Mythology Blog

Once upon a time there was a Pharaoh with many attendants and advisers. Of the pharaoh’s many advisers one, a youth, he trusted most of all, much to the chagrin of the elder advisers. Many thought it wrong for the youth to be trusted more than his elders, and no one grew angrier over the matter than the eldest adviser. It was known that the eldest adviser disdained the youth, as he was keeping the elder from his rightful place, and would have done something to remove him, but none, not even the eldest, would think to move against someone so favored by the Pharaoh. So, the elder advisers tolerated the youth. One day, as the eldest adviser was walking in the temple of Phta when a man approached him. The man, a magician, told the eldest that he two thought it was wrong for the youth to have the pharaoh’s ear, and that if the eldest would help him they could remove the youth without the Pharaoh suspecting a thing. The elder, quickly agreed and the magician brought out a small woode...

The above photo is of Ra the Sun God of Egypt as depicted on the Tomb of Nefertari, Queen of Ramses II, c. 1298-1235 BC, Egypt. As you may have guessed, for today's reading I chose to do the Egyptian Myths and Stories unit because I saw it after doing the reading for last week and was bummed that I had passed it up. Luckily for me, this week is still focused on the Middle Eastern and Indian Units.  I really enjoyed all of the stories in this first part of the reading, as I do many stories about ancient deities and religions. I think I enjoyed these stories particularly though, because they were so unfamiliar to me. Although I knew of Ra the sun god, I had never heard the stories surrounding him and the other Egyptian gods. I think the most I ever knew about Ra and the others was a kids TV show about King Tut on Discovery Kids.  Of the stories I really liked "The Secret Name of Ra" and "The Wax Crocodile." I enjoyed the first one mostly for the cunni...

Hey there! As you may have guessed already because this is an extra credit post, I fell behind last week. This time partially due to procrastination and partially due to a migraine. It was great. Let me tell you about it.  I had been feeling really great all week, getting my work done, not too stressed, and like usual I was planning to do the three weekend assignments on Sunday. Yes, I know I shouldn't wait until the last day to do them. Yes, I know this whole thing could have been avoided by doing them early, but hey, hind sight, spilled milk, you know the drill. Plus, I didn't have any other homework due on Monday, unlike usual, so I thought I would have plenty of time. (Here is where the ominous music should play.) However, that afternoon I started having a migraine attack. This quickly spiraled into me sitting and staring at the wall until it stopped later that night. Sadly, I didn't get much work done, as you can imagine.  Luckily I am back on my feet today, alth...

Hi there!  I decided to continue reading the Persian Fairytales unit for the second reading of this week because I enjoyed the first half so much. Interestingly, the second half contained stories that seemed to make more sense to me, or at least connect more. Some of the stories that I liked the most were "The Shah Abbas and the Poor Mother," "Fayiz and the Peri Wife," and "The Merchant and the Saffron."  I think what I liked the best about "The Shah Abbas and the Poor Mother," and the "The Merchant and the Saffron" was the kindness of certain characters. In the first it was the Shah and the second, the Saffron Seller. In many of the stories I have read for this class there is a lot of injustice or unkindness and sometimes just really bad luck that the stories are centered around, and while both of these stories have those traits they also have characters that try to improve the situation. These stories seem to be lesson...

Hello!  This week I chose to read the Persian Tales unit and was not disappointed. Some of these fairy tales like “The Boy Who Became a Bulbul” and “The Wolf-Aunt” reminded me of the Brother’s Grim Fairytales in their more original forms. The others seemed a little more child friendly like we might expect of fairytales today. Thinking of my story for this week, any of them could make a fun base for writing, but I think that the ones that would be the best to work with would be “The Boy Who Became a Bulbul,” “Nim Tanak,” or “Muhammad Tirandaz, The Archer.” For “The Boy Who Became a Bulbul” I would make the circumstances of the boy’s death make more sense to a modern reader, not just based on a bet with his father that he willingly submits to. I would also want to somehow bring the boy back, maybe instead of the Bulbul growing out of the stalk, he does. Or maybe his father doesn’t kill him but hides him instead. Either way I would like for the boy to live. For “Nim T...

Hello All!  My story book is named  Merlin Ambrosius , and as you may have guessed, it will be a narrative about the legendary prophet and wizard Merlin. I hope you enjoy it. Please use this page as the comment wall for the storybook! -Cat

Hi! For this week, I chose to do a story lab looking at different plot divices from tvTropes instead of another story. I used the "Random Trope" button to suffle through pages, and found a few that I recognized or thought would be interesting to try using! So here we go! The Big Guy : For this trope there was a picture of Chewbacca and Han Solo at the top of the page, and if you have ever seen the original trilogy you'll already understand a large portion of this trope. This character, The Big Guy, is really common in action movies, but I didn't realize how vercetile it could be. In particular, the article pointed out the different options for The Big Guy's characteristics other than just being "the muscle" or the "brute force". The accompanying characteristics included loyalty, gruffness, meanness, gentle giant, calming, wise, dumb, smart, loud, withdraw n, and many others. The secondary traits they have depends on what kind of "Th...

Hi there! This week I decided to read more classical material, and chose more of Ovid's Metamorphosis because previously I read Pygmalion. I went ahead and started with the first book because that seemed logical. So notes will follow, but first I just want to throw out there that Juno and Jupiter are both horrible, and I think that they make better villains than they do gods. Which honestly, could be a pretty good story, so maybe I could do something with that. Okay, now for the notes: Because this is the second week that I have read classical stories, I thought I would do some digging into classical characters, places, and beings that I'm not familiar with by following any available links and such. Nereid: (female) Nymphs of the sea (Aegean particularly) that are associated with the beautiful and kind things about the ocean. They are the daughters of Nereus and Doris, and unlike the more familiar sea creature Sirens, they can be helpful to sailors. One of them, Thetis, i...

Hey, So, after backing up my files, and reviewing the points chart, it looks like I am going okay in the grades area. The suggested number for this week is 88 for an A and I have something like 84 so not far behind.  Of this week’s announcements I think I like the one about adding a "favicon" to your blog (shown below) for a couple reasons. The first is that I had just recently seen that setting option in my blog settings and had no clue what it was, and the second is that I love those little things. When I bookmark pages on my browser I love it when they have one and aren't just the usual google "G". As for my favorite video, I think it would definitely have to be the Jatayu Sculpture video because initially I thought it was going to be about the remains of an ancient sculpture that had been found, but instead has recently been built. I like to imagine that it may be something that future people find and marvel a...

Check the time stamp on this post and you will, no doubt, know what this is going to be about. I am yet again screeching in way past the last minute; although, I think overall, this week was better than last.  In trying to get a better handle on my schedule, I committed more of my Saturday to chores that normally get pushed off to Sunday in the hopes that on Sunday I could get more school work done. Congratulations to me, I did in fact get more school work done today then possibly any Sunday ever! Why, you ask, am I posting this so late then? Because instead of working on what is do sooner, i.e. this post right here, I got distracted working on homework that isn’t due until Thursday because it is what my study group, who aren’t in this class, were working on. Awesome. So one step forward two steps back I guess, but at least it is something. As far as the assignments earlier in the week went, I had plenty of time for reading A and cranked it out in one sitting but wh...