Saturday 13 August 2011

encore

Why do you come here? If it isn't because you hope for more Cuppy then I don't know. Anyway, here's some more Cuppy.

Khufu's six wives were probably not much fun. In accordance with custom, he had to marry some of his sisters and half sisters, not to mention one of his stepmothers and perhaps other close female connections with exactly the same line of family jokes and reminiscences. When he had stood enough, he could always go out to Gizeh and rush construction work on their tombs.*

* Queen Merytyetes or Mertitiones, the stepmother-wife, survived Khufu and was passed along to his son Khafre. Odd, I must say.


And, on Alexander the Great:

Asia proved to be a regular paradise. In no time at all, Alexander had killed Medes, Persians, Persidians, Cappadocians, Paphlagonians, and miscellaneous Mesopotamians.*

* 'He boldly proclaimed the brotherhood of man.' - FA Wright.

...

The Persian army was all out of date. It relied chiefly upon the Kinsmen, who were allowed to kiss the King, and the Apple Bearers, or royal guard, who had golden apples on the handles of their spears. Darius believed that if he kept adding more Apple Bearers to his army the Persian Empire would never fall. But life is not like that. Apple Bearers are all right, if you know where to stop. After a certain point is reached, however, the law of diminishing returns sets in and you simply have too many Apple Bearers.

...

Alexander's empire fell to pieces at once, and nothing remained of his work except that the people he killed were still dead. He accomplished nothing very constructive.*

* But see FA Wright on Alexander's work 'above all as an apostle of world peace.'

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