A swan between facing Sirens. Side B of an Attic black-figure neck-amphora, by the Painter of Vatican 309 (circle of Lydos); ca. 560-550 BCE. Thought to come from Etruria; now in the Museo nazionale etrusco di Villa Giulia, Rome. Photo credit: ArchaiOptix/Wikimedia Commons.
anatomical votive figurines are some of my favorite relics that we have from the ancient world. this is partly because i’m very emotional about the longstanding human desire to live a long and healthy life but it’s also because i think it’s VERY funny to imagine being an ancient roman god and people will just not stop giving you carvings of their uteri
The ancient Egyptian name of the country was Kemet()km.t, which means black land, likely referring to the fertile black soils of the Nile flood plains, distinct from the deshret (dšṛt), or “red land” of the desert.
This name is commonly vocalised as Kemet, but was probably pronounced [kuːmat] in ancient Egyptian. The name is realised as kēme and kēmə in the Coptic stage of the Egyptian language, and appeared in early Greek as Χημία (Khēmía).
Another name was ⟨tꜣ-mry⟩ “land of the riverbank”. The names of Upper and Lower Egypt were Ta-Shem-ahu (tꜣ-šmꜥw) “sedgeland” and Ta-Mehew (tꜣ mḥw) “northland”, respectively. [X]
new favorite marcus aurelius quote is the one where he’s like “no matter how good of a person you are there will still be people who are happy you died” like thank you marcus i feel better now
I went searching after that image of Alexander sitting in a jar in the ocean with a rooster and cat and WOW is the whole manuscript a good time. Some highlights;
Alexander’s battle with dragons
Alexander in a cage suspended by Griffins
Alexander burning bigfoot ‘A Wild Man’
Alexander’s battle with dragons but now they have two heads
And of course, Alexander’s battle with some guys with horse heads and boar tusks
funniest thing in plutarch’s life of cato the younger is that when all the other senators realized cato couldn’t be convinced to let them pass unjust laws they straight up just tried to distract him from coming to the senate like some sort of wacky sitcom
Two Amazons in Scythian dress, one with an axe and shield, the other with two spears. Attic red-figure pelike, attributed to the Phiale Painter; ca. 440-435 BCE. Found in southern Italy; now in the Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich. Photo credit: ArchaiOptix/Wikimedia Commons.
