Carved in Rosetta Stone

Ok, Ladies and Gentlemen it seems I'm back, after feverous nights and everything that comes along...

UK goth band Rosetta Stone (formed in 1988) was a fabulous and important '90s goth band with a strong cult following back then. The "Quarriers" know...
It also happens to be the name of the most visited object at the British Museum, the one visitors see first as the enter the mighty building...
Let's see...

The real Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian black granite monumental stele (flat vertical stone monument or column)  inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. 
This fragment of a larger stele, was rediscovered near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta in 1799 by a soldier, Pierre-François Bouchard, of the Napoleonic French expedition to Egypt, who was checking building material for the construction of military fortification!
It is considered as one of the main findings that has enabled scientists, decode ancient egyptian hieroglyphs. This is mostly due to the fact that the inscribed decree appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic (late egyptian) script, and the lowest Ancient Greek. Because it presents essentially the same text in all three scripts (with some minor differences between them), it provided the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The text was written by a group of high-priests in Egypt to honour pharaoh Ptolemy V and lists all of the things that the pharaoh has done that were good for the priests cast and the people of Egypt.

British troops defeated the French in Egypt in 1801, and the stone came into British possession. Transported to London, it has been on public display at the British Museum since 1802!

One of the first to announce the complete deciphering of these inscriptions was french teacher and orientalist Jean-Francois Champollion in 1822. He happened to know Greek and Coptic at the time -Coptic being a Demotic related language- a fact that was important in finding out that all three texts were the same...

All those who have seen it know it's an impressive black piece of mystery...

Oh, by the way, the first word that Champollion was able to identify was "Cleopatra"...

Rosetta Stone today is also used in other contexts as the name for the essential clue to a new field of knowledge.

That's all for today folks!

Keep "an eye for the main chance"...

Southern Death Cult, Trager and a tragedy

On December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek, in the Lakota (Sioux) Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, USA the last act of the American Indian Wars took part. 

On the day before, a detachment of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment (the one that was defeated by indians on the famous Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876) commanded by Major S. M. Whitside intercepted a bunch of Sioux camped

in Wounded Knee Creek.

The Cavalry Regiment surrounded the encampment supported by four heavy machine guns.

On the morning of December 29, the troops went into the camp to supposedly disarm the Lakota. On pretext of denial of surrender by an elder indian, the 7th Cavalry opened fire indiscriminately from all sides, killing men, women, and children, as well as some of their own fellow troopers. 

By the time it was over, at least 150 men, women, and children of the Lakota Sioux had been killed and 51 wounded (4 men, 47 women and children, some of whom died later); some estimates placed the number of dead at 300. Twenty-five troopers also died It is believed that many were the victims of friendly fire...

It was officially named a battle when it was obviously a massacre...

This is the story that lies behind the-at first weird-photo that Southern Death Cult used on the back cover of their firat 7"single Fatman/Moya in 1982 on Situation Two records (SIT19). Mind you that the same 12" that contained one more song had a completely different sleeve.

To complete the story, George Trager was the first photographer on the scene after the massacre. He took a number of images on January 3, 1891, as U.S. troops began collecting and burying bodies left on the field. This iconic image was entitled "Chief Big Foot Killed in the Battle at/ Wounded Knee/ with his Full Band by the/ 7th Cav. Dec. 28th, 1890/ Copyrighted Jun 1st 1891/ N.W. Photo Co., Chadron/ Neb."

Another still from this event displays, the also frozen corpses,  of medecine-man Yellow Bird and -possibly- family. Remember that at he time photos like these served as means of anti -indian propaganda so note how the odd posture of the frozen corpses betrays the fact that they were turned over to cover the fact that many of them were shot at the back...