Travel Tuesday: Ancient Egyptian Shabtis

A variety of shabtis from the 19th and 20th dynasties (1292-1075 BC)

If you've spent much time in the Egyptology section of any good museum, you've probably seen a collection of little figurines that look like miniature mummies. These are called "shabtis", meaning "answerer". They were put in tombs in order to answer the call to work in the afterlife so that the deceased could relax. They'd come to life and do whatever labor the gods called on them to do.

Some shabtis got their own coffin and larger collections were put in decorated boxes like the one on the left.

Shabtis come in a variety of styles and quality and are made of wood, faience, wax, terracotta, or stone. Some tombs had hundreds of them, and they are one of the most common artifacts to find in museums. These are from the archaeological museum in Bologna, Italy.

I recently did a blog post over on Black Gate about shabtis in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo that goes into more detail about these remarkable artifacts. I've also done a post right here on a rare double shabti.

Travel Tuesday: Mohammed's Birthday Parade in Tangier

When I was in Tangier last month, the Muslim world was celebrating the birthday of the prophet Mohammed. While it's an important holiday, in Tangier it doesn't come with as many celebrations as New Years or Ramadan. A few shops were closed and there were groups of young men going around my neighborhood pounding on drums and singing religious songs like they do for every holiday. The main public celebration that I saw was this parade, which went down one of the main streets in the new city.

These are students from a local madrasa, a religious school. The plaques are a traditional way to practice writing out the Koran. When you graduate you get your diploma on one.

I stumbled upon the parade by accident so I only had my phone with me, not my main camera. It was hard to get good shots because Moroccans, just like Europeans, always crowd around anything interesting and start snapping pictures with their phones. Some even took selfies! Yeah, the selfie is an international phenomenon. Oh well. So I missed getting some shots of some of the marchers in the parade and the bull being led to the slaughter, later be eaten at a feast in the prophet's honor. Here are the shots I did get, in the order the parade passed me.

"Where are the women?" my wife asked. Well, there were these little girls all dolled up in the back of a pickup. They were the only ones.

These musicians were pretty cool. I'm not sure what region they were from, probably in the Atlas Mountains. I've never seen costumes like this before. There are still large sections of Morocco I need to see!

Muslim Depictions of the Prophet Muhammad

Considering recent events, this is a good time to point out that the ban on depictions of the Prophet Muhammad are not universal in Islam. There have been eras in the past where Muhammad was depicted in visual form, and he continues to be depicted in parts of the Muslim world today.

The above picture is taken from the Siyer-i Nebi: The Life of the Prophet, written in Cairo circa 1388 and illustrated in Constantinople (modern Istanbul) in 1595. The book contains several images of Muhammad. This one shows him and his followers marching on Mecca accompanied by angels. In all of the images the prophet's face is covered. More illustrations from the book can be seen at the website for Bilkent University in Turkey.

The University of Bergen also has a webpage of Muslim art show Muhammad. One of them is this Shia image from Iran. Most Persians have never followed the belief that Muslims are forbidden to create images of humans, and this has extended to including Muhammad in their art. Most Sunni believe that such depictions are wrong, but as the Ottoman image proves, this hasn't always been the case.

Post-Apocalyptic A to Z: Oracles of Doom

"The end of the world is nigh!"

How many times have we been told that the world was about to end? This has been going on a long time, and not just in the Christian religion. A lot of faiths get on the apocalyptic bandwagon. Some of the more, um, acquisitive preachers even convince their flock to hand over their money because they won't need it when the world ends, but for some reason the preacher does.

Personally, I think this sort of millennial thinking is a cop-out, a handy way to avoid dealing with the practical consequences of our actions. The world isn't going to end tomorrow, or even next year or in the 22nd century. It's up to us to make it a better place and keep it in good shape for our great-grandchildren.

WWJD? Take care of the kids, not shrug his shoulders and say none of it matters because it's all coming to an end tomorrow.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

My travel articles on other websites: shamanism and Waterloo

As regular readers of this blog know, I write for other websites fairly regularly, including the fantasy magazine Black Gate. I've recently published two travel articles for them. One is on an exhibition in Valencia, Spain, on The Art of Shamanism and the other is about the Waterloo panorama in Belgium. Check them out!

Post-Apocalyptic A to Z: Doomsday

We're going to take a religious turn with the Post-Apocalyptic A to Z and talk about Doomsday. Many religions predict the end of the world and the most influential religions in the West--Christianity, Judaism, and Islam--all teach that the world will someday be wiped clean.

Despite the rather grisly depictions of what Doomsday will be like, the faithful don't seem to worry about it overmuch. One of the points of millennial religions, of course, is to prepare oneself for the End Times. Some less mainstream religious factions predict the end coming very soon, or even try to bring it about.

Personally, I think we should just assume that the world isn't going to end anytime soon and that we should take better care of it. "God helps those who help themselves," as they say. (Actually that line isn't in the Bible or Koran, it originated in ancient Greece).

End Times literature has always been popular, and perhaps the most famous series of Doomsday books is the Left Behind series, which covers the adventures of people who didn't get taken up in the Rapture. I've never read these myself and was wondering if any readers out there could share their impression of these books?
 


Four Horsemen of Apocalypse, by Viktor Vasnetsov. Painted in 1887. Click here to see a full size as this format really doesn't do it justice.