HOLLERIN ABOUT THE ANUBIS

Sorry this took a minute to respond to, things have been nuts over here…

Okay! So, it’s actually a very simple design! The whole thing comes in two parts, like this:

On the left is the lock-shaped housing, on the right is the lockpick, which has all the numbers 1-20 arranged around the outer edge of the disc. The bottom of the lockpick disc comes to a point, like a spinning top, which is exactly what it is.

You thread the lock over the pick so the pick emerges from the keyhole in the lock, like this:

Now your lockpick die is all set. When it’s time to do a skill check, you hold the lock down with one hand for stability, and you twirl the lockpick with the other like a spinning top. After a moment, use your finger to nock the lockpick firmly down and reveal the result of your “roll”.

The window above the keyhole shows the number. In this case, I “rolled” an 18.

From behind, you can see the disc has teeth all around the edge, and there’s a point at the bottom of the lock that will catch between those teeth when you nock the pick to ensure it lands properly on one number instead of coming up between them.

Informative Ancient Egypt Comics: BROS

They claimed that the Egyptians screwed up a burial.

The Egyptians. Screwed up. A burial.

Now I’m not an expert in Ancient Egypt but from what I know, and what the exhibit was telling me, burials and the afterlife and all that jazz DEFINED the Egyptian religion and culture. They don’t just ‘screw up’. So instead of thinking outside the box for two seconds and wonder why else a genetically female body was in a male coffin, the ‘researchers’ blatantly disregard the rest of their research and decided to call it a screw up. Instead of, you know, admitting that maybe this mummy presented as male during his life and was therefore honorably buried as he was identified. But it would be too much of a stretch to admit that a transgender person could have existed back then.

Then we get to the Late Period archaising and oh boy do we have some fun. Due to the Egyptian habit of being nostalgic for what they considered better periods of their history (oh wait where have I heard that before?) they tended to try to copy ‘styles’ of art from other periods without knowing the full decorum. So, as is the case with the Late Period, it’d become a mish mash of ‘ok so this is Amarna style paunch art, but we’re using the feminine coffin pose from the New Kingdom, and our art grid is off by one so everyone looks elongated’. They literally write about themselves being proud of copying these older art styles. 

I know this site likes to think in black and white terms, with a heavy amount of anti-intellectual bias, but reality is more complicated than you’d like, as is history. Knowing the full cultural context for why historical people did what they did is vital, because otherwise we assume they thought the same way we do about topics such as this, and that’s where you fall into the ‘bias’ trap. If you don’t look at something in Ancient Egypt and say ‘well what do the Egyptians themselves tell us about this’ and just immediately head to ‘well it’s this way now so archaeologists must have missed something what idiots’ then you’re doing a bad job of working with the material presented to you. 

As for Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep, well this site likes to twist their narrative pretty hard, as you can see from the above. Yeah, they’re mlm couple. That’s been the accepted narrative (bar a few outliers) for about 40 years, and it was even suggested way before that. Idk, might be a good idea to read something written after 1970 if you’re trying to get current thinking on the subject. Or you know, stuff published this century. Basing your ideas of what archaeologists think currently on publications from the 60s is as bad as assuming that scientists now have the same ideas about disease as they did in the 60s. Things move on. 

Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep are not depicted as different sizes, thus making one more ‘feminine’. They’re depicted as the same size, because it’s not just your gender in Egyptian art decorum that determines your size but also your rank and power. Look:

Here they are embracing, in what is a depiction of a kiss. They’re the same size. 

Here they are at the entrance. Same size. 

Here they are kissing again. Same size. 

One last time. Same size. 

(I’ve been to this tomb. Seen it in person. It’s very gay)

There are also loads of examples where women are not depicted as ‘small’, in fact that statement in and of itself is rather a generalisation than the actual rule. Here’s Menna and his wife:

Same size. 

Here’s Inherkhau and his wife and children:

Same size. 

And because I’m feeling petty, have one more. Here’s Irynefer and his wife:

Same. Size. 

Idk about you guys, but doesn’t seem right does it? Really, size in these tomb paintings is all about the importance of the figure, in this case the deceased, rather than their gender. The only reason they would be not of the same size in the tomb is when one is as an Osiris. When that happens the figure who is larger, and yeah it’s usually the man because you rarely get women’s tombs because they’re buried with their husbands, is representative of the deceased being ‘honoured’ as an ‘Osiris’ (you become an Osiris after death in Egypt). The size of the person depicts their importance as the revered deceased and not because one is a woman. Take here for example the tomb of Sennefer:

You can see Sennefer as the revered dead on the right, being offered a lotus (I’ll get onto that in a sec) by his wife. She’s offering him rebirth. It is only this scene in which she is depicted smaller, because on the left (at an angle) you can see them both….portrayed as the same size. Here’s another image of them together:

It is only when she is offering to him as a revered, and more important, deceased person that she is smaller. Decorum dictates that the more important you are the larger you are, so the tomb owner will always be depicted as larger than pretty much everyone else. If Khnumhotep is offering a lotus flower to Niankhkhnum, it is because Niankhkhnum at that point is the revered dead. It has nothing to do with Khnumhotep being ‘feminine’. The narrative that one of them must be taking the ‘feminine’ role seems kinda….not good?  

As for the symbol of a lotus flower? That’s nothing to do with ‘femininity’. At all. In Egyptian culture, the lotus flower symbolised power and rebirth, as in one creation myth, the mound grew from the waters of Nun, and from this mound grew a lotus flower. When this lotus flower opened it provided the first ‘man’ and that’s how mankind came into existence. This is why we have a statue of Tutankhamun emerging from a Lotus flower. 

Khnumhotep offering this flower to Niankhkhnum is not symbolising his ‘femininity’ it’s offering him rebirth into the afterlife. A symbol that was extremely important in Ancient Egypt. 

Oh and finally, Archaeologists from 1964, and up until the early 80s, thought they were brothers because that’s literally what they refer to each other as. They call each other ‘sn=i’ ‘my brother’. Yeah it seems obvious now that they’re not, but when you start translating something you’re not looking at anything deeper. If it says they were brothers, and they themselves have said this, why would we think differently? It was not until the mid 70s when we worked out that Middle Egyptian Hieroglyphs (though they’re using Old Egyptian, but the flaw is the same) has limited words for family. We only have words for: father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, husband, and wife. There are no words for ‘uncle’ or ‘cousin’ or ‘nephew’. So we ended up having to go back and reassess some stuff, and it turned out where someone had said ‘so and so is my father’ they’re actually saying ‘so and so is my grandfather or uncle’ and the same goes for ‘son/nephew’, cousins are brothers and sisters. Yes, there was some absolute homophobia going on when it was first suggested that they might not actually be brothers, but lovers. There are some that still think this way. But the vast majority no longer hold this view, and haven’t since the 1980s. 

Here is a link to everything we currently know about the presence of LGBT individuals in Ancient Egypt. It’s written by an excellent Egyptologist (Deborah Sweeney), and has an extensive bibliography on everything written so far about LGBT individuals in Ancient Egypt often by LGBT Egyptologist and Archaeologists themselves. The PDF is free to read, and was published in 2011.

and so obviously in addition to there being several rp accounts for each character theres also been an avalanche of ppl making twitter accounts for their ‘tmasonas’ who are generally institute employees which is fun but yesterday i noticed that as a general rule all the OC accounts seem pretty in the know re: the deal with the archives/entities/etc. and i started thinking like… what would a twitter account look like for an institute employee that just genuinely has NO idea. is just 100% oblivious to like an almost impressive degree. so i made one and here are some highlights

I think it’s incredible how seals experience the world.

Many of the deep-diving seals can go blind during their lifetime and live just fine.

in the summer, when it turns out the windows open, you leave a cup of coffee out on the ledge for the gargoyle that’s nearest the breakroom. it’s funny. it’s just a cute joke. your coworkers laugh, but not really at you. it’s harmlessly silly, and frankly working in an office kind of sucks. no one minds something extra to smile about. 

the next day you go to get the mug back. the coffee’s gone, but the cup’s half full of rainwater and cigarette butts. haha, cute joke, someone else must be in on it. you wash the cup and put it back out fresh for the gargoyle. everyone’s calling him greg now. everyone smiles over greg’s morning coffee. greg needs his fix! greg is a valued employee. keep up the good work, greg. you set a mug of coffee out for greg every morning, now. 

the stuff in the coffee mug that’s left behind keeps changing, though. it’s different every morning: always rainwater, but also cigarette butts, coffee grounds, a handful of gravel, some bottlecaps, gross old pennies. receipt papers, pigeon feathers, half a shoe.

then one morning it’s a whole, wrapped snickers bar. still in half a cup of dirty rainwater, but the plastic’s fine, the candy inside should be good. 

‘huh. thanks, greg,’ you say, and after you get greg his coffee, you open the candy bar and have it right there, sitting on the windowsill.