Tombs Archives - Opher's World

Tombs

Grey tombs

of weathered rock

punctuated by

Orange patches of lichen.

Upon a hill

In the drizzling rain.

Low clouds obscure the sun

Enshroud the oblivion of forever.

Of relics abandoned

In the wake of life;

A life spent in the sun’s light.

Confused lives

Striving towards

An unfathomable salvation.

Frozen in scripture,

In inscriptions,

In photographs and stories

Eliciting empathetic understanding

To illuminate a journey

That ended.

Opher – 28.10.2022

I wrote this on a grey, dismal day while walking through the graveyard in Howarth at the Bronte’s parsonage.

I was reading the inscriptions and thinking about the lives of these people. It felt as if they sacrificed so much for some idea of salvation, of an afterlife.

It felt to me as if real life, this brief flame, was almost relegated to a secondary role. Their hope was for something that lay beyond death.

Yet, life is all we have; this moment. Best to life it to the full. The flame flickers.

Off for lunch by the Nile, crossing a bridge where tens of large Nile Cruise lay in mothballs waiting for the tourists to return. There was a cool breeze to dissipate the heat, swallows rested on the mooring ropes of boats, a colourful larger bird sitting in the palm tree watching me, the call to prayer drifted over the water, a serene moment of calm.

Then we stopped at the Luxor Temple which was built along the same lines as Karnak but had a mosque plonked in the middle of it? What is it with these religions that they have to desecrate someone else’s beliefs? We find churches built in Stone Circles, Mosques on Temples, Cathedrals in Mosques. Why can’t people just agree to disagree and respect other people’s faiths? Or lack of faith?

Next stop was the incredible Collossi Memnom statues staring out majestically from their giant thrones across the plains with the backdrop of the mountains behind them.

The Valley of the Kings was full of restraints – We were only allowed to visit three tombs plus Tut Ank Karman. But what tombs!! What splendour, what colours. I’ve seen a lot of photographs of Egyptian tombs but never have I seen such rich coloration – worthy of a king. These religious fanatics believed in the Gods and the afterlife with such devout faith that they waged wars to gain incense and precious materials in order to perform ever more lavish ceremonies. They designed tombs of the most elaborate nature with diagrams to help them make their passage to the future life. They built temples and showered the wealth of the nation, even to bankruptcy, in order to guarantee their safe passage to eternal life. Their bodies, after death, were carefully prepared and their sarcophaguses were gilded with gold. An army of artists and priests worked on the tombs. Armies of slaves built the temples. It is a shame they did not put as much energy into the secular aspects of life. Their faith was for nought. Their religions have passed into antiquity. Nobody believes in that any more.

What we have left are the spectacular tombs, most robbed by grave-robbers, with their colourful hieroglyphs. So that misplaced faith was not wasted. We weren’t allowed to take photos under pain of death so these are photos I took off the web to show you how great it was. The colours were spectacular.