Word: monumented
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There are certain ironies in holding the economics summit at Versailles. The most sumptuous château in France is a monument to royal extravagance. Twice in this century, Versailles has been rescued from near ruin only by generous infusions of American cash...
...however, a newly discovered threat to the 4,500-year-old monument poses fresh problems for conservationists. It has also triggered a scientific and political controversy. A chemical analysis of the Sphinx by K. Lal Gauri, 48, a stone-preservation expert at the University of Louisville, suggests that salt, not wind, is the main cause behind the statue's decay...
...within the stone. In recent years, scientists agree, the salt damage has been accelerated by the Aswan High Dam, more than 400 miles upriver. The new dam has raised the water table throughout the Nile Valley. Another villain has been the high-salt mortar used to restore the flaking monument. "Walking on top of the Sphinx in the morning," says Gauri, "you can hear the stones popping like potato chips...
Gauri's analysis was prompted by the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) and the Egyptian Antiquities Organization (EAO). The agencies set out jointly in 1979 to clean and map the monument. The task of producing a detailed architectural chart of the Sphinx was taken on by Mark Lehner, 32, ARCE's field director. At Lehner's invitation, Gauri visited the site...
...shame that Emerson had to harden into a monument, into mere required reading, or worse, the man superseded by Kurt Vonnegut on the course lists. Too many generations came to regard him as a chill, gnomic bore, the best of American aphorists, no doubt, but also the most relentless ("A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds," "Traveling is a fool's paradise," "... fired the shot heard round the world," and even the 1960s' dreamy license, "Do your thing"). His fatally worthy subjects (Self-Reliance, Prudence, Friendship) have oppressed generations of eighth-grade English classes. People should...