![]() |
Hilde Honerud Gym #16 2021 inkjet print KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo |
![]() |
Edgar Degas Le Bain ca. 1895 oil on canvas Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh |
![]() |
Hyacinthe Rigaud Portrait of Suzanne de Boubers de Bernâtre, wife of Balthasar Keller 1686 oil on canvas Kunsthaus Zürich |
![]() |
Robert Skala Still Life with Oranges ca. 1920 oil on canvas Belvedere Museum, Vienna |
![]() |
Robert Rauschenberg Tree Frog 1964 screenprint and oil on canvas Museum Ludwig, Cologne |
![]() |
Britt Juul Untitled 1999 acrylic and oil on canvas KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo |
![]() |
Giorgio Glass Vesuvius in Eruption 1805 gouache on black paper Belvedere Museum, Vienna |
![]() |
Albrecht Dürer The Virgin in Prayer 1518 oil on panel Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
![]() |
David Hopper Artist's Model 1991 glass National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne |
![]() |
Barbara Hanrahan Anatomical Study I 1966 color etching Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide |
![]() |
Tor Hörlin The Music Room 1942 oil on canvas Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden |
![]() |
Andy Warhol Electric Chair 1967 screenprint and acrylic paint on canvas Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
![]() |
Kerstin Abram-Nilsson Scene from We (and They) ca. 1965 color etching Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
![]() |
Anthonie Schotel Still Life with Oranges in a Bowl ca. 1920 oil on canvas Dordrechts Museum |
![]() |
Louis Rhead Read The Sun 1894 lithograph (poster) Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
![]() |
Julius Klinger Die Woche (film based on novel by Georg Engel) 1913 lithograph (poster) Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
Kalasiris repeated to Charikleia all that the old woman had said, and together they moved away. After stepping over the corpses for a short distance, they found a little hillock, and there Kalasiris stretched himself out, pillowing his head on the quiver, while Charikleia sat, using her pouch as a seat. The moon had just risen and was bathing the whole scene in bright light, for it was the second night after the full moon. Kalasiris, naturally enough for an old man, especially one fatigued by his travels, lay fast asleep, but the anxieties that beset Charikleia kept her awake; and thus she found herself witnessing a performance which, abominable as it may be, is common practice among the women of Egypt.
Supposing herself now secure against any intrusion or observation, the old woman began by digging a pit, to one side of which she lit a fire. After positioning her son's body between the two, she took an earthenware bowl from a tripod that stood beside her and poured a libation of honey into the pit, likewise of milk from a second bowl, and lastly of wine from a third.* Then she took a cake made out of fine wheat flour and shaped into the effigy of a man, crowned it with bay and fennel, and flung it into the pit. Finally, she picked up a sword and, in an access of feverish ecstasy, invoked the moon by a series of grotesque and outlandish names, then drew the blade across her arm. She wiped the blood onto a sprig of bay and flicked it into the fire. There followed a number of other bizarre actions, after which she knelt over the dead body of her son and whispered certain incantations into his ear, until she woke the dead man, and compelled him by her magic arts to stand upright.
*this scene is intended to recall the episode in the Odyssey (11:24) when Odysseus summons the spirits of the dead:
I, drawing from beside my thigh my sharp sword,
dug a pit, of about a cubit in each direction,
and poured it full of drink offering for all the dead, first
honey mixed with milk, and the second pouring was sweet wine,
and the third, water, and over it all I sprinkled white barley.
– Heliodorus, from The Aethiopica, or, Theagenes and Charikleia (3rd or 4th century AD), translated from Greek by J.R. Morgan (1989)