HISTORICAL CHESS
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Goddesschess' Seventh Anniversary!!!!!

From August 17 - 21, 2006, the fab four of Georgia Albert, Michelle Albert, Don McLean and Jan Newton met in Jan's hometown to celebrate Goddesschess' anniversary and plot a course for the website's future.  The theme of this year's celebration was "simply relaxing," and they did plenty of that, enjoying Jan's beautiful backyard and deck, but also spent a day in Chicago and a day on Milwaukee's gorgeous lake front at Maier Festival Park, enjoying "Irish Fest."

The weather cooperated with the celebration; the intense heat and humidity that had gripped the Midwestern USA in the prior weeks moderated during the Milwaukee visit.  Temperatures that had been in the high 90's dropped into the 80's during the day and the back-breaking humidity moderated.  There were even a few days of overcast skies and some rain for the visitors from Las Vegas, to whom moisture and rain are things to celebrate.  At night temperatures dropped into the 60's, comfortable for sleeping with windows open.

A view of part of Jan's backyard from the deck, looking to the northwest, complete with visiting squirrel bounding away with a peanut in its mouth.

Don arrived at Jan's on August 16th and they shared some alone-time together.  Jan made her house specialty, filet mignon, for a special dinner that evening.  Georgia's and Michelle's flight on the 17th was delayed for several hours by mechanical difficulties.  By the time they arrived at Maison Newton, the house was redolent with the aroma of pot roast and everyone was very hungry!  After supper (the pot roast was a big hit), everyone relaxed on the deck, watching the sun go down.  The foursome enjoyed a leisurely evening chatting.  It was lights out early for everyone - the house was dark by midnight, quite unusual!

Friday morning August 18th saw the foursome (in varying states of awakeness) off by taxi to the Amtrak station at 7 a.m.  The weather was warm and very humid, uncomfortably sticky.  The sky could not decide if it wanted to be overcast and gloomy, partly cloudy and hazy, or clear and bright.  Throughout the day three kinds of weather alternated in Chicago.

The Amtrak station was crowded with people traveling for the weekend, along with the usual business types who make the 90 mile trip from Milwaukee to Chicago twice a day.  Don and Jan relaxed and napped on the ride south (they've made the trip several times before), while Georgia and Michelle enjoyed the scenery.  Jan and Don had tickets to see the new King Tut exhibit at the Field Museum.  Georgia and Michelle wanted to tour the Field Museum, visit the Shedd Aquarium, and get some shopping in as well as sight-seeing - a lot to do before the planned departure back to Milwaukee on the 8:05 p.m. train.  On the train we read a preview of the exhibit in the Summer, 2006 edition of In the Field, entirely devoted to the Tut exhibit. An interview with Dr. James L. Phillips (acting curator of the Near East and North Africa at The Field Museum, who was content specialist for the Tut exhibit), contained some questionable - well, actually, quite ridiculous - information.  For instance:

"People are fascinated by Tut because of the spectacular nature of the artifacts and the context in which they were found.  When Howard Carter found Tut's tomb in 1922, communication was just beginning to become global, so it was one of the first big events that the world learned about as it was happening.  The drama of the discovery entered the psyche of the Western world (Egypt was always in the psyche of the Eastern world.)"

Well, it's a long time since 1922 and world-wide communication these days is almost instantaneous, thanks to the internet and 24-hour cable and satellite television.  Several generations since 1922 have come and gone, and it's not sensible to assume that the discovery of Tut's tomb has the same impact on folks today as it did in 1922.  As for ancient Egypt not being in the psyche of the western world until Carter's discovery in 1922, that's baloney.  If that was the case, there would have been NO wholesale excavations and export of Egyptian antiquities during the 19th and early 20th centuries, Napoleon would not have had his scientists and engineers drawing detailed maps of the Giza pyramids and "Egyptienne" style would never have been all the rage in early 19th century France and England.

Another quote from the interview:

"And, through the ages people have removed important artifacts from Egypt and brought them to their own countries...so we think of ancient Egypt as a forerunner of our own cultures, even though that really isn't true.  Judeo-Christian-Muslim origins have nothing to do with Egypt. ..."

Well, that's baloney, too!  Ancient Egypt has made many valuable contributions to "western" civilization.  First of all, it is well established that the Greeks freely borrowed and expropriated as their own "inventions" (and later the Romans from the Greeks) many things from the ancient Egyptians.  When Rome didn't quite succeed in destroying the ancient Egyptian civilization after Cleopatra's death (it held on for another 300 plus years until the last Egyptian temple was closed in the early 5th century CE), early Christendom and then late-to-the-table Muslims did their best to eradicate the sources of their borrowed knowledge of ancient Egyptian mathematics, medicine, and astronomy.  Many Egyptian gods and goddesses were adopted by foreigners and given new names in various languages.  Anyone who has ever read any of the prayers and supplications from the Egyptian "Book of the Dead" soon realizes that many of the Hebrew prayers in Psalms are direct adaptations from those ancient Egyptian works - the parallels are strikingly obvious.  Today we would call it "plagerism."  

The "golden calf" the Hebrews worshipped in the desert while Moses was up in the mountains communing with Yahweh is either the Egyptian goddess Hathor or a child-form of Horus.  We owe our 365 day solar-based year to the Egyptians as well as the concept of the "leap" year; quite possibly the original concept for the mathematical placeholder number of "zero" is Egyptian.    Concepts of man's immortal soul and of judgment, weighing a man's good and bad deeds with the promise either of joining the "imperishable stars" in heaven or being forever tormented in a dark underworld, were first iterated in Egyptian religion, long before the Christian concepts of "Heaven" and "Hell."  The story of Osiris' death and resurrection predates the Christian story of Christ's death and resurrection by several thousand years.  The Egyptian trinity of Osiris/Isis/Horus also predates the trinity of Yahweh /Sophia/Jesus by several thousand years. The concept of the "divine right of kings" first arose in Egypt, where the King was conceived of as a divine being, a god incarnate.  But with this great god-power also came great responsibility, and thus the concept of "Ma'at" - a balancing of wisdom, justice, mercy and exercised power, weighed on Pharaoh's shoulders; Pharaoh was under constraint to exercise his power for the benefit of those ruled, to achieve Ma'at, and he would answer for his actions in the after-life.  This concept of the "powers of God" was later incorporated into the Hebrew Scriptures - the Old Testament.  

The descendant of the idea of Ma'at is today incorporated in the constitutions and legal traditions of many western societies. It is incorporated in the United States Constitution in the belief that all men are created equal and endowed with certain rights from their creator (the gods), and that among these are the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that the power of the ruler is derived from the consent of those ruled.  We also see Ma'at incorporated into the United States' system of "checks and balances" that every American school child learns about, the separate but equal branches of the federal government - the Legislative - the Judicial - and the Executive.

It's information like this - published in supposedly reputable sources, trusted by the public to provide accurate information, that SO angers Goddesschess.  It's inaccurate, mis-informative, and ultimately subversive of the truth.  It does NOT accurately represent current archaeological and historical knowledge.  This is a good example of why the Goddesschess people are up in arms against such misrepresentation!

Back to the anniversary celebration:

Georgia and Michelle on the Amtrak to Chicago.

Interior shot of Union Station, arrival in Chicago.  It's difficult to tell from this angle, but that's Athena with an owl perched on her right shoulder, overlooking one side of the grand arch that leads from the tracks on the lower level to the grand hall and stairs to street level.

The train arrived in Chicago right on schedule, at 9:30 a.m., and the foursome hit the streets running - that is, after a quick-stop at a nearby  McDonalds to get some coffee and breakfast!  Then it was a hike east on Jackson Boulevard toward Lake Michigan, to Grant Park and the fabulous McCormick Fountain, a short-cut through the park, and a bee line along Lake Shore Drive to the Field Museum complex.  Don's and Jan's tickets for the Tut exhibit were for 11:00 a.m.  The foursome arrived at the museum shortly before 11:00 a.m.  They marched up the impressive sweep of stairs and columns at the main entrance, only to be redirected by a sign to the east entrance - back "thataway"!  Jan spurred the troops on and they arrived, out of breath and perspiring in the heat and humidity, into the air-conditioned comfort of the east entrance of the museum for a well-deserved cooling off.  Georgia and Michelle opted to by-pass the Tut exhibit and purchased general admission tickets; they headed toward the exhibit halls while Jan and Don queued in the "hurry up and wait" line for admission to Tut; it was a relatively short wait; they were directed up a staircase to begin the Tut viewing about 11:20 a.m.

Goddesschess' Seventh Anniversary Part 2 
Goddesschess' Seventh Anniversary Part 3 
Seventh Anniversary Photos 1 
Seventh Anniversary Photos 2