Listener Q&A – Texts, Tombs, and Destiny

In this episode, Kara and Jordan tackle supporter questions from the month of April, ranging from tomb decoration, Egyptian concepts of fate and destiny, religious texts, and our craziest theories—as well as some rabbit holes. If you would like to submit a question, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers join our live Q&A and get all their questions answered!

The show notes below support our conversation, and there is some wacky stuff. We hope you enjoy diving down some of these rabbit holes yourself!

Show Notes:

Cannibal Hymn & Eating the Gods

Hunting & Eating Divinity: Pyramid Texts, the "Cannibal Hymn,” and Divine Kingship

Note the duck head and cow foreleg on the right and left sides (Fragment from the tomb of Akhethotep; Munich)

• Daily Cult Ritual

Wood and ivory cosmetic spoon in the shape of a young girl swimming and holding a duck, New Kingdom, ca. 1400 BC–1300 BC. (© 2002 Musée du Louvre / Christian Déchamps.)

• Lacovara - The Meaning and Symbolism of Swimming-Girl Spoons from Egypt

• Mandrakes & Lilies as Aphrodiasiacs

  • Swapping Sex for Drugs: Mandrake Mythology and Fertility in Genesis 30

  • Kate Bosse-Griffiths, “The Fruit of the Mandrake in Egypt and Israel,” in Amarna Studies and Other Selected Papers (ed. by J. Gwyn Griffiths), pp. 82-96, Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 182 (Fribourg, Switzerland and Göttingen, 2001).

“In love poems and in contexts where rejuvenation is the theme, such as in the festival city of Amenhotep III, we find many images and representations of this beautiful but toxic little fruit.”

• Ducks in Ancient Egypt

  • Rozenn Bailleul - LeSeur - Between Heaven and Earth - Birds in Ancient Egypt

“…he [the tomb owner] is also guranteed renewed sexual vigor and thus rebirth, which is implied by the presence of the waterfowl, inhabited in the marshes, the quintessential place for creation and domain of the goddess Hathor” (162).

Akhenaten offering a duck to the Aten (MET 1985.328.2)

Keeping the Joy in Egyptology

How do we engage with the “truth” without being killjoys!?

 “The authenticity of the ancient world is always cooler than any made up shit that Hollywood can come up with.”

What ya’ll think!?

Tomb Decoration

• Tomb Decoration and lamps

  • Stocks, Denys A. 2020. The materials, tools, and work of carving and painting. In Davies, Vanessa and Dimitri Laboury (eds), The Oxford handbook of Egyptian epigraphy and palaeography, 115-128. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190604653.013.8.

    • Ostraca UC39608

      • "Year 29, month 2 of spring, day 9; on this day, distribution of the linen fibre to the crew to make into lamp(wick)s…”

• Textile-pattern ceilings

  • Elizabeth Barber - Reconstructing The Ancient Aegean/Egyptian Textile Trade

Eight Ceiling Patterns, Tomb of Nebamun and Ipuky (MET 30.4.102)

Fate & Destiny

• Dream Interpretation

  • Kasia Szpakowska- Dream of Early Ancient Egypt

  • Szpakowska, Kasia 2011. Dream interpretation in the Ramesside age. In Collier, Mark and Steven Snape (eds), Ramesside studies in honour of K. A. Kitchen, 509-517. Bolton: Rutherford.

  

  Dream Book (BM 31612001)

• ‘King in the Egg’

Divine flesh's holy egg, of noble mien; Come from the womb he wore the crown; Conquered the earth while yet in the egg (THE GREAT SPHINX STELA OF AMENHOTEP II AT GIZA)

• Tale of the Doomed Prince

  • Seven Hathors

Then came the Hathors to determine a fate for him. They said,,"He will die through the crocodile, or the snake, or the dog.”

• Westcar Papyrus

• The god Shai

  

  The god Shai standing to the left of Anubia (Papyrus of Ani)