There’s only so much “Wow!” “Amazing!” I can take

I’m watching the Egypt Live broadcast but I have to get up and do something else every ten minutes because the breathless exclamations are just too much for me to stand. STOP SAYING WOW, JOSH. And especially stop talking over people who have something substantive to say just to exclaim “Wow! Amazing!”

8:30 lol did Zahi Hawass just call him fat? Okay, I’m getting into this now.

Note: Hawass is just shy of his 72nd birthday. Look at him haul himself through these tight passages without breaking a sweat.

Hmm… Split screen with ads on the right and the live action on the left. I don’t hate it. In fact, if you’re going to do breakouts to pre-recorded explanatory bits, then keep the live thumbnail going with that too.

Ugh. Jokey food segment. The goat in the beginning was bad enough. The falafel punsterism is so much worse.

Oh hey, I didn’t know canopic jars were named after a type site! Beautiful examples in this tomb.

Zahi, no. Please. Not the curse.

I find Waziri’s calm descriptions and handling of the artifacts rather a relief after the extraness of Hawass and Gates.

I’ll tell you what, this gives you a good idea of what a hard job it really is to excavate sites like this. I’m not claustrophobic at all, and I can’t help but feel uneasy at the tight spaces and oppressively close rock walls deep underground.

“The adventure in archaeology makes me completely forget the pain. [moans in pain]” — Zahi Hawass

And we have reached the big limestone sarcophagus that will be opened live. They didn’t announce in the press materials that they’d open two less important ones before they even got to this one.

Mahmoud is the unsung hero of this broadcast.

I’m going to have to find out more about the wax heads and their revival in the New Kingdom.

That is the most perfectly wrapped mummy I’ve ever seen. I’ll say it: Wow. Amazing.

6 thoughts on “There’s only so much “Wow!” “Amazing!” I can take

  1. Not to josh with you, but myself I did not know this either…

    —–
    Canopus (Anc. Greek: Κάνωπος or Κάνωβος), was a subordinate of Menelaos. He was killed by a snake bite when Menelaus visited Egypt. Menelaos built a large tomb for him and the Greeks founded a place named Canopus after him [later..Πτολεμαῖοι, I suppose].

    The link between the place name Canopus and the mate of Menelaus is only made late in the tradition by Tacitus (Annals II, 60, 1), Pliny the Elder (Nat. Hist. V, 128) and Dictys Cretensis (VI, 4), among others. In older sources about Menelaus, however, there is no mention of this. According to Homer’s Odyssey (III, 276-285) Menelaos had a mate Phrontis, Onetor’s son, who died at Cape Soenion. Herodotus (II, 113-120) discusses in detail the story that Paris, after the kidnapping of Helena, by mistake ended up in Egypt with King Proteus. Menelaos would have gone in search of Helena in Egypt, but neither his mate nor his death are mentioned by Herodotus.

    [Later, Kanopus was identified with Osiris, represented as egg-shaped object with a head, and from there the name for those types of jars for intestines were derived in Egytology.]

    (Translated with DeepL)
    —–

    :hattip:

  2. Having met Dr. Hawass several times, what you see is what you get — a dynamo. He is one of the few people I’ve met who can eat a complete dinner and keep up a running set of conversations at the same time. He is also a great teacher!

    I wonder how they will recover all of the delicate necklaces on the first mummy, that of a female singer. Cover everything with hot wax, and then remove when hardened?

  3. Josh had his hands full with Dr. Hawass. The mummy was worth it all so perfectly wrapped yes Wow yes amazing !

  4. I thought it was good, I was a little surprised when Dr. Hawass picked up the scarab and statue from the unopened tomb and then right before the commercial instead of placing them back where he found them he just tossed them back into the sarcophagus in the sand next to the mummy.

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