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Waffles, cathedrals, historic tours

Back into Brussels, where we entertained ourselves, ate terribly, had a terrific tour and an all-around lovely day. Brussels is a place you could probably absorb in two or three serious days of trekking. More if you need to hit the bars for the famous Belgian beer. We stuck with the chocolate and the waffles. My word, the waffles.

You should never shoot video of yourself eating, even in time lapse.

This is the exterior of the St. Michael and St. Gudula Cathedral.

Worship here is thought to date back to the ninth century. The current structure was built between the 13th and 16th centuries. The stained glass windows and confessionals go back that far. The pulpit was added in the 17th century and the carillon was installed in 1975. Here’s an interior shot:

During 20th century restorations the remains of a Romanesque church and a Romanesque crypt were discovered.

Here are some of the interior highlights:

We had great chocolate today. And a terrific tour. There’s a four-hour walking tour that begins in the Great Place, where we spent yesterday afternoon. A young Englishman who has changed his citizenship to Belgium gave a terrific tour. We learned about the history of every building in the Great Place — except the Starbucks — how all of this started because of rivers and commerce and that the nation is thoroughly multicultural and full of self-deprecating humor. We talked about the EU, the Congo and the landed gentry of the place.

Here, for example, is the Place Royale, or Koningsplein, near the center of town. This is the second palace construction on the site, after an 18th century fire. In 1831, the coronation of King Leopold I, Belgium’s first king, was held here. There are plans to start a restoration of the facilities in the next few years.

The statue is of Godfrey of Bouillon, an 11th century Frankish knight, and most notably one of the leaders of the first Crusade, in 1096, and briefly became the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Godfrey’s likeness was installed in 1848, replacing the statue of Prince Charles Alexander of Lorraine that was melted down for the metal during the French Revolution.

This is the Mont des Arts. Once a heavily populated area, King Leopold II bought up the land and had the buildings destroyed. Eventually, it became a temporary garden, and since the 1950s some of the land has been used for the Royal Library of Belgium and the Congress Palace. The congressional fountains are beneath you in the foreground. In the distance you can see the spire of city hall and the Grand Place.

It was here we heard the best story of the day. In the early stages of World War I Germany was trying to outflank France. They wanted to go through Belgium, a small and then still very young country. King Albert, who ruled neutral Belgium, said “I rule a nation, not a road.”

The Germans came in, the Belgians resisted. They didn’t last long, of course, but the violation of their neutrality brought the English into the fray. Albert commanded his army. His son Prince Leopold fought in the ranks and his wife, Queen Elizabeth, worked as a front line nurse. The army, about 10 percent the size of the Germans, was pushed back to the coast. They resisted for about a month, key weeks for France and the UK in the early going of the war. Belgium would be occupied by the Germans throughout the war. Opening the dikes created a flood plain and that was all that stood between the German forces and the tiny Belgian army.

How can you not love Belgians after a story like that?

Almost immediately after our tour it started raining. Hard. So we ducked into a Vietnamese restaurant. It was our only real meal of the day. It was delicious. After that we had another waffle. So that was two-and-a-half on the day. But, hey, we didn’t have any fries.

We hung out with Sydney today:

And I want to know why no gift shop in Belgium sells waffle magnets. This seems an oversight.

adventures / Belgium / friends / history / photo — Comments Off
28
May 15

Grand Place, Brussels, Belgium

This is in the courtyard of the Brussels Town Hall. The courtyard was completed in 1712. The oldest part of the town hall was completed in 1420. Everything here is older than anything we can touch at home.

In 1830, a provisional government was formed at the town hall during the Third French Revolution. That brought about a separation of the Southern Netherlands from the Northern Netherlands and somewhere in the unrest of that part of the 19th century Europe Belgium emerged as an independent nation.

We spent the day without big plans or timetables. We caught a train in, got a phone set up, had lunch and walked around the Grand Place, and saw the beautiful buildings there, like these next four shots:

I stood close to the center of Grand Place and shot this interactive image. Click in the picture and scroll around: left, right up and down.

Here’s a view back of the steeple in the square as we walked down a small side street looking for some place to eat dinner:

This is something like a mall. There are plenty of storefronts on the ground level. I couldn’t say what was upstairs. These were open on both sides, but that’s a closed roof, though it feels very airy, with all of those beautiful lines. It really changed the weather. Were you too warm or cold or getting rained on? Duck in here:

A basic pastoral scene on our train ride back to our friends’ place:

adventures / friends / history / London / photo — Comments Off
24
May 15

The British Museum

(This is a long post with 15 cool photos and just over a thousand words. The last photo, I assure you, is worth the wait.)

Dressing up, because that’s how you do the big museums.

I wore a polo, because I don’t do big museums properly.

Tiglath-pileser III didn’t mind. He had other things on his mind. This is the capture of Astartu (in modern Jordan). The cuneiform says it was taken by King Tiglath-pileser, shown here in his chariot, under a parasol. The population was leaving under Asssyrian escort. This took place somewhere between 730 and 727 BC. He built the world’s first professional standing army and conquered much of the land they knew about at the time. One of the world’s great military rulers, he frequently appointed eunuchs as puppet governors of newly conquered lands. No dynasty. He shrank the provinces, reducing the power of his officials by reducing the size of the provinces.

This is part of the false door and architrave of Ptahshepses. Usually the Egyptian tomb doors focused on the afterlife, but this one tells how lived in this realm. He grew up at court, married the king’s daughter and lived through the next six pharaohs as a high priest for Ptah, the chief god of Egypt’s capital at Memphis and patron of artisans. He was also the senior priest of Ra in three sun temples. This is during the 5th dynasty, around 2400 BC. The stone was painted red to resemble wood, which was rare. Ptahshepses was also called “barber of the Great House” and the “manicure of the Great House,” great honors because his work required him to touch the pharaoh. It is said he got to kiss his foot, where most people had to kiss the ground because the king was a religious incarnation himself.

The history of decorative tiles dates to Egypt and Ancient Greece and at least to the 13th century BC in the Middle East and Sri Lanka on hugely important projects. They weren’t common, but the Byzantines and the Romans and in places like Tunisia and Iran they really hit their stride. Starting around the 10th century, tiles became more common in Western Europe, but they were still expensive. When the Moors invaded Spain things really picked up for the art form, the art and several of the techniques spread throughout Europe throughout the 16th century.

This is all going to be important in a bit.

But first, more about our friend King Tiglath-pileser III. This relief was in his palace and shows the sheep and goats captured in his campaign against the Arabs. The livestock were being driven back to the Assyrian camp:

Here’s a relief of the king. He’s got his ceremonial robes on, because he, too, wanted to be like Elvis. He’s holding a bow and his assistant behind him has more weapons. The king should be staring at two officials, but that part of the relief no longer exists. (They have drawings.) Tiglath-pileser may have had this in his palace, but it was also used by King Esarhaddon — his great-grandson — a half-century later.

It was hard to be a king. Esarhaddon was killed by his older brothers. Two of Tiglath-pileser’s sons also ruled. Two because of another familial coup.

But, if you were a succesful military campaigner like Tiglath-pileser, you got your share of war treasure. This relief showing a woman and herd of camels are more of the spoils of war he won during his reign.

But this was all in the 745–727 BC era. Let’s go even farther back into Assyrian history.

This is a guardian lion from the temple of Ishtar Sharrat-Niphi. It was 15 tons and is meant to represent the goddess of war. It guarded the entrance to Ishtar’s temple, installed between 865-860 BC. It was re-discovered in the 19th century.

The signage calls it fierce. That it guarded the temple is important.

Do you think it intimidated anyone?

How did the Egyptians do lions? So glad you asked. This is meant to be King Amenhotep III. The pharaohs were often shown as a sphinx, but this full lion image is rather rare. Amenhotep IV called the king a “lion of rulers, wild when he sees his enemies tread his path.” This dates to 1390 BC, but the lion and its companion piece were used by several rulers throughout history.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Rosetta Stone, a decree from Memphis, Egypt, mandated in 196 BC by King Ptolemy V. There are three scripts, three languages, Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic script and Ancient Greek. The text is basically the same, and that gave scholars the key to our modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Thought to have been on display in a temple, the stone was eventually used as building material of a fort. From there it was rediscovered in 1799 by a soldier, Pierre-François Bouchard, of the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt. In 1802 it became British property as a spoil of war. Since 2003 the Egyptians have asked to have it returned. So far, they’ve only received a replica. This is the real thing:

The supreme god Amun is portrayed here as a ram. That ram is protecting King Taharqo. Two cobras are symbols of sovereignty. This sphinx and others like it lines a road to the temple of Amun at Kawa. This is from the 25th dynasty, 690-664 BC.

This is supposedly a pair of protective spirits, a great lion or Ugallu/ This is Assyrian, from Nineveh, dating to around 700-692 BC:

Bronze tablets like this one were often placed on temple walls as dedications to gods. This tablet is said to describe an offering made to the Sabean god Almaqah after a successful grain harvest. A Tree of Life is surrounded on either side by sphinxes and date palms. It dates to the 2nd century BC of Yemen:

And, finally, this is a 4th-century AD mosaic floor from a villa in Dorset. It is an important Christian remain from the Roman Empire. This central portion is believed to be the earliest known mosaic of Jesus Christ. The Greek letters X and P (chi and rho) are the usual symbol of early Christianity. The pomegranates are meant to suggest immortality.

In the corners of the larger mosaic are four heads, thought to be Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The mosaic was rediscovered in the 1960s.

friends / history / London / photo — Comments Off
23
May 15

The story of Billiter Street

Once upon a time Adam came over to see us. Being the history major that he was and the genealogy buff that he is, he has traced his ancestors migration to the new world.

He is descended from Richard Mynatt, who came over to the colonies from England in 1749. Mynatt, the son of a sailor, was a 20-year-old cook who signed a four-year agreement of servitude with Thomas Lee. He would go to Virginia and become the head cook of Stratford Hall, the birthplace of Robert E. Lee. (Thomas was his grandfather.)

When Thomas Lee died, Mynatt’s contract was passed to Philip Ludwell Lee. When Mynatt’s servitude was up, he asked for his freedom and the money he was owed. Philip said no, so Mynatt went to court. He became the first indentured servant in America to win his freedom in court.

Philip would serve in the House of Burgesses, but died before the Revolution. Two of his brothers, Richard Henry and Francis Lighthorse, signed the Declaration of Independence. Stands to reason that Mynatt knew them.

Now, Adam has been to Stratford Hall. He’s climbed into the attic space where Mynatt lived for four years. Some of his recipes are said to still be on file there.

But that might be about the only thing Mynatt left behind. He moved a few counties to the north when he gained his freedom in 1754. He started a family and later worked as a courier for George Washington, serving two tours of duty, in the Revolutionary War. Richard’s eldest son, William, is also on Revolutionary War rosters.

In 1787 Mynatt sold his Virginia land and moved the family to east Tennessee, where he bought several hundred acres of farmland. He worked as a doorkeeper for the Southwest Territorial House of Representatives.

He died in 1823 in Union, Tennessee and is buried there, in a family cemetery. He was 96 or 100 years old, depending on which record you like. He and his wife, Sarah, had 10 children.

Adam has been to the Mynatt cemetery. But he’s never been to where the ancestral roots began. Adam has found the document that showed Mynatt’s immigration and servitude. It lists the road where Richard Mynatt lived in England, in London.

Let’s find it on a map, we said, when he came to visit.

As these things do, one search led to a neighborhood, which led to looking over every street in the area and there it was. Billiter Lane is now Billiter Street. And it was very close to where we were.

So we went for a visit.

It is a small little road, and of course it looks nothing like mid-18th century London.

This is the oldest building on Billiter, and it is from the 1860s. No one Richard Mynatt knew when he left for the colonies would have ever seen this place. Nor would their grandkids. What I’m saying is, it has been some long time since Mynatt left.

It is a small little road. This is a photo taken while standing on one end of the modern Billiter. You can see the other end from here.

It was cool to see where it all started. A young man who left for reasons lost to history, worked hard and turned himself into a free man, a successful land owner in the new world. He worked on the edges of history and raised a family. And here’s one of his great-great-greats now, wondering where on this street an English sailor raised a future American cook.

And that’s the story of Billiter Street.

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22
May 15

Westminster Abbey

Westminster Abbey has more than a millennium of history behind it. Monks moved in around 960 AD. England have crowned royalty there since 1066. The structure reaches back to the 13th and 16th centuries. Seventeen monarchs are buried there, and more than 3,000 other people besides. Many of them especially important to the United Kingdom and the world. They could use a good dusting in places, but it is a beautiful church.

No photos inside, but here are some from the courtyard, including the famous west towers and flying buttresses.