Ancient art Archives - Page 3 of 5 - Tales of Times Forgotten

Did the Ancient Egyptians Have Electric Lighting?

It has been widely claimed on the internet that the ancient Egyptians had electric lighting. This claim is made largely based on an extremely tendentious interpretation of a series of relief carvings from the southern crypt of the ancient Egyptian Temple of Hathor at Dendera and the fact that some Egyptian tombs and temples do not currently have very much soot on their ceilings.

Unfortunately for those who want to believe that the ancient Egyptians had electric lighting, they simply didn’t. As I will show, the reliefs from Dendera almost certainly don’t depict lightbulbs and there is a much more reasonable explanation for why some Egyptian temples and tombs do not have soot on their ceilings.

Why Is Tutankhamun So Famous?

Pharaoh Tutankhamun is undoubtedly the most famous of all ancient Egyptian pharaohs. He is one of the very few Egyptian pharaohs that most ordinary people are able to name. Most people have never heard of Hatshepsut and even fewer have heard of her nephew and successor Thutmose III, but everyone has heard of Tutankhamun. He even has a Batman villain named after him!

Things were not always the way they are today, though; up until the discovery of his tomb in 1922, Tutankhamun was utterly obscure. If you asked someone on the street in 1921 who Tutankhamun was, no one would have been able to tell you. Even if you asked an Egyptologist about him, many of them probably would not have known who he was. Ironically, it is precisely because of his former obscurity that Tutankhamun is so famous today.

Was Jesus Copied Off the Egyptian God Horus?

Every year, around this time, you start seeing memes claiming that Jesus is “a copy of” some pre-Christian deity. One of the most popular deities for people to claim Jesus is “a copy of” is Horus, a god who was worshipped in ancient Egypt from prehistoric times until after the rise of Christianity in around the fourth century AD. Horus was believed to have been the son of the god Osiris and the goddess Isis. He was closely associated with the pharaoh and he is usually depicted in ancient Egyptian art with the head of a falcon.

The truth is, all the memes claiming that Jesus is “a copy of” such-and-such deity are wrong. Historians agree that Jesus of Nazareth was a historical figure who lived in Galilee in the early first century AD and who was crucified in Jerusalem in either 30 or 33 AD under the orders of the Roman governor of Judaea, Pontius Pilatus. The stories about Jesus’s life recorded in the gospels are certainly heavily embellished with legend and fiction, but, ultimately, there was a real man who stands behind the mythological tradition. While the stories about Jesus recorded in the gospels have probably been influenced to varying extents by stories of various pagan deities, it is entirely wrong for anyone to claim that the whole story of Jesus is copied directly from any single pagan deity.

Of all the deities Jesus is often claimed to have been copied off of, Horus is one of the most commonly mentioned, but also one of the most absurd. I actually included an extremely brief debunking of the claim that Jesus is based on Horus in this article I published on my website in March 2018, but I received some flak over the fact that I did not quote any specific claims from proponents of the Jesus-Horus connection and respond to them. I suppose, then, it is about time that I wrote a more complete response to the alleged connections between Jesus and Horus.

Were the Greeks Really Obsessed with the Golden Ratio?

The so-called “Golden Ratio,” or φ, occurs when the ratio of the greater of two quantities to the lesser of two quantities is equivalent to the ratio of the sum of the two quantities to the greater of the two quantities. Expressed using incomprehensible math symbols, it looks like this:

Many people believe that the “Golden Ratio” is the pinnacle of aesthetic perfection and that, the closer something is to the Golden Ratio, the more beautiful it is automatically. Many people also believe that the ancient Greeks were obsessed with the Golden Ratio and that they incorporated it into all their buildings and works of art. Unfortunately for those who love a good math story, we have no good evidence to support either of these conclusions.

In fact, the Golden Ratio is not even mentioned in any Greek text until as late as the early third century BC. The Greeks were arguably fascinated with the idea of using mathematical proportions in art to a certain extent, but they were by no means obsessed with the Golden Ratio in particular. The story of how we came to believe that the Greeks were obsessed with the Golden Ratio, though, is as fascinating as it is bizarre. It involves a friend of Leonardo da Vinci, an eccentric nineteenth-century German psychologist, and Donald Duck.

Why Are Babies in Medieval Paintings So Creepy?

I have recently discovered that there seems to be something of a widespread notion that babies in medieval paintings look “creepy.” I have never personally thought that babies in medieval paintings look particularly “creepy,” but this seems to be a notion that a lot of other people have.

Even if you’re like me and you don’t think that medieval babies necessarily look “creepy,” there is no denying that babies in a lot of medieval paintings don’t exactly look like real-life babies. Instead, for the most part, they look like tiny middle-aged men. The reason why they are portrayed this way is actually extremely fascinating and has to do with the way people in the Middle Ages thought about the purpose of art.

Was Hypatia of Alexandria Black?

A lot of people today seem to have quite a fascination with the subject of race in the ancient world. I frequently encounter questions on Quora asking whether various historical figures from ancient times were “Black” or “white.” Elsewhere online, I often encounter claims about the racial identities of people from ancient times.

Back in September 2019, I wrote an article in response to various articles I had encountered claiming that the Roman emperor Septimius Severus was Black. In that article, I concluded that, while you could certainly describe Septimius Severus as what we today would call a “person of color,” it would be misleading to describe him as Black without any kind of careful qualification.

Another historical figure from ancient times whose racial identity seems to provoke a great deal of controversy is the early fifth-century AD Neoplatonist philosopher and mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria, who is often cited (quite anachronistically) as an example of a Black woman who excelled in STEM. In this article, I will answer the question: “Was Hypatia of Alexandria really Black?”

Why Do Ancient Greek Sculptures All Have Such Tiny Penises?

Whenever I talk about ancient Greek sculpture, there is always one question that everyone always asks me. It is not “How did the style of Hellenistic sculptures differ from the style of earlier Classical sculptures?” Nor is it “Can you tell me more about how ancient Greek sculptures were originally painted?” No, of course, not. The question everyone always asks me is “Why do they all have such tiny penises?” I have been asked this question so many times that I feel compelled to answer it.

The Real Reason Why the Venus de Milo Is So Famous

Everyone has heard of the Venus de Milo. It is easily one of the most famous, most instantly recognizable sculptures of all time. It been referenced, imitated, and spoofed countless times in popular culture. Have you ever stopped to wonder why it is so famous, though? Why is it that we all revere this one particular statue? Well, as it turns out, the present-day hype over the Venus de Milo is, to a large extent, the result of wounded French national pride in the early nineteenth century.

What Makes Alexander the Great Different from Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun?

King Alexandros III of Makedonia, or, as he is more commonly known today, “Alexander the Great,” still looms large in our history books and in popular culture, where he is often portrayed as a benevolent ruler and a glorious conqueror, spreading the light of Greek civilization to the supposedly barbarous peoples of the east. In Greece today, Alexander is widely revered as a national hero.

Nonetheless, we must wonder why it is that Alexander is portrayed as such a glorious conqueror; whereas other historical figures known for their conquests, such as Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan, are remembered as ruthless barbarians and destroyers of civilization.

Was Septimius Severus a Black Roman Emperor?

It has been widely claimed on the internet that the Roman emperor Septimius Severus (ruled 193 – 211 AD) was a black man. For instance, a blog post published on the site Rasta Livewire on 25 September 2010 describes Septimius Severus as “first black African-born Emperor of Rome” and declares that it is important for black people today to “remember and celebrate” the Severan Dynasty he founded.

The claim that Septimius Severus was a “black Roman emperor” has even found its way into peer-reviewed journals dealing with contemporary black culture. For instance, here is an article written by Molefi Kete Asante and Shaza Ismail titled “Rediscovering the ‘Lost’ Roman Caesar: Septimius Severus the African and Eurocentric Historiography” that was published in March 2010 in the Journal of Black Studies, a peer-reviewed journal on contemporary African-American culture, that advances this claim.

So, was Septimius Severus a black man? Well, it depends on what you happen to consider “black.” Septimius Severus was definitely born on the African continent; that at least makes him African. Unfortunately, there are some serious problems with calling him a “black Roman emperor.”