forever and ever / actors / legalese / salvific deaths

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Someone in the discussion on Main List used the familiar phrase 'forever and ever', which reminded me of my amazement when I discovered that it came from an Ancient Egyptian cliche (and would be more accurately translated 'for always and ever'). There were the traditional phrases always used for Pharaoh, but for everyone else who rated a rock-cut tomb, like a queen or a vizier, the inscriptions said 'May he/she live djet neheh'. Djet means 'forever' written as the dj-snake, the t-breadload, and the determinative for 'land', and neheh means 'forever' written as the ch-hank-of-fiber twice, with the sun as determinative for 'time' written between them, referring to two different kinds of eternity.

Kemper wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/39052>:

<< One bad British actor that emotely comes to mind is Emma Watson. At one time, Daniel Radcliffe was almost as bad >>

If true, that correlates with the theory that British actors are better because of their training; child actors haven't completed, may not even have begun, their training.

Elfundeb wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/39065>:

<< Further affiant sayeth not. (Translation: I have said all I have to say.) >>

Affiant? I thought it was 'deponent'?

Carol replied in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/39066>:

<< you quoted a beautiful example of traditional legalese and translated it into plain English. >>

I don't think little phrases like that are the problem. They're like learning a new word: learn the definition once and add it to your vocabulary forever. The problem, part of the problem, is long sentences of twisty little clauses that all sound alike, so one always loses one's place in the sentence and never reaches the end.

Even plain English isn't always so plain. Does "all I have to say" mean "all I have" of relevant information and opinions on this subject, or "all I have to" meaning 'all that I am compelled to'?

Alla wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/39074>:

<< I wonder if somebody could give me the example of the deity who not only died and was resurrected, but did so to save other [eople. The example of such God or Godlike figure dying for **any** sort of good for another people will do. >>

Joseph Campbell, in THE MASKS OF GOD, recited a number of origin stories of food plants with the similar plot element that a divine, magical, or generally wonderful person died, sometimes chopped into pieces by enemies, and one or more staple food plants (that had never been seen on earth before) sprouted from the buried body. 

One is the origin of maize in Eastern North America, in which a boy, going on his vision quest ordeal to become a man, prayed that he would find a cure for the famine afflicting his people due to all the animals having gone away from being hunted. He fasted for an unreasonably long time, stuck skewers in his flesh and all the usual self-tortures, and had no vision. His father begged him to give up and rest a while before trying again but he refused. 

When he was on the point of death, a tall. handsome stranger dressed all in green and with long green plumes on his headdress came to him and said: "We will wrestle, two throws out of three. If you win, I will give you the solution to famine." After an excessively long and detailed description of this excruciating athletic event, the young man won. 

The stranger told him: "You must kill me. No, don't whine about I'm your friend and you don't want to kill your friend. You must do it" and went on to give detailed instructions for how to kill him and how to dismember and bury the body, which are a careful parallel to the methods, unknown to me, of harvesting ears of corn and husking them and planting the corn kernels to grow new corn. 

As I have given away, in the spring green shoots appeared on the grave, which grew over the summer, into a plant as tall and green as the stranger, topped by long waving plumes. The corn cobs grew and in late summer, the young man dreamed that the stranger appeared and told him how to harvest the corn cobs and how to cook them for food.

IIRC he gave an origin story for bananas in which a unsuccessful fisherman, desperate to get some food for his children, stayed out in his fishing boat despite the storm, and was killed. His body washed up on an isolated spot of shore, and the first banana tree grew from his skull (altho' the shape of bananas would seem more likely to grow from his hands or his penis). His wife found it because some diviner told her where to find her late husband's skull.

Yes, in other of the stories he recited, the people were murdered. They may have known the whole plot in advance, but nowhere does it say they invited the others to murder them. Campbell made an analogy to the murder of Abel by Cain, if it had caused the expulsion from Eden instead of following it.