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Informative Ancient Egypt Comics: BROS
Our1st place contest winner requested a Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep comic as their prize.
I took a class about Ancient Egypt last semester and we had a whole lecture dedicated to talking about how gay Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep were.
Their tomb walls were decorated with scenes of them ignoring their wives in favor of embracing each other. In one scene, the couple is seated at a banquet table that is usually reserved for a husband and wife. There’s an entire motif of Khnumhotep holding lotus flowers which in ancient Egyptian tradition symbolizes femininity. Khnumhotep offers the lotus flower to Niankhkhnum, something that only wives were ever depicted as doing for their husbands. In fact, Khnumhotep is repeatedly depicted as uniquely feminine, being shown smaller and shorter than his partner Niankhkhnum and being placed in the role of a woman. Size is a big deal in Egyptian art, husbands are almost always shown as being larger and taller than their wives. So for two men of equal status to be shown in once again, a marital fashion, is pretty telling. Not to mention they were literally buried together which is the strongest bond two people could share in ancient Egypt, as it would mean sharing the journey to the afterlife together.
And yet 90% of the academic text about these two talks about these clues in vague terms and analyze the great “brotherhood” they shared, and the enigma of Khnumhotep being depicted as feminine. Apparently it’s too hard for archaeologists to accept homosexuality in the ancient world, as well as the possibility of trans individuals.On the last note, I was walking around the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and there is a mummy on exhibit. It caught my attention because the panel that was describing it was talking about how it was a woman’s body in a male coffin and wow, the Egyptian working that day really screwed that up. My summary, not actual words, sorry I can’t remember verbatim but it basically said that someone screwed up.
They claimed that the Egyptians screwed up a burial.
The Egyptians. Screwed up. A burial.
Now I’m not an expert in Ancient Egypt but from what I know, and what the exhibit was telling me, burials and the afterlife and all that jazz DEFINED the Egyptian religion and culture. They don’t just ‘screw up’. So instead of thinking outside the box for two seconds and wonder why else a genetically female body was in a male coffin, the ‘researchers’ blatantly disregard the rest of their research and decided to call it a screw up. Instead of, you know, admitting that maybe this mummy presented as male during his life and was therefore honorably buried as he was identified. But it would be too much of a stretch to admit that a transgender person could have existed back then.
(Sorry I can’t find any sources online and it’s been like 2 years but it stuck in my mind)
There’s a lot of bigoted historian dragging on my dash these days and it makes me happy.
Once again, more proof that we queers have ALWAYS been here, and it’s a CHOSEN narrative to erase them.
Reblog because ancient gay power
ALWAYS. REBLOG. THIS.
And also ancient gay power.
Ancient Gay Power
Can we talk about the Vikings for a second? Because this same fuckery applies there.
First, you’ve of course got the biological women who were buried as warriors.
One such woman was buried with two horses, heaps of weapons and, most notably, a sort of gameboard in her lap that was used to plan battle strategy. All of this indicates a Viking who commanded troops and led them into battle. Naturally, therefore, it was impossibleit was a woman. Researchers were forced to test the bones four different times, each time concluding that, yes, this is a woman. There are still people who argue that there are two bodies in the graves or that, basically, they scienced wrong.
The body of another biological woman was discovered in a grave surrounded by weapons but it was automatically dismissed she was a warrior because, you know, woman. Then they looked at her skull more closesly and saw that she took a sword hack to the face and. it. might. not. have. been. what. killed. her. See a reconstruction of her face using facial recognition software.
Now let’s talk about the myth that Viking men had long hair. Every image and description we can find of Viking men from their time period shows them with short, practical haircuts. That’s not to say that no Viking man ever had long hair, but in general, hair seems to have been worn short in a number of styles - after all, sea wind is not kind to long hair, nor is horseback riding or battle; you can get blinded, tangled up or grabbed by your enemy.
So where did this myth come from? The same place as all the rest of this: bigoted historians. In the 19th century, scholars were really beginning to delve into the old Norse sagas and translate them and speculate on their meaning.
If you’re at all familiar with the Hebrew Old Testament, you’ll know the God contained therein is mostly large, angry and masculine but with moments of softness, empathy and compassion. He is even called El Shaddai which translates roughly to something like ‘one who feeds with breasts’. This is further expounded on in the Christian New Testament with God compared to a mother, a refuge, etc. He’s not the only high god given male and female attributes.
Odin is portrayed similarly (large, angry and masculine) but like the Hebrew/Christian God can be deeply caring. At times he was specifically depicted with the long hair of a woman to make this very obvious. Scholars could not believe that almighty ODIN could have a female side, so they decided that Viking men must have had long hair.
The second component was the existence of a cult called what translated to Long-Hair(Like A Woman’s). In mythology there were two brothers who went on various adventures together, including slaying a dragon. Whether they were based on any actual people or not is unknown. What is known is that after their deaths they more or less became the Norse equivalent of saints and a cult formed around them. For reasons that are unclear, these cult priests, who were biologically male, dressed in womens’ clothes and wore their hair long like women, earning them their name. They were fearsome warriors, often taking up arms to defend their shrine or to join in a particular cause and battle, fighting in their womens’ garments.
Again, historians could not accept the idea of transwomen Vikings or even Vikings who embraced their sacred feminine sides, which ever the case may be, and instead, long hair was just a Viking way.
This erronous myth of long-haired vikings is everywhere and the next time you see it, remember it’s the product of bigots and historians who can’t be bothered to do their job properly.
Sun, 10 Nov 2019 23:48:00
