Denderah Zodiac from the Temple of Hathor

The temple to Hathor at Denderah, Egypt was constructed as a monument and a learning venue for Motherhood. The design of the monument carries the celestial theme throughout its grand architecture. Within each chamber and hall are magnificent and profound works of art which glorify the qualities of benevolent motherhood. In the entrance areas are fully inscribed columns with the Nile Lotus replaced by the head of Hathor wearing her traditional wig over cow ears. The temple is the product of the Hellenistic Period after the conquests of Alexander the Great during the Ptolemaic Dynasties, just prior to, and overlapping the initiation of the Christian era.. The Nile Lotus and the Wig of Hathor are both symbols of the object held in the hand of the constellation Virgo. Modern astronomers recognize the wig as Coma Berenices; the wig of Berenices. However it should be self evident that the stars at the top of the axis of the galactic sphere can be connected to look like a sprig of wheat, an ear of corn, a Red Pandanus, a Nile Lotus, an Indus Lotus, or any fertile flower. The essence of a fertile flower is the theme of the temple to Hathor, and the essence of benevolent motherhood. This essence is drawn directly from the positions of the stars at the top axis of the galactic plane of the Milky Way, perceived from earth.

In the ceiling of the Osiris chamber the architects installed a cosmic story about the deflowering of motherhood. The story was told as a prophecy, and an example teleology; the belief that design and purpose are apparent in nature. It is derived from the Egyptian record of the experiences of life, and their recorded knowledge of the most ancient traditions of the whole world. It is the quintessential document which relates to the conversation between the Egyptian priest and Solon in Plato's dialogue by Critias. For the monument reads like a history book, in which the clock of the heavens defines the space-time frame, and the rhythm of Plato's Dance of the Gods. Besides a history of the ancient world, the monument tells a story about the maturation cycle of human souls in the whole of Western Civilization for an additional 8600 years to come. The solar eclipse of August 1999 demonstrates that the great accuracy of the celestial knowledge of the temple architects included dramatic teleological aspects. Within the presentation of their material science, the spiritual message of the Egyptian priests and priestesses is clearly visible. It is a story about love and reason, arrogance and wisdom, banishment and salvation. Most of all, it is a story about a man child (Horus) and his mother (Hathor), and the dialog of mankind with the Creator.

This is the Greatest Story Ever Told. It has been told around the world. In Polynesian traditions it is the legend of the Land Under the Land, where a disenchanted wife meets a stranger and goes to the Land of Shadows to have her husband's child before returning to the top of the world with peace in her heart, and a Red Pandanus in her hand. In Mesoamerica it is the legend of Hanahpu and his brother Xbalanque. In Mesopotamia it is the legend of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, among many others. In India it is the dance of Shiva. In China and east Asia, it is the dance of the Sun Dragon. The Bible tells the same story with many different players, including Adam and Eve, Isaac and Ishmael, Aaron and Moses, John and Jesus, and the Child of the Madonna. On August 11, 1999, the sun winked as it entered into the Kingdom of Heaven. To let this incredibly important moment pass without recognition of its historical value would be a sacrilege against all that has been sacred since the beginning of the dialogue between man and Creator. For, to be silent is repression. Thus, this story is being told in the hopes that a modern world is not so cosmically deaf that it has lost all value in its ancient sacred meaning.

COMMON SENSE IS INTUITIVE

The reason why so many of the world's sacred myths have a familiar ring to them is the fact that they were all taken from the same patterns in the stars. To say that the stars contain Plato's Lost Island of Atlantis would not be an exaggeration, for the stars contain all the lost legends of our past. The legends are all testaments to the observational brilliance that accumulated at the predawn and early dawn of civilization. They are the foundations of our modern Jungian archetypes. Within these great legends is an unmistakable common belief in the benevolence of Mother Nature. It is the trust and faith that humans gave to Mother Nature that caused her to be deflowered as Western Civilization became a domain of the rule of law. Civilization is not to blame for her being deflowered. It is a process which humanity must pass through. Mother Nature deflowered herself so that the man child could grow to full maturity. The stranger she had come to know was the rationalizing husband and the immature son that she loved so dearly. They had forgotten her value as the vessel of life. In her own words, as spoken through her son, we find the echo of all the great legends.

John 14:1-3
1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
2 In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you.
I go to prepare a place for you.
3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself;
that where I am, there ye may be also.

The deflowering of motherhood is the essential path which all children must follow, sooner or later. For you see, it is not the mother's body that is deflowered, it is the ideal of the goddess she represented when we were young. Our rational mind searches for scientific truth, in the hope that one day we can be independent of the myths we learned within the mothering bonds that we hold in the memories of our youth. When we finally reach the end of our adolescent umbilical cord, it breaks, and we search for the mothering bonds to find out what went wrong. As we turn back, we can become a "pillar of salt" and lose all emotional bondage, or we can shed the tears of our temporal identity and be grateful that the Cosmos was willing to give us mothering when it was needed. After the bond is broken, it can be restored again by the simple grace of gratitude. Then we become wise and are capable of passing on to those who follow us, the stories we once believed to be the material and maternal facts of life. At the end of our mother's cord we learn that she had prepared us to break the bondage of the rational umbilical cord, which was our dream of her divine nature. A few years wandering in the wilderness is all that any rational person needs to recognize that we do not live in a world dominated by the rational ideas of men, we live in a world bound to the breast of Mother Nature. We cannot break that bondage by death. We can only stress and distort it by denial during life.

Hidden behind the logic of this microscopic maturation cycle of a single human soul is the macroscopic maturation cycle of civilizations. Like individuals, civilizations strive to break the umbilical bondage. And like individuals, health is restored when a civilization recognizes that Mother Nature knows only Tough Love. She gives us a scepter of flint as proof that we are capable of self inspiration when we walk in the pits of our emotions. She gives us a flail as proof that we can overcome physical stress. She gives us a crook as proof that we can lead others to the Promised Land. And last, she gives us a door through which we can pass a material record of our lives on to her children who come after us. In Egypt the door was Rostau, where Osiris ascended to Orion, and the Great Pyramids promised his return. It is through that door that the present essay will lead. The metaphor of the way of the door has been fabricated many times and in many ways. The ceiling monument in the chapel to Osiris is a detail of Mother Nature's passages through the cosmic door into the mystery of the heavens.|

Read More Here: http://www.siloam.net/cornwall/cornwal4.htm
Denderah Zodiac
S. Battaglia, G. Miglietta and Opera Laboratori Fiorentini

Full scale reproduction of the Zodiac from the Temple of Hathor in Denderah, the first depiction of the heavens in which use is made of stereographic projection. The outermost circle shows 36 decans, each scanning a 10-day interval; the first decan is level with Sirius, the star that heralds the beginning of the year and the arrival of the Nile flood. The second circle shows the constellations in the southern hemisphere. The third circle shows the constellations in the northern hemisphere. The figures of the Zodiac are aligned along the eccentric circle of the ecliptic. The axis joining Cancer to Capricorn (the solstices) points in a north-south direction. The temple's transverse axis is perfectly oriented towards the heliacal rising of Sirius, which rose at 18o east-southeast. Sirius, portrayed as a squatting cow, is correctly shown at the point of maximum culmination on the celestial meridian of the southern hemisphere.

Found Here: http://brunelleschi.imss.fi.it/galileopalazzostrozzi/object/DenderahZodiac.html
History

During the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt, Vivant Denon drew the circular zodiac, the more widely known one, and the rectangular zodiacs. In 1802, after the Napoleonic expedition, Denon published engravings of the temple ceiling in his Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte.^[4] These elicited a controversy as to the age of the zodiac representation, ranging from tens of thousands to a thousand years to a few hundred, and whether the zodiac was a planisphere or an astrological chart.^[5] Louis Charles Antoine Desaix, a member of the expedition, decided to remove the relief to France and so, in 1820, the antiquities dealer Sébastien-Louis Saulnier commissioned Jean Baptiste Leloraine, a master mason, to remove the circular zodiac with saws, jacks, and scissors constructed for the job. The zodiac ceiling was moved in 1821 to Restoration Paris and, by 1822, was installed by Louis XVIII in the Royal Library. In 1964, the zodiac moved from the Bibliothèque Nationale to the Louvre.

The controversy around the zodiac, called the "Dendera Affair", involved people of the likes of Joseph Fourier (who estimated that the age was 2500 BC^[6]), Thomas Young, Jean-François Champollion, and Jean-Baptiste Biot.^[7] Johann Karl Burckhardt and Jean-Baptiste Coraboeuf held, after analysis of the zodiac, that the ancient Egyptians understood the precession of the equinoxes. Champollion, among others, believed that it was a religious zodiac. Champollion deciphered the names of Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and Domitian on the ceiling of Dendera's temple, and placed the zodiac in the era of Roman rule over Egypt.^[8] Baron Georges Cuvier placed the date 123 AD to 147 AD.^[9] His discussion of the dating question is an interesting summary of the reasoning as he understood it in the 1820s.

Over the last 10 years, I have been presented with a star-code science called cosmogenesis. From 2000 July 17th to 2007 July 17th a pattern of psycho-physical reference points to astronomical events were presented over and over again to engage and synchronize my attention to the placement the Egyptian’s called Heaven’s Gate: The Cancer-Leo Boundary. The code cosmogenesis uses to construct meaning is based on an epistemology designed by the Egyptian Cosmologists. For the sky-priests who closed the Egyptian Empire’s Old World Order, they designed an ingenious calendar wheel at the Temple to Hathor was called the Denderah Zodiac. I made it my concern to follow the on-line study of this remarkable cosmology with the help of Rush E. Allen an engineer and astro-archaeologist whose mentorship provided me the firing-pins for walking the path of the True Priest.

To present the revelation of the Little Lion, we will walk through the basics of Egyptian Cosmology. The modus operandi for their vision of reality is not unlike that of the modern sages like Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen who argued that a quantum state corresponds not to reality but to the information we have about a subsystem of the universe. The quantum state for The Egyptian sky-priests who authored the science accepted two fundamental bodies of knowledge. One was called the Horus of the Two Horizons and the other was Coming Forth By Day, or the study of the First Fire Ceremony. Between these two pillars of science did the Egyptian cosmologists attempt to construct based on information gathering how the planets, milky way and stars were set to the house of creation that made room for one very unique ally in creation: man and his perception of self within a living system. The D.Z. concretized all these aspects with one important axiom. To acquire the experience of Truth one must suffer the burden of cosmic responsibility once he has put his ‘feelings straight’.

A scientific paper was presented during the time of Seti I to define the ability to understand the science of predicting outcome. The Hunefer Papyrus was the Occam’s Razor of the 17th Dynasty.

Found Here: http://www.cyberspaceorbit.com/Lion/Lions_Gate_July_17.htm

The Hidden Geometry of the Zodiac in the Temple of Hathor, Denderah
1. The eight Horus figures holding the circle of the heavens define a pair of crossed axes by the lines defined by knees and elbows. 2. A hexagram may be drawn in by joining the points where the Isis figures hands meet on the circumference of the circle. 3. A pair of horizontal lines are drawn as shown by connecting the "shoulders" of the Horus figures, then point where their headresses terminate. These lines occur at the correct location to each form one side of the regular pentagram which can be inscribed in the circle. Thus two pentagrams are formed; one upright and one inverted. 4. With the remaining lines of the pentagrams drawn in, confirming proof that these constructions represent the intent of the designers is provided by the placement of the straight lines which connect the two fishes of Pisces. Note how one of these two lines not only forms a small section of the side of the pentagram itself, but occurs at the point where this line is intersected by the horizontal diameter of the circle.

Related Pages:

Hidden Geometry in Art:
Pierro Della Francesca:
Fra Angelico
Fra Luca Pacioli
Denderah Zodiac

Geometrical Analysis of the East Meon Crop Circle

Etheric technology of ancient Egypt: The Temple of Hathor at Denderah

Original Article Found Here: http://www.russwill.com/experiments/astro/Denderah/hidden_geo/geo_zodiac.htm

Azoth of the Philosophers

“Visita Interiora Terra Rectificanto Inveniens Occultum Lapidem”

L’Azoth des Philosophes, Basil Valentine, Paris, 1659.

For more than 350 years, this image of the Azoth has been used by alchemists as a meditative mandala because it is believed to contain all the essential components of the Great Work.

Over the next eight weeks we are going to explore the elements of this alchemical mandala to discover a personal and powerful meditative process for using it to acquire an in depth understanding of the the seven key processes for creating the Philosopher’s Stone as well as participating in an initiation into a hermetic perspective that will enrich your life in ways that you have not yet imagined.

There are many explanations of the Azoth available on web sites and in numerous writings. However, I suggest you establish your own relationship with the Azoth before reading the interpretations of others. Spend personal time with the image during the next week identifying the messages it holds for you and developing your unique and special understanding of its symbols before listening to what I and others have to say about this eternal hermetic symbol.

Then each week for seven weeks we will examine in depth through a variety of methods the steps revealed in the Azoth for creating the Stone.

I look forward with excitement and expectation for participating with you in this ancient alchemical practice that will have a lasting impact on your life.

Found Here: http://ouroboroscycle.com/blog/?p=473

Interpretation of Azoth of the Philosophers (by Dennis William Hauck)

This meditative emblem first published in 1659 as an illustration for the book Azoth of the Philosophers by the legendary German alchemist Basil Valentine. The word "Azoth" in the title is one of the more arcane names for the One Thing. The "A" and "Z" in the word relate to the Greek alpha and omega, the beginning and end of all things. The word is meant to embrace the full meaning of the One Thing, which is both the chaotic First Matter at the beginning of the Work and the perfected Stone at its conclusion.

At the center of this striking drawing is the face of a bearded alchemist at the beginning of the Work. Like looking into a mirror, this is where the adept fixes his or her attention to meditate on the mandala. Within the downward-pointing triangle superimposed over the face of the alchemist is the goal of the Work, the divine man in which the forces from Above and Below have come together. Each of the sequentially numbered points on the star emanating from the alchemist stands for an operation in the Emerald Formula (Calcination, Dissolution, Separation, Conjunction, Fermentation, Distillation, and Coagulation) and contains the cipher for the corresponding metal. To see an explanation of these operations, click on the appropriate point on the star.

The alchemist’s schematized body is the offspring of the marriage between Sol, the archetypal Sun King seated on a lion on a hill to his right, and Luna, the archetypal Moon Queen seated on a great fish to his left. "Its father is the Sun," says the tablet, "its mother the Moon." The laughing, extroverted Sun King holds a scepter and a shield indicating his authority and strength over the rational, visible world, but the fiery dragon of his rejected unconscious waits in a cave beneath him ready to attack should he grow too arrogant. The melancholy, introverted Moon Queen holds the reins to a great fish, symbolizing her control of those same hidden forces that threaten the King, and behind her is a chaff of wheat, which stands for her connection to fertility and growth. The bow and arrow she cradles in her left arm symbolize the wounds of the heart and body she accepts as part of her existence. In simplest terms, the King and Queen represent the raw materials of our experience -- our thoughts and feelings -- with which the alchemist works.

The King symbolizes the power of thought, ultimately the One Mind of the highest spirit. The Queen stands for the influence of feelings and emotions, which are ultimately the chaotic One Thing of the greater soul. The much anticipated Marriage of the King and Queen produces a state of consciousness best described as a feeling intellect, which can be raised and purified to produce a state of perfect intuition, a direct gnosis of reality. "All Obscurity will be clear to you," says the tablet of this state of mind; it is "the Glory of the Whole Universe." The goal of alchemy is to make this golden moment permanent in a state of consciousness called the Philosopher’s Stone, and it all starts with the marriage of opposites within us.

In our drawing, the body of the alchemist is composed of the Four Elements. His feet protrude from behind the central emblem; one is on Earth and the other in Water. In his right hand is a torch of Fire and in his left a feather, symbolizing Air. Between his legs dangles the Cubic Stone labeled with the word Corpus, meaning body. The five stars surrounding it indicate that it also contains the hidden Fifth Element, the invisible Quintessence whose "inherent strength is perfected if it is turned into Earth." Where the head of the alchemist should be, there is a strange winged caricature that is variously interpreted as a heart, a helmet, or even the pineal gland at the center of the brain. The symbol evolved from the Winged Disk of Akhenaten and became the top of the Caduceus, the magical wand of Hermes where opposing energies merge to produce miracles. This knob represents the Ascended Essence, the essence of our souls raised to the highest level in the body, to the brain, where it becomes a mobile center of consciousness able to leave the body and travel to other dimensions.

Touching the wings of the caduceus are a salamander engulfed in flames on the left side of the drawing and a standing bird on the right. Below the salamander is the inscription Anima (Soul); below the bird is the inscription Spiritus (Spirit). The salamander, as a symbol of soul, is attracted to and exposed in the blazing fire of the Sun. Likewise, the bird of spirit is attracted to the coolness of the Moon and is reflected in it. This is a subtle statement of the fundamental bipolar energies that drive the alchemy of transformation. Spiritus, Anima, and Corpus form a large inverted triangle that stands behind the central emblem. Together they symbolize the three archetypal celestial forces that the alchemists termed Sulfur, Mercury, and Salt. Again, these chemicals are not chemicals at all, but our feelings, thoughts, and body.

- from THE EMERALD TABLET (Penguin 1999) by Dennis William Hauck

Found Here: http://www.alchemylab.com/azoth.htm

The Nuremberg Battle, 1561

The citizens of Nuremberg, Germany behold what appears to be a large scale aerial battle followed by the appearance of a large black triangular object and a large crash (with smoke) outside the city. A news notice (early form of newspaper) was printed 10 days later (April 14, 1561) describing the event.

At sunrise on the 14th April 1561, the citizens of Nuremberg beheld “A very frightful spectacle.” The sky appeared to fill with cylindrical objects from which red, black, orange and blue white disks and globes emerged. Crosses and tubes resembling cannon barrels also appeared whereupon the objects promptly “began to fight one another.” This event is depicted in a famous 16th century woodcut above by Hans Glaser.

Here is the local news eyewitness report of 1561 :
At dawn of April 4, in the sky of Nuremberg (Germany), a lot of men and women saw a very alarming spectacle where various objects were involved, including balls “approximately 3 in the length, from time to time, four in a square, much remained insulated, and between these balls, one saw a number of crosses with the color of blood. Then one saw two large pipes, in which small and large pipes, were 3 balls, also four or more. All these elements started to fight one against the other.” (Gazette of the town of Nuremberg).

What is really amazing is that 5 years after this incident on August 7th 1566, the same black spheres were seen fighting again, this time over Basel Germany this time the balls would either vanish or appeared to be “consumed” by the other. Below is another woodcut from that event.

Found Here: http://mysteryhistory.tv/2011/04/april-4-1561-ufos-battle-over-nuremberg-germany/

One of the most astounding of documented sightings of aerial phenomena took place on April 4, 1561 at dawn over Nuremberg, Germany. What was described could only be called a war in the heavens, with a wide variety of craft ranging from spheres to spear-like cylinders to crosses and “plates”. The sky was apparently filled with the machines, clashing in battle for well over an hour. The battle was such that a winner was perceived as well. Spheroid UFOs were seen emerging from cylindrical ‘motherships‘. At the conclusion of the battle, it seems a magnificent, black, spear-like super-ship of some kind came upon the scene. An ancient woodcut was created by Hans Glaser to document the event.

Found Here: http://jasonsalyers.com/articles/theories/nazi-ufos/

Futuristic Yugoslavian Monuments

These structures were commissioned by former Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito in the 1960s and 70s to commemorate sites where WWII battles took place (like Tjentište, Kozara and Kadinjača), or where concentration camps stood (like Jasenovac and Niš). They were designed by different sculptors (Dušan Džamonja, Vojin Bakić, Miodrag Živković, Jordan and Iskra Grabul, to name a few) and architects (Bogdan Bogdanović, Gradimir Medaković...), conveying powerful visual impact to show the confidence and strength of the Socialist Republic. In the 1980s, these monuments attracted millions of visitors per year, especially young pioneers for their "patriotic education." After the Republic dissolved in early 1990s, they were completely abandoned, and their symbolic meanings were forever lost.

From 2006 to 2009, Kempenaers toured around the ex-Yugoslavia region (now Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, etc.) with the help of a 1975 map of memorials, bringing before our eyes a series of melancholy yet striking images. His photos raise a question: can these former monuments continue to exist as pure sculptures? On one hand, their physical dilapidated condition and institutional neglect reflect a more general social historical fracturing. And on the other hand, they are still of stunning beauty without any symbolic significances.

Found Here: http://www.cracktwo.com/2011/04/25-abandoned-soviet-monuments-that-look.html

Kazutaka Miyatake

Without paying close attention to the talented artists who worked on Space Battleship Yamato from the beginning, it's easy to overlook the fact that Leiji Matsumoto was not the only veteran who participated in the Playstation games. But one glance at the intricate mechanical designs quickly corrects that oversight. They are the work of Kazutake Miyatake, one of the most respected superstars of anime mecha.

As a charter member of Japan's famous Studio Nue (the design powerhouse behind such anime classics as Crusher Joe, Macross, Gunbuster, and countless others), Miyatake was at ground zero in 1974 when the first TV series went into production and was one of just three artists who designed Yamato herself inside and out. His role expanded in 1978 on Farewell to Yamato when he almost single-handedly designed all the spaceships for the Earth and Comet Empire fleets. If you need one more credential, here it is: the Andromeda was largely his idea.

When the time came to adapt the mecha into the Playstation environment, there was no one more qualified than Miyatake to do the job. He went far beyond what anyone expected, upgrading and refining everything into sleek new forms that retained their original core. Even Yamato was re-imagined to such a degree that Miyatake's new version later became the basis of Bandai's massive 1/350 model kit, released in 2007.

And he didn't stop there---he was front and center for the Playstation 2 games as well, taking things in ever bolder directions. Here are highlights of a lengthy interview with Miyatake that was published in the Fixed Data book for the second Playstation game (DNA Media Books, January 2001) in which he recounts what it was like to create anime's greatest spaceships for both old times and new.

Yamato Must be as Good as the Old Days

Interviewer: What is the goal of a Yamato game for Playstation?

Miyatake: It must be as good for the fans as it was in the old days. The atmosphere is certainly different. The original should be unspoiled, but I wanted to improve some of the roughness of it. Because polygons make a three-dimensional object look different than normal freehand drawing, I thought it could bring a new sensibility to Yamato.

Specifically, it should show modern technology. So I added things like controls for electronic warfare and sensor countermeasures. To begin with, it is a projection of Matsumoto mecha. The sharper feel originates from Soviet fighter design. Matsumoto mecha inherits the coolness of that style.

Interviewer: In a way, it's sad that people of the 20-year old 'robot generation' don't understand things like that.

Miyatake: Indeed, the old Yamato designs may not suit the younger generation today. I thought about ways to adjust the focus of the image and imply more detail.

Interviewer: Your refinement of the Cosmo Tiger II from Farewell to Yamato is considerably stronger.

Miyatake: Yes. New technologies came to pass since the mid-70s, so the Cosmo Tiger II is now decidedely a stealth fighter. Even if the original design is somewhat changed, it is not unreasonable. Someone said I put a little Macross in it. (Laughs)

The economic life of a weapon is long, so some things last for 20 or 30 years, but a fighter needs to keep up with technology to be a state of the art machine. So I wanted to modernize it. The angles on it suppress the reflection of radar waves.

Because a game is drawn with polygons, the polyhedral design of stealth technology is very suitable; it's difficult to express curved surfaces. We could keep the volume of data down while preserving the punch, so I took a bold plunge into stealth! I thought it would be effective, particularly in the case of a fast-moving fighter.

The Cosmo Zero design for Playstation also has a sense of stealth, and it's especially apparent in the Black Tiger. We wanted to use triangles as much as possible to keep the number of polygons low. When I did the original design for animation, the stripes were often drawn incorrectly, but now it's a texture attached to the surface of a polygon, so we no longer have that problem. That's one of the ways it looks different.

Interviewer: What was the design point of the spaceships in Farewell to Yamato?

Miyatake: The balance of the main EDF battleship hasn't changed much from the time of the movie, but the carrier changed considerably. It was adjusted a little for the Yamato 2 TV series, but I wasn't involved with that. Originally, Matsumoto aircraft carriers were designed in a slab-like style, but this is more like the Minsk.

Interviewer: The Soviet Carrier? That was strangely gaudy.

Miyatake: But at the same time the bridge design was fairly simple. That was the first warship to use stealth technology. Bringing that to the Yamato PS game would give it the sense of a living thing. Sorry, I'm going back to the old days...

Interviewer: I think I understand. When a stealth machine like the B2 was drawn in SF anime, it looked like a parody in the time before the real thing appeared. Isn't it hard to surpass both reality and the viewer's imagination?

Miyatake: Yes. Yamato's original image had World War II as its base, so we didn't mind reproducing scenes from old movies. A remake needs to be tailored for its time, but I couldn't take away the nucleus of the original image when I modernized it. The curving, feminine silhouette of Yamato still has a strong visual impression, so it needs to keep that lineage even if the details are quite different.

If it has the Yamato name, it has to look like Yamato. If that's still the case, then I have no problem if the game differs from the anime.

Interviewer: As long as the basic elements are the same...

Miyatake: ...that's why I summarized the design the way I did. However, I couldn't help making a chart to compare the original proportions with the new ones, and use it to pursuade others. Some said it didn't change at all, other had the opposite reaction. It's like the wind. (Laughs)

Interviewer: Were both reactions fair?

Miyatake: Both sides depend on the person's point of view. The comparison was persuasive to both. My designer friends described the PS version as normal evolution. They said if you continued drawing Yamato for ten years or more, isn't this what it would have become? I think that was a natural answer. Even though I changed it, it stayed the same, isn't that how the saying goes?

I thought I would change the Andromeda, too, but I didn't need to, other than making it slightly bigger and adding volume. Because anime is a 2-dimensional picture, it doesn't have to be solid. The form of the ship can change without being incorrect. But a polygon has no choice but to be solid. 3-D animation can never be cheated, or the pieces don't connect.

Honestly, nothing about the Andromeda changed much. It was not necessary. For the original, Mr. Matsumoto left 99% of the Andromeda to me, which means it's done in the Matsumoto style and slightly in my style.

Interviewer: Did it take a lot of thought?

Miyatake: I regretted the EDF battleship (A). My first design didn't have the punch it needed to emulate Yamato. I didn't have enough technical knowledge at the time, and the drawing lacked personality. I felt this most keenly about the bridge. I asked Mr. Matsumoto about it, and he understood.

Interviewer: The Andromeda's bridge was redone many times back then, wasn't it?

Miyatake: No, just once. Mr. Matsumoto drew a rough and I expanded on it. I added all the antennae.

Interviewer: How were the smaller EDF ships designed?

Miyatake: There was not a demand for them at first. In the beginning, there was only Kodai's escort ship (B) [at the beginning of Farewell to Yamato]. The tubular body had only one ring-step around the engine. That basic form was scaled up and given two steps for the patrol cruiser (C). I thought it would need a lot of antennae, so I added more of them. I also used the escort ship as a base for the destroyer (D), decreased the armament and made the bridge lower.

I thought I would want to change them for the PS version of Farewell, but there was no need.

The Comet Empire city was James Blish's New York

Interviewer: You also designed the enemy warships, didn't you?

Miyatake: I did. I discussed them with Mr. Matsumoto to determine their function. We wanted to give a 'compound eye' look to their sensors and use a disc form that would clearly indicate a 'space person' made it. And I added a little more technology.

Instead of designing a clear top and bottom, I thought it would be a better idea to emphasize the technical differences by alternating the panels to build them up. That gave a chain structure to the ships of the Comet Empire.

Interviewer: That different approach to the enemy ships is similar to Macross. Is that how you approach such design?

Miyatake: When you determine the basic form of mecha, the details on the periphery become easier. So we start with a drawing that is like the shape of a car, a ship, or an aircraft. The process is very similar, but we draw it entirely on paper where they make mockups. In the case of automobiles, a full-scale wooden model was often made in the old days.

When you're making something out of physical materials, the core of the idea increasingly changes over time. In the case of our EDF ships, the Andromeda, the escort ships, and all the others were developed to fill each other's gaps. The details fit the needs of the soldiers inside the ships. But it is all based around the fundamental form.

Interviewer: Why does the new version of the Comet Empire City have channels in the lower hemisphere?

Miyatake: This was an order from the producer. He wanted to have trench warfare against heavy armaments. It would also give Kodai a clear direction into the mouth of the aircraft port.

The Comet Empire City was originally inspired by James Blish's New York in the Cities in Flight series; it was built on a hemisphere of exposed rock. If you want to show another way of life, you add a different flavor.

There's also the Battleship Medaluza, which didn't appear in Farewell to Yamato, it was in the Yamato 2 TV series. The [Magna] flame guns are a big, showy highlight. But I didn't work on Yamato 2.

Interviewer: So you refined it this time?

Miyatake: The Medaluza comes from the Comet Empire, so their design is from a different worldview. I couldn't change the parts that define the characteristics of the ship, so I just concentrated on the common areas.

But it was the Dreadnaught that took the most effort. They said the original design would suffice, and there wasn't enough time to do more than a single pass. The amount of linework on it is insane. (Laughs) It all has to be there to show how big it is. Even so, I doubled the number of guns and made it half again as long. In fact, the basic form was quite different from Mr. Matsumoto's original rough. Plus, there was no model sheet of the underside in the old days.

Interviewer: Yamato is only about the size of its stern segment.

Miyatake: That's right. But its bridge tower is about the same size as Yamato's. If you do things like that, the ship looks even bigger. I wanted to do more with it, but the deadline came. (Laughs)

Interviewer: If you have permission from the producer, an artist is cool with even fine detail.

Miyatake: Originally, Mr. Matsumoto came to me near the end of production on the movie. He was running out of time to design the Dreadnaught, and the animators couldn't finish their work without it. Everyone was screaming and tearing their hair out. That was often the situation in those days. So I was glad to have the chance to redo the design.

Interviewer: Even if it took over 20 years to accomplish.

Miyatake: Yes. But I have to offer my apologies to the game director. My first major task for the Farewell game was to rough out the Dreadnaught, even though it doesn't appear until the end. To only draw a front view was too limiting, we had to have the underside and rear as well. I finished them only after the schedule was extended first by three months and then four. It was a tough nut to crack.

I participated in Space Battleship Yamato in 1974!

Interviewer: The first work of yours I ever saw was an internal drawing of Mazinger Z when I was a student.

Miyatake: That wasn't my first professional illustration; I did Kamen Rider's Hurricane Bike before that.

Interviewer: What was your participation in the first Yamato series?

Miyatake: I heard about it when it was still called Asteroid Ship, before it became Yamato. Takeshi Matsuzaki from Studio Nue was working on it as a scenario writer, so he took the lead.

Interviewer: Was he drawing for it, too?

Miyatake: Yes, as a designer. It was the two of us and also Naoyuki Katou and Haruka Takachiho. Previously we had made doujinshis of SF illustration as a group with Takeshi Matsuzaki as our chairman.

I was in graduate school at the time, so I didn't work on it from the start, but I poked my head in and heard about how it was going. Matsuzaki spent all his time in the studio working on it.

Interviewer: What did you draw for it?

Miyatake: I only drew Yamato itself. Naoyuki Kato did, too. The model sheet of the stern view was his.

Interviewer: When I saw the TV series again recently, I was surprised at the impression of weight in the Yamato design.

Miyatake: The director, Noboru Ishiguro, was particularly conscious of that and I stuck to it. But it became more slender in the hands of some animators as the series went on. We had to take the bad with the good; it was a TV series, and all the pictures were drawn by many hands, so it was hard to preserve the sense of weight. But it is thoroughly reflected in the Playstation game. I think the width of the ship has broadened, too.

Interviewer: After all, Yamato really is big and heavy. It's not just in the mind of the viewer.

Miyatake: Speaking of the old TV series...Part 1 and Farewell used different animation studios, so even the cel paint was different and the colors of Yamato were different.

Interviewer: It became more blue.

Miyatake: And lighter. With the old Yamato, the first color we tried was a heavy black, and some said it looked dirty. (Laughs) It looked dark and gloomy. It wasn't a color for normal animation.

Interviewer: It was also framed differently in Leiji Matsumoto's storyboards, with the pulse lasers and the glowing energy.

Miyatake: Those were done by Mr. Ishiguro. He had been making animation since his university days and he'd done research in effects animation at the time. He developed the space explosion that extended in all directions. Almost all the Yamato effects were by Mr. Ishiguro. He says now that he enjoyed it. However, because nobody else could do that kind of work, he kept pulling all-nighters and had to repair a lot of the animation by himself.

Interviewer: A supervisor did animation revision?

Miyatake: Yes. It was the only TV series where someone like him did so much mecha-related drawing.

Interviewer: Anyway, we have that heavy impression in the first TV series. It also had long scenes of space battles with no cutting back and forth. That sort of thing also made a strong impression.

Miyatake: Yamato was exceptional in those days of TV animation. The policy was "no recycling." The voice from the top didn't mind going over budget. There was no restriction on the cel count, although there wasn't much time, either. The idea was to keep the stock footage down so every episode would look new.

Interviewer: There's a famous story from back then about the 'G' cel.

[Editor's note: on animation exposure sheets, the different cel layers are labeled by letter: A, B, C, etc. It is customary not to go deeper than a C layer, but some scenes in Yamato went all the way to an unheard-of G layer: 7 cels in a single exposure.]

Miyatake: Yes. The top layer was badly scratched. The cel material was bad in those days, and it wasn't handled very carefully. The more cel layers they used, the less transparent and the more scratchy they became.

Also, the oil shock made things considerably painful.

Interviewer: Because a cel is a petroleum product.

Miyatake: There is a small amount in it. So even with a big budget you might not get enough cels. Between those shortages and the schedule, Yamato wasn't easy to make.

Interviewer: By the end, even the top supervisor was in the trenches.

Miyatake: That's how it was. I remember people saying Mr. Ishiguro should try to escape.

We had other problems, like the number of windows on Yamato's bridge. It really became a problem. The number often decreased. If you see it from an angle, there are a lot of lines to draw; the outer edges, the glass line, the inner edges. This was the reason the number sometimes dropped from five windows to four. It's a little thing, but it piles up.

Interviewer: What about all those designs that covered several pieces of paper?

Miyatake: I tried to keep a design neatly on a single sheet, but when drawing something in perspective I often had to go off the edge somewhere; there's a limit. I had to add an extension to find a point, otherwise the drawing might lose its power and realism. So I did it without worrying about using up paper.

But there was a problem in those days---copy machines didn't have a reduction function. I had to draw large, it was unavoidable. Mr. Matsumoto didn't understand this at the time either; some of his drawings took up 6 or 7 pages. (Laughs) I remember having a hard time cleaning up his roughs.

Now reduction is really simple, but in the old days there were few machines capable of it, so we had to find a blueprint machine.

Interviewer: In closing, I'd like to ask you about your future hopes. What do you want to do?

Miyatake: A sense of realism is the basis of our work. I was born in Yokosuka, and I grew up looking at military warships. American aircraft carriers made it their port of call...those provided the basics of my work so far.

But now I want to do exactly the opposite, and completely remove the realism. Take a plane, a battleship, or a spaceship--something from the Comet Empire or Gamilas, for example. The aim is to translate technology into a design, to give it a reality and a presence. That's the sort of work that got me here and that's what clients will ask of me from now on.

But I want to try and break that, to find something appealing in the opposite meaning. But I have no idea what kind of work it would lead to.

Interviewer: You want to break out of your shell.

Miyatake: That's right. To create something fundamentally new, that's the dream. Yamato has been that for over 20 years.

Interviewer: Thank you very much.

(Interview conducted in Yokosuka, June 10, 2000)

Found Here: http://www.starblazers.com/html.php?page_id=341

Yoshitaka Amano

Yoshitaka Amano (天野 喜孝 (formerly 天野 嘉孝), Amano Yoshitaka^?) (born July 28, 1952) is a Japanese artist. He began his career as an animator and has become known for his illustrations for Vampire Hunter D and for his character designs, image illustrations and title logo designs for the Final Fantasy video game series developed by Square Enix (formerly Square).^[1] His influences include Western comic books, art nouveau, and Japanese woodblock prints. He has won awards for his work, including the 1999 Bram Stoker Award for his collaboration with Neil Gaiman, Sandman: The Dream Hunters.^[2] In early 2010, he established Studio Devaloka, a film production company.

Amano was born in Shizuoka, Japan. As a young adolescent, he was fascinated with drawing. In 1967, he began working in the animation department of Tatsunoko Productions, where he was introduced to the early Japanese anime movement.^[4][5] His first paid project was for the Speed Racer anime franchise. He was a character designer for anime shows such as Time Bokan, Gatchaman, Tekkaman, and Honey Bee.^[6]

In the 1960s, Amano was exposed to Western art styles through comic books, which he claims among his artistic roots. He has cited Neal Adams as his favorite comic book artist, noting that he would often purchase used comics based on Adams's cover artwork, only to be disappointed that the interior artist was different.^[7] Amano was also fascinated by the art styles of psychedelic art and pop art of the West, particularly the work of American Pop artist Peter Max.^[8] In the 1970s, Amano studied the artworks of the late 19th century and early 20th century European movement of Art Nouveau, as well as the ancient Japanese hand woodblock printing work of Ukiyo-e.^[8]

Amano remained at Tatsunoko Productions until 1982.

In the early 1980s, Amano concentrated on illustrations for science fiction and fantasy works. Combined with the influence of his prior experience in animation, this focus resulted in a personal style influenced by both modern surrealism and realism.^[6]

In 1983, he illustrated the novel Demon City Shinjuku and the first in Hideyuki Kikuchi's Vampire Hunter D novel series.^[6] He also worked as a character designer on the 1985 movie adaptation of Vampire Hunter D, which was one of the first anime movies to be released outside of Japan. In interviews, however, Amano has stated that he was not pleased with the final product of the movie.^{[citation needed]}

His illustrations begin to be published in collections such as Maten in 1984.

In 1987, Amano joined Square (now known as Square Enix) to work on a role-playing video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System: Final Fantasy. Amano produced conceptual design pieces for the game in both traditional and computer designed artwork.^[10] At this time, he also worked for another video game company, Kure Software Koubou, producing box cover illustrations as well as some character designs. This work included designs for Kure's First Queen series.^[11]

Following Final Fantasy VI in 1994, he stepped down as the main character, image, and graphic designer of the series. He continued to provide promotional and character artwork for the following games and to design their title logos.^[12]

In 2006, Hironobu Sakaguchi, the former designer and creator of the Final Fantasy series, recruited Amano and composer Nobuo Uematsu to work on video games at Mistwalker.^[1]

[edit] Branching out

Amano's first exhibition, called "Hiten", was held in 1989 at Yurakucho Mullion in Tokyo, Japan.^[13] In 1990, he began to work as an artist and set designer for stage theater. His first work for theater was Tamasaburo Bando's Nayotake.^[8] He also held further exhibitions and became well-known for his printing works.^{[citation needed]}

Beginning in 1995 with his work at the Biennale d'Orléans in France, he received increased recognition outside of Japan. Further international exhibitions followed, including the 1996 "Hero" at the Angel Orensanz Foundation and the 1997 workshop and exhibition "Think Like Amano".^[14][15]

In 1998, Amano appeared as Hiroshi in the 1998 movie New Rose Hotel, loosely based on the William Gibson short story of the same name.

In 2000, Amano illustrated Neil Gaiman's Sandman: The Dream Hunters,^[17] which won several awards and was nominated for a Hugo Award.^[2] In 2001, Greg Rucka and Amano collaborated on another comic book tale, Elektra and Wolverine: The Redeemer.^[18] His character designs were used in another Vampire Hunter D movie entitled Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. In 2006, the first volume of his HERO series was released by Boom! Studios.

He illustrated three album covers for the Japanese power metal band Galneryus: The Flag of Punishment (2003), Advance to the Fall (2005), and Beyond the End of Despair (2006).^[19]

In 2008, Amano created an illustrated adaptation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Magic Flute, published by Radical Comics.^[20] He also collaborated with Christopher "mink" MorrisonQuentin Tarantino's A Band Apart production company, providing illustrations for the novel Shinjuku and two other projects that have yet to be announced.^[21] He was the character designer for the 2009 Jungle Emperor (Kimba the White Lion) TV special, directed by Gorō Taniguchi, to commemorate both the 50th anniversary of Fuji Television and the 80th anniversary of Osamu Tezuka's birth.

Found Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoshitaka_Amano

Ctesiphon, the Arch - Baghdad Battery

The Arch of Ctesiphon

Mud brick was the most common building material in Mesopotamia, until the advent of modern concrete. Baked bricks were only used for major projects such as the arch at Ctesiphon, just outside Baghdad, part of a palace built by Sasanian kings in the sixth century AD.

The Sasanians were an Iranian dynasty, but they used traditional Mesopotamian building techniques. The arch, a huge open audience hall 30m (98ft) high and some 43m (141ft) long, should have required massive scaffolding, but the Mesopotamians leant the courses of brickwork back at an angle, so that each course was built against its predecessor, and only a mobile tower for the builders was necessary. The arch was flanked by façades decorated with blank arcading and pilasters, but the one on the right collapsed a century ago.

Found Here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/cultures/mesopotamia_gallery_12.shtml

Ctesiphon, the imperial capital of the Parthian Arsacids and of the Persian Sassanids, was one of the great cities of ancient Mesopotamia. In the 6th century, Ctesiphon was the largest city in the world.^[1]

The ruins of the city are located on the east bank of the Tigris, across the river from the Hellenistic city of Seleucia. Today, the remains of both cities lie in Iraq, approximately 35 km south of the city of Baghdad

The Latin name Ctesiphon or Ctesifon (pronounced /ˈtɛsɨfɒn/) derives from Greek KtēsiphōnΚτησιφῶν), a Hellenized form of a local name that has been reconstructed as Tosfōn or Tosbōn.^[2] In Iranian sources of the Sassanid period it is attested in Manichean Parthian, in Sassanid Middle Persian and in Christian Sogdian as Pahlavi tyspwn, continuing in New PersianTisfun (تيسفون). In medieval Arabic texts the name is usually Ṭaysafūn (طيسفون) or Qaṭaysfūnal-Mada'in (المدائن). "According to Yāqūt [...], quoting Ḥamza, the original form was Ṭūsfūn or Tūsfūn, which was arabicized as Ṭaysafūn."^[3] The Armenian name of the city was Tizbon (Տիզբոն). Ctesiphon is first mentioned in the Book of Ezra of the Old Testament as Kasfia/Casphia (a derivative of the ethnic name, Cas, and a cognate of Caspian and Qazvin).

Ctesiphon rose to prominence during the Parthian Empire in the 1st century BC, and was the seat of government for most of its rulers. The city was located near Seleucia, the Hellenistic capital. Strabo abundantly describes its foundation:

In ancient times Babylon was the metropolis of Assyria; but now Seleuceia is the metropolis, I mean the Seleuceia on the Tigris, as it is called. Near by is situated a village called Ctesiphon, a large village. This village the kings of the Parthians were wont to make their winter residence, thus sparing the Seleuceians, in order that the Seleuceians might not be oppressed by having the Scythian folk or soldiery quartered amongst them. Because of the Parthian power, therefore, Ctesiphon is a city rather than a village; its size is such that it lodges a great number of people, and it has been equipped with buildings by the Parthians themselves; and it has been provided by the Parthians with wares for sale and with the arts that are pleasing to the Parthians; for the Parthian kings are accustomed to spend the winter there because of the salubrity of the air, but they summer at Ecbatana and in Hyrcania because of the prevalence of their ancient renown.^[4]

( as (قطيسفون), in Modern Arabic

Because of its importance, Ctesiphon was a major military objective for the leaders of the Roman Empire in its eastern wars. The city was captured by Rome or by its successor state, the Byzantine Empire, five times in its history, three times in the 2nd century alone. The emperor Trajan captured Ctesiphon in 116, but his successor, Hadrian, decided to willingly return Ctesiphon, in 117, as part of a peace settlement. The Roman general Avidius Cassius captured Ctesiphon during another Parthian war in 164, but abandoned it when peace was concluded. In 197, the emperor Septimius Severus sacked Ctesiphon and carried off thousands of its inhabitants, whom he sold into slavery.

Late in the 3rd century, after the Parthians had been supplanted by the Sassanids, the city again became a source of conflict with Rome. In 283, emperor Carus sacked the city uncontested during a period of civil upheaval. In 295, emperor Galerius was defeated outside the city. However, he returned a year later with a vengeance and won a tremendous victory which ended in the fifth and final capture of the city by the Romans in 299. He returned it to the Persian king Narses in exchange for Armenia and western Mesopotamia. In c.325 and again in 410, the city, or the Greek colony directly across the river, was the site of church councils for the Church of the East.

Emperor Julian was killed following a battle outside of the city walls, in 363, during his war against Shapur II. Finally, in 627, the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius surrounded the city, the capital of the Sassanid Empire, leaving it after the Persians accepted his peace terms.

Ctesiphon fell to the Muslims during the Islamic conquest of Persia in 637 under the military command of Sa'ad ibn Abi Waqqas during the caliphate of Umar. However, the general population was not harmed but the palaces and their archives were burned. Still, as political and economic fortune had passed elsewhere, the city went into a rapid decline, especially after the founding of the Abbasid capital at Baghdad in the 8th century, and soon became a ghost town. It is believed to be the basis for the city of Isbanir in the Thousand and One Nights.

The ruins of Ctesiphon were the site of a major battle of World War I in November 1915. The Ottoman Empire defeated troops of Britain attempting to capture Baghdad, and drove them back some 40 miles (64 km) before trapping the British force and compelling it to surrender.

Found Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ctesiphon

The Baghdad Battery

These strange artefacts were originally discovered in 1936 during an archaeological dig at village of Khuyut Rabbou'a which is located approximately 20 miles south east of the city centre of modern Baghdad and close to the Arch of Ctesiphon. Described as 13 – 14cm in height they contained a copper cylinder and within this was suspended an iron rod. In December 1939, shortly after the start of World War II a German archaeologist by the name of Wilhelm Konig came across the item in the basement of the National Museum of Iraq. He immediately recognised their similarity to galvanic batteries and published a paper that suggested that these ancient electrical devices may have been used for electroplating precious gold onto silver. It is around this time that Adolf Hitler began a serious, if eccentric, programme to study the technology of the ancients. Relatively modern films such as “Raiders of the Lost Ark” are based on this obscure reality. There is no easy explanation for the Baghdad Battery and naturally this has created controversy, debate and disagreement in the scientific community. Reconstructions of this device have proved that it could generate an electrical current of between 0.4 and 1.9 volts. Naturally, some scientists dispute these claims and argue that the reconstructions are inaccurate. (Those scientist just love a good dispute – it’s the scientific equivalent of arguing with you history teacher to make sure that everyone else notices that you’re still in the class.)

Found Here: http://www.jimsrandomwebpage.com/The%20Bagdad%20Battery.html

Some of the greatest mysteries are those that surround ancient gadgets. Because of their antiquity, we may never truly know how they were built or what their purpose was. Such is the case with the Baghdad Battery, a device unearthed in Khujut Rabu, just outside of Baghdad, in 1936. It consisted of a small clay jar containing an iron rod suspended inside of a copper cylinder. The copper cylinder was soldered shut and sealed with asphalt. Wilhelm Konig, a German archaeologist working at the National Museum of Iraq, examined the device two years after its discovery and came to the conclusion that it was an ancient battery.

Indeed, when replicas were built they were able to generate small amounts of electricity. But if the device was a battery, it would pre-date other batteries by at least a thousand years. And what, exactly, would an ancient civilization have use batteries for? For many years, experts contended that the Baghdad Battery would have been used to electroplate thin layers of gold onto silver items. That theory has fallen out of favor due to lack of evidence.

In fact, many archaeologists now believe that the Baghdad Battery had no electrical purpose at all. The usability of the ancient batteries has been proven in various scientific and entertainment arenas, but so far all that can be said is that it was possible to produce electricity with these primitive cells. Whether they were ever used for that purpose – and what, exactly, they may have powered – may never be known. Like the Antikythera Mechanism and so many other ancient gadgets, its function may be forever lost to time.

Found Here: http://gajitz.com/battery-of-mysteries-why-did-worlds-first-battery-exist/