Kirkstall Abbey

The church from the chapter house.

The abbot's quarters, from the infirmary complex.

model of the former Cistercian abbey.

Southeast corner of the cloister range.

Kirkstall is definitely worth a visit.

My Dad is the Best

Zoom, beautiful zoom!
On the cathedral west front,
and also inside the nave of St. Thomas church:

My own camera could not capture these details so well.
Dad was so kind to let me take his good camera!
The shields on the capitals are particularly a case in point--
they are too hard to see clearly from the ground,
and this view will help me identify them.

Hatshepsut's Temple at Deir-El-Bahri

This is a detail of a statue of Hatshepsut, the only woman pharaoh in antiquity.
In order to make her claim to be a ruling pharaoh, rather than just a regent or a queen, she depicted herself as a man in art and in (self-created) mythology.
This statute detail of her in the guise of Osiris (Egyptian god of the dead) shows traces of red-orange paint on the face, which was a masculine color. (Women were painted yellow, to show the difference between an indoor feminine complexion and an outdoor masculine suntan.)
Also, she is shown wearing the false beard of pharaoh's (male) authority:

There is a whole row of these statues on the upper facade of her funerary temple at Deir-El-Bahri. Her feet are close together and her arms crossed on her chest, just like a mummy's (Osiris was usually shown swathed as a mummy in art).

Here is a view of the temple as a whole, from further down the valley:

During Hatshepsut's time all that barren rock was enlivened by a small cultivated oasis of greenery, including trees she brought from the fabled land of Punt, where she opened trade to revive the Egyptian economy. My guide book says that they were myrrh trees. You can still see the remnants of their roots at the entrance (they look kind of dry and pitiful, today, but must have been lovely in her time).

Evening Light at Karnak

Our tour visited the great temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak during good evening light, which made me very happy.
The columns in the hypostyle hall are HUGE.
Notice the conveniently placed scale-model person:

Originally the hall was roofed. Only a few of the roof beams survive but some of the slit window panes are still in place. The windows are small (and unglazed), but in that latitude, a little bit of light goes a long way toward illumination.

This view is the hypostyle hall from a distance (out in the court by the eighth pylon, or gate):

Sunset silhouettes palms and the ninth pylon:

Karnak is immense and very grand.

An Nassir Mohammed Mosque (Cairo), 1318 to 1358

The last day of our tour, we had a quick visit to some of the major sites of Islamic Cairo.
I really enjoyed this fourteenth century mosque within the Citadel:

When you walk inside there's a large open courtyard bounded by colonnades and a green dome visible:A corner of the courtyard visible from within other arches:

This is the mihrab wall.
(The mihrab is the niche that faces Mecca,
the direction in which devout Muslims pray.)
Next to it is the pulpit.
The workmanship and decoration is fantastic.

Pendentives and Squinches

I have always had a hard time explaining the difference between a squinch and a pendentive to my students, in part because I have never had good pictures of either.
Well, I just got back from EGYPT and among the hundreds of pictures I took were some mosque ceilings.
This upper one is a squinch,
from the 12th century Al-Hussein mosque in Islamic Cairo:

And this detail shows a dome supported on pendentives,
from the dome of the Muhummad Ali Mosque in Cairo's citadel,
built in the 19th century:

Here are some fancy 14th century pendentives from the An Nassir Mohammed Mosque in the Citadel of Salah-AdDin (Saladin) at Cairo:

Pendentives curve out,
squinches curve in.
I think this will help teach that point more effectively.
I will have many, many more posts to come!

Good Photographs of Carlisle Cathedral

These photos were all taken on Saturday afternoon.
Lovely light on the west end (alas, not the east):

Gorgeous ceiling (restored in the 19th century.
The blue background is silk, which explains the rich color.)

The great east window, from the choir:

A charming detail of an owl seizing its prey, on one of the choir aisle capitals.
(It reminded me of Jennifer!)

Green and Drippy Day Out

Sunday June 1 it rained.
I was in Carlisle, England, and I was disappointed.
I had really wanted nice weather to get good photos of the cathedral east end.
Instead I got bad photos of the cathedral east end.
And despite my umbrella my shoes got soaked up at the Roman fort of Birdoswald while I was sightseeing along Hadrian's wall.
However, the Day of Gloominess had its compensations.
I stopped off to see Lanercost Priory, and am I glad I did!
The rain just added to the romantic ruins atmosphere:

Look at the lush green ferns in the churchyard!
Look at the cool tombstones!
Some of them were practically the size of a single bed headboard.
Taller than me, some of them!

This is the ruined church choir (13th century Augustinian priory).
Very graceful and atmospheric.

And to ice this architectural cake, the refectory undercroft survived (part of the monastic complex) with a really lovely rib vault, as fine as the undercrofts at the more celebrated Fountains Abbey.