The Joy of the Pharaohs

Ah for Pete's-sake! I see it now, it's a jar pouring water.



So, that totally rules out the "B"/"O"/"ou" which now pictographically does become a distinct "lasso" and is not related to the pouring-jar pictograph at all. Neat.

Okay, I'm really out. For a bit.

reply to post by Bybyots


I now see what the other poster...LUXUS was his name...meant by jar. Its clearly recognizable on THAT picture, but not on the picture in the OP.

I'll tell you what's curious about many of the depictions of Amun-Min in his ithyphallic state, that both Skyfloating, in his Masonic garb, and Bybyots, with his homework demands, might find interesting, is that he is often shown holding a set of compasses above his head. What's that about?

KilgoreTrout
I'll tell you what's curious about many of the depictions of Amun-Min in his ithyphallic state, that both Skyfloating, in his Masonic garb, and Bybyots, with his homework demands, might find interesting, is that he is often shown holding a set of compasses above his head. What's that about?

I hadn't even noticed.

And I guess I wouldnt understand it until I reenact the scene. For that I`ll need a jar, a compass...

What do you think it means?

reply to post by Skyfloating




I have no idea, but given that Amun's penis is always at a rather unnatural right angle to the body it does seem to be of geometrical significance.

reply to post by KilgoreTrout


You might be onto something there, you know what the Egyptians were like, someone will measure the distance between the testees and the penis now and find the golden ratio...

It is amazing how a thread can open my mind. Just one single thread.....

I have researched and learned so much. My opinion has flip flopped back and forth on this as posters pointed out various things.

Thanks for a great thread Sky.

I am still interested in just how much the Egyptians could see. (Whether with ox lenses or glass.) I know sperm is ruled out, but what of other things. Pretty cool.

Kantzveldt
reply to post by Harte

 

This is the best article on The Denderah Light Bulb

Although the temple dates to the late Ptolemaic period and was built by Greeks, the builders used the Egyptian symbolism and world view. Also interesting is an architectural element found on every passage to a group of crypts: a band of inscriptions explaining the usage of the rooms. The two southern "lamp" crypts are, according to the text, "Secluded rooms of the statues of the house of Somtus." Somtus is the Greek rendition of the ancient Egyptian god /smA tA.wy/ Sema Tawy - "Uniter of the Two Lands" to whom the crypts were dedicated to. Somtus is the god of the Unity of the Two Lands, known from the Old Kingdom on but he didn't play a great role until the late New Kingdom. Then he emerges as Harsomtus Hr smA tAwy /Hr smA tA.wy/ Har Sema Tawy - "Heru, Uniter of the Two Lands" a personification of the sky, and as Resomtus /ra smA tA.wy/ Ra Sema Tawy, the personification of the sun, especially the new, rising sun. This last form was preferred in Dendera, he is often shown as snake

What is surprising about the iconography there and why it is without precedent in Ancient Egypt is the ordering of the symbolism, the component aspects are all well attested, but the rebirth of the Atum serpent would normally take the order of manifestation of Khepri the black scarab born within the Lily, then the emergence of Nefer-Atum, his receiving of the eye of Horus and thus achieving the status of Horus reborn, and then rising in the glory of Ra, so it isn't the serpent that should be seen to emerge from the Lily, even though everyone that does would still have been understood as an aspect of Atum.

The snake is Harsomtus, which is Horus as the uniter (link.) Horus had been associated with both snakes and lotus blossoms prior to the Ptolemaic era.
Horus the younger was the son of Horus and was also Horus himself. Horus' "children" were born out of a lotus blossom.

Translation of the glyphs next to one of the carvings in the room:

Words to speak of Harsomtus, the great god, who dwells in Dendera, who arises from the lotus blossom as the living Ba, whose perfection is carried by the km3tjw-pictures of his Ka, ..., whose body is carried by the dd-pillar, beneath it's ssmw-picture the primeval (Hathor) sits and whose majesty is carried by the companions of his Ka.[27]

"Words to speak of" is the AE way of saying "the following words are spoken by Harsomtus..."

The artwork depicts various articles that are to be kept in this partuicular storage room to be brought out for the festival associated with this version of Horus. Other rooms in the temple are also storage rooms, as indicated by writings on those walls.

The text tells the priests/priestesses what to say for the festival.

Snakes as protectors:

But snakes also were protectors. Protectors of temples and graves, and in the oldest known religious texts, the famous pyramid texts, many spells asked the snakes to protect the pharaoh against his enemies. Snake spells also made their way to steles erected besides the entries of buildings. These often had no texts on the front, only a picture of a snake. The erection of such steles is described in texts from AE times - so in Dendera! Even original snake stones were found in Egypt. All this can be found in the Reallexikon, used by Krassa/Habeck![33] Snake stones even made it to the Egyptian "alphabet" as signs O 195a, 196, 196a[34]. Nothing else are the strange vertical "bulbs" shown on he previous page.
It is therefore possible that the designers of the Dendera relief chose the form of the "bulb" to match the snake stones to take the symbolism of those protective spells into the picture.

On the next page I will give a translation of most parts of the inscriptions...

I left that last line in there for those who want to read more of the translations. Source is my previous link.

Harte

KilgoreTrout
I'll tell you what's curious about many of the depictions of Amun-Min in his ithyphallic state, that both Skyfloating, in his Masonic garb, and Bybyots, with his homework demands, might find interesting, is that he is often shown holding a set of compasses above his head. What's that about?

they were known to build things
which involve doing masonary work
www.viewzone.com...

also careful of the vowels in phonetisizing egyptian names and words, apparently they are always subject to interpretation...

Doodle19815
reply to post by Harte

 

So a loosely translated version of this may be, "See the Water Of Life as my offering. Bring the waters in abundance."

And by the way, whoever translates this stuff is NUTS! (In a good way for spending countless hours trying to come up with what it all means.)

So as Harte pointed out, my little "magnifier" is the letter t in Egypt language. However, when paired with an eye, it means eye. So are they saying they can see with this "magnifier"?

The "t" is a transliteration. It's not like the AE's had an alphabet.

On the page you posted, you can see that the eye glyph does not mean "eye," although two of them means "eyes." The combination of glyphs on the page that translates as "eye" is the word "eye" in the AE language, which doesn't sound at all like English (I hope this doesn't come as a surprise to you - that would drive me bonkers!)

What this means is that the word for "eye" in Ancient Egyptian had a "t" sound in it.

Doodle19815(Harte, I know I am going to drive you bonkers with this theory, but I am throwing it out there anyhow.)

No, I'm fine, really. Since you "throw it out there," I hope that now you can see that you should follow through and throw your "theory" all the way out.

Harte

reply to post by Harte

IMHO
fertility rights and the spring flood of the nile were a big deal certainly,
central to egypt's prosperity which would be the rulers job to petition the gods for
so what you are saying seems quite likely Harte

Doodle19815
I am still interested in just how much the Egyptians could see. (Whether with ox lenses or glass.) I know sperm is ruled out, but what of other things. Pretty cool.

To my knowledge, the use of the term "lens" in the description given here (from an optemetry website) is somewhat misleading.

These "lenses" are found glued to the eyes of statues, making them seem more lifelike.

These pieces share the common feature of the “illusion of the following eye” best observed at the museums when observing these statues with the aid of a pocket flashlight. Trained as an optical specialist, Dr. Enoch consulted an impressive list of other optical specialists and many noted Egyptologists, including Berkeley’s own Dr. Kathleen Keller and Dr. Carol Redmount trying to turn up answers to this interesting puzzle.

SNIP

A number of opitcal and opthalmic tests were performed on the reserve eye and the scribe Accroupi, a number of which worked while others did not. A keratometer (a device normally used for examining the cornea of a real eye) was used to measure the convex lens mirror surface of the lenses, which were shown to have astimagic errors. It is interesting to note that virtually all ancient lenses demonstrate astigmatism (a structural defect in a lens or eye that prevents light rays from an object from meeting in a single focal point, so the object appears indistinctly formed).

Source

Not likely they were used to magnify, given the imprecision. If you were to try to use these lenses to magnify over a period of time, you'd probably need glasses eventually (lol.)

Harte

reply to post by Harte


I agree, and have followed through.

I can admit when I'm wrong, and frankly, I was wrong.

It took some sleep, but now I see they are not just pictures, but a 400 + page of words and sounds. Geesh, I thought they were only using pics to describe things.

This newbie to AE has many more years of learning to get under my belt to debate hieroglyphs!

Thanks for the links Harte. I have them saved and can now refer to them when needed.

Elijah23
reply to post by KilgoreTrout

 

You might be onto something there, you know what the Egyptians were like, someone will measure the distance between the testees and the penis now and find the golden ratio...

Indeed, the Egyptians were very particular about proportions. Rene Schwaller de Lubictz, in the Temple of Man, claimed in his analysis on the Temple of Luxor that measurements and proportions used by the Egyptians were intentional and imbued with meaning. Off the top of my head, I recall him saying something about the penis being mis-positioned at the navel, correspondent to the position of the womb, as well as there being some geometric connection to the centre of the crown...but I will have to have a re-read, I am sure he was much more mathematically specific than that and there may well have been reference to the Golden Ratio.

This illustration though, from the Room of the Harps at Thebes, is similarly suggestive of the same symbolism. The scarab connected symbolic of the crown of the head, it's outflowing being of the mouth...and the rest speaks for itself...but while the penis is usually forms the right angle, here the body is bent into one...

www.allposters.com...

Interesting stuff.

Obviously the compasses indicate their architectural accomplishments, but there are clearly aspects of the divinity of mathematics, and the aspect of 'god' as the universal architect, also at play.

reply to post by LUXUS


Just to reply to you directly and acknowledge that I can see the JAR. I apologize for my previous ignorance.



(...but still think its uncanny that the jar is made to look like a sperm with its squiggly tail and head)

reply to post by KilgoreTrout


I agree with you, they loved their math and Masonic interests will be peaked here as we're now moving into the area of 'Sacred Geometry' and its origins....

reply to post by KilgoreTrout


Hey ya know what?

It's a flail. Usually the gods of ancient Aegypt and pharaohs are shown with both crook and flail, but Min is shown just with his flail. I pulled the detail from another Min stele so that the beaded lengths of hide can be seen more easily.



Both crook and flail are tools of animal husbandry used for sheep and cattle respectively.

A ways back when I read Joan Grant's Egypt books I remember her offering that the crook and flail represent the union of the upper and lower kingdoms of ancient Egypt and that the union is represented by the point of intersection of the handles of crook and flail. Also, yeah, the steles of Min are loaded with acute angles. I am pretty sure that I have seen the crook-flail-union thing somewhere else, but this stuff is not usually within the scope of my focus.

I also think it is interesting to note the different methods represented by both tools; one guides and ones drives.

That's all I got for a Sunday.



Joan Grant

Winged Pharaoh

ETA: Oh wow! Why is the flail sort of hovering there. Has Min suspended the activity of the flail by pouring out the waters of life?

I had a feeling that these steles might represent some seasonal celebration in the fall of the year because they all seem to show hieroglyphs related to enumeration and others that seem related to full jars of water and full baskets of food.

So it's fall, Min pours out, the flail is suspended?

Party time! Right!!!?

Ancient Aegyptian Bacchanalia!



P.S. My prediction is that as a result of participating in this thread we will all now find ourselves at elegant parties this fall, sipping a nice pinot and thinking of Min.

Dunno exactly what the heiroglyphs are depicting, but microscopy actually pre-dates the ground and polished glass lens microscope which we know as being invented in the late 1500s. The ancients most likely wouldn't have used glass, but simply a device with small aperture which a droplet of water is suspended in. The water acts as a lens, and under the right conditions it may be able to approach 100x magnification. (Feel free to look up "water drop microscope" to see how it's done.) Whether or not that's sufficient to make out the shape of spermatazoa, who knows? But to think that ancient people weren't without some refined technology could be considered ignorant, stuff like the Antikythera mechanism comes to mind.

reply to post by pauljs75


We would need a 400X light microscope just to begin to see cells the size of sperm and RBCs (about 50 microns) and even greater magnification would be required to see the structures of the cell and the organelles.

The real problem is preparation of the 'slides" though, as they would need to be carefully stained to be seen under the microscope at all.

I believe the water of life hieroglyph and the stream of urine (not semen) explain everything.

"If you believe in me, you will never thirst."
"Rivers of living water shall flow from your bellies."
- Jesus (in John 7:38)

Ancient urine therapy knowledge?