MARVEL

MARVEL OF MARVELS Grappled inside Greek tapia, roped ruefully in place by Roman fascia, plundered punitively by Muslim invaders, Turkish traders, Byzantine Mamelukes' harems/eunuchs, nipped, gnashed, by merchants, pinched off piece by piece by: vain Napoleon, by bloody British cannonballs and scholars, it is a marvel that anything remains of Africa's aboriginal Kemet and Kush! Not to mention the earlier raiders, Assyrians, Persians, both invaders who preceded the Greeks who entered under Alexander in 322 B.C. "Egypt" as they renamed it, having already fallen in 650 B.C., hoary with age already when Plato first came to learn, when Alexander came to be anointed pharaoh at Libya's Oasis Oracle of Delphi as the legitimate heir to the pharaohs, without him ever fighting a battle. But much remains underground, in the lake and seabeds, seemingly surfacing with each dig, each document, interminably: pointing to their very prehistoric antiquity and a divine propinquity of their primal people's global marvel of mankind.