Wordless Wednesday: An Ancient Egyptian Lady

Wordless Wednesday: Procession in Honor of Isis by Frederick Arthur Bridgeman

Top 5 Weirdest Ancient Egyptian Hollywood Names

Ah, ancient Egyptian movies. Love them or hate them, you have to admit they're entertaining. But when Hollywood and history unite, strange things happen to characters' names. From the strange to the just plain silly, here are my top 5 weirdest names from ancient Egyptian films.

Does Ftatateeta own a hairbrush?

1. Ftatateeta from Caesar and Cleopatra (1945). Can't figure out how to pronounce this one? Neither can Claude Raines' Julius Caesar. He keeps stumbling over the nonsensical name of Cleopatra's trusted Nubian servant. Also, someone should have told the casting director that Nubians are black.
2. Nellifer from Land of the Pharaohs (1955). It's like the writers got together one day, smoked something funny, and tried to decide what to call the movie's treacherous femme fatale. Nefer is the ancient Egyptian word for beauty. I can hear the conversation now: "What about Nellie?" "Nah, not Egyptian enough. How about Nefer?" "No, I've got it...Nellifer!" "Brilliant!"
3. Shila from Cleopatra's Daughter (1960). Contrary to what you'd expect from the title, this film is not about Cleopatra's daughter Selene. No, it's about a fictional daughter named Shila. I mean...Shila, really? Come on, at least try to make it sound Egyptian.
4. Anck-su-namun from The Mummy (1999) and The Mummy Returns (2001). Not only does she have a faux-Egyptian name, pharaoh's mistress walks around in nothing but gold body paint and has an affair with the high priest Imhotep (which is a real Egyptian name). To make things even odder, none of the characters pronounce her name in exactly the same way. I think her name may actually be based on that of Ankhesenamun, King Tut's wife.
5. Nefer from The Egyptian (1954). Nefer's is the most harmless name on this list. It's an actual Egyptian name. A male one. Since Nefer is a woman, her name should be Nefret. The real reason I put her on this list is because in the novel the movie's based on, her name is Nefer-nefer-nefer. That, and she wears an increasingly bizarre series of wigs.

"Darling, you must give me the number of your wigmaker!"

Giveaway of Daughters of Rome at Confessions & Ramblings of a Muse in the Fog

Just wanted to let all of you know that Svea of Confessions & Ramblings of a Muse in the Fog is giving away a copy of Kate Quinn's new novel Daughters of Rome. Here's a picture of the cover and a synopsis from the publisher (copied from Svea's blog):

Synopsis (From the Publisher):

"A.D. 69. The Roman Empire is up for the taking. The Year of Four Emperors will change everything-especially the lives of two sisters with a very personal stake in the outcome. Elegant and ambitious, Cornelia embodies the essence of the perfect Roman wife. She lives to one day see her loyal husband as Emperor. Her sister Marcella is more aloof, content to witness history rather than make it. But when a bloody coup turns their world upside-down, both women must maneuver carefully just to stay alive. As Cornelia tries to pick up the pieces of her shattered dreams, Marcella discovers a hidden talent for influencing the most powerful men in Rome. In the end, though, there can only be one Emperor...and one Empress."

Fall Under the Spell of Cleopatra Selene

Lily of the Nile
Author: Stephanie Dray
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Summary: After her parents' suicides, Cleopatra's daughter Selene is taken to Rome with her two brothers. There, she must master two things: the magic her mother gave her, and the dangerous political game the emperor plays.
Pros: Selene is a strong female protagonist, and Dray does a superb job of recreating early imperial Rome in all its splendor and scandal.
Cons: Occasionally it's a bit heavy on the "divine feminine."

Princess Selene has everything going for her: beauty, incredible wealth, and the future throne of Egypt. But when her mother, the fabled Cleopatra, commits suicide, Selene's world dies with her.

She is plucked from the marble halls of the palace of Alexandria and deposited in the confining rooms of a humble manor in Rome. Once the beloved children of a divine queen, she and her brothers are now hated orphans.

They are not completely powerless, however. Just before their mother died, she gave each of her three children a magical amulet. Selene soon learns that she is a vessel of the great goddess Isis, who carves bloody messages in hieroglyphs into her arms.

Will she embrace her heritage and sacred vocation? Selene wants to honor her mother and her beloved goddess, but patriarchal Rome is not a safe place for a magical girl who worships a goddess of love and justice.

Dray weaves history, fiction, and fantasy into a compelling tapestry. A few times the goddess allusions are a little jarring, such as when Selene's brother Philadelphus tells her, "Without Isis, people forget female divinity." Philadelphus sees the future, true, but this still seems like a curiously modern thing to say.

For the most part, though, Selene's devotion to Isis fits smoothly into her historical landscape. The Isis cult was extremely popular throughout the Mediterranean, and its values of  peace, love, and justice paved the way for Christianity.

Fans of Selene will be happy to learn that Lily of the Nile is the first book in a trilogy about Cleopatra's daughter. The second book, Song of the Nile, will be published later this year.

Wordless Wednesday: Rare Terra Cotta Statue of an Egyptian Mourner

The Egyptian Job

It's like Ocean's Eleven meets The Egyptian. (For those of you who don't know, The Egyptian is a delightful and thoroughly ridiculous ancient epic film from the 1950s.) The only thing that could make this trailer better would be if it were for a feature film instead of a documentary. Hint hint, Hollywood!

Ancient Egyptian Music

I shared this quite some time ago, but not many people were reading the blog back then. The music is a recreation of what ancient Egyptian music may have sounded like. Unfortunately, they were very inconsiderate and didn't leave any sheet music for us to find. The pictures are more lovely Greco-Roman mummy portraits like the one I shared on Wednesday.

Wordless Wednesday: Roman-Egyptian Mummy Portrait, 2nd Century AD

When to Edit Your First Draft

I'm facing a bit of a dilemma. I want to continue on writing my novel (I have 21 pages so far), but I'm feeling a strong urge to rewrite what I already have. It feels clunky and awkward, the dialogue is stiff, and the characters are flat and somewhat cliche. At least that's the way everything seems to me.

The beginnings of my stories are always awkward. I'm meeting these characters for the first time, and it takes me a while to get to know them and learn how they behave and talk.

I've always been of the "grit your teeth and muscle through" school of writing. I don't revise until the end of a story. But now I feel like I should stop and revise what I have before moving on. I might even create little character profiles to help me flesh out the characters.

How do you handle this situation, fellow writers? What do you recommend?

Chasing Mummies Episode 2: In Which the Pyramids Were Not Built by Slaves

The Five Chambers of the Great Pyramid

Today I watched the second episode of the archaeology "reality" series Chasing Mummies, starring Egyptologist Zahi Hawass, who was reinstated as head of antiquities on Wednesday.

In this heavily scripted show, Hawass has been saddled with three interns/"fellows" (read: actors who've dabbled in history). In this episode, he wants you to know one thing in particular: the pyramids were not built by slaves. He says it in almost every scene.

Actually, this is a noble goal, and I'm glad he decided to focus on this issue. If he sounds like a broken record, it's only because some people need this concept pounded into their heads. I'm a Christian as well as an Egyptophile, and if I had a dollar for every time I've had to gently correct some of my co-religionists on this issue...

Anyway, Hawass is remarkably patient when his interns repeatedly ask if the pyramids were built by slaves, and points out that the Jewish slaves lived at least a thousand years after the pyramids were built.

Today, Dr. Hawass took Our Young Heroes into the five chambers of the Great Pyramid. The five chambers are little rooms built above the king's burial chamber to help distribute the weight of the massive stones.

Tourists aren't allowed in the chambers because they're small and potentially dangerous, so seeing this on TV is the closest most of us, even many Egyptologists, will ever get to them.

The chambers in the pyramid are pretty cool, so I enjoyed watching this episode. Until the show's producer apparently decided things weren't exciting enough and wedged himself through narrow tunnels in the pyramid before having a panic attack.

Also until Zoe decided that the Fourth Chamber was an excellent place to pee.

Dr. Hawass, considerably put out by this, scolded Zoe. I can't say that I blame him. The ancient tomb of a god-king is not the ideal place to take care of your business, even if you have an accident like Zoe did.

Hawass took the other two interns, Lindsay and Derek, up to the Fifth Chamber, leaving the disgraced Zoe to sit and snivel in her own urine.

The Sphinx disapproves of your stupid alien theories.

In this chamber, as in the others, Hawass pointed out the graffiti left on the stones by the ancient workmen. This is solid proof, he explained to his interns, that aliens did not build the pyramids. Some people, however, insist aliens did it because of the size and weight of the massive stones.

Derek thought this was an excellent time to pipe up about his opinion on the matter. "That's what I'm thinking," he said, excited and blissfully unaware that the Fifth Chamber would be an excellent place to store the dead body of an intern who's watched too much Stargate. "I'm thinking that this chamber might have been built by aliens."

Dr. Hawass managed not to throttle him, which just goes to show how much more patient he is than I am about such things. After a well-deserved lecture, Hawass lead Derek and company back down through the Five Chambers and out of the pyramid.

Sure, it stuck to a script like glue, but this episode was entertaining and educational. I only wish they'd also addressed the issue of ancient Atlanteans and the apocryphal Hall of Records supposedly hidden under the Great Sphinx. Perhaps in a future episode...