Archeological Discovery
 

The Ancient Egyptians Had a Sense of Humor.

I particularly enjoyed this article because so much of what we learn via popular sources about ancient cultures (and usually wildly misinterpreting them) depict those who came before as being serious, stodgy, businesslike kings and priests/esses ... only rarely (Pompeiian grafiti declaring "Lydia is a pig") do we get to see the more human side of our ancestors.

I want pictures! How can they write an article about funny ancient pictures without showing them?!

I am in agreement with that one. Perhaps they are NSFW?

I have a book that includes a graffiti suggesting that one of Queen Hatshepsut's viziers was boinking her. (Let's just say she seemed to--allegedly--have some preferences in common with some of the ladies over on the Group Sex thread.) I will try to get a scan at some point. (My cheap old parallel port scanner doesn't have Windows XP drivers.)

Hehe. Those would be very funny to see.

Did anyone 'get' the one picture that they had?

I'm guessing there is an elaborate visual pun expressed there, having to do with a male "grinding flour" for which we lack the cultural context to find the humor.

Hm? I thought that the figure was a female.

Men wore the skirt things too ...

That, no upper garment, plus the short hair, no beard, and lack of boobage led me to that conclusion.

She seems to have a thin waist, and the short hair indicated to me that she was female. (I don't know exactly why I made that latter assumption).

Shaving was supposed to have been very popular during most of ancient Egypt. They shaved with stone razors! Yeoch.

Nudge nudge wink wink say no more.

Hey, I know I've seen that somewhere before...

Here you go. Slightly NSFW. From Akhenaten: Egypt's False Prophet by Nicholas Reeves.

http://www.barks.org/photos/hatsh.jpg

One set of hieroglyphics translates as "Osama hasn't seen his wife in months. He'd walk a mile for a camel".

This was later taken out of context and used for tobacco advertising.