Beautifully said, even if it reminds me more of the Native Americans than ancient Egyptians!
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
rendered down to it's basics the AE's beliefs are Purely Elemental in Nature(I only realised the pun when I previewed the post). I think it more a matter of balance than duality per se.
Agreed.
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
Graham,
I'm not sure all we read in the AE texts is about duality, even if some of it matches the conception quite well and undoubtedly the conception of Ma'at is underlying somewhere in several cases. I'd think that part of these Horus vs, Seth stories can be explained as easily as with a cloud covering the sun or the sun drying up the rain. Or simply the waxing and waning of t
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
Heheh, and how does Seth's testicles fit into this? As you remember, at the occasion of Seth breaking (yes, in the original tale he actually breaks the eye into pieces) Horus' eye, Horus rips Seth's testicles.... Have you read the tale in it's entirety?
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
Lee,
I was thinking of NK and the obvious lack of such custom. Come to think of it, have you seen this in the context of other rulers than Khufu?
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Lee,
Thanks. Was this something they only did during the OK?
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
Yes, he was. But the meaning he is trying to give them, does not exist in the ancient Egyptian culture. Not unless you bend a translation to that specific point and take it out of the context. By bending it I mean that if a sentence has "take it in your hand" it does not necessarily mean that the object taken penetrates the hand and stays there. It could just simply mean using the hand
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
Oh, I'd prefer a spell of Faulkner to anything Budge or Erman may have written any day.... but not in this case. The discussion here was about the earliest appearances of the Eye of Horus and what it may or may not have represented. Your citation, however, dates more than a thousand years after that.
Moreover, I'd like to specify something. There are representations in the AE art, whe
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Robert,
Doesn't the cartouche say "Khufu" with the "kahf" part being completely out of it? How can it then be "Khufu-khaf"?
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
Oh, OK. It is truly unfortunate, that the wiki link does not tell us about how Erman basically never stopped comparing the AE culture to that of the later Greek one, which he absolutely worshipped, and ended up judging and explaining the Egyptian beliefs and customs in the light of that. As to his translations, well, like Budge he is severely outdated (not for the same reasons, though) and saw fi
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
First Erman and now Budge, eh? Where have you been the last fifteen years?
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
Yes, I know who Erman is (having a couple of books written by him myself), but I must say I am surprised he'd come up with such a translation from a passage saying:
Faulkner: ...and Geb has put his sandal on the head of your foe, who flinches from you. Your son Horus has smitten him, he has wrested his Eye from him and given it to you.
Allen: Geb has put his sandal on the head of your
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Cladking,
> There appears to be an "order" to the PT.
Of course there is an order! You cannot describe afterlife events without arranging the utterances in some kind of an order. But that does not give us the age of the utterances used, does it?
>
> I haven't seen any profesional or expert opinion
> on the subject
> but it looks to be in almost
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
The quote is not from the PTs, even if the author (Hooke) boldly claims so.
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Monty,
Do you have a picture of this fourth dynasty EOH?
It would be logical to see it in the context of offering (similarly to the PTs), and hence on the hand making the offering.
Do you have anything on the earlier sky-Horus' eyes?
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Ba,
Can't think of any monkeys or rats mentioned, but apes with knives (the same are seen in the later afterlife imagery of BoD) and, of course, baboons.
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
Clive,
There is no question about the eye-glyph's existence before the PTs. The hieroglyph "eye" is used to write "eye", "see" and words in that context and some words with the sound "ir" in them. Those shouldn't be confounded with the Eye of Horus, which is another conception altogether.
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
Clive,
Yes. The timeframe of the texts in the PTs is very difficult to determine. While the first corpus was found in Unas' mid (end of 5th dynasty), one cannot seriously claim that the utterances date to that time. Some of the utterances clearly are far more ancient. This can be seen in the archaic language used, or the customs described that are were no longer in use during the dynast
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
I'll keep my thoughts about what the "nefer" and "Neter" symbols are to myself. Seems like everytime you go against the orthodox thought on those two symbols World wars III, IV, V, and VI break out.
Yeh. Been to that war many a time.
Ritva
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Clive,
1. The Contendings are dated to the NK because the surviving text relating the tale was written at that time. However, there are allusions to the stories as seen in that NK text already both in the PTs and the CTs. The core of the story must hence be much older.
2. Oh yes. It is actually written using the two glyphs and in the PTs.
The earliest known form of Horus is that of Ne
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Johnee,
Long time no see!
I do love little stars, especially the electric blue ones on top of peoples' heads, so I guess I need to look a bit deeper into this equation. To start with, what would the strong evidence of the mids having originally been painted with iron oxide paint be?
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
Hi RLH,
> I thought 3 of the same signs was to represent
> plural? So by having 3 Q1’s would that mean they
> were referring to 3 Osiris’s ?
Of course not. But they could be an allusion to the seat of Osiris being formed by three stars i.e. sAH.
> >I don't think the pyramids were meant to be
> stars as such, merely places that the stars
> represent in
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
I was thinking more in the terms of perspective and angle in the images. Why depict some stuff from above, other stuff from the side and yet other seen from the front, since we do know from the stauary that they knew exactly how to make true representations? Remember the discussion we had about false doors, Where the multiple frames made an impression of a corridor leading to another place. Well,
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
Hi Clive,
The oldest known textual reference to the Eye of Horus is the PTs.
The first mentions there link the Eye to offerings (as seen also in later times), where it is offered to the deceased as a representation of wholesomeness, cleanness and strength, which the deceased regains at this stage. These utterances are also the first mentions of the Eye having been damaged by Seth, so the Con
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
I can't say that I am all that thrilled. The question is, though, if the spammers are known, why are they not stopped?
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Ritva Kurittu
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Coffee Shop
IMHO there were different 'rules' for 3D and relief and painting.
Yes. That is exactly what I have been trying to say, but maybe you haven't read all my postings to RLH and hendrik.
I don't think this is going off topic, due to it being a follow up of the star-design and the pyramid shape and 3D. IMO.
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
What exactly am I supposed to look at? Or, turning the tables: look at Rahotep's offering stela. Look how he is rendered and compare it to the statue of him found in the same mastaba. The morphology and the way to represent it is not the same at all. Well, at least in my eyes they are not, but then I am not a specialist. Maybe you could shine a light here?
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt
Thanks Khazar, your reply taught me a few things.
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Ritva Kurittu
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Humanities
It so is. The problem is, though, we do not really know how the ancient Egyptians "saw" their artwork and architecture. Looking at their statuary one is overwhelmed by the perfection of Old Kingdom pieces such as the statues of Khafre, Rahotep and Nofret. And yet, their 2D artwork does not match those standards. Or, they do, but we don't see how.
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Ritva Kurittu
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Ancient Egypt