Icon from a picrew by grgikau. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
The tsunamis from the Theran eruption devastated Crete, weakening the then-powerful Minoan civilization, leaving them open to being invaded by the Mycenaeans.
The volcanic winter it created devastated crops in China leading to the fall of the Xia Dynasty.
The abrupt and catastrophic loss of the people of Thera may have also inspired the myths about Atlantis.
if anyone wants a full list heres how they happened:
basically they all stem from a massive eruption of a volcano on the island of santorini off the coast of greece. the ash then floated over to egypt which kickstarted the plagues
1) blood: the ash carried the mineral cinnabar, which has the capability of turning water red
2) frogs: the ash also had many toxic and acidic substances so naturally, all the frogs are gonna flee the river
3) lice: given what was going on insects would have burrowed into dead animals/peoples skin and laid eggs, which then hatched
4) beasts: everything is getting poisoned from the ash and toxins, causing animals to freak the fuck out/die
5) pestilence: toxins again
6) boils: the ash would have caused storms that carried acid rain which when it fell, would irritate peoples skin causing boils
7) hail: the storm again
8) locusts: again with the insects and the amount of dead bodies and such which attract more insects. a lotta insects basically.
9) darkness: the ash covered the sky, blocking out the sun
10) slaying of the first born: given that children’s bodies were found in higher numbers than others, some archeologists think they may have been sacrificed to stop all the destruction, but they aren’t 100% sure about that. this is just me but I would say another possibility is that babies/kids are a lot more susceptible to toxins and shit, so while an adult may have been fine or gotten a bit sick, it might have been very dangerous/deadly for kids or babies
the volcano would also attest for the parting of the sea weirdly enough. the red sea was in fact the ‘reed’ sea, and was very shallow, probably waist deep or so. given the amount of shit dumped into the ocean from the volcano, this wouldve caused a tsunami to head towards egypt. the water would get sucked out from the reed sea right before the tsunami hit, letting people pass it easily, then the actual tsunami would hit, fuckin up anyone who tried to follow.
another theory is that the red water was caused by algae, which would cause the frogs and stuff to jump out as well. the algae also carried substances toxic to animals so if they ingested any they’d get sick and die, so more insects. in this theory there was a sand storm coincidentally that caused the rest
Fun fact! Water actually turns “blood red” when it is contaminated by sulfur creating sulfuric acid. And scientists have discovered that around the time of the plagues a volcano went off that disturbed Egypt’s environment. So the plagues are scientifically proven. The other parts of the plagues are explained by the sulfuric acid river making the animals leave the river and escaping into the human population.
I love that if you really boil all this information down, what you get is something approximating “the sinking of Atlantis caused the 10 Biblical plagues of Egypt” which is, like, one of the greatest mythological mash-ups I have ever heard of.
title???? a TITLE????? is it not enough that i wrote the damn thing IS THAT NOT ENOUGH WORDS WRUNG FROM MY VERY FLESH AND BLOOD
the song lyrics have abandoned me, no number of parantheses and lower cased words can save me from this hell
“I wring out my flesh for what is inside it, pouring out everything I have written, because what has been has has already been repeated: what has been said has been said.”
(Source: The Lamentations of a Middle Egyptian Scribe, c. 19th century BCE.)
really rude of you to just expose my past life like that
Okay! So while I was getting a little bean to fall asleep, @thatlittleegyptologist and I located the source text, since neither of us was familiar with the title “Lamentations of a Middle Egyptian Scribe”. The line above is actually a rather… liberal translation from recto 2-4 of “The Complaints of Khakheperreseneb” (British Museum EA 5645), a Middle Kingdom text, the original possibly dating to the reign of Senwosret II* (12th Dynasty), written in the genre of national distress texts.
This was a particular genre in Egyptian literature wherein calamitous events that could befall Egypt and its people were described. Some of them had political purpose, such as The Prophecy of Neferti, others seem to be more along the lines of exercise in hyperbole and form, such as The Admonitions of Ipuwer. The Complaints is written on a wooden writing board, extant examples of which we know from the New Kingdom, and this particular board (containing a copy of the earlier MK text) was dated to roughly the reign of Amenhotep II (18th Dynasty)**.
I’ve mentioned this to be a very liberal translation. For example: The use of “written” for Dd is incorrect: Dd here means “said”, instead. Translating X.t as “flesh” is also incorrect: X.t is “body”.
Lichtheim translates the lines as follows, and since that’s a good translation, I’m not going to append my own because it wouldn’t be much different if at all:
I wring out my body of what it holds, In releasing all my words; For what was said is repetition, When what was said is said. (Lichtheim, 1975:146)
The verse then ends with:
Ancestor’s words are nothing to boast of, They are found by those who come after. (Lichtheim, 1975:146)
In essence, what Khakheperreseneb describes here is the uselessness of writing, since it has all been written before.
— *Lichtheim, M., Ancient Egyptian Literature vol. I (1975), p. 145 **Parkinson, R. B., The Text of Khakheperreseneb: New Readings of EA5645, and an Unpublished Ostracon, in The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 83 (1997), p63
oh to be more accurately past-life scalped on my own post
[ID: Image 1: the AO3 title box when posting a fic, empty of text, with a red error message underneath saying “We need a title! (At least 1 character long, please.)”
Image 2: A line of hieroglyphics, with a shorter line of four glyphs under it that’s right-aligned.]
We can actually determine different species of birds based on their hieroglyphic counterparts. Ancient Egyptians were sticklers for details.
The point about being sticklers for details makes me want to learn about hieroglyphic paleography. Does less “careful” or less “formal” writing (or just certain mediums like book hand vs. monumental inscriptions) tend to simplify the more detailed bird hieroglyphs, for instance?
Oh yes, absolutely! “Book” hand is either cursive hieroglyphs or Hieratic, both of which are a lot lower on the detail than the carved hieroglyphs by virtue of the difference in medium. They’re different types of handwriting used for writing down the non-monumental version of the classical Egyptian languages. Monumental inscriptions themselves do tend to differ somewhat in terms of details, but in that case it doesn’t depend on formal/informal, since carved hieroglyphs are always formal because of their monumental nature. Any differences in portrayal of e.g. birds changes between the type of relief (raised/low or even painted), but it can also be a stylistic choice, or quite simply be a small idiosyncracy on that particular craftsman’s part.
For example, the White Chapel birds/glyphs overall look like this:
They are supremely detailed and quite honestly a lot of Egyptologists agree that Senwosret I commissioned some of the most beautiful hieroglyphic inscriptions in existence with the White Chapel.
And this is an example from the tomb of Seti I, where the carved details are additionally highlighted by the paint work:
As you can see, both the vulture and the quail chick have a similar type of detail compared to the White Chapel.
But then we also have incriptions like this one of Intef, chancellor during the reign of Hatshepsut/Thutmose III, which is a low relief and, as you can see, a lot simpler:
Still great craftsmanship, mind you, and you can still tell birds apart. Monumental inscriptions are by and large the most detailed because of the medium (stone), though even when written with ink on papyrus or pot sherds we are able to discern each bird from the other because of their respective unique features.
Egyptian paleography and epigraphy are honestly amazing, you can tell for instance when several workmen worked on the same inscription/stelae (happened a lot!) just by looking at things like the spacing, glyph height, the small idiosyncracies I mentioned above, etc. Sometimes the differences are minute, sometimes they’re very clear.
The only time we’re unable to discern a vulture from, say, the tiw-bird or the owl is when we’re dealing with one of Kurt “I’m making my hieroglyphic handwriting everyone else’s problem” Sethe’s transcriptions.
