A Beautiful Legacy

I saw some clay pots symmetrically arranged in a orderly row, little vehicles to carry honey, wine, or for transporting water on a hot summer’s day.

I imagined a pair of hands carefully arranging them, neatly packing the smooth carefully worked brownish pots together for the great journey ahead. Other hands laboured nervously, tirelessly organizing things correctly.

All the arrangements had to be appropriate and without error as sustenance and water would be required to survive the long journey for the traveler  and pictures and words necessary to prevent loneliness in those dark moments of self-doubt. The journey to the netherworld is fraught with challenges and tests and one must be prepared adequately to meet those tests.

The traveler would have time to reflect

on found wisdom, missed opportunities and fulfilled aspirations and all knowledge and experience gathered in a typical life because 3500 years would pass before this tomb would be opened in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings. Those clay pots still lay there, somewhat skewered to one side under the shifting movement of the earth, their brownish hue now a dull grey.

We have found more secrets and knowledge of an age long gone and seemingly remote, but we can ask more questions of how this ancient nature was placed and behaved in the universe different from our own. This was a discovery that compelled us to look inside ourselves and question for that brief moment on what we know about human nature and what that ancient traveler knew in his/her wisdom. Despite our age of computers and passive consumerism we share something definite with this traveler, a traveler who perhaps loved, and love and death are inescapably intertwined both breeding wisdom and loss. There is no need to be afraid to love even if there is the risk of loss for the roads of love and loveless both lead to the same destination.

Love breeds compassion and dissolves ignorance, but living in these times occasionally feels like living in a vacuum needing justice and compassion. But seeing that tomb also reminds us that our existence is brief, which should spurn us on to make use of the time we have to fill that void with love and understanding.

This new discovery is our legacy and hopefully in 3500 years from now future generations will discover OUR tombs and we will be their beautiful legacy.