'Cyber-archaeology' salvages lost Iraqi art (BBC, 2015)

Middle Egyptian Grammar by Dr. Gabor Toth -- texts, vocabulary, exercises, etc

Volcanic eruptions may have contributed to war in ancient Egypt (SMH, 2017)

Viking expert raises doubts over research claiming famous warrior was actually a woman (ABC, 2017)

Egypt had an unusually powerful 'female king' 5,000 years ago, lavish tomb suggests (Livescience, October 2023). Meret-Neith, wife of the First Dynasty pharaoh Djet. It's not clear if she reigned in her own right.

Ancient Egyptian papyrus describes dozens of venomous snakes, including rare 4-fanged serpent (Livescience, October 2023).

4,500-year-old Sumerian temple dedicated to mighty thunder god discovered in Iraq (Livescience, February 2023). The god in question is Ningirsu.

Falcon shrine with cryptic message unearthed in Egypt baffles archaeologists (Livescience, October 2022). "An ancient falcon shine in Berenike, an old port city in Egypt, has flummoxed archaeologists who aren't sure what to make of its headless falcons, unknown gods and cryptic message that reads, 'It is improper to boil a head in here.'"

500 Year-Old Love Letter Found Buried with Korean Mummy (IBT, 2013)

Ancient Viking warrior given a hero’s burial may have actually been ‘transgender, non-binary or gender fluid’, researchers say (Pink News, 2020) | Archaeologists say it’s not scientific to assume gender of ancient human remains (Pink News, 2022) -- not just gender, but sex, which can't always be accurately determined and may not dictate how someone lived, which is why there are multiple "Oops! Warrior was not a man!" news stories | 1,000-year-old skeleton may have been non-binary medieval warrior, say archaeologists (Pink News, 2021)

The Theory That Men Evolved to Hunt and Women Evolved to Gather Is Wrong (Sci Am, November 2023) | Worldwide survey kills the myth of ‘Man the Hunter’ (Science, June 2023)

Lost Ethiopian town comes from an ancient empire that rivalled Rome (NS, 2020) ie Aksum

Oldest legible sentence written with first alphabet is about head lice (NS, 2022)

Where was the first city in the world? (NS, nd)

Powerful photo by Pacific Indigenous artist reveals truth about 1899 painting (CNN, 2022). "Kihara also believes that Gauguin’s models may not be cisgender women, referencing the research of Māori scholar Dr. Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, who has written that the “androgynous” models he painted were likely Māhū – the Indigenous Polynesian community that, like Samoa’s Faʻafafine, are considered to be a third gender and express a female identity."

Egypt unearths 'world's oldest' mass-production brewery, dating back to era of King Narmer, more than 5,000 years ago (ABC, 2021)

Third Gender: An Entrancing Look at Mexico's Muxes (YouTube, 2017)

The Hidden Girls of Afghanistan (YouTube, 2017) | Inside the Lives of Girls Dressed as Boys in Afghanistan (NG, 2018) | I'm a Woman Who Lived as a Boy: My Years as a Bacha Posh (Time, 2014) | Bacha Posh: An Afghan social tradition where girls are raised as boys (The News Minute, 2018) | She is My Son Afghanistan's Bacha Posh, When Girls Become Boys (YouTube, 2018)

Did Aboriginal and Asian people trade before European settlement in Darwin? (ABC, 2018)

History of chocolate rewritten by cacao traces found on ancient pottery unearthed in Ecuador (ABC, 2018)

Earliest roasted root vegetables found in 170,000-year-old cave dirt (NS, 2020)

Religion from nature, not archaeology (Starhawk, 2001). Still an important document.

I couldn't remember for the life of me why I'd borrowed this, so I just went through the index looking for interesting stuff. What an appalling thing to do with a book. Anyway:

The Hermopolitan Ogdoad (p 49): "Nun and Naunet, the primordial water; Heh and Hauhet, infinity in its spatial form; Kek and Kauket, darkness; and Amun and Amaunet, the hidden; this last pair being later replaced by Niau and Niaut, who symbolize the void." I wonder if that substitution represents a promotion for Amun to obscure snake in the lake to Creator. "Amaunet received a cult at Thebes from Dynasty 18 on" (p 26)

Re, in an unpublished papyrus at the Turin Museum (p 47): "When I manifested myself, manifestations manifested themselves. I had manifested myself as a manifestation of the existing: I manifested myself and manifestations manifested themselves, for I acted prior to the anterior gods I had created. If I acted priorly among the anterior ones, it was that my name existed prior to theirs, if I created anterior time and the anterior gods, it was to create all that is desirable on this earth." That's a lot of khepers.

"The two gods who were lords of the [Kom Ombo] temple each had his own divine 'family', made up of a mother goddess and a child god: to the triad Sobek-Hathor-Khons corresponded the triad Haroeris-Tasenetnefret ('the Good Sister')-Panebtawy ('the Lord of the Two Lands')... The theological system of Kom Ombo is extremely complex... [its myths] present original doctrines that constitute the specific 'theology' of the temple, in which two themes, one universalist and the other local, are juxtaposed to and combined with one another.' (p 228-9) And naturally the bloody reference is in French: A. Gutbub, Textes fondamentauz de la theéologie de Kom Ombo (Cairo, 1973).

The Nubian deity Aresnuphis had a temple at Philae. (p 229)

"The foreign deities - Reshep, Baal, Anat, Astarte, and Qadesh - all had a human figure that the Egyptians assigned to them. Without doubt, they would have found it difficult to slip into animal or composite form, for these stem from the deep structure of the Egyptian concept of the divine." (p 18-19) But the Canaanite god Haurun was falcon-headed, and then "he was identified totally with the sun god he had become in the New Kingdom: Hamarkhis, the Great Sphinx of Giza." As Haurun-Hamarkhis, he was represented as the sphinx. (p 19) Sopdu was also a foreigner who "kept watch over the east of the land both inside and outside the frontier of Egypt". (p 18) Plus in Ptolemaic times there was "the divine Thracian horseman Heron", worshipped in Faiyum villages "whose populations included a large contingent of... former soldiers settled on land granted to them by the crown." (p 246) Other foreign gods worshipped in Egypt included Bendis (Thracian), Mithra (Persian), and Kybele and Attis. (p 276)

"... the bestiary present in the divine iconography was extremely coherent. It did not include animals that could live in Egypt at a remote point in time (giraffe, rhinoceros, elephant) but left because of climate change well before the period of historical, political, and religious formation, nor did it include those introduced at a much later time, such as the horse. More precisely put, while the horse played a role, it was in direct relation to foreign deities such as Anat and Astarte, who entered the native pantheon in the New Kingdom." (p 17)

Astarte and Reshep were introduced during the NK. "Astarte in particular, with the epithet 'daughter of Ptah', had her own temple at Memphis, the temple of the 'foreign Aphrodite' mentioned by Herodotus.' (p 276)

At Esna, Khnum is called "father of fathers, mother of mothers", and "associated with several goddesses, in particular Neith, the very ancient goddess of Sais, who at Esna was also a creative power and bisexual. Heqa, their divine child, received a cult in the mammisi... At Esna, the theme of creation is quite important and includes the 'raising of the sky', the modelling of humanity by the potter god, and the formation of the world by means of the 'seven creative words' of Neith." (p 227) Once again the reference (Sauneron) is en Fraçais. Zut!

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Françoise Dunand and Christiane Zivie-Coche. Gods and Men in Egypt: 3000 BCE to 395 CE. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 2004.

A few notes from this chapter of Religion in the Ancient World:

• "It is also striking that Ba'al and Osiris, the dying fertility gods, each have two goddesses caring for them: Isis and Nephthys for Osiris, 'Ashtart and 'Anat for Baal." (Hmm, adds Kate: in the "Contendings of Horus and Seth", Seth gets 'Ashtart and 'Anat as wives. Ishtar and Anat do seem like a natural pairing - or even a redoubling of the same goddess? While I'm thinking out loud, is there any connection between the Sumerian ninan "lady of heaven" and the Egyptian nbt pt "mistress of heaven"?)
  
  
• And in one myth, "El apparently mates with both Athirat and 'Anat". The dirty old man. Colless suggests that the lyre-playing figure at the right of this drawing of "Yahweh and his Asherah" may be 'Anat, as she plays a lyre in the Ba'al myth. ("A tenuous little link", to quote Kenny Everett.)
  
  
• There's a male Ugaritic god, 'Ashtar, whose name is cognate with Ishtar, but is not the same deity as 'Ashtart. Ishtar appears as Ba'al's consort in a myth "only preserved in a tattered state, in a Hittite version."
  
  
• "Deities are like words: some of them maintain their original meaning throughout the ages, but some of them shift their ground and acquire new functions over time."
  
  
• Colless debates whether 'Anat or 'Ashtart was the Biblical "Queen of Heaven", mentioning that 'Anat-Bet'el and 'Anat-Yahu were worshipped at Elephantine alongside Yahweh.
  
  
• Meanwhile in the Sinai peninsula, where the Egyptians got their turquoise, proto-alphabetic inscriptions use the title Ba'alat ("goddess") and name three goddesses: Elat, Tanit, and 'Anat. "Tanit has been variously identified as 'Ashtart, 'Anat, or Ashirat, but she may be a completely separate personage."

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Colless, Brian. "Ba'al's Relations with Canaanite Goddesses." in Matthew Dillon (ed). Religion in the Ancient World. Amsterdam : A.M. Hakkert, 1996.

A large number of recorded public lectures given at the California Museum of Ancient Art are available on CD. I hugely enjoyed a 1987 talk by Dr William Fulco titled "The Love Goddess in Western Semitic Tradition" - here are a few notes from that.

As an example of cultural exchange between Hurrian and Vedic culture, Fulco compares the depiction of Kali with a description of a victorious Anat, who wears a necklace of heads and a girdle of hands. (ETA: A comparison also made by Marvin H. Pope.)

Fascinatingly, Fulco suggests that goddesses such as Anat and Athirat may be the active versions of the things their corresponding gods represent; for example, where Baal is the war, Anat is the actual fighting. (I think there's got to be a comparison here with the Hindu idea of Shakti.) He connects the ambiguous sexuality which crops up throughout ANE religion. Later in the talk, discussing the significance of names, he remarks that Anat and other goddesses are sometimes called the "Name of Baal" - that is, "an external manifestation of [Baal's] personality"; "that reality visible and manifested to the outside - that you can interrelate with". Fulco also relates this to the feminine spirit of God in the Bible.

Regarding the question of whether Asherah was the consort of Yahweh, Fulco suggests that she was seen that way in popular rather than "normative" worship (and hence all the condemnations of the practice in the Bible, which "give you a picture of what's actually going on"!)

Regarding the relationship ANE religions and Christianity, Fulco rather wonderfully says: "If I may put it in a faith context, if the Incarnation means anything, it means coming in the language people understand... Near Eastern mythology, mythological language, forms of worship and so on were things people understood, and I think that's what the Incarnation means, it means to use those, change those... I feel quite comfortable with it. It gives me a sense of historical context."

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Pope, Marvin H. "The Goddesses Anat and Kali," summary, Vol. II, 51, in
Proceedings of the 26th International Congress of Orientalists. New Delhi, 1968.