The ancient Egyptians loathed the changes that life brings. They sought an untroubled permanence in death. Pharaohs who could afford it built pyramids to shelter them in eternity. Others enshrined themselves differently in stone. One such was Sema-tawy-tefnakht, a blood relative of Pharaoh Psamtik I, who commissioned a stylized likeness of himself in rare and unfrugal alabaster, ordered it set in the temple of Amun at Karnak. Permanence, at least in alabaster, is not man's lot; as time passed, his statue was broken in half and thrown into a pit near the temple. In 1951...
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