Antique Hat | Victorian Men 1870s

yerawizardharry:

Nüshu (literally “women’s writing” in Chinese) is a syllabic script created and used exclusively by women in the Jiangyong County in Hunan province of southern China. Up until the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) women were forbidden access to formal education, and so Nüshu was developed in secrecy as a means to communicate. Since its discovery in 1982, Nüshu remains to be the only gender-specific writing system in the world.

Read more here.

drawthisdress:

Evening dress by Christian Lacroix c. 1987 via The Met.

by *Phobs

Genghis Khan era stuff - searching

I add the names - if you want to know who are this people google will help you

shoomlah:

konsciousmoor:

restlessandcr8ive:

Everything they teach about Egypt in most schools is distorted. The people of Egypt called their country Kemet not Egypt. Kemet means black land. Egypt is a Greek concept. Egypt is derived from the Greek word Aegyptos. The greeks called the kemetians  language hieroglyphs, but the people of Kemet called their language Medu Neter. Even the names we learn of the gods are wrong. Isis Kemetic name is Aset. Anubis is Anpu. Horus is Heru. Osiris is Wesir. I’m doing research to find as many of the true Kemetic  names that I can. 

i posted this 4 months ago and it has gotten over a 1,000 reblogs…So i’m sendin it back into rotation. Power of knowledge !!

The Greeks also messed up when they interpreted the religious system. The worship of one God in many forms is the deal. Not multiple Gods. They did not worship the Sun, it was the manifestation of God in the sun, the water, the moon ect. What each element represented.

I feel like the inter-language change of country names is hardly anything new (Japan vs. Nippon, for example), though for Egypt it is at least notable in that the entire modern world calls it Egypt and is generally ignorant of what the ancient Egyptian would have preferred to have called themselves.  Hm.

As to Egyptian hieroglyphics (in the formal sense, not the cursive forms), they’re missing a heck of lot of vowels! For the most part, anyway.  So Anubis is technically:

…And apparently is was vocalized as Anapa?  So that’s all over the place.  Trying to finalize a deity name in the way that doesn’t confuse people and force you to explain yourself (seeing how most Egyptologists seem to use the Greek names in spoken conversation) can be tough.

I’m also curious to see sources on the whole “Egyptian gods as the maifestations of a single deity” theory.  I’ve never heard that before myself, and the mythos deals heavily with the political and interpersonal intrigue of the gods in a way that wouldn’t suggest monotheism.  Also wouldn’t that also explain away Akhenaten’s cult of Aten as being such an upheaval of Egyptian religion at the time?  And even that was more along the lines of monolatrism than anything.

Aaaaaanyway

Yeah, looking for sources on this one. I can verify the gods’ names (Anpu, etc.) provided that what I’ve read of E.A. Wallis Budge’s work is correct, but there’s always issues with foreign sounds in other languages, especially ancient ones (just look at the postalveolar click). I agree that some could be phased in (Kemet isn’t that hard to pronounce, after all), but for any schools below the university level I don’t think the kids should be expected to learn a foreign pronunciation/580725 ways of spelling one god’s name.

vardaesque:

unusualjourney:

what-rabbit-hole:

“some historians think that michelangelo was drawing god in a human brain. very few people knew what one looked like at the time; but michelangelo had dissected cadavers and would have known. it even has the hint of a brain stem. if true this would have been a great “fuck you” to the pope whom he was not friendly with but also would have meant god was in a human brain, or created by man.”

Interesting.

also michelangelo painted a baby angel flipping off the pope

the blond one, you see his right hand? that’s called the fig and it’s an old world european gesture for ‘fuck you” because apparently Pope Julius II was a total raging asshole and everyone hated him

but nobody ever noticed this little fucker because the ceiling was so high

and then thirty years later they called michelangelo back to paint the wall behind the altar and he wasted no time in painting the gates of hell behind the pope’s chair

what a badass

Sry tumblr, that bottom picture isn’t of Pope Julius II, it’s of the prophet Zechariah, which Michelangelo presumably didn’t have any reason to be pissed at (and as it’s positioned above the entrance, it isn’t directed at where the pope would be sitting in the actual chapel). Also, the fig looks like this, which the putto doesn’t appear to be doing; his hand is loose and there’s no shape of a thumb between the first two fingers. Also, the “gates of Hell” (The Last Judgment) aren’t exactly behind the pope’s chair. (Also it was painted closer to 20 years after the ceiling, not 30.)

However:

A few years after the fresco was completed, the decrees of the Council of Trent urged a tightening-up of church control of “unusual” sacred images. In response to certain accusers, when the Pope’s own Master of Ceremonies Biagio da Cesena said of the painting “it was mostly disgraceful that in so sacred a place there should have been depicted all those nude figures, exposing themselves so shamefully,” and that it was no work for a papal chapel but rather “for the public baths and taverns,” Michelangelo worked Cesena’s face into the scene as Minos, judge of the underworld (far bottom-right corner of the painting) with Donkey ears (i.e. indicating foolishness), while his nudity is covered by a coiled snake. It is said that when Cesena complained to the Pope, the pontiff joked that his jurisdiction did not extend to hell, so the portrait would have to remain.^[1]

So that’s fun.

Archaeological News: Angkor Wat Facing an Uncertain Future

archaeologicalnews:

Its stones witness the feel of fingers and the weight and movement of shoe-shodden feet easily numbering in the hundreds of thousands every year.

For the tourists who, this past year alone, numbered more than a million, it is an otherworldly experience that catches and transfixes the eye and dazzles the mind. For most of them, like the Taj Mahal in India, knowing the history and the religious significance of Angkor Wat tends to take a back seat to the almost mind-numbing visual experience. But the beauty and grandeur of the site might fade into oblivian if current trends continue and steps are not taken to ensure its sustainability.

“Nobody should be allowed to walk on 1,000-year-old stones,” says Jeff Morgan, who is executive director of the California-based Global Heritage Fund (GHF).  GHF is currently leading efforts to conserve a sister site, Banteay Chhmar (see image of ruins, below right). It is a smaller site, but its beauty and historical significance is every bit as comparable.

Read more.

letsplayauochat:

→“King…?”

“Gilgamesh was the fifth king of Uruk, modern day Iraq, placing his reign ca. 2500 BC.”

“Gilgamesh was the fifth king of Uruk, modern day Iraq, placing his reign ca. 2500 BC.”

“Gilgamesh was the fifth king of Uruk, modern day Iraq, placing his reign ca. 2500 BC.”

Alulim’s got something to say about that “oldest king” bit, Gilgy.

also why is he a blonde white guy in that case

While watching the Misstory (History) channel.

Me: Hey sis, who's the bigger asshole, Columbus or Cortez?
Sis: Cortez. No, wait, Columbus. Wait— can't I say both?
Me: No, you have to pick which is the bigger. They're both assholes, but you need to pick a magnitude here.
Sis: I dunno, Cortez was a pretty big asshole. It's hard to tell!
Sis: I'll have to ask the internet.
Sis: Well there's a Village Idiot pizzeria in Cortez, Florida. And there's a song called 'History's Greatest Assholes'. Oh, here's a list of biggest assholes in chronological order.
Me: Thank you, Google.

Honey Badger Patronus: Author Scott Lynch responds to a critic of the character Zamira Drakasha, a black woman pirate in his fantasy book Red...

fuckyeahscifiwomenofcolour:

The bolded sections represent quotes from the criticism he received. All the z-snaps are in order.

Your characters are unrealistic stereotpyes of political correctness. Is it really necessary for the sake of popular sensibilities to have in a fantasy what we have in the real world? I read fantasy to get away from politically correct cliches. 

God, yes! If there’s one thing fantasy is just crawling with these days it’s widowed black middle-aged pirate moms. 

Real sea pirates could not be controlled by women, they were vicous rapits and murderers and I am sorry to say it was a man’s world. It is unrealistic wish fulfilment for you and your readers to have so many female pirates, especially if you want to be politically correct about it!

First, I will pretend that your last sentence makes sense because it will save us all time. Second, now you’re pissing me off. 

You know what? Yeah, Zamira Drakasha, middle-aged pirate mother of two, is a wish-fulfillment fantasy. I realized this as she was evolving on the page, and you know what? I fucking embrace it. 

Why shouldn’t middle-aged mothers get a wish-fulfillment character, you sad little bigot? Everyone else does. H.L. Mencken once wrote that “Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” I can’t think of anyone to whom that applies more than my own mom, and the mothers on my friends list, with the incredible demands on time and spirit they face in their efforts to raise their kids, preserve their families, and save their own identity/sanity into the bargain. 

Shit yes, Zamira Drakasha, leaping across the gap between burning ships with twin sabers in hand to kick in some fucking heads and sail off into the sunset with her toddlers in her arms and a hold full of plundered goods, is a wish-fulfillment fantasy from hell. I offer her up on a silver platter with a fucking bow on top; I hope she amuses and delights. In my fictional world, opportunities for butt-kicking do not cease merely because one isn’t a beautiful teenager or a muscle-wrapped font of testosterone. In my fictional universe, the main characters are a fat ugly guy and a skinny forgettable guy, with a supporting cast that includes “SBF, 41, nonsmoker, 2 children, buccaneer of no fixed abode, seeks unescorted merchant for light boarding, heavy plunder.”

You don’t like it? Don’t buy my books. Get your own fictional universe. Your cabbage-water vision of worldbuilding bores me to tears. 

As for the “man’s world” thing, religious sentiments and gender prejudices flow differently in this fictional world. Women are regarded as luckier, better sailors than men. It’s regarded as folly for a ship to put to sea without at least one female officer; there are several all-female naval military traditions dating back centuries, and Drakasha comes from one of them. As for claims to “realism,” your complaint is of a kind with those from bigoted hand-wringers who whine that women can’t possibly fly combat aircraft, command naval vessels, serve in infantry actions, work as firefighters, police officers, etc. despite the fact that they do all of those things— and are, for a certainty, doing them all somewhere at this very minute. Tell me that a fit fortyish woman with 25+ years of experience at sea and several decades of live bladefighting practice under her belt isn’t a threat when she runs across the deck toward you, and I’ll tell you something in return— you’re gonna die of stab wounds.

What you’re really complaining about isn’t the fact that my fiction violates some objective “reality,” but rather that it impinges upon your sad, dull little conception of how the world works. I’m not beholden to the confirmation of your prejudices; to be perfectly frank, the prospect of confining the female characters in my story to placid, helpless secondary places in the narrative is so goddamn boring that I would rather not write at all. I’m not writing history, I’m writing speculative fiction. Nobody’s going to force you to buy it. Conversely, you’re cracked if you think you can persuade me not to write about what amuses and excites me in deference to your vision, because your vision fucking sucks.

I do not expect to change your mind but i hope that you will at least consider that I and others will not be buying your work because of these issues. I have been reading science fiction and fantasy for years and i know that I speak for a great many people. I hope you might stop to think about the sales you will lose because you want to bring your political corectness and foul language into fantasy. if we wanted those things we could go to the movies. Think about this! 

Thank you for your sentiments. I offer you in exchange this engraved invitation to go piss up a hill, suitable for framing.

I do love most of Scott Lynch’s writing (with the exception of the death of [    ] that came off disappointingly like fodder when I was totally expecting them to be a genius Big Bad), and Zamira is definitely one of, if not mymostfucking favourite. One of the reasons I was so excited to see Assassin’s Creed: Liberation is because I expect Aveline to pretty much be Zamira 2.0. If not I will be sorely disappointed.

All of that said, I’m kind of surprised that Lynch didn’t point out how blatant wrong this idiot was on one front: women pirates have been around as long as pirating itself, in history, in the real world. Many have been just as ruthless as the men, some were less, and a handful were much more capable. Take a look at some of this shit and be suitably impressed. (And those are just the ones that history’s remembered and Wiki has recorded.)

Seriously, how have you never heard of Mary Read and Anne Bonny? Of Ching Shih?