Word: empress
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...enormous building "B" is itself a fine example of Roman colonial architecture of the second century A.D. To the east of it, the recently-excavated spectacular ruins of a triple gate (or perhaps quadruple gate--further digging this coming summer will deside definitely) dedicated to a Roman Empress "Julia," have been revealed. This area has yielded superb capitals and marble column bases in a bewilderingly early style of Roman architecture. "In this area," says Hanfmann, "We have plenty of digging yet to be done. Frankly, we barely know where we are at in 'East...
Poet von Hofmannsthal's libretto, embroidered with the common myths of half a dozen cultures, concerns a beautiful empress who is unable to cast a shadow and hence to bear children. In search of a shadow, she persuades a dyer's wife to surrender her own, and thus renounce her power to bear children, for luxuries and an imaginary romance. In a mirage of symbolism about human and superhuman love, selfish and selfless love, the dyer's wife eventually realizes that she loves her husband, and the empress sees that she herself cannot buy love in exchange...
...Siege at Peking, Peter Fleming, an able journalist (onetime London Times correspondent) turned military historian (Operation Sea Lion-TIME, July 22, 1957), does not dwell overlong on the corrupt, decaying empire of the Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi, who was only too glad to turn the wrath of the masses from herself. Instead, he concentrates on the rise and fall of the hordes of shrieking peasants who called themselves "Fists of Righteous Harmony" ("Boxers," said a missionary, giving the rebellion its name). Against them for eight weeks stood a handful of isolated foreigners, including some of the great names of future...
...they did have food (mostly pony meat), champagne from the legation cellars, water, and the certain knowledge that defeat meant death by torture. The grim defense showed the Boxers to be paper tigers. Though the peasants screamed, "Sha, sha [Kill, kill]," they left most of the fighting to the Empress' 6,000-man force of Moslem cavalry. As the siege dragged on. the Boxers posted rewards for dead foreigners-50 taels ($35) for a male. 40 for a female, 30 for a child. Only three rewards were collected. Once, when a drunken Russian stumbled out of the compound...
...woman who started it all, the Empress Tzu Hsi. escaped by cutting her long, lacquered nails and fleeing Peking disguised as a peasant. But soon the allies wanted her back to administer the last years of the wretched empire. In 1901, she returned to Peking, bowed to applauding foreigners, and went back to the Forbidden City. She ruled China for seven more years until her death in 1908, an evil copy of Britain's Queen Victoria, whom she much admired...