https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/547802
The Temple of Dendur
Fifth Sister – 03/08/21
…art is sometimes big, old, and monumental, and, sometimes, something that you are able to touch, if you are careful, if you make it right. For art, here stone chiseled and shaped millennia ago – held, hammered, looked upon and handled by another human being, an artist, or craftsman, or just a laborer – if there ever is “just” anyone, for no person, for no man or woman, is ever “just”. And here the hands helped build a temple, a temple to an ancient Egyptian goddess, the temple no longer where it was built, the goddess not worshipped, no longer remembered as deity, the temple a pile of stones in a museum in New York, an artistic pile, for sure, but a carefully reconstructed pile of stones, artistic even, yes… For is it just antiquity, or the ancient rites of a no-longer used religion, that gives these stones meaning, or is it more the minds and hands that built this temple that now still give it meaning and life – a life different in form from that of ours at this time, for sure, but the same, really, in terms of the human spirit, of the sweat, the strength and tiredness of muscles, the thirst, the longing for the workday to end, yes, the physical, but also the thankfulness for work to feed the kids, to be part of something bigger than just themselves, to feel with hands part of the divine as they understood it, part of their hope for a life of joy and good and peace beyond death – the absolute imperative within us all, given by God to us as part of His image and likeness.
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