The Battle of the five Armies countdown - day 21 of 30
Fascinating differences in strategy in the Quiet Games. Gem just whacked Impulse until he did what she wanted. Skizz and Ren came up with a complex system of signals. Grian and Jimmy somehow unlocked??? telepathy??? and killed it????
We have all been talking about how bad Greek mythology representation the Disney "Hercules" movie is, but I want to stress out something very precise. An association shown in this movie that is often repeated in a lot of bad mythology works that show they do not know their source material.
I am talking about Disney-Hades' association with fire. Not only is it just the most anti-Hades thing to have him with a fiery temper - because Hades in Greek mythology was precisely an emotionless god, a stoic, hard, cold and shadowy figure, who only rarely got angry and only under exceptional cases (the two only cases where he got angry to my memory are the Persephone stuation, and the Asclepios one). But it also makes us believe that "fire" meant the same thing for Greeks as it means for us.
By that I mean: Hades as the god of the underworld can't be FURTHER away from the symbolism of fire in Ancient Greece. In Greek mythology, fire is life, action and emotion. It is the fire of the forge and of Hephaistos' crafting. It is the fire of Helios the sun. It is the fire of Hestia, the hearth of the home. It is the fire of Eros' passionate love. But one thing that is made clear in Greek mythology is that the underworld, and the realm of the dead, is a place with no fire, no warmth, no light. It is darkness and silence and coldness - the very antithesis of what life is supposed to be.
In fact, it isn't just a misrepresentation of Greek mythology - because a lot of Indo-European mythologies share this concept of the underworld as devoid of fire and light. From the Mesopotamian Underworld where the dead eat dust, to the cold and damp realm of the Norse Hel, in the ancient world fire was NOT associated with afterlife in a single way.
No need to tell you that Disney's Hades was actually more influenced by the Christian Devil than by the actual Greek figure of Hades - to the point that his early concept art has him in the traditional "red devil outfit with horns and a tail". And the heavy presence of fire in his character is a leftover of this very Christian take on the character - since he is supposed to be the "bad guy of the underworld", and so we jump on the "fiery hell" of the Christians.
There's no fire in the Greek Underworld - except for maybe the Phlegeton river, probably the only fire within Hades' realm - as the whole thing was that you became a "shadow" in the Underworld, and wandered for all eternity in the darkness, robbed of your voice and memories (unless some kind hero came with some blood to feed you). Well, its a tad bit more complicated than that but the idea stays - no fire in the underworld. Fire belongs to homes, to love, to forges, to the world of the living, not the one of the dead. Heck, according to the Prometheus myth, fire was originally from the realm of the IMMORTALS and the sole property of the gods of OLYMPOS! It was what made humanity closer to the gods (aka closer to immortality, aka further away from mortality). The idea can't be clearer: in Ancient Greece, fire was life.
“Like a surprise symphony or perhaps a car alarm”
1. None of my family is on here
Legolas pretty quickly gets in the habit of venting about his travelling companions in Elvish, so long as Gandalf & Aragorn aren’t in earshot they’ll never know right?
Then about a week into their journey like
Legolas: *in Elvish, for approximately the 20th time* ugh fucking hobbits, so annoying
Frodo: *also in Elvish, deadpan* yeah we’re the worst
Legolas:
YOU ARE IMPORTANT TO PEOPLE!!!!!! YOU BRING JOY INTO THEIR LIVES!!!!!!!!!! YOU MAKE THEM HAPPY JUST BY EXISTING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PEOPLE THINK ABOUT YOU POSITIVELY EVEN WHEN YOURE NOT WITH THEM!!!!!!!!! PEOPLE LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!! I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So. Drinking tea out of a bowl. Somehow tastes better than drinking it from a mug. Or maybe that's just the taste of pettiness that comes with doing something someone just told you not to do.... Guess we'll never know!
Archaeologists Discover 3,000-Year-Old Priest’s Tomb in Peru
Archaeologists in northern Peru have unearthed a 3,000-year-old tomb which they believe might have honored an elite religious leader in the Andean country some three millennia ago.
Dubbed the “Priest of Pacopampa,” referring to the highland archaeological zone where the tomb was found, the priest was buried under six layers of ash mixed with black earth, with decorated ceramic bowls and seals indicating ancient ritual body paint used for people of elite standing, Peru’s culture ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
Two seals were also found along the upper edges of the tomb, one with an anthropomorphic face looking east and another with a jaguar design facing west.
Project leader Yuji Seki said the large size of the tomb, nearly two meters (2.2 yards) in diameter and one meter (3.3 feet) deep, was “very peculiar,” as was the position of the body lying face down with one half of his body extended and feet crossed.
The body was also found with a bone shaped into a tupu, a large pin used by Andean Amerindians to hold cloaks and ponchos, which would have been used to hold a woman’s blanket, he added.
“Though this person is a man, the associations are very peculiar,” said Seki. “I think this was a leader in his time.”
The Pacopampa Archaeological Project has been working in the area since 2005, the ministry said, adding that rock layers indicate the priest, who would have been buried around 1,200 B.C., was some five centuries older than the tombs of the “Lady of Pacopampa” and the “Priests of the Serpent Jaguar of Pacopampa,” discovered in 2009 and 2015 respectively.
Last year’s find of the “Priest of the Pututos,” however, is believed to be older.