Nope

(she/her/they/them, minors DNI thanks) no longer a naive art curator blog for the moment, sadly

[hellallamerican]

bronze age mediterranean dashboard simulator

⛏️seal-with-a-kiss Follow

i'm opening commissions for hand-carved cylinder seals!!! i only accept payment measured with lydian weights (sorry i've been scammed by sumerian weights before 😔) send me a tablet if ur interested!

⚱️cuteneiform Follow 🔁

was it really necessary to bring up to bring up the scamming 🙄 sumerians already get such a bad rap

🪢gordion-knotted Follow🔁

maybe ea-nasir shouldn't have scammed her then. did you think of that?

#sumerians think just because they invented writing that they're enki's favorites #but theyre not anyone else's favorite

132 notes

🤘horny-of-consecration Follow

call me crescent the way i'm so fertile

19.7k notes

🟦egyptian-blue Follow

top 5 ideas for a megaron that will impress your rivals:

???

???

???

???

have a better megaron than them

582 notes

😴tyred-of-this-shit Follow

who do you think is attacking the coastal towers?

dorians

trojans

etruscans

mycenaeans

philistines

Voting ended onSep 11, 2024

🦆tuscan-raider Follow 🔁

the etruscans wouldnt do this 😤🤬 this poll is so fucked up

#and also the trojans just lost everything to the greeks they dont have the resources to attack right now #my gold is on the dorians

🔮acolyte-of-cassandra Follow 🔁

your url is literally "tuscan-raider"......

🦆tuscan-raider Follow 🔁

that doesnt mean anything

7,337 notes

🌸babble-on Follow

has anyone heard from wilusa lately?

#you guys used to love wilusa

⚒️and-my-bow-drill Follow 🔁

girl there's a war

#???? achilles is there and everything

1,002 notes

🪙ea-nasir Follow

i'm tired of the king always butting into my affairs. we need a free and open marketplace with less regulation

📕hammurabi Follow 🔁

aren't you the copper scammer??

#i dont think you can be trusted with a free and open market

897 notes

☀️i-need-atention Follow

hot sun god summer 💅😎

#all my followers better reblog this or ur not gonna be allowed on the sun barge

4.2k notes

🍺brewer-of-lahun Follow

a frothy beer in a ceramic cup and some dates and tying a net with the boys. can't get any better than this.

#might even go to faiyum later

27 notes

🗡️traditional-spartan-values Follow

ok but no one actually believes that paris and helen are in love, right? menelaus is a much better husband than paris could ever be

🏹odysseus-polutropos Follow 🔁

menelaus we need you on the battlefield.. get off the slab

#we are under fucking attack

266 notes

🗼tower-guard Follow

sea peoples? yea i see people every day. on my shoreline.

13,658 notes

🩼tutankhamun-not-tutankhaten Follow

i hate my fucking parents

#theyre ruining this kingdom #can't wait until i'm pharaoh #we're gonna go back to the way things used to be

3 notes

⚓syrian-merchant Follow

got a big shipment of luxury goods setting sail today i hope the seas are in my favor!!!

#especially because so many ships have sunk on the route we're taking

🕛Posted 1325 BCE

🐴troy-story Follow 🔁

can we get an update on this shipment??

#i dont think the seas were in his favor

🕛 Posted 1319 BCE

59 notes

🦁mistress-of-the-beasts Follow

come here little eunuch boy i can be so normal

14.9k notes

🏛️minoan-priestess Follow

uhhh the temple snake bit me. what do we think this means?

🏛️minoan-priestess Follow 🔁

i have just been informed that akrotiri has been destroyed

#i knew it wasn't a good sign....

641 notes

[heliomance]

@21st-century-minutiae

[21st-century-minutiae]

The above is an assorted collection of memes and jokes about Bronze Age societies and myths, presented in the format of early twenty-first century Tumblr blog posts. Essential the mode of Tumblr (as interpreted by the poster) has been preserved, but the topics of discussion have been replaced with topics relevant to the Bronze Age (circumscribed, of course, by those that would be known and understood in the early twenty-first century.) Only events and stories from the Bronze Age with surviving records could be discussed.

The Bronze Age, which took place roughly between 3000 and 1200 BCE, was a period in history around the western Mediterranean known for a number of highly organized empires, international trade, and literacy. These factors combined to create extensive record keeping, much of which survived the millennia, such that there is much known about the period despite the great age, especially compared to the periods before and immediately after, which lacked the same extensive records in that part of the world.

The Bronze Age was named after the advent of Bronze as a material. Notably, this extremely useful alloy requires both Copper and Tin mining, which are seldom found in the same geographic era. The existence of Bronze requires international trade, which requires a level of organizational development absent in previous eras of human history. In the subsequent Iron Age, after the societal collapse of the many empires (and international trade) Bronze was no longer possible to produce at scale, so Iron had to be used instead for similar purposes. This "Bronze Age Collapse" where the empires of the era fell, is a notable historical mystery. Notably, after the Bronze Age, literacy rates fell drastically, and records were few and far between, and when literacy returned, it was often in writing systems that were completely different, meaning people in the Iron Age could no longer read or understand the works of the Bronze Age: the entire era became something of a myth, persisting through oral traditional.

Some written records from hundreds of years after the collapse by successor civilizations who regained writing mention the idea that the collapse was caused by mysterious "Sea people" (one of the jokes above). Over the 19th and 20th century, this was a popular explanation for the drastic change in history, and emboldened mythical history of the idea of Atlantis and lost civilizations. But the modern consensus in the early twenty-first century does not acknowledge "sea people" as a primary cause. Rather, the perception is that the entire age was quite brittle, in a sense. The international trade and societies within these empires all required one another to exist as trade partners, allies, and enemies, akin to a house of cards, each empire served to support the rest and was supported by such in turn. In the same way, disruption of a sufficient scale at any point could lead to the collapse of everything. One popular explanation in the early twenty-first century was a mini climate catastrophe: a change in expected rainfall around important agricultural centers for a few years could lead to the collapse of a given empire, which could cause chaos in its death throes, alongside removing important support.

One major source of how the early twenty-first century perceives the Bronze Age is in Greek Myth. Recorded Greek Myth explicitly takes place in the Bronze Age, and is how the Archaic Greeks reckoned with their predecessors from 500 to 1000 years before: a mythical history born of oral traditional, shaped by the Archaic Greeks who had very little direct insight into the Mycenaean. As such, the above post uses Trojan War characters as Bronze Age people.

Other mentioned characters are real people known from archeological evidence and historical records, such as Ea Nasir (a much memed on Summerian copper merchant who kept records of complaints lodged against him), Hammurabi (Amorite King of Babylonia, famous for his code of law), and King Tutankhamen (mummified Pharaoh of Egypt who died quite young, and whose tomb sparked a fervor for Egyptology in the 20th century).

[contextfreepatentart]

[thatlittleegyptologist]

When I say it’s very easy to see when something is published, here’s what I mean:

This is one of the front pages of my copy of Budge’s translation of the Book of the Dead! All books have these, mostly they’re in the first couple of pages or in this case after some pictures of Ani’s papyrus.

The first date we see is 1960. That’s for this revised version of the translation.

The second date is 1999, which is the publishing date for this specific edition of the book. If I’m reading the numbers right down at the bottom correctly, then this is the 20th edition of this text. Edit: I was wrong. You look at the lowest number in the sequence, so the edition is the 11th. This is the date and version I’d cite in an essay/paper because it’s the one I have.

Then we have the original publication date of 1895 down at the bottom. This tells us that despite my copy of the book being from 1999, the actual author wrote it back in 1895 and therefore I should be careful because this is a 131 year old translation. You don’t cite this unless in the context of your essay you want to say “hey so uhh this translation is old as balls and has issues”.

This has been a very basic summary of how to find a date in a book for a bibliography.

[paralessi]

errata corrige

Months ago I made this comment on a post whose reblogs have now been blocked:

this is literally in Virgil's first Bucolic: TITYRUS. Urbem quam dicunt Romam, Meliboee, putavi stultus ego huic nostrae similem, quo saepe solemus pastores ovium teneros depellere fetus. Sic canibus catulos similis, sic matribus haedos noram, sic parvis componere magna solebam. Verum haec tantum alias inter caput extulit urbes quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi. paraphrasing, this means Meliboeus you wouldn't believe I was an idiot thinking Rome was going to be like our city but bigger instead it's not only bigger but way cooler than any other city ever and then further on in the Bucolic he goes on to lick the god-emperor's boots, obviously.

And ever since then guilt has been wracking me HARD.

because I was WRONG and . It's actually unclear whether Virgil in the first Bucolic is licking the god-emperor's boots because:

Octavian was not god-emperor at the time he wrote it;

we aren't even sure he was the divine iuvenis mentioned.

I guess I'm just prejudiced against Augustan age poets, they creep me out. Ok, there was a period of disorders, but the solution they all promoted was to usher in centuries of incompetent or semi-competent all-powered tyrants. To me, their poetry sounds like a stampede of people running to prostrate themselves at the feet of absolute power. A delicate stampede made of lyrical, light-hearted poetry concerning itself with love, shepherds and melancholy myths, of aggrandizing, hypocritical historiography, and of boot-licking epics. To let the masses forget that they used to have a democracy of sorts.

Especially you, Horace. Nunc est bibendum MY ASS, you moron.

Also because there were other poets, like Bibaculus for instance, but their production is gone because they dared to criticize Octavian.

My problem is that the iuvenis in the first Bucolic might be identified as various people, but I believe we still have Virgil's production because he could also be identified with Octavian. Just like the child in the IV Bucolic might be identified with Jesus. And I'm angry about the fact that powers that shouldn't have anything to do with art have managed to shape not only their own age but the way it is perceived and thought of by posterity.

But at least I have corrected my error and my conscience is at peace.

[vendal-construct]

We Do Not Like The Concrete Tomb.

[vendal-construct]

This is our most popular post and we've seen more than one person tag it as "unreality." We understand why one might think that but we assure you: it was not.

These facilities chew you up. They suck the life from you and grind your body to dust to extract every ounce of profit they can.

These places destroy the body, the mind, and the soul.

[historicalbookimages]

🐉 Ulyssis Aldrovandi …. Bononiæ, apud C. Ferronium, 1640.. Original source Image description: Illustration of a dragon from a 1640 publication by Ulyssis Aldrovandi. The dragon is depicted with a long, sinuous body covered in detailed scales, a prominent wing with webbed, fin-like segments, and clawed limbs. Its head features a fierce expression, open mouth revealing sharp teeth, and a crest or frill extending from the top. The dragon’s tail curls into a loop at the bottom of the image. The style is a black ink engraving on aged paper, with text visible in the background, emphasizing a historical scientific or natural history context. The page number 423 is shown in the top right corner.

[paralessi]

with tropical nights now a regular summer occurrence at 600 meters of altitude in Northern Italy I can't help but wonder

what if when i was 11-13 almost 30 years ago, and I kept going on about climate change, someone had actually listened? then maybe now summers would still be normal

imagine that. imagine a normal summer when you can exist ***outside*** during the DAY. when it feels great to exist outside actually. when you don't curse the absurd length of the day, you relish it. when you don't have to fiddle with the blinds at 6 in the morning to let the wind through but not the sunlight.

also I wouldn't have to physically prevent myself from cheering on climate change at times just to feel the thrill of being on the winning side for once

everyone keeps saying 'heh, it will only get worse' like it's no big deal, with such passivity, fatalism. and I keep thinking of the great oxidation event and of how in the end we are no smarter than cyanobacteria.

[enki2]

[jkl-fff]

I said before on a different post (half-jokingly) that autistic people don't need to act more "normal", rather "normal" people *need* to start acting more autistic.

I'm saying it again now, though, and in absolute sincerity. Because who is helped by a mistake going uncorrected? Who is helped by a lack of truth being perpetuated? We *need* to know the truth, and "normal" people have must learn that the world won't collapse around them if someone (in genuine, good faith or even in cynical, bad faith) points out an error.

Facts and truth are more important than ego. Insecure people have got to suck it up and accept they'll be wrong sometimes.

[officialpenisenvy]

new york city is basically to america what rome was to the roman empire which means there were probably so many insufferable ancient romans going "only in rome 🤪 provincial transfers wouldn't get it" at any given occasion. and those ancient romans had children and their children had children and they eventually begot Every Single Annoying Roman Guy

[paralessi]

this is literally in Virgil's first Bucolic:

TITYRUS. Urbem quam dicunt Romam, Meliboee, putavi stultus ego huic nostrae similem, quo saepe solemus pastores ovium teneros depellere fetus. Sic canibus catulos similis, sic matribus haedos noram, sic parvis componere magna solebam. Verum haec tantum alias inter caput extulit urbes quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.

paraphrasing, this means Meliboeus you wouldn't believe I was an idiot thinking Rome was going to be like our city but bigger instead it's not only bigger but way cooler than any other city ever

and then further on in the Bucolic he goes on to lick the god-emperor's boots, obviously.

[mumblesplash]

no but the “”ai”” boom is crazy bc they made the entire internet so shitty that the only reason to use it is because it’s where all the people are and now they’re getting rid of the people. like i’m straight up logging off and going to the library there’s nothing on here anymore

[mumblesplash]

‘here’s how to tell if an image is ai’ ‘signs the person you’re talking to is a bot’ ‘how to tell if a song is ai generated’ ah but consider this: i am shutting my laptop and walking outside

[jedusaur]

I saw a bsky post last year where someone said their grandma couldn't tell what was real on the internet anymore so she stopped using it and I really, genuinely think the techbros currently ruining everything have never even considered that possibility. their projections and pie charts and market share research and whatever simply do not take into account a scenario where people lose interest in being online. like yeah we're pretty much all gonna keep using the internet to book travel and look up words and order pizza, but in terms of how we spend our leisure time? I'm still extremely online, but in the last few years I've been learning candlemaking and carpentry and sewing, and I was already spending a lot of time cooking and reading books and skating at the rink and hiking, and an afternoon spent on any of those things always leaves me feeling better about myself than an afternoon spent doomscrolling. I think my daily life is going to keep reflecting that more and more as the slop encroaches, and it sounds like I'm far from the only one feeling that way. silver lining the everything, I suppose.

[lionofchaeronea]

Taking up carpentry sounds nice. No, I'm not being sarcastic. I'd like to do something with my hands other than typing, and it would be deeply satisfying to make something tangible.

[lets-steal-an-archive]

[paralessi]

yeah

[novahazard24]

get your medals everyone

[pointless-achievements]

cosigned, good work everyone, have your bricks at the ready when they try it again.

[paralessi]

SEIZE THE MEANS OF COMMUNICATION

[historicalbookimages]

🐸 North American herpetology: Philadelphia, J. Dobson;1842. Original source Image description: Illustration from 1842 showing two views of the amphibian species Salamandra rubra, a red salamander. The top image depicts a side profile, highlighting its elongated body, smooth reddish skin with subtle darker speckling, and four small legs with distinct toes. The bottom image presents a dorsal view with limbs splayed, emphasizing the salamander’s slender tail and uniform coloration. The background is plain, focusing attention solely on the detailed depiction of the amphibian’s form and texture. The image is part of a historical North American herpetology collection published in Philadelphia by J. Dobson.

[paralessi]

me before lunch vs me after lunch

[tumblr]

Reblogs in a chain now get their own notes

The reblog chain is one of the things that makes Tumblr unlike anywhere else. All the notes on reblogs are attributed to the original post, no matter which branch people actually liked or reblogged. We want to keep encouraging conversations, and give contributors the recognition they deserve. 

Soon, you'll be able to like, reblog, or reply to any part of a reblog chain, and that note will go to that reblog's author. Each reblog will have its own counts, instead of one aggregated number from every version of the post. And yes, you’ll be able to like multiple posts in one chain.

If a reblog doesn't add anything, the love flows up to the last person in the chain who did. Your post doesn't lose notes just because people spread it quietly.

Past notes will stay on the original post — we're only changing what happens from here on out. Retroactively re-attributing all of them would be... a lot.

This is just the beginning. More changes are coming as we keep building this out – stay tuned!

[changes]

It’s very clear that you all have strong feelings about Tumblr and about this change. We hear you. The passion people have for how Tumblr works is one of the things that makes this place special.

As this rolls out over the next few days and you explore it, we’ll keep reading your replies and reblogs, so please keep sharing your questions, concerns, and ideas.

Your creativity has always been the heart of Tumblr, whether you’re the original poster or adding something brilliant in the reblogs, and nothing about this change is meant to limit that.

If you’d like to talk directly beyond the comments, leave a reply and we’ll follow up with as many of you as we can. We want to work with you to make Tumblr better.

[icannotgetoverbirds]

hey folks do we like this. reblog without commentary for reach

do we want this?

yes

no

Voting ended onMar 23

[paralessi]

circle

so in the translation I finally delivered today

(go forth you stupid baby, goodbye, I hope I didn't mess you up but I'm also not your parent but I care about you and I hope I did you no wrong—as I always think in these moments)

so as I was saying the translation I finally delivered today contained an anagnorisis AND a pretend death AND a Summation Gathering and basically ALL of the tropes.

and a part of me was disappointed because when I was young I used to wonder what kind of crazy experimental literature would humanity come up with when I got older, and i forgot it goes in a circle and that Daphnis and Chloe already contained all the elements that make up most of today's genre novels.

but also another part of me was like oh god an IRL agnition for real in 2026 I love it bring it on, proving that these things go in a circle for a reason.

(tbh umanity actually did come up with insane new stuff to read and then put agnitions in it which is great)

[swordsman-jing-ke]

“My emperor is fine” your emperor has commissioned over 8000 life-sized terracotta soldiers and buried them facing east, in the direction of his recently conquered enemies in the hopes that they will protect him in the afterlife.

[qin-shi-huang-di]

DELETE THIS IMMEDIATELY

[paralessi]

or what, you'll send your fearsome army of bricks against us?

I always wanted to see them but I can't afford to so I'll be waiting.

[enki2]