mirrors, reflections, light, shadow, refractions, perception

The mirror’s primary religious connection was to Ra—the most powerful deity, the omnipresent African sun—and the mirror was his symbol brought to earth. In Egyptian sculpture and painting there is always a round sun-mirror atop Ra’s falcon head. Even the mirror’s elliptical shape imitated the rising or setting sun, stretched sideways as it

The iron mirror is a curious artefact, in the Lady’s Barrow. It’s easy to leap to conclusions about this too, and to see it as simply a personal object – mirrors are so easy to come by today. But Iron Age mirrors are quite rare, and the workmanship that would have gone into making it – polishing and polishing it until it offers back a true

the earliest artificial mirrors archaeologists have discovered, dating from around 6200 B.C.E. at Çatal Hüyük (near Konya, Turkey), were made of polished obsidian, a natural black glass created during volcanic eruptions.

An overarching theme in this book is that as human beings we use mirrors to reflect our own contradictory nature. On the one hand, we want to see things as they really are, to delve into the mysteries of life. On the other hand, we want the mysteries to remain mysteries. We yearn for definitive knowledge, yet we also revel in imagination, illusion,

Thus, the story of mirrors is also the story of light, that mysterious medium that acts simultaneously like a wave and a particle, imposes a speed limit on the universe, and in a sense is the universe, at least according to Albert Einstein. Yet no one really knows what light is. As if these mysteries were not enough, visible light is only one