Notes: hmmph...what I'm calling 'Easter eggs' is in a light hearted manner like kids looking for colorful hidden eggs Easter morning...that there was such a time!...I should maybe call these eggs 'enigmas'...but there's no fun in that!...nothing of the joy of finding an 'egg'...I call these 'eggs' 'stepping stones' too, as I like the sense of going across a rushing mountain stream with a full backpack, trying to keep one's balance stepping from stone to stone...and, and I consider a 'reach', as one climbing would 'reach' for handholds, wary always of falling, or getting stuck, not being able to go further, or worse, not being able to go further or back down...'enigma' doesn't do all that...in the news current there is an 'enigma', the black sarcophagus found in the ground of a building site in Alexandria, the Egyptian city...it's nine feet by five feet of black stone, andesite?, and sealed shut...twice now I've read stories that is has been opened...and I'm not sure it has, as of today...this post sixtyfirst in a series...see previous...and there was a humorous bit in the news today, folk chiming in that it shouldn't be opened...thought being it's like the Mummy movies...bad things come out of the sarcophagus in the movies...so, there's an 'enigma' with a measure of anxiety, like not being able to find an egg, toppling off a stepping stone, losing ones grip reaching for a handhold!...when they found King Tut's tomb, they found some trumpets...
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Silent for over 3,000 years, the trumpets were sounded before a live audience of an estimated 150 million listeners through an international BBC broadcast aired on 16 April 1939.
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There have been some claims made by Zahi Hawass, former Minister of State for Antiquities Affair, and Egyptologist Hala Hassan, curator of the Tutankhamun collection at the Egyptian Museum, that the two trumpets contain "magical powers" and have the apparent ability to summon war.
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The evening they were first played in 1939, the power cut out at the Cairo museum five minutes before the scheduled air, and the BBC were forced to record the sounding of the trumpets by candlelight. Five months after the radio broadcast, Britain entered World War II and the war in Europe began. The trumpets were again said to have been played before the 1967 Six-Day War, before the 1990 Gulf war, and most recently, the bronze trumpet was played one week before the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 by a Cairo museum staff member to a Japanese delegation. It was among items stolen from the Cairo museum during the Egyptian looting and riots of 2011, mysteriously returned to the museum some weeks later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutankhamun%27s_trumpets
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sheesh...I only recollected that it was played shorty before WW2...actually I thought it was WW1, which is too early, like before King Tut was found...but here in wiki's take, I find it has been tooted a few more times...go figure!...anyway, Easter eggs, enigmas, can have an aura of danger or menace about them...real or imagined...the stuff of Indiana Jones movies...stuff from tombs is spooky...
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The reason for the prominence of the strombus remains slightly enigmatic. Allison Paulsen suggests its special status can be attributed to its exotic provenance and natural properties. (29) One such property was its ability to be modified and used as a trumpet, called a pututo, which often functioned to punctuate rituals.
(il)literate engagement: a case study of a Moche strombus galeatus stirrup-spout vessel from the Museo Larco collection.
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/(il)literate+engagement%3A+a+case+study+of+a+Moche+strombus+galeatus...-a0455286476
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there's the sounds the shell makes when played...(I imagine too the famous ocean waves sound when held to one's ear!), and there's the way the shell looks....I've read that the step fret is thought to be derived from the Strombus shell, but I haven't been able to nail that down...left off yesterday's post thinking to go to the beach to get one, and so look it over first hand!...try to see how the step fret might be stylized from it...and there's the snail, the mollusk, that lives inside it, how it looks, its Natural History...and the properties it has when eaten or ingested...and there are other things I'm not sure of...like using the shell ground up for lime to mix with coca leaves, or something...a lot of things...a 'puzzle wrapped within an enigma', or some such!...so, here's a long quote from the article that I looked to for help in how to see the shell the way the Moche/Andeans/Mesoamerians did...
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The Larco shell vessel is an example among many that portrays ambiguous iconographic significance. Ranging from extremely naturalistic to moderately stylized, the strombus shell is depicted as a stand-alone image in both two- and three-dimensional renderings on stirrup-spout vessels and cups. (36) Elizabeth Benson states that Moche realistic depictions often parallel otherworldly ones. (37) Without more iconographic context in the image, it is impossible to know the otherworldly reference the Larco vessel and other strombus representations make. The following provides a categorization of the various depictions of the conch shell in Moche art in an attempt to identify the theme to which the Larco shell vessel potentially refers. The categories are organized according to the position of the strombus shell within the image on what Jackson identifies as the horizontal or vertical axis. These axes indicate the directional distribution of information. The vertical axis compresses or "telescopes" the distribution of information down into a single element while the horizontal axis has a linear progression in the narrative sequence that moves horizontally, across the illustration. On the vertical axis, the shell acts as a pictorial abbreviation of a wider idea or theme outside of the narrative being directly portrayed. The Larco vessel serves as an example of this type of pictorial involvement. Meanwhile, on the horizontal axis, the shell actively participates in the communication of the narrative of the individual scene. (38)
same as above
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author goes on to write about the Strombus Monster...the Moche stylized the shell into a kind of dragon with the shell on its back...those eye stalks I went on about yesterday are mentioned...maybe I can find that again...
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Strombus Monster. This creature appears in both zoomorphic and anthropomorphic forms. In the former, it resembles a large reptilian animal with clawed feet, a long tail that often ends in a snakehead, perhaps feline-like spots, a large dragon-like head with sharp teeth, unusual antennae that protrude from the snout and upper cranium, and a large strombus shell that rests on its back
same as above
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a fine 'thar be Dragons!' Dragon, I'd say...
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Uno de los más fantásticos monstruos Mochicas que hallamos en el Paseo Yortuque es "Strombus".
http://imagenyfotos.blogspot.com/2015/08/monstruo-mochica-strombus.html?spref=pi
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una enigma amenazante...a long day thinking on this, and finding things...more tomorrowmorrow...All Star Baseball game didn't disappoint!...AL 8 NL 6...
:)
DavidDavid
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