Ancient Egyptian humour
Ancient Egyptian humour
While Greek comedies didn't always equate to modern day comedies, some of the extant plays and writings give us a pretty good idea of what the Greek considered fun. In the case of, say, Lysistrata, that humour was pretty juvenile and crude.
Do we have similar sources for Egyptians? Do we know what the ancient Egyptians considered funny and joked about, especially in plays or other works of literature?
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(1/2) I have to begin with the disclaimer that ancient humor is notoriously difficult to identify. You and I may find very different things amusing, so you can only imagine how difficult it is to grasp the humor of a culture separated from us by thousands of years. There are pieces of ancient literature that readers today find amusing, but it is not always clear whether the authors intended them to be humorous. Most of the "jokes" from Egypt and Mesopotamia are in fact maxims and wisdom sayings that people today have found humorous. I won't dive into the theoretical approaches to ancient humor here, but the first half of Mary Beard's Laughter in Ancient Rome: On Joking, Tickling, and Cracking Up is a good place to start for those interested in the topic.
Most of the humor in ancient Egyptian literature is in the form of satire. The Egyptians were particularly fond of satirizing the king and royal rhetoric. Many Egyptian historical texts incorporate a literary form Egyptologists call the Königsnovelle. In these texts, the king, surrounded by his courtiers, announces his intentions to build a temple, begin a military campaign, or engage in some other such royal activity. In response, the courtiers frequently flatter the king, praising him for his brilliance and bravery. In a text on a leather scroll in the Berlin Museum, for example, the king announces his intention to build a temple. His courtiers respond with effusive praise:
Then spoke the royal companions in answer to their god: Hu is in your mouth, Sia is behind you, O King! What you plan comes about: the King's appearance at the Uniting-of-the-Two- Lands, to stretch the cord in your temple. It is worthy to look to the morrow as something of value for a lifetime. The people cannot succeed without you. Your Majesty is in everyone's eyes!
On other occasions, the courtiers attempt to persuade the king not to pursue his goal. They invariably fail to dissuade him, however, and the king's inevitable success is all the more remarkable because of the supposed opposition from his court. When planning his attack on the city of Megiddo (in modern Israel), for example, Thutmose III announces that he is going to approach the city via a dangerously narrow pass, much to the panic of his followers.
They said to his majesty: "How will it be to go on this road which becomes narrow, when it is reported that the enemies are waiting there beyond and they are numerous? Will not horse go behind horse and soldiers and people too? Shall our vanguard be fighting while the rearguard waits here in Aruna, unable to fight? There are two (other) roads here. One of the roads is to our east and comes out at Taanach. The other is on the north side of Djefti, so that we come out to the north of Megiddo. May our valiant lord proceed on whichever of these seems best to him. Do not make us go on that difficult road!"
As it turned out, Thutmose was lucky, and his troops were able to approach Megiddo undetected.
The author of a Late Period composition concerning Ahmose II had this literary convention in mind. Turning the Königsnovelle on its head, the tale presents the king as a buffoon who fails to heed the prudent advice of his courtiers. Rather than engage in an activity befitting the dignity of his office, the king wishes to drink an entire vat of wine and suffers the consequences.
A day occurred in the reign of Pharaoh Amasis when Pharaoh said to his great men: "I want to drink a vat of Egyptian wine!" They said: "Our great lord, drinking a vat of Egyptian wine is overpowering." He said to them: "Do not oppose what I shall say!" They said: "Our great lord! The wish of Pharaoh, may he do it." Pharaoh said: "Let them set off for the sea shore!" They acted in accordance with what Pharaoh had commanded.
Pharaoh washed himself for a meal together with his wives, with no other wine before them at all except a vat of Egyptian wine, so that the faces of Pharaoh and his wives were cheerful. He drank an extremely large quantity of wine because of the craving that Pharaoh had for a vat of Egyptian wine. Pharaoh lay down at the sea shore on that same night. He slept beneath a grapevine toward the north. Morning came, and Pharaoh was unable to raise himself because of the hangover that he had. The time drew near and he was unable to raise himself. The council lamented, saying: "Is it a thing that can happen? It’s happened that Pharaoh has a terrible hangover!"
(2/2) The Egyptian gods were also popular targets for satire. The Contendings of Horus and Seth, a New Kingdom composition, is a fairly crude retelling of the ancient story of the struggle between Horus and his uncle Seth for the throne of Egypt. When Horus and Seth appeal to the divine assembly, Re-Horakhti dismisses Horus as a callow youth unworthy of the throne. Angry on Horus' behalf, the god Baba insults the chief god by claiming he has no worshipers. Fortunately, the fertility goddess Hathor knows how to restore her father's good humor.
The god Baba got up and said to Pre-Harakhti: "Your shrine is empty!'" Then Pre-Harakhti felt offended by the answer given him, and he lay down on his back, his heart very sore. Then the Ennead came out, shouting loudly at Baba and saying to him: "Go away; you have committed a very great crime!" And they went to their tents. The great god spent a day lying on his back in his pavilion, his heart very sore and he was alone. After a long while, Hathor, Lady of the southern sycamore, came and stood before her father, the All-Lord. She uncovered her nakedness before him; thereupon the great god laughed at her. He got up and sat with the great Ennead; and he said to Horus and Seth: "Speak for yourselves!"
Later in the story, Seth and Horus transform themselves into hippos and engage in combat. In a bit of slapstick humor, Isis attempts to come to her son's aid but instead hits him with her harpoon.
She took a deben of copper and cast it into a harpoon. She tied the rope to it and threw it into the water at the spot where Horus and Seth had plunged. Then the weapon bit in the body of her son Horus. And Horus cried out aloud, saying, "Come to me, mother Isis, my mother! Tell your weapon to let go of me! I am Horus, son of Isis!" Then Isis cried out aloud and said to weapon: "Let go of him! He is Horus my son." And the weapon let go of him.
Undiscouraged, Isis tried again and managed to hit her target.
Then she threw it again into the water, and it bit into the body of Seth. Seth cried out aloud, saying: "What have I done to you, my sister Isis? Call to your weapon to let go of me! I am your maternal brother, O Isis! Then she felt very sorry for him. And Seth called to her, saying: "Do you love the stranger more than your maternal brother Seth?" Then Isis called to her weapon, saying: "Let go of him! It is the maternal brother of Isis whom you are biting." And the weapon let go of him. Thereupon Horus, son of Isis, was angry with his mother Isis. He came out, his face fierce like that of a leopard and his knife of 16 deben in his hand. He cut off the head of his mother Isis, took it in his arms, and went up the mountain.
No doubt there were many similarly ribald tales and jokes that were not written down. In a piece of graffiti near Thebes, for example, a female figure is shown engaging in intercourse. The pair have often been identified as Hatshepsut and the official Senenmut, but this almost entirely due to the graffito's location near the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut, and there is nothing to identify either figure.
The pictorial ostraca and papyri from the workmen's village of Deir el-Medina have many whimsical scenes depicting animals engaging in human activities, including playing senet, herding animals, and serving other animals. These scenes often involve a topsy-turvy view of the world, such as the depiction of the cat fanning the seated mouse. Were these ostraca merely humorous images created by a bored artist, or were they depictions of fables not preserved in the literary record? Unfortunately, we will probably never know.
The Egyptians sometimes slipped scenes into royal monuments that may have been intended to be humorous. In the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri, for example, the artists not only depicted the queen of Punt - who did not at all fit the ideal body shape of Egyptian queens - but emphasized her obesity by including her steed. The tiny donkey is labeled with a caption identifying him as the "donkey who carries his (i.e. the king's) wife." The queen of Punt seems to have fascinated the workmen living in Deir el-Medina, for we have a sketch on an ostraca which replicates the scene.
Finally, we have relatively few jokes from ancient Egypt, but a letter from the late Ramesside period references a joke that had not gone over well. Undeterred, the joker wrote to an unknown recipient to defend himself and his joke.
I've heard that you are angry and that you have caused me to be maligned through slander on account of that joke which I told the chief taxing master in that letter, although it was Henuttowy who had urged me to tell some jokes to the chief taxing master in my letter.
You are the case of the wife blind in one eye who had been living in the house of a man for twenty years; and when he found another woman, he said to her, "I shall divorce you because you are blind in one eye, so it is said." And she answered him, "ls this what you have just discovered during these twenty years that I've spent in your house?" Such am I, and such is my joking with you!
Love this sub but it's so frustrating. 99% of the questions asked I'm fascinated in finding out what the answer could be, so I see it has several comments click on it only to find they all been removed (because noobs have been commenting).
I'm left frustrated I'll never get an answer to that question. I tried to save the question and check it later in the week but I ended up saving too many and it's too much of a job to go checking back through them all, it would just be easier and less stressful to see which have been answered.
The issue here is simple: Reddit is designed to run on what is getting the most activity while this sub is designed to run on the most logical answers which can take days even weeks to get an answer. By that time the question is no longer visible as more active/new questions bury it.
Why don't you use flairs?
I've noticed that in movies like Indiana Jones and games like Uncharted the Nazis seemed to look for important historical or mythological artifacts. Is there any type of truth to the matter or was it all made up to serve the plot?
I'm reading a lot of primary sources from 18th and 19th century Europe for a class, and it seems like people were drinking just constantly. I know this is a bit qualitative, and I don't have any hard data to back it up, but why wasn't everyone permanently hammered all the time? Were they? What am I missing here?
Edit: if your response relies on the fact that people in the past drank alcohol because the water was generally unsafe to drink, you should know that this "fact" is actually a well-known myth, and your answer will likely be removed before I, or anyone else, can read it. Please help the mods out and just leave it to the historians.
Basically, were black teachers who previously had been teaching black students in black schools able to continue teaching?
Throughout the period of the Principate the army seems like a pretty good place to be. If you’re a tenant farmer looking for regular meals and regular pay, or you got the wrong girl pregnant, or there was a misunderstanding with a local gang in your local tavern; running away and joining the army seems like the thing to do. If you’re an aristocrat, military service is a prerequisite for any kind of public life.
By the 4th century, military recruitment is almost all through conscription, we have laws promising punishment for those who mutilate themselves to avoid the draft, and the landed elite not only no longer full the officer ranks, but have nothing but contempt for the army.
What happened both materially and socially to make the army an institution that many did not want to belong to?
P.S. I know I'm conflating tactics and strategy, but the distinction between the two in trench warfare seems muddled to me, apologies.
As I understand it, marrying for love was uncommon in the nobility due to the importance of securing alliances, inheritances, and family honor.
What was the situation for the average peasant? Were marriages still largely decided by the families, or was it acceptable to marry for love?
In 1415 Henry V invaded France with 6-9 thousand men. At the battle of Alesia 1500 years earlier Ceaser fielded 60 000 men and he was heavily outnumbered. So what changed
I couldn’t find any information online.
I often see people claiming that China's culture was totally destroyed during the cultural revolution by the CCP, that Taiwan has more chinese culture than the mainland etc.
To what extent is this true? What aspects have been "destroyed" and what aspects still remain the same?
[Story in question here]
I'm not an Americanist, but I've worked on a couple of books on Reconstruction, and of course 18th century politics have been in the air lately. My sense is that southern Democrats weren't really shy about explaining the grounds on which they resisted Reconstruction--it threatened to upset the racial hierarchy that had been the glue holding southern society together. Black male franchise would lead to the election of Republican and even majority-black governments. Freedmen could bear arms. The lack of a legal caste system would lead inevitably to miscegenation. Southern statesmen railing against Reconstruction did not seem concerned about dissembling or downplaying the racial animus at the heart of the complaint.
Were there attempts to argue against Reconstruction "on the merits" (i.e. on a basis other than open white supremacy)? Were the costs of e.g. the Freedmen's Bureau brought up in those conversations (in good faith or bad)? Is this just a well known canard that reframes a past dispute with contemporary talking points on the order of "the civil war was about states' rights rather than slavery"? Did the kind of northerners who draft-rioted kvetch about shouldering these costs?
Thanks!
One cannot, it seems to me, say that the Germans were gambling on Britain and France staying out of hostilities. After the invasion had already begun, Britain and France issued ultimatums declaring that a state of war would exist unless Germany withdrew. So the Nazi regime should have known full well what would result if they continued the invasion.
War with France and Britain was hugely risky. France was thought to be a major military power at the time. Perhaps more importantly, Germany had no realistic ability to defeat Britain. Even if Germany swept all Briish forces off the continent, Germany lacked the naval and air strength to force Britain out of the war. And it was always likely that the US would back Britain. So Germany was entering a war in which from the very offset, it lacked the power to force a major opponent out of the war - it would have to hope that the opponent just tired of the war, a very dicey proposition.
By invading Poland, the Nazis also created a direct land border with the USSR while at the same time antagonizing Britain and France, the only powers that could have helped to make Poland a buffer against possible German-Soviet clashes. The consequence was that Germany's chance of having to fight a two-front war went up considerably.
Given all these factors, what explains why the Nazi government went ahead and continued the invasion anyway?
At what point in Jewish history do the Jews become more strictly monotheistic? My current understanding (that I want to see alternatives too) is that Judaism was polytheistic, until after the Babylonian captivity when the Torah was composed--and after an encounter with a more monotheistic culture (Zoroastrianism, even though it is a dualistic system). Is it this encounter with the Persians that made the Jews monotheistic?
Also, when do the Jews see themselves as different than other Semitic tribes and cultures? When do they see themselves as special, elect, and chosen by their God and thus different from the cultural context which they emerge from? For example, most Semitic cultures practiced human and child sacrifice, and so did the Jews, but isn't it the case that they gradually abandoned that process and saw themselves as different?
I've looked it up online and found nothing, it's a simple question really, I imagine that if I did kill someone I'd feel horribly, like a stain on my conscience that would never quite wash off. My question is, was the common mentality different throughout the middle ages and is our view on murder nowadays a product of our modern times, or was it always seen as one of the worst things a man can do? I mean, one of the ten commandments is "thou shall not kill", but it seems to me (and I'm aware that this might just be a common misconception) that it wasn't as big of a deal in medieval times.
Thank you.
PS I swear I'm not a psychopath, just curious...
PPS Sources would be appreciated for me to check it out for myself more in depth
Surprisingly, nobody seems to have asked this question on the sub before, so I guess I'll be the first to bite. Did everyone drift apart or was it mostly one of them? How much of a role did Yoko Ono actually play, if any? Did Paul actually die in November 1966 (you don't have to answer that last one – of course he did)?
I read a lot of stories as a kid that were set in earlier centuries, and often poor children would be described as wearing rags. I pictured it then as them wearing old, tattered clothes with tears and stains. I think this interpretation came from the stories often being set during winter, so when they were described as shivering in the cold, I would imagine them being so cold because their clothes were full of holes. Was being "dressed in rags" actually more like wearing patchwork clothing, or maybe wearing older clothes that had been mended beyond recognition?
Link to the painting in question
Obviously it is not perfectly accurate, but nevertheless the painting appears to show a remarkably accurate depiction of the actual arms, armour and clothing that would have been worn by the participants - including Celtic war gear we could expect to be more obscure than its Roman equivalents.
What sources would Royer have drawn from to research this depiction, and how does his work compare to other contemporary artists in terms of authentically depicting ancient history?
Thank you for your time!
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