Egyptology

The digital Ozymandias: Egyptologist Peter Der Manuelian on his mission to make Giza last forever

The Giza Plateau is perhaps the first location that springs to mind when we think about Ancient Egypt. With its collection of pyramids, temples and monuments, all watched over by the Great Sphinx, the area has fascinated visitors for thousands of years. Its structures, often decorated with magnificent inscriptions, paintings and sculptures, have been around for so long that it’s only natural to assume that they always will be. Yet the years have not always been kind to Giza. The challenge of preservation has become even more critical than back in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s day when he wrote “Ozymandias,” his contemplative poem about the passage of time.

Giza

Netflix’s Queen Cleopatra girlbosses against historical fact

The most controversial aspect of Netflix’s new drama-documentary Queen Cleopatra — not least in Egypt — was the casting of a black actress, Adele James, in the title role. After all, one of the few things that seems certain about Cleopatra’s early life is that she was a Macedonian Greek. Luckily, though, the show had a powerful counterargument to this awkward and Eurocentric fact. As the African-American professor Shelley P. Haley put it with a QED-style flourish, back when she was girl, her beloved (if uneducated) grandmother once said to her: "I don’t care what they tell you in school, Cleopatra was black.

queen cleopatra netflix

In defense of Joshua Katz

Last July 17, my daughter, Solveig Gold, married (then) Princeton professor Joshua Katz. It was a glorious, indeed transcendent (as one friend put it) celebration of the glory of God and the power of love — attended by a large gathering of the canceled, the not-yet-canceled and a lucky few who are seemingly uncancellable. Last month, as the world now knows, he was fired. If you haven’t yet read Solveig’s piece in Bari Weiss’s Substack, put mine aside and read hers first. It is beautiful and inspiring. Mine, by contrast, is merely mad as hell. In July 2020, Joshua published a piece in Quillette taking vigorous exception to the now infamous July 4 “Princeton faculty letter.

joshua katz