A COMPETITION TO PLAY laughs
Summary of previous installments. Tiradritti prepares documents for the competition as a researcher in Egyptology at La Sapienza University of Rome, knowing that they have already lost. Loretta Del Barocas France was elected member of procedure. The chances of victory diminish Tiradritti yet. But as you can, if they were already at zero?
know Loretta Del Barocas France since I was a student at the University of Rome "La Sapienza" (then called it). He was director of the Oriental library that worked very well. I was not very familiar with Loretta. I was told that he had a degree in a field that had to do with archeology or the adjacent regions of India and was also the wife of Claudio Barocas, Egyptologist who died prematurely. Barocas taught in Naples where he left a void Egyptological still unbridgeable. His "Ancient Egypt" has been one of the sources of inspiration in my early college years and has contributed a lot to my training methods.
In the years after graduation I was very far from Rome and, in that ' time, Loretta has become associate professor and began to teach Coptic. Some might wonder a degree in a subject that concerns India or so can then take a teaching Christian Egypt. In fact I was a bit too 'amazed when I found out.
Any chance to support me by Loretta have played many years ago. That episode is still indelible in my memory and I think that it is also in his.
It was 2000 and we were in Cairo for the Eighth International Congress of Egyptology who conduct the Mena House Oberoy. During a break I get to the pool bar for a drink. There's Loretta with two or three of his students who, after a while, they leave. Taking advantage the fact that we were alone Loretta makes me part of a big news: it is able to obtain custody of the chair of Egyptology at Viterbo. I said, I quote, "Students can now attend classes where they teach the true Egyptian archeology as Roccati (then teaching in Rome, note) does not understand anything." I do not know how it was, but I came naturally ask, "And who would teach?". Loretta, a bit 'off-limits, she replies, "Well ... I do."
' s true. I missed it. I do not know what came over me, but I'm not able to restrain myself. I started to laugh without being able to slow down more. Loretta I threw one last look annoyed and moved away. I had to restrain myself. I know, but there I just made. Even today, after eleven years, I smile to think of that episode. I laugh when I tell it again without being able to control myself.
What I find so funny? It is not that difficult to understand. How can a person graduated from India and the like, after spending years in the management of a library and has a teaching Coptic, be able to teach the "true Egyptian archeology? Since then I have not had much contact with Loretta Del Barocas France.
In later years I met alcune sue studentesse e ho avuto modo di parlarci. Non mi sembrava che avessero una buona preparazione in archeologia egizia. Sarà forse dipeso dal fatto che non erano molto in gamba. Tutto può essere…
