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admin
Admin

44, male

  BRONZE

Posts: 51

10 Things to know To Avoid Being Raped

from admin on 03/08/2014 06:05 PM



1. Never be alone with a man
Men are stronger than women by nature. Unless a woman is built like Hulk Hogan, she should never be in the same room with a man for more than 1 minute. Hmm.... who would rape_ a woman that looks like Hulk Hogan anyways.....? But that's besides the point. The devil can set workshop in the mind of any man and since you can't fight back, better leave the vicinity quickly. it doesn't matter if it is your boss or your cousin's friend or your childhood friend. It will be your fault if anything bad happens to you. If you are outnumbered by more than two men to one, better pick race like a mad woman because that is a Bleep waiting to happen. Trust me.

2. Never visit a man or let a man visit you
Now why would you do something as silly as that. You don't know that visiting a man's house implicitly means sex_ to Nigerian men? Or are you a learner? Even if you went to collect a library book or you went to visit a man's sister and she was not around, you have made a silent agreement. Whether he acts on it or not is not your business, all you have to do is to submit to his wishes or he will take what is rightfully his. If you are dating him, then you have no case at all because it is your word against his. You better go back and beg him to be your boyfriend after that because it is your fault. If you told him to visit you, then you are a prositute_ and I have no words for your likes.

3. Never walk alone at night
Women are vulnerable to all sorts of attacks in the daylight and now you have decided to be imbecilic. I don't pity you. It doesn't matter if you were coming back from work, went to visit a friend or went to buy recharge card or candle. Any woman that leaves her house after 6pm should not cry rape_ when it happens because she brought it on her self. It doesn't matter if it is an emergency or your house is on fire, stay put.

4. Never spend a night at a man's place
The biggest taboo of all. Why? WHY? Why spend the night at a man's place if you don't want to have sex_? It is even worse than number 2. Let me tell you this now, if you don't know this. There is an evil spirit called konji that plagues men at night. The bastard can smell a woman within a few meters and once it takes control, there is no telling what a man can do to a woman. You can't be screaming rape_ when konji holds a man. It is just not possible. A word is enough for the wise and... You are welcome!

5. Never kiss a man
There is a saying that goes like.... don't play in a den if you don't like the lion or is it don't eat with a lion if you don't like the den.... I can't remember it exactly but that's besides the point. Kissing is just preliminary for what comes after. Once you kiss a man you should expect to give in to whatever happens next. It doesn't matter what you want or what you like. Sex_ must come after. There is no two ways about this. Don't cry foul play after. You started it.

6. Never dress indecently
Showing your body parts means that you have become public property. Who says you have a right over your body? Infact you should be jailed for intimate abuse. Yes! I said it! Do you think wearing all those sexy_ clothes and letting men have erections without letting them have it is right? Have a conscience and stop screaming rape_. Remember the little man down there doesn't care.

7. Never accept drinks from a man
So you are out at a party (which is wrong and if you get raped_ in this setting, it is all your fault), and a guy comes over and buys you a drink. Once the bottle or glass touches your mouth and takes a sip of that drink, you are his for the night. Why waste a man's time, effort and money if you won't get that down? That's sheer wickedness honestly. If he drugged the drink and had his way with you, it will still be your fault because you accepted the drink from him. He just likes it when a woman is unconscious, that's all. If you were drunk at a party and had sex_ with a man..... that's not _rape! Why are you drunk in the first place if you are not wayward. Rubbish!

8. Never accept gifts from a man
This ties in with my above point but it is even more serious than that. Women nowadays are evil. All they do is take take take take! When will they give? You don't know that relationships of modern times are like business transactions. At some point a man needs to reap the dividend of his transaction and it doesn't matter if he takes it forcefully or not. It is not rape_, it is simply a case of a business deal gone wrong.

9. Never change your mind in the middle of sex_
This one is laughable in fact. Changing your mind? After one has inserted sim card? Is there anything wee won't hear these days. It doesn't matter if it is too painful, you are bleeding or you are not just feeling the thing anymore, you have no right to tell a man to stop in the middle of action. That's like torture. You don't know that men are like robots and once that innate response in them kicks in, it does not matter what you think or want anymore until he is done. This case won't even make it to court.

10. Never befriend a man
Ultimately, don't have male . Why have male when there are females all over the place you can befriend. If you are pretty, don't bother because at some point men will lose control and force themselves on you even if were with them since kindergarten. If you are ugly as sin, have as many male as you want because no one wants you anyway.

The list I have provided is not exhaustive but what I am trying to put across is that women have no say with what they do with their bodies. It is all up to men. It doesn't matter what happened. just know it was all your fault. You were 6 when you were raped_?... You must have seduced him. You were in your room when armed robber attacked?.... Why did you leave your doors unlocked? He was a stranger?... Your mother taught you never to talk to strangers.
Infact, never have anything to do with men in general. The best advice I can give to any woman now is that she should be a nun and join a coventry. Have as little contact with men as possible and if you do happen to, go straight to the nearest police station. There may be a probability of about a 100% that you will meet a man there and if you are _raped, it will still be your fault. Sorry but that's how our society works.

The only way evil  people prevail is when the good people do nothing

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kingjohn

36, male

  BRONZE

Posts: 63

The Black Shakespeare

from kingjohn on 03/05/2014 01:03 PM

From the most remote times there has existed in Russia people of African descent. By far the most famous of all the Blacks in Russian history, however, was Alexander Sergeievich Pushkin–patriarch of Russian literature. Born in Moscow on May 26, 1799, Pushkin was descended on his mother's side from Major-General Ibrahim Petrovich Hannibal–an Ethiopian prince who became a favorite of Tsar Peter I (1682-1725). Hannibal impressed Czar Peter "so well that he became a confidant and favorite, was revered at the court, and began the aristocratic Pushkin lineage. In an unfinished work, The Negro of Peter the Great, Alexander Pushkin pays homage to his illustrious ancestor

Pushkin has been positively identified as the father of Russian literature, and composed in the Russian language at a time when most Russian intellectuals were writing in French. Of Pushkin, Feodor Dostoevsky wrote that, "No Russian writer was ever so intimately at one with the Russian people as Pushkin." Maxim Gorky wrote that, "Pushkin is the greatest master in the world. Pushkin, in our country, is the beginning of all beginnings. He most beautifully expressed the spirit of our people." According to N.A. Dobrolyubuv, "Pushkin is of immense importance not only in the history of Russian literature, but also in the history of Russian enlightenment. He was the first to teach the Russian public to read." I. Turgeniev wrote that "Pushkin alone had to perform two tasks which took whole centuries and more to accomplish in other countries, namely to establish a language and to create a literature." Czar Nicholas I, who hated and feared Pushkin, referred to him as "the most intelligent man in Russia."

Pushkin died prematurely, defending his honor in a duel, in January 1837. At the time of his death, Pushkin was working on a novel on the life of his beloved ancestor, Ibrahim Hannibal–The Negro of Peter the Great. Among Pushkin's most significant works translated into English are: Eugene Onegin, The Ode to Liberty, The Captain's Daughter and Boris Godunof.

A bronze statue of Pushkin was erected in Moscow's Red Square. Today, his name is loftily born by twenty museums. African-American scholar Allison Blakely has written that, "Pushkin was truly the Russian counterpoint to Shakespeare."

 

 

 


When you dreams dream big as big as the occean

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kingjohn

36, male

  BRONZE

Posts: 63

5 Women Who Changed the World

from kingjohn on 03/05/2014 12:47 PM

A very wise person stated, "Behind every successful man, there's a woman." But, an even wiser thought will acknowledge that behind a ever-evolving world, there are several women. MensXP takes a look at some of these women who make dynamite seem weak
!1. Joan Of Arc

A patron saint of France and a revolutionary, Joan Of Arc is a heroic figure from our history. Born as a peasant girl, she claimed to receive spiritual intervention at a very early age and soon after she led the French to several victories in the Hundred Years' War in her teens! Unfortunately fate had a different tale carved for her when she was captured and given away to Englishmen for money. The pro-English Bishop of Beauvais found her guilty on the charges of "insubordination and heterodoxy" and was burned at the stake for being a heretic when she was only 19 years old!

2. Mother Teresa

A Nobel Peace Prize winner, a philanthropist, and arguably the one sole person to have brought about a change in the world as of today, Mother Teresa was a heaven-sent being for mankind. A Roman Catholic nun, Mother Teresa dedicated her whole life in serving the betterment of the poor and going to extreme lengths to eradicate poverty. So much so that she ended up establishing charitable trusts in more than 133 countries! Her motto of "Wholehearted and Free service to the poorest of the poor" surely did its trick as she proved to be the most inspirational being of the 20th century!

3. Susan Anthony

The most prominent woman of the American Civil Rights movement, Susan Anthony rewrote history with her work for humanitarianism and human rights. To put things in place, she was the sole person to raise her voice for women's right to vote at the election, bringing the power of authority of women in accordance to the men. She extensively toured the country delivering speeches to huge masses and spreading the word of gender-equality, fighting for equal rights, social and political. Unfortunately she did not live long enough to see it through as the law was passed in 1920, 14 years after her death.

4. Harriet Beecher Stowe

An abolitionist and an author, Harriet Beecher Stowe fought against the slavery of the African-Americans that was a trend in the 18t century. Her writings revolved around the hardships and ill-treatments that she witnessed first-hand all across the United States. Harriet's work and exploits influenced millions and fuelled the fire that eventually helped in abolishing slavery all across United States and United Kingdom!

5. Marie Curie

A scientist and a chemist, Marie Curie is a household name when it comes to science, and even more so radioactivity. Marie Curie established herself in the field that was solely dominated by men, and paved way for new techniques in the study of radioactivity. It doesn't end there, for she has been the first in many roles; She was the first ever woman to win the Nobel Prize for her contribution to science and to be the first ever female professor at the University Of Paris. Her valuable contribution in the field of science, and yet unfortunately so she ended up dying while doing what she d the most while working on radioactivity and eventually dying due to radiation.

 

When you dreams dream big as big as the occean

Reply Edited on 03/05/2014 12:50 PM.

kingjohn

36, male

  BRONZE

Posts: 63

Love and Relationship Quotes

from kingjohn on 03/05/2014 12:41 PM


instead of swearing to go off and pack for the Himalayas, I look to the greats who formulated and perfected the Pickup arts, for wisdom and inspiration. Over the years, I have collected their choicest 'words of wisdom' – lines powerful enough to result in an in instant epiphany. I am sure they will help you as much as they helped me:

Respect is to women what looks are to men. A woman dating a man without respect is like a man dating a borderline ugly woman.

Brian Canigla

Never try to keep someone who does not want to keep you.

Doc Love

As a rule when men talk to someone about a problem, they are looking for answers; women in general are different. They will talk to you about a problem to express how they feel. They usually aren't looking for answers; they just want to talk about it to straighten things out in their own minds. Unless she asks for advice, don't offer it. Just listen, and keep the conversation going. If she wants advice she will ask for it.

Gary Caine

Improve on what you can (health, fitness, style) and embrace the things you cannot change (height, race, etc) Insecurity is an ugly thing, so confront the roots of your warped self image and banish this negativity from your mind. No excuses, dude! Only you can make yourself worthy of the best things in life!

Senor Fingers

When a man goes on a date, he wonders if he is going to get lucky. A woman already knows.

Frederick Ryder

Nobody is teaching boys how to be men, nobody is teaching them how to be in tune with their masculine nature. Mothers, try as they might, cannot do so adequately, because they don't know HOW to teach masculine nature, because their nature is feminine. With more boys being taught how to by their mothers, they pick up the feminine nature.

'Metal Fortress'

Never ask a female friend to hook you up with one of her . To a woman that's pathetic. It implies that you are desperate, insecure and dependent. The key is not to ask for it, let her do it.

John Fate

Not approaching a girl actually feels worse than getting rejected

Don Joey

Women know if they'll sleep with you within 5 minutes of meeting you.

Dr. Dennis W. Neder

Just like we want our women to be soft, beautiful, sexy, confident, etc., they want men to be strong, masculine, secure, and into himself. Wear the finest. Smell great, not good. Do better than the next man. Look better than the next man!

Marc

Attraction is an emotional and physical RESPONSE... and you can't "convince" a woman to feel it with logic, gifts, and NICENESS.

David DeAngelo

The thing to know is that if you give the dog a treat every single time he comes when you call, he'll start to get lazy. He'll figure, "Eh, why should I hurry? I can get over there in my own good time, and take the treat." If you constantly shower a woman with gifts and attention, you run the risk of the same thing happening.

Ron Loui

The greatest regrets in our lives are the risks we did not take. If you think something will make you , go for it. Remember that you pass this way only once!

Don Juan

You weren't BORN shy. Shyness is not an inherited trait. It's something that is LEARNED. It's a skill that is DEVELOPED over time. In short: Shyness is UNNATURAL!

Joseph Matthews

It's easier to start from scratch with new women than it is to fix up old problems with the women you're pursuing now.

'Mystery'

When you dreams dream big as big as the occean

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kingjohn

36, male

  BRONZE

Posts: 63

Qualities of Entreprenuers

from kingjohn on 03/05/2014 11:56 AM

What does it take to create and build a company? This is usually the first question that most people get to ask before starting up a business. Getting the most factual answers and applying same go a long way in determining the success of the business. I once asked this question in a meeting of successful entrepreneurs. What emerged from that conversation was a set of behaviors that all great entrepreneurs have in common:

 1. Believe If athletes, artists, musicians, and entrepreneurs actually examined the success rate of people in their field, they would talk themselves out of even trying. They would take the path of least resistance. They would go out and get a "real" job. Belief provides the motivation to attempt things that, if you were entirely rational about them, you would never attempt. With belief, the "odds of success" become irrelevant. You continue to push forward until you achieve your dreams.

 2. Empathize Believing in yourself and what you're doing has a downside: It can make you blind to what other people believe and why they believe it. As a result, you become convinced that everybody sees the world the unique way that you see it. Great entrepreneurs have the uncanny ability to see the world from the perspective of their customers. Steve Jobs was a case in point. He certainly believed in Apple's products, but he presented them as something that customers could believe in.

 3. Observe Great entrepreneurs are observers of human nature and human behavior. They're profoundly curious about the patterns that guide people's lives and the activities that bring them pleasure and (especially) pain. Therefore, if you want to create a product or service that people will , keep your eyes and ears open. When you hear somebody curse or swear because an existing product or service sucks, that's where there's money to be made.

4. Obsess Great entrepreneurs are fanatical about improving their products and services. They never rest on their laurels or think merely in terms of incremental improvement. They'll spend extraordinary time and effort simply to get things right. Thus, if you want to be successful as an entrepreneur, you must pay attention to every element, every process, and every stage of your product or service. There must be no detail so small that it escapes your notice.

 5. Win Do I need to say more? They win in their minds they believe that everything is possible, they aare enthusisatic about their goal

When you dreams dream big as big as the occean

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Justice

44, male

Posts: 39

The Black Pharaohs of Egypt

from Justice on 03/01/2014 09:28 PM



 

 

 

 

 

In the year 730 B.C., a man by the name of Piye decided the only way to save Egypt from itself was to invade it. Things would get bloody before the salvation came.

“Harness the best steeds of your stable,” he ordered his commanders. The magnificent civilization that had built the great pyramids had lost its way, torn apart by petty warlords. For two decades Piye had ruled over his own kingdom in Nubia, a swath of Africa located mostly in present-day Sudan. But he considered himself the true ruler of Egypt as well, the rightful heir to the spiritual traditions practiced by pharaohs such as Ramses II and Thutmose III. Since Piye had probably never actually visited Lower Egypt, some did not take his boast seriously. Now Piye would witness the subjugation of decadent Egypt firsthand—“I shall let Lower Egypt taste the taste of my fingers,” he would later write.

North on the Nile River his soldiers sailed. At Thebes, the capital of Upper Egypt, they disembarked. Believing there was a proper way to wage holy wars, Piye instructed his soldiers to purify themselves before combat by bathing in the Nile, dressing themselves in fine linen, and sprinkling their bodies with water from the temple at Karnak, a site holy to the ram-headed sun god Amun, whom Piye identified as his own personal deity. Piye himself feasted and offered sacrifices to Amun. Thus sanctified, the commander and his men commenced to do battle with every army in their path.

By the end of a yearlong campaign, every leader in Egypt had capitulated—including the powerful delta warlord Tefnakht, who sent a messenger to tell Piye, “Be gracious! I cannot see your face in the days of shame; I cannot stand before your flame, I dread your grandeur.” In exchange for their lives, the vanquished urged Piye to worship at their temples, pocket their finest jewels, and claim their best horses. He obliged them. And then, with his vassals trembling before him, the newly anointed Lord of the Two Lands did something extraordinary: He loaded up his army and his war booty, and sailed southward to his home in Nubia, never to return to Egypt again.

When Piye died at the end of his 35-year reign in 715 B.C., his subjects honored his wishes by burying him in an Egyptian-style pyramid, with four of his beloved horses nearby. He was the first pharaoh to receive such entombment in more than 500 years. A pity, then, that the great Nubian who accomplished these feats is literally faceless to us. Images of Piye on the elaborate granite slabs, or stelae, memorializing his conquest of Egypt have long since been chiseled away. On a relief in the temple at the Nubian capital of Napata, only Piye’s legs remain. We are left with a single physical detail of the man—namely, that his skin was dark.

Piye was the first of the so-called black pharaohs—a series of Nubian kings who ruled over all of Egypt for three-quarters of a century as that country’s 25th dynasty. Through inscriptions carved on stelae by both the Nubians and their enemies, it is possible to map out these rulers’ vast footprint on the continent. The black pharaohs reunified a tattered Egypt and filled its landscape with glorious monuments, creating an empire that stretched from the southern border at present-day Khartoum all the way north to the Mediterranean Sea. They stood up to the bloodthirsty Assyrians, perhaps saving Jerusalem in the process.

Until recently, theirs was a chapter of history that largely went untold. Only in the past four decades have archaeologists resurrected their story—and come to recognize that the black pharaohs didn’t appear out of nowhere. They sprang from a robust African civilization that had flourished on the southern banks of the Nile for 2,500 years, going back at least as far as the first Egyptian dynasty.

Today Sudan’s pyramids—greater in number than all of Egypt’s—are haunting spectacles in the Nubian Desert. It is possible to wander among them unharassed, even alone, a world away from Sudan’s genocide and refugee crisis in Darfur or the aftermath of civil war in the south. While hundreds of miles north, at Cairo or Luxor, curiosity seekers arrive by the busload to jostle and crane for views of the Egyptian wonders, Sudan’s seldom-visited pyramids at El Kurru, Nuri, and Meroë stand serenely amid an arid landscape that scarcely hints of the thriving culture of ancient Nubia.

Now our understanding of this civilization is once again threatened with obscurity. The Sudanese government is building a hydroelectric dam along the Nile, 600 miles upstream from the Aswan High Dam, which Egypt constructed in the 1960s, consigning much of lower Nubia to the bottom of Lake Nasser (called Lake Nubia in Sudan). By 2009, the massive Merowe Dam should be complete, and a 106-mile-long lake will flood the terrain abutting the Nile’s Fourth Cataract, or rapid, including thousands of unexplored sites. For the past nine years, archaeologists have flocked to the region, furiously digging before another repository of Nubian history goes the way of Atlantis.

The ancient world was devoid of racism. At the time of Piye’s historic conquest, the fact that his skin was dark was irrelevant. Artwork from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome shows a clear awareness of racial features and skin tone, but there is little evidence that darker skin was seen as a sign of inferiority. Only after the European powers colonized Africa in the 19th century did Western scholars pay attention to the color of the Nubians’ skin, to uncharitable effect.

Explorers who arrived at the central stretch of the Nile River excitedly reported the discovery of elegant temples and pyramids—the ruins of an ancient civilization called Kush. Some, like the Italian doctor Giuseppe Ferlini—who lopped off the top of at least one Nubian pyramid, inspiring others to do the same—hoped to find treasure beneath. The Prussian archaeologist Richard Lepsius had more studious intentions, but he ended up doing damage of his own by concluding that the Kushites surely “belonged to the Caucasian race.”

Even famed Harvard Egyptologist George Reisner—whose discoveries between 1916 and 1919 offered the first archaeological evidence of Nubian kings who ruled over Egypt—besmirched his own findings by insisting that black Africans could not possibly have constructed the monuments he was excavating. He believed that Nubia’s leaders, including Piye, were light-skinned Egypto-Libyans who ruled over the primitive Africans. That their moment of greatness was so fleeting, he suggested, must be a consequence of the same leaders intermarrying with the “negroid elements.”

For decades, many historians flip-flopped: Either the Kushite pharaohs were actually “white,” or they were bumblers, their civilization a derivative offshoot of true Egyptian culture. In their 1942 history, When Egypt Ruled the East, highly regarded Egyptologists Keith Seele and George Steindorff summarized the Nubian pharaonic dynasty and Piye’s triumphs in all of three sentences—the last one reading: “But his dominion was not for long.”

The neglect of Nubian history reflected not only the bigoted worldview of the times, but also a cult-like fascination with Egypt’s achievements—and a complete ignorance of Africa’s past. “The first time I came to Sudan,” recalls Swiss archaeologist Charles Bonnet, “people said: ‘You’re mad! There’s no history there! It’s all in
Egypt!’ ”

That was a mere 44 years ago. Artifacts uncovered during the archaeological salvage campaigns as the waters rose at Aswan in the 1960s began changing that view. In 2003, Charles Bonnet’s decades of digging near the Nile’s Third Cataract at the abandoned settlement of Kerma gained international recognition with the discovery of seven large stone statues of Nubian pharaohs. Well before then, however, Bonnet’s labors had revealed an older, densely occupied urban center that commanded rich fields and extensive herds, and had long profited from trade in gold, ebony, and ivory. “It was a kingdom completely free of Egypt and original, with its own construction and burial customs,” Bonnet says. This powerful dynasty rose just as Egypt’s Middle Kingdom declined around 1785 B.C. By 1500 B.C. the Nubian empire stretched between the Second and Fifth Cataracts.

Revisiting that golden age in the African desert does little to advance the case of Afrocentric Egyptologists, who argue that all ancient Egyptians, from King Tut to Cleopatra, were black Africans. Nonetheless, the saga of the Nubians proves that a civilization from deep in Africa not only thrived but briefly dominated in ancient times, intermingling and sometimes intermarrying with their Egyptian neighbors to the north. (King Tut’s own grandmother, the 18th-dynasty Queen Tiye, is claimed by some to be of Nubian heritage.)

The Egyptians didn’t like having such a powerful neighbor to the south, especially since they depended on Nubia’s gold mines to bankroll their dominance of western Asia. So the pharaohs of the 18th dynasty (1539-1292 B.C.) sent armies to conquer Nubia and built garrisons along the Nile. They installed Nubian chiefs as administrators and schooled the children of favored Nubians at Thebes. Subjugated, the elite Nubians began to embrace the cultural and spiritual customs of Egypt—venerating Egyptian gods, particularly Amun, using the Egyptian language, adopting Egyptian burial styles and, later, pyramid building. The Nubians were arguably the first people to be struck by “Egyptomania.”

Egyptologists of the latter 19th and early 20th centuries would interpret this as a sign of weakness. But they had it wrong: The Nubians had a gift for reading the geopolitical tea leaves. By the eighth century B.C., Egypt was riven by factions, the north ruled by Libyan chiefs who put on the trappings of pharaonic traditions to gain legitimacy. Once firmly in power, they toned down the theocratic devotion to Amun, and the priests at Karnak feared a godless outcome. Who was in a position to return Egypt to its former state of might and sanctity?

The Egyptian priests looked south and found their answer—a people who, without setting foot inside Egypt, had preserved Egypt’s spiritual traditions. As archaeologist Timothy Kendall of Northeastern University puts it, the Nubians “had become more Catholic than the pope.”

Under Nubian rule, Egypt became Egypt again. When Piye died in 715 B.C., his brother Shabaka solidified the 25th dynasty by taking up residence in the Egyptian capital of Memphis. Like his brother, Shabaka wed himself to the old pharaonic ways, adopting the throne name of the 6th-dynasty ruler Pepi II, just as Piye had claimed the old throne name of Thutmose III. Rather than execute his foes, Shabaka put them to work building dikes to seal off Egyptian villages from Nile floods.

Shabaka lavished Thebes and the Temple of Luxor with building projects. At Karnak he erected a pink granite statue depicting himself wearing the Kushite crown of the double uraeus—the two cobras signifying his legitimacy as Lord of the Two Lands. Through architecture as well as military might, Shabaka signaled to Egypt that the Nubians were here to stay.

To the east, the Assyrians were fast building their own empire. In 701 B.C., when they marched into Judah in present-day Israel, the Nubians decided to act. At the city of Eltekeh, the two armies met. And although the Assyrian emperor, Sennacherib, would brag lustily that he “inflicted defeat upon them,” a young Nubian prince, perhaps 20, son of the great pharaoh Piye, managed to survive. That the Assyrians, whose tastes ran to wholesale slaughter, failed to kill the prince suggests their victory was anything but total.

In any event, when the Assyrians left town and massed against the gates of Jerusalem, that city’s embattled leader, Hezekiah, hoped his Egyptian allies would come to the rescue. The Assyrians issued a taunting reply, immortalized in the Old Testament’s Book of II Kings: “Thou trustest upon the staff of this bruised reed [of] Egypt, on which if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it: So is Pharaoh king of Egypt unto all that trust on him.”

Then, according to the Scriptures and other accounts, a miracle occurred: The Assyrian army retreated. Were they struck by a plague? Or, as Henry Aubin’s provocative book, The Rescue of Jerusalem, suggests, was it actually the alarming news that the aforementioned Nubian prince was advancing on Jerusalem? All we know for sure is that Sennacherib abandoned the siege and galloped back in disgrace to his kingdom, where he was murdered 18 years later, apparently by his own sons.

The deliverance of Jerusalem is not just another of ancient history’s sidelights, Aubin asserts, but one of its pivotal events. It allowed Hebrew society and Judaism to strengthen for another crucial century—by which time the Babylonian king Nebuchadrezzar could banish the Hebrew people but not obliterate them or their faith. From Judaism, of course, would spring Christianity and Islam. Jerusalem would come to be recast, in all three major monotheistic religions, as a city of a godly significance.

It has been easy to overlook, amid these towering historical events, the dark-skinned figure at the edge of the landscape—the survivor of Eltekeh, the hard-charging prince later referred to by the Assyrians as “the one accursed by all the great gods”: Piye’s son Taharqa.

So sweeping was Taharqa’s influence on Egypt that even his enemies could not eradicate his imprint. During his rule, to travel down the Nile from Napata to Thebes was to navigate a panorama of architectural wonderment. All over Egypt, he built monuments with busts, statues, and cartouches bearing his image or name, many of which now sit in museums around the world. He is depicted as a supplicant to gods, or in the protective presence of the ram deity Amun, or as a sphinx himself, or in a warrior’s posture. Most statues were defaced by his rivals. His nose is often broken off, to foreclose him returning from the dead. Shattered as well is the uraeus on his forehead, to repudiate his claim as Lord of the Two Lands. But in each remaining image, the serene self-certainty in his eyes remains for all to see.

His father, Piye, had returned the true pharaonic customs to Egypt. His uncle Shabaka had established a Nubian presence in Memphis and Thebes. But their ambitions paled before those of the 31-year-old military commander who received the crown in Memphis in 690 B.C. and presided over the combined empires of Egypt and Nubia for the next 26 years.

Taharqa had ascended at a favorable moment for the 25th dynasty. The delta warlords had been laid low. The Assyrians, after failing to best him at Jerusalem, wanted no part of the Nubian ruler. Egypt was his and his alone. The gods granted him prosperity to go with the peace. During his sixth year on the throne, the Nile swelled from rains, inundating the valleys and yielding a spectacular harvest of grain without sweeping away any villages. As Taharqa would record in four separate stelae, the high waters even exterminated all rats and snakes. Clearly the revered Amun was smiling on his chosen one.

Taharqa did not intend to sit on his profits. He believed in spending his political capital. Thus he launched the most audacious building campaign of any pharaoh since the New Kingdom (around 1500 B.C.), when Egypt had been in a period of expansion. Inevitably the two holy capitals of Thebes and Napata received the bulk of Taharqa’s attention. Standing today amid the hallowed clutter of the Karnak temple complex near Thebes is a lone 62-foot-high column. That pillar had been one of ten, forming a gigantic kiosk that the Nubian pharaoh added to the Temple of Amun. He also constructed a number of chapels around the temple and erected massive statues of himself and of his beloved mother, Abar. Without defacing a single preexisting monument, Taharqa made Thebes his.

He did the same hundreds of miles upriver, in the Nubian city of Napata. Its holy mountain Jebel Barkal—known for its striking rock-face pinnacle that calls to mind a phallic symbol of fertility—had captivated even the Egyptian pharaohs of the New Kingdom, who believed the site to be the birthplace of Amun. Seeking to present himself as heir to the New Kingdom pharaohs, Taharqa erected two temples, set into the base of the mountain, honoring the goddess consorts of Amun. On Jebel Barkal’s pinnacle—partially covered in gold leaf to bedazzle wayfarers—the black pharaoh ordered his name inscribed.

Around the 15th year of his rule, amid the grandiosity of his empire-building, a touch of hubris was perhaps overtaking the Nubian ruler. “Taharqa had a very strong army and was one of the main international powers of this period,” says Charles Bonnet. “I think he thought he was the king of the world. He became a bit of a megalomaniac.”

The timber merchants along the coast of Lebanon had been feeding Taharqa’s architectural appetite with a steady supply of juniper and cedar. When the Assyrian king Esarhaddon sought to clamp down on this trade artery, Taharqa sent troops to the southern Levant to support a revolt against the Assyrian. Esarhaddon quashed the move and retaliated by crossing into Egypt in 674 B.C. But Taharqa’s army beat back its foes.

The victory clearly went to the Nubian’s head. Rebel states along the Mediterranean shared his giddiness and entered into an alliance against Esarhaddon. In 671 B.C. the Assyrians marched with their camels into the Sinai desert to quell the rebellion. Success was instant; now it was Esarhaddon who brimmed with bloodlust. He directed his troops toward the Nile Delta.

Taharqa and his army squared off against the Assyrians. For 15 days they fought pitched battles—“very bloody,” by Esarhaddon’s grudging admission. But the Nubians were pushed back all the way to Memphis. Wounded five times, Taharqa escaped with his life and abandoned Memphis. In typical Assyrian fashion, Esarhaddon slaughtered the villagers and “erected piles of their heads.” Then, as the Assyrian would later write, “His queen, his harem, Ushankhuru his heir, and the rest of his sons and daughters, his property and his goods, his horses, his cattle, his sheep, in countless numbers, I carried off to Assyria. The root of Kush I tore up out of Egypt.” To commemorate Taharqa’s humiliation, Esarhaddon commissioned a stela showing Taharqa’s son, Ushankhuru, kneeling before the Assyrian with a rope tied around his neck.

As it happened, Taharqa outlasted the victor. In 669 B.C. Esarhaddon died en route to Egypt, after learning that the Nubian had managed to retake Memphis. Under a new king, the Assyrians once again assaulted the city, this time with an army swollen with captured rebel troops. Taharqa stood no chance. He fled south to Napata and never saw Egypt again.

A measure of Taharqa’s status in Nubia is that he remained in power after being routed twice from Memphis. How he spent his final years is a mystery—with the exception of one final innovative act. Like his father, Piye, Taharqa chose to be buried in a pyramid. But he eschewed the royal cemetery at El Kurru, where all previous Kushite pharaohs had been laid to rest. Instead, he chose a site at Nuri, on the opposite bank of the Nile. Perhaps, as archaeologist Timothy Kendall has theorized, Taharqa selected the location because, from the vista of Jebel Barkal, his pyramid precisely aligns with the sunrise on ancient Egypt’s New Year’s Day, linking him in perpetuity with the Egypt

It pays to be good and It is more blessed to give than to recieve

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Justice

44, male

Posts: 39

7 Habits you need to Be Highly Efficient

from Justice on 03/01/2014 09:06 PM



1) Be proactive - We always have the freedom to choose our reactions to stimuli, even if everything else is taken away. With that ability also comes the knowledge we do not have to live by the scripts that family or society has given us. Instead of 'being lived', we accept full responsibility for our life the way conscience tells us it was meant to be lived. We are no longer a reactive machine but a proactive person.

2) Begin with the end in mind - What do I want people to say about me at my funeral? By writing our own eulogy or creating a personal mission statement, we create the ultimate objective or person first, and work backward from there. We have a self-guidance system that gives the wisdom to choose rightly, so that whatever we do today is in line with the image created of ourselves at the end.

3) Put first things first - Habit 3 puts into daily action the far-sightedness of habit 2. Having that ultimate picture in our mind, we can plan our days for maximum effectiveness and enjoyment. Our time is spent with the people and the things that really matter.

4) Think Win/Win - One person's success doesn't need to be achieved at the expense of the success of others. In seeking Win/Win, we never endanger our own principles; the result is a better relationship - 'not your way or my way, a better way' - created by truly seeing from the other person's perspective.

5) Seek to understand, then to be understood - Without empathy, there is no influence. Without deposits in the emotional bank account of relationships, there is no trust. Genuine listening gives precious psychological air to the other person, and opens a window onto their soul.

6) Synergize - Synergy results from the exercise of all the other habits. It brings forth 'third alternatives' or perfect outcomes which cannot be predicted from adding up the sum of the parts.

7) Sharpen the saw - We need to balance the physical, spiritual, mental and social dimensions of life. 'Sharpening the saw' to increase productivity involves taking the time for regular renewal of ourselves in these areas

It pays to be good and It is more blessed to give than to recieve

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kingjohn

36, male

  BRONZE

Posts: 63

Never Ask Single people These Questions

from kingjohn on 03/01/2014 04:25 PM

:
1. "When are you getting married?" In my recent social media survey, this was the NUMBER ONE QUESTION that baffled (and irritated) most singles. If they knew when they were getting married they would tell you (unless they were planning to elope). Many of us are still waiting to be found (ladies) or are still trying to determine who will be "The One" (men). So the answer to this question most times will be, "I have NO idea!"

 

2. "You can't find anyone yet? Maybe it's because your standards are too high." Well, if we take just anyone who comes along, are we using wisdom? Most singles have some standards that they are sticking with in deciding who they will marry. Many of us are pursuing our purpose and will need someone to walk with us and support us as we achieve our goals. As long as the "standards list" doesn't contain anything that is above what we will be willing to offer our desired future mate, our "high" standards are just fine.

3. "You need to hurry up, you aren't getting any younger." Getting married is not 100% up to either party. The single person must first meet someone who has expressed an interest, and then there is a period of getting to know him or her. Next, a decision has to be made on whether the relationship or hip should advance to the next level. If a woman is hearing this statement and is already anxious about having children, it adds unwanted pressure to her situation. Speeding up the process of meeting, dating/courting and engagement has not worked for many who tried it. (Of course there are exceptions.) Also, some singles are not concerned with marrying at a young age, as they may prefer to establish themselves first. So our response to this statement is: The right situation will happen when the time is right.

"."

4. "Really? Never married? Okay, so what's wrong with you?" This comment may cause the single person to become very sarcastic, so if you ask this question be prepared for the answer you will receive. Many are not married simply because no-one asked! Some were not ready for marriage before, so they were not focused on getting married in the past. As I mentioned earlier, they may be focusing on career/education or raising children as a single parent and prefer to wait before entering into a marital commitment. Not being married by a certain age does not always mean that something is wrong with them.

5. "Don't get married!" The reflex response will be "Why not?" with a bit of an attitude. Married folks, who are having less than stellar marital experiences, may offer this advice. Others who offer this advice may have never seen a successful marriage so they assume that the single person will be spared some heartache if they follow their advice. While it is true that around 50% of marriages end in divorce, if the single person truly desires marriage and is diligent in preparing for it, then there is no reason to discourage them from marriage. They may prepare by participating in pre-marital counseling with their future spouse, by getting out of debt (or by preparing a plan to get out of debt), by practicing healthy eating habits/exercise, and by working on their spiritual lives. Being married has many benefits; some are financial, but many are physical, emotional and spiritual. Here is the bottom line: Many singles WANT to be married! Don't discourage them!

If you are worried about your single and family members, be careful how you present your concerns to them. Instead, consider praying for them and lovingly encourage them. Include them when you plan fun activities with your families or with other married . Invite other single men and women! You never know what can happen!

When you dreams dream big as big as the occean

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Justice

44, male

Posts: 39

The Purpose for Marriage is Growth

from Justice on 02/28/2014 10:12 PM

Marriage as we all know i a union of two people with a good understanding of one another to make life work for them, Two heads as we always say is better than one and compatibillity makes one to achieve greater things in life.

 In fact, current marriage rates are at the lowest levels in more than 100 years. This begs the question…why are people less likely to stroll down the aisle of matrimony?

Laura Baron, life coach and relationship expert, makes two strong points.   “Hollywood affects all aspects of decisions of mainstream America, from products to fashion to trends, and now they are affecting how we do relationships,” she said. “It is much less intimidating to sign a lease than to sign a marriage contract.”

Well, of course it is more intimidating to sign a mortgage than a lease. One is more temporary by nature, while  the other provides more permanence.

Living together offers many of the benefits of marriage without making a commitment. Making a commitment can oft times be a really scary choice. It’s understandable that in our culture of divorce, many people are a little gun-shy about marriage.

Relationship therapist Argie Allen offers an answer as well. “People are getting married later. They have more choices. They’re choosing to co-habitate,” she said, adding this jewel,  ”an indicator of a good relationship is not how well you do when things are good, it’s how well you do when things are bad.”

Let’s pause here for a moment. I’ve noticed what appears to be a theme. When times get tough many couples want out, they want to make their escape easy or uncomplicated. Many couples want to do what is easy.

Marriage is not easy and I don’t blame anyone for waiting to ease into it, if at all. However, marriage requires a critical ingredient that few recognize and that is growth. And growth requires change. Change is not easy.

Finally, if you keep fixing up the house called marriage over time you’ll build up something I call “marital equity” and it has enormous value.

Think of the benefits that a mortgage brings that don’t first meet the eye, such as; tax benefits, legal protection and security.

Security in a relationship is priceless.  To be in a relationship that involves children, where either party can leave at will is unsettling to say the least. I’ve been married nearly 19 years and there were many times when I thought about throwing in the towel. I wanted someone to fix it and I wanted the pain to stop. Would it have been easier to hop out of my marriage? Yes. Might I have avoided the pain if I had never actually gotten married? Probably not.

Yet, when I look into the eyes of my wife and the eyes of my three daughters, I’m 100 percent confident that the depth of my for them could not exist without the commitment and pain of growth as a husband and father.

Growth can be painful, but a healthy marriage comes at a price. Nothing good comes easy

It pays to be good and It is more blessed to give than to recieve

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Justice

44, male

Posts: 39

Re: 5 Laws Against slaves in 1681- 1683

from Justice on 02/25/2014 06:13 PM

Today we still have some similar conditions like this for Africans
Sanctions, Invasions and Aids all in the neo colonialism era and spirit of inequality

It pays to be good and It is more blessed to give than to recieve

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