Gods and Men

Dear friends,

Older than Reading, older than London, older than Rome, Luxor sits beside the Nile, a town beholden to the greatest waterway of the Ancient World. Fiercely hot at this time of the year the scrappy modern streets are dominated by the two great temples, imposing ruins from the times of the pharaohs; that at Luxor itself, and, connected to this by an avenue of sphinxes, the enormous Temple of Karnak. Breath taking pillars, hieroglyphic walls as sharp as if they were carved yesterday, a statement of authority and might and political power comes echoing across the millennia.  In the very early morning to escape the heat you can cross the Nile, directly if you use the boat, or via bridges to the north and south if you are in a taxi, to take you towards the desert and, where the hills rise up in dusty  mounds away from the fertile and irrigated river plain, you twist and wind until you are deposited at the mouth of the Valley of the Kings. Walking on, and paying your dues, you can enter the bowels of the earth, down numerous steep stairways and ramps, to see the colours and breath the stuffy air and marvel at the great tombs of those men (and women) who thought that they were Gods. Rameses II ? Seti IV ? You pick and mix your visit choice, according to interest, or ease of access. Their sarcophagi and wealth now mostly broken and gone, their remains consigned to museums across the globe, and you walk in their traces, the flashes of colour in the artwork on the walls a testament to the skill of those enslaved, perhaps walled in alive with their work when the tomb was sealed, so that no other alive could benefit.

And outside overhead, more flashes of colour in the early morning sky reflect from tourist hot air balloons rising from the river a few miles away, the brightness of the sunlight bleaching everything else the colour of sand. An unmarked trail, not for the faint hearted or those without water, takes you over the hills to the south, where Hatshepsut built her own temple and tomb into the face of the escarpment looking east towards the river and the rising sun, and the life that water and light bring together. She had an eye for a great situation, although her own humanity was to be conflated with Hathor, the Egyptian goddess of beauty and motherhood, which meant that she was given the ears of a cow in the rather fetching sculpture made for her there.

In our day, we seem to be returning to this “ancient world order” where human leaders claim divine status and build large monuments to themselves. In the US the president was recently lambasted for a “Jesus-ication” post (my word – sorry). In our own country, the new Prime Minister was greeted in the House of Commons by a tongue in cheek but very perceptive cry of “He’s not the Messiah!” (taken from the Life of Brian) – humour being the best antidote to pretence, whether political or religious. Despots across the world have a perennial fascination with eternal youth, while the rest of us are relieved that they, too, age at the same rate as we do, and will, at some point “go the way of all the earth”. For there is only one Lord, to whom we all must bow, whether great or small, and He brings the arrogance of men and women to dust, such that, in the generations after us, they will marvel at our stupidity. Isaiah the prophet saw it, and told it like it was in the 6th C BC. It remains so. (Isaiah chapter 40 – it is worth reading.)

Worship Services for Sunday 9th August

9.30am Morning Prayer at St John’s Stoke Row with Canon Kevin Davies

11am Holy Communion at St Peter and Paul, Checkendon with Canon Kevin Davies.

Worship Services for Sunday 16th August

9.30am Informal Worship at St John’s Stoke Row with Mr Peter Ferguson

11am Family Worship at St Peter and St Paul, Checkendon, with Revd David Benskin

 

Political and religious self-alignment from the ancient world: Queen Hatshepsut, as the goddess Hathor.

or, those with children might ask “how did the Princess Fiona from “Shrek” get to Luxor?”