Links to the Griffin Warrior

Not sure how this escaped my notice earlier, but the World of the Griffin Warrior is of course supremely fascinating, especially the battle gem.

The article in Archeology by Andrew Curry of 2019 is here, and the later news item on the trade links exemplified by Hathor is here.

Disagreements in Wikipedia

I have been tracking disagreements between articles in Wikipedia for a while now, and just found another nice one (though admittedly one of the articles is a stub). I found this while researching this post. The articles are about the Egyptian Pharao Dejdkare Isesi, specifically his daughters, and the man married to one of them, Senedjemib Mehi, who had finished the tomb that the previous post talked about.

While the stub-article on Senedjemib Mehi identifies his wife Khentkaus as either a daughter of Pharao Djedkare Ikesi or Unas, the successor of Djedkare Ikesi, the article on Djedkare Ikesi writes:

Less certain is the filiation of Kentkhaus III, wife of vizier Senedjemib Mehi, who bore the title of "king's daughter of his body".^[75][76] It is debated whether this title indicates a true filiation or if it is only honorary.^[76][77]

The fascinating part is that the quote draws upon Brovarski's 2001 work, The Senedjemib Complex, p.30 (= Fn 75),  but so does the stub-article on Mehi!

An Old Egyptian historical Argument

In the autobiographical part of his tomb inscription, Vizier Senedjemib Inti of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt, who worked under Pharao Djedkare Isesi, writes:

When it came to pass [Register 4] his majest caused that I be annointed with fat [by the side of his majesty] [Register 5] [Neve]r [was done] the like by the side of the king for anyone. [Register 6] -- James H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Vol 1, #270, p.122.

Given the dating of the Fifth Dynasty, that would put the record between the late 25th and the mid 24th century BC; see here for some of the proposed dates of Djedkare Isesi's reign.

Some Mamluk Details and Natural History Details

Been researching history of the Mamluks for a collaboration with some people in the Digital Humanities at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Found some cool resources on the web:

• Reuven Amitai-Preiss' book on the Ilkhanid Mongols and the Mamluks
• An old German History of Islam

In communicating with my collaborators, I revisited the Timbersnake argument from my dissertation, and found some additional resources for that, including

• Mark Catesby's Natural History of  the Carolinas,Florida, the Bahamas etc etc with a cool depiction of a rattlesnake from volume 2, published in London in 1756.
• The travels of Linneus student Peter or Pehr Kalm of Sweden, who helped classify rattlesnakes for Linneus (as did Catesby's drawings)
• An analysis of his journal (including on rattlesnakes)
• His three volume travel journal is available here in German for the First Part. Indubitably other parts are on Archive.org as well.