Enough for the wise

“Enola Eudoria Holmes, will you take I, Earnest Augustus, of the House of Tewkesbury, to be your husband?” ♡

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

"- That letter, Kirya, contained Leon's love for a Turk girl."

"+ Who is this girl, Lucy? If not Yıldız, then who is she?"

And that letter;

“I liken the color of your skin to the white of my flag, and your eyes to its blue. As for me, I believe in the infinity of the star on your flag; I associate the life you would not hesitate to sacrifice with the red of your flag, and I lose myself in that red. Then, you become the flag and the people of all nations for me. When I think of you, borders, the colors of people, and flags all disappear. And as I keep thinking of you, I fade away.”

"Senin teninin rengini bayrağımın beyazına, gözlerini mavisine benzetiyorum. Ben ise bayrağınızdaki yıldızın sonsuzluğuna inanıyor, feda etmekten çekinmeyeceğiniz canınızı bayrağınızın kırmızısına yoruyorum ve o kırmızıda kayboluyorum. Sonra sen benim için tüm milletlerin bayrağına ve halklarına dönüşüyorsun. Seni düşündüğümde sınırlar, insanların renkleri, bayrakları ortadan kalkıyor. Ben seni düşündükçe yok oluyorum..."

Their relationship isn’t just a passing flirtation or only sexual tension (which they got that too for sure), but they like being around each other and that makes it believable that they are meant to spend the rest of their lives together.

friend: oh like romantically?

me: no. like cursed object passed between hands for centuries, they are cosmically linked, probably bonded by blood ritual, I think they’ve fought in a war together in at least three lifetimes, and their souls make direct eye contact every time they breathe in the same room

friend: so… romantically?