"Ask The Egyptologist" -- A Virtual Fireside With John Gee

NASA/NOAA, Egypt from space — A NASA/NOAA photo of the Nile River and the Nile Delta — the ORIGINAL “delta” — from approximately 512 miles above the surface of the planet. The exceptionally bright glow of Cairo at the southern end of the Delta is plainly visible, as is the long narrow strip along the Mediterranean coast on western side of the Delta that is Alexandria. Moving westward, after the sparsely populated moonscape of the Sinai Peninsula, the very populous nations of Israel and Lebanon and coastal Syria are unmistakable. The Nile Valley and the Delta, taken together, resemble an Egyptian lotus flower and its stem.

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Back on 1 December, Scott Gordon sat down with Dr. John Gee to interview him. That interview was accessible live to “Sustaining Members” of FAIR. It has now, however, been made more generally available and at no charge:

“”Ask the Egyptologist” – Virtual fireside with John Gee”

I’m impressed that John was willing to do this interview so soon after our return from the Interpreter Foundation’s “Ultimate Egypt” tour. We had just returned fairly late the night before from Alexandria via Cairo via Paris via Atlanta.

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You might enjoy this, from our friends at Book of Mormon Central:

“Celebrate the Season with a Collection of Christmas KnoWhys”

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I’ve long been fascinated by this curious “Christmas poem” from T. S. Eliot (1888-1965). It’s entitled “Journey of the Magi”:

“A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The ways deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter.”

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,

And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling

And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,

And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,

And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly

And the villages dirty and charging high prices:

A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,

Sleeping in snatches,

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;

With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,

Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.

But there was no information, and so we continued

And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we led all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

Posted from Richmond, Virginia

“Ask the Egyptologist” — A Virtual Fireside with John Gee