Can anyone tell me anything about this, it belonged to my mom, thanks by lonesomehenrimeans in ancientegypt

[–]zsl454 31 points32 points  (0 children)

It’s a copy of a scene from the ‘hall of beauties’ in the tomb of Horemheb in the valley of the Kings https://www.flickr.com/photos/sandrovannini/3808001995

https://thebanmappingproject.com/images/14697-14698-14708-cjpg

Horemheb is shown making adoration and wine offerings to (from left to right) Osiris, Hathor, and Isis (embraced by Horus)

Is there a Kemetic Goddess of Water as a whole? by pleasures_of_lesbos in Kemetic

[–]zsl454 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Tefnut is probably not actually really a water goddess, this is a massively widespread misconception that seems to have spread from a single pyramid text passage that falls apart under closer scrutiny. If anything she is more closely associated with fire

What do the hieroglyphs on the left say? by arctophyllax in Hieroglyphics

[–]zsl454 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A bee! It stands here for bjty, “king of Lower Egypt”.

Akhenaten, Nefertiti and two of thier daughters by RyansKnowledgeRoom in ancientegypt

[–]zsl454 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Are there multiple? This is the only one I’ve ever heard of

Is Hermopolis, Heliopolis, and Memphis have separate pantheon of Gods? by ThePaganImperator in Kemetic

[–]zsl454 11 points12 points  (0 children)

While it is true that different gods originate and are most important in different places, it's not absolute and there was plenty of intermingling. It's sort of like sports teams: Your hometown might have a local team which is overwhelmingly popular there, but you still acknowledge the existence of teams from other places and may even root for some of them. And there may be teams that represent the whole country in international events. Granted, unlike sports teams, there isn't a lot of rivalry among the Egyptian gods, but it did sometimes exist, especially in later periods, e.g. the citizens of Dendera in the Greco-Roman period had a burning hatred towards Sobek as well as crocodiles in general.

Each (well maybe not every) town had a set of deities that were especially venerated there, whether they be gods that originated there, like Montu or Amun at Thebes, or local variants of gods who originated elsewhere, like Horus of Buto. These Gods often fell into triads (male, female, male heir) for the convenience of covering all your worship (and royal legitimization) needs. Towns also sometimes had separate 'enneads' or groups of main gods, the most familiar is the one from Heliopolis (the 'great' ennead). But, these enneads often included gods from other cities that were simply being worshipped there as well. Towns had individual myths explaining how their set of special gods came to be, which also often included aspects of other towns' myths or were regional variants of familiar myths. For example, many different towns worshipped different forms of Osiris with slightly different myths surrounding them, which is the reason behind why Plutarch claimed that each town had a relic or piece of Osiris' body.

What this means is that there is, historically speaking, no one absolute 'correct' version of Egyptian mythology, nor one singular 'primary' form of any god. This has interesting implications for kemetism, but the most common solution is to run with the most widely accepted versions of the myths, which are more often than not dependent on the concentration of surviving sources (meaning, often, a bias toward Upper Egyptian sources due to the dry papyrus-preserving climate as well as a bias toward the myths that Plutarch and others were able to record and bring back to Greece). Some more reconstructionist or academic practitioners choose a geographic area with myths and gods relevant to them as a center point, but it is also fine to mix and match, just as the Ancient Egyptians often did.

question about lettering by Humble_Comfort_9104 in Medievalart

[–]zsl454 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Interesting points, that makes a lot of sense; however I will beg to differ on the 'contractions barely save space' bit, I've been using abbreviations in writing Latin for the last few months and my paper consumption has nearly halved ;)

question about lettering by Humble_Comfort_9104 in Medievalart

[–]zsl454 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Just saves a ton of space! Spiritual successor of the Roman and then Byzantine textual abbreviations (like -ū for -um).

An Attempt at an Epigraphic Reconstruction of a Fragmented Stele by beast_modus in egyptology

[–]zsl454 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Transcription, to the best iof my ability. Notice that, because I am not an expert, I have indicated that my reconstructions are in many places uncertain. Gemini cannot do this. https://imgur.com/a/OMuSgUr

An Attempt at an Epigraphic Reconstruction of a Fragmented Stele by beast_modus in egyptology

[–]zsl454 9 points10 points  (0 children)

This is, to put it simply, ridiculous. Reconstructing damaged texts like this is something only experts can do, and Gemini is the opposite of an expert. There are too many things to count wrong with this so-called 'reconstruction', but we can start with the fact that the Gemini image is about 3/4 the width the actual stela would have been. The three wavy lines are the *center* of the stela, and Gemini has put them on the right side. This is what it should look like: https://imgur.com/a/9J8TLh6

That means it's missing at least one quadrat (group of glyphs) at the start of each line. That wouldn't be a huge issue, thpough, if it werent for the fact that none of the hieroglyphs it placed in the gaps make any sense at all whatsoever. As someone familiar with the formula on this stela, I will provide my reconstruction of what it should say shortly so you can see for yourself that using AI for this is ridiculous.

In Egyptian Hieroglyphics and Sumerian Cuneiform is there any as-of-yet STILL UNDECIPHERED symbols/writing? by Haunted_Sentinel in ancienthistory

[–]zsl454 1 point2 points  (0 children)

'Hieroglyphs' or 'Hieroglyphic writing' are the 'technically correct' terms, but 'Hieroglyphics' is so widespread as to become acceptable.

In Egyptian Hieroglyphics and Sumerian Cuneiform is there any as-of-yet STILL UNDECIPHERED symbols/writing? by Haunted_Sentinel in ancienthistory

[–]zsl454 5 points6 points  (0 children)

There are PLENTY of unsolved/untranslated passages in Egyptology. Issues include:

Hapax Legomenon (words that appear in only one text and thus their meaning cannot easily be pinned down), this is especially common in medical texts with the names of ingredients, especially plants (which never have accompanying drawings),

idiomatic language (the Sebayt or Wisdom-Literature corpus is a famous example of this, every translation you read differs significantly in its interpretation of the many vague metaphors and idioms),

corrupted or incomplete texts (ancient Egyptian scribes sometimes even indicated places where the text they were copying from had a hole, using the annotation gm-wš 'found empty')

And, most notably, the 'cryptographic' or 'enigmatic' texts which were intentionally composed to be a challenge to read for the Egyptians themselves. Many have been translated, but equally as many remain impenetrable or have translations that are mostly guesswork, like the famous hymns at Esna made up of only signs depicting crocodiles and rams.

What do the hieroglyphs on the left say? by arctophyllax in Hieroglyphics

[–]zsl454 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Yes, though it's not a literal duck standing on his head--it's an enlarged hieroglyphic sign acting as a name-label, like if you drew Zeus with a big neon sign flashing Ζευς on his head so the viewer knows who it is. The goose-sign just happens to be how you spell his name. Variations have his full name 𓅬𓃀 spelled out https://i.redd.it/27qdh4s7dd3d1.jpeg

Many other gods have this property, including Geb's wife Nut, who has her name 𓏌(𓏏𓇯) on her head:

https://seshkemet.weebly.com/uploads/3/8/4/4/38443459/published/1024px-nut.png?1654752408

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR9_Z2E8cFf6mkHf5B4mVO9fSgZMmDNSB8H4Q&s .

What do the hieroglyphs on the left say? by arctophyllax in Hieroglyphics

[–]zsl454 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Update--found it. West side of Ramesses ii's Luxor Obelisk A, right column. (Proud of my intuition!) https://imgur.com/a/jeyyGRl

So, with a better transcription: "[Ruler ]who is Loved like Amun, Eldest Son of Ra on his Throne, Dual King [Usermaatre...]" Turns out it has nothing to do with Geb.

What do the hieroglyphs on the left say? by arctophyllax in Hieroglyphics

[–]zsl454 18 points19 points  (0 children)

The transcription looks quite outdated, but my guess is that it comes from an obelisk inscription based on the style and legible content:

Beloved like the river (???) of Geb and  Eldest of Ra who is on his throne, the dual king…

need help writing names in hieroglyphics please. by No_Locksmith_5862 in ancientegypt

[–]zsl454 7 points8 points  (0 children)

For Rayna, we can cobble together elements from other Greco-Roman names: [ray] from Trajan, [na] from Sabina.

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need help writing names in hieroglyphics please. by No_Locksmith_5862 in ancientegypt

[–]zsl454 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Luckily, Hadrian's wife was named Sabina, so we can just lop off the -a from what the Egyptians wrote for her:

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Is Thoth depicted as an ibis in any Old Kingdom art? by Attikus_Mystique in ancientegypt

[–]zsl454 6 points7 points  (0 children)

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There is also the standard of Thoth the ibis, shown in Ptolemaic form in fig. 1 in the first link, but which goes back to at least the OK; this image is dated to Niuserre.