Photo by Galen C. Dalrymple, copyright 2024. All Rights Reserved.
I took this photo inside the Cairo Museum. It is a photo of Anubis, but it was special because it was part of the treasures found inside the tomb of King Tut. I’d never seen a statue of it with its tail showing before and I thought it was interesting! The subject was encased in a glass box, hence some reflections can be seen in the image.
Anubis, also known as Inpu, Inpw, Jnpw, or Anpu in Ancient Egyptian was the god of funerary rites, protector of graves, and guide to the underworld, in ancient Egyptian religion, usually depicted as a canine or a man with a canine head.
Like many ancient Egyptian deities, Anubis assumed different roles in various contexts. Depicted as a protector of graves as early as the First Dynasty (c. 3100 – c. 2890 BC), Anubis was also an embalmer. By the Middle Kingdom (c. 2055–1650 BC) he was replaced by Osiris in his role as lord of the underworld. One of his prominent roles was as a god who ushered souls into the afterlife. He attended the weighing scale during the “Weighing of the Heart”, in which it was determined whether a soul would be allowed to enter the realm of the dead. Anubis is one of the most frequently depicted and mentioned gods in the Egyptian pantheon; however, no relevant myth involved him.
Anubis was depicted in black, a color that symbolized regeneration, life, the soil of the Nile River, and the discoloration of the corpse after embalming. Anubis is associated with his brother Wepwawet, another Egyptian god portrayed with a dog’s head or in canine form, but with grey or white fur. Historians assume that the two figures were eventually combined. Anubis’ female counterpart is Anput. His daughter is the serpent goddess Kebechet.
ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY: in 1974, John Denver scored his first #1 song, “Sunshine On My Shoulders,” on March 30, 1974. He would go on to become one of the most popular singer-songwriters of the 1970s.
“Sunshine On My Shoulders” was John Denver’s attempt to write a sad song, a big part of Denver’s broad appeal. “I was so down I wanted to write a feeling-blue song,” he told Seventeen magazine in 1974, “[but] this is what came out.” Originally released on his 1971 album Poems, Prayers and Promises, Denver’s lovely ode to the restorative powers of sunlight only became a smash hit when re-released on his John Denver‘s Greatest Hits album in late 1973—an album that went on to sell more than 10 million copies worldwide.
It should come as no surprise that an artist who played such an enormous role in the softening of mainstream pop music in the 1970s would find little support from rock critics. “Television music” marked by “repellent narcissism” was Rolling Stone‘s take on Denver. “I find that sunshine makes me happy, too,” wrote Robert Christgau of The Village Voice, “[but] there’s more originality and spirit in Engelbert Humperdinck.”
Such critical response did little to dampen public enthusiasm for Denver’s records during his heyday, however. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, John Denver has sold 33 million records.
Born Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. on December 31, 1943, in Roswell, New Mexico, John Denver died in California on October 12, 1997, when his experimental aircraft crashed into Monterey Bay. – The History Channel
TRIVIA FOR TODAY: The rarest scent in the world is orris butter. Favored by the 16th-century Italian noblewoman Catherine de Medici, the perfume is made from the rhizomes of the iris plant. Some varieties cost more than gold.
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