Egypt: land of the pharaohs

HAREM FOR A BOY

Egyptian

No other pharaohs of Egypt can compare with Ramses II for achievement and self-glorification. At the age of 10 he was already a captain in the army and had his own harem. By the time he died in 1225 B.C., he was over 90 years old and had ruled for 66 years, fathered 111 sons and 67 daughters, built the exquisite temples of Abu Simbel, and added to those at Luxor and Karnak. The great Battle of Kadesh in about 1284, in which he claimed to have subdued the Hittites, is celebrated in gigantic relief on one of the walls of the pharaoh’s mortuary temples on the Nile’s west bank at Thebes.

On an obelisk, which is now in the Place de la Concorde in Pairs, Ramses had his glory described in these words: “Ramses, conqueror of all foreign peoples, master of all crown-bearers, Ramses who fought the millions, bids the whole world subdue itself to his power.” The massive fallen statue of Ramses at Thebes probably inspired English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley’s sonnet of faded glory,”Ozymandias”. (Ozymandias is the Greek rendering of one of the pharaoh’s names, User-ma’at-re.) The poem ends with these lines:

Ozymandias, king of kings;

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains.Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Castes within castes

Over centuries, marriage between the four main castes led to the formation of subdivisions, and these were further subdivided by occupations. By the time India became independent in 1947, there were an estimated 2,000 castes within the general framework of the four main classes. The lowest of all was the group known as the Untouchables, or Panchamas. They were confined to occupations that were shunned by the higher castes as unclean, such as clearing excrement or handling the dead.

In each caste there were rules of eating, washing, and religious conduct, and well-defined laws of contact with other casts. Women, for example, could marry into a caste above the one into which they were born, but not below. Today the government of India is committed to abolishing the caste system. The constitution lays down as a principle of law the equality of all Indians, regardless of caste.And Untouchability has been outlawed altogether.

BATTLE ROYAL Fights between  trained elephants were  a popular  spectator sport among the Mogul emperors. Here, Jahangir- the father of Shah Jahan, who built the Taj Mahal- watches a fight from horseback. The fights ended when one elephant  brought the other to the ground, and usually neither elephant was  hurt seriously. But the mahouts, or riders, formally took leave of their families before each fight, because they often did not survive.

FROM DIVERSE ROOTS, A COMPLEX SOCIETY

Between 2000 and 1000 B.C. settlers from central Asia arrived in the Punjab and upper Ganges Valley. They were lighter-skinned than the local Dravidian people, who orginated  in the south of India, and became known as Aryans, from the Sanskrit  word meaning” noble ones”. The Aryans brought with them an  early form of the Hindu religion, and it was probably at this stage that they devised the rudiments of the caste system to maintain their superority over the Dravidians. From a fairly flexible set of distinctions, the caste system developed into one of the most complex class systems of any society in the world.

Four main castes were formed. They were the Brhmans, the priestly class; the Kshatriyas, who were warriors  and rulers; the Vaisyas, who were originally herdsmen and later merchants  and farmers; and the Sudras, who served the other three castes and carried out menial tasks. In Hindu teaching these four  classes are said to have been formed from the head (Brahmans), arms (Kshatriyas), trunk (Vaisyas), and feet  (Sudras) of the god-creator, Brahma.

MAIDENS IN PERIL

The Lion’s Rock at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka, a granite block 600 feet high, was once crowned by a fortified palace built by a Ceylonese king, Kasyapa, I who was killed in A.D. 495. A man-made path spirals up the rock to its 5-arce summit.

A small area of plastered rock is still covered with frescoes depicting 21 voluptuous women, who are known as cloud maidens, because clouds usually obscure their lower parts. Poems to these cold,unyielding beauties were scribbled into the plaster in the 8th through 10th centuries.

During the World war II, vibrations from Allied planes taking off nearby threatened irreversible damage to the maidens. But the frescoes were saved for posterity by a covering of cotton padding held against the rock face by bamboo scaffolding.

PILLARS OF WISDOM

Lasting exhortations to the people of India to be kind, benevolent, and  peaceful were carved into huge sandstone pillars and set up throughout  the country by the emperor Asoka (c. 273-232 B.C.). Asoka was the grandson of Chandragupta (c. 321-298 B.C.)  and ruler of the Maurya dynasty, which came to govern much of India from its capital, Pataliputra (now Patna), in the northeast of the country. A bloodthirsty campaign to subjugate the state of Kalinga  in about 261 B.C. sickened the victorious Asoka. Full of remorse, he renounced conquest, embraced Buddhism, and spent the rest of his preaching goodness to his people. His pillars- or rock edicts-ordered tree  planting, well digging, kindness to children, and the establishment of  hospitals for humans and animals. At the top of each of Asoka’s stone pillars was a stone lion holding the wheel of law, a Buddhist symbol of enlightenment. The same symbol is today part of India’s national flag.

FIRST TOWN PLANNERS

The city of Mohenjo-Daro, built about 4,500 years ago, did not just grow up willy-nilly. Its streets were laid out north-south and east-west in the gridiron fashion used today in many U.S. and Canadian cities. Main streets were about 45 feet wide, and side streets about 30 feet. The houses were usually 30 feet by 26 feet, and most were two stories high. They had blank walls facing the streets and opened inward onto courtyards and small alleyways. The walls kept out the heat of the sun and the dust of passing cart traffic.

GODDESS IN CLAY This terra-cotta figurine, depicting an ancient Indian mother goddess, was found in the ruins of Mohenjo-Daro in the 1920s. It dates from about 2000 B.C.

FLOOD RIDDLE

The story of life in the twin cities of the Indus civilization, Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, is still being pieced together by scholars and archeologists. The cities’ economy was based mostly on farming and herding, but trading was also an important activity, and there seems to have been a busy riverside landing place at Harappa. Potters and toolmakers, working in wood and metal, were also part of the cities’ commerce.

Nobody knows for certain why the Indus Valley cities suddenly collapsed in about 1500 B.C. Military conquest, economic decline, or an earthquake have all been suggested. Another theory is that the collapse may have been accelerated by a major river flood that inundated the cities and drove the inhabitants away.