Who doesn't want to teach kids Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs?   Looking at Hoopla's books on hieroglyphs, I was intrigued by claim of the title "Writing Hieroglyphics (With Actual Examples!)." Other than a few flaws, it doesn't disappoint- if you're six. Let's hit the pluses first: it addresses the types of hieroglyphs- ideograms, phonograph and determinatives; they cover directionality of texts; Hieratic, Demonic and Coptic are touched on; and the Rosetta Stone and the eventual deciphering are given a moment.  I was surprised.   And the flaws aren't too bad- other than the use of "hieroglyphics" when they mean "hieroglyphs."  Including the title.  Oh, and the monoliterals. They use the whole ABC, which I guess you should teach it as to someone, y'know, learning the English alphabet anyway, so c is included and transliterated to 𓎡.  See the picture of them below. These are my biggest complaints about it- and that they don'...

This week is Kreskin heavy since he's been a little needy lately.  First among equals and all that.

Well, Halloween was so off the hook last week I actually forgot to hit publish.  I will fix that. This week, I'm lamenting a lost opportunity:  the Fox television show Hieroglyph. Historical fantasy that was probably more eye candy than factual, it was canceled before the first episode was broadcast. Here's a look at what we missed. A comment on the YouTube page explained that the fangs here belong to a cat-like being... hmmmm.

 Writing this November 3, 2022.  Tomorrow it will be a hundred years since the tomb of Tutankhamun  was discovered.  The news didn't show up in the New York Times til December 1.

 This is inspired by a post in a Facebook group I'm in: someone was asking for gift suggestions for his wife.  I realized Museum gift shops would be the place to look. I have to apologize for the American centricness of the list.  If you have some suggestions, please include them in the comments.   My primary criteria is specifically a Museum shop with LOTS of Ancient Egyptian themed merchandise. Two exceptions: the Metropolitan Opera, thanks to their productions of Akhnaten and Aida, and what I can only imagine is the distributor to most of the American museums- but I suggest trying the actual museums first as they derive a lot of their funding from sales. Here we go: The Metropolitan Museum  in New York City The Getty Museum in Los Angeles The Field Museum in Chicago The de Young Museum in San Francisco The Louvre in Paris The British Museum in London The Egyptian Museum in Turin The Metropolitan Opera Shop for Akhnaten  and Aida The Museum Sto...

 Well this week, watching Rage of the Mummy, I managed to make it to EIGHT minutes.   The opening credits aren't bad.  It makes the transition from credits to story using a comic book as a framing device and that's probably where the budget went.  Dunno. The Mummy's tomb has been plundered by a group of evil occultism called The Pharaohs of Darkness.  They're auctioning off the artifacts among their members, "but first let's go around the room and introduce ourselves." That was when I had to stop. It might have gotten better but I wasn't going to risk it. My advice: pass on this one, too.

I love free stuff. Educational free stuff? Even better.  Links below to several of my favorite libraries online.  Make some tea, grab some munchies, settle in and go wild.  You'll be down the rabbit hole for hours. This was prepared with the assistance of Marvin cat. (All links have been set to direct to Egyptological content for simplicity's sake.) Sidestone Press: "Open Science is central to our publishing philosophy: we believe that scientific information should be freely available to all. Through our own digital e-book library we guarantee that scientific information published through Sidestone Press is immediately freely available around the world. Our authors always retain the copyright of their research and are free to share  PDF s of their work."  Here The British Museum:  "The British Museum Studies in Ancient Egypt and Sudan (BMSAES) is a peer-reviewed, academic publication. BMSAES is dedicated to presenting research on aspects of ancient Egypt an...

 After watching the NBC The Curse of King Tut's Tomb, I thought I could give the Casper Van Dien movie a try. I stopped at five minutes, forty-five seconds. I did try.  Really.   Despite being skeptical because it was a Hallmark production... the opening segment was... promising. CGI Ancient Egypt, with Tutankhamun there... Ok... And he was sent by Ra to defend the world from evil.   By evil, they mean CGI Set and his minions. By defend, they mean Tut has a buff bod and golden steampunk angel wings and flies out to slay the minions with his sword.   This is all under expository narration by Caspar (Omega Code*) Van Dien.   So Tut smashes the Emerald Tablet, forcing Set to return to his nether dimension and... Cut to dogsled in the Arctic.  Ol' Casper is an Indiana Jones class archeologist searching for the pieces of the Emerald Tablet, two previous pieces having been stolen from him by the Hellfire Council.  They show up as he'...

  I've been waiting for this one: The Mummy's Curse!  So quick recap: Egypt, 30 years later, Massachusetts Massachusetts and now... 25 years later in Louisiana. Yes, as Kharis and his love Ananka somehow entered the swamp im Massachusetts and emerge in Bayou contry. Really.   And the Priests of Arkam are back. Fourth film in the series and it's gloriously bad.  Opening with a Cajun musical number, it makes very little sense relative to the previous movies. But that's ok, because (for the most part) Mummy movies are like pizza, even the bad ones are good. It's currently (October 2022) streaming on Peacock and available in the Mummy Legacy Collection DVD set from Universal, available from Amazon. (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The House of Bast is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program, which provides a means for participants to earn commissions by linking to Amazon.com)

After last weeks post, I rented The Curse of King Tut's Tomb .. and I can see why nine year old me found it fascinating. Unfortunately, I am not nine anymore. There's a lot to unpack here, both good and bad. I watched the 2016 Miniseries Tutankhamun and that covered the same ground, but because of technology and budget was a superior production.  This has it's retro- charm though. Productiin: Location! Exteriors were filmed partially in Egypt.  And and and! Because it was Lord Carnarvon, they filmed scenes at Highclaire Cstle.  Like the weirdest episode of Downtown Abbey. A seance in the saloon (yes, that's whats it's called- think Christmas tree at Downton Abbey).  The library.  In fact, because we've watched entirely too much Downton Abbey, Perry was able to identify a piece of furniture. (Reuphoistered since this was filmed). Cast: Howard Carter was played by Robin Ellis, lead in the 70s Poldatk, but the first billed was Eva Marie Sait, playing a fictional jo...

 Tonight's movie was The Mummy's Ghost.   After the two previous movies, Kharis, and the audience, finally meet his lost love, Princess Ananka.   Following up after The Mummy's Tomb, Smalltown USA is still talking about the events of the movie, as is the nearby Collegetown, USA... even including discussing it in the Egyptology class. BMOC Tom Hervey has an Egyptian girlfriend, Amina, working at the college library.  She doesn't like talking about Egypt, there's something that haunts her... Turns out she's the reincarnation of Ananka.  Kharis survived the fire in TMT and the priests of Karnak, now called Arkam, are pulling his strings.   George Zucco is back as the high priest with John Carradine as junior priest. SPOILERS FOR A 78 YEAR OLD MOVIE TMG ends on an unexpected note: Kharis and Ananka, together!  Kharis takes Amina into a swamp, where they're consumed in it's depths. But it's not forever- there's still one more movie in the ser...

I must have been some kind of serious little King Tut nerd as a kid. Exhibit A: Thursday night, May 8th 1980.  King Kong preceded the first half of The Curse of Kig Tut's Tomb.  42 years ago.  I don't remember a damn thing about King Kong, or if we even watched it. I do remember being excited about The Curse of King Tut.  There's a curse! And Perry Mason! And Eva Marie Saint! (I didn't know who she was but I loved  her name.) Most everything else is lost to the fog of time.   But... while gathering notes for this post, I *found* the movie.  It's available to rent on VUDU and GoogleTV.  So I'll be renting it soon for a rewatch- and a follow up post.  Meanwhile, I've included the promo spot from NBC below.

Universal's follow-up to The Mummy's Hand was 1942’s The Mummy's Tomb and just in case the audience might have forgotten the events of the earlier film, the first ten minutes are a flashback.  A flashback related by Steve Banning, played again by Dick Foran, thirty years later. Banning is a widower living back in Massachusetts, living with his sister and son. Andoheb and Kharis survived the previous movie, Kharis now being played by Lon Chaney Jr. Andoheb sends a junior priest of Karnak to America to avenge Banning's trespass.  The junior priest arrives in Smalltown, USA taking a job as a cemetery care taker.  In fact, he organizes his revenge from a mausoleum, the titular tomb of the Mummy (as opposed to oh, something from the Valley of the Kings or something.) The contrast of the very old world character of the Mummy against the small town Americana setting works... well within the context of.... y'know a living Mummy. I'm looking forward to the next insta...

I've decided to do a deep dive down the rabbithole for the last quarter of 2022 and just plunge into the phenomenom that was 1970’s Tutankhamun inspired Egyptomania, after all, for most of us my age, this is where it started. Most likely, with In Search Of... ,the most seventies of seventies pop speculative science/history things even: Big Foot! The Bermuda Triangle! And most importantly: The Mummy's Curse!!  Originally broadcast on May 14, 1977, the episode recreates scenes from 1920's Egypt with commentary by ''experts" and narration by Leonard Nimoy. (Viewable here on Youtube) This was *CRAZY* and a) it was on tv and b) it was hosted by Mr Spock, so it had to be legit, right. Never mind the fact that I was (doing maths....) seven on the initial broadcast. Rewatching it over three decades later... it's interesting. First, part of the episode was filmed at Highclere Castle, home of Lord Carnarvon... or as most PBS junkies would say: Downton Abbey/  It was ...

 I'm kind of slow sometimes.  It took me forever to catch on that Stephen Sommers' The Mummy was a remake of 1940's The Mummy's Hand and not Karloff's 1932 The Mummy. Universal's second film in the franchise would be referred to today as a reboot, spawning three and a half sequels (I don't really count Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy... mostly). Handsome adventurer/ Egyptologist Steve Banning (Dick Foran) and his comic relief sidekick Babe Jenson (Wallace Ford) with love interest Marta (Peggy Moran) seek the tomb of Ananka.  This tomb is protected by the priests of Karnak, led by oh-so-Egyptian George Zucco's Andoheb, keeper of the sacred Tana leaves, which revive Kharis,  the cursed priest of Isis, mummified alive and set to guard the tomb. Kharis was played by Tom Tyler, mostly famous these days for playing Captain Marvel (Shazam), but aside from some silent exposition scenes... he has no lines. After two weeks of less than stellar movies, The Mummy...

Please note there's no poster for this one, Ouija Mummy currently (Sept '22) available via Tubi.  There might be one somewhere but I couldn't be bothered, it's so bad. Starts off on good note: stock footage of an excavation outside a pyramid.  It devolves quickly from there with expositional voice overs of a woman, a member of the dig, at home in California, examining jewelry she took.  It's the most Mexican looking Ancient Egyptian jewelry I've ever seen.  The history, at least what I sat through seemed pretty good though- I attribute this more to cut-n-paste from wikipedia.  As in, I rewound the scene and was able to read along to the Ahotep I entry. Less than two and a half minutes.  I couldn't do it. Don't you do it either.

In The Mummy Lives, a centuries old creature pursues a woman  younger than himself.  It's also about a Mummy.  Tony Curtis was over forty years older than the romantic interest in this direct-to-video piece of drek and honestly my suspension of disbelief was easier on the Ancient Egyptian magic stuff than Curtis being a romantic figure at 67. For completists only.

Yeah it's Hammer time again.  Today's movie is Blood From the Mummy's Tomb.   From 1971, BFtMT is the fourth and last of Hammer's unconnected Mummy movies, it's adapted from Bram Stoker's novel The Jewel of the Seven Stars. It's the swingin' seventies and Margaret has dreams of ancient Egypt that scare her.  It helps that her father, an archeologist played by Andrew Keir (Quatermass!), decorates in Egyptian Revival style. And Revival is right: evil Queen Tara is getting ready for her resurrection.  All she needs to do is a) possess Margaret and b) recover artifacts from her tomb, dispersed by her father amongst the members of his expedition. Fortunately, Margaret has a boyfriend who understands that she's not crazy, she's psychic.  A totally reasonable assumption considering it's the seventies in a Hammer film. The whole thing is delightfully lurid in a seventies Hammer kind of way, and the expedition members are killed off one at...

Last month, our sweet River, Mother of the House of Bast, left us. I was going through the posts, looking for *just* the right picture for here, when I saw this picture of her with Isobel. It's an early photo of Isobel, it looked like it was taken before MacIntyre and the other kittens had left the House. Even with the biological mother near, River still stepped in to help care for the kittens, as she had for Marvin and Celeste, and Benny and Bailey. As she would with Ranefer and Rahotep. Because that's who she was.  She was our friend and we miss her.

I'm a little worried.  The last few nights at dinner, it's just been the boys- Narmer, Djoser, and Snefru. The girls of my tribe, Mafdet and Nefertari, haven't been to the porch in a couple of days.   These are cats that come to dinner when I whistle.  Narmer has taken to spending almost all  his time here.  Maybe that intimidates them. Maybe they're exhausted under the porch across the street,  suckling kittens. Or maybe they've gone walkabout.   Bast prayers. (Picture of Narmer)