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

An eastbound perishables train and a westbound container train are stopped for crew changes at Green River, Wyoming 9/15/12

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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Six thousand horsepower worth of EMD F3 power hustles a Santa Fe "Green Fruit Express" perishable train hauling celery, bell peppers, and tomatoes to eastern markets. It takes five days, four icing stops, and sixteen crews to make the run from Bakersfield, California to AT&SF's Corwith Yard in Chicago.

 

The A-B-B-A set of Athearn locomotives and Intermountain refrigerator cars belong to Nathan Pierce. The two B units have Soundtraxx DSD decoders installed while the A units have non-sound NCE decoders. He also took the photo.

Visit the HO scale NAPM club on-line at www.napmltd.com.

Often trade entrances into cities in Historica are modest affairs... not so however in Sultan's Gate! The cities strategic location has seen flourishing trade, which has made some merchants very rich indeed. This allowed the powerful merchant's guild to commission the lift many years before, completed in the grand style to advertise the wealth and power of the city. Goods that are perishable or particularly valuable are often sent by lift to avoid the treacherous climb up the escarpment. The lift is very safe with only a few losses, mainly from overbearing merchants ordering it's use on high wind days. (A local legend has it that a giant roc once bit through the lift chain and made off with the entire box, but this has never been substantiated.) A ride in the lift to the ground and back again is a rite of passage for many of the young thrillseekers in the city, who often try to stow away or bribe the guards for the experience.

 

Finally got around to taking and editing some pics of my Brickvention model for this year - which was originally going to be my entry into the Sultan's Gate community build on GoH (last year!), but then life happened and suddenly it was 6 months later. :P The lift actually is remote controlled using PF, which was fun to build and operate. Sorry the pics aren't that good but this was quite a challenge to photograph - significant height and length taxed my home set-up, and the large area of white didn't make things easy either.

Angkor Wat or "Capital Temple" is a temple complex in Cambodia and the largest religious monument in the world. It was first a Hindu and later a Buddhist temple. It was built by the Khmer King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century in Yaśodharapura, present-day Angkor, the capital of the Khmer Empire, as his state temple and eventual mausoleum.

 

Breaking from the Shiva tradition of previous kings, Angkor Wat was instead dedicated to Vishnu. As the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious center since its foundation. The temple is at the top of the high classical style of Khmer architecture. It has become a symbol of Cambodia, appearing on its national flag, and it is the country's prime attraction for visitors. Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple-mountain and the later galleried temple, based on early Dravidian architecture, with key features such as the Jagati. It is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the devas in Hindu mythology: within a moat and an outer wall 3.6 kilometres 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, means "Temple City" or "City of Temples" in Khmer; Angkor, meaning "city" or "capital city", is a vernacular form of the word nokor (នគរ), which comes from the Sanskrit word nagara (नगर). Wat is the Khmer word for "temple grounds" (Sanskrit: वाट vāṭa ""enclosure").

 

HISTORY

Angkor Wat lies 5.5 kilometres 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. It is in an area of Cambodia where there is an important group of ancient structures. It is the southernmost of Angkor's main sites.

 

According to one legend, the construction of Angkor Wat was ordered by Indra to act as a palace for his son Precha Ket Mealea.

 

According to the 13th century Chinese traveler Daguan Zhou, it was believed by some that the temple was constructed in a single night by a divine architect. The initial design and construction of the temple took place in the first half of the 12th century, during the reign of Suryavarman II (ruled 1113-C. 1150). 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 "Varah Vishnu-lok" after the presiding deity. Work seems to have ended shortly after the king's death, leaving some of the bas-relief decoration unfinished.

 

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 to the north.

 

In the late 13th century, Angkor Wat gradually moved from Hindu to Theravada Buddhist use, which continues to the present day. Angkor Wat is unusual among the Angkor temples in that although it was somewhat neglected after the 16th century it was never completely abandoned, its preservation being due in part to the fact that its moat also provided some protection from encroachment by the jungle.

One of the first Western visitors to the temple was António da Madalena, a Portuguese monk 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 the mid-19th century, the temple was visited 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."

 

Mouhot, like other early Western visitors, found it difficult to believe that the Khmers could have built the temple, and mistakenly dated it to around the same era as Rome. The true history of Angkor Wat was pieced together only from stylistic and epigraphic evidence accumulated during the subsequent clearing and restoration work carried out across the whole Angkor site. 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. Instead there is the evidence of the monuments themselves.

 

Angkor Wat required considerable restoration in the 20th century, mainly the removal of accumulated earth and vegetation. Work was interrupted by the civil war and Khmer Rouge control of the country during the 1970s and 1980s, but relatively little damage was done during this period other than the theft and destruction of mostly post-Angkorian statues.The temple is a powerful symbol of Cambodia, and is a source of great national pride that has factored into Cambodia's diplomatic relations with France, the United States and its neighbor 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 even 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. Angkor Wat's aesthetics were also 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 splendid 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 that had been under Siamese (Thai) control since 1351 AD (Manich Jumsai 2001), or by some accounts, 1431 AD. Cambodia gained independence from France on 9 November 1953 and has controlled Angkor Wat since that time.

 

ARCHITECTURE

SITE AND PLAN

Angkor Wat, located at 13°24′45″N 103°52′0″E, is a unique combination of the temple mountain, the standard design for the empire's state temples and the later plan of concentric galleries. The temple is a representation of Mount Meru, the home of the gods: the central quincunx of towers symbolises the five peaks of the mountain, and the walls and moat 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. 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. The archaeologist Charles Higham also describes a container which may have been a funerary jar which 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.

 

A further interpretation of Angkor Wat has been proposed by Eleanor Mannikka. Drawing on the temple's alignment and dimensions, and on the content and arrangement of the bas-reliefs, she 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 honor 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.

 

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 of sandstone blocks, while laterite was used for the outer wall and for 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, and on 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.

 

FEATURES

OUTER ENCLOSURE

The outer wall, 1024 by 802 m and 4.5 m high, is surrounded by a 30 m apron of open ground and a moat 190 m wide. 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 of Vishnu, known as Ta Reach, which may originally 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, 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 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. Mannikka interprets these galleries as being dedicated to the king, Brahma, the moon, and Vishnu.

 

Each gallery has a gopura at each of the points, and the two inner galleries each have towers at their corners, forming a quincunx with the central tower. Because the temple faces west, the features are all 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.

 

The outer gallery measures 187 by 215 m, 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 (the "Hall of a Thousand Gods"). Buddha images were left in the cloister by pilgrims over the centuries, although most have now been removed. This area has many inscriptions relating 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 each other and 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 by 115 m, 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 very steep stairways represent the difficulty of ascending to the kingdom of the gods. This inner gallery, called the Bakan, is a 60 m 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 to the shrines. The tower above the central shrine rises 43 m to a height of 65 m 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, and 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 Hindu mythology.

 

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"). and a battle between the Hindu gods and asuras. The north-west and south-west corner pavilions both feature much smaller-scale scenes, some unidentified but most from the Ramayana or the life of Krishna. 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) as decorative motifs on pillars and walls. They incorporated larger devata images (all full-body portraits measuring approximately 95–110 cm) 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, jewelry and decorative flowers, which Marchal concluded were based on actual practices of the Angkor period.

 

CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES

The stones, as smooth as polished marble, were laid without mortar with very tight joints that are sometimes hard to find. The blocks were held together by mortise and tenon joints in some cases, while in others they used dovetails and gravity. The blocks were presumably put in place by a combination of elephants, coir ropes, pulleys and bamboo scaffolding. Henri Mouhot noted that most of the blocks had holes 2.5 cm in diameter and 3 cm deep, with more holes on the larger blocks. Some scholars have suggested that these were used to join them together with iron rods, but others claim they were used to hold temporary pegs to help manoeuvre them into place. The monument was made out of millions of tonnes of sandstone and it has a greater volume as well as mass than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. The Angkor Wat Temple consumes about 6 million to 10 million blocks of sandstone with an average weight of 1.5 tons each. In fact, the entire city of Angkor used up 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 barely half a km away all the time, the entire city of Angkor was built with sandstone quarried 40 km (or more) away. This sandstone had to be transported from Mount Kulen, a quarry approximately 40 km to the northeast. The route has been suggested to span 35 kilometres along a canal towards Tonlé Sap lake, another 35 kilometres crossing the lake, and finally 15 kilometres upstream and against the current along Siem Reap River, making a total journey of 90 kilometres. However, Etsuo Uchida and Ichita Shimoda of Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan have discovered in 2012 a shorter 35-kilometre 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 even roofs are carved. There are miles 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 hair styles. The gallery wall alone is decorated with almost 1000 square metres 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 a prime target for robbers. While excavating Khajuraho, Alex Evans, a stonemason and sculptor, recreated a stone sculpture under 1.2 m, 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 labor force to quarry, transport, carve and install so much sandstone must have run 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 artifacts that have been dated to the seventh century, before the Khmer came to power.

 

ANGKOR WAT TODAY

The Archaeological Survey of India carried out restoration work on the temple between 1986 and 1992. Since the 1990s, Angkor Wat has seen continued conservation efforts and a massive increase in tourism. The temple is part of the Angkor World Heritage Site, established in 1992, which has provided some funding and has encouraged the Cambodian government to protect the site. The German Apsara Conservation Project (GACP) is working to protect the devatas and other bas-reliefs which 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 restoration of the north library of the outer enclosure in 2005. World Monuments Fund began conservation work on the Churning of the Sea of Milk Gallery in 2008 after several years of conditions studies. The project restored the traditional Khmer roofing system and removed cement used in earlier restoration attempts that had resulted in salts entering the structure behind the bas-relief, discoloring and damaging the sculpted surfaces. The main phase of work ended in 2012, and the final component will be the installation of finials on the roof of the gallery in 2013. 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 can 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. Angkor Wat has become a major tourist destination. In 2004 and 2005, government figures suggest that, respectively, 561.000 and 677.000 foreign visitors arrived in Siem Reap province, approximately 50% of all foreign tourists in Cambodia for both years. The site has been managed by the private SOKIMEX group since 1990, 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 whole Angkor site was spent on the temples - although most work is carried out by foreign government-sponsored teams 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, organized seminars to discuss the concept of "cultural tourism". Wanting to avoid commercial and mass tourism, the seminars emphasized the importance of providing high quality accommodation and services in order 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 with regard to traditional Khmer architecture, contain leisure and tourist facilities, and provide luxurious hotels capable of accommodating large amounts 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 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 over the charming nature and atmosphere of their town being compromised in order to entertain tourism. Since this charming local atmosphere is the key component to projects like Angkor Tourist City, local officials continue to discuss how to successfully incorporate future tourism without sacrificing local values and culture. At the ASEAN Tourism Forum 2012, both parties have agreed Borobudur and Angkor Wat to become sister sites and the provinces will become sister provinces. Two Indonesian airlines are considering the opportunity to open a direct flight from Yogyakarta, Indonesia to Siem Reap.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Angkor Wat or "Capital Temple" is a temple complex in Cambodia and the largest religious monument in the world. It was first a Hindu and later a Buddhist temple. It was built by the Khmer King Suryavarman II in the early 12th century in Yaśodharapura, present-day Angkor, the capital of the Khmer Empire, as his state temple and eventual mausoleum.

 

Breaking from the Shiva tradition of previous kings, Angkor Wat was instead dedicated to Vishnu. As the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a significant religious center since its foundation. The temple is at the top of the high classical style of Khmer architecture. It has become a symbol of Cambodia, appearing on its national flag, and it is the country's prime attraction for visitors. Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple-mountain and the later galleried temple, based on early Dravidian architecture, with key features such as the Jagati. It is designed to represent Mount Meru, home of the devas in Hindu mythology: within a moat and an outer wall 3.6 kilometres 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, means "Temple City" or "City of Temples" in Khmer; Angkor, meaning "city" or "capital city", is a vernacular form of the word nokor (នគរ), which comes from the Sanskrit word nagara (नगर). Wat is the Khmer word for "temple grounds" (Sanskrit: वाट vāṭa ""enclosure").

 

HISTORY

Angkor Wat lies 5.5 kilometres 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. It is in an area of Cambodia where there is an important group of ancient structures. It is the southernmost of Angkor's main sites.

 

According to one legend, the construction of Angkor Wat was ordered by Indra to act as a palace for his son Precha Ket Mealea.

 

According to the 13th century Chinese traveler Daguan Zhou, it was believed by some that the temple was constructed in a single night by a divine architect. The initial design and construction of the temple took place in the first half of the 12th century, during the reign of Suryavarman II (ruled 1113-C. 1150). 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 "Varah Vishnu-lok" after the presiding deity. Work seems to have ended shortly after the king's death, leaving some of the bas-relief decoration unfinished.

 

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 to the north.

 

In the late 13th century, Angkor Wat gradually moved from Hindu to Theravada Buddhist use, which continues to the present day. Angkor Wat is unusual among the Angkor temples in that although it was somewhat neglected after the 16th century it was never completely abandoned, its preservation being due in part to the fact that its moat also provided some protection from encroachment by the jungle.

One of the first Western visitors to the temple was António da Madalena, a Portuguese monk 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 the mid-19th century, the temple was visited 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."

 

Mouhot, like other early Western visitors, found it difficult to believe that the Khmers could have built the temple, and mistakenly dated it to around the same era as Rome. The true history of Angkor Wat was pieced together only from stylistic and epigraphic evidence accumulated during the subsequent clearing and restoration work carried out across the whole Angkor site. 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. Instead there is the evidence of the monuments themselves.

 

Angkor Wat required considerable restoration in the 20th century, mainly the removal of accumulated earth and vegetation. Work was interrupted by the civil war and Khmer Rouge control of the country during the 1970s and 1980s, but relatively little damage was done during this period other than the theft and destruction of mostly post-Angkorian statues.The temple is a powerful symbol of Cambodia, and is a source of great national pride that has factored into Cambodia's diplomatic relations with France, the United States and its neighbor 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 even 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. Angkor Wat's aesthetics were also 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 splendid 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 that had been under Siamese (Thai) control since 1351 AD (Manich Jumsai 2001), or by some accounts, 1431 AD. Cambodia gained independence from France on 9 November 1953 and has controlled Angkor Wat since that time.

 

ARCHITECTURE

SITE AND PLAN

Angkor Wat, located at 13°24′45″N 103°52′0″E, is a unique combination of the temple mountain, the standard design for the empire's state temples and the later plan of concentric galleries. The temple is a representation of Mount Meru, the home of the gods: the central quincunx of towers symbolises the five peaks of the mountain, and the walls and moat 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. 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. The archaeologist Charles Higham also describes a container which may have been a funerary jar which 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.

 

A further interpretation of Angkor Wat has been proposed by Eleanor Mannikka. Drawing on the temple's alignment and dimensions, and on the content and arrangement of the bas-reliefs, she 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 honor 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.

 

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 of sandstone blocks, while laterite was used for the outer wall and for 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, and on 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.

 

FEATURES

OUTER ENCLOSURE

The outer wall, 1024 by 802 m and 4.5 m high, is surrounded by a 30 m apron of open ground and a moat 190 m wide. 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 of Vishnu, known as Ta Reach, which may originally 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, 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 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. Mannikka interprets these galleries as being dedicated to the king, Brahma, the moon, and Vishnu.

 

Each gallery has a gopura at each of the points, and the two inner galleries each have towers at their corners, forming a quincunx with the central tower. Because the temple faces west, the features are all 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.

 

The outer gallery measures 187 by 215 m, 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 (the "Hall of a Thousand Gods"). Buddha images were left in the cloister by pilgrims over the centuries, although most have now been removed. This area has many inscriptions relating 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 each other and 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 by 115 m, 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 very steep stairways represent the difficulty of ascending to the kingdom of the gods. This inner gallery, called the Bakan, is a 60 m 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 to the shrines. The tower above the central shrine rises 43 m to a height of 65 m 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, and 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 Hindu mythology.

 

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"). and a battle between the Hindu gods and asuras. The north-west and south-west corner pavilions both feature much smaller-scale scenes, some unidentified but most from the Ramayana or the life of Krishna. 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) as decorative motifs on pillars and walls. They incorporated larger devata images (all full-body portraits measuring approximately 95–110 cm) 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, jewelry and decorative flowers, which Marchal concluded were based on actual practices of the Angkor period.

 

CONSTRUCTION TECHNIQUES

The stones, as smooth as polished marble, were laid without mortar with very tight joints that are sometimes hard to find. The blocks were held together by mortise and tenon joints in some cases, while in others they used dovetails and gravity. The blocks were presumably put in place by a combination of elephants, coir ropes, pulleys and bamboo scaffolding. Henri Mouhot noted that most of the blocks had holes 2.5 cm in diameter and 3 cm deep, with more holes on the larger blocks. Some scholars have suggested that these were used to join them together with iron rods, but others claim they were used to hold temporary pegs to help manoeuvre them into place. The monument was made out of millions of tonnes of sandstone and it has a greater volume as well as mass than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. The Angkor Wat Temple consumes about 6 million to 10 million blocks of sandstone with an average weight of 1.5 tons each. In fact, the entire city of Angkor used up 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 barely half a km away all the time, the entire city of Angkor was built with sandstone quarried 40 km (or more) away. This sandstone had to be transported from Mount Kulen, a quarry approximately 40 km to the northeast. The route has been suggested to span 35 kilometres along a canal towards Tonlé Sap lake, another 35 kilometres crossing the lake, and finally 15 kilometres upstream and against the current along Siem Reap River, making a total journey of 90 kilometres. However, Etsuo Uchida and Ichita Shimoda of Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan have discovered in 2012 a shorter 35-kilometre 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 even roofs are carved. There are miles 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 hair styles. The gallery wall alone is decorated with almost 1000 square metres 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 a prime target for robbers. While excavating Khajuraho, Alex Evans, a stonemason and sculptor, recreated a stone sculpture under 1.2 m, 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 labor force to quarry, transport, carve and install so much sandstone must have run 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 artifacts that have been dated to the seventh century, before the Khmer came to power.

 

ANGKOR WAT TODAY

The Archaeological Survey of India carried out restoration work on the temple between 1986 and 1992. Since the 1990s, Angkor Wat has seen continued conservation efforts and a massive increase in tourism. The temple is part of the Angkor World Heritage Site, established in 1992, which has provided some funding and has encouraged the Cambodian government to protect the site. The German Apsara Conservation Project (GACP) is working to protect the devatas and other bas-reliefs which 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 restoration of the north library of the outer enclosure in 2005. World Monuments Fund began conservation work on the Churning of the Sea of Milk Gallery in 2008 after several years of conditions studies. The project restored the traditional Khmer roofing system and removed cement used in earlier restoration attempts that had resulted in salts entering the structure behind the bas-relief, discoloring and damaging the sculpted surfaces. The main phase of work ended in 2012, and the final component will be the installation of finials on the roof of the gallery in 2013. 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 can 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. Angkor Wat has become a major tourist destination. In 2004 and 2005, government figures suggest that, respectively, 561.000 and 677.000 foreign visitors arrived in Siem Reap province, approximately 50% of all foreign tourists in Cambodia for both years. The site has been managed by the private SOKIMEX group since 1990, 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 whole Angkor site was spent on the temples - although most work is carried out by foreign government-sponsored teams 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, organized seminars to discuss the concept of "cultural tourism". Wanting to avoid commercial and mass tourism, the seminars emphasized the importance of providing high quality accommodation and services in order 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 with regard to traditional Khmer architecture, contain leisure and tourist facilities, and provide luxurious hotels capable of accommodating large amounts 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 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 over the charming nature and atmosphere of their town being compromised in order to entertain tourism. Since this charming local atmosphere is the key component to projects like Angkor Tourist City, local officials continue to discuss how to successfully incorporate future tourism without sacrificing local values and culture. At the ASEAN Tourism Forum 2012, both parties have agreed Borobudur and Angkor Wat to become sister sites and the provinces will become sister provinces. Two Indonesian airlines are considering the opportunity to open a direct flight from Yogyakarta, Indonesia to Siem Reap.

 

WIKIPEDIA

ALCo C-628 # 7126 and F-7B # 8249 back down into the siding to pick up two mechanical reefers to add to their westbound train. This is Southern Pacific’s daily fruit block that ran up the Valley from Fresno, stopping at valley towns as it moved north picking up perishable freight to forward to Roseville. The 1968-69 era on the SP had a lot of ALCo road power running in the Valley. Also note the elevation that the head brakeman is suspended above the toe path on that B-unit!

Perishable Rush Brick Lane East London 2023

.... First Lutheran has opened a Little Free Pantry in front of the church on the north-east corner, open 24/7. People can take what they need or donate non-perishable food items to help keep the pantry stocked. The project's goal is to enhance food security in the Bond Street and Ryerson University neighborhood and help build a caring and supportive community ....

WEEK 30.1 – Columbus Kroger, Set I

 

Due to Kroger wanting to pack in all they can into their smaller stores, roominess on the salesfloor seems to be sacrificed for merchandise a lot of the time (for better or for worse). As a result, aisle one begins directly along the right-side wall of the store, rather than using up valuable square footage for a large and airy "perishables grand aisle" like you're liable to see in bigger stores. The natural foods department runs the length of said first aisle, with its 2012 décor signage placed directly adjacent to that final piece of produce department flytrap stenciling.

 

I'm not sure when the Greenville Kroger was remodeled, but I'm willing to bet it was before the Columbus store here, seeing as how Greenville split Aisle 1 between natural foods and bread and rolls, based on the paint on the walls in that store. Bread and rolls were later moved to front-and-center in Kroger's standard store layout, a move that must have taken place before this Columbus store's 2014 remodel, given its lack of a similarly-painted area.

 

(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 :)

WEEK 32.1 – Columbus Kroger, Set II

 

With the produce department and the deli and bakery counters on opposite sides of the salesfloor in this store, there was no way we were getting a dedicated “perishables grand aisle” here in Columbus. So instead, what you're looking at here is the next best thing: all of the prepared foods display tables out in front of the deli-bakery. The tables all appear to be holding various baked goods, while the two coffin coolers (only one of which is visible here) hold such items as specialty cheese and fresh sushi.

 

(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 :)

Here's another view from the side wall in the service department/perishables area. I'm fairly certain this was near the front left corner of the store.

____________________________________

Kroger, 1982-built, Hwy 51 at Shelby Rd., Millington TN

WEEK 26 – Oxford Millennium Kroger, Revisited (I)

 

After our brief diversion to the front end, investigating what possibly used to be the old Starbucks counter and what likely became the ClickList staging area, we now return to the perishables grand aisle. This view looks from a spot directly at the foot of the café all the way toward the back right corner.

 

It’s worth noting that the café sign is kinda oddly placed here; I’m used to it being actually somewhere near the associated seating area, but here in Oxford those tables and chairs, as I mentioned on Thursday, are a fair bit out-of-frame to the left (if in fact they were even still there at all). Something else here was not present in my Thursday uploads… (cont.)

 

(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 :)

 

Flowers are highly perishable commodity. No wonder this woman at Mylapore, Chennai seems concerned about business.

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.

"Time is at once the most valuable and the most perishable of all our possessions".

-Herman Melville

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For my Fine Arts Digital Imaging Class we were suppose to take the week to turn in a post processed self portrait that best depicted who we are as both a person and as a photographer. I literally didn't know for the longest, I actually took the whole week to finish the assignment. At first I was going to go with something cheesey like all the examples she gave us. My original idea was to turn myself into book ends and leave it at that. After taking my book end photos they came out horrible and I thought to myself there is no way this describes me at all nor is it anywhere close to my potential. I was sitting in the studio with ashley and megan while they were shooting for their lighting teqnuqie assignment and I thought struggle I want to do something with struggling. In the end it's a battle an inner struggle between who I am as an artist and who everyone expects me to be as a photographer. It's finding my balance and the journey to get to where I want to be. This is who I am I am a girl who doesn't really have full grips on herself but I am getting there, everyday.

 

Hopefully all goes well with critique tomorrow :)

 

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Tumblr: dearelizabethgrace.tumblr.com/

Twitter: twitter.com/#!/ewizabephgwace

Facebook: www.facebook.com/egracephotography

The Thunderbird Inn in Fort Benning, GA. Not exactly the Four Seasons, but then again, I didn't WANT The Four Seasons.

 

The room smelled about as bad as you would guess. And even though it looks warm from the glow of the bare light bulb, the heat didn't work, so it got cold at night. I must admit I did not sleep in the bed. I was smart enough to bring a folding lounge chair, so I slept in that.

 

Luckily I didn't have any perishables. The refrigerator was rusted out and wasn't plugged in anyway. Besides, it had a stained towel on top of it that may or may not have had urine stains on it. I did not take the time to DNA test it.

WEEK 26 – Oxford Millennium Kroger, Revisited (I)

 

I hope you were paying good attention to the Garden Market sign declaring this store’s produce department in the previous image, because (to date) that’s the very last picture I ever took of that particular millennium décor sign :( On subsequent visits to the Oxford Kroger, after its expansion had already begun, I found that this entire right-side wall had been removed and replaced with a temporary barrier – meaning that everything you see all the way up to that corner beside Bread & Rolls in this pic was also unceremoniously removed. As I shared with y’all last September, that makes those two signs the very first millennium décor departments to go entirely extinct in the state of Mississippi :(

 

But I neither want nor intend to spend the majority of my time in this photoset dwelling on how sad that fact is. Rather, let’s just appreciate this outgoing millennium décor store for what it is – er, was.

 

In this pic we’ve panned over to the left from produce, and are looking down what I consider the “perishables grand aisle.” A quite large swath of floor space, perfect for multiple displays, cases, and other amenities, sits in the middle between the right-side wall, home to produce and bread, and the island you see a tiny portion of on the extreme left of this picture, home to the deli and bakery counters.

 

(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 :)

 

Spring is over

Angkor Thom located in present-day Cambodia, was the last and most enduring capital city of the Khmer Empire. It was established in the late twelfth century by King Jayavarman VII. 170  It covers an area of 9 km², within which are located several monuments from earlier eras as well as those established by Jayavarman and his successors. At the centre of the city is Jayavarman's state temple, the Bayon, with the other major sites clustered around the Victory Square immediately to the north. The site is one of the major tourist attractions of southeast Asia.

 

Angkor Thom (Khmer: អង្គរធំ) is the transform name from another alternative name of Nokor Thom (Khmer: នគរធំ), which is believed to be the correct one, due to neglect of calling it in incorrect pronunciation. The word Nokor (Khmer: នគរ, Nôkô) is literally derived from Sanskrit word of Nagara (Devanāgarī: नगर), which means City, combining with Khmer word Thom (Khmer: ធំ, Thum), which means Big or Great so as to form Nokor Thom then being altered to current name of Angkor Thom.

 

Angkor Thom was established as the capital of Jayavarman VII's empire, and was the centre of his massive building program. One inscription found in the city refers to Jayavarman as the groom and the city as his bride.: 121 

 

Angkor Thom seems not to be the first Khmer capital on the site, however. Yasodharapura, dating from three centuries earlier, was centred slightly further northwest, and Angkor Thom overlapped parts of it. The most notable earlier temples within the city are the former state temple of Baphuon, and Phimeanakas, which was incorporated into the Royal Palace. The Khmers did not draw any clear distinctions between Angkor Thom and Yashodharapura: even in the fourteenth century an inscription used the earlier name.: 138  The name of Angkor Thom—great city—was in use from the 16th century.

 

The last temple known to have been constructed in Angkor Thom was Mangalartha, which was dedicated in 1295. Thereafter the existing structures continued to be modified from time to time, but any new creations were in perishable materials and have not survived.

 

The Ayutthaya Kingdom, led by King Borommarachathirat II, sacked Angkor Thom, forcing the Khmers under Ponhea Yat to relocate their capital southeast to Phnom Penh.: 29 

 

Angkor Thom was abandoned some time prior to 1609, when an early western visitor wrote of an uninhabited city, "as fantastic as the Atlantis of Plato".: 140  It is believed to have sustained a population of 80,000–150,000 people.

 

The Poem of Angkor Wat composed in Khmer verse in 1622 describes the beauty of Angkor Thom.

 

Angkor Thom is in the Bayon style. This manifests itself in the large scale of the construction, in the widespread use of laterite, in the face-towers at each of the entrances to the city and in the naga-carrying giant figures which accompany each of the towers.

 

The city lies on the west bank of the Siem Reap River, a tributary of Tonle Sap, about a quarter of a mile from the river. The south gate of Angkor Thom is 7.2 km north of Siem Reap, and 1.7 km north of the entrance to Angkor Wat. The walls, 8 m high and flanked by a moat, are each 3 km long, enclosing an area of 9 km². The walls are of laterite buttressed by earth, with a parapet on the top. There are gates at each of the cardinal points, from which roads lead to the Bayon at the centre of the city. As the Bayon itself has no wall or moat of its own, those of the city are interpreted by archaeologists as representing the mountains and oceans surrounding the Bayon's Mount Meru.[8]: 81  Another gate—the Victory Gate—is 500 m north of the east gate; the Victory Way runs parallel to the east road to the Victory Square and the Royal Palace north of the Bayon. It is around 30 minutes from central Siem Reap.

 

The faces on the 23 m towers at the city gates, which are later additions to the main structure, take after those of the Bayon and pose the same problems of interpretation. They may represent the king himself, the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, guardians of the empire's cardinal points, or some combination of these. A causeway spans the moat in front of each tower: these have a row of devas on the left and asuras on the right, each row holding a naga in the attitude of a tug-of-war. This appears to be a reference to the myth, popular in Angkor, of the Churning of the Sea of Milk. The temple-mountain of the Bayon, or perhaps the gate itself,: 82  would then be the pivot around which the churning takes place. The nagas may also represent the transition from the world of men to the world of the gods (the Bayon), or be guardian figures. The gateways themselves are 3.5 by 7 m, and would originally have been closed with wooden doors.: 82  The south gate is now by far the most often visited, as it is the main entrance to the city for tourists. At each corner of the city is a Prasat Chrung—corner shrine—built of sandstone and dedicated to Avalokiteshvara. These are cruciform with a central tower, and orientated towards the east.

 

Within the city was a system of canals, through which water flowed from the northeast to the southwest. The bulk of the land enclosed by the walls would have been occupied by the secular buildings of the city, of which nothing remains. This area is now covered by forest.

 

Most of the great Angkor ruins have vast displays of bas-relief depicting the various gods, goddesses, and other-worldly beings from the mythological stories and epic poems of ancient Hinduism (modified by centuries of Buddhism). Mingled with these images are actual known animals, like elephants, snakes, fish, and monkeys, in addition to dragon-like creatures that look like the stylized, elongated serpents (with feet and claws) found in Chinese art.

 

But among the ruins of Ta Prohm, near a huge stone entrance, one can see that the "roundels on pilasters on the south side of the west entrance are unusual in design."

 

What one sees are roundels depicting various common animals—pigs, monkeys, water buffaloes, roosters and snakes. There are no mythological figures among the roundels, so one can reasonably conclude that these figures depict the animals that were commonly seen by the ancient Khmer people in the twelfth century.

WEEK 51 – Cordova Super Target Final Day, Set V

 

Here it is, folks: our final shot of the grocery department of the Cordova Super Target. As we saw throughout our walk down the actionway and aisles, while there were lots and lots of dry goods left to be purchased, most of the perishables were gone. No more meat, not much frozen, and only dregs in bakery and produce. I think there was a tiny bit of stuff left in the deli as well, but that’s not visible in this pic (see here instead). Other than all that… all we’re left with is just a bunch of emptiness :(

 

I do like the banners above the produce coolers, though. They serve as nice differentiation/delineation between produce and the rest of the grocery aisles. Walmart, which tends otherwise to have a more or less identical layout for its grocery departments as this Super Target does, kinda lacks that demarcation. Also adding points to Super Target’s total is that it makes more sense, at least in my opinion, to have frozen foods placed at the back of the department, as was the case at this store, as opposed to Walmart which usually has it as the immediate next department beyond produce. I’ve made fun of certain stores like Food Lion that used to have frozen foods in Aisle 1, because the typical supermarket logic has that department placed at the center or complete far end of the store so that items picked up from those aisles won’t melt the longer you shop around with them in your cart. Walmart didn’t seem to get that memo, haha!

 

Unfortunately, though, if any of the shoppers of this Super Target ever even thought of such things, they won’t get the chance to experience them any longer… and ironically, most all of them likely switched to shopping this store’s next-door neighbor, which is of course, you’ll recall, a Walmart.

 

(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 :)

 

With my friend Paul, I spend five days in Osaka, Japan. The trip provided much refreshment, and excitement, not to mention many challenges. It was my first visit to the country, and, I feel, it certainly won't be my last, as there are still many places left to see, and so many new things to learn.

 

We had several destinations highlighted on our itinerary, the foremost of which was Universal Studios. We spend an entire day there, going on rides and more often than not, queuing for them. The excruciating wait times were worth it, however, for such exhilarating fun, especially on the Hollywood Roller Coaster, my personal favorite. The next morning we followed up that successful endeavor with a trip to the Himeji Castle, a place which came highly recommended by my colleague, whose succinct description of the heritage site was, "awesome." Indeed, as a history buff, I enjoyed walking the storied grounds and climbing through the maze-like interior of the keep which was designed not so much to comfortably house the royal family as to confound the invading enemy. The castle is a must-visit. Other attractions of note include the Osaka Aquarium, and the Tennoji Zoo; both teemed with animals of every shape and size. We also at length ventured into several shopping districts inside of which were myriad stores, selling all sorts of fashion and gadgetry, countless restaurants and several gambling parlors - the Japanese, it seems, love their slot machines as much as the Hong Kong Chinese love their horse racing. Lest I forget, we frequented several video arcades to play the latest and greatest games; Paul played well, while I more often than not got 0wn3d. There is a lot to do in Japan.

 

Japanese culture, of which I've heard so much, really is distinct and separate from other Asian cultures. Their patterns of action and their peculiar artifacts certainly aren't the same as those which feature prominently in Hong Kong. For one thing, the MTR culture was more civilized and less stressful: people queued up for trains and let passengers alight first before permitting themselves to board; cellphones never rang and cabin cars were as quiet as bedrooms at midnight; and to imagine all of these people enforce their norms without public service announcements, without any coddling, conspicuous signs - that's amazing. What proved difficult was trying to find a garbage can. It was easier to find a vending machine, from which one could purchase a variety of drinks or cigarettes, than a bin in which to dispose of these delectable, perishable goods.

 

As for the general citizenry, they were most accommodating and hospitable, with several individuals going out of their way to help Paul and I find our way around the dense sprawl of the city. Language wasn't a concern despite our limited Japanese; amazingly enough, our comfort was their concern! I won't forget their selfless service, as one day, I hope, I'll be able to return the favor. That the girls were quite attractive and that I demonstrated a propensity to ask attractive girls for directions go without saying; however, I understand now that their sexiness and sophistication stem not from comely faces but coherent attire. Rather than adorn themselves like a typical Mong Kok girl in a ridiculous neon rainbow palette, with jeans or unseemly spandex underneath dresses, skirts or other tops better left to stand alone, Japanese girls opt for more somber, sensible colors - black and cream-colored - and what's more, they aren't afraid to whip out the tasteful pantyhose or to show some skin, even. We had plenty of time to ogle the ladies, and to their credit, freezing temperatures weren't enough to dissuade many of them from forsaking, icing their shorts, as we saw countless pairs being worn on the street. That's what I call fashion professionalism!

 

Overall, Japan is a marvelous little land full of the eccentric, as well as the endearing. It was a fascinating place to explore, and I'm thankful that it was done in the company of my friend , with whom candor was not at a premium. We both learned a lot and look forward to the next trip!

Ad for A&P Food Stores from the October 27, 1941 issue of Life Magazine, with emphasis on perishable departments and mention of the A&P house brands, showing some refrigerated cases and shopping carts used at that time. Also clothing fashions and how people got dressed up to go shopping.

Angkor Thom (literally: "Great City"), located in present day Cambodia, was the last and most enduring capital city of the Khmer empire. It was established in the late twelfth century by king Jayavarman VII. It covers an area of 9 km², within which are located several monuments from earlier eras as well as those established by Jayavarman and his successors. At the centre of the city is Jayavarman's state temple, the Bayon, with the other major sites clustered around the Victory Square immediately to the north. Angkor Thom was established as the capital of Jayavarman VII's empire, and was the centre of his massive building programme.

The last temple known to have been constructed in Angkor Thom was Mangalartha, which was dedicated in 1295. Thereafter the existing structures continued to be modified from time to time, but any new creations were in perishable materials and have not survived.

-

Angkor Thom fue la ciudad real intramuros fortificada construida por Jayavarman VII (1181 - c. 1220), rey del Imperio jemer, al final del siglo XII, luego que Angkor fuera conquistada y destruida por los Chams.

La ciudad real fue construida al lado del río Siam Reap, con un área de 9 km2 siguiendo la forma casi cuadrada de 3 km de lado, rodeada de un pozo y de un muro de 8 metros de alto. El palacio real actual fue construido durante el reino de Suryavarman I 150 años antes. Según la leyenda, el rey pasaba parte de cada noche con la reina Sol en el Palacio Celestial que forma parte de esta construcción.

Angkor Thom fue construido dentro de la cosmogonía hindú, dedicado al Dios Visnu, aunque más tarde se dedicaría al tardío budismo. En el centro de Angkor Thom está el Bayón, que fue el templo de Jayavarman VII. Es conocido por sus torres, con la cara de Buda por los cuatro lados; las paredes estaban cubiertas de relieves mostrando escenas de la vida del rey y del pueblo.

"At certain moments I felt that the entire world was turning

into stone: a slow petrification, more or less advanced depending on people and places but one that spared no aspect of life.

It was as if no one could escape the inexorable stare of Medusa. "

 

"The only hero able to cut off Medusa’s head is Perseus, who flies with winged sandals; Perseus, who does not turn his gaze upon the face of the Gorgon but only upon her image reflected in his bronze shield.

To cut off Medusa’s head without being turned to stone, Perseus supports himself on the very lightest of things, the winds and the clouds, and fixes his gaze upon what can be revealed only by indirect vision, an image caught in a mirror.

The relationship between Perseus and the Gorgon is a complex one and does not end with the beheading of the monster. Medusa’s blood gives birth to a winged horse, Pegasus—the heaviness of stone is transformed into its opposite. With one blow of his hoof on Mount Helicon, Pegasus makes a spring gush forth, where the Muses drink. In certain versions of the myth, it is Perseus who rides the miraculous Pegasus, so dear to the Muses, born from the accursed blood of Medusa.

As for the severed head, Perseus does not abandon it but carries it concealed in a bag. When his enemies are about to overcome him, he has only to display it, holding it by its snaky locks, and this bloodstained booty becomes an invincible weapon in the hero’s hand. It is a weapon he uses only in cases of dire necessity, and only against those who deserve the punishment of being turned into statues. Here, certainly, the myth is telling us something, something implicit in the images that can’t be explained in any other way. Perseus succeeds in mastering that horrendous face by keeping it hidden,

just as in the first place he vanquished it by viewing it in a mirror. Perseus’s strength always lies in a refusal to look directly,

but not in a refusal of the reality in which he is fated to live; he carries the reality with him and accepts it as his particular burden.

On the relationship between Perseus and Medusa, we can learn something more from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Perseus

wins another battle: he hacks a sea-monster to pieces with his sword and sets Andromeda free. Now he prepares to do what any of us would do after such an awful chore—he wants to wash his hands. But another problem arises: where to put Medusa’s head. And here Ovid has some lines (IV.740-752) that seem to me extraordinary in showing how much delicacy of spirit a man must have to be a Perseus, the killer of monsters: “So that the rough sand should not harm the snake-haired head, he makes the ground soft with a bed of leaves, and on top of that he strews little branches of plants born under water, and on this he places Medusa’s head, face down.” I think that the lightness, of which Perseus is the hero, could not be better represented than by this gesture of refreshing courtesy toward a being so monstrous and terrifying yet at the same time somehow fragile and perishable. But the most unexpected thing is the miracle that follows: when they touch Medusa, the little marine plants turn to coral and the nymphs, in order to have coral for adornments, rush to bring sprigs and seaweed to the terrible head.

 

Italo Calvino's Six Memos for the Next Millenium

 

«In certi momenti mi sembrava che il mondo stesse diventando tutto di pietra: una lenta pietrificazione più o meno avanzata a seconda delle persone e dei luoghi, ma che non risparmiava nessun aspetto della vita. Era come se nessuno potesse sfuggire allo sguardo inesorabile della Medusa.»

 

«L'unico eroe capace di tagliare la testa della Medusa è Perseo, che vola coi sandali alati, Perseo che non rivolge il suo sguardo sul volto della Gorgone, ma solo sulla sua immagine riflessa nello scudo di bronzo ... per tagliare la testa di Medusa senza lasciarsi pietrificare, Perseo si sostiene su ciò che vi è di più leggero: i venti e le nuvole, e spinge il suo sguardo su ciò che può rivelarglisi solo in una visione indiretta, in un'immagine catturata da uno specchio»"

«Il rapporto tra Perseo e la Gorgone è complesso: non finisce con la decapitazione del mostro. Dal sangue della Medusa nasce un cavallo alato: Pegaso; la pesantezza della pietra può essere rovesciata nel suo contrario; con un colpo di zoccolo sul monte Elicona, Pegaso fa scaturire la fonte da cui bevono le Muse ... Quanto alla testa mozzata, Perseo non l'abbandona ma la porta con sé, nascosta in un sacco; quando i nemici stanno per sopraffarlo, basta che egli la mostri sollevandola per la chioma di serpenti, e quella spoglia sanguinosa diventa un'arma invincibile nella mano dell'eroe ... Perseo riesce a padroneggiare quel volto tremendo tenendolo nascosto, come prima l'aveva vinto guardandolo in uno specchio. È sempre in un rifiuto della visione diretta che sta la forza di Perseo, ma non in un rifiuto della realtà di mostri in cui gli è toccato di vivere, una realtà che egli porta con sé che assume come proprio fardello ... Sul rapporto tra Perseo e Medusa possiamo apprendere [ancora] qualcosa di più leggendo Ovidio nelle Metamorfosi. Perseo ha vinto una nuova battaglia, ha massacrato a colpi di spada un mostro marino ... E ora si accinge a fare quello che ciascuno di noi farebbe dopo un lavoraccio simile: va a lavarsi le mani. In questi casi il suo problema è dove posare la testa di Medusa. E qui Ovidio ha dei versi che mi paiono straordinari per spiegare quanta delicatezza d'animo sia necessaria per essere un Perseo, vincitore di mostri:

 

"Perché la ruvida sabbia non sciupi la testa anguicrinata, egli rende soffice il terreno con uno strato di foglie, vi stende sopra dei ramoscelli nati sott'acqua e vi depone la testa di Medusa a faccia in giù".

 

Mi sembra che la leggerezza di cui Perseo è l'eroe non potrebbe essere meglio rappresentata che da questo gesto di rinfrescante gentilezza verso quell'essere mostruoso e tremendo, ma anche in qualche modo deteriorabile, fragile. Ma la cosa più inaspettata è il miracolo che ne segue: i ramoscelli marini a contatto con la Medusa si trasformano in coralli, e le ninfe per adornarsi di coralli accorrono e avvicinano ramoscelli e alghe alla terribile testa»

 

Italo Calvino's Six Memos for the Next Millenium

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.

Publix handbaskets, located somewhere in the grand/perishables aisle (near the front entrance? I would think so...) at the Muscle Shoals Alabama location.

____________________________________

Publix, 2015-16 built, Woodward Ave. at W. 6th St., Muscle Shoals AL

An eastbound perishable train slams the diamonds at Ipswich enroute to eastern markets powered by a recently delivered Penn Central Century 636 and a veteran N&W Alco Century 630. Models owned by Jim Hebner and Craig Willett.

 

Photo by Craig Willett.

Visit the HO scale NAPM club on-line at www.napmltd.com.

WEEK 17 – Collierville Houston Levee Kroger (I)

 

Leaving the perishables grand aisle/service department island and jumping over to the back wall now, here’s our first view down the rear actionway of the store. Like I said: the dark colors continue through a good portion of the place, haha! But as we’ll see, there are some lighter elements in at least two major areas closer to the left side of the store (although even then, you could argue those colors are dark compared to the same family of colors as implemented in other décor packages, both within Kroger and at other chains).

 

I’ve been talking a whole lot about the design of the décor so far, so now I feel it’s a good time to take a step back and ask y’all what you think about it so far. Do you like it? Hate it? Don’t care either way? I’m curious; talk to me!

 

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It has occurred to me that it’s probably not fair of me to enjoy listening to PopRock Picks without sharing any music for y’all. So here’s this week’s overdue list of quarantine jams.

 

1. You Belong to the City – Glenn Frey

2. Nothing Left to Say/Rocks – Imagine Dragons

3. Inside Out – Eve 6 🔥

4. Only the Lonely – Motels

5. God Bless Saturdays – Kid Rock

6. Feel Like Makin’ Love – Bad Company

7. I Can’t Tell You Why – Eagles

8. Shut Your Eyes – Snow Patrol 🔥

9. My Way – 3 Doors Down

10. No More Secrets – Carolina Liar

11. God Bless This Mess – Bon Jovi

12. Hypnotize – The Darlings

13. West Coast – Imagine Dragons

14. Amazing – Saving Abel

15. Witch – Cold

16. Lucky Kid – Sheryl Crow 🔥

17. Daddy’s Little Girl – Carolina Liar

18. Words as Weapons – Seether

19. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious – Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke (I can spell that from memory. Can you?)

20. Before He Cheats – Carrie Underwood

21. Trouble – Imagine Dragons

22. Parallel Universe – Red Hot Chili Peppers

23. Gone – Montgomery Gentry 🔥

24. Show Me This Life – Poets of the Fall

25. Central Park – Lifehouse

26. Psychosis – Poets of the Fall 🔥

27. Locking Up the Sun – Poets of the Fall (okay I love Poets but that seems like a bit much lol)

28. Beats the Hell Out of Me – The Waltons

 

(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 :)

 

Veracruz, Mexico

A.D. 250-500

Polychrome ceramic

 

Stanford Art Museum

 

Wikipedia says:

 

Classic Veracruz culture (or Gulf Coast Classic culture) refers to a cultural area in the north and central areas of the present-day Mexican state of Veracruz, a culture that existed from roughly 100 to 1000 CE, or during the Classic era.

 

El Tajin was the major center of Classic Veracruz culture; other notable settlements include Higueras, Zapotal, Cerro de las Mesas, Nopiloa, and Remojadas, the latter two important ceramics centers. The culture spanned the Gulf Coast between the Pánuco River on the north and the Papaloapan River on the south.

  

Characteristics

 

The major theme of Classic Veracruz art is human sacrifice, particularly in context of the Mesoamerican ballgame. This art is rendered with extensive and convoluted banded scrolls that can be seen both on monumental architecture and on portable art, including ceramics and even carved bones. At least one researcher has suggested that the heads and other features formed by the scrolls are a Classic Veracruz form of pictographic writing. This scrollwork may have grown out of similar styles found in Chiapa de Corzo and Kaminaljuyu.

 

In addition to the scrollwork, the architecture is known for its remarkable ornamentation, such as that seen on the Pyramid of Niches at El Tajin. This ornamentation produces dramatic contrasts of light and shadow, what art historian George Kubler called a "bold chiaroscuro".

 

While Classic Veracruz culture shows influences from Teotihuacan and the Maya,[6] neither of these cultures are its direct antecedents. Instead, the seeds of this culture seems to have come at least in part from the Epi-Olmec culture centers, such as Cerro de las Mesas and La Mojarra.

 

The Classic Veracruz culture is sometimes wrongly associated with the Totonacs, who were occupying this territory at the time of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico. However, there is little or no evidence that the Totonacs were the originators of the Classic era culture.

 

Social structure

 

Burials, monumental sculpture, relief carvings, and the distribution of architecture within the regional centers all point to a stratification of Classic Veracruz society, including the presence of an elite rank as well as craft specialization. Elite hereditary rulers held sway over these small- to medium-sized regional centers, none over 2000 km², maintaining their rule through political and religious control of far-flung trade networks and legitimizing it through typical Mesoamerican rites such as bloodletting, human sacrifice, warfare, and use of exotic goods.[9] Much or most of the population, however, lived in isolated homesteads, hamlets, or villages.

 

Like the Epi-Olmec and Olmec cultures before it, Classic Veracruz culture was based on swidden, or slash-and-burn, agriculture, with maize an important component of the diet, supplemented with domestic dog, wild deer and other mammals, and fish and shellfish. Cotton was also an important crop.

 

The Classic Veracruz culture venerated many common Mesoamerican deities, in particular a death god (very prominent at El Tajin and often associated with the Aztec Mictlantecuhtli) and an earth monster (likely inherited from the Olmec culture).

 

Mesoamerican ballgame

 

The Classic Veracruz culture was seemingly obsessed with the ballgame. Every cultural center had at least one ballcourt, while up to 18 ballcourts have been found at El Tajin. It was during Late Classic here in north-central Veracruz that the ballgame reached its height.

 

The ballgame rituals appear throughout Classic Veracruz monumental art. The walls of largest ballcourt, the East Ballcourt at El Tajin are lined with carved murals showing human sacrifice in the context of the ballgame (see photo above). The culmination of these murals is a tableau showing the rain god, who pierces his penis (an act of bloodletting) to replenish a vat of the alcoholic, ritual drink pulque, the apparent desired end result of the ballgame ritual sacrifice.

 

A defining characteristic of the Classic Veracruz culture is the presence of stone ballgame gear: yokes, hachas, and palmas. Yokes are U-shaped stones worn about the waist of a ballplayer, while the hachas and palmas sit upon the yoke. Archaeologists generally suppose that the stone yokes are ritual versions of leather, cotton, and/or wood yokes, although no such perishable artifacts have yet been unearthed. While the yokes and hachas have been found from Teotihuacan to Guatemala, the palmas seem peculiar to what is today northern Veracruz.

 

Ceramics

 

Until the early 1950s, the Classic Veracruz ceramics were few, little understood, and generally without provenance. Since then, the recovery of thousands of figurines and pottery pieces from sites such as Remojadas, Los Cerros, Dicha Tuerta, and Tenenexpan, some initially by looters, has expanded our understanding and filled many museum shelves. Artist and art historian Miguel Covarrubias described Classic Veracruz ceramics as "powerful and expressive, endowed with a charm and sensibility unprecedented in other, more formal cultures".[18]

 

Remojadas style figurines, perhaps the most easily recognizable, are usually hand-modeled, and often adorned with appliqués. Of particular note are the Sonrientes (smiling faces) figurines, with triangular-shaped heads and outstretched arms. Nopiloa figurines are usually less ornate, without appliqués, and often molded.

 

The Classic Veracruz culture produced some of the few wheeled Mesoamerican figurines and is also noted for the use of bitumen for highlighting.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_Veracruz_culture

Perishable beauty... Pale petals preserved in pink.