This post spiraled off from my last post, as frequently happens. You know you’re looking at a pharaoh in ancient Egyptian artwork by looking at his hat. There’s several different hats, but all of them are only worn by pharaohs. Moreover, there’s a square beard also only worn by pharaohs. Continue Reading
Today’s post started with a joke. The first few amuse me. By the end it doesn’t even make sense: just putting hieroglyphs around Ghostbusters doesn’t exactly give the impression of ancient Egyptian Ghostbusters. I do, however, get a giggle from the Vulture posing as Isis. We’re going to stick withContinue Reading
I greatly enjoyed my trip to Egypt in 2010 just before the Arab Spring. However, our tour guide had the annoying habit of attributing just about everything in Western history to the ancient Egyptians via half-truths, over-generalizations, and periodic nonsense. Several of us responded by creating our own list ofContinue Reading
Ramesses’s temples at Abu Simbel are awesome for two reasons. The first is the incredible novelty of their construction: it’s dug into the rock face rather than built as temples commonly were. The second, however, is what happened to them in the 1960s. Ramesses II Ramesses never did anything smallContinue Reading
If I asked random people on the street to name a pharaoh, most would say King Tut. (More than a few would probably also look at me oddly.) They wouldn’t even call him a pharaoh (much less by his full name, Tutankhamen), because we’re so used to the phrase “KingContinue Reading
Egyptian history is divided into three main periods, the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms. Everyone knows about the Old Kingdom. That’s the time of the Great Sphinx and the pyramids, with the most known pyramids being some of the earliest. If you’ve heard of specific pharaohs (famous for something otherContinue Reading