Nefertiti

via Wikipedia

There are five Tuesdays this November? Hmmm.

Coherence may be difficult for me today because I'm suffering from some kind of crud my kids brought home. But I went and dug up (not literally) another interesting woman for the Notable Eastern Women series.

I had some great choices. Cleopatra was tempting because she and Antony visited Tarsus, which is not far from where I lived in Mersin. The only thing left there is the "Cleopatra Gate" and it's not very interesting.  Plus everyone already knows her story, venomous snakes and all. Hatshepsut is another Egyptian woman and pharaoh, but a fellow blogger is the expert on her...and I really liked the story of Nefertiti.

Nefertiti was erased from history. Her name was scratched out and where possible, her statues were credited to Kiya, King Tut's mother instead. That tells me two things: 1) She must have been interesting. 2) I should write a post about it!

So, if somebody tried hard to eliminate her from memory, what do we know about her? Enough to write an interesting piece of historical fiction. (Esther Freisner already has: Sphinx's Princess.)

• She was co-regent with Akhenaten.
• Her name means ""Beauty has come", so she must have been easy on the eyes. Iconic even.
• She and Akhenaten supported a monotheistic religious revolution to the sun god, Aten.
• She only had daughters, so she and Akhenaten were succeeded by the son of Kiya and Akhenaten, Thutankhaten - who eventually changed his name to Thutankhamun.

The mummy of Nefertiti has never been found. Recently, there was an excavation of a small tomb located in a larger, already excavated site. Two women found there were thought to be Nefertiti, but DNA and CT scans were inconclusive. One mummy is supposedly Kiya and the other Queen Tiye. What was interesting about the find, was that Kiya's body seemed to have been desecrated after mumification. The floating theory is that the mummy is indeed Nefertiti, but someone had gone to the trouble of making the body unidentifiable. And inaccesible to the afterlife.

Maybe the key to the story is King Tut.  The biggest clue was his name change from Thutankhaten, "Living Image of Aten", to Thutankhamun, "The Living Image of Amun". He abandoned not only the name, but his father's great city of Amarna, with it's temples honoring the sun god. Did he view Nefertiti as a heretic and order her "disappearance" from every monument and temple? Or was it the priests who finally regained power under an impressionable boy king? A boy king who preferred the memory of his mother to the queen his father adored...

Grey places...I love it!

Next month I'm posting a series called "Western Tales with Eastern Roots". You might be surprised by what I've found.

Related articles

• RAPatton: The ancient Egyptian facelift: Beautiful Queen Nefertiti had a 'bent nose and wrinkled eyes' | Mail Online (dailymail.co.uk)
• Met returning 19 King Tut objects to Egypt (cnn.com)
• Sphinx's Princess (sunflowerdiva.wordpress.com)

Turkish Tavla



via Tulumba.com

 Like everyone else, I'm sitting here waiting for hot deals on Amazon. But if you have someone on your list who doesn't need books or electronics, you're probably clicking around like a maniac trying to find something interesting. (Something not made in China or available at Target would be nice!)

How about a backgammon (tavla) set? Conjures images of old men in coffee shops, doesn't it?

Yup, I can just see them under the shade of an arbor smothered with bougainvillia or at the edge of the town square, people watching between moves...

This set is pretty cool, and not too expensive. Tulumba.com has it for under $50.00. I suppose if you're not into games, it would still look nice up on a bookshelf. Rummikub is pretty cool too. If you've never tried that, it's like Gin Rummy but with domino-like tiles. In Turkey, these games are pretty much de rigueur. I knew some ladies that had regular *ahem* gatherings to play Rummikub (called Okay in Turkey). I never went because I didn't want to lose my shirt, if you know what I mean.

How about a coffee set to go with those games? Tulumba has those too! OK, that one is probably more for the ladies group...but if you need an ashtray (Ashtray? What's that? Where do you even GET one of those anymore? You did know Camels were made with Turkish Tobacco.) Tulumba has neat looking ashtrays too...and over 100,000 other neat things that might work for your hard-to-impress giftees.

Pumpkin

via BloomingRoseMusings.blogspot.com



In the past ten years (since I've been buying pumpkins to carve for my boys), there's been a resurgence of heirloom varieties.  One I'm particularly fond of happens to be the kind they grow in Turkey as well.  The bluish grey skin of a Jarrahdale may not look like your typical jack-o-lantern, but the shape is gorgeous and the bright orange flesh inside is tasty.

I thought I'd share a very simple Turkish recipe for poached pumpkin my husband's aunt taught me. Because, in the tradition of all American immigrant families, we all bring little bit of our heritage to the Thanksgiving table.

About 4 cups pumpkin, seeded, peeled and cubed (any size, but I like larger 2x3 chunks)
2 1/2 cups sugar
½ cup walnuts or pecans
whipped cream

Place the cubed pumpkin in a large pot and spread the sugar evenly on the surface. Let it stand for 3-4 hours, until the sugar dissolves and the pumpkin has released quite a bit of liquid. Then cook over low-medium heat for 30-45 minutes (depends on the size of the cubes), or until the pumpkin is soft. There should be some syrup at the bottom of the pot. Cool and serve with whipped cream and chopped walnuts or pecans.

If you like, you can add cloves and/or the juice of one lemon to the liquid while cooking and a dusting of cinnamon might be nice. English folks might try it with clotted cream. Enjoy!

Türkiye

Image via WikipediaFirst, I want to say Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow American bloggers and readers. :)

Second, I have a confession to make:

I've been calling it Turkey, partly because that's what most people call it and partly because I'm lazy and I hate to open the character map every time I need a weird letter. (Many words in my posts are probably incorrect due to reason number two.) But on Turkey day I feel the need to clarify.

The official name of the country is Türkiye, not Turkey.

Enjoy your bird!

Auras



Pier.Bover via Flickr

 I was out celebrating the Beaujolais Nouveau release and started up a discussion with a friend of mine about auras. (Couple glasses of wine will bring out interesting conversation, you know...)

Over the years, I've noticed many of my closest friends love orange. They have orange rooms, orange candles, orange furniture.  Me? I love blue. All shades, but especially peacock. Do I give off a matching vibe? I don't know, but I do think favorite colors are indicative of personality. I also know I'm not the first one to come up with the idea.  

Auras are important to the concept of the third eye, Kundalini, chakras and Zoroastrianism. Halos behind saints, prophets and kings in Abrahamic religions are an example of the aura in the mainstream.

Guess what? My djinn have auras too. Remember my post on amber orbs?

As I was telling my friend, grey areas are the best place for my writerly mind to dwell.

Related articles

• World Beliefs in Aura Reading (brighthub.com)

Helen of Troy

Image via WikipediaMy series of Notable Eastern Women is taking some geographic liberties today, because Helen of Troy was really born Helen of Sparta. But history had other plans for the woman with "the face that launched a thousand ships".

If you aren't familiar with Homer (or Marlowe), I'll give you the skinny.

Helen was the daughter of Leda and Zeus. She grew up to be a demi-goddess of astounding beauty. Then like a pawn, she was married off to Menelaus, the local strong arm who won the games held in her honor. She was a true prize, with powers of seduction and connections to the gods (probably via opiats).

Meanwhile in Troy, handsome Paris (the man, not the city or the hotel heiress) was between a rock and a hard place. Three goddesses, Hera, Aphrodite and Athena, asked him to choose who was the most beautiful among them.  He awarded the golden apple (Calista) to Aphrodite, because she promised him the love of the most beautiful woman.

Fast forward to Paris visiting the court of Menelaus. Aphrodite arranged to have Menelaus leave for pressing business and Helen was left to "entertain" Paris. The rest is history - or mythology, depending how you look at it.

The ancient site of Troy is in modern day Turkey, near Çanakkale, at the narrowest point of the Dardanelles. There isn't much left to look at.  After all, Menelaus supposedly destroyed the wealthy trading port with his famous Trojan horse, even though Achilles ran into some bad luck with his heel.

So what was the real story? Did Helen love Paris?  She probably had to go with him willingly. (Many a woman has dropped everything for a hot guy with cold cash.) Was Menelaus really jealous enough to convince the owners of 1,000 ships (because most of the ships weren't his) and the sons of may men to join him in his quest for revenge? The sad part is, it was probably more a question of who had the biggest piggy bank. A busy port city at the mouth of the Dardanelles was a jewel in anyone's crown, but the romantic idea of fighting for the woman you love is more interesting and we're still captivated by the story even in our century.

Evidence:

What's in a Name?

Image via Wikipedia

Somebody named Will once said that "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."  That's true, but how about I call you Bob for the rest of the week? Bet Bob doesn't mind that, but the rest of you might get a little annoyed.

New York hasn't been New Amsterdam since 1667. Thailand hasn't been Siam since 1939. Istanbul is not Constantinople. Since 1453.

Not since an extremely weakened (by the the 4th Crusade) Eastern Roman Empire was taken over by the Ottomans.

You'll notice 1453 is before Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 and before cartographer Amerigo Vespucci took the prize of naming my fine homeland.
 
This is my first opinion piece ever on this blog. I can't apologize to people who don't agree, but I believe certain historic sites belong to all of us and it's our duty to preserve them the best way we know how. Endangering the status quo of neutralized places is in no way beneficial. Neutral is good for a historic building.

Example:

The iconic model for mosques around the world, Hagia Sophia, is also the best example of Byzantine architecture. It is now a museum.  A move designed by the secular Turkish government to protect and preserve it for future generations unscathed. Work is constantly being done to uncover breathtaking mosaics in the building, which was once a church and then a mosque. Religious services, by anyone, are prohibited. Seems the best middle ground any logical person could come up with.

There are lots of amazing places in Turkey which fall into this grey area. Once one thing, then another, sometimes even repurposed again. It's part of a long and complex history. So while Turkish people are proud of the heritage and architecture left behind by the many different societies that once called Thrace home, Istanbul is distinctly their city.  It is not Constantinople.

Heck, there's even a song about it!


They Might Be Giants - Istanbul (Not Constantinople) from They Might Be Giants on Vimeo.

Related articles

• Turkey may bar Greek Orthodox mass at Hagia Sophia (reuters.com)
• Sultanahmet- A Historical Treasure Chest (mydestinationinfo.com)