Frozen Solid

131 people fell out of the sky the other day, frozen solid in a big aluminum can. The details of this tragedy are rather creepy, but what struck me the most was an image from the crash site. The image of Helios; Greek God of the Sun, hammered into a copper plate a couple of thousand years ago, eventually photographed, printed on what I presume is an adhesive vinyl, and finally stretched across the tail of that great big aluminum can – which until the other day, flew gracefully through the skies the way a god’s chariot might.

It’s odd the various ways we honor or dishonor our ancient ancestors. I remember thinking a decade ago (yes, I’ve thought since!) as I strolled through a disassembled and then reassembled Egyptian tomb in the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art about just how aggressive we are as a culture in our thirst for knowledge. Don’t get me wrong, mummies and all that jazz are one of the most fascinating subjects in my opinion, but in all the articles I’ve half-read (see previous post) and documentaries I’ve seen on the matter, I’ve never heard the question “Are we dishonoring these great civilizations?”.

King Tut (the most glorified ruler of Egypt if I’m not mistaken) was probably fairly comfy in his golden tomb in the warm sands of Giza. He was buried by his now-disbanded civilization in the finest way possible, ready to enter the afterlife which he probably had no doubt in. Will the next great civilization treat our most honorable figures with the same level of indecency? Will Abraham Lincoln be exhumed and paraded around the world?... the solar system? Perhaps through genetic technologies unthought-of his flesh and even his soul will be rekindled and put on display for those curious of The American Empire.

Maybe our rummaging in Egypt is actually the just what it will take for the Pharaohs to see the afterlife. Perhaps that meticulous preservation of flesh is just what will be necessary for science to bring alive their souls someday. Perhaps in their own sense of time (see The Two Ingredients) they have already opened their eyes to the afterlife and are living in nirvana with plasma televisions behind climate controlled glass in a museum somewhere 40 years from now.