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Sri Lanka vs. Egypt

PRIMORDIAL Sri Lankan and ancient Egyptians believed in curses and spells. In secret venues treasures were buried for the benefit of their future dynasties if they engage in decisive wars.
Belief was rampant in ancient world that some spirits of the dead reborn as dreadful demons dying under horrified conditions. Bahirawa and thereby impose the curse effectively. Before burying their treasures, kings got powerful Kattadiyas to kill a kulundul child (first born to parents who themselves were first born in their respective families) as a billa or human sacrifice, and thereafter bury the fresh corpse along with the treasure and a written curse or spell to be effective upon anyone who would attempt one day to recover the buried treasures.

Were the ancient kings of Sri Lanka influenced by the esoteric Egyptian practice of curses and spells? I discovered 36 mysterious parallels between ancient Sri Lanka and Egypt, and explained them in my book, "Alien Mysteries in Sri Lanka and Egypt, the New Version
They say magic originated in Egypt. Religion, medicine, technology, and what we would call magic coexisted in the Land of the Nile, without apparent conflict.
Everyone resorted to magic, from the pharaoh guarding his country with elaborate magical rituals to the expectant mother wearing amulets to safeguard her unborn child.
Egyptian magical thinking had an all-pervasive influence over all monotheistic religions of the world. It also continued to influence the ancient cultures of the world, such as Europe, Mexico, India and Sri Lanka.
The dead, their resting places and whatever valuables buried with them in ancient Egypt needed protection and, as history has proven, ancient curses turned out to be most effective. Amulets were worn by the living and given to the dead to empower and ward off evil. Some mummies had dozens of scarabs packed into their bandages.
The word, spoken or, perhaps even more potent, written, was the means to influence other beings and bend them to your will.
Many spells required the use of special foodstuffs, magical implements, figurines, talismans and the like. Animal figurines were among the equipment of tombs. Very popular were hippo talismans.
Vessels, lamps, knives and other utensils were used. Blood (of smun-geese, hoopoes, nightjars, worms, puppies, humans etc), semen, oil and water were mixed with other animal or plant matter.
Another form of protection in Ancient Egypt was the use of magic and spells. Egyptians had many uses for magic and spells. They used spells to protect their tombs. Everyone in Egypt used magic. Pharaohs used magic to protect their families. Magic was also used to ward off injuries.
Egyptian curses have been popular in movies. In such movies, usually an Egyptian mummy would come to life. The first movie about Egyptian curses was The Mummy, made in 1932. There have also been horror films about Egyptian curses.
In ancient Egypt it was believed that magical knowledge and power emanated from the gods and was bestowed upon their servants. When dealing with their gods in burial rites, the Egyptians used great care. Their gods were powerful and highly respected.
Both the living and the dead went to great lengths to receive the blessing of the gods. Hymns of praise were composed and recited, written down on papyrus and put in the tombs. Offerings of food, real or carved on walls, were supposed to satiate the god's hunger and thirst.
Lesser magical powers like demons, spirits or the deceased did not quite warrant the same amount of respect. They were the main agents of magic and were invoked by simple means.
There are many theories about Egyptian curses. It was rumored that carved in the en-trance of King Tutankhamun's tomb were these words: Death shall come on swift wings to him who disturbs the peace of the king. In fact, those words were never found there.
Egyptians never put curses on their tombs. Although Egyptians never used curses, there is a scientific theory that could explain the many deaths of those who entered Tutankhamun's tomb.
Mold spores grow on mummies over time. Most spores are harmless, but some can be deadly and toxic. Toxic spores on the king's mummy could have blown into the people inside the tomb, which could have led to their deaths.
Tutankhamun, the boy king, died in his late teens and remained at rest in Egypt's Valley of the Kings for over 3,300 years.
All that changed in November 1922, when the British Egyptologist Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamun's tomb, while he was excavating on behalf of his patron Lord Carnarvon.
More than the priceless treasures discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter and his team, what sent the world's media into a frenzy was the bizarre pharaonic curse that supposedly came down upon all those involved in the historic discovery, after the final wall of the sealed burial chamber of the boy pharaoh was breached for the first time in 3,000 years on 17 February, 1923.
When Lord Carnarvon, aged 57, died on 5 April 1923, seven weeks after the official opening of pharaoh Tutankhamun's burial chamber, rumours were rife about a curse.
The death of Lord Carnarvon, caused by pneumonia resulting from infection after a mosquito bite, added another twist for eager journalists. All sorts of links were found.

Continued in col. 3

Wisdom and learning in Jaffna

Rajan Hoole hails from an illustrious Jaffna family that churned out men of almost intimidating intellectual stature. His appointment as Vice Chancellor of the Jaffna University has been greeted with howls of protest, not entirely surprising since this chap Hoole, as the rest of his family, is a man belonging to that intimidating Hoole family tradition.

Hoole lives but his intellectual peers such as Rajini Thiranagama had their lives snuffed out. Hoole's appointment as VC is now being resisted in trouble-enveloped Jaffna which has been identified more than any other Sri Lankan city save perhaps for Peradeniya with intellectual and scholarly ferment.

It would have been comic if it wasn't so tragic that its in this city that Hoole's appointment is subject to a rather boorish challenge by various elements who identify themselves as being pursuant of the Jaffna intellectual tradition.

They say that Hoole is a fool who turned his back on Jaffna's paramount concern of the age and everyone knows what that's supposed to be, correct? But it was second nature for Hoole to protest when Jaffna's intellectual life came under heavy cannon-fire from the various party sycophants hacks and soap box orators who were in their estimation upholding any Jaffna man's credo which was for independence from the bonds that tied them to the Sri Lankan Sinhala state.

Any other form of domination or intimidation has to be tolerated until the final emancipation from this bondage was accomplished, or so went the theory.

It was the most egregious kind of linear thinking that those who grew up in Jaffna's intellectual tradition such as Hoole could not relate to or identify with. Rajini Thiranagama resisted this kind of apostasy with a spirited vehemence that transformed her into a bicycle riding irrepressible and irreverent sadhu-like legend in her own time.

Before she or her intellectual compatriots knew it, they were deemed to have crossed the line. Their intellectual life came under scrutiny of the crosshairs of Jaffna's moral police and anyone who would knows anything about Jaffna's conflict culture would know what that means.

But, Hoole stubbornly persisted in his scrutiny of human rights violations in Jaffna, and in so doing he kept faith with the highest intellectual traditions that all of Jaffna has sworn by for generations.

It's this same Rajan Hoole who has now been appointed Vice Chancellor of the Jaffna University under the hand of the President. Ostensibly the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are not hysterical about this exercise of Presidential prerogative.

What we hear is the regular fairy story that the ''people of Jaffna'' not to mention its student population are rankled by the fact that Hoole was appointed

So here we are, hearing the same litany that Jaffna needs to be saved from its most illustrious products, which we are told is the opinion of Jaffna's scholarly student population which grew up adoring the same heady intellectual culture in which their mentor, the Vice Chancellor of the Jaffna university grew up and was nurtured.

We take it then that there is some anti-learning bug that has bitten the Jaffna student populace, which should be scary to the LTTE, which fiercely protects the Jaffna Tamil heritage of scholarly pursuit as an end in itself.

We would have to believe that the LTTE is scared, going by what the organisation's theoreticians have written by way of defending the culture and ethos of the Tamil majority North and East and of Jaffna.

In that context, we daresay that this organisation, rebellious in the grain, would applaud the appointment of Hoole, as the man has been unwavering in his pursuit of his ideal in life, as much as the LTTE hierarchy has been steadfast in their pursuit of their own ideals which they swear by.

The newspapers

Rupert Murdoch, press-baron at large, says that the media has to change with the technology or die. That's the Murdoch-endorsed truth, but in Sri Lanka we find that the media is not changing, and neither is the technology.

Well, that is not strictly true, but technological change in this country is so eerily slow it makes one wonder if we are on the information super highway or on the gravel road that is leading to it. At some press offices, we are told, or maybe we can be sure, the technology still caterwauls at cartwheel pace.

But, the technology outside is moving. That's outside the country, and on each individual's laptop or desktop. If press barons here do not keep pace with this movement of technology, we including those in this newspaper can be obsolete sooner than Murdoch can utter the word 'takeover.'

Creeping obsolescence is not a pleasant feeling; but need we be intimidated or cowed by the marauding heft of the electronic age? That will be like resisting the wave, and crashing with the surfboard. We can surf the technology wave and enjoy it, or perish. But, could the Sri Lankan media take that challenge?

From col. 1

The lights of Cairo were said to have gone out at the moment of his death (not an uncommon occurrence back then), while at Lord Carnarvon's country house in England, his dog, Susie, began baying and howling - a bloodcurdling, unnatural lament which shocked the domestic staff deep in the middle of the night. It continued until one last whine, when the tormented creature turned over and died.
A cobra mysteriously killed the pet canary of the tomb's discoverer, Howard Carter, on the day the tomb was opened. This was interpreted as retribution for violation of the tomb, particularly as a cobra was depicted on the brow of the pharaoh from where it would spit fire at the king's enemies.
According to one list, of the 26 individuals present at the official opening of the tomb, only one lived to a ripe old age. Was this a bizarre coincidence? Or was it the manifestation of a curse that had passed down through the centuries?
It was rumoured that the final blow of the excavators' pick had set free the Curse of the Pharaoh. Lord Carnarvon had never taken lightly the threats of ancient Egypt's high priests.
In England before his expedition had set out, mediums whom he consulted in England had prophesied his impending doom.
But for Carter and Lord Carnarvon, who had financed the dig culminating in history's greatest archaeological find, all thoughts of curses and hocus-pocus were forgotten as they reveled in the joy of the victorious end to the dig.
The site of Luxury had escaped the attention of grave robbers down through the centuries, and the treasure-packed tomb was a find beyond compare.
The newspapers of the day were quick to speculate that such eerie happenings were caused by the curse, an untapped source of evil which Carnarvon and Carter had unleashed.
Their sensational conclusion was reinforced when, two days after Carnarvon's death, the mummified body of the pharaoh was examined and a blemish was found on his left cheek exactly in the position of the mosquito bite on Carnarvon's face.
Perhaps this could have been passed off as coincidence had it not been for the bizarre chain of deaths that were to follow.
Shortly after Carnarvon's demise, another archaeologist, Arthur Mace, a leading member of the expedition, went into a coma at the Hotel Continental after complaining of tiredness. He died soon afterwards, leaving the expedition medic and local doctors baffled.
The deaths continued. A close friend of Carnarvon, George Gould, made the voyage to Egypt when he learned of his fate. Before leaving the port to travel to Cairo he looked in at the tomb.
The following day he collapsed with a high fever; twelve hours later he was dead. Radiologist Archibald Reid, a man who used the latest X-ray techniques to determine the age and possible cause of death of Tutankhamun, was sent back to England after complaining of exhaustion.
He died soon after landing. Carnarvon's personal secretary, Richard Bethel, was found dead in bed from heart failure four months after the discovery of the tomb. The casualties continued to mount.
Six years after the discovery, 12 of those present when the tomb was opened were reported to have died mysteriously. Within a further seven years only two of the original team of excavators and a further 21 people connected in some way with the dig, were also reported to have died mysteriously.
Of the original pioneers of the excavation, only Howard Carter lived to a ripe old age, dying in 1939 from natural causes. Was the legend of Tutuankhamun's curse a pure myth?
A recent study of journals and death records indicates no statistical difference between the age of death of those who entered the tomb and those on the expedition who did not. Indeed, most were found to have lived past 70.