Sex and booze figured in Egyptian rites

BALTIMORE - Today, it sounds like a spring-break splurge on the order of "Girls Gone Wild": Drink huge quantities of beer, get wasted, indulge in gratuitous sex and pass out — then wake up the next morning with the music blaring and your friends praying that everything will turn out all right.

But back in 1470 B.C., this was the agenda for one of ancient Egypt's most raucous rituals, the "festival of drunkenness," which celebrated nothing less than the salvation of humanity. Archaeologists say they have found evidence amid the ruins of a temple in Luxor that the annual rite featured sex, drugs and the ancient equivalent of rock 'n' roll.

Johns Hopkins University's Betsy Bryan, who has been leading an excavation effort at the Temple of Mut since 2001, laid out her team's findings on the drinking festival here on Saturday during the annual New Horizons in Science briefing, presented by the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

"We are talking about a festival in which people come together in a community to get drunk," she said. "Not high, not socially fun, but drunk — knee-walking, absolutely passed-out drunk."

The temple excavations turned up what appears to have been a "porch of drunkenness," associated with Hatshepsut, the wife and half-sister of Thutmose II. After the death of Thutmose II in 1479 B.C., Hatshepsut ruled New Kingdom Egypt for about 20 years as a female pharaoh, and the porch was erected at the height of her reign.

Some of the inscriptions that were uncovered at the temple link the drunkenness festival with "traveling through the marshes," which Bryan said was an ancient Egyptian euphemism for having sex. The sexual connection is reinforced by graffiti depicting men and women in positions that might draw some tut-tutting today.

The rules for the ritual even called for a select few to stay sober — serving as "designated drivers" for the drunkards, she said. On the morning after, musicians walked around, beating their drums to wake up the revelers.

Prayerful party
The point of all this wasn't simply to have a good time, Bryan said. Instead, the festival — which was held during the first month of the year, just after the first flooding of the Nile — re-enacted the myth of Sekhmet, a lion-headed war goddess.

According to the myth, the bloodthirsty Sekhmet nearly destroyed all humans, but the sun god Re tricked her into drinking mass quantities of ochre-colored beer, thinking it was blood. Once Sekhmet passed out, she was transformed into a kinder, gentler goddess named Hathor, and humanity was saved.

Bryan said the festival re-enactment came to its climax when the drummers woke up the celebrants. "The ultimate intention of inebriation is to see and experience the deity," she said.

That's when the Egyptians would ask the goddess to preserve the community from harm. "It was a communal request, not an individual request," Bryan said.

New twists in an old tale
The discoveries at the Temple of Mut parallel historical references to drunken rituals during Egypt's Greco-Roman period. The writer Herodotus reported in 440 B.C. that such festivals drew as many as 700,000 people — with drunken women exposing themselves to onlookers. "More grape wine is consumed at this festival than in all the rest of the year besides," Herodotus wrote. The festival also turns up in chronicles from around A.D. 200.

The new twist in Bryan's work is that such rituals were found to have taken place during a much earlier time in Egyptian history, said Aidan Dodson, an Egyptologist at the University of Bristol. "She's actually found the first definite evidence," he told MSNBC.com.

Dodson agreed with Bryan that getting drunk was definitely part of the ritual. "Clearly the Egyptians enjoyed a drink or three," he said. What's more, the parallels to the Sekhmet myth provide a "good theological basis" for what otherwise might be considered bad behavior.

However, he's not so sure that the sex was a religious obligation. "It's more likely to be a natural result of the vast imbibing of the beer, rather than an integral part of the ritual itself," Dodson said.

Beer, made from fermented barley bread, was the drink of choice for the festival of drunkenness as celebrated at the Temple of Mut, Bryan said. Another ritual, celebrated several months later in the year and known as the "festival of the beautiful valley," called for the celebrants to get drunk on wine, laced with lotus flowers to promote sleepiness. The lotus could also induce vomiting — which is depicted in some Egyptian wall paintings, Bryan noted.

Bryan conceded that she didn't have solid answers for many of the questions surrounding the rituals. For example:

Did the revelers use birth control? (The Egyptians were said to favor natural pastes and suppositories, or perhaps stone amulets that served as intrauterine devices.)

How long did Hatshepsut's porch of drunkenness last, and why was it taken down? (Egyptologists say Hatshepsut's successor to the throne, Thutmose III, obliterated all references to the female king — and her name was a mystery until the damaged ruins were reconstructed.)

Bryan suspects that the festival of drunkenness fell out of favor soon after Hatshepsut left from the scene. By the time of Amenhotep III, less than a century later, references to the rite had faded away. "One can't help but wonder whether individual piety won out over this kind of communal drunk," she said.

But Dodson said the Egyptian rite must have survived in some form long after Hatshepsut. Otherwise, how could it resurface during the Greco-Roman period? "If something dies out, I'm always a bit nervous about the idea of it being resurrected in full form centuries later," he said.

In either case, the debate over sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll in ancient times has added a little spice to the sometimes-staid field of Egyptology. "It certainly seems to have gotten people interested," Bryan acknowledged.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15475319/page/2/

By Branwen Morgan Norwich

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/5323704.stm

Published: 2006/09/07 12:57:05 GMT

© BBC MMVI

Maths theory bags lotto jackpot

from news.com.au

MOST of us believe winning lotto is down to the luck of the draw.

But a syndicate of university professors and tutors in Britain thought it could also be related to the principles of mathematical probability.

And their theory was spectacularly vindicated this week when they matched all six numbers and scooped the $13 million lotto jackpot.

The syndicate, made up of 17 staff members at Bradford University and College, bagged the big prize by using two boxes, 49 pieces of paper and a large amount of brainpower.

But it was far from an overnight success.

Syndicate leader Barry Waterhouse, 41, who works at the design and printing section of the university, explained that the syndicate had been doing the National Lottery for eight years without conspicuous success after it started in 1994 with each member picking his or her own line.

"We just weren't winning with the numbers being picked that way, so we thought of a different method which would mean all 49 numbers would be used,' Mr Waterhouse said.

The syndicate then set up a computer program to check the numbers every week.

It took four years and a total outlay of $8700, but on Saturday, the formula succeeded.

Matching the winning numbers and the bonus ball, they hit the jackpot.

"We just thought that if all the numbers are in use, we must have a good chance of winning and it has proved so, though you never really think it will happen to you, "Mr Waterhouse said. 

Fellow syndicate member David Firth, 63, said: "We have won tenners and the odd 70 quid in the past, but now this is the big one."

Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years' time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said.

Evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics expects a genetic upper class and a dim-witted underclass to emerge.

The human race would peak in the year 3000, he said - before a decline due to dependence on technology.

People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added.

The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the "underclass" humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.

Race 'ironed out'

But in the nearer future, humans will evolve in 1,000 years into giants between 6ft and 7ft tall, he predicts, while life-spans will have extended to 120 years, Dr Curry claims.

Physical appearance, driven by indicators of health, youth and fertility, will improve, he says, while men will exhibit symmetrical facial features, look athletic, and have squarer jaws, deeper voices and bigger penises.

Women, on the other hand, will develop lighter, smooth, hairless skin, large clear eyes, pert breasts, glossy hair, and even features, he adds. Racial differences will be ironed out by interbreeding, producing a uniform race of coffee-coloured people.

However, Dr Curry warns, in 10,000 years time humans may have paid a genetic price for relying on technology.

Spoiled by gadgets designed to meet their every need, they could come to resemble domesticated animals.

Receding chins

Social skills, such as communicating and interacting with others, could be lost, along with emotions such as love, sympathy, trust and respect. People would become less able to care for others, or perform in teams.

Physically, they would start to appear more juvenile. Chins would recede, as a result of having to chew less on processed food.

There could also be health problems caused by reliance on medicine, resulting in weak immune systems. Preventing deaths would also help to preserve the genetic defects that cause cancer.

Further into the future, sexual selection - being choosy about one's partner - was likely to create more and more genetic inequality, said Dr Curry.

The logical outcome would be two sub-species, "gracile" and "robust" humans similar to the Eloi and Morlocks foretold by HG Wells in his 1895 novel The Time Machine.

"While science and technology have the potential to create an ideal habitat for humanity over the next millennium, there is a possibility of a monumental genetic hangover over the subsequent millennia due to an over-reliance on technology reducing our natural capacity to resist disease, or our evolved ability to get along with each other, said Dr Curry.

He carried out the report for men's satellite TV channel Bravo.

    Although I have a soft-spot in my heart for Myspace.com I must say Vox is squisito.  The features are nice and sweet, while I have noticed there is no intrusion of the gigante-graduato profiles that require a few minutes just to load; somedays I really loathe the gigante-graduato profiles on Myspace.com but I suppose the gigante-graduatos sould be praised as a method of self-expression.  I guess my opinion of the gigante-graduatos changes with each passing day.
    Speaking of passing days, I miss my Laura so very much and without her I feel I cannot accomplish my work.  My depression is running deep while my heart continues to sink.  I require a new muse in whom I can once again relinquish my heart to; I really need my inspiration.  But, I feel I will suffer so just as I did with Laura.  Her very presence gave me such unspeakable joy even thought my unrequited love created such unquenchable desires.  In the end, such torture was worth being able to feel love, for I was able to feel--for the first time--that I was alive.
I need a muse, any takers?

Riguardi Migliori,

Francesco Petrarch

P.S.-
Although l'amore è una malattia terminale, I yearn for it.  Is such a desire wrong?