First A&R Thursday of 2013

Not that this is the first Thursday of the new year. Just that I’m a bit slow with stuff sometimes.

Imsety, Duamutef, Hapi, Qebehsenuef
and Amelia

Archeologists in Egypt unearth 3000-year-old tombs

CAIRO—Egypt’s Antiquities Minister says Italian archaeologists have unearthed tombs over 3000 years old in the ancient city of Luxor.
Mohammed Ibrahim says the discovery was made beneath the mortuary temple of King Amenhotep II, seventh Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty who reigned from 1427 to 1401 B.C. The temple is located on the western bank of the Nile.

Ibrahim says remains of wooden sarcophaguses and human bones were found inside the tombs.

Mansour Barek, head of Luxor antiquities, says jars used to preserve the liver, lungs, stomach and intestines of the deceased were found. They were decorated with images of the four sons of the god Horus—figures seen as essential by ancient Egyptians to help the soul of the deceased find its way to heaven.

Canopic Jars from the British Museum, similar to the ones found in this excavation


As I’m sure you recall, the jars mentioned here are properly called Canopic Jars. By the middle of the 18th Dynasty (Amenhotep II was King Tut’s great-grandfather, probably possibley) the jars, usually carved from alabaster, had lids carved in the shape of the four sons of Horus: Imsety, Duamutef, Hapi, and Qebehsenuef.



This is Amelia Calley, actress, model, video star. I know I’ve run her before, but if Nefertiti (probably King Tut’s mommy) was a redhead, she would have looked like this. At least in my dreams anyway.

clicky biggy

Yes, yes, I know about the counter thesis that says Tut was really the little brother of Smenkhare (the catamite!!), who replaced Nefertiti who got the boot from Akenaten (Amenhotep IV, the possibly transgendered perhaps bisexual pharoah aka The Abomination aka The Heretic who started that whole monotheism thing with his one god Aten) after bearing him 6 daughters, and that Tut - under his original name Tutankhaten (Tut, the life of Aten) was forced to marry one of those daughters, Ankhsunamoon Ankhesenpaaten, and then later when the whole country got cranky from withdrawl symptoms from a lack of a pantheon, changed his name to Tutankhamen (Tut, the life of Amen, a “normal” Egyptian god, also known as Amun and Amon, because the Egyptians never got around to inventing vowels. They were also very good at gluing several gods together, since they had too many to keep track of, which is why Amen is also known as Amun-Ra). Tut moved the capital back to Luxor, and died a few years later. Oh mummy, what a complicated soap opera life must have been in the late 18th Dynasty!

But until there is definitive proof otherwise, I’ll have a shave with Occam’s Razor and say Tut was Ake’s son via Nefertiti. Nor do I believe that A-tep IV was trans- or bi-; he was such a radical dude that he invented impressionist sculpture as well as monotheism. So all those statues showing him with big hips, a pot belly, and sometimes even man-boobs were just stylin’. Same goes for the big lips thing on those same statues: no, he weren’t black neither. Style. Go ahead, prove me wrong.

1. I love it when you go off on a tangent like this, it really lets us see the complex wiring in that skull cap of yours Drew.
   

   Posted by Rich K       01/10/2013  at  05:30 PM  

2. Waytago Drew. A double, no a triple WHAMMY!

   Didn’t see that story anywhere btw. Well done.

   VERY well done.

   Posted by peiper       01/11/2013  at  08:25 AM  

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