Roy Blog - Glyphs Along The Highway

Do hieroglyphs hold any more potency than highway symbols?

Hump... or the Egyptian hieroglyph glyph for 'foreign land'?

'Foreign land'...'hill country'

Author Ian Fleming wrote amusingly about the “exotic pungency” of USA road signs in his James Bond thriller ‘Live and Let Die’ – ‘SOFT SHOULDERS – SHARP CURVES – SQUEEZE AHEAD – SLIPPERY WHEN WET.’

As I take my ancient Egypt thriller fiction writing on the road, I can’t help wondering about the glyphs we see at the roadside here in Australia.

How do these enigmatic signs compare with the ancient Egyptian glyphs that mark the underworld journeys of my renegade British archaeological hero Anson Hunter?

Like the menagerie of animals that appear in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs – Australian roadside glyphs possess a zoomorphic vocabulary, including kangaroos, koalas, wombats, ducklings, cattle, emus, crocodiles and sharks.

A zoomorphic roadside vocabulary

Some signage glyphs are as menacing as curses uttered by Egypt’s priests in execration rituals – “A microsleep can kill.” “You’re a bloody idiot!”

Roadsidce curse

Others are tenderly human when found along the harsh and merciless march of the bitumen - small children defensively holding hands. 

Another has a caption that makes the peril of road-crossing sound like a cosy adventure story – ‘Refuge Island’.

What would the Egyptians make of these signs?

One of the first recorded workers' strikes in history happened in Egypt in the reign of Rameses lll when the royal tomb workers lay down their tools when their pay and rations were not forthcoming.

To other eyes, some of our signs might look like protest banners. End Roadwork! End School Zone! End Freeway!

Is it superstition to believe that the sacred writing of hieroglyphs held any more potency than road signs, even though they were invested with the power of heka, Egyptian magic?

My Egyptologist hero Anson Hunter has a respect for unseen dangers from the ancient past, execration texts, forbidden artefacts and the like. He is something of a phenomenologist, one who believes in granting value to the sacred, unlike conventional Egyptologists with their ‘agnostic reflex’ that prevents them from taking the esoteric seriously.

Perhaps the fact that there are others today with an agenda that takes its inspiration from the mystery religions of Egypt, who believe very seriously in the potency of Egypt’s past that warn us to be wary of unseen dangers breaking into the 21^st century.


The journey continues here

Lakes Entrance, Victoria

I think that I shall never see...

Chainsaw memory to the massacre that was WW1

carved out of old cypress tree butts

90 mile beach

footbridge linking town to 90 mile beach

Lakes Entrance boat life

Eden

Eden's Lighthouse

Our Lighthouse

We're currently taking it easy at Eden on NSW's far South Coast.

We've found a remarkably tranquil campsite called 'Garden of Eden' - so it can't be all bad.

There's a boardwalk around a lake, singing birds and lush vegetation and it's deliciously cool. 

We plan to stay for a week or so.

Next stop Victoria to visit our son. 

Port Eden

Fishin' is an understatement

Fishin' in the vernacular

Lake Tuggerah, our view from the Silvery Nomad

Roy, as an author, says he loves listening to the understated nature of Aussie dialogue.

We’re sitting at the water's edge of our campsite, overlooking the blue dazzle of Tuggerah Lake. An old digger in a blue sunhat struggles down to the small beach below us. He looks plump, soft and flushed from the sun, like a retired office worker determined to enjoy his retirement. He chooses a gap between a line of beached boats, fiddles around with his fishing rod and finally casts his line.

He’s standing right in the spot where an incoming boat is heading, another old guy at the helm, burbling up to its mooring spot, a wash of water at its bow. The old guy in the boat doesn’t call out a warning to him. “Careful, I’m about to run right over you.”

Instead, he merely calls:

“Or right, mate?”

“You comin' here?” 

“Yeah.” 

 The fisherman takes the hint and shifts a short distance.

The old chap races up the beach, right over the spot where the first guy was standing and switches off.

“Anythin'?” the new arrival says to the fisherman in the silence that follows.

“Nah, just wettin' a line, mate. You?”

“Nah.” He gets out of the boat and swings  a drum-sized plastic bucket, obviously full to the brim, up onto the concrete wharf. The effort makes him gasp. “Just went to get a bit-a-bait. Fish one day, get bait the next.”

“Right

“They’re not interested are they?” the gasping man says.

“Nah.”

“Fished four hours yesterday. It was that slow. Caught three flathead day before…”

He moors the boat and then totters, leaning heavily against the wharf. He's struggling for breath. Maybe he’s going to have a heart attack.

“You oright, Mate?” the other says.

“Yeah, Mate. Just takin' five…”

And so, in its understated way, it went…