Controversial Truths About Ancient Egypt Masterpost
The pyramids were built by contemporary workers who received wages and were fed and taken care of during construction
The Dendera “lightbulb” is a representation of the creation myth and has nothing to do with electricity
We didn’t find “““copper wiring””” in the great pyramid either
Hatshepsut wasn’t transgender
The gods didn’t actually have animal heads
Hieroglyphs aren’t mysteriously magical; they’re just a language (seriously we have shopping lists and work rosters and even ancient erotica)
The ancient Egyptian ethnicity wasn’t homogeneous
Noses (and ears, and arms) broke off statues and reliefs for a variety of reasons, none of which are “there is a widespread archaeological conspiracy to hide the Egyptian ethnicity”
The carvings at Abydos aren’t modern machines but recarvings over old carvings. Sure they look like them but if you can read hieroglyphs and know that Ramesses II will even usurp the carvings of his own father just to be a little shit
‘No soot on the ceilings and walls of the Dendera temple!’ is actually because of extensive restoration works and not because Egyptians were in on shit like Baghdad “batteries”
While the Egyptians were fine-ass astronomers they didn’t align any of their enormous and/or important buildings to modern star constellations, because constellations look very different now than they did ~5000 years ago
The pyramid is the simplest, sturdiest shape with which to build and many different cultures discovered this in their own time. There were never any weird fish humans/aliens involved
The sphinx of Gizah is only an approximate 5000 years old; the 10,000 year/rain erosion nonsense is proven hokum
Speaking of that particular sphinx, the Napoleonic expedition is not responsible for its missing nose
Akhenaten was not a “heretic” by contemporary standards
Ramses II appropriated a lot of his predecessors’ buildings/reliefs and isn’t really deserving of the epithet “the Great”
The Battle of Kadesh ended in a stalemate (twice)
While they had feline deities throughout their history, Egyptians didn’t actually worship cats themselves. This was a later Greek/Ptolemaeic addition
It was not, in fact, practice to shave off eyebrows after cats died; Herodotus lied about that
Herodotus lied about a lot of things and many misconceptions about ancient Egypt can be traced back to his Greek ass
I can’t believe I forgot my favourite Hill to Die On
Seth was not the god of “evil”, and despite his chaos providing a foil to order, he wasn’t completely villified until very late in Egyptian history, when he became associated with despised foreign enemies
Hats off to the few of you who’re reblogging this with tags saying you’re going to check my claims later. You make me not entirely despair of this hellhole.
Here are some vetted Egyptological books/sources (that are by and large appropriate for a lay-audience) you can find most, if not all of the above:
Lehner, M., The Complete Pyramids
Wilkinson, R. H., The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt
Hornung, E., The One and the Many: Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt
Dunand, F. & Zivie-Coche, C., Gods and Men in Egypt
Kemp, B., Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization
Bard, K., An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt
Stevenson Smith, W., The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt
Kitchen, K. A., The Life and Times of Ramesses II, King of Egypt
Sweeney, D., Sex and Gender (in Ancient Egypt)
McDowell, A. G., Village Life in Ancient Egypt:
Laundry Lists and Love Songs
Bockstensmanen, a medieval person who happened to die in a bog which preserved his clothes (and more), clothes like hella comfy??
Like seriously. Comfy and warm wool clothes!
(yes this are pictures of his actual outfit, not reconstructed clothing. They were very well preserved in all except colour. The bog gave everything that yellow shade, i suspect)
It goes around the entire body! So perhaps not quite a mantel but.
A got a little hood with a fashionedble long thingy at the end
Warm that too! There is no openings for wind or anything, so like. Just pull hood over head, get warm!
Warm socks! Gotta keep em feets warm (and just like in english, the swedish words for trousers, byxor, is in plural in its normal form, just because the medieval version of trousers consisted of two separate peices like here.
Somewhere, there should be something for hos upper legs but idk were that one is)
Anyway! I do think one can tell that keeping warm was an important part of the logic behind bockstensmannens clothing. Not odd that, when he lived in Scandinavia and all…
When we already at it, with listning his entire outfit. Here his this shoes
Reconstruction in how he might have looked like in life. The musuem points out, that his skull was very smashed when found, werehas it might be a bit so so with this dolls facial similiarity with bockstensmannen in life. And his hair colour we know not, the bog will colour most hair red with enough time.
But that hairstyle! That he really had! Bockstensmannen wore like Peak Fluffy Medieval Hair Fashion in life
The entire doll wearing bockstensmannens reconstructed clothing
the most valid thing about taako is that hes a depressed gourmet chef who would serve sour patch kids ice cream at a party that hes catering
bone ape the teeth
oh swag someone dug up this post id forgotten about, for Good Reason too! because this stuff? tastes like literal poison. those blue bits are rock hard landmines you Do Not Eat and the red stuff is shockingly gross if you hit a thick enough vein. im talking, the flavor equivalent of briefly touching your tongue to a live wire, exquisite, effervescent… the texture is gritty in the way fine sand in between your sweat soaked toes is gritty yet soft; it is fruity and sour and is exactly what tasting the blood of sour patch children should be like. the ice cream itself is actually a pleasantly chemical lemon flavor. i ate half a carton of it and felt taako in the chilis that is my soul. wh
so someone just said they’re “really interested in history” how careful do you have to be?
“i just think history is interesting in general! i’m not interested in any specific part of it”: this person is most likely safe. never drop your guard though
“i’m interested in this specific subject or time period in history. (ex. ancient egypt, the golden age of piracy, the history of the printing press”: still probably safe. be on the lookout for certain risky historical subjects. you should know them you see them
“i’m really into WW2 history”: this is the caution zone, there’s plenty of valid reasons to be into WW2, but if they start talking about how Operation Sealion totally could have succeeded, it’s time to abort
“i’m specifically into roman history, the crusades, prussian military history, and WW2”: danger! do NOT talk about history with this person. in fact, do not talk to this person at all. you will regret it, you do not want to know what they think of the treaty of versailles or why germany lost the first world war
this post has inspired three different responses
1) people who lack any reading comprehension skills whatsoever and seem to think i’m saying “being into history makes you bad”
2) history students/historians saying some variation of “tbh this is true”
3) the kind of people my last point was specifying calling me slurs
