the writing on the walls
I told you I wasn't seeing things!

Some of you may remember that I've reported an Egyptian god sighting twice when traveling by Amtrak between Shreveport and St. Louis: a painting on an upright structure to the west of a creek running along the tracks. I'd only gotten a glimpse, not even enough to say for sure which god it was. But it really stood out, especially considering I was traveling through a part of Missouri that was all trees, cows, and dilapidated trailers.

I've never been able to find anything on the Internet to support my sighting. I almost wondered if I'd imagined it, except I'd asked my Mom to watch for it on her trip up and she did see it.

This afternoon, we drove out to the area I had narrowed down to being the location of said image and, after a couple of false starts and a long and uncomfortable walk along the train track, we found it!

And the god depicted in the Middle of Nowhere, Missouri is ...


The structure appears to be part of a never-finished bridge, or a structural support, or something. Someone apparently noticed its resemblance to an Egyptian pylon and decorated it accordingly. The blue is obviously spray-painted, and we noticed other graffiti in the area -- "Mike loves (girl's name)" and "By Mike Wite"(?) -- of the same hue. The other colors appear painted with more traditional means. Sesha, like a good scribe, attempted to record the nearly-illegible accompanying glyphs for further study.

Much remains mysterious about the image. For example, is Djehuty holding out a much-faded offering, or is that the God of Writing with a can of spray paint??

ETA: My current theory: Someone (perhaps the mysterious "Mike") sees a parallel between his graffiti and a culture who regularly painted words on walls?