EGYPT has opened a 4,000-year-old tomb at Memphis Egypt, a city visited by Antinous and Hadrian in September of 130 AD.
It is intriguing to think that Antinous perhaps stood over this tomb as he looked out from the Saqqara cliffs across the teeming city of Memphis.
The 6th Dynasty tomb of Mehu was 4,000 years old when Antinous was in Egypt. Mehu was an advisor close to the king.
It was discovered for the first time approximately 80 years ago in 1940 by Egyptologist Zaki Saad.
The public were able to visit it for the first time in history this weekend.
Images on social media showed visitors queueing to enter and taking photographs of the interior.
The colours inside are different to many other tombs in the necropolis as the brightness of them is somewhat unusual.
Many of the paintings inside are unique to the time period, with images of a crocodile marrying a turtle and celebration dances depicted on the walls.
The tomb does not just contain Mehu, but his son Meren Ra and his grandson Heteb Kha.
Mehu held 48 titles during the reign of King Pepi, which were found on the walls of the tomb.
Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities said in a statement: "The tomb is one of the most beautiful in Saqqara Necropolis because it still keeps its vivid colours and distinguished scenes.
"The tomb does not belong to Mehu himself, but for members of his family as well."
TWO ancient Roman skeletons, who mysteriously were buried holding hands, now have been identified as two males, researchers have revealed.
In 2009, archaeologists discovered the remains in the Italian city of Modena. The pair were dubbed the "Lovers of Modena" by the media, the assumption being that they were a heterosexual couple.
The researchers at that time could not determine the gender of the skeletons when they were found in Italy in 2009 because they were badly preserved.
But a new technique, using the protein on tooth enamel, revealed their sex.
The actual relationship between the skeletons from the 4-6th Century AD remains a mystery.
The researchers say the two adult males were intentionally buried hand-in-hand.
Some of the suggestions for the link between the two skeletons are that they are siblings, cousins or soldiers who died together in battle, study author Federico Lugli told Italy's Rai news site (in Italian).
Researchers suggest that their burial site could have been a war cemetery.
The researchers from Italy's University of Bologna said in Scientific Reports that the findings had profound implications for understanding funeral practices at that time in Italy.
ON the 13th of September the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus atop the Capitoline Hill was dedicated in 509 BC. The ascent of Rome began!
In the old Roman calendar, September was the seventh month of the year in counting March as the first. Among the festivals observed in September were several honoring Jupiter.
He was hailed as the chief of the gods and had many epithets as a result.
ON September 11th we remember those gay and lesbian men and women who have died in terrorist attacks.
The magnificent Religion of Antinous is not just about beauty and male-on-male sex and it's not just one continuous gay cocktail party. Alas!
The word "alas," by the way is a Latin corruption of the Greek name "Hylas" ... the beloved young companion of Herakles/Hercules. In Mysia, handsome young Hylas was abducted by water nymphs and vanished below the waters of a stream.
Heartbroken Herakles went mad with grief, bellowing "Hylas! Hylas!" and ripping out trees as he frantically searched for his beloved. He never abandoned his search, and his cries of "Hylas! Hylas!" continue to echo through the ages every time we say the word "alas!"
Hadrian and his beloved drowned Antinous have always been associated with Herakles and his beloved drowned Hylas. And so ... alas! ... the Religion of Antinous is profoundly and irrevocably associated with tragedy and with grief. That is the reason why the sculptures of the Beauteous Boy never show him smiling and boyish. He always gazes off to one side, his head tilted slightly downward, with a wistful and slightly melancholy expression on his face.
It's as if he is always whispering, "Alas!"
And so it is fitting that the Ecclesia Antinoi Annals of Saints and Martyrs and Exemplars includes the names of many, many people who have died under tragic circumstances.
Some died of overdoses or suicide. Others, such as the gay college student Matthew Shepard who was bludgeoned to death in Wyoming, were murdered simply because they were gay.
In Iran, coming out is tantamount to a death sentence.
Many, many others have been taken by the scourge of AIDS.
And still others on our list, Aula Sancti Ecclesiae Antinoi, have suffered and died because they just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
On September 11th we remember those gay and lesbian men and women who have died in terrorist attacks.
They include the gay waiters and pastry chefs in the Windows on the World restaurant on the 110th floor of the World Trade Center, and also the gay and lesbian office workers in the Twin Towers, and the gay passengers and crew aboard the hijacked planes.
They also include the gay victims of the subsequent bombings and atrocities in London, Madrid, Orlando and many other cities.
We don't know the names of most of those people. But one name stands out: Mark "Bear Trap" Bingham.
Mark, 31, was a passenger aboard United Airlines Flight 93 and was flying home to see his mother.
He made a phone call to his mother. He was so distracted by the chaos on board the plane that he identified himself by his full name, saying, "Hi, Mom, this is Mark Bingham."
He just had time to tell her he loved her and that his plane was being hijacked before the phone call abruptly ended.
Mark was a big man at 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) and 225 pounds (102 kg) and was a rugged rugby athlete. He is believed to have been among the passengers who attempted to storm the cockpit to try to prevent the hijackers from using the plane to kill hundreds or thousands of additional victims.
That assumption is based on the fact that his lover of six years said he had repeatedly fought back against muggers and gay bashers and that Mark definitely would not have surrendered to his fate without first putting up a fight. "Mark was a fighter. He hated to lose ... at anything!"
Mark Bingham may never have even heard of Antinous, and the Ecclesia Antinoi had not been founded yet before he died. He most definitely never expected to be remembered as a gay martyr. And he scarcely could have imagined being memorialized in movies and on websites and in books and TV docu-dramas.
He surely never expected to become a symbol and an icon. But that is what he has become.
And so, on September 11th, we remember Mark "Bear Trap" Bingham as a symbol for all those gay people who happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time when terrorists strike — as can happen to any of us.
Like Mark (and like Herakles, for that matter), we fight and struggle to do the best we can in our day-to-day lives, but sometimes things just turn out far differently from anything we could ever imagine. Sometimes tragically so ... Alas!
ON September 10th we remember the brutal mutilation murder of a gay teenager on this date in 2014 in Brazil ... the first official saint of Antinous in Brazil.
The death of 18-year-old JOÃO ANTÔNIO DONATI galvanized worshipers of Antinous into proclaiming him the first martyr saint of Antinous in Brazil.
His severely beaten body was found in the city of Inhumas in the state of Goiás with his neck fractured and both legs broken and with his mouth and trachea stuffed with a plastic bag and a paper note, on which had been scrawled an anti-gay hate message saying that this is what should happen to all queers.
His horrific bruises, lacerations and contusions showed that he had put up a desperate struggle against his attackers.
On the same day that João was killed, two other gays were beaten and a transvestite was murdered in the same state. But the images of João's smiling Facebook selfies instantly touched the hearts of millions.
Outrage swept the nation, with protest marches and vigils held in numerous cities.
Brazil has the largest Antinous faith community in the non-English speaking world, and adherents of Antinous have taken the unprecedented move of proclaiming João the first Saint of Antinous in Brazil.
Brazilian Novitiate Priest DECO RIBEIRO says more than 300 LGBTIU victims of homophobic murders were reported in Brazil in 2015 alone, though the true figure is unknown.
"Hundreds more have died since then," says Deco. "Each and every one of these is a martyr who is symbolized by João Antônio Donati. He was a vibrant young man filled with all the hopes and dreams of so many his age, and who became yet another victim of homophobia in Brazil, and who so deeply touched us that we have been moved to initiate something in our country that has long been in the offing: the Declaration of Apotheosis and canonization of the martyrs of homophobia in Brazil."
Noting that anti-gay hate crimes and murders are frequent in Brazil, Deco says: "This is the first statement and official nomination amid many others that will follow continuously over time honoring the names of many victims who have died in the past and who inevitably will be murdered in the future."
The coins featured images of the Emperor Augustus, with the imperial princes Gaius and Lucius Caesar on the back, and all date back to a period before the ancient battle. Thus they were carried by the legions into the battle.
ANTINOUS must have heard the many wondrous creation stories which the Egyptians told him during that fateful journey up the Nile.
The Egyptians had many creation stories, ranging from dry land appearing in the midst of the primeval ocean to the "Great Cackler" laying an enormous egg.
Our own favorite (and the one with the closest bearing on Antinous) is probably the least-well known of all of them, involving as it does an act of masturbation.
If you've never heard about it, it's because Victorian and Edwardian Egyptologists were so shocked by it that they referred to it only in Greek or Latin footnotes — if at all.
For a hoot, read Wallis Budge's embarrassed attempts to tell the story in English using words no stronger than "onanism" and "seed".
Hernestus once knew a Harvard teaching assistant who taught Beginner's Hieroglyphs at the Cambridge Adult Education School and who delighted in titillating his students (mostly lonely-hearts straight women and a couple of gay men) by demonstrating reflexive verbs in Middle Egyptian with the sentence: "The God Loved Himself With His Hand" and assigning homework that involved copying out the text with particular attention to the glyph showing testicles attached to an erect penis with a fountain of semen gushing forth from its end.
Here's the gist of the story:
The Great Creator sits alone, having not yet created anything, when the creative urge comes upon him and his penis throbs into a massive erection, which he strokes to ecstatic climax, sending his silvery semen flying into his mouth, whereupon he speaks the magical words that create the first "neteru" (gods) and all the universe.
"In the Beginning was the Word" is the way the New Testament puts it in a somewhat more family-friendly version of the same story.
It is this "essence of magical creation," which the Egyptians call "heka," which invigorates everything we do. It is liquid heka which flows through the desert in the form of the annual inundation of the Nile, creating life from barrenness.
Budge and the others translated "heka" as "magic," which is misleading and simplistic. But then they also translated "neteru" as "gods," which is also misleading since English is such a young language (scarcely 1,600 years old) that its linguistic concept of "god" necessarily reflects Christian attitudes.
An Egyptian or a Greek or Roman of Antinous's day might have been more comfortable with Medieval infatuation with Spheres of Angels and Archangels or with the Catholic panoply of Saints. The Egyptians might have thought that more like the divine agents they called "neteru."
The "neter" associated with the annual inundation of the Nile is the transgender deity Hapi. To our mind, and we believe to the minds of the Ancient Egyptians, Hapi is one of the most wonderful and beautiful of the "neteru."
Hapi's most distinctive attribute is bluish-green skin and a towering headdress consisting of papyrus and lotus plants which seem to shoot out of the crown of Hapi's head the way those plants do from the waters of the Nile.
As a transgender deity, Hapi has a robust male physique with athletic legs, narrow waist, broad shoulders and sinewy arms.
But Hapi also has the pendulous breasts of a nursing mother and the round belly of an expectant one. Sometimes Hapi has the short-cropped hair of a man, but more often Hapy is depicted with long hair cascading over both shoulders almost to the waist.
Very strikingly, Hapi effortlessly holds before him/herself a platter heaped high with incredible amounts of crops, beverages, groceries and produce, often including casks of wine, sheaves of wheat and even entire sides of beef.
Just as the Egyptians had no problems thinking that the universe and the neteru (and ultimately they themselves) were all products of primordial masturbation, they also had no problems thinking that their lives depended on a transgender deity who was, in essence, their mother/father and provider of everything they put in their mouths and clothed their bodies with.
It is a popular misconception to try to fit Isis and Osiris into the roles of Mother Earth goddess and Great Father god who bring forth riches from a bountiful Earth. That is an alien concept to the Egyptians, for whom the Earth was a desert. Our own English word "desert" comes directly from the Ancient Egyptian "desheret" — meaning the "Red Land" of sunrise and sunset.
It was only divine "heka" flowing through this barrenness that permitted life to thrive in a verdant valley called the "Black Land" or "Kemet," from which the Arabs derived "al-Chem" and our words "alchemy" and "chemistry" come.
As Herodotus said: "Egypt is the gift of the Nile," by which he meant: "Egypt is the gift of Hapi."
So when Antinous plunges into the Nile on that fateful October day, he becomes becomes one with Hapi. Antinous and the transgender source of all life merge and flow into each other.
Antinous opens his mouth and his nostrils and allows himself to be filled with heka which, after all, is the semen of the Great Creator himself.
The hieroglyphs on the OBELISK OF ANTINOUS proclaim that Antinous can assume any form his heart desires "for the Semen of the First God Truly is in His body!"
It's the ultimate seminal experience.
And it is Antinous's unique gift to us as gay men. He asks us to take the plunge with him and to explore what words like "god" and "magic" really mean.
With the help of Culture Club member Mikey Craig, he landed his first solo recording contract with Clive Davis of Arista Records (10 Records in the UK) in 1984. 
ANCIENT Egyptians really did wear wax cones on their heads, according to archaeologists who have found two bodies at Amarna ... a mere 20 kilometers from Antinoopolis ... which have beeswax cones on their heads.
The exact purpose of these cones is unknown, although it has been assumed they were soaked with perfume which slowly released its scent as the cones melted on the wearers' heads.
But many experts have believed the cones never truly existed ... but were only iconographic symbols on the wall murals of Egyptian tombs.
But the discovery proves the wax cones were real.
The team of archaeologists, in collaboration with the Ministry of Antiquities, analysed these head cones, which were discovered in Akhetaten (now known as El-Amarna). The cones, made of beeswax, were found in a non-royal grave.
According to team leader Anna Stevens of Monash University in Melbourne, "By melting and cleansing the hair, the cones might have ritually purified the individual, placing them in an appropriate state to participate in rituals."
While the discovery of these cones shed new light on the headwear of people in Ancient Egypt, their exact purpose is still unconfirmed, raising more questions than they answer.
Amarna was built by the pharaoh Akhenaten and occupied for only 15 years, (1347-1332 BC).
But despite this brief existence, the city contains thousands of graves, including those of many non-elites.
Archaeologists from the Amarna Project have been working with the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities to investigate them, shedding light on the ordinary people of ancient Egypt.
IN a quiet corner of a shady plaza in the middle of Rome stands an ages old portal to another dimension.
The "Magical Doorway" (Porta Alchemica) is all that remains of a 17th Century alchemical laboratory which drew scientists from across Europe ... and which drew the wrath of the Inquisition.
The Alchemy Gate or Magic Portal is a landmark from the Villa Palombara built in 1680 by Massimiliano Palombara marquis of Pietraforte on the Esquiline Hill.
The Porta Alchemica is the only survivor of the five gates of the villa Palombara.
There was a lost door on the opposite side dating from 1680 and four other lost inscriptions on the walls of the mansion inside the villa.
The marquis was fascinated by occult and esoteric sciences. His wealth and social position enabled him to act as a patron to a number of alchemists.
In his villa he also held meetings, attended by other important personages who shared his interests, such as the Swedish Queen Christina, who lived in Rome after having abdicated, the distinguished astronomer Domenico Cassini, the renowned scholar Father Athanasius Kircher, and others.
Villa Palombara had a small detached outbuilding, probably a laboratory, where the occult meetings and the alchemic experiments were secretly held, and occult rituals were performed.
A young doctor and alchemist from Milan named Giuseppe Borri, who had been expelled from the Jesuit college for delving into the occult, came to Rome and joined the circle of Villa Palombara.
A legend says that Borri, sponsored by the marquis, was successful in transforming lead into gold ... creating the Philosopher's Stone of transformational magic.
But one night he suddenly fled - this really happened, after being stalked by the pope's Inquisition - and left behind a number of papers inscribed with complicated formulae which nobody was able to decipher.
So Massimiliano Palombara had them inscribed on the doorways of his laboratory.
Another version of the legend says that an occultist calling himself Antimony (an alchemical element whose symbol adorns the portal lentil) conducted experiments at the villa ... and vanished through the doorway one night ... disappearing into a magical dimension ... leaving behind only a solid-gold apple as proof that he could transform matter into gold.
Unfortunately Villa Palombara was completely demolished in the second half of the 1800s, when the new district was built.
The other doorways were lost ... along with their alchemical formulae.
On both sides of the surviving portal stand two bearded and bandied-legged statues ... they are statues of the Egyptian deity BES which once stood at a Temple of Isis and Serapis in Ancient Rome.
Knowledge of the Egyptian hieroglyphs had long since been lost when the portal was built.
The marquis could not have known that BES was a worshiped by the Egyptians not only as a protective deity ... but also as a protector of Egyptian SEM magician-priests.
Or perhaps the marquis was very well aware of this ....
