Come on. Everyone knows who this is.
Everyone.
Surely, you know. Don't you?
I do like it. It's a good one. There are quite a lot of bad ones. I didn't have the heart to mention it's missing its was. Was.
A was is weird shoulder height staff with the head of an unknown animal on it. Vaguely a jackal in appearance. And with rounded two-tined fork on the bottom. Nobody knows for sure what it means. While pretty much every Egyptian god carries one. Sometimes the shaft portion is slightly wavy like a snake. It's a symbol of power. The first representation comes from the first dynasty.
Just try looking up "was." The internet thinks you're asking about the English word for first and third person singular past indicative of "be." It'll explain the difference between was and were. And when to use the subjunctive case were for was. As it were.
I mean is.
To search for the meaning of the wavy wooden staff with the vague jackal head you have to specify Egyptian symbol and use a plus sign and quotation marks.
But it's not a jackal. Anubis is a jackal, and he's holding one of these staffs. Weird, huh? And it also looks a bit like Seth, another animal vaguely similar to a jackal. But the "was" is not Seth. Seth and Anubis and "was" are all different.
This page uses this picture to illustrate.
So I fitted the little statue with a was fashioned from copper wire.
This is trying to be the fork on the bottom.
And the hieroglyphics are random.
After looking at a million was symbols I realize the head must be at a more acute angle.
You can tell the artist studied form but not Egyptian art. Or else they'd know the jackal's head is looking too high. The bottom of their chins are horizontal with the ground as if gazing beyond the horizon, not looking up at mountains, or watching a hawk.
This is one of those times that not having any wire hangars around here is a problem. It would be better with stiffer wire.
(I did this to avoid cleaning up this place to prepare for visiting family. Now I'm really behind.)
8 comments:
Chip, did you see the Daily Mail,
article on the recent translation of Luwian hieroglyphs on a 3300 year old stone found, copied, and destroyed over a century ago in Anatolia?
I read all I can about the Sea Peoples, but this translation doesn't pass my smell test. What do you think?
Damn, the Egyptians had some weird outfits.
Coincidentally, I saw an Anubis statue this week-end at one of those TJ Maxx type places. Now you mention it, it is weird it's leaning back.
Was (Not Was) was a semi-famous '80's band. I never owned of their stuff, but I read that they covered "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone" which me to re-listen to "The Temptations" version.
As for Anubis -- I'll never forget the "Jonny Quest" episode Curse Of The Anubis.
Jonny Quest -- best cartoon ever!
Err, The Curse of Anubis. There is only one Anubis, correct?
Chip, I believe that you mentioned you'll be gone for a time this week. When you return, I have a gift that I wish to offer to you. It involves two of your favorite themes: Egypt and pop-ups.
Cool. Can't wait.
Wow, Christy, that Sea-people glyph copy is fantastic. I had no idea they had their own writing.
I understood them as a loose confederation of marauding pirate types, including Minoans and Philistines being the two major groups, also Libyans who attacked Egypt at the Delta, by both land and sea. I know of them through Egyptian hieroglyphs on the mortuary temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu. The nationalities are not specified but the various hair dressings are distinct and match other paintings and carvings that are identified.
I find their hieroglyphs incredibly interesting. I wonder how they worked it out without speaking their language. Or maybe the scholars do speak their various ancient languages. I wonder why it couldn't be published until all the scholars working on it died. That seems strange. And I wonder how the various ancient pirates consolidated their individual languages into one script. Maybe it was a massive internal power move. To write all those things and chisel them into stone to force the issue of a predominate language among them. Looking at all the straight glyphs with no ligatures, no combinations, I doubt the glyphs have much grammar.
Thanks for linking the article.
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