Classics Memes

[reallyreallyreallytrying]

nip over to troy, bit of rough and tumble, big horse, bish bash bosh, back home to ithaca. simple as

[somecunttookmyurl]

i can tell i’m sleep deprived bc i just made myself cry about tutankhamun and i have, like, negative interest in the kid

[somecunttookmyurl]

have now made the rest of the discord cry about this little boy who had multi-coloured ducks sewn onto a tunic that he loved so much he wore it to a Very Important Event because he was EIGHT and have you SEEN my DUCKS

[somecunttookmyurl]

sorry no i’m not done i’m gonna make you all cry some more i’m bringing you down with me

there was once a little boy.

he is born disabled. his body hurts, and he can’t walk properly the way the other children do. he doesn’t understand why. he’s a little boy. but he plays with wooden boats and pulls toys on a string.

somebody makes him a tunic. they sew ducks onto it in red and green and yellow and blue. the bright colours of a child.

the little boy is eight years old, and he’s going to be king now. there’s a big ceremony about it. he doesn’t really fully understand what’s going on, because he’s eight, but he wears the tunic with the brightly coloured ducks for the occasion because he loves it. look at his ducks! aren’t they great?

he is a child. the adults around him manipulate and coax him to gain more power for themselves. he still plays with toys.

as a teenager, not yet an adult, he fathers children. they do not survive. he’s not even old enough to have full agency in his job and is still being manipulated, but he had babies and they died.

he does not make it to his twenties. at eighteen or nineteen years old he dies, and is buried. his babies, so tiny, are buried with him.

and so is his tunic with the little ducks that he loved so much he kept it long after it no longer fit.

there was once a little boy.

[somecunttookmyurl]

yeah i think that like. especially with historical figures in your mind people who were kings and queens or important nobles were adults. even if you know how old they were it doesn’t really click. it doesn’t seem real

but then you get something like a little tunic with brightly coloured ducks on it and it hits you like a fucking truck that this really was a little kid and no matter how far removed you are a little kid is still a little kid. their brains didn’t develop any quicker back then. he was just as developed/mature mentally as any 8 year old now. he had cartoonish animals on his clothes and he played with toy boats and probably terrorised the local cat population.

tutankhamun was a child and he didn’t make it to adulthood because he was unfortunate enough to be a very important child

his dad died when he was 8. he saw his own babies die when he was still just a boy himself.

but he had brightly coloured little ducks on his favourite shirt, and he kept it.

[somecunttookmyurl]

and he did not just keep the duckie shirt either

tutankhamun had a little pair of sandals with ducks on them. he had earrings decorated with ducks. he kept those, and other items of childhood clothing. some toys. keepsakes. things he loved, and treasured. he kept them all in a little wooden chest. the chest… was carved with ducks.

and that little duck chest, filled with things he kept from his childhood, was buried with him. maybe he was keeping them for the little babies who did not make it. maybe they just reminded him of good days and fun times.

but he was a little boy who thought ducks were just the best

[somecunttookmyurl]

WITH PLEASURE

(greyscale makes it hard but the duck head is on the right above the toe strap. always takes me a while to find it too)

[beggars-opera]

[libriamore]

Ok but this is how to teach history. This is how you get people to pay attention, to care. Find something small and make it personal, then zoom out to the wider context. History is best taught as a story, with people who lived their lives in ways that came together to create something remarkable that we still talk about today, but who were still just human at the end of the day. They kissed, argued, cried, and dreamed just like we do. And sometimes they really liked ducks.

[riverlarking]

ancient peoples loooved a flood narrative it was kinda like their beatles

[mcaelius]

[volumina-vetustiora]

senator mihi Romam identidem pueros bonae spei vorare dixit. rogavi itaque quot tirones haberet, atque is dixit se in Foro novum postea tironem reperire. dixi itaque eum Urbem pueris pascere videri, et tunc mensa eius citrea lacrimavit.

[thoodleoo]

time for another round of one of my favorite games, "try to picture what this roman graffito looks like from its description"! today we have EDR167813. click the read more to see how accurate the picture in your head was

go my lambda

[dogpuppy]

[shortcircuit908]

then it's worthless to me

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[beleester]

>#I love how this gag would be funny at any point since the third century BCE

[sksjjsjwjejsjwos]

this might just be THE worst review oat 🥀

[terpsikeraunos]

Intricate-throned undying Aphrodite, snare-weaving child of Zeus, I beg of you, do not break my heart with longing or sorrow, o queen, but come here, if ever before hearing my cries from afar you listened, and leaving your father’s house you came, yoking your chariot of gold; and beautiful they bore you, swift sparrows across dark earth, whirling quick-beating wings, from heaven through mid-sky; suddenly they arrived; and you, blessed one, a smile on your immortal face, asked what I had suffered this time, and why again I called you and what I wished most dearly to happen in my tormented heart; “Whom should I persuade, contriving that she respond to your love? Who, Sappho, wrongs you? For if she flees you, soon she will pursue, and if she rejects your gifts, yet she will give them, and if she does not love you, soon she will love you, even unwillingly.” Come to me again now, and free me from unbearable distress, and as much as my heart longs to accomplish, make it so, and you yourself battle at my side.

-Sappho (Lobel-Page 1)

Keep reading

[the-puffinry]

Engraved Scaraboid with Aphrodite Riding a Goose, about 400 B.C.E.

Aphrodite riding on a goose. Terracotta from Locri, Calabria, Italy. Made in Boeotia c. 470 – 460 BC. [this actually looks like a swan to me; look at the upper beak?].

Aphrodite on a goose, 2nd-1st Century B.C.E.

Aphrodite riding on a goose, 380 BCE, Taranto.

Relief of Aphrodite on a goose, 50 BCE-100 CE, Italy.

Terracotta figurine of Aphrodite seated on a goose, 3rd to 2nd century BCE, Cyprus.

[asteroidtroglodyte]

Me, tears streaming down my face, sobbing, as I stare at the stars: it’s just so beautiful

The medieval peasant I went back in time to give a bag of Doritos to, concerned: what terrible and powerful sorcerers they must have in your age, to be able to veil the vault of heaven itself from view, as you say

Me, sniffling: I didn’t realize, I can’t, it’s so much, I, I… are the chips good, at least?

Medieval peasant, trying to make me feel better: they’re… magical, strange traveler

[rudjedet]

Controversial Truths About Ancient Egypt Masterpost

The pyramids were built by contemporary workers who received wages and were fed and taken care of during construction

The Dendera “lightbulb” is a representation of the creation myth and has nothing to do with electricity

We didn’t find “““copper wiring””” in the great pyramid either

Hatshepsut wasn’t transgender

The gods didn’t actually have animal heads

Hieroglyphs aren’t mysteriously magical; they’re just a language (seriously we have shopping lists and work rosters and even ancient erotica)

The ancient Egyptian ethnicity wasn’t homogeneous

Noses (and ears, and arms) broke off statues and reliefs for a variety of reasons, none of which are “there is a widespread archaeological conspiracy to hide the Egyptian ethnicity”

[thatlittleegyptologist]

The carvings at Abydos aren’t modern machines but recarvings over old carvings. Sure they look like them but if you can read hieroglyphs and know that Ramesses II will even usurp the carvings of his own father just to be a little shit

[rudjedet]

‘No soot on the ceilings and walls of the Dendera temple!’ is actually because of extensive restoration works and not because Egyptians were in on shit like Baghdad “batteries”

While the Egyptians were fine-ass astronomers they didn’t align any of their enormous and/or important buildings to modern star constellations, because constellations look very different now than they did ~5000 years ago 

The pyramid is the simplest, sturdiest shape with which to build and many different cultures discovered this in their own time. There were never any weird fish humans/aliens involved

[rudjedet]

The sphinx of Gizah is only an approximate 5000 years old; the 10,000 year/rain erosion nonsense is proven hokum

Speaking of that particular sphinx, the Napoleonic expedition is not responsible for its missing nose

Akhenaten was not a “heretic” by contemporary standards

Ramses II appropriated a lot of his predecessors’ buildings/reliefs and isn’t really deserving of the epithet “the Great”

The Battle of Kadesh ended in a stalemate (twice)

[rudjedet]

While they had feline deities throughout their history, Egyptians didn’t actually worship cats themselves. This was a later Greek/Ptolemaeic addition

It was not, in fact, practice to shave off eyebrows after cats died; Herodotus lied about that

Herodotus lied about a lot of things and many misconceptions about ancient Egypt can be traced back to his Greek ass

[rudjedet]

I can’t believe I forgot my favourite Hill to Die On

Seth was not the god of “evil”, and despite his chaos providing a foil to order, he wasn’t completely villified until very late in Egyptian history, when he became associated with despised foreign enemies

[rudjedet]

Hats off to the few of you who’re reblogging this with tags saying you’re going to check my claims later. You make me not entirely despair of this hellhole.

Here are some vetted Egyptological books/sources (that are by and large appropriate for a lay-audience) you can find most, if not all of the above:

Lehner, M., The Complete Pyramids

Wilkinson, R. H., The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt

Hornung, E., The One and the Many: Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt

Dunand, F. & Zivie-Coche, C., Gods and Men in Egypt

Kemp, B., Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization

Bard, K., An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt

Stevenson Smith, W., The Art and Architecture of Ancient Egypt

Kitchen, K. A., The Life and Times of Ramesses II, King of Egypt

Sweeney, D., Sex and Gender (in Ancient Egypt)

McDowell, A. G., Village Life in Ancient Egypt:  Laundry Lists and Love Songs

Te Velde, H., Seth, God of Confusion 

[rudjedet]

Guys do me a solid and reblog this version instead of continuously asking for sources on the other versions thanks

[chronic-backpain]

Excuse me please post ancient erotica link

[rudjedet]

hey it’s not my fault people keep reblogging the version without it!

[aggot]

the guy who wrote greek mythology

[sociallyunacceptableart4]

This was my art school’s water fountain. Drink from them wolf tiddies

[mando-lore]

Assignment misunderstood. I have now built a city.

[mando-lore]

[mando-lore]

Give it a day

[alexaloraetheris]

[pics-and-fanfics]

Oh

Oh is it

Is it

Is it Rome?

Is it supposed to be about Rome?

[cryptotheism]

The Romans were for real naming their kids shit like Boy #2

[lemilianposts]

[ilions-end]

i'm reading this paper on supplication (particularly in homer) by john gould and although he only touches on this in a footnote it's about achilles and lycaon's meeting in the iliad so of course it's got my ears perking up like a retriever's

gould lays out the xenia process of an outsider going from xenos (stranger) -> xenos (guest) -> philos (friend), using odysseus in alcinous' court as an example. then he touches on how lycaon pleads with achilles to spare him by reminding him of when he was achilles' captive and they ate bread together, and gould points out:

Note that though Achilles does not accept Lykaon's supplication, he nevertheless addresses him as philos (II. xxi 106) after being reminded of the common meal.

ie this bit that always sends chills down my spine:

"Come, friend, you too must die. Why moan about it so? Even Patroclus died; a far, far better man than you."

before killing lycaon who's still unarmed and on his knees.

gould's perspective makes it even creepier! the thought of achilles acknowledging the rules of xenia even in a captor/captive dynamic, respectfully addressing him as a friend, and then very deliberately disregarding those rules because he can't suffer a (half) brother of hector to live. oooh the texture

[ltwilliammowett]

This need to put a coin under a mast just won’t let me go. It is originally a Roman custom, as the Greeks also did and put the coins under the pillars of a temple when it was built to hope for protection and luck. This is also what the coin under the mast is said to do. However, there is one thing that may also play a role. A silver coin was placed under the tongue or on the eyes of a dead person so that he could pay Charon, the ferryman of the underworld, for his passage. If a ship sank, it was hardly possible to give a coin to the dead and not everyone had a coin directly with them when this happened. What if this coin was not only a good luck charm but also a means of payment for Charon when this happened? I will think about it further and read some books, maybe there is a clue for this thesis….

[verecunda]

Oh! Is this a widespread custom, then? I know I’ve read about a Roman shipwreck in the Thames that was found with a coin in the mast-step, but I didn’t realise it was a common thing. That was the first time I’d ever heard of it.

Interesting theory about it being intended to pay Charon!

[ltwilliammowett]

Oh that was even very common, so far 17 ships have been found with a coin, like this one

Dr. Deborah Carlson has written a very interesting article on this subject,  “Mast‐Step Coins among the Romans”  maybe you want to read more about it.

[archaeos]

If you don’t mind me adding — ships themselves were often held to contain a sort of divine or living spirit, which may possibly connect to this notion of payment for the dead. From Brody, A. 2008, ‘The Specialised Religions of Ancient Mediterranean Seafarers’, Religion Compass, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8171.2008.00079.x:

Evidence for divine spirits imbued in ships is found in diverse sources. There are very few extant Canaanite or Phoenician maritime texts, yet we know from the Ugaritic Kirta epic that the sacred mountain, Mt. Zaphon, was represented as a ship, and a parallel reference from an Egyptian papyrus details that Ba‘l Zaphon was worshipped in the form of a ship (Brody 1998). In later periods, seafarers dedicated ships, or model ships, to Zeus Kasios, Ba‘l Zaphon’s direct Hellenic counterpart, or more generally to Zeus the Savior, Zeus Soter. A letter from the king of Tyre to the king of Ugarit details the sinking of a ship in a storm. This ship is said to have literally died in the tempest, suggesting an animate spirit that perished with the loss of the vessel […] (Wachsmuth 1967; Göttlicher 1981; Brody 1998).

[ltwilliammowett]

Thank you for adding it. This is really a very exciting topic and I had already talked about it with one of my former professors who works a lot in the field of ancient religion. She hasn’t come across it yet either, she also finds my suggestion exciting and now we’re sitting down together to see if there are any research approaches in this area. However, it’s still at the beginning and quite rough, because so far we haven’t found anything in this direction. So now we have to search through ancient texts…