Egypt | Giza | Khufu Pyramid

From The Spinx I wandered up the road to the Pyramid of Khufu, also known as Pyramid of Cheops. This is the largest of the three big Giza Pyramids. Although the grounds were nearly deserted when I entered at 8:00 a.m.—opening time—a considerable crowd has accumulated while I was admiring the Spinx. Most of them appear to be Egyptians. Many have hired horse buggies to haul them around the pyramids. The road leading up to the Khufu Pyramid does not look that steep, but the horses are having a hard time negotiating it. They are shod, and their steel horseshoes keep slipping on the asphalt surface of the road. As I watch two horses slip and fall to their knees. Obviously they are used to this, since they very quickly jump up and resume pulling. One horse, pulling a buggy with a family of Egyptians—father, mother, and three small children—refuses to go up the hill. It tries to turn and head back down, but the driver, who is walking along side, starts whacking it with a cane and it very reluctantly turns uphill. It slips and falls to its knees. Bounding up very quickly, it then turns and attempts again to go downhill, precipitously whipping around the buggy. The driver hauls on the reins and whacks it with a cane, finally getting it turned around. It takes a few steps uphill, but then turns yet again and attempts to lunge downhill. All the while the buggy is being whipped back and forth. The family looks scared. One of the little girls starts screaming. For the moment it looks like the driver might lose control completely and the horse will take off downhill at a gallop, quite possibly upsetting the buggy. But the driver shortens the reins and administers a series of solid whacks with his cane. The horse had probably been through all this before and knows that in the end it must bow to the inevitable. It puts its head down and slowly, carefully plods its way uphill. One imagines the pyramids were built this way.

The road does not look so steep in this photo, but horses had trouble negotiating it (click on photos for enlargements). 

Moving on from this spectacle, I proceed to the base of the Khufu Pyramid. Like millions of other tourists who have stood here I cannot help but wonder, “What in the name of all that’s holy were they thinking?” I mean, seriously, this is one badass pile of rocks. 

The pyramid was built as a tomb for the Fourth Dynasty Pharaoh Khufu. It was probably built over a twenty-year period ending in about 2560 B.C. Thus it has stood here roughly 4570-some odd years. It was originally 481 feet high, and for almost 4000 years it was the tallest manmade structure on earth. It is now missing its capstone and stands around 455 feet high. Each side of the pyramid is 756 feet long. An estimated 2,300,000 blocks of stone was used in its construction. If the Khufu pyramid was built in twenty years, as suggested, then the builders would have had to put in place twelve blocks of stone an hour, 24/7/365 for the entire twenty years. Put differently, they would have had to install 800 tons of blocks every day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year for twenty years. 

On the other hand, it could have been Built By Aliens using anti-gravitation devices to float to the blocks into place. Or by the Mysterious Nephilim, the Giants of the Old Testament, spawn of Fallen Angels who could not resist mating with human women. Or maybe it was built by a previous incarnation of Donald Trump. Or by the spawn of Donald Trump’s previous incarnation and Fallen Angels. Or by the spawn of Fallen Angels and Snoop Dog.  Tupac Shakur may have been involved, hence his assassination (by the Nephilim?) on September 7, 1996, in Las Vegas, Nevada, home of the Luxor Hotel, which features its very own pyramid. The pyramids seem to invite speculation.

Frontal view of the Khufu Pyramid

Another view of the Khufu Pyramid

Another view of the Khufu Pyramid

Another view of the Khufu Pyramid

The Khufu Pyramid was once completely covered with casing stones of highly polished white limestone. In 1303 A.D. a huge earthquake shook off many of the casing stones. These were carted away and used as building material for mosques and other buildings in Cairo. What remained were used by Muhammad Ali Pasha to build a mosque in the nineteenth century. The pyramid we see today is thus the core of the original pyramid. It must have been a dazzling sight indeed when faced with gleaming white limestone. 

Some of the few original casing stones that remain

Another view of the Khufu Pyramid

Another view of the Khufu Pyramid. 

People are climbing to the current day entrance to the pyramid, known as the Robber’s Tunnel. It was created by Abbasid Caliph al Mamun in the 820s A.D. His workmen used a battering ram to punch a hole through to the existing corridors within the pyramid. Presumably they were looking for treasure. It now costs 200 Egyptian pounds ($26.38) to enter the interior of the pyramid, and several people I talked to said it was not worth it. So I demurred. Maybe next time.

Another view of the Khufu Pyramid

Today it is not possible to climb to the top of the pyramid. Once, however, an ascent was a standard part of the Great Pyramid tour. In 1873 forty-two year old English writer and gadabout Amelia Edwards made the climb and described it in her book  A Thousand Miles Up The Nile. We must rely on her for a description of the view from the top:

The ascent [to the pyramid summit] is extremely easy. Rugged and huge as are the blocks, there is scarcely one upon which it is not possible to find a half-way rest for the toe of one's boot, so as to divide the distance. With the help of three Arabs, nothing can well be less fatiguing. As for the men, they are helpful and courteous, and as clever as possible; and coax one on from block to block in all the languages of Europe. “Pazienza, signora! Allez doncement—all serene! We half-way now—dem halben-weg, fräulein. Ne vous pressezpas, mademoiselle. Chi va sano, va lontano. Six step more, and ecco la cimca!” “You should add the other half of the proverb, amici,” said I. “Chi va forte, va alla My Arabs had never heard this before, and were delighted with it. They repeated it again and again, and committed it to memory with great satisfaction. I asked them why they did not cut steps in the blocks, so as to make the ascent easier for ladies. The answer was ready and honest. “No, no, mademoiselle! Arab very stupid to do that. If Arab makes steps, howadji goes up alone. No more want Arab man to help him up, and Arab man earn no more dollars!” 

They offered to sing “Yankee Doodle” when we reached the top; then, finding we were English, shouted “God save the queen!” and told us that the Prince of Wales had given £40 to the pyramid Arabs when he came here with the princess two years before; which, however, we took the liberty to doubt. The space on the top of the great pyramid is said to be thirty feet square. It is not, as I had expected, a level platform. Some blocks of the next tier remain, and two or three of the tier next above that; so making pleasant seats and shady corners. What struck us most on reaching the top was the startling nearness, to all appearance, of the second pyramid. It seemed to rise up beside us like a mountain; yet so close, that I fancied I could almost touch it by putting out my hand. Every detail of the surface, every crack and party-coloured stain in the shining stucco that yet clings about the apex, was distinctly visible. The view from this place is immense. The country is so flat, the atmosphere so clear, the standpoint so isolated, that one really sees more and sees farther than from many a mountain summit of ten or twelve thousand feet. The ground lies, as it were, immediately under one; and the great Necropolis is seen as in a ground-plan. 

The effect must, I imagine, be exactly like the effect of a landscape seen from a balloon. Without ascending the pyramid, it is certainly not possible to form a clear notion of the way in which this great burial-field is laid out. We see from this point how each royal pyramid is surrounded by its quadrangle of lesser tombs, some in the form of small pyramids, others partly rock-cut, partly built of massive slabs, like the roofing-stones of the temples. We see how Khufu and Khafra and Menkara lay, each under his mountain of stone, with his family and his nobles around him. We see the great causeways which moved Herodotus to such wonder, and along which the giant stones were brought. Recognizing how clearly the place is a great cemetery, one marvels at the ingenious theories which turn the pyramids into astronomical observatories, and abstruse standards of measurement. They are the grandest graves in all the world—and they are nothing more.

Another view of the Khufu Pyramid

There are signs everywhere telling people not to climb on the pyramids, but boys will be boys (actually there were quite a few girls too) and they could just not resist the urge to ascend the rocks. Security guards were forever shouting at the miscreants to get down, but the moment their heads were turned the kids clambered back up again. Of course all the climbers were constantly taking selfies on their mobile phones, using the stones of the pyramid as a backdrop.

Tomb—I think—near the Khufu Pyramid

These are the only examples of hieroglyphics I saw in the area of the pyramids. 

School girls from the nearby city of Sakkara on a class excursion to the Pyramids. They asked me to take their photo and I could hardly refuse. The second one from the left, in the red sleeves, was the only one who spoke English,  and she proved to be quite the chatterbox.

For the classic, if admittedly now dated, study of the pyramids of Giza see W. M. Flinders Petrie’s The Pyramids And Temples Of Gizeh. 

Egypt | Giza | Sphinx

No sooner had I entered the grounds of the Pyramid Complex than a horde of would-be guides descended on me like a Biblical plaque of locusts. “But who will chase the other people away?” moaned one when I turned down his services. Indeed, some visitors might be tempted to hire one guide just to shoo away the voracious sellers of camel and horse rides, postcards, model pyramids, head wraps, cowboy hats, and a host of other gimcracks and ephemera. But I pushed on; I just wanted to soak in the atmosphere by myself without someone chattering in my ear. First on the agenda was the Sphinx. The Sphinx of course needs no introduction. Reputedly both the oldest and largest monumental sculpture in the world, it is also one of world’s most instantly recognizable images. 

As with most monuments of ancient Egypt, there is considerable controversy over when the Sphinx was built and by whom. I think we can safely rule out the theory that it is over 10,000 years old and was carved out by aliens using laser beams, or that it was built by the mysterious “giants” who keep popping up here and there in the Old Testament. The most prevalent scholarly theory maintains that it was constructed during the reign of the Pharaoh Khafra (c. 2558–2532 BC), the same pharaoh who built the middle pyramid of the three big Giza pyramids. Most onsite tour guides also ascribe to this idea. The face of the Sphinx might be—again this is disputed—that of Khafra himself.   

The Pyramid of Khafra with the Sphinx in front (click on photos for enlargements).

The Sphinx, looking positively Sphinx-like.

 The Sphinx with the Pyramid of Khufu, the largest of the Giza pyramids, in the background.

 The Sphinx is 241 feet long and 66 feet high—reputedly the largest stone sculpture in the world.

I remember reading, when I was maybe seven years old, that Napoleon’s artillery men shot off the Sphinx’s nose for target practice. I am pretty sure I did not read this in a “Scrooge McDuck” comic book, even though the adventures of the richest duck in the world did inspire some of my later travels (i. e., “The Lost Crown of Genghis Khan”, a McDuck classic; this is surely where I read about Mongolia and Genghis Khan [Chingis Khan] for the first time). However, a Danish traveler by the name of Frederic Louis Norden made a sketch of the Sphinx in 1738 which shows the nose already missing. This was decades before the pint-sized French megalomaniac arrived on the scene. An alternative tale suggests that in 1378 a Sufi by the name of Saim al-Dahr became outraged after seeing local peasants worshipping the Sphinx, a clear violation of the tenets of Islam, and in a fit of pique knocked off the nose himself. How he was able to do this is not clear. It would have taken more than just a sledgehammer. Anyhow, then as now the local authorities did not appreciate people tampering with tourist attractions. Saim al-Dahr was arrested for vandalism and hanged.

The noseless Sphinx

Another view of the Sphinx

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Mongolia | Bactrian Camels

Camels: You can’t help but love them (click on photo for enlargement)

Turkey | Istanbul | Mongol Invasion

I entered a Portal on October 9 and after having spent several weeks in a Parallel Universe emerged just recently in Istanbul, which as cognoscenti know contains a Portal Connected to Shambhala. I reappeared in Istanbul just in time to meet up with my pal Ms. Saraa from Ulaanbaater, who had flown into town on Turkish Airlines for a few days of shopping and R&R.

Ms. Saka at her hotel (click on photos for enlargements)

We hit the streets running. I must say I experienced a different Istanbul than the one I am accustomed to: namely the shopping scene. First we visited the Historia Mall, a huge new complex just up the street from the Aksaray Metro Station. Thank Heavens they had a Starbucks! I parked myself there while Ms. Saka hit the stores. She had already advised me that she did not like people peering over her shoulder while she was shopping. It had recently dawned on me that I knew very little about the Achaemenids who ruled much of what is now Iran and surrounding countries from 550 BC to 330 BC, when their empire was conquered by Alexander the Great. I had brought my Kindle along (actually I never go anywhere with it), and now I took the opportunity to get up to speed on the Achaemenids by reading Matt Water’s marvelously entertaining Ancient Persia: A Concise History of the Achaemenid Empire, 550-330 BCE.

I had already reached the sack of Persepolis by Alexander the Great when Ms. Saka reappeared. After three hours of shopping she had found nothing she liked. So we moved on to the mammoth Forum Shopping Center a few stops further out on the Aksaray-Airport Metro Line. They too had a Starbucks! I finished Ancient Persia and moved on to Alexander the Great and the Conquest of the Persians. By the time Ms. Saka  appeared three and a half hours later Alexander was dead. Still she had found nothing she liked.

The next day we went to the Russian shopping district near the Laleli Mosque, not far from the Grand Bazaar. Many of the stores here are wholesale. Ms. Saka finally got down to business. She bought at least fourteen dresses, several pairs of boots, and other assorted items. I spent an enjoyable day listening to women from Russia and the former Soviet republics haggle with beleaguered sales clerks. Although I have not lived in Russia for years I was able to at least get the drift of most of the conversations. There following three more days of whirlwind shopping. Then finally to the Spice Market area where Ms. Saka bought raisins, apricots, dried cranberries (for kidney ailments), walnuts, both shelled and unshelled (her mother believes tea made from the shells of walnuts are good for the bones), cashews, almonds, and various other fruits and nuts. That concluded the shopping portion of Ms. Saka’s trip. 

Now for sightseeing. This was Ms. Saka’s first visit to Istanbul so we hit all the high spots, starting with the square between Hagia Sofia and the Blue Mosque, certainly one of the world’s most iconic tourist venues. 

Ms. Saka and Hagia Sophia, built in the 530s AD by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. 

Ms. Saka and the Blue Mosque, built  between 1609 to 1616 by Ottoman Sultan Ahmed I. 

The Blue Mosque at night

We also visited the Basilica Cistern, built in the 520s AD to store water for the area around Hagia Sophia. The underground cistern has 336 columns and reportedly can hold over 100,000 tons of water. 

The Basilica Cistern

Two of the columns in the cistern rest on bases with carvings of Medusa. This one is on its side. No one know why. 

The other Medusa is upside down. Again, no one knows why.

Ms. Saka upside down

The Yeni Cami, or  New Mosque, near the Spice Market, completed in the 1660s

Courtyard of the New Mosque

Ms. Saka buying simit from a simit seller

Of course no trip to Istanbul is complete without seeing the Whirling Dervishes at the Mevlevi Hall in Galata, across the Golden Horn from Sultanahmed where Ms. Saka was staying.

Performers prepping for the dance

Whirling, whirling . . .

The morning after the Dervishes we left for Büyükada, the largest of the Prince Islands, located in the Sea of Marmara about an hour’s ferry ride from the main part of Istanbul. 

Ms. Saka at the Ferry Dock

On the ferry to the Prince Islands

Ms. Saka

Ms. Saka at the Büyükada (Big Island) ferry station

Ms. Saka strolling the streets of Büyükada. No cars are allowed on the island, so it’s either horse carriages, bikes, or on foot. 

Back in Istanbul we visited the famous fish restaurants near the Galata Bridge. Thoroughly sated by Istanbul, Ms. Saka caught the next plane back to Ulaanbaatar. She had arrived with only the clothes on her back but returned with 85 pounds of loot (that’s 38.5 kilos to you insufferable decimal-heads)—not a bad shopping trip!

Mongolia | Uzbekistan | Chingis Khan Rides West

Chingis Khan Rides West is now available on Amazon: Paper Version and Kindle Version. The Kindle version is best read on devices that support color. 

(Click on Photo for Enlargement)

Back Cover Blurb:

Since the time of the Xiongnu two thousand years ago the nomads of the Mongolian Plateau traditionally looked south toward China for both plunder and trade. In 1215 Chingis Khan turned his attention westward and by 1219 had decided to invade the Islamic realms of Inner Asia, unleashing a sequence of events that would result in the sack of Baghdad in 1258 by his grandson Khülegü and the fall of the 508 year-old Abbasid Caliphate. The dissolution of the Caliphate by Khülegü dealt a blow to the Islamic world from which some might argue it has never fully recovered. We are still to this day living with the consequences of the Mongol invasion. Chingis Khan Rides West examines the motivation of Chingis Khan’s ride westward to attack the Islamic world and recounts the fall of the great Silk Road cities of Bukhara, Samarkand, Termez, Gurganj, and others.

Iraq | Yezidis | Peacock Angel |Shambhala

Yet Another Update: Iraqi Yazidi MP Breaks Down in Parliament: ISIL is Exterminating my People

Still Newer Update: The Cruel Jest Of American “Humanitarian Aid” To Iraq

Newer Update: 20,000 Iraqis Escape Mt. Sinjar

Things can't get worse than this: Iraqi civilians are escaping into Syria to get off a northern mountain wheretthey've been trapped without food or water for weeks. Between 20,000 to 30,000 minority Yazidis have found a safe passage through Syria and back into Iraqi Kurdistan, assisted by Kurdish guerrilla forces. Meanwhile, American and British missions have been dropping emergency relief Mt. Sinjar and U.S. has launched air strikes on Islamic State militants nearby.

New Update: Iraq Accuses Islamic State Of Yazidi Atrocity

Update: 'A Catastrophe': Yazidi Survivor Recalls Horror Of Evading ISIS And Death

As anyone who pays even cursory attention to the news now knows the United States is airdropping humanitarian aide to the Yezidis in Iraq. See US Drops New Aid To Iraqis Fleeing Militant Surge if by some chance you are not up to speed on this. The fleeing Iraqis in this case are Yezidis, although of course Syriac Christians are also fleeing from the Jihadists in Iraq. I think I first became aware of the Yezidis when I read about them in the book Meetings With Remarkable Men by twentieth century magus George Gurdjieff back in the early 1970s. Then in  2009 I met a Yezidi in the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, where he was working in a carpet store. I had my laptop with me and he asked to see a post I had made about his store—there is wi-fi in the Grand Bazaar—and after he had seen that post he began surfing through other of my blog entries. Suddenly he stopped and blurted out, “What is this!?!” It was a Short Post About Yezidis. “How do you know about Yezidis?” he demanded. He actually seem shocked that I should know about anything about this subject. I said that I read about them in books and had seen various material about them on the internet. After some hemming and hawing he finally admitted that he himself was a Yezidi. He said that for various reasons he usually did not tell tourists like myself who came into his store about this, but since I already knew about Yezidis he felt he could tell me. Admittedly he was not too eager to share his beliefs, but he did offer to take me to eastern Turkey to met his relatives if I was so inclined. 

According to One Source, “The religion is little known to outsiders but contains elements of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, and also includes the veneration of the Peacock Angel.” What, you are wondering, is the Peacock Angel? According To Yezidis:

Tawsi Melek, the “Peacock Angel” and “Peacock King,” is the most import deity of the Yezidis. But he is not just the possession of the Yezidis, he belongs to the entire world. The Yezidis believe that they possess the oldest religion on Earth, the primeval faith that features Tawsi Melek, and that all other traditions are related to them through the Peacock Angel. They contend that Tawsi Melek is the true creator and ruler of the universe, and therefore a part of all religious traditions. He does not, however, always manifest within these diverse traditions as a peacock. Tawsi Melek has taken on many other forms throughout time. The Yezidis do not believe that the Peacock Angel is the Supreme God. The Supreme God created him as an emanation at the beginning of time. He was brought into manifestation in order to give the invisible, transcendental Supreme God a vehicle with which to create and administer the universe. Tawsi Melek is thus a tangible, denser form of the infinite Supreme God. In order to assist Tawsi Melek in this important role, the Supreme Creator also created six other Great Angels, who were, like the Peacock Angel, emanations of the Supreme God and not separate from him. Tawsi Melek was, therefore, both the first form of the Supreme God and one of the Seven Great Angels, which is a cosmic heptad mentioned within many religious traditions. The Jews, Christians, Persian, Egyptians all have their seven angels and creators. In the Meshefê Re, the Yezidis “Black Book,” there is one passage that describes the Seven Great Angels and associates their creation with the seven days of Creation. The text first states that the Supreme God first created a pearl containing the substance or substratum of the soon-to-be physical universe, ostensibly referring to the molten mass preceding the “Big Bang” championed by modern physics.

 The Peacock Angel

One of the manifestations of the Peacock Angel in human form is believed to be Shaykh Adi ibn Musafir al-Umawi. He was born in 1070 in what now Lebanon. He studied in Baghdad but soon took up the life of a recluse in upper Mesopotamia. He eventually became a Sufi, but also adhered to the Zoroastrian beliefs still prevalent in the area. His syncretistic tendencies and saintliness soon attracted the attention of local Yezidis, who recognized him as a manifestation or incarnation of the Peacock Angel. He died in 1162 at the age of ninety and was entombed in a mausoleum in a village near Lalish, Iraq. His mausoleum and shrine exists to this day and has become one of the main Yezidi pilgrimage sites. 

The Mausoleum of  Shaykh Adi ibn Musafir al-Umawi near Lalash (not my photo)

The Jihadists in Upper Mesopotamia have destroyed many shrines in the region, perhaps most notably the Tomb of Jonah, Jonah being the belly-of-the-whale-guy who makes an appearance in both the Bible and the Quran. Christian churches, Shiite Mosques, and Sufi holy places have also been targeted. Jihadists May Have Already Captured The Mosul Dam above the city of Mosul. Lalash is just twenty-five miles northeast the breast of the Mosul Dam. If the Jihadists reach Lalash they will undoubtedly destroy the mausoleum and shrine of Shaykh Adi ibn Musafir al-Umawi. 

For photos of Lalish see Visit The Holy City Of The Iraqi Religious Minority That ISIS Is Threatening With Destruction (allow the ad to run for 15 seconds)

The Peacock Angel Manifests Itself In Many Religions, including Buddhism, and is believed to occasionally incarnate as the King of Shambhala:

In Tibet the Peacock Angel appears to be manifest as Amitibha, the peacock-riding dhyanibuddha who sits upon his Peacock Throne in the heaven of Sukhavati and occasionally takes a physical incarnation as the King of the World in legendary Shambhala, the land of immortals that flies the Peacock Flag. Shambhala, meaning the “Place of happiness,” is a place designed as eight territories or “petals” and recognized to be the heart chakra of planet Earth. In the center of the planetary heart chakra is the palace of the King of Shambhala, who thus functions as not only planetary monarch but soul of the world (just as the human soul resides within the human heart chakra). According to one legend, the Peacock Angel not only spread his colors around the globe but additionally merged his spirit with that of the Earth and became the world soul. Thus, his physical body is the Earth and his will is reflected in the actions of all creatures that live upon the face of the Earth.  

You also might want to look at Knights Templar and The Mysteries of the Peacock Angel.

Turkey | Tur Abdin | Mor Gabriel Monastery

Lots of news coming out of Mesopotamia. I posted earlier about Midyat, in Turkey, where a refugee camp has been set up to house Syriac Christians fleeing the civil war in Syria. I also posted about the Syriac Christians from Mosel in Iraq who had sought Refuge On Mount Alfaf, about eighteen miles north of current-day Mosul. The plight of Christians in Mesopotamia has continued to worsen; see Ancient Christian population of Mosul Flees Islamic State. Now with the fall of Qaraqosh, Iraq's Largest Christian City, to Jihadists, Syriac Christians in Iraq face annihilation. See ISIS Persecution Of Iraqi Christians Has Become Genocide. Given these conditions, Turkey, which in the past has had its own checkered relationship with its Christian minorities, now appears to be a safe haven for Syriac Christians. 

After visiting Midyat we wandered down to Mor Gabriel Monastery, twelve miles southeast of Midyat and fifteen miles north of the Syrian border. Here, at least, Syriac Christianity appears to be surviving. This is one of the oldest monasteries in the world. It was founded in 397 by Mor (saint) Samuel (d. 433) and Mor Simon (d. 409). Originally it was called the Monastery of Mor Samuel and Mor Simon, but in the seventh century it was renamed Mor Gabriel Monastery after Mor Gabriel (634-668), the bishop of the Tur Abdin Region. Except for brief periods during wars and civil disorders the monastery has operated continuously since the year 397. Visitors are not allowed to wander around the grounds by themselves (although you can stay overnight if you make previous arrangements), but a guide is provided to give you a tour. Our guide, a young Syriac Christian, spoke perfect, unaccented English. 

Entrance to the monastery (click on photos for enlargements)

Entrance to the courtyard

Inner courtyard of the monastery

Monastery grounds

Steeples

This circular room, a later addition to the original monastery, was built in the sixth century with funds provided by the notorious Empress Theodora, the wife of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I. 

Circular Room. The small windows on the dome open on monks’ cells. 

Our guide related that Theodora was born near here, in what is now Syria, and that her father was a Syriac priest. It was this connection with the area and the Syriac Church that motivated her to make a sizable donation to the monastery for the purpose of building this room. This is the sanitized version of Theodora’s background. Most sources do agree that she was born in Syria, but many maintain that Theodora was the daughter of a bear trainer and a professional dancer and actress. They began pimping out Theodora and her sister Komito when they were both pre-adolescents. Theodora quickly began one of Constantinople’s most notorious prostitutes. If we are to believe the Byzantine historian Procopius (c. AD 500 – c. AD 565), who probably knew her personally, Theodora engaged in behaviour which would make even Kim Kardashian blush:

One night she went into the house of a notable during the drinking, and, it is said, before the eyes of all the guests she mounted the protruding part of the couch near their feet and forthwith pulled up her dress in the most disgraceful manner, and did not shy away from displaying her lasciviousness. And though she made full use of three orifices, she often found fault with Nature, complaining that Nature had not made the holes in her nipples larger so that she could devise another variety of intercourse there. Of course, she was frequently pregnant, but by using pretty well all the tricks of the trade she was able to induce an immediate abortion. Often in the theatre too, in the full view of the people, she would throw off her clothes and stand naked in their midst, having only a pair of knickers over her private parts and her groin – not, however, because she was ashamed to expose these also to the public, but because no one is allowed to appear there absolutely naked: underwear over the groin is compulsory. And with this costume she would spread herself out and lie on her back on the floor. Certain menials on whom this task had been imposed would sprinkle barley grains over her private parts, and geese trained for the purpose used to pick them off with their beaks one by one and swallow them. Theodora, far from blushing when she stood up again, actually seemed to be proud of this performance. For she was not only shameless herself but did more than anyone else to encourage shamelessness. And many times she threw off her clothes and stood in the middle of the actors on the stage, leaning over backwards or pushing out her rear to invite both those who had already enjoyed her and those who had not been intimate as yet, parading her own special brand of gymnastics. With such lasciviousness did she misuse her own body that she appeared to have her privates not like other women in the place intended by nature but in her face! And again, those who were intimate with her showed by so doing that they were not having intercourse in accordance with the laws of nature, and a person of any decency who happened to meet her in public would swing round and beat a hasty retreat, for fear he might come into contact with any of the hussy’s garments and so appear tainted with this pollution. For to those who saw her, especially in the early hours of the day, she was a bird of ill omen. (Quoted from Procopius’s Secret History)

None of this mattered to Emperor Justinian, who became besotted with Theodora and eventually married her. As the wife of a Byzantine emperor Theodora might well have wanted to upgrade her image by donating money to religious institutions. Thus she has been memorialized here at Mor Gabriel Monastery. Justinian himself initiated the construction of Aya Sofia in Istanbul, to this day one of the most magnificent religious structures in the world. Maybe he was feeling guilty about marrying a nymphomaniacal prostitute and wanted to do something to atone for it?

Theodora (c. 500 – 28 June 548) portrayed on a mosaic in a church in Ravenna, Italy (not my photo)

This was probably the dining hall in the monastery

A book, I believe a Bible, but I am not sure, in Syriac Script. The Syriac Language is closely related to Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus of Nazareth, leader of the Galileans.

The Syriac Script was based on the ancient Aramaic Script. The Sogdians of Inner Asia adapted the Syriac Script into their own Sogdian Script; the Uighurs in what is now Xinjiang Province in China adapted the Sogdian Script into their own Uighur Script; and later the Uighur Script was used as the basis for the Traditional Mongolian Script. Thus the Mongolian Vertical Script, which is experiencing somewhat of a revival in Mongolia, can be traced back to the ancient Aramaic Script, a variation of which is still used by Syriac Christians in Turkey today. 

Closer view of Syriac Script. 

A Syriac inscription on a wall in the monastery

New addition to the monastery. Local stone carvers and masons have lost none of their traditional skills.

Good example of local stonework