Word: sarcophagus
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...precious metals--reliquaries, chalices and other kinds of liturgical equipment. The reliquaries were done at the highest pitch of craft, mostly by goldsmiths whose names have not survived. A modern eye is more apt to enjoy the spectacle of the concentrated, disciplined labor that went into building a tiny sarcophagus out of gold and rock crystal to house a brown bit of human tissue that may or may not have been part of St. Vitus, or a supposed rag off the "seamless robe" worn by Christ at his Crucifixion. Seven hundred years ago, of course, it was the relic itself...
...More persuasive than Kuchma's warning of impending social explosion, however, will be Gore's visit to the decaying sarcophagus around the damaged Chernobyl nuclear reactor. "Kuchma will show that Chernobyl threatens all of Europe and the world," says Zarakhovich. "And then he'll say, 'Sorry, there's nothing Ukraine can do about it without money...
Entering the museum, one is first greeted by an overabundance of life: Vibrantly green vegetation bursts out of a brilliantly lit four-story courtyard littered, or so it seems, with the remnants of the Roman Empire. A head-less marble statue stands in one corner, a decorated sarcophagus in another. It's as if a piece of the eternal city had been cut out and transferred to Boston. One can only stand and admire. The eye of the visitor is soon also drawn to a long line of people apparently waiting for something very special, visible through...
...commission's luck changed the very next day when five ex-officers in South Africa's dreaded Security Branch applied for amnesty and offered to reveal details about the death-squad murders of some 40 political activists. With that, the sarcophagus of silence that had shielded top apartheid-era leaders finally cracked. The five officers, including a police brigadier who had commanded a hit-squad training camp, claimed they took orders from the State Security Council, a secret junta of military, police and government officials whose sweeping powers enabled it to bypass Parliament. The council was headed by Botha...
Ramesses was then placed in a sarcophagus and interred, along with everything he would need to travel through the afterlife: the Book of the Dead, containing spells that would give the pharaoh access to the netherworld; tiny statuettes known as ushabti, which would come alive to help the dead king perform labors for the gods; offerings of food and wine; jewelry and even furniture to make the afterlife more comfortable. It's likely, say scholars, that Ramesses II's tomb was originally far richer and more elaborate than King...