iterukheti.fumblr.web

(OOC: With thanks to this thread for the inspiration!)

Dispatches from the Iteru
Kemet from Without, from Within

16 Pachon, 5144 K.C.
First up, a couple pieces of news: the Ask Box is now open again! I'm sorry about the break, but like I said, my studies come first, and I was a little overwhelmed. Also, while I was out, my sister managed to persuade me to let her make the occasional post or answer some of your questions. I know some of you might have reservations about talking to our clergy, but hear her out, she's got quite the personality. Yes, that was a compliment, sis. Anyway, now that that's out of the way, on with the reviews!

Little Lavrco in the Land of the Pharaohs
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Oh Osiris what is this I don't even.
For those of you who are mercifully unaware, "Little Lavrco" was originally an Aquitanian comic book from about 60 years ago, telling about the adventures of an ancient tribesman fighting off the bigger, badder dogs in geopolitics of the time, and now the animated versions are getting a re-release in time for the anniversary. This was not a good idea.

In this adventure, Lavrco goes to Ancient Kemet and bumbles about in the court of Ramses II, showing us "arrogant" Kemetics what's what and saving the pharaoh from a (fictitious) palace conspiracy. All the classic stereotypes are on display: the Kemetics are shown as condescending, greedy, holier-than-thou, scheming, and cheap, and there's even a gag with an innkeeper speaking broken Celtic with a modern Ptah statue behind the counter and thick glasses, to say nothing of the physical appearances--just look at that racist caricature up there and his broken Old-Lettering.

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Many foreigners have only seen those Kemetics who choose to leave home to get rich teaching or working in the pharmaceutical industry overseas, and what they don't realize is that those are the upper classes. We're not all like this. In fact, even those are usually the younger children whose siblings are already working in the Ministries for His Divine Majesty, and they're used to getting what they want. It's sad but true that our Constitution has turned the appointments into kind of a plutocracy as well as a theocracy (thank you, Ellenes, for your descriptive terms!). For that matter, I know the language is hard to get past (and harder still to learn, with three different written forms), but you can't just make up stuff either, like the gobbledygook these characters have for names.

Get to know us before you start making assumptions, okay? Oh, and again, that ask box is open! Send me your questions.
Till next time,
Kheti
EDIT: (And Seshen!)
 
IC: Well, we Krievi maybe can sympathize with you in terms of language - until the large grammar reform in the middle of the previous century intended as part of secularization of government, we had separate script for commoners and separate for clergy. A fair share of stereotyping too - while patronymics form an important part of Baltakrievjia names, we DO not use them as surnames - though I heard your FORMAL naming convention also involves naming father, grandfather and great-grandfather, so it's natural that on about 4th middle name foreigners get bored and confuse one of them for surnames.
Also, you mentioned your sister is a member of clergy? What deity does she serve? A typical female cult like Isis? Or maybe Khator (sorry if I butchered the names of your deities, but I did not intent anything sacrilegious - your phonetics does not translate well into Kreivja language).
OOC: Damn that was hard. For all I guessed this was a mix of No Alexander of Macedonia with a dash of Moses as Pharaoh of Egtypt thing, so I simply decided that for my geographical region TTL the Baltic tribes will remain dominant, as such POD may butterfly proto-Slavic migration north altogether.
 
I'd heard about that, part of the industrialization and modernization thing, right, with the whole area getting reforms to make them more mutually intelligible? I swear, with the number of languages just around the Wadj-Wer (oops, sorry, Mediterranean) alone, you're dancing on eggshells not to accidentally offend anyone by, like, talking to a Magyar in Bulgarian or something. I'm learning Krievan myself at school, along with Ellenic and Etruscan and a couple others. We've got the same problem with names--technically there are no surnames, since it's descriptive enough in full, but you get nicknames and 'from-such-and-such' to boot. Hard to remember, maybe, but it's necessary if you're going to maintain a bureaucracy like this one, or even keep medical records.

Speaking of, actually, we've opened up the clergy a lot more than people think. In cases where the god's not specifically linked to one sex, we've got both genders working equally in their respective cults and departments. Seshen serves Inpu (or Anubis if you like--don't worry about transcription, there's plenty of local variation in names, especially in Wawet/Nubia, which is just to the south of where we live), so naturally, she's an undertaker, too. People expect her to be gloomy and mystical, but really, she's one of the most cheerful people I know. It's a comfort to the patients at the hospital (we're too cheap to have a separate mortuary temple here at Edfu).
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The local hospital.
OOC: A little more complex than that, but yeah, more or less. Moses was pharaoh, but also both Cambyses I and Cyrus 'the Great' were killed at the Battle of the Persian Border here, my reasoning being that they weren't butterflied away since Egypt was focusing more on internal stability than Eastern expansion at this point. Maps later if you like. The Baltics are still Baltic, yeah, but the rest of Europe is very different--the Magyars and Bulgaria mentioned above are not OTL's versions!
 
Well, place of origin figures as surname for our aristocracy - both traditional, descending from great councilors-priests of the past, and commoners elevated by Mindaugas V during said industrialization - we were modernized enough, thanks to sitting on major trade hub, but mass industrialisation involved the exploitation of commoners in some ways the Council of Priests disagreed with, so grammar reform was performed as part to curb their monopoly on bureaucracy.
My family surname is "of Palasha" literally, though neither me nor even my paternal grandfather were born in said estates. Our languages demands are more lax than yours - Ellenic, Aquitanian and Suomi is considered enough for an educated middle-class lady. Though learning your language is in plans - you can't be successful medical transcriber with Ellenic only, though I thought writing medical thesis in "formal" Old Script Kemet language is considered a show-off.
OOC: No OTL Magyars? I can get Bulgaria since there are two regions by this name (Khazars anyone), but the word Magyar is of Finnish origin.
 
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OOC: The one interesting thing is name Lavrko, which has a certain Czech sounding to it. But even with POD in 1000 BC the migration of Elba tribes in Aquitania to the point that their naming conventions here are considered NORMAL for stories set in cartoonish Ancient Times sounds a bit... random. Unless it's ELBA/Moravia region called Aquitania in TTL for some reason.
 
OOC: The Magyars here are the same people, hence the same Finno-Ugric name, but in a different location; they're also called by the name of said tribe instead of OTL's "Magyarország", a tradition that's been kept (imagine if we said "The Serbs" instead of "Serbia", for instance).

'Lavrko' is a variant "more modern" transcription of 'Lavrco', a name from Aquitanian--which is related to the Basque language, hence why it sounds so odd compared to the areas around it.
 
OOC: The Magyars here are the same people, hence the same Finno-Ugric name, but in a different location; they're also called by the name of said tribe instead of OTL's "Magyarország", a tradition that's been kept (imagine if we said "The Serbs" instead of "Serbia", for instance).

'Lavrko' is a variant "more modern" transcription of 'Lavrco', a name from Aquitanian--which is related to the Basque language, hence why it sounds so odd compared to the areas around it.
Yes, with c it makes a bit more sense than with k. Thanks for clarification:)
 
17 Pachon, 5144 K.C.
Double Feature Review

Part 1

A Gathering of Beasts
by Hodei Bolibar

The third and latest book in alternate-history master Bolibar's ongoing Persian series, which you may recall I've been following. If you're just joining us, Bolibar shows us a world in which the then-tiny, backwater nation of Persis produced a great leader 2300 years ago, who managed to conquer the Medes, Khwarezm, Chaldea, Canaan, Lydia, Hellas, and of course, Kemet, and butterflies it into a modern-day Great Power which maintains control by military force where they can't impose their culture. Not a surprise that he picked Persis, given their reputation for saber-rattling and aggressive religious zealotry (no offense to Zoroastrians out there), but it's hard to believe that they ever could have founded a lasting dynasty on that plateau, let alone over such a wide area. Anyway, the series largely focuses on the efforts of the heroic Kemetic Resistance and its leader, the beautiful Tadu-Heba, though of course the hero is from Lengtzan.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Bolibar's middle books tend to drag on. This time is no exception either, sad to say. Whereas the first part of the series was reminiscent of Islands in the Dark, that classic Gothic War tale, by this time the covert sabotage and guerrilla aspects have been discarded in favor of lengthy discussions about motives and scenes of spying on the Satrap's movements, interspersed with the occasional (awful, as usual) sex scene. It does promise to be leading to an interesting conclusion, quite possibly one with Earth-shaking consequences, but getting there is a chore. If, like me, you're determined to see it through, read it; otherwise, just ignore the sequel hook in the first one.

Part 2

The Chosen by Senenmut-Yuya Sabju

This on the other hand, is quite interesting, if only for its sheer goofiness. It seems destined to become a popcorn flick by this time next year. A conspiracy theorist by nature, the author is known for publishing radical thrillers filled with ridiculous historical inaccuracies, and this time it verges on the offensive and racist, but is so far over the top it's hard to take seriously. The idea is that the Ebrai, an ancient Semitic people who are best known for producing one of our ancient dynasties under Pharaoh Mose I, were not assimilated and generally absorbed into the collective unconsciousness, but that they've been secretly living among us all these centuries. Our hero (whose name this time I forget) discovers that he is one, heir to these "chosen people", and is tasked with preserving the ancient heritage and recovering a lost weapon of spiritual power from their ancestral land in Canaan. That that was where they were living at one point is about the only thing he got right. Most controversial are the references made to the early pyramids being made with slave labor--which they certainly were not! The builders' guilds would have had the head of anyone using free workers--just as the Royal Unions of the Ministry of Construction complain today about bringing in cheap Mahabratan and European labor. Still, worth it for the scenes of (spoilers!) exploding heads from electrical contact.

In response to Valena: I know how that feels, and I kind of envy your laxer standards...if you want to be a diplomat and a scribe, you've got to know your stuff here. You're totally right about the script, though, Demotic will do just fine for anything you actually need to read or write, Old Script goes on diplomas and fancy scholars' dissertations and such.
 
The slave labor for pyramids... if I remember correctly, participation in building of pyramids was actually a honorable duty, assistance in immortalizing the Pharaoh. If anything like this was written in Krievjia, the author of this BS will get sued by religious authorities at the very least - the church of Perkunas for example demanded the ban on several episodes of Princes of Amber, the most well known TV show on our history, which showed some high priests of Perkunas conflicting with our ruling House as madmen bent on human sacrifices. They lost lawsuit, but the depiction of opposition to Algirdas the Great was heavily watered down (which made things more realistic, though, while still showing that high priest Vytenis is the villain).
Though this crap was heavily politicized part of what is still an enjoyable TV show (nothing like say this B-list comedy on "Bulgarian" reporter which makes shit up on the country it goes on) I am seriously surprised your cult of Ptah allowed thing like The Chosen to be published, as their cult was really big under Mose I IIRC, and Ebrai cryptohistory is a direct offense against the cult of Ptah.

As for scribe, that's quality over quantity, medical transcription means that you have to study pharmacology too, and it is considered reasonable to achieve fluency in three foreign languages or so, as linguistics is not major component of job. Though our teachers take a lot of ideas from your scribe training system, as I've said, we here in the North are a lot more lax about this - three foreign languages is enough if profession involves deep knowledge of something else.
 
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OOC: Oh, delightful to see this format gaining popularity. :D

IC: Is it true what they say about human sacrifice for kings' burials in the early dynastic periods of Kemet? Forgive my ignorance—I live across the ocean, so most of what we hear about Kemet is second-hand from Europe and Isken[1], and sometimes intentionally unflattering at that. (Granted, my homeland isn't free of stigma about human sacrifice, either.)


[1] - NikoZnate says this refers to "the land beyond the eastern horizon" in ancient Egyptian cosmology; in this case it's China.
 
Valena: Yeah, I think the only things keeping it going are that we just had a big fuss about the Ministry of Education (naturally, guided by the Thoth priests) censoring references to foreign religions, especially the monotheist ones, in state education, and that nobody takes it seriously. But if Senenmut-Yuya knows what's good for him, he'll keep his mouth shut about it, because all it will take is one pundit for the Ptahites to notice and it'll start another debate that will end with His Divine Majesty stepping in personally as the arbiter of all religion (Blessed Be His Name), and adding it to the Index of Banned Books. At least he's careful enough to avoid direct slander of the Pharaoh himself, and thank goodness it wasn't a foreigner or we'd get You-Know-Who in the Red Hoods launching another fear campaign. You know, we actually got the PoA series here, too; sadly, most of us didn't get the memo that it was fictionalized--and, gah, if you think that movie was bad, did you see the one where the Eirean Special Forces guy drops out to become a hairdresser? Just...tacky. I guess you're right about the job, though. I'm not much of a medic myself, despite what the aforementioned stereotypes would have you believe, so it's more languages but less complicated chemistry.

Huehuecoyotl: Seshen: I'll handle this one. And hey, Internet people! Good to hear from you. In response to your question, yes, briefly, it did happen. For one dynasty, right at the beginning of the calendar, nobles were interred with servants. But what set us apart from other cultures in the region (let me just pat myself on the back here for a second) is the early innovation of substitutions for the physical needs of the deceased. Since then, we've used ushabti, which are figurines which are imbued with spiritual power in Duat (the afterlife), and carry out servants' functions. That has the advantage of not requiring either the loss of human life or the maintenance of their souls in the afterlife. And really, Isken ought to know better than to criticize that, considering how much fake paper money they burn for their dead. I get to help make and consecrate the shabti before funerals, and it's actually pretty fun! Here are some.
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Oh, and it's always interesting to see how well our respective native religions have meshed, particularly the heliocentric part...and the fact that outsiders keep accusing us of death worship. I try to explain, it's not death that Kemet worships, but the continuation of life in another form, the consummation and reward for a life well-earned for the righteous! But...this is Fumblr, and we probably have enough religious discussion. XD
(OOC: Seriously, this is such a great idea for worldbuilding! :D)
 
It's interesting, that you find this thing.. bad (and it IS bad and stereotypes galore). In fact, I'd have thought that it will have been advertised in your country by cult of Min - with all this phallic symbolism in it (even if in form of dumb dick-themed jokes), and I prefer dick-themed jokes over shit-themed jokes any time of year (though it may have something to do with cult of Pyzius (Krievi fertility deity for those who suffered from Ministry of Education censorship) sponsoring such comedies as a part of fund-raising, with some percent from profits going to temples, to the point that we, along with Ellenes, have "dick comedy" become a meme in itself - cult of Dionysus also makes money this way especially now with restrictions on ritual prostitution).
The parody on Bulgarians was offensive since we have quite a minority of those here in Baltakrievjia - it started back when we traded amber, furs and linen to them for goods of steppes, and the "Bulgarian" comedy author surely counted on audience who has never met a Bulgarian in their life. Making fun of existing stereotypes and having a comedy being endorsed by several important cults is one thing, making shit up from scratch and then airing the damn thing in the country with large Bulgarian minority is beyond stupid. It got rightfully booed in cinemas.
And as for Princes of Amber being fiction and not realistic account on descendants of Mindaugas I... well, the author made some liberties here and there, and the sources he worked with were biased (reforms of Mindaugas V were accompanied with sort of revisionism galore, with his political opponents getting demonized, and the author of the series worked with the sources written back then - conflict of Algirdas and the priesthood got overblown cause it was needed to set precedent for Mindaugas V reforms), he also used some popular myths - but hey, the Amber Palace of Algirdas III the Mad is wonderful, if fictitious thing, and lends itself well to the screen. Also, I think that southern countries like to see something exotic - and northern land of amber, fur and great trees is just a thing. Anyways, trade is good, Amber Room presented by Mindaugas V to your then-current Pharaoh is still one of the great attractions of your Royal Residence, and a cultural exchange is wonderful thing - even nowadays in blogs such as yours.
 
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