Ancient egypt miscellaneous

without any WE WUZZ arguments can we have a nice discussion on the contributions/inventions that led to aspects of our lives in modern society

Contemproary neighbours of Egypt took a lot from them, including of course their art: Canaanites, Hurrites, Hittites, all the people in the Syrio Palestinese Coast and Anatolia took a lot from them artistically, pic related a Hittite sphinx

Typical Baal idol from Ugarit, this type of figure was widespread in all of Canaanite and Syria, the pose and headgear is exactly the same as that of the Egyptian pharaoh striking his captives, which existed since at least 3100 bc as we know from the Narmer Palette, of Narmer the first pharaoh

Narmer Palette, this type of pose and headgear will be adopted by Syrians and Anatolians even thousands of years later, and in the Phoenician colonies of Italy, North Africa and Spain 2500 years later, we see it even in Ptolemaic Egypt in 50 bc, this motif remained in used for more than three millenia

are there any motifs that we are using today that are this old?

it's almost unbelievable how stable egyptian cultural expression was. Hieroglyphic inscriptions in middle egyptian were used up until the roman age. interestingly that is part of the reason why hieroglyphs remained undeciphered for so long - the people who were culturally connected to them "knew" that it was an esoteric secret religious language that is really hard to understand and only accessible to experts, because that's what it was in the last time period when it was used. someone had to come in from outside egyptian culture and question those traditional assumptions to open the possibility of decipherment.

Another example of Egyptian motif that lasted a lot is the winged sun

It was first used in Egypt since at least the 26th century bc, later spread to Mesopotamia and Syria in the 21th century bc

Ancient Egypt is top tier comfy

Hittite winged sun, Northen Syria

Persian winged sun, 6th century bc

Winged sun, Sardinia, 5th century bc

Winged sun from an alchemical treatise, 1550 AD, the author was French-Catalan

>contributions to modern life
If that's why you study history you're a retard

Winged sun, today

A lot of cool stuff from this region can be seen at this history museum in Jerusalem probably because of all the rich Jews bought everything it goes through every period the region went through Roman,Greek, ancient Egypt, ottoman all the way back to barbaric times there is a Neanderthal skeleton there I think also

Egyptian architecture, bitch, simply no comparison with contemporary monuments

1180 bc

2650 bc

2650 bc, again

1493 bc

Same goes with the sculpture, 2500 bc, you won't find anything like this anywhere else outside of Egypt back then

2500 bc again, I think it's Menakure again

Scribe, 2420 bc

2560 bc, the architect of the great Pyramid of Gizah, Hatshepsut

i wonder to what extent this is actually inspired by egyptian examples though and to what extent it is just a relatively straighforward motif that anyone who looks up at the sun could plausibly come up with. all humans have seen the sun and all humans have seen birds. both are in the sky (it's easily possible for a bird to appear in front of the sun from a human perspective) and it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch that people simply ended up combining the imagery independently in different places.

this is also how i would explain the prevalence of swastika-like symbols in unrelated ancient cultures.

I think it is inspired by Egyptian symbolism, all those regions came in contact either with Egypt itself or with regions which were strongly influenced by it, you don't see this motif pop up in, say, the Americas or West Africa

Also I'd like to remind you how popular Egyptian religion became in Europe since the time of the Phoenicians, with Egyptians scarabs being produced in European towns since those ancient times, and later during the Roman empire Egyptian religion became even more popular and widespread, it's not that unbelievable to think it survived til the middles ages

i'm willing to believe that about the hittite and persian examples but for sardinia and the european middle ages the connection seems a little more tenuous to me.

Talking about Swastika and common motifs, it reminded me of how a symbol really similar to the Chinese Yin Yang symbol (Taijitu) comes up in many artifacts from the Neolithic culture of Cucuteni in Romania, kinda eerie, wonder if they attached a similar meaning to it, it pops up often in carefully crafted objects, so it probably held some important value

>but for sardinia

That's from a Phoenician city in Sardinia, Phoenicians were under Egyptian control for almost 3 centuries and they had direct contact with Egypt since ever, they were almost right next to them, not to mention Egyptian scarabs were both imported from Egypt and produced in Sardinia itself during those times, the oldest Egyptian scarab found in the island was discovered in a tomb dated to 1000 bc and was probably made in Palestine during the New Kingdom.

You can see Egyptian motifs all around Sardinia, even in isolated places, but especially in Phoenician cities, see pic related, there's even a mummy

>European middle ages

Considering Gnosticism might have survived through the Cathars in some form, and you know how Gnosticism and other esoteric cults were deeply influenced by Egyptian mystery cults among other things, it doesn't seem so far fetched for me to think that Egyptian symbolism survived as well in some form

Yes and another example is the bucket. Multiple civilizations used this image around the world. Coincidence?...Idk

Yes, probably.

And the Yin Yang as well but it's more of an abstract symbol so I find it more eerie

they invented the art of the selfsucc