The Louvre Is In the Wrong

http://www.drhawass.com/blog/video-beautiful-mummy-found-saqqara

It is time for great institutions to cease purchasing stolen goods.  If collectors refused items without legal provenance, it would do much to defeat the tomb robbers, wouldn't it?  I for one would like to see the artifacts of this great civilization repatriated, to a home where their ka(s) can rest.  Surely, out of context, they are only treasure, when in truth, they are so much more than that.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Louvre and the Berlin Museum returned these to their home?  Imagine Nefertiti's beauty at home again.  Imagine the joy of that return.  Imagine the joy of the return of the noble dead to the land of their birth.  I wonder if we shouldn't see any Egyptian artifact outside of Egypt as contraband, even if archaeologists of other countries acquired them.  And another thing!  Did you know that when Napoleon went into Egypt, his soldiers made potshots at the face of the Sphinx, that plundered mummies were taken away, and it became a fad of the elite and they would have unwrapping parties, that the ground remains of their bodies became a nostrum, as though the beautiful mystery of their true lives could heal the ill so greedy for life.  No such travesty could heal anything.  Repatriation could, though.

Another Ghostly Figure

A mere shadow of her former self, yet somehow happier (she's kicking up her heels to show the giddy stockings that match the hornet), the Ghostly Schoolmarm.  She haunts the Museum of Antiquities and Dry Goods Emporium and discusses ancient history with the mummies but is also very happy to have free access to the dry goods as well; she can be a bit of a poltergeist, but it's retail therapy in the afterlife where things are free.

Taking a Break on the Rocks

While a bit of summer still lingers and the skies are still blue and dry, I am going over to beautiful Leavenworth, Washington into Icicle Canyon for a spot of mellow rock climbing to end the season.  You'll see the white streaks on the granite buttress, where many climbers have swept aside the lichen following a line of bolts.  Easy routes up to 5.8 in beautiful surroundings, with shady places under fragrant Ponderosa pines, and then off to town for dinner at South, a very nice restaurant featuring the foods of South America.   Try the "Plata Cubana" featuring fried plaintains.  Yummy!

The Madwoman from Mendota

One more barn burning and off she went, escorted by the Sheriff to Mendota, in restraints because she just couldn't keep her hands off the matches and kerosene.  The judge asked her why she did these things, and she replied, she loves to stare into the flames.  Smoke gets in your eyes.

Mummy's Wrath 2.5

Lars the mummy snatcher has collected more contraband; a small cat was prepared in the 2nd millenium to accompany a royal queen upon her journey to the afterlife.  Never, never separate a cat from her queen, or there will surely be a serious karmic debt to pay!  Especially when kitty didn't get the full 9 lives.  As if the queen's displeasure wasn't enough.  Imagine how a wrathful cat mummy might take revenge ... 

AIEEEEE!

And here's a portrait of that smirking disturber of the dead, that wretch, that erstwhile archaeologist, Lars.   

Lars, Jasper, and Patent Medicines: The Mummy's Wrath II

From the far flung remote and dessicating sands of the Gobi Desert a new mummy arrives for the Museum, drawing throngs of the curious in Kenosha.  It's another ambitious project of erstwhile archaeologist Lars Olafson.  Lars, not one to miss a profitable opportunity, and Jasper Elkhorn, purveyor of nostrums and anodynes, not one to miss good publicity, have struck a deal and plastered the famous remains with advertising.  Neither gentleman being known for his subtlety, each has missed just how misdirected and annoying their pioneering efforts at advertising may be.  It is enough to raise the dead.  The Kenosha Museum of Antiquities and Dry Goods Emporium will soon regret this new project:  he stirs -- first Lars, then Jasper, then Kenosha, then, well, the world.  BWAAhaHA.

The Mummy's Wrath

The royal lady Nefer-nefer.  It wasn't that they married her off to her bucktoothed brother, it wasn't the ancient thieves who interrupted the royal repose and made off with her funerary riches, it wasn't those 2,500 years in an obscure pit in the the Valley of Queens, no.  It wasn't that dratted Lars Olafson, self-styled archaeologist, disturber of the dead, who shipped her, not first class, but as freight, mind you, freight, and the side trips as misplaced luggage to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, oh no.  It was the trip on the rattling train to the museum in Kenosha.  Kenosha!  Ptah knows, a girl has her limits.  That was the straw that broke the camel's back.  She stirs, and she is, to put it mildly, peeved.  Kenosha will know the horror of royal disfavor!  And she hasn't entirely forgotten that wretch, Lars, either.

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Halloween is coming, and that means it's time for things that go bump in the night.

Stay tuned for the continuing story of Lars Olafson and his misguided efforts to collect antiquities and make a buck or two at the Kenosha Museum of Antiquities and Dry Goods Emporium.  Soon Kenosha will pay the price of his greed and poor taste.

BWAAAhaha!