Pauline

300 years of New Orleans history of pirates, hoodoo, and good food is in my blood. Historical fiction is my passion. Ghosts always welcome. 🏳️‍🌈

[Archaeo - Histories @archeohistories]

Prince Rahotep, moustachioed “General of the Army” and “High Priest of the Sun”, seated beside his luminous lady Nofret, “the Beautiful One,” and “Known to the King”. A royal power couple of the 4th Dynasty (2575-2551 BC), their quartz eyes still glint with all the certainty of rank, ritual, and well-earned reverence. Discovered in 1871 in their mastaba tomb near the Meidum Pyramid, they are renowned for their incredible realism, particularly the crystal-inlaid eyes that appear lifelike.

Few sculptures have startled the modern world quite so memorably as the painted limestone statues of Prince Rahotep and his elegant consort, Nofret. When archaeologists first cast their torchlight upon these lifelike figures, buried within a mastaba north of Sneferu’s pyramid at Meidum, their flickering beams met the glinting gaze of quartz and alabaster eyes so uncannily vivid that the Egyptian workmen recoiled in fright; convinced, it is said, that the statues had come alive.

Indeed, inlaid eyes were a prized technique in the Old Kingdom, a subtle alchemy of materials that endowed stone with soul. The realism is nothing short of theatrical: Rahotep, lean and alert in his crisp white kilt, sports a finely shaped pencil moustache; an Old Kingdom flourish that would not look out of place in the salons of 1920s Montmartre. Such facial hair, now rarely associated with ancient art, appears to have been rather fashionable among men of rank, if the relics are anything to go by.

Beside him sits Nofret, whose very name means “beautiful,” and who more than lives up to the epithet. Her complexion is rendered in a pale, almost luminous cream, a striking contrast to her husband’s warm ochre tone. Her violet-painted eyes, wide and otherworldly, lend her a dreamy detachment, while the cascade of her black wig (held in place by a floral diadem) frames her delicate features with ceremonial poise.

The pair sit stiffly side by side, as convention demanded, yet the sculptor breathes a quiet vitality into their presence. Nofret’s sheer dress clings just enough to suggest the generous curves beneath, softened further by a lavish broad collar of painted beads. By contrast, Rahotep’s adornment is a simple, modest heart-shaped pendant and choker hint at military sobriety. And yet, for all this symmetry and stillness, there is an intimacy between them, a closeness as tender as it is stylised.

Rahotep, thought by some to be a son of King Sneferu and thus a brother to Khufu, held titles of considerable weight: High Priest of Re at Heliopolis, General of the Army, and Chief of Constructions. Nofret, meanwhile, is described as “the one acquainted with the king,” a title that hints at noble privilege.

Their tomb, among the grandest in the Meidum necropolis, reveals further treasures: beneath the eastern façade with its formal false door, archaeologists uncovered an earlier wall, curiously concealed, bearing a cross-shaped shrine and richly painted reliefs. The reasons for its concealment remain as enigmatic as the expressions on the statues themselves.

The pair serve as a masterful embodiment of early 4th Dynasty artistry, poised at the threshold between the experimental naturalism of the 3rd Dynasty and the strict canon that would dominate for centuries to come. Though the lower limbs are handled with something of a sculptor’s shrug, all finesse is lavished upon the upper forms, particularly those hypnotic eyes, which still catch the light and the imagination over four thousand years later.

(H. Rahotep: 121cm; Nofret: 122cm)

🎥© arkeolojievreni (IG)

© Egyptian Museum, Cairo

#archaeohistories

[Pauline @Paulineagain]

@NosCalanGaeaf 91 days 🎃

[Pauline @Paulineagain]

Circa 2nd or 3rd century stella depicting Epona astride a horse via Wikipedia. Epona was always depicted with one or more horses, sometimes holding grain, a cornucopia or a plate that was possibly a sun disk. #horses #Epona

[Pauline @Paulineagain]

Epona the Celtic horse goddess, was known on the Continent and in Britain. She may have originally been an Indo-European mare deity representing sovereignty and granting kingship through her favor, who took on attributes of local earth and sun goddesses as well. #FolkloreSunday

[Pauline @Paulineagain]

A man can sail in the forecastles of big ships all his life and never know what real sailing is ~ Jack London (Brigantine Cristina by Antonio Pettiluga) #quote #JackLondon #SeafaringSaturday

[Pauline @Paulineagain]

@NosCalanGaeaf 4 hands down

[Pauline @Paulineagain]

@SubRosaMagick Nailed it!

[Pauline @Paulineagain]

Also, as a lifelong New Orleans Saints fan, I feel that tag is serendipitous. Help us defeat those dragons this year Saint Margaret!

[Pauline @Paulineagain]

Margaret of Antioch, an early Christian martyr, is known as a dragon saint but unlike the male knights she does not harm the dragon that tried to eat her. In fact, she often appears to have tamed and befriended rather than executed evil. Quite a trick for a girl. #FolkloreSunday

[Pauline @Paulineagain]

Sainte Marguarite, alabaster statue with gilding from Toulouse, France c 1435. I also like this painting from the Peruvian School by Francisco Zurbaran, St Margaret the Shepherdess, both via Wikipedia #Saints #dragons

[Bluebell Raven @BluebellRaven]

Medea casts a spell over a flaming cauldron, and suddenly a golden-fleeced lamb leaps out rejuvenated. Impressed by this, Pelias’s daughters are tricked into butchering their aging father to restore his youth, but in the end, Medea maliciously leaves him dead.

🎨Tales of the Greeks and Trojans (1963) illustrated by Giovanni Caselli.

[Pauline @Paulineagain]

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason to stay ashore ~ Vincent Van Gogh (Fishing Boat Arriving by Vincent Van Gogh) #fishermen #quote #vincentvangogh #SeafaringSaturday

[Pauline @Paulineagain]

@bear_stbernard May her name and wisdom be remembered and a comfort to you.

[soli @solisolsoli]

Moby Dick by Gerard DuBois

[Godyssey @GodysseyPodcast]

There is an open question in Arthurian canon as to what becomes of Galahad (or Percival in older traditions) when he obtained the Grail. Did he ascend with it to Heaven? Does he now defend it? Did he die? Different authors take different stances. #FairytaleTuesday

🖼: D.D. Crane

[ArchaeoHistories @histories_arch]

In 203 CE, a young noblewoman sat in a prison in Roman Carthage and wrote down what was happening to her. She was waiting to die.

Her name was Vibia Perpetua. Newly a mother, nursing an infant son, she had converted to Christianity at a time when the emperor Septimius Severus had issued an edict against new conversions. She was arrested. She knew she would not be released.

So she wrote.

What she left behind became known as "The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity." It is the earliest surviving text known to have been written, in part, by a Christian woman. Most of it is in her own first person. More than eighteen centuries after her death, we can still read exactly what she was thinking.

She describes her father coming to the prison and begging her to renounce her faith. He weeps. He calls her by name. She holds firm each time. She writes about her baby too, how frightened she was to lose him. A sympathetic guard brought the infant to her cell so she could nurse him.

The other figure in the story is a servant named Felicity.

Felicity was heavily pregnant when arrested. Roman law forbade executing a pregnant woman. She prayed to give birth before the execution date. According to the account, she did, delivering her daughter just days before the arena. A Christian woman from the crowd took the child.

On March 7, 203 CE, Perpetua and Felicity and several companions were brought into the amphitheater at Carthage.

The crowd expected sport. They got something different.

Perpetua was attacked by a wild heifer. She was thrown, fell, rose, and gathered her torn tunic around her. She helped another prisoner who had fallen. By the account that survives, she walked through the arena as though she was in a dream.

When the animals were done, the gladiators came. The gladiator assigned to Perpetua was a novice. His sword strike missed. She cried out. And then, by every account that survives, Vibia Perpetua reached up and guided his trembling hand to her own throat.

She had decided how this would end.

The diary survived because later writers copied and preserved it, convinced they were preserving the voice of a martyr. They preserved something else too: a record of a woman who, in the worst weeks of her life, chose to write down exactly what she saw and felt and refused.

Her words, written in a prison cell with a nursing infant beside her, read as personally as a letter to a friend.

She did not think of herself as making history. She was trying to explain what had happened to her, and why she would not change her mind.

That document exists today. She wrote it.

#archaeohistories

[Pauline @Paulineagain]

Portrait of Henuttawi, wife of Menna the builder. Mural fragment via Wikipedia

[Pauline @Paulineagain]

Malachite was favored in #AncientEgypt as an eye makeup. Ground and mixed with castor oil, it was swiped along the upper and lower lid. Protective from infection during intense heat, the glittery paste was also thought to help attract the love of a true heart #FolkloreSunday

[Pauline @Paulineagain]

Of all those I have met with who have traveled on land or sea alone, not one has told me it was 'lonely' ~ John MacGregor (#painting by Ivan Aivazovsky) #quotes #SeafaringSaturday