egyptian singer amira selim sings ancient egyptian verses at the pharaoh’s golden parade, in which the mummies of egypt’s ancient royalty were transported to their new home. 3rd April 2021.
this a hymn to the goddess isis btw
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Imagine how much historical knowledge wasn’t written down because our ancestors thought: “What idiot isn’t going to know this?”
So ancient Egypt’s best friend basically was called Punt. They traded all kinds of fun stuff with them; ebony, incense, gold, silver, myrrh, leopard skins, baboons for pets… and the Egyptians wrote a lot about the land, the people living there, what their houses looked like, records of trading expeditions to there (like, robust, oceangoing ships with thousands of men); they wrote down everything imaginable about this place… except for where it actually was.
We still to this day have no geographic fix on this ancient empire’s whereabouts, because what idiot wouldn’t know, right?
Until the 1850s British condiment sets came with bottles for oil and vinegar, and three spice containers for salt, pepper and…nobody knows. Potentially mustard, but it’s just a guess because no one ever wrote it down.
And this is why historians love, really love, those incredibly dull people who write in their diary every day about what they wore and what they had for dinner and how many miles away their friend Mr So-And-So’s house is in that one village. Because they are the only ones who *do* write down what was in the third spice jar, how many miles away this now-nonexistent village was and so on. Seriously, the diaries of really dull people are HISTORICAL TREASURES OF OTHERWISE LOST MINUTIAE.
Somewhere out there there is almost certainly a diary that would expose the true contents of that third spice jar because of the one time it was low and this person had to have a quiet word with the butler or something and it was the most interesting thing that happened all week so they wrote it down. And I hope that diary is found someday because now I really want to know.
Pharaoh Ramses II’s Egyptian passport, issued in 1976 for passage to France nearly three millennia after his death.
In order to leave the country, Egypt required anyone leaving the country, living or dead, to have the proper papers. Seemingly the first mummy to receive one, Ramses had his occupation listed as “King (deceased).” Bibliothèque Infernale on FB
Archaeology News
Anonymous asked:
My anthropology TA likes to use shitting as an example of cultural difference being so engrained in what we think of as clean and acceptable bc when he first left Egypt he thought it was DISGUSTING that everyone is using paper instead of water lmao (he talks about it like, too much)
Yeah I think a bidet would be much cleaner than tp
This is the Great Pyramid of King Khufu. Everybody knows the Great Pyramid of King Khufu, but you probably don’t know about the Shit Pyramids of his father, King Sneferu. This is a shame, because they are amazing.
When King Sneferu came to the throne of Egypt, the cool thing that all the pharaohs had was a Step Pyramid, like the original one built by King Djoser and designed by Imhotep (not the mummy). King Sneferu could easily have had one one because his predecessor King Huni had died before his could be finished. All Sneferu had to do was step in and put the last few blocks on.
But King Sneferu had a vision. He didn’t want any old Step Pyramid. He was going to build Egypt’s first smooth-sided pyramid, and make King Huni’s pyramid way taller in the bargain. It didn’t work. The core of Huni’s pyramid couldn’t handle the modifications and nowadays the Step Pyramid at Meidum looks like this:
It’s not on a hill - that’s the outer layers of the pyramid that have fallen down all around it. The name of the structure in Arabic is Heram el-Kaddaab, which means something like The Sort-Of Pyramid.
Anyway, King Sneferu was understandably disappointed and made his pyramid-builders start over from scratch at a different site. Apparently having learned nothing about the Big Fat Nowhere that hubristic pyramid ambition was going to get him, this pyramid was designed to be even taller and pointier than the last effort! Too tall and pointy, in fact - the bedrock proved to be less stable than he might have hoped, and by the time the pyramid was half-finished stuff was already moving and cracking inside of it. There are ceilings in this pyramid that are to this day partially held up by wooden beams.
The builders seem to have panicked and decided that the only way to finish the pyramid without another disaster was to make the top half lighter than the bottom half. They did this by changing the angle of the slope, ending up with a pyramid that looks like this:
Egyptologists call this one the Bent Pyramid for fairly obvious reasons. Uniquely among Egyptian Pyramids, it has most of its smooth outer blocks intact, rather than having them all stolen to build other stuff (most of medieval Cairo is built from the skin of the Giza pyramids). I’m guessing this is because nobody dared touch the thing for fear the whole structure would come down like a giant limestone game of Jenga.
I’m sure the pyramid-builders were very proud of this solution. Sneferu appears to have been less so. He had them move over about half a mile and start over. Again. Why only half a mile when he had them move 34 miles between the Sort-of Pyramid and the Bent Pyramid is a mystery. I think he wanted to keep them in sight of the Bent Pyramid so they could look at it and feel ashamed every once in a while.
And there they built Sneferu’s third pyramid, which is called the Red Pyramid. As pyramids go, it’s a very cautious one - it’s got the shallowest slope rise of any Egyptian pyramid, and while it’s the same height as the Bent Pyramid it spreads its weight over a much greater base area, making it far more stable. Sneferu seems to have been happy with this one, because he was buried in it. Either that, or after a forty-eight-year reign he just finally died and that was the pyramid they used because it was the nicest of the three.
These three pyramids together actually contain substantially more stone than the Great Pyramid of Sneferu’s son Khufu. By the time Sneferu died, his workforce had honed themselves into a lean, mean pyramid-building machine. They had already made every possible pyramid mistake. So when Khufu announced that he didn’t just want a great pyramid, but The Great Pyramid, these guys built him a pyramid so fucking great that we now think aliens must have done it.
It was as true in Ancient Egypt as it is now.
THE SHIT PYRAMIDS OF SNEFERU
OH MY GOD
A lesson for the ages.
Fun fact! Water actually turns “blood red” when it is contaminated by sulfur creating sulfuric acid. And scientists have discovered that around the time of the plagues a volcano went off that disturbed Egypt’s environment. So the plagues are scientifically proven. The other parts of the plagues are explained by the sulfuric acid river making the animals leave the river and escaping into the human population.
WHY DIDNT ANYONE TELL ME THE PLAGUES WERE PROVEN
if anyone wants a full list heres how they happened:
basically they all stem from a massive eruption of a volcano on the island of santorini off the coast of greece. the ash then floated over to egypt which kickstarted the plagues
1) blood: the ash carried the mineral cinnabar, which has the capability of turning water red
2) frogs: the ash also had many toxic and acidic substances so naturally, all the frogs are gonna flee the river
3) lice: given what was going on insects would have burrowed into dead animals/peoples skin and laid eggs, which then hatched
4) beasts: everything is getting poisoned from the ash and toxins, causing animals to freak the fuck out/die
5) pestilence: toxins again
6) boils: the ash would have caused storms that carried acid rain which when it fell, would irritate peoples skin causing boils
7) hail: the storm again
8) locusts: again with the insects and the amount of dead bodies and such which attract more insects. a lotta insects basically.
9) darkness: the ash covered the sky, blocking out the sun
10) slaying of the first born: given that children’s bodies were found in higher numbers than others, some archeologists think they may have been sacrificed to stop all the destruction, but they aren’t 100% sure about that. this is just me but I would say another possibility is that babies/kids are a lot more susceptible to toxins and shit, so while an adult may have been fine or gotten a bit sick, it might have been very dangerous/deadly for kids or babies
the volcano would also attest for the parting of the sea weirdly enough. the red sea was in fact the ‘reed’ sea, and was very shallow, probably waist deep or so. given the amount of shit dumped into the ocean from the volcano, this wouldve caused a tsunami to head towards egypt. the water would get sucked out from the reed sea right before the tsunami hit, letting people pass it easily, then the actual tsunami would hit, fuckin up anyone who tried to follow.
another theory is that the red water was caused by algae, which would cause the frogs and stuff to jump out as well. the algae also carried substances toxic to animals so if they ingested any they’d get sick and die, so more insects. in this theory there was a sand storm coincidentally that caused the rest
The volcano wasn’t ON Santorini - it WAS Santorini, then called Thera. It completely blew away the Minoan settlements on the island and was one of the largest eruptions in human history.
- The tsunamis from the Theran eruption devastated Crete, weakening the then-powerful Minoan civilization, leaving them open to being invaded by the Mycenaeans.
- The volcanic winter it created devastated crops in China leading to the fall of the Xia Dynasty.
- The abrupt and catastrophic loss of the people of Thera may have also inspired the myths about Atlantis.
this is blowing my fucking mind
This image is way funnier considering that this is Egypt and this snow was the first snow they got in 112 years.
this man has waited 112 years to SLAM DUNK that snowball on this man’s head
This image is way funnier considering that this is Egypt and this snow was the first snow they got in 112 years.
this man has waited 112 years to SLAM DUNK that snowball on this man’s head
C’MON AND SLAM
This image is way funnier considering that this is Egypt and this snow was the first snow they got in 112 years.
this man has waited 112 years to SLAM DUNK that snowball on this man’s head
