Horrors - Ancient Arms Caches along Sinai's Way of Horus, claims Haaretz

Worryingly close to Rafah, archaeologists have uncovered huge weapons caches in the Sinai, at least according to a report published in today's Haaretz newspaper. It then recaps an agency reporter's tale about 4 Egyptian temples found along the Road of Horus. Reading beteen the lines, it seems that there were no actual weapons left to be found, but impressively big buildings with enough room to store them. Speculative reporting like this shows the same skewed logic that assumed a warehouse in Syrian wasteland which had been visited by North Koreans must hold a nuke reactor and should be secretly obliterated by the IDF. True, too many present day weapons get smuggled into Gaza along these ancient military routes, and then by burrowing under the border fences. Perhaps the headline writer couldn't resist the usual newsy phrases, particularly since the announcement, four months after arrests, that the Sinai was Hezbollah's latest hotspot for plotters.

Arms Storehouse Uncovered in Sinai

Archaeologists exploring an old military road in the Sinai have unearthed four new temples amidst the 3,000-year-old remains of an ancient fortified city that could have been used as a stronghold during the Egyptian occupation of Mesopotamia and Canaan, and to impress foreign delegations visiting Egypt, antiquities authorities announced Tuesday.

Archaeological findings have determined that a series of fortresses were built in the area and were used as weapons storehouses for soldiers traveling northwards. One source, a wall painting found in the Karnak temple in Luxor, depicts 11 strongholds built in northern Sinai

Among the discoveries was the largest mud brick temple found in the Sinai with an area of 70 by 80 meters (77 by 87 yards) and fortified with mud walls 3 meters (10 feet) thick, said Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.

The find was made in Qantara, 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometers) east of the Suez Canal. These temples mark the latest discovery by archaeologists digging up the remains of the city on the military road known as "Way of Horus." Horus is a falcon-headed god, who represented the greatest cosmic powers for ancient Egyptians.

The path once connected Egypt to Palestine and is close to present-day Rafah, which borders the Palestinian territory of Gaza. Archaeologist Mohammed Abdel-Maqsoud, chief of the excavation team, said the large brick temple could potentially rewrite the historical and military significance of the Sinai for the ancient Egyptians.

The temple contains four hallways, three stone purification bowls and colorful inscriptions commemorating Ramses I and II. The grandeur and sheer size of the temple could have been used to impress armies and visiting foreign delegations as they arrived in Egypt, authorities said.

The dig has been part of a joint project with the Culture Ministry that started in 1986 to find fortresses along the military road. Hawass said early studies suggested the fortified city had been Egypt's military headquarters from the New Kingdom (1569-1081 B.C.) until the Ptolemaic era, a period lasting about 1500 years.

In a previous find, archaeologists there reported finding the first ever New Kingdom temple to be found in northern Sinai. Studies indicated the temple was built on top of an 18th Dynasty fort (1569-1315 B.C.).

Last year, a collection of reliefs belonging to King Ramses II and King Seti I (1314-1304 B.C.) were also unearthed along with rows of warehouses used by the ancient Egyptian army during the New Kingdom era to store wheat and weapons.

What was Moses smokin'? Burning bush and divine sounds linked to psychedelics

Like many modern Israelis, Moses may have been stoned while he wandered in the Sinai way back when. At least one Israeli academic, who sampled strong hallucinogenic potions during his own South American fieldwork in the early 1990s, asserts that similar psychedelics derived from the desert acacia or the Bedouin stimulant rue may have fueled the patriarch's religious visions shared with his tribe in the wilderness.

Benny Shanon, a cognitive psychology professor at Hebrew U, has no explicit proof, but revived a venerable controversy in a recent scientific article, Ofri Ilani reports in Haaretz.

“And all the people perceived the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the voice of the horn, and the mountain smoking.” Thus the book of Exodus describes the impressive moment of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

The “perceiving of the voices” has been interpreted endlessly since these words were first written. When Professor Benny Shanon, professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, reads the verse, he recalls a powerful hallucinatory experience he had when he visited the Amazon and drank a potion made from a plant called ayahuasca.

“One of the things that happens when you drink the potion is a visual experience created via sounds,” he says.Shanon presents a provocative theory in an article published this week in the philosophy journal Time and Mind. The religious ceremonies of the Israelites included the use of psychotropic materials that can found in the Negev and Sinai, he says.

“I have no direct proof of this interpretation,” and such proof cannot be expected, he says. However, “it seems logical that something was altered in people’s consciousness. There are other stories in the Bible that mention the use of plants: for example, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden.”

Shanon, former head of the Hebrew University psychology department, said his first experience with ayahuasca was in 1991 when he was invited to a religious ceremony in the northern Amazon in 1991 in Brazil.

“I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations,” he says.

Since that time, he has used it hundreds of times, and has published a book about the plant.

“Hypotheses have been around for 20 years connecting the beginning of religions with psychoactive materials,” Shanon says. He believes the Israelites used two plants in Sinai and the Negev: one of them is wild rue, a hallucinogen used by the Bedoin to this day. However this plant is not identified with any plant mentioned in the Bible.

The acacia tree also has psychedelic properties, Shanon says, which the Israelites could have used. The acacia is mentioned frequently in the Bible, and was the type of wood of which the Ark of the Covenant was made. According to Shanon, he drank a potion prepared from a species of acacia while he was in South America, which caused similar experiences to those produced by the ayahuasca.

Shanon also sees signs of a hallucinogenic vision in the story of the burning bush. “Moses ‘looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed,’” Shanon quotes from Exodus 3:2. Time passes differently when under the influence of the plant, he notes. “That’s why Moses thought the bush was not consumed. It should have been burned in the time he thought had passed. And in that time, he heard God speaking to him.”

“But not everyone who uses a plant like this brings the Torah,” Shanon concedes. “For that, you have to be Moses.”

Shavuot: Thou Shalt Have a Cow

Izzy's first encounter with this peculiar combo-holiday has left her full of good Jewish food...just like on most Israeli holidays. Friends tell me Shavuot commemorates when Moses came down from Mt Sinai with the stone tablets, and by extension celebrates the divine gift of the Torah, and (also) the picking of the first fruit. But surely that does not go all the back to the tasting menu of Eve and Adam, I reckon. Otherwise the day would be a celebration of humankind's fall from grace and the emergence of original sin. Not so auspicious.
To me, it's a timeless harvest fest, with crucial religious overtones. Somehow the day has evolved into a p.r. blitz for the Israeli dairy board as well, according to local reports, and some animal rights folks want this practice to end. Well, Israeli cheese tastes great spread on bread baked from newly harvested and ground wheat. Yum. Unfortunately, many Israelis are lactose intolerant, according to this recent post. Cheesy holidays like these are a challenge.
Apparently, the milk component of this agricultural celebration inspires seasonal squirt gun fights amongst rowdy school kids. Must be symbolic. Udderly symbolic. Just as well that the kids have this to occupy themselves, since Shavuot is like an extra sabbath. Most offices and shops are shuttered in western Jerusalem. This caught many of us off guard, and makes celebrating damn difficult.

Red Sea, red indeed

Izzy took off for the Sinai coast last week, despite the latest terrorism alerts and arrests, and had a blast. No, not literally. We just relaxed and took a pleasant dip in the Red Sea on the far side of the border. This time, during my sixth swim here ever, the water was blood red. Clearly red. Not an illusion.

Scholars always say that the Red Sea's evocative name has nothing to do with its colour, but is derived from a mis-translation of the Hebrew name, Yam suph (ים סוף)--or "Reed Sea"-- the one through which Moses and his Biblical throng made their exodus. Wikipedia's clickable clique notes that this traditional name comes from the Greek Erythra Thalassa (Ερυθρά Θάλασσα), Latin Mare Rubrum, and Arabic Al-Baḥr Al-Aḥmar. The colour red also might indicate the cardinal direction south, or the rich colour of the sunburnt earthen hills that crouch down to the water's edge and get reflected in the waters. Hmmmm. Could have fooled me.
The simplest explanation is that old-time sailors saw red. Check out my photographic proof above, snapped on the Gulf of Aqaba just north of Nuweiba in the Egyptian Sinai one week ago. (On this aerial photo below, it's near the tip of the little watery horn on the right.)


This startling redness was not a smelly slick on top, like the red tides of southern California. It was not a chemical. The pigment was mixed right into the translucent water and it resembled Martian canal-water or a sign from the heavens that blood would flow. Abdullah, a Bedouin scuba instructor, reassured us that this was just algae which overblooms once in a while, whenever the reef fish which usually eat it are in decline. The scientific name of this plankton-like stuff is cyanobacteria Trichodesmium erythraeum, and I even found a microscopic photo.

Alarmingly, the condition means the coral reefs are at risk.

More on Eilat Blast

Well, the Israeli cops tell quite a different tale from the initial Palestinian reports, which should be examined carefully for disinformation. This young Gazan guy, who reportedly was jobless and unable to save his dead baby girl with timely medical help, also lost a good buddy in an Israeli military operation last year. Friends recalled he was depressed, desperate and dangerous. Israeli military intelligence says he travelled through via Egypt, picked up his explosive vest from Islamic urban guerrillas there, crossed the Sinai desert, and hitched a ride into Eilat. An IDF reservist Lt Col who picked him up was immediately suspicious because the glum Arab in a windbreaker did not speak much and looked jumpy. The driver called the cops after he let this hitchhiker off a km out of town, but by then the bomber already had entered the bakery and triggered the blast.
Now security advisers and fence manufacturers may argue that this latest atrocity is reason for a separation barrier to be erected across the Sinai Desert , too. The fence is why attackers from the West Bank have been deterred for 9 months, they say. We shall see.

Dive spots and resorts have been increasingly in the bombers' cross hairs. : Bali (twice), Sharm el Sheik and Dahab in Egypt, Hikkaduwa in Sri Lanka, Antalya in Turkey, Pattani and Narathiwat provinces in southern Thailand. So, best to be careful out there.
(Regional Map by ecanada.com)