I have sometimes wondered why, when the back end of this blog records the search terms that have lead them here, the phrase “daughters of sphinx” often appears. Well, I’ve finally got round to googling it myself, and I am now enlightened (but not in any gnostic sense). The Ancient Arabic Order of the Daughters of the Sphinx: a female branch of a fun-loving red-fez-wearing adjunct fraternity of freemasonry; I can only imagine how aspiring members feel when they wind up here instead. Sorry, guys, the knowledge here may be esoteric, but puzzling it out doesn’t get you any further towards acceptance and initiation – though of course I’d say that if I were trying to test your commitment and perseverance.
The fact that many readers of Thucydides act like a secret order of initiates, priding themselves in their possession of secret knowledge and swapping obscure code phrases with one another, is a different matter…
Where is Europe? It’s perhaps not the most obvious answer, but one possibility is: sitting in the elegant Kulturzentrum PFL in Oldenburg the week before last with a mixture of academics, activists, trade unionists, students and regular citizens, listening to an elderly trio playing 1950s British trad jazz a la Chris Barber and Ken Colyer as the introduction to a podium discussion on the theme Wo ist Europa? And, yes, I should have got a photo of the band, rather than this rather off-putting one of the panel. 