TIL… that in the middle ages there was a popular belief in a demon of language, one who collected the words of people women gossiping in church, and the mumbled syllables of priests who weren’t saying mass properly. He was also held responsible for scribal errors. “Later he haunted printing presses, causing typesetters to make mistakes.”
TIL… there is a typo demon, it has a name, and it is Tutivillus (Titivillus).
A small fat bird, like the above, is the hieroglyph used in Ancient Egyptian to mean “wicked” or evil”.
The phrase above him (the inscription should be read from the top down) is “Nb s3″ or “Lord of the son of”. Genitive is usually implied in this sort of phrase without a connecting word, meaning:
This birb has literally created the sentence and declared himself “ Lord of the Son of Evil”
I love Alexander the Great because if he was a fictional character you would yell “THAT’S JUST NOT REALISTIC WTF MAN YOU CAN’T WIN A BATTLE AFTER BEING ATTACKED FROM BEHIND AND HAVE TO WHEEL YOUR WHOLE FUCKIN ARMY AND FIGHT YOUR WAY ACROSS A RIVER AND UPHILL AGAINST A LARGER ARMY"
But
“Look conquering an island by making it not an island any more is ridiculous that’s never going to be believable.”
But
He just fuckin did that shit.
I actually got the inspiration for the protagonist of Lady of Ice and Iron from him, and when/if it’s ever published and people inevitably yell “YOUR PROTAGONIST IS JUST NOT REALISTIC” I’m just going to make unblinking eye contact while folding a printout of Alexander’s troop movements at Gaugamela into a paper airplane and then lob it at their face.
And if they give me shit for her being queer, I’m going to print out historical accounts of Alexander’s lover Hephaestion, tape them to Nerf darts, and shoot them at people.
Wait he un-islanded an island?
Tyre is now an isthmus. Before Alexander, it was an island.
He offered to let them surrender peacefully. They told him to get fucked, secure in their place on a fucking island in a fortified city.
“Fine.” Said Alexander, cracking his knuckles. “Get me my engineers, we’re building the land out to this island.”
“Holy shit”, his generals presumably said. “Holy fuckin shit, man.”
And so, at Alexander’s command, his engineers constructed a causeway to connect the island of Tyre to the mainland. It took eight months. Tyre hurled everything they could against the workers, so Alexander rolled siege engines out there to protect them.
Anyway, long story short, the causeway was completed, Tyre fell and was burned and sacked (unusually, as Alexander normally did not allow his army to pillage and plunder and destroy, but he was, apparently, mega peeved).
And the causeway stands to this day. Tyre remains an isthmus.
[Further proof to verify you guys’ info]
Ancient History Encyclopedia says:
“
Negotiations having failed, Alexander began his operations in January 332 BCE. After occupying old Tyre, he began to construct a causeway (or mole) across the channel toward the walls of Tyre, using rocks, timbers, and rubble taken from the buildings of the old city. Initially, work progressed well: the water near the mainland was shallow and the bottom muddy, but, as the causeway lengthened, the Macedonians and Greeks began to run into trouble. The seafloor shelved sharply near the city, to a depth of 18 ft (5.5m). Work slowed to snail-pace, and the work gangs found themselves increasingly harassed by missile fire from the city walls.
Alexander constructed two siege towers from timber covered with rawhide and positioned them at the end of the causeway. Artillery engines at the top of these towers were able to return fire at the walls, and the work gangs erected timber palisades as an added measure of protection. Work proceeded, and Alexander spent much of his time on the mole, dispensing small gifts of money to his sweating labourers and leading by personal example.”
Your players are faced with an ancient Sumerian curse! However, since the early ancient Sumerian language was only used for recording tax debts, it turns out to actually be an ancient Sumerian bill.
and therefore they need to get hold of some ancient Sumerian coinage and bring it to the ruins of the ancient Sumerian tax office, because the Sumerians had a pleasingly direct way of preventing tax evasion, namely horrifying curses.
well I don’t have any coin but I have these copper ingots, lovely copper ingots, from a very reputable merchant, never heard a word said against him, very thorough with his paperwork, anyway they’re guaranteed pure copper and proper weight, so can I pay my tax with those?
I just want everyone to take a step back for a second and really think about how we’re using the most powerful knowledge tool in history to make jokes about a specific dude who lived almost 4000 years ago.
one of my favorite weird history moments has got to be when american agents tasked with nixon’s security while he was in the soviet union as vice president under eisenhower detected unusual amounts of radiation in his hotel room so they discussed it loudly to each other to make sure the soviets knew that they knew since there were obviously bugs everywhere and the next day it just mysteriously went away and they never learned any more about it
life during the cold war was just whatever
The Soviets: What if we irradiated Nixon to try and give him radiation poisoning
Secret Service Agents the room over: WOW NIXONS ROOM SURE IS RADIOACTIVE! I SURE HOPE WE CAN FIGURE OUT WHERE ALL THIS RADIATION IS COMING FROM. THE RADIATION IN NIXON’S ROOM THAT IS. THE ONE WE’RE MONITORING SO CLOSELY WE EVEN BOTHERED TO TEST FOR RADIATION LEVELS.
Kimchi and Justice 