LunaCalx

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

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 

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”

It was not, in fact, practice to shave off eyebrows after cats died; Herodotus lied about that

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

When she was representing the Pharoah, she wore male clothing and presumably used male pronouns, but it was ritual theater. She was acting. She also may have died from complications of diabetes because of an overly-rich diet.

Also, the Pyramids (I believe, if I’m getting the project wrong, correct me), were the site of a strike that at first mystified Egyptologists.

Workers struck because they weren’t getting “cosmetics.”

Eventually somebody found reside in a mortar and reverse engineered it, because archaeologists do cool things like that.

Turned out that what we were translating as “cosmetics” was…sunscreen. Dang important safety gear if you’re doing construction work in the desert!

I’ve seen the Tumblr post that claims the whole “cosmetics-turns-out-to-be-sunscreen” and it’s just not accurate. 

The word that post refers to is sqnn, found on recto 2, line 3 of the Turin Strike Papyrus*:

This word is translated as “oil/ointment”. It was used to denote any type of oil or ointment that they weren’t or didn’t want to be too specific about. If you’re curious, you can find all the attestations of the word here. 

So we can’t and shouldn’t translate sqnn as sunscreen. Moreover, I’ve yet to come across a recipe in the medical papyri (my specialisation) that can be interpreted as sunscreen - especially something that’s as good as the stuff we have right now! 

Almost a month ago, while searching for “LotRO Pies” on Google, I came across @mymainisacook​‘s awesome Tumblr account. Right away, I browsed through the LotRO tag for desserts. Of all the pies, I am unsure why I raved about the Vegetable Pot Pie and swore to try it one day, despite being a historian by profession and not a tinker or yeoman. Anyway, here it goes.

First of all, I based my pie crust from this recipe. For the broth, I used vegetable broth and based it from this recipe. 

The leeks I bought were thinner and smaller. The herbs I had at home were lacking too. Using this as reference (from @mymainisacook again), I decided to throw in dried basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme, and salt. Oh, I threw in onion powder too.

Then at last, it was time to bake it in the oven!

Voila! Since I had a lot of extra pie crust, I made a mini peach pie and a mini pineapple pie too.

This delicious treat was requested by an anonymous reader!

You can use either fresh pears or pear preserves as the recipe originally states, I will leave that up to your taste. Also, since pears are traditionally a winter fruit, preserves will likely be more widely available at this point (though I did luck across some late Bosc pears, so I decided to use those.) I will also leave open how you cut or fold your pastry, I decided to use a single sheet of pie dough and fold it in half to make 1 large pasty.

~Ingredients~

1 - 2 Bosc or Red Pears or Pear Preserves/Jam as needed

4 oz. Goat Cheese, room temperature

1 Egg

3 tbsp. Brown Sugar (optional if using preserves)

½ tsp. Cinnamon

Puff Pastry or Pastry Dough

Prep Time: 5 - 10 min.  |  Cook Time: 20 - 30 min.

Makes: 1 large pasty or up to 3 smaller ones

~Instructions~

Step 1.) Preheat oven to 375 ºF. Grease a baking sheet and set it aside.

Step 2.) Mix the brown sugar and cinnamon together, and slice your pears into thin slices, if using whole pears.

Step 3.) Lay out the pastry dough and layer the filling in as so: half the sugar+cinnamon mixture, goat cheese cut into cubes, pear slices/preserves, and the other half of sugar+cinnamon. Make sure to leave at least a 1 - 1 ½ inch margin around the sides of the dough.

Step 4.) Fold over the pastry (or layer over with the second piece) and pinch the side to seal in the filling. Beat the egg and brush it liberally over the top of the dough. 

Step 5.) Cut a few small holes for ventilation and then bake in the oven for 20 - 30 minutes, or until the dough is fully baked. Enjoy hot!

~Results~

The goat cheese and pears go together really well and the sugar caramelizes in an exceedingly delicious way! I could easily see this as a dessert or a snack with tea during the Winter, and it’s just as good to cozy up to with all the May thunderstorms there’s been around my parts!

Weeeell mine was grilled rather than baked as the recipe name states, but I will take advantage of artistic license in this respect. It is summer after all, and what better way to cook pork chops? 

I will also have you know I braved a spider to grill this! It was most definitely Frostbite Spider sized and not at all a tiny, harmless thing that just wanted to check out the grill. Nope. Not at all.

~Ingredients~

4 Pork Chops, bone in or boneless

Cantaloupe and Honeydew Melon, as needed

Flaked Parmesan Cheese, to taste

Sauce

1/3 cup Soy Sauce

1/3 cup Honey

½ tsp. each of Cayenne, Red Pepper Flakes, Ginger, and Cinnamon

Prep Time: 1 hr - overnight  |  Cook Time: 15- 20 minutes

Serves: 4 people

~Instructions~

Step 1.) Combine the sauce ingredients together. Take 1/3 of the sauce and add that to a ziplock bag or bowl with the pork chops. Allow pork chops to marinate for 1 hour to overnight.

(Optional) Add some diced melon to the marinating pork chops for some extra blending of the flavors!

Step 2.) Bring out the pork chops at least 30 min. - 1 hour prior to grilling. Light/start your grill to begin heating up.

Step 3.) Cut the cantaloupe and honeydew melons into slices. I used one slice of each melon per pork chop. Set aside.

Step 4.) When the grill is ready, begin grilling both the porkchops and melon slices. Porkchops will cook at a rate of 5 - 6 minutes for the first side, and 4 - 5 minutes on the second side. I grilled the melons for roughly 3 minutes on each side. Make sure to bast both the pork chops and the melons in generous layers of the remaining sauce while grilling them.

Step 5.) After a few minutes to cool, roughly chop the melons and load them up over the pork chops. Garnish with extra sauce and Parmesan as desired. Enjoy!

~Results~

YUMMY! Both the melon and the pork are complimented so well by the sauce and cheese, everything is so flavorful! If you aren’t one for spicy foods, you can easily use less spice or replace the cayenne with paprika.