow.

 

MAHAPARINIRVANA

According to the Mahaparinibbana Sutta of the Pali canon, at the age of 80, the Buddha announced that he would soon reach Parinirvana, or the final deathless state, and abandon his earthly body. After this, the Buddha ate his last meal, which he had received as an offering from a blacksmith named Cunda. Falling violently ill, Buddha instructed his attendant Ānanda to convince Cunda that the meal eaten at his place had nothing to do with his passing and that his meal would be a source of the greatest merit as it provided the last meal for a Buddha. Mettanando and Von Hinüber argue that the Buddha died of mesenteric infarction, a symptom of old age, rather than food poisoning. The precise contents of the Buddha's final meal are not clear, due to variant scriptural traditions and ambiguity over the translation of certain significant terms; the Theravada tradition generally believes that the Buddha was offered some kind of pork, while the Mahayana tradition believes that the Buddha consumed some sort of truffle or other mushroom. These may reflect the different traditional views on Buddhist vegetarianism and the precepts for monks and nuns.

 

Waley suggests that Theravadin's would take suukaramaddava (the contents of the Buddha's last meal), which can translate as pig-soft, to mean soft flesh of a pig. However, he also states that pig-soft could mean "pig's soft-food", that is, after Neumann, a soft food favoured by pigs, assumed to be a truffle. He argues (also after Neumann) that as Pali Buddhism was developed in an area remote to the Buddha's death, the existence of other plants with suukara- (pig) as part of their names and that "(p)lant names tend to be local and dialectical" could easily indicate that suukaramaddava was a type of plant whose local name was unknown to those in the Pali regions. Specifically, local writers knew more about their flora than Theravadin commentator Buddhaghosa who lived hundreds of years and kilometres remote in time and space from the events described. Unaware of an alternate meaning and with no Theravadin prohibition against eating animal flesh, Theravadins would not have questioned the Buddha eating meat and interpreted the term accordingly.

 

Ananda protested the Buddha's decision to enter Parinirvana in the abandoned jungles of Kuśināra (present-day Kushinagar, India) of the Malla kingdom. The Buddha, however, is said to have reminded Ananda how Kushinara was a land once ruled by a righteous wheel-turning king that resounded with joy:

 

44. Kusavati, Ananda, resounded unceasingly day and night with ten sounds - the trumpeting of elephants, the neighing of horses, the rattling of chariots, the beating of drums and tabours, music and song, cheers, the clapping of hands, and cries of "Eat, drink, and be merry!"

 

The Buddha then asked all the attendant Bhikkhus to clarify any doubts or questions they had. They had none. According to Buddhist scriptures, he then finally entered Parinirvana. The Buddha's final words are reported to have been: "All composite things (Saṅkhāra) are perishable. Strive for your own liberation with diligence" (Pali: 'vayadhammā saṅkhārā appamādena sampādethā'). His body was cremated and the relics were placed in monuments or stupas, some of which are believed to have survived until the present. For example, The Temple of the Tooth or "Dalada Maligawa" in Sri Lanka is the place where what some believe to be the relic of the right tooth of Buddha is kept at present.

 

According to the Pāli historical chronicles of Sri Lanka, the Dīpavaṃsa and Mahāvaṃsa, the coronation of Emperor Aśoka (Pāli: Asoka) is 218 years after the death of the Buddha. According to two textual records in Chinese (十八部論 and 部執異論), the coronation of Emperor Aśoka is 116 years after the death of the Buddha. Therefore, the time of Buddha's passing is either 486 BCE according to Theravāda record or 383 BCE according to Mahayana record. However, the actual date traditionally accepted as the date of the Buddha's death in Theravāda countries is 544 or 545 BCE, because the reign of Emperor Aśoka was traditionally reckoned to be about 60 years earlier than current estimates. In Burmese Buddhist tradition, the date of the Buddha's death is 13 May 544 BCE. whereas in Thai tradition it is 11 March 545 BCE.

 

At his death, the Buddha is famously believed to have told his disciples to follow no leader. Mahakasyapa was chosen by the sangha to be the chairman of the First Buddhist Council, with the two chief disciples Maudgalyayana and Sariputta having died before the Buddha.

 

While in the Buddha's days he was addressed by the very respected titles Buddha, Shākyamuni, Shākyasimha, Bhante and Bho, he was known after his parinirvana as Arihant, Bhagavā/Bhagavat/Bhagwān, Mahāvira, Jina/Jinendra, Sāstr, Sugata, and most popularly in scriptures as Tathāgata.

 

BUDDHA AND VEDAS

Buddha's teachings deny the authority of the Vedas and consequently [at least atheistic] Buddhism is generally viewed as a nāstika school (heterodox, literally "It is not so") from the perspective of orthodox Hinduism.

 

RELICS

After his death, Buddha's cremation relics were divided amongst 8 royal families and his disciples; centuries later they would be enshrined by King Ashoka into 84,000 stupas. Many supernatural legends surround the history of alleged relics as they accompanied the spread of Buddhism and gave legitimacy to rulers.

 

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

An extensive and colorful physical description of the Buddha has been laid down in scriptures. A kshatriya by birth, he had military training in his upbringing, and by Shakyan tradition was required to pass tests to demonstrate his worthiness as a warrior in order to marry. He had a strong enough body to be noticed by one of the kings and was asked to join his army as a general. He is also believed by Buddhists to have "the 32 Signs of the Great Man".

 

The Brahmin Sonadanda described him as "handsome, good-looking, and pleasing to the eye, with a most beautiful complexion. He has a godlike form and countenance, he is by no means unattractive." (D, I:115)

 

"It is wonderful, truly marvellous, how serene is the good Gotama's appearance, how clear and radiant his complexion, just as the golden jujube in autumn is clear and radiant, just as a palm-tree fruit just loosened from the stalk is clear and radiant, just as an adornment of red gold wrought in a crucible by a skilled goldsmith, deftly beaten and laid on a yellow-cloth shines, blazes and glitters, even so, the good Gotama's senses are calmed, his complexion is clear and radiant." (A, I:181)

 

A disciple named Vakkali, who later became an arahant, was so obsessed by the Buddha's physical presence that the Buddha is said to have felt impelled to tell him to desist, and to have reminded him that he should know the Buddha through the Dhamma and not through physical appearances.

 

Although there are no extant representations of the Buddha in human form until around the 1st century CE (see Buddhist art), descriptions of the physical characteristics of fully enlightened buddhas are attributed to the Buddha in the Digha Nikaya's Lakkhaṇa Sutta (D, I:142). In addition, the Buddha's physical appearance is described by Yasodhara to their son Rahula upon the Buddha's first post-Enlightenment return to his former princely palace in the non-canonical Pali devotional hymn, Narasīha Gāthā ("The Lion of Men").

 

Among the 32 main characteristics it is mentioned that Buddha has blue eyes.

 

NINE VIRTUES

Recollection of nine virtues attributed to the Buddha is a common Buddhist meditation and devotional practice called Buddhānusmṛti. The nine virtues are also among the 40 Buddhist meditation subjects. The nine virtues of the Buddha appear throughout the Tipitaka, and include:

 

- Buddho – Awakened

- Sammasambuddho – Perfectly self-awakened

- Vijja-carana-sampano – Endowed with higher knowledge and ideal conduct.

- Sugato – Well-gone or Well-spoken.

- Lokavidu – Wise in the knowledge of the many worlds.

- Anuttaro Purisa-damma-sarathi – Unexcelled trainer of untrained people.

- Satthadeva-Manussanam – Teacher of gods and humans.

- Bhagavathi – The Blessed one

- Araham – Worthy of homage. An Arahant is "one with taints destroyed, who has lived the holy life, done what had to be done, laid down the burden, reached the true goal, destroyed the fetters of being, and is completely liberated through final knowledge."

 

TEACHINGS

TRACING THE OLDEST TEACHINGS

Information of the oldest teachings may be obtained by analysis of the oldest texts. One method to obtain information on the oldest core of Buddhism is to compare the oldest extant versions of the Theravadin Pali Canon and other texts. The reliability of these sources, and the possibility to draw out a core of oldest teachings, is a matter of dispute. According to Vetter, inconsistencies remain, and other methods must be applied to resolve those inconsistencies.

 

According to Schmithausen, three positions held by scholars of Buddhism can be distinguished:

 

"Stress on the fundamental homogeneity and substantial authenticity of at least a considerable part of the Nikayic materials;"

"Scepticism with regard to the possibility of retrieving the doctrine of earliest Buddhism;"

"Cautious optimism in this respect."

 

DHYANA AND INSIGHT

A core problem in the study of early Buddhism is the relation between dhyana and insight. Schmithausen, in his often-cited article On some Aspects of Descriptions or Theories of 'Liberating Insight' and 'Enlightenment' in Early Buddhism notes that the mention of the four noble truths as constituting "liberating insight", which is attained after mastering the Rupa Jhanas, is a later addition to texts such as Majjhima Nikaya 36

 

CORE TEACHINGS

According to Tilmann Vetter, the core of earliest Buddhism is the practice of dhyāna. Bronkhorst agrees that dhyana was a Buddhist invention, whereas Norman notes that "the Buddha's way to release [...] was by means of meditative practices." Discriminating insight into transiency as a separate path to liberation was a later development.

 

According to the Mahāsaccakasutta, from the fourth jhana the Buddha gained bodhi. Yet, it is not clear what he was awakened to. "Liberating insight" is a later addition to this text, and reflects a later development and understanding in early Buddhism. The mentioning of the four truths as constituting "liberating insight" introduces a logical problem, since the four truths depict a linear path of practice, the knowledge of which is in itself not depicted as being liberating:

 

[T]hey do not teach that one is released by knowing the four noble truths, but by practicing the fourth noble truth, the eightfold path, which culminates in right samadhi.

 

Although "Nibbāna" (Sanskrit: Nirvāna) is the common term for the desired goal of this practice, many other terms can be found throughout the Nikayas, which are not specified.

 

According to Vetter, the description of the Buddhist path may initially have been as simple as the term "the middle way". In time, this short description was elaborated, resulting in the description of the eightfold path.

 

According to both Bronkhorst and Anderson, the four truths became a substitution for prajna, or "liberating insight", in the suttas in those texts where "liberating insight" was preceded by the four jhanas. According to Bronkhorst, the four truths may not have been formulated in earliest Buddhism, and did not serve in earliest Buddhism as a description of "liberating insight". Gotama's teachings may have been personal, "adjusted to the need of each person."

 

The three marks of existence may reflect Upanishadic or other influences. K.R. Norman supposes that these terms were already in use at the Buddha's time, and were familiar to his listeners.

 

The Brahma-vihara was in origin probably a brahmanic term; but its usage may have been common to the Sramana traditions.

  

LATER DEVELOPMENTS

In time, "liberating insight" became an essential feature of the Buddhist tradition. The following teachings, which are commonly seen as essential to Buddhism, are later formulations which form part of the explanatory framework of this "liberating insight":

 

- The Four Noble Truths: that suffering is an ingrained part of existence; that the origin of suffering is craving for sensuality, acquisition of identity, and fear of annihilation; that suffering can be ended; and that following the Noble Eightfold Path is the means to accomplish this;

- The Noble Eightfold Path: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration;

- Dependent origination: the mind creates suffering as a natural product of a complex process.

 

OTHER RELIGIONS

Some Hindus regard Gautama as the 9th avatar of Vishnu. The Buddha is also regarded as a prophet by the Ahmadiyya Muslims and a Manifestation of God in the Bahá'í Faith. Some early Chinese Taoist-Buddhists thought the Buddha to be a reincarnation of Lao Tzu.

 

The Christian Saint Josaphat is based on the Buddha. The name comes from the Sanskrit Bodhisattva via Arabic Būdhasaf and Georgian Iodasaph. The only story in which St. Josaphat appears, Barlaam and Josaphat, is based on the life of the Buddha. Josaphat was included in earlier editions of the Roman Martyrology (feast day 27 November) — though not in the Roman Missal — and in the Eastern Orthodox Church liturgical calendar (26 August).

 

Disciples of the Cao Đài religion worship the Buddha as a major religious teacher. His image can be found in both their Holy See and on the home altar. He is revealed during communication with Divine Beings as son of their Supreme Being (God the Father) together with other major religious teachers and founders like Jesus, Laozi, and Confucius.

 

In the ancient Gnostic sect of Manichaeism the Buddha is listed among the prophets who preached the word of God before Mani.

 

WIKIPEDIA

A very small amount of soup was left at the Murdock Walmart just a couple of days before Hurricane Irma's landfall. The shelves were for the most part, cleaned out, along with most of the other non-perishable items in the store. I wasn't going to buy soup, anyway, as I already had several cans at home.

 

Also, on an unrelated note, you get a slight peek of the new Black 2.0 look. ;)

 

-----

Store 721. This store originally opened on March 1, 1995 and relocated from an older Division 1 store at US-41 and Cochran Boulevard, which originally opened in 1985. That location has since been subdivided into Staples, Big Lots, and Books-a-Million.

In my work I deal with the artistic transformation of motifs from

everyday life as well as the social phenomena of our time. I am

interested in how human beings, with their standards and basic

values, behave, present themselves and move within the social

fabric. In the tension between its qualities and shortcomings, the

human figure is often the starting point for my reliefs and

sculptures. The respective relationship of the human being towards

him or herself or towards nature can be read in the current forms

of presentation and in those of the last decades. The archetype of

society, the smallest nuclear of a social life, is the image of “father,

mother, child”, an image that not least due to the long and very

loaded visual tradition of the “holy family”, is deeply rooted in our

society. (*Nativity Scene*, 2011).

Fragments of images and sculptures from past epochs and periods

constantly recur in the motifs. This results in hybrids containing

images of what is occurring in the currently omnipresent multimedia

world. Through the realization of the images using the archaic

technique of carving, motifs and visual language, which seemed to

have long been discarded, they reveal themselves to be unexpectedly

topical and controversial. Particularly with regard to the topics and

images of mundane everyday life, the iconic aspect of today’s culture

with its often century-old symbolism, emerges.

At first glance, I frequently use the same effects as the media and

internet images we are surrounded by: a superficially-oriented, slick

wrapping that is appealing yet often turns out to be soulless

hollowness. As a result, there is a confounding break between

traditional appearance and the images of digital modernism, which

at best leads to a deceleration of images in our fast-paced age.

Contemporary representations, which in their iconographic visual

language are for example reminiscent of medieval saints, are

frequently produced. They are sometimes joined by animals, which

are not only symbols for the human psyche but also references to the

long-felt guilt-ridden relationship between humans and nature.

In order to orientate themselves in the present and to interpret it, the

viewers must be aware of the past and things that have passed. The

examination of the political challenges of our present and future

often leads to a composition that is characterized by a feeling of

perplexity and powerlessness. This frequently results in super-

elevations and ironic metaphors. The works, which often appear to

hover weightlessly, deal with nothing less than the questions of our

time, existence and perishability

WEEK 49 – Cordova Super Target Final Day, Set IV

 

While the frozen and refrigerated cases thus far have given off the impression that this store’s grocery department was entirely sold out, as we head down one of the dry goods aisles, we find a different story entirely. Look how well-stocked this aisle is – it’s like night and day!! Crazy. I believe I can pinpoint the reasons why, too.

 

Let’s recall the general merchandise in all the rest of the salesfloor; we saw plenty of emptied-out aisles there, and I said the likely reason why was not because there was any liquidation discount – because that is untrue – but rather, because Target had simply already boxed up most of that product and shipped it off to other, nearby Target stores (so that the goods could continue to sell at full-price as opposed to having to be let go at a discount, which would of course be disadvantageous to Target).

 

On the other hand, here in grocery, we saw that any refrigerated, frozen, or (as we’ll soon see) fresh goods were all discounted, essentially the only merchandise categories in the entire store to see any sort of sale price prior to the closure. That was so that those goods could be cleared out, as unlike all the general merchandise, the other nearby Targets – all being non-supercenters – did not have the capacity to receive and store extra perishable goods beyond those that they already regularly sell. (This Super Target, of course, had a much greater selection of items as compared to a regular Target’s grocery selection.)

 

The logic for the dry groceries (such as those seen here) is more in line with the general merchandise strategy. Target had no reason to offer any extra discount on these items because they could easily be boxed up and shipped out to other Target stores in the area, where they could continue to be sold at more or less full-price. This is exactly what we saw happen, too, although it should be noted that because the selection of dry groceries was also larger than that of those other Targets, the goods did have to be discounted at least somewhat, as well as stocked on clearance endcaps as opposed to within the aisles themselves (again, due to the lack of space within the aisles proper). But the overall discount was still probably less than what they would have had to go with at this Super location, in order to sell off all the goods before the closure date.

 

This brings up a good question, though – if Target’s strategy for the dry groceries was similar to all the general merchandise in the rest of the store, then why didn’t they go ahead and box all this stuff up, too, just like they did the rest of the items? My theory on that is that Target wanted to keep these items here until the last minute in hopes that they would sell as much as possible, and then only have to box up what remains. See, unlike all the other GM stuff that they knew is carried normally in those other Targets, this stuff had a lot of extra selection, so only having to deal with the excess was likely a better idea in the long run.

 

(c) 2020 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

 

Snapped in Relics, a junk shop in Glasgow's West End.

 

"A junk shop has a fine film of dust over the window, its stock may include literally anything that is not perishable, and its proprietor, who is usually asleep in a small room at the back, displays no eagerness to make a sale... its appeal is to the jackdaw inside all of us, the instinct that makes a child hoard copper nails." - George Orwell, Just Junk - But Who Could Resist It?

WEEK 9 – Hdo Kroger Marketplace, Set IV

 

Across from Starbucks and floral, as you very likely could have guessed, is the store’s produce department. And boy, is that department huge here! There’s actually a little bit more of it that didn’t even manage to make it into my shot here, out of view on the right. In the past, Kroger’s produce departments were located in the front right (or left, depending on) corner of the store: like literally in the corner itself, right up against it. These days, it’s located in the general vicinity, but in more central of a position as you walk into the store, and with a footprint that allows it to be larger and more flexible and open. Instead of being A PART of the perishables grand aisle, it’s now APART from it. (See kids, there’s a distinction between those two spellings! Yay grammar!)

 

(c) 2018 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

KIDWELLY was originally the name of the district which included part of the coastlands lying between the estuaries of the Towy and the Loughor. In 1106, after the death of Howell ap Gronw, Henry I granted these lands to his minister, Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, who erected a castle at the mouth of the Gwaendraeth Fach. This formed one of a series of Norman strongholds designed to secure their newly won conquests in South Wales and to command the passage of the rivers across which the road to the west passed. A mention of the hall of the Castle in a document of 1115 or earlier shows that the building of Kidwelly must have been practically completed by that year. During the rising which followed the death of Henry I, the Battle of Maes Gwenllian was fought a short distance away from the castle (1136). The account speaks of Maurice de Londres, Lord of Kidwelly, and Geoffrey, Constable of the Bishop, as leaders of the Norman army. Maurice, who is mentioned for the first time in connection with this district, already possessed Ogmore in Glamorgan, where his father William de Londres appears to have been one of the original conquerors. The coupling of the two names suggests that Roger of Salisbury, while retaining possession of the castle, had granted the lordship of the district to Maurice de Londres, who probably acquired the castle also when the bishop died in the following year.

 

The Welsh chronicles record that, in 1190, the Lord Rhys built the castle of Kidwelly. This entry probably reflects a native conquest of the settlement, but the Normans must have recovered it before 1201, when Meredith, son of Rhys, was slain by the garrison of the castle. In 1215 Rhys Grug, another son of the Lord Rhys, captured Kidwelly and burnt the castle. He remained in possession until 1220, when Llywelyn the Great forced him to restore these conquests. The male line of the de Londres had become extinct during these troubles, and Kidwelly had passed to an heiress, Hawise. In 1225 she married Walter de Braose, who died during the campaign of 1233-4. Kidwelly Castle was by that date again in the possession of the Welsh as a result of the rising of 1231, when Llywelyn the Great, previously a supporter of the royal authority, had turned his arms against Henry III. Hawise de Londres, left a widow, was unable to regain possession of Kidwelly which, in 1242, was still held by Rhys's son Meredith. Two years later Hawise married Patrick de Chaworth, who seems to have recovered these lands soon after this date. The Welsh rising of 1257 involved the destruction of the settlement at Kidwelly, but the invaders failed to capture the castle. Patrick was slain during the campaign of the following year, and the wardship of his lands was granted to Hawise during the minority of their son Payn.

 

Payn de Chaworth must have attained his majority about 1270, as in that year he and his younger brother Patrick took the Cross. Hawise survived until 1274, and her death was soon followed by that of her two sons, Payn in 1279 and Patrick four years later. The elder brother died childless, and the younger left only an infant daughter, Matilda, who inherited Kidwelly and Ogmore. In 1291 the marriage of the young heiress was granted to the king's brother, Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, for the use of his second son, Henry, the union being celebrated in 1298.

 

The prominent part taken by Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, in the civil wars of Edward II's reign led to his execution after the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322, but the forefeited title and estates were later restored to his younger brother, Henry. The extinction of the male line in 1361 caused a temporary partition of the Lancastrian possessions, but on the death of the elder co-heiress, Matilda, in the following year, the whole inheritance fell to her sister Blanche, wife of John of Gaunt, who became Earl and later Duke of Lancaster. On the accession of Henry IV, Kidwelly, together with the other Lancastrian possessions, passed into the hands of the Crown, and was of little importance during the fifteenth century. Henry VII granted the castle to Sir Rhys ap Tudor, whose grandson Rhys ap Griffith forefeited it in 1531. Later it was again alienated and passed to the Earls of Cawdor. The castle had long ceased to be habitable, but certain repairs were carried out during the nineteenth century. In 1927 the owner placed the ruins under the guardianship of the Commissioners of Works (now the Department of the Environment).

 

Since that date extensive works of preservation have been undertaken. In 1930 and 1931 excavations were carried out by Sir Cyril Fox and the writer in order to recover the earlier history of the castle. The results are embodied in the present guide, and the interesting series of relics recovered may be seen in the National Museum of Wales.

 

PERIODS OF CONSTRUCTION

 

THE earliest remains at Kidwelly, dating from the beginning of the twelfth century, are the semi-circular moat surrounding the castle together with the rampart under the outer curtain, the true meaning of which was revealed by the investigations of 1930-1. Of the hall mentioned in the deed of 1115 and the other buildings of the twelfth century no trace remains, though it is possible that an extensive search under the 2ft to 7ft of debris with which the whole interior of the castle was levelled in the early fourteenth century would lead to the recovery of their plan. The only tangible relic of Norman buildings is a small capital belonging to an attached column and probably forming part of a fireplace. This was found walled into the masonry of the hall of c1300, and may be ascribed to a date at the end of the twelfth century. The ramparts and moats surrounding the northern and southern outworks cannot be exactly dated, but analogy with other sites shows that they may well belong to this early period.

The oldest surviving masonry is that of the towers and the curtain enclosing the inner ward. This occupies a rectangular area with a circular tower at each angle. There are two gates, on the south and north sides, each protected by a portcullis. The erection of these defences within the circuit of the original bank and stockade marks the beginning of the refortification of the castle in accordance with the ideas of the late thirteenth century. The awkward way in which the two western towers are brought close to the foot of the earlier bank can only be understood when the pre-existence of this defence is realised, while the simple character of the gates, so different from the elaborate gatehouses of the normal concentric castle, must be similarly explained. The south-east tower was designed for occupation, but the hall and other structures of the earlier castle probably remained in use. Most of the dressed stonework of this period has disappeared, but the few remaining details are of thirteenth-century character, and this taken in conjunction with the plan suggests that the construction of the inner ward was carried out by Payn de Chaworth, c1275.

 

The replacement of the older buildings by a new hall, solar and kitchen and the erection of a chapel, form the next stage in the development of the castle. The different character of the masonry and the unusual position of the best-appointed private apartments in the southeast tower behind the screens of the hall prove that these additions were planned and built after the completion of the inner ward. The mouldings of the doors and windows belonging to this stage are all of late thirteenth- century character, and none need be earlier than 1300. The absence of glass grooves in the trefoiled lancet windows of the hall and chapel is also an early feature. It is perhaps unlikely that an extensive building programme would have been carried out during the minority of Matilda de Chaworth (1283-98), and a date before the death of her father Patrick is earlier than the architectural evidence would justify. The work should therefore in all probability be attributed to c1300, directly after the marriage of Matilda to Henry of Lancaster.

 

The design of the inner ward at Kidwelly presupposes an outer defensive zone, and the replacement of the original stockade with a stone curtain followed the completion of the living-quarters. The main gatehouse, the lesser northern gate, the outer curtain with its four flanking towers, and the mantlet between the north-eastern tower and the chapel, are part of a single design intended to bring Kidwelly into line with other concentric castles of this period. The position of the elaborate gatehouse, which could in case of need act as a separate defensive unit, on the line of the outer instead of the inner curtain is an abnormal feature imposed by the pre-existing layout of the site. The new masonry curtain of the outer ward was higher than the original stockade and necessitated the addition of a further storey to the towers of the inner ward in order that they might still command the outer defences. The details of this reconstruction are all of early fourteenth-century character, and the fortification of the outer ward must have been carried out during the first quarter of that century. On the completion of this work the surplus material from the bank and other rubbish was used to level up the interior of the castle, which it now covers to a depth varying from 2ft to 7ft. The closing of the open gorges of the towers of the outer curtain marks the last stage in the military development of Kidwelly and may also be ascribed to the fourteenth century. The existing gate in the south wall of the town also appears to be of fourteenth-century date, and it might be expected that the erection of these walls would have followed rather than preceded the reconstruction of the castle. But grants of murage in 1282 suggest an earlier date, and the solution of this problem must await further research.

 

There is reason to think that the great gatehouse may have stood unfinished through most of the fourteenth century and that the opening of a quarry `for the work of the new tower', recorded in 1388-9, may mark the beginning of the works needed to complete it. Ten years later, between 1399 and 1401, when the lord of the castle had become king in the person of Henry IV, there is another record of nearly £100 being spent ‘on the new work of the tower over the gates of the castle’, the near completion of which at this time can be inferred from an order of 1402 for it to be roofed in lead. But in the autumn of the following year the castle was besieged by the Welsh rebels, aided by a naval force from France and Brittany, and subsequent documents leave very little doubt that they succeeded in setting fire to the gatehouse and inflicting serious damage to it; so much so that between 1408 and 1422 a further £500-£600 had to be spent on it, and only in the latter year was it finally roofed with lead shipped from Bristol. A superficial indication of the new work may be seen in the patches of thin flat slabs which contrast with the irregularly coursed boulders of the original masonry. To it belong the triple machicolis high up on the outward face, the upper part of, the wall towards the courtyard, all the square-headed windows, the rectangular stair turret at the north-west corner, and the stone vaults inserted at different levels in the flanking towers as a protection against fire.

 

The last significant addition to the castle, probably made towards the end of the fifteenth century, was a large hall placed on the west side of the outer ward. This was connected with a kitchen in the south-west corner of the inner ward by the enlargement of a thirteenth century embrasure so as to form a passage-way. Buildings placed against the outer curtain reflect the increased complexity of life in the Tudor period, but the provision of an entirely new hall and kitchen suggests that the earlier hall was already ruinous.

 

KIDWELLY is one of the Norman foundations strung out along the coastal plain of South Wales. There is no evidence of any occupation before the grant to Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, and even if a small Celtic settlement existed, it has been without influence on the subsequent development of the site. Like many other Norman settlements which were then continually threatened by a hostile attack from the mountains, Kidwelly stands at the head of an estuary where the river was still navigable at high tide. This situation ensured a line of communications when the castle was surrounded and the roads cut by a Welsh rising.

 

THE SETTLEMENT

 

The settlement consists of two parts, the castle and the walled town on the west bank, and the priory church with the new town on the other side of the river. The two are joined by a two-arched bridge of fourteenth- or fiftecnth-century date. This carried the great road to West Wales, probably replacing an earlier structure. Modern development has greatly altered the appearance of the new town, the last of the picturesque medieval houses having recently been destroyed (1931). The priory church of St. Mary was founded by Bishop Roger before 1115, and became a cell of the abbey of Sherborne. Such foundations are typical of the Norman settlements in South Wales, the alien monks being introduced as a counterpoise to the patriotic sentiments of the native monasteries which too often served as focuses of anti-Norman feeling. The present building dates from the fourteenth century.

From the bridge the road to the castle leads through the defences of the old town. The walls have mostly disappeared, but the main gateway, apparently of early fourtheenth-century date, still spans the road. The line of the defences can still be traced by the earthen bank which preceded the walls. It encloses about eight acres including the castle which it surrounds on all sides except the east. A transverse ditch running west from the castle moat divides it into two nearly equal halves, of which it is probable that only the southern was walled. The defences consist of an earth bank and ditch except on the east, where the steep scarp above the river formed a natural protection. The date of these ramparts is not certainly known, but as the walling of the southern part is to be connected with grants of murage, c1280, and the erection of the gatehouse during the following century, there is good reason for suggesting that they form part of the original Norman settlement.

 

Although the medieval buildings within the walls have been replaced with modern houses, the line of the existing roads probably follows the original layout. Another feature of exceptional interest is the ruins of the medieval mill which with the contemporary weir and leat can be traced on the low ground between the old town and the river. At a comparatively modern date this was replaced by a more efficient type of mill, which in its turn is now disused.

 

THE CASTLE

 

After passing through the south gate of the town the road crosses the settlement and turning to the right reaches the gatehouse of the castle. The original bridge has been replaced by a causeway, the outer end of which starts from a small knoll. Trial excavations failed to recover the plan of the structure which this represented, and as the castle stood within the walled settlement, it is possible that the builders considered a barbican unnecessary.

The gatehall was closed at each end by a double gate preceded by a portcullis. On entering the outer ward the inner gate is seen in the centre of the south curtain of the inner ward. It is a simple structure, a mere arch through the curtain defended by a gate and a portcullis. The inner ward is rectangular with a circular tower at each angle. The earlier hall and solar lie on the east side, with the kitchen between the former and the gate. Behind the hall is the chapel, contained in a bastion projecting down the steep scarp above the river. A later kitchen occupies the south-west corner of the courtyard. The outer defences form a semi-circle based on the river. The masonry curtain and towers date from the fourteenth century, but they follow the lines of the original rampart which was disclosed by the 1931 excavations, and which can still be traced on the north and west sides. The Tudor hall standing free on the west side and several later buildings have encroached on the already restricted area of the outer ward. On the east, where the outer defences do not surround the inner ward, a small mantlet joins the north-east tower and the chapel.

 

The earlier domestic buildings

 

The thirteenth-century domestic buildings occupy the whole of one side of the inner ward. The hall and the solar together form a long range connecting the two eastern towers which are of slightly earlier date. The principal chambers were on the upper floor, below which were low rooms probably used as storehouses. The latter were lighted by narrow widely splayed windows looking on to the courtyard. The present divisions date from the period when the castle was put to base uses, as does the doorway piercing the east curtain and leading to the mantlet and the chapel. The entrance from the courtyard appears to be original. The upper part of the building is almost entirely destroyed. In the outer wall of the solar two trefoiled lancets and a fireplace with quoins and a hood of dressed Sutton stone are preserved. The splay of another window opening into the courtyard can be traced in the west wall, while a recess in the same side marks the position of the door leading into the hall. At the other end of this wall, where it joined the south curtain, the jamb of the doorway leading to the kitchen is visible. The kitchen is a small room with a large fireplace in the thickness of the south curtain. Outside the walls of the kitchen an irregular block of masonry marks the base of the stairs leading up to the hall. The exact position of the screens cannot be determined. From the passage behind them are doors leading to the chapel and the rooms below it, while further entrances give access to the tower.

The south-east tower

 

The south-east tower consists of five storeys. The lowest, a basement lighted by narrow loops, is reached by a door from the storeroom under the hall. The next stage, which has two narrow windows and a fireplace with quoins and hood of Sutton stone, seems originally to have been intended for residence, though after the hall was erected its position would suggest that it served as a buttery. This is confirmed by the contemporary blocking of the archway leading directly from the entrance passage to the circular staircase by which the upper rooms are reached. Like the ground floor, the next two storeys of this tower are decently appointed and seem to have been the private apartments of the castle. One of the narrow windows on the first floor was widened in Tudor times, the jambs of Sutton stone being replaced with a more perishable sandstone. The highest stage is a fourteenth century addition, the earlier battlements being traceable about eight feet below the existing parapet.

The chapel

 

The chapel is in two stages, the semi-octagonal eastern end rising above massive spurs. The clerestory has an unbroken range of trefoiled lancet windows. They are rebated for shutters, but there is no groove for glass. In the lower stage a double piscina and a wide sedile occupy the angle south of the altar. On this side of the building a small rectangular projection forms a sacristy, of which the groined vault is covered with a cruciform roof of stone. Below the chapel are two further storeys. The upper is reached by stairs descending from the passage behind the screens. It has a fireplace on the north side. The small room under the sacristy probably formed the living-quarters of the priest, for whom a garderobe was contrived in the south wall of the main room. The lowest storey was reached by a stair in the thickness of the north wall. The northern entrance to the room below the chapel is later.

The north-east tower

 

The arrangement of this tower differs little from that already described. From the ground floor a narrow passage leads to the outer face of the east curtain. This was designed to give access to the mantlet, and was formed by an alteration of the passage which had led to the wall walk along the eastern curtain. The addition of the hall and the consequent heightening of the curtain has blocked this passage. Here, as in the other towers, access to the wall walk on the remaining sides is obtained from the first floor. The curtain between the two northern towers is pierced by a small postern, closed by a gate and portcullis, and by two embrasures.

The north-west tower

 

The inner side of this tower is recessed so that on plan it appears heart-shaped instead of circular. In this and the following tower the higher level of the courtyard prevented the provision of a separate entrance to the basement, which must have been reached by a trapdoor. The upper part of this tower is particularly well preserved. Not only can the main battlements be traced, but some of those surrounding the small turret which covers the stairs are still in position.

The south-west tower

 

This tower is distinguished from the others by the flat saucer vaults with which each stage is covered. At some period, probably in the sixteenth century, the bottom of the circular staircase was blocked so that access to the upper rooms could only be obtained from the wall walk. This corner of the inner ward is occupied by the Tudor kitchen, which will be described in connection with the hall of that period. Above the inner gate the south wall walk passes through a small ruined chamber from which the portcullis was worked.

The gatehouse

 

The gatehouse is a building of three storeys. The plan is rectangular with two semi-circular towers flanking the entrance, while an elliptical projection on the eastern side commands the defences above the river. The ground floor is occupied by small vaulted chambers lighted by narrow loops through the outer walls. Below the rooms in the two flanking towers are vaulted cellars similarly lighted and approached by stairs opening out of the gate passage. Originally the upper storey was reached by a circular stair leading out of the front room on the west side of the gate, but this was replaced in the early fifteenth century rebuilding by a more convenient staircase in an added turret at the north-west angle.

The principal chambers were on the first floor. The inner side formed the hall lighted by windows with cusped heads looking into the courtyard. Early in the fifteenth-century these were enlarged and traces of the hood-mould surmounting the new rectangular-headed windows can be seen. Originally this hall could only be reached by the inconvenient stairs already mentioned, but later, probably as part of the general remodelling of the gatehouse, a wide external stairway was added leading up from the outer ward and entering the hall by a doorway inserted behind the screens. To the east of the hall lay the vaulted kitchen with a large fireplace and oven. The towers were occupied by two smaller rooms, while a third filled the space to the west of the hall. From the kitchen a door led to the wall walk along the eastern ramparts, while that to the west was reached from a small lobby opening out of the narrow room beyond the hall. Above the hall and stretching over the vault of the kitchen was the solar, reached originally by a small staircase contrived in the inner wall of the hall. The rest of this storey contained three smaller rooms corresponding to those on the floor below. With the exception of the solar all the rooms on the highest storey are covered with flat stone vaults, but the former, like the hall and the smaller chambers on the first floor, had wooden ceilings. From the hall the circular stairs in the added northwest turret led up to the solar and the roof.

 

The outer curtain

 

The curtain enclosing the outer ward follows the crest of the earlier rampart, on which it is built with very shallow foundations. There is a smaller gatehouse with two flanking towers through which the northern outworks could be reached. The western curtain between the two gates was reinforced by three semi-circular towers, while a fourth covered the north-eastern angle of the defences. There is evidence that the shallow foundations built on the top of an artificial bank were already giving trouble during the Middle Ages, and that the western and north-eastern towers with a portion of the adjacent curtain had collapsed before 1500. The latter was replaced by a thinner wall built slightly behind the line of the fourteenth-century curtain, but the slight wall closing the gorge was considered sufficient to replace the former. Access to the wall walk was through the gatehouses or by stairs leading up from the west side of the outer ward. The northern gatehouse is too far ruined to allow its internal arrangement to be reconstructed, but like the towers it was of three storeys. Of the latter that on the south-west is the best preserved. Originally this must have had a half-timbered inner wall, but during the fourteenth or fifteenth century this was replaced by a stone wall which projects beyond the inner face of the curtain. The ground floor was entered from the outer ward, but the upper floors could be reached from the wall walk. The presence of a fireplace on the first floor shows that the towers were intended for occupation.

The later domestic buildings

 

Changes carried out towards the close of the fifteenth century, probably by Sir Rhys ap Tudor, included the provision of more spacious buildings in the outer ward. On the west side a large hall with a high-pitched roof was erected parallel to the inner curtain. Of this only the two gables and the base of the side walls remain. The kitchen to serve this new hall was placed in the south-west angle of the inner ward, a passage being driven through the curtain by the enlargement of one of the original embrasures. The kitchen, a simple rectangular building, has two large fireplaces occupying the whole of each end of the room.

To the same period belong the buildings standing against the east, north and west curtains of the outer ward. The purpose of the first, a large chamber which is very similar in appearance to the late, hall, cannot be determined. The building to the west of the north gate has a large oven built in the thickness of the side wall and was the bakehouse. The remaining structure by the south-west towers has two long narrow rooms, one of which is provided with a fireplace.

 

The invading Normans took only a few years to conquer England after the Battle of Hastings in 1066. But Wales held out for two-and-a-half centuries.

 

Kidwelly Castle is a symbol of this enduring conflict. And it was here in 1136 that a warrior princess turned herself into one of Welsh history’s greatest heroines.

 

Gwenllian was authentic Welsh royalty – sister of the northern prince Owain Gwynedd and wife of Gruffudd ap Rhys, lord of Deheubarth. But she definitely didn’t live the life of a pampered princess.

 

Under constant threat from the Normans she was forced to hide away in the deep forests, where she raised four sons. Her husband was busy building an army and plotting lightning raids. But he chose the wrong time to head north for help.

 

In his absence Maurice de Londres, lord of Kidwelly Castle, began to gather forces for a counter-attack. He had to be stopped. So Gwenllian donned her battledress and entered the field herself.

 

She was ‘like some second Queen of the Amazons’, said the admiring historian Gerald of Wales. Some call her the Welsh Boudicca – the only woman to lead a medieval Welsh army into battle.

 

But they were no match for the Normans. She was captured and beheaded for treason. It’s said a spring welled up where she died – still known as Maes Gwenllian, or the Field of Gwenllian.

 

Her death wasn’t in vain. She inspired a popular uprising that swept the Normans out of West Wales. Finally true poetic justice was achieved by her youngest son, Rhys ap Gruffudd, who was just four years old when his mother died.

 

The Lord Rhys, as he was later known, captured Kidwelly Castle in 1159 and was recognised by King Henry II as the undisputed ruler of the region. But his death in 1197 provoked a power struggle. Just four years later the castle was back in Anglo-Norman hands.

 

You can pay tribute to brave and beautiful Princess Gwenllian at her monument near the castle gatehouse. You might even spot the headless ghost that’s reputed to stalk the grounds.

 

Carmarthenshire is a county in the south-west of Wales. The three largest towns are Llanelli, Carmarthen and Ammanford. Carmarthen is the county town and administrative centre. The county is known as the "Garden of Wales" and is also home to the National Botanic Garden of Wales.

 

Carmarthenshire has been inhabited since prehistoric times. The county town was founded by the Romans, and the region was part of the Kingdom of Deheubarth in the High Middle Ages. After invasion by the Normans in the 12th and 13th centuries it was subjugated, along with other parts of Wales, by Edward I of England. There was further unrest in the early 15th century, when the Welsh rebelled under Owain Glyndŵr, and during the English Civil War.

 

Carmarthenshire is mainly an agricultural county, apart from the southeastern part which was once heavily industrialised with coal mining, steel-making and tin-plating. In the north of the county, the woollen industry was very important in the 18th century. The economy depends on agriculture, forestry, fishing and tourism. West Wales was identified in 2014 as the worst-performing region in the United Kingdom along with the South Wales Valleys with the decline in its industrial base, and the low profitability of the livestock sector.

 

Carmarthenshire, as a tourist destination, offers a wide range of outdoor activities. Much of the coast is fairly flat; it includes the Millennium Coastal Park, which extends for ten miles to the west of Llanelli; the National Wetlands Centre; a championship golf course; and the harbours of Burry Port and Pembrey. The sandy beaches at Llansteffan and Pendine are further west. Carmarthenshire has a number of medieval castles, hillforts and standing stones. The Dylan Thomas Boathouse is at Laugharne.

 

Stone tools found in Coygan Cave, near Laugharne indicate the presence of hominins, probably neanderthals, at least 40,000 years ago, though, as in the rest of the British Isles, continuous habitation by modern humans is not known before the end of the Younger Dryas, around 11,500 years BP. Before the Romans arrived in Britain, the land now forming the county of Carmarthenshire was part of the kingdom of the Demetae who gave their name to the county of Dyfed; it contained one of their chief settlements, Moridunum, now known as Carmarthen. The Romans established two forts in South Wales, one at Caerwent to control the southeast of the country, and one at Carmarthen to control the southwest. The fort at Carmarthen dates from around 75 AD, and there is a Roman amphitheatre nearby, so this probably makes Carmarthen the oldest continually occupied town in Wales.

 

Carmarthenshire has its early roots in the region formerly known as Ystrad Tywi ("Vale of [the river] Tywi") and part of the Kingdom of Deheubarth during the High Middle Ages, with the court at Dinefwr. After the Normans had subjugated England they tried to subdue Wales. Carmarthenshire was disputed between the Normans and the Welsh lords and many of the castles built around this time, first of wood and then stone, changed hands several times. Following the Conquest of Wales by Edward I, the region was reorganized by the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 into Carmarthenshire. Edward I made Carmarthen the capital of this new county, establishing his courts of chancery and his exchequer there, and holding the Court of Great Sessions in Wales in the town.

 

The Normans transformed Carmarthen into an international trading port, the only staple port in Wales. Merchants imported food and French wines and exported wool, pelts, leather, lead and tin. In the late medieval period the county's fortunes varied, as good and bad harvests occurred, increased taxes were levied by England, there were episodes of plague, and recruitment for wars removed the young men. Carmarthen was particularly susceptible to plague as it was brought in by flea-infested rats on board ships from southern France.

 

In 1405, Owain Glyndŵr captured Carmarthen Castle and several other strongholds in the neighbourhood. However, when his support dwindled, the principal men of the county returned their allegiance to King Henry V. During the English Civil War, Parliamentary forces under Colonel Roland Laugharne besieged and captured Carmarthen Castle but later abandoned the cause, and joined the Royalists. In 1648, Carmarthen Castle was recaptured by the Parliamentarians, and Oliver Cromwell ordered it to be slighted.

 

The first industrial canal in Wales was built in 1768 to convey coal from the Gwendraeth Valley to the coast, and the following year, the earliest tramroad bridge was on the tramroad built alongside the canal. During the Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815) there was increased demand for coal, iron and agricultural goods, and the county prospered. The landscape changed as much woodland was cleared to make way for more food production, and mills, power stations, mines and factories sprang up between Llanelli and Pembrey. Carmarthenshire was at the centre of the Rebecca Riots around 1840, when local farmers and agricultural workers dressed as women and rebelled against higher taxes and tolls.

 

On 1 April 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, Carmarthenshire joined Cardiganshire and Pembrokeshire in the new county of Dyfed; Carmarthenshire was divided into three districts: Carmarthen, Llanelli and Dinefwr. Twenty-two years later this amalgamation was reversed when, under the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994, the original county boundaries were reinstated.

 

The county is bounded to the north by Ceredigion, to the east by Powys (historic county Brecknockshire), Neath Port Talbot (historic county Glamorgan) and Swansea (also Glamorgan), to the south by the Bristol Channel and to the west by Pembrokeshire. Much of the county is upland and hilly. The Black Mountain range dominates the east of the county, with the lower foothills of the Cambrian Mountains to the north across the valley of the River Towy. The south coast contains many fishing villages and sandy beaches. The highest point (county top) is the minor summit of Fan Foel, height 781 metres (2,562 ft), which is a subsidiary top of the higher mountain of Fan Brycheiniog, height 802.5 metres (2,633 ft) (the higher summit, as its name suggests, is actually across the border in Brecknockshire/Powys). Carmarthenshire is the largest historic county by area in Wales.

 

The county is drained by several important rivers which flow southwards into the Bristol Channel, especially the River Towy, and its several tributaries, such as the River Cothi. The Towy is the longest river flowing entirely within Wales. Other rivers include the Loughor (which forms the eastern boundary with Glamorgan), the River Gwendraeth and the River Taf. The River Teifi forms much of the border between Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion, and there are a number of towns in the Teifi Valley which have communities living on either side of the river and hence in different counties. Carmarthenshire has a long coastline which is deeply cut by the estuaries of the Loughor in the east and the Gwendraeth, Tywi and Taf, which enter the sea on the east side of Carmarthen Bay. The coastline includes notable beaches such as Pendine Sands and Cefn Sidan sands, and large areas of foreshore are uncovered at low tide along the Loughor and Towy estuaries.

 

The principal towns in the county are Ammanford, Burry Port, Carmarthen, Kidwelly, Llanelli, Llandeilo, Newcastle Emlyn, Llandovery, St Clears, and Whitland. The principal industries are agriculture, forestry, fishing and tourism. Although Llanelli is by far the largest town in the county, the county town remains Carmarthen, mainly due to its central location.

 

Carmarthenshire is predominantly an agricultural county, with only the southeastern area having any significant amount of industry. The best agricultural land is in the broad Tywi Valley, especially its lower reaches. With its fertile land and agricultural produce, Carmarthenshire is known as the "Garden of Wales". The lowest bridge over the river is at Carmarthen, and the Towi Estuary cuts the southwesterly part of the county, including Llansteffan and Laugharne, off from the more urban southeastern region. This area is also bypassed by the main communication routes into Pembrokeshire. A passenger ferry service used to connect Ferryside with Llansteffan until the early part of the twentieth century.

 

Agriculture and forestry are the main sources of income over most of the county of Carmarthenshire. On improved pastures, dairying is important and in the past, the presence of the railway enabled milk to be transported to the urban areas of England. The creamery at Whitland is now closed but milk processing still takes place at Newcastle Emlyn where mozzarella cheese is made. On upland pastures and marginal land, livestock rearing of cattle and sheep is the main agricultural activity. The estuaries of the Loughor and Towy provide pickings for the cockle industry.

 

Llanelli, Ammanford and the upper parts of the Gwendraeth Valley are situated on the South Wales Coalfield. The opencast mining activities in this region have now ceased but the old mining settlements with terraced housing remain, often centred on their nonconformist chapels. Kidwelly had a tin-plating industry in the eighteenth century, with Llanelli following not long after, so that by the end of the nineteenth century, Llanelli was the world-centre of the industry. There is little trace of these industrial activities today. Llanelli and Burry Port served at one time for the export of coal, but trade declined, as it did from the ports of Kidwelly and Carmarthen as their estuaries silted up. Country towns in the more agricultural part of the county still hold regular markets where livestock is traded.

 

In the north of the county, in and around the Teifi Valley, there was a thriving woollen industry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Here water-power provided the energy to drive the looms and other machinery at the mills. The village of Dre-fach Felindre at one time contained twenty-four mills and was known as the "Huddersfield of Wales". The demand for woollen cloth declined in the twentieth century and so did the industry.

 

In 2014, West Wales was identified as the worst-performing region in the United Kingdom along with the South Wales Valleys. The gross value added economic indicator showed a figure of £14,763 per head in these regions, as compared with a GVA of £22,986 for Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan. The Welsh Assembly Government is aware of this, and helped by government initiatives and local actions, opportunities for farmers to diversify have emerged. These include farm tourism, rural crafts, specialist food shops, farmers' markets and added-value food products.

 

Carmarthenshire County Council produced a fifteen-year plan that highlighted six projects which it hoped would create five thousand new jobs. The sectors involved would be in the "creative industries, tourism, agri-food, advanced manufacturing, energy and environment, and financial and professional services".

 

Carmarthenshire became an administrative county with a county council taking over functions from the Quarter Sessions under the Local Government Act 1888. Under the Local Government Act 1972, the administrative county of Carmarthenshire was abolished on 1 April 1974 and the area of Carmarthenshire became three districts within the new county of Dyfed : Carmarthen, Dinefwr and Llanelli. Under the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994, Dyfed was abolished on 1 April 1996 and Carmarthenshire was re-established as a county. The three districts united to form a unitary authority which had the same boundaries as the traditional county of Carmarthenshire. In 2003, the Clynderwen community council area was transferred to the administrative county of Pembrokeshire.

 

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, Carmarthen and Wrexham were the two most populous towns in Wales. In 1931, the county's population was 171,445 and in 1951, 164,800. At the census in 2011, Carmarthenshire had a population of 183,777. Population levels have thus dipped and then increased again over the course of eighty years. The population density in Carmarthenshire is 0.8 persons per hectare compared to 1.5 per hectare in Wales as a whole.

 

Carmarthenshire was the most populous of the five historic counties of Wales to remain majority Welsh-speaking throughout the 20th century. According to the 1911 Census, 84.9 per cent of the county's population were Welsh-speaking (compared with 43.5 per cent in all of Wales), with 20.5 per cent of Carmarthenshire's overall population being monolingual Welsh-speakers.

 

In 1931, 82.3 per cent could speak Welsh and in 1951, 75.2 per cent. By the 2001 census, 50.3 per cent of people living in Carmarthenshire could speak Welsh, with 39 per cent being able to read and write the language as well.

 

The 2011 census showed a further decline, with 43.9 per cent speaking Welsh, making it a minority language in the county for the first time. However, the 2011 census also showed that 3,000 more people could understand spoken Welsh than in 2001 and that 60% of 5-14-year-olds could speak Welsh (a 5% increase since 2001). A decade later, the 2021 census, showed further decrease, to 39.9% Welsh speakers -- the largest percentage drop in all of Wales.

 

With its strategic location and history, the county is rich in archaeological remains such as forts, earthworks and standing stones. Carn Goch is one of the most impressive Iron Age forts and stands on a hilltop near Llandeilo. The Bronze Age is represented by chambered cairns and standing stones on Mynydd Llangyndeyrn, near Llangyndeyrn. Castles that can be easily accessed include Carreg Cennen, Dinefwr, Kidwelly, Laugharne, Llansteffan and Newcastle Emlyn Castle. There are the ruinous remains of Talley Abbey, and the coastal village of Laugharne is for ever associated with Dylan Thomas. Stately homes in the county include Aberglasney House and Gardens, Golden Grove and Newton House.

 

There are plenty of opportunities in the county for hiking, observing wildlife and admiring the scenery. These include Brechfa Forest, the Pembrey Country Park, the Millennium Coastal Park at Llanelli, the WWT Llanelli Wetlands Centre and the Carmel National Nature Reserve. There are large stretches of golden sands and the Wales Coast Path now provides a continuous walking route around the whole of Wales.

 

The National Botanic Garden of Wales displays plants from Wales and from all around the world, and the Carmarthenshire County Museum, the National Wool Museum, the Parc Howard Museum, the Pendine Museum of Speed and the West Wales Museum of Childhood all provide opportunities to delve into the past. Dylan Thomas Boathouse where the author wrote many of his works can be visited, as can the Roman-worked Dolaucothi Gold Mines.

 

Activities available in the county include rambling, cycling, fishing, kayaking, canoeing, sailing, horse riding, caving, abseiling and coasteering.[7] Carmarthen Town A.F.C. plays in the Cymru Premier. They won the Welsh Football League Cup in the 1995–96 season, and since then have won the Welsh Cup once and the Welsh League Cup twice. Llanelli Town A.F.C. play in the Welsh Football League Division Two. The club won the Welsh premier league and Loosemores challenge cup in 2008 and won the Welsh Cup in 2011, but after experiencing financial difficulties, were wound up and reformed under the present title in 2013. Scarlets is the regional professional rugby union team that plays in the Pro14, they play their home matches at their ground, Parc y Scarlets. Honours include winning the 2003/04 and 2016/17 Pro12. Llanelli RFC is a semi-professional rugby union team that play in the Welsh Premier Division, also playing home matches at Parc y Scarlets. Among many honours, they have been WRU Challenge Cup winners on fourteen occasions and frequently taken part in the Heineken Cup. West Wales Raiders, based in Llanelli, represent the county in Rugby league.

 

Some sporting venues utilise disused industrial sites. Ffos Las racecourse was built on the site of an open cast coal mine after mining operations ceased. Opened in 2009, it was the first racecourse built in the United Kingdom for eighty years and has regular race-days. Machynys is a championship golf course opened in 2005 and built as part of the Llanelli Waterside regeneration plan. Pembrey Circuit is a motor racing circuit near Pembrey village, considered the home of Welsh motorsport, providing racing for cars, motorcycles, karts and trucks. It was opened in 1989 on a former airfield, is popular for testing and has hosted many events including the British Touring Car Championship twice. The 2018 Tour of Britain cycling race started at Pembrey on 2 September 2018.

 

Carmarthenshire is served by the main line railway service operated by Transport for Wales Rail which links London Paddington, Cardiff Central and Swansea to southwest Wales. The main hub is Carmarthen railway station where some services from the east terminate. The line continues westwards with several branches which serve Pembroke Dock, Milford Haven and Fishguard Harbour (for the ferry to Rosslare Europort and connecting trains to Dublin Connolly). The Heart of Wales Line takes a scenic route through mid-Wales and links Llanelli with Craven Arms, from where passengers can travel on the Welsh Marches Line to Shrewsbury.

 

Two heritage railways, the Gwili Railway and the Teifi Valley Railway, use the track of the Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway that at one time ran from Carmarthen to Newcastle Emlyn, but did not reach Cardigan.

 

The A40, A48, A484 and A485 converge on Carmarthen. The M4 route that links South Wales with London, terminates at junction 49, the Pont Abraham services, to continue northwest as the dual carriageway A48, and to finish with its junction with the A40 in Carmarthen.

 

Llanelli is linked to M4 junction 48 by the A4138. The A40 links Carmarthen to Llandeilo, Llandovery and Brecon to the east, and with St Clears, Whitland and Haverfordwest to the west. The A484 links Llanelli with Carmarthen by a coastal route and continues northwards to Cardigan, and via the A486 and A487 to Aberystwyth, and the A485 links Carmarthen to Lampeter.

 

Bus services run between the main towns within the county and are operated by First Cymru under their "Western Welsh" or "Cymru Clipper" livery. Bus services from Carmarthenshire are also run to Cardiff. A bus service known as "fflecsi Bwcabus" (formerly just "Bwcabus") operates in the north of the county, offering customised transport to rural dwellers.

 

Carmarthenshire has rich, fertile farmland and a productive coast with estuaries providing a range of foods that motivate many home cooks and chefs.

WEEK 51.1 – Flashback 2016: Hernando Kroger (II)

 

One last overview of the perishables grand aisle on the store’s right-side wall, taking a look from the back of the store toward the front, before we head onward to explore the rest of the salesfloor. Beginning tomorrow, we’ll take a closer look at the meat and seafood counter (glimpsed in the previous photo) and several of the dry goods aisles as we head down to the dairy department nearing the left-side wall of the store. Stick around!

 

(c) 2016 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

 

A rain soaked Western 1034 Western Dragoon at Plymouth with the 12:45 Penzance to Crewe parcels and perishables train, at this time this was a solid Class 52 working. 06/10/1974.

 

image Kevin Connolly - All rights reserved so please do no use this without my explicit permission....

KIDWELLY was originally the name of the district which included part of the coastlands lying between the estuaries of the Towy and the Loughor. In 1106, after the death of Howell ap Gronw, Henry I granted these lands to his minister, Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, who erected a castle at the mouth of the Gwaendraeth Fach. This formed one of a series of Norman strongholds designed to secure their newly won conquests in South Wales and to command the passage of the rivers across which the road to the west passed. A mention of the hall of the Castle in a document of 1115 or earlier shows that the building of Kidwelly must have been practically completed by that year. During the rising which followed the death of Henry I, the Battle of Maes Gwenllian was fought a short distance away from the castle (1136). The account speaks of Maurice de Londres, Lord of Kidwelly, and Geoffrey, Constable of the Bishop, as leaders of the Norman army. Maurice, who is mentioned for the first time in connection with this district, already possessed Ogmore in Glamorgan, where his father William de Londres appears to have been one of the original conquerors. The coupling of the two names suggests that Roger of Salisbury, while retaining possession of the castle, had granted the lordship of the district to Maurice de Londres, who probably acquired the castle also when the bishop died in the following year.

 

The Welsh chronicles record that, in 1190, the Lord Rhys built the castle of Kidwelly. This entry probably reflects a native conquest of the settlement, but the Normans must have recovered it before 1201, when Meredith, son of Rhys, was slain by the garrison of the castle. In 1215 Rhys Grug, another son of the Lord Rhys, captured Kidwelly and burnt the castle. He remained in possession until 1220, when Llywelyn the Great forced him to restore these conquests. The male line of the de Londres had become extinct during these troubles, and Kidwelly had passed to an heiress, Hawise. In 1225 she married Walter de Braose, who died during the campaign of 1233-4. Kidwelly Castle was by that date again in the possession of the Welsh as a result of the rising of 1231, when Llywelyn the Great, previously a supporter of the royal authority, had turned his arms against Henry III. Hawise de Londres, left a widow, was unable to regain possession of Kidwelly which, in 1242, was still held by Rhys's son Meredith. Two years later Hawise married Patrick de Chaworth, who seems to have recovered these lands soon after this date. The Welsh rising of 1257 involved the destruction of the settlement at Kidwelly, but the invaders failed to capture the castle. Patrick was slain during the campaign of the following year, and the wardship of his lands was granted to Hawise during the minority of their son Payn.

 

Payn de Chaworth must have attained his majority about 1270, as in that year he and his younger brother Patrick took the Cross. Hawise survived until 1274, and her death was soon followed by that of her two sons, Payn in 1279 and Patrick four years later. The elder brother died childless, and the younger left only an infant daughter, Matilda, who inherited Kidwelly and Ogmore. In 1291 the marriage of the young heiress was granted to the king's brother, Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, for the use of his second son, Henry, the union being celebrated in 1298.

 

The prominent part taken by Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, in the civil wars of Edward II's reign led to his execution after the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322, but the forefeited title and estates were later restored to his younger brother, Henry. The extinction of the male line in 1361 caused a temporary partition of the Lancastrian possessions, but on the death of the elder co-heiress, Matilda, in the following year, the whole inheritance fell to her sister Blanche, wife of John of Gaunt, who became Earl and later Duke of Lancaster. On the accession of Henry IV, Kidwelly, together with the other Lancastrian possessions, passed into the hands of the Crown, and was of little importance during the fifteenth century. Henry VII granted the castle to Sir Rhys ap Tudor, whose grandson Rhys ap Griffith forefeited it in 1531. Later it was again alienated and passed to the Earls of Cawdor. The castle had long ceased to be habitable, but certain repairs were carried out during the nineteenth century. In 1927 the owner placed the ruins under the guardianship of the Commissioners of Works (now the Department of the Environment).

 

Since that date extensive works of preservation have been undertaken. In 1930 and 1931 excavations were carried out by Sir Cyril Fox and the writer in order to recover the earlier history of the castle. The results are embodied in the present guide, and the interesting series of relics recovered may be seen in the National Museum of Wales.

 

PERIODS OF CONSTRUCTION

 

THE earliest remains at Kidwelly, dating from the beginning of the twelfth century, are the semi-circular moat surrounding the castle together with the rampart under the outer curtain, the true meaning of which was revealed by the investigations of 1930-1. Of the hall mentioned in the deed of 1115 and the other buildings of the twelfth century no trace remains, though it is possible that an extensive search under the 2ft to 7ft of debris with which the whole interior of the castle was levelled in the early fourteenth century would lead to the recovery of their plan. The only tangible relic of Norman buildings is a small capital belonging to an attached column and probably forming part of a fireplace. This was found walled into the masonry of the hall of c1300, and may be ascribed to a date at the end of the twelfth century. The ramparts and moats surrounding the northern and southern outworks cannot be exactly dated, but analogy with other sites shows that they may well belong to this early period.

The oldest surviving masonry is that of the towers and the curtain enclosing the inner ward. This occupies a rectangular area with a circular tower at each angle. There are two gates, on the south and north sides, each protected by a portcullis. The erection of these defences within the circuit of the original bank and stockade marks the beginning of the refortification of the castle in accordance with the ideas of the late thirteenth century. The awkward way in which the two western towers are brought close to the foot of the earlier bank can only be understood when the pre-existence of this defence is realised, while the simple character of the gates, so different from the elaborate gatehouses of the normal concentric castle, must be similarly explained. The south-east tower was designed for occupation, but the hall and other structures of the earlier castle probably remained in use. Most of the dressed stonework of this period has disappeared, but the few remaining details are of thirteenth-century character, and this taken in conjunction with the plan suggests that the construction of the inner ward was carried out by Payn de Chaworth, c1275.

 

The replacement of the older buildings by a new hall, solar and kitchen and the erection of a chapel, form the next stage in the development of the castle. The different character of the masonry and the unusual position of the best-appointed private apartments in the southeast tower behind the screens of the hall prove that these additions were planned and built after the completion of the inner ward. The mouldings of the doors and windows belonging to this stage are all of late thirteenth- century character, and none need be earlier than 1300. The absence of glass grooves in the trefoiled lancet windows of the hall and chapel is also an early feature. It is perhaps unlikely that an extensive building programme would have been carried out during the minority of Matilda de Chaworth (1283-98), and a date before the death of her father Patrick is earlier than the architectural evidence would justify. The work should therefore in all probability be attributed to c1300, directly after the marriage of Matilda to Henry of Lancaster.

 

The design of the inner ward at Kidwelly presupposes an outer defensive zone, and the replacement of the original stockade with a stone curtain followed the completion of the living-quarters. The main gatehouse, the lesser northern gate, the outer curtain with its four flanking towers, and the mantlet between the north-eastern tower and the chapel, are part of a single design intended to bring Kidwelly into line with other concentric castles of this period. The position of the elaborate gatehouse, which could in case of need act as a separate defensive unit, on the line of the outer instead of the inner curtain is an abnormal feature imposed by the pre-existing layout of the site. The new masonry curtain of the outer ward was higher than the original stockade and necessitated the addition of a further storey to the towers of the inner ward in order that they might still command the outer defences. The details of this reconstruction are all of early fourteenth-century character, and the fortification of the outer ward must have been carried out during the first quarter of that century. On the completion of this work the surplus material from the bank and other rubbish was used to level up the interior of the castle, which it now covers to a depth varying from 2ft to 7ft. The closing of the open gorges of the towers of the outer curtain marks the last stage in the military development of Kidwelly and may also be ascribed to the fourteenth century. The existing gate in the south wall of the town also appears to be of fourteenth-century date, and it might be expected that the erection of these walls would have followed rather than preceded the reconstruction of the castle. But grants of murage in 1282 suggest an earlier date, and the solution of this problem must await further research.

 

There is reason to think that the great gatehouse may have stood unfinished through most of the fourteenth century and that the opening of a quarry `for the work of the new tower', recorded in 1388-9, may mark the beginning of the works needed to complete it. Ten years later, between 1399 and 1401, when the lord of the castle had become king in the person of Henry IV, there is another record of nearly £100 being spent ‘on the new work of the tower over the gates of the castle’, the near completion of which at this time can be inferred from an order of 1402 for it to be roofed in lead. But in the autumn of the following year the castle was besieged by the Welsh rebels, aided by a naval force from France and Brittany, and subsequent documents leave very little doubt that they succeeded in setting fire to the gatehouse and inflicting serious damage to it; so much so that between 1408 and 1422 a further £500-£600 had to be spent on it, and only in the latter year was it finally roofed with lead shipped from Bristol. A superficial indication of the new work may be seen in the patches of thin flat slabs which contrast with the irregularly coursed boulders of the original masonry. To it belong the triple machicolis high up on the outward face, the upper part of, the wall towards the courtyard, all the square-headed windows, the rectangular stair turret at the north-west corner, and the stone vaults inserted at different levels in the flanking towers as a protection against fire.

 

The last significant addition to the castle, probably made towards the end of the fifteenth century, was a large hall placed on the west side of the outer ward. This was connected with a kitchen in the south-west corner of the inner ward by the enlargement of a thirteenth century embrasure so as to form a passage-way. Buildings placed against the outer curtain reflect the increased complexity of life in the Tudor period, but the provision of an entirely new hall and kitchen suggests that the earlier hall was already ruinous.

 

KIDWELLY is one of the Norman foundations strung out along the coastal plain of South Wales. There is no evidence of any occupation before the grant to Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, and even if a small Celtic settlement existed, it has been without influence on the subsequent development of the site. Like many other Norman settlements which were then continually threatened by a hostile attack from the mountains, Kidwelly stands at the head of an estuary where the river was still navigable at high tide. This situation ensured a line of communications when the castle was surrounded and the roads cut by a Welsh rising.

 

THE SETTLEMENT

 

The settlement consists of two parts, the castle and the walled town on the west bank, and the priory church with the new town on the other side of the river. The two are joined by a two-arched bridge of fourteenth- or fiftecnth-century date. This carried the great road to West Wales, probably replacing an earlier structure. Modern development has greatly altered the appearance of the new town, the last of the picturesque medieval houses having recently been destroyed (1931). The priory church of St. Mary was founded by Bishop Roger before 1115, and became a cell of the abbey of Sherborne. Such foundations are typical of the Norman settlements in South Wales, the alien monks being introduced as a counterpoise to the patriotic sentiments of the native monasteries which too often served as focuses of anti-Norman feeling. The present building dates from the fourteenth century.

From the bridge the road to the castle leads through the defences of the old town. The walls have mostly disappeared, but the main gateway, apparently of early fourtheenth-century date, still spans the road. The line of the defences can still be traced by the earthen bank which preceded the walls. It encloses about eight acres including the castle which it surrounds on all sides except the east. A transverse ditch running west from the castle moat divides it into two nearly equal halves, of which it is probable that only the southern was walled. The defences consist of an earth bank and ditch except on the east, where the steep scarp above the river formed a natural protection. The date of these ramparts is not certainly known, but as the walling of the southern part is to be connected with grants of murage, c1280, and the erection of the gatehouse during the following century, there is good reason for suggesting that they form part of the original Norman settlement.

 

Although the medieval buildings within the walls have been replaced with modern houses, the line of the existing roads probably follows the original layout. Another feature of exceptional interest is the ruins of the medieval mill which with the contemporary weir and leat can be traced on the low ground between the old town and the river. At a comparatively modern date this was replaced by a more efficient type of mill, which in its turn is now disused.

 

THE CASTLE

 

After passing through the south gate of the town the road crosses the settlement and turning to the right reaches the gatehouse of the castle. The original bridge has been replaced by a causeway, the outer end of which starts from a small knoll. Trial excavations failed to recover the plan of the structure which this represented, and as the castle stood within the walled settlement, it is possible that the builders considered a barbican unnecessary.

The gatehall was closed at each end by a double gate preceded by a portcullis. On entering the outer ward the inner gate is seen in the centre of the south curtain of the inner ward. It is a simple structure, a mere arch through the curtain defended by a gate and a portcullis. The inner ward is rectangular with a circular tower at each angle. The earlier hall and solar lie on the east side, with the kitchen between the former and the gate. Behind the hall is the chapel, contained in a bastion projecting down the steep scarp above the river. A later kitchen occupies the south-west corner of the courtyard. The outer defences form a semi-circle based on the river. The masonry curtain and towers date from the fourteenth century, but they follow the lines of the original rampart which was disclosed by the 1931 excavations, and which can still be traced on the north and west sides. The Tudor hall standing free on the west side and several later buildings have encroached on the already restricted area of the outer ward. On the east, where the outer defences do not surround the inner ward, a small mantlet joins the north-east tower and the chapel.

 

The earlier domestic buildings

 

The thirteenth-century domestic buildings occupy the whole of one side of the inner ward. The hall and the solar together form a long range connecting the two eastern towers which are of slightly earlier date. The principal chambers were on the upper floor, below which were low rooms probably used as storehouses. The latter were lighted by narrow widely splayed windows looking on to the courtyard. The present divisions date from the period when the castle was put to base uses, as does the doorway piercing the east curtain and leading to the mantlet and the chapel. The entrance from the courtyard appears to be original. The upper part of the building is almost entirely destroyed. In the outer wall of the solar two trefoiled lancets and a fireplace with quoins and a hood of dressed Sutton stone are preserved. The splay of another window opening into the courtyard can be traced in the west wall, while a recess in the same side marks the position of the door leading into the hall. At the other end of this wall, where it joined the south curtain, the jamb of the doorway leading to the kitchen is visible. The kitchen is a small room with a large fireplace in the thickness of the south curtain. Outside the walls of the kitchen an irregular block of masonry marks the base of the stairs leading up to the hall. The exact position of the screens cannot be determined. From the passage behind them are doors leading to the chapel and the rooms below it, while further entrances give access to the tower.

The south-east tower

 

The south-east tower consists of five storeys. The lowest, a basement lighted by narrow loops, is reached by a door from the storeroom under the hall. The next stage, which has two narrow windows and a fireplace with quoins and hood of Sutton stone, seems originally to have been intended for residence, though after the hall was erected its position would suggest that it served as a buttery. This is confirmed by the contemporary blocking of the archway leading directly from the entrance passage to the circular staircase by which the upper rooms are reached. Like the ground floor, the next two storeys of this tower are decently appointed and seem to have been the private apartments of the castle. One of the narrow windows on the first floor was widened in Tudor times, the jambs of Sutton stone being replaced with a more perishable sandstone. The highest stage is a fourteenth century addition, the earlier battlements being traceable about eight feet below the existing parapet.

The chapel

 

The chapel is in two stages, the semi-octagonal eastern end rising above massive spurs. The clerestory has an unbroken range of trefoiled lancet windows. They are rebated for shutters, but there is no groove for glass. In the lower stage a double piscina and a wide sedile occupy the angle south of the altar. On this side of the building a small rectangular projection forms a sacristy, of which the groined vault is covered with a cruciform roof of stone. Below the chapel are two further storeys. The upper is reached by stairs descending from the passage behind the screens. It has a fireplace on the north side. The small room under the sacristy probably formed the living-quarters of the priest, for whom a garderobe was contrived in the south wall of the main room. The lowest storey was reached by a stair in the thickness of the north wall. The northern entrance to the room below the chapel is later.

The north-east tower

 

The arrangement of this tower differs little from that already described. From the ground floor a narrow passage leads to the outer face of the east curtain. This was designed to give access to the mantlet, and was formed by an alteration of the passage which had led to the wall walk along the eastern curtain. The addition of the hall and the consequent heightening of the curtain has blocked this passage. Here, as in the other towers, access to the wall walk on the remaining sides is obtained from the first floor. The curtain between the two northern towers is pierced by a small postern, closed by a gate and portcullis, and by two embrasures.

The north-west tower

 

The inner side of this tower is recessed so that on plan it appears heart-shaped instead of circular. In this and the following tower the higher level of the courtyard prevented the provision of a separate entrance to the basement, which must have been reached by a trapdoor. The upper part of this tower is particularly well preserved. Not only can the main battlements be traced, but some of those surrounding the small turret which covers the stairs are still in position.

The south-west tower

 

This tower is distinguished from the others by the flat saucer vaults with which each stage is covered. At some period, probably in the sixteenth century, the bottom of the circular staircase was blocked so that access to the upper rooms could only be obtained from the wall walk. This corner of the inner ward is occupied by the Tudor kitchen, which will be described in connection with the hall of that period. Above the inner gate the south wall walk passes through a small ruined chamber from which the portcullis was worked.

The gatehouse

 

The gatehouse is a building of three storeys. The plan is rectangular with two semi-circular towers flanking the entrance, while an elliptical projection on the eastern side commands the defences above the river. The ground floor is occupied by small vaulted chambers lighted by narrow loops through the outer walls. Below the rooms in the two flanking towers are vaulted cellars similarly lighted and approached by stairs opening out of the gate passage. Originally the upper storey was reached by a circular stair leading out of the front room on the west side of the gate, but this was replaced in the early fifteenth century rebuilding by a more convenient staircase in an added turret at the north-west angle.

The principal chambers were on the first floor. The inner side formed the hall lighted by windows with cusped heads looking into the courtyard. Early in the fifteenth-century these were enlarged and traces of the hood-mould surmounting the new rectangular-headed windows can be seen. Originally this hall could only be reached by the inconvenient stairs already mentioned, but later, probably as part of the general remodelling of the gatehouse, a wide external stairway was added leading up from the outer ward and entering the hall by a doorway inserted behind the screens. To the east of the hall lay the vaulted kitchen with a large fireplace and oven. The towers were occupied by two smaller rooms, while a third filled the space to the west of the hall. From the kitchen a door led to the wall walk along the eastern ramparts, while that to the west was reached from a small lobby opening out of the narrow room beyond the hall. Above the hall and stretching over the vault of the kitchen was the solar, reached originally by a small staircase contrived in the inner wall of the hall. The rest of this storey contained three smaller rooms corresponding to those on the floor below. With the exception of the solar all the rooms on the highest storey are covered with flat stone vaults, but the former, like the hall and the smaller chambers on the first floor, had wooden ceilings. From the hall the circular stairs in the added northwest turret led up to the solar and the roof.

 

The outer curtain

 

The curtain enclosing the outer ward follows the crest of the earlier rampart, on which it is built with very shallow foundations. There is a smaller gatehouse with two flanking towers through which the northern outworks could be reached. The western curtain between the two gates was reinforced by three semi-circular towers, while a fourth covered the north-eastern angle of the defences. There is evidence that the shallow foundations built on the top of an artificial bank were already giving trouble during the Middle Ages, and that the western and north-eastern towers with a portion of the adjacent curtain had collapsed before 1500. The latter was replaced by a thinner wall built slightly behind the line of the fourteenth-century curtain, but the slight wall closing the gorge was considered sufficient to replace the former. Access to the wall walk was through the gatehouses or by stairs leading up from the west side of the outer ward. The northern gatehouse is too far ruined to allow its internal arrangement to be reconstructed, but like the towers it was of three storeys. Of the latter that on the south-west is the best preserved. Originally this must have had a half-timbered inner wall, but during the fourteenth or fifteenth century this was replaced by a stone wall which projects beyond the inner face of the curtain. The ground floor was entered from the outer ward, but the upper floors could be reached from the wall walk. The presence of a fireplace on the first floor shows that the towers were intended for occupation.

The later domestic buildings

 

Changes carried out towards the close of the fifteenth century, probably by Sir Rhys ap Tudor, included the provision of more spacious buildings in the outer ward. On the west side a large hall with a high-pitched roof was erected parallel to the inner curtain. Of this only the two gables and the base of the side walls remain. The kitchen to serve this new hall was placed in the south-west angle of the inner ward, a passage being driven through the curtain by the enlargement of one of the original embrasures. The kitchen, a simple rectangular building, has two large fireplaces occupying the whole of each end of the room.

To the same period belong the buildings standing against the east, north and west curtains of the outer ward. The purpose of the first, a large chamber which is very similar in appearance to the late, hall, cannot be determined. The building to the west of the north gate has a large oven built in the thickness of the side wall and was the bakehouse. The remaining structure by the south-west towers has two long narrow rooms, one of which is provided with a fireplace.

 

The invading Normans took only a few years to conquer England after the Battle of Hastings in 1066. But Wales held out for two-and-a-half centuries.

 

Kidwelly Castle is a symbol of this enduring conflict. And it was here in 1136 that a warrior princess turned herself into one of Welsh history’s greatest heroines.

 

Gwenllian was authentic Welsh royalty – sister of the northern prince Owain Gwynedd and wife of Gruffudd ap Rhys, lord of Deheubarth. But she definitely didn’t live the life of a pampered princess.

 

Under constant threat from the Normans she was forced to hide away in the deep forests, where she raised four sons. Her husband was busy building an army and plotting lightning raids. But he chose the wrong time to head north for help.

 

In his absence Maurice de Londres, lord of Kidwelly Castle, began to gather forces for a counter-attack. He had to be stopped. So Gwenllian donned her battledress and entered the field herself.

 

She was ‘like some second Queen of the Amazons’, said the admiring historian Gerald of Wales. Some call her the Welsh Boudicca – the only woman to lead a medieval Welsh army into battle.

 

But they were no match for the Normans. She was captured and beheaded for treason. It’s said a spring welled up where she died – still known as Maes Gwenllian, or the Field of Gwenllian.

 

Her death wasn’t in vain. She inspired a popular uprising that swept the Normans out of West Wales. Finally true poetic justice was achieved by her youngest son, Rhys ap Gruffudd, who was just four years old when his mother died.

 

The Lord Rhys, as he was later known, captured Kidwelly Castle in 1159 and was recognised by King Henry II as the undisputed ruler of the region. But his death in 1197 provoked a power struggle. Just four years later the castle was back in Anglo-Norman hands.

 

You can pay tribute to brave and beautiful Princess Gwenllian at her monument near the castle gatehouse. You might even spot the headless ghost that’s reputed to stalk the grounds.

 

Carmarthenshire is a county in the south-west of Wales. The three largest towns are Llanelli, Carmarthen and Ammanford. Carmarthen is the county town and administrative centre. The county is known as the "Garden of Wales" and is also home to the National Botanic Garden of Wales.

 

Carmarthenshire has been inhabited since prehistoric times. The county town was founded by the Romans, and the region was part of the Kingdom of Deheubarth in the High Middle Ages. After invasion by the Normans in the 12th and 13th centuries it was subjugated, along with other parts of Wales, by Edward I of England. There was further unrest in the early 15th century, when the Welsh rebelled under Owain Glyndŵr, and during the English Civil War.

 

Carmarthenshire is mainly an agricultural county, apart from the southeastern part which was once heavily industrialised with coal mining, steel-making and tin-plating. In the north of the county, the woollen industry was very important in the 18th century. The economy depends on agriculture, forestry, fishing and tourism. West Wales was identified in 2014 as the worst-performing region in the United Kingdom along with the South Wales Valleys with the decline in its industrial base, and the low profitability of the livestock sector.

 

Carmarthenshire, as a tourist destination, offers a wide range of outdoor activities. Much of the coast is fairly flat; it includes the Millennium Coastal Park, which extends for ten miles to the west of Llanelli; the National Wetlands Centre; a championship golf course; and the harbours of Burry Port and Pembrey. The sandy beaches at Llansteffan and Pendine are further west. Carmarthenshire has a number of medieval castles, hillforts and standing stones. The Dylan Thomas Boathouse is at Laugharne.

 

Stone tools found in Coygan Cave, near Laugharne indicate the presence of hominins, probably neanderthals, at least 40,000 years ago, though, as in the rest of the British Isles, continuous habitation by modern humans is not known before the end of the Younger Dryas, around 11,500 years BP. Before the Romans arrived in Britain, the land now forming the county of Carmarthenshire was part of the kingdom of the Demetae who gave their name to the county of Dyfed; it contained one of their chief settlements, Moridunum, now known as Carmarthen. The Romans established two forts in South Wales, one at Caerwent to control the southeast of the country, and one at Carmarthen to control the southwest. The fort at Carmarthen dates from around 75 AD, and there is a Roman amphitheatre nearby, so this probably makes Carmarthen the oldest continually occupied town in Wales.

 

Carmarthenshire has its early roots in the region formerly known as Ystrad Tywi ("Vale of [the river] Tywi") and part of the Kingdom of Deheubarth during the High Middle Ages, with the court at Dinefwr. After the Normans had subjugated England they tried to subdue Wales. Carmarthenshire was disputed between the Normans and the Welsh lords and many of the castles built around this time, first of wood and then stone, changed hands several times. Following the Conquest of Wales by Edward I, the region was reorganized by the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284 into Carmarthenshire. Edward I made Carmarthen the capital of this new county, establishing his courts of chancery and his exchequer there, and holding the Court of Great Sessions in Wales in the town.

 

The Normans transformed Carmarthen into an international trading port, the only staple port in Wales. Merchants imported food and French wines and exported wool, pelts, leather, lead and tin. In the late medieval period the county's fortunes varied, as good and bad harvests occurred, increased taxes were levied by England, there were episodes of plague, and recruitment for wars removed the young men. Carmarthen was particularly susceptible to plague as it was brought in by flea-infested rats on board ships from southern France.

 

In 1405, Owain Glyndŵr captured Carmarthen Castle and several other strongholds in the neighbourhood. However, when his support dwindled, the principal men of the county returned their allegiance to King Henry V. During the English Civil War, Parliamentary forces under Colonel Roland Laugharne besieged and captured Carmarthen Castle but later abandoned the cause, and joined the Royalists. In 1648, Carmarthen Castle was recaptured by the Parliamentarians, and Oliver Cromwell ordered it to be slighted.

 

The first industrial canal in Wales was built in 1768 to convey coal from the Gwendraeth Valley to the coast, and the following year, the earliest tramroad bridge was on the tramroad built alongside the canal. During the Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815) there was increased demand for coal, iron and agricultural goods, and the county prospered. The landscape changed as much woodland was cleared to make way for more food production, and mills, power stations, mines and factories sprang up between Llanelli and Pembrey. Carmarthenshire was at the centre of the Rebecca Riots around 1840, when local farmers and agricultural workers dressed as women and rebelled against higher taxes and tolls.

 

On 1 April 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, Carmarthenshire joined Cardiganshire and Pembrokeshire in the new county of Dyfed; Carmarthenshire was divided into three districts: Carmarthen, Llanelli and Dinefwr. Twenty-two years later this amalgamation was reversed when, under the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994, the original county boundaries were reinstated.

 

The county is bounded to the north by Ceredigion, to the east by Powys (historic county Brecknockshire), Neath Port Talbot (historic county Glamorgan) and Swansea (also Glamorgan), to the south by the Bristol Channel and to the west by Pembrokeshire. Much of the county is upland and hilly. The Black Mountain range dominates the east of the county, with the lower foothills of the Cambrian Mountains to the north across the valley of the River Towy. The south coast contains many fishing villages and sandy beaches. The highest point (county top) is the minor summit of Fan Foel, height 781 metres (2,562 ft), which is a subsidiary top of the higher mountain of Fan Brycheiniog, height 802.5 metres (2,633 ft) (the higher summit, as its name suggests, is actually across the border in Brecknockshire/Powys). Carmarthenshire is the largest historic county by area in Wales.

 

The county is drained by several important rivers which flow southwards into the Bristol Channel, especially the River Towy, and its several tributaries, such as the River Cothi. The Towy is the longest river flowing entirely within Wales. Other rivers include the Loughor (which forms the eastern boundary with Glamorgan), the River Gwendraeth and the River Taf. The River Teifi forms much of the border between Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion, and there are a number of towns in the Teifi Valley which have communities living on either side of the river and hence in different counties. Carmarthenshire has a long coastline which is deeply cut by the estuaries of the Loughor in the east and the Gwendraeth, Tywi and Taf, which enter the sea on the east side of Carmarthen Bay. The coastline includes notable beaches such as Pendine Sands and Cefn Sidan sands, and large areas of foreshore are uncovered at low tide along the Loughor and Towy estuaries.

 

The principal towns in the county are Ammanford, Burry Port, Carmarthen, Kidwelly, Llanelli, Llandeilo, Newcastle Emlyn, Llandovery, St Clears, and Whitland. The principal industries are agriculture, forestry, fishing and tourism. Although Llanelli is by far the largest town in the county, the county town remains Carmarthen, mainly due to its central location.

 

Carmarthenshire is predominantly an agricultural county, with only the southeastern area having any significant amount of industry. The best agricultural land is in the broad Tywi Valley, especially its lower reaches. With its fertile land and agricultural produce, Carmarthenshire is known as the "Garden of Wales". The lowest bridge over the river is at Carmarthen, and the Towi Estuary cuts the southwesterly part of the county, including Llansteffan and Laugharne, off from the more urban southeastern region. This area is also bypassed by the main communication routes into Pembrokeshire. A passenger ferry service used to connect Ferryside with Llansteffan until the early part of the twentieth century.

 

Agriculture and forestry are the main sources of income over most of the county of Carmarthenshire. On improved pastures, dairying is important and in the past, the presence of the railway enabled milk to be transported to the urban areas of England. The creamery at Whitland is now closed but milk processing still takes place at Newcastle Emlyn where mozzarella cheese is made. On upland pastures and marginal land, livestock rearing of cattle and sheep is the main agricultural activity. The estuaries of the Loughor and Towy provide pickings for the cockle industry.

 

Llanelli, Ammanford and the upper parts of the Gwendraeth Valley are situated on the South Wales Coalfield. The opencast mining activities in this region have now ceased but the old mining settlements with terraced housing remain, often centred on their nonconformist chapels. Kidwelly had a tin-plating industry in the eighteenth century, with Llanelli following not long after, so that by the end of the nineteenth century, Llanelli was the world-centre of the industry. There is little trace of these industrial activities today. Llanelli and Burry Port served at one time for the export of coal, but trade declined, as it did from the ports of Kidwelly and Carmarthen as their estuaries silted up. Country towns in the more agricultural part of the county still hold regular markets where livestock is traded.

 

In the north of the county, in and around the Teifi Valley, there was a thriving woollen industry in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Here water-power provided the energy to drive the looms and other machinery at the mills. The village of Dre-fach Felindre at one time contained twenty-four mills and was known as the "Huddersfield of Wales". The demand for woollen cloth declined in the twentieth century and so did the industry.

 

In 2014, West Wales was identified as the worst-performing region in the United Kingdom along with the South Wales Valleys. The gross value added economic indicator showed a figure of £14,763 per head in these regions, as compared with a GVA of £22,986 for Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan. The Welsh Assembly Government is aware of this, and helped by government initiatives and local actions, opportunities for farmers to diversify have emerged. These include farm tourism, rural crafts, specialist food shops, farmers' markets and added-value food products.

 

Carmarthenshire County Council produced a fifteen-year plan that highlighted six projects which it hoped would create five thousand new jobs. The sectors involved would be in the "creative industries, tourism, agri-food, advanced manufacturing, energy and environment, and financial and professional services".

 

Carmarthenshire became an administrative county with a county council taking over functions from the Quarter Sessions under the Local Government Act 1888. Under the Local Government Act 1972, the administrative county of Carmarthenshire was abolished on 1 April 1974 and the area of Carmarthenshire became three districts within the new county of Dyfed : Carmarthen, Dinefwr and Llanelli. Under the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994, Dyfed was abolished on 1 April 1996 and Carmarthenshire was re-established as a county. The three districts united to form a unitary authority which had the same boundaries as the traditional county of Carmarthenshire. In 2003, the Clynderwen community council area was transferred to the administrative county of Pembrokeshire.

 

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, Carmarthen and Wrexham were the two most populous towns in Wales. In 1931, the county's population was 171,445 and in 1951, 164,800. At the census in 2011, Carmarthenshire had a population of 183,777. Population levels have thus dipped and then increased again over the course of eighty years. The population density in Carmarthenshire is 0.8 persons per hectare compared to 1.5 per hectare in Wales as a whole.

 

Carmarthenshire was the most populous of the five historic counties of Wales to remain majority Welsh-speaking throughout the 20th century. According to the 1911 Census, 84.9 per cent of the county's population were Welsh-speaking (compared with 43.5 per cent in all of Wales), with 20.5 per cent of Carmarthenshire's overall population being monolingual Welsh-speakers.

 

In 1931, 82.3 per cent could speak Welsh and in 1951, 75.2 per cent. By the 2001 census, 50.3 per cent of people living in Carmarthenshire could speak Welsh, with 39 per cent being able to read and write the language as well.

 

The 2011 census showed a further decline, with 43.9 per cent speaking Welsh, making it a minority language in the county for the first time. However, the 2011 census also showed that 3,000 more people could understand spoken Welsh than in 2001 and that 60% of 5-14-year-olds could speak Welsh (a 5% increase since 2001). A decade later, the 2021 census, showed further decrease, to 39.9% Welsh speakers -- the largest percentage drop in all of Wales.

 

With its strategic location and history, the county is rich in archaeological remains such as forts, earthworks and standing stones. Carn Goch is one of the most impressive Iron Age forts and stands on a hilltop near Llandeilo. The Bronze Age is represented by chambered cairns and standing stones on Mynydd Llangyndeyrn, near Llangyndeyrn. Castles that can be easily accessed include Carreg Cennen, Dinefwr, Kidwelly, Laugharne, Llansteffan and Newcastle Emlyn Castle. There are the ruinous remains of Talley Abbey, and the coastal village of Laugharne is for ever associated with Dylan Thomas. Stately homes in the county include Aberglasney House and Gardens, Golden Grove and Newton House.

 

There are plenty of opportunities in the county for hiking, observing wildlife and admiring the scenery. These include Brechfa Forest, the Pembrey Country Park, the Millennium Coastal Park at Llanelli, the WWT Llanelli Wetlands Centre and the Carmel National Nature Reserve. There are large stretches of golden sands and the Wales Coast Path now provides a continuous walking route around the whole of Wales.

 

The National Botanic Garden of Wales displays plants from Wales and from all around the world, and the Carmarthenshire County Museum, the National Wool Museum, the Parc Howard Museum, the Pendine Museum of Speed and the West Wales Museum of Childhood all provide opportunities to delve into the past. Dylan Thomas Boathouse where the author wrote many of his works can be visited, as can the Roman-worked Dolaucothi Gold Mines.

 

Activities available in the county include rambling, cycling, fishing, kayaking, canoeing, sailing, horse riding, caving, abseiling and coasteering.[7] Carmarthen Town A.F.C. plays in the Cymru Premier. They won the Welsh Football League Cup in the 1995–96 season, and since then have won the Welsh Cup once and the Welsh League Cup twice. Llanelli Town A.F.C. play in the Welsh Football League Division Two. The club won the Welsh premier league and Loosemores challenge cup in 2008 and won the Welsh Cup in 2011, but after experiencing financial difficulties, were wound up and reformed under the present title in 2013. Scarlets is the regional professional rugby union team that plays in the Pro14, they play their home matches at their ground, Parc y Scarlets. Honours include winning the 2003/04 and 2016/17 Pro12. Llanelli RFC is a semi-professional rugby union team that play in the Welsh Premier Division, also playing home matches at Parc y Scarlets. Among many honours, they have been WRU Challenge Cup winners on fourteen occasions and frequently taken part in the Heineken Cup. West Wales Raiders, based in Llanelli, represent the county in Rugby league.

 

Some sporting venues utilise disused industrial sites. Ffos Las racecourse was built on the site of an open cast coal mine after mining operations ceased. Opened in 2009, it was the first racecourse built in the United Kingdom for eighty years and has regular race-days. Machynys is a championship golf course opened in 2005 and built as part of the Llanelli Waterside regeneration plan. Pembrey Circuit is a motor racing circuit near Pembrey village, considered the home of Welsh motorsport, providing racing for cars, motorcycles, karts and trucks. It was opened in 1989 on a former airfield, is popular for testing and has hosted many events including the British Touring Car Championship twice. The 2018 Tour of Britain cycling race started at Pembrey on 2 September 2018.

 

Carmarthenshire is served by the main line railway service operated by Transport for Wales Rail which links London Paddington, Cardiff Central and Swansea to southwest Wales. The main hub is Carmarthen railway station where some services from the east terminate. The line continues westwards with several branches which serve Pembroke Dock, Milford Haven and Fishguard Harbour (for the ferry to Rosslare Europort and connecting trains to Dublin Connolly). The Heart of Wales Line takes a scenic route through mid-Wales and links Llanelli with Craven Arms, from where passengers can travel on the Welsh Marches Line to Shrewsbury.

 

Two heritage railways, the Gwili Railway and the Teifi Valley Railway, use the track of the Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway that at one time ran from Carmarthen to Newcastle Emlyn, but did not reach Cardigan.

 

The A40, A48, A484 and A485 converge on Carmarthen. The M4 route that links South Wales with London, terminates at junction 49, the Pont Abraham services, to continue northwest as the dual carriageway A48, and to finish with its junction with the A40 in Carmarthen.

 

Llanelli is linked to M4 junction 48 by the A4138. The A40 links Carmarthen to Llandeilo, Llandovery and Brecon to the east, and with St Clears, Whitland and Haverfordwest to the west. The A484 links Llanelli with Carmarthen by a coastal route and continues northwards to Cardigan, and via the A486 and A487 to Aberystwyth, and the A485 links Carmarthen to Lampeter.

 

Bus services run between the main towns within the county and are operated by First Cymru under their "Western Welsh" or "Cymru Clipper" livery. Bus services from Carmarthenshire are also run to Cardiff. A bus service known as "fflecsi Bwcabus" (formerly just "Bwcabus") operates in the north of the county, offering customised transport to rural dwellers.

 

Carmarthenshire has rich, fertile farmland and a productive coast with estuaries providing a range of foods that motivate many home cooks and chefs.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaulian

 

Jaulian (Urdu: جولیاں‎; meaning Seat of Saints[1]) is a ruined Buddhist monastery dating from the 2nd century CE,[2] located in Pakistan. Jaulian is located in Haripur District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, near the provincial border with Punjab and the city of Taxila.

 

Jaulian, along with the nearby monastery at Mohra Muradu, form part of the Ruins of Taxila – a collection of excavations that were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980.

  

Location

  

Jaulian is located on a hill 100 metres above the nearby modern village of Jaulian. The cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad are approximately 35 km and 45 km to the southeast, respectively and situated near Khanpur Taxila road; a picnic place near Khanpur Dam. Jaulian is located near the Mohra Muradu monastery, and the ancient Taxilan city of Sirsukh. Moreover, Piplan Remains, Badalpur Stupa and Jinnah Wali Dheri Stupa are nearby places.

  

History

  

Jaulian was built by the Kushans in the 2nd century CE – around the same time as the nearby Mohra Muradu[3] Jaulian, along with the rest of Ancient Taxila, was devastated in the 450s CE during the invasion of the White Huns, and later abandoned. Subsequent rulers, such as the Hun King Mihirakula, persecuted the region's Buddhists,[4] and the site never recovered.

  

Excavations

  

The ruins at Jaulian are situated on a hill top, and consist of: a main central stupa, 27 peripheral smaller stupas, 59 small chapels displaying scenes from the life of Buddha, and two quadrangles around which monastic living quarters were arranged. The form and building of Jaulian is similar to that of the nearby Mohra Muradu.

  

Main stupa

  

The main stupa at Jaulian was much smaller than that of Mohra Muradu or the Dharmarajika Stupa,[3] and is badly damaged. It was extensively coated in stucco plaster, as are almost all the sculptures and architectural details.[3] Despite the use of an easily moldable material, the quality of decoration at Jaulian is considered to be less impressive than that of Mohra Muradu.[3] The original plaster is preserved at some places.

 

The main stupa is surrounded by 21 smaller "votive stupas" that contained religious iconography – though some posit that some of the votive stupas were actually built as tombs for revered monks. The statues located in the votive stupas are mostly preserved; though a number of have been removed and are housed in museums.the original fabric of the main stupa itself which stands in the middle of the upper court

 

A statue of Buddha in a votive stupa with a hole in the navel was called the "Healing Buddha". Pilgrims would put their fingers in the icon's navel, and pray for cures of various ailment. A 5th century inscription preserved under the statue shows that it was given by a friar Budhamitra Dharmanandin.[5]

  

Monastery

  

The monastery at Jaulian is similar to that of nearby Mohra Muradu.[3] Jaulian monastery was a two-level building that contained 28 students' rooms on the first floor, and 28 more on the second floor. The two levels are connected by stone stairs which are still preserved. Some of the rooms contain preserved statues of the Buddha. Each room had a niche to hold lamps, and a window offering a source of fresh air and natural light. The windows were designed to be narrower at the outer edge, of and larger at the inner edge in order guard against wild animals. The rooms were plastered and decorated with plasterwork and paintings.

 

As was common at other large monasteries in the Gandhara region such as Takht-i-Bahi and Dharmarajika, a section of the monastery was set aside specifically for the production of Buddhist manuscripts, typically on birch bark,[3] a highly perishable material.

 

The monastery further contained a large pool that was used for washing, and a kitchen. A stone for grinding spices is well- preserved at the site, as well as two stone mills that were used to grind grains.

  

World's first university

  

Jaulian's monastery formed part of what some consider to be the world's oldest university. Students came to study and consult texts from throughout the Indian subcontinent and as far as Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China. Although, the important antiques have been shifted from Jaulian to Taxila Museum, however, importance of this place is very much for the visitors.This is a place which is now not only a historical place but also used by many people for their proposals,dates and wedding photoshoot.

 

A Royal Air Force pilot wearing night vision goggles.

 

A large proportion of the flying in operational theatres is conducted at night using night vision goggles: a form of light-enhancing binocular strapped to the front of the aircrew helmets. Flying at night minimises the threat to the aircraft, the crew and the passengers as it is more difficult for the aircraft to be seen and therefore targeted. Flying using night vision devices is a difficult skill to acquire and, as with all flying, is a skill that is perishable.

-------------------------------------------------------

© Crown Copyright 2013

Photographer: SAC Chris Hill

Image 45155670.jpg from www.defenceimages.mod.uk

  

This image is available for high resolution download at www.defenceimagery.mod.uk subject to the terms and conditions of the Open Government License at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/. Search for image number 45155670.jpg

 

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WEEK 47 – Cordova Super Target Final Day, Set III

 

I don’t believe this pic was actually taken in that yogurt case we’ve been looking at, but I stuffed it at this point in the series all the same. You may have noticed, amongst the many empty shelves plaguing the refrigerated and freezer units, several groups of affixed paper signs. This pair serves as a sample of all of them; the top one is the more important (and recent) of the two, and reads, “Take an additional 50% off all dairy, frozen, meat, deli, bakery, and produce.” (The bottom one, advertising a lesser 30% off of bakery individually, was, I presume, older and simply never removed. Same with other such signs you may have seen.)

 

Indeed, while the rest of the store was pretty much business as usual – er, well, *priced* as usual, anyway; the actual amount of stock available was far from that, of course – over here in grocery, because this store was the only Super Target in the region and had nowhere else to transfer its perishable goods, Target did finally cave in and decide to run a discount to clear these items out before the final day. From what we’ve seen so far and will continue to see when our tour continues two weeks from now, I’d say they were pretty successful in that endeavor, haha!

 

I’m not sure when exactly this clearance sale began, but I would assume a day or two before the final day, again especially given the continued presence/lack of removal of those older, lesser discount signs (advertising sales which themselves also only began after my initial visit in January, it should be noted… Target clearly was discount-hesitant here, lol!)

 

NEXT WEEK – the confusion continues at Office DepotMax…

 

(c) 2020 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

 

WEEK 28 – Oxford Millennium Kroger, Revisited (II)

 

(cont.) …but also with several additional local flair pics, as can be seen in this view, which peers straight down Aisle 1 towards the front of the store.

 

I find it interesting to note here that approximately half of the gondola dividing both of the first two aisles houses weekly sale items – not interesting in the sense that those items are being stocked, as that’s a common thing at Kroger; but rather, interesting in that the sale items are simply in that particular spot. You’ll note that neither aisle sign promotes “Weekly Specials,” either.

 

That said, I’m used to the setup in newer Krogers like the Hernando Marketplace, and older Krogers like Stateline, that face the weekly sale items right out to the perishables grand aisle, from a tiny unsigned aisle. Even the old Hernando millennium store had a little unsigned half-aisle that fed into Aisle 1 to meet this purpose. Maybe the setup we’re seeing here in Oxford is actually common to stores of this era, and I just haven’t encountered it before. Does anyone have any input or knowledge to confirm or deny that? (e.g. l_dawg2000, concerning the Getwell store pre-expansion?)

 

More from here in two weeks! Until then, next week – the Columbus Klosing continues…

 

(c) 2020 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

 

Post-Apocalyptic Survival Outpost

Located off the Texas Coast

 

I have always wanted to build a post-apocalyptic diorama but I didn't want to recreate the usual dio of dilapidated structures and cities in ruins.

 

In almost every apocalyptic scenario, the cities usually are the first place survivors head due to large amounts of supplies, weapons, non-perishable food, and the possibility of finding other survivors. However, urban areas are usually hit the hardest in any apocalypse. Large amounts of destruction, lack of electricity, presence of outlaw gangs, and other dangers await survivors that hope to find shelter in the metropolis.

 

With this in mind, where would you turn to find sustainable safety and security for a group of survivors? The county side? Rural towns? The coast?

 

A while back, I was out fishing near some gas and oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. I thought to myself, "why not build a survival outpost on rig a mile off the coast?"

__________________________________________________________________________

 

Offshore structures can provide all of the 5 resources required to survive.

 

Water - A basic desalinization device along with large amounts of coastal rainfall would provide all the fresh water required

 

Food - Sea life of all kinds can be acquired near offshore rigs. The structure creates cooler water with shade from the sun and the underwater structure acts as a natural reef which attracts bait and then predators. Crustaceans and shellfish can be collected from the surrounding waters. The tropical climate makes for great greenhouse conditions.

 

Shelter - A roof and walls offer a place to keep supplies dry and a refuge from the elements.

 

Protection - Being offshore, the risk of attack is reduced. Survivors are better able to detect possible threats and react accordingly. The near proximity to the shore also makes trips to the mainland feasible. And of course, lots of guns.

 

Energy - With an almost infinite supply of natural gas and wind, you could power almost anything using natural gas engine conversions and wind generators.

 

In the dying days of steam on the Nancha-Jiamusi CNR main line, immaculately presented QJ No.6262 pauses in a heavy snowfall for a crew change at Nancha on 29th March 1997, heading a northbound refrigerated freight for 'Jams', probably conveying perishables from the south of China.

 

© Gordon Edgar - All rights reserved. Please do not use my images without my explicit permission

In my work I deal with the artistic transformation of motifs from

everyday life as well as the social phenomena of our time. I am

interested in how human beings, with their standards and basic

values, behave, present themselves and move within the social

fabric. In the tension between its qualities and shortcomings, the

human figure is often the starting point for my reliefs and

sculptures. The respective relationship of the human being towards

him or herself or towards nature can be read in the current forms

of presentation and in those of the last decades. The archetype of

society, the smallest nuclear of a social life, is the image of “father,

mother, child”, an image that not least due to the long and very

loaded visual tradition of the “holy family”, is deeply rooted in our

society. (*Nativity Scene*, 2011).

Fragments of images and sculptures from past epochs and periods

constantly recur in the motifs. This results in hybrids containing

images of what is occurring in the currently omnipresent multimedia

world. Through the realization of the images using the archaic

technique of carving, motifs and visual language, which seemed to

have long been discarded, they reveal themselves to be unexpectedly

topical and controversial. Particularly with regard to the topics and

images of mundane everyday life, the iconic aspect of today’s culture

with its often century-old symbolism, emerges.

At first glance, I frequently use the same effects as the media and

internet images we are surrounded by: a superficially-oriented, slick

wrapping that is appealing yet often turns out to be soulless

hollowness. As a result, there is a confounding break between

traditional appearance and the images of digital modernism, which

at best leads to a deceleration of images in our fast-paced age.

Contemporary representations, which in their iconographic visual

language are for example reminiscent of medieval saints, are

frequently produced. They are sometimes joined by animals, which

are not only symbols for the human psyche but also references to the

long-felt guilt-ridden relationship between humans and nature.

In order to orientate themselves in the present and to interpret it, the

viewers must be aware of the past and things that have passed. The

examination of the political challenges of our present and future

often leads to a composition that is characterized by a feeling of

perplexity and powerlessness. This frequently results in super-

elevations and ironic metaphors. The works, which often appear to

hover weightlessly, deal with nothing less than the questions of our

time, existence and perishability

Etruscan mirror from Vulci [325-300 BC] -

Paris BNF wm;

 

The mirror, whose handle in perishable material has disappeared, presents on the back of the formerly polished disc, on three registers, a complex decoration with thirteen characters, identified by engraved inscriptions.

 

main decor, upper register:

Hercules (Herclé) presenting Eros (Epiur) to Jupiter (Tinia). The latter, in the center, is seated on a richly decorated throne. His chest is bare but his legs are wrapped in a chlamys decorated with embroidery. In his left hand, he holds his thunderbolt which is leaning on his shoulder. His feet rest on a stepladder supported by two sphinxes. His head, diademed, is turned to the left, in the direction of little Eros (Epiur) carried by Hercules (Herclé). The hero is diademed, beardless and naked. He faces the viewer and looks at Jupiter. He carries his club, leaning on his shoulder with his right hand and holds Eros with his left arm covered with lion skin. The child is naked, his wings outstretched. On either side of this central group are depicted two goddesses seated on richly decorated stools. The one behind Jupiter is an Etruscan Venus, Thalna. A swan is placed at her feet. Behind Hercules is another Etruscan Venus (Turan). She leans with her right hand on a scepter adorned with a pomegranate. A branch of myrtle is placed at her feet.

 

main decoration, lower register:

In the center Hélène (Elina), dressed in a rich Phrygian costume and seated on a throne decorated with lion heads. She presents her hand to a bearded and richly dressed man arriving from the right, Agamemnon (aχmemrun). The king of Mycenae has his head covered with his shroud. Between them, and facing the spectators, is shown Menelaus (Menle) simply dressed in a chlamys. He leans with his left hand on a spear and holds a phial in his right hand. On the other side of Helena is represented Pâris-Alexandros (elχsntre), half-naked, facing left. He holds a spear in his right hand and walks towards Mean (Etruscan deity personifying Victory), who presents him with a large band. A doe is standing at his feet. Behind her stands Aevas (Memnon or Ajax) beardless and naked. He is simply wearing a Phrygian cap.

 

main decor, at the bottom:

Lasa racuneta lying on a flower chalice. She is naked and diademed. Her neck is adorned with a collar and her wings are spread. She holds an alabastron (perfume vase) in her left hand and a sort of stylus in her right.

 

Source: BNF

medaillesetantiques.bnf.fr/ws/catalogue/app/collection/re...

m.youtube.com/watch?v=yvfen5NxfSs . . . First time I visited this neighborhood was in 2001. I remember walking on the street, going inside the store full of people & books. To make long story short this is what I listen to while doing my work training Friday night. / Be kind to your self, it is only one

 

and perishable

 

of many on the planet, thou art that

 

one that wishes a soft finger tracing the

 

line of feeling from nipple to pubes–

 

one that wishes a tongue to kiss your armpit,

 

a lip to kiss your cheek inside your

 

whiteness thigh–

 

Be kind to yourself Harry, because unkindness

 

comes when the body explodes

 

napalm cancer and the deathbed in Vietnam

 

is a strange place to dream of trees

 

leaning over and angry American faces

 

grinning with sleepwalk terror over your

 

last eye–

 

Be kind to yourself, because the bliss of your own

 

kindness will flood the police tomorrow,

Much of the tight valley floor of the Valle de Merveilles is littered with boulders and heavy scree. The above stone was found in an average aside to this dance of angles and drops. Whilst a found monolith, this stone can be referred to in texts as a menhir (standing stone), which does not seem to be in keeping with the site. The above is an image of the original stone which was removed and can now be seen in the musee des Merveilles of Tende. A replacement currently sits in the original position - a decision that seems credible as the anthropomorphic figure on the stone is atypical of the site and so rare. I have added colour to the petroglyphs in post production to help layer the categories of subject.

 

Corniforms - yellow ocre.

Corniforms are schematic symbols of cows with their horns. The first corniform is inside an 'abdomen' square and appears as a decoration within a schematic anthropomorph. This may help to confirm that corniform signs may have been employed as decoration on perishable items such as leather, weave and wood. I am not aware of corniform decorations on pottery.

 

The second central corniform seems to confirm the cow-form hut hypothesis (see related texts) with a small pecked 'herd' gathering between the horn-like fences of the hut. See how the horns are almost closed, and it may be that many outer horn-like fences were hinged. Here a woven gate frame might finally be pinned into the gap for over-night security of a flock: the fence being wide as the corral starts, before closing as the herd settles into place (the said image). Here the hut may be a slender 'one shepherd' base with a bulbous entrance for sitting - detached behind the fence.

 

The third corniform is to the right and is very small. Again dots of herded animals seem to be gathered between the fence horns.

 

Person / dog - red

To the left of the grid, a man has his arms in the air, as if waving to be seen from a distance. Contrast this average stance with the oft seen schematic hominid symbol - legs as wide as shoulders, arms up and all appendages demonstrative as a force such as the expression during a haka. One seems to be a modest description given to a space, and the other an expression of a force in a form of man held in a symbol. The vast spaces of mountain life will have made the simple arms up body-form a norm, and, even today, if stuck on an island and in need of the attention of a passing boat, this is the position we find within ourselves. The character may carry a wide hat?

 

The potential dog is towards the top left, again coloured in red and with two pointing ears. The artist may have been trying to depict a dog helping with the gathering of animals - like an arm scooping together a cluster of pecked dots where peck dots are thought to represent a herd or flock. The potential dog may also be a poorly drawn man with a hat that has ears ... or ... something else. It must be said that most of the rock art seems to have been driven by a clear idea and form, and there are few, if any, out and out doodles.

 

Field system - green.

A circular field system crossed by a bronze age knife. There are many examples of near circular field envelopes around Mont Bégo.

 

The rectilinear field system has 32 allotment cells - an even number, but with asymetrical rows. The interpretation of the grid seems to be backed-up by examples from Seradina in Valcamonica rock art site to the north. Here representations of huts are associated with field grids; and animals within are pecks with slightly larger marks and less stylistic feel for movement than from around Mont Bégo.

 

Crofter's knifes - bronze.

Normally just such a stone would simply be registered as having five clean representations of bronze age knifes (with a sixth potential outline inside the green pen that was not completed with infill). Here, the way the tip of one knife meets the presumed head of the anthromorph does generate speculation of a link: that the knife adds information about the anthromorph... If there is an interplay between the symbols then maybe there are interplays elsewhere?

 

Today the ages of man are categorised according to stone, bronze and Iron; places (Acheuléen...) and compound terms (Paleolithic...). An alternative might have been to describe by fire: hot enough to cook at 400 °C, hot enough to fire pottery at 800°C and hot enough to smelt metals at over 1000°C. Hearth becomes kiln which in turn becomes furnace. Whilst every phase-change involved changes in cultural knowledge, the phase change from 'captured' forest fire to captured 'lightning' may have impacted the fabric of prehistoric society to the greatest degree. The old stone age corresponding to a period when man could first capture flames, then create flames. The age of pottery being when he managed to capture the spirit of a forest fire, managing the flames and reductions inside a simple architecture, with the ages of metals being when he captured the spirit of lightning - intense white fire that could melt ore, requiring more innovations of structure, charcoal and bellows. Here, the bronze age tools that came out of this last category of fire will have been born for the spirit of lightning, displacing polished stone tools that were born from the principles of the spirits of sacred Mother Earth hills (Langdale, Viso...).

 

Lightning is intrusive and vivid and will always have had Gods. Jean Rouch documented the impact of the lightning spirit Kyirey aside the thunder spirit Dongo after a village lightning strike in his film 'Hampi...' (1960). Here, the spirit Dongo has no pity, and has announced the seven years of drought. Rouch later reports that over 100 people had been killed around the village of Hampi in a single season. The same area of Africa also knows Oya who gathers great natural forces like the Gods of Gods : procurers of lightning - Zeus, Thor and Indra. These Gods will be as old as man's reflective mind and will have coexisted with Earth Gods and Goddesses. Here, a man-made tool crafted from the spirit of 'lightning' carries with it a moral aura that is categorically different from a polished stone seeded from the fertility of Mother earth.

 

In today's homes, lightning can be a simple flutter of a television screen, or a shocking boom overhead. Curtains are promptly shut, keeping nature's theater from view. Equatorial Africa and mountain ranges both attract electrical storms. Anyone who has ever been stuck in a storm at high altitude, to face a lightning bolts from eye level, will know that lightning can get very big and fat. Spirits of lightning align to their nature and tend to be described as destructive and impulsive - perhaps a significant categorical difference from the Mother Earth spirits of life and season. Might tools made from the fire and force of lightning want to 'act' like their impetuous and destructive Gods, opening a panora's box on the will to destroy and shock? The wars that arrived with the ages of metals are correctly assigned variables of population and resource, variables of available war tools and reconfigurations and sophistications of conceptions and practice of banditry. The potentially impetuous and negative spirit of lightning, implicit within the then 'modern' bronze tools, may not have helped the social psychology of this late prehistory...

 

And when lightning stuck a farm, or shook a field next to a croft, sometimes on several occasions as bolts return to bell-towers, might the trauma have been registered as a petroglyphic depiction? Here knifes may credibly symbolise both lightning and a very real tool, in the same way that a cow-form hut can symbolise either a cow or a hut? If this was the case, then some tool depictions may be simple registers to a hybrid Goddess of earth and lightning (Mont Bégo), and others may be registers of lightning bolts that came close to people's lives.

 

Moving up to farm in the mountains is to move closer to the spirits of thunder and lightning. Mont Bégo is a mountain heavy with metals and is known to attract lightning. It has an ancient form - albeit slight, of a Venus Hill, and was perhaps a perfect landscape host for a God of thunder and lightning. People living in mountainous regions would have their lives impacted by lightning, and may be drawn to pilgrimage - to dialogue with this force of nature. The white fire inside their tools, their plough shares, where metal tips replace stone – a zeitgeist of transformation, and an arena where sudden dramatic lightning can change crofting for brief moments, or, for good.

 

The anthromorph in the above stone may be an accident of line or a lone visualisation of a cult of lightning – perhaps the rock art was a late addition to the site, akin to the petroglyph thought to be the Dieu Cernunnos 2,500-2,400 ybc of Zura further to the north, or a traveller interested in lightning from a distant culture. Here the lightning bolt would be pictured as a tool hitting the head, here depicted as a 'cloud' that sits on shoulders of a landscape vista, with its hands as rivers (coloured in blue): a spiritual enclosure at the heart with its central corniform hut, and then, maybe a pool of spiritual water... The forces of the sky and the earth depicted under one hominid form?

 

AJM 22.3.19

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_of_the_Kings

 

The Valley of the Kings (Egyptian Arabic: وادى الملوك Wādī el-Mulūk; Coptic: ϫⲏⲙⲉ Džēme [ˈʃɪ.mæ]), also known as the Valley of the Gates of the Kings (وادى ابواب الملوك Wādī Ebwāb el-Mulūk), is an area in Egypt where, for a period of nearly 500 years from the Eighteenth Dynasty to the Twentieth Dynasty, rock-cut tombs were excavated for pharaohs and powerful nobles under the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt.

 

It is a wadi sitting on the west bank of the Nile, opposite Thebes (modern-day Luxor) and within the heart of the Theban Necropolis. There are two main sections: the East Valley, where the majority of the royal tombs are situated; and the West Valley, otherwise known as the Valley of the Monkeys.

 

With the 2005 discovery of a new chamber and the 2008 discovery of two further tomb entrances, the Valley of the Kings is known to contain 65 tombs and chambers, ranging in size from the simple pit that is KV54 to the complex tomb that is KV5, which alone has over 120 chambers for the sons of Ramesses II. It was the principal burial place for the New Kingdom's major royal figures as well as a number of privileged nobles. The royal tombs are decorated with traditional scenes from Egyptian mythology and reveal clues to the period's funerary practices and afterlife beliefs. Almost all of the tombs seem to have been opened and robbed in antiquity, but they still give an idea of the opulence and power of Egypt's pharaohs.

 

This area has been a focus for Egyptologists and archaeological exploration since the end of the 18th century, and its tombs and burials continue to stimulate research and interest. The Valley of the Kings garnered significant attention following the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, and is one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world. In 1979, it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site alongside the rest of the Theban Necropolis. Exploration, excavation, and conservation continues in the area and a new tourist centre has recently been opened.

 

Geology

The Valley of the Kings is situated over 1,000 feet of limestone and other sedimentary rock, which form the cliffs in the valley and the nearby Deir el-Bahari, interspersed with soft layers of marl. The sedimentary rock was originally deposited between 35 and 56 million years ago during a time when the Mediterranean Sea sometimes extended as far south as Aswan. During the Pleistocene the valley was carved out of the plateau by steady rains. There is now little year-round rain in this part of Egypt, but there are occasional flash floods. These floods dump tons of debris into the open tombs.

 

The quality of the rock in the Valley is inconsistent, ranging from finely grained to coarse stone, the latter with the potential to be structurally unsound. The occasional layer of shale also caused construction (and in modern times, conservation) difficulties, as this rock expands in the presence of water, forcing apart the stone surrounding it. It is thought that some tombs were altered in shape and size depending on the types of rock the builders encountered. Builders took advantage of available geological features when constructing the tombs. Some tombs were quarried out of existing limestone clefts, others behind slopes of scree, and some were at the edge of rock spurs created by ancient flood channels.

 

The problems of tomb construction can be seen with the tombs of Ramesses III and his father Setnakhte. Setnakhte started to excavate KV11 but unintentionally broke into the tomb of Amenmesse, so construction was abandoned and he instead usurped the tomb of Twosret, KV14. When looking for a tomb, Ramesses III extended the partly excavated tomb started by his father. The tomb of Ramesses II returned to an early style, with a bent axis, probably due to the quality of the rock being excavated (following the Esna shale).

 

Between 1998 and 2002, the Amarna Royal Tombs Project investigated the valley floor using ground-penetrating radar and found that, below the modern surface, the Valley's cliffs descend beneath the scree in a series of abrupt, natural "shelves", arranged one below the other, descending several metres to the bedrock in the valley floor.

 

Hydrology

The area of the Theban hills is subject to infrequent, violent thunderstorms causing flash floods in the valley. Recent studies have shown that there are at least seven active flood stream beds leading down into the central area of the valley. This central area appears to have been flooded at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty, with several tombs buried under metres of debris. The tombs KV55, KV62, and KV63 are dug into the actual wadi bedrock rather than the debris, showing that the level of the valley was five meters below its present level. After this event, later dynasties levelled the floor of the valley, making the floods deposit their load further down the valley, and the buried tombs were forgotten and only discovered in the early 20th century. This was the area that was the subject of the Amarna Royal Tombs Project ground-scanning radar investigation, which showed several anomalies, one of which was proved to be KV63.

 

History

The Theban Hills are dominated by the peak of al-Qurn, known to the Ancient Egyptians as ta dehent, or "The Peak". It has a pyramid-shaped appearance, and it is probable that this echoed the pyramids of the Old Kingdom, more than a thousand years prior to the first royal burials carved here. Its isolated position also resulted in reduced access, and special tomb police (the Medjay) were able to guard the necropolis.

 

While the iconic pyramid complex of the Giza Plateau have come to symbolize ancient Egypt, the majority of tombs were cut into rock. Most pyramids and mastabas contain sections which were cut into ground level, and there are full rock-cut tombs in Egypt that date back to the Old Kingdom.

 

After the defeat of the Hyksos and the reunification of Egypt under Ahmose I, the Theban rulers began to construct elaborate tombs that reflected their newfound power. The tombs of Ahmose I and his son Amenhotep I (their exact location remains unknown) were probably in the Seventeenth Dynasty necropolis of Dra' Abu el-Naga'. The first royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings were those of Amenhotep I (although this identification is also disputed), and Thutmose I, whose advisor, Ineni, notes in his tomb that he advised the king to place his tomb in the desolate valley (the identity of this actual tomb is unclear, but it is probably KV20 or KV38).

 

I saw to the excavation of the rock-tomb of his majesty, alone, no one seeing, no one hearing.

 

The Valley was used for primary burials from approximately 1539 BC to 1075 BC. It contains at least 63 tombs, beginning with Thutmose I (or possibly earlier, during the reign of Amenhotep I) and ending with Ramesses X or XI, although non-royal burials continued in usurped tombs.

 

Despite its name, the Valley of the Kings also contains the tombs of favorite nobles as well as the wives and children of both nobles and pharaohs. Therefore, only about twenty of the tombs actually contain the remains of kings. The remains of nobles and of the royal family, together with unmarked pits and embalming caches, make up the rest. Around the time of Ramesses I (ca. 1301 BC) construction commenced in the separate Valley of the Queens.

 

At the start of the Eighteenth Dynasty, only kings were buried within the valley in large tombs. When a non-royal person was buried, it was in a small rock cut chamber, close to the tomb of their master. Amenhotep III's tomb was constructed in the Western Valley, and while his son Akhenaten moved his tomb's construction to Amarna, it is thought that the unfinished WV25 may have originally been intended for him. With the return to religious orthodoxy at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty, Tutankhamun, Ay, and Horemheb returned to the royal necropolis.

 

The Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties saw an increase in the number of burials (both here and in the Valley of the Queens), with Ramesses II and later Ramesses III each constructing a massive tomb used for the burial of their sons (KV5 and KV3 respectively). There are some kings that are not buried within the valley or whose tomb has not been located: Thutmose II may have been buried in Dra' Abu el-Naga' (although his mummy was in the Deir el-Bahari tomb cache), Smenkhkare's burial has never been located, and Ramesses VIII seems to have been buried elsewhere.

 

In the Pyramid Age, the pyramid tomb of a king was associated with a mortuary temple located close to the pyramid. Since the tombs of the kings in the Valley of the Kings were hidden, the kings' mortuary temples were located away from their burial sites, closer to the cultivation facing Thebes. These mortuary temples became places visited during the various festivals held in the Theban necropolis. Most notable is the Beautiful festival of the valley, where the sacred barques of Amun-Re, his consort, Mut, and son, Khonsu, left the temple at Karnak in order to visit the funerary temples of deceased kings on the West Bank and their shrines in the Theban Necropolis.

 

The tombs were constructed and decorated by the workers of the village of Deir el-Medina, located in a small wadi between this valley and the Valley of the Queens, facing Thebes. The workers journeyed to the tombs through various routes over the Theban hills. The daily lives of these workers are quite well known due to their being recorded in tombs and official documents. Amongst the events documented is perhaps the first recorded workers' strike, detailed in the Turin Strike Papyrus.

 

Exploration of the valley

The valley has been a major focus of modern Egyptological exploration for the last two centuries. Prior to this time, it was a site for tourism in antiquity (especially during Roman times). The area illustrates the changes in the study of ancient Egypt, starting as antiquity hunting, and ending as scientific excavation of the whole Theban Necropolis. Despite the exploration and investigation noted below, only eleven of the tombs have actually been completely recorded.

 

Many of the tombs have graffiti written by those ancient tourists. Jules Baillet has located over 2,100 Greek and Latin instances of graffiti, along with a smaller number in Phoenician, Cypriot, Lycian, Coptic, and other languages. The majority of the ancient graffiti is found in KV9, which contains just under a thousand of them. The earliest positively dated graffiti dates to 278 BC.

 

In 1799, members of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt (especially Vivant Denon) drew maps and plans of the known tombs, and for the first time noted the Western Valley (where Prosper Jollois and Édouard de Villiers du Terrage located the tomb of Amenhotep III, WV22). The Description de l'Égypte contains two volumes (out of a total of 24) on the area around Thebes.

 

European exploration continued in the area around Thebes during the nineteenth century. Early in the century, the area was visited by Giovanni Belzoni, working for Henry Salt, who discovered several tombs, including those of Ay in the West Valley (WV23) in 1816 and Seti I (KV17) the following year. At the end of his visits, Belzoni declared that all of the tombs had been located and nothing of note remained to be found. Working at the same time was Bernardino Drovetti, the French Consul-General and a great rival of Belzoni and Salt. John Gardner Wilkinson, who lived in Egypt from 1821 to 1832, copied many of the inscriptions and artwork in the tombs that were open at the time. The decipherment of hieroglyphs, though still incomplete during Wilkinson's stay in the valley, enabled him to assemble a chronology of New Kingdom rulers based on the inscriptions in the tombs. He also established the system of tomb numbering that has been in use, with additions, ever since.

 

The second half of the century saw a more concerted effort to preserve, rather than simply gather, antiquities. Auguste Mariette's Egyptian Antiquities Service started to explore the valley, first with Eugène Lefébure in 1883, then Jules Baillet and Georges Bénédite in early 1888, and finally Victor Loret in 1898 to 1899. Loret added a further 16 tombs to the list, and explored several tombs that had already been discovered. During this time Georges Daressy explored KV9.

 

When Gaston Maspero was reappointed as head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, the nature of the exploration of the valley changed again. Maspero appointed English archaeologist Howard Carter as the Chief Inspector of Upper Egypt, and the young man discovered several new tombs and explored several others, clearing KV42 and KV20.

 

Around the start of the 20th century, American explorer Theodore M. Davis held the excavation permit for the valley. His team (led mostly by Edward R. Ayrton) discovered several royal and non-royal tombs (including KV43, KV46 and KV57). In 1907, they discovered the possible Amarna Period cache in KV55. After finding what they thought was all that remained of the burial of Tutankhamun (items recovered from KV54 and KV58), it was announced that the valley was completely explored and that no further burials were to be found. Davis's 1912 publication, The Tombs of Harmhabi and Touatânkhamanou closes with the comment, "I fear that the Valley of Kings is now exhausted."

 

After Davis's death early in 1915, Lord Carnarvon acquired the concession to excavate the valley, and he employed Howard Carter to explore it. After a systematic search, they discovered the actual tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62) in November 1922.

 

Various expeditions have continued to explore the valley, adding greatly to the knowledge of the area. In 2001 the Theban Mapping Project designed new signs for the tombs, providing information and plans of the open tombs.

 

Tomb development

 

KV1KV2KV3KV4KV5KV6KV7KV8KV9KV10KV11KV12KV13KV14KV15KV16KV17KV18KV19KV20KV21WV22WV23WV24WV25KV26KV28KV29KV30KV31KV32KV34KV35KV36KV37KV38KV39KV40KV41KV42KV43KV44KV45KV46KV47KV48KV54KV55KV56KV57KV58KV59KV61KV62KV63

 

Location

The earliest tombs were located in cliffs at the top of scree slopes, under storm-fed waterfalls (KV34 and KV43). As these locations were filled, burials descended to the valley floor, gradually moving back up the slopes as the valley bottom filled with debris. This explains the location of the tombs KV62 and KV63 buried in the valley floor.

 

Architecture

The usual tomb plan consisted of a long inclined rock-cut corridor, descending through one or more halls (possibly mirroring the descending path of the sun god into the underworld) to the burial chamber. In the earlier tombs, the corridors turn 90 degrees at least once (such as KV43, the tomb of Thutmose IV), and the earliest ones had cartouche-shaped burial chambers (for example, KV43, the tomb of Thutmose IV). This layout is known as "Bent Axis", After the burial, the upper corridors were meant to be filled with rubble and the entrance to the tomb hidden. After the Amarna Period, the layout gradually straightened, with an intermediate "Jogged Axis" (the tomb of Horemheb, KV57 is typical of this layout and is one of the tombs that is sometimes open to the public), to the generally "Straight Axis" of the late Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasty tombs (Ramesses III's and Ramesses IX's tombs, KV11 and KV6 respectively). As the tombs' axes straightened, the slopes also lessened. They almost disappeared in the late Twentieth Dynasty. Another feature that is common to most tombs is the "well", which may have originated as an actual barrier intended to stop flood waters from entering the lower parts of the tomb. It seems to have developed a "magical" purpose later as a symbolic shaft. In the later Twentieth Dynasty, the well itself was sometimes not excavated (by the builders), but the well room was still present.

 

Decoration

The majority of the royal tombs were decorated with religious texts and images. The early tombs were decorated with scenes from Amduat ('That Which is in the Underworld'), which describes the journey of the sun god through the twelve hours of the night. From the time of Horemheb, tombs were decorated with the Book of Gates, which shows the sun god passing through the twelve gates that divide the nighttime and ensures the tomb owner's own safe passage through the night. These earliest tombs were generally sparsely decorated, and those of a non-royal nature were totally undecorated.

 

Late in the Nineteenth Dynasty the Book of Caverns, which divided the underworld into massive caverns containing deities as well as the deceased waiting for the sun to pass through and restore them to life, was placed in the upper parts of tombs. A complete version appears in the tomb of Ramesses VI. The burial of Ramesses III saw the Book of the Earth, where the underworld is divided into four sections, climaxing in the sun disc being pulled from the earth by Naunet.

 

The ceilings of the burial chambers were decorated (from the burial of Seti I onwards) with what became formalised as the Book of the Heavens, which again describes the sun's journey through the twelve hours of night. Again from Seti I's time, the Litany of Re, a lengthy hymn to the sun god began to appear.

 

Tomb equipment

Each burial was provided with equipment that would enable a comfortable existence in the afterlife. Also present in the tombs were items used to perform magic rituals, such as shabtis and divine figurines. Some of the items may have been used by the king during his lifetime (Tutankhamun's sandals for example), and some were specially constructed for the burial.

 

Tomb numbering

The modern abbreviation "KV" stands for "Kings' Valley". In 1827, Wilkinson painted KV numbers over the entrances to the 21 tombs that lay open in the East Valley at that time, beginning at the valley entrance and moving southward, and labeled four tombs in the West Valley as WV1 through WV4. The tombs in the West Valley were later incorporated into the East Valley numbering system as WV22 through WV25, and tombs that have been opened since Wilkinson's time have been added to the list. The numbers range from KV1 (Rameses VII) to KV64 (discovered in 2011). Since the early 19th century AD, antiquarians and archaeologists have cleared and recorded tombs, with a total of 61 sepulchers being known by the start of the 20th century. KV5 was only rediscovered in the 1990s after being dismissed as unimportant by previous investigators. Some of the tombs are unoccupied, others remain unidentifiable as regards to their owners, and still others are merely pits used for storage. Most of the open tombs in the Valley of the Kings are located in the East Valley, and this is where most of the tourist facilities are located.

 

Eighteenth Dynasty

The Eighteenth Dynasty tombs within the valley vary quite a bit in decoration, style, and location. It seems that at first there was no fixed plan. The tomb of Hatshepsut has a unique shape, twisting and turning down over 200 metres from the entrance, so that the burial chamber is 97 metres below the surface. The tombs gradually became more regular and formalised, and those of Thutmose III and Thutmose IV, KV34 and KV43, are good examples of Eighteenth Dynasty tombs, both with their bent axis, and simple decoration.

 

Perhaps the most imposing tomb of this period is that of Amenhotep III, WV22, located in the West Valley. It was re-investigated in the 1990s by a team from Waseda University, Japan, but it is not open to the public.

 

At the same time, powerful and influential nobles began to be buried with the royal family; the most famous of these tombs is the joint tomb of Yuya and Tjuyu, KV46. They were possibly the parents of Queen Tiy. Until the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, this was the best-preserved of the tombs that had been discovered in the Valley.

 

The return of royal burials to Thebes after the end of the Amarna Period marks a change to the layout of royal burials, with the intermediate 'jogged axis' gradually giving way to the 'straight axis' of later dynasties. In the Western Valley, there is a tomb commencement that is thought to have been started for Akhenaten, but it is no more than a gateway and a series of steps. The tomb of Ay, Tutankhamun's successor is close by. It is likely that this tomb was started for Tutankhamun (its decoration is of a similar style), but later usurped for Ay's burial. This would mean that KV62 may have been Ay's original tomb, which would explain the smaller size and unusual layout for a royal tomb.

 

The other Amarna Period tombs are located in a smaller, central area in the centre of the East Valley, with a possible mummy cache (KV55) that may contain the burials of several Amarna Period royals – Tiy and Smenkhkare or Akhenaten.

 

In close proximity is the burial of Tutankhamun, perhaps the most famous discovery of modern Western archaeology. It was discovered by Howard Carter on 4 November 1922, with clearance and conservation work continuing until 1932. This was the first royal tomb to be discovered that was still largely intact, although tomb robbers had entered. Until the excavation of KV63 on 10 March 2005, it was considered the last major discovery in the valley. The opulence of his grave goods notwithstanding, Tutankhamun was a relatively minor king, and other burials probably had more numerous treasures.

 

In the same central area as KV62 and KV63, is "KV64", a radar anomaly believed to be a tomb or chamber announced on 28 July 2006. It was not an official designation, and the actual existence of a tomb at all was dismissed by the Supreme Council of Antiquities, prior to finally excavating and describing it during 2011–2012.

 

The nearby tomb of Horemheb, (KV57) is rarely open to visitors, but it has many unique features and is extensively decorated. The decoration shows a transition from the pre-Amarna tombs to those of the 19th dynasty tombs that followed.

 

Nineteenth Dynasty

The Nineteenth Dynasty saw a further standardisation of tomb layout and decoration. The tomb of the first king of the dynasty, Ramesses I, was hurriedly finished due to the early death of the king and is little more than a truncated descending corridor and a burial chamber. However, KV16 has vibrant decoration and still contains the sarcophagus of the king. Its central location makes it one of the more frequently visited tombs. It shows the development of the tomb entrance and passage and of decoration.

 

His son and successor, Seti I's tomb KV17 (also known as Belzoni's tomb, the tomb of Apis, or the tomb of Psammis, son of Necho), is usually regarded as the finest tomb in the valley. It has extensive relief work and paintings. When it was rediscovered by Belzoni in 1817, he referred to it as "a fortunate day."

 

The son of Seti, Ramesses II (Ramesses the Great), constructed a massive tomb, KV7, but it is in a ruinous state. It is currently undergoing excavation and conservation by a Franco-Egyptian team led by Christian Leblanc. The tomb is vast in size, about the same length, and a larger area, of the tomb of his father.

 

At the same time, and just opposite his own tomb, Ramesses enlarged the earlier small tomb of an unknown Eighteenth Dynasty noble (KV5) for his numerous sons. With 120 known rooms, and excavation work still underway, it is probably the largest tomb in the valley. Originally opened (and robbed) in antiquity, it is a low-lying structure that has been particularly prone to the flash floods that sometimes hit the area. Tonnes of debris and material has washed in over the centuries, ultimately concealing its vast size. It is not currently open to the public.

 

Ramesses II's son and eventual successor, Merenptah's tomb has been open since antiquity; it extends 160 metres, ending in a burial chamber that once contained a set of four nested sarcophagi. Well decorated, it is typically open to the public most years.

 

The last kings of the dynasty also constructed tombs in the valley, all of which follow the same general pattern of layout and decoration. Notable amongst these is the tomb of Siptah, which is well decorated, especially the ceiling.

 

Twentieth Dynasty

The first ruler of the dynasty, Setnakhte, had two tombs constructed for himself. He started excavating the eventual tomb of his son, Ramesses III, but abandoned that dig when it unintentionally broke into another tomb. He then usurped and completed the tomb of the Nineteenth Dynasty female pharaoh, Twosret, KV14. Therefore, this tomb has two burial chambers, the later extensions making this one of the largest of the Royal tombs, at over 150 metres.

 

The tomb of Ramesses III (KV11, known as Bruce's Tomb or The Harper's Tomb due to its decoration) is one of the largest tombs in the valley and is open to the public. It is located close to the central 'rest–area', and its location and superb decoration make this one of the tombs most visited by tourists.

 

The successors and offspring of Ramesses III constructed tombs that had straight axes. They all had similar decorations. Notable amongst these is KV2, the tomb of Ramesses IV, which has been open since antiquity, containing a large amount of hieratic graffiti. The tomb is mostly intact and is decorated with scenes from several religious texts. The joint tomb of Ramesses V and Ramesses VI, KV9 (also known as the Tomb of Memnon or La Tombe de la Métempsychose) is decorated with many sunk-relief carvings, depicting illustrated scenes from religious texts. Open since antiquity, it contains over a thousand examples of graffiti written in ancient Greek, Latin and Coptic. The spoil from the excavation and later clearance of this tomb, together with later construction of workers huts, covered the earlier burial of KV62 and seems to have been what protected that tomb from earlier discovery and looting.

 

The tomb of Ramesses IX, KV6, has been open since antiquity, as can be seen by the graffiti left on its walls by Roman and Coptic visitors. Located in the central part of the valley, it is between and slightly above KV5 and KV55. The tomb extends a total distance of 105 metres into the hillside, including extensive side chambers that were neither decorated nor finished. The hasty and incomplete nature of the rock-cutting and decorations (it is only decorated for a little over half its length) within the tomb indicate that the tomb was not completed by the time of Ramesses' death, with the completed hall of pillars serving as the burial chamber.

 

Another notable tomb from this dynasty is KV19, the tomb of Mentuherkhepshef (son of Ramesses IX). This small tomb is simply a converted, unfinished corridor, but the decoration is extensive. The tomb has been newly restored and opened for visitors.

 

Twenty-first Dynasty and the decline of the necropolis

By the end of the New Kingdom, Egypt had entered a long period of political and economic decline. The priests at Thebes grew more powerful, and they effectively administered Upper Egypt, while kings ruling from Tanis controlled Lower Egypt. Some attempt at using the open tombs was made at the start of the Twenty-first Dynasty, with the High Priest of Amun, Pinedjem I, adding his cartouche to KV4. The Valley began to be heavily plundered, so during the Twenty-first Dynasty the priests of Amun opened most of the tombs and moved the mummies into three tombs in order to better protect them. Most of the treasure was removed from the tombs. Most of these were later moved to a single cache near Deir el-Bahari (known as TT320). Located in the cliffs overlooking the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, this mass reburial contained a large number of royal mummies. They were found in a great state of disorder, many placed in other's coffins, and several are still unidentified. Other mummies were moved to the tomb of Amenhotep II, where over a dozen mummies, many of them royal, were later relocated.

 

During the later Third Intermediate Period and later periods, intrusive burials were introduced into many of the open tombs. In Coptic times, some of the tombs were used as churches, stables, and even houses.

 

Minor tombs in the Valley of the Kings

The majority of the 65 numbered tombs in the Valley of the Kings can be considered as minor tombs, either because at present they have yielded little information or because the results of their investigations were only poorly recorded by their explorers. Some have received very little attention or were only cursorily noted. Most of these tombs are small, often consisting of only a single burial chamber accessed by a shaft or staircase with a corridor or a series of corridors leading to the chamber.

 

Nonetheless, some are larger, multiple-chambered tombs. These minor tombs served various purposes: some were intended for burials of lesser royalty or private burials, some contained animal burials, and others apparently never received a primary burial. In many cases these tombs also served secondary functions, and later intrusive material has been found related to these secondary activities. While some of these tombs have been open since antiquity, the majority were discovered in the 19th and early 20th centuries during the height of exploration in the valley.

 

Tomb robbers

Almost all tombs throughout Egypt have been robbed. Several papyri have been found that describe the trials of tomb robbers. These date mostly from the late Twentieth Dynasty. One of these, Papyrus Mayer B, describes the robbery of the tomb of Ramesses VI and was probably written during year eight or nine of Ramesses X, around 1118 BC.

 

The foreigner Nesamun took us up and showed us the tomb of King Ramesses VI ... And I spent four days breaking into it, we being present all five. We opened the tomb and entered it. ... We found a cauldron of bronze, three wash bowls of bronze

 

Confessing to their crimes, the thief goes on to add that a small quarrel arose amongst the robbers when it came to equally dividing the spoils collected from the tomb.

 

Tombs were filled with valuables, therefore a prime motivation to rob them. Thieves often looted the chambers and bodies of mummies and took with them precious metals and stones, the most common gold and silver, linens and ointments or unguents. Often tombs were robbed when they were still fresh because many of the valuables buried with the mummies were perishable.

 

The valley also seems to have suffered an official plundering during the virtual civil war, which started during the reign of Ramesses XI. The tombs were opened, all the valuables were removed, and the mummies were collected into two large caches. One in the tomb of Amenhotep II, contained sixteen mummies, and others were hidden within Amenhotep I's tomb. A few years later most of them were moved to the Deir el-Bahari cache, containing no fewer than forty royal mummies and their coffins. Only tombs whose locations were lost (KV62, KV63 and KV46, although both KV62 and KV46 were robbed soon after their actual closure) were undisturbed during this period.

 

The oldest of the seven wonders of the world, the Pyramid of Giza, was built by King Khufu; the most powerful ruler of the Old Kingdom. In this largest of the pyramids, a system of tunnels was put in place to deter thieves from robbing the tomb. Sources suggest that until the ninth century AD, the pyramid remained sealed and untouched by robbers, however these intruders also imply that once in the King's chamber they saw the mummy had been taken and the sarcophagus opened.

 

Tombs were ransacked for their valuables but also for their original primary purpose. Once robbed, an empty tomb could be used as a burial place for another mummy, which is exactly what happened in the smallest of the pyramids of Giza.

 

Tourism

Most of the tombs are not open to the public (18 of the tombs can be opened, but they are rarely open at the same time), and officials occasionally close those that are open for restoration work. The number of visitors to KV62 has led to a separate charge for entry into the tomb. The West Valley has only one open tomb – that of Ay – and a separate ticket is needed to visit this tomb. The tour guides are no longer allowed to lecture inside the tombs, and visitors are expected to proceed quietly and in single file through the tombs. This is to minimize time in the tombs and prevent the crowds from damaging the surfaces of the decoration.

 

In 1997, 58 tourists and four Egyptians were massacred at nearby Deir el-Bahari by Islamist militants from Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya. This led to an overall drop in tourism in the area.

 

On most days of the week an average of 4,000 to 5,000 tourists visit the main valley. The West Valley is much less visited, as there is only one tomb that is open to the public.

flora minus fauna at home

Just another frame from this great morning with some classic street running from a few weeks ago.

 

Here is the Juniata Valley Railroad heading east on Water Street with two cars for the big Standard Steel mill in Burnham. Leading the train in sharp PRR styled heritage paint is SW900 2106 blt. Nov. 1953 for the Pittsburgh and Shawmut Railroad as their number 236.

 

After leaving the yard and interchange with NS the line crosses the Juniata River then immediately enters Water Street for 3/10ths of a mile down the road. Lewiston also features a second stretch of street running on the Maitland Branch just east of the junction, but they didn't go that way today.

 

A bit of history from the North Shore Companies web site:

 

Today, Juniata Valley Railroad is an 18.5 mile short line that interchanges with Norfolk Southern in Lewistown, PA. JVRR delivers commodities that vary from scrap and finished metals to plastics, fertilizer and pulp. The infrastructure is owned by SEDA-COG JRA (Susquehanna Economic Development Association - Council of Governments Joint Rail Authority).

 

The Juniata Valley Railroad was incorporated in 1996 to assume from Conrail the operation of the three branch lines radiating out of Lewistown. These lines include remnants of the former railroads extending to Selinsgrove and to Milroy, and the branch to the West Mifflin Industrial Park. The Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) had been incorporated in 1846, to construct from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh. Three years later (1849) Lewistown became its first western terminus, and industry quickly developed due to the proximity of the Juniata iron ores.

 

The Freedom Forge at Burnham/Yeagertown had been producing pig iron from these ores since 1795, and was acquired by Andrew Carnegie in 1865. The Mifflin & Centre County Railroad (M&C RR) was projected to build northward through this iron belt, from Lewistown to Milesburg, in 1860. Construction began in 1863, and by 1865 the line extended only 12 miles to Milroy, there being no favorable route northward over Seven Mountains to Milesburg. The PRR leased the M&CC RR in May 1865, and for years handled enormous traffic to and from Burnham Steel Company, successor to the Freedom Forge. The north end of the line was abandoned in segments between 1976 and 1980.

 

Entrepreneurs also projected a line eastward from Lewistown to the Susquehanna River at Selinsgrove and Port Trevorton, incorporating the Middle Creek Railroad in 1865. Despite having constructed some roadbed, this line was waning by 1870. It was reincorporated as the Sunbury & Lewistown Railroad in 1870, opened from Lewistown to Selinsgrove, 43.5 miles, on December 1, 1871, and immediately leased by the PRR.

 

But the traffic was rural and the little line was foreclosed in 1874. It was reincorporated again in 1874 and immediately leased “by PRR interests.” Under PRR control, it served as an important shortcut for moving Wilkes-Barre anthracite westward, avoiding Harrisburg, and for moving perishables to New York markets via interchange with the Lehigh Valley Railroad at Mt. Carmel, avoiding both Harrisburg and Philadelphia. With the industrial decline of the 1950s, the middle of the line was taken up beginning in 1957. Conrail operated the line from 1976 until the Juniata Valley RR became the operator August 19,1996.

 

Lewistown, Pennsylvania

Friday July 31, 2020

While the shunters chat Class50 50020 Revenge backs down onto the 4M05 12;45 Penzance to London Paddington parcels and perishables taken Bristol Temple Meads on a very dull July day. 25/07/1978.

 

image Kevin Connolly - All rights reserved so please do no use this without my explicit permission

Standing at the heart of Witney the Buttercross was probably originally a simple market cross, although different local traditions suggest that it also may have been the spot on which stood an ancient preaching cross, a shrine, or a statue of the Virgin Mary. The central stone pillar which is raised up on a bed of steps is older than the surrounding twelve pillars that support the roof and it may be the remains of the original market cross or shrine. It was in 1606 that Richard Ashcombe left £50 to build a house 'over and above' the cross and it then became a place where people sold perishable goods such as butter. The clock turret was added later in 1683 following a bequest by William Blake of Cogges who was a successful draper, wool merchant and local benefactor.

Koyambedu Wholesale Market Complex, Koyambedu District, Chennai, India; one of Asia's largest (14.41 acres) perishable goods markets (fruits, vegetables, flowers).

Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM

©2013 Patrick J Bayens

  

Found a few items way in the back with really old expiration dates!

 

Epidemic or not, it is probably a good idea to always have 3-4 weeks worth of non-perishable food on hand.

 

Because we are over 65, Deb and I are on self quarantine. I can do all my work by computer from home. We can get pharmacy and grocery supplies by drive through orders.

 

Here in Colorado, my company is not yet shut down, but probably has only 10 to 20 percent of our local workforce reporting to the office. Our California offices are closed by government order.

PLEASE, no multi invitations in your comments. DO NOT FEEL YOU HAVE TO COMMENT.Thanks.

 

Plaza of the Thousand Columns has ample vaulted spaces held up by columns. It is probable that the function of this Plaza was civic and religious. It as a drainage system that gathers water and stores it in a natural depression notheast of the Plaza. Besides the main buildings, there are approximately 40 foundation bases which were built with stone from the buildings already in disuse in the Plaza.

 

There are remains of perishable materials, perhaps as a center for humble inhabitants, living amidst the ruins of what was a once great city.

Late summer is the time of delivery via sealift for heavy and non-perishable items, and heating fuel and gas for Kugluktuk and other Arctic communities. For a few years now the large ships from Montreal have been able to make it and ease what was previously only done by the barges from Hay River through the MacKenzie River and the western route. Fuel is delivered for the whole year because after freeze up only planes can resupply the communities at a very high cost.

ON DETACHMENT

 

"I have read many writings of pagan masters, and of the prophets, and of the Old and New Testaments, and have sought earnestly and with all diligence to discover which is the best and highest virtue whereby a man may chiefly and most firmly join himself to God,and whereby a man may become by grace what God is by nature, and whereby a man may come closest to his image when he was in God, wherein there was no difference between him and God, before God made creatures. After a thorough study of these writings I find, as well as my reason can testify or perceive, that only pure detachment surpasses all things, for all virtues have some regard to creatures, but detachment is free of all creatures. Therefore our Lord said to Martha, "unum est necessarium " (Luke 1 0 : 42), which is as much as to say, 'Martha, he who would be serene and pure needs but one thing: detachment.'

 

The teachers greatly praise love, as does St. Paul who says, "Whatever things I may do, and have not love, I am nothing" (cf. 1 Cor. 1 3 : 1 ). But I extol detachment above any love. First, because, at best, love constrains me to love God, but detachment compels God to love me. Now it is a far nobler thing my constraining God to me than for me to constrain myself to God. That is because God is more readily able to adapt Himself to me, and can more easily unite with me than I could unite with God. That detachment forces God to me, I can prove thus: everything wants to be in its natural place. Now God's natural place is unity and purity, and that comes from detachment. Therefore God is bound to give Himself to a detached heart.

 

In the second place I extol detachment above love because love compels me to suffer all things for God's sake, whereas detachment makes me receptive of nothing but God. Now it is far nobler to be receptive of nothing but God than to suffer all things for God, for in suffering a man has some regard to the creatures from which he gets the suffering, but detachment is quite free of all creatures. But that detachment is receptive of nothing but God, I can prove this way: whatever is to be received must be taken in somewhere. Now detachment is so nearly nothing that there is no thing subtle enough to maintain itself in detachment except God alone. He is so subtle and so simple that He can stay in a detached heart. Therefore detachment is receptive of nothing but God.

 

The masters also extol humility above many other virtues. But I extol detachment above humility for this reason: humility can exist without detachment, but perfect detachment cannot exist without perfect humility, for perfect humility ends in the destruction of self. Now detachment comes so close to nothing, that between perfect detachment and nothing no thing can exist. Therefore perfect detachment cannot be without humility. But two virtues are always better than one.

 

The second reason why I praise detachment above humility is because humility means abasing oneself beneath all creatures, and in that abasement man goes out of himself into creatures, but detachment rests within itself. Now no going out can ever be so noble, but remaining within is nobler still. As the prophet David says, "Omnis gloria eius filiae regis ab intus " (Ps. 44 : 14), which is to say, "All the glory of the daughter comes from her inwardness. " Perfect detachment is not concerned about being above or below any creature; it does not wish to be below or above, it would stand on its own, loving none and hating none, and seeks neither equality nor inequality with any creature, nor this nor that: it wants merely to be. But to be either this or that it does not wish at all. For whoever would be this or that wants to be something, but detachment wants to be nothing. It is therefore no burden on anything.

 

Now somebody might say, 'Well, our Lady possessed all virtues to perfection, and so she must have had perfect detachment. But ifdetachment is higher than humility, why then did our Lady glory in her h umility and not in her detachment when she said, "Quia respexit dominus humilitatem ancillae suae " (Luke 1 : 48 ) , that is to say, " He regarded the humility of his handmaiden " ? '

 

I reply that in God there is detachment and humility, insofar as

we can speak of God's having virtues. You should know that it was loving humility that led God to stoop to enter human nature, while detachment stood immovable within itself when he became man, just as it did when He created heaven and earth, as I shall tell you later. And because our Lord, when he would become man, stood unmoved in his detachment, our Lady knew that he required the same of her too, and that in this case he looked to her humility and not her detachment. For if she had thought once about her detachment and said, 'he regarded my detachment,' that detachment would have been sullied and would not have been whole and perfect, since a going forth would have occurred. But nothing, however little, may proceed from detachment without staining it. There you have the reason why our Lady gloried in her humility and not her detachment. Concerning this, the prophet said, "Audiam, quid Loquatur in me dominus deus " (Ps. 84:9), that is to say, " I will (be silent and) hear what my lord God says within me,'' as if he were to say, 'If God wishes to speak to me, let Him come into me, for I will not go out.'

 

I also praise detachment above all compassion, for compassion isnothing but a man's going out of himself by reason of his fellow creatures' lack, by which his heart is troubled. But detachment is freeof this, stays in itself and is not troubled by any thing: for as long asany thing can trouble a man, he is not in a right state. In short, when I consider all the virtues, I find none so completely without lack and so conformed to God as detachment.

 

A master called Avicenna declares that the mind of him who

stands detached is of such nobility that whatever he sees is true, and whatever he desires he obtains, and whatever he commands must be obeyed. And this you must know for sure: when the free mind is quite detached, it constrains God to itself, and if it were able to stand formless and free of all accidentals, it would assume God's proper nature. But God can give that to none but Himself, therefore God can do no more for the detached mind than give Himself to it. But

the man who stands thus in utter detachment is rapt into eternity in such a way that nothing transient can move him, and that he is aware of nothing corporeal and is said to be dead to the world, for he has no taste for anything earthly. That is what St. Paul meant when he said, "I live and yet do not live - Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20).

 

Now you may ask what this detachment is that is so noble in

itself. You should know that true detachment is nothing else but a mind that stands unmoved by all accidents of joy or sorrow, honor, shame, or disgrace, as a mountain of lead stands unmoved by a breath of wind. This immovable detachment brings a man into the greatest likeness to God. For the reason why God is God is because of His immovable detachment, and from this detachment He has His purity, His simplicity, and His immutability. Therefore, if a man is to be like

God, as far as a creature can have likeness with God, this must come from detachment. This draws a man into purity, and from purity into simplicity, and from simplicity into immutability, and these things make a likeness between God and that man; and this likeness must occur through grace, for grace draws a man away from all temporal things and purges him of all that is transient. You must know, too, that to be empty of all creatures is to be full of God, and to be full of all creatures is to be empty of God.

 

You should also know that God has stood in this unmoved detachment from all eternity, and still so stands; and you should know further that when God created heaven and earth and all creatures, this affected His unmoved detachment just as little as if no creature had ever been created. I say further: all the prayers and good works that a man can do in time affect God's detachment as little as if no prayers or good works had ever occurred in time, and God never became more ready to give or more inclined toward a man than if he had never uttered the prayer or performed the good works. I say still further: when the Son in the Godhead wanted to become man, and became man and endured martyrdom, that affected God's unmoved detachment as little as if he had never become man. You might say atthis, 'Then I hear that all prayers and good works are wasted because God does not allow Himself to be moved by anyone with such things, and yet it is said that God wants us to pray to Him for everything.'

 

Now you should mark me well, and understand properly if you

can, that God in His first eternal glance (if we can assume that there was a first glance) saw all things as they should occur, and saw in the same glance when and how He would create all creatures and when the Son would become man and suffer; He saw too the least prayer and good work that anyone should do, and saw which prayers and devotion He would and should accede to; He saw that you will call upon Him earnestly tomorrow and pray to Him, but God will not grant your petition and prayer tomorrow, for He has granted it in His eternity, before ever you became a man. But if your prayer is not sincere and in earnest, God will not deny it to you now, for He has denied it to you in His eternity.

 

And thus God has regarded all things in His first eternal glance, and God performs nothing afresh, for all has been performed in advance. Thus God ever stands in His immovable detachment, and yet the prayers and good works of people are not wasted, for he who does well will be rewarded, and he who does evil will reap accordingly. This is explained by St. Augustine in the fifth book of On the Trinity, in the last chapter thus: 'Deus autem, etc. ' which means, 'God forbid that anyone should say that God loves anyone in time, for with Him there is no past and no future, and He loved all the saints before the world was ever created, as He foresaw them. And when it comes to be that He displays in time what He has seen in eternity, then people think He has gained a new love for them; so too, when God is angry or does some good thing, it is we who are changed while He remains

unchanged, j ust as the sun's ray hurts a sick eye and delights a sound one, and yet the sunshine remains unchanged in itself.' Augustine also touches on the same idea in the twelfth book of On the Trinity in the fourth chapter, where he says, 'Nam Deus non ad tempus videt, nee aliquid fit novi in eius visione, ' 'God does not see in temporal fashion, and no new vision arises in Him.' In the same sense Isidore speaks in his book On the Highest Good, saying, 'Many people ask, What did God do before He created heaven and earth, or whence came the new will in God that He made creatures?' and he answers, 'No new will ever arose in God, for although a creature did not exist in itself (as it is now), yet it was before all time in God and in His reason.' God did not create heaven and earth as we (perishable beings) might say, 'let that be so! ' for all creatures were spoken in the Eternal Word. To this we can add what our Lord said to Moses when Moses said, " Lord, if Pharaoh asks me who you are, how am I to answer him ? " and the Lord said, " Say, 'He who IS has sent me" (Exod. 3 : 1 3 -1 4 ) . That is as much as to say, He who is immutable in Himself has sent me.

 

But someone might say, 'Was Christ in unmoved detachment when he said: " My soul is sorrowful even unto death" (Matt. 26: 3 8; Mark 1 4 : 34), and Mary when she stood before the cross? How is all this compatible with unmoved detachment?' Concerning this, you should know what the masters say, that in every man there are two kinds of man.? The one is called the outer man, that is, the life of the senses: this man is served by the five senses, though the outer man functions by the power of the soul. The other is called the inner man, that is, man's inward nature. You should understand that a spiritual man, who loves God, makes use of the powers of the soul in the outer man only to the extent that the five outer senses need it: the inward nature is not concerned with the five senses except insofar as it is a guide or ruler of those senses, guarding them so that they do not yield to sense objects in a bestial fashion, as some folk do who live for carnal pleasures like beasts unendowed with reason; such people should be termed beasts rather than men. And whatever powers the soul has over and above what it gives to the five senses are all devoted to the inner man. And when such a man perceives a noble or elevated object, the soul draws into itself all the powers it has granted to the five senses, and then that man is said to be insensible or entranced, for his object is an intelligible image or something intelligible without an image. But you should know that God requires of every spiritual man to love Him with all the powers of the soul. He says, " Love your God with all your heart" (Deut. 6 : 5; Matt. 22 : 3 7; Mark 1 2 : 3 0; Luke 1 0 :27). Now some people use up all the powers of the soul in the outer man. These are people who turn all their senses and their reason toward perishable goods, knowing nothing of the inner man.

 

You should know that the outer man can be active while the inner man is completely free of this activity and unmoved. Now Christ too had an outer man and an inner man, and so did our Lady, and whatever Christ and our Lady ever said about external things, they did so according to the outer man, but the inner man remained in unmoved detachment. Thus it was when Christ said, " My soul is sorrowful unto death," and whatever lamentations our Lady made, or whatever else she said, inwardly she was in a state of unmoved detachment. Here is an analogy: a door swings open and shuts on its hinge. I would compare the outer woodwork of the door to the

outer man, and the hinge to the inner man. When the door opens and shuts, the boards move back and forth, but the hinge stays in the same place and is never moved thereby. It is the same in this case, if you understand it rightly. Now I ask, 'What is the object of pure detachment? ' My answer is that the object of pure detachment is neither this nor that. It rests on absolutely nothing, and I will tell you why: pure detachment rests on the highest, and he is at his highest, in whom God can work all His will. But God cannot work all His will in all hearts, for, although God is almighty, He can only work where He finds readiness or creates it. I say 'creates it' on account of St. Paul, because in him God found no readiness, but made him ready by infusion of grace. And so I say God works according as He finds us ready. His working is different in a man and in a stone. Here is an example from nature. If you heat a baker's oven and put in it dough of oats, barley, rye, and wheat, there is only one heat in the oven, but it does not have the same effect on the different kinds of dough, for one turns into fine bread, the second coarser, and the third coarser still. And that is not the fault of the heat, it is due to the materials which are unlike. In the same way God does not work alike in all our hearts: He works as He finds readiness and receptivity. Now in whatever heart there is this or that, there may be something in 'this' or 'that' which God cannot bring to the highest peak. And so, if the heart is to be ready to receive the highest, it must rest on absolutely nothing, and in that lies the greatest potentiality which can exist. For when the detached heart rests on the highest, that can only be on nothing, since that has the greatest receptivity. Let us take an example from nature: if I want to write on a wax tablet, then anything written on that tablet already, however wonderful it may be, will prevent me from writing there; and if I want to write I must erase or destroy whatever is on the tablet, and the tablet is never so suitable for me to write on as when there is nothing on it. Similarly, if God is to write the highest on my heart, then everything called 'this and that' must be expunged from my heart, and then my heart stands in detachment. Then God can work the highest according to His supreme will. Therefore the object of a detached heart is neither this nor that.

 

Again I ask, 'What is the prayer of a detached heart? ' My answer is that detachment and purity cannot pray, for whoever prays wants God to grant him something, or else wants God to take something from him. But a detached heart desires nothing at all, nor has it anything it wants to get rid of. Therefore it is free of all prayers, or its prayer consists of nothing but being uniform with God. That is all its prayer. In this sense we can take St. Dionysius's comment on the saying of St. Paul, "There are many who run, but only one gains the crown " ( 1 Cor. 9 : 25 ) . All the powers of the soul compete for the crown but the essence alone can win it. Dionysius says the race is nothing but a turning away from all creatures and a union with the uncreated. And when the soul has got so far, it loses its name and is drawn into God, so that in itself it becomes nothing, j ust as the sun draws the dawn into itself and annihilates it. To this state nothing brings a man but pure detachment. To this we may add a saying of St. Augustine, 'The soul has a secret entrance to the divine nature, when all things become nothing for it.' On earth, this entrance is nothing but pure detachment, and when the detachment reaches its climax, it becomes ignorant with knowing, loveless with loving, and dark with enlightenment. Thus we may understand the words of a master, that the poor in spirit are they who have abandoned all things to God, j ust as He possessed them when we did not exist. None can do this but a pure, detached heart.

 

That God would rather be in a detached heart than in all other hearts, appears if you ask me, 'What does God seek in all things ? ' to which I answer from the Book of Wisdom, where He says, " In all things I seek rest" (Sir. 24: 1 1 ). But nowhere is perfect rest to be found but in a detached heart. That is why God prefers to be there rather than in other virtues or in anything else. You should know, too, that the more a man strives to be receptive to divine influence, the more blessed he is; and whoever can gain the highest readiness in this is in the highest state of blessedness. But none can make himself receptive to divine influence but by uniformity with God, for insofar as a man is uniform with God, to that extent he is receptive to the divine influence. But uniformity comes from man's subjecting himself to God, and the more a man is subject to creatures, the less he is uniform with God. Now the pure detached heart stands free of all creatures. Therefore it is totally subject to God, and therefore it is in the highest degree of uniformity with God, and is also the most receptive to divine influence. This was what St. Paul meant when he said, " Put on Christ, " meaning unformity with Christ, for this putting on can only take place through uniformity with Christ. You should know that when Christ became man, he took on, not a man, but human nature. Therefore, go out of all things and then there will remain only what Christ took on, and thus you will have put on Christ.

 

Whoever would know the nobility and profit of perfect detachment, let him note Christ's saying concerning his humanity, when he said to his disciples, "It is expedient for you that I should go away from you, for if I do not go away, the Holy Spirit cannot come to you" (John 1 6 : 7). This is just as if he had said, 'You rejoice too much in my present form, and therefore the perfect joy of the Holy Ghost cannot be yours.' So, leave all images and unite with the formless essence, for God's spiritual comfort is delicate; therefore He will not offer Himself to any but to him who scorns physical comforts.

 

Now take note, all who are sensible! No man is happier than he who has the greatest detachment. There can be no fleshly and physical comfort without some spiritual harm, for "the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh" (cf. Gal. 5 : 1 7) . Therefore, whoever in the flesh sows disorderly love reaps death, and whoever in the spirit sows ordered love, reaps from the spirit eternal life. Therefore, the quicker a man flees from the created, the quicker the Creator runs toward him. So, take note, all sensible men! Since the joy we might have from the physical form of Christ hinders us in receiving the Holy Ghost, how much more of a hindrance to gaining God is our inordinate delight in evanescent comforts! That is why detachment is best, for it purifies the soul, purges the conscience, kindles the heart, awakens the spirit, quickens the desire, makes us know God and, cutting off creatures, unites us with God.

 

Now take note, all who have good sense! The swiftest steed to bear you to His perfection is suffering, for none will enjoy greater eternal bliss than those who stand with Christ in the greatest bitterness. Nothing is more gall-bitter than suffering, nothing more honey-sweet than having suffered. Nothing disfigures the body before men like suffering, and nothing beautifies the soul before God like having suffered. The finest foundation on which this perfection can rest is humility. For whatever man's nature creeps here below in the deepest lowliness, that man's spirit will soar aloft to the heights of the Godhead, for j oy brings sorrow and sorrow joy. And so, whoever would attain perfect detachment should strive for perfect humility, and thus he will come to the neighborhood of God. That this may be all our lot, so help us the highest detachment, which is God Himself. Amen."

 

Meister Eckhart

Remodel, Week 3

 

Anyway... besides a (thankfully false) bomb threat here last night that l_dawg told me about, it's been smooth sailing at the Hdo WM remodel! In the previous photo (and the right one here, joined by a comparison shot on the left) you can see that the grocery section of the store has now been painted white, in advance of the black décor 2.0 makeover here. That white has also made its way around the rest of the store – and from something I saw while looking over the plans, may simply be primer instead of white paint, in yet another Walmart corporate cost-saving measure!

 

(c) 2016 Retail Retell

These places are public so these photos are too, but just as I tell where they came from, I'd appreciate if you'd say who :)

Merchanter-type vessels are fairly rare, given their cost and the niche role they fill. Besides their size, they differ from contemporary cargo haulers in that they do not operate primarily on commission. That is, the cargo they haul is bought and owned by the ships' owners, and they travel from system to system selling what is in their holds. Of course, they do occasionally haul cargo in the traditional way, but rare are the orders that can fill even a fraction of their holds. They often ferry passengers in bulk.

 

The ships themselves are usually built in starts and stops over a long period of time, as even massive corporations cannot afford the full up-front cost without defaulting on their debts. Oddly enough, the crews of these behemoths tend to skew towards one of two extremes. Either the ship regularly hires entirely new crews for every venture, with extremely high turnover rates, or the crew is composed of one giant family which has lived aboard for generations. The pay tends to be good, although "family" ships often forego traditional wages in favour of extra perks and imporvements to the living quarters.

 

These very large, slow, and vulnerable ships tend to stick to well-established trade routes and rarely venture outside the space lanes within the Space Patrol's jurisdiction.

 

The White Solar Lines' Titan is the most common merchanter type, with five having been built. By far the most infamous is the Serenity, subject of the "Argo Odyssey." In 2382, tired of a long and unsuccessful cruise, half of the Serenity's crew deserted her when she put in to berth at Argo station. The captain, having been refused additional funds to hire a new crew by the company, resigned in frustration, leading to the rest of the crew's resignation. As days turned into weeks, with docking fees accumulating and perishable cargo rotting, the White Solar Lines sent a recruiter to Argo to hire a crew on short notice. At any other station, this might have been okay, but Argo was notorious for housing low-lifes and other seedy characters.

 

Upon arriving, Jayne Cobb, the recruiter, waas promptly mugged, stripped, and injected with an unknown narcotic. Presumably under the influence of said narcotic, he hired a crew nearly three times the required size in the nearest bar, all while in the nude. From there, things only got worse. No more than two hours later, the Serenity was seen launching three-quarters of her lifeboats, filled with men who, upon reflection, preffered to take the sign-up bonus offered by Cobb and spend it immediately in the station's brothel.

 

Cobb, having elected himself captain (though he lacked all credentials and qualifications), was soon facing a general mutiny after his disastrous decision, upon sobering, to demand back the men's sign-on bonus which he had no authority to give. After being threatened with mutilation and various other violations of his person, he decided that discretion was the better part of valour and absconded with the ship's safe into the nearest escape pod. He launched it towards the nearest habitable planet, which happened to be New Greenland, which all spacers know is full of interesting flora and fauna such as the Stinging Skin Beetle, the Horrible Nose-Needler, Death Tree, Itching Flower, Cobra-Tiger, Red Nosed Mosquito, ann the famous Mankiller wasp. Cobb was no spacer. He was later found alive, naked and emaciated, babbling incoherently.

 

The rest of the crew then apparently went on a joyride with the mutibillion-ton vessel, going from station to station committing various acts of theft, bribery, extortion, prostitution, murder, and sedition. Only a lack of fuel and an outbreak of venereal disease stopped them. At least one sailor had been eaten by his own exotic pet he had picked up somewhere.

 

Serenity is still being repaired and cleaned to this day, and is expected to make her second inaugural flight within the next year.

Faience beads

Dynasty 18, reign of Akhenaten

ca. 1353-1336 B.C.

 

This necklace of faience beads, called a broad collar, is a durable version of the elaborate perishable floral collars worn by banquet guests. Such necklaces are seen in banquet scenes and are painted on statues from the Old Kingdom onward. The beads in this example imitate a row of cornflowers (center), three rows of dates (middle), and a row of lotus petals (outer). These rows are joined by strands of small ring beads. The rows end in rectangular terminals adorned with blue lotus blossoms, buds, and interspersed with poppy petals and persea fruit.

 

Metropolitan Museum of Art

NYC

While up near the front, might as well look back at the service departments and produce section again. Looks kind of cramped in this view, but I believe that's just the angle I took the photo from, and all the people crammed into it!

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Walmart, 1997-built, Hwy 64 at Kate Hyde Rd., Bartlett TN

It's this year that has taught me something about holding on to memories: It's the most painful thing ever!

Not just because they are gone... but because they embody the deepest truth to every moment, every instant you shall spend on this Earth... it is that every moment in itself holds the end to it. The law ruling the most meaningful and the most meaningless of moments you have, the law that shall always prevail, it is that of perishability (or Vergänglichkeit in German, a word I truly love).

It's a thought that shall linger over you, in heavy silence, once you understand it fully with every bit of your precious soul. A law of life, a law that within itself, to me, holds a tragedy. The deepest, most lingering tragedy that probably outweighs any other tragic thoughts I might have had over the course of my lifetime.

And so I choose to see the beauty, the bliss behind the tragedy... to see the idea of life as a whole, as a creation that needs be looked at in awe... and to live every moment, the happiest and the saddest of all, with a silent respect, a silent acknowledgment of its perishability, as well as a silent gratitude for its existence.

I want to learn to live a life that has learned to love the happiness, as well as the pain, and to see the bliss in all that there ever was.

 

17/04/19 - Thoughts on the balcony, home alone, enjoying the company of the birds.

 

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