Category: Uncategorized
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The Law of Unintended Sequels: Ten Unusual and Obscure Roman Deities
“[E]vidently Forculus [the god of the threshold] can’t watch the hinge and the threshold at the same time.” – St. Augustine Nobody enjoys mocking the Egyptian pantheon for its weirdness than the supposedly straight-laced Romans, so I thought as a companion to last week’s entry, we’d give them a taste of their own medicine and…
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Geese, Ghosts, and Gods: Ten Unusual and Obscure Egyptian Deities
[The Egyptians] are religious excessively beyond all other men — Herodotus The ancient Egyptians have a well-earned reputation for their migraine-inducingly complex cosmogony, but as much as we joke about their multitudinous pantheon, most people don’t realize just how extensive it really is. So, I thought this week we’d deep-dive into it and talk about ten…
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Mediterranean Bandstand: Music in the Ancient World
Slide your feet up the street, bend your backShift your arm then you pull it backLife is hard you know (oh way oh)So strike a pose on a Cadillac – The Bangles, Walk Like an Egyptian This week, I thought we’d get back into some more historical pursuits and take a look at the diverse…
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Sita Speaks: Chandrabati’s Ramayan and the Many Voices of Indian Storytelling
If I start telling the story of my misfortunes/ A blazing fire is ignited somewhere – Sita in Chandrabati’s Ramayan Sing his love, sing his praise/ Rama set his wife ablaze./ Got her home, kicked her out/ To allay his people’s doubt. — Sita Sings the Blues Since I’ve finally tired myself of dragging you all around…
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Field Day Part 3: The Carnegie Museums and the Pleasures of Small-Scale Egyptology
Okay, everyone, we’ve (finally, for some of you) reached the last of week of my self-guided tour of the Carnegie Museums. This week, I want to walk through the Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s (CMNH) Walton Hall of Ancient Egypt. As I alluded to last week, as a science, Egyptology’s roots are deep in colonialism and…
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Field Day Part 2: The Carnegie Museums and the Classical World in Imitation
As promised, this week we’re going to continue our tour through the Carnegie Museum of Art (CMOA) and Natural History (CMNH), but I also promise to finally let all of you out of the single room I confined you to last week. [Pictured: People fleeing my attempts to keep them in the Hall of Architecture]…
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Field Day Part 1: The Carnegie Museums and the Classical World in Replica
“One of them said we made going to the moon as exciting as taking a trip to Pittsburgh.” — Henry Hunt, Apollo 13 Now that we’re fortunate enough stateside to be (finally) enjoying a reprieve from Covid restrictions, I was able to resume my nineteen year-strong love affair with Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History in some semblance of…
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Guess Who’s Coming to the Sacrifice: The Ara Pacis and Speculative Archeology
“When I returned from Spain and Gaul after successfully settling the affairs of those provinces, in the consulship of Tiberius Nero and Publius Quintilius, the Senate decreed that the Ara Pacis should be consecrated for my return near the Campus Martius, and ordered that the magistrates, preists, and the Vestal Virgins should there make an…
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Beer Here! : Potent Potables of the Ancient World
Candy/ is dandy/ But liquor/ is quicker — Ogden Nash Over some lovely late-spring cocktails with my parents this past weekend, I asked my mother what I should talk about here this week, and she pointed out I haven’t talked about consumables yet. Ancient food and drink covers a lot of ground, so I thought…
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Players Gonna Play: Games of the Ancient World
I’ve been meaning to do a games entry for a while now, but one of my readers lit a fire under me by asking me if I knew how to play senet, an ancient Egyptian board game that comes up periodically in my books. Now, I’ll tell you all what I told her, which is:…
Sarah Holz 