All my life's a circle

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"What we called today the historical course of the Egyptian society was not a course for the Egyptians, but a rhythmical repetition of cosmogony in the imperially organized humanity which existed at the center of the cosmos. The prolonged disturbances and revolt, for instance between the Old and the Middle kingdoms, were not epochs of history from which order in new form could arise, but simply disruptions of the cosmological form to be borne with nothing but the hope that the same type of order would ultimately be somehow restored." -- Eric Voegelin, Order and History, Volume II, p 50

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