To Be Elevated with the Gods and Reign for Eternity

Lintel of Amenemhat I and Deities; limestone, paint; 14 1/2"h × 68"w × 5 1/4"d; ca. 1981–1952 B.C.

O years! and age! farewell:

Behold I go,

Where I do know

Infinity to dwell.

And these mine eyes shall see

All times, how they

Are lost i' th' sea

Of vast eternity: –

Where never moon shall sway

The stars; but she,

And night, shall be

Drown'd in one endless day.

Robert Herrick Eternity

Senusret I could not wait any longer for the throne. While leading a campaign in Libya and safely away from the royal residence, he instructed the royal guards in his absence to assassinate his father Amenemhat I. His father was old and in the 29th year of his reign. But he would not die! Although he had been conferred as co-regent, Senusret I wanted the throne for himself. Now with the deed done, he would have absolute power over the Upper and Lower Kingdoms of Egypt.

Of course, as a result he had to hurry the completion of Amenemhat I’s pyramid tomb and mortuary temple to keep up appearances and appease the Gods. As long as the exterior of the pyramid looked perfect, the interior didn’t matter, that meant cutting corners with mud brick and rubble. Senusret I could also dismantle his father’s last two attempts at building his eternal resting place. The blocks were already dressed, and the structures lay abandoned and incomplete in the desert.

We cannot know with certainty if this is the exact scenario explaining Amenemhat I’s assassination or the reason for the shoddy workmanship for his completed pyramid tomb at Lisht. We do have the facts that Amenemhat I was assassinated in the 29th year of his reign under mysterious circumstances. At the time, his son was on campaign in Libya. In the 20th year of his father’s rule, Senusret I has been named co-regent possibly to ensure his easy and secure succession since Amenemhat I was not of legitimate royal lineage. But even as co-regent, Senusret I would not have had all of the power and status of his father.

It is also true that Amenemhat I’s pyramid was built of inferior materials, especially those materials that would not show on the outside. The pyramid was built primarily of mud bricks and blocks of limestone reused from other monuments. The repurposed limestone blocks still carry the carved reliefs and inscriptions of their former use making it easy to identify their original purpose. The exterior was finished with polished limestone as was usual for the pyramid of an Egyptian king, but this had been stripped off in ancient times and reused for other purposes. The interior mud brick construction has not weathered time well and Amenemhat I’s final resting place that once stood shining bright white in the sunlight at 194 feet, now resembles a hill of sand in the landscape.

The entrance of the pyramid of Amenemhet I at Lisht.

Amenemhat I himself, while serving as Vizier (Chief Advisor), gained the throne of Egypt more than likely by overthrowing king Mentuhotep IV during the king’s troubled reign. Mentuhotep IV’s reign was considered “the 7 empty years” by the records from the time. As the Vizier Amenemhat I held a very powerful position in court. Mentuhotep IV appears to have been childless and with the country in turmoil through difficulties with keeping Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt united, conflicts with Africa and the Near East, and trade problems, Amenemhat I seems to have taken advantage of his position and the unstable political situation and asserted his power to take hold of the throne.

Map of Egypt showing the site of Itjtawy.

Portrait of Amenemhat I.

Soon after Amenemhat I ascended the throne, he moved the capital of Egypt to a new location, 30 kilometers south, away from Thebes, near the Faiyum Oasis, where there was fertile land and he was able to keep a defensive eye on the enemies of Egypt, the Libyans to the west and the tribes of the Levant to the east. He named his new capitol Itjtawy – “the seizer of two lands.” This is in reference to his determination to unite the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt, which had resisted unification even though they had been conquered. It was near Itjtawy that he also established the location of his pyramid complex at Lisht and abandoned the building of all of his other tombs near the former capital of Thebes.

Jean-Léon Gérôme, View of Medinet El-Fayoum, c. 1868–1870

Amenemhat I pyramid complex, site map and satellite view.

It was at the Lisht mortuary complex where the Lintel of Amenemhat I and Deities was found. This relief block was incorporated into the foundation stones of the Amenemhat I’s funerary temple. It is clear from its subterranean position as an infrastructure support stone, that this relief was reused from one of Amenemhat I’s previous building campaigns. The relief is in an excellent state of preservation, still retaining its original color. It depicts the king in the central position, receiving honors during his Sed festival.

Location where the lintel was found on site and it's assumed placement.

The Egyptian Sed festival was a jubilee that occurs during the 30th year of a ruler’s reign. It was designed to test the ability and strength of the king’s competence to continue as a leader of his domain and people. Since Amenemhat I was assassinated in the 29th year of his rule, this relief does not commemorate an actual event, but was designed to convince the future viewer that he was consecrated by the gods to have successfully completed the Sed festival’s tests of endurance and had passed into the realm of an eternal god/king.

Nemes headdress, showing Ureaes on the foreheadand flail in both hands..

Amenemhat I sits enthroned at the center of the relief. Instead of the traditional Nemes headdress, which confers on him his spiritual ascendancy and the right to confer with the gods, he is wearing a wig of tight curls. The absence of the headdress indicates that he had not yet been given his transformation into a deity. He is however wearing other symbols of authority that indicated his rank as ruler. On his head he retains the Ureaes. The Ureaes in the form of a spitting cobra was the protector of Egyptian gods and kings. The image was worn on the forehead of royalty as protection from those who would challenge the authority of the king. It was assumed that it would spit venom into the eyes of the king’s enemies. Amenamhat I also retains the false beard of authority that is part of the ceremonial dress of all gods and kings.

In his right hand he is holding a flail, a symbol of the king’s coercive power to encourage and restrain his people. In his left hand he is holding a mekes object. This object provides the magic granted by Thoth the God of magic for the king to successfully complete with ease the rigors of the Sed festival and ensure his place on the throne for another 30 years. With these symbols of kingly authority, it is visually established that Amenemhat I is the true ruler and worthy of the attentions of the gods who occupy the relief with him.

Amenemhat I faces right toward the standing figure of Anubis, the canine headed god of the Underworld, who ensures that the funeral rites are followed with precision, and who also cares for and guides the soul of the deceased as they embark on their journey to the Otherworld. Here he stands before the king proffering him and ankh on the end of his Was scepter.

Detail of Anubis with his Was scepter to his right.

The God Set.

Anubis’ Was scepter is modified from a shepherd’s walking stick that has a forked end which acts as a snake catcher. It has been stylized to resemble the god Set, the aardvark headed God (this designation is in contention among archeologists) with the forked tail. Set protects Ra by fighting Apep, who in the form of a snake, represents the forces of darkness and chaos. In order for Ra the Sun God to bring the dawn every morning, Set must defeat Apep every night as the two Gods journey through the Underworld of night. The Was scepter gives authority and power over the forces of evil to its holder, which is why it is carried by Anubis as the God of the Underworld. Anubis is offering to Amenemhat I, the ankh, the symbol of life and renewal. This ankh however is presented hanging on the head of his Was scepter, indicating a transferring of primordial power. Through this gesture, Anubis is granting Amenemhat I the gift of eternal life and the status of a God.

Set spearing the snake Apep.

Behind the seated king, Horus, the falcon headed God of the struggle between light and darkness, rebirth, victory, and protector of kings is holding out an ankh toward the king, giving him the gift of millions of future Sed festivals to ensure Amenemhat I’s rule for eternity.

At each end of the relief as witness of this ceremony are the Goddesses Nekhbet and Wadjet. Nekhbet is the goddess and protectress of Upper Egypt. Wadjet is the goddess and protectress of Lower Egypt. The presence of these two goddesses as witnesses to Amenemhat I’s Sed ceremony elevating the king to the status of God and granting him immortality, not only authorizes the advancement of the king’s stature, but also confirms and legitimizes his rule over the two kingdoms of Egypt.

It is difficult to access the aesthetics of this relief since what we see here is only half of the work. The bottom half of the relief is lost. We can fairly imagine what the missing part looks like, but without the actual missing piece, we must speculate on its quality. It can be ascertained that the symmetrical composition, and its stylistic representation of the figures are in keeping with the high-quality of workmanship of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt. In the remaining piece that has come down to us, the main figures show the skill of a master carver, while the linear details seem to have been given over to a lesser hand.

As noted previously, Amenemhat I did not issue from a royal lineage. Although it does seem as though he did come from an upper-class family with connections to the royal family. This, along with his strategic intelligence and military acuity allowed him to rise to become the king’s Vizier. It was through his cunning and political knowledge that he was able to take advantage of an opportunity during a tumultuous time in Ancient Egyptian history when the power of the reigning king was in question and commandeered himself into the position of the king of Egypt. Not having been born into royalty in Ancient Egypt, kept him from being a God on Earth as all Egyptian kings of royal descent had been. But with this lintel, which would have been placed above the entrance of his burial chamber, he was announcing that he had been elevated by the Gods themselves to the position of God King. With this final ascension he would finally be able to take his place, as all other Egyptian kings had before him, in the heavens among the pantheon.

After his father’s assassination, Senusret I ascended the throne and was able to complete the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt that his father struggled with. He established a formal southern border of Upper Egypt which ended the conflicts with the Nubians. Senusret I reigned for 45 years. He built many monuments which stand as a tenement to the age of prosperity he brought through his rule.  

Arthur Bruso © 2024

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Reflections For Our Fifteenth Winter of Holiday Installations

Now in its fifteenth winter, the Curious Matter holiday installation has offered not only a celebration of our communal desire to bring light to this dark time of year, but a meditation on universal truths, and our finest human impulses. Rooted in the rich imagery and symbolism of our Catholic heritage, each installation invites contemplation of the interplay between the sacred and the secular, the intimate and the expansive, and the cherished past and the ever-unfolding present. These installations are guided by a deep reverence for our highest, shared human ideals, and the belief that even the humblest objects can become vessels of meaning and inspiration.

The essays collected in this volume chart a journey of discovery that began with The Madonna Fragment, the diminutive painting that became the centerpiece of our first holiday installation. Though its provenance was unknown, its form evoked the countless Madonnas of Western art, inspiring questions about what we choose to venerate and why. As we wrote then: “The Madonna Fragment, charming and worthy enough in our estimation of appreciation and contemplation, is presented along with a sense of our individual and collective capacity to attach meaning and magic to any object.” This first experiment in holiday storytelling and interpretation invited visitors to attach their own meanings to the fragment, setting a tone of curiosity and open-ended exploration that has guided our tradition ever since.

Our next holiday installation may be considered our most whimsical, diving even deeper into the realm of holiday storytelling. The Relic of 41st Street began as an ordinary, discarded object—a found mannequin leg—but through our holiday lens, it became a vessel for joy, goodwill, and redemption. Its unexpected Baroque charm allowed us to conjure a Dickensian sense of wonder, transforming urban detritus into a powerful seasonal symbol. As we wrote, it reminded us of the season’s enduring power to “generate joy, goodwill, harmony and peace on earth.”

Our installations have evolved, increasingly drawing from our personal collection of Roman Catholic devotions: finely crafted lithographs and prints, to hand-stitched Sacred Hearts, homemade crafts, and sentimental keepsakes. While the objects themselves are steeped in Catholic tradition, the installations aim to highlight broader, universal aspirations: themes of love, forgiveness, sanctuary, community, and the resilience of the human spirit. These devotions invite us to consider not only their spiritual resonance but also their capacity to tell stories of our shared humanity.

Each essay in this collection reflects the collaborative and contemplative spirit of our work. Objects like a popsicle stick church, crafted with care, remind us of personal devotions that exist outside institutional frameworks. Similarly, a bottle whimsy filled with Passion symbols or a hand-carved wooden crucifix offers a glimpse into the intimate ways people articulate their devotion. We’ve also shared works more grandly executed, such as the lithograph The Broad and Narrow Way, which confronts the complexities of moral choice with an intricacy and delightful earnestness.

Over the years, our holiday installation tradition became increasingly shaped by the news of the day. During the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, the installation offered a space for reflection on the sanctity of home as a refuge. As we wrote then, “Home is a comfort, a refuge, the place where we can express who we are, deeply and fully. That is the hope.” In times of social upheaval, the installations became a call to nurture community and connection, as our nation wrestled with questions of justice and equity. “Our exhibition is our gesture of solidarity, mourning, and insistence on the irreplaceable value…of people to commune and celebrate the highest ideals with which we seek to live.”

As we celebrate this milestone, we are reminded of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, who inspired our 2012 installation, Petite Voie. We wrote then of “honoring the spirit of the season and celebrat[ing] the small acts that touch our sentimental hearts. The same hearts that recognize even modest work born of our best intentions can transcend mere sentiment and possess the capacity to inspire us, in ways that may not necessarily be heroic but with significance nonetheless.” This book is a celebration of that ongoing effort.

The essays in this collection offer a window into the ideas and inspirations that have guided our work. They are not only a record of our journey but an invitation—to reflect, to question, and to find meaning in the smallest acts, the simplest objects, and the shared light of the human spirit.

As ever, with warmth, love, and affection,

Raymond E. Mingst & Arthur Bruso, Co-founders, Curious Matter

© 2024 Curious Matter, used with permission

Purchase Fifteen Winters here.

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Light Magic

“One instant is eternity; eternity is the now.

When you see through this one instant,

you see through the one who sees.”

Wu Men Hui-k’ai

The commercial was everywhere that year; the melodious, catchy jingle inviting us all to “Meet the Swinger;” the beautiful, youthful quartet on bikes enjoying a sunny, summer afternoon cycling to a beach picnic; the artfully staged “candid” shots of eating, and fun. The Swinger was a new camera by Polaroid. It was sleekly modern with its white plastic body, designed to look more like an accessory than a piece of equipment. What caught my attention as much as Polaroid’s reputation for instant developing, was that the camera sort of talked to you. When the exposure and focus were correct, the camera would display a bright red “yes” in the viewfinder. The seductive magic of the instant developing of Polaroid film was the game changer. In ten seconds, the photograph would develop, and you could see your image. No more film processing and waiting a week or more for the results. Compared with the far more expensive Polaroids on the market, the Swinger looked like a hip bargain. The price was a major selling point of the commercial – Polaroid claimed that at $19.95 the Swinger was a value. In actuality, it was a bit pricey when compared to the $7.00 Kodak Brownie Hawkeye camera I already had but, after that commercial, my two other siblings and myself were sold. We each wanted one.

On that Christmas, after a season with the commercials filling the television breaks and all of us learning the jingle by heart, my sister, my brother, and I each received the new Swinger camera. It quickly replaced our older Brownie cameras, partly because we were seduced by the new technology of instant developing, and partly because its aura of chicness somehow begged for the camera to be carried around. For me, this allowed for more experimentation and creative exploration.

Since I saw the world through myopic eyes, I was constantly trying to get my camera to capture the world as I perceived it. This meant trying to take close-up images that were beyond the limits of whatever camera I had. I was often disappointed with the results. The perception I had of my surroundings was of small, concentrated vignettes. My way of seeing was focused on the microcosm. Cameras took a more expansive view of wide vistas and full figures. It was my hope and expectation that the new Swinger could be used to record how I viewed the world. But I was to be frustrated again by what I envisioned in my mind versus the limitations of the camera.

Before we had the Swinger, my mother encouraged us children (my sister, my brother and me) who owned cameras, to reserve our use of them to holidays, birthdays, and other special occasions. I assume this was because of the added cost of processing the film, which my parents took on the expense of. This limited the use of my camera and film as art media. With the Swinger, there was no push back from my mother about “wasting film.” This new freedom from guilt helped in expanding my youthful photographic explorations. The Swinger film’s capacity to self-develop almost immediately had me taking a wider range of subject matter. There was something freeing about seeing the results of your vision so quickly. While the Swinger was no better at capturing close-up images than my Brownie had been but, the images were not as much of a disappointment. Since the less than stellar results could be seen as soon as the film was exposed. This allowed for some immediate correction and more experimentation. This did not translate into the Swinger taking superior photographs. On the contrary, the images it produced were low contrast, muddy, small, and dark. If they were not coated with the included lacquer infused sponge, they faded to a sepia, or the photo emulsion was subject to scratch off. Still, my range of subject matter expanded from family occasions to still lifes, pets, toys, and a series of close ups of our Christmas tree and my aquarium. The Swinger became a new tool that broadened and grew my young artistic vision. Before I used the Swinger, I enjoyed the concept of photography as the magic box that recorded the images before my eyes. I never would have thought to carry around a camera as a tool for documentation or art making since its use had been so limited and regulated as mandated by my mother. With the Swinger, all this changed for me. Now, the rules enforced by my parents had been lifted. I was free to use the Swinger as I pleased. I didn’t question the reason; I ran with it. Now I saw the camera as a tool of expression, although as a 10-year-old, I may not have stated it that way. I saw possibilities and I set out to explore them.

While this was a defining moment in my evolution as an artist, in the timeline of a human life it was short lived. In three years, the Swinger fad was waning. My brother and I were moving on to explore a more serious interest in photography and experimenting with darkroom was one aspect. My Swinger photographs were eventually collected from their scattered places, put into and album, set aside and largely forgotten.

As I matured, went to college, and pursued my life, still wondering what vocation I would settle on (I had hoped to be a Botanist). In college I decided to return to my juvenile interest in art and explore it as a vocation. As part of the fine arts program, I began taking photography courses. My pre-college interest in the medium had not waned. I still saw photography as an extension of my creative process. Although, I discovered that photography, as it was taught to me in my classes, had rules. I chafed against these rules. Aspect ratios, perfect contrast, pristine and spotless prints, flawless focus, and editions; none of these things made sense to me as a creative person who wanted to experiment, test, and push limits. To the dismay of my instructors, I often followed my own ideas, and only sometimes tried to please the requirements of the course. By the time I graduated with my degree, I had learned to hate darkroom because of the strictures of precision that had been enforced, and over a course of several years, I rejected most of what I had been taught in photography classes. It was my painting and drawing classes that ultimately influenced my photography. I became more interested in a well-balanced composition, regardless of whatever the aspect ratio of the viewfinder. If that meant cropping the image to achieve that balance, I would do it. Motion blur, out of focus, and dark, underexposed images – anything that seemed to expand the language of photography, started to appeal more to my eye as my work evolved.

I learned a lot from my college art classes. But the biggest revelation for me was understanding the distinction that painting encourages the artist to change what you saw to improve the work, while photography encourages the photographer to record what was seen with minimal manipulation. My objective as an artist was to create a balanced image that would support and project the idea behind it, regardless of the medium. I discovered that this was a (minor) scandalous position while I was in photography classes because of the philosophical and objective differences that were taught between painting and photography. A lot of those differences between the two seemed to be fixed to the notion that a Photographer did not need to have the formal design training of an artist. Photography was rooted on the dependence of the mechanical systems of the camera to do the bulk of the image making. This also expanded to the belief that the better the equipment, the better the photograph. Painting relied on learning the formal skills of drawing, composition, and color theory. There were drawing studies, color pallets and compositional ideas to work out before a work was to be begun. Photography was to be the near instantaneous and intuitive capturing of an image. It was also predicted to become the process that would make everyone an artist and eliminate painting. I insisted on bringing the concepts of painting into my photography classes and upset that insistence on the formulaic and mechanical.

Some years ago, I had the notion that my juvenile photographs were just as valid as my more mature work. With that idea, I began my project Each Age a Lens. Each Age a Lens, revisited photographs I had taken between the ages 6 and 9. These images were my first foray into the medium, and I wanted to bring another life to them. What resulted was a strengthening the images and an interest in the visual anomaly. An intrusive hand in the foreground of an image becomes a compositional device; cropping out extraneous clutter from the edges solidifies the visual harmony. I was reconsidering these images from a different position in my development.

Completing that project successfully had me looking at and reconsidering my Swinger polaroid images, which had been my next big advance as a budding artist. My Swinger photographs are more visually unconventional than the images that made up the Each Age a Lens project. The images of Each Age a Lens are more conventional snapshots. While the polaroid images display none of the qualities of what I was taught or even what I thought were exhibition caliber photographs. Even so, I believed there were qualities about them that had me thinking they would make something that could expand my thinking and get me to consider photography or image making in another way, even in a different way from Each Age a Lens.

The residual artifacts of the instant process, the action of time on the photographs and my desire to make them larger, ultimately compelled me to scan them and create digital images. As digital images, I could then manipulate them further using a computer. There is a lot of surface noise apparent on the Swinger photographs. Some of it is directly related to the basic process: sepia areas from uneven coating of the lacquer, micro bubbles that mar the surface from coating too fast, the uneven distribution of the developing chemicals that leave marks from the roller bars in the camera and bare spots on the image. The surface noise from aging and mishandling was also interesting to me: tape residue from storage in albums, the slight purple cast that the lacquer coating acquires over time, creases and dents that come from poorly preserved prints. These accretions on the photographs I once saw as distractions to the image, I began to find interesting additions, creating layers of visual dimension. The attention of the viewer can move away from literalness of the subject and concentrate on the surface. The “who” or “what” of the image, I hope, becomes less of a concern while the overall work becomes the focus of attention. Through my interventions of cropping, digital cleaning and manipulating contrast and choosing which photographs were worth these interventions, they are no longer simply candid shots of my past. They were transformed from what I intended them to be when I took them. Many modifications were applied to the images, as they were scanned, enlarged, cleaned up and adjusted. In some, the photographic subject may overwhelm the image, making the surface textures an annoying distraction. Others may have too much surface texture which obscures photographic image, resulting in an imbalance between the surface and the image, making for an ambiguity in viewing. Despite these confusing and anomalous results, I devoted my time to recreating them because I valued the idea and the process of reclaiming them.

The Polaroid pictures still remain a testament to a time of youthful exploration and what excited my vision as a pre-adolescent. For a while, they were only artifacts of my history. In some ways, they remain the snapshots taken by my 10 - 13-year-old self and stay as a paralyzed fragment of my past. In other ways, they have been filtered through the present where I have reexamined them for whatever they may have to offer. My interest in how and if I want to present them has changed. There is a pentimento to my work. The Italian concept of repenting. Used in the context of art it becomes a change of the artists mind from a former idea. A reworking. I am looking at what was there for me then in these photographs and what is there for me now.

Looking at my old Polaroid Swinger photographs today, I can remember the circumstances around my taking them, which had more to do with me recording my family and the important objects surrounding my life than learning how to see as an artist. For this new project which I’m calling Light Magic, my interpretation is less about my sentimental feelings toward my family, pets, and the objects, and more about the materiality of the photographs as corporal artifacts, and the accumulations over time on their surfaces. To complicate matters, I could not ignore the obvious and trite imagery, but my intention was to consider the image, the surface texture of the photograph and the poor quality of the self-developing process as a whole. I wanted to depict mystery, ambiguity, and time; more than present a flattering portrait of my family or show a document about my surroundings. I hoped to create a sense of something passing, perhaps a disintegration. Something aging and crumbling, or maybe something that is no longer there.

In Space

You Will Obey Us

Digging

Deep Sea Diver

Purchase Light Magic here.

Arthur Bruso and Curious Matter © 2024

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