Nazi Motorcycles

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Who knows their motorcycles?   I noticed this on the street in Gythion.  My first thought knowing how proud the Greeks are of their resistance to the German invasion and occupation is that this is a war trophy.  I have seen this before in towns on Crete, BMW motorcycles proudly displayed in front of shops as a monument to their expulsion of the Nazi occupiers.  But that was decades ago and I don't remember the details of the models used by Germany during World War II.
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Toe Be or Not Toe Be

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I have seen the famous wooden prosthetic toe in textbooks on ancient medicine, on social media, and in academic talks, but I was surprised and thrilled to see it for myself at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization.  The foot and toe date to 950-710 BCE and we’re recovered from the mummy of a woman found near Luxor.  There is another toe of cartonnage at the British Museum as well.

I recall my ancient history professor at San Jose State University decades ago discussing Henri Frankfort's Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the Integration of Society.  I was a bit incredulous about Frankfurt's interpretation of the relationship between the icons of gods and the spiritual essence of the deity. Whether wood, cartonnage, straw, faience, or stone, these representations were not merely representations but the embodiment of the spirit, no less real than the connection of your mind and body. 

For example, there is an account of a man making love to the stone statue of Isis to gain fertility with his wife. The famous sensual Arsinoë-Isis statue from Alexandria might explain some of this.

And of course, this melding of spirituality with the material representation of the divine entities continues today in most religions, although generally rejected in Islam and Judaism. So, are prosthetics more than a convenience of life?

The importance of making sure that a person was complete has not been lost from its origin with our ancestors.  I recall once working on some MIA cases in Korea and talking with the head of the US Army mortuary there.  He had a horrific case on the table, a young female soldier whose armored vehicle toppled over the side of a rice paddy during training. The young woman panicked and tried to exit the hatch as it rolled over and her head was crushed. He carefully, as he spoke to me, reassembled the pieces of her skull so that her remains would go back to her family in a presentable form.  He then showed me an album of before and after images of tragic deaths. He was an artist who caringly tried to build whatever representation of the victims' life back into their bodies as they made the transition to whatever afterlife awaits.

So, while the biomechanics and practicality of ancient prosthetics are surely interesting and a humanitarian endeavor to improve one's life we should also keep in mind the importance of completeness of the body so that our divine spark has an appropriate place to reside and that are memories of the physical form of those we loved are preserved in their most beautiful form. 


Reference:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(11)60190-6/fulltext

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