Browsing the archives for the Egyptian tag

What Ancient Art Tells Us About Pinboards

What do “pin boards,” social media websites designed around sharing pictures, have in common with Stone Age cave paintings and Egyptian funerary art?

Science May Explain Why Egyptians Worshiped Dung Beetle as Sun God

My mother sent me a link to a fascinating Scientific American article about zoologist Emily Baird’s research on dung beetles. Egyptologists give these poo-pushing champions the more dignified name of “scarab,” after an ancient Greek word for beetle. Dr. Baird’s specialty is insect vision, flight and navigation (see her profile at Lund University). She wrote her thesis […]

Grave Goods: An Affirmation of Life

A fascinating article in the LA Times this week tells of a modern expression of a practice that goes right back to the dawn of human prehistory: the sacrifice or disposal of offerings for the dead. In this case, Chinese are burning paper facsimiles of iPads, iPhones, and other modern luxuries to “give” to their […]

The Word and Unstruck Sound

Words have power, and many creation myths begin with god speaking or singing the universe into being. The New Testament speaks of Logos, the word. Kosmos, the universe, which also means “that which is ordered, structured,” arises from logos, the word. This is older than Christianity, of course: Greek philosophers spent a lot of time […]

Sopdet, Egypt’s Herald of the New Year

Set your calendars, Egypt. No, not for 2/11/2011. (Congratulations and good luck!) I’m talking about August 2nd, when a very old Egyptian goddess is set to rise. Like most agrarian societies, the Egyptians watched the skies closely. They needed some sort of calendar to tell them when to plant and plan their harvests. The regular […]