Adventure travel meets faith: cycling to Mecca for the Hajj

by Sean McLachlan on


Two Muslims from South Africa mixed adventure travel and spirituality this year by cycling to Mecca for the Hajj. Natheem Cairncross, 28 and Imtiyaz Haron, 25, cycled through South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, Turkey, Syria and Jordan. Visa problems with Sudan and Ethiopia meant they had to take a plane from Kenya to Turkey, but that doesn’t lessen their achievement.

In an interview with the BBC, Cairncross said the 6,800-mile journey was a life-changing experience. Both had to sell possessions to raise money for the trip. Cairncross even sold his car. Yes, he had a car and he decided to go by bike.

The Hajj is the traditional pilgrimage to Mecca that every Muslim should do at least once in their lifetime if they are able. Currently the Empty Quarter Gallery in Dubai is exhibiting photos and recordings made by Dutch explorer Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje in 1885. Check out the link for some amazing early images and eerie recordings made on wax cylinders that had only recently been developed by Thomas Edison.

[Image courtesy Ali Mansuri via Wikimedia Commons]

Art thought destroyed by the Nazis is discovered

by Sean McLachlan on


The Nazis called it “Degenerate Art”, works that didn’t conform to their taste for Germanic propaganda. Anything too experimental, anything too avantgarde, anything too Jewish, got locked away or destroyed.

Before they did that, however, they held the art up to public ridicule at a 1937 exhibition called Degenerate Art. Thousands of Germans went to this exhibition, although it’s hard to say how many came to lap up Nazi propaganda and how many came for a last look at works they assumed they’d never see again. The photo above shows Hitler visiting the exhibition. Notice how the paintings are hung at angles and angry graffiti is scrawled all around them.

Now a treasure trove of art long thought to have been destroyed by the Nazis is on display at Berlin’s Neues Museum. Eleven sculptures that were part of the Degenerate Art exhibit were found in a rubble-filled cellar on Königstrasse in Berlin. Like most of the city, this street was hit hard in the war and when new buildings were put up, they were built on the rubble of previous buildings. Archaeologists excavating ahead of a new subway line discovered the art.

It’s unclear how these sculptures survived. One theory is that someone who loved beauty more than Hitler hid them away in an apartment that was later destroyed. All the sculptures are fire damaged and some had to be pieced back together, yet this has only added to their dignity. The German magazine Der Spiegel has an excellent photo gallery of the sculptures.

[Photo courtesy Tyrenius via Wikimedia Commons]

Indiana Jones exhibit whips up international tour

by Sean McLachlan on

He’s everyone’s favorite fictional archaeologist. Even real archaeologists, once they’re done nitpicking his lack of scientific technique, usually admit that they love the guy. Now Indiana Jones is the subject of a new international exhibition.

Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology: The Exhibition will open at the Montreal Science Centre on April 28, 2011 to mark the 30th anniversary of the release of the first movie in the series. Tickets are already selling fast.

The exhibition will include clips and memorabilia from the movies, as well as an educational component to show the public that archaeologists don’t generally carry bullwhips and get into fights with evil cults. My own Masters program offered no classes on bullwhip technique, but that lecture I attended on Aztec human sacrifice certainly convinced me that not all religions are created equal. On one excavation I got too close for comfort to a Palestinian viper and nearly had a 3,000 year-old wall fall on me, so it’s not all libraries and dusty museums.

The educational portion of the exhibit is being planned by Frank Hiebert, the Archaeology Fellow for National Geographic. Real archaeological artifacts from Quebec and around the world will be on display and visitors will learn the painstaking processes archaeologists use to piece together the past. It’s not as exciting as being chased over a rope bridge by sword-wielding cultists, but it’s still pretty cool.

Interactive displays will explain some of the myths behind the movies such as the stories of the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail.

Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology: The Exhibition will run from April 28 to September 18 before going on an international tour. Not all dates and locations are set, so check the official website for updates, and stayed tuned here to Gadling.

[Photo courtesy user Insomniacpuppy via Wikimedia Commons]

Katrina exhibit opens in New Orleans

by Sean McLachlan on

It was the most catastrophic event in New Orleans history. Hurricane Katrina destroyed large swathes of the city and left hundreds of thousands homeless. Now the Louisiana State Museum has opened an exhibit chronicling the natural disasters that have visited New Orleans, culminating in the most recent and worst.

Living with Hurricanes: Katrina and Beyond, a 6,700 square-foot multimedia exhibition, opened this week. The show traces the history of the city’s relationship to the elements and explores how such disasters can be averted in the future. Interactive displays show how hurricanes form, why they are so prevalent in the Gulf, and how Katrina broke the levees and caused such widespread destruction.

Many individual stories are told, like that of Ken Ballau, who used his boat to rescue four hundred stranded civilians. His boat is part of the display. Claudio Hemb’s jeans are exhibited too. Thinking he was going to die, Hemb wrote his and his wife’s names, her phone number in Houston, his social security number and blood type on his pants so his body could be identified and his wife informed.

The museum hopes the exhibit will act as a catharsis for New Orleans residents, as well as educational for the thousands of out-of-towners who visit the museum every year.

[Image courtesy U.S. Coast Guard]

Major new exhibition at British Museum: Egyptian Book of the Dead

by Sean McLachlan on


For four thousand years it was the cornerstone of Egyptian religion. It started as a few prayers said in prehistoric times before a body was laid to rest in the desert next to the Nile. As the civilization in Egypt grew the prayers and spells became more elaborate, as did other rites for the dead. They were written inside pyramids and other tombs. Eventually the various rituals and spells were gathered together to create what we call the Book of the Dead. It’s made up of numerous chapters in no set order. Individual chapters or groups of chapters were written on tombs, sarcophagi, and rolls of papyrus. The book survived, with various changes and variations that Egyptologists are still puzzling out, until the Christian era.

One of the foremost institutions for collecting and studying the Book of the Dead is the British Museum in London. Now the museum is opening up its archives for an exhibition of its amazing collection of this esoteric masterpiece. Journey through the afterlife: ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead features items rarely if ever seen by the public, including the Greenfield Papyrus, the longest scroll of the Book of the Dead at 37 meters. Other items like sarcophagi and tomb figurines will give a complete view of the ancient Egyptian cult of the dead.

The papyri are elaborately illustrated with scenes of the gods and the toils a spirit must go through in the afterlife. In the above scene Anubis leads Hunefer, a dead scribe, to a scale, where his heart will be weighed against the feather of truth. A wicked heart will be heavier than the feather and the monster Ammut, crouching below the scale, will eat it. This image is from the Hunefer Papyrus and will also be on display at the exhibition.

For a taste of what you’ll see, check out the online scan of the complete Papyrus of Ani.

Journey through the afterlife: ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead runs from 4 November 2010 to 6 March 2011.

[Photo courtesy Jon Bodsworth via Wikimedia Commons]