#ababda

[malikempire]

mersa gawasis

ancient egyptian port between safaga and quseir used to go to expeditions out to the land of punt

[mythosblogging]

A Brief Account of Life with Unicorns

Rainbows, glitter, wings and magic. There are a lot things associated with the unicorn. But, as connected as these are today, the unicorn has not always been as it is today and in earlier myths explorers were faced with a quite different beast.

Many cultures have their own version of the unicorn myth, from the Japanese Kirin (a deer-like creature with a curved horn) to Kongo’s Ababda (a two horned creature with the tail of a boar). The European unicorn, formally known as the alicorn, has two common depictions. In one, it is indistinguishable from a white horse, barring the single horn that grows from its forehead. In the other, it is a fey, deer like creature, with a lion’s tail, a billy goat beard and that same, single horn.

[malikempire]

made this today

[malikempire]

A view of the Red Sea hills from Hurghada, Egypt taken by me in late 2021-early 2022

The mountain range in the back is the Itbay or the Red Sea Hills on the left you'll find Jabal Shayib al Banat which is the second highest peak in Egypt after Saint Catherine and the highest in the Itbay

Shayib al Banat or "old man of the girls"

The old man part comes from the fact that the top of the mountain is white so it looks like an old man with white hair

the girls part comes from a girl named Selima or Salma (I've seen both in different sources) from the Beja tribe of the Ababda who fell off the mountain so they put al Banat

The itbay spans the Eastern Desert of Egypt and Sudan is mainly inhabited by the Beja and at the very north you'll find some Arab tribes like the Ma'aza who migrated to the region

[malikempire]

southeastern corner of egypt in the halayeb triangle

[malikempire]

based

[malikempire]

Tomb of a Bishari Wali in Wadi O Sir Eirab

Ababda hut in Wadi Abu Ghusun

Both pictures most likely taken in the early 20th century

Murray, G. W. (1927). The Northern Beja. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 57, 39–53. https://doi.org/10.2307/2843677

@jstor thanks

[malikempire]