Word: ruler
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Ninth- and 10th-graders from the Eagle Academy in Poughkeepsie, New York, used the computer's protean powers of simulation to build a virtual replica of the Gilgamesh myth. Not only are the details of the Sumerian ruler's life re-created, but visitors who log on also get to play at being king for a day, at least in cyberspace...
...lower level, bringing the total number to more than 100. That would make Tomb 5 the biggest and most complex tomb ever found in Egypt -- and quite conceivably the resting place of up to 50 sons of Ramesses II, perhaps the best known of all the pharaohs, the ruler believed to have been Moses' nemesis in the book of Exodus. Says Emily Teeter, an Egyptologist with Chicago's Oriental Institute Museum: "To find large tombs is one thing, but to find something like this, that's been used for dozens of royal burials, is absolutely amazing." The cheeky London Daily...
...though many Westerners probably don't connect the name with the fame. In Exodus he is simply known as "Pharaoh," and Shelley's poem Ozymandias, inspired by the fallen statues at the Ramesseum, his mortuary temple at Thebes, takes its title from the Greek version of one of the ruler's alternate names, User-maat-re. "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" said the inscription on the pharaoh's statue in Shelley's sonnet. Though the poet was making the point that such boasts are hollow because great monuments eventually decay, Ramesses' achievements were truly magnificent...
Ramesses' place in history, meanwhile, has been amply documented. The ruler himself saw to that. In fact, grandiosity was part of the job description for pharaohs. One of their primary duties was to make sure the gods were properly thanked for their continuing bounty and protection (and begged for them when they were in short supply). The accepted way to do that was to erect plenty of heroic structures-and then to adorn them with detailed records of the pharaoh's good and dutiful works. Says Kenneth Kitchen, professor of Egyptology at the University of Liverpool and the author...
...debate on the housing lottery last fall. Isn't it just possible that the outgoing Jewett made the decision so that the incoming Lewis would not have to anger his students in the first year of his term? It's a classic maxim of The Prince for the ruler to separate himself from the executors of unpopular policies...