Of obelisks and pyramids, meaning in stone
Of obelisks and pyramids, meanings in stone
What does a monument to time really mean? Ask the Sphinx and he will reward you with an impassive, sand-blasted, stare. It took persistent archaeologists, they beloved of the spade and brush, to uncover the secrets of the Valley of the Kings. It is these painstaking individuals who, driven by a passion for knowledge and not a little curiosity, unearthed the pyramids from the soft sand dunes which had covered them over. Archaeologists revealed for the world to see, in tandem with historians, the terrific emphasis the ancient Egyptians placed on the afterlife.
Why do some of us attempt to uncover the past like this? Is it an unconscious but strong bond between the living and the dead? The former, gone before, through the traces and marks they leave behind, bestow meaning and continuity on the latter, the living, who will become, all too soon, the dead in turn. Some cultures have institutionalised this symbiotic relationship in the form of ancestor worship. Others exalt particularly worthy predecessors by burying them in houses of worship or creating hallowed ground in their memory, endowing it with monuments and symbolic eternal flames.
But all this imprinting on the sands of time presupposes that future generations will venerate that which the monument builders thought worthy. Verily there is a tribe spread thin all over mankind that has responded through the millennia. Who are they and what holds them distinct from the herd? They are people who believe that the achievements of past generations have valuable lessons for mankind. They turn this fundamental faith into skills as engravers, restorers, decipherers, interpreters, linguists, scholars of dead languages and obscure dialects, archivists, historians and lovers of old times and artefacts. Quite a few people in the end who stand willing and able to reach out across the mists and veils to the long ago.
So the tomb makers have toiled on through the ages sanguine about their aficionados in the ranks of the unborn. They make their statements to posterity, in forms great and mighty and if time applies a patina and if future generations cannot really understand the importance of mummifying or triumphal arches, then so be it!
The point of all the puissant monuments and tombs is a bid for immortality. If the flesh is dust let it go but let not the legacy also disappear without trace. It is too frightening to contemplate a complete demise of body and soul both. Many an atheist falters on the rock of posterity. The living see children as being their continuity, and not everyone is willing to acknowledge a debt to the dead of other tribes. This is the way of the philistine and the uncaring it breeds trivialises the ignored other, and demeans the posturer too.
So when you walk among the tombs that scatter the plains of Delhi, realise that at a minimum they are living history worthy of respect. I walked among graveyards in different places and saw cenotaphs and mausolea, pyramids and obelisks to record a passing on definitely but also to emphasise the significance of a life and its times.
The terraced cemetery outside Naini Tal on the road going down to the plains is a document to an era in which a lot of people died young. There were no antibiotics then but it didn’t keep away the intrepid. Ranks of serried graves and their inscriptions tell tales of dogged persistence through infant mortality and spouses torn away. They record that death is no respecter of rank, pomp or circumstance. The South Park Street Cemetery in Calcutta houses the grave of Sir William Jones, who founded the Asiatic Society, most significant in the 19th century. Now even though his is the tallest obelisk in the cemetery, his legacy, the Society, has been overtaken by creeping senility and gradual obsolescence.
Sometimes, a mausoleum becomes, and remains, all that it was intended to be. I am referring, of course, to the Taj Mahal. It transcended, perhaps from the laying of the first slab of luminescent white marble, its function as a tomb and transformed itself for all eternity into the world’s greatest monument to love undying.
(714 words)
4th July 1996
By Gautam Mukerji
First published in The Pioneer, India, 1996www.dailypioneer.com as "Of obelisks and pyramids" on July 15, 1996 in the MUSINGS column
What does a monument to time really mean? Ask the Sphinx and he will reward you with an impassive, sand-blasted, stare. It took persistent archaeologists, they beloved of the spade and brush, to uncover the secrets of the Valley of the Kings. It is these painstaking individuals who, driven by a passion for knowledge and not a little curiosity, unearthed the pyramids from the soft sand dunes which had covered them over. Archaeologists revealed for the world to see, in tandem with historians, the terrific emphasis the ancient Egyptians placed on the afterlife.
Why do some of us attempt to uncover the past like this? Is it an unconscious but strong bond between the living and the dead? The former, gone before, through the traces and marks they leave behind, bestow meaning and continuity on the latter, the living, who will become, all too soon, the dead in turn. Some cultures have institutionalised this symbiotic relationship in the form of ancestor worship. Others exalt particularly worthy predecessors by burying them in houses of worship or creating hallowed ground in their memory, endowing it with monuments and symbolic eternal flames.
But all this imprinting on the sands of time presupposes that future generations will venerate that which the monument builders thought worthy. Verily there is a tribe spread thin all over mankind that has responded through the millennia. Who are they and what holds them distinct from the herd? They are people who believe that the achievements of past generations have valuable lessons for mankind. They turn this fundamental faith into skills as engravers, restorers, decipherers, interpreters, linguists, scholars of dead languages and obscure dialects, archivists, historians and lovers of old times and artefacts. Quite a few people in the end who stand willing and able to reach out across the mists and veils to the long ago.
So the tomb makers have toiled on through the ages sanguine about their aficionados in the ranks of the unborn. They make their statements to posterity, in forms great and mighty and if time applies a patina and if future generations cannot really understand the importance of mummifying or triumphal arches, then so be it!
The point of all the puissant monuments and tombs is a bid for immortality. If the flesh is dust let it go but let not the legacy also disappear without trace. It is too frightening to contemplate a complete demise of body and soul both. Many an atheist falters on the rock of posterity. The living see children as being their continuity, and not everyone is willing to acknowledge a debt to the dead of other tribes. This is the way of the philistine and the uncaring it breeds trivialises the ignored other, and demeans the posturer too.
So when you walk among the tombs that scatter the plains of Delhi, realise that at a minimum they are living history worthy of respect. I walked among graveyards in different places and saw cenotaphs and mausolea, pyramids and obelisks to record a passing on definitely but also to emphasise the significance of a life and its times.
The terraced cemetery outside Naini Tal on the road going down to the plains is a document to an era in which a lot of people died young. There were no antibiotics then but it didn’t keep away the intrepid. Ranks of serried graves and their inscriptions tell tales of dogged persistence through infant mortality and spouses torn away. They record that death is no respecter of rank, pomp or circumstance. The South Park Street Cemetery in Calcutta houses the grave of Sir William Jones, who founded the Asiatic Society, most significant in the 19th century. Now even though his is the tallest obelisk in the cemetery, his legacy, the Society, has been overtaken by creeping senility and gradual obsolescence.
Sometimes, a mausoleum becomes, and remains, all that it was intended to be. I am referring, of course, to the Taj Mahal. It transcended, perhaps from the laying of the first slab of luminescent white marble, its function as a tomb and transformed itself for all eternity into the world’s greatest monument to love undying.
(714 words)
4th July 1996
By Gautam Mukerji
First published in The Pioneer, India, 1996www.dailypioneer.com as "Of obelisks and pyramids" on July 15, 1996 in the MUSINGS column
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