The experience presented by Egyptian visual artist Mohamed Eid in his latest exhibition, “Narratives of the Black Earth,” includes interesting features of ancient Egyptian civilization, where Egypt was known in ancient times as “Kemt,” meaning “Black Earth,” recalling its reflections on reality, the daily scene, and contemporary people.
In the exhibition hosted by the “Bab Selim” Hall at the Museum of Modern Art until September 26, the artist Muhammad rereads the concept of “Ket” as more than just a historical designation for ancient Egypt. For him, it is “a starting point for contemplating the relationship between man, the earth, time, and what remains of civilizations in human memory.”
The artist’s experience begins with deconstructing the intellectual and symbolic system of the ancient Egyptian form in its usual, direct form, and monitoring its philosophy, what lies behind it, and the limits of its contact and engagement with contemporary reality. Eid says: “Ancient Egyptian art was not just a recording of the scene or a visual decoration, but rather it was an integrated language that carried the concepts of eternity, transience, identity, and the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.”
From this standpoint, the symbols and elements inspired by ancient Egyptian murals are transformed into contemporary visual energies, through which questions about time, existence, and memory are re-posed. The body in works does not appear only as an external body, but rather becomes a carrier of meaning, and the line is not just a formal border, but rather turns into a trace of memory and a visual path that crosses between the past and the present.
Eid added to Asharq Al-Awsat: “The experience is based on the concept of visual hybridity, where the vocabulary of ancient Egyptian art is intertwined with contemporary plastic formulations, to form a visual space within which multiple temporal layers juxtapose; The time of ancient civilization, the time of artistic work, and the time of emotional experience for the creator and the recipient.”
The paintings rely on various compositions within more than one visual dimension. Some represent the present with its ordinary figures and vocabulary, some recall the symbols of ancient Egyptian mythology, and others impart an intimate psychological atmosphere linking time, place and characters in an aesthetic scene that adopts the vocabulary of modernity through color, line, expression and abstraction.
According to the artist: “Color plays a pivotal role in building this vision; Color is not only used as an aesthetic element, but also as a semantic and philosophical carrier. In it, black is the essence of experience, as it is not a color of darkness, but rather as a symbol of the fertile land (the black earth), the womb from which life emerges, and the space that stores the secrets of existence and renewal.
The artist relies on digital documentation of ancient Egyptian murals as a living memory. The restored lines from ancient engravings turn into transparent layers within the work, evoking presence and absence, and linking the historical impact and the contemporary vision.
“The experience includes a group of works executed using colored wooden pencils and acrylic techniques, dealing with topics inspired by the vocabulary of ancient Egyptian civilization, such as the sacred tree, the bird, rituals, and the human body, but it re-presents them within a new visual context that searches for the meaning behind the symbol,” according to the artist.
The “Black Earth Narratives” exhibition is an invitation to rediscover the past. The earth here does not only include place, but extends to carry human stories through human memory, which stores the energy of time, and opens a dialogue between what was and what is to come, in a contemplative journey from the womb of the earth towards eternity.
For his part, Dr. Mahmoud Hamed, Head of the Fine Arts Sector at the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, stressed during the opening of the exhibition that “the works of the artist Mohamed Eid are not limited to mere historical documentation or heritage restoration, but rather go beyond that to create a new myth related to the present, and weave a deep dialogue between the spiritual and temporal dimensions of human existence.”
It is noteworthy that the artist Mohamed Eid previously presented the “Autumn of Love” exhibition in 2021. He also participated in more than 30 group exhibitions, and won the “Youth Salon” award in Egypt in 2017, and the Engraving Award at the 52nd Vanguards Exhibition organized by the “Fine Arts Lovers Association.”
A construction worker, while working on a routine project in a house, came across a terrifying discovery of ancient human remains, which turned the renovation work into a criminal investigation, before the remains finally found their way to their final resting place.
Ross Sledger (49 years old) was beginning renovation work on his house in the spring of 2019, when a construction worker, who was adding a kitchen to the house, found what appeared to be human bones, according to what Fox News reported from the SWNS news agency.
The remains were officially reburied last August, during a ceremony held in a church near Sledger's home, in the Wye area of Kent, southeastern England.
Sledger said that he did not care about the discovery at first, thinking that the bones belonged to a farm animal or a pet. He said: “The construction worker told me: ‘I found some bones.’ I replied: ‘Awesome’, thinking they belonged to a farm animal or pets.”
Sledger added that he was astonished when he learned that the remains might be human. “As you can imagine, a lot of words escaped me,” he recalled. “I was thinking: ‘You must be kidding, this is just a joke.’ But he replied: ‘I’m very serious.’”
The bones, which were later found to be remains dating back to the Anglo-Saxon era and approximately 1,000 years old, caused a widespread uproar and launched a police investigation. About 10 officers went to the house to excavate the backyard, and eventually found the remains of a second body.
The horrific discovery included a femur, two skulls, ribs, part of the pelvis, and fragments of the humerus and finger bones.
“They thought it was a crime scene,” Sledger said. “They had to keep an officer on duty all night, and he had to get out of his car every half hour.”
He added: “This movement turned on the neighbors’ bright lights, which caused my dog to bark.” As you can imagine, I didn't sleep much that night.
About 48 hours after the first discovery, specialists confirmed that the remains were old and had no connection to a recent crime.
But the discoveries did not stop there. Sledger later found what he described as “knuckles and fingers” while installing artificial turf in his backyard, raising concern that renovation work might be delayed.
“I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, this is going to delay things,’” Sledger said. "I have construction workers coming next week."
He added: “I thought it might take months, but fortunately, everything was over by the end of the weekend, which is a good thing.”
He explained that after the police investigation was completed, the remains were transferred to a historical society, then to a local priest, but it took some time to arrange their burial in their final resting place.
Sledger expressed his belief that “it was a matter of obtaining permission and determining whether it was permissible to bury her there.” He continued: “I think it was just bureaucratic procedures more than anything else.”
Sledger's backyard wasn't the only place in the UK to uncover an unexpected piece of history; Another British couple made a historically valuable, if much less dark, discovery in their backyard recently.
The couple, from Hampshire, found a treasure containing 70 historical English coins, while modifying a fence near the flower garden in 2020.
These currencies were sold at a public auction in November 2025, for more than 380,000 British pounds, equivalent to about 500,000 US dollars.
When an opera singer opens his mouth wide to reach a high note, he creates a subtle change in the shape of his mouth and throat so that his voice reaches farther. Recent research reveals that one of Madagascar's most unusual animals, the song lemur, may be doing something similar high in the treetops of the rainforest.
In the dark forests of northeastern Madagascar, where dense trees block visual communication beyond a few metres, lemurs known as indri rely on their melodious songs to communicate. The scientists concluded that these primates open their mouths wider when they emit higher-pitched tones, a pattern consistent with a vocal technique known as formant tuning.
“Imagine the shape of your mouth and throat as a tube,” said researcher Filippo Carogati, from the University of Turin in Italy, the lead author of the study reported by Reuters from the journal PLOS Computational Biology. “When you open your mouth wider, the shape of that tube changes, which in turn changes the frequencies that naturally resonate. It’s like when you lengthen or shorten the tube of a wind instrument, and the tone it produces changes.”
This modification, which indri monkeys use when reaching high notes, enhances the power and range of their voices, just as professional opera singers do.
Researcher Chiara Di Gregorio, from the University of Warwick in England, and co-author of the study, hopes that the research will draw attention to this vocal ability, and to the animal that is severely threatened with extinction. Lemurs are only found in the wild in Madagascar, and the indri is the only species known to be able to sing.
“While we may think we are the only humans with soprano voices capable of performing songs of this complexity, there is another extraordinary singer in the forest, singing, communicating and simply trying to survive,” Di Gregorio said.
A mixture of howling and whistling
The researchers analyzed 83 video recordings of 19 indri monkeys in the wild, in the Marumizha Forest and the Metsingo Reserve in Madagascar. They traced facial features frame by frame, and linked them to the sound that was simultaneous with them, to test whether the width of the mouth opening predicted the pitch of the tone.
“He did it to a very large extent,” Carugatti said.
He explained that indri songs “are often described as a mixture of wailing and whistling, with long, high tones, rising and falling, instilling dread in the soul, and almost sounding sad to the human ear, but at the same time they are carefully organized, and are performed in duets in which the male and female phrases are intertwined, rather than just overlapping and coinciding.”
These songs play an essential role in the relationship of the Indri family groups with their surroundings, and carry out more than one social function.
Carugatti said: “Its main function is to announce its presence, as if to say: We are here, through a natural environment where you often cannot see your neighbors in the middle of the dense forests.” “What is interesting is that these songs associated with defining the field tend to lengthen specifically when the group spots another group nearby, as if direct vision enhances the song.”
