Never mind that face on Mars

[semillama]

Now it's an entire Egyptian statue!

http://ufoblogger.blogspot.com/2008/05/after-mars-man-now-its-egyptian-statue.html

Whee!!!

[DavidDvorkin]

1. I think we need to encourage this sort of silliness

It means lots more people supporting manned spaceflight.

(I'm speaking as someone who supports manned spaceflight, obviously.)

[cosmik debris]

2. Right path for the wrong reason? OK with me!

I'm just glad Mars doesn't have clouds or we would have stories about fluffy bunnies and popcorn in the Martian atmosphere. :)

[WoodrowFan]

4. Martian Bunnies?

Martian Bunnies?



But does he have his Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator??

[onager]

3. Thanks! The comments are priceless. Seriesly!

Anonymous said...

Not Egyptian

Atlantean

Learn!

May 20, 2008 1:35 PM
Anonymous said...
Indeed ,I'm with ya...;Atlantean probably.....maybe Mongol or Olmec,numerous civilisations have reached space ....400 000 000 years of civilisation on Planet Earth,i've learned.....Greetings to the best of Mankind.....LOVE and LIGHT

May 20, 2008 3:09 PM
Anonymous said...
OBVIOUSLY TOLTEC...THEY USED "BEAM ME UP" TECHNOLOGY TO BUILD THEIR SKYSCRAPERS.

As usual, I don't have enough of these little guys...

:rofl:

Well, being in Egypt, I naturally have to spout off about this. The "statue" in that photo looks oddly familiar, and I suspect a Photoshop-chop.

It looks a lot like the huge statue of Ramses II that was just moved fairly recently, from in front of the Cairo train station where it had sat for many years.

The term "Egyptian statue" covers a lot of territory. Naturally the Egyptians just spent tons of money and time carving random big-ass statues. Insert your preferred sarcasm smiley here.

That's just my dumbass way of staying there's no such thing as an "Egyptian statue" out of context. But you knew that.

Usual irrelevant tourist notes: one of my favorite statues is a great big 'un sitting in front of the rebuilt Alexandria Library. It's an Egyptian statue of a Greek (ok, Macedonian) ruler, I think Ptolemy III. I'm impressed because it's a "warts and all" kind of statue. Mr. Ptolemy is noticably chubby (as all the Ptolemies tended to be). He completely lacks the idealized musclature etc. of most Greek "heroic" statues, and certainly of rulers.

Oh, a Greek statue. That reminds me of one other minor point, which I'm sure all you have thought of. If the Egyptians could move a statue to Mars, why were they so frequently conquered? Leaving aside the mysterious Hyksos conquest, why did the tech-savvy Egyptians allow themselves to be ruled by foreigners FOR 2500 FRIGGING YEARS?

Sorry for shouting, but you can look that up. Circa 332 BCE, Alexander The Great cut a deal with the last Pharoah, Nectanebo II. And Nectanebo would be the last Egyptian ruler of Egypt until Gamel Abdel Nasser took over--after the 1952 Revolution.

The Ptolemies eventually called themselves "Pharoah," but for that we can thank the usual suspects--Egypt's professional priesthood, who brown-nosed the Macedonians to protect their own unearned hereditary privileges. The High Priest Maneletho insisted that Ptolemy I be invested as Pharoah, which Ptolemy eventually did after 8 or 10 years of pretending that he was just taking care of Egypt for Alexander The Great's heir. Cough...

Bonus Irrelevant Rant: it was Ptolemy I who decided Egypt needed a new religion, so he invented a god named Serapis.

According to one local legend here in Alexandria, NOBODY worshipped Serapis at first. Everybody knew it was a con job. The Egyptians had their fun traditional gods, and so did the Macedonians. The un-fun god was represented by Alexandria's large Jewish community, but nobody paid him much attention. The philosophers at the Library/Mouseion took an occasional swipe at him, forcing his apologists like Philo Of Alexandria to cobble up weak defenses out of leftover Platonic BS. The Mediating Logos! WTF?

And then--a miracle! Demetrius of Phaleron popped up in Alexandria, in need of a job. He was a tyrant who had been run out of Athens about one step ahead of a lynch mob, at least according to my historical sources. Ptolemy I put him in charge of organizing the Alexandria Library.

Demetrius was a student of Aristotle and obviously a very keen student of human nature. The poor fellow was suddenly struck blind, but was miraculously HEALED after spending one night in Alexandria's heretofore empty and ignored Temple Of Serapis.

That did the trick. A few years later, Serapis was being worshipped all around the Mediterranean.

End rant. It's my weekend and I've just been reminded I need a drink. Or 5.

[moggie]

5. Who said the Egyptians went to Mars?

Obviously it was the other way around. There was a truly ancient and advanced humanoid civilisation on Mars; a few thousand years ago, they finally lost patience with their woos, always banging on about gods and the razor-blade-sharpening properties of pyramids etc, bundled them onto a large ship (the hieroglyphs on the nose translate to something like "B Ark"), and sent them to Earth. The ship landed near the Nile, and the rest is history.

[NoodleBoy]

6. I think it's amazing how impressively incompetent the Ptolemies seemed to be

It's been a long time since I read stuff about Ptolemaic Egypt, but my feeling was on reading it was if it weren't for queens, sisters, or consorts named Cleopatra, the most of the kings named Ptolemy would have lost their kingdoms almost by accident.

[onager]

7. All downhill after the first Ptolemy!

And that Ptolemy had accomplished a thing or two even before he got to Egypt. I especially like the story of how he hijacked Alexander The Great's corpse. Then he had to fight a whole series of wars with his former companions, Alexander's successors, as they tried to hijack Egypt.

To Cleopatra, add the two other popular female names that confuse anyone trying to keep up with the Ptolemies--Arsinoe and Berenike. There were so many of them, ya need the Greek alphabet to tell them apart.

Ptolemy II was first married to Arsinoe Alpha, daughter of the king of Crete, IIRC. His second wife, Arsinoe Beta, was also conveniently his sister. Which is how he got the name Philadelphus--sister-lover. After that everybody's wife seemed to be named Cleopatra, Arsinoe or Berenike.

You're right about the women in that dynasty generally being more useful than the men. According to legend, in 300 years only one member of the family ever bothered to learn the native Egyptian language. And that was the last Ptolemaic ruler, the famous Cleopatra VII.

If you need some great lightweight summer reading, you can do worse than Duncan Sprott's Ptolemies Quartet--four huge books of historical fiction about the family. Heavy on the sex and violence. And narrated by fun Egyptian gods, like Thoth.

[realisticphish]

8. Thoth is my favorite

i have a small statue of him by my computer

[onager]

9. The Ptolemies are in my window...

Hmm. That sounds like a song from a really bad musical or something.

What I mean is, the biggest memorial to the Ptolemies is visible from my window. Or would be, if it didn't have the slight problem of no longer existing.

As I sit here typing this, with the window open in my apartment, I can see Fort Quitbay, which is several miles away. The fort dates from the 15th century but is built on the site of the Pharos Lighthouse. Partly using recycled materials from the Pharos, even.

The historical experts say you have to imagine a structure 4 to 5 times the height of the fort, to get an idea of how high the Lighthouse stood.

I'm looking at the fort and trying to imagine that right now. It's not easy. Damn, that thing must have been bigger than Bill O'Reilly's ego.

When Julius Caesar came here, one of the first places he tried to take over was the Pharos. He took the Lighthouse, but didn't have enough troops to take all of Pharos Island (the Romans were outnumbered 10-to-1 by the Egyptian army). So the Egyptians simply regrouped on the southern end of the island, waited, and ambushed the Romans when they tried to send reinforcements by boat.

One of the boats contained Caesar himself, always a hands-on sort of guy. He very nearly drowned during that battle. Interesting to speculate on how that might have changed history. Not much? Independent Egyptian empire under Cleopatra? Famines followed by revolution in Rome if Egypt suddenly cut off grain shipments?

[realisticphish]

10. when i look out my window

I see a taco bell :D

Bastards living in interesting places...

[WoodrowFan]

11. Surface Findings from the Mars Lander

Martian soil comprised of 96% astroturf, 4% crushed Natty Light cans.

Martians already three films ahead of us in the National Treasure movie series, two in the Fast and Furious series and fourteen in the Leprechaun series.

Martian textbooks refer to existence of Earth as "an unproven scientific theory."

more at.....
http://francescoexplainsitall.blogspot.com/2008/05/surface-findings-from-phoenix-mars.html

[TZ]

12. Now wait.

You know better than that WF...That whole Phoenix landing on Mars thing is something that was filmed in a Hollywood studio...:P