Tag: Egypt
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Travels with Hadrian: Julia Balbilla, Her Poetry, and Ancient Tourism
In my entry about the two(?) Sulpicias, I said that she/them were the only Roman women poets that we have a record of—but that’s not strictly true. We have one more, the equally sketchily-known Julia Balbilla (72 – after 130 CE), but perhaps what we can mean is that the Sulpicias are the only Italian…
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Hold That Door!: The Gates of the Duat and Their Keepers
I turn to the drooling hyena holding its flaming sword before the gate. “We demand your name, gatekeeper.” The hyena lets loose an unnerving cascade of shrieking sounds that makes Dru wince. “I must have heard him wrong,” she says, frowning. I shake my head. “Not if what you heard was One Who Eats Up…
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A Bug’s Life: Khepri & the Many Faces of Ra
“Khepri in the morning, Ra at midday, and Atum in the evening.” – ancient Egyptian saying “Khepri clicks his mandibles sympathetically. ‘I would, child, but I am not a god of death. I am here to create you from the ashes of your resurrection. Be who you were destined to be and be reborn before…
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Curses, Corpses, and Cheops: The Surprisingly Feminine Origins of Mummy Literature
“He saw it rise gradually—he heard the dry, bony fingers rattle as it drew them forth—he felt its tremendous grip—human nature could bear no more—his senses were rapidly deserting him; he felt, however, the fixed steadfast eyes of Cheops still glowing upon his failing orbs, as the lamp gave a sudden flash, and then all…
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Rigid Flexibility: Change & Continuity in Ancient Egyptian Art
“Slide your feet up the street, bend your back/ Shift your arm then you pull it back/ Life is hard you know (oh way oh)/ So strike a pose on a Cadillac” – The Bangles (again) I thought this week we’d look at an evergreen topic—Egyptian art. In part because I like doing art entries…
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Expedition Unknown: The Lost Land of Punt
“They arrived safely at the desert-country of Coptos: they moored in peace, carrying the goods they had brought. They [the goods] were loaded, in travelling overland, upon asses and upon men, being reloaded into vessels at the harbour of Coptos. They [the goods and the Puntites] were sent forward downstream, arriving in festivity, bringing tribute…
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The Bones Are Their Dollars: Ghosts in the Ancient World
“Hail thou One, who shinest from the moon. Grant that this one may come forth among thy multitudes who are at the portal. Let [me] be with the Light-god. Let the Duat be open to [me].” – The Book of Coming Forth by Day “We’ve been going about this all wrong. This Mr. Stay Puft’s okay!…
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The Flying Was Inside Him All Along!: Gods of Egypt and the Egyptian Pantheon on Film
“This makes Thor AND Thor: The Dark World look like Citizen Kane.” — me, at the hour and a half mark “Rufus Sewell is right, that necklace does look super cheap.” — also me Okay, so I’m writing this up on Labor Day in the US, so I’m admittedly feeling a little lazy vis á vis a serious scholarly…
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Inventing (Everything But) the Wheel: Egyptian Innovations & Notable Firsts
When people think of things the ancient Egyptians did first, they’re usually thinking of papyrus, or cat-based theology. But I thought this week, we’d look at a few lesser-known things the Egyptians came up, and perhaps get a better sense of the wide scope of human endeavor we can trace back to the Nile Valley.…
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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…
Sarah Holz 