Beyond The Artichokes

In an old “Peanuts” cartoon, Charlie Brown is pictured on the beach, building a beautiful sand castle. When the castle is completed, a very self-satisfied Charlie stands back to admire his sand-made treasure. A single raindrop falls. Then, in the cartoon’s final frame, the rain is coming down in torrents, and Charlie, looking very pensive, says philosophically, “There’s a lesson of some kind in this someplace.”

Tourists who visit the Egyptian Museum in Cairo are likely to hear their guide say, “You could always measure the greatness of an ancient Egyptian ruler by the nature of his burial place. The greater he was, the more elaborate was the preparation of his final resting place.” Actually, these burial customs for Egypt’s high and mighty went through an evolutionary process that culminated in the building of the pyramids. Those mighty pyramids are symbolic of the power and the money and the prestige of their dead occupants. But, standing before these great wonders of the world, any…