Field Notes

Welcome to Cairo! Where is your Wife?
by R.M. Vaughan
(pp. 18-22)

The Human Rights Watch report, In a Time of Torture: The Assault on Justice in Egypt’s Crackdown on Homosexual Conduct (2004), documents the repression of homosexuals in Egypt, most sensationally exemplified by the May 2001 violent arrest of dozens of men aboard the “Queen Boat,” a floating disco. Accused of participating in a blasphemous conspiracy, the media labeled the group Satan-worshippers. Twenty-three of the men were sentenced to up to five years imprisonment, followed by an equal period of police supervision. “In November they sentenced me to a living death,” one of the convicted reported, “but I had already been dead for months.”

Bruce L. Gerig presents evidence of gay love in pharaonic times in his article Homosexuality in Ancient Egypt (2005), posted in the Epistle, a web magazine for Christian gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.

“Ming, eh?”
by Eric Powell
(pp. 22-25)

The Island of Seven Cities: Where the Chinese Settled When They Discovered North America by Paul Chiasson (Toronto: Random House, 2006) tells the story of Chiasson’s discovery of a possible ancient Chinese settlement on Cape Breton Island in his own words.

One of the first visitors to the alleged archeological site was Gavin Menzies, the author of the controversial book 1421: The Year China Discovered the World (Toronto: Bantam, 2004). Menzies argues that the Chinese circumnavigated the world in the fifteenth century, reaching America seventy years before Columbus, Australia 350 years before Captain Cook, and the Magellan Straits sixty years before Magellan was born. The book supports Chiasson’s theory about a Chinese settlement in Nova Scotia, but has been attacked by academics for being highly speculative.

For a more traditional examination of fifteenth-century Chinese naval history, try When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433 by Louise Levathes (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).